Angry Birds Now Appearing on a Baby Near You

 by Jennifer Van Grove

Even the tiniest tots can participate in the Angry Birds craze. App-maker-turned-entertainment-franchise Rovio has teamed up with baby product maker SwaddleDesigns to release an Angry Birds Baby line.

New parents can now opt to outfit, wrap or protect their bundles of joy, while showing off their Angry Birds fan status, in any of the five types of products (as seen below).

“As parents, one aspect of Angry Birds we appreciate is how protective the birds are and how much they love their offspring,” says Lynette Damir, CEO and creative director of SwaddleDesigns. “It’s one of the characters’ endearing qualities that resonates with parents everywhere, and a key reason we believe Angry Birds fans will be enthusiastic about our new line of Angry Bird baby products.”

Merchandise is a hot category for Rovio and the Angry Birds brand. The company has sold more than 7 million plush toys alone and will likely see merchandise sales skyrocket should the movie project come to fruition.

SwaddleDesigns is making its official Angry Birds Baby products available for sale Tuesday. Items cost $20 to $38 and will begin shipping October 10.

8 Tips for Health Care & Pharmaceutical Companies on Facebook

 by Augustine Fou

Pharmaceutical and health care companies have been understandably cautious about using social media for marketing purposes.

While the FDA provides little concrete guidance, some social media marketing is permissible.

Here are a few tips and best practices to consider if your health care company is embarking on a Facebook presence.

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1. Is Your Product Consumer-Facing?

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Determine if your brand, drug or service is “consumer facing” — whether consumers are the ones making the purchase decisions. This factor applies more to over-the-counter products that consumers can buy themselves (such as Advil) in stores and less to prescription drugs for which doctors are the ones writing the prescriptions. Consumers tend to go online to research products before they buy — and they want to be able to reach the manufacturers directly. Physicians, on the other hand, don’t (and can’t legally) talk about work on Facebook. So, pharma advertisers should determine if social media marketing is even relevant to their product in the first place.

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2. Provide Useful Information

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People go to Facebook to socialize, not to “friend” Lipitor. If pharma companies are to earn the attention of any modern consumer, they should provide useful information and value to the consumers instead of asking them to do things or give personal information. “Information” includes accurate details about the product, including side effects and risks.

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3. Ask Intelligent and Related Questions

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Once consumers voluntarily give their attention and visit the pharma companies’ Facebook pages, then pharma has the right to ask intelligent questions and listen to the feedback from the community. Instead of telling, asking and listening is a way to earn the dialogue with consumers and fans.

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4. Have Real Experts Lead Discussions (Not Marketing or PR Reps)

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Consumers are very savvy and have learned to sniff out marketing and “bad acting.” When they interact with advertisers, they expect complete transparency and candor. This goes for pharma as well. So instead of having marketing or PR representatives field questions from users, it’s important for pharma companies to have real experts (scientists, MDs, etc.) answer questions and concerns from consumers. If your company doesn’t currently do this, organizational processes should be put in place to enable it.

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5. Create a Publishing Schedule

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Many brands have made forays into social media. But beyond just buying display ads on Facebook, it is important to have something new to talk about periodically. This not only means creating valuable content and providing information about new products, but it also can be asking the right questions. The key is to do this consistently and regularly, thus creating a publishing schedule of both content and questions that can be delivered through your Facebook page. This way, users have an expectation for new content on a regular schedule, which will bring them back to the page and give them a reason to talk and share.

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6. Establish the Right Success Metrics

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“Doing social media” does not mean placing display ads on social media sites like Facebook. You need to engage and measure success to see what works. But the number of fans or Likes are not the best success metrics. Consumer engagement and vibrance of the community are more important and yield more value over time. So for those pharma companies that are using Facebook for marketing, tips two through five above will collectively enable you to better engage the community and create longer-term ties. Metrics that involve actual actions of the users — the number of conversations, the number of repeat visits, the pages viewed per visit — are better than one-off actions like clicking the “like” button.

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7. Make a Social Media Commitment (Not a Campaign)

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Social media is media created by the conversations of people. Advertisers have to earn the right to participate in these conversations by creating a community with valuable content. What your followers say — whether good or bad — is now permanently recorded online for all to see. So advertisers should be prepared to make a “social media commitment” instead of a “social media campaign.” The efforts in social media should not stop as if it’s a marketing campaign. As advertisers embark on social media “commitments,” they should see them as the opportunity to create relationships and assets of lasting value, both for consumers and pharmaceutical companies.

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8. Monitor For Adverse Events

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Finally, for the pharmaceutical industry in particular, advertisers must monitor for adverse events in the sites and pages they own and control — including their own Facebook pages. This has seemed an onerous task in the past, but monitoring tools and services are making it easier to collect, detect and act. In addition, there are four criteria that must be met to constitute a reportable event.

The FDA requires that four criteria be reported in each adverse event report:

• 1. Who is the patient affected?
• 2. Who reported the event?
• 3. What was the adverse event?
• 4. What was the product that is suspected of causing the bad reaction?

Most comments on social media sites do not meet all four criteria. So companies should use the tools to gather relevant, potentially reportable comments and have their own medical and legal departments review and provide guidance.

