Colle+McVoy: Super Bowl XLIV
Brands spend millions of dollars on a Super Bowl spot, but how does this translate into conversation on social networks such as Twitter? We decided to find out. By monitoring and analyzing the volume of Twitter chatter on game day, Squawq™ provided an immediate snapshot of activity surrounding each ad. It ranked the most talked about brands and provided data throughout the game. And it garnered 62 million media impressions for a day’s worth of work.
Visit the site: squawq.com/superbowl »
Colle+McVoy: Squawq Case Study
Collemcvoy - Squawq
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Visit the site: squawq.com »
Solution
Since it didn’t exist, we created it ourselves. Squawq™ leverages the Twitter API and features an intuitive user interface where brands can analyze tweet volume, popular keywords, hashtags, most-vocal authors and frequently shared links. By logging into Squawq via Twitter, users can access the application using their existing Twitter credentials. Within months of launch, Squawq generated thousands of users, actively monitored 100 tweets per second, and stored more than 75 million tweets to the database. Not to mention it provided a much-needed ear to the ground for our clients.
Challenge
As Twitter continued its massive growth in late 2009, we wanted to figure out an easy and intuitive way to track what people were saying about our clients’ brands on the microblogging platform. At the time, a one-stop application that let a brand easily monitor tweets about its brand was nonexistent in the marketplace.
People Google It...
...Even When They Know Your Website Address
According to a recent comScore ranking of search engine activity in the U.S., more than 20 billion total searches were conducted across major search engines in December 2011. That’s a lot. 3% more than were conducted the previous month.
But the figure shouldn’t be too surprising given the role search plays in our lives. Another recent set of data from comScore, shared in its annual U.S. Digital Future in Focus report, found that the U.S. market for search grew at an 11% clip last year. Not only did 2011 see a slight 3% uptick in unique searchers, but existing users of search ran 7% more searches. It’s clear that we rely on search to discover. And our reliance on it is clearly increasing.
Our analytics team fielded a question from one of our clients about how people use search engines to make their discoveries and interact with the Web. Specifically, our challenge was to use Google Analytics to demonstrate whether people still rely on search engines even when they had already discovered the content they were seeking.
The Challenge
Do people continue to use search engines even when they already know the URL?The Methodology
- Assume visitors returning to a website already know the URL.
- Acknowledge that this means return visitors would arrive through direct sources rather than through search.
- Compare a full year’s worth of return traffic sources to those of new visitors among site profiles within Colle+McVoy’s Google Analytics account.
What This Means
Returning visitors are much more likely to find your brand through search, even when they already know your website address. The data above indicates that visitors continue to rely on search engines even after they have some level of awareness regarding their intended online destination. Marketers therefore need to ensure that their online presence is relevant enough to appear in search engine results not only for first-time visitors—but also for those who have already been to the site.Colle+McVoy: Super Chatter XLV Case Study
Colle+McVoy Super Chatter
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Solution
By creating search queries in Collective Intellect and Radian6, we analyzed how people shared their Super Bowl experiences across the social Web via tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts and more. Once our analysis was complete, we designed an infographic to visually display the top ten themes and served it up using the Google Maps API. To bring awareness to Super Chatter™, we relied entirely on the media that covered the Super Bowl to spread itself. One tweet and Facebook post sent thousands of visitors to collemcvoy.com/superchatter, where they spent an average of 23 minutes browsing through the infographics. While the idea of Super Chatter was spreading through social media, our brand sentiment was the most favorable it has ever been, and visits to the Work section at collemcvoy.com increased 40 percent.
Challenge
We set out to monitor the social Web and uncover how the Super Bowl influences people’s behavior throughout the nation. While numerous agencies focused on assessing the impact of TV commercials, we broadened our analysis to identify the top behavioral themes by dissecting the social media footprint of Super Bowl XLV.
The "Dark Social" Meme
Senior editor at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal, last year published a blog post about social media and its impact in generating web traffic: “Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong.”
With approximately 5,400 Tweets; 4,600 Facebook Likes; 1,200 shares on LinkedIn; and 1,100 +1s—to say nothing of the blog commentary and other related discourse in digital channels—it’s fair to say that “Dark Social” was a sticky idea that went viral.
To me, the main point of the post is that today's web analysts are decreasing the perceived value of social interactions in their reporting by relying on tools that track visits by referral sources—tools that invariably allocate otherwise socially driven traffic coming from, say, instant messenging and email to generic sources such as “direct” means.
Other, more general implications include:
- The notion that optimizing for social media means more than looking at Facebook and Twitter. The content itself has to be appraised.
- Formal social networks have brought a form of structure to social interactions that did not previously exist (in as simple a format).
