ONE of the largest agencies on Madison Avenue, McCann Erickson New York, is ramping up its efforts in social media to reflect the rapidly growing interest among marketers in reaching consumers through platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and blogs.
A division of McCann Erickson New York that specializes in social media, which was formed in March 2012 with three employees, is being expanded to more than 30 with the addition of staff members who hold posts that include creative strategist, designer, developer, creative technologist and writer. The global director of the division, Kandace Hudspeth, is also being named chief digital integration officer for McCann Erickson New York.
The division, which had been known as McCann Social, is being renamed McCann Always On. (Some with long experience in the advertising business may be reminded of the nickname of the old Chiat/Day agency, which was meant to reflect the hours its employees put in: Chiat Day and Night.)
McCann Always On is working on assignments for 15 brands sold by marketer clients of McCann Erickson New York that include General Mills, L’Oréal and Nestlé. For instance, for the Nestlé Waters North America unit of Nestlé, the division handled the social media aspects of a campaign for a new product, Resource spring water with electrolytes, which was centered on an interactive installation with a punning name, the Fountain of Electrolytenment.
“At the highest level, social media is a strategic priority for us,” said Rick Tanner, vice president for marketing at Nestlé Waters North America in Stamford, Conn., “and for Nestlé as well.”
“We’re moving beyond listening and engaging through social media to building social media-centric marketing plans,” he added. “As we do that, a premium is placed on the ability to have a good dialogue, a good conversation, that your consumers will trust and participate in.”
Mr. Tanner said he welcomed McCann Erickson New York’s “becoming the always-on content strategists,” focused on initiatives that are “talking in the brand voice in a way the consumer wants to be engaged,” as well as taking care of “managing the communities” of consumers who follow the Nestlé Waters North America brands, which include Arrowhead, Calistoga, Nestlé Pure Life, Perrier and Poland Spring in addition to Resource.
Poland Spring offered an example last month of how brands react in social media to events in real time when Senator Marco Rubio of Florida reached for a bottle of Poland Spring during the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Despite criticism of Poland Spring for waiting until the next morning to respond in a post on its Facebook fan page, “we had the moment,” Mr. Tanner said, adding: “The bar’s going up every day for branded packaged-goods folks. You have to set the rules of engagement.”
Such a task is in the bailiwick of Ms. Hudspeth, who at 30 has also worked at agencies like Euro RSCG 4D, iCrossing and MRM New York, which like McCann Erickson New York is part of the McCann Worldgroup unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
“I grew up in digital,” Ms. Hudspeth said. “I’m a digital native, and I believe in the opportunity that brings.”
Differentiating between “digital media” and “social media” is an artificial distinction, she added, because they “are one and the same.”
The social media phenomenon is far more than one of the “bright shiny objects” that tend to catch the attention of Madison Avenue, Ms. Hudspeth said, because the intensifying interest among consumers in social media means “there’s a real need from a marketplace perspective to have an offering in the space” that would “help the brands we work with be set up for success.”
Ms. Hudspeth gave as an example an effort for Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, sold by General Mills.
After comments were found in social media about the brand from “millennial males” who ate it at night — rather than from the target audience of mothers buying it as breakfast for their children — “we created some posts for Facebook and Twitter that got a lot of engagement,” she said, featuring cheeky comments like “Good in bed” and “Spoon with me.”
With “the bulk of what we do” focused in the realm of content creation, she added, it made sense to have McCann Always On “embedded in the creative department” of McCann Erickson New York. Ms. Hudspeth works with the co-chief creative officers there, Sean Bryan and Tom Murphy, and reports to Hank Summy, president at McCann Erickson North America.
McCann Always On is “adding another dimension to what McCann has always been doing, finding the truth about a brand and building a campaign around that truth,” said Mr. Murphy, referring to the McCann Erickson slogan, “Truth well told,” which dates to 1912.
“In addition to the ‘big idea,’ Kandace talks about the ‘long idea,’ ” Mr. Murphy said, “one that has underneath it a constantly evolving dialogue” that reflects how “you’re always listening to and engaging with consumers.”
According to Mr. Summy, McCann Always On “adds a number of tools, a strategic and analytic component,” to the agency’s abilities, giving it an advantage “in unearthing truths about consumers and figuring out the right message to be delivered at the right time.”
“Tom and I are ready to walk into a pitch,” Mr. Summy said, “and for that pitch, Kandace has gathered data from 10 million signals in the digital domain, which we’re using for insights to create the long idea” for the potential client.