Read the article on CommPRO.biz

As you know, Web 1.0 was characterized by prolific content creation: organizations raced to claim their static presences on the Internet and produce commerce-driven media. Web 2.0 – and social media – brought with it an era of connectivity and reciprocity.

And today, branded content now tells stories, and provides value to the consumer. So what will the next iteration of the World Wide Web’s impact on brands look like?

In order to understand this, we must evaluate the current situation of online content. Mobile access to the Internet has resulted in hyper-productivity—namely, more people creating more content more often, and in more places. Instead of owning one online property, such as a blog or a dot-com, virtually everyone on the Web manages several pieces of real estate through which they publish content and interact with their social networks.

But with new opportunities arise new challenges. The demand is high for a reduction in noise; several applications have appeared allowing users to vet relevant content, prioritize the content, and discover more content that aligns more closely with their interests. So what will Web 3.0 be about?

The answer: Personalization.

Navigating the Web has become stressful, and users are seeking a more pleasant experience. Relevancy is now the name of the game: Brands must now compete for the attention of their audiences by providing personal value to the users. This means that we can no longer identify target audiences in terms of demographic; but rather, along passion points. Passion points are the things that users are passionate about, the types of content that they actively seek out online.

Personalization will occur in three specific areas:

1. Data Collection

The future will bring more niche networks that connect people and things in similar ways that humans connect in the offline world. This is called the interest graph. The interest graph is the data collected from a user’s online actions that give insight into that user’s passions, interests, and activates. The interest graph is especially useful to marketers looking to amplify their brand’s message within niche markets.

2. Technology Development

Technology will not only be built with function in mind, but with social components built in to the device, resulting in a new breed of “smart appliances.” Think of all the social actions that people take around food, from sharing recipes to uploading photos of their favorite dishes. A refrigerator with Internet access can not only recommend recipes based on your existing inventory, but suggest recipes that your friends have tried (and even gave a positive rating to).

3. Personalized Engagement

With a staggering rate of new users joining more and more social networks, billions upon billions of data points are being produced every day. The brands that will succeed in meeting their business objectives are the ones that can scale for personalized engagement across multiple platforms. Each platform requires a different approach, different technology, and yields different results. It’s no longer about maintaining a presence on social – it’s about tailoring what you publish and how you interact to unique audiences within each channel.

The future of social is about the online world meeting the offline world in ways that are as diverse and as personal as the individuals using them. To learn more about the future of social from influential new media experts like Joseph Jaffe, check out the video below:

The Cannes committee has rolled out its final jury lists and there are some notable names, as expected, in the bunch. Namely, Big Fuel’s founder/CCO Avi Savar will topline the Branded Content & Entertainment jury as president, Saatchi & Saatchi global digital creative director Tom Eslinger will oversee the Mobile Lions and Ivan Zacharias, director on the Stink roster, will take on the jury president role for the Cannes Film Craft Lions. Phew, thus ends our Cannes coverage, we think, until the actual fest gets underway. Check out the full jury lists after the jump.

Branded Content & Entertainment Lions Jury
Avi Savar, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Big Fuel, USA – Jury President
Rodrigo Figueroa Reyes, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, FiRe Advertainment, Argentina
Michael Hilliard, Executive Producer, FINCH, Australia
Silvia Goh, Managing Director, LiquidThread/Starcom MediaVest Group, China
Jan Godsk, Creative Consultant/Branded Content Specialist, Ideatakeaway, Denmark
Cyrus Oshidar, Creative Director, Bawa Broadcasting, India
Marc Ros, Partner & General Director, AFTERSHARE.TV, Spain
Dean Baker, Managing Director, JWT Entertainment, United Kingdom
Mary Lisio, Senior Vice-President, Non-Fiction & Branded Entertainment, Scott Free Productions, USA
Doug Scott, President, OgilvyEntertainment, USA
Bill Davenport, President, Wieden + Kennedy Entertainment, USA
Scott Donaton, Chief Executive Officer & President, Ensemble, USA

