ADOTAS – “It used to take three hours to provision the page with tabs; now you can do it in 90 seconds,” Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow says as he drags boxes and quickly inserts type into a mock Facebook page he is instantly fabricating to demonstrate the Buddy Media social media platform. “We measured it — we’ve cut 90% of the time out of the process.”
Within minutes he has created a page complete with a YouTube channel up top, a Twitter feed, a customized poll and a photo — hours of user interaction and brand engagement via a smidgen of effort.
With the aim of assisting ad agencies, Buddy Media has created a social media platform — with tools for Facebook, MySpace and Twitter — that will allay the fears of code-phobic creative people. Instead of adding a social media specialist or five to churn out HTML, creatives can set up and manage a modular Facebook page by clicking and dragging.
The company recently presented the platform to 10 agencies, all of which jumped on the opportunity. Vivaki; MDC Partners; The KBuzz; and Kirschenbaum, Bond, Senecal & Partners announced their integration of the platform on Tuesday. The platform will be branded for each agency.
Two years of social media work with around 100 clients provided the backbone to develop the tools for the platform. In targeting ad agencies, Buddy sought to bypass the programming hurdles that hamper the efforts of creatives.
Now campaigns can easily establish virtual stores filled with branded gifts — Wendy’s offers the ability to send digital cheeseburgers. But agencies can also flex their creative muscles to push brand optimization — for example, on the New England Patriots fan page, users can choose their “gameface,” a cartoon head covered in war paint bearing a custom expression.
Most important, the Buddy Media platform facilitates sharing of such applications, turning users into viral engines. In addition, page managers can update the brand fanbase instantly. The platform also offers a preview function, something Facebook lacks.
In addition, the platform provides a full set of analytics — not only can a user see how many times a tweet was retweeted, he or she can sort through every mention of a brand at the click of a button.
Lazerow mentions that he will spend hours at night trying to create “the most whacked-out pages,” just to push the limits of the platform. He believes that the doors opened by the platform are only limited by creatives imaginations.
“Facebook pages have become more important than a company’s own website, and we have made them simple to create and manage,” Lazerow says. “We’ve made agencies’ dreams come true.”
