The fastest growing digital company in the world is Chicago-based Groupon, which this week announced 2010 revenues of $760 million, up from $33 million in 2009. Even bad Superbowl ads can’t undo that kind of head-turning performance.
Rocket-like growth inevitably brings intensified competition. Right on cue, the category of ‘social coupons’, which also includes Living Social and Gilt, among others now also includes a new, niche entry, YouCeleb.com. Think of it as Groupon for fashionistas – “YouCeleb gives you access to the hottest celebrity fashion without the celebrity bank account” In a nice twist, a portion of the proceeds go to the celebrity’s favorite charity.
The female focus of YouCeleb.com is not an accident. A cool infographic from Digital Buzz highlights the profile of Groupon users – young, wealthy, educated women.
- 77% female
- 66% 18-34 years
- 50% have bachelor’s degree
- 30% have post college degree
- 70% have above average incomes ($50K or more)
Given this profile, it’s not a surprise that many of the most successful Groupon offers are for things young women enjoy – salons and day spa’s, dining out, and yoga classes. And they do LOVE them. Here are some comments by members of our Millennial Marketing “super consumer” community:
Sasha Muradali: “I get really good deals on these and I’ve seen really good deals on them too. There was an 85% MMA discount about a week ago on The Dealist I think. I bought one on them recently for a 6-week foreign language class. The thing is, places I wouldn’t normally go to, or things I wouldn’t normally participate in, I get the opp too through Living Social/TheDealist/Groupon. Besides for the discounts, it just opens your eyes to new and cool things. Discounts are always good — really good discounts are even better!
”
Katie Lorenz: “I use Groupon, Living Social, Foxling, and Deal a Day Online. I cancelled my gym membership and only use Groupons for yoga, ballet classes, pilates and tennis (usually unlimited use for a month) and 90% of the time they’re places I’ve never been. I’ve loved all the facilities but their normal prices are usually too expensive for me to continue on so I find the next best thing. “
The men in our community are more equivocal in their assessments of social coupons:
Justin DeGraaf: “I subscribe to Groupon and just started livingsocial during the Amazon.com GC bonanza. Although I look at Groupon maybe 3x a week, I’ve never purchased anything. For some reason, I don’t feel like it’s a good deal, most notably on services. I don’t trust that the rates a spa, for example, gives are any cheaper than if you were to call them and ask for an introductory special. And in my town, the restaurants that are participating are the dodgy and struggling ones. Now, when Living Social did the amazon special I went crazy! Bought like 6 of ‘em. : )”
Steven Conway: “For me, it depends entirely on the category of the deal. When it comes to apparel/retail brands, I tend to purchase groupon deals from brands I currently shop at it like the Gap and Nordstram Rack, as there is a perceived higher risk in buying a groupon from a retailer I do not shop at or like – no matter how good the deal is. On the other hand, when it comes to a restaurant, I will take a chance on a place I haven’t tried as I feel there is less risk involved. Overall, I would rather have a bad meal experience than buy something from a clothing retailer I probably wouldn’t wear.”
Consider the Target
Marketers considering social coupons as a strategy for gaining trial (See my MENG Online post last week, “Social Coupons: Backward Marketing, Forward Thinking“) should first consider the characteristics of their target. Is the target young, upscale and female? Then social coupons may be just the ticket.
Social couponing fits with the overall social context of shopping for young women. E-marketer provides an excellent overview of how teen girls approach shopping (“Online Shopping Is Entertainment to Teen Girls“, 2.28.11). Millennial age young women are similar to teen girls in that they love shopping, but they like shopping with others even more. For them, shopping is more than deals, it is a way to bond. Talking about your Groupons and sharing deals generates important social currency, currency that is often less meaningful for guys.
YouCeleb.com may be the first of a wave of female-focused social coupon opportunities. It’s harder to imagine new Groupon-like sites just for guys – Trouton, anyone?
A special thanks to Suhan Park, Notre Dame MBA candidate, for alerting me to the YouCeleb.com launch.
I came to dance, dance, dance, dance
I hit the floor
‘Cause that’s my, plans, plans, plans, plans
I’m wearing all my favorite
Brands, brands, brands, brands
Give me space for both my hands, hands, hands, hands
You, you
Cause it goes on and on and on
And it goes on and on and on
Millennials are suspicious of marketers, skeptical of claims and ignoring ads, but their affinity for brands is undiminished. Gen Y understands that brands are cultural symbols that convey meaning. Brand choice, especially in image driven categories like mobile phones, shoes, entertainment, and clothing brands matters even more to teens and young adults, than to older consumers.
Brand Talk
Keller Fay’s 2010 Talk Track study asked participants use a diary to keep track of their brand conversations between July 2009 and June 2010. The study sample ranged from ages 13 to 69, and included a break out sample of 4,900 teens (ages 13 to 17).
They found that, overall, teens engage in a significantly higher level of word of mouth about all brand categories than the public as a whole. Furthermore, teens are twice as likely as everyone else to hold brand conversations online, although online still accounts for a minority of brand conversations even among teens (13% for teens vs. 7% for general public). (‘ Online’ included email, texting/IM and social networking).
