Does that mean Americans are taking a longer view?
Almost all the Super Bowl advertisers included a call-to-action to look them up online this year. But since the big game is the one televised event few of us tend to watch with our laptops in hand, how well did those CTAs work?
Hitwise tracked it. Both to see where we took time to click to Sunday night and where we remembered to nav over to the next day. Careerbuilder definitely won out. Disney's very actionable "free night" promotion earned a lot of immediate interest, too. But, mostly I'm happy to report that Denny's big free meal didn't require the further explanation of a web visit.
How many websites and networks are you registered for?
How many different passwords do you have out there?
How many email addresses have you used and discarded along the way?
Do you get a sense of panic when you have to answer a new generation of security question, wondering truly if your favorite color/food/pet will really be the same as it is today when you eventually forget your password?
Managing all these different identities and accounts is a hassle. Uploading your best photo (and re-uploading it when you find a better one). Filling out all the information. It’s creating a barrier to participating. Who has time for another account setup?
So why are so many colleges asking their potential students and alumni to do just that?
I recently wrote about four of the top colleges in social media. Ones that “got” their audience and came up with a clever strategy that made just the right connection.
But, they’re not the only ones out there with good ideas. Think of all the social media campaigns you’ve looked at and thought: well, that had a lot of potential. The idea was clever, but the execution? Just not there.
Often what’s missed is one of three simple best practices:
Make it easy. Don’t ask you audience to adopt a new behavior or even create a new account if you don’t have to. Leverage the tools they already use. Sync with their behavior. Be as creative with technology as you are with strategy.
Who does it well: Barnard invites its alumni to connect via a private network. But it doesn’t take a new account to join, alums can just leverage their existing Facebook credentials to enter.
Stanford University uses the technology in its students’ pockets. Last school year, Stanford released a free iPhone application called iStanford that allows students to register for classes, look up campus maps and be able view the location of their friends on a map – instant messaging them if need be.
Use a personal voice I would argue that voice is the single most important element of a successful social media execution. The medium rewards casual interactions. People feel more intrigued by – and connected to – brands that they sense are authentic and more genuine than their competition.
Who does it well: University Nebraska-Lincoln is hands down the execution expert here. David Burge is the Associate Director of Admissions there and he’s also the host of the popular online video program Real Nebraska.
Real Nebraska was developed as a recruitment tool and is available to prospective students through the admissions website, vodcast, and on YouTube. The program, in its third season, averages several hundred hits per day and was featured on the TODAY show in early March.
Shot, edited, and staffed with entirely in-house talent, the three seasons of Real Nebraska have produced more than thirty 3-4 minute episodes highlighting student life.
Importantly, they’re told in a friendly, relevant voice. Full of ready-to-pass on soundbites, subtle answers to those pesky questions you’re afraid to ask, and a real peer-to-peer authenticity
Seed the audience You’ve probably heard that the idea if you build it they will come is about as outdated as that Friendster login you’ve got written down on your old Trapper Keeper. It takes some work to get a new social media destination to critical mass. That’s where seeding comes in. It’s an intentional strategy for how you’ll get your first users.
Often social media campaigns don’t have the kind of marketing dollars behind them that traditional programs might. So, it’s important to think about what you can do with what you have.
For example, in 2006, CareerBuilder launched a fun little ecard destination called Monk-e-mail. Using a phone and their computer, visitors could customize a talking monkey and send it off to a friend’s inbox. With few resources to publicize the site, they looked for what assets they did have: the people who worked there. All the employees at CareerBuilder (~1500) and at their agency partner (~300) were asked to send n monk-e-mail card to 10 friends. There were no marketing dollars spent to promote this campaign.
Since then? Over 100 million monk-e-mails cards have been shared.
Who does it well: Capital University. You’ve probably seen me write about their Will You campaign before.
