Brand Strategy: Politics And Purpose

Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner advert was a car wreck, but its social conscience insight was sound. That insight is that lifestyles are the central focus of brands today.  Ergo, politics and lifestyles can no longer be treated separately. 

So, what’s a brand to do in an increasingly polarising world?  Stay neutral and risk becoming irrelevant or wade into the debate and risk a backlash? 

Nowhere is this division more evident than in the US, under Donald Trump’s presidency. Just a sniff of partisanship could rouse pitch-fork-wielding masses, as numerous brands have discovered. Also, any brand hoping to lay low until better times arrive will be waiting a long time for three reasons. The first is social media, which is amplifying people’s fears and entrenching their beliefs. The second is the lack of accountability among those in power and the third is rising inequality across the world.

The fact that brands are more comfortable getting active politically today is an extension of a larger trend to use morality as marketing. Brands today are taking that to another level, tapping into our sense of what’s right and wrong.

By advocating for causes and incorporating them into their business models, brands allow consumers to vote with their wallets on the kind of world they want to support. These feel-good purchases of self-expression have earned a catchy name: cause-sumption.

These are admittedly heavy subjects for a soap brand or sportswear label to contend with. But those that have spent the past decade differentiating themselves through purpose and cultural relevance can’t go back to saying: ‘It’s all about the product.’ So, what can they do?

Increasingly there is a responsibility to make a social stand on the things that your consumer base cares about. The brands that got to grips with the new political lifestyle vocabulary most successfully were those that picked specific social issues – as opposed to overtly political ones – tied to their stated purpose.

None of this guarantees an easy ride, but an honest position that reinforces a brand’s purpose can be very profitable. In the first ten years of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, from 2004-2014, sales reportedly grew from $2.5 billion to $4 billion, and the award-winning “Evolution” ad spot earned an estimated $150 million worth of media time.

Ultimately, the pros of cause-sumption marketing often outweigh the cons, making for memorable brand messages that connect well with consumers. And the revenue speaks for itself.

THE BIG PICTURE

Without a doubt, a brand that takes a political stance risks irritating consumers who disagree. But it’s also an opportunity to stand up for values that are consistent with the brand’s messaging, earning further respect from consumers who are increasingly looking to vote with their wallets.

Just remember - if you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing. Brands should, therefore, be politically active to the extent that doing so is consistent with their values, messaging, and worldview. The key is knowing when to speak up and when to stay silent - and there is a fine line between political activism that feels meaningful versus selfish.

Once you determine why consumers and employees feel an affinity for your brand, it will become clear whether or not that affinity is relevant to the political issue at hand.

2010's Most Viral Brands

- - - - - - 

Goodbuzz Inc. is a Digital Ad Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. Note: Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

PARTICIPATION IS THE NEW LOYALTY

Optimizing Content to Improve Engagement and Conversions

If you allow users to participate in the making of a product or service, you demonstrate unequivocally that they are an important part of the process rather than just a recipient of whatever you think is best.  We’re moving from the limits of the age of mass production to a new age of mass individualization.  Not only will people get used to it, they will demand a level of uniqueness in every product and service they consume. 

Most media publishers however are only interested in increasing returns on marketing investments through improved conversion and engagement - - and are still missing out on opportunities to increase conversion. For example:

• 80% do not promote content based on performance metrics,

• 46% are spending less than five hours per week optimizing onsite conversion,

• 80% of respondents do not serve personalized content to visitors,

• 70% of the promotional content decisions are made by one person, unsupported by data.

Opportunity

There are many opportunities to immediately begin improving conversion. Automated tools exist that encompass testing and targeting, as well as onsite search and content recommendations to help improve engagement on existing site traffic.  A tremendous amount of time and money go into building an audience for your online media properties. Therefore, it’s imperative that you maximize the value of that audience by ensuring the experience these visitors have with your content is both relevant and rewarding.

Whether the main goal may be to boost subscriptions for premium content, increase page views to promote growth in advertising inventory, or extend the amount of time visitors spend on your site - - often a company’s goals will include a combination of any or even all of these. Regardless of the desired outcome, online publishers today are looking to leverage their content and its presentation in ways that propel site visitors toward a desired action.

