I recently came across an interesting article in Advertising Age which quoted a joint study by ComScore and Facebook.  The study stated that brand posts actually reach more friends-of-fans, than fans itself which shows how much leverage social media can really have.  To use the example highlighted in the article, a Starbucks post to its fan page in May reached about 6.5 million of its 24 million fans.  An additional 11 million people were reached by fans "liking" or commenting on the post - these were the friends-of-fans.  Ad Age noted that the 17.5 million "reached" by the Starbuck's post didn't go to the Starbucks brand page, but saw the activity in the form of a news feed or friend's profile view.  Still, a tremendous result and that combined reach of fans and friends-of-fans equates to 8% of total U.S. internet users -- at zero-cost!   The link to the article is below:

http://adage.com/article/digital/a-facebook-fan-worth-depends-number-friends/228923/

                              

I've often heard that, "adults don't really use Facebook or other social media" when we have recommended using social media to clients.  While doing research for the Direct Marketing, Social Media and E-Commerce class that I co-taught in September at St. Joe's Executive Master's in Food Marketing Program with George Latella, I came across an international study from Deloitte that suggests otherwise (chart below).  As of December 2009, almost half of the Baby Boomers and more than one-third of the Matures (65+) use at least one of the major social networking sites.  While that information is now one year old, I would expect it to show dramatic increases in penetration for the older generations throughout 2010.  Imagine my surprise when I got a Facebook friend request from my 83-year-old mother-in-law last summer!  At that time, she had three friends - my wife and her two sisters. 

                              

For as long as I can remember, marketers have been applying animal or human characteristics to their brands to communicate a "brand personality".  But, I don't remember hearing that there was any real "science" behind that.  However, a recent study seems to suggest that there is something to it, afterall.  

In an article in Forbes Magazine, Chris Malone of Relationship Capital Group says, "According to a recent study of more than a thousand representative U.S. consumers, people respond to brands in much the same way they instinctively perceive and judge one another--on the basis of warmth and competence. Companies that understand what really lies behind that dynamic have a chance to win the kind of deep customer loyalty that has been elusive even for highly successful national brands." 

Recently, I had the good fortune of hearing Chris speak about how people view brands to a graduate level class in the Food Marketing Program that George Latella and I co-taught at SJU.  Chris's insights came from the research study his company conducted in July, 2010 using researchers from Princeton University.  One of the conclusions from the study was that there was a statistical correlation between how the brands in the study ranked on "warmth" and "competence" and purchase intent.  The brands in the study were McDonalds, Burger King, Shell, BP, Tylenol, Advil, Minute Maid and Tropicana.

I found this fascinating, and very promising for use in advertising and other forms of consumer marketing communications.  Does this also suggest that brands reaching out to form relationships with consumers through social media is on the right track?  I think so.  The link to the Forbes Magazine article is http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/01/marketing-brands-loyalty-bp-mcdonalds-burger-king-tropicana-tylenol-cmo-network.html