Fads & Ads

Marketing is Holding Back Marketing on Facebook

Over the past weekend, I spent some time in Orange County, CA, well outside of the tech bubble. I was shocked by how many people I spoke to didn’t realize that Facebook made over $2B last year. Less surprising, but more indicative of the challenges Facebook faces is what it means to market your business.

A lawyer with over 30 years of experience was telling me that he was excited to launch his firm’s Facebook page so that he could list all of the cases that they win. This is precisely the GM challenge: nobody cares what you did and how you looked good.

Today’s Facebook (and all other social, for that matter) is about aligning your brand to provide content that will enhance your followers’ overall experience. In the case of the law firm: update your followers with new legislation that passes and your firm’s POV on how it can impact potential clients.

The content needs to be about how it impacts your followers, not to toot your own horn. Check out what Pepsi is doing on Facebook. They become part of the Facebook experience; not a distraction to it.

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Facebook IPO: Odd Lots Galore

Image of the day: you can really get a sense for how retail trading is taking place in today’s Facebook IPO.

Typically shares trade in round “lots” which traders executes in magnitudes of 100. This makes it easier to align bids and asks and how most counterparties agree to a price.

In some cases, when you have retail buyers, who are buying more on how much they can “afford” at say $5,000 or $10,000, you get what’s known as an odd lot - a trade that has a non-divisible-by-100 amount of shares. Looks like it’s going gangbusters on the retail front.

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Degree: Masters of Movement

The deodorant marketing wars are on fire. Old Spice’s Believe in Your Smellf campaign highlighted the power of comedy in making you feel manly, but Degree’s new Masters of Movement campaign tracks 4 athletes through amazing feats of strength.

Loving the longer format which makes it feel like you’re actually watching content and not advertising. Exciting that more brands are investing in content-based marketing.

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