Socialyse-ing with the social team

As part of my learning journey with Havas Chicago, I got the honor to meet 2 awesome individuals, Andrew Wolin (former Lofter) and Libby Curtis from Havas’ social media arm, Socialyse.

Staying true to their team name, we socialized over fun facts about our countries before our meeting started.

Did you know: The width of Lake Michigan is almost 4 times the width of Singapore. 118 miles vs 31 miles respectively.

Question: If the length of Lake Michigan is 3 times its width, how many Singapores can fit on the lake’s surface?

Answer: 80!
80 freaking Singapore islands can fit on the surface of Lake Michigan.

What are the roles within Socialyse Chicago?

Like the Socialyse I know back home, the team here is traditionally split by job function.

You have your Media specific roles which focuses on Strategy, Trading / Buying, Reporting and Analytics. Then you have the non-Media roles which include community management, social influence and social listening.

However!

If you don’t already know, Havas Chicago is a fully integrated Village where creative and media work hand in hand on most accounts and sit together in large teams. You can literally whisper a swear word from media side and the creative side will hear it, I swear.

With accounts on the Village model, the non-Media social roles are typically taken on by the creative team. But this Village model also encourages a lot of collaboration and what’s happened is you now have a Social folks to be able to take on Media and non-Media specific roles. Wonderful! All-rounders!

Where do you start your career though, if everyone’s an all rounder?

What I like about how the progressions works within Socialyse Chicago is firstly, they are NOT limited by job function. From what I’ve learned, everyone starts the same way and works their way through various roles, IF they want.

At the start of the progression you have you analysts. These guys help out with trading and reporting, learning the ropes by learning the fundamentals. This is where they learn social listening as well.

Then when they’re ready, or when they feel they want a change, they can move on to a planning / strategic role where they’ll work closely with the media plan to come up with social media strategies to address client’s business goals.

While back in Singapore we have the Front Office (client fronting), Middle Office (specialist) model, they’ve kind of broken that wall down in Havas Chicago. This gives groups like Socialyse greater ownership of their work gives them the opportunity to steward campaigns or initiatives with clients.

Here’s how Socilayse Chicago comes in to support the media planning team.

There are always 2 rounds of planning where there are varying levels of involvement from Socilyse.

During the Strategic Upfront Planning process, Socialyse support the media planning team with topline ideas and thoughts regarding strategy. The purpose of this step is to align high level overall media approach with the client.

One that phase is done and ideas get approved, there where the Functional Planning phase starts. This is where Socialyse has greater involvement as they take charge of the planning and execution of the Social element of the media plan.

Socialyse Workflow
- Take the brief
- Create a social strategy. Aligned with Creative team
- Prepare a deck (to be aligned with Media Planning team)
- Present along side the Media Planning team
- Execute the campaign after getting client approval
- Socialyse will also be in charge of weekly performance reviews
- Work with analytics team to optimize the campaign. Communicate necessary changes to Creative team
- Communicate updates to clients

I wonder if the way Socialyse Chicago woks can be replicated across other markets such as Singapore? Would account size, media spend volumes and the AC model be limitations?

No learning would be complete without getting you are some innovative campaigns they’ve done. So here’s a cool one!

Introducing the ‘Recipe Roulette’

The Challenge:

Reynolds current social efforts were not breaking through newsfeed clutter. For the summer grilling season, client was looking for a way to increase engagement and usage of their recipe library.

The Solution:

Enter Recipe Roulette — a social activation that gamified recipe hunting in Instagram Stories! Havas worked as a village to formulate a social-first, interactive placement opportunity to reach Reynolds target audience in a full-screen, immersive environment

The Results:

•By introducing Instagram Stories as a placement extension this campaign:
•Drove an extremely efficient CPM (19% less than 2017 benchmark)
•Decreased Cost per Link Clicks by 40%, resulting in more than 23K clicks to Reynolds site

Using dynamics links, a user will not see the same recipe twice, keeping the user engaged and entertained.

IF you read till this point, yay! Here are some free social best practices :D

1. Don’t undermine your bid. Input the maximum bid you are willing pay because will will almost always be charged less than your maximum bid
2. Identify High Life Time Value (LTV) users. Segment them out in a separate line so you can adjust your bids to ensure they get reached for your

Thanks for reading, more fun and serious stuff coming up!
- Chintheman