Stone Ward is seeking an Account Manager with 5+ years agency experience. Experience should include a demonstrated ability to think strategically about the client’s business and a demonstrated ability to direct and recognize results-oriented marketing communications that are on brand strategy.

The Account Manager will be required to provide business and marketing counsel to clients at an executive management level and oversee an associate account executive in the daily execution of client projects. The Account Manager will also oversee the client profitability and will be responsible for managing the client budget and agency revenue.  The Account Manager will report to the Director of Account Management.

Job responsibilities will include:

• Serving as an agency leader across all disciplines to lead an integrative approach to all client marketing communications.
• Acting as a leader for agency teams, creating a culture of team-level responsibility for achieving agency and client goals.
• Developing strong relationships throughout the client organization, particularly at executive management level, maintaining thorough understanding of client satisfaction and ensuring client retention.
• Maintaining a thorough understanding of client’s business, category, competitive landscape and customer base to ensure agency is proactive in delivering strategic marketing direction.
• Recognizing and contribute to creative account planning that is excellent, results-oriented and strategic.
• Providing strategic consultation about client’s business and marketing initiatives on a regular basis.
• Supervising clients budgets and billing, as well as agency profitability by client.
• Continuously seeking out education and information on communications tools, techniques and trends to apply to client’s communications initiatives.

Desired traits in an Account Manager include (in no particular order):

• Flexible
• Proactive
• Organized
• Innovative
• Cheerleader
• Collaborative
• Numbers nerd
• Detail-oriented
• Not reactionary
• Strong work ethic
• No shrinking violets
• Calm under pressure
• Know when to say “no”
• Ability deal with multiple personality styles
• Willingness to learn new things
• Willingness to take hit for team
• Good written communications skills
• Good verbal communications skills
• Producer-type personality
• Ability to defend creative
• Good time management
• Good creative instincts
• Ability for forethought
• Good negotiator
• Problem-solver
• Thought leader
• People person
• Open-minded
• Good listener
• Team player
• Multi-tasker
• Technophile
• Self-starter
• Passionate
• Confident
• Realistic
• Creative
• Diligent
• Patient
• Leader
• Coach
• Agent
• Calm
• Fair

About the Account Management department at Stone Ward:

The Account Management function at Stone Ward serves an extension of the client’s marketing department, with a specialization in creative communications and customer experience interactions. We are a partner in the client’s strategic communications planning, execution, budgeting and measurement.

• 232 million monthly active users
• $597 million in revenue in 2010

Mashable provides a list of 11 other interesting stats about Zynga’s success.

Zynga is the company behind social games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars and is highly dependent of Facebook for its players.  ”The company admits that basically all of its revenue comes from its partnership with Facebook: ‘We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.’” This fact may make investors a bit wary of buying in immediately, but with the success of LinkedIn and the talk about growth potential of gaming/games in general, Zynga will probably fair well in this market.

While I haven’t yet decided exactly which sessions I will be attending, I have at least narrowed it to five or so selects for each time period.  View my culled list here.

Stay tuned.  Full coverage begins on Friday.

This morning as I watched actual “news” coverage of the spot and an interview with the child actor that was in the Darth Vader costume, I hit my tipping point of curiosity and started searching for some explanation for the strategy of the spot.  The majority of the talk online, much like that “new” segment I saw this morning, talks about how “cute” the spot is and how much everybody liked it; there was little, if any, mention of the brand or the product.  While I can accept that it is a brand ad and they are not necessarily trying to sell Passats, can it be considered successful if no one remembers/talks about/notices the VW brand itself?

It was on AdAge that I finally found a real review of the spot:

“But if we were VW, we wouldn’t be too triumphal too quickly. Another name for the Relationship Era is the Listenomics Age, and if you listen to what was being said, you’d notice that the vast majority of the Twitter traffic mentions the ad, and not the car. Not even the model — which happens to be a Passat. Certainly nobody mentioned the ad was nominally promoting keyless ignition, and no wonder: that’s all but a generic feature.