Film Craft Lions Jury
Ivan Zacharias, Director, Stink, United Kingdom – Jury President
Dulcidio Caldeira, Director, ParanoidBR, Brazil
Ralf Schmerberg, Artist/Director, Atelier Ralf Schmerberg, Germany
Sneha Iype Varma, Executive Producer/Partner, Nirvana Films, India
Seiichi Hishikawa, Executive Creative Director, Drawing and Manuel, Japan
Espen Horn, Executive Producer, Motion Blur, Norway
Alex Roman, Director, The Third & The Seventh, Spain
Peter Raeburn, Creative Director, Soundtree Music, United Kingdom
Michael Sagol, Executive Producer & Managing Partner, Caviar, USA
Diane Jackson, Executive Vice-President/Director of Integrated Production, DDB Chicago, USA

Mobile Lions Jury
Tom Eslinger, Digital Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, Global – Jury President
Barney Loehnis, Digital Lead Asia Pacific, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Asia Pacific
Leo Xavier, Founder, Grupo.Mobi, Brazil
Paul Gunning, Chief Executive Officer, Tribal DDB Worldwide, Global
Daisuke Yanasawa, Chief Executive Officer, KAYAC, Japan
Hoon-Joo Shin, Vice-President of Corporate Image, KT, Korea
Per Holmkvist, Founder & Board Director, Mobiento, Sweden
Salvador Carillo Bardo, Chief Executive Officer, Mobile Dreams Factory, Spain
Peter Sells, Head of Mobile, BBH, United Kingdom
Laura Marriott, Chief Executive Officer, NeoMedia Technologies, USA

I was quoted in Saya Weissman’s article in Digiday today talking about the insane adoption of Zynga’s new game DrawSomething.

Draw Something is the latest digital phenomenon. It took the game just 50 days to get over 50 million downloads in just 50 days.

The Zynga-owned game is simple and fun. It’s like playing an easier version of Pictionary on your iPhone with your friends or with strangers. With the tap of your finger you can try to clumsily draw your best waffle or surfboard, or you can watch someone else draw and then guess what it is. Big Fuel chief creative officer Avi Savar calls it “Pictionary for the Facebook generation.”

It’s safe to say that Zynga is probably feeling pretty good about its recent purchase of OMGPOP for $180 million The question is how, if at all, Zygna will further incorporate brands into its ad strategy. Like all new bright, shiny digital objects, it’s unclear if Draw Something will be a viable outlet for brands beyond being yet another place for banner ads.

“I think there’s a deep opportunity to integrate,” said Brandon Berger, chief digital officer at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. “I’m a firm believer in games being an important place for brands.”

So far on the free version it’s just the usual banner ads. With such a huge and growing audience at its disposal, Draw Something seems like the perfect place for brands to jump on board and associate themselves with a fun social game.

It would be a prime candidate for a new type of activity-based ad format like those offered by Appssavvy and Kiip, which reward users for achievements with product samples and coupons. You could imagine someone getting a brand reward for successfully drawing five words. Or Zynga could do sponsored challenges in which a brand challenges users to draw something related to the brand. For example, Nike could have running-themed sponsored words.

One thing’s for sure, there are many opportunities far beyond standard ads.

Branded color palette options or having special branded drawing topic words that relate to a brand’s message would fit in with the game and with the user experience.

“Gaming is a fun environment, but I caution any brand that participates to understand the game environment first,” warned Berger.

But Draw Something isn’t exactly the next Facebook or Twitter. It is after all just a supremely popular mobile game.

“I think brands can learn a lot from the adoption of the game,” said Savar. “I don’t look at this as anything more than a game right now.”

I had a nice quote in this article by Stuart Elliot in today’s New York Times print and online editions

Social media enable brands to amplify advertising centered on authenticity because the details of their history and heritage give them a story to tell to an audience that prizes “status and reputation,” said Avi Savar, chief creative officer at Big Fuel, a social media agency that is majority-owned by the Publicis Groupe.

