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In a column for BBC Business (@BBCBusiness), Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) CEO Muhtar Kent cites 5 global mega-trends from a Consumer Goods Forum report on the "Future Value Chain," and stresses how fundamentally important they are to the future of retail and consumer goods.

2020 Future Value Chain Webcast Presentation

1.    Mass Urbanization. The proportion of people living in cities has now surpassed 50% worldwide, and should reach 70% by 2050, necessitating new supply chain and logistical models.

2.    We're Getting Older. By 2047, the number of individuals over 60 years of age will be higher than those under 15 years of age, a shift presenting substantial possibilities for suitably adaptive organizations.

3.    The Middle Class Cometh. The world is experiencing the greatest economic shift in history as the global middle class grows by another billion people in the next 10 years. By 2030, over 90% of this audience are set to reside in emerging nations, compared with 50% today.

4.    Consumers in the Driving Seat. Evolving technologies are transforming customers’ expectations and ability to influence companies. By 2013, for example, there will be 2 billion mobile users, while a third of purchases are due to be completed online by 2020. Among the requirements on companies will be finding the right channels through which to converse with shoppers, alongside leveraging big data and embracing collaboration.

5.    What About the Planet? Sustainability will assume heightened importance. By 2030, the global population should hit 8.3 billion, while the demand for food and energy is anticipated to leap by 50%, an acceleration standing at 30% for fresh water.

Read this in full.

Coca-Cola also shares it’s branding vision:

How do the above mega-trends impact your publishing plans? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify and maximize trends impacting your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Thad McIlroy (@ThadMcIlroy), publisher of The Future of Publishing, writes that the word “‘discoverability’ is being used carelessly and doesn’t provide ready answers” in the never-ending quest to help consumers become aware of new books. He says, “Metadata’s first task is mere findability – and the distinction is important.”

·         Findability is the challenge of locating exactly what you’re looking for (even if you have incomplete or inaccurate information about the book).

·         Discoverability is the process by which a book appears in front of you at a point where you were not looking for that specific title (although you are looking for something other than a pound of butter).

·         Marketing a book involves reaching out to a community that should be interested in that particular title and bringing it into focus in a way that captures their attention.

Metadata plays an important role in all of these tasks, although the role it plays is substantially different in each.

Read this in full.

Also see Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) article, "BISG Releases Report on Book Product Metadata," and the Book Industry Study Group (@BISG) press release.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you make your books more findable, discoverable, and marketable.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The above video demonstrates the value of a company taking a consumer’s question seriously and answering it honestly. A consumer asked McDonald’s (@McDonalds), “Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?”

The hamburger chain responded with a behind-the-scenes tour of a McDonald's Canada photo shoot showing how Watt International (@Wattisretail) preps a Quarter Pounder to look edible for ads. In 3 days, the 3½ minute viral video had 3.5 million views.

Lesson? Answer your customers’ questions with transparency and it will contribute to your brand’s positive reputation.

Also see our previous blogpost, “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize public relations and produce videos that effectively communicate your brand’s message to your target audience.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The above Infographic (enlarge it) is by MDG Advertising (@MDGadvertising).

Also see research statistics in the Adweek (@adweek) article: “Mobile users aren’t abandoning print any faster than non-mobile users.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to plan and execute the mobile strategy for your brand.

And bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

</object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 500px;">Watch Digital Nation on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.</p>

In our Internet era, publishing houses are having to reinvent themselves as technology companies in order to adapt their business models and remain viable. But when does technology cease to be a value-add to the consumer experience?

“Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier,” a documentary that aired on PBS’ (@PBS) Frontline (@frontlinepbs) program, asks the question, “Is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained?”

Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it?

This video explores what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. It seeks to understand the implications of living in a world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations. "I'm amazed at the things my kids are able to do online, but I'm also a little bit panicked when I realize that no one seems to know where all this technology is taking us, or its long-term effects," says producer Rachel Dretzin.

Read and see this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you leverage technology to effectively communicate your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

TechJournal South (@TJ_South) reports on a new University of California, Davis (@ucdavis) study of “buzz” marketing on YouTube that says the quality of videos aren’t as important as “seeding” them to influential people (bloggers, tweeters, etc.).

The study’s author, Hema Yoganarasimhan, professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, says seeding information in social media outlets through handpicked agents is crucial.

“It’s not the number of people; it’s focusing on the right people,” she explains. “They need to ask who are their friends, and who are their friends’ friends — and how are they positioned in the network?”

While a close-knit community may be committed and loyal to a dispenser of information, that community may generate low video popularity in the long run, the study showed. That’s because people in a close-knit community don’t interact much with outsiders, resulting in few interactions with 2nd- or 3rd-degree “friends.”

