Donna's Promo Talk - Promotional Marketing that Creates Excitement and Gets Results

Reflections from a Mom on Graduation Day

Kelsey, my oldest daughter, is graduating from college today. When I post this we should be in route to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to attend the graduation ceremony of the 2012 Class of New York University. The school has so many students that it needs to be held in a stadium this huge. Of course they can’t call each student by name. Instead they call them by the school.

Kelsey is graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and majored in Drama. Tisch will be having their ceremony on Friday at Radio City Music Hall. So my husband, Kevin, and our other college-aged daughter, Alex, will be hanging out in the city with the graduate for a few days.

We have contributed some to cover the cost of her education. She is one of those students that is part of the country’s huge college student loan debt crisis. NYU is one of the most expensive schools in the country, especially combined with the cost of living in New York City. So while we don’t have any more NYU tuition payments to make, I’m sure we’re going to have to continue to financially support her in some part for a while. How long a while is the big question?

I recently wrote a proposal for a prospective new client. They are a  PR agency that is working with an organization whose objective is to create awareness of how bad the student debt crisis really is. They are interested in running a contest that would invite participants to submit either an essay or video that would describe how they or someone they know has been personally affected by this issue. The goal of course would be to help raise awareness in this country and to let our state and federal representatives know that we need change, and need it now.

The organizers of this project are hoping to launch this program and award a few monetary prizes that would go towards a person’s college tuition or towards paying off a student loan. Anyone could participate, but the money would have to go directly to the school or the financial institution. So if a student’s family member, relative or friend participated and was chosen as one of the winning submissions, then they would have to designate to whom and where the prize money would be going.

I’m hoping that this project will move forward. I believe the organization is currently working on getting the funding to proceed. I think it would be a great program, very innovative and a cause I would really like to help with. I’m hoping to get a chance to meet with this team while I’m visiting NYC over the next couple of days if we can fit in in between all our schedules.

I’m looking forward to our visit to the Big Apple. The commencement speaker this year will be Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor which should be highly inspiring, especially for the young women graduates. Plus, I haven’t been to the new Yankee Stadium yet. My dad used to take me to the old park when I was young since we're all originally from the Bronx. I haven’t been back to Radio City Music Hall in quite some time either.

So I’d like to congratulate my daughter, Kelsey, and all this year’s graduates and wish them the very best life can give. They have a tough road ahead of them. I am so very proud of the fine, young woman that Kelsey has become and all the hard work she has accomplished, not just the NYU years, but since she started her first day of preschool. She still has some close friends from that very first class. The same goes for my other daughter, Alex, who is just one year away from her college graduation. It’s hard to believe where the time has gone, but it has. My, how things have changed so much and how some have remained quite the same.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share this special day with you all…..my family, friends, colleges, clients and readers.

Facebook Playing a Bigger Role this Mother's Day

Mother's Day is this Sunday and if you didn't know that by now then you must really live under a rock as they say. Marketers have been out in full force this week reminding us of the upcoming holiday and what you should give the moms in your life. It appears that they are using every media channel available, and of course this year social media is playing a bigger role, especially Facebook.

Open Table recently did a survey in which 65% of Moms said that they will be making their own dining reservations for Mother's Day. Family Circle posted this on their Facebook page and asked their fans what they were doing which resulted in many comments and likes to the post. I found out yesterday that my husband finally made a reservation for brunch for us and his mom. However, the place we went last year and wanted to go back to was full already. I think my daughter called him earlier that day to remind him to make a call.

Flowers still top the list of gifts for Mom's Day. 1-800-Flowers is running the “Make Mom Proud” photo contest on their Facebook page. They invite users to submit a "photo mom would be proud of" that gets uploaded to a photo gallery and then open to a public vote to determine the grand, first and second place prize winners. All participants that cast a vote are entered in a random-drawing sweepstakes for a chance at being one of the 34 Voting Sweepstakes winners (2 per day) that will receive a one-of-a-kind vase. Contest grand prize winners gets a Norwegian Cruise for two along with 120,000 Delta SkyMiles they can used towards airfare to get to the cruise, a Canon PowerShot SX150 and 12 months of Bouquets from the sponsor. First and Second prize winners get 6 and 3 months of Bouquets respectively.

