Whatever success looks like – it could be more hits, likes, shares or just good old fashioned sales – effective community management is essential.

Through a detailed knowledge of the strategic direction of an account, as well as a specific campaign strategy, it’ll be up to you to deliver high quality campaign and digital PR activity that gets people talking/clicking/buying. So, what makes a good Community Influencer? You’ll need experience in a community management or digital PR position and a broad range of core PR skills, including landscaping for digital media, writing blogs, updates and releases, managing media coverage, maintaining brands’ social media profiles and an excellent eye for detail – plus, a passion for fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands.

If you’re interested in applying for this vacancy, please contact recruitment@fivebyfiveuk.com

The fact is that FMCGs are the brands most integral in our daily lives. Think about what you do every day and which brands you use most frequently, and I promise 8 out of 10 will be FMCG ones.

That is why I don’t like the term’s allusion to an ephemeral and superficial “affair”, especially since no meaningful relationship is based on “quick and cheap” as principles. It always felt a counterintuitive moniker for brands much loved by millions.

Continuing from our exploration of “always on”, meaningful and engaging relationships can only be built when someone – or a brand – is there for you when you need or want them.

And ‘being there’ used to be an easier endeavour for brands – contained, linear, formulaic, and prescriptive.

But in a demanding society where people live multi-screen lives, seeking instant information, entertainment, utility, value for money and more via increasing interconnectivity, FMCG may stand for something quite different.

Fast Meaningful Content Gratification, perhaps.

There’s the “C” word again, but we shouldn’t shy away from it; when it comes to content nowadays, our target audiences are at their most demanding regarding quality and immediacy.

When seeking to achieve everyday goals, 90% of people move between several screened devices. Increasingly, they’ll use more than one screen simultaneously.

Combine this with the projection of an 80% smartphone penetration for the UK by 2016 (currently 40%¹), which means that just about everyone has an intelligent interactive screen in their pocket that will connect with more and more data and devices around us.  And with mobile access to the internet overtaking desktop as soon as 2015¹, that is when we perhaps start to get a sense of what Fast Moving really is.

So, on the one hand you have FMCG brands that feature constantly in our lives, and in the other hand (literally) you have the many screens that reflect, enrich and enhance our lives; giving access to the content, competition and currency that are important to us. It isn’t exactly a challenging leap to fathom the value of combining the two.

You can look at this multi-screen development in two ways; either as something that increased the complexity and daily challenges of our professional lives as marketers, OR a huge opportunity to be of value to our target audience beyond the item they put in their trolley. To earn our place in their world.

We can become a valued part of their world before they reach the shelf, during their shopping trip, and long after they’ve got home, unpacked the bags and sat on the sofa, tablet in hand. We can close the gap that sometimes exists between shopper and end user. And if we get it spot on, we can support the retailers by driving innovation and interest in the category.

Either way, the heat is on for FMCG brands – not just to be accessible in a meaningful manner, but also to be able to cater to the whole spectrum of what “meaningful” may be depending on the need of the moment as well as the format of the screen itself.

At any given point your brand may need to be entertaining, informative, emotive, valuable, rewarding, useful, helpful and much more. It may need to rise to any occasion, whether that is an X Factor ad break or an interactive FAQ section on your website.

The only way to shine through in this new world is to empathise. Brands have to learn how to earn their place in a customer’s world, and stay there – they need to rethink the static “touch points” of the past.

There are many questions to be answered in planning a multi-screen strategy that engages the always-on consumer. Is it better to be optimised for sequential usage, for simultaneous usage or both? How important are smart phones vs. tablets? How does that affect a PONBE (Paid, Owned, Network, Borrowed, and Earned) media approach to a brand’s content?

As Tupac Shakur said, both man and an FMCG (Fast Meaningful Content Gratification) brand that realised the power of “social” before it even became a term in media, “I‘m a reflection of the community”. Today the community is reflected across multiple screens.

Did you read this on a Desktop PC, laptop, tablet or a phone….?

Christian Lazopoulos

Strategy Director, Five by Five.

¹ Source: Tech Radar, Think Mobile UK (Google) conference, Microsoft Tag, October 2012

This shift presents an opportunity for clients to go beyond standard banner ad campaigns to sharing interactive multi-screen experiences.

Below are some examples from our latest smartphone ad for Call of Duty Black Ops 2. It incorporates swipe control and video content. 

We’re now looking into extending smartphone ad creative further to make the experience more immersive and entertaining.

We helped CooperVision launch Proclear® 1 day multifocal to market last spring by providing an extensive toolkit of supporting marketing materials to practitioners, to equip them with everything they needed to help promote this lens to patients. Campaign branding focused on the key benefits of simplicity (of fit), comfort and convenience.

