Bobby Llew in action

Traackr was born out of a passion for finding the people who were making a difference online.  We were very excited by the notion that “regular”, everyday people, in all walks of life, had a ubiquitous platform (ie – social media) for affecting change.  And we wanted to find them.

In our early work, we were always amazed by the great people that would show up in the searches run by our clients.  Not journalists, not celebrities, just seemingly regular folks with a very unique point of view and a talent for generating a loyal audience.  Some really great people.

One of our favorites was Bobby Llewellyn.  We found Bobby in a search for Honda UK, looking for hybrid car influencers to help promote their new hybrid Insight (case study from the Honda project here).

The Traackr search for this project yielded a lot of great, highly targeted people.  Most belonging to two distinct groups — ‘car’ influencers and ‘alternative energy’ influencers.  And then there was Bobby Llew.  At the time, no one involved had ever heard about Bobby.  He had a YouTube show in which he would interview B/C-level, British celebrities in his car while driving around London.  He literally set up a small camera (might have been a Flipcam) on his rearview mirror and record 20 minute interviews while cruising through the city.  He recorded ~one show per week.  It was simple, but really entertaining.  He gained a big following and millions of views.  He was also, at the time, the most retweeted person we had ever seen.  He was driving action.

But when he showed up on a list of top influencers for Hybrid cars, Honda was very confused.  How could this guy influence purchasing decisions around hybrid cars?!?  He’s not a ‘car guy’ or a ‘green tech’ guy.  He didn’t make any sense for this list.  They thought our technology was flawed.

Admittedly, we were a bit dumfounded as well, until we took a closer look at Bobby’s profile and content.  As it turned out, Bobby drove a Prius.  And he loved his Prius.  He featured it in all his YouTube shows and talked about it a lot on Twitter (and his blog).  He was a big advocate of hybrid technology and the environmental impact of cars – in his own way.  The point being…as we looked into Bobby more, we realized that he was definitely an influential, and potentially very powerful, voice in driving awareness and sales of any hybrid car.

Honda (and their PR agency) were still very confused.  They understood what to do with traditional journalists, but they had no idea what to do with Bobby.  We told them…um….”He produces a popular YouTube show — from his car.  Send him a car!”  Eventually…this is what they did.  They sent him an Insight and sponsored his show for two weeks.  Bobby ended up using the Insight in his show and talking about it through all his channels – generating a ton of awareness and, no doubt, sales.

Ultimately, this particular influencer campaign was a huge success…and Bobby played a big part.  He quickly became everyone’s favorite influencer.

SO, WHY AM I TELLING THIS STORY NOW??

Because I recently checked in on Bobby.  For some random, unknown reason, I tapped in his video blog site, llewtube.com, a couple of weeks ago.  And I was so happy with what I found.  As you can see (below) — he not only still has his traditional show (now called Carpool)…sponsored by the Prius, but he also started another show, Fully Charged, dedicated to test drives and reviews of all new hybrid, electric, clean fuel vehicles.  Do you think Bobby Llew is an influencer for hybrid cars now??  I would say so…

When I saw Bobby’s new site and all the progress he’d made, I couldn’t help but smile.  Bobby Llew done good.  These kinds of stories are still exciting to me…

DS

I was excited by the header of an article in PR Week last week, “The Battle Between PR and Ad Agencies Heats Up!”, thinking I’d be reading about the social media land grab taking place right now. Not so… the article was a rant about Ad agencies stealing business away from independent PR through the first-tier PR firms they bought over the years. Next article? How PR still struggles to get on CMO’s radar. Really??!?

I read this and wondered in what world do people still whine about an old battle, already decided a decade ago (advertisers won that one btw)? Besides, going after PR firms owned by WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, or IPG to defend your PR dollars is not just the wrong battle to fight but, whether owned by advertisers or not, all PR firms are on the same side of the media war.

Many of TRAACKR’s clients are PR and I can tell you that none of them complain about getting their lunch money stolen by advertising. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: instead of fighting off advertisers to keep their budgets, for the first time PR firms can now compete for advertising dollars!

SOCIAL IS WHERE THE BATTLE IS BEING FOUGHT

For generations, mass media has governed marketing. TV alone would represent over 80% of an average marketing budget. Ad agencies have made a living of charging brands obscene amounts of money for creative and media buy.  A senior exec at one of the top ad agencies told me just a few months ago, “when I meet with a CMO for an hour, do you think I sell them a $15M ad campaign or $200k in social media?” This is still today’s reality in an ad agency. The truth is that the economic model of an ad agency is based on big dollars and social media is small dollars – ad agencies haven’t figured out how to earn money on it, and this is their Achilles’ heel.

