Gen Y has spoken once again. In the latest PMN and Pace University survey we explored Gen Y’s usage and attitudes toward texting, mobile marketing, email, social networks and more. The results were enlightening. While Generation Yers do indeed spend considerable time on social networks, when asked what they would least like to give up for one week, only nine percent said social networks! In fact, the media Gen Y apparently can’t live without was…drum roll please….yup, old-fashioned email and texting.



So what’s going on here? Could it be that there is a clear division across media that includes “nice to have” non-essential sites (like Twitter and facebook) and “must have” productivity and communication tools (like email and texting)? Should Twitter and facebook be worried given they are considered less of a necessity? While no one is asking Gen Y to choose, the question is an important one for every social network and/or community player – what should you be doing now to avoid becoming just another community causality like GeoCities. For more information about our latest survey, visit the PMN website or check out some of the news coverage and let me know what you think.

Gen Y Holds Tight To Email And Texting
eMarketer: November 4, 2009 

Probing GenY'ers
MediaPost: October 27, 2009

Tech Additions: Email and Texting Top Social Media In Gen Y [Study]
Mashable: October 20, 2009

‘Til Next Time

I love the fact that brands are now conscious about building communities. They’ve finally realized that the social internet matters and that these communities have and will continue to have an enormous impact on their brand, sales, and future success -- whether they like it or not.

The latest to announce a new online forum/community is Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) with their new Freestyle Voices website. The site officially makes NCL the first cruise line in the industry to allow guests to connect and participate with each other. It gives users the ability to post their own opinions, reviews, pictures and personal stories about their NCL cruise vacation. And it seems to be working. In just a short period of time NCL’s Freestyle Voices is a vibrant community with more than 3,500 questions submitted, 200 stories posted and over 770 shore excursion reviews. But what I like best about the NCL Freestyle Voices is the following:

1. It’s not a separate community/url: Freestyle Voices is part of the NCL main website and heavily promoted on the homepage. This allows NCL to take advantage of the close to one million unique individuals who visit the NCL website each month. Furthermore, quotes from happy cruisers help NCL do the selling. In a world where people are turning to other people for the things they need rather than brands, this is great marketing.
2. It’s flexible and fully integrated: Users of the Freestyle Cruise can not only share their stories amongst themselves but also have the ability to link to those stories, photos, etc. to other social networks like Facebook -- so that people who don’t visit NCL, can view the experience. This also enables the customer and NCL to reach a larger audience.
3. It’s a database & viral tool: NCL doesn’t stop the conversation there. NCL encourages visitors to Freestyle Voices to sign up for the Inside Scoop, their company newsletter offering the latest updates on cruise specials, hot destinations and vacation planning. Visitors can even share the page/site with others across a multitude of destinations including delicious, newsvine, Twitter and more.

What the NCL site (and others like it) demonstrate is that it is not just about the popular social networks (i.e. Facebook), its about being and building community everywhere your customers are, including your own web site – especially your website since that  is where you'll likely to find your best customers.

‘Til Next Time

And that is exactly what CVS Caremark is hoping with its new community “For All the Ways You Care.” The campaign officially launched last year with TV ads and an innovative contest that celebrated and honored women’s roles as nurturers and caregivers. It takes another step forward this week with a new and enhanced community website. An email invitation received on Monday officially announced that website along with a series of new community features that invites users to participate with others and the CVS brand. New member features include personalized profiles, customizable stories, forums and support groups, and resources.

It’s a great concept and an admirable effort but success is all in the details and execution. While CVS and its agency Hill Holliday should be commended for expanding on a good concept and successful contest that humanized the brand, there are a few lessons to be learned here. First a look at the traffic using Compete tells an interesting story. The site is struggling. After hitting a high of 35,000 unique visitors in December with the support of national TV ads the site now hovers around half that. That compares to over 4,000,000 monthly unique visitors for CVS.com. Next, referring url data on Compete site shows the majority of the traffic is coming from sites associated with the CVS brand - www.cvsadvisors.com (and advisor site and panel for CVS) and www.hhcc.com (Hill Holliday the agency). So what should CVS.com do to build the community site and facilitate sharing and interactions among visitors?

1. Leverage Existing Assets: With 4 million monthly unique users, CVS may have benefited more by integrating the program into www.CVS.com or at least promote it on the homepage. A visit to CVS.com’s home page today showed no mention of the “For All The Ways You Care” program – missed opportunity. And although I received a solo email announcing the official launch because I signed up for the alert, CVS should leverage its existing programs and communications including its ExtraCare loyalty program to further promote the effort.

2. Build, Listen, Grow, Activate: CVS has little to no presence on Social Network sites such as facebook, YouTube, etc. CVS.com’s Twitter presence is limited to a handful of twitter accounts with few followers – the largest of which CVSPharmacy has 464 followers but no posts. Part of being successful is being there. Social Networks are a great opportunity to listen and learn and best of all they cost little other than the time and effort you put into them. While “For All The Ways You Care” may be central and critical to CVS’s long-term community strategy it would certainly benefit from a presence on and integration with other CVS communities across the leading social networks.

3. Define and Refine Goals, Objectives, Target Audience – If the goal is to build a vibrant online community CVS need to rethink its approach. To do so across today’s social internet requires a deep understanding of the audience and where to find them. Are they creators or spectators, as an example? Knowing this will dictate the approach, tactics, content and ultimately success of the program.

4. Tactics - After knowing the audience, think about the tactics. Imagine if the $169K that CVS spent on just one Extreme Home Makeover :30 TV ad was applied to targeting key influencers online. My guess is we’d be seeing a ton of growth. Time to funnel a lot of the big budget into online marketing and communications to grow and engage the community.

5. Partner – Picking the right partner to grow participation is critical. While Hill Holiday created a very strong concept, it’s critical that CVS partners with agencies that understand the social web and how to grow participation.

Overall good idea that is struggling, but certainly capable of getting better with some additional thinking, new tactics and a lot of listening.