So why is Domino’s campaign so engaging and Red Lobster’s so boring?

I think it’s because transparency is not an end in itself. If every business pulled back the curtain to show us what really goes on, we’d be bored silly by almost all of it. Red Lobster proves this with videos like this one:

This guy is a crab fisherman—an occupation so exciting that there’s a TV show around how dangerous it is. But Red Lobster doesn’t want to show the excitement, so instead we get placid seas, clear skies, and calm words about how this guy loves his job and his boat.

Yawn.

And then there’s this video, abouta grillmaster who (surprise!) “loves food.”

The point of the second spot is probably to show that Red Lobster uses real wood-fired grills, but they hide that information behind a bland interview. The main takeaway from these two spots is that Red Lobster gets crab from crab fisherman, and there’s a guy in the kitchen who makes your food. I knew that already.

On the other hand, Domino’s spots are fun and engaging—because the campaign doesn’t use transparency as an end in itself, only as a means. Their spots introduce us to various people in Domino’s corporate kitchen, all of whom have the same basic message: If you don’t like our new recipes, we’ll be fired.

“Here’s the guy the handles customer comments about our new chicken recipe. We hope you like it, because if you don’t, this guy has to deal with it.”

“Here’s the guy that redesigned the crust and the sauce—you’ve hated our crust and sauce for years, so we challenged this guy to fix them.”

The spots are great because they match up with our perceptions of Domino’s pizza (that it has sucked for a long time), and gives us a reason to want to change our perceptions. Transparency isn’t enough to make something interesting, we want drama or surprise or conflict.

McDonald’s used surprise + transparency in its original Brand Journalism campaign back in 2007, when the company invited a group of moms to tour McDonald’s facilities. These moms got a behind-the-scenes look at the farms where the potatoes for French fries are grown, and the kitchens where the cooking happens.

According to a Washington Post story from 2008, a group of moms “crowded into the walk-in refrigerator at the Baltimore restaurant. There were eggs stacked in a corner. Kelle Evans, a single mother from Woodbridge, said, ‘What are these eggs for?’ Answer: McDonald’s makes Egg McMuffins with them. Evans was stunned.”

The element of surprise is what makes the campaign’s transparency interesting. There might be people who are surprised to see a wood-fired grill in a Red Lobster commercial, but that doesn’t play with my perceptions the way McDonald’s did when I found out they use real eggs.

Ford, on the other hand, used transparency + conflict for its Ford Bold Moves campaign back in 2006. The company was undergoing a major transformation, which involved layoffs, struggles, and re-designing their cars from scratch. Ford allowed JWT to document the entire process with video teams and independent journalists, in order to give the public an inside look at what Ford was going through, and what the company was trying to accomplish. They were capturing the conflict in a transparent way.

I get very similar vibes from the Domino’s work. I don’t get any vibes at all from the Red Lobster work.

Still, it could be worse. They could be Olive Garden.

Related articles

• Advertising: Red Lobster Campaign to Showcase Some of Its Own Workers (nytimes.com)
• Red Lobster: We Sea Food Differently (adrants.com)

We talked a lot about the attention dynamics of IM–specifically, Yanda said “the beauty of IM [is] continuous partial attention. The predominant way to use IM is when you’re doing something else.”

As such, it makes perfect sense for IM to live within the Facebook environment. And as we know, Facebook ended up deploying its own version of SocialIM a few years ago.

The other reason IM makes sense on social networks is because social networks own the most robust versions of our social graph. Why should I maintain a separate contact list for AIM, MSN, or GChat when Facebook has a much more complete list of all the people I’d ever want to talk to? Trillian and Digsby smartly export Facebook Friends lists into traditional IM applications, for just this reason.

The recent Facebook announcement of adding Skype video chat to Facebook was met with a collective snore for a couple reasons. First, Google+ had just launched as a whole new social platform with a similar video chat feature. Second, video chat is just not a natural fit with social networks, for the reason that Yanda outlined so well. Video chatting is not a format for “continuous partial attention,” and more and more, that’s the kind of format we want. I can maintain 30 email threads, 10 IM conversations, and 5 Twitter back-and-forths at the same time; or I can have one video chat.

Video chatting is still an appointment form of communicating. Google+ is trying to change that by making “hangouts” (video chatting with a more casual name), but typically, we set up a video chat by sending a text or an email first. Frankly, I consider it rude for a Skype friend to randomly call me expecting me to fire up my webcam and chat with them. No thanks, I’m doing stuff (that’s why I’m logged onto my computer). Send me an IM instead.

