Mediaboss Marketing

Sales of Procter & Gambles (PG) Pepto-Bismol had been flat or declining for several years when in 2010, P&G marketers noticed that social media chatter about the pink indigestion reliever was occurring on Saturday and Sunday morningspresumably after users had overindulged the night before. So P&G decided to try to lure potential customers before their eating and drinking binges by touting the product on Facebook with the upbeat slogan Celebrate Life. The result was an 11 percent market-share gain in the 12 months through fall 2011.

The company that for generations has meticulously observed customers in their homes as they mop floors, apply makeup, and diaper babies is now listening to their conversations online. And for good reason: The 25- to 54-year-old women who buy the bulk of P&Gs products spend more time on Facebook than typical users. For us, the real aha! was an incredible ability to listen to consumers much better, much faster, more broadly, says Alex Tosolini, P&Gs head of e-business. These days, social media is an integral part of brand building.Vergera: Jen Lowery/Splash News/Corbis; DeGeneres: Michael Rozman/Warner Bros/AP Photo

Thats creating new challenges for the worlds biggest advertiser. Even though P&Gs Tide, Crest, Cover Girl, and other brands are household names, theyre not what most people are talking about on Facebook or Twitter. I dont think too many people sit out there in conversation and talk about the deodorant they use, says Zain Raj, chief executive officer of marketing services company Hyper Marketing. Companies need to build bonds with customers so a brand becomes a choice, and then theyll go out of their way and pay more, he says.

P&G has created cheeky blogs, such as My Fire Hydrant, starring Tyler, an adopted bichon frise, to promote Iams pet food. Facebook pages of individual P&G brands use celebrities to tout products, including Ellen DeGeneres and Sofia Vergara for its Cover Girl makeup. And P&G creates online advocacy campaigns around topics that customers raise in focus groups.

Although P&G wont disclose how much of the $9.3 billion it spent last year on advertising went to social media, the company says its increasing the share of its marketing budget allocated to sites including Facebook, Twitter, and Googles (GOOG) YouTube, as well as sites prominent in overseas markets. All its major brands now have a social media marketing component. Women ages 25 to 54 with children at homethe key target audience for consumer products makerseach spent an average of 484 minutes on Facebook in February, 14 percent more time than the sites typical user, says Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at digital marketing firm ComScore (SCOR).

P&G first stepped into social media in 2005, with Tylers blog. The fluffy white rescue-shelter dog engaged readers with his story and links to a bichon frise rescue-group site. P&G also that year ran its first ads and promotions created to drive traffic to a company website, Crest Whitestrips Smile State Facebook page, for students at 20 colleges. The site offered prizes, concerts, and other giveaways to those who joined.

More recently, P&G has built social media campaigns around issues important to consumers it wants to reach. Facebook pages for Secret deodorant, aimed at teenage girls, address the issue of bullyingthe proverbial mean girls whom some of its customers faced. From those findings, P&G created its Mean Stinks issue campaign on Facebook, launched last February. It features Amber Riley of televisions Glee. The page lets participants send apologies to those they have bullied and view videos and comments others have posted. The Mean Stinks page now has 367,402 likes, indicating users recommend it, with half regularly posting, viewing, or recommending the site.

Visitor interaction at Secrets Facebook page soared 25-fold since the campaign began, P&G says. It now has 1.5million likes. The interest also fueled a 5percent market-share jump for the core brand in the 12 months after the campaign, and 16 percent for the premium Secret Clinical line featured on Mean Stinks.

The bottom line: P&G has launched social media campaigns for its big brands. The 25- to 54-year-old women it targets are above-average Facebook users.

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Social Networking Takes Center Stage at P&G

A deals site for those with an overdeveloped sense of mortality? Possibly, but the team behind a new social network,My-bucketlist.net, which launches on March 30, say their goal is to connect people to check off shared goals togetherwhile offering group discounts.

Users sign up on the site or through Facebook, add items to their lists, and connect with friends and other people on the site who share the same goals. Users decide whom to invite and accept into their group.For popular goals such as skydiving, visiting the Eiffel Tower, or swimming with dolphins, My-bucketlist contacts vendors to offer services at a discounted rate. The most popular items are travel or adventure based, co-founder AndrewJorgensen says. For niche goalssay, traveling to the South Polevendors send targeted offers. Vendors might also sell dance lessons or language classes or software.

The network is the newest service developed byRemembered.com, a three-person company co-founded in 2009 by Jorgensen, now 46, and developer Adolfo Espadas, 34. When he started the company, Jorgensen had just recovered from swine flu. This kind of makes you think about your life and what youre doing, he says. Thats when Jorgensen started thinking about the death-care business.The Salt Lake City-basedcompanylaunchedRemembered.com in September 2010 as a place for users to create online memorials for $10 to $20.Freefuneralnotice.com allows people to send out announcements via e-mail or Facebook. Also in development are My Final Message, which sends pre-recorded video messages to friends and family in the event of ones passing, and Account Vault, which designates a recipient for a dead users IDs and passwords.

