Today, very few of us can deny that social media has broad based influence on brand awareness. Specifically, social gaming really has impacted enterprise customer experience - evidence Farmville. Facebook, the number one social networking site on the internet, most certainly influences consumer brand experience through targeted and "personalized" ads based on a user's "likes" as well as other criteria. Therefore, as the most popular application across most operating systems, according to The Nielsen Company, Facebook's multimodal and multichannel ubiquity indeed provide enterprises a very enticing advertising platform.
Gartner's top end user predictions for 2010 states very clearly a statistic that cannot be ignored by any B2C company: "Facebook-already the largest social network community-is expected to rocket to more than a billion (active users) by the end of 2010. More than 15,000 websites, devices and applications have implemented the Facebook Connect APIs and protocols to interface with Facebook. This interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites."
The impact of Facebook cannot be ignored by enterprises. Social advertising and branding has reached new, and at times, strange heights. Thousands of new advertising schemes and ploys hit social sites every day. Some brands' cobbled together "social media strategy" does little more than leave a consumer going "huh?" One might relate the social advertising phenomenon to the recent days when iPhone apps sprouted like weeds and enterprises considered an iPhone app a good enough representation for their organization's "mobile strategy." It wasn't as most found out. They required a well thought out, long term approach to mobility and application development. We'll see the same in the coming months as the social gaming advertising market takes off. One promotion or even a fan page does not equate to a strategy.
On the brighter side, an example of a well executed, targeted social networking-based brand promotion and advertising comes from Farmer's Insurance. On Facebook while playing Farmville (approximately 80M active users - giving advertisers more eyeballs than the Super Bowl), we virtual agriculturalists were given a gift of a Farmer's insurance branded dirigible to float above our Farmville spreads. The blimp's presence provided insurance for my crops: no withering of un-harvested plots for about two weeks. Of course, we all took the blimp. We spend our hard earned Farmville coins and cash to sow our seeds, and Farmer's could insure that we'd be able to reap what we sowed.
Simultaneously, Farmer's Facebook Fan page touted a contest for Facebook fans to win a ride on the Farmer's blimp (now Farmer's have my name and email address and me as a "fan"). Just after signing up for the promotion, Farmer's sent me an invitation to get an immediate quote from one of their agents (now Farmer's knows where I live or at least my zip code). Pretty slick for Farmer's - a fairly staid brand in my demographic of females age 35-45. Now, imagine the impact on customer care for Facebook or Farmer's or Zynga (the company that produces Farmville) if the no-wither feature they promised doesn't work. Now, you've got a bad brand experience and potentially a bunch of complaining, and vocal consumers.
Well, of course I forgot that my crops would begin to wither again after the two week period had elapsed. I'd not received an email reminder from Farmer's or Farmville or Facebook alerting me to the fact that I should remember that the insurance policy for my crops was about to expire. They could have offered me a chance to perhaps "buy" the high flying protection again, and I'd have been fairly happy. However, I instead received an email that my crops had dried up. Of course, Farmer's allowed me to keep the flying billboard as decoration for my acreage. I got rid of the blimp post haste.
More evidence of this phenomenon comes from a mobile broadband provider, 3UK a service provider with about 1 million customers today. 3UK is experiencing substantial traffic increases which the company directly correlates to Facebook, and specifically Farmville. "With gaming on Zynga and Facebook the profile is very different [from the traditional profile of a 25-35, console-buying male], and much more female and over 35s," said Charlotte Blanchard of 3UK in an interview with The Guardian. However, 3UK like many Service Providers, have no immediate plans to provide support to customers who want to jump into the social gaming space.
So, who get's the call when my crops wither and die? Zynga? The Service Provider? Facebook? Or do I get frustrated and blame Farmer's for not living up to their promise? Farmer's in this case would suffer the most damage to its new crop of potential customers, and they're the least able to support the consumer in this ecosystem. I for one am looking forward to more interesting and brand aware social gaming. I especially am eager for the day when consumers won't wither in the face of bad promotions or poor experience, but rather flourish in the fertile ground of our new multimodal and multichannel experiences.
Originally posted on http://community.nuance.com/blogs/expertsblog/default.aspx
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