1-800-Flowers.com plans to use some of the submitted photos as Sponsored Stories ads that they’ll run on Facebook. They used this same strategy last Mother’s Day and saw one Sponsored Story ad featuring a military mom stationed in Afghanistan reach “three times the engagement level of any other ad that we ran,” according to the company's president Chris McCann.

Jewelry is the next most popular gift for Mother's Day. Zales Jewelers has created a multichannel marketing program this year utilizing their Facebook page at the very center. The Super Mom Facebook Sweepstakes application invited people to celebrate their moms by submiting a story describing why their mom is a super mom. One super mom will receive a $2,500 Zales Gift Card. The app allows users to view all the submitted stories which states that 6,921 stories have been shared.

The Super Mom app also lets people send this virtual gift to their mom. They can also link to the Zales Super Mom Pinterest board to view gift ideas and leave comments. Plus tweet their #SuperMom moments to show up on the Zales Twitter page feed. Here's the Zales Super Mom TV commercial that is short and sweet.

In doing some of my mom's day research I came across this article on Tech News Day that also did a little mom's day survey. It found that 91% of moms would rather receive an iPad this year then flowers. Hey family, that's me!!! I've been talking about buying one now for the past few months. I even dreamed about one last night.

On a final note, I just would like to wish all you moms a very Happy Mother's Day and thanks for being a reader. I'm missing my mom who we lost to cancer over two years ago. I love you mom.

Is fan engagement up or down with the new Facebook Timeline brand pages?

One of our clients asked me last week about the new Facebook Timeline pages and if I had read anything about changes in fan engagement since they launched. The client said they he felt that they were experiencing a slight decrease in likes and comments on their Facebook page posts and wasn't sure if it may be related to Timeline.

Well since it's only been since March 30 that all brand pages were required to switch over to Facebook's new Timeline format, I didn't think there was any data on this yet. But to my surprise, just as I said that the results of two studies came out and both revealed that some brands have been seeing an increase in fan engagement.

I first wrote about Facebook Timeline in this February 29 post, the day it debuted. I stumbled upon it when I visited Dove's Facebook page because I was planning to write about the brand that day. Dove was one of the 43 early-adopter brands (as well as Coca-Cola, Burberry, Chevy Volt, Old Spice) that Facebook partnered with on the launch. With the elimination of a default landing page and the addition of a bigger, new cover photo, along with some other entirely new branding opportunities, brand pages had to scramble to get ready for the conversion. Many of them, like my client, are now very interested to learn if users are more or less engaged with their content. Those that made the switch prior to the March 30 deadline have a little more data than the others to review.

Wildfire Interactive compiled an analysis of the 43 early-adopter brands. Since several of their clients were part of the initial launch they were looking to understand engagement statistics such as People Talking about This (PTAT), Likes per Page Post, Comments per Page Post, and Fan Growth Rate. They tracked these brand pages for 21 days before the Timeline switch and 21 days after. 45% of these brands have less than 1MM fans. 40% had between 1MM-10MM fans and the remaining 15% had greater than 10MM fans (mega-brands).

According to Wildfire, the brands with less than 1MM fans saw their comments per brand post grow 40% and Likes per post rise 60.3%. The “PTAT” metric also increased, up 67.4%. For brands with between 1MM- 10MM fans, comments per brand post dipped 17.43%, while Likes per post and “PTAT” both increased, by 13.56% and 28.58%, respectively. For brands with more than 10MM fans, all metrics declined, with “PTAT” down 13.72%, comments down 16.72% and Likes down 11.57%.

Social media measurement company Simply Measured also studied some of these early-adopter brand pages and found that average engagement on brand posts rose 46% during the same time period. Prior to the Timeline introduction, these 15 brand pages saw an average of 1,672 points of engagement per post, rising to 2,441 after switching to Timeline. Thanks to our friends at eMarketer for creating these graphs.