“The big idea is what’s the existing social behavior a brand can tap into,” Mr. Savar said. “If I align with a brand, it needs to align with my values.”

Oscar Rolls out Its Red Carpet for Social Media

By Avi Savar

Two years ago, Slumdog Millionaire took home 8 golden statues. Hugh Jackman sang and danced his way into America’s hearts. And Ben Stiller did a hilarious Joaquin Phoenix impression. Yet the 81^st Annual Academy Awards ranked as the 3^rd least-watched ceremony from the last 20 years. It looked as though the general public was suddenly disenchanted with Hollywood’s biggest night. But something happened the following year that caused viewership to jump by 14%. What led to this sudden interest in what seemed like an aging Hollywood tradition? The answer is social media.

From The Academy’s official Facebook and Twitter accounts to its interactive website Oscar.com, the star-studded event has opened its doors and rolled out its famous red carpet to viewers worldwide, experiencing the glitz and glamour online and through second screens. There’s even an official Oscar mobile app, loaded with nominee lists, trailers, videos, fashion specials, and more, so that movie fans can get their fix no matter where they are.

This year’s theme is “celebrating the movies in all of us,” with a campaign focused on the role that movies play in our personal lives. The Academy Awards YouTube channel is holding an open call for fans to submit videos that tell unique stories of how a movie or movie moment has changed their lives, to be featured on their channel leading up to the show. The Academy has also teamed up with humor website FunnyOrDie.com to produce original content that pokes fun at the historical awards show, starring Mike Myers and Academy Award Winner Kevin Kline all about Oscar etiquette. Supporting the ramp up to this Sunday is What’s Trending host Shira Lazar, hosting a series of daily interviews with various entertainment personalities, covering topics such as online chatter, fashion, and the nominations.

But nothing is more important than the engagement that takes place on Sunday night. The “Oscar Buzz” page of Oscar.com is a great resource for fans to learn how to connect with the red carpet and with each other. Fans can connect with Facebook to fill out a digital ballot, and then challenge their friends to see whose predictions were the most accurate. The hashtag #RedCarpetQA will be used for fans who want to ask the stars a question by tweeting directly to the pre-show hosts. The site also tracks trending topics (by tweets per minute) and streams tweets tagged with the #Oscars hashtag. Viewers also get a peek behind the curtain through various cameras that are set to stream all the action on the red carpet and backstage at the awards.

What I find interesting about this year’s Oscar campaign is its attempt to bring together past and present, a theme that is echoed throughout its social channels and on the official Oscar blog. An interactive timeline on the Oscars site lets users explore past nominees and memorable moments, along with corresponding historical events that help put Hollywood in context with the rest of the world.

While the Oscars are off to a great start in terms of engaging at-home viewers through social media, there’s certainly room to make the viewers a bigger part of the show. I’d also like to see integration with new platforms, like Google+ (a hangout with the stars?), and Pinterest (since the red carpet experience is a highly visual one). As they tell the less-fortunate nominees: there’s always next year!

Avi Savar is the Founder of Big Fuel. You can find him on Twitter @AviSavar.

In this new clip, Big Fuel Founder and Chief Creative Officer Avi Savar takes the time to explain more about what Branded Content & Entertainment is and why he thinks its inclusion into Cannes Lions really recognises a new and important medium in marketing. Avi Savar is this year’s Jury President for the first-ever Branded Content & Entertainment Lions.

Avi Savar is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, and this year’s President of the first-ever Cannes Lions Branded Content & Entertainment Lions. In this new video, he shares some insights into what those entering need to do to make sure their work does well when it comes to judging.

I was quoted in Tim Peterson’s recent article in Adage today talking about Facebook and the hype surrounding their upcoming IPO.

