Marcom this week: From A to zinc – 12/31/10 edition

From social networking sites dominating our search queries in 2010 to growing social media budgets in the year ahead, here’s a look at what made headlines this week in the integrated marketing communications industry.

Facebook Beats Google in 2010 for “Most Visited Site” Title
According to Experian Hitwise’s analysis of the top 1,000 search terms for 2010, "facebook" was the top-searched term overall, accounting for 2.11 percent of all searches. This is the social networking site’s second year as the top-searched term. Not surprisingly, overall, social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches. "YouTube" was the third most-searched term, followed by "craigslist," "myspace" and "facebook.com." Facebook also took top honors as the most-visited site in 2010, moving up from No. 3 and accounting for 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits. Google came in second with 7.19 percent of visits, followed by Yahoo Mail at 3.52 percent, Yahoo at 3.3 percent and YouTube at 2.65 percent. Bing popped up on the top-10 list for the first time in 2010, sitting at No. 10. Will be curious to see where the newbie search engine site goes from here.

Social Media Spending in 2011
With nearly 80 percent of corporations undertaking social media efforts, social media has quickly evolved from a shiny new object to a marketing toolkit must-have. So it’s no surprise that total budget for social strategy is projected to rise in 2011. Advisory firm Altimeter Group recently asked 140 corporate social media strategists how much they spent in 2010 and learned that the amount varies greatly based on the size of the organization. However, on average, companies spent $833,000 last year on social strategy. Next year, this number is expected to reach an average of $1.16 million. The following chart breaks down social media budgets and strategy based on an organization’s level of SM sophistication. We’d be curious to hear how this compares to your experience – let us know in the comments.

TaylorMade Scores a Hole-In-One with "Sesame Street"
The leading manufacturer of golf clubs, TaylorMade, has teamed up with the sounds of “Sesame Street” for a major TV ad campaign that will launch Jan. 3 on the Golf Channel, ESPN, NBC and CBS. The commercial features the song “One of These Things is Not Like the Others” – a “Sesame Street” staple – and will plug the company’s high-tech R11 driver, which has an unusual mostly white-colored clubhead. While we think the cutesy song will perk the ears of golf enthusiasts tuned into the season’s top competitions, we’re not sure these viewers will totally get the deeper meaning intended by TaylorMade’s ad agency, NYCA. As Michael Mark, CEO and creative director of the Encinitas, Calif.-based shop, explained in a recent AdAge interview, “We wanted to disarm the fear. We wanted to bring people back to a time of learning and openness when they would make personal leaps ahead without worry of what they didn’t know. That’s what ‘Sesame Street’ is all about.”

Marcom this Week: From A to Zinc is compiled by the Vitamin IMC editorial team. They can be reached at vitaminimc@gmail.com. Miss your vitamins last week? Visit the Dec. 24th edition of “Marcom this Week."