The document discusses how Doner, an advertising agency, approaches social media marketing. It emphasizes the importance of understanding people's behaviors and leveraging social insights to develop ideas that will move people to action. Doner focuses on identifying cultural passions and aligning brand messages to resonate with target audiences. The agency also stresses the need to facilitate conversations and share stories on social media like people do.

1. IDEAS THAT
MOVE PEOPLE.

2. The ubiquity of technology and its ability to accelerate the adoption
of behaviors have created great opportunity for marketers to reach
target consumers but simultaneously have made it more difficult
to “break through.” This, of course, challenges the conventional
approaches to marketing communications and puts more emphasis on
leveraging social media as a means to engage target consumers and
propagate messages, ideas, products and behaviors. Here at Doner,
we are reshaping how we see the world of social media and how we
operate in it as practitioners. The following is a peek into that world.
Marcus Collins
SVP | Executive Director of Social Engagement
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3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
How We See the World
How We Operate in the World
How We Resonate in the World
How We Connect to People in the World
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6
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4. HOW WE SEE
THE WORLD:
A POINT OF VIEW THAT
INFORMS EVERYTHING

5. IDEAS THAT
MOVE PEOPLE.
And we mean this quite literally. All of our efforts are done in the service of exciting a
population of people to take action. Considering the fact that people rely on people more
than any form of marketing communication, it is incumbent on us to ensure that our ideas
are socially designed – with people at the center – and are built to share, if we are to
successfully “move people.” Whether it be campaigns (messaging and communications),
content (film, GIFs, flat images, audio, code) or experiences (both online or offline), the
aim is to excite a desired behavior – from conversations to pass-alongs, purchase to search,
and everything in between.
OUR CORE IMPERATIVE
AT DONER IS TO CREATE

6. HOW WE OPERATE
IN THE WORLD:TRANSFORMING OBSERVATIONS INTO
INSIGHTS AND IDEAS

7. We rely on social listening as a critical
vehicle to inform strategic planning and
turbocharge creative ideation. Our approach
to doing so takes on many forms. In some
instances we start with conversations about
the brand, using a myriad of brand-centric
keywords, and observe the subsequent
topics and behaviors that bubble to the top
or lurk at the bottom. While in other cases,
we mine conversations around relevant
topics and cultural happenings to establish
cognitive linkage to the brand.
Regardless of the approach, at
the root, we look for the semantic
associations that illuminate what
people think, say, do and feel.
From this exercise, we glean empirical
intelligence and overlap our findings with
cultural awareness in hopes of unearthing
rich insights.
How do you use listening to develop social
insights? How do you apply insights to
develop creative ideas and expressions?

8. Using social listening to develop insights
and social connections plans.
These insights help shape the strategic lens we
use to develop creative opportunities for the brand.
They enable us to superimpose brand truths with people truths and carve out the most
fertile territory possible for the brand to own. Out of this exercise comes an actionable
strategy (grounded in empirical data) that not only inspires creative ideation but also
serves as a rubric by which we evaluate ideas, tactical executions, content development,
response opportunities, relevant contexts, would-be partners and potential sponsorships.
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9. This process is best seen in our efforts with
Minute Maid. Here we took a long-standing brand
belief, “If you put good in, you get good out,”
developed a creative platform and produced broad
communications around it.
Through our social listening exploration, we found a truth that
flew in the face of a widely held convention and challenged
some of our own assumptions as well. Many people believe
that the ubiquitous use of technology and digital media in
today’s society distracts parents from spending time with their
children. The truth is, as we found, today’s parents spend more
time with their children than any generation prior. This wasn’t
just observational, it was evidenced in scientific research. So
despite the ridicule and guilt that these modern moms and
dads experience due to an inaccurate judgment placed on
them, they are actually doing a good job. This insight
became the impetus for the idea that would fuel
Minute Maid’s creative efforts.

10. A brand that believes in “putting
good in to get good out” would
become the champion for today’s
modern parents and remind
them that they’re “#doingood.”
All tactics, content, posts and
activations would run through
this creative platform to support
the brand’s legacy conviction.
Example content based
on social insight.

11. Examples of informed connections
thinking, informed by social insights.
The notion of #doingood provided Minute Maid with both
a playbook and permission for the brand to insert itself
across a host of contextual moments where parents could
use some support and/or encouragement.
Within the #doingood creative, we developed a mnemonic –
a letter exchange between parents and children – that served as a
device for the brand to join in on cultural conversations. Beyond the
obvious (Mother’s Day and Father’s Day), we identified “#doingood”
moments where the brand could respond to individuals directly with
encouragement or celebration to further demonstrate our commitment
to the cause and drive deeper engagement and relevance with parents.
All of this was done in an effort to move people to take action.