I feel it's still a bit too early to determine exactly how the Timeline pages will affect fan engagement. I strongly believe the most important element is the content brands put out on their pages. For now, it seems users are still participating and engaging on Facebook and will continue to do so. I'm curious to hear from any of our readers who are managing their brand pages if they have seen any difference so far. Please share any data that you can.

Speaking of Facebook brand pages, I launched a new Facebook page last week for American Sweepstakes. I won't have any data prior to Timeline launch, but will be able to track going forward. As of now we only have 22 fans, and we need 30 to be able to have access to Facebook Insights. So please visit and like us. I plan to posts about the latest sweepstakes and contest promotions we are launching for clients as well as what's new in promotional marketing and of course share my blog posts.

I now have to work on scheduling Facebook posts and updates into my schedule. I forgot to post on Monday already and then yesterday I posted twice. I don't want to post too much, but not too little. How often do you post on your page? Any advice you can share with me from your experiences would be appreciated. Thanks!

What's Beautiful competiton by Under Armour utilizes social media to challenge women

My daughters first introduced me to the Under Armour brand back in their early school years. Both were involved in sports, specifically softball. I somehow had coerced my husband into coaching their coed "rookie" league team and he ended up coaching softball for 10 years.

We spent many cold spring days out on the fields... the girls playing, Kevin coaching and me watching. The Under Armour shirts worked perfectly under their softball uniforms as well as on the coach. I was lucky enough to sit under a blanket when needed on top of wearing my Under Armour.

Under Armour has just launched a campaign marketing specifically to women. “What’s Beautiful" is based on "a competition to redefine the female athlete". They are inviting women to show the world what beautiful really is and declare a personal fitness goal. The three women who push it the hardest and farthest will become the new faces of Under Armour Women and have their lives sponsored for a year. Here's their introduction video:

How it works is that women start by visiting the UA What's Beautiful website and declaring their goal... whether its climbing Mout Everest or walking the dogs a mile every day (yes, I made that one up). They will create a profile page and then proceed to tell their story and show how they're accomplishing their goal over the course of this 9-week period. They will do this by posting videos, photos and motivating words that demonstrate their drive, competitive spirit and influence.

 

There are 19 Under Armour Challenges in three categories; Drive, Compete, and Influence. One has to be completed first and the remaining 18 can then be completed in any order the participant chooses. There will also be opportunities to go above and beyond the challenges. The final three will be declared the new faces of Under Armour.

Of those who complete the challenge, Under Armour will choose 10 finalists which will be announced on June 26th. They will be judged by who documented the most impressive, inspiring and monumental journeys. Then UA judges will select two women and one will be chosen based on a public vote. These three winners will receive a nutritionist for a year, as well as sessions with celebrity trainers and ample Under Armour swag. They will potentially be utilized in all of UA's marketing channels including TV advertising. All 10 finalists will receive $1,000 in gear and will become part of the Women’s Advisor Group to make appearances for Under Armour.

UA is heavily utilizing both its Facebook and Twitter page, @UAWomen, to promote the competition. They have included this image as their Facebook cover photo. I'm a little surprised because Faceook Timeline guidelines clearly state you cannot include any call-to-action in your photo and this clearly does. Anyhow, when a participant first registers they have to Like the UA Facebook page. As they say, if you're competing to be a UA spokesperson, you have to at least Like the UA women's Facebook page.

Once registered, participants can choose to follow other fellow competitors that may have similar goals as theirs. They also have the choice of posting their goal on their Facebook timeline and tweeting it. Currently there appears to be quite a few women who have registered already and who have uploaded videos of themselves.

So what do you think of this marketing campaign? I think it's pretty interesting and unique. I just declared a goal and may continue to participate and see how this goes. Not that I want to be a spokesperson for UA. I just would like to lose a few pounds and get rid of some of this body fat around my "core". We'll see.

Good luck to all the women athletes that are participating. I'm interested to see who the final 3 will be. Let us know if any of you decide to participate as well.

