Mediaboss Marketing

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and NEW YORK, Feb. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Wildfire, the global leader in social media marketing software, today announced with Adaptly the integration of Adaptly's unique social advertising and optimization technology with the Wildfire Social Marketing Suite. The combination of Wildfire's market-leading suite of tools for designing, publishing, and managing brand content through social media – used by more than 10,000 customers, including many of the world's most recognized brands, such as Facebook, Amazon, and Target – with Adaptly's ad optimization technology gives marketers, for the first time, unified control over the combined effect of paid, earned, and owned social media to maximize consumer engagement with the brand. Engagement encompasses social actions such as likes, comments, and sharing of content.

Unlike first-generation ad serving solutions – which focus on traditional metrics such as cost per clicks, fans, or impressions – Wildfire's solution integrates Adaptly's technology that optimizes social ads not only for cost but also for maximum engagement. Adaptly's proprietary technology aggregates more than 160 social metrics from a brand's earned and owned channels, analyzes the impact of paid media on earned media in real time, and continuously refines ads (including content and target audience) to reach the best social audiences and drive ongoing engagement – the objective that marketers care about most today – at the lowest cost. This self-optimizing technology is unavailable from any other vendor, and Wildfire is the first to bring it to the broad market through a complete integrated social marketing solution.

Content and Advertising Integrated into a Single Seamless Solution

The ability to integrate advertising with content is becoming a critical requirement for social marketing thanks to the launch of Facebook's Sponsored Stories ad units, which allow marketers to turn fan-generated content into social ad units. For brands to run Sponsored Stories ads they must successfully engage consumers. The Wildfire Social Marketing Suite provides all the tools needed to engage consumers through social media. Extending the Wildfire Suite with Adaptly's social advertising technology now enables marketers to optimize their whole social strategy in a single seamless solution.

"Integrating a brand's ads with its content is key to maximizing engagement through social media, yet powerful ad management had been a missing piece from social marketing software suites," said Victoria Ransom, Wildfire CEO. "We are delighted to partner with Adaptly to bring their innovative advertising optimization technology to our customers. We evaluated many solutions in the market and Adaptly was the clear leader, with a best-in-class technology that is science-based, data-driven, and results-focused. Adaptly is fully aligned with Wildfire's philosophy of developing highly scalable software solutions that automate social marketing processes to generate maximum impact at the lowest cost and effort for customers."

"At Adaptly we've been focusing on building a powerful social ad platform, spanning Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and StumbleUpon," said Nikhil Sethi, Adaptly CEO. "We are excited to partner with Wildfire, to bring together paid, owned, and earned media. Integration of our proven ad optimization technology with Wildfire's results-driven platform allows brands to both improve the customer experience through smarter, more relevant advertising and drive significantly better results."

Self-optimizing Technology Maximizes Audience Quality and Engagement

The integration of ad management and optimization into the Wildfire social marketing platform delivers compelling value for brand marketers:

Enables marketers to specifically target their most valuable audience segments, and even discover new audiences that are highly engaged with their brand. Enhances performance of social promotions, brand pages, and newsfeed messages by driving fans to engage with brand content Gives brand marketers for the first time a real-time view of advertising, page, and campaign metrics in one unified interface to easily and effectively evaluate engagement and total social marketing ROI Allows marketers to optimize advertising across multiple social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Ad Optimization Delivers Compelling Results for Customers

Wildfire beta customers have experienced significant results with the Adaptly ad optimization technology. For example, beta customers' "people talking about this" metric on Facebook – one of the most powerful measures of fan engagement – rose on average by an order of magnitude during their campaigns. Beta customers also saw significant cost improvement, on average more than doubling the size of their fan base while beating their goal for cost per fan by 49%.

Enables Brands of All Sizes, as Well as Agencies, to Optimize Any Level of Social Ad Spend

The Wildfire solution makes it possible for brands to spend at any level with optimal results. For large global brands that are spending tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on social ads, the integration of Adaptly's technology with the Wildfire suite provides unprecedented ease and control in managing and optimizing ad spend. It also opens the door to social advertising for small and midsize companies, eliminating the need for a full-time person to manage what had previously been a highly manual process. Agencies also benefit from Wildfire's integrated solution, enabling them to more efficiently deliver cost-effective results for their clients.