(Short story: This was a great collaboration between the agency I work for and Kevin Sayers and his team at Capital. It was a show and tell of the school’s evolved brand that mapped in comments from Facebook; pulled in Tweets with a certain hashtag; grabbed photos from Flickr, etc., to get a whole campus of feedback.)
But the part I didn’t talk about was the seeding. They didn’t assume that the site would naturally take off (even though there was quite a bit of curiosity on campus). They made sure to make some noise.
They chalked the website address on campus sidewalks; Sharpied it onto white boards; saved it on screensavers; hung it on fliers. They gave sneak peeks to talk leaders and sent post cards to parents. In short, they bootstrapped a clever seeding campaign and got real results. 120,000 people visited the destination in the first three months. And 6% of the student population engaged by leaving a comment or a photo.
Ologie does some pretty great work every day, but there are a few stand-out projects that I just can't seem to stop talking about. This is one of them. And, it's total Ologie: simple, compelling and smart as hell.
Here's the setup: Capital Univerisity is a private college here in Columbus. It's got a strong liberal arts core, surrounded by a number of practical, professional programs. Super engaged faculty; lots of hands on learning.
And, a brand that wasn't really keeping up with the offer.
At their best, brands set an expectation for an experience. They connect what a company does to what it says about itself. Capital was a project just like that - find the cool, geniune stuff and tell a tight little story about it.
Part of the launch of that brand was sharing the work with the students. We did that in part through a website called WillYou. It's got a great storytelling video, but then relies on the community for content.
So, the site maps in comments from the Facebook page; pulls in Tweets with a certain hashtag; grabs photos from Flickr, etc. Super simple show and tell with a whole campus of feedback.
Proving again that one of the best assets an agency can have is a bootstrappy programmer who's willing to take home a weighty print out of Facebook developer guidelines and mine for answers.
Couple of other social experience sites I've been talking about lately:
I love Pledge to End Hunger for its choose-your-own adventure levels of interaction and its conversational voice. It connects collaborators (and competitors) across the country and powers big initiatives, all with a call to action that seems more friendly than pitchy.
Stand Up & Eat is an entirely different kind of social. It powers WOM with its clever phrasings and unfortgetable facts. You'll tell someone about this site. (agencies unknown)
You’ve probably all been in that dead-end social media pitch. The one where you have a perfect audience and an authentic story, but your client heads down one of three painful directions:
The Social Kids Table: (Or the Intern Factor.) Assuming social is just for (irrelevant) kids, they offload the brand voice to the nearest 20-something and hope for the best
The Slow Lane: The mere mention of social starts the weaving of a bureaucratic Web. Mediation, distrust, individual approvals. How can we protect ourselves from the people who want to engage with us?
The Soapbox: Prepping for command and control. Spewing content into the vast social underbrush. Comments locked down. Brand Invincible.
It’s enough to convince you that social can’t succeed with an average business. That – as the blogging boys say – your brand can never be my friend.
But just when you’re about to give up: A completely unlikely brand throws itself entirely into social and comes out smarter and more authentic for it.
We are - in a word - overwhelmed by choice. So much to read
and do and participate in. A lot of it clever and intriguing and really
kind of delightful. To get your message heard, to get past our savvy
consumer filters, you need a special kind of engagement - the kind that
breaks through.
In this series, I'll share examples of brands that have broken through and show how they used the principles of social to do it.
What they were up against: Like most cities that never have red
carpet events or celebrity homes to happen by, Asheville has an
awareness challenge. How do they make sure vacation planners everywhere
know how much great stuff they have to offer?
For years, Asheville went about tourism advertising in the usual way -
visit Asheville for X, Y and Z. Calls trickled in. Weekend vacations
were had. But, Asheville wanted something more - longer vacations, more
interest, higher engagement.
So they challenged a number of agencies - including Luckie - to come up with the idea that would help them break through.
What they did: Luckie knew that it was going to take more
than bucolic photography of green mountains and the promise of a ride
on the rapids to put Asheville on the map. So they looked for an angle
that would get people talking about something people are naturally
passionate about: getting a break from their demanding worklife.