I'll be joining the 2012 BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes winners in Salt Lake City next month

The 2012 BlogPaws Pet Blogging and Social Media Conference is just about two months away now. This year we're heading back out west and visiting Salt Lake City for the first time. The conference attendees will be comprised of a large group of pet bloggers, online pet enthusiasts and marketers of pet brands.

I have written about BlogPaws several times here on Lip-sticking since this will be my fourth time speaking at the conference (haven't missed one yet). My friends and fellow blogging colleagues, Yvonne DiVita and her partner, Tom Collins, first introduced BlogPaws at the start of 2010 and held the first conference in Columbus, OH. Since then they've been very busy turning it into the premier online pet community and a leading go-to-resource.

As with all conferences (two were held in 2010) I have contributed my services in launching and managing a promotion to help create awareness and buzz. So this month I have worked with the BlogPaws team to launch the 2012 BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes. It's running now on the BlogPaws Facebook Page where people can enter for a chance to win a trip to the conference. Grand prize includes round trip airfare to Salt Lake City from major airport nearest to winner's home, hotel accommodations for three nights at the Sheraton Salt Lake City (where the conference is being held) and of course registration to the conference. A 2nd prize winner will receive the hotel stay and conference registration and a 3rd prize winner gets a free pass to the event.

I'm using a different Facebook application this year then I've used in the past for the other conference sweepstakes and contest promotions. The Shortstack app has become my first choice for running promotions on Facebook. They were the first to provide guidance on what the new Timeline for brand pages meant and how to adjust your applications for the changes. Most recently they introduced "Smart Links" that you can use in your Facebook status updates and in newsletters and blog posts such as this that are mobile friendly. Which means you can now finally get to a Facebook app from a smartphone. Here again is the BlogPaws Sweepstakes Smart link, so check it out on your phone! You can also create a QR code from the link.

At this year's conference I'll be speaking at one of the break-out sessions on Day 2, Saturday, titled Facebook Tips and Tricks. Joining me will be Jane Harrell, Associate Producer of the Petfinder blog, and Ann Hogan a blogger and social media manager of the Humane Society's Facebook page. I will be reviewing some of the new Facebook Timeline changes, introducing the attendees to the Shortstack app and reviewing how we launched the BlogPaws Sweepstakes. Plus, my fellow Lip-sticking blogger, Lena West (pictured here), will be delivering a special keynote session on Saturday morning. I attended Lena's break out session at last year's BlogPaws conference in Tyson's Corner and everyone there loved her so much, we got her back for more. You can view the full program here.

As with all the BlogPaws Conferences, pets are welcome. The BlogPaws Facebook Page is full of photos and comments from pets that want to come with their human partners. My two dogs, Shadow and Izzie featured here, are not the best travelers, so they will be staying home. However, my husband Kevin will be joining me this year for the first time. We've never been to this part of the country, so we're planning a little vacation after the conference. We'll be traveling up to Wyoming to see some of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Anyhow who has been there and has any suggestions/advice, please pass along.

There's still time to register for the conference. I would love to meet some of our readers there. Feel free to enter the BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes as well. We now have 163 entries and growing!

Pinterest Promotions are growing on our now 3rd largest Social Networking Site

Pinterest has been written about in the news quite a bit lately. It's now the third most-visited social-networking site in the United States, according to a report recently released by Experian Marketing Services. Pinterest ranks behind only Facebook and Twitter in terms of total visitors which was based on U.S. visitors during March and did not even include mobile traffic.

Most of us probably never heard of Pinterest six months ago. For those not familiar with Pinterest it lets users "pin" photos and info from the Internet onto virtual boards. Once I started reading about it I first had to request an invite to join. Once I signed up it allowed me to easily follow all my Facebook friends, which is one of the reasons behind it's fast growth. I have to admit, I didn't have any photos pinned to my boards at first and I still only have a few. My most popular are "Recipes I Love" and "For the Love of Doggies". I still really haven't spent much time on this social network and not sure if I want to, but there are many people that are, especially women.

