The numbers are impressive. They represent the level of customer engagement Wet Seal earned in its 2010 social media-driven model search. Wet Seal’s Chief Information Officer Jon Kubo related the brand’s online success to fellow retailers at a conference last month in San Francisco.

The significant impact of the single promotion described above not only brings attention to Facebook, the platform that drove most of the engagement, but also entices previously-skeptical retailers to take another look at social media.

We hope they do. And we hope they look far deeper than an accounting of fans and followers.

The numbers above signify neither fans nor followers. They illustrate actions. They show that customers and potential customers are willing to invest time and effort in the brand experience and add their voices to the corps of advocates promoting the brand. 10 million Facebook posts? That’s a lot of buzz for a marketing campaign built around a contest.

How did they do it? Wet Seal is doing a lot right. It produces interactive content that provides fans and customers opportunities to belong to the evolving story of the brand. In addition to the model search, Wet Seal has created tools that allow individuals to create (and share) outfits and operate personalized virtual stores.

That’s the lesson. A social promotion on Facebook has the best chance when it is part of a broad and ongoing strategy to welcome and involve people with interest in your brand. Don’t just put up a Facebook fan page and start broadcasting on Twitter. Use your knowledge of why customers love your brand to customize opportunities and experiences for them.

If they recognize your brand’s personality in what you offer – conversation, entertainment, value, interaction, relationships – you will attract their attention and participation.

And by the numbers, they will be excited enough to tell more than a few friends about it.

*According to “Top of Mind for Retailers? Facebook,” an article at Investors.com in March 2011

While we observed a wide variety of interior and exterior design styles, incorporation of brand identity and product information, there was something notably absent from all locations: social and mobile marketing integration.

It’s not that these companies lack social media or mobile marketing channels…almost all these of them offer a mobile application for account management. And of the five brands we reviewed, four have fairly active Facebook pages that occasionally even mention the branches in the form of new location or event highlights. But in the branch – in an environment where I was captive and immersed in the brand experience – I saw no promotion of the social or mobile channels or anything that encouraged customers’ social engagement with the brand or its products.

More and more retailers across sectors are focusing their in-store experiences on conversation and social interaction, yet in retail investment firms – where some people have no doubt come seeking advice about their money – the stimuli for sparking continued conversation is lacking.  So even though these FIs are doing a good job of promoting a wide variety of products and services in-store, they are failing to create a space that supports an ongoing brand dialogue – one that highlights ways to connect via social and mobile platforms or provides relevant offers for proactive visits to their branch locations… And missing a big opportunity to deepen their relationship with core customers.

Since this was the year of the Social Super Bowl (or the Not So Social Super Bowl), Media Logic thought it’d be fun to do a (non-scientific and non-representative) analysis of how social media extended and amplified the ads a couple of days out.

We conducted a fast poll of everyone who works here, and then did a fast scan of the tweets and stories respondents pointed us to.

Here’s what we learned.

First, most people either previewed the spots online before the game or in the days after. Even if the Super Bowl wasn’t “social” in the ways predicted, the spots have generated a huge amount of conversation, both online and off since.

By far the most popular ad was Volkswagen’s “Darth Vader”. “Adorable.” “It made me chuckle.” Less popular here but apparently popular based on online chatter were Doritos’ “Pug” and Bridgestone’s “Beaver” (aka “Carma” with a “C”). Advertisers still can’t go wrong with kids and cute animals.

A few Monday morning critics online thought the “Darth Vader” ad was a failure because nobody knew who the spot was for. But everyone we surveyed knew.

The most polarizing spot was Doritos’ “Finger Licking”. The folks around me during the game were stunned silent when it aired (how does one react to a guy suckling another guy’s finger during that macho-fest that is the Super Bowl?). The day after, it was most definitely a love it/hate it thing. But there was no doubt in anybody’s mind what the product was, even if there was some discomfort about what was being communicated.

The most controversial spots were those produced for Groupon, particularly “Tibet” with Timothy Hutton. The immediate reaction was mostly a “huh?” But the apparent casual exploitation of human misery to promote a brand sent thousands of activists online to complain (in the spot Tim says, “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry!” Eech!). The backlash drove Groupon’s Founder and Chief Executive Andrew Mason to post a non-apology apology to his blog on Monday. On Tuesday, the controversy itself was exploited, first by the Huffington Post, which linked Groupon’s faux pas to Kenneth Cole’s of the previous week, and second by Lawrence O’Donnell, who criticized the critics. Social ping pong?

