Social media marketer going to town

Bentonville’s Collective Bias grows, plants feet on both coasts and Minneapolis

John Andrews, chief executive officer of Collective Bias in Bentonville, talks about how bloggers can make money for their content.
John Andrews, chief executive officer of Collective Bias in Bentonville, talks about how bloggers can make money for their content.

— Just off the square downtown, a small, 3 1/2-year-old marketing firm with expertise in the social media arena is undergoing a significant expansion, though not at home base.

Collective Bias, launched in May 2009, just opened an office in New York at Madison Avenue and 39th Street, staffed with five employees.

“It’s an important place to be as a media company. It’s where media is,” said John Andrews, co-founder and chief executive officer. The firm also has opened offices in San Francisco and Minneapolis.

A former Wal-Mart executive, Andrews first entered the social media arena by overseeing Wal-Mart’s Eleven Moms project, in which blogging mothers shared their thoughts online about the retailer and how it fit into their lives.

Now, Andrews and his colleagues operate a network of 1,300-plus blogging shoppers, each with a little more than 40,000 followers in their direct networks. For the past three years, he said, Collective Bias has generated 125 percent year-over-year growth in revenues.

This year, he said, revenues for the firm are approaching $10 million. The company is aiming for $20 million to $24 million next year and has a long-term goal of reaching $120 million.

In the last three months, Andrews said, the company has been talking with investment banks about taking the company public.

“We haven’t made any decisions yet but we’re looking at that,” he said. “I know lots of changes are coming. I think people are learning about this space.”

Recently, he said, Collective Bias partnered with Plano, Texas-based Mutual Mind to develop measurement systems for social shopper marketing. Collective Bias’ customers are either retailers or their shopper marketing teams, he said, and when they buy media content, they want a tool to measure its effectiveness.

Andrews likens the business model to that of magazines. If a brand wants to reach customers via a magazine, he said, it goes to Time Warner to buy pages in various publications.

Collective Bias, he said, does much the same thing across various online social channels including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. A message delivered through Twitter or Instagram by 50 bloggers, he said, could reach 15 million “impressions.” (In online marketing, an impression is a single display of an ad on a webpage).

Blogger messages are designed to create a “word of mouth” effect to connect with consumers.

Collective Bias has created a payment system akin to direct deposit that automatically pays bloggers as they create content.

“It lets us know that the work has been created and we can aggregate and syndicate it in different places,” he said.

Karen Doan, senior manager for customer marketing and development at Tyson Foods Inc. in Springdale, said her firm has worked with three firms on social media marketing but mostly with Collective Bias.

“They’re doing something that’s very cutting edge. It’s amazing what they can do,” she said, adding that working with a local company is always advantageous.

Return on investment is the key to longevity and what social media have lacked in that arena is a reliable means to measure effectiveness, Doan said.

That measure, she said, used to be “impressions,” but many in the business world were skeptical.

“Who cares if you got 20 million, what does that mean?” she said. An impression reflects only when an ad was displayed, whether it was clicked on or not.

Social media marketing, Doan said, should not be just about making a splash today, but about where the company wants to be three years from now.

Tyson came to the social media table just in the past two years. What social media provide, she said, is “the freedom of using and working with people that give their opinions. We learn so much from our customers.”

And feedback from the customers sometimes improves the content the company offers online, Doan said. An example: Previously, she said, content about Tyson products didn’t always have recipes or links to recipes.

“Done. That’s an easy one,” she said.

“It’s really fun to work with them, fun that they have great ideas. They’re able to give short- and long-term advice. Social media is new, and it’s kinda big and scary out there.”

Calvin Peters, online/public relations manager for the Duane Reade pharmacy and convenience store chain that operates in the greater New York region, said he started working with Collective Bias when he joined Duane Reade in April 2011. The chain is a subsidiary of Walgreen Co.

Peters said Collective Bias was “strong on the blogger side” and had the ability to provide shopper insights, map paths to purchase and manage social platforms.

“It creates a revenue stream here for us,” he said.

The company’s goal for 2013, Peters said, is to make a profit with all social platforms in which it participates.

Peters said his company evaluated several firms before choosing Collective Bias. He said Collective Bias offered the best ideas for his goal of creating a team of brand ambassadors for the company.

“These people are passionate about the Duane Reade brand, and Collective Bias was integral in forming that team for us,” he said. “It’s working out really well.”

Mary Tarczynski, chief shopper-marketing officer, recently joined Collective Bias in its San Francisco office after being a client in her previous job at Mars Advertising Inc.

“I really believe in the proposition and I see the explosive growth that is happening,” she said. “As media has become more fragmented, there’s so many messages out there.”

Her assignment is to focus on growth. She notes that she was a late adopter of social media, but now embraces it.

“It’s a natural extension of people wanting to share ideas with their friends. Social media just makes that easier,” she said.

Courtney Velasquez, vice president for community relations in the Bentonville office, said she initially joined Collective Bias as a blogger three years ago, but by the next year, she oversaw a program for Hershey Co. that turned out well. That led to her current full-time position, which includes making sure the bloggers have good content.

Now, she said, the firm does about 50 projects a month. “It’s massive, it really is,” she said.

Business, Pages 65 on 12/09/2012

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