My favourite SM campaign lately

Oh Philips, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. The casette, the compact disc, the DVD, and now the wonderful Philips Cinema TV Parallel Lines campaign.

It has compelling content to launch with - 5 short films all made by Ridley Scott Associates. These films, from 5 different directors, all use the same dialogue, yet are all very different experiences. The are all very cool, especially the two I posted below.

It has fantastic prizes for people who enter their own short film - again using the same dialogue. This encourages people to create their own content. These prizes are open worldwide, so there is no moment when you realize you can't win because you dont live in the US. Blah.

It has a winner which will be decided (largely) by public vote, encouraging people to have their say. This will also ensure that those who enter will get all of their friends to go to the site, watch the ads, and vote.

It has subtlety. The short films are framed in a Philips TV, but this is the only branding visible, and you quickly stop noticing even this. But it does show you the back light function of the TV in question. This feature may sound like it is no big deal, but when viewed in this format it really shows off its own coolness.

It has an integrated Facebook page with additional content, including interviews, opinions, etc which further enhance the engagement of the desired audience. The page invites people to post questions they would like to ask the various directors, with the best ones answered the following week. This connects the audience with the celebrities, something all us normaltins aspire to.

Speaking of celebrities. It has Ridley Scott's stamp on it. Alien. Blade Runner. (cough) Thelma & Louise (cough). Nuff said.

This campaign is everything that a social media campaign should be (oh, except it is big budget, but hey - it's Ridley Scott!!!).

Well done Philips. Anthony likes this.

Here are two of the 5 launch films. I had real trouble choosing which ones were best though. I really like the one with the blind girl, and the one with the creepy voyeur. The CGI one is really cool too. I guess you will just have to go watch them all on the youtube channel.

How much is your Facebook page worth? (part 2)

Yesterday I got lost in some math trying to explain my theory about how to value the PR of a Facebook page based on the initial number of fans, number of interactions, number of fans gained (or lost), and the number of wall posts you do during a given period.

It also takes into account 2 different personality types that can be found on the web – mass influencers & normal web users. After all, there are two kinds of people in the world – people who are stupid enough to think there are only two kinds of people, and those who know better.

If you are really keen, you can see the math & links to the research behind the theory here. Be careful though, it hurts my eyes looking at – and I wrote it.

It does not look at ROI in terms of sales, conversions, new customers etc. But tracking on your landing pages, ecommerce page etc should give you those figures.

Anyways, here for you to use, abuse, criticize and break is a little web thingy which you can plug your own numbers into and get a value for the PR generated by your Facebook page over a given time period.

The tool is designed to give you a value over a set period, the more frequently you use it, the more accurate it will be. Keep track of each ensuing week’s value and add them up to give you a value over a longer period of time.

This model will reflect the changes in the value of your Facebook page as you invoke more or less reaction, as you gain or lose followers etc. This makes it a bit more accurate than saying “We have X number of fans so our page is worth X x Y dollars per year.” Some weeks your page will be more effective (and worth more) than other weeks.

You can get all the info required from your Facebook insights page. If you have lost followers, enter a negative number into the box and see what happens.

Please note that this is using a CPM of NZ$6.95 as this is what Facebook charges for an ad on the home page. This is the default figure, but feel free to change it into other currencies or amounts.

What do you think?

How much is your Facebook page worth?

I should warn you before you read this that I initially studied math & physics before giving up halfway through my degree. Turns out it was rocket science…

I recently blogged about how much a Facebook fan was worth, and promptly disagreed with the research done, but I did not suggest an alternative. Not so good of me I am afraid.

Valuing a fan is a flawed way to look at things. Fans have different values depending on their personality type, and they are worth very little if they are not interacting with you.

So lets look at it differently, how much is your Facebook page worth?

There are two parts to this, the value of getting your message to your existing fans, plus the value of your fans spreading the message in a word of mouth style. I will use the fan page from my work to plug in some numbers as we go, but of course, you can use your own data to see how you are going.

Part 1

We will start with the easy stuff, the value of your info showing up on your fan’s home page feed.

Facebook charges a CPM of NZ$6.95 for an ad to be placed on a home page feed. So, for every 1000 fans you have, every time you post to your wall and show up on your friends home page feed it is worth $6.95.

We have 49 fans and have so far posted 13 times onto our wall. Pretending for a minute that every fan had always been there & seen every wall posting, we have shown up on our fan’s home page 637 individual times. Based on a CPM of $6.95, this is worth $4.43.

Not quite time for me to retire yet.

Part 2

By far the greatest value in having fans is to be found in interactions. This is where the word of mouth advertising comes into it. But how much is it worth?

According to Facebook’s statistics page, each user (and therefore fan) has, on average, 130 friends.

When a fan interacts with your page, this is posted as a news feed on the fan’s friend’s pages. Based on Facebook’s averages, each interaction would therefore generate 130 impressions on other people’s home pages.

Again using Facebook’s CPM of NZ$6.95 for an unsolicited ad on the home page, this equates to a value of 9.035 cents per fan interaction.

However, I am much more inclined to look at something that has been recommended by a friend. I estimate that people are 4 times more inclined to like/look at something if it is recommended by a friend/peer. This increases the value of an interaction to 4x 9.035 = 36.14 cents.

Not factored into this is the influencer group, the cool kids.

According to research done by Forrester, and detailed here, 16% of 10,000 American web users surveyed can be called “Mass Influencers”. This group was responsible for 80% of branding “influence impressions” on social networks last year, and are therefore 4 times more likely to spread the word about your brand than the rest of web users.

(WARNING: Now I am really going to get mathy)

We know that a “Mass Influencer” creates 4 times as much noise about brands as a “normal web user”.

1 fan has an 84% chance of being a “normal web user” and making me 4 times more receptive to an ad. But each fan also has a 16% chance of being a “mass influencer”, making 4 times as much noise as a “normal web user”, thus making me 16 (4 x 4) times more likely to see, and be receptive to, an ad.

We established that, based on Facebook’s CPM of $6.95 and on a multiplier of 4, a normal web user interaction (including the initial page like) is worth 36.14 cents.

An interaction by a “mass influencer” would be worth 4 times as much, or 144.56 cents, but only 16% of fans are worth this much.

Now, unfortunately we have to get really mathy to plug the numbers in.

(0.84 x 36.14) + (0.16 x144.56) = 30.3576 + 23.1296 = 53.49 cents per interaction.

Now you can plug in the numbers from your Facebook insights page to see what your particular page is worth. Based on the Facebook page I set up for my work last week…

49 new fans + 6 interactions = 55 times we have had our fans publish our company name (at least) onto their friends home page feeds.

55 interactions x $0.5349 per interaction = $29.41 worth of word of mouth advertising since we started.

Ok, we are almost there. To get a value for the total advertising our Facebook page has created so far we need to add part 1 ($4.43) to part 2 ($29.41), and from that we get $33.85.

So, since we started our page a couple of weeks ago, we have garnered $33.85 cents worth of advertising.

This kind of figure is changes depending on the number of fans you acquire, the rate you acquire them at, and the frequency with which your fans interact with your content. To be accurate, you would need to be updating the numbers regularly with the latest figures to create a rolling cumulative value.

My next step will be building an easy to use spreadsheet that will give you a figure for each day/week/month that can then be tabulated into a cumulative value. Ask me nicely & I will email you a copy.

But, have I got the multiplier of 4 right? By which I mean, have I overvalued the word of mouth component?

Am I forgetting something?

I would love to hear your thoughts.