Available through Limited Beta Program

The integrated ad management capability is currently available to a limited number of beta customers.

About Wildfire
Wildfire is the leader in social media marketing software and the only social media marketing company to have received an investment from Facebook's fbFund. Our patent-pending technology allows large brands, small businesses, and agencies to create social campaigns and pages, communicate with their social audience, and measure their own and their competitors' social media performance. Intuitive and affordable, our software is simple enough for the least tech-savvy manager yet flexible enough for the most creative marketer. Wildfire serves thousands of companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Ogilvy and Target, and has offices in California, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Munich, and Singapore. For more information, please visit http://www.wildfireapp.com.

About Adaptly
Adaptly is changing the way brands increase engagement on social networks by helping them harness the unique value of each social network. It offers one consolidated platform to complete a social media ad buy across multiple social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and more. Adaptly recently introduced Momentum, a new measurement tool to help brands evaluate how different marketing initiatives impact their overall brand performance across paid, earned and owned social media.

Founded in 2010 by Nikhil Sethi and Garrett Ullom, Adaptly was incubated through DreamIt Ventures and is now based in New York City. Investors include First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Lerer Ventures, kbs+p Ventures and more. Adaptly's clients include brands and agencies such as PepsiCo, Diageo, News Corp., Razorfish and hundreds more. For more information, please visit http://www.Adaptly.com.

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Wildfire and Adaptly Introduce First Social Marketing Solution With Integrated Ad Technology That Optimizes Engagement

NEED FOR CONTROL ROOM: The industry has alphabet bodies that deal with various issues but when it comes to public relations and marketing, there seems to be a gaping hole that is getting larger

IS THERE a media and public relations (PR) "control room" for Islamic finance that educates, creates awareness, undertakes damage control, etc, so that the industry is "conventionally efficient" media-savvy?

Some recent headlines, by-lined articles, blogs and press releases from Islamic finance provide the answer:

* Is Islamic Finance a Failure? Reuters (Guest Columnist)

* KFH: Banking Products that Cement Value of Savings in Society, press release

* Islamic Banks Misleading: Clients Emirates 24/7 (Dubai, UAE)

* Reporters Notebook: The Ethical Aspects of Islamic Banks, http://www.greenprophet.com

* Most Trusted Middle East Banks, http://www.Alifarabia.com

* Questionable Islamic Banking Principles, http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com

* Shining Star of the Middle East, Financial News

* The Trillion Dollar Hoax, The Islamic Globe

* The Lessons from the Goldman Sachs Proposed US$2 Billion Sukuk Saga, Arab News

* Mega Islamic Bank Plans Cancelled, Gulf Daily News (Bahrain).

Let's put aside those writers seeking publicity, cheerleaders of the industry, the anti-syariah movement and the well-meaning purest, and those who, unfortunately, have had a bad experience, from inappropriate products to fraud to customer service, in Islamic finance. The truth about Islamic finance is somewhere between "today's offering and where we eventually want it to be tomorrow".

The continued "conflicting" headlines should be the "cold water" wake-up call for the industry on two fronts:

ADDRESSING the substance, over form, of the Islamic finance, and;

CONVEYING its message, as the perception of the industry is not aligned to the objectives of movement, including raising/writing comments after "unbalanced, out-of-context, exaggerated, or untrue" articles in the media circles.

Industry body

Usually, industries, from finance and healthcare to technology, have financed a designated company/industry body to educate, lobby, promote to new customers and market, undertake damage control, and so on. Their broad message is supplemented and complimented by local institutions with customised local message.

For example, in many of non-Muslim countries with an established Muslim population, there are Muslim organisations, like Council of American Islamic Relations in the US or Muslim Council of Britain and so on, that, in effect, act as the "PR" arm for "righting wrongs, damage control, or addressing media/political errors of omission and commission".

