Around 8pm PT on Saturday night, the Walt Disney Company reached a milestone definitely worthy of celebrating with 100 million Facebook likes over its 200 active pages. Pretty amazing. They compiled a video to say thanks with some high points about their journey to 100 million fans which they have posted on their Youtube channel and their Facebook page. Continue reading
Perhaps you noticed a few articles or blurbs in the past week touting the “deaths” of several celebrities. If you were like me you saw one of the ads (like the one to the left), clicked it to see what it was all about and then said “who cares?” and quickly went back to Facebook stalking your friends. Well it seems that in an effort to raise money for the AIDS research charity Keep a Child Alive, celebrities like Alicia Keyes, Lady Gaga, Ryan Seacrest and the Kardashian sisters have “digitally died”, promising not to update their Twitter or Facebook accounts until $1,000,000 is raised through donations. Wait, what?
Now, let me first say I’m all for raising money for AIDS research and the Keep a Child Alive charity is a wonderful organization that does a world of good. That said, this is probably one of the worst social media campaigns I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the worst marketing campaigns I’ve seen, period. The entire campaign hinges on the belief that fans of these celebrities spend all day everyday waiting to hear what they are doing or thinking. Cause we can’t live without knowing what Justin Timberlake is up to. And now that we, the masses of social media users, have been deprived of said updates we’ll pay to have Kim Kardasahian back telling us what she thinks about her latest shopping purchases.
Am I the only one who finds this a wee bit arrogant?
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American Express OPEN, the small business unit, declared the first Small Business Saturday to be the Saturday after Thanksgiving in effort to give small businesses a more prominent part of the holiday shopping weekend. With strong statistics from Civics Economics showing that for every $100 spent at a local business, $68 returns to the community, and the Small Business Administration reporting that for every year in the past decade, 60-80% of new jobs were generated by small businesses, it’s clear to see why it’s important to support these local businesses.
American Express provided incentives of statement credits for cardholders who participated, gave the first 10,000 businesses to join a $100 Facebook credit to advertise, and made donations based on the number of supporters garnered to Girls, Inc. In just over 3 weeks, Facebook members grew to over 1,000,000 supporters, and is already nearing 1.2 million supporters as of this morning. You can view stories and ideas from participating small business owners on the Small Business Saturday Facebook page. Based on the response from this past weekend, American Express has just released it will be extending the offer to give any card member a $25 statement credit if they join and shop at a small business from now till 12/31/2010. Continue reading
Much to dismay of many professors out there, smartphones are a staple in college classrooms nowadays. So are laptops. And while the general reaction among school administrators is to worry that students are surfing Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks rather than paying attention to their lecturers, perhaps they should consider this – it appears that Twitter, when used in the classroom, can improve students’ engagement in courses and as a result earn them higher grades. (If only they’d discovered this when I was a co-ed.)
A study recently published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, found that students who used Twitter to access information complete class assignments scored half a point higher GPAs than those who did not utilize Twitter in the classroom. Not only that, the tweeting group was said to show higher levels of engagement during class than the non-tweeting group. Even professors who voiced skepticism in the Chronicle of Higher Education over the study ‘s findings admitted that Twitter did provide a new system for collaborative note-taking that could lead to increased engagement and class participation among students.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the new email service at an announcement in San Francisco, Monday, Nov. 15, 2010. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) (Paul Sakuma – AP)
Dukky tuned in today to watch as Facebook unveiled its upcoming changes and plans to optimize its messaging interaction between users and third parties. We’ve been expecting this announcement as the buzz of Facebook adding an email messaging system or something comparable has been ongoing for a few weeks now. Being a company that leverages the power of social media across multiple channels to improve marketing efforts means we’re completely engaged when any enhancements and changes to social sites take place. Continue reading
Happy birthday United States Marine Corps! Today in 1775 the USMC was founded. It’s hard to imagine that just three years ago the USMC had banned Marines from accessing any social media sites from military networks. But in the last few days the Department of Defense has announced that not only has it lifted the ban but that now the USMC is officially on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. They even have an official USMC blog. What a turnaround!
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A colleague recently fowarded this article to me. It seems that for the first time ever Louisiana has broke into Site Selection Magazine’s Top Ten list of best business climates in the nation! As a start-up currently thriving in the New Orleans area Dukky is proud to be a part of the growing business climate in our lovely state. Let’s hear it for progress! And to any of you budding businesses out there lucky enough to be in Louisiana we’d like to invite you to let Dukky help your business grow! We’ve already worked with some amazing local businesses including Rookies Sports Cafe and N’tini’s New Orleans Steak and Martinis in Mandeville as well as several local Chick-fil-A and Sonic franchises. All of these clients enjoyed amazing ROI, doubled their customer database and saw previously unheard of redemption rates. Who dat?! We dat! Want to see proof? Check out our case study for Chick-fil-A.
Louisiana Breaks Top Ten for First Time in History
The countdown is officially on for the holidays. Christmas lights are going up around our city and stores and restaurants are adorning their doors, aisles and employees with holiday marketing ideas and opportunities for consumers.
At dinner last night I was given the opportunity by 3 different employees in the restaurant to purchase a gift card for the upcoming holiday for friends and family. It was a very nonchalant offer, but yet a very clear indication that the holiday marketing hounds have been loosed. Continue reading
It’s been a whirlwind of a few days after the DMA convention in San Francisco last week. Hopefully, you came and stopped by our booth and met our Super Dukky (www.superdukky.com) or sat in our session with the USPS discussing, “The New Normal” Wednesday morning.
These shows can often be a blessing and a curse in retrospect. It’s great to network, explore and be exposed to new solutions and opportunities, but unless we choose to implement, integrate and improve based on what we’ve learned, we may just end up with a lot of new info on our desk…or dare I say, in the trash can. Continue reading
By now we’ve all seen at least one clip of the 33 Chilean miners being pulled from beneath the earth. We sat glued to our flatscreens, our computers and/or our phones as each one was hauled out of that 21 inch tube (something the claustrophobic in me shudders to think about) and were welcomed into the arms of their families, the Chilean president and first lady, fellow miners, rescue workers and the world over. USA Today reports that 8.5 million viewers tuned in for the rescue on the top three news channels – FOX, CNN and MSNBC. FOX alone had 7.5 million viewers. That’s more than double their normal viewership.
I tuned in as they were pulling miner #29 out to the surface. As I watched him come out, clean shaven and smiling, I noticed he was wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes. As I’m sure you’ve now heard, and Shepard Smith was quick to point out, those sunglasses were donated by Oakley. As soon as Shepard mentioned this fact my first thought was “this is marketing genius.” At roughly $150 a pair, the company turned a $5,000 investment into an estimated $41 million in international exposure for their brand. You can not top that kind of ROI, I don’t care who you are.
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