Traditionally, publishers have engaged with their audiences by operating under the adage “content is king”—the publisher with the scoops and exclusive stories had the competitive edge. But in today’s modern publishing world, this old adage, although still relevant, carries far less weight. While having exceptional content remains a prerequisite, the Internet has transformed content into a ubiquitous resource that is difficult to own or differentiate.   Online content is highly perishable, and—by and large—free. Audiences are more fickle than ever, and almost nothing prevents them from quickly jumping to another site to find the information and the experience they are seeking. Today, media sites have to be more than just relevant— they have to resonate with viewers.

While the challenges in today’s media landscape are vast, so are the opportunities. Audiences can consume content virtually anywhere, on multiple devices, and this translates into the chance for publishers to reach media consumers across many touch points. Public places such as coffee shops and airports are equipped with Wi-Fi access to make content and news constant companions. Social media sites have made media consumer’s active participants in the publishing process. New mobile devices make it possible to consume content on the go, and in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. All of these trends have transformed and expanded the media ecosystem dramatically and have significantly increased media companies’ opportunity to inform, educate, and entertain consumers.

Along with these diverse new opportunities for distributing content, most media outlets are also sitting on enormous opportunities to improve the performance and revenue generated by their existing sites. In fact, many media outlets today focus immense budgets and energy on driving traffic to their websites—while investing far less on making proactive changes to their site that facilitate visitors’ ability to accomplish what they came to the site to do in the first place.

According to 2009 Forrester Research, targeting online content drives productive visitor activity—yet marketers currently deliver targeted content to only 24% of website visitors on average. Forrester further states 58% of marketers reported an incremental lift in conversions over the control group by 5% or more as a result of using relevance tactics. Content and messaging delivered with contextual meaning for website visitors—derived from current session activity or historic profiles—consistently outperforms generic one-size-fits-all content.

Today, to distinguish oneself from the competition and improve your sites performance, optimization is key. Publishers must tailor their homepages and article pages based on visitor behavior and preferences, rather than executive opinion or reaction to competitors.  All too often, designers, marketers, and executives come together as a committee and negotiate website concepts and copy based on assumptions. Or, site redesigns are completed in a rush when a major competitor launches a new design or experience that makes your site look outdated. Some companies turn to focus groups and research that provide valuable data points but can only tell you so much about who your visitors are and what they want from your website collectively.

Drive to relevance

The online media experience, first of all, must be highly relevant to each individual visitor. Repeat or new visitors must easily find tailored content on your home and article pages that is pertinent to what they are searching for, and sometimes, where they live, what season it is, and other variables. Pay special attention to your article pages—most media companies concentrate on their landing and home pages, but the article pages are the place where visitors are likely to spend most of their time and form opinions as to the relevance of your site to them personally.

The second major theme is efficiency. From the very first click, visitors need to have a relevant, fulfilling content experience on your site. Visitors need to be guided with speed and ease to article pages that meet their intent and fit their interests. They have little time, so they need to be consistently rewarded for coming to your site by finding relevant content through easy navigation.  In the media space, it is vital for visitors to feel connected to your site—almost as if they have some ownership in the experience. Visitors need to be comfortable with your navigation and layout and they need to trust that you will provide exceptional recommendations for additional relevant content. Empower visitors to become active contributors in the experience if they wish. Give them opportunities to interact with the content itself.

In order to build a sustainable loyalty with your site visitors, they need to feel immersed—and a key part of that involves transforming them from passive observers into active participants. Don’t be afraid to solicit comments, ask them to fill out forms, or sign up for newsletters. With the options for site visitors to comment on articles or quickly and easily share stories with their social networks, visitors are more interested than ever in taking an “active editor” role in their online media experiences.


If you are asking site visitors to share personal information about themselves in exchange for greater-value content or services, tell them up-front and clearly what they will receive in return if they sign up for a subscription, newsletter, or other premium content.  Make any forms short and intuitive and give customers reinforcement at appropriate points during the process that highlight how and why they should trust you with their personal information. Prove to them that you will provide them with increased value and a greatly enriched experience.

New formats and PLATFORMS

Keep in mind that you have many opportunities to optimize and differentiate your media site—even for visitors who are not sitting in front of a computer. Today, you have the opportunity to extend the visitor experience to a variety of mobile and wireless devices to provide a more engaging, immersive experience to media consumers. New digital media technologies not only deliver increased engagement by immersing readers in the ads and content and allowing them to interact with them, but also offer better ways to measure and optimize content and ad effectiveness than traditional print magazines.

