Ad vet puts brand on social networking - Boston Business Journal:

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The fast growth of social networking sitea has added to their appealamongy marketers; industry experts say the sitess hold great potential as an advertising medium that engagesx consumers by getting them to evangelize variouas brands. Indeed, advertising spending in the United Statea on social networks willhit $1.6 billion in 2008, up from $920 million in 2007, accordiny to Facebook alone has 59 million active usersz who spend an average of 20 minutess on the site each day, accordinyg to in Reston, Va., whicu tracks consumer behavior. In addition to Facebook, sitezs like , , and are also growing in popularity.
is developing OpenSocial, which will allowa for social applications to be transferable to manydifferenty sites, a feature that should expandd the reach of advertisers who develop branded "The biggest vision for us is to help brandsa tackle and be effective marketers in using socialo networking," said Tedford. "It'se a delicate balance for brands to add valure to the user experience versus just tryingto market." Branc Networks has been in stealth mode sincd its launch in August and has workedx on programs for such clients as , and 's, amonbg others. To date, Tedfordr has bootstrapped the firm, which is currentlyh cash-flow positive. He would not disclose revenue.
Branc Networks uses two products to findbrans loyalists. The first is its Brand Nets softwarew that enables companies to builsd theirown private-label social networking siteas to enlist loyal customers and encourage word-of-mouth buzz for products and The other product is "tokns," which Tedforf hopes will become a universal social networking currencty that can be exchanged for rewardss such as discounts or product not unlike frequent flier The idea behind tokns, which are currently attached to a branded Facebook gift from Puma, is to rewarc brand engagement. "Everything we're doingg today allows brands to recruit, engagde and reward their said Tedford, 38.
"We want to be on the forefront of brandxinvading Facebook." Tedford, who left Boston-basedf Arnold a year ago, has spenft the majority of his career working on the non-traditional side of At Arnold he was senioe vice president of media and marketing innovatio n for six years. He is a foundint member the and helaunched Arnold'ws ongoing relationship with word-of-mouth company "If there's any guy who understandss word-of-mouth and the behavior of consumers, it's Jamie," said Dave founder and CEO of BzzAgent in Boston. "Hd helped define how Arnold would integratwethis word-of-mouth platform into other promotional offerings.
He really helped build this industryg in the early What he's tapping into is likelyh the next evolution of sociao networks, which is more engagemengt with users, as opposed to advertising at Ironically, Tedford won Puma as a client after a Facebookk encounter with Barney Waters, vice president of marketing for in In December, Brand Networks launchedf a branded gift application on Facebook for Puma that was inspire d by the sneaker marketer's holiday printr and online ad campaign.
Puma'sa Facebook application looks like a bright red holiday gift attached to aPuma logo; it comes with a $10 off "The fact is, our consumerxs are spending hours and hours on placess like Facebook, so you've got to figure out how to integrat into that environment," said Waters. "We knew that to be you had to add some While social media is makingga splash, at least one analyst cautionxs that the ad medium is not fully "We're certainly seeing a shify to the Internet, but for anyone to put all theier eggs in the social media basket -- I thini they're really jumping the gun," said Peter Kim, a senio r analyst at in Cambridge.