For better or for worse, PR firms have experience working with small budgets. They have also cultivated the art of the two-way communication with their target required to perform on social media. In many ways, social media is very much an extension of PR’s existing business model that only requires tweaks to succeed, not a business overhaul. This is the edge PR has over advertising in the land grab for social media ownership and budgets.

SOCIAL IS ELEVATING PR TO CMO-LEVEL

As much as advertising agencies have a basic economic problem dealing with social media (not enough money going around to make the effort worthwhile), brands don’t. Brands owe it to their shareholders to create the most value for each dollar invested. If Social yields better results than other media, it becomes a priority. The ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling you get for having a Facebook page with tens of thousands of ‘likes’ only gets you thus far in spending real dollars though… but social media is changing fast and as social media communication develops and more companies gather metrics, we are discovering some fascinating facts:

1. Well-targeted and executed social media campaigns can yield much higher results and ROI than ad buys. In influencer marketing (our field of work and study), we found that less than 3% of the participants in an online conversation yield over 90% of the results (depending on the campaign, measured as reach, sales leads, viral distribution of a message). Considering only their reach, these same 3% even beat TV programming.
2. The social media component of marketing campaigns is growing. According to Forrester Research, the US market for social media communication doubled last year to reach $1.5B and will keep expanding at the same pace. As the practice of social becomes less of an experiment and more of a component of success for marketing, brands can focus on result-oriented initiatives, measure performance and tune their practice of social media.
3. Brands look for expertise in social media as a key component of selecting a marketing partner. Though anecdotal, I can’t tell you the number of brands we met with who decided to take social media away from their main AOR and gave it to PR or a ‘next gen’ marketing firm and have started transferring budgets from advertising as they see results materialize.

CMOs are now starting to pay attention to social, and as a result to PR. The simple equation each CMO constantly runs in their head (sales per marketing $ invested), has gotten premiere brands like P&G or Pepsico to multiply their investment in social while shrinking their involvement with traditional advertising. External factors, like the economic crisis we’re going through have also contributed to accelerating this transition.

If budgets for social media communication are exploding,  success stories from social campaigns keep coming out and advertising agencies are still chasing their tail in social, why on earth doesn’t PR own social by now?

SOCIAL RELATIONS IS THE NEW FRONTIER

There are really two main reasons why Social is still up for grabs. One legitimate, one not.

Historically, PR firms haven’t been early technology adopters (I see some of our clients cringing here: of course there are exceptions!) and the move towards social media has required PR to embrace new technologies, use new tools in order to perform the work, and learn how to navigate an ocean of data. Mainstream PR is slowly  going over the technology hump, but it’s taken a while. Early technology adopters in PR have long passed that point and can maneuver technology and social media tools easier than I ride my bike.

The second reason why PR has yet to ‘kill it’ as an industry in Social very much relates to the content of the PRWeek article I was quoting at the beginning of this post. I’ll call it the ‘post-traumatic mass media era disorder’ or PTMMED Much of PR still feels like the step child of marketing and fears the mighty advertisers with their lavish lifestyle.

No more! Our PR clients, all early adopters of technology, paving the way to what the PR industry should become, are proving to their peers that through Social they get access, they get budgets, they get more work than they can handle, and they are not afraid to tell advertisers to bring it on!

Interestingly, the fact that mainstream PR has yet to fully embrace their social practice has created a void on the market and a new breed of agencies have emerged as a result to fill it with some success. What innovative PR firms and these ‘next gen’ marketing firms have in common is that they have both understood that the new frontier for communication is Social Relationships. Call it SR, call it PR 2.0, these firms are defining a new industry where much of the money spent on social media is pouring in. My advice: you want to be on that train before it leaves the station…

To TRAACKR’s loyal blog readers, I want to pause the influencer conversation today and take a moment to remember September 11, 2001.

Ten years ago, I was working at a technology consulting firm in NYC, called Viant. Along with other Vianteers, I set-up an office at our client’s on the 38th floor of World Trade I. I was lucky enough that Tuesday morning to be late for work and only made it as far as a few blocks away from WTC to witness the catastrophic events of the day unfold.

