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As you probably already know, KLM is one of the best players on Social Media. They are known for their genius and creative replies to people on Facebook and Twitter, and for their unique campaigns, like the one with the cute dog that brings people their lost belongings.

This month, KLM has started testing something new, called “FlightFunding”, as a kind of crowdfunding project. In this experiment, one person gets 24 hours to raise money for a flight using her social media. KLM daily receives tons of messages from people that wish to travel, but have no money. This campaign is meant to help these people (Emerce, 2015).

In the experiment, Juanita from Schijndel in the Netherlands, got the chance to raise enough money to fulfill her wish. Her wish was to be reunited with her family in Canada. The flightfunding-experiment was a great success. In only eight hours, they reached their goal to raise €1.200 (Van Gils, 2015). Because of this success, KLM’s Social Media manager, Karlijn Vogel-Meijer, states that it’s their aim to organise more flightfunding campaigns. This is not a “one-time thing” (Fygi, 2015).

In my opinion, this is a great marketing campaign of KLM. It’s creative, innovative, and joyful. I think it’s a great way to help people, who have a wish to visit a long-lost family member, for example. Even though, KLM isn’t doing great right now, this campaign is something refreshing, and it will definitely not harm their reputation.

I love it!! What do you think? Do you like the concept? Is it a good move from KLM?

Watch the video here:

Sources:

• Emerce (2015) KLM experimenteert met flightfunden, http://www.emerce.nl/nieuws/klm-experimenteert-flightfunden
• A. Fygi (2015) KLM bekijkt hoe het vervolg aan flightfunding-actie kan geven, http://www.adformatie.nl/nieuws/klm-bekijkt-hoe-het-vervolg-aan-flightfunding-actie-kan-geven
• van Gils (2015) Top marketingactie: ‘Flightfund’ je vlucht met KLM, http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/marketing/top-marketingactie-flightfund-je-vlucht-met-klm

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What do you do when you want to show someone your compassion or your respect? And what to do when someone posts something on Facebook, regarding the circumstances in Syria, for example? Do you like the post? This is a bit ambiguous. It may not be very appropriate to like a sad post. Facebook has come up with a solution to this.

In September, Facebook announced that they are working on a button, which you can use to express sympathy. People immediately thought that their prayers had been heard and that the ‘dislike’-button was finally coming. There has been mixed reactions to this news. People (and the Facebook team) were afraid that it could be used to express negativity or to put down other users: cyber bullying, basically (Kokalitcheva, 2015).

Last week, Facebook started testing the ‘Reactions’ in Ireland and Spain. This is a new addition to the like-button with many ways to show your feelings. You can do this using a few emojis: “like, love, haha, yay, wow, sad and anger”.

This is what Mark Zuckerberg had to say about this new feature: “For many years, people have asked us to add a “dislike” button. Not every moment is a good moment, and sometimes you just want a way to express empathy. These are important moments where you need the power to share more than ever, and a Like might not be the best way to express yourself” (Zuckerberg, 2015).

The reactions of Facebook users are mixed. Some really love the new idea, others think it’s useless or they prefer a ‘dislike’-button. Here are some of the positive reactions on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post where he announces the testing of the ‘Reactions’ feature:

“Brilliant Mark. No one wants to be disliked and displeased on social network so dislike button idea was never going to work. This is best!”

“Thank you for not making the real kind of dislike button”

 “Great idea! I always feel strange to see “likes” on all sad news or updates”

But, of course, there are also people who don’t like the new feature:

“Why we need a dislike button? If you can just simply not press the like button” 

“We want the dislike button, not this..”

So, what do you think? Should Facebook implement the ‘Reactions’?

• Dutchcowboys (2015) Reactions: het nieuwe ‘liken’ op Facebook, http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/socialmedia/reactions-het-nieuwe-liken-op-facebook
• M. Zuckerberg (2015) https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10102412343501081/
• K. Kokalitcheva (2015) Facebook is finally making a ‘Dislike’ button, http://fortune.com/2015/09/15/facebook-dislike-button/

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This week’s theme is ‘Diffusion and Social Influence’. In this blogpost I will discuss the required articles, as well as two additional articles that I’ve found and two cases to illustrate social influence.

The first article from Aral, S. and Walker, D (2011) discusses if firms can add viral features to products so they are more likely to be shared among peers. The writers state that viral product design may be more effective in encouraging new product adoption than traditional marketing strategies. I agree with this, because when people receive an invite or recommendation from a friend, they will be more likely to react to this. However, I think that viral product design can also backfire. When people receive too much invites, they will eventually ignore all of them.

The article from Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M.W. (2006) discusses the challenges of two-sided networks. I think this article is very useful for platform providers. It helps them understand the Social Media market and it makes them aware of the challenges in two-sided markets.

