dot-gruppe looks back on a very successful year 2011

In 2011 dot-gruppe enjoyed further growth. As a leading company in the field of social media and viral marketing dot-gruppe has developed new business continuously and acquired numerous new clients from the focus areas like IT, automotive, fashion, charity, tourism and entertainment.

The constant growth of the social media channels especially Facebook and YouTube combined with a strong clients` demand for effective and holistic campaign concepts for the social web form the basis for the business success in 2011 and makes the outlook into the new year very optimistic.

Social media marketing is a strong focus of the planning departments. Marketers with budget responsibility within the companies rely on full service suppliers with many years experiences like dot-gruppe to position themselves successfully and sustainably in the channels.

Bernhard Longin, CEO of dot-gruppe: "We are very happy with the development of the last year. dot-gruppe is strategically well positioned and delivers impact through its creative campaigns. New business is developing very well, we hopefully expect further growth with double figures in 2012."

The whole team of dot-gruppe wants to thank all clients and partners for the good and successful cooperation in 2011 and looks forward to exciting campaigns and further growth in 2012.

Facebook Plans First Foray Into Mobile Ads (adage.com)

Facebook plans its first push into mobile advertising by the end of March, giving the company a fresh source of revenue ahead of a possible initial public offering, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
An idea being considered is putting Facebook's Sponsored Stories ads, which feature friends' interactions with brands, within the mobile News Feed, said the sources, who declined to be identified because the plans aren't public. The News Feed lets users view status updates, photos and other content. Facebook, the world's most popular social-networking service, would be playing catch-up in mobile advertising to Google, Apple and Millennial Media Facebook's potential advantage is that by gathering so much information about a person's interests and associates, it can help advertisers target potential customers more directly than mobile web browsers or applications.
Facebook, which has more than 800 million users, is increasing its focus on mobile technology with the aim of taking advantage of the shift to smartphones and tablets. The company expects its next 1 billion users to come mainly from mobile devices rather than desktop computers. More than 350 million users already access Facebook through mobile devices, according to the site.
The company had originally expected to roll out the advertising service on mobile devices earlier this year, and the plan could be delayed again, one of the people said.
Brandon McCormick, a spokesman for Facebook, declined to comment. Facebook announced a mobile service last year that lets companies reach out to potential customers with discounts based on location.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is considering raising about $10 billion in an initial public offering that would value it at more than $100 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter said last month. Facebook may file for the IPO before the end of the year, according to the source. Facebook's revenue is expected to rise to as much as $6.9 billion in 2012, from $4.27 billion this year, according to eMarketer. The research firm said almost 90% of Facebook revenue comes from advertising revenue. It also makes money from its Credits business, which earns a commission on transactions in certain applications, such as games.

Bernhard Longin, CEO dot-group, says: "The figures show that Facebook has been developing with a giant leap towards advertising and sales and will unfold its enormous potential entering the mobile ad market even further. Marketers have to take this development into consideration - there will be no way to accomplish marketing success this year without planning campaigns for Facebook Ads and Facebook Mobile Ads."

(Source: adage.com)

Can Social Shopping Finally Take Off? (adweek.com)

Analog shopping is inherently social. There's the flea market stroll, the girls' outing, and the time-honored encounter with a mall Santa. But e-commerce, a category that's expected to reach $200 billion this year, has yet to reap full benefits of the social networking revolution. The two seem as compatible as reindeer and sleighs, yet the universe is littered with proof of awkward pratfalls. (...) That explains why Facebook killed Beacon, a function that automatically published a user's e-commerce interactions to news feeds. (...) Shopping on Facebook remains a challenge.

F-commerce-online storefronts within the Facebook framework-hasn't quite caught on. Large brands like Pampers and ASOS have opened successful stores on the platform, but integration with existing inventory operations is too costly for the average-sized retailer. What's more, it's not clear how willing shoppers are to open their wallets on a social network. "People don't go to Facebook to shop. They never have," says Harish Abbott, co-founder of Sneakpeeq, a social shopping platform. Using "Facebook norms", like game mechanics, to drive discovery, is more effective, he says.

