GM Doesn't Have a Facebook Problem, It Has a Brand Loyalty Problem

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La noticia de que General Motors ha retirado su inversión de Facebook ha causado conmoción en todo el mundo. ¿Pero que piensan los expertos de las redes sociales al respecto? ¿Qué piensan ustedes al respecto? Ha habido opiniones que a final de cuentas, no importa el medio, sino el mensaje; y qué esto fue el fallo de la marca dentro de Facebook.

Espero sus opiniones y comentarios acerca de este tema tan rico que son las redes sociales.

Saludos

RT

Facebook's Value Isn't Clicks, It's Using Online Behavior to Influence Offline Actions

By: Dave Williams Bio
Published: May 17, 2012

Dave Williams

Henry Ford is often credited with saying that if he had asked consumers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse. Whether he actually said that or not, it's a great reminder that successful businesses look to the future. It's ironic that GM, one of Ford Motor Company's biggest competitors, demonstrated its eye on the past by pulling approximately $10 million worth of Facebook ad spend. The timing of this move is suspect, given its proximity to Facebook's IPO and GM's history of working over its publishers.

This move has brought GM more attention than it's had in a while, but rather than raising doubts as to the value of Facebook, the move really brings into focus GM's inability to amplify brand and consumer advocacy of its products on the world's largest social networking platform.

With this move, one of the world's largest advertisers is trying to say that Facebook advertising doesn't work. The truth is that Facebook isn't broken; GM is. And the automaker's movement of ad dollars to other media channels offers a short-term solution to a long-term business problem.

Putting its $10 million into more traditional online advertising channels such as search and display ads will probably pay short-term dividends for GM, which will only obscure the automaker's failure to recognize the best way to utilize Facebook. Rather than focus on selling cars on Facebook, the brand should have looked at how to connect with its best advocates to influence purchase behavior across the social graph. Facebook's true value lies in the power to build loyal fans and then message them as well as their friends to build consumer relationships, with the ultimate goal of rebuilding the brand as well as selling cars. GM's strategy clearly missed that step.

GM will reportedly continue to invest nearly $30 million to maintain a Facebook presence and develop applications, which may turn some of the brand's 3.9 million fans into brand advocates. That's an expensive investment, though, for such a small and disengaged fan base. GM's chief competitor, Ford, has 10.2 million fans. If Ford consistently messages and engages with these fans and their friends through paid advertising that demonstrates the benefit of a Ford, it will continue to build brand advocates, of a kind that no amount of GM advertising can sway. When it comes time for a new car, rather than research new brands, those brand loyalists will go straight to their Ford dealership; GM won't even be in their consideration set.

If GM were to take a more progressive approach, it would move social to the very beginning of its sales and product planning strategy, investing in using the platform for consumer research, using paid ads to engage and acquire more fans, and then engaging with those fans and their friends to turn them into genuine advocates. While the automaker complained of its inability to attribute success, we've seen consistent data showing that Facebook is best at using online behavior to drive offline behavior, and that Facebook fans influence others and minimize comparison price shoppers, as seen commonly through search and other comparison shopping sites. According to Forrester Research's "The Facebook Factor" report, fans are also very likely to recommend a brand to friends. By leveraging Facebook advertising, brands can actually connect with fans over time to build loyalty and long-term sales -- not only with the single buyer, but also with families of consumers and their friends.

GM's consumer loyalty problems certainly didn't begin with Facebook. GM ranked 12th out of 13 automotive brands in Consumer Reports' latest automotive scorecard, and recalled 50,000 vehicles as recently as April. If the brand was losing ground to competitors on social, it was probably wise to look for a new battleground. It may be smart to abandon Facebook altogether for now, and reinvest its money in making a car that actually appeals to consumers.

Rather than ask what Facebook has done to help GM, GM should have looked at what it was doing to engage its fans. Diverting money into other online channels may sell cars in the short term, but will fail in the longer term, as consumers spend more and more of their time on social platforms like Facebook. Don't forget that brands used to raise their eyebrows at the idea of search advertising, too. Brands that are investing heavily in Facebook now -- such as Starbucks, Coke, Kraft, Zynga and Groupon -- will reap long-term rewards.

