The Engaged Consumer

More gems from the bizdev, marketing and product teams here at Powered. As always, we love to share so this is just one more way we do so. Enjoy!

Beth Lopez (marketing)
This week's choice is the State of Interactive Agencies report by Sean Corcoran of Forrester.

Executive Summary of Report:  Although most interactive marketers would prefer to have one consolidated agency handling all of their digital needs, the ever-changing landscape requires the use of several agencies. These agencies are key to success because interactive marketers need to outsource certain skill sets, and because agencies help marketers stay ahead of the curve in a fast-changing industry. Moreover, many interactive marketers don’t trust their traditional brand agencies with interactive work. Yet the complexity of the interactive landscape is creating a fragmentation of interactive agencies, which in turn is creating a whole new set of challenges to marketers. Interactive marketers should prepare their organization for even more agency partners and educate their procurement teams on the value of these relationships.

DP Rabalais (marketing)
Although not a article, I think this is one of the most useful, practical, and measureable examples of brands using Facebook to not only engage and communicate with their customers, but also to listen to what they want.  BestBuy recently did an outstanding Voice of Customer outreach via Facebook.  They asked their Fans which vampire movies they liked the most.  Based on Fans input, Best Buy put the most popular movies on sale and promoted the sale back to their fans!

Doug Wick (bizdev)
This is a compilation of a lot of the 2010 prediction posts, including Mashable’s and Read Write Web’s. There are a lot of interesting predictions, most of them centering around brands taking a larger direct role in publishing content, mobile platforms become central to our lives, and the impact of real time information (which is significantly enhanced by mobile in terms of demand).

Bill Fanning (bizdev)
My shared post for this week comes from Brian Solis and is titled Facebook Brings Fans into Focus.  The post is a quick review of the latest features released by Facebook  making one's Fan page portable. Essentially, Facebook has a widget that allows you to put a light version of your Fan page directly on your website, making it more than just a static site. Just another step toward fulfilling the prediction that all websites will soon be social. 

Jay MacIntosh (bizdev)
As we saw last year, big brands were experimenting with social media. According to this study by Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club, 75% of CMOs didn’t attach any revenue expectations to their social spending in 2009. Perhaps, that’s one of the factors that made a $50k a facebook or twitter experiment seem more palatable than a six figure investment in a branded online community.

According to this survey, that’s about to change big time in 2010. This year 81% of CMOs are expecting their social media investments to drive 10% of their sales. I think there’s a compelling opportunity for Powered to provide the 2009 experimenters with a social marketing strategy and execution that ultimately pulls buying customers into their .com domains (aka branded online community). Of course, we’ll use outposts like facebook, twitter, search, etc. to create awareness and invite them to the community.

Don Sedota (product)
This is an entertaining re-cap about a big agency (Saatchi & Saatchi) that recently got in over their head with a social marketing campaign for Toyota. It goes to show that there really is a difference between an interactive agency and a social marketing agency. The big mistakes; lack of authenticity and lack of involvement by the brand.

Of particular interest is the winning/controversial video (embedded) and the fact that most of the comments on the article are from the future (it’s an Australian site).

What about you? Have a great article you want to share alongside the Powered team's finds? E-mail me at aaron DOT strout AT Powered DOT com or leave your idea in the comments. Just remember to include a quick description as to why you picked your link!