The new UK Twitter brand pages have finally hit our shores for those companies that can afford it.

Let’s put this out there, brands on Twitter still don’t have the flexibility the Facebook API allows. Twitter will keep a tight rein on what users can and can’t do and maintains a standard look and feel for the site. So what do the new pages allow brands to do?

Space for a branded banner below company profiles;

Area for a permanent tweet containing rich media or a promotion;

…and that’s it.

Twitter says that, brand pages now round off its offering for business. But, then Twitter would say that wouldn’t it?

WHAT YOU GET (according to the Twitter ad blog)

• Own it

Your enhanced profile page is completely public, entirely yours to brand, and accessible to every viewer. In addition, no other companies’ advertisements will appear on your enhanced profile page.

• Deliver results

Drive traffic around your latest ad campaign, product launch, breaking news, or other timely content by using your enhanced profile page to focus followers and non-followers alike on the Tweets that are the most important to you right now.

• Connect the dots

Want to integrate Twitter into other media? Now you can use your @handle to guide users to a richer brand experience on your profile page.

WHAT WE SAY

I’m being facetious, because you also get £25k of media spend with Twitter. Now, promoted tweets don’t have exhaustive proof of ROI, and while EA appear pleased with the results of their recent trial the wider jury’s still out on their effectiveness. Personally, I feel that promoted tweets and the brand page should be taken as a cost whole, branded pages might justify the financial outlay for an ad product that is yet to prove itself to marketeers and advertisers.

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On Wednesday, we blogged about the new ASA regulations and some of the questions that it raised in relation to communications in the online space.

It caused a bit of a stir.

Whilst marketing, PR and social media professionals all seem to concur that ensuring vulnerable people can trust marketing communications in the online space is important and that guidelines are helpful for professionals operating in this area, there are some grey areas requiring resolution and some questions that need to be addressed.

Like whether hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website is promotion. Or what the implications are for re-Tweets.

As we continue exploring the implications of this measure, we were pleased to see that Copy Advice is beginning to address some of these questions and wanted to mention the piece as it nearly slipped under our radar.

You can read the full article for yourself here and, whilst it’s reassuring that some of the questions we touched on are being addressed, the article also highlights the complexity of the debate. For example, whilst Copy Advice offers reassurance that each breach will be examined on a case-by-case basis , we are already starting to get a sense of just how many subtleties will come into play – think context, tone, solicitation – and how hard interpreting the regulations may become.

Similarly, the attempts to define ‘marketing communications’ and a reminder of the exemptions are helpful, but fail to clarify some of the haziness around the increasingly blurry definition of editorial content.

With such rich and varied content being created by both users and companies, gaining clarity is of paramount importance – both in relation to protecting consumers and also keeping social media exciting and fresh.

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The extension of the ASA’s CAP code to cover digital marketing communications – both on brand’s own websites, but also through social media, has been driven by a need to close the gap related to companies’ claims online, in particular to regulate marketing to children.

There is no doubt that regulation is essential to protect the vulnerable. And to give brands clear guidance on accepted professional standards of communication. Everybody benefits.

At face value, the digital extension is clear: online communications that are generated or commissioned by a brand fall under the CAP code’s remit. All you need to do to ascertain liability is ‘follow the money.’

But is it really that clear cut?

Marketing communications falls under the Code; press releases on a company website are exempt. But ‘editorial’ and ‘marketing communications material’ can be difficult to distinguish. PR covers more than just press releases. Many different forms of content may be used to grab the attention of influencers.

And many different flavours of influencers may be engaged. If those influencers are professional journalists they are deemed capable of making up their own mind about PR material. What about bloggers? At which point do they move from interested member of the public who needs protecting by the Code, to media professional who can apply a different set of criteria to evaluating marketing material?

So what is marketing promotion?

Beyond online PR, the non-paid-for space online presents even more shades of grey. If a brand commissions user generated content (UGC) which is shared online, that communications piece falls under the CAP code digital remit. Unsolicited UGC is not covered. Promoting unsolicited UGC is covered. So what is considered a marketing promotion?

• Is a tweet highlighting UGC a brand admires to be considered under regulation?
• Is hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website, promotion?

There are many challenges here for social media marketing.

• Advertisers may have many different social media estates. These are not always managed at a senior level and engagement with those sites is not always defined. There is a potential that this extension will add to the fear of social media that already stops many companies from taking part.
• Those individuals already engaging in social media activities will need a level of communications expertise and an understanding of regulations that may be unfamiliar and outside of their experience.
• Hat tipping trends and influencer comment has become common amongst social savvy brands. This will now need some forethought to prevent false claims.

ASA will risk your brand reputation

Another concern is the risk to reputation represented by the planned ASA ‘outing’ of non compliant brands.

Even under the existing code, long after reparation is made, an adjudication can still show up high on a search engine results page. The new Code will bring a new ‘name and shame’ site into play. The impact of appearing on that site will affect business and increase punitive measure way beyond the fines.

The industry needs clarity

We have many questions that the Code as yet leaves unanswered:

• What is the difference between marketing communication and editorial on a website – and will the decision be made based on solely ASA assessment?
• Is an RSS or Twitter feed that pulls UGC onto a company website considered promotion and therefore covered by the code?
• When will the ‘name and shame’ site come into play? While the Code is still being defined advertisers could easily fall foul. If the point of contention is an ambiguous one, will there be negotiation room around the complaint or could a brand fall victim to a temporary ambiguity, while the judgement remains online for perpetuity?

Perhaps the biggest question that remains however, is this: given the ambiguity between editorial, PR and marketing, why was the CIPR not even consulted?

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Is it just me or is everyone talking about crowdsourcing at the moment? Every meeting or event I go to, it comes up. Crowdsourcing advertising (see T-Mobile, Berocca, Hyundai etc.) has been around for a while, providing ad agencies and brands with a new way of showcasing a brand or product (whilst also helping them save some budget, I’m sure.) More and more companies going down the route of taking product suggestions and improvements from its core audience:  innocent ask customers for new recipe suggestions, PlayStation’s US blog has an ideas section, whilst Dell’s IdeaStorm is the tech poster child for actually implementing people’s ideas.

For brands, it makes perfect sense, and we’ll see more and more companies extend their involvement in crowdsourcing, either by giving trusted advocates a voice on their official social media estates or giving supportive influencers the tools to actually create their own content, not just be one of the stars of an existing idea.

For the public sector, crowdsourcing seems like a perfect fit. Everyone has an opinion on how the country or their local area should be run. Public opinion of politics and politicians is at a low ebb; how better to get the public engaged again than to open the clandestine corridors of power for people to suggest their own ideas?

The problem with any crowdsourcing tactic is that there has to be some guarantee that, if you ask people for their ideas, something is going to happen with them. When the coalition government asked for people’s thoughts on policies, they received 9,500 responses. The only thing was that nothing happened with them.

In modern politics, it seems that only good old-fashioned public outcry gets anything done. Just this weekend, the government was forced into an embarrassing climbdown over cancelling free milk for nurseries after the media took umbrage at the idea. On one hand, this kind of action is great – mass movements still have an effect; a unity of voice gets things done. But, the government is ultimately there to make tough decisions. What would happen if something like Proposition 8 in California was proposed over here? Would the inevitable Daily Mail/Daily Express/Daily Star campaigns influence things so far one way that all rational thought goes out of the window? How do you legislate for personal agendas monopolising the activity?

I guess we just shouldn’t ask for, or expect, too much actual involvement in the way things are done. Just as Dell wouldn’t let an amateur into one of its factories to play around with the expensive equipment, we should hope that the government will keep at least of some its policy making and activity behind closed doors.

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