The truth is, you cannot really predict what will happen next week in social media, but nonetheless here are 12 predictions and thoughts we have going into 2012.

1. Content is (still) King - Over the past few years we’ve seen brands become their own publishers and content curators. The trend will continue in 2012, and brands will find more and more ways to integrate content with commerce and their communities. Brands with the most authentic, engaging, integrated, and useful content will find the most success. Those who tumbl just to tumbl will not find the digital community they hoped to build.

2. Digital Punch Cards in the form of Recommendations and Rewards -  Have you noticed when you “like” pages on Facebook now you are offered the ability to recommend that brand to all of your friends? This feature and digital recommendation trend around social media will evolve in 2012, and brands, small businesses in particular will find a way to take advantage of it. Surprise and delight your fans perhaps? The key for brands will be to thank the audience they’ve accumulated and authentically encourage them to digitally recommend them to other friends. No need to carry those buy 40 get 1 free yogurt punch cards!

3. Brands will try to take advantage of Pinterest, and many will fail. – As any pinner knows, Pinterest is amazing for finding pretty things, new recipes, new looks, and overall inspiration. And many bloggers know that Pinterest drives a ton of traffic to their blogs. Brands are paying attention to this trend, but have not yet discovered how to use Pinterest as a proactive social media channel. 2012 will be the year of Pinterest for brands, “Like” will be replaced by many with “Pin it”.

4. Tumblr will roll out metrics (hopefully). – Early brand adopters of Tumblr have since voiced their frustration with the company’s business practices and its lack of an analytics dashboard. In 2012, Tumblr will should roll out some metrics, and/or brands will continue to devote more of their efforts to Facebook with its newer Tumblr-esque visual and re-sharing properties.

I heart glitterguide.tumblr.com

5. The 2012 Elections will be Social - If the 2012 election stays on trend with the 2008 election, increasing the votes cast by a demographic of younger voters, politicians will need to socialize. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 83% of Internet users ages 18-29 use social networking sites, and 65% of adults use social networking sites, most of whom form opinions of restaurants, styles, and even politics amongst friends. Notice, even Obama uses F-commerce (Facebook commerce).

6. Less is More. As brands and social gurus continue to refine metrics, we believe 2012 will simplify the actions of brands and their respective social communities. Instead of being spread across multiple channels and being a little bit effective in each, they will find the channel(s) that is best helping them achieve their marketing goals, and spend less time with all the other noise.

7. Your web experience will become more responsive – Everything you experience online with your iPhone, iPad and computer will be optimized for that platform more and more. As more shoppers do their research with mobile, companies will invest more dollars enhancing those handheld experiences, and allowing you to quickly share that experience with all of your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

8. Social will continue to integrate with all arms of marketing. – Social media will be painted on all digital and printed collateral, and more CMO’s will be asking how social media is woven into their overall objectives. Remember Dodge’s Find a Journey YouTube campaign where they hid 3 cars throughout America? The big brands are on board already, small to mid-size businesses will follow suit in 2012.

9. Twitter will be less social - Gasp I know! As Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and other niche communities continue to drive traffic and awareness to brands in 2012, Twitter just may become more and more what it really is. A place for quick information, news dissemination, and networking with like minds. Unless brands use Twitter as an in the moment customer service channel, or have a robust social media team, we think brands will devote less time and energy to the channel in respect to bandwidth and ROI.

10. The Olympics will be digital – In 2010, the Winter Olympics scratched the surface with fans experiencing the games through social media. Brands will roll out the red carpet for bloggers and fans to interact with them socially during the London games. Instagram will probably tell a pretty amazing story of the games.

11. Spotify will take over the world – Well maybe not the world, but it will definitely gain a serious amount of subscribers and go toe to toe with Pandora. There really is nothing like having a best friend miles away create a playlist for you and keep your tunes up to date. Not to mention your ability to see what all your friends are listening to constantly on Facebook. More companies and brands will try to find ways to follow Spotify’s lead in genuinely making their user’s experience “sharable”.

12. We can “like” Emails – This is really more of a wish of ours than a prediction. Although we do think more brands should pay attention to their email strategy and how it integrates with their social media efforts. We would LOVE if you had the ability to “like” an email instead of having to reply with “thanks”, “sounds good”, or the other. Could you imagine the time and amount of emails you could save if you just had to “like” it to send your “I got it and have read it all” message?