At Media Logic, the Groupon spots seems to have left a bad taste in people’s mouths that is only growing more sour as the days go by. Time will tell if Groupon has damaged its brand, or if it will find itself on top in the end, as did Target, Best Buy and Gap, all of whom survived social-driven controversies in 2010.

Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon is the slowly gathering buzz around the 2-minute Chrysler spot featuring Eminem. It seems it took a while for people to chew and digest this opus. But 60 hours after the event, the gritty prideful spot seems to be working its way into the country’s subconscious. It was the most serious spot to air, and a gamble not unlike Apple’s “1984.” It took a few days, but it appears the gamble might be paying off.

Ironically, one of the least loved ads was the one that was most obviously social, the Chevy Cruze “First Date.” The spot, which shows a young man checking his status updates via OnStar to hear the message “best first date ever” posted by the girl he just kissed goodnight, drew derisive laughter in the room I was in. In the days after, that ad barely registered, except in chatter criticizing the brand for not really understanding how Facebook works. Was the girl already a Facebook friend? Wouldn’t the guy have to suffer through 5 FarmVille updates first? Why is he using OnStar, doesn’t he have a smartphone?

The evolution of advertising on (as well as before and after) the Super Bowl demonstrates the meaning and value of marketing for a social world. To quote Eminem, “THIS IS WHAT WE DO.”

The game used to be a once-and-done event. People would talk about the commercials the next day, maybe see a news story. But with rare exceptions, if a spot never ran again, it’d be forgotten. Now, the airing of a spot is merely the kick-off of a campaign that is carried to a marketing score through social networks.

UPDATE: see related article in Advertising Age.

My first experience was the new “Facebook Places” mobile application. Similar to Foursquare and Gowalla, users ‘check in’ on their phone when they arrive at a destination to let their friends know where they are, as well as take advantage of special deals the location may be offering. The Gap was one of the first major retailers to experiment with FB Places, offering free jeans to 10,000 customers to check into their store using the app on Nov. 5th. After so much bad press, I was rooting for a win for the beleaguered brand. I like Gap merchandise, and now I was armed with a smart phone, and hey – we all need pants.

In this social world, I heard about Gap’s promotion in a traditional way, by reading about it in an emailed newsletter. My first step was to download the app, which took several tries, probably because I was among 10,000 trying to do the same thing.

So Gap’s Free Jeans Giveaway Event comes, and I clearly wasn’t alone in my quest. On my way to the closest Gap, I got a call – the jeans were gone already. This was seven minutes after they opened.

Ok – I press on; to what I expect to be the more crowded mall. Upon arriving at a different Gap, the store seemed pretty empty. I fumbled with my phone to check in, and the sales associate sees me and says, “Oh, yeah, people are having trouble with that… must be the cement or something. But here you go,” and she hands me a coupon for free jeans. Simple as that. Or not so simple. She points me to the jeans that apply – they don’t have my size. I ask if there are any more in the back, she checks. I’m thinking I’ll end up driving around town to get them (time I don’t have), but the manager appears and says I can have a pair that is valued at $10 more in my size instead, no problem. They still had about 10 more coupons to give away when I left, almost an hour after they opened.

Some bumps in the road are expected with the adoption and application of any technology, but as a successful focus group of one, here’s my take on what Gap did right.

• Offered a social promotion of value – jeans are fairly high ticket item and symbolic of the Gap brand. 10,000 Gap jean ambassadors, right before the holiday season, are a valuable marketing asset

• Prepared their employees – a week earlier, Brueggers Bagelry emailed around a coupon for 6 free bagels, and by lunch they were sold out all over town. One weary employee was apologetically stamping make-goods while bemoaning the fact that they were unprepared. The Gap associates told me they had been notified weeks ago, that corporate-to-store communications were really detailed and informative – no surprises here.