“So, yeah, VW got some positive attention, and that’s good. But the attention wasn’t on automobiles. That’s bad. This could have just as well been a McDonald’s commercial. Which just goes to show: If you’re peddling entertainment instead of products, cultivating smiles not constituents, the Brave New World will be just as easy to squander resources in as the cowardly old one.”

Right on.

Of course the laughter comes only after they made it over the hump of seriously addressing the lawsuit with an official video and statement from the company president last week:

The responses from Taco Bell, both the serious and the funny, were the right ones.  No one really believed they were eating 100% beef when they ordered from Taco Bell, especially those that are actual customers.  And they don’t care because they love the brand and the products.  The news only rallied Taco Bell’s dedicated following: their Twitter and Facebook pages are practically love fests.

While Taco Bell had to address the situation, the acknowledgment of the humor in the situation makes the brand all the more likable and really aligns with its established feisty brand personality.

Here is the video referenced in the Taco Bell Twitter post above. Enjoy.

This topic is explored in a new book, Alone Together.  I haven’t read the book yet, but have put it on my list to read soon.  The book was recently reviewed over at The Daily Beast:

“The advantage to all that gadgetry, of course, is connectedness: email lets us respond on the go, and we are in touch with more people during more hours of the day than at any other time in history. But is it possible we’re more lonely than ever, too? That’s what MIT professor Sherry Turkle observes in her new book, Alone Together, a fascinating portrait of our changing relationship with technology. The result of nearly 15 years of study (and interviews with hundreds of subjects), Turkle details the ways technology has redefined our perceptions of intimacy and solitude—and warns of the perils of embracing such pseudo-techno relationships in place of lasting emotional connections.”

The “alone” versus “together” situation works in reverse as well: when we are face-to-face among a group of people, many of us isolate ourselves by bowing our heads to the mobile devices actively lighting up in our hands.  If you don’t believe me, next time you go out to dinner, do a quick scan around the restaurant and check out what people are doing at each table.

The impact of technology on social mores is not a new topic of conversation, but as technology and social channels continue to improve and become even more integrated into our lives, the conversation will grow.  But will anything change?  Will we pull back on the use of technology and social media now that it is ingrained in our behaviors?

Check out the novel Super Sad True Love Story for a satirical look at the possibility of completely transparent sharing through technology and utter dependency on technology.  It is funny and sad and scary.  Set in a future where people are obsessed with appearances, their smart phones and credit scores, this book tells the story of two mismatched lovers through their journal entries and online communications.

• Online video viewing continues to grow and results ensue.
• Photo sharing gains in popularity.
• Social shopping gaining momentum.
• Location sharing is (still) not going away.
• Consumer influence continues to grow online.

Online Video Viewing Continues To Grow and Results Ensue

Prediction: More Companies/Brands Using Video to Sell. Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. In four years, more than 90% of internet content will be video.

Online video viewing is now more than just cute kittens. The kittens might get the most views, but consumers are actually just as interested in interacting with brands via videos as they are in laughing at pet tricks. Brands that engage consumers through video demonstrations are seeing the results on their bottom lines. Zappos, as one example, added simple videos of people holding shoes and moving them around to its sales pages and increased conversion rate from 6% to 30%. Based on that success, by the end of next year, Zappos will have ten full working video studios, with the goal of producing around 50,000 product videos by 2010, up from the 8,000 videos they have on the site today.

Toyota is another example: its “The Swagger Wagon” music video garnered over seven million views, only three percent of which were driven by advertising.

And, Travelocity was the first brand to jump on the Chatroulette fad early in 2010 when they placed their signature gnome character in front of the webcam holding signs with clever travel messages. Over 40 days and nights, the Roaming Gnome generated 350,000 impressions on the site, engaged in 40 conversations, and generated over 19 million media impressions for the brand.

In the next year, we will see more brands using video to sell their products and services.

Sources: Mashable, Streaming Media

Prediction: More Mobile Video Sharing. Smartphones with video recording abilities are not new to consumers, and even the ability to record HD video is not new. Up until this point, however, we have not seen mobile video capturing and sharing take off. This is most likely a result of the difficulty in uploading and sharing video instantly due to bandwidth limitations. In the next year, we will see wireless providers improve bandwidth, allowing friendlier video uploads and we will devices improve video compression without sacrificing quality that will assist with immediate sharing.

