The Digital Tipping Point: The Future of Branding and Social Media

I attended a conference in Sydney yesterday called The Digital Tipping Point: The Future of Branding and Social Media.


That we have reached a digital tipping point is abundantly clear. IBM has already proclaimed that there will be more change in the next 5 years than there has been in the past 50 years, thanks to digital technologies. User time spent on social media increased by 43% in 2008 compared to 2007 (Pew Internet and American Life Project). Facebook has over 220 million members worldwide. Niche interest based networks are rapidly proliferating.

The future of branding and social media, on the other hand, is less clear-cut - or at least, success is not evenly distributed. MySpace, for example, has had much more success in monetising its offer than Facebook. To some extent this is a reflection of the different uses of these sites, Facebook being about connecting with friends and MySpace about discovery and fame.

But, as a rule of thumb, social media are more successful at carrying brand messages if they were designed to do so from the offset. Otherwise, established communities tend to react against the introduction of commercial messages because it feels to users as if the space they have taken ownership of is being invaded by an uninvited third party.

A growing number of emerging sites are both consumer centric and fiercely commercial, leveraging the insight that consumers are happy to use and manipulate brands to their own ends, be it self-expression or getting support for their passions.

Venture capitalist Brian Garrett, MD of Crossout Ventures, pointed out some new players: Social Vibe, Loopd and Flipgloss. While they may not be delivering great numbers yet, in terms of consumer eyeballs, these new models show commercial promise.


With companies placing greater emphasis on meaningful CSR, e.g. Kraft's "Give 6 Meals to People in Need" campaign, Social Vibe helps people get brand sponsorship in suppport of their causes. Brands, such as Colgate, provide artwork which people post to their blogs or social media profiles in support of their cause. The more views the profile gets, the more money Colgate and Social Vibe donate.

Extreme sports social network Loopd lets brands "sponsor" members - through providing branded stickers and discounts. The budding skateboarder feels like a sponsored pro, while brands get free viral marketing and an e-commerce channel.

Flipgloss is an intriguing proposition. Noticing that most glossy magazines don't migrate online very well, the developers set out to create print advertorials specifically for the online space. Instead of using small images and crowding the web page with text, Flipgloss has big muthas of images - looking just as delicious as the cover of Vogue. It then uses overlays (hover your mouse over sections of the image and contextual information appears). By clicking on these overlays, people can access information on where to buy products, or even buy directly. Flipgloss is not just a site, it's a widget which people can post to their own profiles.

It's now much easier to get your brands on to social networks, thanks to Adknowledge, which describes itself as a social applications ad network. Marketers can thereby take advantage of the thousands of applications that have already been developed, such as video applications. HBO, Neutrogena, 3 and Coldplay have already done so.

Adknowledge's President is Brett Brewer, the Co-Founder of MySpace, who knows a thing or two about social media marketing.

Oh, and he predicted that by 2015, the last major metropolitan newspaper will fall.

Social Shopping: Making Online Advertising Work

A new site, Rasba, co-founded by 17-year-old Miriam Brafman, succeeds in doing what Facebook's Beacon initially tried - and failed - to achieve: the right balance between online shopping, advertising and social networking.

As I've highlighted previously, Beacon failed to have an opt-in system, so people were revealing their purchases to others without realising it. But, I believe, despite the fallout, Facebook had the right idea, executed wrongly.

Rasba not only avoids antagonising users through ensuring opt-in from the start, it makes buyers advocates of the advertising model, through leveraging social - and real - currency. They earn kudos and commission when the brands they've bought, displayed on their profile pages, are subsequently purchased by other members.

Just as 'gifting', 'begging' and feedback features on social networking sites facilitate social exchanges, other smart features of Rasba include wishlists and newsfeed-style updates on what their friends are buying. And brands get their own customisable storefronts within the website - it's win-win all round.

For teens, shopping is fundamentally a social event - whether it's spotting what the cool kids are wearing (nonchalantly, of course, and passing it off as your own style), consulting friends in the changing room, or via mms, or getting the verdict from the crowd on the way to a big night out. It makes absolute sense for e-commerce sites to leverage this. Teens' desire for acceptance, belonging and killer style is no less online.

Online, who's the Daddy?

