WebProNews

Tag: Friend2Friend

  • Facebook And Instagram Represent An Important Shift In Social Marketing Strategy

    Facebook And Instagram Represent An Important Shift In Social Marketing Strategy

    “It seems that Facebook acquired Instagram for two reasons,” Roger Katz, CEO of Friend2Friend, tells WebProNews. Friend2Friend does some of Universal Pictures’ social media campaigns.

    “The first is clearly a mobile play: Apple and Google are the players who control the critical app ecosystems for iOS and Android,” he adds. “Today, Facebook users who access the service with tablets or smartphones predominantly do so through iOS and Android apps. Facebook is intent on crafting a future strategy that is independent of competitors for a myriad of reasons including fees, data, control, etc. They are doing this by, among other things, pushing for HTML 5 based web-apps to eventually circumvent the need for app stores altogether.”

    “Currently, there are several limitations that prevent this and photo apps sit at the heart of those (e.g. use of camera/photos and other native device functionality),” Katz continues. “Facebook is making a huge, strategic push into mobile through everything it does, and Instagram will be a very important part of that effort.”

    Facebook has indeed been placing a great deal of emphasis on mobile, since citing it as a major risk factor in its IPO filing. For one, they’ve initiated the RingMark initiative (and recently open sourced it), a mobile browser test suite to increase the functionality of apps on mobile browsers, working with the W3C in the process.

    Instagram is a very popular mobile app that fits right into Facebook’s home turf, and the deal makes a great deal of sense for a variety of reasons.

    “The second, and less obvious reason Facebook made this acquisition, has to do with the changing state of the social media landscape,” says Katz. “Though Facebook has a massive user base, what it lacks are the passionate communities that have fueled the growth of companies such as Pinterest and Instagram. This is a fact that hasn’t been lost on marketers. It’s for this reason that large and small brands alike have recently started running Facebook campaigns that incorporate their Pinterest and Instagram marketing efforts.”

    “New Belgium Beer’s work with Friend2Friend is an interesting example of creative bridge-building between audiences on different social channels — Facebook, Pandora, and Instagram — and how to expose engaging content from one channel to another,” says Katz. “The Apps ensure that content is shared among friends on Facebook, to further widen the reach. It gives them content to share on their pages, which also improves engagement. And, the content may be fan created, or may be corporate created.”

    The brewing company launched a new beer called Shift Pale Lager, and teamed up with Pandora to build custom radio stations. They use a Facebook app to promote the stations to fans.

    Shift Pale Lager

    They also held a live streaming event and had fans invite their friends to a beer-drinking celebration to be entered into a contest to win an all-beer-expenses paid party.

    New Belgium used an Instagram Facebook app to greatly increase the reach over what was available on Instagram itself. The app automatically updates with the latest photos posted to the company’s Instagram channel. Fans can comment and share posts to their friends on Facebook.

    New Belgium on Instagram

    “We are not working on an Instagram campaign for Universal”, Katz tells WebProNews, though apparently, Universal is doing campaigns apart from Friend2Friend. “F2F doesn’t yet have a client using both Instagram and Pinterest together,” he says. “But that’s just a question of time. However, Universal is leveraging Pinterest/Facebook for their current Snow White and the Huntsman campaign.”

    “In this campaign, based on an engagement tab for the movie Snow White and the Huntsman, users can view the movie trailer, see images from the movie or submit pictures that, as Universal states ‘could be featured on the Snow White and the Huntsman Pinterest page,’” he says.

    Snow White Facebook campaign

    “The user either submits an image file from their PC/Mac, or adds an image via URL,” he explains. “Universal Pictures (the admin of the Page and contest) reviews all images selected and determine which are a good fit for their Pinterest page.”

    “This is all pretty straightforward, but represents a trend that Friend2Friend is seeing across its customer base,” he says. “Featuring more niche-oriented social networks (like Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest) on their much larger Facebook pages, and ensuring that Facebook fans become fans on the other networks as well.”