Even though Facebook has barely gotten started when it comes to advertising, the company can thank Madison Avenue for the stunning $5 billion initial public offering (IPO) it filed on Wednesday (Feb. 1). Advertising dollars accounted for 85 percent of Facebook’s $3.7 billion in revenue for 2011, and U.S. advertisers alone contributed 56 percent to the company’s 2011 revenue pile, per the SEC filing.

Facebook’s total revenue swelled by 88 percent from the prior year, with revenue from advertising jumping by 69 percent to $3.2 billion. Yet according to Debra Williamson, analyst at eMarketer, Facebook’s ad business still has “an uphill battle” in terms of attracting major advertisers, but it could bolster the business by launching its own ad network.

“Facebook is distributed across the Web and has all the pieces in place [to run an ad network],” said Williamson. But, she noted, “Every time I ask them about it, they say no.”

Avi Savar, founding partner of social agency Big Fuel, said that Facebook has “barely scratched the surface of what they can do with advertisers.” He added, “Most brands still live in a CPM world.”

For example, Facebook claims an amazing 425 million mobile users, yet the company has yet to run a single mobile ad. “We believe that we may have potential future monetization opportunities such as the inclusion of sponsored stories in users’ mobile News Feeds,” reads the S-1 filing. Bloomberg reported in December that Facebook plans to start running mobile ads by the end of March.

Aside from advertising, games played on Facebook drove a significant chunk of the company’s revenue. Social gaming giant Zynga alone accounted for 12 percent of Facebook’s overall 2011 revenue. And last July, Facebook began requiring game developers to use Facebook Payments when executing transactions via Facebook’s platform. As a result, revenue from payments and other fees chipped in $557 million to Facebook’s bottom line in 2011, a surge of 425 percent versus 2010.

Among the other interesting disclosures in Facebook’s IPO was that the site added 237 million monthly active users in 2011, closing the year with 845 million. On a given day the company said it averages 483 million unique users—a staggering level of user loyalty.

In addition, Facebook said more than 4 million businesses run Pages on the site and more than 37 million Pages had garnered 10 or more “likes” via virtual goods sales processed by Facebook and advertising purchased by Zynga.

Lastly, Facebook revealed that it increased its spend on sales and marketing by 132 percent year over year to $427 million.

Read the article on Forbes.com

Let’s admit it. For marketers, Super Bowl Sunday has nothing to do with the ball. It’s opening night for the big brand ads to imprint themselves on 70 million people in 30-second bits. The dollars that are poured into the biggest paid-media event of the year do get results: Every year at least one brand finishes the night with a big win.

Unlike the big game, though, no odds-maker in Vegas can lay numbers on which brand will take home the marketing equivalent of the Super Bowl ring by producing a video or slogan that goes viral, with people talking about it around the office, and re-tweeting it on the web Monday morning and beyond

There’s no way to predict—or create—the game-changing ad campaign. Or is there?

What if Coke already knew which members of the audience would be most receptive to its happy-go-lucky polar bear messengers and most likely to share that message with thousands? What if Pepsi, leveraging social consciousness with its “Pepsi Refresh” campaign, already knew which bloggers and Tweeters would be interested in sharing its message?

I believe we have arrived at that Moneyball moment in social media, where we have a science of social media that can guarantee results. With targeted access to social media, we can now identify strong influencers for each brand and pair them up with content, adding a powerful human element to advertising that can ensure the message reaches the intended audience.

Pairing online influencers with content has proven tremendously effective in the shared media sphere. Traditional media advertising – the television commercial or outdoor billboard delivering the message, good or bad – is inherently disruptive, interjecting itself into what the audience is doing, grabbing  attention whether people want to listen or not. The concept behind brands partnering with social media influencers is holistic. It has to be. With social media, we can’t interrupt people and get them to pay attention to us.  We must get real people talking to other real people about the brand, by enlisting the help of people who have credibility around certain content topics. The key to brand influence success is pairing the right influencer with the right piece of content and integrating the brand into that equation.