We've recently been getting some inquires about Pinterest from clients who are currently running sweepstakes and contests promotions with us. They're asking if we've done one yet and should they consider it. The answer is no, we haven't done one yet, and there is this issue of who owns the copyright of the image being pinned that we share with them. Just because someone can pin any image they find on the Internet to a Pinterest board doesn’t mean that it’s legal. The vast majority of images found on the Internet are not “public domain” and pinning or re-pinning them on a brand’s virtual pinboard risks a copyright infringement claim by the original image owner.

Using Pinterest for promotions presents its own practical issues. First, you have limited space in which to make required disclosures, like the official rules. You're limited to a 500 character description of your photo, so similar to Twitter you can include a URL address that links to your rules. Also Pinterest boards are viewable upon creation, so by encouraging consumers to create a themed pinboard for your promotion, consider what images the participant may connect to your brand. They may not always be "brand friendly" let alone be images that they own. In addition to the copyright issues, this may present further complications if you plan on using the winning pinboard for later publicity. To be safe, some are providing a library of images for participants to pin from that the brand owns or has licensed.

Here's an interesting Pinterest contest that the folks at Harrods, the London-based department store, is currently running. They are inviting people to create a mood board on Pinterest, which will be the inspiration for a ‘Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Street Party’ window. A participant's board must be titled ‘Harrods Street Party Window’ and once complete, they must tweet a link to their board to Harrods Twitter Page, @HarrodsofLondon, and include the hashtag #HarrodsWindows

Harrods created some ‘Pinspiration’ to help people get started which is shown on their Pinterest page specifically created for this contest.
The winner will be brought to London and put up in a premium hotel in advance of the official unveiling of their window next month. The deadline for entries is Thursday, April 19. It's only open to residents of the UK, so this doesn't have to follow any of the U.S. contest regulations, which is probably why we found no Official Rules.

Harrods announced the contest on their Facebook page which is at this time still the "Pinned" status update on their Timeline. They also have been promoting it through their Twitter page:

We're giving you the chance to design one of the world famous #HarrodsWindows - bit.ly/I63CVl

— Harrods (@HarrodsofLondon) April 10, 2012

BTW, I just used one of Twitter's new features which is to embed a Tweet. Pretty cool.

So are you on Pinterest? Why or why not? Have you been involved in a Pinterest promotion yet? Let me know what you think in the comments.

A few Corona's helped us "Find Our Beach" in Mexico

Hola. I was on vacation in Mexico with my husband, Kevin, so por favor excuse my absence last week. We had a lovely time and it was the first visit we made to this area which they call the Maya Rivera. The resort we stayed in was south of Cancun, about half way to Playa del Carmen. We both agreed we would like to visit again, so I'm going to try to learn more Spanish in the meantime. I haven't taken a course since high school!

I'm not a world traveler, but the times I have traveled outside of this country have always been very insightful experiences. They remind me that America is not the center of the world, as much as many of us Americans think it is. While we were in a resort area, we did not sit at the resort everyday and had rented a car which allowed us to get out and explore a bit. My family and friends cautioned us before we left. "Be careful, don't go to far from the resort. Mexico is not a safe place to visit." While I agree we needed to be cautious, these statements are true no matter where you go. Just think of the horrible tragedy that happened just yesterday at a small college in Oakland, CA.

What I wanted to point out is that all the local Mexicans that we met, those that worked at the resort, the local Walmart in Playa del Carmen, the guides that took us out on their boats to snorkel the reef, we're all so very pleasant. Yes, many rely on us tourists to make a living, however, there appeared to be a genuine friendless that I found more with them then with the average American. My husband and I would both wake up early every morning and go for a jog or a walk around the resort. Each employee we passed would make eye contact and greet us with either a hola or buenos dias. In contrast, not all the resort's guests were as friendly. So we can learn something here.

Anyhow, to tie this post into a marketing topic I'm going to step back to the week before we left when I was in Chicago for PMA's Annual Marketing Conference. Here I got to listen to Jim Sabia from Crown Imports talk to us about Corona's biggest ever promotional marketing campaign, "Find Your Beach". Corona was the beer of choice during our Mexican vacation which we were able to stock up on from the local Walmart since we were lucky enough to have a refrigerator in our room. I've always liked Corona's advertising and could picture myself on a beach whenever I saw the ads. Corona appears to be marketing much more to women then Budweiser or Labatt, who feature babes and stupid jokes in most of their commercials.