(source)

What do you think will happen within the realm of social media in 2012?

I think it’s safe to say our PR team has officially recovered from Opening Day at Del Mar. In my haze of recovery I was asked, “what do you do there?” Good question.

It starts in the winter, pitching magazines and travel writers to write about the track in time for the public to plan on attending. We invite editors and writers who have never been to Del Mar to experience the track in the upcoming season so that they can write about it next year.

It heats up in June, with local and regional media calling, emailing and randomly showing up to ensure they’ll have their credentials and their coveted wrist bands to the Turf Club. We start credentialing, we supply email after email of information like concert dates, past celebrities who have attended, ticket prices, images, etc.  Then we do it a million more times so that we can ensure anyone who wants to know about the track’s Opening Day and anyone who doesn’t want to know about it, will know about it.

Then come the TV stations. San Diego has six major news stations that broadcast live from the track on Opening Day. They each want the best shot of the track, they each want an interview with a jockey, they each have tech needs, parking issues, need credentials, the list goes on.  Starting in late June, our team meets with each station throughout the month to discuss their morning interview schedule, their tech needs and what special, behind the scenes arrangements we can make for them.

Every on-site or in-studio mention of Del Mar that you saw on TV came through this agency.

The two days prior to Opening Day are long ones. You’d be surprised how many people get in touch at the last minute for their credentials. In addition, we have a lot to coordinate. We schedule upwards of 50 interviews in the four hours of news that day. So we make calls to the hat designer, the jockey’s agents, the Del Mar executives, the stylist, the track bugler, the guy who runs the jockey room, the handicapper and the list goes on. We prep the media with information about the track and their interviewees to ensure that the details are all accurate and we arrange all the necessary access they’ll need – unlock the door to the turf club, drop a cable behind the building, put their logo on the Jumbotron, etc.  We meet them at the track to film their b-roll or their pre-Opening Day interviews. For most of the interviews you see on TV, we are behind the cameraman, sipping an oversized coffee, watching like a hawk to make sure they say everything correctly and don’t spook the horses and wondering how the hell we managed to get up that early.

Then Opening Day arrives. It’s like Christmas. We tear out of our warm beds at 4 a.m. We’re at the track just before the morning shows start because its our role to make sure everyone shows up for their interview. And when they don’t, we send Carrie Jones racing around the barns to grab the closest horseman she can find and swoop them up to the camera for a far-too-last-minute interview.

At 9 a.m., the shows are more or less done and we breathe a sigh of relief. We eat a bagel. We charge our cell phones. Then we start again. We wrangle a few last minute interviews and we begin meeting our media guests who are arriving to enjoy a day at the track. We give the royal treatment to some media by taking them into the Paddock and down to the Winners’ Circle to watch a race. We deal with far too many people who claim they should have a credential, claim they should be in the Turf Club and we do our very best to make sure they all have a great time.

Then, when we’ve given all the Turf Club wrist bands we can give, we’ve made all the last minute credentials we can make, we’ve sent all our TV cameras free to film the crowds and we’ve wooed all the media we can woo, we relax. It’s lunchtime and the day is still young.

Bailey Gardiner's Del Mar Racetrack PR team, after the morning madness

The team leaves when you leave, we’ve just been there a bit longer. We of course, could not do it without the horses, jockeys and our on point set of Del Mar Thoroughclub Executives, but we do our best to make sure you knew it was happening and that it happened well.

At 8 p.m. on Opening Day, our team called the TV news desks and alerted the radio stations that Del Mar had its highest attendance in history, 46,588 party-goers. That makes it the eighth-straight year of record-setting Opening Day attendance. On-track handle was up nearly 10%.

The following morning, we send pictures of celebrities to the gossip mags for mentions of celeb sightings including Ali Fedotowsky and Roberto Martinez, Mark Sanchez and Dylan McDermott.

And let’s not forget that throughout the entire time, we managed Del Mar’s Twitter and Facebook activity, responding to the more than 23,000 fans and nearly 6,000 followers who had a lot to say on Opening Day.

This year’s Del Mar team coordinated 57 interviews that all took place on Opening Day morning.  The team coordinated upwards of 14 interviews prior to Opening Day and credentialed approximately 200 media. Don’t worry though, we’ve recovered. Bring on the cougars, the ex-lovers and the wiener dogs. We still have five jam-packed weeks to go!