In Islamic finance, we have alphabet industry bodies: for accounting and auditing (Bahrain-based AAOIFI), for prudential regulations and governance (Malaysia-based IFSB), for Islamic capital and money market (Bahrain-based IIFM), etc.

Although, they have some common shareholders, let's put aside the inability of these industry bodies to host one Islamic finance event that is supported by all of them. Let's put aside lack of speaker invitation of one industry body to the head of its sister industry body for a presentation slot.

Notwithstanding present "turf" challenges, these industry bodies have done a commendable job of raising awareness and educating the wholesale stakeholders of the technical aspects of Islamic finance, in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, on standards, governance, and regulations. However, when it comes to the public relations and marketing of Islamic financial institutions or even damage control, there is a gaping hole and it is getting larger.

In fairness to the above-mentioned industry bodies, they have resource constraints, from manpower to finance, and, furthermore, expanding their mandate to include marketing and public relations for a geographically- dispersed and fragmented industry at various stages of development is unreasonable. However, something more needs to be done as Islamic finance is only strong as the weakest link.

The continued negative headlines will not go away even if we continue to ignore them or convince ourselves that it's the growing pains of an emerging industry. They should be seen as the tip of the iceberg of issues and feedback on the industry's perception/message.

Funding of body

The time has arrived for the majority to conclude there is need for an industry body that is tasked with public relations and marketing of Islamic finance at, say, the "wholesale level" - governments, regulators, financial institutions, law firms, western media, and so on. It allows for a universal message, a necessary pre-requisite to achieve harmonisation-cum-standardisation, that builds the foundation for local Islamic financial institutions to customise and add local content.

After determining a need for an industry body to promote and educate Islamic finance, the funding question must be addressed. Fortunately, the experience of AAOFI, IFSB, IIFM, etc, suggests the stakeholders could include the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Islamic financial institutions (possibly one from every country that has declared itself an Islamic finance hub), forward-looking governments like Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and possibly the existing industry bodies (to include their technical message).

One of the lessons learned from the existing industry bodies is the need for adequate capitalisation and annual budget (adjusted for demand). It makes no sense to provide a shoestring budget when the objectives are global and the awareness and education is on-going and expanding.

Location of industry body

One of the takeaways about an industry body's location is that it raises the profile of the country and the country raises the profile of the industry body, as there is now a "go to" place on the global map. Thus, bodies like the AAOIFI, IIFM and IIRA have raised the profile of Bahrain, while the IFSB, ISRA, and INCIEF have raised that of Malaysia.

Therefore, Dubai (UAE), Qatar, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brunei or even London, Paris, or Luxembourg have an opportunity to host an industry body that promotes awareness and information about Islamic finance and shows their commitment to the industry. Furthermore, much like the phrase "think global, act local", it makes to have geographically situated satellite offices to address local time zone challenges.

Mandates

Beyond awareness, education, damage control, etc, one of the areas that require immediate attention is a more robust investor relations depart of Islamic financial institution, including addressing media training for executives. The media, especially western, wants access to senior executives, which implies challenging questions, and, it is here that the industry can best utilise them to send its message to the masses globally.

Additional responsibilities could include establishing and hosting a Davos-type event, including the US$640 billion (RM1.9 trillion) halal industry, in Europe, the Gulf and Southeast Asia. Thus, not Islamic finance per se, but the link of Islamic finance and funding education, healthcare, infrastructure, know-ledge-based economy, etc.

Some examples where the proposed PR Islamic body could have provided guidance for clear, coherent and concise clarifications:

SCHOLARS (confusion as to their role in the West), purification and zakat (not funnelling money to financing extremists), money exchange places in Muslim countries are not Islamic financial institutions, etc.

COORDINATE with other industry bodies for job openings, direct inquiries to appropriate industry bodies and Islamic financial institutions (reduce information cost for existing/potential users)

PRODUCT launches, new bank/takaful launched, etc. I'm not convinced that a general or financial PR firm can provide the needed specialised message and follow-ups that a dedicated body can direct.