Jim shared with us that the "Corona Beach Getaway" sweepstakes they executed last year included a full 360^O engagement. They promoted the sweepstakes on promotional packaging of all their 12-packs, in-store retail point-of-sale, on premise in bars and restaurants, through PR events, digital ad buys, outdoor ads, social media, and in their TV spots. The sweepstakes offered a chance to win one of 100 trips to Mexico by finding a winning custom-wrapped Corona beach bottle or can, each with a unique code, that were randomly inserted into packages nationwide. Consumers used the code to enter the random drawing which awarded more than 1,700 prizes that included Corona-branded patio umbrellas, rolling coolers and beach cabana tents, along with the trips.

This promotion Jim stated delivered at least $845K in incremental cases of volume over the last two years. So, Corona is planning to launch this sweepstakes again this year with a target date in May.

Kevin and I definitely found our beach while in Mexico. Our favorite was here at Puerto Morelos, which is a small fishing village south of Cancun. The reef is just off shore which is part of the Great Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest reef system in the world, which is now a protected National Marine Park. We brought our cooler with Corona's each day that we visited. But don't tell too many people about this great beach. We don't want too many tourists to find out about it. Adios for now!

Porsche 911 Carrera Sweepstakes Helps Launch Falken Tire's Largest Social Media Campaign to Date

At PMA's Annual Marketing Conference which was held in Chicago last week I had the pleasure of moderating one of the break-out panel sessions which was called Building Brands through Promotion: Beyond Facebook. The focus was on how to run promotions such as sweepstakes, contests and games through applications on Facebook to grow and engage with fans. I got to meet representatives from three of the top Facebook application companies who joined me on the panel: Mike Nabasny from Wildfire, Jim Belosic the founder of Shortstack and Kelly Lund with Capita Technologies.

At the same time I was working with our client, Falken Tire, in preparation for their largest social media campaign to date tied directly to the Porsche 911 Carerra Sweepstakes which launched on Friday, March 16. Fans can enter for a chance to win the Grand Prize which features a brand new 2012 Porsche 911 Carerra worth $82K by visiting the Falken Tire Facebook page. We built the promotion on the Shortstack app which allows for a non-fan message to be revealed first inviting people to Like the Facebook page if they haven't yet in order to enter the sweepstakes.

At the same time the sweepstakes was launching Falken Tire switched over to their new Facebook Timeline page where we were able to feature the promotion as one of the Application Photo tiles that are featured under the cover photo. The promotion was pinned at the top of their news feed over the weekend as well.

The promotion launch date coincided with the eve of the start of the 2012 season of the American Le Mans Series. Falken Tire is a leader in high performance tire technology for cars and trucks and this campaign's objective is to drive awareness of their Azenis product line and grow and engage with their Facebook fans. The weekend included the ALMS 12 Hours of Sebring race and featured the new Falken television commercial on Sunday, the 18th, which promotes the Azenis tire line.

Falken Tire also partnered with the team at CityVille, the popular simulation and social network game. CityVille reaches more than 48 million monthly users through Facebook. At the same time the Porsche Sweepstakes launched, Falken Tire also introduced this partnership which includes a CityCash Weekly Giveaway awarding daily prizes of $10.00, $25.00, and $50.00 Zynga Game Cards. Also Cityville Players can compete on a Falken-branded racetrack and have an opportunity to earn a Falken themed racecar. Yesterday, we saw a huge spike in the number of entries since Cityville started featuring both the Giveway and the Porsche Sweepstakes on the top of their page.

Andrew Hoit, Falken Vice President of Marketing stated “The growth of this form of social media is just astonishing, and when you add in the inherent value of Facebook and its strong appeal of “Likes,” this program reaches our loyal fans, as well as new eyeballs from consumers who may try our brand for the first time." Currently their fan based is more than 75% male. So I invite all my women friends who also like to drive like me to become Falken Tire fans and let's grow the female percentage a bit!

