The Quisenblog

It’s a tactic so simple, I wonder why more clients don’t take advantage of it.

The tactic I’m speaking of is for a marketer to create/remix/mash-up a commercial message to run exclusively in a specific environment. The latest case in point is Clorox Bleach, who created this television commercial to run during the airing of the acclaimed AMC series “Mad Men.”

“Mad Men” isn’t exactly tearing up in the ratings. The show averages just over a million viewers per episode, which for an original broadcast series is a microscopic audience. So why would Clorox go to the trouble of creating a one-off spot that will only run a few times at most, reach comparatively few people, and might not even index well against its core target audience?

The answer, I believe, is impact. By tongue-in-cheekily tying its creative message to recurring themes of the series, the brand shares an inside joke with the show’s fans, while still honoring the brand promise of the product (gets whites, whiter). The production values of the spot are quite modest, so it didn’t cost a heck of a lot to produce the spot.

Another important thing to note about this spot: people are talking about it. Just Google “Clorox Mad Men Commercial” and you’ll be greeted with more than a page worth of search results, with bloggers, commenters, Facebookers and even news web sites weighing in on the spot. Something tells me that doesn’t happen when Clorox runs one of its one-size-fits-all spots in the pabulum of afternoon programming.

Small investment. Big viewer involvement. Even bigger buzz.

The bigger question is, of course, will the ad help sell more product? Or was it simply a case of clever ad guys talking to each other? Time will tell. But because the spot played up the advertiser’s key sales point, I gotta think it will reinforce that point with viewers.

Advertisers have been creating special ads to run in event programs or one-time specials (such as the Super Bowl) seemingly forever. But what makes this a winner in my book is the special combination of relevant, edgy creative and spot-on placement.

It’s the kind of success you can expect if you really get to know your market and endeavor to make a meaningful connection with them.

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Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Clients, Social Media buzz, clorox, Mad Men, TV advertising, viewer engagement

It’s certainly not news that all ads are not created equal. Some grab us by the throats (or the funny bone) the very first time we see them. We remember them. We tell others about them. We might even look them up on YouTube. Other spots? There are many we have been exposed to dozens of times but never paid them any mind. Such is the nature of creativity in advertising.

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that ads that do a better job of engaging or entertaining us also do a better job of selling. Yet there are some in this business who still tend to discount creativity in advertising to be somewhat of a commodity. They see “entertainment” and “selling” as somehow being mutually exclusive. These folks for whatever reason have yet to buy into the notion that the quality of creative corresponds directly to the success of a marketing program. As support, they may point to the success of spots such as the infomercial-esque “as seen on TV” ads as proof that it’s what the ad says, not how it’s said that matters. And they have a point: interrupt people with $30 million in paid media, and the needle will move.

But more and more, we are moving to a model of opt-in content. Less are we able to interrupt the consumer with whatever message we feel like and expect them to pay attention to it.

The dynamics of Social Media illustrate this perfectly. There are no multi-million “buys” on YouTube, Facebook, blogs or the like. The barrier to entry is non-existent. Access to Social Media platforms has been democratized. Anyone can post anything. And the success of that content isn’t how much the creator puts behind it. It’s on how many users feel inclined to pass it forward and to talk it up.

In the opt-in world, you’re only as good as your content. A great illustration of this point would be to compare the results of a recent Social Media success (The Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like”) to one that’s not-so-successful (Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” series).

In the Old Spice campaign, Social Media users were invited to correspond with The Old Spice Guy. Old Spice’s agency (Wieden & Kennedy) then shot nearly 200 “personalized web videos” addressed to fans (and Social Media heavyweights) over a couple of days and posted them online. The resulting buzz generated an estimated 1.4 BILLION views, hits and mentions over the period of a few weeks. (Oh, and sales were up over 100% over that period.) You can view some of the spots here.

On the other hand, Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” series was launched as a web series in hopes of going viral.

Response to the web videos was less than overwhelming (fewer than 10,000 views, despite a huge PR push). One commenter on their YouTube page summed up reaction to the campaign this way: “I am embarrassed for your marketing department. This is the sad result of a poorly orchestrated attempt at some sort of viral leaching by a room full of middle aged guys, who’s (sic) kids saw something on YouTube that they thought would be a good idea to copy.”

