Tinker it now!

This week, the Economist has a nice chunk of reportage on Social Networking for those who have been living underneath a rock, it would seem. (As a side bonus, the front cover was emblazoned with a saintly image a Steve Jobs, but that was luckily, not distracting.) An interesting tidbit from this spread was a long article on the effects of social networking and a statistic snagged from ACNielsen that showed consumer trust in advertising is highest when it comes from their friends’ recommendations – more than twice as much as advice gained from other sources (websites, tv, newspapers, billboards, etc). If this is true, it has significant consequences for Agencies and Brands.

The old stalwarts of print media have been in a well documented and steady decline of both readership and ad revenue. Broadcast media such as TV suffer from the scatter-shot limitations inherent to the medium. Are the people watching? Brands are left inevitably to wonder if they’ve seen real ROI on the ad budgets. They want more than ever to make sure their messages reach the mark – and everyone knows it.

The web isn’t immune either. In the face of declining revenue per impression for web-campaigns, vendors have been touting web analytics as a way to shed light on real impressions that make a difference. Click-throughs tell the tale. Trackable impressions and conversions to sales tell Brands what they need to know, and they’ll pay a premium for that information. Accordingly, this yields revenue for agencies who are now offering analytics, and analytics firms which are sprouting up like dandelions to grab the gold.

Experiential marketing blended with social networking has greater value still. The granularity of social media makes it possible to get even finer detail. Since each consumer holds a unique account, it is possible to track specific interactions, times of interaction, and number of impressions quite precisely. Patterns of use and viral communication also emerge. In one of our recent campaigns involving Twitter, we were able to identify exactly how many impressions and interactions individuals within the target population engaged in the Brand experience, and to identify eddies of conversation in the tweetstreams which had direct value for our clients. The consequences are clear: better information means higher value-for-money in campaign expenditures. And if this is the case, content creators can justify high budgets for more fun and engaging interactive experiences.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. As new techniques for tracking and measuring these interactions emerge, we’ll see better reporting and better precision. The big mobile manufacturers have already figured this out and are spending more on these kinds of campaigns. Those who are quick to the mark will be able to add real value for their clients and build more creative and interesting experiential marketing campaigns which offer new, physical, fun, and connected experiences for consumers. Now more than ever: Physical+digital=fun! And we can tell you exactly how much.