The last required article written by Li, T., Sprengers, D. and Van Dalen, J. (2013) discusses whether Twitter messages proxy present or even future stock performance and whether they can be used to make better investment decisions in stock markets. I find this research quite interesting, because this shows how Social Media networks can be used for different purposes. Although Yahoo! Finance is a great Social Media network that is used to gather financial information for stock buyers, a network like Twitter could be even better and more convenient, because it doesn’t only provide financial information, but also other information which can affect the stock market.

However these three articles are very useful for understanding the different purposes of Social Media networks, I would like to discuss the term “social influence”.

The first article discusses the difference between social influence and homophily. The authors describe homophily as a process in which people with similar characteristics form ties. Social influence is described as the effect of influencing others with human decisions (Ma, Montgomery and Krishnan, 2009). I think this article is useful for marketing managers, because they need to identify what the reason behind a customer’s purchase is. This is because they require different strategies.

The other article discusses why social influence matters to businesses. In this article eight industry insiders define what social influence means, how to measure it, and why it truly matters. Tip: don’t spam influencers with offers, but develop a relationship with them (Dubois, 2015).

To illustrate social (media) influence, I will discuss two cases: Boxed Water and the #IceBucketChallenge. Both companies encouraged people to share content and to raise awareness. Boxed Water did this by working with influencers to spread the word about their philanthropic campaign with the National Forest Foundation, #Retree (Talbot, 2015). The #IceBucketChallenge was used to promote awareness of the disease ALS and encourage donations to research. This campaign actually encouraged participants to nominate their friends and to share their videos online (Braiker, 2014). This is a great example of a viral product design. Because people are more likely to participate when their friends nominate them and they see that their friends have also done the challenge.

References:

• Aral, S. and Walker, D. (2011) Creating social contagion through viral product design: A randomized trial of peer influence in networks. Management Science 57(9) 1623-1639.
• Braiker, B. (2014) The ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’: A case study in viral marketing gold, http://digiday.com/brands/ice-bucket-challenge-case-study-viral-marketing-success/
• Dubois, L. (2015) Why Social Influence Matters to Businesses, http://www.inc.com/guides/201103/why-social-influence-matters-to-businesses.html
• Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M.W. (2006) Strategies for Two-Sided Markets. Harvard Business Review 84(10) 92-101.
• Ma, L., Montgomery, A. and Krishnan, R. (2009) Homophily or Influence? – Analysis of Purchase Decisions in a Social Network Context, http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~bakos/wise/2009/papers/wise2009-5b2_paper.pdf
• Moore, H. and Roberts, D. (2013) AP Twitter hack causes panic on Wall Street and sends Down plunging, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/apr/23/ap-tweet-hack-wall-street-freefall
• Li, T., Sprengers, D., and van Dalen, J. (2013) Leveraging public sentiment to beat the market. Working Paper.
• Talbot, K. (2015) 5 Brands on Instagram That Succeed with Influencer Marketing, http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-brands-on-instagram-that-succeed-with-influencer-marketing/

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I think you’re all familiar with the little, sneaky ads that appear when you’re surfing the web on your smartphone or tablet. They also appear in apps. Most of the time, you click on them unintentionally. Then, they direct you to their website, which is pretty annoying. Why can’t we just turn them off? Well, Apple has come up with a solution. Yesterday, Apple has launched the new version of iOS, the operating system of iPhones and iPads (iOS 9). This allows users to download apps, which block all mobile ads. But what does this mean for companies that use mobile advertisements?

Mobile advertising is growing faster than all other digital advertising formats (Hoezel, 2015). Mobile ads appear on mobile devices in Google search results, on content websites, in apps and video. They are used to put the business in front of people as they use their smartphones and tablets throughout the day. Websites that publish these mobile ads, generate revenue from it.

Because ad-blocking offers iOS users benefits, they’re very likely to choose to block ads once they’re aware of the option. This will not only hurt publishers that will have less profit, but it will also break the marketing tools that websites use to measure and communicate with their visitors, such as Google Analytics. These tools could be blocked from working and this means that it will be harder to measure site traffic, learn about people who are visiting, and preform A/B testing to find out if changes to a site perform well (Bolluyt, 2015).

So, the main question is: are ad-blockers as good as they sound? I think that, on one hand, an ad-blocker is a great thing to have. It will probably make web surfing on a mobile device a lot more convenient. Because there won’t be any ads that can direct you to another page, by clicking on them unintentionally. But on the other hand, I think it’s bad, because companies will not receive as much information as they do now, through mobile ads and cookies, for example. This can make it a lot harder, or almost impossible, for them to target people, or to improve their business by using this information.

What do you think?

Sources:
“Why Ad-Blocking in iOS 9 Benefits Only Apple” by Jess Bolluyt

“Apple maakt de adblocker mainstream, en dat is een groot probleem” by Alexander Klöpping

“Mobile advertising is exploding and will grow much faster than all other digital ad categories” by Mark Hoelzel

“Mobile ads” by Think with Google