Back to Coke and Pepsi, two random big brands, big advertisers during the Super Bowl.  For fun we at Big Fuel identified the best influencers, other than media outlets, on Twitter for each brand. Since they are both soft drinks, some of their influencers are the same, but many are not. Why? Because after we identify the influencer, we study context. (I should note that we don’t know if any of these folks have a relationship with the brands.)

Using a Big Fuel analytical tool we call “Brandfluence,” we drilled down into the social media matrices and identified strong everyday influencers who work well with the content of these two brands messages. We know Coke is leveraging happiness and feeling good. Pepsi is leveraging social consciousness and doing good.

We identified the top 11 “Brandfluencers” for each brand, selecting those that skewed toward social activism for Pepsi and for Coke, those tending toward motivation and feeling good. Each of these 22 influencers frequently share their opinions, experience and feeling toward the brands, with their large social networks. We also took a look at the size of their following and the number of retweets and commentary sparked by their tweets as well as how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers are “linked” to them.

The results? Pepsi’s 11 top everyday influencers have a reach of 7.3 million people. Coke’s 11 top influencers reach 3.6 million people.

For Pepsi, we identified the number one potential “Brandfluencer” as @DamnitsTrue, which bills itself as “The # 1 Real Life Facts Site.” DamnitsTrue skews female, with 1.3 million followers, as of the day last month when we ended our research, and it has already run a Pepsi vs. Coke challenge, offering $25 gift cards to participants.

The No. 2 “Brandfluencer” for Pepsi is @OMGFacts, with more than three million followers.  @OMGFacts in August tweeted that Pepsi’s original name was “Brad’s Drink” because it was created by a pharmacist named Caleb Bradham.

No. 6 for Pepsi is CNBC sports reporter Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) with 175,000 followers, and Number 8 for Pepsi is comedienne Ruth Buzzi (@Ruth_A_Buzzi and formerly of the 1960’s TV sketch show Laugh-In) with 22,000 followers. Buzzi has tweeted jokes like “My ex-husband got fired from the Pepsi Cola Company. He tested positive for Coke.” Buzzi is an “overlap” “Brandfluencer” for Coke as well (where she came in slightly lower at number 10).

The No. 1 “Brandfluencer” for Coke is a Twitter user called Uberfacts, whose handle is described as “The most unimportant things you’ll never need to know.” Uberfacts has a reach of 441,000 followers and has tweeted that Coca-Cola “can be used as a car oil” – which might seem counterintuitive in a “Brandfluencer.” In fact, the happy-go-lucky tone of the tweets perfectly aligns with Coca-Cola’s brand message.

The No. 8 “Brandfluencer” for Coke on our metric is motivational speaker Carrie Wilkerson, who tweets as “barefoot_exec” and self-identifies as “wife, mom, speaker and Joyful Human!”

No. 12 for Coke is @DetroitRedWings (124,586 followers), the official Twitter home of the Detroit Red Wings as Coke is one of the team’s sponsors.

If we were Coke or Pepsi—or another Super Bowl advertiser—armed with this insight, what would we do? In the weeks leading up to the game we would identify 30 or 40 people on Twitter who have influence with Coke and Pepsi, based on their reach and interests. Then we’d share Super Bowl ad content and background with them early, feeding them information to seed into posts if they want. I’d tell them before the game when the ads will air so that they can share the content with influencers, who can tell and share with others: “You’ve got to watch this ad. It’s the one I was telling you about.” Then I’d give @OMGFacts, Ruth Buzzi and crowd a snippet to share the day after the game to keep the content and the conversation alive. Just for starters.

Identifying and then triggering “Brandfluencers” is a way to connect the dots from traditional media to social media, from content to human, from digital to TV and back again. It’s also a way to keep the conversation going. Long after the likes of Adriana Lima, Donald Trump and David Beckham have flickered on and off the screen during the big game, real people talking to other real people on the social web will keep the buzz alive for days or weeks.

