Spongecell Revolutionises Event Sharing

The title of this blog post comes from Million Music Marketing and their recent coverage of Spongecell, though of course we’ve been making this claim for years. Their blog dedicated to “How to Market Your Music Online” covers innovative ways for music industry professionals to use interactive media to reach online consumers.

“Spongecell could radically alter the way artists and labels update fans about events, including gigs, new releases, media appearances or website updates,” the blog post begins. “Think of everything an artist does and 90% of it is a form of event. Think of information in this way and suddenly calendar sharing becomes as powerful, if not more so, than news updates, email or SMS.”

Thanks for such wonderful words and for helping to keep people up to date on trends in interactive media. Your blog is totally awesome – um… I’m sorry, I wish I could come up with a comparable complement, really we’re very pleased to receive validation from such industry insiders. Thank you!

Spongecell Brings Your Datebook to Facebook

Today we issued a press release for our new Spongecell Flyr Facebook application, and interactive advertising publication Adotas was quick to recognize the value to its community of online marketers and picked up the story.

Spongecell and Facebook are teaming up. Spongecell allows marketers to further spread and track peer-to-peer communications within Facebook’s user community.

Events from any Spongecell-powered calendar, blog or site can be added to a user’s Facebook profile. The calendar items on a profile will show up on the mini-feed, or can be sent as an invitation to people in your network.

Marc Guldimann, CEO of Spongecell said “Online communities are where consumers ‘live’ and connect, and it’s a natural environment for marketers to communicate with their audience more organically and efficiently. The extension of the Spongecell application to Facebook is an obvious next step as many brands are seeking to engage people online and on social networks. Our customers use our software as a way to drive people to take action – from attending an event to buying a ticket to purchasing merchandise.”

“Because our software is platform-agnostic and can be integrated with many different forms of media, we empower our customers to engage their audience anywhere including on their mobile devices, MS Outlook, blogs or any web-based venue.”

Spongecell provides real-time metrics for marketers and event promoters. With a Facebook application, marketers can track comments made about their event. By segmenting audiences, people are informed about relevant content that interests them and are more likely to spread the word about events.

Expand Your Brand Community Online

AdAge published an excellent article recently on CMO strategy recommending how brands can utilize social media to engage consumers online. Their discussion highlights how problematic the traditional “marketing tunnel” is to drive consumer loyalty online through conventional banner and print ads, and 30-second commercial spots:

“Traditional 30-second TV spots, viral stunts and PR campaigns are subject to rerouting through a milieu of online communities that repackage, edit and mash up intended messages for distribution through social networks, search engines, e-mails and word-of-mouth. It’s within that mix that today’s real marketing opportunities lie.”

CMOs must consider how consumers interact with the brand online, become brand advocates, and ultimately in doing so become participants in a campaign. All of this boils down to encouraging word of mouth.

The challenge facing every CMO is to find a balance between letting go of complete control of your brand vs. constructing your brand marketing in a way that it will retain consistency with your corporate identity as consumers interact with it across forums, chat rooms, and social networks.