Marketing Science

http://e.ccialerts.com/a/hBKXG$9AHJQfmAUDSLFASbv4uD0/clck63

Novo Nordisk, Spokesman Pay Extra Care to Regulatory Issues

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Scrutiny of direct-to-consumer advertising from the Food and Drug Administration may be heightening, but that has not deterred one pharmaceutical company from trying something new for the industry: a branded Twitter page.

FULL ARTICLE http://e.ccialerts.com/a/hBKXG$9AHJQfmAUDSLFASbv4uD0/clck63

In days of old, advertisers had to buy TV airtime, magazine placements, or radio spots to send their ads out to reach customers. Usually one of the largest chunks of cost is the media placement, followed by “creative” development and content creation.

What if there was a way to cut out most or all of the media cost?  And what if we could also substantially reduce the cost of “creative development” and “content creation?”  Look at the JetBlue example below.  On Twitter, JetBlue has nearly 600,000 followers.  Each of these followers has basically “opted in” to receive their updates, often multiple times a day (“costless media”). There is no “media cost” for getting these messages out. Compare this to what it would cost to air a TV ad that reaches 600,000 viewers (assuming all the viewers wanted to receive the ad, and were sitting there in front of the TV watching the ad when it was aired).

Also, the cost of content is nearly zero too. JetBlue has their customer service people (and fans) help create content by tweeting. These tweets range from customer service (“twitter customer service”) , to service notices (e.g. dense fog in NYC area airports causing delays, etc.), to tips from frequent travelers. This type of content is more “real,” valuable, and trusted than an advertisement. And there is no cost of “creative development” because the content does not need to be dressed up into a glossy ad for TV or print — it’s just 140 characters of text at a time. It’s more effective AND lower cost?!  Imagine that!

Finally, notice in the “bio” area on the upper right of the screen shot that it reports who is currently on duty — “Morgan and Lindsey” — this gives the normally faceless customer service system a name and a face and perhaps even a personality.  JetBlue’s twitter is a great example of social marketing done awesome!

Every year around SXSW, there’s a surge in interest about twitter. This time around people have even gone as far as to proclaim twitter to be “the next google” or “the future of search” etc.  Bullocks!

Here’s why:

1) distant from other social networks – While we are seeing a massive surge in interest and usage of twitter, it is still a long way off from the number of users of other social networks; it will take a long time to get to critical mass; and this is a prerequisite for twitter to assail the established habit of the majority of consumers to “google it.” — Google’s already a verb. 

2) no business model – It remains to be seen whether Twitter can come up with a business model to survive for the long haul. Ads with search are proven. Ads on social networks are not. And given the 140-character limit, there’s hardly any space to add ads. 

3) lead adopters’ perspective is skewed - Twitter is still mostly lead adopters and techies so far; so the perspectives on its potential may be skewed too positively. As more mainstream users start to use it, we’re likely to see more tweets about nose picking, waking up, making coffee, being bored, etc….  This will quickly make the collective mass of content far less specialized and useful (as it is now). 

4) too few friends to matter – Most people have too few friends. Not everyone is a Scott Monty ( @scottmonty ) with nearly 15,000 followers. So while a user’s own circle of friends would be useful for real-time searches like “what restaurant should I go to right now?” the circle is too small to know everything about everything they want to search on. And even if you take it out to a few concentric circles from the original user who asked, that depends on people retweeting your question to their followers and ultimately someone notifying you when the network has arrived at an answer — not likely to happen. 

5) topics only interesting to small circle of followers – Most topics tweeted are interesting to only a very small circle of followers, most likely not even to all the followers of a particular person. A great way to see this phenomenon is with twitt(url)y. It measures twitter intensity of a particular story and lists the most tweeted and retweeted stories.  Out of the millions of users and billions of tweets, the top most tweeted stories range in the 100 – 500 tweet range and recently these included March 18 – Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 preview event; #skittles; and the shutdown of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News.  Most other tweets are simply not important enough to enough people for them to retweet. 

6) single purpose apps or social networks go away when other sites come along with more functionality or when big players simply add their functionality to their suite of services. 

Am I missing something here, people?  Agree with me or tell me I’m stupid @acfou  

http://www.webkitchen.be/2009/02/18/adobe-on-twitter/

Adobe on Twitter
By Serge Jespers 18 February 2009 at 11:02 am
I thought it was a good idea to compile a list of Adobeans on Twitter. It was quite surprising to see how big this list turned out and I’m pretty sure there must be even more of us on Twitter. If you know of someone not on the list, feel free to add them in the comments!