The sheer volume of DAILY conversations about brands is impressive.
- 69% of teens have one or more conversations per day that include food/dining brands, versus 54% of the total public.
- 67%/39% about technology;
- 63%/42% about sports/recreation/hobbies;
- 63%/39% about telecommunications;
- 59%/38% about retail/apparel
- 58%/46% about beverages
- 45%/35% about automotive
- 45%/26% about personal care/beauty
Marketers, Brand Stories and Facebook
This week, Facebook announced a new program called ‘Sponsored Stories‘ designed to generate revenue from these conversations.
When a friend mentions a brand or has any brand interaction such as “Page Likes, App interactions, Place check-ins and Page posts”, that mention will now show up in a separate ‘sponsored stories’ area to the right of the feed. This is to make sure that mention isn’t missed. Here’s a short two-minute video from Facebook explaining how it works.
Make no mistake, Brand Stories are ’advertisements’, but they are likely to receive little or no pushback from Millennials, for they don’t seem like ads. Millennials want to know what brands their friends ‘like’. As the video points out, “anything they would have seen as a sponsored story is something they would already have seen in their newsfeed.” Now, it’s just more likely those interactions will be noticed.
Brandification?
As Millennial Josip Petrusa points out in his blog this week, Sponsored Stories is just a continuation of the ‘Brandification of Your Social Presence”.
“Both Edelman’s “8095” and L2’s “Gen-Y Affluents” reports have verified that Millennials are considerably brand-centric. They love the brand. They love brands. They share brands. They talk brands. They live brands. They speak brands. And they have invested considerable ideological value into them. They have come to represent who they are. When you make this correlation you begin to see the very beginnings of branded social profiles. Brands will no longer come to represent the products that encompass them but the user who empowers them. The user who humanizes them.”
The stories go on and on and on
From my perspective, what Petrusa calls ‘branded social profiles” is the continuation of a trend toward the humanization of brands and the branding of people, places and institutions that has been developing for years. The trend has simply accelerated with the advent of social media.
James Twitchell wrote a provocative book as early 2004, titled “Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College, Inc., and Museumworld“ . Twitchell points out the importance of stories to branding in clear terms: ’Often the only thing that separates this ratty rug from that priceless tapestry is a story’.
In the age of social media, ’brand’ stories are no longer confined to the ‘marketplace’ but are now part of culture, both high and low. The difference is that now we are more self-conscious about creating those stories. Here’s Twitchell again:
“And really, isn’t all life about marketing, in a sense? You market yourself to your friends, to your employer, your constituents, and they to you. Your children market themselves to their sport team (pick me! pickme!), schools market themselves (a degree from us is a ticket to success), and even churches market themselves (services at 9 and 11) and their products (forgiveness now, salvation later). Maybe it’s just the illusion of not marketing that we need to dispense with.” (p. 3)
There’s little question that social media and hyper-texting can be a hyper distraction. As social media pervades our every minute in every venue of our personal and professional lives, we all recognize that, paradoxically, it can also be an obstacle to the very things we are trying to accomplish in terms of relationships and productivity.
Hyper Connectivity = Hyper Time Suck
We recently completed a series of interviews among college students, who nearly all admitted that Facebook was their favorite way to procrastinate. When my daughter needs to really focus on an exam or paper, she asks me to change her Facebook password to something she can’t guess until she’s finished.
“I check facebook 3-4 times a day (maybe thousands but I’m not admitting to that here.” Male College student
“I use Facebook constantly, it’s a really good procrastination tool and way to stay in touch with everyone. I use it all the time. It’s the first thing I check when I turn my computer on.” – Female College Student
A widely cited study by Retrevo revealed 18% of those under 25 cannot go even a few hours without checking Facebook, and 55% check it at least daily.
Other Risks
Excessive social media use may have negative effects beyond distraction and loss of productivity. Research in a 4000-student Cleveland high school revealed a correlation between hyper-texting (defined as 120 or more texts a day) and hyper-networking (defined as 3 or more hours of social network use a day) and health issues. Specifically, they learned that students who participate in hyper-texting and hyper-networking are as much as 3.5 times more likely to engage in risky behaviors:
- The 19.8% of respondents who qualified as “hyper-texters” were:
–350% more likely to have had sex
–200% more likely to have tried alcohol
–55% more likely to have been in a physical fight
–41% more likely to have tried illicit drugs
–40% more likely to have tried cigarettes
- The 11.5% of respondents who qualified as “hyper-networkers” were:
–340% more likely to have an eating disorder
–240% more likely to have attempted suicide
–94% more likely to have been in a physical fight
–84% more likely to have tried illicit drugs
–79% more likely to have tried alcohol
–69% more likely to have had sex
I asked my 17-year son, a high school junior, to comment on these statistics. He expressed no surprise, but also no concern. After all correlation is not causality. He quickly pointed out that the students who text a lot have more active social lives. That may suffice as an explanation, but it is little consolation to parents wondering if they should limit social media use in some way.
