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.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kim Gould from Facebook’s marketing and communications team at this year’s CES.  We had a great discussion around trends in technology, social media and more.  This was a terrific way to cap off a very productive week in Vegas, where I had the pleasure of meeting some amazing people, see some dazzling new products and enjoy a few nights out with my team, our clients and partners.

My recent Forbes Article discussed social media trends for 2012.  You can read the article here, or at Forbes.com, enjoy!

Companies sometimes gripe that social media is useless as a branding tool.

For marketers, converting messages into transactions is the Holy Grail, but if they don’t quickly materialize through new media outlets, that’s no reason to throw in the towel. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other outlets are constantly evolving and experimentation is necessary to find success.

Once we accept that “social” does not equal “transactional” we’ll all be a lot more adept at using it in 2012.

Three trends and tools to watch in the coming year:

From Checking In To Cashing In: Geo-Gaming

Geo-location has been an important marketing tool for a few years, but in 2012 it will become more personal and more transactional, especially in social-media marketing. This is a game-changer for retailers because it enables them to put potential consumers in the context of time and place and more effectively influence purchase intent.

This type of influence is a reason I see social media as a bridge to commerce because it’s where marketers build a relationship with customers.

The context of the offline world is crucial for marketers so they know what kind of message to deliver and how to interact with a customer at any given time. Is my potential customer in front of a store or on the couch? Is that person with people or alone?

Yes, geo-location has been around a while because the technology exists, but marketers have not yet taken advantage of it.  To date, geo-location has been all about the “check-in.” Nobody really understands the value of the check-in yet, but if you think about it, the check-in is a social transaction, but soon will become a monetary one.

How will that work? Look for marketers to motivate and change behavior through geo-location tools and social gaming.

Starwood was one of the first brands to see the check-in as a bridge. Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) members could connect their SPG accounts directly to Foursquare. Anytime they checked into a Starwood property combined with a confirmed reservation they got points. There’s a reciprocal relationship between the check-in and the reward, which is what game dynamics are about–rewarding behavior through real and virtual currency.

Let’s say Starwood has a million fans, a small sub-set of whom checks in on Foursquare. Now let’s add a layer of social gaming so that whatever those fans do online they do through Facebook. I post to my page saying, “I just came back from Paris, ate at this restaurant, and it’s amazing,” and that is shared with the Starwood community of a million people through a gaming experience. Starwood could reward me for that because I’m selling travel to Paris where Starwood has properties.

I don’t think there’s a place in social marketing to have offers, promotions, coupons and transactional items as a part of the social eco-system and social story telling. Where I do think there is a time and place for coupons, offers, promotions is through mobile and geo-location and how those two talk to each other.

These are ways for brands to say, “Believe in us, be part of our community, and when you engage with us, we notice.” It’s that acknowledgement that creates loyalty, advocacy and drives earned-media value.

Facebook: Gateway To The Web

Would it surprise anyone to think Facebook will become the overlay of the Internet experience? It may not happen in 2012 but it certainly will in our lifetimes. Facebook is what Ma Bell once was, a utility with which few people could conduct their daily lives. It’s almost impossible to not use the web these days, and it’s becoming less possible to use it without Facebook.

As marketers build the bridge to commerce through online communities, it is imperative that they do not cannibalize them for the sake of transactions. Microsoft and Zynga got it wrong with their partnership.

Back in early 2010, Zynga moved beyond making its popular games available on social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and began making some titles, especially the wildly popular Farmville, available on Microsoft properties like MSN Games and Windows Media Player. More than 200 million players had interacted with friends and acquaintances through these games every month. But Zynga wanted to expand its reach even further, hence the Microsoft partnership.

It was a great move for MSN’s gaming portal, which was steadily losing traffic, but what did Zynga gain? It already had enviable reach. What it really did was cannibalize Zynga’s passionate and original gaming community by adding all those MSN gamers.

