April 08, 2010

Just The Facts

Just The Facts
Social media maniacs are very long on assertions and very short on facts. For a nice, reasonable, non-hysterical (not my style at all) look at some of the facts undermining the preposterous claims of many social media zealots, here's a link to a piece called Social Media: How Much Is Too Much? from Stoltz Marketing Group, in Boise, Idaho.

Volvo
A year and a half ago we said...
..."They have relinquished their unique reason for being. ...I haven't seen any other work from this campaign, but if it's like this thing, these people are in trouble."
We were talking about Volvo. We wrote 2 pieces called Smelly Volvo Families and Account Planners Gone Wild about Volvo advertising.

Now the stupidity of these people is coming home to roost. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ford, which owns Volvo, is trying to unload this money-losing albatross to a Chinese company called Geely.

Engagement Leads To Sales. Not. 
Here's one that the social media crowd will ignore. According to Media Post's Online Media Daily, a study by a company called Psychster indicates that the form of social media advertising that is most engaging is also least effective in generating sales.
"Now that social networks devour about a fifth of Web users' time, you might be wondering which ad formats are most effective on Facebook and its rivals...Well, among the seven most common formats, sponsored content ads -- in which consumers viewed a page that was "brought to you by" a leading brand -- were the most engaging, yet produced the least purchase intent, according to a new study conducted by research firm Psychster..."

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