The truly useful feature that comes out of Skype/Facebook integration is being able to use Skype with my Facebook social graph. Of course, MySpace had video chat in 2004 and Skype integration way back in 2007.

My research has led me to believe that applications usually fall under two value propositions: Entertainment or utility. Below is an amazing chart, compiled by Geoff Northcott, Client Partner at AKQA, of publicly available download data for branded applications. (Geoff, too, categorized the applications as Entertainment or Utilitarian.) Although these download numbers are circa 2010, I re-shuffled this data a little bit to make a point. I divided them into two separate charts: Entertainment vs. Utility and picked the best five branded applications in both sections with the highest download numbers.

The point of doing this was to illustrate the pros and cons of entertainment vs. utility in branded applications. Here is the breakdown:

Entertainment:

• PROS: A one-off promotion based approach to mobile applications usually delivers huge spikes in customer engagement and often shows significantly higher download numbers.
• CONS: Brand recall – a large number of entertainment based mobile applications are game-based and as such, it is difficult to ascertain whether users are even aware of the brand when interacting with these applications. Another major con is sustaining on-going interaction with the brand. Interest wanes as the novelty wears off and often, there is little to no re-usage. In fact, 95% of downloaded applications are not used after 30 days. Under-utilized asset of x many customers that have downloaded the application.

Utility:

• PRO: Evergreen application; perhaps not very sexy. Has a slower build initially but evolves and grows with the brand and its audiences. Usually also reflects the general brand direction
• CONS: The biggest challenge with such an application is to continuously evolve the offering and keep it interesting and valuable to the consumers. It needs to strike the perfect balance of entertainment, content and utility

Most brands have taken an either/or approach. While I think it depends on the direction and the strategic needs of the brand, it is worthwhile to consider that it doesn’t always need to be an either/or approach. Entertainment based applications have demonstrated the ability to drive high downloads. Why not consider an “Entertainment” based feature as part of your Launch strategy for your branded application ? Ongoing updates can work on evolving the brand and adding newer features and offerings into the application.

Another point-of-view to consider is simply creating diverse applications for diverse audiences. Lets face it. A deal-hunter will not download a branded application for a highly engaging game. And a gamer will not be very interested in a content-based application. In such cases, it is smart for brands to consider which audiences they want to target and build experiences specifically for those niche audiences. My only caveat is that even as brands build niche experiences, it is crucial to think long-term instead of immediate short-tern return.

Kraft’s iFood Assistant is one of the best branded application case-study that I can think of that has nailed the program vs. platform concept. The application offers up to 2000 recipes, many of them using Kraft products. The application has also in-built shopping lists and deals/ coupon features that incentivize users. It is one of the few applications that has continued to keep its users engaged: It launched in 2008 and to date, about 60% of users that downloaded the application continue to use it. In fact, Kraft charged a cool 99cents per download as well, ensuring an alternative revenue stream and solidifying its value with the users.

Regardless of the route you choose, here are some best practices to keep in mind when designing and building the application:

Best Practices:

Marketing Support: Every successful branded application has had strong marketing support in form of paid media, mobile ads and even online PR. This support gives the initial boost to the application but mostly focuses on generating enough downloads to have the application listed in Apple’s Top 100 applications. Applications featured in the list have a 40% higher chance of being downloaded by other users. Additionally, Star Ratings and Reviews also incredibly important tools towards increasing a brand’s chances towards making it into the Top 100 list. Although this is specifically for iTunes, it is fair to expect similar marketing levers to emerge for the Android Marketplace as well. (Consiering Android is now the number one Smartphone in the word)

Intuitive User Experience: If you are not going to invest the necessary time and resources into building an intuitive and highly capable user experience, you are better off not making a mobile application at all. In a recent study, 13% of users said that  a bad experience with a branded application avoided them from downloading other applications from the brand. Also, users just expect an application to be fun and easy to use. Don’t just try to replicate an existing marketing promotion, elements of your website or an ad campaign on your mobile app. Build for its audience and its eco-system.

Social Sharing: Maximize the capabilities offered by a mobile application. Several applications can “speak” to each other. Also there is no point in reinventing the wheel. So where and when possible; make sure your application is connected to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare or whatever eco-system your brand lives in.

Customization: Depending on the brand, I believe that simple customization not only helps make an application more interesting but also increases the opportunity for re-use. It’s also highly beneficial for brands from a data-collection perspective to have more granular information about your customers.

I’m sure you’ll want to look at case-studies to build your own argument/case. I didn’t see any point in re-writing the best ones there are. So here are the links to the best resources on the web. I hope this helps.

