This document discusses social media and its role and value for brands. It summarizes Mark Ritson's presentation on this topic from an alumni reunion in 2013. Some of the key points made include that while social media can be useful for brands, its impact and value is often overstated. Social media typically accounts for a small portion of digital marketing spending and is a weak driver of direct purchases. The quest for ROI from social media often leads to unrealistic expectations and pressures brands to demonstrate value in ways that are difficult to quantify.

2. The World’s Greatest Ever Sports Photograph

4. Ritson versus Social Media
Mark Ritson
Associate Professor
Almuni Reunion 2013

5. It Started When the Lights Went Out

6. Literally….

8. The Tweet Heard Around the World

9. 
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65,000 followers
Average CTR of Twitter link: 0.45%
Generous CTR of 2%
1,300 followers opened link
Amplification?
Re-Tweeted 15,000 times
x 208 followers (USA average) – 3m+
x 2% CTR
63,000 followers
Reach of 64,500
Oreo’s US market: 80,000,000 people
0.01% of their market
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TV audience 108,000,000 million
47% ad viewing (eyes on screen)
50,000,000 million people
X 60 seconds
Moving parts!
3000 times better

10. The Usual Reponses
The Super User
It’s a conversation, dude
Integration Effects

11. Terms of Reference
research
service
SOCIAL MEDIA
communication
people
brands

12. Big Numbers

 500 million globally
 2.1 million Australians
 15% adult population active
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 1 billion + globally
 11.5 million Australians
 33% adult population active
SOCIAL MEDIA

13. Some Smaller Numbers
70,500
8,500
9,000
Social Media
Is
Over-Rated

14. Small Numbers
 13,000,000 people will shop at Woolworths this week
 One in 1 in 3000 of them will engage with them on Facebook

15. Social Media Defined

16. Social Media
 It means communication between people…
 65% of Australians
 Don’t follow any brands
on Twitter

17. A Precarious Contradiction
 “I’m not sure if its working”
 “I want to do more next year”

18. The Urgent Search for ROI

19. The Quest for ROI

20. Chapter 1: The Pissing Contest
 2009
 Buy friends & followers
 Not all of them genuine
 Fake Followers:
Target, K-Mart, Bunnings, Big W
6,000
 Only 28% of the followers of the top 100 are real

21. Chapter 2: A Crude $ Value
2010
 2 cents
 12 cents
 $1.45
 $138.00
 $174.17

22. Chapter 3: The Power of Like
2011
 Do Facebook likes make you money?
 Study of 3 brands
 Bing
 Soutwest
 Starbucks
 Conclusion – Yes!

23. A Lurking Variable

24. For Example

25. In The Same Way

26. Chapter 4: Chaos

27. The Experts However…

29. The Experts

30. Unilever & Coke
 Early adopters – 24 months ahead
 Experts at ROI
 Cross Comparison versus other tools
 Both continuing with social media
 But also stepping back
 A more nuanced approach
 A more traditional approach

31. You Knew About these?

32. Your Best Guess…
8 hours per week
16 hours per week

33. Good News Only - & Often

34. Social Spend is Small Part of Digital

35. Social is a Weak Purchase Driver
 Less than
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Outdoor
TV
Newspaper ads
Sampling
Er.. Erverything
 A Digital Divide

36. Search versus Social

38. The Same Imbalance
 Social gets 1:20 of Australian adspend
 Social gets equal media coverage
 Social generates 1:17 of traffic versus Search
 Social gets 4x or 58x the media coverage

39. The Jackdaw Profession
shiny, shiny

40. Paranoid About Being Out of It

42. The Elevator Experiment

43. It’s A Very Crowded Elevator

44. So What?
 Q: Is social media worthless?
 A: No
 A middle ground
 Q: Is social media as valuable and as important
as we are being told?
 A: No

45. Rhetoric is Good
 No-one else is asking these questions
 Everyone else is doing down traditional media
 When I do “have a go” at social nobody actually
knocks me down (properly)
 Its what (good) B Schools should do
 And this is the way brand managers are meant to
behave

46. I Come from the Eighties

47. 1988: A Vintage Era
 The creation of modern brand management
 The arrival of IMC
 The importance of media neutrality

48. The Social Business
 A separate allocated budget?
 Clients who want social, but don’t know why?
 Separate planning tools and models
 A complete lack of critical thinking
 The fear to question and to reject

49. A New Tool, The Usual Process
 Start with your objectives
 Use the same funnel we always have
 Look at your positioning
 The private bank question
 Be suspicious of all the tools
 Ask the hard questions of all of them
 Play them off against each other

50. As We Conclude…
 Old man out of time
 The 12th Man

52. Questions / Comments

53. Connections
Mark.Ritson
@markritson