Rather than drop dollars into F-commerce, retailers are getting more socially creative with their own e-commerce sites. And they should-revenue per click from shoppers arriving via social media links is $5.24, versus the $3.18 per click spent by email shoppers, according to analytics company ClearSaleing. Share and "like" buttons help drive traffic since click-through rates for news feed links are vastly higher than for Facebook ads. The Levis.com "Friends Store," for example, uses Facebook Connect so its shoppers can see comments, shares, and likes from their Facebook friends within the Levi's site. It's social, without that awkward automatic sharing part.
(...)
Bernhard Longin, CEO dot-group, comments: "Facebook is truly a big challenge for marketers to serve as sales channel, but is also very efficient. Firstly, social media sales need a broad fan base to kick-off a sustainable and interactive dialogue with the brand. Then you can take efforts to make fans become happy customers. When you want people to buy on a Facebook platform you should deliver an attractive fan page providing special tabs, advanced apps, competition apps, YouTube integration etc. and, last but not least, regular sales specials which contribute in hard sales. From our experience with famous international brands social media sales work very well when the parameters perfectly fit together and match the communication needs users expect on these channels."

(Source: adweek.com)

Best of Car Videos on YouTube

"Tops of Cars" is a car-video channel that shows the best car-related video content available in the social web. The content is selected by a jury according to specific criteria which are reach, originality, coolness and fun potential.

YouTube is the video portal with highest reach and the second most important search engine after Google. According to the latest Nielsen study YouTube has 20,3 million user per month alone in Germany; the advertising-relevant target group between age 20 and 49 is very well represented by the YouTube users. The constant growth of YouTube opens new and prospective chances of video content promotion to advertisers. Regarding the huge amount of videos on YouTube one may ask how to find the best content. Therefore the "Tops Of Cars" channel bundles the best videos of the automotive scene and makes them available to the user.

The marketing concepts to promote "Tops Of Cars" will be focused on the single videos to boost the reach of the video views. Video content of the "Tops Of Cars" channel comes from private users, influential automotive top blogs and from cooperations with the top car brands as well, especially from premium brands like Audi, BMW or Daimler.

"Our channel concept makes us unique, the name "Tops Of Cars" reflects this very well. In the current growth period of the channel we strengthen our handpicked cooperations with influential alpha blogs and the automotive industry to push the traffic on the channel. There are only a few vacant places for selected cooperations left", says Bernhard Longin, CEO.

"Tops Of Cars" channel is managed and supervised by the Berlin based social media agency dot-gruppe. dot-gruppe offers different cooperation concepts depending on the respective content provider, e.g. barter deals and special promotional deals. Selected partner of "Tops Of Cars" will profit from additional traffic and the boost of reach within a premium content environment.

Expert Strangers Beat Friends for Web Recommendations? (adweek.com)

To hear it from social networks, the key to converting consumers is through friends. But a new study suggests that you shouldn't underestimate the click-value of strangers.

According to research from Meebo, a social platform that connects friends across the Web, expertise trumps friendship when people are surfing the Web for content that matches their interests. The study, which included a nationally representative sample of 1,473 people, found that 53 percent of Web users are looking for recommendations from "everyday experts," or strangers with knowledge on a specific topic. For information on specific hobbies or interests, 39 percent of people would seek the recommendations of strangers, compared to 28 percent who would turn to friends or acquaintances, the study found. For questions about travel and cooking, the gap is even bigger - about 40 percent said they would connect with "everyday experts" while about 20 percent would ask people they know. "People are saying 'so my network of friends may not have expertise in what I'm interested in doing, so I need to look outside of that,'" said Pip Marquez de la Plata, SVP of marketing for Meebo. Consider that in light of research from Nielsen and Facebook showing the effectiveness of ads served with social context from Facebook friends. Their study found that ads with social context lift recall 68 percent, and boost purchase intent by a factor of four. Facebook has not yet disclosed data on its six-month-old Sponsored Stories program, which incorporates social actions such as friends "liking" brands into a user's newsfeed, and it declined to comment for this story. But the company has said that there are 50 million likes per day for Facebook pages and early reports suggest positive engagement. While Facebook doesn't include a specific tool for seeking out expert friends, its Question feature does allow users to ask friends (and even other Facebook users) for recommendations and advice. (...)