Companies can use in-depth editorial analytics, customer demographics, and advertising analytics to improve the effectiveness of content and ads.  The same tools that you use to optimize the content on your website can be used off-site as well. Whether you have an app designed for Android, a monthly newsletter, or an upcoming display ad campaign, each represents customer touch points that you can and should optimize.

The media landscape is changing faster than ever, especially in a world where content must share its throne with experience optimization. Now, rather than relying solely on scoops and exclusives, publishers have an unprecedented opportunity and requirement to tailor content and speak to media consumers in personalized, meaningful ways. Online media companies now have the chance to communicate to audiences across a wide array of devices and allow people to explore and interact with content like they never could before.

The key to success in today’s fast-changing media world is to let consumers vote with their clicks and then respond to those clicks by improving your online experiences based upon what you have learned. In a changing landscape, you can mitigate risks and successfully challenge the status quo by presenting multiple media experiences and navigational schemes to your visitors and then continually testing and optimizing—with huge potential upside.  Companies that continually optimize are deriving significant competitive advantages and achieving dramatic returns.

The proliferation of online social media represents a fundamental shift in the way people obtain information. Instead of companies or institutions, people can now get the information they need from each other. Naturally, brands want to remain relevant to their customers, and this means being more transparent and accessible. What your brand should really have is an overarching strategy that may or may not include social media tactics - - depending on whether they make sense for your customers or not. Start from the customer and work out. Understand your audiences, including demographics, attitudes and beliefs, cultural realities affecting their lives, and technology adoption. 



And if you need help, we’re happy to assist.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Goodbuzz Inc. is a Toronto-based Digital Ad Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. Visit Goodbuzz or join the conversation on Facebook.  Note: Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

PACIFICO BEER’S “WEBTREK” ONLINE SCAVENGER HUNT

Pacifico Beer has launched an interesting online scavenger hunt called the Pacifico Webtrek.   The website experience is touted as “sort of a job application to see if you can handle all the stuff the Pacifico lifestyle throws at you”.   If you can prove you can, they might just hire you for their next adventure.

The travels starts with print, digital and OOH that contain searchable tags and QR codes pointing people to Pacifico's Facebook page.  There, they learn about the Webtrek and can view the short film (below), Grey Whale Sessions, which will offer the first clues of a journey retracing the path of the surfers and musicians in the film. Players will travel across a series of websites, each of which will offer a clue. 

The appearance of the Pacifico bottle cap lets you know you're on the right track. Follow the trek to its conclusion for a chance to take part in Pacifico's next trip to Mexico.

- - - 

Goodbuzz Inc. is a Toronto-based Digital Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. This is accomplished by focusing on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting. From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes. Visit Goodbuzz or join us on Facebook. Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

Social Media Case Studies [Aug-GB_V6.0]

Adidas recently launched a social media campaign featuring several international sports stars to promote MiCoach, a new personal coaching application - PRWeek

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC is launching an email marketing campaign that includes a Facebook "like" button to get people talking about their new feature documentary called "Restrepo." More at DMNews

STARBUCKS shares how social media helped drive more than one million people into stores for their “Free Pastry Day” Promotion - PRLog

TARGET used Twitter to promote their fall fashion show in New York with a series of videos and ads streamed live on the event's Facebook page - brandchannel

The AMERICAN RED CROSS recently hosted an Emergency Social Data Summit to discuss the use of social media in emergency situations.  More at - American Red Cross

FORBES launched a new blogging platform that allows marketers to contribute content to both their print publication and their website - BtoB

OFFICEMAX has added a Back to School tab on their Facebook page that includes a "Can You Make the Grade?" quiz.  Check out their promotion at Facebook

- - - 

Goodbuzz Inc. is a Toronto-based Digital Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. This is accomplished by focusing on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting. From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes. Visit Goodbuzz or join us on Facebook. Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

Social Media Case Studies [Aug2-GB_V5.0]

What do Zagat, Bravo, and The History Channel have in common?  They’re among the top brands on Foursquare.  What are they doing that’s so unique? – More at ReadWriteWeb

A&W is giving away free floats to people who "like" them on Facebook in celebration of National Root Beer Float Day. – More at Facebook

No kidding. Delta's Ticket Window app allows customers to book flights directly through Facebook. – More at ClickZ

