By: Shannon Aronin

One year later, and the Share Our Strength/Tyson Foods partnership is still one of the most impressive campaigns to date that exemplifies best practices in cause related  marketing.

Social media creates unique opportunities for nonprofit/business partnerships. People share the things they are most passionate about, and your average brand just can’t compete with the passion a nonprofit cause can generate. If you are in business, customers give you money, and you in turn give them a product or service. Nonprofits rally people behind movements; donors give them money to support what they see as the common good. People have to be passionate to give time and money without receiving a product or service in return.

Nonprofits need generosity to meet their missions and thrive. Corporate giving makes up a significant part of nonprofit funding. Most businesses, even small local shops, give to charity in one way or another. Consumers expect companies to give back. A 2008 Cone/Duke University study states that consumers spend twice as long viewing cause-related ads, 85% of Americans have a more positive image of a company that supports a cause they care about, and 79% would switch brands to one associated with a good cause.

Unfortunately, nonprofits continue to offer the same benefits to corporations with changing marketing needs, and corporations don’t seek opportunities to maximize the marketing value of the good work for communities they already do. Companies are uncomfortable talking about the social good they are doing. I think that many fear that their charity will be reduced in the public eye to corporate greed, but as the numbers above demonstrate, that is simply not the case. Corporations from small to large actually can and do care. There is no such thing as a “company,” there are only people that own or work at a company. The more “real” your brand is in general, the more authentic a company’s giving appears. But there is nothing wrong with leveraging the giving that a company is going to do anyway as a marketing tool either.

So, how can nonprofits and corporations work together to create better, truer partnerships? Here are 3 tips to improve the effectiveness of cause-related marketing for both companies and nonprofits.

1. Corporations should direct giving to nonprofits that are aligned with their business model. This simply makes sense to consumers. Geoff Livingston does an excellent job here showing that the sweet spot for effective and authentic cause-related marketing is the intersection of Mission, Problem and Family. If you are an engineering or technology company, you have a genuine interest in supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning objectives for students. If you are a developer, you have a genuine interest in causes that support healthy community growth. There is self-interest, but not objectionably so. On the other hand, if you are a tobacco company mandated to spend millions of dollars on anti-smoking campaigns, that’s a little too see through for the average consumer to take seriously.

2. Nonprofits should offer more creative benefits to corporate donors. The third sector needs to do a better job raising visibility for corporate donors. Nonprofits should still include them in  annual reports and sell event sponsorships. I’m a big fan in diversifying the sources of your nonprofit’s funding in as many ways as possible. But partnering with a corporation to generate buzz through a day of company service improves awareness and sentiment for both organizations. Online initiatives need to advance. There have been a number of campaigns that have been targeted at giving to charities based on how much attention the cause generates by bringing Fans to the company’s Facebook Page, adding Twitter Followers for the company, or improving traffic to the company’s website. But what happens if we flip the equation?

What kind of message would it send if the company instead drove Fans/Followers/visitors to the nonprofits? What message would the consumer receive if companies demonstrated the altruism – which I idealistically believe really is part of why companies should and do give – by using their budget, resources and audience to raise awareness for an important cause? What if corporations started sponsoring the online presences of nonprofits? What if corporations gave according to the attention the nonprofit they support garners? Slap your logo on this and explain that you believe in helping nonprofits succeed, and you have created a different, more giving image and done more to foster the nonprofit’s sustainability.

3. Companies need to recognize the changing needs of nonprofits too. Funding is scarce right now for everyone, especially nonprofits. The best thing many can do right now is to prepare to soar as the economy continues to recover. Nonprofits do still need to fund general operating expenses. Program support also remains important. But the nonprofits have not been so in need of capacity building, marketing, technology and expertise in at least fifteen years. The great part of this is that corporations can provide much of this in-kind and through company sponsored employee volunteer work. Corporate grants should place a high priority on innovation right now, because those are the charities that will thrive in the future and create the most social good with corporate investments in the community.

What creative corporate/nonprofit partnerships have impressed you? Is there a company you give purchasing favor to specifically because of their involvement with a cause? Are you mistrustful of companies that showcase their giving, or are you ok with it so long as you feel connected to the cause?

By: Shannon Aronin

Back in the early 90s, many of us enjoyed the PBS show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? Today’s technology would have made the gumshoes job a whole lot easier.

Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, now Google Buzz, and even Twitter allow users to announce to the world their exact location, right down to latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. What do we get out of these services? The same thing we get out of other social media sites: connection with friends, opportunities to meet like-minded people, get reviews on useful products and venues from people we trust, and sometimes just bragging rights. From a marketing perspective, brands are salivating at the thought of being able to target deals to consumers in their immediate geographic area, and rightly so. Most users will enjoy the deals; imagine walking down main street and being able to choose a restaurant based on who sends you a better deal on your phone.

So what’s the down side? I’m not a privacy nut. My entire life is well documented on Facebook and Twitter. I frequently announce where I am going and cool things I am doing. I know that this is public information. Please Rob Me believes that these sites are dangerous because they announce that you are not home, making you vulnerable to burglars. Foursquare had some great comebacks to this idea, namely that criminals don’t need your tweets to rob you. They have always been able to case a home, call, or just see if the lights are on.

Getting robbed is lousy. You lose your stuff, your house is usually turned upside down and victims tend to feel very violated. But we have homeowner’s insurance, stuff is only stuff, and it could always be worse. My concern with these services is a little different. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to announce where you are when you are out and about. I am much more concerned about the personal safety and well-being of myself and my family.  So what can go wrong using these services?

• You could forget and tweet you are at the beach when you took a sick day at work.
• You could decide a guy is not worth a second date, but he is convinced he is so he finds opportunities to “bump into you.”
• If you have any kind of job that attracts attention (reporters, celebrities, police officers, prosecuting attorneys, record producers, etc.) you may not want every professional contact, people you have angered, or people who will stop at nothing just to meet you to know exactly where you are.

The question becomes do the benefits outweigh the risks? The answer is it depends. What is your privacy threshold? Everyone has their line – what am I uncomfortable sharing with everyone? In the world of social media where transparency and authenticity are key, that line is either nonexistent or pretty far away for industry thought leaders and enthusiasts. 

The good news is that most of these services require that users opt in. What’s more, you can decide what geographic location you share with others. If you are at a friend’s home you can be pushing out their address too, something your friends might not appreciate.

Here’s the bottom line – be cautious. Before you tweet out your exact location, stop for just a second and ask yourself if doing so at that time and place could be dangerous to you or others. It’s the most obvious of statements, but be aware that the internet is a public place and you should take reasonable precautions. There are definitely times when these services can be useful. I am advocating the idea of safe and thoughtful geotagging.

Do you use geotagging to let people know where you are? What services/sites do you use? Are you uncomfortable sharing your location, and if so what is your reason, especially if you are quite social on other sites and often share where you are without coordinates? What do you love about geotagging applications?

By: Shannon Aronin & Dave Kerpen

Given the buzz Pepsi’s Refresh Project generated by NOT participating in the Super Bowl and instead donating ad spend to charity, we expected the Big Game ads to be pretty heavy in social content. Overall, we were disappointed. At nearly $3 million for 30 seconds, what a waste when brands could have done a much better job building an ongoing relationship with their audience. A few Superbowl advertisers were at least using social media during the Super Bowl and talking to people about their ads. These included HomeAway.com, and the US Government Census Bureau, both on Twitter. In terms of social media integration into the ad campaign themselves, a few standout ads made the cut.

theKbuzz Presents:

Super Social Super Bowl Ad Awards

Honorable Mentions: Coca-Cola & Honda

Honda’s Squirrel ad got a lot more attention than the “Who Do You Know” ad they ran in the 3rd quarter – but it was the latter ad that featured a really short screenshot at the end of the ad, of the link: Facebook.com/Honda. While we couldn’t find anyone talking about this (and somehow we can’t even find the ad online today), we believe this was the 1st time any Super Bowl advertiser has used even a precious second to promote a Facebook Page rather than a website- a notable acievement in its own right.

We really wanted to love Coke’s ad for their Live Positively campaign. They get an A+ for effort. But somehow the execution fell flat. They had all the right ingredients: cause marketing on Facebook that donated $1 up to $250,000 to Boys & Girls Clubs of America for every Coke you shared, a sneak peek at the Super Bowl ad on Facebook, and it featured The Simpsons. We expected it to be innovative or hilarious. Instead it was just kind of cute. The “Open Happiness” tagline suggested that a broke Mr. Burns could be made happy, along with the rest of Springfield, just by having a Coke.