Getting a Grip
I recently read an article that purported to have a quick test to see if technology was in danger of becoming a destructive force in your life. Of the ten indicators, our family exhibits more than I quite like to admit. Is this a problem? I’m not sure. We don’t seem unusual, and our Twittering, blogging and Facebooking doesn’t seem all that damaging — but how can you tell? After all, my parents thought I was addicted to my Princess Slimline telephone when I was 17 years old.
Benefits of A Social Media Vacation
JWT has listed a social media de-tox as one of the 100 trends to watch in 2011. In October, Communications Professor Bill Sledzik did just that with a two-month break from the business side of social media. Sledzik intended 90-days but only made it to 69. As he teaches social media and PR at Kent State, this was no casual decision.
Sledzik’s blog post on the experience, “How I Spent My Social Media Vacation” indicated that he discovered many productive ways to use the time, preparing a new class and rereading classic books like the “Cluetrain Manifesto” and “Groundswell”, as well as simply focusing more on relaxation. He claims he didn’t really miss it:
It just doesn’t matter. How many bloggers produce such compelling content that you can’t live without it? While I love the digital world, I believe more than ever in the Meatballs Mantra. It just doesn’t matter — at least in the scheme of life.…My blog stats went in the crapper during this break, but so what? Still, I’d be lying if I said links and re-tweets don’t motivate me. When people share my ideas, its affirmation of my work and fuel for me ego. And you don’t do this unless you have a sizable ego. Longtime readers know that my conflict with the Web demons goes way back. I love this space, but I hate it, too. The blog gives me voice, but the burden of the blog hangs constantly overhead. A digital guilt trip.
Now that he has returned to blogging, reading blogs and sharing in the digital world, Sledzik ends with this question – if it weren’t for my job, would I just walk away? Sledzik isn’t sure and neither am I. It is fun to be connected and sharing ideas. I genuinely enjoy my Twitter friends, the ‘thrill’ of seeing my posts get RT’s and comments. The question is whether I can do it in moderation, balancing the time spent with the firehose with time spent reading books and in reflection.
In Search of Balance
A few months ago I was struggling to write a book on social media and branding. I have written several articles on this subject and wanted to do a more thorough job. Yet it just wasn’t coming together. My good friend and colleague Gaurav Bhalla, an accomplished author himself, immediately diagnosed my problem. He pointed out that I was so immersed in what other people had to say on the subject I was having trouble finding my own voice. When you are deeply into a subject, you are hyper sensitive to everything you read that is even remotely connected and it interferes with clear thought. Once I recognized this, and stopped obsessively reading every new post on the subject, writing became much easier.
I wonder if it is the same for some teens? In their effort to hear what everyone else is saying, they may be losing the ability to hear their own voice. Everything in moderation, yet the demands of social media are so insistent, this may not be possible.
Cookie Monster as SNL Host?
Social media marketing is growing up. Although remnants of the idea that social media success means a viral hit, there is a new understanding that ‘spreadable’ is different, and more desirable, than ‘viral’.
USC professor, Henry Jenkins, describes ‘spreadable media’ as a ‘hybrid system’ where content ‘travels across media platforms at least in part because people take it in their own hands and share it with their social networks’. Jenkins maintains, “if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.” The old notions of ‘stickiness’ were rooted in the idea of locking down content. This idea is being replaced by a notion based on the idea of empowering consumers to help spread the word.
‘Viral media’ vs. ‘spreadable media’
Two videos released this week illustrate the difference.
I have been astonished by the rapid spread of the Cookie Monster’s video request to host Saturday Night Live. Released on Tuesday (11.23.10), as of Friday, the 4 minute video audition has garnered 862,000 YouTube views and 9,000 ‘likes’. Over 90,000 have voted ‘like’ on the dedicated Facebook page. A search of ‘SNL Cookie Monster’ shows 536 news articles. No doubt SNL will respond, Colbert will comment, there will be video spoofs and mashups. I’m sure the Sesame Street organizers are pleased with the ROI of their modest investment in video, regardless of whether CM actually appears on the show or not. This video is wonderfully fun and ‘spreadable’.
Angry Birds and Pigs Negotiate a Treaty?
In contrast, the 2-minute video “Angry Birds Peace Treaty“, (a very funny segment from Israeli ‘Eretz Nehederet’ ( A Wonderful Country)) went up on YouTube and Break.com a few days earlier but appears to be more ‘viral’ than spreadable. So far, it has garnered nearly twice as many YouTube views (1.6 million) but only about the same level of liking (just 10,700). a Google search revealed just 120 articles. There is no Facebook page.
The difference is sustainability
Pek Pongpaet write sof the difference between ‘vanity metrics’ and ‘ROI’ in a chapter of the book, ‘The Big Book of Social Media‘ (by Robert Fine) titled simply ‘Social Media Analytics’
“Vanity metrics are the ego-booster, often lauded by press releases and internal reports. The fluff stats that don’t get at the heart of user activity could swirl around millions of page views, hundreds of clicks-per minutes, or thousands of sign ups on the first day. The the relevance missing from these vanity metrics is sustainability. You can brag about a million page views, but that doesn’t offer any insights to the origin of those page views, how engaged users were once they reached your page, and if they thought highly enough of the content to share it across the social web. ”
Sustainability must be built into every social media effort by inviting consumers to participate in the story, to put their own stamp on it and transform it into something larger than a stunt or piece of entertainment. There are many examples of viral marketing, but the real business success stories in the case book all demonstrate the staying power of ’spreadability’, and very few even make an attempt to ‘go viral’.