We just can't get enough.

If you were one of the lucky 500+ advertising, PR or social pros who attended Interactive Day 2011, you probably noticed a trend throughout the day – Bailey Gardiner was everywhere. Being the creatively-charged overachievers we are, we wanted to share our San Diego insight in the techiest (geekiest) way possible – through QR codes, a mobile app and multiple tweets. Naturally, we held one of our famous brainstorms to come up with the Brain Grease iPhone app, shared our love for innovation by making people work via QR code to win iPods and tweeted our way through the conference.

You may have noticed our QR codes on the walls, tables, mirrors and counters of the restrooms. Our Orange Couch even made an appearance the following day for ADMERICA! at our BG coffee truck meet up with Joes on the Nose. Indra Gardiner moderated a panel on Twitter Stories with Crosby Noricks from Red Door Interactive and Alex Funk from Covario, while Jon Bailey (aka San Diego Ad Club President) strolled the halls with some pretty amazing glasses on. Why make our presence known? Because excitement is contagious and we love taking the lead to amp up our fellow agency peers – ultimately building an even stronger marketing community in San Diego.

Ryan Thompson interviewed some of the speakers from the event which was captured on video thanks to our friends at SOIClave.  Interviews included Andrew Solmssen from Possible Worldwide, Joel Book from Exact Target, Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz, Ryan Berger from The Berger Shop, Jake Fields from Treeline Interactive, Mike Hodges from SignOn San Diego, Jason Sadler from Iwearyourshirt.com, Chad Robley from Mindgruve, Jeanette Best from USAopoly, and our Ad Club Co-Presidents.

As for my personal takeaways:

• Local media landscape has changed – Creating opportunities for smaller brands to garner coverage due to hyper-localized  media outlets. San Diego Union-Tribune’s Mike Hodges moderated a panel of reps from Patch, NBC and CityGrid who discussed the current media landscape. With layoffs, national reporters have been left to cover numerous beats in little time. This has led to a drop off in localized media coverage within larger regional and national outlets. These three outlets are solving this issue by only covering hyper-localized news empowering community members to provide information and share with their community members.
• SMS can double a brand’s response from consumers – Dan Flanegan from Brand Anywhere provided some great stats showing how using mobile in a brand’s marketing initiatives can increase sales. With smartphones at the fingertips of every shopper, they’re able to check prices of a brand’s competitors, get specialized deals and interact with brands in a whole new way.
• Consumers are expecting updates and new apps – If your brand can’t do that, you run the risk of being forgotten. Another fantastic point by the knowledgeable Dan Flanegan proves that brands that ignore consumers’ use of mobile will fall behind. Brands should make sure their websites are mobile-friendly and taking advantage of new technologies, brands should consider new ways of engaging by creating mobile apps.
• SEO for social updates - Search was a common theme across the Interactive Day panels. We’ve come to appreciate using search to reach the top of Google, but with social media taking off, brands need to remember that their updates should also be made with search in mind. Think of your keywords and who you’d like to find your posts and draft your content accordingly.

For those of you that shied away from the Bailey Gardiner camera, what was your favorite presenter, topic or part of Interactive Day? Please share in the comments.

This week is a big week for Advertising folk in San Diego. First, 500 of our ad, social media, and web friends will get together on June 1st at the annual Interactive Day. At this one day conference we’ll be talking everything from digital advertising, to SEO, to social media. There is a bad ass line-up of speakers including leaders from Google, Pandora, Facebook, HubSpot, and much more.

The following day, June 2nd, the San Diego Ad Club celebrates its 100th birthday and hosts the national advertising conference, AAF. This will bring more than a thousand advertising peeps from all over the country into our beloved city; all to talk and learn about advertising best practices. For any of our Twitter/local friends who are planning on attending, the BG crew will be there on June 2nd, at 7:30 AM, hosting a coffee truck meet-up to get you going and ready to learn. Be sure to stop by, say hello, and grab a HTeaML or a Chai Logo Latte and kick off your first day of sessions the right way.

In preparation for this big week, I sat down with fellow SD Ad Club board member and industry colleague Chad Robley to chat about Interactive Day (#IDSD for you twitter peeps). Just take a gander at this short video that our friends shot at SOIclave to get some insight on why you should attend.