• Offered a consolation prize – 10,000 happy customers is great, 100,000 unhappy ones is bad. A coworker recently participated in Lowes’ Facebook sneak peak event for Black Friday deals, 100 Kitchen Aid mixers at 90% off. That left 2600 participants with nothing more than aggravation, as noted on their wall, and a visible blunder to more than 200,000 Lowe’s FB fans. In Gap’s case, if the free jeans coupons were gone – anyone who checked in via Facebook Places received an offer of 40% off any item in the store. That’s not half bad for a non-winner.

• Customer Service is still king – to get as far as I did, and leave without the jeans, would have been more sour than sweet. My Gap manager felt empowered to make decisions that built my brand experience.

• New technology is exciting, but traditional media is not dead – traditional PR outlets covered the Gap promotion and drew my attention. The most successful marketing leverages the best of all media options. Organizations that make good use of relevance, urgency and value will be welcome in my email stream. And don’t discount good old fashioned media like radio and television, which are among the first to plant seeds that I then recognize in other social outlets

As for the future of Facebook Places, it remains to be seen if consumers are as excited about the possibilities as we marketers are. Despite the fact I sit here blogging in my new jeans, I am not quite programmed yet to always check the location or even the “Coupon” app on my phone when I enter a store. But hey – at the rate my son wears through the knees in his pants, it could be a habit in the making. Kind of like remembering to bring those recyclable bags into the grocery store, not just carried around in my trunk.

If we as buyers do not have a personal experience with a brand, or know someone who has, we generally defer to (and trust) the “wisdom of crowds” and their conversations about a particular brand or product to inform our purchasing decisions.  In the modern marketing world, in which social media and social CRM are moving at break-neck pace, the crowd-sourcing mechanism will be a primary influencer of how, when and where B2B consumers decide to make a purchase. The once-isolated customer is now an active consumer of expert opinions, product comparisons and peer reviews, using the Internet and massive social networking to gather the necessary information for making an informed purchase decision.

The new participatory role of the consumer has fundamentally changed B2B marketing by presenting companies with the opportunity to excite and engage prospective customers in their prevailing platform for conversation. Now that the consumer has control (as discussed in our recent whitepaper, Forget the Funnel – a New Look at the Stealth Buyer), companies who wish to have a voice in the conversation must develop integrated marketing strategies that deliver consumers offers and experiences in an authentic and relevant way.

So how do you generate inbound leads with a social media strategy?  Develop an integrated marketing communications program that strengthens your brand within the conversation, builds referrals, communities and influencers and makes sense of your social footprint – a strategy that will pave the way for attracting highly qualified inbound leads.  Miller rightfully asserts that companies thinking strategically about demand generation must commit a significant portion of their efforts to using social media as a means for tapping the wisdom of crowds and conversations and building trust for their brands and products.  Just as it was in the traditional sales cycle, trust is a critical component to building a customer relationship, and companies can leverage social media to grow their consumer relationships, enhance B2B lead generation efforts and ultimately, convert qualified prospects into revenue for their brand.

Many companies in today’s market might be struggling with the costs of increasing their physical footprint. But with the right strategic approach, companies can afford to increase their digital footprint to reach more prospects, increase engagement and generate highly qualified inbound leads.

Learn how to integrate, manage and maximize your company’s total social marketing universe. Request your Zeitgeist & Coffee demo now.

Some of us remember a similar transition about twenty years ago, when traditional graphic production (we’re talking galleys, xacto knives, spray mount, stat cameras and monstrous typesetting equipment) shifted into the computer age of desktop publishing. The tradesman-like skills of specialized dexterity, hand-eye coordination and endurance were replaced by amazing new tools – computer software, mouse and keyboard. Making the jump into modern production with a crash course in Quark, Photoshop or Illustrator (to name just a few) was intense, initially terrifying, but ultimately amazingly empowering. Modern tools have facilitated faster, easier and more sophisticated production of visual communications.

Gone were the days when it would take at least two people a full week to produce a single FSI. The specialties of typesetter and a paste-up artist morphed into one powerful resource: the graphic artist. Very much a blend of blue and white collar, graphic arts became a very rewarding way to apply one’s skills to “make” a living (not one you would like to see slip away into obsolescence). Fast forward to the Twenty-First Century, I would argue that our social world has upped the ante, and paved a new, wonderfully exciting avenue to further enhance that powerful resource.

