What really drives engagement? Most brands treat social media like traditional marketing. With crowdsourcing and co-creation, you can make your brand stay top of mind with fans. Is your brand social? Learn why some brands get it and have vocal, passionate fans who stay engaged, share content, and tell their friends. Is your marketing user-centered? Like user-centered design, this paper will show you how putting customers at the center of your marketing changes everything.

1. Five Reasons Why
Customer Collaboration
is the Future of Facebook
Marketing
By Riley Gibson
Co-founder & CEO, Napkin Labs
-- www.napkinlabs.com --
- info@napkinlabs.com -
© 2012 Napkin Labs, Inc.

2. page 2
Modify Watches consistently engages fans in sharing their ideas, stories, and photos.
Overview concluded that less than 1% of fans who entertained or informed (TV, radio, print,
“Liked” a page actually engaged with non-social online) or are looking for a
Facebook has emerged as the central the brand.1 The real value in Facebook distraction (billboards.) In these contexts,
platform for brands to cultivate marketing is to keep brands top of mind interruption marketing is less disruptive
communities that power real word of and to build user loyalty. This requires rich or even welcome. But in a social setting,
mouth, awareness, loyalty, insights, customer engagement over time. interruption marketing is about as welcome
and even innovation. However, the real as a person who talks incessantly about
opportunity is being missed. Facebook is In order to map the future of Facebook themselves at a cocktail party.
designed to be a networking service that marketing, we need to understand the
connects people and empowers sharing and platform’s context. People use Facebook For this reason, social marketing should
collaboration. It’s no place for traditional for social interaction, to get updates from be rooted in collaboration and co-creation.
marketing that consistently pushes friends and other things they care about. As This sets the stage for building a passionate
messaging, sweepstakes, and promotions. with any social setting, audiences are less brand community. When users are given
responsive to interruption marketing on the tools to co-create with a brand, and with
This paper reveals five reasons why Facebook. In fact, it’s estimated that only each other, they become invested in the
collaboration with consumers on Facebook 16% of brand posts are seen by Facebook community and are transformed into an
is the future of marketing. It also covers users. We’ve become adept at blocking army of advocates.
how to make the switch to a
collaborative strategy and gives real- User-generated content produces Here are the five reasons why
world examples of this strategy in 90% higher engagement than collaboration on Facebook is the
action. future of marketing:
brand-generated content.
The future of Facebook marketing 1. Collaboration gives your
requires a major shift in thinking. Most marketing messages on Facebook because fans a reason to come back
brands are focused on the acquisition of they disrupt our reason for being there.
“Likes” as their success metric. However, Facebook Timeline provides a visual diary
research shows that a “Like” alone isn’t Consider traditional media channels. of your brand from its founding to the
all that valuable. A recent AdAge study Audiences are generally there to be present, a great way to introduce your
1
http://adage.com/article/digital/study-1-facebook-fans-engage-brands/232351/
© 2012 Napkin Labs, Inc.

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brand, but not a reason to return to your may still control the message, but customers and build their brands into the future.
brand page. This is where collaboration now control the brand’s meaning. Facebook’s size, social and open graphs, and
comes in. By providing a range of tools on sharing tools make it the ideal medium for
your Timeline page that enable the sharing Coca-Cola, consistently ranked one of the this transformation.
of ideas, suggestions, photos and stories, world’s top brands and largest traditional
users become part of the brand experience. advertisers, has noticed that customer Companies that form communities on
They return to see the responses to their stories online far outnumber stories Facebook, gather ideas, and continually
submissions and to share their contributions generated by the brand itself. They recently ask for feedback and suggestions will
with friends. announced that by the year 2020, they will undoubtedly power their brands into
have phased out traditional marketing in the future and continue to control their
According to Facebook’s Best Practices, favor of social engagement marketing. This message.
on average, user-generated content (UGC) shift in strategy already has Coke examining
produces 90% higher engagement than their Share of Conversation (SC) metric 3. Customers embrace and
brand-generated content. To realize the
2
ahead of every other measure of marketing advocate for what they have a
benefit of Facebook marketing, it’s critical to success. Coke also projects that they will
3
hand in shaping
put fans at the center of your strategy and double unit sales at the same time they
provide the tools for collaboration. make the shift to social. The internet revolution is disintegrating
barriers to entry for a wide range of
2. A brand’s meaning is now It’s clear that customer engagement and industries. It has empowered globalization,
defined by the sum of its community building need to become top access to capital, and the democratization of
customer’s voices priorities. This will require specific online media. It’s also been an ongoing disruptive
tools to enable brands to host, catalyze, force to most traditional brands. Gillette
Social media is changing how brands are promote and distribute user-generated had a nearly untouchable business with
created, sustained, and grown. The brand stories and ideas in order to define their “Razor-Razorblade” model. This model
Coca-Cola collects and shares fan stories on Facebook to promote the brand through the eyes and words of their fans.
2
https://www.facebook.com/business/fmc/guides/bestpractices
3
Content 2020: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LerdMmWjU_E&feature=player_embedded © 2012 Napkin Labs, Inc.