I'm now working with the Falken Tire team on the next exciting promotion that will be out soon. So stay tuned! I'm so glad to be part of this team.

"Attention is the New Currency" Game Changers - Day 1 of PMA's Annual Marketing Conference.

Day 1 of PMA's 2-Day Annual Marketing Conference took place yesterday. I arrived back in Chicago on Tuesday to attend and headed over to the Westin North Hotel where it's being held for the first time and is my first time staying here. They've picked up the theme from last year's conference, Game Changers, and added "The Rules are being rewritten. Don't be left behind".

The folks at PMA asked me to moderate a panel at this year's conference which we called Building Brands through Promotion: Beyond Facebook. This was one of the first break out sessions that was held yesterday right after lunch. The focus of this session was on how to run promotions such as sweepstakes, contests, games through applications on Facebook to grow and engage with fans. Joining me was Mike Nabasny from Wildfire, Jim Belosic the founder of Shortstack and Kelly Lund who's with Capita Technologies. They each showed a brief presentation showing some different case studies that demonstrate how brands are using these apps to connect with their fans. The new changes for Facebook's Timeline for Brands was discussed as well as how to design your app for mobile. Thank you Mike, Jim and Kelly for a great session that was very well attended. So glad to finally meet you all.

Most attendees that I spoke to during the day commented on how much, to their surprise, they enjoyed the opening keynote from David Shing from AOL. I say we were surprised because many of us still remember the old AOL who used to send us those CD's in massive direct mail campaigns, which David kidded about at the start of his presentation. When David took the stage, just by his presence, we knew it was going to be a different talk. He's got a creative background and was dressed in black, with crazy sneakers with wings on them and long black hair with a spike in the middle of his head.

David spoke about how the Communication Game is Changing, which we all know, but when you sum it all up like he did, you realize really how big of a change we are right NOW experiencing. He shared with us some interesting examples of the changes along with statements such as "Attention is the New Currency", and today it's all about "Influencer Marketing". Marketers today need to move to "conversations" and away from "campaigns". Thanks David for an insightful presentation.

The rest of the morning we got to hear from Cindy Donahoe, VP of Pharmacy Marketing at Walgreens. Cindy reviewed with us their "Arm Yourself" campaign which won the top Reggie Award last year. The campaign's focus was all about driving people to a Walgreens location to get their flu shot. Jim Sabia from Crown Imports then made us all want to sit on a beach and drink some Coronas. We did get a chance to drink a few Coronas at the cocktail hour later in the day! The Corona Summer Beach campaign, which included a beach trip giveaway sweepstakes promotion, delivered 845,000 incremental cases of volume over the past two years!

Subway's $5 Footlong has now become a $5 billion brand, instead of just a 4-week promotion that Tony Pace, CMO from Subway, told us. We all know the jingle that plays in our heads when you hear that term. Tony fought the team that wanted to originally go with a $4.99 pricing and ended up with a huge hit!

At the lunch break we were treated to an entertaining and insightful presentation form Jeff Rosenblum, who gave us a preview of the movie "The Naked Brand". Today all brands are transparent, whether they want to be or not. He used Crayola as an example of a brand that from customer reviews of one of their products, the Colored Bubble Launcher, has turned them into a brand that tortures kids and their parents (one tortured father was in the audience). Just go to Amazon and search for the product and you'll see what it's all about.

The most popular topic of the day however was who was taking credit for the amazing summer weather we experienced here in Chicago in the middle of March. I think the high was 81 degrees and it's going to be the same today! The Westin has a patio right on the river that we were able to step out on during breaks to get a breadth of fresh air an enjoy it. Thank you Chicago and the PMA for a great day. Day 2 begins shortly!