DAMAGE control includes recent media frenzy on Islamic banking in Nigeria, Goldman Sachs' US$2 billion sukuk, sukuk defaults, Islamic funds closing, Islamic bank (Dubai Bank and Islamic Bank of Britain) rescue, etc.

BRANDING of Islamic finance. Has time arrived to survey the stakeholders on the naming? In Turkey, its called Participation Banking and it conveys the essence and objective of the movement and is less politically charged, especially if Islamic finance is for all mankind.

Continuing to call it "Islamic", combined with marketing materials emphasising syariah board and adherence, may not convey its universality.

Many of these issues also go to trust and confidence of Islamic finance by depositors, investors, shareholders, etc.

Conclusion

Although Islamic finance is less than 40 years old, the time has arrived for the industry to have a dedicated well-financed body to send a coherent and consistent message about the industry. This is an investment and not a cost, and not having such a body is to have continued schizophrenia headlines and resulting systemic brand risk.

Rushdi Siddiqui is the global head of Islamic finance at Thomson Reuters

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Media and public relations — the missing link in Islamic finance

STERLING, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Today Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C. launched Social Media BI, a solution for companies that want to build an effective social media strategy to improve relationships with customers and identify operational improvements.

Smart companies see social media as a valuable source of customer data, and realize that it must be integrated into the overall customer experience management (CEM) strategy, which encompasses all contact points.

With Social Media BI, customer-centric organizations can gain greater control of what customers are saying about their brand by identifying the issues that are most impacting customers. Based on this analysis, they can take specific actions that will spread positive sentiment, while fixing those problems that damage their brand.

Dr. Jodie Monger, founder and president of Customer Relationship Metrics, says, “Many companies fall into the trap of simply listening to and running after their loudest online critics. But the real challenge for consumer-focused companies is to bulletproof their relationships with customers, so that criticism is dampened or even drowned out completely by customer champions.”

Social Media BI incorporates a thorough 360-degree assessment of customer relationships. It starts with identification of those issues that lead to the greatest number of customer complaints, which is then cross-referenced with online sentiment and chatter to correlate those issues that negatively impact customer relationships and corporate reputation. Armed with this information, Customer Relationship Metrics then creates a social media roadmap to help the client execute a cohesive and proactive social media strategy.

The service also includes analysis of the company’s current social media strategies and suggests targeted new approaches that enable companies to quickly respond to online detractors, while filtering social media data points to identify best practices and areas of concern.

Dr. Monger added, “Social media is more than a marketing channel – it is an opportunity to reduce support costs by providing social customer service.”

ABOUT CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP METRICS, L.C.

Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C., headquartered in Sterling, Virginia, is a provider of managed call center analytics and advisory services. Customer Relationship Metrics’ business intelligence solutions use SaaS data collection and reporting tools combined with subject matter expertise to significantly lower the in-house total cost of ownership and to eliminate the skilled personnel gap.

For more information, visit their award-winning blog at http://www.metrics.net/blog, or their website at http://www.metrics.net.

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Customer Relationship Metrics Launches Social Media Business Intelligence Offering

Geneva, 24 February 2012. Skyguide adopted two new functions at its control centre in Dübendorf near Zurich on 23 February to support its controllers in their radar work. Switzerland`s air navigation service provider had already introduced these innovations at its Geneva control centre on 9 February.

The first of the new functions adopted is the Cleared Level Adherence Monitoring tool, or CLAM. This tool constantly monitors whether a flight actually keeps to the flight level it has been assigned by air traffic control. If the flight leaves this altitude, the controller responsible for it will be alerted to this immediately by a visual alarm. The second innovation is a tool which automatically calculates the precise separation between two aircraft that are on converging flight tracks. The tool thus shows the controller immediately whether they will need to issue any instructions to either flight - such as corrections to their speed or heading - to ensure that the requisite minimum separation is maintained.   

As is customary with operational changes of this kind, the capacity of the airspace concerned (i.e. above Eastern Switzerland) has been reduced as a safety precaution, and will gradually be restored over the next days. Skyguide has also taken steps to alleviate the impact of this short-term capacity reduction, including temporarily assigning more controllers than usual to the Dübendorf control centre to minimise any delays.