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allows them to sell razors at a discount but Collaboration and co-creation go beyond to remain competitive. According to a Mr.
the dependent product, razorblade refills, at loyalty and advocacy, they are also effective Youth study, brands ignore 50% of the social
a premium. at building awareness. The sharing of posts about them, yet it’s widely known that
traditional brand promotions on social one of the biggest mistakes any brand can
Recently, a start-up called DollarShaveClub. networks tends to be low. However, the make is to ignore their customers.6
com flipped Gillette’s model on its head. propensity to share user-generated content
is much higher. Threadless, This is where your army of advocates
“At the heart of customer an online community and comes in. When the brand provides
collaboration is the knowledge e-commerce website is an example the forum, customers tend to do most
of a company that entered the of the heavy lifting. An example of this
that people embrace what they mature clothing market and type of collaboration is My Starbucks
have a hand in creating.” leveraged crowdsourcing and Idea. Customers are able to submit ideas,
voting to spread awareness. comment, rank, vote and work with each
DSC offers a subscription service that sends As customers submit designs, they are other to make good ideas better and
blades to your door at a fraction of the price. naturally incented to share with friends in bubble the best to the top with minimal
Their main marketing channel is social buzz order to gather votes. This approach grew community management required. It’s an
thanks to a low cost, quirky YouTube video Threadless from a $1,000 start-up to a engaging social experience for users, and an
that cost a few thousand dollars to produce business doing an estimated $30 million in extremely successful and scalable program
but generated over four million views in its sales within eight years. for Starbucks.
first week. 4
Lower barriers also mean more competition,
which has created a growing focus on
customer loyalty. Soon, adding customer
collaboration and fan engagement tools is
going to be a competitive requirement for
retaining and growing existing customers.
At the heart of customer collaboration
is the knowledge that people embrace
what they have a hand in creating. We
don’t have to look far to find examples of
this phenomenon. The television show
American Idol has built a near religious
following around the concept of fan voting.
Domino’s Facebook Fan Page calls out “Think Oven” application to gather ideas and feedback from customers.
Another example is Domino’s Pizza’s recent
turn-around. They created “Think Oven” on 4. Collaboration is a scalable social 5. Crowdsourcing fuels innovation
Facebook as a way to hear and reward great model thanks to peer-to-peer
customer ideas. This has resulted in tens communities With the rise of social media, the first
of thousands of engagements and millions reaction from marketers was attempting to
of ‘likes’. Future-focused brands like these
5
One-to-one social conversations between a translate traditional media strategies and
are not only crowdsourcing their future brand and its consumers usually becomes metrics into the new medium. This has
products but also their brand experience. unmanageable as the brand grows. But resulted in the focus on measuring “Likes,
not responding isn’t an option if you want Engagements,” and “Impressions.”
4
DraftFCB Blog: http://www.draftfcbblog.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=469
5
Napkin Labs Domino’s Think Oven Case Study
6
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/brands_ignore_nearly_50_of_consumers_facebook_post.php © 2012 Napkin Labs, Inc.

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Community building however, broadens the themes and patterns formed by the marketing tactics to Facebook don’t produce
the scope of business value. It provides conversations in aggregate usually contain results. Marketers and social media
a window into the lives of customers and rich insights into unmet needs. strategists are finding they must design
enables the brand to keep their finger customer collaboration into the heart of
on the pulse of the market. Humans are More brands are adopting online their Facebook strategy. By providing
natural problem solvers and since the user- collaboration as a medium for product avenues for fans to engage, share stories,
base is buying, consuming or interacting insights, yet many exist on destination ideas, and insights, brands are able to
with the product daily, they are a goldmine sites instead of platforms like Facebook. cultivate communities that yield benefits in
of insights that can drive product or Community managers are finding it to be real-time that also capture valuable user-
experience improvement. a struggle to recruit, retain and engage generated content that can be shared and
users on these destination sites. So just sponsored by the brand.
When brands use Facebook as their as more web traffic is moving to Facebook,
collaborative medium, they are able to brand communities are migrating there as Brands will need to evolve their marketing
gather ideas and feedback in real-time to well and turning their Facebook pages into strategies from creators of marketing
help inform brand strategy. New tools crowdsourcing hubs. content to providers of marketing platforms.
and apps allow brands to host co-creation By enabling their consumers to share their
projects designed around problem solving. Conclusion passion and creativity, brands can achieve
a growing Facebook fan page that is also a
While few brands expect their users to Facebook is not just another digital media market research and innovation dynamo.
come up with their next big product idea, channel. Attempts to translate traditional
ANATOMY OF FACEBOOK CUSTOMER COLLABORATION
Brands pose questions, projects, and
prompts to spark creativity among fans.
Fan generated content
becomes the foundation
for sponsored stories
that promote brand
collaboration and
community building.
FAN
Brands collect
ideas, feedback,
increase
community
metrics,
fan count,
and gather
Layers of small and more rich insights
significant rewards are into their
Friends of fans are exposed provided to build loyalty consumers.
to open graph actions and and engagement with fans.
sponsored stories related to their
friend sharing ideas, stories, and
content with a brand.
© 2012 Napkin Labs, Inc.

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ABO U T NAP K IN L A BS
Napkin Labs provides a suite of Facebook applications empowering businesses to uncover the passion and creativity of their fans. Our Facebook
applications can be instantly plugged into any Facebook fan page, turning a crowd of faceless ‘likes’ into a community of brand advocates sharing
ideas, insights, and their stories. For more information visit www.napkinlabs.com
ABO U T T H E AUTH O R
Riley Gibson is the co-founder and CEO of Napkin Labs. Prior to founding Napkin Labs, Riley was a market research and innovation consultant at
Intel and The Sterling-Rice Group where he worked with a range of Fortune 500 brands. For more thoughts on tapping online communities for
crowdsourcing, check out the Napkin Labs blog: blog.napkinlabs.com
© 2012 Napkin Labs, Inc.