Out of home campaign for Hazard Center, a local shopping destination.

Woo-hoo! We had a great time last Friday, April 1 at the 2011 San Diego Ad Club Addy Awards, held at the Torrey Pines Hilton in La Jolla. As in years past, the BG team made a solid appearance, led by pack leader and Ad Club president Jon Bailey and featuring our latest team addition, Greg Joumas.

We couldn’t be happier with our wins and want to thank all our great clients and especially the team here at Bailey Gardiner for putting in a lot of hours and brain power to produce this award-winning work. Here’s what we won:

"Barf bag" flier to promote Seaport Village 30th Anniversary

Silver Addy Winners

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences, Integrated Campaign for “Sushi-Contemporary and Performance Art”

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences “Art Alive 2011 Save-The-Date Seed Envelope”

Bronze Addy Winners
Out-of-Home “Hazard Center, Avoid A Hazard Campaign”

Mixed Media “Seaport Village 30th Anniversary”

Interactive “Sushi-Contemporary and Performance Art Website”

Peoples Choice Winners
Creative Rescue “Aladdin Bail Bonds Billboard and TV Spot”

Interactive “Del Mar Thoroughbred Club”

Mixed Media “Seaport Village 30th Anniversary”

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences “Art Alive 2011 Save-The-Date Seed Envelope”

Check out all the other 2011 Addy Award Winners on the San Diego Ad Club website.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Hodges and pick his brain on the newspaper and publishing industry.  Mike is the VP of Interactive for the Union Tribune and General Manager of SignonSanDiego.com and has extensive experience in the digital space.

Newspapers around the country have been looking to re-invent themselves and take advantage of their existing offline audiences while building online audiences and implementing new programs within the interactive medium. Lots of changes are taking place in this space as newspapers look to please multiple audiences and continue to provide great content.

Take a break from your emails and watch the interview for an inside perspective on the changes in the newspaper and publishing industry.

Bonus Tip: check out this ComScore report on audience segmentation between online readers and offline readers

Three of the six Charger home games have been blacked out this season.

Several times this season I’ve been extremely frustrated with the Chargers. Not because of their performance on the field (that’s another blog post) but because of the six home games this season, three of them have been blacked-out due to poor attendance. Not only could I not watch the game at home, I couldn’t even go to a bar to see it because of NFL blackout regulations.

The theory of blocking out games is that the threat of a NFL blackout a week or so before a game will actually help spur ticket sales. And I think, in some cases, this is exactly what happens. However, when you’re in a recession economy I don’t think this works.

How can you force people to buy tickets when the price of them is so insanely high people simply can’t afford them, even if they wanted to?

I think that the NFL is bringing these poor ticket sales upon themselves. Because their ticket prices have historically been so high, they are creating a culture of fans who are accustomed to watching games at home—not at the stadium. And when the game is blacked-out, all these fans miss out on watching the game, including younger generations of future football-watching, merchandise-buying fans.

These young viewers are the future of the sport, and if they aren’t able to watch the games, I think it’s less likely that they will become devout fans. This is where the NFL is going wrong.

I know it’s hard to think that football could ever lose popularity, but look at hockey. After just one season off, the sport is still struggling to regain popularity. If the NFL wants to be successful going into the future, they need to start managing their brand, starting with fairer ticket pricing.

What do you think? Is the NFL’s brand is at risk?

You’ve likely heard the buzz that yesterday was “Cyber Monday.” So what the heck does that mean, you ask? And how should/can it affect your marketing plans?

Well, Cyber Monday is…

Cyber Monday is a marketing term created by businesses. The goal is to persuade people to do their holiday shopping online on the first Monday after Thanksgiving. Hoping to see similar results to the hugely successful “Black Friday,” online businesses began offering one-day-only sales to appeal to those who didn’t want to brave the malls or who didn’t find everything they needed.

The marketing term is still relatively new but awareness about the shopping event has grown leaps and bounds. Here we are, only five years after the first Cyber Monday, and everyone from CNN to Wall Street Journal to BusinessWeek is talking about it.

So why is Cyber Monday such a big deal?

According to research done by shop.org (who incidentally runs CyberMonday.com) more than 106 million people were expected to shop on Cyber Monday 2010 – that surpasses last year by more than 10 million shoppers. And, according to the article today on CNNMoney.com, sales were up nearly 20% from Cyber Monday 2009.  Sales were also more than 31% higher than the online purchase for this year’s Black Friday.  In short, Cyber Monday was a success.