- Along with the structure of formal social networks there is not only a loss in privacy, but a gain in social record keeping.
There have been plenty of counterpoints to the Alexis piece. For instance, the notion that the web has only been social since the rise of social networks (ca. 2005) ignores the fact that the Internet—of which the worldwide web is a part—has been social since its inception. Is anyone up for a dial-up chat on a local bulletin board service (aka BBS)?
Regardless of semantics about the Interwebs, I was intrigued by the notion that our analyses might be downplaying the true role of social interactions simply on account of our toolsets.
I therefore replicated the Chartbeat methodology Alexis outlined in “Dark Social” and ran a test of the site Colle+McVoy launched earlier this year for the Pedal Minnesota campaign (www.pedalmn.com).
Methodology
- Exclude Sources (relevant to the site I analyzed)
- Specific media vendors/partnerships (i.e., exploreminnesota, bringmethenews, tuneupstation)
- Exclude Media (relevant to the site I analyzed)
- CPC, organic, email
- Exclude Landing Pages (clearly not “Dark” in their nature)
- Home page (i.e., /)
- Main section header pages (i.e., /map/|/events/|/resources/|/pedal central/|/contact/|/partners/
Results
My results reflected the general patterns Chartbeat isolated with traffic data to The Atlantic. At first glance, this might suggest we need to be more thorough with any site reporting that requires us to be 100 percent certain about all socially derived visits. However, owing to other truths about site analytics and methodologies (deactivated cookies, for instance, decreasing what we can actually report as full and complete records), we will never be 100 percent certain about all such visits.
Analysts working in agencies should keep this in mind. As much as we'd like to report firm campaign results to our teammates and, ultimately, our clients, courtesy of web analytics tools that purportedly count unique visitors to your properties and tally the sources of their arrival to those properties, we need to be transparent about the fact that—unless we're pulling server logs—our data is always going to be directional.
Social Sharing Buttons Are Overrated
Seeing social media sharing buttons across the top of a site has become the norm. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even Google+ have buttons on almost every page we see. Some tools, like addthis.com, even let you add over 300 social network buttons to your site. With all these choices, how do you determine which networks are the best for your site?
Through testing, we set out to identify just that, the best set of social sharing buttons to include on one of our client sites. What we found was surprising: Pinterest is both the hero and the villain of social sharing buttons.
What We Did
We tested two different combinations of sharing buttons. The Original Set included buttons for Facebook and Twitter. The Test Set added Pinterest and Google+ buttons, along with a “more” dropdown that included tumblr and StumbleUpon. Each set was presented about 50% of the time on a highly trafficked site. We tracked shares using both Google Analytics and network specific insights platforms, such as Facebook Insights.
What We Learned
The Pinterest button has volume, Facebook is close
In the Test Set, Pinterest and Facebook accounted for 63 times more button shares than all four of the other networks combined. In the Original Set, Facebook outperformed Twitter by a factor of 93. So, for this audience Google+, Twitter, StumbleUpon and tumblr sharing buttons are all non-factors. We can’t make blanket statements about the success of those network buttons, as this behavior is audience driven, but those networks regularly have a lower volume. Visitors are still sharing content on lesser networks, but it appears that they prefer other methods of sharing than buttons.
The Pinterest button bullies Facebook
The addition of the Pinterest button increased the total number of button shares almost 500%, but came at the cost of a 33% reduction in Facebook Likes and shares. In fact, adding the Pinterest button led to a 31% loss of shares on all other networks. It would seem that visitors are only willing to share using one button, and that Pinterest takes precedence. Is Pinterest worth the reduction of Facebook shares?
The Pinterest button also bullies Pinterest
When given the option to use a sharing button instead of an organic method, such as the Pin It! bookmarklet, visitors will use the button. This seems obvious, but there are some implications. There was a 30% reduction in organic Pins once the Pinterest button was added. So, total button shares went up with the addition of a Pinterest button, but a majority of the increase was from people using the button instead of sharing organically; ultimately at the cost of Facebook interactions.
What’s the value of a Pin?
The value of a social share is as contested as the measurement as value of a social follower. Pinterest, being new and unique, is even harder to define. There’s a few subtle ways Pinterest and its users behave that provide some insight into the benefit of a Pin.
Pins quickly lose branding. While looking at your feed, no source is displayed for Pins or Repins. In fact, to see the source while shifting through a person’s pins you need to navigate to the particular user’s individual boards. Repins account for 80% of all Pins, one of our client’s popular photos last month was pinned 13 times from the site and repined over 11,000 times. The mobile experience behaves similarly.