Flash Platform evangelism

Duane Nickull: http://twitter.com/duanechaos
Tom Krcha: http://twitter.com/tomkrcha
Mihai Corlan: http://twitter.com/mcorlan
Greg Wilson: http://twitter.com/gregorywilson
Enrique Duvos: http://twitter.com/eduvos
Daniel Dura: http://twitter.com/ddura
Kevin Hoyt: http://twitter.com/parkerkrhoyt
Andrew Shorten: http://twitter.com/ashorten
Lee Brimelow: http://twitter.com/leebrimelow
James Ward: http://twitter.com/jlward4th
Ryan Stewart: http://twitter.com/ryanstewart
Serge Jespers: http://twitter.com/sjespers
Raghu: http://twitter.com/raghunathrao
Harish: http://twitter.com/hsivaram
Anirudh: http://twitter.com/anirudhs
Sujit: http://twitter.com/sujitg
Mihai “Miti” Pricope http://twitter.com/mpricope
Cornel Creanga http://twitter.com/cornelcreanga
Terry Ryan: http://twitter.com/tpryan
Flash Platform

Michele Turner: http://twitter.com/mturner
Robin Charney: http://twitter.com/Rcharney
Mike Chambers: http://twitter.com/mesh
AIR

Ethan Malasky: http://twitter.com/emalasky
Rob Christensen: http://twitter.com/robchristensen
Christian Cantrell: http://twitter.com/cantrell
Flex

Matt Chotin: http://twitter.com/mchotin
Cocomo

Nigel Pegg: http://twitter.com/nigelpegg
Fang Chang: http://twitter.com/fkchang
Varun Parmar: http://twitter.com/vparmar230
Pixelbender

Kevin Goldsmith: http://twitter.com/KevinGoldsmith
Samantha Bailey: http://twitter.com/upperleftcorner
Adobe Core Tech

Jim Hong: http://twitter.com/jimhong
John Metzger: http://twitter.com/metz123
Kevin Stewart: http://twitter.com/kstewart
Mike Houser: http://twitter.com/tharkad
ColdFusion

Adam Lehman: http://twitter.com/adrocknaphobia
Products

AIR: http://twitter.com/air
Pixelbender: http://twitter.com/pixelbender
Flash Platform: http://twitter.com/Flash_Platform
ColdFusion: http://twitter.com/coldfusion
Buzzword: http://twitter.com/Buzzword
Adobe Reader: http://twitter.com/Adobe_Reader
Dreamweaver: http://twitter.com/dreamweaver
Spry: http://twitter.com/AdobeSpry
Developer relations

Ed Sullivan: http://twitter.com/esulliva
Rachel Luxemburg: http://twitter.com/rlux
Ted Patrick: http://www.twitter.com/AdobeTed
John Dowdell: http://www.twitter.com/jdowdell
Stacy Sison: http://www.twitter.com/ssison
Creative Suite evangelists

Paul Burnett: http://twitter.com/pburnett
Karl Soule: http://twitter.com/KarlSoule
Greg Rewis: http://twitter.com/garazi
Jason Levine: http://twitter.com/Beatlejase
Rufus Deuchler: http://twitter.com/rufusd
Flash Catalyst

NJ: http://twitter.com/rictus
Rob Adams: http://twitter.com/robadams
Cory West: http://twitter.com/corywest
Adobe After Effects

Dan Wilk: http://twitter.com/DanielWilk
Michael Natkin: http://twitter.com/michaelnatkin
Chris Prosser: http://twitter.com/cprosser
Open source

Dave McAllister: http://twitter.com/dwmcallister
Creative Suite

Doug Winnie: http://twitter.com/sfdesigner
Scott Fegette: http://twitter.com/sfegette
Marc Kubishta: http://twitter.com/kubischta
Connect

Mark Blair: http://www.twitter.com/markblair
Randah McKinnie: http://www.twitter.com/randah
Guillaume Privat: http://www.twitter.com/gprivat
Brant Strand: http://www.twitter.com/BStrand
Adobe Nordics

Anna Bouveng: http://twitter.com/annabou
Mattias Jonsson: http://twitter.com/mjonsson
Andreas Hollstrom: http://twitter.com/hollstrom
Adobe UK

Emma Wilkinson: http://twitter.com/emmawilkinson
Adobe Netherlands/Belgium

Klaasjan Tukker: http://twitter.com/ktukker
Bert Hagendoorn: http://twitter.com/berthagendoorn
Adobe Usergroup NL: http://twitter.com/adobeusergroup
Adobe Romania

Bogdan Ripa http://twitter.com/bogdanripa
Alexandru Costin http://twitter.com/acostin
Irina Huzum http://twitter.com/irinah
Adrian Spinei http://twitter.com/aspinei
Cosmin Lehene http://twitter.com/clehene
Andrei Dragomir http://twitter.com/adragomir
Sorin Sbarnea http://twitter.com/sbarnea
Mihaela Barbu http://twitter.com/mihabarbu
Adrian Tanase http://twitter.com/atanase
Horia Galatanu http://twitter.com/horiag
Ovidiu Eftimie http://twitter.com/eovidiu
Gelu Blanariu http://twitter.com/gelu11
Gabriel Dobritescu http://twitter.com/GabiD
Catalin Anastasoaie http://twitter.com/acatalin
Dragos Georgita http://twitter.com/drageo2000
Remus Stratulat http://twitter.com/rstratulat
Cristian Ivascu http://twitter.com/ivascucristian
Adobe Germany

Sven Doelle: http://twitter.com/sdoelle