Ouch.

Granted this is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison. The Old Spice campaign started as a mass media campaign and extended to include the digital component. But while “Ted in Accounting” didn’t have that mass media lift, my bet is that you could have put millions behind it and viewers’ reactions wouldn’t have been any different than the YouTube poster above.

The digital world is proving what we who have developed offline content for years have always known: people aren’t going to waste their time with boring content.

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Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Customers, Social Media cisco, old spice, Social Media, success stories, ted from accounting, viral video

Early this year, Pepsi announced its “Pepsi Refresh Project,” which was a way of allowing the “followers” of Pepsi in Social Media to nominate worthwhile ideas or public service projects Pepsi could fund.

So far, the program has been a win/win for Pepsi. The soft drink maker received plenty of media attention for its Refresh Project, and it gave it a chance to connect with its fans and followers in a meaningful way.

In light of the recent Gulf disaster, Pepsi expanded its Refresh Project into a “Do Good for the Gulf” Refresh campaign. Pepsi has pledged $1.3 million to consumer submitted ideas that could “refresh the communities of the Gulf states.” Pepsi invited the public to submit ideas through July 16. Starting August 2, consumers can vote on the ideas they like best. Finalists will be announced on September 2, and grants will be awarded on September 22.

On the surface, this initiative seems to hit all the right notes. It’s a natural way to extend Pepsi’s Social Media campaign while doing some much-needed good. But to the skeptical part of me, this just doesn’t smell right. By tying itself to a major disaster, the company has to carefully walk the line between legitimate cause marketing and shameless self promotion. Is the company’s driving intention to help the residents of the Gulf, or is it to promote the Pepsi brand?

Here are a few of my reservations:

1) The amount pledged. Hey $1.3 million isn’t chump change by any stretch of the imagination. But knowing the inner workings of corporate marketing/PR departments, I can easily imagine the company is paying ten times that amount to promote and administer the program. It’s like those solicitations you get to help feed the children of Africa, but when you look into the financials of the organization, you find out that only 5 cents of your dollar goes for food. In other words, if Pepsi’s #1 concern is providing for Gulf residents, it could do better.

2) The company’s involvement in the “crowd sourcing” part of this project. The focus strictly on Social Media means the system will be gamed—heavy users Social Media will have more of a say than your average Gulf resident. While that fits with the original intention and structure of the Refresh Project, it feels somewhat ham-handed for dealing with people’s legitimate needs and concerns.

3) The very public way the company is going about this promotion. It seems a little too “corporate” and well-planned. Disasters are messy. Carefully orchestrated philanthropy feels out of place. For an example of a company that did it right, think back to WalMart in the days following Hurricane Katrina. With no fanfare, the company’s stores loaded tens of thousands of bottles of fresh water on its trucks and delivered them to needy residents before the media even showed up.

There’s nothing wrong with an organization striving to get noticed for its good works. If I were advising Pepsi on how to follow through on this project, here’s what I’d tell them:

1) Find out what the needs are NOW and address them. Why wait until the end of September to actually do something? The days immediately following a disaster are when the needs and opportunities are most critical. Find out what needs aren’t being addressed now, and address them. If there’s a need for more shovels or graders to comb the beaches, provide them. If volunteers need accommodations, equipment, hazmat suits or respirators (or cell phones to call home), provide them. Go ahead and collect nominations from the Facebook crowd, but don’t let them lead you on this.

2) Involve the Pepsi community as a whole. Allow folks beyond the Gulf in California or Nebraska or Idaho to contribute to the cause. Set up a dollar-for-dollar match campaign with specific projects in mind. Or start a general Gulf Fund where the company would handle all administrative expenses so every dollar goes to the cause, whether its shrimp fishermen’s families, bankrupted hotel operators or whatever.

3) Make a long-term pledge. Don’t bug out as soon as the story falls off the front page. Commit that “five cents of every Pepsi product purchased will go to Gulf aid,” or something like that.

4) Don’t focus on getting attention. No need to string huge Pepsi banners on the beaches, put logos everywhere and arrange for press briefings. Just get out there and do what you know needs done. People will notice. Stories will spread. This will be more powerful than an orchestrated Social Media campaign.