Imagine being at a party with people you know and feel comfortable with, and then suddenly, an outside group of revelers crashes your bash. It’s not the same party anymore. You don’t want to be there. You aren’t going to stick around.

Microsoft spent a tremendous amount of time, dollars and effort cultivating a community, and they threw it out the window with the Zynga deal just to boost its fan base.

Starbucks got it wrong — and then got it very right. The coffee bar behemoth woke up one day and noticed it had completely alienated its consumers. Instead of selling them coffee in an ambient setting, Starbucks installed mega coffee machines to serve people faster. They took the artisanal aspect from the process and then realized they moved away from their core brand attributes. The company was smart and sincere enough to ask its community for help by launching Mystarbucksidea.com, listening to the people who were very attached to their brand. It was like the return of the Prodigal Son.

Starbucks also devised Pastry Thursday, creating a regular event on Facebook where people could register and check-in to get a free pastry. On Election Day, they gave away free coffee.

Starbucks is one of the few advertisers that know it will lose [Facebook] friends if all it does is talk about itself. If I had a friend who, whenever we’re together, tries to sell me something, we wouldn’t be friends for very long. Starbucks knows it has to care about what their customers have to say.

Mystarbucksidea.com was an example of perhaps the first time that a brand had to act like a person. The company recognized that relationships are personal and that for a relationship to thrive, some base-line principles must be observed.

Perpetuating The Personal

Brands in 2012 must create a social world of personalization.

Facebook has built a model for this. Its “pages” function enables brands to engage customers on a virtual island and have a theme party of their choosing. If the guests are into Huggies, the page can be about potty training. Amex’s page/party theme can be about small business.

Then you have Facebook’s “social ads,” through which brands can deliver targeted messages to fans and followers. Any marketer that knows something about its core fan base, derived from the insights gathered on its Facebook page, can create and deliver custom messages to sub-sets of that population.

The third prong is Facebook’s “sponsored stories,” which are about leveraging the friends of fans. If you become a fan of my page, this generates a News Feed story that your friends might see.  Sponsored Stories increase visibility of this story by highlighting it for my friends in the right column.

The brand has delivered a story to someone on Facebook, and that person delivers the story to their Facebook friends.

Let’s say you became a fan of the AMC show “Breaking Bad.” Now your feed reflects that action to your friends, and the next time any of your friends log in, they’re alerted that you just “liked” “Breaking Bad” — and maybe they should check it out. Your friend clicks on that link, which takes them to a “Breaking Bad” page, completing the loop.

The Facebook triad of Pages-Ads-Stories is one example of how to create a loop using paid media dollars to drive earned media.  There are many other ways of delivering earned media across social channels.  Every brand has different needs, but most importantly, every brand has a different personality – it’s crafting and delivering that personality that ultimately drives the kind of earned media that you don’t need write checks for.

The best kind of media is organic earned media. In 2012, social media as a bridge to commerce may seem obvious, but the journey will be much more interesting–and lucrative.

Panelists:

Tobias Bauckhage/Co-Founder & CEO, Moviepilot
Reggie Bradford/Founder & CEO, Vitrue
Lyle Fong/Co-Founder & Chief Strategist, Lithium
Christian Hernandez/Director, Platform Partnerships, Facebook
Avi Savar/Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Big Fuel
Moderator: Brian Morrissey/Editor-in-Chief, Digiday

KPCB Internet Trends (2011)

Her 12 trend topics are below:

1. Globality – We Aren’t In Kansas Anymore…

Meeker revealed that 81% of users of the top ten global internet properties are outside the USA, which makes global markets a force to be reckoned with.

2. Mobile – Early Innings Growth, Still…

iPhones, iPods and iPads have revolutionized the market. But Android tablets and phones, at a different price point, are not to be underestimated.

3. User Interface – Text/Graphical/ Touch / Sound / Move

“Sound is going to be bigger than video. Record is the new Qwerty,” say SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung.

4. Commerce – Fast / Easy / Fun / Savings = More Important Than Ever…

The ability to click and buy on a mobile device is making a huge difference in mobile commerce. “It’s now an expectation that if you see it on your screen, you can click and buy it,” says Meeker.