What makes someone attractive? When do couples break up? Who is happiest? Turns out social media data analysts have been tackling these questions and more.
Facebook and a free online dating site, OKCupid, each make their research available publicly. As OKCupid says “We run a massive dating site and therefore have unparalleled insight into sex and relationships.”
Social psychologists and anthropologists take heed, here are some of the fascinating insights the data folks have gleaned about tech-enabled romance.
The Facebook Happiness Index: Surprise! Couples are Happier
Facebook looked at the use of positive and negative words in status messages over the course of one week in January and filtered the data by Facebook relationship status.
Finding: “People who are in relationships [in a relationship, engaged, married] do seem happier than those who are not in relationships. …The people that seem the most unhappy are those that either don’t disclose their relationship status or those that are in an open relationship. However, those that don’t disclose their relationship at all are about 50% more negative than everyone else.”
Facebook Break Up Graph: Surprise! Couples Break Up Before Christmas
David McCandless is a designer who pulled information from 10,000 Facebook status updates that had the phrases “break up” or “broken up” in them to see what days of the year break ups happen with the greatest frequency:
Finding: “There are huge spikes of relationship ending statuses during spring break (early March) and in the two weeks leading up to Christmas. Valentines Day, April Fool’s Day, and the Fourth of July are all big breakup times as well. The lowest breakup day of the year, however, is Christmas Day.”
OKCupid Picture Analysis: Surprise: Attractiveness Matters in Online Dating, Especially for Women
Men and women rated photos for attractiveness. Photos were analyzed according to the number of messages they received and whether or not the messages evoked a response from the recipient.
Finding: Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.
As you’d expect, more attractive people get more replies. And since they themselves get so many more messages than everyone else, they write back much less frequently.
OKCupid Picture Analysis: Advice for Women: Look Into Camera and Look ‘Flirty’
A random data set of 7,140 chosen from all female users in big cities, with only one profile photograph, between the ages of 18 and 32, and “average-looking people;” (no extremes of attractiveness or unattractiveness). To quantify “profile success” for women, new messages received per active month on the site was used.
Finding: “For women, a smile isn’t strictly better: she actually gets the most messages by flirting directly into the camera. However, flirting away from the camera is the single worst attitude a woman can take. Certain social etiquettes apply even online: if you’re going to be making eyes at someone, it should be with the person looking at your picture. The Cleavage Shot is very successful, drawing 12.9 new contacts per month, or 49% more than average.”
OKCupid Picture Analysis: Advice for Men: Look Away From the Camera and Look Mysterious
A different metric was used for men because they are more likely to initiate a ‘hello’ than women. The metric for effectiveness for men is the ratio of “women met per attempt”. Basically, this is how many women a guy has a conversation with, per new woman he reaches out to.
Finding: “Men’s photos are most effective when they look away from the camera anddon’t smile. Maybe women want a little mystery. What is he looking at? Slashdot? Or Engadget? While making flirty eye contact is relatively okay for men, flirting away from the camera is the worst thing they, too, can do…
If you’re a guy with a nice body, it’s actually better to take off your shirt than to leave it on. If you’re not the type of guy who can show off your muscles, don’t veer off in the opposite direction and get all dressed up. Outfits more sophisticated than a simple collared shirt fare poorly.”
OKCupid Picture Analysis: Advice to All: Show Yourself Doing Something Interesting
Incoming contacts and answers were mathmatically modeled to see if the messages generated by a photo went unanswered or turned into legitimate conversations as measured by the number of messages back and forth.
Finding: “If you want worthwhile messages in your inbox, the value of being conversation-worthy, as opposed to merely sexy, cannot be overstated.”
OKCupid: Gays Are Not Sexually Interested in Straights
We combed through over 4 million match searches by gays and straights.
Finding: “We found virtually no evidence to support the idea that gay men or women search for straight matches. Only 0.6% of gay men have ever searched for straight matches, only 0.1% of lesbians have ever searched for straight matches and only 0.13% of straight people’s profile visitors are gay.”
Links to the full stories:
The Facebook Happiness Index (Mashable)
Couples Most Likely to Break Up at Christmas (Yahoo)
Your Looks and Online Dating (OKCupid Blog)
The Four Big Myths of Profile Pictures (OKCupid Blog)
Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex (OKCupid Blog)
Sometimes it's hard to tell what is the product from the marketing.
Today’s post is not about Millennials, it’s about the impact they are having on marketing.
According to a survey of marketers by Pivot, the sponsor of Pivotcon, Millennials (defined as 18-34 year olds) are the primary or secondary audience for 75% of marketers. That’s huge. What’s more marketers recognize that Millennials have unique characteristics that need to inform their marketing.