Public skepticism of corporations is high right now. The first question many consumers will ask of your good works is “What’s in it for you?” It pays to be as transparent as possible. If your #1 intention is to do good, then do good. Don’t worry about how you can milk your efforts.

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Mickey New Media, On Clients, Ramblings, Social Media cause marketing, crowd sourcing, gulf clean up, Pepsi, Pepsi refresh

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. While I’m not sure of the exact number, one thing I can say is this four-minute video does a heck of a lot more to parse the impact of Social Media than a 400-word blog post could. Enjoy.

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Mickey New Media, On Customers, Social Media Facebook, fatboy slim, social media growth, social media revolution, Social media video

Chances are if you sat through an agency creative presentation back in the days BSM (Before Social Media), you probably heard your fill of the importance of “breaking through the clutter.” The idea being that because the consumer is exposed to as many as 4,000 marketing messages (primarily via mass media)  per day, we need to create something amazing that is going to be among the 12 or so he will remember the next day.

Funny how you don’t really hear much anymore about “breaking through the clutter.” Today, we preach the gospel of “going viral.” No longer is the high-bar creating content our audience sees, remembers and likes, but creating something that folks actually pass on to their own personal networks.

So how do we approach the creative challenge when our goal is to not only have our audience remember our messages, but spread them as well?

My take is that not much has changed. The messages that we lauded as “breaking through the clutter” have way more in common with today’s “viral campaigns” than you might think. In both cases, successful messages can be described as being both “sticky” and “slippery.” The “sticky” part is pretty straight forward—it means there is an idea or concept that captured the audience’s imagination and helped them remember the message. It made an impression with them, got them involved in the message.

The “slippery” part is a little trickier to understand. It relates to the ease at which that idea is spread to others. It’s easy to describe (or pass on) to someone else.

“Hey, did you see the E-Trade spot with the talking baby?” “What do you think of that Old Spice spot with the guy on the horse?” “How about the FedEx spot where the company tried to save money with Nordic Tuesdays?” (see below) These conversations are viral. They’re an opportunity to share something you like with others. Conversations like this are nothing new.

What is new are the tools of Social Media. You don’t have to meet at the water cooler or wait for some sort of invitation to join a conversation. You can simple post it on your Facebook wall, for all your friends to see.  You can even link the spot as part of the conversation. And everytime one of them reacts to it, that messages gets even more slippery.

Content that is both “sticky and slippery.” This is where your emphasis should be. These are the filters you should use when creating or evaluating content.

My advice is, don’t get so hung up on the tools you’re relying on to spread the message. Get hung up on the message itself.

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Mickey Creative, New Media, Social Media content, e-trade, FedEx, old spice, slippery, sticky, strategy, viral video

Social Media has been a trending topic for quite some time now. Tomes have been written (here and elsewhere) about the quick assimilation of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al into the lives and media habits of Americans of basically every stripe. And plenty of examples exist of how mainstream companies and products have scored big paydays by immersing themselves into Social Media. Yet, despite all of this, only about a quarter of American businesses have jumped into the deep end of Social Media.

So what’s the hold up? Well, as the accompanying graph (courtesy of eMarketer.com) points out, the big hiccup in the eyes of many organizations (more than 1/3) relates to ROI. How will they know if the expenditures on Social Media will pay off? Is Social Media truly a brave new world where the tools are free and your followers do all the “selling?” Or, is it a giant black hole that’s going to demand more and more resources with precious little to show for it?

Business leaders can be excused for their skepticism of Social Media as a platform for selling more widgets. They see how their teenagers use Facebook. They read about people tweeting what they had for lunch. They see YouTube as a venue for cute cat videos. And, unfortunately, folks in my position haven’t been a ton of help when we talk about Social Media as a forum for “engagement,” not for “selling” (without explaining in down-to-earth language how that engagement is a critical element in the selling process).

One way to approach the ROI barrier is to take a look at how we determine it with traditional media like TV, radio, magazine, outdoor, etc. that we know works. None of the ROI is up front. It’s all after the fact. We spent so-and-so on media for the quarter, and our sales were such-and-such. You can chart year-over-year incremental sales and attribute the extra sales (or increased margin) to your ad expenditure.

