BRANDTHINK Malaysia » #SocialMedia

Facebook to Advertisers: No low-quality ads

BRANDTHINK Malaysia — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:17:51 +0000

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Early this month, Facebook unveiled new guidelines on advertising on its performance network. The new guidelines aim to weed out questionable ads on its performance network. Personally, we think it’s a good development as improving the quality of advertising on its performance network will ultimately improve credibility and trust.

Facebook’s advertising guidelines can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php and its promotion guidelines found here: http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

Improving Ad Quality

Ad quality and user feedback have always been important considerations for Facebook Ads, and are significant factors in determining which ads we accept and display on the site. We’ve recently taken a close look at the ads that drive the most negative feedback, and identified four key themes behind ads that are detrimental to the user experience. As a result, we’re strengthening our Advertising Guidelines in these key areas to ensure that all Facebook Ads meet our high quality standards.

Unexpected User Experience

Advertised products may not generate any unanticipated user experience. This includes, but is not limited to:

1. Computer performance changes, such as the unexpected installation of any secondary software or the overlay of advertisements on the user’s browser or operating system

2. Unanticipated recurring charges

3. Undisclosed sale or distribution of requested user information. Any distribution of user information must be confirmed through user consent.

Unclear Recurring End Product

Advertisements must be clear and straightforward in describing any recurring end product to the user. The advertised offer must directly match the service being sold, and ads should provide the user with a clear understanding of what he or she is purchasing. Facebook Ads for products with recurring billing cycles should not:

1. Focus on an advertised “hook” without disclosing the core subscription-based service. Example: “Take a quiz!” (for a service that includes ringtones, wallpaper, or other undisclosed services).

2. Position a subscription-based service as a single product or billing interval. Example: ”Try now for $2.95” (for a service that includes monthly billing intervals)

Unsubstantiated Claims

Ads must not include unsubstantiated claims. Ads must clearly represent the offer, company, product, or brand that is being advertised. Unacceptable claims include, but are not limited to:

1. Unrealistic prices or rates. Examples: “$0.50 LCD TVs,” “$10/month health insurance”

2. Use of current events or news reports to create false associations with the advertised product. Political events or images may not be used for an irrelevant commercial agenda. Example: “Breaking News: Great car insurance rates”

3. Use of false qualifications to create a sense of relevancy. Example: “If you are right-handed, you qualify for low premiums”

4. Implication of dynamic ad content Examples: “7 minutes remaining,” “only (3) available”

5. Implied knowledge or passing of user data. Examples: “See who searched for you,” “you have been chosen”

Unacceptable Business Models

Ads will not be permitted in cases where a business model or practice is deemed unacceptable or contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising philosophy.

Unacceptable business models include, but are not limited to:

1. Lead generation offers which sell or distribute a user’s information to larger extent than indicated by the landing page

2. Offers that require a user to complete several hidden steps or make additional purchases in order to receive the promised product

3. Offers that require the input of user information for complete access to offer or product details

4. Ads promoting deceptive recurring billing services

5. Downloadable software that may affect the user’s computer or browser performance in unexpected or undesirable ways

The above information is obtained from affiliate marketer Jonathan Volk, from a more detailed document by Facebook.

Our (Work), Presented in Cases

BRANDTHINK Malaysia — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:38:42 +0000

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Case studies are a great way to learn new things. Over nearly 10 years, our agency has slowly built a collection of cases that we draw on every year for inspiration, for insight and for principles of success.

Highlighted below is a sample collection of the experiences we have shared with our clients. From our work in advertising, or PR to our recent exploration of social marketing, we hope you’ll find a case here that spark an insight on your own marketing campaigns. (If not, we’re simply a call away. *wink*)

Advertising & Interactive

Apple – The Mac Minute Show – Making radio fun again
We have been working with Apple -- one of our largest clients -- since 2002 in helping them build the brand in Malaysia. The Mac Minute Show represent perhaps the most fun we had in creating a radio campaign – and we really had plenty of fun with it. To date, it’s still the radio ad the sound engineers over at the radio station remember us by.

HotelClub – Who Says You Can’t Enjoy Business Trips? Campaign & Birthday Sale – Promotions help you sell
One of our new regional clients, HotelClub is giving us the opportunity to work on the creative over many countries, and Singapore is just the start. From digital marketing to print advertising, we hope to see the brand continue its rise as the premier destination for hotel reservations online.

JetstarAsia – Plus! Plus! Plus! Campaign
JetstarAsia – KL-SIN Launch Campaign
JetstarAsia represent our second budget airline client in our stable, and the first we have officially launched. The timing could not have been better as Malaysia’s travel industry saw the most aggressive marketing war between the national carrier and the national budget airline. Against the odds, we created a campaign that helped the airline jumpstart its awareness level amidst a highly competitive market and more importantly fill their seats.