How did Cyber Monday accomplish this?

Promotion of the event – and lots of it. All possible avenues were used to get the message out there, including traditional and not-so-traditional ways:

• Direct Mail
• Print
• Online banners
• And of course, Social Media

Being new to the Cyber Monday game this year, I did a quick social media search to see how much chatter the event was getting. Not a surprise, it got a lot, especially on Twitter.*

• #CyberMonday was a top trend on Twitter yesterday
• The @CyberMonday handle sent out more than 9,000 Tweets
• According to PR Week, the social media buzz for Cyber Monday was 6.5 times greater this year than last.

So you may be wondering how businesses can take advantage of the growing number of Cyber Monday consumers.

What businesses should do to benefit from Cyber Monday:

• Umm, participate!  The marketing and promoting is already being done.  All you need to do is offer a good discount that won’t be available the day before or the day after.
• Add messaging to your website.  You should be keeping your website content fresh anyway, so do so by promoting your sale. Start well in advance so that your offer can build buzz online.
• Tweet and/or Facebook it. Spread the word via social media and be sure to use the #Cybermonday hashtag.
• Email your loyal customers and ask them to pass it on.

Bottom line – you don’t need to spend a lot to benefit from the Cyber Monday marketing train – you just need to Get On Board…Toot Toot!

* Info gathered at 5 PM on 11/29/10

By Guest Blogger, Natalie Wardel from the Metropolitan Transit System*

I think it’s safe to assume that no one likes to be stuck in traffic. I also think it’s safe to assume that not very many of us like change- especially when it comes to our morning commute.

When leaders from the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) and the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) decided to launch the $620 million “Trolley Renewal Project” to revive the 30 year-old rails from San Ysidro to Old Town, they knew strong communication was key to their success.

We knew that clear and succinct messaging about how the renovation was going to benefit commuters and what changes they could expect to their commute wasn’t just a critical component. It was the only way to gain a favorable perception among riders and tax payers. They also knew that the messaging needed to reach nearly 20,000 commuters of all ages.

There were two main messages. First, the renovation will introduce new features to commuters, some of which included, low-floor trolleys, station amenities, closed circuit television and enhanced lighting. The second, and probably most important, is the temporary change to hours of operation of trolley stations during construction.

The objective was clear. Communicate ongoing, and sometimes daily, changes to tens of thousands of weekend commuters who are less likely to be regular riders, and also to the weekday riders who are dependent on MTS to arrive to work on time.

To achieve this, we devised an integrated marketing plan to include not only traditional marketing tools (outreach to community groups, direct mail to schools and churches, public relations, advertising, etc.) but newer platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s how it went:

Two months before construction started, MTS made presentations to more than two dozen community organizations. A month before closures, signs were displayed at stations, and the information was available online. To spread the word even more, MTS and SANDAG hosted a news conference which garnered almost 30 mentions over five days from media including KGTV and the San Diego Union-Tribune. To support the education component we posted real time reminders and updates on Facebook and Twitter  to remind people of station closures.

One month into the Trolley Renewal project, construction is running smoothly and MTS hasn’t received any known complaints. Passengers have communicated their appreciation for the renovation and the lengths the two agencies have gone to keep them informed of changes in order to minimize inconveniences.

It’s become apparent to us that using more than one marketing tool to reach different audiences is important, and real time information is key when it comes to customer service and satisfaction. This is just one example of how a service which is used by so many San Diegans has integrated these tools into a cohesive plan.

Have you been impacted by the Trolley Renewal Project? How well do you think MTS and SANDAG are communicating? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

*Natalie Wardel is the marketing coordinator for the Metropolitan Transit System, San Diego’s public transit provider. She is also a good friend of Bailey Gardiner and an active participant of our Twitterverse.

A little over two weeks from now, we’ll be moving to our new office space. You might have already seen our preview tour. We snapped a lot of “Before” pics. As remodeling nears completion, we’ll put up the “After” shots.

Life has been interesting in the weeks leading up to the move. A lot of us are excited about it…. some a bit more than others (as evidenced by the videos below).  Don’t forget to swing by our site to see some of the other ways we’re celebrating the move to our new neighborhood.