Developments in social media marketing: Mondelez in Facebook tie-up

10 March 2014

NEW YORK: Mondelez, the FMCG brand owner, has announced plans to put Facebook at the "core" of its media investment plans, even as new research showed that the organic reach of brands' Facebook posts is headed towards zero.

The deal with Facebook, described as a "global strategic partnership," covers 52 countries and gives Mondelez access to the social networking site's beta-testing programs and research, Advertising Age reported.

Bonin Bough, Mondelez's VP-global media and consumer engagement, said in a statement: "This isn't just about having a social media strategy; it's about digitising our entire approach to communications."

Meanwhile, Carolyn Everson, VP-global marketing solutions for Facebook, noted that, "as an industry, we're shifting back to a more personal way of marketing, leveraging technology to bring a personal touch to business with the scale and efficiency of mass media".

The snack food giant recently indicated it was aiming to double the proportion of its media budget spent on digital and mobile channels to 50% over the next three years, after research showed that digital programming drove twice the ROI of traditional TV advertising.

Separately, new research from social@ogilvy indicated that the organic reach of a piece of content on a brand's Facebook page had halved in the past six months, to just 6%. A similar pattern was evident among larger pages, with more than 500,000 Likes, which were down to 2%.

The unofficial advice from Facebook sources was that these figures would soon be approaching zero. Consequently, said social@ogilvy, brands would have to "make decisions … with regard to content planning, paid support for social media activities, audience targeting and much more".

In a similar vein, Forbes suggested that Facebook should now be placed in the 'paid media' category, meaning brands would need to become more strategic in their use of this channel.

Conversely, Facebook would now have to justify paid-for posts in a marketing budget, which, said Forbes,  "means delivering results".

Forbes also observed that Facebook's various tweaks had led to a slowdown in the adoption and the organic promotion of posts. "Facebook is asking brands to spend more money to get equally or less value than they are just now" it said.

Data sourced from Advertising Age, social@ogilvy, Forbes; additional content by Warc staff

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