Girls are the primary content creators online, they're more involved in the blogosphere and social networks, while boys exchange funny videos, recent research suggests. Online behaviour may reflect offline tendencies, with males seeking to impress quickly and females more likely to gradually build relationships, creating a deeper impression of their 'true' selves over a longer period.

Girls are designing free widgets, such as horoscopes to embed in your blog, layouts, icons, graffiti image generators and 'glitters' (shimmering animations) to help others customise their social network profiles and blogs. Ashley Qualls, creator of Whateverlife.com, which became the authority on customising MySpace, was a teen millionaire in the space of a few years.

Girls are podcasting their own music and entertainment shows from their homes. Emogirltalk.com by 17-year-old Martina Butler is attracting serious audiences - and corporate sponsors.

Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, released in December 2007, indicates that US teenage girls are significantly more likely to be content creators than boys. 35% of online girls aged 12 to 17 (vs. 22% of boys) create Web content. Girls are more active in the blogosphere, 35% maintaining a blog, vs. 20% of boys.

Females display different online networking behaviour. Among 15 to 17 year olds, both sexes engage in social networking, but girls are more active, 70% creating their own profiles, vs. 57% of boys. However, Facebook executives have said that males have more Facebook Friends - 150 on average - while girls tend to be more selective.

Not just teenage girls, but women, are actively fostering online communities. Women's community sites, such as Glam Media and iVillage.com, along with politics sites, were the fastest growing websites in the US in pre-election year 2007, each experiencing 35% growth, in terms of total unique visitors (ComScore). Women's community sites in total had 69,854,000 unique visitors, as of December 2007 out of the total US online audience of 183,619,000, up 5% vs. 2006.

While females are investing more time in creation and in developing relationships online, when it comes to posting and viewing videos on YouTube, males are the dominant players, according to the Pew study.

Recent research by MSN and MTV's Circuits of Cool also indicated that YouTube is used more by males. Globally, the use of online video is widespread, with 87% of males and 74% of females using video sites. But 40% of males aged 18 to 21 visit these sites regularly, compared to 24% of females of the same age.


What's really going on?

The reasons behind the differences in male and female usage of online content may lie in their motivations to impress others, versus engage others emotionally in an ongoing dialogue, with boys inclining towards the former and girls to the latter.

It's by no means a clear-cut distinction. Girls also want to impress their peers, but seem to be going about it in a different way, through creating something unique that expresses their personality. Boys also want to chat, but seem to value more instant exchanges and fast gags. Forget painstakingly building their credentials, boys may be more prone to 'bragging' with new sites like Bragster dedicated to just that - challenges and trash talk. It evokes fond memories of Jackass.


The MSN/MTV research points to the importance of humour and peers in sharing video content. Passing on funny content and, in particular, humourous content that they think will appeal to their friends, was identified as a primary motivation.

Data from eMarketer shows the popularity of humourous content, indicating that the second most viewed online video content after news is comedy - jokes/bloopers/funny clips - watched by 57% of Internet viewers at least monthly in 2007. Most of what's viewed is short - an average of 2.8 minutes, with US viewers consuming 72 online videos a month, according to ComScore - making brief, funny clips ideal.

Professor Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, believes that males may be more likely to post videos as a way to impress others. Skateboarders or snowboarders can demonstrate their athleticism, through posting videos of their masterful skills, for example.

Girls, on the other hand, he suggests, are more interested in creating content on websites to show their individuality. And they're fiercely protective of the identities they create for themselves. Palfrey points to girls' strident criticism of online imitators. Speaking to the NY Times, he likens an online copycat, who outright steals another girl's Web page layouts and graphics to someone who turns up at a party knowingly wearing the same dress as another girl.

Girls' desire to cultivate a dialogue is evidenced by the popularity of problem-solution sites by girls for girls, such as Agirlsworld.com. Girls are drawn to emotional sites and 'confessionals', like Postsecret, which ranks among the top 10 favourite websites of female US college students (eMarketer). The new teen version of Postsecret, Alykatzz's I've got a secret, attracted over 425 postings of secrets in less than 48 hours, according to their press release.

So, online, who's the Daddy? It depends on your perspective. My favourite fictitious guru House says, "Work smart not hard," which would tend to favour the impress quickly approach. But he's also creatively brilliant and easily bored, so whatever you post, make it not boring.