There are many sensitive and serious issues that need marketing, but how to reach the audience in an effective way when most people do not want to talk about these issues? How to get their attention and furthermore, how to get the message across? It seems that especially with men, campaigns with beautiful women tend to work well. A male cancer awareness campaign in England promotes a sensitive issue in a very clever way
I think this way of advertising is a lot more effective than 'scare advertising' that has been used for some other serious issues, such as trying to get people to quit smoking by showing disturbing images or raising awareness of speeding with emotional videos of people dying. Sure, that way you get the message across but it makes you feel stressed and emotional whereas the cancer campaign brings up a serious issue with a humorous feel.
What is the best way to deal with serious and sensitive issues?
Marketing has a lot to do with colours, images, words and especially sounds. What many companies fail to take into account are the minorities that might not be able to hear the campaigns. The question is, how to engage with these consumers while engaging with the masses? One of the issues is that marketers often consider deaf people to be handicapped without understanding how they can be reached simultaneously while reaching people who do have the ability to hear. Volkswagen geniously incorporated both into their campaign of VW Tiguan:
Another example comes in the form of an unusual musician. Not often do we come across deaf musicians. However, Signmark - a deaf Finnish hip-hop artist - is the first deaf person ever to get a record deal with an international record label. He was performing in Melbourne earlier this year and I think he is an amazing example of someone creating something special in a way that cannot be understood by everyone, reaching far outside the square. For those who are curious
Singmark said it himself, music goes beyond listening - it is about more than what you can hear. He follows the beat by feeling the bass line and writes all the lyrics himself. The sign language performed in the videos is American sign language. Too many marketers are only concerned about pushing the message to the consumers nowadays. But as social media marketing is increasing and influencing buyer behaviour more and more, it is crucial to recognise that marketing goes beyond pushing the message. In today's environment it is more about listening, watching, observing, giving more power to the consumers and thinking outside the square. So many examples have proven this lately (one of the latest ones being Mt Buller, check out Sarah's blog).
Should marketers focus more on sign language? Can there be a new type of benefit gained from it, what do you think?
Coke has come up with another exciting and innovative campaign in Australia called 'share a Coke'. The aim is to share a virtual can of Coke with a friend who's name is on the list of 150 names and each name has a song on the Coca-Cola Australia Facebook page. The retail outlets will be selling Coke but it wont have Coke as the brand name but a random name from the list of 150 which have been created to cover a variety of names in different cultures based on the demographics of the population of Australia. To make it more exciting, they have little shopfronts where anyone can go and get their name labeled on the bottle. Coke is encouraging consumers to create an ad 'share a Coke with (your name)' and share it through social media in order to win some amazing prices. This is the first time in 125 years that Coke has changed the packaging!!! They have given consumers the chance to display their name on the Coke billboard in Kings Cross, Sydney by sending a text message (cost $0.30) with your name on it. This is the best know outdoor advertising sign in Australia and the campaign will run until the 30th of November 2011.
It's pretty courageous campaign. On their Facebook page it has created a lot of discussion already and it's interesting to see that Coke hasn't really kept up with responding to the posts. Some of the earlier ones had replies but then the replies from Coke kind of stopped... There are a lot questions from fans asking why their name is not in the list of 150 names and clearly it has created a lot of frustration among customers. The page also has many responses from satisfied customers who even post photos of a Coke bottle with their name on it.
I think this is an interesting campaign. I would love to find out how Coke decided to have only 150 names and whether or not they analysed the risks of not including everyone's names. At least they tried to solve the issue by giving everyone the chance to have their name labelled on the bottle. Clearly the list would've been way too long with every possible name on it but will this lead into unhappy customers? Another issue would be that how many people want to buy a Coke with someones name on it when you know that you didn't have a chance to have your name up on the shelves?
Alcohol companies have been very successful in creating ads
that really grab consumers’ attention. Beer brands such as Budweiser with their ‘Poolball’ and Carlton Draught with ‘the Big ad’ really created something that had
not been done before. However, the hits they got on YouTube are not even close to what Carlsberg got (even though the Big ad has been there for several years).
Carlsberg launched a very creative marketing
campaign that was based in a movie theater. It was posted on YouTube and the ad
went viral with almost 2,5 million views in less than a week!!! It is a very
unusual ad, check it out...
The question that automatically pops into my mind is how
effective is the ad? It did go viral which means that cost is low and exposure is
huge, as the views already suggest. But the million dollar question is whether
it actually leads into sales..? In a way the brand is engaging with the
consumer and providing an experience, I mean I’d love to get a free beer at the
movies. Wouldn’t you?!
Music and social media go hand in hand. Go, hype it! discussed about SoundCloud, which reminded me of another different kind of platform for music - SoundPond.net. What makes it interesting is that it's the first one of its kind in Australia! This is a website where you can stream live DJ sets from different DJ's 7 days a week. It's almost like you have a DJ in your own room. It's a simple business plan created by a few people in Adelaide. They set up a studio with decks and a video camera so that dj's could play their sets live online. At the same time there is a chat open where you can chat with the dj or with other people streaming the show. Sometimes you can even watch a live set from a club. From the schedule on the front page you can see times, DJ names and the music genre.
I've seen familiar faces there who also promote their sets on SoundPond through Facebook. It's a brilliant way for new and upcoming DJ's to create awareness and make a name for themselves amongst others in the industry. Weekly unique visits are over 15,000 at the moment and increasing all the time. Soundpond is advertising different events on the website and selling ad space. It is well know in Adelaide music&hospitality scene but they need to get the word out more. Facebook and Twitter are already being used and the next step is to expand to Melbourne and Sydney.
There are some great DJ's who play here, if you like good music I recommend tuning in!