JetBlue finally responded to news about their flight attendant who dramatically quit his job last week by poking fun of themselves in a blog post entitled "Sometimes the weird news is about us." – More at CNN

How PlayStation, GM, and Marriott leverage their corporate blogs – More at OPEN Forum

Gillette's "Razor Guys" campaign features two college students traveling around the U.S. making pitches for the new razor -- blogging and tweeting merrily along the way – More at brandchannel

Proctor & Gamble is calling on influential bloggers and online communities to help inspire people to get involved with their Children's Safe Drinking Water program. PROMO

- - - 

Goodbuzz Inc. is a Toronto-based Digital Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. This is accomplished by focusing on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting. From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes. Visit Goodbuzz or join us on Facebook. Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

Is Social Media Marketing starting to feel like a full-time Job? Let us handle it!

Is Social Media Marketing starting to feel like a full time Job? Let us handle it!

Are you finding that there are just never enough hours in the day?  Are you trying to optimize and integrate multiple social activities with a single point of update?  

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s understandable.  The good news is we can help.  

Goodbuzz can tailor social moderation to meet your budget and needs.  Contact us today to get started.   

- - - - 

Looking for the top social media campaigns from around the world?  It’s easier then you think.  Visit Goodbuzz Inc.

Tiffany & Co's iPhone app for engagement rings

Beware the lure of the sparkle. Tiffany & Co.’s iPhone app for engagement rings has been carefully engineered to usher unwitting commitment-phobic grooms through the daunting process of selecting an engagement ring.  The app allows you to customize the ring of your (or your fiancé’s) dreams and view it at actual size. For husbands to be clueless as to their better half's ring size place one of her existing rings on the phone and it will automatically size it for you. No kidding.

 Once you’ve selected some ring options, they can be shared via e-mail, text message, Facebook and Twitter — a great option for getting feedback from friends and family members if done discreetly. Good luck getting out of it this time. ;)

Purchasing an engagement ring can apparently be an intimidating process, and while Tiffany & Co.’s iPhone app is clearly designed to drive customers to stores, it makes the whole experience significantly less daunting by providing a wealth of pertinent information, options, and prices. You can even book a one-on-one diamond consultation.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you.  Check out the video overview below.

TWENTY QUESTIONS TO ENSURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITIES ARE ON TRACK

Every social media engagement typically starts with some kind of audit or assessment, and can include varying degrees of formality and scope.   Social Media agency ZaaZ put together this framework of questions to help get focused and on track.

1. Have you formalized the goals, KPIs, and reporting for your social media activities?  This gives us a sense of the degree to which social media efforts are aligned with the business, as well as the current state of listening, analysis, and reporting.

2. Do you know who’s talking about you online, what they’re saying, and the scope of their influence?   Most (though not all) companies I’ve worked with have a general sense of what’s being said about them online. Typically, the past year, this sense is mainly anecdotal. In the next year I expect to see much more systematic, sophisticated, and analytical listening. But if you’re not there yet, you’re not alone.

3. How effectively are you able to respond?  Yes, this begs the question of whether a business is responding at all. For those who are, the question of degree of effectiveness can be a stumper. The real question here is: How do you know how effective you are (see #1)?

4. What technology tools are you using to monitor social media activity around your brand / product / service?  People really are surprisingly resourceful when it comes to using free tools to listen online. Even for businesses without a sophisticated listening platform in place, a conversation about the tools they’re using tells us a lot about what they care about and are (or aren’t yet) able to measure.

5. Which groups and individuals are informally involved in social media activities?  Once you start walking around asking people, the variety here can be surprising. Typically corporate social media efforts emerge out of PR, Marketing, or Customer Service. But ad hoc efforts are very common, and there’s usually something important driving them. Building out a strong program requires accommodating, supporting, and enabling ad hoc efforts.

6. Whose job description includes it, and who has overall responsibility?  As you might guess, the answer here last year was very often “nobody.” Next year we’ll see a shift toward the guerilla social media people formalizing their roles and management recognizing the need for coordination and leadership. And yes, this question can set off turf wars. Tread lightly.

7. Have you defined a corporate policy for engaging with customers through social media?  If not, better get on it. Talking early to legal / brand / compliance, especially in regulated industries, always saves frustration later.