With this in mind, businesses might consider encouraging consumer use of videos to share their brand and product experiences.  Providing customers with  back-drop and props, allowing access to a wireless connection to assist in upload speed, and giving them a place to share their videos with other customers are all ways to promote brand-specific videos.

Source: Mashable

Photo Sharing Gains in Popularity

Prediction: More Mobile Photo Sharing. Mobile sharing services will hit critical mass as smartphone users install apps in order to keep up with their friends. The iPhone photography app Instagr.am, which launched less that three months ago, claimed this week to have surpassed 1 million downloads. Services like Instagr.am have become so popular because they emphasize simplicity and make it easy to share your photos on social networks; Instagr.am, in particular, is liked for the filters it offers, the community they find there and the ease of cross-posting Instagrammed photos out to other networks like Flickr, Facebook and Foursquare.

With tools like these, average users can look more like professional photographers and they want to show off their work. And, although people already post photos to Facebook, we will probably see an improvement in their photo sharing features that include integration into their Places app that launched in 2010 so that users can share their work with a broader audience of people who also visit that “place.”

Expect to see photo sharing increase in the next year.  Businesses can capitalize on this trend by launching promotions that reward customer participation by photographs or gives customers a forum for sharing their amateur photography with others.

Sources: ReadWriteWeb, CNN, Mashable

Group Shopping Gaining Momentum

Prediction: More Ability to Share Purchases Through Social Channels Allowing Customers to Become the Advertisers. When you add in a reward component, like with Groupon, there are many more people willing to share their individual purchases (or purchase intent) through their existing social platforms. Groupon was introduced to the central Arkansas area in 2010. It is a daily coupon for a local business that only becomes active if enough people purchase it that day. “This creates the incentive to share the deal with friends and family, until ‘the deal is on.’ It’s great for local businesses because they can set the parameters for the offer and they know a minimum for how many offers they will have sold in advance.” Businesses establish the offer and people who have signed up for Groupon receive the notification. If the user decides to buy the offer, they have the option of telling their friends about it – through Facebook or Twitter, thereby spreading the word to their networks, too. Groupon gets its offers in front of buyers via the word of mouth of its 13 million subscribers.

Groupon’s effectiveness is evident in its claim that it now has 35,000 companies clamoring to be a part of the service offerings and only one in eight applicants is accepted. The companies that register with Groupon must already be getting good reviews at online review sites like Yelp, CitySearch and TripAdvisor, and the deals must offer a substantial discount from normal prices and not be similar to other promotions regularly offered by the vendor.

In the next year, consumers will become increasingly comfortable sharing their purchases and getting their friends on board to make the same purchases.  Businesses should make this easy for their customers to do.  With tools like Facebook Connect and linking to Twitter accounts on their websites, companies can encourage customers to share their purchases through their existing social media tools.

Sources: Social Media Explore, TechCrunch, Forbes

Location Sharing Is (Still) Not Going Way.

Prediction: Location Services Will Continue to Grow in Popularity. People will get more comfortable checking in to a business when they realize they can get deals and coupons for doing so. Additionally, with options like privacy blocking, enhanced security will ease the transition.

“Relevance will distinguish [location] services from each other as the two biggest players, Facebook and Google, have the most powerful social graph data to customize deals for consumers. Don’t count Groupon out, though. It more than makes up for its comparative lack of technology with brand equity and scale, as its massive sales force will remain dominant in 2011 by further monetizing local commerce beyond the recently launched self-service platform.”

If you are a business owner, it is “time to acquaint yourself with sites and applications such as Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla. These sites will help you better target prospects’ likes and interests, pique interest and influence purchase decisions by offering discounts, promotions or giveaways when they ‘check in’ to your business.”