It seems that Volkswagen knows how to engage with consumers extremely well. Here's a campaign they ran in China, with a great idea that I haven't seen done before. They attached a steering wheel to a motorsport magazine and the readers could then go online and use the exact same steering wheel from the magazine and race online. How amazing is that?! See this video for more details
The success of this campaign lead to the most successful year for VW Scirocco sales in China. Apparently over 7% of the online racers signed up for a test drive.
Would you try this online? If yes, would you consider test driving a vehicle based on a campaign like this? Consumers seem to have preferences when it comes to cars which might have an influence on their opinions. At least it's something new to try...
Some brands have started engaging with consumers in a very successful way. Here are a few examples:
New Balance launched a campaign to get people running while at the same time engaging with the brand
Volkswagen launched a campaign in Norway and got consumers to engage by guessing how far the new Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion could get without refilling with petrol
Two different industries but both introducing something interesting for the consumers to engage with.
The new Batman movies have been a huge success, not many people have bad things to say about them. Even bigger success has been the marketing of these movies. The marketers behind these movies are brilliant, The Dark Knight had a viral campaign called 'Why So Serious?' and the success of it had never been seen before. Chicago was seen by fans as 'Gotham City', the campaign spread across the world so quickly and gained followers everywhere who supported Joker or the Gotham police force and marched down the streets of various cities presenting their commitment. The way it was done was very clever and here's a video explaining how it all got done:
The third movie, The Dark Knight Rises, is scheduled to come out June 2012. It's expected to be even more popular than The Dark Knight and the viral campaign has started already. There are a few videos that can be found on YouTube that show Gotham burning on Gotham City News and there's chanting on the background for the new villain Bane. There is also a clip that reveals the character Bane pixel by pixel
There's a lot of debating around different websites about whether or not these clips are part of the new viral campaign for the new movie or whether they are just user generated videos by the biggest Batman fans. I don't think it really matters because it has already created such a hype online and it's only about to get bigger. It might just be a very smart move from the marketers since the campaign for The Dark Knight was a huge success all over the world. Considering that the previous campaign was launched in 2008 and how much social media has grown since then, this campaign could be better than ever!
On their Facebook page, The Dark Knight Rises has just over 192,000 likes whereas The Dark Knight page holds over 8 million likes. It'll be interesting to see the figures in 6months time...Personally, I can't wait for the movie to come out and I might just go and Like the page right know to see how this campaign turns out.
Some kind of history was made on Friday the 19th of August. It was the opening game of the FA cup, (follow the link if you're unfamiliar), a match between Ascot United and Wembley. For those who are interested, Wembley won the game 2-1. These teams might not say much to many people which is not surprising since both are far from competing in the Premier League (main league in England) and if you're not a football fanatic you might never come across these teams. That is not important. However, what makes the game remarkable was that it was the first game ever shown live on Facebook! Not only the first football game but the FIRST sports game EVER! The home stadium of Ascot had nearly 1,200 people watching the game. There were 30,000 people watching the match through Facebook. The figure is not as big as it could be but again, it's the first one ever shown on Facebook and many people are not that familiar or interested with these teams. 30,000 is still a huge audience.
What makes this more interesting is that it was shown on Budweiser UK's fan page. It also created a lot of discussion on the topic on their page. Budweiser is the official sponsor of the FA cup and for them, the aim is to bring the game closer to the fans. This will also create a lot of publicity for them and attract traffic to their fan page.
Here's a really cool football ad from them as well
I think this was a great move from them. Even though there were 'only' 30,000 viewers for the match, imagine how many might watch the FA cup final for example? I know I definitely would!!! Furthermore, they might even attract more users for Facebook just because you can see the game for free and we all know how crazy people are in Europe when it comes to football...
Would you become a fan of a page in order to watch sport for free?
Monitoring social media can be very valuable for brands. On Facebook, there are many groups that are titled 'Bring H&M to Australia'. For those who are not familiar with the brand here a link to their website http://www.hm.com/entrance.ahtml?orguri=/ . H&M is a Swedish 'affordable fashion brand'. After doing a Google search I found so many blogs discussing about H&M and demanding it to Australia.
I had a look at one of the Facebook groups and it even had a copy of a response from someone who works at H&M thanking the creator for showing the interest towards the brand. Through monitoring social media companies can find these kind of consumer demands and address them accordingly. It has been in the news that H&M is planning to open retail stores in Australia soon. It would be interesting to find out whether these 'demands' had an effect on the decision to expand to Australia...
One way or the other, social media has provided great marketing for H&M from brand lovers. Should brands show their appreciation and reward people who do this?
Having studied marketing and coming across so many case studies of how brands have fiercely competed against one another with ads that have been trying to make the rival brand seem secondary, it is quite interesting to see how branding is seen in social media. So many social media sites share links to other sites and even show the logo of their main competitor! A good example of this is Flickr. A website that is owned by Yahoo but displays the logo of Google on the homepage. In more traditional marketing, Coke and Pepsi have been showing each others brands in their campaigns quite cleverly but usually in a way that one of them is seen to be a superior one.Coke and Pepsi spent so much money in the past trying to prove why one is better than the other, now the aim seems to be to have fun with the brand. A great example is a 2011 advertising campaign by Pepsi
Almost similarly it looks like Yahoo has accepted that it is not worth it to try and change people from using Google. It is better to give people the freedom to use what they want because in the end, users have the power when it comes to social media.
If you go to YouTube and read the comments under this ad for Pepsi it's really fascinating to see how people have responded to the ad. This brings up the question whether marketers or the brands themselves have any power in social media anymore ? Or is it simply just better to stay back and let the users promote and protect your brand?