5. Advertising – Lookin’ Good…

Look at Google’s click growth for an indicator of advertising health: 23% of clicks on ads is a good sign Meeker says.

6. Content Creation – Changed Forever

Meeker refers to Joanne Bradford from DemandMedia doing a better job at talking about content creation.

7. Technology / Mobile Leadership – Americans Should Be Proud

64% of smartphones have U.S.A. OSes (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) versus 5% 5 years ago.

8. Mega-Trend of 21st Century = Empowerment of People via Connected Mobile Devices

“The ability to get realtime fast and broad information flow is only going to get greater,” says Meeker.

9. Authentic Identity – The Good / Bad / Ugly. But Mostly Good?

“One of the biggest topics of the next ten years,” Meeker says.

10. Economy – Lots of Uncertainty

Despite lots of indicators of uncertainty, “We’ve had a good two weeks.”

11. USA Inc. – Pay Attention!

The US ranks 10th on a list of country by debt. Greece, by comparison, ranks number 3.

I was asked to give a speech on Brand Content in Spain this summer. It was the first time I spoke in front of a non-english speaking audience. It was a terrific experience for me. Given that Spain is a few years behind the US in the areas of Branded Content, I met some amazing people and felt like I had a real impact at the conference.

I was more than happy to add some leverage to the Grad Men campaign, started by students of Creative Circus to convince the actor Jon Hamm to speak at their commencement ceremony – as his Emmy-nominated TV character, Don Draper from AMC’s Mad Men!

I had the opportunity to appear on Fox News recently to talk about social media in the workplace and key tenants to success in social media.  Here is the clip from my segment – thankfully I don’t look exhausted and didn’t embarrass myself too much… but you be the judge!

TRANSCRIPT:

Benzinga: How are you doing today, Avi?

Avi Savar:I’m doing well, thanks so much.

Benzinga:Could you start off by giving our listeners some background information on your career, how you got your start in the marketing world, and the founding of Big Fuel?

Avi Savar:I’ve actually never worked in an advertising agency other than the one I started seven years ago; my background is in entertainment. My entire professional career up until starting Big Fuel I was a producer. I used to produce programming for networks like MTV and VH1, and before that I was a producer for Good Morning America. So, I pretty much spent my whole life, my whole professional career at least, telling stories, making people laugh, making people cry, and engaging with audiences through storytelling.

I think that has been the basis of what Big Fuel has become, and through the evolution of the marketing landscape in the digital world through social media, the notion of engagement, telling really great stories, and connecting with consumers is really what the company is all about.

So I started Big Fuel seven years ago, before Youtube and Facebook, and we started as a branded content agency working with brands and publishers to create branded content for the web. Within our first year, we probably produced about 100-150 webisodes before people really knew what a webisode was. That paved the way for us to be in the right place at the right time, as social media became the next big wave.

The moment in time when we shifted was about three years ago when social media became mainstream and jumped to everybody’s mind. We repositioned the company: branded content is still a big part of what we do and how we connect, but social media became the driver. Now we are one of the dominant agencies in the digital marketing world, and we help big brands like McDonalds and GM and a number of other big brands that we are lucky enough to call our clients. We continue to pave the way and look at what’s going on in the digital world, and try to stay ahead of it and connect with consumers in most relevant ways we can.

Benzinga:There’s been a lot of attention recently on how dealing with Twitter and how we’re getting these quick snippets of information, consumer’s attention spans are dwindling. In light of this new consumer that is quickly bored, how do you go about maintaining audience engagement?

Avi Savar:For us, it is about being relevant. I always say that what we do is the reverse of traditional advertising. Traditional advertising is based around telling product stories. If you’ve ever taken a marketing class, or studied any type of marketing principles, the basis of it is about identifying the unique selling proposition of your product or service, what makes your product different. If I’m selling toothpaste, does my toothpaste have 20% more fluoride than the competition; if I’m selling a car, do I have the most horsepower. That’s the basis for advertising.