Skyguide is responsible for providing air navigation services within Swiss airspace and in the airspace of certain adjoining regions in neighbouring countries. The company guides the civil and military aircraft entrusted to its care - around 3,270 flights a day or 1.2 million a year - through the busiest and most complex airspace in Europe. Skyguide is a non-profit limited company which has its head office in Geneva. The majority of its shares are held by the Swiss Confederation. The company generated total operating revenue of over CHF 365 million in 2010, and employs some 1,400 people at 14 locations in Switzerland. Skyguide is also a member, together with its partner organizations in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, of the FABEC initiative to create a common functional airspace block that will bring greater efficiency to Central Europe`s air traffic management services and activities.

The media release can be downloaded from the following link:

Media release (PDF)
This announcement is distributed by Thomson Reuters on behalf of Thomson Reuters clients.

The owner of this announcement warrants that:
(i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and
(ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the
information contained therein.

Source: skyguide via Thomson Reuters ONE
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skyguide: New functions to assist radar controllers at skyguide's Dübendorf control centre

To borrow a presidential debate catch-phrase, there you go again.

As GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum noted after Wednesday’s debate, the media’s game of late has been to 1) ask repeated questions of him and the other Republicans about their stance on birth control and 2) ask them why they’re talking so much about birth control.

Why do that? In an attempt to make Republicans look extreme and anti-woman. CNN commentator David Gergen even openly alleged it after the debate.

It has become clear that your main job as a voter in 2012 will be to not be fooled by the national media.

First things first: Despite their well-founded reservations regarding the birth control pill, none of the Republican candidates has any intent to make it less available. Period. End of report. They simply object to the Obama administration’s attempt to force people and institutions that are opposed to birth control and abortion-inducing “abortifacients” to offer such services to employees.

The Obama administration also has, with the help of a frothy lapdog media, somehow convinced some Americans that free birth control is now a civil right.

Meanwhile, as Newt Gingrich eloquently pointed out at the CNN debate, “Not once (in 2008) did anyone in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide.”

It was the moment of an otherwise off-kilter debate, earning raucous audience approval – and for good reason: It’s true. However bluntly put, it’s true.

While a member of the Illinois state Senate in the early 2000s, Obama actually voted against a bill that would have prohibited the outright killing of infants born as a result of botched abortions.

Mr. Obama since has claimed the bill didn’t protect abortion rights under Roe v. Wade. But the truth is, it did: Abortion-preserving language similar to that in a federal law on the issue was inserted into the Illinois bill, and Obama still opposed it. Even though he claimed to support the similar federal law.

Even the liberal-leaning Factcheck.org has to admit it, writing, “Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported ...” (emphasis added).

Likewise, in a RealClearPolitics.com article in 2008, Joel Mowbray concluded, “Mr. Obama contended that he ‘would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported,’ but that he voted against the 2003 Illinois bill because ‘that was not the bill that was presented at the state level.’ Except that it was.

“As it turns out ... the National Right to Life Committee wasn’t lying; Mr. Obama was.”

Regardless of whether you want to believe these things, just consider the incongruity of it all: Barack Obama gets a complete pass on actual votes against bills that would’ve protected born-alive babies from failed abortions – but the Republicans are hounded by theoretical questions about access to birth control that they have no plans to change.

Does that not seem a bit odd to you?

If only the media had the moral compass of, say, a high-schooler in Augusta.

Several at Aquinas High School held a “Shave ’em to Save ’em” hair cutting Wednesday – giving up their locks for lent and raising awareness for victims of abortion and a bit of money for the Augusta Care Pregnancy Center. The center provides loving help to women and girls in crisis pregnancies.

Kudos to students Nicholas Scicchitano and Garrett Merz for showing, as our newsroom put it, “sheer conviction.”

They may be boasting less hair for awhile, but at least these kids’ heads are on straight.

The national media could learn a thing or two from them.

Perspective being one of them.

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Don't be fooled