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Advertising and Social Networking

The Marketing LandscapeFriday, May 26th, 2006

John Manoogian IIIDirector, Experience Design

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Social Networksare the new malls.

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But these malls are built by users. Without any rules.• Users are connecting with each other, goofing around, and sounding off

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People are putting their real lives + personas online.

• baring their souls online in exchange for human connections• Movies, Books, Friends – profiles are people’s lives on public display. This is

the stuff they pin up inside their lockers.

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for a long time, consumers have been coming to advertising spaces.

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but now,advertisers arecoming to aconsumer-createdspace

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how can advertising remain relevant in this space?

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“The spirit of social computing is the spirit of leaving value in your wake”

> Bradley Horowitz, Technical Director - Yahoo

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Companies who do this will take the prize.

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let’s see howmarketers areusing the space

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Allowing users to play with brand identities: Axe - GameKillers

• Make the characters more real by creating custom personas and fictional MySpace profiles for each of them, which users can add as friends

• The profiles “auto-approve” your friend requests

• Plus video trailers

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Viral Comedy - Dodge Caliber – Pig and Bear

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What’s viral?

Simple. Marketing consumers transport for you.Why?

> It’s unique content or functionality they can’t get elsewhere> Exploits the natural desire to be the first on your block with something cool

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A user-powered place to play: Fox + X-Men

• X-Men: expanding the functionality of the network, empowering users to do things they couldn’t do before they became friends with the X-Men

> X-Men MySpace skins> Portable viral movies – add the

movie trailer to your page> New functionality – users get 16

“Top friends” instead of a “top 8” if they add the X-men as a

> http://myspace.com/xmenthelaststand

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Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

• This is about brand-building + loyalty building – NOT direct response.> DM approach is boring for users.

• Media and production budgets become messily co-mingled • It’s scary to “open-source” your brand –

> to succeed on a social network, you have to allow users to comment on you, to actually control your brand a bit online – this is a scary thing. Anyone can (and will) say anything about you.

• Rejection is painful.> Advertisers and marketers are late to the social networking party

• The waters move quickly> one misstep and you’ll drown

• Horror stories for users of transparency gone wrong / too far• Will people really buy products they see on social networks?• Metrics are pretty soft

> Tagworld can do this – will MySpace catch up?

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The Future / Further Reading

• MySpace is just the beginning:> Social networking sites are multiplying rapidly> Users flit between sites> Filling out profiles again and again is a drag> User-owned, merged profiles that can be plugged into any new site will emerge

• For more on social networks and emerging media, check out our blog

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Thank you!

Questions?