Magnum Chocolate Lets You Hunt For Chocolate… Around the Internet.

Now this is a cool example of using Web 2.0 to wow your audience. This is a little Flash game from Magnum chocolate (of the Unilever fame) that lets you scour the internet in search of the Ultimate Pleasure. The one complaint I have is that you have to get to the end to actually navigate to Magnum. You can’t just click the logo and jump there if you chose. Minor gripe though, over all this is fabulous.

Buyer beware: You’ll probably lose at least 10 minutes playing this game.

Stop giving “social media” all the credit

I was just reading an article about how Starbucks used social media to drive 1 million people to its stores on one day. But these stories are misleading, because it’s not really social media that got all those people through the doors of Starbucks. Those people came to get something that was valuable to them (in this case a free pastry). And as for how they heard about it? Yes, an important TOOL involved was social media, but the STRATEGY was what got them there. The strategy was based on the concepts of word of mouth marketing.

Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) operates on certain concepts that underlie the new ways that consumers think about and interact with brands. WOMM recognizes that the consumer has more power because they have more of a voice. So don’t think I’m discounting the importance of social media, because social media is the entire reason that consumers have more power. But I want to emphasize that you can’t “do” social media. And if all you do is interact on social media because you heard that Starbucks just made a gazillion dollars, you won’t get anything out of it.

To be successful with social media, you need to be successful in word of mouth marketing. You need to give people someone to talk about, or you need to find what people are talking about and get your brand in the discussion. There are tons of other ways to take advantage of word of mouth marketing concepts, but they all relate back to this:

- The consumer is tired of you interrupting them and yelling at them.

- The consumer has so much information thrown at them daily that they are quick to stop paying attention. You know what they will always pay attention to? Their friends and people that they respect.

- If you want their attention you better be telling them something a lot more valuable than “hey look it’s us! buy our product!”

- The consumer will call you out if you have a bad product, and they might have 100, 1,000, or 100,000 people listening.

Respect word of mouth. Start with these concepts and you are bound to get people talking about your brand.

How Facebook “Open Graph” will change the web forever

I really think Facebook can do it. I think that with it’s new Open Graph partnerships/technology, Facebook will become the thread that ties our web experiences together.

For years, the top web companies have been vying for the ability to tie-together everyone’s web experience. What do I mean? Well, our browsing experiences are incredibly fractured. We use different browsers, different computers, talk with different people, use different email accounts, have bookmarks all over the place…see what I mean? When I find a great website, what are my options?

• Post the link to Facebook
• Post the link to twitter
• Bookmark the link in my browser
• Bookmark the link to del.icio.us (web-based bookmarking)
• Email the link to people that might like it
• Post the link to my LinkedIn status
• Post the story to Digg.com or Reddit.com

There are obviously tons of options that I didn’t mention. The problem is that different tools are used for different activities. Some things I know my followers on Twitter would like, and others are perfect for my friends on Facebook. Some things I just want to save for later, so I bookmark them. Some things I want to share with one or two people, but not a large network, so I email it.

The problem with this is structure, is that I end up with a collection of youtube favorites, links I’ve posted on Facebook, my Twitter history, old emails, etc. that are a collection of the things that I like online, and of the things that I’ve shared with my networks. But these things are all in different places.

Facebook is trying to become the central hub of things you “like” on the web. Here is an excerpt of their recent blog about the issue:

We think that the future of the web will be filled with personalized experiences. We’ve worked with three pre-selected partners—Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora—to give you a glimpse of this future, which you can access without having to login again or click to connect. For example, now if you’re logged into Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. And as you’re playing music, it can show you friends who also like the same songs as you, and then you can click to see other music they like.

So there you have it. Facebook wants to be your online identity. Considering you’ve already filled out a profile with all sorts of information, pictures, links, etc., I think it makes sense. And of course, as an advertising agency, we are pretty thrilled about being able to target people more effectively. If we have a client that wants to sell volleyballs, I can use facebook to target people that have “liked” pages relating to volleyball. More information = more targeted advertising. It’s that simple.

Healthy Eating in Public Schools: A cause we support at The Cyphers Agency

We really think you should go to Jamie Oliver’s online petition to get healthier food into our public schools.

If you don’t know much about Jamie Oliver, he is a celebrity chef that has his own primetime television show: Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. The show focuses on getting Americans to understand how it can be easy (and taste better) to eat healthier foods.

Here is a video of Jamie talking to Mashable about his petition. We try to be advocates of a healthy lifestyle here at The Cyphers Agency, so we encourage you to visit Jamie’s petition and sign it so we can help fight the obesity epidemic in America.