Facebook Timeline for Brand Pages: Top Tips to Get You Up and Running

I started writing my weekly blog post last week, as I'm doing now, and stumbled upon the fact that Facebook launched their Timeline for Brands that day. I was promoting the fact that I've now been blogging for 5 years and following my yearly tradition, I was planning to write about the Dove brand since they were featured in my very first blog post. I hopped on over to Dove's Facebook page and to my surprise discovered that they had updated to the new Timeline format. I then wrote about what I found there not fully realizing what it all meant yet.

As the day went on, I started to receive many emails and newsletters that all were about the Facebook Timeline introduction. I tried to read as much as I could, as quickly as I could, to understand what all this means to brands and specifically to the current sweepstakes and contest tabs I had running for clients. Here's a quick summary of the top changes you need to know. Since I was invited by GM last week to test drive a new Chevy Volt at the Rochester Auto Show, I decided to use their new page as an example.

Now if you visit your Facebook page you'll see a message from Facebook at the top and a link to preview what your page would look like in Timeline. So Facebook has already started the process for us. Everyone has till March 30 to further create their Timeline and at that time it will be published whether you are ready or not. Everyone can publish it sooner however. and many I see already have.

The biggest change is that you now have the expanded space at the top of the page for a large cover photo (851 x 315 pixels). You can really get creative with this space and use it to enhance your brand, however it also comes with a few restrictions. Facebook states: “Covers may not display calls to action or references to Facebook features such as “Like this Page”, purchase or pricing info such as “40% off” or “Download at our website”, or contact information such as web address.”

The tab pages are also larger with Timeline. Currently they are 520 pixels wide and with Timeline they will expand to 810 pixels. All the 520 pixels tabs will still work once you switch over to Timeline and will look centered in the middle of the 810-pixel layout without any adjustments. You can then update an existing tab to a the larger size at any time. The biggest disadvantage now is that we can no longer have specific default landing pages for non-fans. For instance a Like Us to enter a sweepstakes or contest tab or a Welcome tab that invites non-fans to become fans will not work once you convert to Timeline.

Without default landing tabs, pages will now need to communicate in a different way to encourage non-fans to Like the page and become a fan. One option is to use the smaller photo tiles that are now located on the right side of the page below the cover photo. Facebook is referring to these as the application tab icons. There are four that are automatically displayed and if you have multiple apps then the visitor will have to click a button to the far right to expose the rest.

Similar to the existing menu on a page's left hand side, the first app icon is Photos which cannot be moved from that position. There is also another app icon that will automatically appear which features the number of Likes on your page. This icon can be moved from it's default position, but it cannot be deleted. There are a total of 12 app icon spaces, however since two are permanent you really can only add up to 10 apps. These new application icons dimensions are 111 × 74 pixels and page administrators can easily upload a photo and name each icon.

Another way to raise awareness of specific apps or events that I really like is the ability to “pin” certain posts to the top of the Timeline. Similar to how us bloggers feature a post so that it remains at the top of a blog for a specified period of time, pinning a post to the top of Timeline allows you to do the same. A pinned post is distinguished by a small, orange flag. You can pin only one item at a time, and the pinned item then will stay at the top of the Timeline for up to 7 days as well as permanently within its chronological place. So you should start to plan out a calendar of what items you want to pin and for how long.

I wanted to point out another new feature which is the ability for a fan to private message a page. Once they do the brand page will have the ability to private message them back. So this could be a great way to handle issues that should remain private and not open to the public. For example if someone posts on your page a problem that they are having you could suggest that they private message you so that you can work directly with them offline to help solve their issue.

Going forward with your new Timeline page you really will need to update your page every day. People who visit your page will see an activity stream on the upper right hand side that shows the visitor their friends that are also fans of the page and any interactions between them and the page. If no friends have interacted then it displays the most recent post. Here you'll see 2 of my friends on the Chevy Volt page along with the post I wrote last week regarding the test drive I did. It's important to plan out daily content that engages users by asking questions and encouraging comments and shares so that this section doesn't look empty.

Overall, the new changes for brand page are a big plus, but of course it will take us all a while to get used to. It definitely is an exciting time to be in this business and I'm looking forward to seeing what some of these new pages will feature. Are you or your company planning to do anything differently with the new page? Please share your thoughts and/or questions in the comments below.