Facebook's value comes from its ability to help brands build long-term loyalty, and $10 million is a tiny fraction of GM's $3 billion annual ad budget. If GM isn't investing in building brand loyalists, then the automaker and its dealers will miss the value of Facebook, and will ultimately lose resonance with consumers.

SOURCE:
AdAge.com
Retrieved from: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/gm-a-facebook-problem-a-brand-loyalty-problem/234817/ 

Facebook Ads: What Works? What Doesn't?

Measurement Team Distills Creative Into Six elements That Predict a Successful Placement

By: Matt Creamer Bio
Published: May 14, 201

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Brands may be plowing more and more money into Facebook ads, but the creative results are decidedly mixed, with all-too-common flubs such as blurred product shots and incomprehensible pitches.

Not all Facebook ads are creative clunkers, but the company will have to close the wide quality gap to convince marketers that they must buy media on the platform and thus justify its forthcoming $100 billion initial public offering.

To help agencies and brands make better ads, Facebook's measurement team is making public its research on what does and doesn't work.

Like Facebook's recent study of best practices for brand-page postings, these findings aren't revolutionary and some are even obvious. Yet glance at a few ads and you'll see that many of these best practices, common sense though they may be, are ignored by big brands.
Facebook's recent study of ad creative comprised three steps.

First, after talking with marketers, Facebook distilled six elements of ad creative. Two of the elements are visual: focal point and noticeability. The other four involve messaging and consider a range of things, from whether it's easy to discern the brand to whether the advertiser gets the point across. 
The measurement team then asked 109 marketers to rate just under 400 ads on each of the six elements. All the ads examined were from a Facebook format called premium-engagement ads, which appear on the right column of a Facebook page and carry tight restrictions on image size and copy length.

The ads were also meant to communicate brand or product attributes, as opposed to direct response. 
After plugging those ratings into a quantitative model, Facebook found that high ratings in the six elements were predictive of in-market success in two traditional metrics: brand recall and purchase consideration, as measured in Nielsen Brand Effects studies.

The overall model devised by Facebook explains 20% to 25% of variance in market performance, according to Sean Bruich, head of platforms and standards at Facebook. The study doesn't seek to explain how reach or the nature of the brands themselves may affect the effectiveness of a particular ad.

When it came to recall, three things were particularly important: The image needs to have an obvious focal point, the brand needs to be clear and the ad needs to fit with the brand's personality. 
Focal-point fails are pretty common. Facebook ad formats don't allot a ton of space for images or text. To deal with the restraints, many brands opt for an image that might include tiny renderings of the product line on, say, a funky background, meant presumably to suggest movement—or something. Whatever the intent, fuzzy, out-of-focus shots get in the way of consumers' remembering your brand. 

Ads should also be clear about what brand they're promoting, which, again, sounds pretty basic until you look around and see the number of ads where the brand name is obscured and its logo, colors and overall feel are AWOL.

The sample high performer in this regard was a big-brand ad containing both the tagline and a new holiday TV commercial. The creative looked as though it could have been ripped from a TV or print ad. While this guideline could be an opening for make-the-logo-bigger types, the lesson is that Facebook ads don't have to swerve from a brand's usual visual and messaging approach. 
For purchase consideration, only one element proved particularly crucial: Does the ad reward the viewer? Mr. Bruich said that this need not involve free stuff, and could be informational or even emotional.

One high performer was from a prestigious brand inviting people into one of its communities. In contrast, a lesser-known brand merely sought information from the viewer, with no clear indication how it would be used. 

"Ads that were rewarding tended to be pretty clear -- there wasn't an overload of information," said Mr. Bruich, who conducted the study with measurement researcher Adrienne Polich. "But [the] rewarding ads also seemed to connect. The information seemed meaningful."

The importance of reward, the single-biggest creative predictor of an ad's success, caught Mr. Bruich and his team by surprise. They'll most likely conduct follow-up studies of what reward means on an industry-by-industry basis, as well as dig deeper on what generates reward. 

The Facebook study, which will be presented at the Advertising Research Foundation conference next month, was also useful for showing what isn't particularly important to creative success on the platform. For example, noticeability.

A high degree of noticeability was not predictive of either recall or purchase consideration—a dagger to the dreams of those who think bright colors, promiscuous use of exclamation points and Crazy Eddie-type come-ons are the fast track to social-media success. 

Source:
AdAge.  (2012) Retrieved from: http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-ads-works/234731/