The blackout during the Super Bowl has provided another opportunity to examine the financial benefits or drawbacks of spending valuable time and resources on a business’ social-media presence. No matter how many statistics come out that illustrate the amount of people using social media, there is still a debate that seems to always rage: “How can social media affect your bottom line?”
Chest bump for Fanta: Image taken from Fanta’s Facebook campaign.
This weekend, in fact, I was having a similar conversation with a SEO expert. He obviously sees the value in social media, search engines, and a strong digital presence, and we often share ideas for digital tools to help. He was adamant about how the use of Evernote — a great program to help with organization — could make individuals more efficient and organized. We started to share thoughts on great social-media campaigns, and I brought up Fanta — a soda product that has been around since the 1940s.
Currently Fanta has 6.4 million “Likes” on Facebook — a number that seems astronomical for a soda company. I explained to him the campaign. Check out Fanta’s own description: “Consumers around the world, particularly teens, fondly associate Fanta with happiness and special times with friends and family. This positive imagery is driven by the brand’s fun, playful personality, which goes hand in hand with its bright color, bold fruit taste and tingly carbonation.” Their Facebook page has hundreds of Memes with color, and each one of these Memes attempt to be interactive. They even have 3D memes. It’s wildly vibrant and interactive, and they know how to impact their audience.
Check out the Fanta image below. It’s a game — find the differences in the shots:
Clearly, we saw the brilliance in the campaign in garnering an audience. They’re targeting young clients, and the images compel others to share and “have fun” with the posts. But what my buddy and I couldn’t agree upon, however, was that these 6.4 million “Likes” had anything to do with direct sales. And this is a controversy that businesses are having all over the world. How can social media impact the bottom line?
Well, last night, the Super Bowl proved the value in Facebook and, especially, Twitter in impacting a company’s bottom line. Though it’s hard to measure accurately — I would argue that so is the value of golf and dinner expenses while schmoozing clients — social media’s value is evident and intuitive, because it allows companies to strike, when the timing is right and be a part of a larger phenomenon.
Last night at the Super Bowl, there was a power outage after halftime. The game stopped for nearly 33 minutes, and while the game stopped, Twitter and Facebook went berserk. Everyone was talking and making jokes, and clever advertisers sensed an opportunity. Oreo tweeted out the pic below, and it started to trend. Then Jim Beam, Calvin Klein, and others came up with, seemingly, on the spot posts and vines of brilliance that attracted the attention of millions — for free.
So think about this for a second. The commercials during the Super Bowl cost $8-million for one minute of air time, while the tweets and posts were free. Well, I don’t have a statistics or graph that shows directly how these posts and tweets correspond to the bottom line, yet, but a tweet just reached millions and millions of viewers, placing Oreo and Calvin Klein in the viewer’s minds. This publicity, wit, and creativity, at the very least, ensures the products are branded a bit more into the minds of viewers.
Having a committed social-media campaign not only provides you with an opportunity for free advertisements, but it allows you to capitalize on moments that require direct response — and/or crises. When you have a strong social-media campaign in place — with followers and actual relationships — your message and brand can be a part of the developments from around the world; you just have to look at it the right way. Maybe Facebook doesn’t bring you attention every day, but if you stay constant and work hard, then you will find the moment of success.
Finally, ask yourself another question: Are we spending more time post Super Bowl, talking about the $8-million ads — or Twitter?