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... shout out to the Minute Maid team and the incredible campaign
they launched earlier this year with #doingood. In a category where
rarely any brand ever spoke about anything else than the product
benefits, the team was brave enough to think more broadly about how
to grow the brand and launched a platform that celebrated parents,
reminding them that they are doing better than they think they are
with their kids.
Emmanuel Seuge
SVP Content – The Coca-Cola Company

13. HOW WE RESONATE
IN THE WORLD:ASCRIBING BRAND BEHAVIOR

14. If brands are to tap into the consciousness of a population and
provoke them to take action, then said brands have to stand for more
than just features, benefits and product attributes.
Brands must have a conviction, a reason for existing
that a population of people can subscribe to in order to
truly resonate.
When brands stand for something, people use the brand to
communicate something about themselves and how they see the
world. Social content – that is, content exchanged from person
to person – places an even greater responsibility on how brands
communicate and demonstrate their convictions, because it’s not
enough to be shareable; the content itself must be “share-worthy.”
More specifically, the content has to satisfy the psychological
conditions of why people share if the branded context is to spread.
Therefore, brands must fully realize what they stand for and use it as
a North Star to inform the content they make and where that content
is delivered.
The convergence of brand-led
and passion-led ef forts.

15. Considering this, brands should focus their attention
on clearly identifying their beliefs and demonstrating
them across the most appropriate contextual passion
points in an effort to meet a population of people who
likely subscribe to the same beliefs as well.
The ever-evolving sophistication of social networking platforms
allows brands to do this well without adopting a pseudonym or
passion-hyphened-brand name. The targeting opportunities
that the platforms provide enable “conviction + passion” based
content to be delivered to people who subscribe to the same
passion points as the brand, and share the same convictions
(determined by their self-authored descriptions and on-platform
behavior). This applies whether these people are “ followers” of
the brand’s community or not. Truthfully, brands would have
to use these media solutions to reach people within their own
Facebook communities regardless, thanks to newsfeed dynamics
and subsequent restrictions. The good news is that this
precludes brands from having to build an additional
identity that is passion-led and recruit yet another
community to it.Social Content – Should we focus attention
on brand-led or passion-led ef forts?
IN THIS CONTEXT,
“PASSIONS” AND “BRAND”
become somewhat interchangeable. The brand’s conviction is what gives
it license to participate in passion-driven genres because the brand belief
aligns with the particular passion point.

16. BEHAVING
LIKE PEOPLE
If “social” is about people, then “social media” is the media
of people and, therefore, brands must consider how people
interact with each other when a brand decides how it will
behave across social media channels. (That’s a mouthful, I
know. If you need another second to reread it, feel free.) As
people, we inherently know that good stories lead to good
conversations. And oftentimes a good conversation can
induce storytelling. The two are both by-products of each
other and as such they are practically inextricable when
considering the context of people dynamics.
This suggests that brands, too, cannot prioritize storytelling
over conversations (or vice versa) as they consider how they
behave across online social media channels. Brands must be
equipped to tell stories that lead to good conversations and
facilitate good conversations that draw out rich stories.
Social Content – Is social
better suited for storytelling
or conversations?
Brands must be equipped to
tell stories that lead to good
conversations and facilitate
good conversations that
draw out rich stories.
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17. One of the most fascinating aspects about people dynamics is
the massive influence that people have on one another. It has
been said that you can predict the behavior of people based
on their exposure to the example behavior of others. As you
can imagine, this greatly benefits our aim to “move people.”
Thus, we put a lot of stock in leveraging influence in our
creative solutions and designing strategic recommendations
for how we will yield its sway within tactical executions. All
the while, ensuring that these recommendations remain plumb
to the larger operating strategy that has been established at
the brand level.
BEHAVING
LIKE PEOPLE Thus, we put a lot of stock
in leveraging influence
in our creative solutions
and designing strategic
recommendations for how
we will yield its sway within
tactical executions.
The role of inf luencers in social .