What we do, and what I think in this new on demand world where consumers are actually in control, it’s actually less about product stories and more about people stories. It’s about connecting with consumers in a relevant way, and finding a point we call the “point of engagement” where product and people connect. So rather than leading with product stories, we as an agency lead with people stories, we find out what people are talking about, what are the conversations they are having on Twitter, what are they posting, what groups are they fans of, etc.

We connect with people in a way that is meaningful to them first, and then for the brand second, rather than the other way around. I think if you can do that, than you become top of mind, and people will talk about you or at least pay attention to what you have to say.

Benzinga:That’s interesting– can you give an example of a recent campaign you’ve worked on and how that exemplifies this idea of people stories?

Avi Savar:We recently helped Colgate-Palmolive launch a product called The Wisp. It’s a mini disposable toothbrush, the first of its kind, and comes in a pack of four. The idea is to compete with gum and breath strips and mints, etc. The traditional ad campaign that introduced the product into the market–the 30-second commercial, the print advertising, the online banners–was based around this one concept of “just brushed clean, anytime, anywhere.” In one line, that is the product story. That’s the unique selling proposition. When you only have 30 seconds to sell your product, that’s the way to do it.

In social media, that does not apply. People don’t want to friend or follow a toothbrush, they don’t want to have a relationship with a toothbrush. So, “just brushed anytime, anywhere” is a good way to tell the product story, but in social media, it’s not about that. We had to come up with a way to connect the product to an audience based on what is important to them.

Through our research and going through our processes, we came up with, and what we went into social marketplace with, was this concept around something we called “be more kissable.” And the idea isn’t actually around kissing, but more about the fact that we saw in social media, and specifically within our young urban professional target audience, was about confidence. The people story that we attached ourselves to was this idea of self-confidence, and always wanting to be at your best. That isn’t necessarily about a toothbrush or a product, so what we went to market with was content, and a marketing initiative that helped people be confident.

The line we used was “be more kissable”, and everybody wants to be more kissable, whether you walk into an interview or are getting ready for a date, you always want to be at your best. So that is a simple example of our manifestation of “just brushed clean anytime, anywhere” into a social platform that we were able to generate a tremendous amount of momentum behind through online videos, photo-sharing, through a contest we held through a Facebook application that we built that was all around this concept of “being more kissable.”

Benzinga:Big Fuel is not just a marketing company, but is “One part marketing, entertainment, distribution company.” What are some of the upsides and challenges of being three companies rolled into one?

Avi Savar:Our company works to give our clients an end-to-end solution in social media. The world of social media, especially for big brands, is very complicated. It is evolving very rapidly: every single day we learn about new tools and platforms. So there is a lot for big brands to digest.

Also, big brands tend to move slower, and rightfully so–they have to be smart about their decisions. So our model is those three components: we offer strategy, planning and insight. It’s also about content creation and building assets, and it’s about distribution and making sure the right people see those things, and all along the way providing what I call “one throat to choke”. The brand can pick up the phone and have one place to go, whether it’s about the tools they’re using to measure, or to publish content, or about the strategies they are implementing, there has to be one place to go.

So when we walk into big brand, that’s a big part of our value proposition, to say, you don’t want to have relationships with 15 different companies doing 15 different things. You want to have one company that can manage everything that is happening in this crazy place that is social media. Our job is to make sense of it, and to ensure that the brand is getting the right advice, the right initiatives to drive objectives forward, and to make sure their business mandates are being achieved.

So that’s the full service offering we provide. We tend to work with big brands, we understand how to navigate big complex organizations that require a lot of risk management, and require processes to drive governance and legal. Those are things in which social media is still the wild west, and we have to make sure to tame the horses, so to speak.

Benzinga:Looking at the past few years and seeing social media evolve as rapidly as it has, how does Big Fuel stay ahead of the game?

