The younger brother of a recent computer science grad didn’t believe that his older brother really had a job a Facebook. Well, in steps CEO, Founder, and famous person – Mark Zuckerburg. He filmed a 22 second video to prove that in fact, the older brother was a Facebook employee. Would your CEO jump at the chance to do this? If he did, would any employee pass it along to friends and family? This is exactly why Facebook wins talent. Here is the video.

Under Armour has tappend into their talent community for ideas on product development and consumer insights!

Mini Case: Open-Toed Footwear Strategy

Mini Case Question: What trends are you spotting in the open-toed footwear market?

Mini Case Brief: What do you think is the most popular open-toed footwear alternative? (i.e. Crocs, flip-flops, slides, clogs, etc.) Also, what strategic recommendations do you have for an open-toed footwear product? Thank you and good luck!
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Case Challenge: Consumer Insights

Case Goal: Bring to life the “it” girl on campus

Case Brief: Our consumer insights team is performing market research. We are looking to bring to life the “it” girl on campus. Consumer insights are critical to developing product and marketing strategies. Please answer these questions: How does she work out? What footwear does she wear when working out (be specific)? If different, what footwear does she wear when she is not working out (be specific)? Please feel free to do creative research. Also, use these consumer insights to come up with a marketing/product strategy recommendation.

I read TechCrunch on a daily basis and they had a great (but long) interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Below are some highlights for business owners looking to use Facebook.

Q:How do you see businesses using things like Facebook Pages?
A:Pages are for businesses the same way Profiles are for people. They are exploding. 10 million people fan pages every day. Starbucks has the number one fan page. 4.5 million today. Sprinkles, the cupcake store does a word of the day (get a free cupcake if you know it). People use pages to update, do special permissions. More of what you see is authentic communication. Papa John’s pizza — Papa John himself posts. He came to Facebook, took a picture with Mark. We’re seeing increasingly authentic engagement from people who run businesses.

Q: Lets talk about engagement in posting vs. dialog. Seems like companies just push, don’t talk back.
A: It’s a tool. Some people use better than others. The best use cases are companies that post frequently enough that there’s new info on the page, but not so that it’s too much. And they watch their page to see what people say. Virgin America asking people what their route should be.

Q: Do you think most of the advertisers get this.
A: I think some do. Some are coming along. They get it more than they used to. We were meeting with a CMO of a very important company that does lots of advertising. They asked about best practices. We said you should post frequently — you don’t just spend lots of time upfront. With us, spend half an hour a day, and do it frequently. He said, if we have a 12 day approval process to get something up online, is that a problem. We said it was. When I first took the job I was meting with a head of a movie studio. He said that it used to be, if you have a bad movie, you had that weekend with people seeing it — it wasn’t til the second weekend that they stopped. Now they find out it’s bad the same day, they don’t go to the second showing. I think their processes are changing. We’re working with almost all the top 100 advertisers in the country, and increasingly in the world.

Q: How on Earth do you measure this, to help them figure out what they’re getting?
A: We just announced a partnership with Nielsen — Polls. One example with Sony,a movie they were releasing. We did studies of people who had seen the ad. If they had seen the ad they were 87% more likely to see the movie. It’s important that Nielsen is well respected and a third party.

Source: TechCrunch.