The Conversation Manager

With its 12,8 million fans, Starbucks remains the most popular brand on Facebook. During the last 12 months, the number of fans doubled. Same story for Coca Cola, they went from 5 million to 11 million fans. Other popular brands (top 10) are Skittles (8,6M), Redbull (7,8M, new in top 5), Victoria Secret (6,4M, new in top 5), Disney (5,8M), Converse (4,8M), Pringles (4,8M), ZARA (4,4M) and Nutella (4,2M).

Who's overshooting all these brands? Yeps: Michael Jackson with 19 million fans.

The American snack Wheat Thins wanted to surprise its fans. When a fan tweeted something like: "O no, I’m out of wheat thins", the machine started to work. The brand surprised these fans with a real-time treatment, by taking out their ‘Crunch is calling’-Van and driving towards the fan to deliver a new load of snacks.

After a while fans started to understand the idea behind it and spread fake ‘Cries for help’ on Twitter. So, at that point the brand could not handle it anymore. However, they made a video of their first few actions which was watched by quite a lot of people. Next to that they made it into the offline press to boost conversations about the brand.

The greatest invention ever made by media is the term: 'Opportunity to See' (OTS). It's actually some sort of an agreement between an advertiser and media agency that you are paying for something you're not getting. If you have an Opportunity to See of 1 million people, you are sure you won't reach them. In fact, you're sure that you'll only reach a small group of these people. But still: we feel safe by this measure that is selling the illusion of reaching out to the mass. Whereas we all know that you are not reaching out to the mass, people who see your ad are probably already brand users and even more likely brand fans.

Why not go for a new approach in targeting, called 'Certainty to See' (CTS). Where you target a small group of brand fans of which you are certain they'll see you and interact with you. Smaller target groups that help you reach out to the mass. Read the example I wrote last week about the Marmarati and you'll know what I mean. Read the example of Harry Potter in my book (7 people reach out to 350,000,000 in two weeks) and you'll know. Look at the Heineken video with their great activation campaign in Italy and you'll know what I mean. When we look at those cases, many advertisers are jealous. But the truth is: we are so scared of small numbers that we feel more secure for paying for the illusion of reach, called 'Opportunity to see'.