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As marketers move to social media, they are trying to figure out how to measure the success of such campaigns.  An Adweek article posted this morning notes that advertisers may soon have a new way to measure the amount of online buzz (see “New Campaign Metric:  Social Chatter,” January 27, 2010).

But, “Does Chattter Matter?”  An article in the November 2009 issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing, “Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales“  (by Vasant Dhar and Elaine A. Chang, pp. 300-307) shows some evidence that in the music industry online chatter matters and predicts future sales.  We could use more academic research to show what types of products benefit from online chatter.

One of the objectives of this blog is to bridge the gap between editions of our text books. Some of the social media platforms being used today were not widely known just a couple of years ago. And marketing managers are still trying to figure out how to use social media like Facebook and Twitter. So this blog provides some examples you can bring into the classroom. Ford has done a nice job, and Grant McCracken describes their success with last year’s launch of the Fiesta Movement campaign in “How Ford Got Social Marketing Right,” BusinessWeek, January 8, 2010.

From Wall Street Journal Video, “CES 2010: Lady Gaga’s Deal With Polaroid” January 8, 2010).  This short (0:50) video highlights publicity and trade shows.  If you can’t relate (and my 11 year old told me about Lady Gaga as I drove her home from ballet last night) our students probably know this pop star.

Lady Gaga makes an appearance at CES to promote Polaroid on Thursday. The iconic brand has tapped Lady Gaga to be creative director for a specialty line of products.

This short Wall Street Journal video clip (2:41) interviews the founder of B.R. Guest Restaurant.  He talks about building buzz and creating value as the keys to his restaurants success.

This article and video combination describe how companies can monitor “tweets” on the social media service Twitter to help them forecast sales.  “Follow the Tweets,” Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2009 (subscription required – no subscription click here).   The video below is an interview with one of the authors.

We believe executives can make accurate predictions about sales trends by analyzing tweets that mention their products or services, and we have created a model based on Twitter’s keyword-search function to help them do that.

These videos are hilarious — maybe more so for married men and women than for most of our students.  So maybe it will work better for those of you with nontraditional students.  The original “Beware of the Doghouse” viral video was popular last holiday season and so JC Penney created a new version “Back to the Doghouse” with new twists (see “JC Penney’s ‘Doghouse’ Lives to Bark Another Season,” Brandweek, November 20, 2009).

Consumer reviews are playing an increasingly important role in buying behavior.  This means that traditional marketing communication vehicles are likely to be less influential.  As a nice supplement to this article (“What Do You Think?  Companies are learning to make the most out of customers’ online reviews of their products,” The Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2009), pair it with the results of a July 2009 Nielsen survey that asked consumers how much they trust various sources of information.  As this survey makes clear, 70% of consumers trust online opinions from people they don’t know.  I copied this table (right click on graphic, choose “copy image”) and pasted it into my PowerPoints (right click on the slide and choose “Paste”).  Before showing the results, I asked students which sources of information they trusted the most and the least – choosing a set of five from this list.  The article and survey can lead into discussions about what marketing managers can do with consumer reviews.  For a related story, see “Amazon:  Turning Consumer Opinions into Gold,” (BusinessWeek.com, October 15, 2009).