Creating visual ways to communicate with each other very much entails strategic thinking, time-sensitive decisions and troubleshooting (the very nature of software and hardware playing nicely together requires this). Enter multimedia. A powerful new suite of proficiencies can be adapted from the skill and talent required by traditional print-based graphic arts. Good layout sensibility can be called upon and applied to rich media, which in turn enhances blogs, or enriches web experience, for example. Editing web content through custom (or not) CMS can become a slight side step from editing brochures in Quark or InDesign. The point here is that all those wonderful abilities, like a keen eye for high-end color, superior layout and composition, and incredible deadline driven organizational skills, can be applied, and I would say effectively enhanced by stretching into the new media frontier.

For me, unlike 1990, the demands and opportunities of this hot new transition is not nearly the stretch that Production 1.0 (pre-desktop) to Production 2.0 was. Computers as tools are now second nature, and we have all had to learn how to train ourselves on the fly. If we stay nimble and flexible, this new, infinitely networked world has unprecedented room for skill adaptation and unimagined growth.

Recent Media Logic rich media projects such as chooseMVP.com and our own CCM model (referenced above) and Zeitgeist & Coffee videos, utilized Adobe After Effects as a composition and animation tool, Final Cut Pro, and Sound Edit Pro to edit and enhance the Rich Media experience, and employed Flash to create the video player to make it all work online. Then our own holiday card employed Final Cut Pro, Sound Edit Pro as well as Flash to create an interactive microsite with “play along” functionality.

“Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can’t just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.”

–MarketingVOX

Case in point: Purchase College. This premier member of the State University of New York system had what many might consider an enviable situation – it was experiencing very little difficulty in recruiting students.

The challenge was in student retention.

As part of the SUNY system, Purchase College attracted many students expecting a “typical” SUNY experience – something you definitely won’t find at the distinctly different Purchase College. Even internally, Purchase had become a college of two minds, a unique combination of both arts conservatory and liberal arts/sciences mainstay.

In order to get more of the right students to apply and have fewer of the wrong ones enroll, Purchase College needed to start talking about itself in a more authentic and direct way – allowing prospective students to “self-select.”

Through our Mine & Dine and BrandAmp products, Media Logic quickly worked to uncover, identify and create a unified vision. Media Logic provided the necessary forum for leaders from across the campus community to come together and resolve the tension between the school’s “arts” side and its “liberal arts” side.

Under Media Logic’s guidance, Purchase College created a brand that was far more than the sum of its parts. Essential to the branding process were qualitative research, a geo-demographic analysis, predictive modeling and a comprehensive recruitment and retention plan. We were able to determine that Purchase’s ultimate value came not solely from its programs, but from the unique mindset and culture of the students themselves.

The entire campus – from faculty and students to administrators and alumni – embraced the new brand as an authentic reflection of who they really were. It was integrated into all recruitment communications, and guidelines were established to extend it across the entire college.

After the launch of the new brand, applications increased more than 60%. Selectivity was also up 16% (more than 30% for liberal arts), and persistence has risen by 10% and 12%, respectively.

Media Logic’s work with Penn Mutual on the development and launch of its Accumulation Builder Indexed Universal Life product (IUL) gives us a great example of how Brand Amp can be used in exactly this type of situation.

Now, when most people think of insurance, “exciting” probably isn’t the first word that springs to mind. But things around Penn Mutual have been exciting lately, as the company has been revving up its product development engines to address the unique challenges of our current economy.

John Hayes, Global CMO of American Express, summed it up nicely at a recent marketing conference when he said:

“The marketer that stops innovating in tough times is ‘carving their brand’s own tombstone.’ Companies that build the infrastructure to respond to changing customer behavior quickly will reap the rewards from customers who will be looking to award their hard-earned dollars to those brands which provide them with the greatest value and understand their needs.”

Harnessing the power of Brand Amp, Media Logic and Penn Mutual looked at the shifts in the marketplace and identified key opportunities. This, in turn, led to development of a compelling value proposition and product messaging for “Accumulation Builder IUL” – an innovative new insurance product designed to unlock the potential of Penn agents’ current customer base.

To build engagement and increase product momentum, Media Logic also built proprietary tools that allowed Penn’s agents to get up to speed on the new product quickly and get ready to sell it confidently.

By taking advantage of BrandAmp, Penn Mutual was able to keep its offering in step with the evolution of its customers’ needs – helping ignite conversation and re-excite a target population.