In the days that followed September 11, 2001, our team and the New York office received so many notes of support. I especially recall one that came from Charlie Conn from our Boston office simply saying, “today, we are all Yankee fans.” For some reason, it has stuck with me all these years. I think I had been in crisis management mode immediately following the catastrophe, and only after reading Charlie’s note did things start sinking in and I got to appreciate what we had just been through (for a diehard Red Sox fan to rout for the NYY, clearly something of unparalleled gravity had just happened). 

Today, I remember our project team (Adam, Aiko, Annmari, Brandon, Calvin, Caterina, Chip, Chris, Dan, Dave, Henri, John, Leslie, Melody, Sunghee, Yvonne, and many others) and I’m so thankful we all made it alive; I remember those we passed every day in the elevators and corridors of the World Trade who were not as lucky as we were; I remember those who walked into the fire to save lives and gave theirs when the buildings crumbled; and I remember the months that followed 9/11/01 when New Yorkers showed their true colors and with resilience, courage and solidarity overcame the adversity that had just hit us.

Ten years later today, let’s once again all be Yankees fans.

The question is, can we?  Tom Rue, aka. True, is starting at Traackr and we’re very excited about it.

He drinks about 5 red bulls a day, so we know he won’t fall asleep on us, and he has two kids at home to keep him sane in the midst of Traackr work. Ok, maybe a 9 – and 8-year-old won’t keep him sane, but he loves them, so we had to mention them in here.

A few more things about Tom we thought you might find pretty cool:

• Tom is a completely self-taught technologist. As a child, he had dyslexia and once he figured out he could read and write much better on a computer, he used technology for the rest of his formal education.
• He’s really looking forward to overcoming the technology challenges of storing tons (literally) of influencer data.
• He’s bungee jumped before!
• You can find him on LinkedIn.

Tom and I worked together some years back – for that matter, we went to hell and back together – so we anticipate his integration in the Traackr team to be a walk in the park…

Welcome to the team, Tom! We expect great things from you!

On a side note, it’s been a busy few months at Traackr with a lot of new hires, and we don’t anticipate slowing down anytime soon! Actually, we are still looking to hire a front-end developer. If you’re interested, or know anyone else that may be, be sure to get in contact with us.

Once again, we’re looking to expand the Traackr team.  We’ve recently added a couple of key players to our back-end team who are already making some amazing things happen for what we call the Traackr “core.”  Now we’re looking to add to our front end team a strong lead developer who can manage the development of our existing (and ever expanding) business interface.

This is a very, very important hire for us — not only because our business is expanding quickly and we simply need “more hands” to help us keep the application on pace with our growth, but also because we are still in the infancy of what Traackr can and will become and we want to bring someone on now who will help us define the future of the Traackr offering(s).  In short, we are looking to bring someone on now who will be with us for a long time to come…

What we’re looking for

At the very basic level, we’re looking for someone with groundbreaking technical chops.  Specifically, we are looking for someone with the following technical skills:

• BSCS, MSCS or equivalent
• Experience in Web application architecturing & development
• Experience in building advanced Web-based UI
• Expert in PHP5, Javascript, HTML and CSS
• Experience with MVC frameworks like CakePHP or similar
• Strong database knowledge (MySQL or similar)
• Experience with Ajax and Object Oriented Javascript programming

Why you will want to work with Traackr

Traackr is a great place to be for anyone interested in working in a very flexible, but demanding, start-up environment.  Some of the reasons you will love working at Traackr (if you are the right person) include:

• We are a small, scrappy start-up which has completely funded itself through revenue so far
• But we’re not going to be small forever…we have big goals for Traackr and are on our way to achieve them
• We are working on something big here at Traackr (some of which we can’t talk about here) but in short, it’s our aim to be the ultimate source for Online Influencer Analysis — something that will become even more important and valuable as the social media landscape develops.
• We have a clear vision and great management.  Unlike many start-ups, at Traackr you have both a clear vision for your role and where we are heading as well as the flexibility to shape and define your work.
• We have an awesome office in Cambridge
• We drink beer on friday afternoons…as a rule.

Inquire about this job

If you are interested in working with Traackr, you can let us know by sending a link to your LinkedIn profile (don’t bother cleaning up a resume, just update your LinkedIn profile) and a note to MGRAVE @ TRAACKR DOT COM with “Sr. Front End” in the subject line.

Thanks — looking forward to meeting you!

You already knew about the video -and here too- (you knew about that, right?), now discover the music.

All the spirit of Traackr.com in a song. Check it out on lastfm.com.

Thank you Laurent.

Enjoy!

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