- 70% of marketers consider them to have a shorter attention span
- 67% consider them to have different motivations than previous generations
- 59% consider them to be less accepting and more questioning of marketing messages in general
Millennials and social media are having a profound affect on the way marketers think about marketing. Their indifference to traditional paid communications and promotions is forcing a re-evaluation of our approach to marketing’s very role and function – how to best serve customers.
“Marketing offers a powerful perspective on how to sense, serve and satisfy the needs of others.” – Philip Kotler
Effectively meeting the challenge of social media requires more than incorporating a few new ideas here and there, or hiring a digital agency. It’s not about finding a better ‘campaign’ or more relevant positioning. It requires a radical shift in perspective.
Re-reading Bob Gilbreath’s book, “The Next Evolution of Marketing” this week provided me with an ‘A ha!’ moment: Marketing is the product or service.
What if we stop thinking about the product as something to be ‘marketed’ and started thinking of marketing itself as the product or service? Instead of creating products and services and then creating ways to market them, what if we think about marketing as the thing to be created? The alternative – thinking about marketing as something separate and performed by separate teams – misses the point that it is the marketing that adds the meaning, not the product.
Are the thousands of free app’s marketers are creating a service? Of course they are, even if consumers don’t pay for them. Is the entertainment value provided by the Old Spice team of value even if someone never buys the body wash? Is Ben and Jerry’s effort to “Help the Honeybees” a product, a service, a marketing program or all of the above?
This reframe has profound implications for how we staff, organize and manage the marketing function.
There’s a lot more to creating an ongoing service than to creating an ad campaign or web site. This insight helps explain why internal marketing teams and specialist agencies (like PR and applications developers) are more likely to be charged with developing social media programs than traditional ad agencies. If you think about it, the process of creating marketing programs has more in common with product development than the traditional ‘creative processes. For example:
- Creating experiential, social media or cause marketing programs taps the same skills that marketers use to create a line extension or new service.
- The skills required to manage marketing programs today, especially social media programs, are closer to what a brand manager does than what an account exec, PR manager or ‘creative’ person does.
- Constant innovation is required because marketing programs have lifecycles, just like products do; programs are launched, nurtured, and when they show signs of maturing, a decision must be made whether to reinvigorate or retire the program.
When you think about the skill sets involved in creating a constant stream of relevant content, it really is more of a process than a project. Once started, it doesn’t have an end point, which is why companies are rightly taking it slow and testing the waters before jumping in. They don’t want to start something they can’t sustain. It requires internal resources, not just hiring an agency.
The shift to earned media from paid means quality of content is now a key differentiator. According to David C. Edelman of Edelman Communications, brands need to think of themselves as ‘publishers’ of ‘content and applications that help consumers buy and bond with the brand’. (“Publish or Perish”, Forbes, 8.4.10)
In short, meaningful content and ‘add-on’ services are the product. We need to start thinking of them that way.
Guest Post by David Ioanne
I spend quite a bit of time these days riding public transportation. As a result I have the opportunity to “engage” with many people. At the simplest level, others may acknowledge my existence and maybe even read whatever message is on my graphic tee shirt. That I consider an impression.
But beyond the random impressions that may facilitate a conversation, it takes much more to tee up a conversation, let alone an engagement.
That said I enjoy conversing with random people. But what if the people I sit next too are already engaged in a conversation or something other than me? I start to consider the ways I can break into the conversation or at least in to their consideration so I can eventually get into a conversation if that’s my objective.
In the traditional world of marketing I might try using a swift headline or pickup line. Or if the opportunity didn’t present itself, I could just blurt out what it was I wanted to say. And if they still didn’t engage, I’d sit there and repeat my message over and over until I got some sort of reaction. This is the interruptive model. Sure after that reaction, I may become part of a memorable story retold to others later on, but I’m quite sure it wouldn’t be in positive light.
The reality is, that most people we come across are very focused and entrenched in their own worlds. Not until they need something do they look outside of their worlds.
I believe I have a lot to offer others in their worlds. However, if I just blurt out what it is I think, chances are they won’t be overly receptive. This is why I listen to the conversation first, wait for the right moment and then add value to the context.
The other day a group of four Millennials sat next to me in the train. We all a good group laugh about something happening outside of the train, but that superficial rapport was not enough to let me into their deeper conversation. I needed another reason for them to give me the time of day. After me asking a number of questions the guy in the group finally asked what it was that I do?
I told him that like the movie, Inception, I make ideas. He hadn’t seen the movie yet, but asked me to give him an example of an idea as he struggled to open a banana. I replied “certainly”, then asked if I could share with him an alternative idea on how to open the banana. Confused, he answered “sure.” I then took the banana, flipped it upside down, pinched the nub and easily peeled back the skin.
“Wow” he exclaimed. “Thats a crazy idea..and it works better then the one I’ve always used.” After this engagement he actually really wanted to know what it was I did. Prior to that engagement, he was soley asking to be polite since I asked him so many questions. And even then, it took 20 mins of semi-active participation on my part to get any sort of acknowledgement.
