Experience Engineer

Calling the results “remarkable,” Nike Inc. says its fiscal second-quarter revenues climbed 18% to $5.7 billion, from $4.8 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose 3% to $469 million, compared with $457 million in the year-ago period. Sales in North America were particularly strong, up 21%, with double-digit gains in stores and online on Thanksgiving weekend.

The results beat investor expectations, and Nike executives say the strong performance is a result of steady gains in both its basketball and running divisions, as well as its continued digital transformation. “We’re using digital to change everything about the product creation process,” Mark Parker, president/CEO, says in a conference call that was also webcast. Not only has that sped up its manufacturing, beginning with design and moving into factories, it’s also been a game-changer in its marketing approach.

“Social media is helping us unite and expand,” he says. “We have never been closer to our consumers, as they connect more with each other, their heroes and their favorite teams.”

Great to see digital at the center of product creation. 

For all the talk of Social Media being hard to measure Nike is able to come up with some very clear figures. If you're having difficulty measuring the middle but see the end result, do the results still count?

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Ogilvy just released a study on the business value of Social Media. In the wake of the Harvard study concluding that taste does not rub on on your friends through social media this seemed to be an appropriate topic to bring up.

The Harvard study is useless to most businesses. What does it matter if my taste is different from my friends. What matters is that I spend more on your brand because the shared taste with my friend and their confirmation of the awesomeness of your brand makes me want to buy it. (read that really quick, it is an awesome run on sentence)

Kapow!

So what do the Ogilvy brains share:

1. Social media exposure is directly linked with increases in sales. Integrated social media (social content + one or more other channels) exposure is linked with significant increases in spend and consumption—for example, social media + PR exposure was associated with a 17% spend increase compared to the prior week without these. 
2. Integration matters. Exposure to social content was most consistently effective when it was combined with exposure to other types of media channels. 
3. Social media is a top driver of impact. Out of the 20 channels analyzed, social media was No. 1 or No. 2 in magnitude of impact on spend and consumption. 
4. Social media exposure is directly linked with changes in brand perception. Social media by itself is particularly effective at rapidly impacting brand perception—exposure to social media generated the largest impact on brand perception over a short (one week) period of time. 
5. Brand exposure in social media is low. Weekly social media exposure to brand mentions was relatively low (24% of panel) vs. television branded exposure (69% of panel), even in this selected high social media consumption group of consumers.

Seems to me it's an effective way of getting closer to consumers...regardless of taste.

If our markets are based on trust. How can the financial industry keep people in check? We have seen the power of ubiquitous uncontrolled communication through the Arab Spring. What will stop people from doing the same for the financial industry, from organizing against "the man".

Only time will tell. But if this instance of a twitter rumour instigating a run on ATM's predicts anything, it shows that the consumer is back in the drivers seat. People are getting back into the drivers seat.

What is your company doing to be on the people's side?

analyst firm eMarketer is predicting double-digit growth through 2015. Spending on online ads will hit $50 billion that year — that’s almost double last year’s spending figure.

The prediction, published Tuesday, comes a month after eMarketer nearly doubled its estimated increase for online ad revenues for 2011 to 20.2%, thanks to a surge in display advertising. U.S. online ad spending hit $26 billion in 2010. The new report assumes a continued growth in search advertising, but also in banner ads from large sites like Yahoo, Google and Facebook.

Video will continue to be the fastest-growing format in online advertising, according to eMarketer. Spending for video ads hit $1.42 billion in 2010, but will reach $7.11 billion in 2015. That’s because video “generates greater audience attention than other digital ad formats,” says David Hallerman, eMarketer’s principal analyst.

Online ad spend is increasing. Great.

It is predicted to grow in the following areas:

1. Search advertising
2. Banner ads
3. Video ads

That's too bad. The power of digital is the ability to engage consumer and increase share of mind through an interactive experience. Not just visually communicating the big idea.

Digital had the power to BE that big idea.

Instead of spending into non engaging display ads allocate budget to self standing digital projects, not just an extension media buy.

The future of digital marketing is not coding offline content into online formats.

The future of (digital) agencies is being a collection of entrepreneurs. Sitting side by side with brands to solve their marketing challenges with new models and engaging ideas. Not pasting the tvc and poster on youtube or banner ad.

It's not about communicating the idea, it's building an experiential idea that communicates.

I like this. It's remarkable. It could have been better.

Where is the shareable component? Any remarkable event begs to be shared. Lynx could have taken all the videos, chopped it up into per interaction videos. Placed them online where the consumers who interacted with the video could share it via their social networks.

When you make something remarkable, do you make it shareable?