Sources: Mashable, Entrepreneur

Consumer Influence Continues To Grow Online

Prediction: Consumers Get More Selective With The Brands They Allow In Their Social Streams. In the coming year people are going to be much more diligent about curating their own content into a more manageable form. While following a brand on Twitter or Facebook is getting consumers good coupons and deals, it is also turning their streams into undesired and overwhelming advertising channels that drown out the social sharing from their friends. “Therefore, what’s happening in Facebook is that consumers are turning off brands posting to their walls, using friends lists to pay close attention only to their ‘real’ friends, and commenting on or sharing only when something is really juicy. In Twitter, a company called Cadmus aims to change the way we view our streams by determining what content is most relevant to you based on your Twitter usage patterns. Other tools, such as Paper.li and Flipboard (for iPad), also curate Twitter, primarily based on content popularity, and make that content much more reader-friendly.”

It is no longer enough for companies to be in these channels generating regular content. The content that brands and companies post is going to have be worthy of consumer curation into their social streams. “If your content is truly compelling and share-worthy, it’ll get noticed and Liked, it will generate Comments and Retweets, and you’ll be okay because it will have legitimately earned its way into people’s streams. If not – you’ll have to have a combination of search optimization savvy [and] fans in high places (influencers).” In the next year, as consumers get more selective in their follow habits, brands will get more creative in their ploys to make into the social streams.

Source: Social Media Explorer

Prediction: Online Influencers Are Celebrities. Consumers want to be heard, and more importantly they want answers. Consumers are already scouring the social web and polling their friends and followers to decide where to eat, shop and stay. Websites dedicated to customer reviews will dominate the social media landscape. Sites such as Groubal.com, consolidating common user-submitted complaints and presenting those petitions to businesses, demanding answers for their wrongdoings.

As consumers are doing all of this, brands are desperately trying to insert themselves into those relevant streams by analyzing Twitter, blog posts and reviews to understand not only who has the largest audience, but how much influence individuals have. These influencers become well-known locally, regionally and nationally as their content is commented on, retweeted and linked to, driving them higher in search results. The past year also saw some brands go full throttle on Foursquare’s game-like geo-location platform, attempting to reward mayors and creating custom badges for the network’s power users. To measure the relevant influence of these online “celebrities,” tools like YouTube’s Partner Program is being joined by new services such as Klout to create an official layer of social credibility.

We will see brands doing more research on their social consumers in the next year as they figure out ways to influence the influencers.

Source: Mashable, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review

Watch the video here (while the NFL did the video right, they didn’t embrace the full power of the social web to make it embeddable; a fail in my opinion).

Crowdsourcing is not a new conversation topic on this blog.  I am always impressed by well-done, crowdsourced videos.  And, today’s example actually gave me goosebumps.  Maybe it is because I am from Louisiana and I am proud of the Saints.  Maybe it is because I have become more engaged in football lately with my Fantasy Football obsession (although a losing proposition).  Maybe it is just because I love the fact that through social channels, everyday consumers can contribute to a major advertising campaign.  Maybe it is just really well done.

It is much more professionally leaning than Yahoo! Answers: the people answering questions are credentialed to answer the questions in some way.  Evan Williams, found of Twitter logs on and answers Twitter questions.  A Facebook designer answered a question about icon design.  According to Mashable, those that tend to be early adopters of social technology are the ones using Quora:”Despite some assertions that Quora has gained a broader audience, it seems to be heavily trafficked by technologists, those in the media industry and social media types.”  However,

“In some ways, Quora has a broad appeal: answering specific questions and questions you didn’t know you had but that interest you. When users go to a search engine like Google, they are looking for specific information. Quora is similar, but, instead of an algorithm, you get answers from people who are knowledgeable about the topic. It’s similar to a social search engine.”

Although people can edit your questions, they can’t edit your answers; they can only post another answer disputing your response, blog comment-style, making it different than Wikipedia.

And, as for Facebook, where you have to find people or brands to follow, with Quora, you can also enter topics to get Q&A related to those topics feeding into your stream.