3rd Place: Motorola

Start with Megan Fox in a bath tub. As ads go, that’s a good start. Megan tells us that this “little guy” has MOTOBLUR. She goes on to tell us that MOTOBLUR pulls her important stuff and lets her update all of her networks at once with a shot of Facebook on her phone. She then takes a picture of herself and wonders what would happen if she posted it? Watch what happens next for a giggle. But the lesson in this ad is that you need to sell Facebook in order to effectively sell a mobile phone.

2nd Place: Vizio

Vizio’s had the star power of Beyonce and included a montage of what we love about the internet: David After Dentist, Numa Numa Guy, Overly Dramatic Groundhog, (interestingly CarMax seemed to build their ad on this meme too) Twitter, Flickr and of course Facebook. Vizio’s tag line, “The best of the internet on your TV,” sums up the strategy of this campaign.

1st Place: Google

The fact that Google bought an ad at all is buzzworthy.

The online chatter began the day before the Super Bowl when CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted hinting at the ad, saying that “hell has indeed frozen over.” The ad, “Parisian Love,” has been on YouTube for over three months, as explained on Google’s official blog. Undoubtedly, Schmidt’s tweet and subsequent online buzz helped catapult Google to the top of  BrandBowl, where it lost only to Doritos, who ran 3 Super Bowl ads to Google’s 1.

The ad is a bit of a tear-jerker. No dialogue at all. Just a demonstration of how google users interact with the product, and how their search capabilities can be life changing. It’s a classic boy meets girl tale, told as only Google can.

Congrats to the most social Super Bowl advertisers! What were your favorite Super Bowl ads and why? And when will television advertisers, Superbowl and otherwise, understand that in order to extend the buzz and effectiveness of an ad, you’ve got to use and integrate social media?

Do YOU actually click on Internet banner ads? According to the “Natural Born Clickers” research conducted with Starcom USA and Tacoda, the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32% of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8% of the Internet user base) accounting for 85% of all clicks.

The argument for still running banner ads is that “click throughs” are not an accurate gauge for measurement, and that advertisers should be evaluating campaigns based on their view-through impact. I think that’s a pretty tough nut for advertisers to swallow. Although the data also showed a direct correlation between online banner campaigns and lift in search of the advertised product…it may be that online advertising is headed in the direction of traditional advertising. In other words, it’s all clutter, it’s all annoying, and users resist it.

Our advice? Start a dialogue with your targeted customers, rather than holding up (digital) signs in their face. If you are to advertise, consider linking to your social spaces, where you can capture a customer and engage in conversation with them. CRM trumps advertising, any day of the week.

– Carrie Kerpen, Queen Bee

Dave Kerpen, ceo of theKbuzz, talks about the new report that indicates that online advertising dollars have surpassed tv advertising in the UK. What does this mean for you? It’s a reminder to spend your advertising and marketing dollars where people are – which is clearly online now- and on social networks – much more than in front of a television, radio or newspaper. Where are you spending your precious marketing budget dollars?

Our Chief Buzz Officer, Dave Kerpen, has been tweeting live from Advertising Week in New York today. According to Advertising Week’s official website, “Advertising Week is North America’s premier gathering of cutting edge communications leaders. The Week is a hybrid of thought leadership and special event programming, uniting clients, creatives, media and inspiring figures like Lorne Michaels, Ludacris, Jon Bon Jovi, Jimmy Wales, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Donny Deutsch, Lewis Black, Chaka Khan, Bob Greenberg, Emeril, Jimmy Fallon, Ziggy Marley . . . and many more”.

Additions to the program were still being announced as recently as this past Friday, when Wal-mart and Starbucks CEOs were confirmed for the Team Earth seminar. If you’re checking out any of the events this week, let us know about them and what you thought! If you don’t have a chance to make it to any of the presentations at Advertising Week, follow the #adwk hashtag on Twitter to see all of the conversation happening around it, or follow our CBO @DaveKerpen for more of today’s highlights!

Previously, the most you could do with Facebook’s social ads scheduling was set your ad to run during certain dates. Sometime this past week, Facebook added the option to schedule your social ads down to the 5-minute interval:

This is huge news for everyone using Facebook’s advertising platform! Instead of hitting users indiscriminately anytime between 12AM and 11:59PM on a given day, you can seek to encourage an immediate response by targeting users at the most appropriate time. Right away, we can think of a few great uses:

– Restaurants advertising lunch specials (especially if they deliver!),
– Bars/Clubs with happy hour looking to target office employees in the area,
– TV Show premier reminders an hour or two beforehand,
– and Event reminders in general!