Avi Savar:We have to make that a priority as an organization. We have an unbelievable team that is responsible for evaluating platforms and partnering with different companies. We tend to be platform agnostic: we use every platform if it’s right for our client. Every client has different needs, so for example for social listening and social intelligence there are probably 30 different tools to monitor conversations. Depending on what kind of a brand you are and what your goals are, different tools tend to make sense for different initiatives. It is our job to evaluate all of those tools and partnerships, and provide our clients with a baseline of information and best practices.

We have a team we call the network services team, who is responsible for making sure that we are managing enterprise platforms across the digital landscape, so that we understand exactly what these platforms do. Every week we have vendors and partners come in and demo the latest and greatest, and a big part of our job is making sure we are not just on leading edge but on the bleeding edge of technology.

Benzinga:What resources and tools do you as an individual rely on to help you stay ahead of the game in terms of marketing and social media?

Avi Savar:This is probably the hardest part of the job as a founding partner and one of three executives that run the organization. I have two partners who are phenomena: one is gentleman by the name of Mike McGraw, who is our COO and a legend in the advertising and marketing business. The other is Jon Bond, who started Kirshenbaum and Bond and partners about a decade or so ago, which grew into the largest independent ad agency in world. These are very smart folks whom I get to call my friends and partners, and we work very hard to slice and dice our responsibilities.

In terms of staying ahead of the curve, it’s about terrific relationships, and being at the right conferences. I do a lot of speaking, I get to write a fair amount, and I do thought leadership as much as I possibly can. Just by the nature of what we do and who we are as an agency, we surround ourselves with the newest and best. Because we’ve built a reputation for ourselves, and I am very grateful for this, people seek us out. We get the benefits from representing a lot of great brands, so just by the nature of who we are, a lot of the stuff tends to now find us.

It’s our job to evaluate it all, because there is a lot of clutter and noise in the marketplace. The hardest part is making sense of it all. Surrounding yourself with the right people and right tools to do the job, and then making smart decisions is what it comes down to.

Benzinga:Mobile devices are dominating multiple aspects of consumer’s lives—how is Big Fuel getting in on the action, and making itself relevant in the mobile sphere?

Avi Savar:Mobile is a big part of connecting to consumers, and you can leverage mobile in a lot of different ways. I look at mobile and see it as a bridge to the offline world. We do a lot of things in social media and in digital that tell really great stories, and what mobile allows us to do is to be with the consumer at any given time, and connect them to activity.

For example, it could be about tapping into the new hyper-local trend to provide context to what a consumer is doing every day, because a consumer who lives in Manhattan is very different and has different needs than a consumer who lives in Detroit. So understanding where the people are, what they are doing, and how to make their lives better is a great way for us to use and leverage mobile. It provides a point of contact. It’s a bridge from offline to online and vice versa.

Benzinga:What do you think is the most valuable social media tool for companies and products– Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc?

Avi Savar:I don’t want to dance around the question, but it really depends on what you want to do. Twitter is a very different platform than Facebook, for example, so understanding what the objectives are, and not to say that a brand unequivocally must have a presence on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter—the Big Three–but if you’re a big brand you probably do need to have your bases covered.

What you do within those channels is up to what you want to do as a brand, what your goals are, what kind of content you want to invest in, and what kind of time and resources you have to manage those channels. So, it really does depend. We have clients that want to create deep and longstanding relationships and who are willing to invest in time and resources needed to do that.

This is different from clients who just want awareness, and are not looking (yet) to invest in long term relationships in social. It’s very different. There are different publishing and CRM platforms that help brands manage day-to-day interactions with consumers in social media; it all depends on what kind of relationship you want with consumers. You can have a lot of thin relationships with consumers, or a few deep relationships with consumers, it depends on what your product or service is and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Social is different from any other medium in that is never shuts off. You can spend a certain amount of money on a 30-second piece of video or print ad, let it run, and then turn it off whenever you want. The social media game requires what we call an “all the way on” mentality, if you want to get into it, it’s more like a marriage than anything else: you have to commit to the plan, so to speak.