18. Social networking
technologies allow us
to identify advocates
(through social listening and
community management)
in the wild, upholding their
beloved brands. This enables
us to recognize, organize
and galvanize around these
people in an effort to drive a
desired action.
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BEHAVING
LIKE PEOPLE
It is no surprise then that social media – the media of people – provides great
opportunity for brands to build and maintain advocacy. This is largely due to the fact
that people heavily depend on each other for guidance and direction, both consciously
and subconsciously. However, advocacy is a word used so fluidly across our industry
that its meaning has experienced a bit of creep over the years. Let us be precise.
Advocacy is the public support of or recommendation of a given initiative. Likewise,
an advocate is someone who publicly supports or recommends an initiative and
attempts to persuade others on its behalf. When we talk about brand advocates, it’s a
person who is not only willing to recommend the brand but will also defend it against
an antagonist. These advocates constantly send the appropriate signals about their
affinity for a brand and/or their alignment with the brand’s belief.
Social networking technologies allow us to identify advocates (through social listening and community management) in the wild,
upholding their beloved brands. This enables us to recognize, organize and galvanize around these people in an effort to drive
a desired action. Meanwhile, when the brand is demonstrating its beliefs and delivering remarkable experiences, it sets the
stage to convert the apathetic to potential advocates – thus continuing a cycle of advocacy.
The role of social in building
and maintaining advocacy.

19. In many cases, the best place to identify advocates is within the group of people who have already raised their
hands to say, “I’m a fan!” Though it’s highly unlikely that each individual among a brand’s Snapchat followers or
Facebook fans falls into this category, there is indeed a constituency of people who share the brand’s convictions
and are willing to go to bat for it. Naturally, then, it is imperative that the brand make every effort possible to nurture
those relationships and help foster the interconnectivity among them so that the community can thrive. In this effort, the
brand must facilitate conversations among the community, spark dialogue around the issues that matter to the people,
respond to those in need, and sustain the dynamics that best represent the collective’s shared beliefs. And community
management bears the responsibility of this crucial task.
At its core, community management is a function of service. Brands disrobe themselves of their corporate veneer and
adopt a sense of humanity to serve the people who see the world similarly. To do this requires an amount of empathy on
behalf of the community manager(s) representing the brand. This act of public service is not reserved for the “photo op”
only, but is an ongoing commitment that reflects the “always-on” and continuous nature of the technology that facilitates
the exchange between community managers and the people they serve.
This also requires that community managers are deeply practiced in the brand (its strategy, values, tone of voice and legal
guardrails) and skilled in the art of writing copy, which makes for brand consistency and swift response.
Examples and principles of ef fective
community management.

20. CUSTOMER CARE
In this instance, an unsatisfied
customer was assured that not
only was the brand listening,
but we would also take the
proper steps to make it right.

21. EMPATHETIC SUPPORT
Mother’s Day was an obvious holiday,
so the brand engaged the community in
such a way that gave them a platform to
tell their mom, “You’re #doingood.” In
this instance, fans shared their poignant
stories about why they loved mom and
how she’s #doingood.

22. Much like any sustainable relationship, there must be reciprocity between both
parties. This reinforces the strength of the relationship and builds loyalty.
Therefore, while brands look to social networking technologies to extract value
from peer-to-peer influence and advocacy, it is necessary that we consider
how brands contribute to the relationships as well. Rewarding acts of support,
purchase and consumption then become table-stakes when we reflect on how
easy the tech makes it for brands to do so. And so the role of online social media
platforms in loyalty marketing becomes obligatory if brands are to truly leverage
the full power of the space.
It should also be noted that brands don’t technically “own” their communities on
social networking platforms. These communities are “leased” to brands by the
Twitters of the world. This suggests that there is great opportunity to shift these
“ fans” into channels where we have greater access and control.
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BEHAVING
LIKE PEOPLE
Therefore, while brands
look to social networking
technologies to extract
value from peer-to-peer
influence and advocacy, it is
necessary that we consider
how brands contribute to the
relationships as well.
The role of social in
loyalty marketing.

23. PREDICTING
PEOPLE BEHAVIOR
There’s an old saying that “success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.”
We can’t plan for the unpredictabilities of life, but we can certainly prepare
for them. It’s the same in the case of how brands can prepare responses for the
unpredictable moments that happen in culture. This preparation is a factor of
muscle memory and pattern plotting.
The muscle memory comes from a repeated exercise of creating content, informed
by the intersection of human truths and brand truths, that populate campaign
activations and align to earmarked, contextual moments. This creates a habit for
the brand to identify the most fertile opportunities in time to demonstrate itself.
The result, thereof, is that the brand inadvertently establishes a rubric for itself as
to what things it has license to respond to and when. This moves the brand from
“real time” to “right time,” “right message,” “right context,” and “right people.”
We can’t
plan for the
unpredictabilities
of life, but we can
certainly prepare
for them.