So, without a user taking extra steps to find the source of a Pin, it remains fairly anonymous. If your photo content is not easily recognizable, Pinterest users will likely not know it’s related your brand. If your brand has easily recognizable content, such as cars or mascots, branding will remain. Except for a few iconic pieces, food, clothing and furniture are all products examples that often are Pinned without brand recognition.
If you run a photo-centric site, you’ve undoubtedly noticed spikes in Pinterest referrals. For sites we track, usually one or two Pins are responsible for the majority of the increase. On average, we’ve seen visitors from Pinterest spend 70% less time on site, have a bounce rate increase of 30%, and mostly view only the page they landed on from the Pin. In the data we analyzed, site visitors from Pinterest provide little value to high-level objectives.
Takeaways
Unless you’re targeting an audience that matches a lesser-used network’s demographics, leave the buttons off the site and let people share organically.
While some brands have used Pinterest accounts correctly, value for most brands lies in the organic pinning already happening without a Pinterest button.
We’re big believers in never-ending testing, so this is just the beginning. As we roll out other styles and combinations, we’ll let you know how these initial findings change.
An Analysis of Social Media Engagement Tools
Maintaining a social media presence has become an essential part of the marketing mix for just about any consumer-facing brand. In fact, enterprise class corporations now have 26 employees on average creating social content on their behalf (Owyang, Jeremiah. Social Media Management: An Industry Perspective).
Although marketers realize that a social media presence is crucial, social media (or community) management is still a young discipline. Over 80% of enterprise-class corporations’ social media programs are less than three years old (Owyang, Jeremiah. Social Media Management: An Industry Perspective). The exciting part is best practices are still being forged all the time. This includes the emergence of a handful of social media engagement tools that aim to help social media teams listen to and interact with their communities.
It’s important for marketers to stay abreast of the tools that can make us more effective while engaging in the social space. That’s why we’re constantly evaluating social media engagement tools. Most of these tools include features like:
- Conversation streams from various social networks to keep an eye on what’s being said about your brand
- The ability to flag or assign posts for follow-up and facilitate collaboration between team members
- Publishing capabilities for multiple social networks to broadcast content to your community
- Post-level analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your content
Of course, you should always keep your specific social media objectives in mind when evaluating these tools. But, to help narrow the list, a recent evaluation from Colle+McVoy identified three frontrunners: Hootsuite, Buddy Media and SocialVolt.
In our particular case, we were looking for a tool with a good balance of collaboration features, real-time listening, post-level analytics and publishing capabilities across multiple networks.
HootSuite provides the most bang for your buck. It offers solid analytics, a decent user experience, and standard collaboration features like assigning community posts to team members for follow-up, for $5.99/month, plus $15 per additional user per month.
Buddy Media is a true enterprise solution, with a scalable offering that spans just about every social network. It is one of the few tools that provided options for publishing to a YouTube channel.
SocialVolt is solid across the board. Although more expensive at $1,800 per month for the professional edition and a website that leaves you needing a live demo for the full picture, we were still very intrigued.
The most important thing we learned through our evaluation is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. No silver bullet. It’s extremely important to articulate your goals for the social space and tailor your team and tools to them. We did arrive at a clear decision for the tool that best fits our particular needs: HootSuite.
HootSuite provides all the necessities a social media team needs in a clean and intuitive interface. Collaboration is streamlined. Publishing capabilities include almost all social networks and post types. Analytics are integrated across the board. Customizable conversation streams on the home screen allow you to keep an eye on the conversation. And, perhaps an often-overlooked benefit, the training necessary for a team to use the tool would be minimal.
If you’re part of a social media team that could use some streamlining, there’s a good chance one of these tools could make your life easier. Just don’t forget to consider the whole picture before jumping on the bandwagon of any single one. It’s a long list.
Welcome to the New ColleMcVoy.com
We’ve been working hard to bring you an experience that tells you who we are, why you should work with us and - ultimately - inspires you to make a difference and join us in our vision to stand out.
We pushed ourselves to treat this project as we would any other client assignment. The clients in this case were the leadership team, and I had the pleasure of leading our internal team all the way from strategy to execution. This approach encouraged accountability and challenged us to practice what we preach. We learned a ton along the way, and we’re proud of the work we produced.
The Opportunity
As we assessed our previous .com and social media presence, we realized there was opportunity for improvement. Our previous interactive experience didn't accurately demonstrate who we are and what we're great at. It also didn't allow for the flexibility required by the dynamic nature of social media and agileness of mobile. If we could improve in these specific areas, we knew creating a stand out interactive experience was achievable.