In other words, you’re doing it on faith. Not ill-placed faith to be sure. But the naked truth is that you are betting numbers with lots of zeros behind them on projections. On forecasts. The same way you decide how to dress based on a weather forecast. It is only after-the-fact that you see if your projections were correct.

But for many business leaders, this kind of faith has no place in the discussion of Social Media. What we need are hard numbers.

The irony is, of course, is that Social Media gives you access to plenty of hard numbers. Hard accurate numbers. Even free analytic tools allow you to measure your impact in Social Media with a real-time accuracy that would be the envy of any offline media, which still pretty much rely on historical data from set-top boxes and diaries.

Analytics can show you how many people are talking about you, what they are saying (positive, negative or neutral), how many are joining your communities, how many site visits you have, how many downloads you’ve issued, where your visitors come from, how many times they’ve come to you, how many thought leaders have linked to you, and so on.

But alas, even these numbers have little to do with sales or ROI. In fact, I would submit that the most important aspects of a Social Media program will never be measured. Because Social Media is conducted on a one-to-one basis (in front of thousands of spectators), Social Media’s strength is its ability to strengthen the relationship between marketer and customer. To resolve customer service issues before the customer decides to take a powder (or vent elsewhere). To reward frequent and loyal customers with special access and considerations (and giving them the tools and permission to talk you up in their communities). To get input from customers on possible product offerings and initiatives. To conduct quick-and-dirty surveys. To work casual customers up the loyalty ladder. To provide several new portals through which to engage the organization.

Just because you can’t measure stuff like this doesn’t mean it won’t have a huge impact on your business’s bottom line.

All it takes is a little faith.

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Mickey Media, New Media, On Clients, On Customers, Social Media eMarketing, faith, ROI, Social Media

How many times have you heard yourself say that? Where do people find the time to spend 6 hours a day on Facebook? Or send 1,500 Tweets a day? Or watch 12 hours of television?

Conceivably, the only way you could spend this amount of time interacting with the media is to have a lot of time on your hands. In this video, Prof. Clay Shirky calls this a “Cognitive Surplus“.

According to Shirky, the reason we waste so much time with media is because we all have more time than we know what to do with. Say what? I mean, if you’re anything like me, that sounds like a total disconnect. How many times have I left a couple hours of stuff on my daily to-do list because of “lack of time”. And I’m not alone: studies show one of the top complaints people have these days is a “I don’t have enough time!”

Shirky, though, makes a very good point. We actually do have an enormous amount of discretionary time. Technology has afforded us that. Tasks that used to take minutes now take seconds. Activities that once required significant segments of our days now require very little effort. So why do we feel as if we’re being short-changed of time?

Here’s the rub, according to Shirky: if you were to keep a moment-by-moment log of how we spend our days, we’d realize that we pretty much suck as time managers.

It’s like we all have ADD, and are just waiting to be seduced by whatever reflecting ball of tin foil momentarily catches our attention. Our subconscious mind is not very discriminating. It is easily distracted. It wants immediate gratification. And it doesn’t want to work very hard.

In other words, it’s an easy mark for what passes as content in today’s media (especially, I would argue, today’s new media).

Our ability to be so easily distracted leads to all sorts of paradoxes. We decry not having enough time to spend with our families, yet we spend hours a day watching YouTube. We can’t seem to get around to fixing that leak in the bathroom, but we’re up to date on who’s-doing-what on Facebook. We can’t seem to finish that blog post, but no way we’re missing that “Law & Order” marathon.

Shirky also points out how the shift towards Social Media and the Internet is giving us the power to take back the control of our time. Instead of interacting with media on their terms, we now have the ability to interact with them on ours. As media once conspired to suck up our time, it now gives us unprecedented control over it.

The key, though, is to recognize that the choices we make on how we use our time are just that—choices. When we allow ourselves to get sucked into the latest Internet phenomenon or check in on Facebook ten times a day, those are choices. We need to plan our media use with the exacting detail we plan a family vacation to Disneyworld.

So now that we know how we have all this time, the question is, how are we going to use it?