Although the site launched in 2009, it is just now gaining momentum despite an uphill battle for the users of all of the existing outlets listed above:

“Quora is up against mainstream competition. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t be a great place to get your questions answered; after all, the service has already attracted the likes of top-level CEOs. But it may have trouble winning users from mainstream services like Yahoo Answers, and the newer Facebook Question, as many will not want to join ‘another network.’” (Mashable)

How can businesses use Quora?  To get answers, of course.  I am new to Quora, too.  While I am still trying to figure out its potential value, my initial interest is in consumer research.  We are constantly trying to figure out how to learn more about our consumers, quickly and efficiently.  A tool that reaches those not already following your brand on Facebook and Twitter, but with an interest in the topic you are researching could be a powerful resource:

“Imagine the ability to really ask serious and honest questions of your consumers and community members. Think about the significant back and forth that can take place. Imagine what it’s like when each answer can be voted up by everyone in an equal and public fashion. While all of that has been doable for some time, it’s now taking place in a very public forum (that neither brand nor consumer “owns”). It’s also a place that is not limited to 140 characters or being mixed in with a personal profile page or a Blog that sits within a walled garden.” (Six Pixels of Separation)

It has been a while since a new social tool has caught the attention of bloggers and the technology media, so it is possible they are grasping for anything that might be interesting to discuss.  Or, it might be that Quora will catch on with mainstream users.  Regardless, if you are looking for answers, it is worth checking out and exploring.

UPDATE: Just came across this article that talks about maintaining the quality of the posts as growth continues to a more mainstream audience.

Thanks to Blake’s Think Tank for passing this along.

This idea is brilliant because it exploits the basic premise of social media: two-way communication and sharing.  And it leverages the benefit of digital media: immediate communication and sharing.

As brilliant as the idea is, I am most impressed with the production coordination that must be going on behind the scenes to keep up the posting pace of these videos.  I wonder how many people are monitoring the web for comments, then mining those comments for potential humorous responses?  And, how many copywriters are standing by to write these hundreds of 30-second scripts on the spot?  And, the clients must be on the set to approve on-site.  Then there is the actual video production crew, shooting and transferring the video straight to the web.  And there must be a person/people posting the videos and tweeting them out.  This must be one large and fun team, but I bet they are getting tired.  The production turnaround is impressive: I would love to see a behind the scenes/”making of” video after this stunt is complete.

This has been a successful scheme for the Old Spice brand: everyone is talking about it.  Quite a brilliant idea, indeed.

Here are some of the responses I have enjoyed most:

“Far from stodgy public access programming, C-SPAN has been embracing social media (and taking its shows on the road) as it pushes for greater public access through media coverage of the House and Senate and the Supreme Court.

“Now, Foursquare users who friend C-SPAN can, via Foursquare.com/cspan, access an abundance of C-SPAN content about U.S. public policy, politics, and government – a virtual tour guide to the inner workings of American democracy.

“If a user searches Foursquare for the U.S. Capitol, up comes a C-SPAN video with information about the Federal budget. Search for the White House, and view a C-SPAN interview with President Obama that was taped in the White House library.”

A partnership with C-SPAN solidifies the legitimacy of Foursquare and its potential in our increasingly digital and social world.  By linking relevant (and educational) content to locations, the act of checking-in becomes more valuable to the consumer.  And, C-SPAN is now exposing itself to a target viewer that might not otherwise have interacted with the media brand.

• “In the minutes following Landon Donovan’s game winning goal in the 91st minute of action (which sent the US to the round of 16), traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, which moves the event past the 2008 presidential election as the 2nd highest traffic spike of all-time.”
• “The plethora of World Cup breaking news briefly knocked Yahoo Sports offline.”
• “Tweets containing ‘USA’ spiked to 6% of total tweet volume.”
• Many Twitter users encountered the “Fail Whale” as a result of the traffic volume on Twitter during the game.

And, I think every status update on my Facebook news feed was related to the game.  Yes, soccer has the power of influence this month.  It will be interesting to see how that influence is capitalized on by marketers both immediately and in the coming months.  Some of the lucky ones advertising during the World Cup coverage are even getting some of the chatter; a favorite among those I have talked to:

Enjoy the games.

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