Episode #194 – March 30th, 2012
Intro
How to interact on Twtter: Include #MktgUp in your tweet!
On the show today is Karen Rubin (@KarenRubin) and Mike Volpe (@MVolpe)
As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience – 4pm Friday
Starbucks Bashed For Bashing Beetles
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2012-03-28/starbucks-strawberry-frappuccino-beetle-juice/53839006/1
Starbucks has the vegan community seeing red over what it recently began using to color its Strawberry Frappuccinos: beetles.
That’s beetles as in ground up cochineal beetles ? mostly found in Mexico and South America. Gross as that may sound, it’s a common, government-approved food coloring used widely throughout the food industry.
For Starbucks, which is eager to get artificial ingredients out of its food and drinks, it’s an unexpected PR problem.
Never mind that Frappuccinos, in total, represent a $2 billion global business for Starbucks. “This is the quintessential modern day PR crisis,” says PR expert Katie Delahaye Paine. “You try to be good and green, and someone is going to get you for it.”
Marketing Takeaway: You might get flamed for trying to do the right thing. Just be as transparent as you can.
Is Facebook Building A Search Engine?
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/03/is-facebook-getting-serious-about-search.html
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-28/facebook-delves-deeper-into-search
About two dozen Facebook engineers, led by a former Google engineer named Lars Rasmussen, are working on an improved search engine
The goal, they say, is to help users better sift through the volume of content that members create on the site, such as status updates, and the articles, videos, and other information across the Web that people ?like? using Facebook?s omnipresent thumbs-up button.
In February, Facebook fielded 336 million search queries, according to ComScore?magnitudes fewer than Google (GOOG) and its closest competitors.
While Google controls 67 percent of the search market in the U.S. and has sophisticated technology to track a trillion Web pages, Facebook employs few, if any, traditional search engineers, who typically have deep expertise in fields such as information retrieval and natural language processing. But the company has a lot of social data it can apply to the problem of organizing information.
Marketing Takeaway: Build up your Facebook presence NOW so you are prepared for the day they kill Google. (sort of like Doomsday preppers)
Couple Flees Home After Twitter Mistake
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/03/tweet-ids-wrong-address-for-trayvons-shooter-/1#.T3XH2b9WqgQ
An elderly couple in Sanford, Fla., have temporarily fled their home after the address was erroneously tweeted as belonging to George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.
The Smoking Gun reports that the address was retweeted by director Spike Lee to his 240,000 followers. CNN reports that Lee has since taken it down from his Twitter site.
The 70-year-old woman, a school cafeteria worker, and her 72-year-old husband have moved into a hotel after getting hate mail and unwanted visitors, their son, Chip Humble, tells the newspaper.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-29/spike-lee-trayvon-martin/53873206/1
An elderly couple has reached a settlement with Spike Lee after the pair said they had to leave their Florida home after the director help spread a Twitter posting listing their address as that of the man who shot an unarmed teen.
Elaine and David McClain are in their 70s and say they have a son named William George Zimmerman, who lived in their Sanford area home in the mid-1990s. They say he is no relation to 28-year-old George Zimmerman, who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26.
Lee tweeted late Wednesday: “I Deeply Apologize To The McClain Family For Retweeting Their Address. It Was A Mistake. Please Leave The McClain’s In Peace.”
Marketing Takeaway: If you want to be as trusted as a journalist. you need to do fact checking like a journalist.
Tweeting CEOs
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/03/social-media-trust-ceo.html
77% of Consumers 82% of Employees Trust a Tweeting CEO
http://www.brandfog.com/CEOSocialMediaSurvey/BRANDfog_2012_CEO_Survey.pdf
81% of respondents believe that CEOs who engage in social media are better equipped than their peers to lead companies in a web 2.0 world.
When asked what benefits C-Suite engagement in social media can lead to, 78% cited Better Communication and 71% stated Improved Brand Image a