Point is that I I had not engaged, and had just thrown my message out there is a good chance that it would not have been received and had any impact.
Imagine if I told him how to peel a banana before he had thought about peeling the banana. By the time he peeled he maybe would have forgotten what I said or just decided to do it his own way instead. From a reach standpoint I would have made an impression, but from an action standpoint my message wouldn’t have been as effective and the good idea would be lost in translation or reception. That’s because the time and place of the message as well the delivery – while interruptive – would have been dissruptive and my new approach to peeling a banana may not have been enough to trigger a future action. It definitely would not have helped my objective in engaging in a conversation beyond peeling bananas when he wasn’t even thinking about bananas.
Marketing ideas are no different. Not only do ideas and messages need to be the right message at the right time, but they need to be delivered in the right way for the right audience if they are going to have an impact and cause action.
While content may be king, and marketing may be queen – context is the joker that can steal the crown. Engagement is key to keeping the crown safe.
Boo interruptive marketing. Hooray engagement marketing!!
David Ioanne is a Digital Integration Strategist at Colangelo, a Connecticut-based digital marketing firm. He lives in New York City. David is a member of Brand Amplitude’s Millennial Marketing “Super Consumer” Market Research Community. Follow him on Twitter as @ravin_dave. This post originally appeared as a comment in response to an earlier post, “What Millennial Marketers Can Learn From A Corset Maker” on the importance of adding value through marketing. David has graciously allowed me to reprint his insights as a post.
‘Conversation marketing’ (do we even have a name for it yet?) is enabling unprecedented levels of customer intimacy. It touches every marketing discipline from customer service to corporate PR. It is going beyond marketing to have impact in areas such as productivity, cost control and HR. Social media has special resonance among young consumers, every brand’s future market. Social media has brought a resurgence of creativity in integrated marketing that hasn’t been seen since Burger King featured a funky chicken, BMW offered free 7-minute feature films and Audi stole its own car.
It is an exciting time to be a brand marketer. But it’s also a challenging one.
The rate of change is dizzying. An article in Forbes.com by David Edelman of McKinsey suggests there’s more going on than just a shift in budgets from paid to earned media, it’s also a ‘massive shift in perspective’.
“The shift in mix from “paid media” to “owned” and “earned” media that occurs with digital marketing is more than a budgeting exercise. It is–or should be–the manifestation of a massive shift in perspective, from being a brand that pushes ads and promotions to one that publishes content and applications that help consumers buy and bond with the brand. This may sound like semantics, but the reality is substantive: This new perspective determines how we invest in content, how we manage that content, and finally, how we harvest the information that is generated when customers use our content.”
It’s time to rethink our tools and frameworks for planning brand and marketing strategies in light of social media.
Fundamentals, of course, don’t change. Brand strategies explain how the brand will support business and marketing objectives and are a critical step in managing brands as valuable assets. Marketing strategies explain how a firm will grow revenue and share by acquiring new customers and by increasing the value of the customers they already have. But consider for a moment the complexity social media introduces when answering these basic brand and marketing strategy questions:
1. Who is the target?
With social media, the target may well extend far beyond typical category users. Many of those interested in Pepsi Refresh’s social action agenda are certainly not Pepsi drinkers and I would venture to say many of those who passed along Johnny Walker’s Man Who Walked Around the World video have little interest in Scotch.
Griffin Farley in its ‘brand propagation brief’ calls for planners to make a distinction between a brands’ “aspirational audience” and its “inspirational audience”. The aspirational audience is defined as those who will actually deliver your business objectives. The inspirational audience is defined as those who are more likely to engage with your creative assets or act on the creative to influence the aspirational audience.
2. What are our points of difference?
With social media, points of difference range well beyond unique selling propositions and what Leo Burnett called the brand’s ‘inherent drama’. The point of difference increasingly lies in shared interests or passion points, not in a single-minded, consistent message. A conversation is pretty short if you can only talk about one thing. A community that is all about products or services is pretty dull.
To stay relevant, brands need to develop a bigger cognitive ‘foot print’, identifying themes where the brand has credibility, and the consumer gives it permission to talk. Quality of content is now the point of difference. Tide can talk about water quality, Van’s shoes can talk about music, Dove can talk about young women’s self-image, and Dawn can talk about saving wildlife — provided their motivation is authentic and they back up their commitment with action. Pampers went from having a value of $3.5 Billion to a brand worth $19 Billion in three years according to Millward Brown’s BrandZ study by changing its focus to ‘helping moms develop healthy, happy babies’ rather than a strict category focus on ‘dry bottoms’.
3. What is the brand personality?
At a time when brands are people and people are brands, a well-defined and consistent personality is essential. Despite the excellent work of Jennifer Aaker in this area, defining brand personality has often been an afterthought, secondary to determining identity and positioning. It has sometimes been reduced to a set of adjectives meant to inform creative ‘voice’ or connect creative to consumer lifestyle.
Social media makes personality – how the brand’s content is uniquely expressed and brought to life — nearly as important as the message itself. Brands are becoming humanized at a rapid pace. If consumers are going to ‘talk’ to a brand or be part of a brand community, it’s only natural they would want to know who is behind the brand and what are the company’s values and motives.