Benzinga:I’m going to give you the loudspeaker now, so you can sound off on anything that’s going on in the world that you think needs your attention or is not being sufficiently reported, or so you can simply give your opinion on any issue that you really care about.

Avi Savar:I think the thing that I would talk about is our position on social media within the overall world of marketing and advertising: I look at social media as a new seat at the table. We’ve been saying that for the last 2-3 years, that social media is such a different platform and channel than any other marketing channel that has ever existed. So, if you’re a big brand, and you have a complex structure which most big brands do, you have complex needs. Social media is not something that you can have a traditional digital agency handle for you, or even a PR agency handle for you, because the requirements for managing an infrastructure to support social media, we believe at Big Fuel, requires a dedicated social media agency of record.

The things that we do on a day-to-day basis on social are really infrastructure based. A lot of our competitors in social media are very creative driven, are all about latest greatest coolest little campaign that they run. It’s really important to have great creative and great strategy, but that is probably 20% of the overall game.

The other part of social media is actually the non-sexy part of it, it’s the legal and governance, it’s the account management, it’s the analytics and reporting, it’s the integration with other agencies, it’s the management of brand channels, and coming up with an architecture for Facebook pages. That’s more of consulting than it is campaign oriented or idea driven. Social media as a marketing platform is more than just a creative outlet, it is also a pipeline that needs to me managed and cultivated, and that’s a big part of what we do as an agency.

We have 125 people right now in our agency in three locations, and I would say less than a third of them are creatives. We have really strong creative and really strong campaigns, but a lot of what we do is supporting, integration, relationship management, etc. So social media, in my opinion, needs a dedicated agency, dedicated resources, and it needs to be managed in a very different way than any other marketing channel.

So, having your traditional digital agency that is in the business of managing websites manage your social channels is a mistake, because social media by default is not about mass audiences: it is about small communities. So taking that big idea and trying to deliver it through social media in a mass awareness kind of way tends to not work. Social media is about understanding communities of interest that are relevant to a brand.

If I am Fisher Price, for example, there are communities online that are more relevant to me than others. Entrepreneurs, moms, college students, Nascar enthusiasts–it’s very affinity-based rather than based on big mass awareness ideas. It’s about very targeted communications, and that requires a new seat at the table: you need a creative agency, a traditional brand agency, media, digital, and today you need a social media agency.

Benzinga: Where do you see social media in five years? Do you have any idea as to what the next big thing in the industry is going to be?

Avi Savar: Five years is a lifetime, especially in what we do– five months is a lifetime. If you would’ve asked me that question seven years ago and I actually gave you an answer, I would’ve been crazy. The world is changing and evolving so fast, that I honestly don’t think anybody can answer that question in a meaningful way.

Ultimately I think consumers are taking more and more control over the mediums and the channel, and that trend will continues. The more successful brands will be more authentic and transparent, and will build relationships with consumers in order to be successful in social media. I don’t think television or mass awareness is ever going to go away–it’s just shifting and broadening. We’ve seen it with digital ten years ago: it was a new channel, and social is just that, it’s a new channel, and so for brands to be successful in that channel, they must migrate towards more one-on-one communications. There are more platforms in mobile and social that are going to help brands connect on a one-on-one basis with individuals within specific communities. That’s where the world is going.

It’s funny, I spent the better part of my professional career in entertainment, and you see the progression over time in entertain industries and in the media world. Twenty years ago, for example, we had three channels: it was ABC, NBC, and CBS. Then, all of a sudden, there was Fox, and then there were broadcast cable channels, and music channels, and sports channels, and women’s networks, and as time progressed and the world evolved, everything became more and more targeted.

Now it’s not just about having a sports channel like ESPN, but we have the tennis channel and the golf channel and the outdoor network. Everything is getting more and more specific, and audiences are getting smaller and more fragmented. The idea of having one big brand concept reaching everybody is unlikely. There’s only a few times a year you can actually do that.