The pitch & the eventual campaign was called Friends of the Five Day Weekend. And it was a call to stop working longer and harder. It was time to take leisure back.
Through newspaper ads, posters, sandwich boards, TV spots, and radio
ads, Luckie drove the curious and overworked to learn more on a Web
site, sign petitions of support and even attend rallies in key cities.
What happened next: 7000 people signed an online petition that was sent on to Congress and the presidential primary contenders. Hundreds joined homegrown Five Day Weekend groups on Facebook. Average people bought and wore the brand. They not only attended the planned rallies, but some even set up their own rally.
Hundreds of bloggers - including the feisty Donald - blogged. And - even with no concentrated media outreach effort -
Michael Medved invited the campaign spokesman on for a lengthy debate
about the economics of the issue. Fox News did a national piece on
it, focusing on overwork but also interviewing the head of Asheville
tourism. And, the AP ran with it.
Importantly, the story of Asheville came through. Not only as
the transparent sponsor of the "movement," but also as a place where
people do care about the very real issue of work-life balance.
How it's social: This campaign has literal social elements -
like the Facebook groups, blogging, etc. But its success is arguably
built on the solid social principles of what makes WOM happen. To
borrow from Steve Knox, CEO of Tremor,
it was a story that was
true to the core of the brand and disruptive to the conversation. The
kind of social marketing that creates results, not just impressions. It
was something that people could care about and it was easy for them to pass on.
Last week, over on Compete’s blog, Cynthia Stephens wrote about the incredible impact Oprah’s live, online book club event has had on site traffic.
Quick catch-up for those of us not in the Oprah know: The show’s book club read for February was A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. To promote the author and the book, Oprah is hosting a 10-week online class on Awakening Your Life’s Purpose with the author.
Participants can watch the classes live or archived and each registered fan gets a workbook to track their own learnings and observations.
Technologically speaking, this isn’t a big break through. Most of us have been enduring Web conferences since the late 90s.
But, the content was so compelling and so well-fit for the audience that the response nearly crashed the live programming and quickly catapulted Oprah’s site ahead of traditional American favorites:
"The number of visitors to Oprah.com topped five million in February, making her site one of the top 225 ranked sites in the United States. To put this in perspective, more people went to check out Oprah.com in February than the popular NASCAR, eHarmony, Fidelity, Barnes and Noble or Walgreens sites."
__Compete blog (Lots more stats here.)
Meanwhile, locally, I was following David Armano and others on Twitter as they covered Ad Age's Digital Marketing Summit. As thrilling as it was for me, when I tried to share the content about what was going on with friends and colleagues, I pretty much got the blank stare of … what?
Or, more broadly, I’ve been watching StrawberryFrog's news mini-cooper-ization of Scion at scionspeaks.com:
"Scion owners design their own personal “coat of arms” online, a piece of owner-generated art that is meant to reflect their job, hobbies and — um, O.K. — karma.
In making their personalized crests, Scion owners can choose from among hundreds of symbols, all designed by a professional graffiti artist. The symbols range from an eagle, a jester, a king’s crown and a worker’s fist to Japanese anime-style flowers, a three-person family and a yin-yang circle. Customers can download their designs and have them made into window decals or take them to an auto airbrushing shop to have them professionally painted onto their cars." _NYTimes
Incredibly cool, right? But what will the adoption really be like?
And don't even get me started about last year's speculation Second Life.
The Oprah story is a great reminder to pause and think about what we should do as much as what we could do.
In the end, the rules of great online experience marketing are simple:
Understand the objective: Why are we doing this?
Know your audience: Care about what they care about
Know your audience (again): Grow with or just barely ahead of their technology adoption
Invest in content: If it’s not valuable to your audience, they won’t come back or pass it on
Ok, I can't take it anymore. What is it with these office supply companies and their ability to create marketing juggernauts that every other client in America wants emulated? The next Easy Button, the next ElfYourself, the next...