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Conclusion

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The use of social media is not only appropriate, but also highly effective and efficient in certain cases. So pharma and health care companies should make plans and take specific steps to leverage social media on platforms like Facebook.

4 Reasons Google+ Brand Pages Will Be Better Than Facebook’s [OPINION]

 by Zeny Huang

Converting Facebook’s 750 million active users to Google+ will be a long, difficult battle for the search giant. But converting brands to Google+ will be much easier if Google+ is able to solve advertisers’ biggest problems with Facebook — such as post-click engagement tracking, paid search inefficiencies and limited customization.

Advertisers drive paid media to their Facebook Pages because they want to be where their audience is, but there’s a major flaw in this strategy. Advertisers can’t track post-click engagement of non-Facebook ads driving to Facebook, and that’s a huge disadvantage in qualifying traffic and uncovering valuable user insights. Without such information, we can only guess whether media dollars are being well spent.

In a month or two, Google+ will launch its highly anticipated brand pages. Here are four reasons why marketers are right to be excited and why Google+ brand pages will provide a better branded experience than Facebook.

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1. Better Search Opportunites

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A major challenge with driving paid search ads to a Facebook page is that the Facebook.com domain generates a lower click-through rate (CTR), most likely due to people finding the domain irrelevant to their query. The low CTR makes for a low quality score in Google’s auction-model, which typically increases cost per click for paid search ads driving to Facebook versus a unique brand domain. The loss in cost efficiency of driving to a Facebook page has been an ongoing struggle for advertisers, particularly on Google, which has over 60% of the search market.

It would be crazy for search giant Google not to have search benefits for Google+ brand pages, whether it is a “certified check mark” callout (like on Twitter), a colored box around the listing, or possibly page-rank priority. Search benefits would likely be the strongest reason for brands to adopt a Google+ brand page. The only flaw in this theory is that giving brand pages’ extra benefits in search could raise the specter of anti-trust action and legal challenges.

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2. More Customization

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Facebook ad types are limited to just ads, sometimes with a video or poll, allowing for few branding or creative opportunities. Looking at the design of Google+ personal pages, I predict the two skyscraper-sized white spaces on each side of the profile will be opportunities for custom skinning of your brand page and for display or rich media ads.

Google+ users are probably cursing me for suggesting the placement of ads on the currently clean design of Google+, but I am speaking specifically about allowing brands to advertise and skin their own pages as seen on branded YouTube channels such as Old Spice and Miracle Whip. These are great examples of how Google+ brand pages can deliver stronger brand experiences and help brands raise awareness of special promotions, as well as letting them drive qualified traffic to pages outside of Google+.

I would not be surprised if advertising opportunities were immediately available after the launch of Google+ brand pages, since Google is fully prepared to support it with its Google Display Network, AdWords and DoubleClick advertising products.

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3. Better Analytics

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People who have used Google Analytics know how detailed the data is, including metrics like time spent on page, top content, referring sites and geographic information. It seems inevitable for Google to integrate Google Analytics into Google+ brand pages, so that brands can gain valuable insights into who their fans are, what content their fans are consuming, and where they are coming from.

All this data will guide brands in the prioritization, organization and creation of content for their page, which will lead to an improved experience that better suits fans’ interests and needs. More importantly, Google Analytics and DoubleClick reporting products will let advertisers tie paid media placements to page interaction, and help to optimize and maximize the value of media spend.

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4. Google Can Learn from Facebook

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Facebook pioneered one-on-one connections between a brand and its fans through social networking, and will continue to be valuable for inherently social brands like musicians and celebrities. But for less social industries such as insurance, health and, say, paper towels, Google+ provides a platform that is open to conversation and focuses on providing branded content and valuable information in one place.

Facebook’s successes and missteps offer invaluable lessons, giving Google second-mover advantage in creating a brand page based on brands’ need for more customization, a hub to aggregate content across the web, strong search presence and user-engagement data. However, if Google+ brand pages turn out to be a replica of Facebook’s, the battle could be over before it’s begun.

Google+: Google Reverses Its Social-Network Curse

By HARRY MCCRACKEN 

With technology, as in the rest of life, eternal verities have a funny way of turning out not to be so eternal after all. For eons, everybody has known that Google is hopelessly inept when it comes to building social-networking services. Each one it has unveiled has seemed to confirm that truism, from Wave (shuttered 2½ months after opening to the public) to Buzz (still extant, but famous mostly for the uproar over its shoddy privacy practices).

Last week, the search-engine kingpin announced Google+, its latest attempt to muscle its way into the people-centric territory where Facebook and Twitter reign supreme. Rather than launch this offering with a prematurely triumphant media event like the ones it gave Wave and Buzz, Google alerted the world to Google+'s existence via a modest blog post and a few videos. Then it began a closed field test and let in a bunch of bloggers and journalists — some of the same folks who have delighted in bashing the company for its lack of social skills. And ... they liked it! A lot!

