Facebook apps gather user data

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I recently gave a talk at Colorado State University’s Future Visions program titled, “Marketing and Social Media:  Creepy or Cool.”  As I prepared for my presentation, I was surprised to see that some marketing practices I thought were years away — are being practiced now.

For example, did you know that Facebook apps are gathering data about users and user’s friends?  You can read more about this in “Selling You on Facebook” (Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2012).  Looking ahead, you can be sure that Facebook and Google are developing techniques for mining many types of data — everything from your “likes,” gender, and political leanings — to your status posts and photo stream. Facebook wants to be able to anticipate your needs — so that it can help marketers address those needs.  Yes, that is the reason the company is worth $100 billion.

The video below is kind of long (7:54) provides an overview you could show to stimulate class discussion.  Students may be interested in this topic.  I have found that my students are much less concerned about the invasion of privacy than I would have suspected.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

The article and video might be used when you discuss social media, advertising, targeting, and privacy.

Facebook – Big Brands Like its Reach and Its Cost

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This Wall Street Journal article/video combination is really two stories.  One is the remarkable success of Doug, Ford’s spokespuppet.  Doug’s YouTube channel has more than 3 million upload views.

On the other hand, focus of the article, “Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like Paying,” (November 2, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here) describes a business model challenge for Facebook.  The company’s $70 billion market value is based on the idea that the social network giant will produce revenues and profits — largely from selling targeted ads on the site.  Big brands love the eyeballs their Facebook fan pages attract, but those pages cost little to produce and generate no revenue for Facebook.  And many firms, like Ford, are spending for other media — in part to drive customers to Facebook.  While Americans spend 15% of their online time on Facebook, the social network giant only attracts 6.4% of all online advertising.  The video below interviews with the author of the WSJ article.

The article has insights for teaching about advertising, media selection, and social media.

Trust – Making Facebook and the World a Better Place

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Marketers have always been excited about the idea of turning consumers into powerful Promotion tools for their brands — but fostering word-of-mouth isn’t easy.  Now Facebook is hoping they have a strategy that makes it easy for consumers and marketers to work together to promote brands and products we “like” (as in pressing the “Like” button on Facebook).

No one is quite sure where this is going, but many consumers are already clicking the Facebook “Like” button on their favorite brands — or maybe mentioning in a post a recent  purchase of the brand.  Now it seems that Facebook will mention this ads targeting that customer’s friends.  So for example, if I “Like” a brand like Ikea on my Facebook page, an ad could appear on my friends pages that mentions “Joe (and perhaps more of their friends) Likes Ikea.”  In theory, knowing that Joe likes Ikea may make the store more appealing to my friends. This short article at Fast Company suggest that Facebook’s sponsored stories work – see “Facebook Sponsored Stories Performing 2 Times Better Than Standard Ads” (July 15, 2011).

Why could it work?  Because Facebook users are trusting people.  There is evidence that social networks foster trust.  You can read more about it in another Fast Company article, “Digital Oxytocin:  How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming” (July 18, 2011).

These short articles epitomize one of the original motivations for Teach the 4 Ps — how can we keep our customers up-to-date when books only publish every few years.  So many new things are happening in marketing — so the blog is designed, in part, to help you stay current.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Facebook – Good or Evil?

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Facebook’s image has always bounced between good and evil.  Privacy advocates have complained about the company.  It turned out that most users didn’t much care about privacy.  “The Social Network” did not paint a very pretty picture of founder Mark Zuckerberg.  Then this week we start off with a very favorable cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek that lauds the company’s COO and #2, see “Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg,” (May 12, 2011).  Bad timing for Sandberg, because now Facebook is getting more bad press for more bad actions “Facebook Admits It Hired PR Firm to Smear Google” (Adweek, May 12, 2011).

Yikes, lots of stuff here.  The Sheryl Sandberg story in BusinessWeek provides a neat profile of the COO and gets you up to date on some Facebook initiatives — like advertising and whether the firm should enter China.  The more interesting issue is the ethical lapse by Facebook.  It also makes you wonder about a PR firm that would take on (or maybe even suggest) such a tactic.  Neither looks very good here.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Great scenario to use to discuss ethics in class.  How does a PR firm – even a big, well-known firm like Burson-Marsteller say no to Facebook?

Best Practices in Social Media

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Social media is getting less confusing.  Best practices are emerging.  Marketing managers are better understanding how which marketing objectives might be best addressed with social media.  This article, “Are You Talking to Me?” (Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011, non-subscribers click here) suggests five best practices used by companies with some success in social media.  Many of the lessons come from “listening” closely to customers via social media.  The early heavy users of social media are listening, learning, and adapting.  Anyway, the article has some good examples of using Facebook and Twitter that you can bring to a class discussion about Promotion, social media, and market research.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.