Bernhard Longin, CEO of dot-gruppe says: "No matter if the user receives his feedback from a friend or a stranger - both have to be trustworthy and authentic in the mind of the user. Therefore dot-gruppe cooperates with influential brand ambassadors in social media campaigns. Brand ambassadors are highly active social media networkers and adopt product trends and innovation at a very early stage. Recommendations of brand ambassadors are trustworthy and authentic and influence the buying decision of the users. Within social media they have the potential to transform fans into loyal buyers of a brand and are therefore valuable for the campaign'ss success."

(Source: adweek.com)

Why Ad Agencies and Media Companies Should Hunt for the Next Instagram (adage.com)

Social media shouldn't remain solely the province of companies launched since Justin Bieber hit puberty. In fact, traditional ad agencies and media companies have the chance to catch the internet wave they may have missed by aggressively becoming players in social media. Ad agencies of all sizes are already mobilizing to crack the social-media code for themselves and their clients. David Jones, newly elevated CEO of Havas Worldwide, recently disclosed that his firm now employs 2,000 people who are focused on social media. And, Jon Bond, a big-agency veteran turned CEO of social-media agency Big Fuel, believes that eventually ad agencies will use social media as the engine that drives the rest of their business, putting social media on the front-end of their offerings. Smart publishers across the media landscape - general-interest, enthusiast and B-to-B - understood the essence of community a century before the term social media was coined. (...)

"The trend towards social media became evident more than five years ago. dot-gruppe is an industry pioneer. Today more and more merketers position their brands in the social web", adds Bernhard Longin, CEO of dot-gruppe.

(Source: adage.com)

Is Your Business a Social-Media Laggard? The Five Stages of Social Media Maturity. Where's Your Brand? (adage.com)

After working with hundreds of companies - and surveying 95 of them - we've answered the question "What's the roadmap that organizations follow in adopting social media?" We've also got advice on how to get to the next stage. In a nutshell, here are the stages (...).

Dormant stage (laggards). No social applications, typical in regulated industries or conservative culture. Our advice: get started soon, concentrate on "small victories." I've working with companies in this stage, such as retailer Eileen Fisher, where Lauren Croke, a leader in the eCommerce group, told me "We are so collaborative, things take a really long time to get consensus and approval." Recommendation: concentrate on adopting listening platforms like Radian6 - seeing what people are saying will often get them motivated to start participating in the Groundswell.

Testing (late majority). Social applications happening, but little coordination. Often focused on popular "talking" environments like YouTube and Facebook, typically run by PR. Recommendation: build on success. Expand out from blogs or Twitter to communities, for example. Shift measurement from volume metrics (e.g. "friends" ) to business metrics (click-throughs, sales, sentiment). Hire or appoint "shepherds" to coordinate resources and learning across the organization.

Coordinating (early majority). Management recognizing value of applications and putting coordination and governance in place. While the social innovator in a testing-stage company may feel lonely, his counterpart in the coordinating-stage company feels pressure, because she's in the spotlight. Recommendation: build a cross-departmental council of social managers for sharing best practices (31% of the companies we surveyed have such councils). Concentrate on policy, which is a natural element of the infrastructure to allow more applications to develop. Start building a long-term plan.

Scaling and Optimizing (early adopters). Company has a plan in place, and seeks ways to do multiple social applications efficiently. For example, at Home Depot, the launch of a customer service presence on Twitter and a marketing channel on YouTube naturally led to the creation of home improvement community, staffed by knowledgeable people who work part of the time answering questions in stores. IHG (Intercontinental Hotel Group) began to concentrate on training management staff at its hotels on how to respond to customer posts on places like Facebook and TripAdvisor. Many companies in this stage have moved beyond listening and talking and are systematically embracing new ideas from customers (like Starbucks' mystarbucksidea.com). Recommendation: Use companywide tools to encourage HEROes with new social ideas to innovate throughout the organization.