Public Relations

Although less than 2 years old, our public relations agency has been a true star in the industry. We have been blessed with incredibly wonderful and challenging opportunities with great clients. Here are some highlights:

Cortina Watch – Launch of Penang Boutique by the Penang Chief Minister
Max Mara – Official Press and Customer Launch, the party was indeed fun!
Caran d’Ache’s Beautiful Writing Instruments
Breitling’s Instruments for Professionals
MAX&Co – Private Preview
Cortina Watch Jewellery Time 2008 – all the way to Singapore
Facet Fire Media Explosion
Davidoff – Official Media Launch

On top of that, we have created a special NewsFeed site that serves as a wire service for our clients to reach the media. Visit BRANDTHINK NewsFeed and preview all our client press releases!

Activation

What is work if you can’t party a little, eh? Well, we are in the best positions to enjoy some of the most dazzling parties of the year. After all, we helped made it successful!

Breitling’s Party of the Year in Malaysia – How did the guest react to the appearance of the VIP in a custom made WWII-era Mustang?

Mac+iPod DiscoveryWeek – iPod Dancers – Imagine those iconic iPod ads coming to life right in the streets of Kuala Lumpur! We had the traffic grooving to our mojo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEc8j-HUFB0

Apple iPod U2 Launch Party in 2005: One of our earliest and biggest events. To date, we still believe it single-handedly marked the start of the meteoric rise of the iPod in Malaysia. Since then, we have done another iPod Party, and an iMac Party.

How do you reach the highly affluent individuals? With a touch of class and plenty of exquisite wines, that’s how. Moet Hennessy Estates & Wines’s Flavors of the World & Riche Monde’s Cape Mentelle Winemaker’s Dinner.

Social Media

Mac+iPod DiscoveryWeek – Blog, Facebook, and Twitter Campaign – It started out as a quick & dirty way of promoting the DiscoveryWeek event. Today, the DiscoveryWeek blog, Facebook fan page and Twitter are fast becoming a sweet spot for marketing innovation. Next steps? Seeing how to integrate the social media aspects into the on-ground event!

Gap Malaysia & Guess Watches Social Media Campaign – When we first published the Facebook page for Gap & Guess Watches, an industry magazine ran a story on us. At the time, we had 200 odd fans each, and the target was 2000 by the end of 2009. Lo and behold, we hit our target in less than 2 months!

For both our featured campaigns, it marked some of the new initiatives that our client is beginning to explore, including custom Facebook pages and applications. The future landscape of social media is yet to be defined but these initial steps would prove to be a great enabler in the future!

Self-plug: Now is a good time as any to encourage you to join the BRANDTHINK Facebook fan page! Simply click on the Facebook Be A Fan button below and get instant updates on all our agency’s activities!

Interested in hiring our Agency for your marketing, advertising or public relations needs?

Let’s face it: every business is different. Even if your business is in the same industry, you’ll no doubt face unique challenges. Are you looking for a specific case study that is more related to your business? If what you are looking for is not listed here, call us! We might have a case study tucked somewhere we can share.

Call us at 603-22872255 or email us from here.

Insight: Five principles of a great fan base

BRANDTHINK Malaysia — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:13:29 +0000

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We all know the scenario:

Contest objective that targets a gazillion unknown people.
Competing for media coverage that appears in unknown corners in as many unknown magazines as possible.
Two teenage girls competing with one another to see how many friends they both have.
Database vendor bragging that they have more data than the nearest competitor.

The same with marketing. Every client marketer we know face the looming titanic metric: Numbers. Traffic. Readership. #.

If you start a social media campaign, you’ll probably be tempted to do the same as well: get as many fans, followers, retweets, blog post, etc, as possible.

That’s where you’ll stumble upon the trap of herding quantity with no regard to quality. Sure, a large fan base looks impressive on the outside, but at what cost? It’s a complete effort waster that will ultimately eat into your resources.

How do you stay on the path and avoid a herding mentality? The truth is, doing it right isn’t easy and there isn’t a magic formula or thing that can automate this for you. Over the years, our agency has built upon 5 principles that guide us in our quest to build quality fans.

Principle #1: Make a decision from the start: Quality or Quantity?

Giving quality the lip service is always easy. But when faced with calls for your head at board meetings or post-mortem evaluations, will you still stand firm to your value of quality or quantity? Everyone faces the pressure from higher-ups for quantity. More visitors, more eyeballs, more fans, more followers – generally in the belief that “more” will translate to more sales, more returns, more ROI.

But having “more” isn’t good enough for more ROI. Quality is what generates real ROI. The real focus should be on those who matter: real fans who are real buyers, a great story in a quality publication, and a group of highly potential clients following you on Twitter.

After all, it’s pointless to have thousands of people following you on Twitter or your Facebook page simply to hawk their “insert the latest affiliate/money-making scheme here” idea. In fact, sites like Facebook and Twitter are filled with such individuals that avoiding them will be a huge challenge.

Don’t scramble at the last minute to justify even the best decisions made. Make a decision early on. Write it down. Pin it up on your wall. Have torturously long meetings with your stakeholders and repeat throughout. When crunch time comes, you’ll be able to defend your position that quality matters.