Additional Resources:

1. Mashable’s Top 13 Branded Applications
2. Best Practices: Mobile Marketing & App. Strategies for Food Brands
3. Best Practices: Branded Application Design
4. Geoff Northcott: Branded Apps: Strategies for Success

Ad+Geek: Define Transmedia in your words.
Aina Abiodun: Transmedia is a style of storytelling in which one core narrative idea sprouts many rich, new story tentacles across media platforms. Adapting or repeating the same story over and over on different platforms doesn’t count. Each platform should deliver a completely new experience to the audience.

Ad+Geek: What are some of your favorite examples?
AA: The 2008 Presidential Election. I think it was the most supremely overlooked example of recent Transmedia. Look back closely at all the media artifacts of his campaign you will observe that Obama was in strategy and swagger, the real life John Wayne of our era. And his narrative played how all good stories play, with a hero, some fierce battles, and a transformation.

World Without Oil was also brilliant – and an often-cited example because it succeeds in pulling the viewer into the realm of real world issues in an immersive and engaging way across platforms. Laying out the conditions of a world oil shortage, the audience had to imagine and document their lives under those conditions.

Ad+Geek: How do you see it melding with the world of advertising?
AA: The idea that as creators of media we must relentlessly go where the audiences are is long ingrained in the culture of advertising and I’ve already seen some very impressive brand Transmedia work. I’m excited to see the variety and scope of the projects that are sure to come out of the agencies as Transmedia becomes more mainstream.

Ad+Geek: What are some misconceptions about Transmedia?
AA: A big misconception that I encounter among longtime media-makers is this notion that Transmedia is too “techy”. While we use a host of technology-based solutions to deliver the message, we work first and foremost in service of the narrative. That’s like saying that talking on the phone is “too techy”. The phone delivers the message. I like to say that if you understand story, then you can understand Transmedia.

Ad+Geek: How did you get involved with Transmedia?
AA: I stumbled into it while working on the release of a feature film I produced a few years ago. I was looking for more effective ways of finding and engaging audiences. With just a little Transmedia work, I found the results were significant. So, excited at the possibilities, I began developing original Transmedia properties, and went on pitches only to discover that Hollywood had no taste for this newfangled experimentation. So I decamped to New York where I have happily found that the combination of creativity, technology and many individual forward-thinking minds make for a fertile Transmedia development world.

For more, check out the “Transmedia Rising” report from JWTIntelligence.

I’d posit that the survey points to dissatisfaction with Facebook tactics, rather than dissatisfaction with the Facebook platform. Users love Facebook, and the social graph that Mark Zuckerberg created is built for rapid influencer amplification. Perhaps marketers just aren’t using it in the right way.

The coverage of the Forrester report looks at Facebook’s efficacy as a brand-building platform, but that’s not really what Facebook is about, even though we try to use it that way. Take The New Yorker’s promotion last week, for example. Anyone who “Liked” The New Yorker’s Facebook page got free access to an excellent Jonathan Franzen essay.

But here’s the thing: The Franzen essay appeared concurrently in last week’s print issue. So all those people “Liking” The New Yorker probably weren’t subscribers—they didn’t necessarily “like” The New Yorker. The program was deemed a success, in that the page got 166K new fans, but how many of those will last? Engagement is still relatively low on the page, given the number of Likes it has.

We’ve seen Facebook campaigns like this in the past, and while some of them might succeed, I don’t think they’re the best use of Facebook (and neither does Forrester). Instead of using the platform to win people over with deals and discounts, why not take a page from fan clubs and use our Facebook pages to engage brand advocates? In other words, try to collect “Likes” from people who really do “Like” your brand, and trust them to spread the word.

Fan clubs have been around for decades, and they succeed in whipping fans into a frenzy by offering them niche, highly valued brand experiences that aren’t available elsewhere. A rock band might offer unreleased tracks to the fan club, or early access to concert tickets. A football team hosts a barbecue with the cheerleading squad, but only premium season ticket holders are invited. The point is that whatever you offer is going to be spam to almost everyone, and gold to a select few. So find the content that will pull in that select few, and their friends will notice.

To go back to The New Yorker example, instead of offering something online that subscribers already get, offer something valuable that will be more likely to appeal to your fan base. Here are all the cartoons that ended up on the cutting room floor last week; here are the 10 WORST entries for the caption contest; here’s an exclusive track from the guitar player that Sasha Frere-Jones profiled in the most recent issue.

This changes the Facebook model somewhat. The current strategies tend to revolve around getting as many “Likes” as you can get, so you can push content out to the News Feeds of a huge number of Facebook users. Instead, I’m recommending going after a much smaller number of genuine fans. When you post content, those fans will be more likely to comment on it and “Like” it.