Until now, nobody knew when a viral hit was coming until it happened.  To return to the Moneyball analogy, our strategy is not about swinging for the fences every time. When you do that, you strike out more times than you hit out of the park. With “Brandfluencers” we are trying to play Moneyball, using metrics to get on base. Eventually, we load the bases and bring in the runs.

Setting the benchmark for creative excellence in communications, the International Festival of Creativity – Cannes Lions – will reward creativity in branded content & entertainment, defined as the creation of, or natural integration into, original content by a brand. Avi Savar, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, a full-service global social media marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from content to commerce, will chair the inaugural Branded Content & Entertainment Lions Jury.

The purpose of branded content and entertainment is to deliver marketing messages by engaging consumers via relevant content platforms rather than traditional advertising methods.

Entrants to the Branded Content & Entertainment Lions category will demonstrate how a brand has successfully worked independently or in association with a content producer or publisher to develop and create or co-create entertaining and engaging content for their audience. This could be either by creating original content or programming for a brand or by naturally integrating a brand into existing formats by partnering with a publisher or media partner.

Entries should demonstrate how consumer insight successfully integrated into original content drives audience engagement and creates synergy across paid, owned and earned media.

Entries to Branded Content & Entertainment Lions might leverage a single media channel, such as web video or broadcast, but may also use multiple platforms to deliver content to audiences across various channels, including: radio, magazines, books, gaming, music, video, mobile, social, community, blogs, experiential events, and more.

Since the use of branded content & entertainment differs from one country to another, entrants will be required to describe the current situation around branded content & entertainment in their country or the region where the campaign appeared, including any restrictions or regulations imposed by TV stations, broadcasting companies, government or other regulating body.

The first Branded Content & Entertainment Lions jury will be chaired by Avi Savar, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, who will lead nine branded content & entertainment experts from around the world. Avi launched Big Fuel, a pure-play social media agency designed for the needs of large brands, in 2004. What started as a one-man “branded content studio” has today grown into the largest social media agency in the world – with clients that include: T-Mobile, Sherton, Westin, Starwood Preferred Guest, The Children’s Place, Nurtisystem, Bacardi, Gore-Tex, Citi, Clorox, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Philips. In June 2011, Avi led Big Fuel to a successful acquisition by French media giant Publicis Groupe thus giving Big Fuel a global footprint and making it the most dominant social media agency worldwide.

Avi Savar has spent his professional career connecting with and motivating audiences through content. He has created highly stylised programming for companies such as USA Networks, Fox, USA, Columbia Tri-Star, and Showtime Networks. Prior to launching Big Fuel, Avi served as a Producer for ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ before being tapped to create and develop breakthrough entertainment-based programming for both MTV Networks and VH1.

“The International Festival of Creativity at Cannes is the premier advertising award show. I’m honoured and excited to participate and look forward to the celebration of branded content & entertainment as part of it,” said Avi upon his appointment. “As Jury President I hope to guide the process in a way that will inspire people to create innovative and immersive content.”

Philip Thomas, CEO of Cannes Lions commented, “Branded content & entertainment has become key to brand communication that creatively engages with consumers. Therefore to include it in Cannes Lions is important not only for the continued development of the Festival as a global celebration of creativity in communications, but to also give due recognition of the convergence of marketing and entertainment.”

“We are delighted to count on the expertise of Avi Savar, an innovator whose work continues to influence the shape of brand communications, media and customer engagement, to guide and set the standard of this new category in its inaugural year,” he continued.

The Branded Content & Entertainment Lions winners will be announced on Saturday 23 June, in Cannes, alongside the Film, Craft, Titanium and Integrated winners. Additional information on Branded Content & Entertainment Lions will be available when entries open on 26 January.

Branded Content & Entertainment, together with the already announced new Mobile Lions section, brings the total number of Cannes Lions awards categories to 15.

For more information on Cannes Lions 2012 or to register to attend, please visit www.canneslions.com.