Empowered (innovators). Few companies have reached this stage, where social pervades the company. Dell and Zappos come to mind. At United Business Media, an internal community for collaboration attracted 80% of the employees within 12 months, a great step on the way to an empowered, innovating workforce.

The takeaway: understand where you are on this journey. Teach your managers. Shift your goals as you move through the stages. But always be moving: companies that adopt these technologies broadly outside and inside the corporate walls create brand advocates, streamline business processes, and improve product quality and success.

Bernhard Longin, CEO of dot-gruppe, commentates: "These stages perfectly describe the different phases many companies run through when adopting social media strategies for their brands. The majority of our clients belongs to the stage 'coordinating' and 'scaling'. dot-gruppe helps them to bring social media activities on the right track and to social media channels successful in their performance."

(Source: adage.com)

You Can't Understand It Without Experiencing It Firsthand (adweek.com)

The biggest news for agencies about social media is that clients are starting to buy. If you thought selling social media was hard, wait until you start to deliver it. In the past three months, we've seen a handful of clients commit hard dollars, and after a couple of years of talking theoretically, we're discovering that implementation has its own challenges. I've been reminded several times in my career that a passion for craftsmanship makes great agencies. Something as creating a corporate Facebook page comes with its own set of complexities and requires an understanding of the platform and its capabilities...

This has been a watershed year when it comes to corporate enthusiasm for social media. Three years ago, we first started making presentations to our clients. There was polite interest and a lot of resistance for reasons of privacy and control. A lot of people just didn't believe it was relevant to their customers, or they couldn't see a clear link to their existing sales process.

That changed one year ago. With major brands increasing their presence, and with the surge of interest in Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and blogs more clients began to call and ask us to come in and talk to them about specific social-media initiatives. From my own experience, I became convinced that, unlike every other form of marketing, it was impossible to understand social media if you didn't experience it firsthand. You need a guide who has explored the territory. You don't want one who has just read the travel book or seen the slide show.

Bernhard Longin, ceo of dot-gruppe says: "The field of social media differentiates al lot from classic media advertising. There is a lot of specific knowhow needed and many mistakes agencies can do. Instead of making their own trial and error experience or asking their classic media agency to run the campaign, companies should outsource the topic to specialists to reach their objectives."

(Source: adweek.com)

Clients Must Join the Conversation (adweek.com)

Those not embracing social media risk being left behind. As social media continues to become part of consumers' everyday lives, agencies and clients will have to reorganize themselves to accommodate that trend or risk being cut out of the conversation. That was the broad conclusion of a late afternoon panel yesterday at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Transformation Conference in San Francisco, which keyed on social media's rapid transformation...
"Innovation [in the social media] needs to be part of your culture," said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus. "Consumers are transforming faster than we are, and if we don't catch up, we're in trouble."...
"Every brand is discussed in social media...you are there anyway... brands should take the opportunity and position themselves in social media. The consumers expect them to play an active role" adds Bernhard Longin, CEO of dot-gruppe.

(Source: adweek.com)

How Lionsgate Plans to Take on 'Twitter Effect' for 'Kick-Ass' (AdAge.com)

