Nexus is divided  into 12 key categories starting with the consumer’s overall technological aptitude and then digging deeper into their mobile, social, video and mainstream media behavior. The study will get at some of the key questions keeping CMO’s up at night:

• Is my target using their console system as their primary entertainment device?

• Does my target listen to more terrestrial radio or has this been displaced with entities like Slacker, Pandora and LastFM?
  

  Slacker Personal Radio

• Is my target moving away from reading magazines on paper to reading them on tablets?

• Does my target look for information on their smartphone via search or apps?

• Where can I reach my target with TV commercials when they are not hitting the fast forward button?

• Does my consumer spend more time on the web via a desktop or a smartphone?

• Is my consumer starting to enact in commerce via social, mobile and/or their TV?

This is just a small sample of the kind of insight we can provide clients that will have a profound effect on the trajectory of their overall campaigns and we truly believe we are the first marketing (media) company to unearth this type of crucial intelligence. In an environment where consumers are galloping and marketers are chasing consumers, we believe this insight will provide our clients with a distinct and unfair advantage. What do you think are the key media questions that should be asked?

For women, sharing information (recommendations, experiences, advice) is important, but certainly not a purely altruistic act. Information is social currency. And while exchanging information is faster and easier than ever (copy, paste, click), information as social currency isn’t new. From medieval soothsayers to Gossip Girl, the woman in the know is the woman worth knowing.

But it’s not a numbers game. She’s only as “good” as the information she shares, and she’s highly selective. Before she “hits” send, she makes a rapid, but a critical calculation – one that determines if you’re sent or deleted.

We call this “share value.” And share value has never been more important now that the amount of information women have access to and their potential reach – thousands in a single click – have exploded. There are several factors women use to determine the share value of a ______________ (fill in the blank: brand, message, product, promotion, web-site, event). You can use this list to help evaluate the share-value of your current messaging or offering.

Here’s how to ensure your message is S.H.A.R.E.D.

1. Save. Does the information offer her the opportunity to save or earn money? Helping others save money pays big dividends toward her own social value. But beware – women are digging for even deeper savings – women tell us 10% and free shipping offers don’t do it.
2. Hurry. Urgency means more than a limited-time offer. Give her a compelling reason to act now – and make it fun. The Starbucks Free Pint of Ice Cream for Facebook Users promotion is a great example – with only 800 pints per hour up for grabs, the rush to participate was overwhelming, and those who scored, shared.
3. Access and exclusivity. Help her show she’s connected and in the know while inviting others to the party. Get her to the front of the line, offer her new products and experiences before they’re available to the public and consider co-branded promotions that up the all-access-ante.
4. Reward. What’s in it for her? How are you incentivizing her sharing? Give her a reason to keep your name on the tip of her tongue.
5. Express. Simply, what does the information she’s sharing say about her? Consider the values or traits she wants to convey about herself: savvy, relevancy, cool, consciousness, kindness, multi-dimensionality, responsibility, creativity. Align your values to hers.
6. Digital. It might seem obvious, but there must be a digital, mobile component to all of your messaging that makes it easy for her to send and share with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

Social is everywhere

• Social networking users have doubled since 2007, representing 60% of the online population and users go to their favorite sites five days per week, four times per day for about an hour per day.
• Facebook and MySpace represent two of the top ten sites and provide similar scale to the big portals.
• Social is bigger than facebook, MySpace, twitter and LinkedIn. It has become so pervasive that it has seeped into all parts of our lives: Music (imeem), movies (flixster), parenting (cafemom) and even ethnic communities (BlackPlanet and AsianTown).
• Smart marketers are starting to replace click thrus to their own site with click thrus to facebook where they encourage you to fan their brand. They understand that if I click thru to their site, they have reached one person, but if I click thru and fan their brand, they have reached me and all of my friends via facebook’s News Feed. Absolut Vodka has started to use this execution.
• Facebook and twitter are starting to infiltrate TV as there will be a twitter and facebook app in the Verizon Fios Widget Bazaar. In the first iteration of the twitter app, Fios subscribers will see a spilt screen with the programming on the left and the tweets on the right based on the programming or genre they are currently watching.

Social is nowhere

Ad land tends to look at the world through a myopic lens vs. understanding what is happening in real America. And although social is huge and is growing, we are sometimes startled and receive a much needed dose of reality when we hear contrarian numbers:

• 69% of all adults 18+ have little knowledge of what twitter actually does.
• Social networks receive less than 7% of the overall digital investment.
• TNS recently polled 60 big brands and the consensus was that agencies don’t get it and one went as far to say that traditional agencies have very little contribution to make.
• Ask any major marketer if they feel they have search or OLA figured out and most of them will say yes, but ask them if they have social figured out and the majority will say no.

So there you have it. The next time a client asks you to opine about social, tell them social is everywhere but nowhere. And FYI, you don’t have to credit yours truly.