Principle #2: Know when to BUY, SELL or HOLD

Great sales people will tell you that timing is everything. When do you give customers room to move (HOLD)? When do you provide relevant information that assist customers in making the right decision (BUY)? Or when do you aggressively close the sale (SELL)?

Timing is crucial to your success. For example, don’t make every blog post about the latest discount offer, or a sale. There’s definitely room to educate about product features, or even to solicit feedback and conversation.

These same principles apply whether you’re pitching for a sale, or pitching for a story to an Editor, or updating your status on Facebook or Twitter. Don’t simply stalk an editor simply to get your story across, but be a great source of material, even if it doesn’t benefit you one bit.

The right timing will result in building the one most important commodity in business: TRUST.

Principle #3: Invest in Quality

It is in our nature to go with the largest. The largest audience, the largest readership, the largest circulation. Do remember that hidden inside the mass are nuggets of gold. Invest in them. Invest in quality publications that reach quality audiences. Cultivate great bloggers who have great, but not necessarily the most fans. Seek out customers who may not be the year’s most famous socialite but hold their own nevertheless. When you do that right, you earn quality relationships.

Principle #4: Be patient

If you take the time to cultivate solid relationships with your best customers, and repeat the process over and over with your next best customer, sooner or later, you’ll have a lot of good customers.

We learn a huge lesson with several social media campaigns we ran on Facebook, that if you’re not prudent, you’ll end up with a list of fans who’re there simply to hawk their own websites, products or latest schemes. Taking the time to build quality fans and resisting the urge to mass invite and canvas for clicks resulted in a growing fanbase that loves the brand.

Principle #5: Know when to move on

Finally, even the best list requires pruning. Our agency for example, from time to time take stock of our relationships, from our Twitter followers, media lists, suppliers to even our customers and decide if they are worth keeping in the list. Pruning overgrown leaves is essential in keeping a beautiful tree healthy. It gives you amble opportunity to place proper focus on the right people.

Building quality customers requires time. Don’t succumb to the quick-fix of harvesting as many people as you can just to meet some magical number but rather take the time and effort to prune your own tree into something extraordinary. The result is worthwhile.

Do you have a principle that you use to build quality fans? Share it with us, we love to hear from you.

(Work) Kicking of Social Media Campaigns

Advertising — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:49:47 +0000

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Online advertising isn’t new. Neither is social media. From the days of BBS, online discussion forums, instant messaging and more recently blogs – social interactions between people online, now referred to as social media – is constantly evolving.

While Internet users used to congregate within portal sites and services the like of ICQ, today there’s a shifting usage trend towards services such as Facebook and Twitter. When the number of Malaysian Internet users joining these popular services grows daily, it is time to take note.

Brands must begin to understand these new platforms to engage and enable deeper communication with their customers. While technologies that enable new interactions are still new and unfamiliar in many ways, we’re beginning to get requests from more of our clients to begin experimenting with it.

New technologies it may be, but the precept of communication still applies. The challenge is how do you use these new tools to enable deeper engagement, particularly if your target market is embracing these tools rapidly.

This week, we have the opportunity to launch two new social media marketing via Facebook pages for Guess Watches and GAP Malaysia. It’s a whole big socializing experiment – and the key objective is to gather feedback on how customers would like to engage with the brands.

Be a fan of these pages, and take part in shaping these new forms of engagement. If you have specific opinions on how these new social campaigns should take shape, we would like to hear from you. Drop a comment in this post!

GUESS Watches on Facebook

GAP Malaysia on Facebook

Gap Malaysia Facebook Page

We love to hear from you, drop us a comment below!

Highlight: Twitter for Business, 101.

BRANDTHINK Malaysia — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:51:19 +0000

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If your business is looking for ways to leverage on new social media technologies to reach out to customers, then this guide is for you.

Twitter 101: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

Made by the creators of Twitter itself, Twitter 101 is a friendly instructional guide for any business to create a strategic and effective presence on Twitter. It helps users to foster a collaborative community among customers that are increasingly turning to Twitter as a form of communication. With this guide, you’ll learn the lingo of Twitter, the basics of using Twitter, and some examples and case studies on how Twitter is currently being used for marketing purposes. It starts by answering the first question on any business executive’s mind:

So what does Twitter do for businesses?

Twitter is a communications platform that helps businesses and their customers do a number of useful things. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you’ve had a great–or disappointing–experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

While the technology is fairly nascent, and it will be awhile before it reaches the tipping point in Malaysia, it doesn’t hurt for you to learn more about Twitter now, so you are well prepared to use it when your business is ready for it.

This guide covers quite a variety of topics, which includes:

This guide provides a comprehensive overview on what can be applied in business and gives you a starting point for your own Twitter project. Closer to home, our local clients have began to experiment with ways of reaching their customers via Twitter. Follow a local example at: http://www.twitter.com/discoveryweek. You can also find out more about DiscoveryWeek as a whole here.