Wait. That last one. ElfYourself. Let's look at that.
First, credit where credit is due: The site has been rightly equated with a pop culture phenomenon:
The hottest holiday greeting Web site two years in a row
Roughly 100 million visitors created elves. (Including my DAD!)
No question, the site has been a runaway success for OfficeMax and agency creators Toy and EVB. But that's not the full story:
First up, this was not just a random great idea from some creatives loopy on spray glue fumes. It was a the winner of a very well-funded test of over 20 holiday sites - each of which was intended to be viral. (That level of upfront investment would make most marketers cringe!) A few examples of the OfficeMax sites you may not have heard of:
Reindeer Arm Wrestling
Roast A Turkey
Greetings from the North Pole
Shake the Globe
Yes I'm Working
Save the Snowman
Faux Charity Donation Generator
North Pole Dancing
Second, it didn't magically go viral. OfficeMax (and/or Toy) has a strong understanding of how to pounce on an opportunity. They took early adopter posts on Flickr, Digg and Facebook and leveraged them into a PR pitch that landed spokespeople on Letterman, The Today Show and others. From there, they juggernaut ... well, juggered. Mainstream media coverage included USA Today, ABC World News Now, CNN American Morning, CBS Early Morning, and US Weekly's "Buzz-O-Meter." Online, nearly half a million pages reference the site.
Finally, let's wait and see the results. Buzz is OfficeMax had a tough fourth quarter. Despite 120 million ElfYourself.com visitors having spent the equivalent of more than 1,500 years with the brand.
Remember that snarky Norelco site ShaveEverywhere.com that launched last year? Well, the results are in. And, they reveal well more than an optical inch':
The big number: 60% of Bodygroom buyers say they learned about the product via ShaveEverywhere.com
Wait, it gets better. According to The New York Times, the category was largely built by the buzzy little site:
[Prior to the launch] the idea of a product specifically made for below-the-neck shaving barely existed.
Today, the Bodygroom is one of at least four products in what’s seen as a distinct and fast-growing category; nearly 250,000 body-hair trimmers have been bought in the United States in the last year.
At a $40 unit price, that's a $10 million category launched with stock images of peaches & carrots and bleeps!
In other shaving news, you've got to check out the career advice from Bern on Barbasol.com's overhaul. This well-spoken hand puppet definitely knows the inside scoop...
(Click the 'How to live the Ultra Successful Life' button)
Have you noticed all the buzz (and, well, legal action) around the Wild Oats acquisition seems to end with - what about Trader Joes?
Well, granola heads, it's no Whole Foods. But, another competitor - one much closer in approach - is using field marketing and WOM to actively take on the big guys. With some early success.
Check out this brand launch strategy: Market: Indianapolis Audience: Suburban Moms (mid-tier shoppers who don't currently buy a lot of organic food) Medium: Online - offline / trying for viral Marketing budget: ~ $200,000
Agency: Olson
Key online tactic: Amazing Growing Virtual Sunflower - a downloadable desktop plant that would live or die based on user action to water, give sunlight and fertilize. Totally sharable on a daily basis - look what I grew.
Key offline tactic: Think pink flamingos, but more eco-friendly. Olson & Sunflower Market took guerilla to the 'burbs with "lawnvertising" - planting neighborhood lawns in a three-mile radius with branded cardboard sunflowers. Key media tactic: Six weeks out from the first store opening, key media received a branded flower pot + seeds and soil with the instruction to "plant the seeds in the pot, and, by the time it sprouts, you will have been introduced to the sunny new face of organic food."
BIG, BIG, BIG ROI:
Whole Foods' plans to build a competing store were put on hold
Pickup by all local TV news + online media
Exceeded initial sales goals by ~20%
Nearly doubled average basket goals
Lots of email registrations for ongoing communication
So far, Sunflower Market has five stores in the midwest with more opening soon...
Recent Comments