Will Social Media Replace Traditional Advertising?
Posted on Mon, Mar 22, 2010
Will social media replace traditional advertising? Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Mark Kvamme thinks so. "If you can harness social-media marketing, you don't have to pay for advertising anymore," stated Kvamme in his keynote address last Wednesday, March 17th at OMMA's Global Media Conference in San Francisco.
Why does Mark think this is going to happen?
- Smart content can be produced cost effectively and spread virally through the social nets, including Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube
- Increasing smart phone ownership puts viral marketing in everyone's hands.
Mark backs up his statements with great examples of how companies [that Sequoia has or has had investments in] are makng that happen:
- Viral Content: Funny or Die, the comedy website funded by Sequoia, produced a custom online video for last summer's film release of The Goods. Viral distribution resulted in the movie becoming a trending topic on Twitter, ranking twice on the Digg front page, increased interaction on Facebook and a UStream chat with the film's director. Best of all, the efforts resulted in a 15 % lift in expected ticket sales.
- Mobile Ads: Wolfman, another movie, benefited from working with AdMob, a company that Sequoia recently sold to Google for $ 750 Million. With this movie, mobile ads allow users to get information on the movie, send it to a friend and even buy tickets.
Social Media Doesn't Replace Traditional Advertising, It Integrates with It
First of all, the social media campaign for The Goods is a fantastic social media case study. Yet its success was supported by traditional marketing awareness. With a $ 10 MM production budget, it is highly likely that Paramount, the film's distributor, spent at least $ 5 MM on marketing the movie, with much of it spent on traditional advertising.
Why? Well, Moviegoers 2010, a study conducted by Stradella Road, an entertainment marketing strategy company, found that while the internet supports movie marketing efforts, television advertising still ranks as the preeminent vehicle for first learning about movies.
So, my take-away: I appreciated and learned from the social media campaign examples that Mark Kvamme showed in his presentation. However, they worked because they were part of an integrated marketing campaign.
Analysis Shows Social Media Is Integrated With Broader Marketing
Overall, as marketers continue to adopt social media, more will integrate it with broader marketing efforts. eMarketer and Unica, the marketing management firm, have recently studied the State of Social Media Media Integration. Their survey shows that 41 % of the respondents are integrating social media as part of an overall campaign while 35 % are using it on a stand alone basis. This analysis shows a growing preference for integrated marketing solutions.
Integrating Social Media Into Tradition Media Efforts . . . Next Steps
There are no quick and easy answers as to how to integrate social media marketing into your overall marketing efforts. However, it does require:
- Knowing Where Your Audience Is: Understanding where your targeted audience is in the social universe is paramount. Integrating Twitter into your marketing efforts when your customers aren't using Twitter doesn't make any sense.
- Fighting the Urge to Use Social Media as Another Broadcast Platform: The Goods social media campaign didn't tell people to go see the movie. It provided incentives, such as free Funny or Die T-shirts for retweeting information about the movie and enabling people to engage with the film's director during the premiere through live video streaming [UStream] and Twitter.
- Creative Content: Social media integration isn't just recylcing commercials on YouTube. It is creating custom content as Funny or Die did for The Goods or expanding on the success of a television campaign as Old Spice has done with its Super Bowl commercial that featured the man on the white horse. Enjoy the video and don't forget to integrate!!!!