Alleblog

by Nancy Landis, Account Coordinator

I love to entertain and bring people together for a party. I enjoy feeding my guests, listening to them share stories, laughing and debating issues together. Good healthy interaction can leave us all with a new view on life, an energized spirit, a deeper connection with our friends and a feeling of belonging. Good connection leaves you with a desire to return again and again. Just like a good, well written, informative blog.
As humans, we are social beings. However, regardless of how social I am, at the end of a busy day of work, meetings, parent teacher conferences, soccer games, and helping with the children’s homework, there is very little time for gathering round with my friends. Yet, even when I don’t feel like going out again, dressing up, or spending money, I can cozy down in the sofa, go to my favorite blogs and be with my friends and make connections. I can listen to others’ stories, hear about a new recipe or someone’s experience at a restaurant, or I can get answers to my questions.
Social media and the blogosphere is now an intricate part of our social lives . In that same vein, I recently read a blog by Tom Asacker that noted some very interesting differences between two very popular artists, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Both very well known, yet van Gogh died without a penny to his name, while Picasso’s estate was said to be valued at over $750 million. Professor Gregory Berns noted in his book, Iconoclast, that Picasso had superior networking skills. He knew how to connect and add social value to influential people, who in turn spread a good word for him among their circle of friends. So who is your brand? Vincent van Gogh or Pablo Picasso?
There is power in numbers and large numbers of people are on the web, reading blogs, checking in on Twitter or sharing information on Facebook and other social media tools. To be with your friends or make connections, you don’t have to gather them around a meal. You only have to go where they are and feed the conversation. Where are your connections happening? Are your friends sharing a good word about you or your product? Will you be influential in the conversation? Maybe you should “gather round”, bring a little food and join the party!

by Jamie Allebach

From most ad agencies all you hear is brand-building, brand-building, and more brand-building. Branding is good, but let’s be honest about what the end goal of advertising is—for consumers to purchase your product!

Branding is about changing consumers’ “attitude” towards your product. Advertising is focused on changing consumers’ “behavior”. See the difference? And here’s the truth of the matter; it’s easier to change consumer behavior than their attitudes.

Consumers are more often driven by impulse or incentive (sometimes brand loyalty plays a role–wink, wink, nod, nod). Let’s look at a simple example.

Ask yourself this; when you’re shopping, is it easier to compel you to buy that pint of rich, creamy euphoric flavored gourmet ice cream (not mentioning any brand, but you know who I’m talking about) or is it easier to convince you that it’s good for you? One is about changing your “behavior” to buy now, the other seeks to change your “attitude” and perhaps get something healthier.

Let’s look at another practical example; when you give consumers a good reason to change their behavior, they will. Someone buys a certain brand of soup each week. The brand right next to it has a high-value IRC on it. The consumers buy it based on the immediate value. You’ve changed their behavior, but not necessarily their attitude towards the two brands.

In-store sampling, couponing, rebates, discounts, packaging, compelling merchandising and POS, can all give customers a practical reason to try your product now—having an immediate effect on consumer behavior.

You see, it’s much simpler to change consumer “behavior” than it is “attitude”. Remember this the next time your agency tells you; “You have to invest more in brand advertising.”

By Bennett Andelman, Allebach Communications

Recently, we introduced newly designed actionable intelligence software that has the ability to find, monitor and process exact online conversations about your category, brand and competitors. This includes every known blog, social network, user generated vehicle, micro-blog and all other social and digital media platforms.

This is actually decommissioned government spyware that has been modified to meet our needs, and those of our clients - measuring social media against ROI and Share of Voice/Share of Chatter to have a dynamic impact on your brand and marketing program. Through this software, we can more efficiently:

* Build and manage your brand online
* Measure ROI and ROA for all social media initiatives
* Discern which sites and forums give your brand the most leverage
* Find out who’s talking about your brand
* Discern attitudes about your category, brand, and competitors
* Examine keywords used to discuss your brand
* Find and incentivize brand evangelists and influencers
* Gather intelligence to assist in product improvement and development

Basically, we can now measure the total share of consumer conversations your brand has online and the degree to which consumers like or dislike your brand (or competitors) when they talk to each other about you (or competitors) - including where they congregate.

As an example, the software can tell us the exact number of consumers and/or professionals talking about a brand (say Nautica Fragrances) or the product category (beauty), what are they saying and what sites are getting the most traffic related to that messaging (down to exact keywords and phrases like “cheap cologne”). Then they will pull the responses, both positive and negative, interpret the response (pulls out sarcasm, humor, etc so you are only getting information on legitimate conversations about your product and/or category and/or competitors), list the terms that people are talking about and searching on the most (helping with Adword buys and organic SEO), and tell us where we should focus our attention – message, strategy, tactics, etc.

Incredible information.

There are other software tools like Radiant 6 that measure, but nothing this robust. We finally have an opportunity to truly look at a brand and be able to tell you without a shadow of a doubt where you should market yourself online and what you should considering saying to influence action. We can also track mid-campaign to show you how your advertising efforts are doing (and make changes in real time to change behavior if necessary). In a few months, we will even be able to place ads directly into the middle of conversations about your product or brand category, truly changing the game.

The license for the software is not inexpensive (approx. $5000/month for the category, brand and a few competitors to analyze) but will pay huge dividends.

For more information on this social media measuring tools, visit http://www.allebach.com/all%5Femails/webdig/landing.html.

Big brother is watching whether we like it or not…so lets create an opportunity from it.