4. How are we defining success?
Traditional marketing metrics still matter. Revenue and market share as well as brand metrics such as the ability of the brand to contribute to the bottom line through customer acquisition, loyalty and ability to command price premiums are not going away anytime soon. But new measures are popping up every day it seems.
Number of “FFF’s” (friends, fans and followers), Edelman’s ‘Trust Index’ and new metrics for evaluating ‘Social Currency’are revealing new dimensions of brand equity. These aspects of brand value are likely to become more important over time. Starbucks and Apple have both been shown to have high Brand Social Currency scores, no doubt a result of their social media initiatives.
5. What message is most relevant?
Agency planners and market researchers use to labor long and hard to discover a polished diamond or two of ‘insights’ which could be translated into a brand platform and compelling message. Insights about how consumers relate to the category or the brand are no longer enough. Relevance is now more about connecting consumers more solidly with their community or culture than a brand pyramid or onion. Relevance comes from meaningful solutions to problems, access to information, branded utility, entertainment, gifts, thank you’s, well-timed help or connections to likeminded people.
Context also matters for relevance. What is the message of the Old Spice videos and does it even matter? These videos are fun and entertaining and gain relevance from interaction rather than content. Mobility will make context even more important in the future. Where you are when the message is received will matter as much as the message itself. I will care more about a reminder to use suntan lotion at the beach or drugstore than when watching TV.
Brand strategy needs to evolve to fit the times.
Does your brand strategy address these questions? If not it may be time for a second look. Social media is more than just a new medium, it may well represent an inflection point in the way we think about building and maintaining brands.
It’s no longer enough to articulate what the brand should stand for and who it should appeal to in broad terms. It’s not enough to define your niche and point of difference. We need to answer more than the question ‘what do we have to say?’
Now the question for brand strategists is ‘what can we create that will be of enough value that people will want to participate and talk about?’
Who is Jaci and why does she want to be my friend?
I started using Twitter because I was curious to see what it was all about. With Twitter, it took a few months to realize how it could be useful to me, so I expected to have to use some patience with Foursquare. Like Twitter, it was easy to sign up and in the early stages it felt a bit ‘game-like’ - who else do I know who uses it? How do I find followers? With Twitter, it wasn’t that long before I recognized its value and could bore my friends, colleagues and students at Notre Dame with reasons why they should join. Today I am proud to say even my husband tweets.
I signed up for Foursquare earlier this year out of the same sense of curiousity that led me to Twitter. However, I am still baffled as to why I should continue or draft others to start.
To date, I have over 60 Foursquare check-ins, 8 badges and one lame mayorship (my apartment building). I am pretty good about remembering to check in when I am at a conference, travelling or spending a day out and about. But I will admit that I often fail to check in at the places I go regularly (like home, the fitness club, Trader Joe’s). I keep thinking if I just stay with it, all will be revealed. But I am about ready to give up. Here’s why:
1. My network lacks critical mass
I have 255 ‘friends’ but I don’t really care where they are, unless they are somewhere near me. Most of them are not the people I really care about anyway and many are total strangers. It’s a little more exciting when I am at a conference like Ad:Tech because I can find the handful of Foursquare users, but what do I have in common with them other than Foursquare? I connect anyway, but much prefer the connections I make at conferences via Twitter.
2. I never get offers
Despite checking in numerous restaurants and stores, I have yet to receive an offer, even from restaurants and stores I have checked into repeatedly. I was at Lucky Store in Oakbrook Terrace Monday night buying jeans. Foursquare indicated that store has over 1000 members. You would think Lucky would make some acknowlegement of that fact? After all, according to Paco Underhill’s book, half of all retail store visitors don’t make a purchase. Perhaps the absence of an offer makes sense though: retailers have many ways to make me an offer once I’m in the store that don’t require a GPS signal. But why don’t t retailers nearbyshoot me some kind of alert? After all Oakbrook Terrace is a very big mall.
3. Checking in is work
Even though I have the app on my phone, I have to remember to check in. It’s another step – why can’t it check me in automatically? If the place I am visiting isn’t already on Foursquare, it’s tedious to enter it. If it is on the list, I have to scroll through and find it. This isn’t my first priority on entering a restaurant and is mildly irritating to my family. There goes mom again…. Apparently I am not the only one who forgets. According to Forrester, of the 4% of U.S. adults who have used a location based service like Foursquare or Gowalla, only 1% check in more than once a week.
4. There are no psychic rewards
Foursquare makes me feel boring. I didn’t realize how little I actually go out and about until I used Foursquare. Really, a night with 4 check in’s is probably beyond me, unless I am travelling. The solution is that I probably should do more. Twitter on the other hand has the opposite effect. Each RT and @ reply makes me feel more interesting.
Location-Based Marketing Is Still in Early Stages
I continue to believe in the power of location-based marketing, but I tend to agree with Forrester that it’s too early for marketers to make a big move onto Foursquare. Of the 2 million users, over 80% are male, 70% of whom are age 19-35, and college educated. While it’s true that these men tend to be highly influential, that target concentration makes ‘FourSquare’ more like ‘ForMales’ – an attractive niche audience. As a Boomer woman this could explain in part why I feel rather left out.