Studio Synchs Film's Branded Facebook, MySpace, YouTube Pages Under One Platform

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- While the so-called "Twitter effect" and its impact on a movie's box office remains enigmatic at best for most studios, Lionsgate is hoping its latest social-media marketing milestone will put them one step closer to a solution. Lionsgate will become the first advertiser to sync up its sponsored brand pages on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace under one platform to promote its upcoming comic-book movie "Kick-Ass," out April 16.
The "Kick-Ass" promotion, courtesy of Silicon Valley startup ThisMoment, lets Lionsgate integrate user comments, video streams and Twitter conversations (via a branded hashtag) under one platform, with real-time metrics to show isolated and combined traffic figures. The platform, called Distributed Engagement Channel, was sold to Lionsgate by ThisMoment and YouTube as an upgrade to YouTube's brand-channel package to advertisers.
"It's important to have all the buzz and great fan reaction in one place," said Danielle DePalma, Lionsgate's VP-new media and marketing. "The web overall is a social place, but I don't think fans and users see it in a siloed way. So if somebody's looking at a trailer on YouTube, they can then log in right here, leave a post and share it with a friend on Facebook or MySpace. It's important that everything we do in the social space is making it easy for people to find and spread."
Bernhard Longin, ceo of dot-gruppe commentates: "campaigns are easier to run and supervise if you have one platform where all the campaign elements lead together. The task is to find solutions which merge the overwhelming options of facebook, twitter and youtube".

(Source: adweek.com)

You're Using Social Media. But Just Who Is Overseeing It All? (AdAge.com)

With Marketing, Sales, R&D and Customer-Service Reps Involved, the Task Is to Get Everyone Working Together

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Social media is undoubtedly shaking up the digital landscape, but it looks to be shaking up the corporate suite as well.
As brands try to foster loyalty with Facebook pages, show innovation on blogs and address customer concerns on Twitter, social media is threading its way through the marketing and sales, research and development, customer-service departments and more. All of which gives rise to the question: Just whose job is it anyway?
SCOTT MONTY: Global-digital and multimedia-communications director is involved with Ford's marketing department.
Answer: everyone's -- so it's important to get all those disciplines working together.
Take Ford Motor Co. for example. The automaker saw $2.7 billion in profit for 2009 -- a huge turnaround from a record loss the prior year -- and it smartly used social media to help disassociate it from the bankruptcies and bailouts of its rivals. But that required breaking with custom at Ford and pooling the resources of marketing and corporate communications.
"We've been living this for the past year," said Scott Kelly, Ford's digital-marketing manager. "Historically, we had very little interaction with public affairs, but ever since the congressional bailout for the other two automakers, we needed to combine marketing and public-affairs forces to get the right message out around Ford so we didn't get dragged down by GM and Chrysler."
Bernhard Longin, ceo of dot-gruppe says: "social media is not only the responsibility of an online manager, it becomes the responsibility of the spokesman of the board..no issue becomes more important concerning the speed how brand equity can be won or lost".

(Source: adage.com)

Does Social Sell? (adweek.com)

Brands drive further into social-media arena without money-back guarantees

For all the excitement about social media, there's a specter hanging over its use by companies. Is all this tweeting, blogging and Facebooking paying off? For some proponents, the question is irrelevant. They agree with the view encapsulated in the social media bible The Cluetrain Manifesto -- markets are conversations. Companies have to participate in the conversations where they're happening, ROI be damned. Their dismissal of metrics is summed up in an oft-repeated question, "What's the ROI of putting on your pants on in the morning?"
Those kind of pithy ripostes are music to the ears of the social-media faithful at conferences and on blogs, but they're unlikely to impress budget-strapped CMOs who, while eager to find new ways to reach consumers, are under more pressure to prove their efforts are pushing the business forward. Measurement remains the single greatest challenge to social-media adoption by companies. While digital channels and online interactions offer a plethora of data points, they don't come with a set playbook for assigning value. Marketers have grown comfortable with formulas like gross ratings points and frequency, time-tested formulas for building brands in traditional media. Yet with social media, what's a Facebook friend worth?
"The value of social media is it's the richest data set that's ever existed," says Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights, a Wisconsin-based analytics company that uses social media to help clients make marketing decisions. "You can use this data for many things."

Bernhard Longin, ceo dot-gruppe says, "we need new measurements for social media. The old parameter like GRP are not really applicable. The consumers have to be exposed many time by classic ads. Consumers have their strategy of avoiding. Social media are crucial consumer touchpoints. If a video is watched on youtube, it happens on demand, because users are interested. From the video the user can be leaded to another consumer touchpoint to trigger conversion".

(Source: adweek.com)