I directed her to some social media blogs. Here's what she wrote to me:
"...after reading all those bullshit social media blogs and learning what they are trying to get me to do (talk to my friends about laundry detergent)...."
Hi TAC,
Can you share those links, I've heard about those sort of things but never seen any.
I'd like to know what all the fuss is about, good and bad, just so I can have a view.
Hi Bob, thanks for the stream of great content. I Twitter your articles to my Facebook and then have my friends share them to me over YouTube.
Here's my question: Has social media done anything to help grow your business?
How did the Starbucks ad affect the trend in sales from the month before the ad to the month following it? That seems like a better indicator than Q1 2009.
@Dave: I'll send you some of the links I gave her via email. Don't want to embarrass anyone.
@Jay: Thanks. Unfortunately, social media thus far hasn't made my business a nickel.
@Robert: I don't have those figures, but it's a good point.
So the success of the Starbucks election promotion in the first week of November is measured by 2009 sales? Bit of a stretch.
Correlation does not equal causation on the Starbucks stuff. A little thing called "the recession" was happening in the background, no?
Not to diminish your statistics, but wasn't everything down the first quarter? I can think of a few companies (and portfolio managers) who would have been overjoyed to have been down 8%.
To see SM as a competitor of traditional media is an odd way to look at it. But it sure is entertaining.
A few commenters have taken issue this morning with my comments entitled The Power of Social Media. They are substantially right.
I didn't really mean it as a critical analysis, just as a way to rag on social media.
A few points:
1. Of course, there are larger, macro-economic forces at play here.
2. Of course, there are also factors besides advertising at work.
3. Nonetheless, if social media and online conversations are as powerful as we are told, we should be able to discern some effect of all the attention Starbuck's received online (1.5 million Facebook fans; one tweet every 8 seconds; etc) .
This weekend I will try to find info on how Starbuck's did versus its primary competitors (e.g., Dunkin Donuts, McDonald's) during the first quarter and report back.
I feel the same way about the swine flu. Although I am aware of your aversion to facebook, I belong to a group there called "swine flu happy fun time." It helps me over the rough times.
Proof that social media can, at the very least, help save a TV show.
http://www.givememyremote.com/re...inale-footlong/
So to what do you attribute the fact that all those YouTube views of an actual Starbucks TV commercial had no effect on sales?
Does viewing the same exact 30 seconds of video on your computer (something you choose to do) have a completely different effect on purchase habits than viewing it on your television?
If we follow your argument to its logical conclusion, it would seem that it does. Why do you posit that is?
C'mon Alan.
Nobody with any knowledge of advertising runs a commercial once on television. The people who watched it on YouTube saw it once.
AC- How many engaged views (or views that someone decided - "hey, I'd sure like to watch that!" - does a single tv exposure equal?
Conversely, I saw and ad for Toyota on TV 6 months ago. Toyota sales are down this year. Therefore, clearly Television doesn't work.
And please excuse the typos. 
To Paul's point: all those people watched that commercial on YouTube because they wanted to see it.
Which, to me says that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that it was a really good commercial, from an entertainment POV-- not that social media is better than television or more effective. I mean to get a million plus people to watch anything, let alone a commercial, is pretty difficult. So it must have been a really well-done piece of film.
Which is about all you can conclude from that.
On another note, it's sort of funny that constant repetition does more for sales than anything else. It's a dirty little secret of advertising that annoying-but-oft-repeated TV and radio ads are wildly effective (Crazy Eddie, Mr. Whipple, 1-800-Autoland) -- in the short term, anyway.
@Paul:
1. I have seen no data that indicates that voluntary exposure to a message is any more effective than forced exposure. It may be and it may not be. My guess is that effectiveness correlates more closely to the quality of the message than the motives of the viewer.
2. I doubt the Toyota spot you saw 6 months ago is cited often as a shining example of the effectiveness of advertising, whereas Starbucks "free coffee" effort is often cited as a brilliant example of successful social media.
3. Everyone's sales are down. The only way to reasonably evaluate marketing success in an environment like this is share of market. I guarantee when this mess is over Toyota's share of market will be larger and Starbuck's will be smaller.
4. I really don't know that much about what Starbuck's social media strategy was other than giving away free coffee. However, it smells very much to me like alibi advertising which I described in this post: http://
adcontrarian.blogspot.com...dvertising.html
I saw the tweets on Starbucks but I didn't go out and get a cup or buy more than I usually do. But, I didn't switch to any other coffee sellers either so they keep my brand loyalty by these efforts.
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