It's too early to declare Google+ a success. For one thing, it's still not fully open to the public. (Google has been admitting newcomers in small, sporadic batches; you can get on the waitlist at plus.google.com.) For another, it's an unapologetic work in progress. But it has enormous potential — both to be a cool online destination and to redefine the dynamics of the ongoing battle between the Web's biggest companies. Already, it's having an impact. Facebook unveiled a new person-to-person video-calling service in partnership with Skype this week, but the fact that Google+'s Hangout feature permits up to 10 people to chat via Webcam made Facebook's news less of a big whoop.

Google calls Google+ a "project," which is about right. It's not one thing but several of them loosely stitched together and with existing Google services like the Picasa photo-sharing service. Some of it is cribbed directly from Facebook. The Stream is Facebook's News Feed, Posts are the Wall, and the +1 button is a shameless imitation of the Facebook Like button that's been pressed billions of times all over the Web.

Google+ replicates only a fraction of Facebook, though, and it offers several things that Facebook doesn't — like Sparks, a special-interest search engine that helps you find stuff on the Web to share with your pals, with topics ranging from recipes to robotics. It also borrows a fundamental principle from Twitter rather than Facebook: you can follow other members without seeking their permission, and it's a unidirectional action that doesn't require them to follow you back.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, adding people in Google+ forces you to add them to one or more Circles, which are customizable clusters of related people — Google provides you with ones for Friends, Acquaintances, Family and Following, and you can add your own, such as Poker Buddies or Book-Club Members. Every time you share anything, you can limit it to specific Circles or individuals or both. (The mandatory organization is for your eyes only. If you decree that certain people are Acquaintances rather than Friends, they'll never know.)

At the moment, Google+'s population is so small and homogeneous that it's tough to properly evaluate Circles. But they could be a boon from both the standpoint of privacy and making Google+ a place where the conversation is relevant rather than random. Want to share photos of your kids with family members and nobody else? That's a cakewalk. So is discussing your high school reunion with just your classmates and not with co-workers who couldn't care less about it. It's a strikingly different emphasis than the one at Facebook, where privacy is possible but public sharing is clearly encouraged — and where repeated dustups over the company's handling of personal information have left some folks permanently cynical about its intent.

The way Circles look is as noteworthy as the way they behave. Google has given them an inventive user interface, masterminded by legendary software wizard Andy Hertzfeld, one of the inventors of the Macintosh. Friends and potential friends appear on tiny cards that you can drag into the appropriate Circle, whereupon the people in question spin into place like digits on a rotary-dial phone. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is fond of describing his brainchild as a "utility," and its look and feel are, indeed, utilitarian; Google+'s playful touches help give it its own character.

Right now, Google+ has a Garden of Eden feel about it, especially compared with the overdeveloped, uncontrolled sprawl of Facebook. It's inhabited primarily by Google+ enthusiasts who spend most of their time praising the service and suggesting ways to make it even better. Celebs and big-name brands have yet to discover it, and there are no distant cousins sharing videos of windsurfing pigs or allowing FarmVille to pelt you with auto-generated crop updates. Actually, there's no auto-generated anything on Google+: it consists entirely of items generated by a human being, which gives it a refreshingly humane, handcrafted flavor.

Google, of course, isn't interested in operating Google+ as a salon where a handful of agreeable geeks wax enthusiastic about Google+. The very name "Google+" indicates the audacity of its ambition: this could be the future of the whole company. So it's a safe bet that Google is going to stuff the service with new features. It's going to open the platform up so game companies and others can build apps on top of it. It's going to do everything in its power to deeply integrate Google+ with other Google offerings and encourage as many people as possible to give it a whirl.

For us charter Google+ members, that's a scary proposition: a fully fleshed-out version might devolve into a variant of Facebook. Nobody needs that. But if Google+ gets big without losing its personality, it would be good for both Google and consumers. Heck, it might even be good for Facebook, which could use the motivating power that only an archrival can provide. Consider the conventional wisdom about Google's social-networking incompetence shattered — and stay tuned.

Google to Businesses: Don’t Create Google+ Profiles Yet

by Ben Parr

Google has revealed that it is working on a Google+ experience for businesses and is asking brands not to create Google+ profiles just yet.

In a post and accompanying YouTube video on Google+, Product Manager Christian Oestlien says that the Google+ team is working on creating a unique experience for businesses that includes deep analytics and the ability to connect to products like AdWords. “How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands,” Oestlien argues.

As a result, Google is asking businesses to put their Google+ ambitions on hold.

“The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” Oestlien says in his post. “We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

Several prominent brands have already joined Google+, including Ford, Breaking News and yes, Mashable, which is now one of the top ten most popular users on Google+.

While the new Google+ experience for businesses won’t be ready until “later this year,” the company intends to launch a “small experiment with a few marketing partners” to test the brand-oriented accounts over the next few months. It even has opened up a Google Spreadsheet where “non-user entities” can apply for the program. It’s unclear when Google will shut down non-user profiles or how the process will work.

We’re not surprised that Google is building an optimized Google+ experience for businesses, but we are surprised that Google wasn’t more prepared for the wave of brands that have been joining its social network. The same thing happened with Google Buzz and has happened on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and countless other social networks. Brands like to go where their customers are.