Another reason for caution is that there have been some missteps on Foursquare, even by marketers the likes of Starbucks that should know better, as David Teicher (aka @aerocles) points out in his Ad Age Blog this week. Apparently, Starbucks ended a Foursquare loyalty promotion without letting barristas know how to let participants redeem their offers.
Nevertheless, location-based marketing holds a great deal of promise if these early obstacles can be overcome, as Sara Hoftstetter points out in her Ad Age blog post yesterday (“Four Reasons Brands Must Check In To Foursquare. Now“) Regardless of whether it’s Foursquare or another, yet to be invented service, retail locations are still the last mile for marketers trying to connect with prospects. Any service that promises to bridge the gap will get marketers’ attention.
I just wish there was something that required less work on my part relative to reward. Meanwhile, I think I’ll wait and check in again in a year.
Yesterday I shared portions of a remarkable Twitter chat among 45 Gen Y’ers on the topic of the “American Dream”. Today, I’m going to share the rest of that conversation where they discussed what it means to have a good life. The conversation took place over an hour using the hashtag #genYchat and included contributions from 45 different people.
The overall take away is that while Millennials still relate strongly to the idea of a “dream” of limitless possibilities, they also are in the process of redefining those possibilities in a less material and more experiential/personal way.
Some of the redefinition is a rejection of what they in the lives of their parents. Some is simply part of a deeper desire to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others, the nation or the world. Many defined success in terms of affirmation from peers, others defined it in terms of greater satisfaction from work or ‘happiness’.
@GenyChat: Q2. Do you believe that there are generational differences in how personal and material success are defined?
@kelly_ashworth: Absolutely! I think GenY will be less focused on $ which failed for many of our parents and more focused on happiness.
@malapropicninny: Heck yes. As GenY, I’d like to have a nest egg, but if I’m working & doing something I love, I don’t mind the lifelong grind!
@josippetrusa: Definitely, how gen-y appears to the world both online and in person “defines” our perceived success
@steve_campbell: Definitely. Gen Y doesn’t necessarily care about following a set path to find happiness.
@Outlaw_Inc: Yes. GenY’s success = having the freedom and flexibility to pursue passions, have great experiences.
@steve_campbell: I’d say we definitely worry about our future less than our parents do Not to say we don’t care, but we’re not overly worried
@NahumG: Let’s see..if the American Dream is supposed to be living on your own with a career and great family I’m on my way, but it’s taking a LOT longer than I thought it would take to get there.
@E_Hanson: We’re more focused on doing what truly makes us happy and experiencing everything we possibly can.
@steve_campbell: I agree. Experiences seem to be a bigger part of our lives.
@niltiac: Definitions of ‘success’ have changed over time. The Baby Boomers who started that process, Gen X and Y continue it.
@kelly_ashworth: I think we have a belief that it will work out, and we’ll figure it out along the way… ties into our optimism
@WriterChanelle: Are those the trappings of success for us, though? I just want a place of my own and a car.
@josippetrusa: Not so much a trapping of our own but something that we have put into believing
@GenerationMeh: Interesting! I see a lot of worry/angst/second guessing, maybe more about self-worth than $, though.
@daniellewriter: For me, success is liking my job, not how big my paycheck is.
@steve_campbell: Familiarity with technology helps with our vision of how the world works too, which lessens worry
@josippetrusa: When someone RTs an article I’ve written, that’s what I see as “successful”
@WriterChanelle: *Deep sigh* YES!! I’ll take a Google Alert with my post showing up over a BMW
@TylerDurbin: Amen!
@josippetrusa: When you [@WriterChanelle] notified me that one day when my article came up, biggest smile ever!!
@WriterChanelle: It’s GenY’s “having your name in lights” re: Google Alert
I’m particularly fascinated by the last few remarks as they are less about ‘fame’ than about affirmation. Your name in lights re: Google is not exactly the world’s definition of success, but it appears to be a meaningful yardstick for these Gen Y’ers.
Last week, Jenny Blake, the blogger behind “Life After College” announced in her blog that she had landed a book deal. The excitement was contagious. Here’s how she described her feelings a few days later. Note the focus is on her immediate ‘supporters’ – one senses this is the group that truly matters to her:
I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Partly because of the book deal, but partly because I got propped up by a small army of support these last two weeks by having all of you celebrate with me. Every tweet, text, email, call, facebook note, hug and high-five just filled me to the brim with gratitude. This book finally feels real — thanks to you.
Experiences are better when they are shared.
I think of Jenny’s response as quintessentially ‘Millennial’ – team oriented, collaborative and authentic. For marketers, this insight could be potentially quite profound. Social media is not just about ‘communicating’ with friends, it is about ‘connecting’. Marketers who provide affirmation, as well as information, will find it easier to fit into the lives of Millennials and their idea of success.
How can your brand provide the ‘high fives’ and ‘five minutes of fame’ Millennials value?
