Agencies Boost Social Media Savvy

Posted by Sheila Shayon on July 20, 2010 11:30 AM

Social media is getting more and more, well, social.

"You can't walk out your house without bumping into a social-media expert today," Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran tells the Wall Street Journal. "The reality is the space is still very much a Wild West."

In an effort to grab hold of that manifest destiny and the growing stream of ad dollars, Madison Avenue is rallying.

Universal McCann, owned by Interpublic Group, recently created a social media agency it's calling Rally. Headed by former MySpace exec Heidi Browning, its mission is to assist marketers with creative campaigns, sparking online engagement, and monitoring performance.

Publicis Groupe's Vivaki is set open its own social-media consulting practice, and Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy officer says he will dig into his mergers-and-acquisitions budget if needed to support the unit.

The brass ring for all: leveraging Facebook and Twitter, with their 500 million and 120 million users respectively.

"Social media tends to be siloed in companies and/or fragmented across many agencies, leaving marketers wondering how it impacts their marketing mix and business outcomes. We view social media as the central nervous system, coordinating and connecting important functions of an organization,” Browning comments in Rally's launch press release.

"Social media is now part of all our clients' plans; we can't not be in this space," notes Matt Seiler, CEO of Universal McCann.

Experts feel the days of smaller agencies dominating the digital space is over, as large ad holding companies and PR firms will expand their efforts – gobbling up smaller fish in their wake. According to eMarketer, the aggregate ad spend this year will be $2.5 million – with social media a $55 billion slice of that pie and growing the fastest.

Recent deals in the social media space include New Media Strategies, a unit of publisher Meredith Corp., by Chrysler Group LLC; and 360i by Kraft Foods – part of Japan’s Dentsu Inc. The Facebook page for Oreo cookies is overseen by 360i, which created the "World's Fan of the Week" promotion.

This could be the year of consolidation as the wild west of social media starts to be managed, integrated and dare we say, tamed.

More about: Social Media, Universal McCann, Rally, Publicis, Vivaki, MySpace, 360i, Kraft, Facebook, Twitter, Oreo

Josh Pearlstein says:

Thank you for the good read. I agree that you cannot walk a mere two blocks without bumping into someone that considers themselves a social media consultant. In fact, that is my title at <a href="www.singlplatform.com">SinglePlatform</a>. However, I believe that the general title of "social media expert" will be transitioned into a more specific title i.e. "social media expert for the hospitality industry", once people realize that specialities are needed in social media just like every other position.

The aforementioned is what my company, <a href="www.singlplatform.com">SinglePlatform</a>, has set out to do. We are a social media and marketing platform specifically for restaurants and bars, and we are already working with thousands of restaurants across the country. SinglePlatform provides bars and restaurants with one platform that enables bar to optimize their presence on the ever-changing web. This one portal allows establishments to manage their critical information (events, specials, games and menu items) from one location. The platform updates their own website, their mobile site, and is distributed, in real-time, to a variety of other sites (social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, review sites such as Citysearch and Urban Spoon, and iPhone apps like Foursquare and Gowalla among others).

We just launched our Facebook "Today" tab (letting Facebook page visitors know what is going on in realtime) for bars and restaurants, which can be seen on <a href="www.facebook.com/.../>McFadden’s Fan Page</a>.

July 20, 2010 01:46 PM #

S. Shayon says:

Josh,
Thanks for the info on SinglePlatform.
Any other social media experts with similar tips - please chime in!
S. Shayon

July 20, 2010 02:40 PM #

Jason says:

> "Any other social media experts with similar tips - please chime in! "

I don't think I want to claim "social media expert" status, but I do have a tip. I worked inside marketing agencies as a consultant for clients on how to leverage digital media, the web, and now social media. I felt like most of the tools out there were about response (customer service) or measurement (monitoring, sentiment analysis, etc). Not enough focus is on aggregating the positive things fans of a product or brand are saying and then using the customer's voice for marketing. People care more what other people have to say about a brand than what the brand has to say about itself.

I ended up leaving the agency world to start a business that does social content aggregation for display. I didn't want agencies to have to spend lots of time and money writing code to talk to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and other APIs anymore. FeedMagnet does all the heavy lifting and includes filtering, moderation, blacklisting, and other management controls to help brand managers determine what gets displayed.

If you want to learn more, hit me up on Twitter @feedmagnet or @jasford. Or just check out FeedMagnet.com

Thanks for the insights in this blog post. Definitely agree that social media is still a land grab. Social media agencies, PR firms, traditional ad agencies—everyone wants a piece.

- Jason (founder/CEO of FeedMagnet)

July 22, 2010 09:23 AM #