The difference between the two models is that in the first one, content is being distributed under your brand’s name to people who don’t necessarily care about it; in the second, it’s being distributed under your fans’ names to people who care about them. You’re trading reach for real community, so you can use that real community to increase your reach.

See the difference?

Related Articles

• The New Yorker Puts Jonathan Franzen Story Behind a Wall of Likes (mashable.com)
• The New Yorker Hides Jonathan Franzen’s David Foster Wallace Story Behind Facebook ‘Like’ Wall (businessinsider.com)
• Was ‘The New Yorker’ Facebook Campaign a Winner? (mediabistro.com)

The emotional billboard is part of Adstruc’s “Billboards for Everyone” campaign. It gives artists the chance to experiment with the use of billboards. The first, which debuted last month, was created by Shepherd Fairey’s Studio Number One.

Adstruc is an auction and listing-based marketplace for outdoor advertising. The effort is sponsored by JWT New York, Fuel, SPREAD Art and Culture magazine.

Ad+Geek caught up with Tronic co-founder Vivan Rosenthal to find out how the world’s first billboard with feelings was born:

Ad+Geek: A billboard with feelings? Where did that idea come from?
Vivian Rosenthal: I launched a mobile augmented reality (AR) app called Goldrun a few months ago. It brings together GPS, virtual goods and AR to allow for location-based advertising that is visually driven. [JWT Chief Creative Innovation Officer] James Cooper and [BA Reps] Louisa St. Pierre were both familiar with [the app] work and they approached me to collaborate on a billboard. I knew I wanted to create an interactive billboard that leveraged augmented reality and from there the idea emerged to design our own take on the Emoticon and use it to bring a billboard to life. This execution is just the beginning. Tronic and GoldRun are working on a number of projects that combine out-of-home (OOH) media with mobile in really new and exciting ways.

Ad+Geek: What were the challenges in coming up this execution?
VR: Bringing together OOH and mobile will be important in the landscape of advertising, but it’s not without its challenges. The biggest hurdle is letting the OOH community know about AR and its possibilities. Right now, they are two distinct mediums that aren’t speaking to each other. Hopefully that will change.

Ad+Geek: What were some key learnings from this project?
VR: The call-to-action has to be very clear. If we did it again, we’d make the copy to download the app more prominent so that more people understood that they could participate in the experience.

Ad+Geek: How is the billboard feeling today?
VR: Very happy. It’s Friday!!!!

Related Articles:

• New York Board Knows Just How You Feel (Adfreak)
• Tronic, GoldRun and ADstruc Create Billboard with Feelings in New York (Dexigner)
• Oh Billboard, Don’t be Sad (Creativity)

It also felt very personal. By my guess, I’d say about 700 people were in attendance along with an army of Radian6 employees. Still, I didn’t feel like I was getting “sold” to the entire time. I felt like Radian6 was more interested in creating and showcasing a better tool, not just convincing us that they were the best that there is to offer. There are shortcomings in all social listening tools and I think Radian6 understands these limitations. Their product demonstrations and customer testimonials showed that they’re as interested as we (their customers) are in sourcing the most accurate information about our brands online in an efficient way.

A few examples of how Radian6 is helping brands listen in social included:

• Dell is using social listening to transform how every employee interacts with consumers.

• Gatorade’s impressive Social Media Command Center is powered by Radian6.

• The American Red Cross is implementing social listening to engage their community during and outside of natural disasters. (Watch the closing Keynote to hear more from Red Cross Social Media Director, Wendy Hartman).

All in all, it was a strong conference, that probably could have expanded to another day with more emphasis on training. Next year at Social2012, I hope that the dialogue shifts from “social listening is important” to a greater focus on “social listening led to this great action and engagement.”

Radian6 Insights
Radian6 Insights is an integrated platform that uses 75 insight factors from four insight vendors (Klout, Open Amplify, Reuters Open Calais, PeekYou) to bring a deeper understanding to Radian6 information and results. Thanks to these new partnerships, the Radian6 Insight tool will help people interpret and digest information faster than before. Instead of having to manually sort through query results to get the big picture, Radian6 automatically draws conclusions based on search results. Say you’re wondering who was the most popular band, film, or keynote speaker at SXSW. No need to shuffle through conversation result to come to a conclusion because Radian6 Insights is set to do this for you.

