Lately, a wide range of social media writers have made much of the fact that the user base for Pinterest is overwhelmingly female, with even conservative estimates claiming 80% of users are women. Some writers have speculated that the structure of Pinterest, with an emphasis on visuals, appeals more to women, while other writers think that Pinterest appeals more to women because it focuses on social interactions by forming communities. However, what these writers are actually doing is reading too much into their own interpretations of the differences between the genders. Their arguments underestimate the flexibility of social mediums, in this case Pinterest, while trying to look for biological, rather than social, reasons for why Pinterest has become dominated by women. In the US, the Pinterest user base is predominately made up of women because women were the first, or perhaps just the fastest, to start inhabiting Pinterest and define its focus today. Women, by connecting with other women both on Pinterest and in real life, have made Pinterest a space for women.

In a country where men are traditionally the first ones to adopt new technology, it’s easy to see why writers have been sent into a tailspin trying to figure out why the gender ratio in Pinterest users is reversed from the usual statistics. These statistics have led some writers and analysts to speculate why Pinterest appeals to women in particular, and many have concluded that this is due to the structure of Pinterest itself.  For example, Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois in Chicago, has compared Pinterest to the bulletin boards that girls hang up and decorate in their bedrooms: “It reminds me of my girlfriends in high school who’d cut stuff out of magazines and pin it up on a wall…This is the Web-based, digital equivalent of that behavior.” This statement, however anecdotally true, seems to assume that there is a biological distinction between men and women that makes women want to pin things to a board. However, I don’t think women have an innate drive to create collages. Instead, girls create pin boards because they’ve seen other girls create pinboards, and they liked the idea. Looking at the story this way, it becomes apparent that there’s more of a social influence at stake – we’re influenced by people of similar social groups.

With the 5-day SES New York Conference coming up on March 19th-23rd in NYC, Supercool was lucky enough to get some time with one of the event’s speakers, Jon Aizen, Director of Display Initiative, with Yahoo!. Jon shares his thoughts on what would be the coolest dynamic ad in the history of the planet, the creative value of an ad vs the marketing message, and which industries could be taking better advantage of Yahoo! Smart Ads.

Supercool Creative: If you could just waive your hand and instantly create “the coolest dynamic ad in the history of the planet,” using real or imagined technology, what would be in it?

Jon Aizen: The coolest dynamic ad would be one that is indistinguishable from the content that surrounds it – an integrated and consistent part of the experience of the webpage in which it is embedded that provides consumers with a personalized, interactive, and dynamic experience. For example, denverco.areaguides.net, which is composed of a variety of content widgets that provide job listings, news, and other types of content, is actually advertising content that the website is monetizing directly on the page.  In effect, this execution is effectively a dynamic ad, albeit one that is constructed with custom integration, but more importantly, it blurs the lines between content and advertising to deliver real value to consumers.

Supercool Creative: Does an inverse relationship exist between the creative, or entertainment value and the message effectiveness of digital initiatives? In other words, as the marketing message becomes stronger, does the entertainment value necessarily decrease and vice-versa? Is there an ideal balance?

Last night Ria and I went to the Los Angeles kickoff show of the DigiTour, a national, live tour bringing your favorite YouTube musicians to you! The show rocked the El Rey Theater for the second year in a row and was absolutely amazing… even better than last year, if you can believe that. The lineup featured: Dave Days, Destorm, Ricky Ficarelli & Wellington, Alex Goot, Asher Monroe, Nice Peter and The Key of Awesome.

Here are some photos from the event. Seriously we had a blast, so go check it out on one of the 17 tour dates that’s nearest to you! 

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We had the opportunity earlier this week to interview Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, leading up to SES New York. Avinash will be the keynote speaker at the 5-day conference being held March 19th-23rd in NYC. With an obvious passion for the work he does, Avinash shared some excellent insights about meeting customer expectations in a digital marketing world, the biggest risks marketing executives can take in 2012, and the best metrics for measuring the success of a digital marketing campaign.

Supercool Creative: On your blog, Occam’s Razor, in a post titled “The 2015 Digital Marketing Rule Book. Change or Perish,” you wrote “Aim to meet super-insane customer expectations and you’ll future-proof your business.” How can analytics and data help marketers and their agencies pinpoint and even predict those expectations?

Avinash: There are two ways to look at this. You can look within your own data and see the emerging trends and preferences of your audience. Stories they love, products they buy (and then stop buying, switching to something else), performance of experiences with lower bounce rates, Per Visit Value of your flash content vs. straight HTML5, things people are searching on after they land on your site, products getting more reviews (and more passionate ones) than others etc. etc. There is so much data you have access to, it is not even funny. Use it.

Originally published on Ad Age

Wikipedia defines symbiosis as the “close and often long-term interaction between different biological species.” That pretty much describes the relationship between brands and their agencies. Although they must work together to achieve larger, common goals, the relationship between marketing executives and agencies can be both rewarding and conflicted. Never before has this been more true than in the digital marketing space, when strategy, planning, creative development, social media and production are all expected to be cheaper, faster, more effective and more measurable than ever before.

Although they can seem as different as sea anemones and clownfish, marketing and agency executives both aspire to work hard, develop and execute fabulous campaigns, sell lots of stuff, win awards, not get fired and move up. The disconnect is often in the perceived value of the work, the scope of the work and the results that work will yield. The key to attaining those results, is for brand executives to hire the most symbiotic agency, and then make sure that agency delivers on their part of the relationship. Shove them around, spy on them, make sure they’re doing their jobs. The results will be better work and more effective campaigns.

