Yesterday, I collaborated with my colleague Alisa Leonard on thoughts about the implications of Google+ Pages for marketers. Read an excerpt below or the full post at greatfinds.icrossing.com.

Google+ Pages: Real-Time Platforms for Connected Brands
By Tarah Feinberg | November 7th, 2011

 

The launch of Google Plus Pages today provides marketers a distinct opportunity to engage in real-time marketing on an extremely powerful connected platform. Google+ is not another social destination site; leave your comparisons of Facebook and Google+ at the door, please. No, the doors have swung open for businesses and brands, large and small, to develop deep and focused connections with their audiences across bought, earned and owned media. Google now has an indisputable foothold across all of those media. Marketers that leverage the platform effectively will see impressive results.

It is more important than ever for brands to act like publishers, and Google+ promises to enhance the relationship between search and social. But Google+ isn’t just about search, either. As our colleague Rob Garner wrote on MediaPost recently, “this is about social relevancy, or in other words, using technology to improve one’s social networking experience in a highly meaningful way.”

Wow. Just wow.

The official Nivea statement reads: “After realizing that this ad is misleading, it was immediately withdrawn.” Really? It’s pretty disturbing that no one on the brand team realized that before launching it, much less when it was pitched to them by the moronic agency.

What is it going to take for brands and agencies to understand that there's a vast difference between irreverent humor and idiotic, offensive, archaic thinking? Categorize this with Groupon's Super Bowl spots.

A Nivea print ad encouraging African-American men to “re-civilize” themselves, now appearing in September’s issue of Esquire magazine, created a firestorm of tweets, Facebook updates and blog posts accusing the brand of racism.

Nivea took to its Facebook Page Thursday afternoon to issue an apology and thank fans for their concern. Parent company Beiersdorf AG withdrew the ad from future publication.

“Thank you for caring enough to give us your feedback about the recent ‘Re-civilized’ NIVEA FOR MEN ad. This ad was inappropriate and offensive,” Nivea said on Facebook. “It was never our intention to offend anyone, and for this we are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again. Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of our company.”

The ad in question portrays an African-American man tossing out a mask of himself with a beard and afro-style hairdo. It reads, “Look like you give a damn,” and has the phrase “re-civilize yourself” bolded in all capital letters.

Bloggers, Twitter users and Facebook members took issue with the racial implications of the print ad.

“The message couldn’t be clearer: Natural hair on a black man isn’t a style preference or a nod to afrocentrism — it’s straight-up uncivilized,” GOOD Associate Editor Nona Willis Aronowitz wrote.

“Wonder what, if anything, @Rihanna will say about this as the face of #nivea,” fashion writer Septembre Anderson tweeted. Rihanna was chosen as the official spokeswoman for Nivea earlier this year. The caption on Anderson’s Twitpic photo reads, “Adding Nivea to the list of companies that will not be getting my money. Post-racial my ass.”

A separate ad featuring “a clean-shaven white guy getting ready to toss away his scraggly unshaven head and the words, ‘Sin City isn’t an excuse to look like hell,’” seemed to be overlooked in the midst of the social media uprising, according to AdAge.

Nivea parent company Beiersdorf AG shared the following longer statement with CNN:

“We are deeply sorry to anyone who may take offense to this specific local advertisement. After realizing that this ad is misleading, it was immediately withdrawn.

“Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of NIVEA: The brand represents diversity, tolerance, and equal opportunity. We value difference. Direct or indirect discrimination must be ruled out in all decisions by, and in all areas of our activities. This applies regardless of gender, age, race, skin color, religion, ideology, sexual orientation, or disability. Nor should cultural, ethnic, or national origin, and political or philosophical conviction be of any significance.”

Images courtesy of AdAge & GOOD

via mashable.com

August  8, 2011
iCrossing's Live Media Studio to Turn Brands into Storytellers

@Hearst: What's your view on the trend of brands acting more like publishers?

Tarah Feinberg: For a long time, we’ve lived in a world where brands engaged in marketing that was very one-way—it was, “This is our message. This is our product. This is what you should believe.” We now live in a world where we have much savvier consumers who have access to a wider range of information. Now CMOs know that they have to be content publishers in order to provide a higher value to their audiences other than information about their products. But the dilemma is that they’re having a really hard time building and managing a publishing operation because they’ve never done it before.

@Hearst: Given today’s digital media landscape, what role does real-time play in crafting content for a brand?

Feinberg: Real-time marketing boils down to understanding the needs of a brand and its audience at any given moment. We might broadcast different content in the morning than in the evening, on a Monday than we do on a Saturday. It’s about making sure that our client’s communications are always as relevant as possible. We can measure how the content is performing and take immediate feedback from the communities, which means that we are constantly improving the experiences on an ongoing basis.

@Hearst: What are clients hoping to achieve?

Feinberg: As a baseline, we know that we’re talking about products or services and selling something. But what brands are now looking to accomplish with the Live Media Studio is to build advocacy around their offerings in the marketplace so that they’re not just talking about themselves—they want the world talking about them. If a brand can compel someone to sing its praises, it’s been proven by research that that person’s social network is more likely to buy that product than if they just hear a message from the brand.

Tarah Feinberg

@Hearst: How will iCrossing’s partnership with Hearst influence the Live Media Studio?

Feinberg: We are very fortunate to be a part of Hearst because it allows us to leverage its state-of-the-art creative resources, including all of the in-house production capabilities and a network of freelance writers. Hearst has some amazing thought leaders in so many different categories, including fashion, automotive, and finance, which overlap with our client roster. When working with a publication, we can use archived content or co-create it with our clients.

iCrossing is disproportionately competitive compared to other agencies because of our partnership with Hearst. Virtually no one else in this space has the amazing mix of incredible content creation, editorial capabilities and marketing acumen. All of these aspects that Hearst specializes in have amplified our studio operations.

@Hearst: Tell me about your role as senior director of the Live Media Studio.

Feinberg: My outward-facing role is to convey the vision and the offerings that we are bringing to other departments at iCrossing, to Hearst properties, and to our clients so there’s a unified voice about the Live Media Studio. The other part of my role is to offer operational guidance, drive the creative product and help the studio continue to evolve its mission and value of content and communities.

@Hearst: What does the addition of the Live Media Studio suggest about iCrossing’s future?

Feinberg: It’s a natural evolution for the agency. The Live Media Studio shows how iCrossing has always been at the forefront of digital marketing. When the company was founded, we were really ahead of the curve for search—we were doing search marketing before Google was “Google.” We innovated in that area, but since then the digital space has progressed to more than that. And while our search and paid media offerings are still very strong, we’ve identified that the future of marketing is about using real-time and rich content that is rooted in a brand.

 

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Watch a video of iCrossing leaders talking about the significance of their Live Media Studio.