    The general strategy is not new by any means, but probably often overlooked. There are certainly a lot of social channels to pay attention to, or at least options. You don’t have to target all of them, and certainly not with every campaign, but the developer ecosystem of Facebook, for one, allows for a lot of cross-service opportunities like the ones on display here.

    With Facebook’s new timeline feature and the still fairly new ticker, there are a lot of opportunities to get actions from your fans seen by their friends. What’s the best example such a campaign that you’ve seen?

  • Exclusive: How Universal Does Social Commerce, And Why Your Business Should Do It Too

    Universal Pictures is using Facebook to create buzz and drive ticket sales for a number of its new films, including Big Miracle, Safe House, and The Lorax, and is utilizing social media management platform Friend2Friend for some social commerce efforts.

    We had a conversation with Friend2Friend CEO Roger Katz to learn more about Universal’s efforts, how his company is working with the movie giant and how brands in various industries can leverage Facebook to drive commerce in 2012.

    “Friend2Friend has worked with Universal for the past 2 years, providing all the social media marketing ‘engagement’ apps that reside on Facebook pages for their major movie releases, both in the US and Internationally,” he tells us. “Most recently, Universal Pictures is using Friend2Friend’s Social Media Platform to easily allow fans to turn a plan to go to the movies into a social experience on Facebook.”

    “With the Universal Pictures ticketing app, fans can watch and share the movie trailer, find show times, invite friends, and buy tickets, all without leaving the Facebook wall,” he explains. “Universal kicked off this social commerce initiative with the movie ‘Safe House’ and plans to use the app on the upcoming film ‘Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax’ and other major movie releases in 2012 and beyond. The campaign enables movie-goers preferences to be socialized within Facebook, and then turned into monetizable action.”

    “Further, a recent campaign for The Lorax includes a ‘stache’ app that launched in the US, and subsequently in the UK, Australia, Spain, Russia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Latin America,” he says. “We went on to provide an extensive ‘content’ tab for all aspects of engagement for the movie on Facebook.”

    More on that here.

    “Other campaigns include ‘multi-function tabs’ for the movie Despicable Me, video voting apps for Little Fockers, and many other movies,” he adds.

    So, just how is social commerce changing e-commerce?

    Katz, of course has some thoughts about that.

    “Social commerce, a new cut at e-commerce, is just getting traction in the market,” he says. “Social commerce is leveraging the phenomenal uptake of social environments like Facebook, where consumers are increasingly spending their time…and doing so while interacting with their friends.”

    “If businesses can identify the social dynamics that factor into purchases of their product, and incorporate those into the actual purchase of their products in these social environments…well that’s the ‘social commerce’ pay-off,” he adds. “In the case of the Universal Showtimes and Ticketing app, users can watch a movie trailer, get background information on the movie, look up showtimes, invite friends and buy tickets, all within their Facebook Wall —the purchase becomes part of a fundamentally social experience — one that respects the context of the social network.”

    “Real social commerce isn’t just putting a wrapper around a store on Facebook, or even adding a ‘Share’ button to a shopping site,” says Katz. “It’s about really making the shopping selection and consideration something done with people you trust in your social network — and then continuing that brand experience post sale to show how much you love, and are loyal to, that brand purchase.”

    Facebook is obviously the big daddy when it comes to where people are spending the majority of their social networking time.

    How can brands in different industries leverage Facebook, specifically to drive commerce?

    Katz says, “I think this comes back to what’s the product, and how can social behaviors factor into the sale. Is it the recommendation of a friend? Is it wanting to experience the product or event with a friend? Or is it acknowledging that there may be no direct social aspect to commerce (A brand like, say, Preparation H comes to mind!)?”

    “Again, social commerce is an emerging area and opportunity,” he says. “No one has all the answers today, and only over time will a best practices model emerge. However, given the size of the audience in environments like Facebook, it’s only a matter of time until the social cash registers start ringing. Remember, no-one was buying shoes online in the mid-90s, and today who isn’t?”

    As mobile use continues to grow, and Facebook starts taking it more seriously, it’s going to be quite interesting to see how big a role social commerce plays not just online, but in the physical world, where we’re out shopping in real stores.