8. In what third-party venues do you have a presence?  This always yields surprises. “None…. Well, oh yeah, I guess we do have the Facebook thingie. And someone in marketing has been posting our ads to YouTube.” Or: “Marketing is in charge of our Twitter accounts. Except for the ones they use in customer service. And Dale down in R&D is a total Twitter fanatic.”

9. How well are those efforts coordinated?  Yes, more question-begging. Most often, efforts across social networks, blogs, and media sharing sites are not coordinated. Maybe, just maybe, they should be.

10. What is your brand’s online personality?  This one is a great conversation starter. It’s really about understanding how to show up in social media (hint: not with offers, and not with campaign messages). This topic is really about starting to think about how the people representing the brand should show up in social settings—authentically, as people, but as people not only representing but also enacting the brand and its character. I like to use the example of our client NAU. They make sustainably-developed clothing, and they blog not about their clothing products but about sustainability, outdoor recreation, and social action—the passions that are at the emotional core of their brand. A while back they posted, for example, a video of people moving an entire Portland, OR household by bicycle. Awesome. You want to subscribe, to follow, to befriend them.

11. How consistently do your social media efforts embody the character of the brand?   This is really a question about governance. How organized are you? Do you have a system in place to manage customer interaction across touch points? Is the system in use?

12. Where do your customers spend time online? What content do they create?  Market research typically tells us a lot about where customers spend time online. What it typically doesn’t tell us is very much about what they’re doing—So 40% of your customers check Facebook daily. That’s good to know, but to really drive action, you need to understand whether they’re there socially, professionally, or both. Whether they’re using it to market their services, keep in touch with Granny (oh yes, Granny is definitely on there), or what. They’re on Twitter, good—but what are they talking about? Whom are they following?

13. What are their preferred information sources, and how do they consume them?  What’s the information ecosystem your customers tap? Who are the influencers? What do they read? Blogs, newspapers, Digg? Are they looking at web pages, RSS feeds? Are they reading on mobile? Are they sharing things they find? Which things? With whom?

14. Where are their relationships?  Whom do your customers interact with online? Through what channels—IM, email, blog post commentary, Flickr photostreams? On social networks? Twitter? Do they use different channels for different kinds of relationships? Which ones, and what kinds?

15. What are you doing to enable customer participation on your own properties?  Do you have an email contact form buried in your footer? Or a p2p support forum? Corporate blogs? Can customers comment? Review? Rate? Can they interact with each other? Create content and add it? Suggest or vet ideas? Do they have a stake in your next version? What value can they create for each other, and how can you enable it?

16. How does your organization interact with customers online?  Can your customers contact you? How? Simply being reachable is a great first step. The next step is to proactively engage customers who need support, to reach out to your customers for feedback and ideas, and to create opportunities for customer collective intelligence to create business intelligence.

17. How do you capture business intelligence from those conversations?  Social media listening has a major difference from behavioral web analytics: It’s a two-way conversation, and it’s not just about what people do. It’s also about what they say, and how they feel.

18. What is the process for making your business intelligence actionable?  Intelligence is useless without action. But the challenges in actionablizing (ha!) business intelligence are often really substantial. How do you get the right bits and pieces to the people who can take action? This question is really about escalation, delegation, roles and responsibilities, and workflow. To make the most of what you know, you need definition around how you’re going to do something about it, who’s responsible, and how success gets measured and reported.

19. Have you monetized the value of your social media efforts?  Social media ROI is one thing, and monetized estimates of the impact of social media activities are another. ROI is great, and showing ROI in social media is absolutely possible to do. The problem is that a large portion of the payoff in social media happens over the long term and is measured in, for example, lifetime customer value and word of mouth—neither of which show up on your quarterly balance sheets.

20. Estimated the financial impact on lifetime customer value or word of mouth?  We do have a very advanced approach to this, but it’s a subject for another post. Essentially the idea is to be really smart about some monetized estimates of the value of certain measurable activities, then validate and refine those estimates over time.

Naturally, we don’t typically get these questions answered by sitting down with the marketing people for an hour and just asking. We basically never ask these questions in these words. A huge part of the assessment is getting time in conversation with the right people in the first place, and talking with them about their jobs, their goals, satisfactions, and frustrations. We use a combination of interviewing approaches including contextual inquiry and appreciative inquiry, and a fair amount of intuition and sneaking around. In other words, it’s not a mechanical process.

- - - 

 Looking for the top social media campaigns from around the world?  It’s easier then you think.  Visit Goodbuzz Inc.