Summary Dashboard
Radian6′s new Summary Dashboard provides an easy to read, high level snapshot of conversation volume, sentiment, trending themes and topics, key demographics, top influencers and competitors in real-time. This tool is perfect for brand and community managers who want a quick overview of details in real time. The Summary Dashboard is integrated with Raidan6 Insights and allows information widgets to be exported and embedded across the Web.

Radian6 Mobile App
For brands who require social media monitoring outside of the hours of 9-to-5, a mobile solution has arrived. With the Radian6 Mobile App (iPhone only at the moment, no word on Android or Blackberry version), users can open a “Summary Stack” to keep an eye on overall conversation volume and trends, sentiment, share of voice, share of conversation and top five countries. Borrowing features from the Radian6 Engagement Console, users have the ability to engage and respond to conversations while on the go. While the application isn’t as extensive as it’s Web version, Radian6 has created a product that customers have been asking about for sometime. A mobile application that keeps users connected to conversations about their brand just makes sense.

All in all, if these new features live up to their promise and hype, they will provide Radian6 users with more immediate insights to guide them in their interactions with online communities.

I’m waiting eagerly their debut.

Related Articles

• Radian6 Teams Up With Klout for Social Analytics (clickz.com)

She started off by reminding the audience that sometimes organizations and brands create social media messes for themselves and that thanks to technology, we’ve adapted to the speed of business (telephone to fax machine, to email, etc.), but we haven’t adopted our businesses to the speed of social. Herein lies our problem.

To fix this, Amber suggests that companies must start from within. This means decentralizing communication and empowering all members to represent the organization online. Engaging all members ensures that consumers are taken care of in-real time and as Amber stated, “A committee meeting cannot be held every time the organization needs to respond to a consumer’s tweet.”

To alleviate apprehension that leaders may feel about decentralizing communication, set and determine guidelines and hire trustworthy people. Amber stressed that there was room for all members of an organization to be involved at some level, with varying responsibilities. Like a baseball team, the organization’s members must act together to accomplish the task (or win the game). This can’t be left to one person to do single-handily.

Towards the end of her presentation, Amber said something that made a lot of people around me nod in agreement. Social Media is just a role right now, but sooner or later, it wont just be a job, it’ll be a skill. We don’t have a manager of “the email” or of “the phone.” Those are just skills. I understand her point, and agree for the most part but I think that there will always need to be someone overseeing the social charge, even if the rest of the organization has mastered the social media skills.

In a few years, Amber predicts that every company will be social because consumers are demanding it. This isn’t a threat, rather it’s a huge opportunity to be highly in-tuned and engaged with consumers. To stay ahead of the curve, companies need to implement social listening programs throughout the whole organization because one day (thanks to social), all employees will become unofficial members of the marketing team.

Is the “The Now Revolution” here? I don’t think so, but it’s on its way.

#social2011 @Lebrun on stage keynoting #radian6 Thanking the community (photo via @rwang0)

I was a few minutes late to this morning’s opening keynote (silly registration lines), but when I entered the Pacific Grand Ballroom, I was met with a packed crowd. After some shimmying in the dark, I found a seat and settled in to hear Marcel LeBrun (CEO, Radian6) welcome those of us who’ve come to learn more about social listening and how Radian6 is making it easier and more accurate to do.

Jumping right in, LeBrun brought up some great fundamental thoughts about to social listening.

First, social listening allows us to engage with our consumers and audience when they’re at a point of need, rather than interrupting them when they don’t need or want to hear from us. This allows for and creates real-time, meaningful experiences and it changes the way we (should) drive sales.

Next, LeBrun advocated that brands move away from “what’s always been done” to “taking actions and being where our consumers are.” He used P&G as a great example. P&G invented the soap opera and for the past 77 years, they’ve been a leading sponsor for the daytime shows. Within the last year however, the decided to stop sponsoring the very entity that they created. Their consumer base has moved away from TV and they could better engage with them if they invested money and resources into social media.

Finally, he talked about the relationship between social media and trust. Whether we as marketers like it or not, consumers don’t automatically trust brands. They’re skeptical and understand that at the end of the day, brands are trying to sell them something.  Who they do trust however are their friends and those who they’re connected to via their social networks. A brand’s message is able to last longer on the web when it is propagated through a network of trust. So, when my friend sends me a cool video, my first thought isn’t, “They’re trying to get me to buy something.” Rather, I think, “They know me, understand my likes and interests and think that this is something I will enjoy.”

For brands to find success here, they should listen to and understand what their consumers are talking about online and take steps to create content tailored to their likes and interests.

Overall, LeBrun’s keynote highlighted a very important thing: this space is more than just social listening. It’s listening combined with effective action and engagement.

I couldn’t agree more.

(photo via @rwang0)