As of this moment, you cannot schedule recurring ads, but we’ve spoken to our contacts at Facebook and they’ve confirmed that this development is on the horizon. Do you have any others to add to this list or any plans for your own business to use Facebook’s timed scheduling options you’d like to share? Comment and let us know!

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) just released results from a study conducted to uncover how brand builders are spending their money and where they are placing efforts.  It’s no big surprise that short-term strategies are being employed in response to the economy.  Social media is in the same bucket as pricing deals and public relations which are three things that have increased budgets right now.  It also wasn’t a surprise to hear that traditional media has declined in importance compared to previous reports.  

Straight from the press release:

Media channel effectiveness for building brand equity has also shifted materially. While television is still ranked highest in importance (64 percent), online (61 percent) and guerilla/word of mouth/buzz marketing (57 percent) have grown to be on par with television, with social media being ranked as the next highest effective media channel (40 percent).  Social media ranked highest as the media channel that marketers would like to use but have not yet been able to implement.

This study reaffirms that now more than ever it is critical to be in social media where brands can engage with their consumers.  In uncertain economic times, this is a prime way for brand marketers to keep their ears directly plugged into what consumers are thinking about their brands.  Those that are there now, will be that much stronger when the economy turns around because they’ve been engaging with their consumers the entire time.

Have you shifted your marketing dollars differently than the report shows?  What’s the hardest marketing challenge that you find in the short-term and in the long-term given the economy?  Is social media part of your strategy in both the short-term and long-term?  We want to hear your thoughts.

Would you walk up to this guy to have a conversation about household cleaning?

Last week, MediaPost reported on new research from Knowledge Networks “How People Use Social Media” and concluded that “only 16% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social sites. Based on the findings, Knowledge Networks categorizes the value of social media advertising “somewhere in the long tail of marketing options, way below TV ads and personal, word-of-mouth recommendations.”  Ironically, the report went on to say, “What we’re seeing is that word-of-mouth is still the No. 1 most influential source.”

This is pure hogwash.

What I gather from this report is that apparently social media advertising isn’t working very well. That’s because advertisers and ad agencies don’t yet get social media. It’s not about broadcasting your message as loudly as possible on Facebook or Twitter or whatever social network you think your target audience is visiting. (Hint: It’s probably Facebook.) It’s about joining the conversation – creating a space where consumers and fans can talk about your brand and products and services, listening to them, and engaging with them. This works.

For some reason ($$$?) media companies and ad agencies still don’t get this, so, if you’re in the media industry, think like a consumer for a moment, and then picture Mr. Clean, his smiling bald face and all. If you were at the kids soccer game talking with other moms and dads and Mr. Clean kept butting into the conversation, trying to get you to talk to him, (or click on him!), you’d find him totally annoying and unbearable. If, on the other hand, Mr. Clean was off to the side, taking notes on what people who chose to walk up to him had to share, and maybe giving out some free samples and having a great time with people, you’d probably be into Mr. Clean.

Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are just tools for a much larger version of that conversation. If your brand uses the tools right, and enters the conversation the right way, not as an advertiser but as an authentic party wanting to listen and engage, share, connect and have fun like every other productive member of the conversation, then you can take advantage of the fact that “word-of-mouth is still the #1 most influentual source” and laugh all the way to the bank, while other brands and agencies lament that “social media advertising doesn’t work.”

This morning, Dave sent me what is perhaps one of the most disturbing Facebook gifts I’ve ever seen – the “Creepy Co-Worker” from CareerBuilder.com:

Having not watched the Super Bowl myself, I was incredibly confused. But once Dave clued me in and I found the spot on YouTube, I had to agree that it was refreshing to see another brand successfully integrating and including social media into their campaign. We’ve frequently highlighted the CareerBuilder.com Facebook page as one of our favorite pages for its great layout and tons of valuable content for its fans, but now we can see their Facebook campaign continuing to build off of their big traditional media spend. Aside from the easy-to-share free gift, the page itself has the video upload as well as links to their YouTube page (which has already risen to YouTube’s Top 10 Most Viewed and Most Subscribed over the last two days). I know everyone’s talking about their favorite and least favorite ads today, but judging by the overwhelmingly disappointed tones of most marketing and advertising blogs that have posted, I thought it’d be good to highlight a brand that continues to get it right.

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