The Super Bowl is an example of that. It’s one event that draws tons and tons of people, and I don’t think that’s every going to go away. Where I think social is going, however, is the same way the overall media is going. It’s becoming more and more fragmented, and we need tools and processes to help brands connect in relevant ways to individuals and smaller communities. How that progresses? I can’t answer that. But I do think ultimately that is where it’s going.

Benzinga: That’s all I have for you Avi, thanks for coming on the show it’s been great hearing your insights.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/generallifemisc/11/05/1079722/from-content-to-commerce-avi-savar-founding-partner-of-big-fuel-commun#ixzz1MEcj7vPi

Mark my words, Geo-location will be at the heart of Social Media.

Social Media Is About Me.

I had the good fortune to hear Peter Theil speak a few weeks ago.  He shared a lot of wisdom from behind his podium — one memorable moment for me was his answer to the question “why did Facebook succeed where other social networks (ie. MySpace) stalled out?”

His answer was simple and elegant.  “MySpace was started in LA as a place where people went to become somebody else.  Facebook was started in Boston as a place where people went to be themselves.”

I have always said that Social Media is a channel of “people stories” but Peter’s insight into what made Facebook successful adds further context.  The people stories are real, they represent a collective human experience and every individual user is part of it.

Essentially, Social Networking is about real people and the connections between them.  However, social media is also a highly individual experience — I experience social media through my “social graph” and my experience is different than your experience.  Social media is about me — it’s the place I go to be myself.

Mobile Is My Gateway

Like many folks today, I am constantly on the go.  Like many folks today, my mobile phone has become an appendage.  My mobile phone is what connects me to my digital world no matter where I am.  Mobile is the gateway I use to access information, make connections and “plug in” to my social graph.
The use and adoption of mobile is critical to the thesis of this blog post ( “geo-location is the heart of social).  If the stats are true and by 2014 a person’s first online experience will be via a mobile phone not via a computer, then mobile and social will converge — social media becomes more than just being “about me,” it becomes being about me and… where I am and what I am doing.  Everything that I do is tagged by “where I did it” and the mobile device becomes the conduit to sending and receiving that information — mobile provides context to everything about me.

I “Check In,” Therefore I Am

Content is the fuel that makes social media run.  Whether it’s a 140 character tweet, a video clip or a photo — content is at the center of the social universe.  Moreover, content with context is the holy grail.  Geo-location provides instant context to the content we create and share because remember — social is all about me, what I’m doing, where I’m doing it, etc.

Now let’s think about this a little differently.  Let’s think about this eco-system from the perspective of someone that needs to find information rather than share information… Here is a scenario:

I was recently in Amsterdam for 3 days of client meetings.  I landed a day early to adjust to the time change and get settled in, which gave me a free afternoon to explore and wander.  As I headed out of the hotel I had a few choices:

1. Ask the concierge what I should do or where I should go.
2. Open google maps and search for some points of interest.
3. Or…. You guessed it.  “Check-In” to my hotel on foursquare and access real-time information about my current surroundings.

Here is the hypothesis.  As adoption rates continue to increase across mobile and location-based platforms like Facebook Places and FourSquare, hopefully the quality of real time information improves also.  This means that in the future FourSquare could become the front door to the mobile web just like Google became the front door to the desktop web.  When I’m at my desk, I search to find information in the digital world.  When I’m on the go, I “check in” to access information about the physical world.  Social lives right in between the two.

Social is what connects my physical world to my digital world.  “Checking in” is the digital representation of “showing up” — it’s how your digital self knows where you are.

Think about it.  We have all seen movies like Terminator.  Where a the creature or robot from the future (good or evil) has a built-in computer embedded with some augmented reality view of the world.   What does that computer do?  It provides relevant (and real time) information based on where the creature is and what it is doing.

If FourSquare can unlock delivering users relevant information, connecting them to their social graph and providing context to the content they create — then they could indeed become the future front door to mobile — then we will all care about FourSquare.