FreshNetworks Blog

Image courtesy of ETF trends

Yesterday I attended the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) How to be Safe and Social event.

Of particular interest was the presentation by Malcolm Phillips, the Code Policy Manager at the Committee for Advertising Practice (CAP), on updating the digital remit of the CAP code and the new Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) guidelines for online advertising that come into effect from 1 March 2011.

Of primary importance to me, and to the way FreshNetworks functions as a social media agency, are the rules regarding the re-purposing of user generated content.

While the ASA and CAP understand that marketers and brands cannot be held responsible for content produced by independent consumers and third parties, it’s how that content is used that will be come under scrutiny. From the 1st March,  if brands decide to re-purpose user generated content in their marketing strategies, they become liable for the content from the time of use onwards – it falls within the same guidelines as any offline or brand-generated marketing content.

So what does this actually mean for brands and businesses using social media marketing?

• Any user comments re-tweeted by a brand will require proof that the claims made are true. For example, re-tweeting a comment that your brand makes the best coats will require proof that the coats are the best.
• Drinks companies will have to be very careful with any galleries they create on Facebook as advertising rules governing alcohol promotion state that no under 25s can be shown in the marketing material (CAP code point 18.6).
• A brand is responsible for any messages it produces that are then re-tweeted by followers. If it goes viral, the ASA may well ask for the brand to clarify the purpose of the message and its content.
• If any branded messages are re-tweeted with additional comments from the follower, the ASA will not hold the brand accountable for the additional user generated content.

The new rules also raise a number of additional questions that need clarification:

• At what point does user generated content fall under the brand control?
• How much additional information do you need to add to a tweet to ensure it isn’t misleading, and will a link to more information suffice?
• At which point does PR become marketing and visa versa?

The ASA are not actively looking for breaches of these new regulations, however it only takes one complaint from a customer or competitor brand and they will consider making an investigation. This will not be retrospective and will only be applied to content produced on or after 1st March 2011.

All in all, the IAB How to be Safe and Social event has thrown up just as many questions as it has answered. 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting year for online marketers, especially within Social Media, and there are bound to be a few real life examples that will set a precedent for what is and isn’t deemed acceptable.

Internet users in the UK are more likely to follow brands in social media than they are to follow celebrities. A study of over 1,000 internet users (by the IAB, Opinion Matters and RMM) found that whilst only 13.4% of users follow celebrities, more than one in five (20.3%) follow brands. Brands are, therefore more than 50% more popular than celebrities in social media. This is good news for brands and shows the benefits they can get of using social media and using it well. But it also reinforces the importance for all brands of getting a social media strategy in place.

The research also showed than more than one in eight UK consumers have given feedback to a brand or organisation in social media. That is more than half of those who say they are following a brand in the first place and shows that, when consumers are following brands in social media, they are also likely to interact with it.

Another way to ‘interact’ with a brand in social media is not to follow it or to give it feedback directly, but to complain about it in a public arena. The survey found that 7.7% of UK consumers had done just this and in 40% of cases brands had responded rapidly to these complaints and comments. Getting your social media monitoring in place is important for brands as it helps you to find and, if appropriate, respond to mentions and such complaints. The research also shows the benefit of brands monitoring and responding like this – almost four out of every five (77.8%) people who were contacted by a brand were left with a positive feeling about the brand.

So consumers are more likely to follow a brand than a celebrity. Of those who follow a brand, more than half will interact with it and give it feedback. Consumers are also complaining about brands and organisations through social media, and those who receive a response from the brand through the same medium and highly likely to leave with a positive feeling about that brand.

In an environment where we know that most people will happily consume, and be influenced by, discussions and comments. The number of UK consumers actively discussing and feeding back on brands in social media is relatively high, and underlines how critical it is for all brands and organisations to address how they are using social media and to make sure they are using it in a way that makes sense for them, and adds value to them as well as to their audience.

Recent research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Thinkbox shows the power to the brand of using TV and internet together.

The research provides the data behind a trend that we’ve been observing for some time. Around 50% of the tech-savy population in the UK will be online whilst they’re wathcing TV (this kind of multi-tasking is why some people claim we now have 38 hours in our day!). People are truly cross-platform and so brand building needs to operate cross-platform too.

The other headline statistic from this research is that combining TV and online leads to a 47% increase in positive brand perceptions compared to using either in isolation. A consumer is more likely to purchase when the two are used together, and so it’s great for conversion too.

Digging beneath these headlines, it’s interesting to look at how best to combine these media:

• TV is best for telling people about a brand they have not yet heard of, sparking interest in a brand or persuading people to try a brand or product
• Online, on the other hand, is great at helping people to decide which brands are relevant, helps people to re-evaluate brands (and their existing brand choice) and is the best source at giving specific information to inform a purchase decision

Looking at this split, it is clear that TV and online both play different roles in the minds of consumers. TV is about the new and the now, it is good as an interventionist medium to tell people about new things they might not have considered. Online is about reflection and information. It’s less interventionist and more about the consumer using it to find the information they need and to inform themselves.

This seems to fit with the pattern of consumer behaviour online that we witness. More consumers are using online to find information about and even discuss a brand. We also see a high success rate of TV advertising causing people to go and visit websites in their own time to get more information about the brand or product.

It’s clear that the two media work well together and that to build a brand successfully a strategy is needed both for television brand building but also online. Brands need to own their online space and create successful and effective campaigns that are about building the brand online, and not just transactional.

Some more reading

• UK 2008 Ad Spend Growth Forecast Slips to 4%
• Response: TV viewers are not switching off for the internet
• Study: Ads in online shows work better than ads on TV
• Spending on online ads rises by 38%