Social innovation is at an all time high and campaigns integrated with social media are the latest incarnation exemplified by the new Mercedes-Benz #YOUDRIVE Twitter campaign, which will let fans help shape the ending. Ever the innovator on digital, Mercedes-Benz is up 10 percent in Interbrand's just-announced 2012 Best Global Brands report.

TV viewers in the UK will ‘drive the action’ of a three-part story about the new Mercedes-Benz A-Class to be shown this weekend during commercial breaks in "The X Factor." A cat and mouse caper features a young music star (played by Top Boy actor Kane Robinson) aided by a female accomplice attempting to secure a secret gig that authorities are keen to close down.Continue reading...

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is busy pitching Wall Street and Madison Avenue on FB advertising, calling it "incredibly effective" in her first post-IPO interviews. She's not the only Facebook exec defending the efficacy of ad campaigns using the social graph, even as the FTC raises privacy concerns about FB's new partnership with Datalogix for ad metrics, and social ad skeptic GM challenged the site's analytics.

With its stock down 43% since its May IPO, new initiatives to increase revenue including mobile ads and now the Datalogix union are attempts by the social behemoth to wean marketers off clicks, which is the key metric pitched by Google. Instead, Facebook is focusing not on the click-through rate (CTR) but on the number of times a user sees an ad (and whether the campaign has reached its target audience) as more effective metrics to track in marketing.

Indeed, Facebook reports that fewer than 1% of in-store sales tied to brand campaigns come from people who clicked on an ad.Continue reading...

Kellogg’s is crossing two bridges at once, bringing its successful Special K Cracker Chips across the pond to the UK, where they're called (in local parlance) Special K Cracker Crisps, and using social currency in the form of tweets to pay for the savory treats.

Special K’s London pop-up, The Tweet Shop (a play on the classic British "sweet shop") is seeking tweets with the Twitter hashtag #tweetshop in return for a box of its new Cracker Crisps. That's what Kellogg's UK is billing as its ‘healthy brand of crisps (potato chips) that don't use potatoes’ and come in three flavors: sea salt and balsamic vinegar, sweet chilli and sour cream and onion and usually sell for $1 a pack.Continue reading...

As golf is a major passion point for Chase Sapphire’s upscale target and customer base, the brand is actively pursuing golf partnerships and increasing spend this year by more than 500% over last year, and teed up the Golf Digest and Golf Channel brands for a social marketing campaign on Facebook.

Golf Digest and Golf Channel have linked up with Chase Sapphire, Chase bank's premier travel and dining rewards credit card, on ‘Beyond the Tee,’ a multi-platform initiative centered around a Facebook app on the Chase Sapphire FB page, aimed at golf enthusiasts.

“Many of our cardholders are passionate about golf, so Chase Sapphire is committed to providing the compelling experiences and content we know our customers want,” stated Sean O’Reilly, general manager, Chase Card Services.Continue reading...

When Facebook went public in May at the cost of $38/share, but it has since struggled to get anywhere close to that amount, falling at one point below $18. Analysts and investors have been down on the social-networking site, saying the new more-mobile world is going to make it less relevant. Mark Zuckerberg admitted that mobile needs to be more of a focus during his first post-IPO public remarks, at TechCrunch Disrupt. The stock price has made its way back into the low twenties, partially due to its founder/CEO's remarks over marketing missteps — and also due to some much-needed good news for the company.

According to partners using Facebook’s ad network, the company is doing better than Google in getting its users to click on advertising based on browsing.

“Facebook Exchange, or FBX, generates as much as four times the return on ad dollars than other real-time bidding systems, said Triggit Inc., which makes software tools to help Facebook deliver the ads,” Bloomberg reports. “Another partner, AdRoll, said advertisers used to getting $10 for every $1 they spend are making $16 for every dollar spent on FBX.”

The official launch of Facebook Exchange on Sept. 13 sent its share price soaring. The ads come up based on what a consumer has been looking for on the web. So if someone has been searching for shoes online, when he or she goes onto Facebook, shoe advertisements will be served up.Continue reading...

Volvo US is kicking off a social marketing campaign on Pinterest in partnership with Victoria Smith, a design-savvy social mediaite who has more than half a million followers on the social scrapbooking site. The San Francisco-based pinfluencer, better known in blogging and design circles as sfgirlbybay, boasts almost 25,000 Twitter followers, Instagram fans and made a name producing Keep Calm & Carry On posters on Etsy, among other activities.

The pitch: "Didn't take a trip this summer? Follow @VolvoCarsUS on Pinterest and pin your favorite Volvo adventure for a chance to win your ultimate #VolvoJoyride! Watch as Pinner & Lifestyle Blogger Victoria Smith takes a road trip to Lake Tahoe in the New 2013 Volvo S60 T5 AWD! To learn how to win your own #VolvoJoyride, visit http://volvojoyride.com"

LinkedIn’s 100 million members reportedly follow at least one of 2 million companies with Company Pages, but use of that content has been less than optimal.

Staring this week, redesigned Company Pages offer marketers a visually-enhanced platform presence and early adopters include Philips, Citi, Dell and HP. The redesign includes improved brand imagery, streamlined navigation and a prominent follower button.

LinkedIn Global Product Marketing Director Marc Bishop told brandchannel, “Our newly redesigned Company Pages offer a suite of tools for marketers to attract LinkedIn’s affluent and influential professional audience. As companies build out their presence, it’s important for them to tailor their content and marketing messages to the needs – and professional mindset – of their specific target audiences. Marketers can then leverage the new navigational elements of Company Pages that enable our members to easily discover and engage with this content.”Continue reading...

A recent McKinsey Global Institute study, “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies,” concludes that social technologies could contribute $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value to business.

"Two-thirds of this potential value lies in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises," with improved consumer focus and better-functioning teams as additional benefits. 

The current crop of social media acquisitions, including Microsoft's acquisition of Yammer and Salesforce.com's purchase of Radian6, underscore large companies’ increasingly expensive quest for internalized productivity tools to better help them manage customers. 

The most effective social technologies include wikis, instant messaging, content searches and user forums, and apply to several levels of employees from managers to sales representatives to engineers. The largest impediment to overcome, both organizationally and individually, is the embrace of a nonhierarchical ethos where acumen and information are shared rather than hoarded. Continue reading...