Insight + Strategic Direction
Our findings from the qualitative and quantitative research we conducted uncovered what makes C+M more than an advertising agency. We invent analytics tools from scratch. We write job descriptions for clients. We offer strategic counsel on business-level strategies. We offer fulfillment capabilities in house. We build 3-D dioramas. The engine that makes all of this possible is the people who work here. And here is a special place. Employees and clients described the feeling they get when they walk off the elevator at C+M, and that feeling is what we wanted our online experience to emulate. We worked off the key insight that C+M is more than just a workplace; it’s the incubator for and manifestation of the vibrant, warm and open spirit of its people.
Audience + Architecture
With this insight in mind, we initiated a complete run-through of potential conceptual architecture solutions before creating visual design concepts. We explored organizational schemes based on four distinct audience profiles that we brought to life through personas and use case scenarios. We mapped out an agile experience that made itself smarter over time. An experience based heavily on search and a sophisticated tagging system, allowing site visitors to surface content they find relevant and useful.
Design
Our user experience strategies led to design concepting. We generated multiple concepts and put them up on the wall for review. One prevailed. The one you’re experiencing now. As we brought people through a prototyped version of the Web site, they reacted positively to the design and photography style. We hope your reaction is the same, but we also want to make sure the experience delivers on getting you to the information you’re seeking easily and efficiently.
Usability
During our usability sessions, we also observed people hesitantly browsing through our progressively created navigation system. A system built on the search-based tagging previously described. We offer five ways for people to navigate: 1) entering a search query, 2) clicking on a trending topic, 3) vertically scrolling through image tiles, 4) horizontally browsing via contextual links and 5) using the keyboard. Usability findings led to design and functionality tweaks that resulted in an experience surpassing the standards our team set. Time to go live.
An Experience Built From Behavior
Going live is only the initiation of what the experience will eventually come to be. The Web site as it exists today serves as the foundational platform we will constantly monitor and change to adapt to visitor behavior. Meaning, the next time you come back, your experience will be better. Furthermore, we continue to add content to the site (e.g., case studies, blog posts). Another reason to come back. In the meantime, I encourage you to leave a comment below or offer feedback through the survey we’ve created.
Silburn Named Director Of Client Services
MINNEAPOLIS, October 23, 2012 - Colle+McVoy today announced that Jim Silburn has joined the agency as director of client services overseeing account management, strategy and analytics, and media. Silburn will play a key role in maintaining the agency’s recent momentum.
Colle+McVoy has experienced seven consecutive years of growth fueled by organic growth from existing long-term client partners and a string of new clients. Its ability to modernize iconic brands has earned national and international recognition in recent years. The agency was named a Best Place to Work two years in a row by Outside magazine, Advertising Age and the Star Tribune.
“Jim will be instrumental in helping to harness all the opportunities available to us and our clients at this time,” said Christine Fruechte, president and CEO, Colle+McVoy. “He shares our modern approach to building brands and is a thought leader in brand and digital strategy.”
For over 20 years, Silburn has created brand value across a wide range of marketing deliverables for some of the best companies. Silburn most recently served as senior director of marketing, brand communication & value proposition at Capella Education Company where he helped transform Capella University’s marketing model. Prior to joining Capella, Silburn’s background in brand value creation includes a variety of escalating roles at advertising agencies, including Fallon, Martin-Williams and Carmichael Lynch. In these roles, he helped lead teams through brand architecture definition and communication development on a wide variety of consumer brands, including Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, U.S. Bank, Purina Dog Chow & Puppy Chow, Lee Jeans, Sports Illustrated, Coca-Cola, and Rolling Stone.
“I was drawn to Colle+McVoy’s ability to evolve and grow while maintaining a strong foundation,” and Silburn. “The agency’s ability to successfully diversify its client portfolio and simultaneously transform into a fully integrated, digital agency is rare. I want to build on this growth and help shape what the agency will next become.”
C+M New Hires: Account Service + Strategy Teams
We have a ton of fresh faces in every discipline at the agency. Below is a list of just a few of those recent new hires in our account services and strategy teams (pictured from left to right):
- Melissa Meyer, Account Director, has worked at creative agencies throughout the U.S. on the Old Spice, Uncle Ben's, Hillshire Farms, Jimmy Dean and Nestlé Purina brands. She’s also worked with artists such as Lady Gaga and The Black Eyed Peas to develop strategic partnerships in the music industry.
- Kyle Johnson, Social Media Monitoring and Web Analytics Strategist, gained considerable technical experience working at tech-focused startup companies in San Francisco and the Twin Cities. He also earned his MBA from the University of San Francisco.
- Caitlin Roemhildt, Assistant Account Executive, brings her experience in market research and account service from working with household brands that include Hormel and Target.
- Tricia Schlaefer, Assistant Account Executive, worked most recently with the Arthritis Foundation and is a graduate of the University of Minnesota.
- Colleen Marion, Business Manager, joins us after spending many years working in finance for a Twin Cities construction company.