The study, Impact of social network structure on content propagation: A study using YouTube data, finds that while 1st-degree friends are important for initial marketing, 2nd- and 3rd-degree friends are essential for “viral” spread.

The study says video ratings are important — but it doesn’t much matter if the rating is good or bad. Yoganarasimhan’s analysis shows that video quality, as measured by viewer comments and ratings, have little effect on viewership in the long run. However a video with any rating is likely to have more viewers than one with no rating.

Read this in full.

Tim Schmoyer (@timschmoyer) of ReelSEO (@Reelseo) offers 6 tips in “How to Connect with Key Video Influencers in a Social World.”

1. Become engaged in other creators’ blogs and videos....

2. Be genuine....

3. Start with your niche....

4. Collaborate with others at your level....

5. Give a glowing review....

6. Invest the time....

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize and produce videos that effectively communicate your brand’s message to your target audience.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

In Search Engine Land (@sengineland), SEO expert Rick DeJarnette (@rickdejarnette) says a webpage’s <title> tag “has the most SEO power of any tag on the page for establishing keyword relevance.” He offers the best practices to achieve optimized results:

1. Use only one per page, placed within the <head> tag…

2. Place top-performing keywords in descending order…

3. Ensure site branding goes last…

4. Use no more than 70 characters, including spaces…

5. Avoid using stop words (“the”, ”an,” “a” and many others)...

6. Reflect the most important keywords used in the page’s body text…

7. Keep it unique between pages…

8. Avoid duplicating the exact text string within the <h1> tag text…

9. Avoid keyword stuffing…

Read this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you optimize your Internet branding presence.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

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Traditionally, the metric used to assess return-on-investment for public relations efforts has been Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), defined by Marketing Metrics Made Simple (MMMS) as “what your editorial coverage would cost if it were advertising space (or time).”

To calculate the AVE for one month, measure the space (column inches) occupied by a clip (for radio and television coverage, you measure time). Then multiply the column inches (time) by the ad rate for that page (time slot).

After you do the same for every clip for that month, add up the costs to get a total cost. The total cost is the cost of the ads that theoretically could have occupied the space (time) occupied by all your editorial coverage for that month.

However, MMMS explains how AVE numbers might be an inaccurate tool:

Consider that a highly positive article can be worth much more than a single advertisement in the same space. That's because readers consciously or unconsciously think of an advertisement as an instance of a company boasting about itself (and paying dearly for the privilege of doing so), and an article as an implied endorsement by a presumably objective and knowledgeable third party (the editor who approved the copy on that page). So, from this perspective, AVE underestimates the value of editorial.

...Generally speaking, advertising tends to command attention and create awareness. Publicity tends to build credibility. Normally you need both.

In an attempt to more precisely gauge a PR campaign’s influence on the decision-making steps of a consumer (awareness, knowledge, consideration, preference, action), the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (@AmecOrg) (#Amec2012) has produced The Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles:

1. Importance of goal setting and measurement

2. Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs

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.

Public Relations is a broad discipline that requires multiple metrics tied to well-defined objectives. These guidelines provide many alternatives to AVEs and are intended to help practitioners identify a palette of Valid Metrics that will deliver meaningful measurement to reflect the full contribution of Public Relations.

Above are slides explaining the Barcelona Principles measurement activity and effect in each of the following PR areas:

·         Brand/product marketing

·         Reputation building

·         Issues advocacy & support

·         Employee engagement

·         Investor relations

·         Crisis and issues management

·         Public education / not-for-profit

·         Social / community engagement.

Read the presentation in full (pdf).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute the right integrated public relations communications strategy for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The above Infographic is by First Scribe (@firstscribe).

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you plan and execute your social media marketing strategy.

And bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Marketers should make an effort to understand and cultivate so-called brand advocates as social media becomes more prominent. According to a Zuberance (@Zuberance) study, half of brand advocates make a recommendation online because of a good experience with a product or service. The second most prominent motivation for brand advocates: they want to help friends make better purchase decisions.

Though brand advocates are formally defined as making one recommendation a year, without pay – the highest percentage of them (38%) do so 5 to 9 times a year, with 16% making 10 to 15 recommendations and 16% making 15 or more. Other findings:

·         Brand Advocates are even more active than previously thought.

·         Brand Advocates have even larger social networks than previous studies showed.

·         Brand Advocates’ recommendations aren’t limited to consumer brands and products.

See the recorded webinar.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Consumer Trust in Online, Social, & Mobile Advertising Grows.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify and reach your brand advocates.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.