We created the dedicated microsite for consumers and practitioners, which features a tool for people to input their prescription to see if the lens is available in the correct parameters for them. It also covers the topic of presbyopia and treatment options, along with lens information and a call to action for consumers to visit their local practitioner for more information.

For independent practices and key retailers, we designed a comprehensive launch pack comprising a step-by-step fitting guide, six-page sales aid, PC Technology™ guide, multifocal booklet and an introductory letter.

We also produced a launch press release for key trade media, an announcement email for the UK market and a front page trade advertisement in Optician magazine that ran in June and July 2012.

A key figure in this debate is Katie Delahaye Paine, Chief Marketing Officer of News Group International and founder of KDPaine & Partners but also known as ‘The Queen of Measurement’, no less! She has been working tirelessly for nearly two decades developing global measurement systems and pioneering the standardisation of PR and social media measurement. Paine was also instrumental in establishing the Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles in 2010:

1. Importance of Goal Setting and Measurement
2. Measuring the Effect on Outcomes is Preferred to Measuring Output
3. The Effect on Business Results Can and Should Be Measured Where Possible
4. Media Measurement Requires Quantity and Quality
5. AVEs are not the Value of Public Relations
6. Social Media Can and Should be Measured
7. Transparency and Replicability are Paramount to Sound Measurement

More detail on the principles can be found here and, although they make complete sense, it is all quite theoretical with little to go on in terms of how exactly to put the principles into practice. So when the opportunity arose to hear Katie Delahaye Paine speak in person at the recent Social Media Measurement & Monitoring Conference run by Our Social Times, I obviously jumped at the chance.

I won’t go into all the detail of the day’s presentations, though you can have a read of the Our Social Times summary here if you are interested. The day was well organised and the content from the speakers was fascinating, yet the majority was, again, quite theoretical. Katie Delahaye Paine summarised the Barcelona Principles and covered the standards for measurement such as reach/impressions, engagement, influence/relevance, opinion/advocacy and impact/value but didn’t divulge anything new.

Other speakers covered different topics from Katy Howell (Immediate Future) with ‘Attribution vs. Contribution’ and how consumers touch on average over 10 sources before committing to a purchase, through to Lutz Finger (Fisheye Analytics) with ‘Astroturfing and the Rise of Fake Influencers’– did you know that 50% of web traffic is non-human and that 30% of users cannot tell that they’re not talking to a real person? Scary stuff!

So, all in all, an interesting day but no big revelations as to how exactly we should be measuring our PR and social media campaigns aside from our usual approach of KPI setting based on a campaign’s objectives. I will certainly be keeping my ears to the ground for any news to come out of the next AMEC summit which will be taking place in Madrid in June, highlighting best practice development, standards and the latest thinking on social media measurement. Perhaps a little trip overseas is in order… ¿Como se dice ‘Measurement Matters’ en Espagňol?!

Let me tell you a story
This section’s all about the heritage (which is immense and fascinating) and what the company stands for. The things that are important to them. It also covers the business side like running your own pub and recruitment.

Can I get you a drink?
This is about all things Badger. Helping you choose your ideal ale, recipes, the stories behind some of the drinks (ask us some day how they came up with the name ‘Tanglefoot’).

Come on inside
This is all about the network of pubs. The challenge here was to balance the individual personality of each pub with the core H&W values. Then we gave loads of information around local walks, food, pub sign history (really).

Of course, coming up with the idea is one thing, delivering it is something else entirely. And that’s what our Producers are all about. It’s about scoping and delivering projects across a range of digital and offline channels while also building a close and trusting relationship with clients. A real mix of getting things done and client management. So, you’ll need to be able to keep a cool head when the heat’s on, you’ll love great creative, be incredibly organised and be able to gain instant credibility with clients.

Essentially we’re after the moon on a stick. But our Producers deliver that for our clients every day, and then some.

So, if you’re interested in being at the centre of amazing work and clients, contact recruitment@fivebyfiveuk.com

Our technology team also created two applications; a bespoke HTML 5 iPad application to help the CooperVision sales team engage with practitioners and a web-based version of the Vision Xtra app for everyone to use.

Rob Healey, CooperVision UK Marketing Manager had this to say about the campaign:

“We have been incredibly impressed with the smooth production and execution of the Vision Xtra campaign thanks to Five by Five. We are already seeing success to-date in terms of registration numbers and particularly for one of our sales representatives, who has struggled to meet with an independent practitioner for a number of years. However, once he had received the direct mail piece the practitioner actually contacted CooperVision directly himself!   All campaign materials created were of an extremely high standard and the team at Five by Five were really easy to work with throughout the project. They dealt with all our requests quickly and efficiently to help produce a campaign all parties can be proud of.”  

We’ll be back (and detoxing) on Tuesday.