Focus on accountability.
Campaigns, especially larger and longer ones with many moving parts, can be hard to keep an eye on. Marketing executives can often be too busy to micromanage every single detail. Stay focused on the campaign goals, short and long-term objectives and your digital or social media agency’s role in the campaign. Hold your agency to task for every deliverable they’ve set forth, and then some. Insist on frequent in-person or conference call status meetings. Agencies may hate you for this, preferring to be left to do their job, and you may not want to be bothered either, but when the campaign is over, you’ll all be a lot more successful for having gone through the exercise.

Is B2B (business to business) really ready for social media marketing? The short answer is “no.” The long answer “is almost. Let’s just say that generally speaking, these kinds of companies are  “social media curious.” My agency gets a lot of B2B inquiries from marketing, sales and PR executives with companies that are genuinely interested in “doing something a little different — you know, funny and more edgy.” Half the time they chicken out and go back to whatever they were doing before they called us, which usually includes sleep-inducing  product videos and downloadable PDFs that they will no doubt force upon corporate buyers who have grown accustomed to this, along with their bland breakfast and lukewarm coffee every morning.

My first reaction is to assume they understand their customers better than I do, but then I realize how insane that sounds, and decide that they simply don’t understand social media marketing. Here’s a quick crash course in case you need to get up to speed. I’ll go into more detail in a future article.

There are a lot of new social media sites out there. But let’s face it. Not all of them were created equal. There were a lot of sites that were good, but not great, that had to be weeded out. Here, we present the Top 5 New Social Media Sites that brands and businesses should be watching, if they’re not already.

1. Google+

Many writers have debated whether or not Google+ will be able to topple Facebook, but the point is moot. Who really cares? What businesses should be looking at is how Google+ functions differently from Facebook and how they can lean from this. One of the most important features of Google+ is the Ripples application. Ripples shows the extent of influence of a user’s post. If a publicly-shared post is re-shared, and then re-shared by others, it shows up as a larger ripple. This application makes it easy to see who, and what, has the most clout on the social media site. Brands should perk up their ears on Google+ to see who is talking about their product, and who’s actually being listened to.

2. Bandcamp

Even though Bandcamp currently only functions as a social media site to help bands and musicians connect with new listeners, it offers an interesting model that brands and businesses should keep an eye on. The site allows bands to upload liner notes and songs for free streaming, and lets them set the prices for download. The site also connects users, encouraging them to share music recommendations with each other on the site, as well as posting to other more ubiquitous social media sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. However, what really makes Bandcamp a site to watch is its user analytics. Through the site, bands can see which of their songs were played and which ones were skipped, as well as review the direct links to where their songs where shared and posted online. This gives bands the opportunity to directly respond to their fans’ postings, and extend their direct person-to-person influence over multiple other social media sites.

1. Social media is ubiquitous

Over 2 billion people worldwide use the internet, for various purposes, and almost all of them come into contact with social media through one means or another. It’s difficult to get an actual statistic on how many people use social media since a single person might participate in multiple ways, from tweeting to blogging to posting, but Facebook alone is poised to top 1 billion active users by August 2012, over 3 billion videos are viewed daily on YouTube, Twitter is at 100 million active users and Google+ is at well over 100 Million. Since social media is how people are communicating and interacting with each other online, brands and businesses have to be a part of those conversations.

2. Social media is accessible

Social media is really, really easy to access. Anyone with a name and an email address can sign up for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Foursquare or any number of social networking sites, and start connecting with friends. Even people who don’t have friends can get their social media fix by starting or reading a blog and making comments. As smartphones and wifi become almost omnipresent, your target audience no longer needs to be sitting down in front of a desktop to be able to access the internet, meaning that social media has become a constant, easily-accessible presence in public (and private) life.

Face it, the old ways of marketing are dead and that means you need to be executing expansive online marketing campaigns. With over 1 billion active users on Facebook and Twitter alone, it’s obvious that social media is the new crux of your video game marketing campaigns. To be successful, there are 8 things you need to do. Read this and then go do it.

Who’s in charge here?
Establish your Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Google+ as the go-to authority for all the information your fans need. First, develop and release creative content on a regular basis. Write and schedule updates well in advance that include events, contests, videos and other content. Be prepared to throw some of that out the window and update on the fly as needed.

Second, have a social media manager in place that is engaging and replying to users’ questions, comments and responses in real time. Do (and continue to do) those two simple things and fans will know you’re the boss.

Supercool Creative has just launched Round 4 of the contest we’re running for Capcom’s new game title  Street Fighter X Tekken. This round is called “Flat Ono vs Flat Harada” and we’re asking fans to download  and cut out a “flat” version of either Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono or Namco Bandai producer Katsuhiro Harada and snap a photo of him in a cool place!

To enter the contest or check out the campaign go to the official Street Fighter Facebook page.

Round 4 Flat Ono vs Flat Harada is part of a 5 month social media campaign that Supercool Creative is running for Capcom that includes 5 facebook contests, custom Facebook tabs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube management and a 12-episode video series called X The Line, starring video game host Andrea Rene who interviews some of the fighting game world’s top players and influencers. The series also features SFxTK-related news and events, a fan feedback segment called Cross Talk (X Talk) and frequent fan giveaways!