24. During our daily social listening, we found a tweet
from a gentleman who missed out on purchasing
the car of his dreams – an Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
This wasn’t just an ordinary tweet, it was a love
poem penned to the “one who got away.” The
poem gained social traction with Twitter users
and the Alfa Romeo community. We thought
this was a great opportunity to leverage the
growing momentum across social and showcase
Alfa Romeo’s customer service capabilities, so we
responded with a poem of our own that expressed
our admiration and appreciation. This initiative
led to an outpouring of positivity from the Alfa
Romeo community and a wealth of earned media
from industry publishers like Adweek.
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26. Pattern plotting is an exercise of taking data from the past –
happenings, trends, etc. – and using it to inform the future. Calendar
events, annual occurrences and major observations tend to present
repetitious incidences that can be planned for so brands can set
expectations of what might happen and create responses in advance.
So “real-time,” in this case, refers to deployment as opposed to
responsiveness.
Therefore, preparing responses for the unpredictable things
that happen in culture becomes a balance of ingraining a
practice of being able to recognize the right moments and
developing an ability to preplan accordingly.
As a result, a brand’s balance would become heavy on the campaign and
planned side, and opportunistically planned on the “real-time” side.
Listening for “Planned Real-Time”
engagement. While monitoring
conversation heading into the holidays,
we saw an increase in conversation around
spiced mixology, and around the use of
mason jars for handcrafted gifts. This post
was created to expand the use occasion
for Spice Islands, and timed at the peak of
holiday parties and gift giving.
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Considerations in balancing campaign ,
planned and real-time executions.

27. HOW WE CONNECT TO PEOPLE
IN THE WORLD:DELIVERY AND PROPAGATION

28. The debate between engagement and reach .
The same intelligence that is invested in the creation
of Ideas That Move People must be put into the
delivery of said ideas so that brands are to connect
with people.
The mass adoption of social networking technologies provides
great opportunity for brands to deliver content, experiences
and messages to a tightly targeted group of people and still
achieve a high-volume reach. The value this creates for brands
is unprecedented in comparison to preexisting marketing
tools. However, the most compelling factor of social media
is that content, experiences and messages that resonate
with people are shared from person to person and can easily
spread across a wide populous. The “share” is accompanied
with a degree of credence that a brand could not command
on its own because people trust people more than any form of
marketing. Here, engagement produces reach, with a twist. The
technology accelerates this dynamic so that the propagation
happens far more rapidly than it would in the “offline world” and
amounts to a high-level reach as well. Therefore, engagement
and reach are far more intertwined than they are binary. When
people engage on social networking platforms, it produces
stories, and these stories are presented to other people within
their network. From this perspective, reach is a by-product of
engagement. Concurrently, the high-level reach that social
networking platforms provide creates opportunities for potential
engagement, and thus the cycle continues. Engagement
and reach are not mutually exclusive and should be seen as
complements to a practice of social connections.

29. When an idea moves people, engagement and reach become
mutually exclusive and fuel each other exponentially. Our
campaign for Bellefaire JCB challenged preconceived
notions of youth homelessness and reimagined a modern
PSA. The idea extended beyond art and copy and connected
in a powerful and arresting way. We then partnered with
Upworthy to extend the effort to reach the right contextual
audience, further accelerating engagement, and driving
massive reach (over 1 million views in the first few hours).

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Delivery is not only a matter of to whom but also a product of where.
The contexts of the environment inform the content, experiences and message
a brand would transport in an effort to connect. How the brand shows up would
then be nuanced by the subtleties thereof. Of course, the retail environment is
highly coveted, because of its proximity to purchase, and entrenched with its own
set of nuances. With this in mind, brands can develop creative stimuli – informed
by the contexts of the retail environment – that resonate with people and move
them to take action, whether it be a share or a purchase. Or both.
The role of social in
retail/shopper marketing.

31. Measuring success.
As an agency whose aim is to “move people,” our
approach to measuring success is quite simple.
Did people move? Did they adopt the behavior we
designed for? If the answer is “Yes,” then it was a
success. If not, then it was not. The benefit of social
networking technology is that marketers are able to
track behaviors with low latency (thanks to social
listening, Google Analytics and other tools), analyze
the deficiencies and optimize the design to course
correct. Appropriately, we assign metrics that are
most representative of the behavior we want people to
adopt. The key performance indicators become those
metrics that are closer in proximity to the identified
business objective (sales, traffic, shares, etc.).
Did people move?
Did they adopt
the behavior we
designed for?
If the answer is
“Yes,” then it was
a success. If not,
then it was not.