Dear Facebook: Please require users to update their profile keywords

Dear Facebook,

As an advertiser that spends hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per month for my clients, I have a request that will help make their money more effective. I would appreciate it if you could remind your users to update the information in their profiles. This is the information that I am basing my advertising on, and if the information isn’t updated regularly, then my campaigns might be targeting the wrong people. For example, if I used to watch Spongebob Squarepants 6 years ago (when I filled out my profile), and was delivered an ad based on those keywords, it would be a wasted impression. Furthermore, there are thousands (probably millions) of newer shows, books, songs, interests, etc. that could help us target our campaigns more effectively, but if we are only relying on new facebook users to fill out their keywords, there is only a small percentage of users that will be up-to-date. We OG (“Original Gangsta”) Facebook users aren’t being targeted accurately with the ads that are delivered to us.

Here is the solution I propose: please use the “suggestions” area in the top right portion of everyone’s home screen to suggest that people refresh their profiles. The “reconnect with john, write on his facebook wall” was a cute idea, but it’s not helping me much. This change would help your advertisers (otherwise known as your only revenue stream) and would make the overall Facebook experience more accurate. Hopefully you are already working on this, and will soon prove this letter superfluous. Thanks Facebook, I love ya, always have.

Regards,

Andrew Krebs-Smith

And the rest of The Cyphers Agency

Some great social media case studies

We just ran across a blog with some interesting social media case studies. They have social media case studies from big brands, non-profits, and small businesses. We recommend checking them out.

Facebook retweet option now functional

We’ve been wondering for a while now how long it would take Facebook to give users the ability to share something that someone else on facebook has posted. Until now, we’ve had to repost it ourselves and manually give someone else credit.

But now, via the “share” link on people’s wall posts, Facebook will say where you got your information from (“via…”). You can see below what this looks like.

We’re glad this functionality has made its way to Facebook, because it just makes it that much easier to share information about products and brands, thus making creative ad campaigns just that much more viral.

Is this retweet feature on Facebook just what you’ve been waiting for, or do you not care about its arrival? Let us know what you think about the Facebook retweet functionality in the comments section below.

Check out some of our Facebook Fan Page insights

Facebook fan page “insights” are one of the ways to track interaction with your fans on Facebook. Although it’s not our most powerful analytical tool for interaction, it’s certainly better than nothing, and includes some neat features.

One way we use Facebook fan page “insights” is to monitor the trend of our fan accumulation across our different client pages.

We think the graphs are cool, and thought you might want to see them. They show how different strategies can impact your fan base in different ways. Click here to see some of our other Facebook fan page insights (and more importantly, you can read about the strategy we used to garner those fans).

Ridiculous Soccer Fouls

Last week, the women’s soccer teams from Brigham Young University and University of New Mexico faced off in a high-pressure game that resulted in a suspended player and a LOT of fouls.

I’m sure many of you saw this last week, but just in case, we wanted to bring it to your attention. Sometimes viral videos are inspirational, sometimes they are cool, but this one is just downright horrible. Still, we can’t stop watching the video. We hope the player from BYU – and her ponytail – are OK.

Fall Internship at The Cyphers Agency

The Cyphers Agency has an opening for a paid internship for the Fall term. We are seeking a dynamic, creative, fun and interesting candidate that would like to learn about word of mouth marketing.

We are looking for someone with a thorough understanding of:

- Internet Research

- Social Networking sites (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Meetup, etc)

- Blogs

- Online Forums

- Viral Videos

- Flashmobs

- Digg, Flickr, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Review Sites, etc.

Requirements:

- In college or a recent graduate

- Advertising, PR, or Marketing Majors are preferred

- Able to work 20-40 hours per week

Wanna prove that you’re super awesome? Pick a few of the following:

-Show us your online presence (Facebook, Twitter, Google Profile, Flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, your blog, etc.).

-Get others to talk online about why you should be the next WOM intern at The Cyphers Agency (comments to this blog would be a good start).

-Show us how you’ve used social media to get results (for school, work or personal purposes).

-Tell us what YOU think is an awesome example of an effective campaign that used social media and/or Word of Mouth.

-Suggest an ideal client for WOM marketing. Tell us how you would implement a campaign for them.

It’s not required to do all the above listed tasks, but if you want, feel free! Before you get started though, take a look at WOMMA ethics guidelines. You can also get great ideas from there. Share any of that information on the comments section of this blog or find us elsewhere online and reach out to us.

As for the resume and cover letter, you can send it to andrew@thecyphersagency.com.