Not exactly cheery stuff. A lot of the business we were doing were more on the death-care side of things, Jorgensen says. Its not exactly the most uplifting. Sometimes it can be very positive, but sometimes it can be on the emotional side.

Hence My-bucketlist, acheerier turn for the field of death care.The idea stemmed from the pairs frustration with daily deal sites, which spam subscribers with offers that dont interest them. They wanted to achieve simultaneous aims: stay in the death-care business, which is profitable for Remembered.com, while offering deals targeted at peoples life goals. The company sells ads and collects a commission on sales generated by the site.

In beta, My-bucketlist has signed up about 1,000 users, most of them 30 and younger. Jorgensen expects they will be the sites main user demographic because they grew up using Facebook and Twitter.Theyre not people who have a high preoccupation with dying, he concedes. Theyre people who have their life ahead of them, and they are making their list of things they want to do.

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Social Networking For Your Bucket List

If you were born in the United States after 1979 and have lived here since, you've grown up in a polio-free country.

Don't take it for granted.

Timelines note the highly contagious virus predates recorded history. More than 3,000 years ago in Egypt, cryptic evidence showed signs the disease always was a far greater crippler than a killer.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted polio at age 39, the virus drew even more attention and soon medical philanthropy took flight via his March of Dimes campaign.

In my childhood home, I lived with it, too. My mother caught a mild case of polio when she was pregnant with my younger brother, Jim. I remember waving to her as she peered from the window of the train she'd boarded in Muncie, Ind., headed to Cleveland Clinic for a checkup.

In the early 1950s, the U.S. reported its most cases ever when the epidemic hit nearly 60,000 individuals.

Folks were frightened. No one knew the cause of the transmission of the disease. Families avoided swimming pools, water fountains and other public places.

What health professionals did know, however, is that polio attacks the nervous system, quickly destroying nerve cells that activate muscles, causing irreversible paralysis within hours. Paralysis caused immobilization of breathing muscles.

I recall collecting dimes for coin saver booklets to give to the March of Dimes, the charity that advanced development of Jonas Salk's injected vaccine as well Albert Sabin's live oral vaccine (OPV).

Back then, my father's construction business built a camp designed for children who had been crippled by polio kids about my age who wore leg braces or were bound to wheelchairs.

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Why the battle against polio isn't over

The Vancouver Business Journal accepts press releases about the business activities, accomplishments and recognitions for businesses located in Southwest Washington or for residents of Southwest Washington who work outside the area. Releases should be typed in MS Word. By clicking on the Browse button you will be able to upload your Word document. The contact information is to confirm who should be contacted if the release leads to a story.

In addition to uploading your press release here you are welcome to email the release to nkulmac@vbjusa.com with the text of the release copied into the body of the email.

Press release information runs in the Vancouver Business Journal on a space available basis. Every attempt is made to include this information.

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Related Story: Secret Service intercedes as reporters descend on Mitt Romney's beachfront house

Americans' attitudes toward Mitt Romney are firming up, and a new free-association poll by the Pew Research Center suggests they are now less focused on his religion and more aware of his wealth.

When 1,009 adults were asked to give a one-word response about Mitt Romney in December, the top response was "Mormon," with "rich" 18 spots down the list. Last week the same poll was repeated, and this time the top slot went to "no/no way" with "rich" right behind. Another word that shifted significantly was "flip-flopper," which fell from third to seventh.

Romney's negatives on this measure are high. With the general adult population sample (not registered or likely voters), Pew notes that 14 percent offered positive words, while 30 percent offered negative words and 29 percent used neutral terms. According to Pew, 28 percent offer no opinion, down from 43 percent in December.

December's top Romney responses were Mormon (47 percent), no/no way (23), flip-flopper (19), good (15), OK (15) and religion (10).

The current top responses for Romney are no/no way (31 percent), rich (30), good (19), Mormon (18), moderate (15), business (15), flip-flopper (11), idiot (11), possibility (11) and untrustworthy (10).

Romney also lags in favorability ratings in a new ABC/Washington Post poll of adults. Again, this is not a poll for registered voters or likely voters. It shows Romney falling to 50 percent unfavorable and 34 percent favorable and sets that against President Barack Obama's 43 percent unfavorable to 53 percent favorable status.

Jon Cohen in the Washington Post points out that in 2008, after Obama had been through a tough primary fight, his standing among independents was much higher than Romney's. "Obamas relative low point among independents in 2008 was in mid-April, when 57 percent said they had favorable impressions and 37 percent had unfavorable ones. In the new poll, Romney is underwater with independents: 35 percent view him favorably, 52 percent unfavorably," the article says.

But these polls are more emotional than intentional. More on point may be a series of Quinnipiac University polls out this week that suggest that Romney has slipped somewhat in key swing states but remains competitive.

Florida: Obama leads Romney 49 to 42 percent

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More rich, less Mormon: One-word attitudes toward Mitt Romney shift