A lot of companies and brands will willingly sing the same song as Jack Morton’s New Realities 2012 research: word-of-mouth (WOM) is the most powerful form of advertising. But is your brand really serious about incentivizing WOM among your customer base? Fab.com, a daily deals site focused on design, has taken an aggressive approach showing that it is deathly — dollars and cents — serious about its peer-to-peer recommendation engine.

Through the option presented to users in this menu panel on the site, Fab.com offers users $10 credits every month just for sharing their purchases on Facebook and their usernames (not even their real names) on the site. Clearly, Fab.com is finding out, and putting money behind, what EventBrite, GE and Rubbermaid have issued studies showing: Socializing commerce can lead to some serious ROI.

Yet, there are still generally two schools of thought when it comes to incentivized WOM:

As the media attention surrounding the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) dies down, many onlookers, exhibitors and even attendees themselves are wondering: Where does all that leave us? Indeed, CES 2012 was made up of a series of contradictions.

At Jack Morton, we set out to find a way to simplify the commentary, tune out the noise and end up with a defined point of view on the direction of the show and what brands can do to create experiences for the people that matter most to them. Written for brands, exhibitors, marketers and interested attendees, this overview gives just that: Jack Morton’s POV on CES 2012, an overview of the trends and some tips to help brands prepare for CES 2013. Features include a profile of trends spotted at this year’s show and tips for an effective approach to CES 2013.

During a show where it seems that attendees increasingly don’t give a %&*# about the products, will your brand provide an experience that is talked about once Vegas clears out in 2013?

On November 3, 2011, I had the pleasure of joining a panel of industry experts to talk about the quickly maturing field of daily deals (a.k.a. group buying platforms) at Social Media Breakfast Greater Philly. Oxford Communications and our client, Visit Bucks County, teamed up once again to host the event at the Bucks County Visitor Center in Bensalem, PA.

The event, attended by over 50 early riser business professionals, also featured insights from a great group of fellow industry pundits from the Philadelphia market, including:

• Christopher Stemborowski (Oxford Communications)
• Tom Sauer (LivingSocial)
• John McInerney (Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance)
• Eve Gelman (Peddler’s Village)

In the end, attendees left with several key takeaways to help businesses on the journey to their daily deal dreams:

1. Set Objectives: Those with experience in this field agree: Don’t count on making profits on the original purchases that result from group buying platforms. Think of these initiatives instead as a marketing investment that gives your brand a first date with consumers. With this understanding, it is important to set realistic objectives for your brand’s endeavor into group buying platforms. What is the expected average lifetime value of the customers you will get? How many purchases will it take to make up for profits lost during the initial deal.
2. Know The Vendor: Before you sign-up to conduct a daily deal with the latest and greatest vendor, make sure you know the company well. Find out how long the company has been operating its daily deals, the demographics of its users and what kind of long-term support it provides to partners. Another key consideration is the deal’s impact on your brand. Before doing anything, sign up for the deals from vendors under consideration in order to get a sense of the brands yours will be presented with down the road. This exercise can also help your deal stick out from the clutter of other offers.
3. Prepare Perfectly: One of the greatest dangers in engaging in a daily deal is a lack of preparation before the deal goes live. Prior to launching an initiative, make sure staff is properly trained to redeem deals and that it understands the business value of offering products or services at a discount. Next, find ways to make the experience your brand is providing its deal lovers an amazing one. This will ensure that, while the daily deal may be your brand’s first date, it won’t be the last. Finally, make sure you have a plan in place to retain first time customers through CRM programs, loyalty clubs or engaging social media presences.

If you’re interested in attending a future Social Media Breakfast Greater Philly, follow the event on Twitter or sign up for the newsletter.

The Frank N. Magid Associates Generational Strategies study, which took a look at how consumers spend their time consuming media throughout the day, came out this week. If you work in a company with employees under the age of 47, the primary conclusion shouldn’t come as much of a shock: Consumers are spending more time on Facebook than watching TV during working hours.

What is impressive is that Facebook (media provided by one privately held company that didn’t exist seven years ago) is now dominating the TV (a collective effort of the largest media conglomerates out there). In other words, it’s not social media as a whole that is more popular than TV—it’s just this one social network.

Another interesting aspect of the study is its break-down of Facebook users and TV viewers by daypart and generation. With 50 percent of all Facebook users logging in every day and about 45 percent of users accessing Facebook through a mobile device, employers and employees alike can expect to see a quickly changing work day. Given Nielsen’s prediction that 50 percent of mobile devices will be smart phones by the end of this year, it is inevitable that Facebook is going to be central to the ‘nine to five’ routine.

I was interviewed by Business News Daily about what this study means to marketers and came to a pointed conclusion. This state of affairs provides an amazing opportunity for marketers to integrate themselves into a lifestream that doesn’t stop during work hours. Previously, brands may not have been able to advertise a new lunch option within company walls, but now they can do it not only within the walls, but in consumers’ pockets as well:

“This study should be really eye-opening for advertisers in that it shows what people are doing when they consume their messages,” said Grossman. “If your message isn’t relevant to your target audience, it is going to be skipped over or ignored completely.”

[continue on Business News Daily]

As digital media has become increasingly social and evermore accessible, the democratization of the ability to publish has also led directly too the ability to do something else: hate. What’s more interesting to me than the presence of hate itself, though, is the varying degrees to which hate is accepted by the Internet population at large.

In order to gain a bit of perspective on the spread of hate online, I’ve broken it down into four major categories: Celebrity Hate, Brand Hate, Person-to-Person Hate and Anonymous Hate. This fourth post of the four-part series will address Anonymous Hate.

Anonymous Hate: Celebrated & Shared
The popularity of anonymous expression started fairly innocently with Post Secret. Since then, opportunities for internet users to covertly express how they really feel have sprung up left and right. To me, the most interesting aspect of this phenomenon is the degree to which anonymous ‘truth’ is celebrated. Soon, Post Secret, a site described as an “ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard” led to much more extreme types of online venting.

In 2009, sites like Juicy Campus (now owned by BlipDar) became a hotbed of anonymous venting that ultimately constituted cyberbullying. These sites allowed students to express hate toward each other without risking anything, and then provided them with the opportunity to talk about it ad nauseum. These services were at the center of gossip circles and their presence was celebrated and shared among community members.

Other sites, like RateMyProfessor, take a somewhat more conservative approach to providing a ratings and reviews style environment, with potentially useful information, in an anonymous context. These services have been the subject of extensive controversy and several lawsuits:  there is so much reliance on opinions (even anonymous ones) expressed on line that the careers of some professionals have been wrecked.

The newest style of online hate, which has surfaced, is anonymous on both ends. Users don’t disclose who they are talking about or who they are. This kind of double blind environment is probably the context in which users have felt the most free to celebrate and share stories of hate. In fact, several sites, including Clients from Hell, have been so successful that they’ve landed major book deals based on the premise of the online property.

Has it become socially acceptable to hate anonymously, or is it just cowardly? Are double blind hate blogs, like Clients from Hell, shameless fun or a negative influences on the greater public?  Mercedes, the popular sass ball from cultural phenomenon, Glee, has some very specific thoughts on the subject:

Click here to view the embedded video.