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Mickey New Media, On Customers, Social Media Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, time management, too much time

There are some huge online communities out there. For example, Starbucks has over 6 million Facebook fans. Jet Blue has more than 1.6 million followers on Twitter. Even the AFLAC Duck has more than 5,000 followers who eagerly follow his every move on Twitter.

And then, there’s the infamous pickle we blogged about a few weeks back. The one that garnered more than 1.6 million fans on Facebook in just 16 days on the page “Can This Pickle Get More Fans Than Nickelback?”.

Which begs the question: how much, really, are these fans and followers worth? Is fan volume the key metric in determining the success of a Social Media program? Is what it takes to attract fans enough to make them customers? What value can an organization place on such a community?

A look at how organizations have been able to attract such large numbers gives us some clues about how easy it is to “buy” followers. Victoria Secret attracted 2 million fans by giving away panties. TGI Friday’s similarly gave out free hamburgers. Jet Blue recently gave away 1,000 one-way tickets. The “decision engine” Bing grew its fan base from 100,000 to 500,000 overnight by giving away Farmville cash.

So what are these fans really worth? Not much until you can classify them. They represent a database to communicate with to determine their level of interest in you. Most folks will just be there for the swag. I would wager that an overwhelming majority of Starbuck’s 6 million-plus fans didn’t join because they “loved” Starbucks, but rather than they’re hoping to get a coupon for a free frappacino.

What you have, then, is a community of “hand raisers.” You did something that interested them enough to “join,” but by itself that act is no indication that they are true “fans” or even that they give half a hoot about you. Think of them as the folks who walk by your tradeshow booth and stop to fill out a sweepstakes entry.

There are times when a big community can be an asset. If you’re looking for a way to drive traffic and have a special enticement to offer, you have a built-in audience. You can solicit input from them on different issues, and occasionally even invite them to co-create with you. But don’t fall under the spell of thinking that everyone who clicks the “Become a Fan” button on Facebook is a “brand evangelist” dying to hear your every word. These days joining a fan page is no big deal for most folks (recent stats show the average Facebook users joins three fan pages a month), and as the examples of Victoria’s Secret and Bing go to show, it doesn’t take all that much to get them to join.

Over time, you’ll be able to track the followers who interact with you on a regular basis, who respond when you throw something out there. These are your most valuable followers. And while they may only represent a small portion of your overall community, it’s not about their numbers. It’s about their level of engagement. One could argue it is much more profitable to have deep engagement from 1,000 fans than to be “friended” by 500,000.

But for arguments sake, let’s say you’re not interesting in shear numbers, only in having loyal, highly engaged followers. How do you organically go about attracting them? It helps to build in a barrier to entry that not everyone can get past. Reward your followers, but make your page exclusive to the point where not everyone can join. Don’t let just anybody in. Could be invitation only, or require a referral from an insider (like G-mail was when it was first introduced).

Your community will grow a lot more slowly, but will be more likely to be populated with true “believers” who are truly interested in you and won’t hit the “Hide” button after they received their first free coupon.

So before you decide to run a promotion in Mafia Wars for 100 Godfather points in an attempt to grow your fan numbers, ask how you can make the best use of the folks who’ll opt-in, and how you’ll go about separating the wheat from the chaff.

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Mickey New Media, On Customers, Social Media Facebook, fan value, followers

We’ve written often about how the dynamics at play in Social Media aren’t new. Once you get past the nomenclature many have adopted for Social Media (“crowdsourcing,” “the long tail,” “viral buzz” etc.), what you really have are just people sharing something with others, peer to peer. In Social, what you want to “share,” you pretty much just put it out there for everyone to see, and if someone likes it, they can join you, or pass it on to others through their own networks.

The following video probably tells the story of Social Media simpler and better than any blog post I could hope to write. It is an amateur video (approximately 3 minutes in length) taken at last year’s Sasquatch Music Festival at The Gorge.  It starts off with one guy in the crowd doing his own goofy dance. Slowly, a few other join in. After a while, it appears as if the “dancers” outnumber the rest of the crowd.
Check it out.

The first time I viewed this video, I was struck by a couple of things. First, that the original guy was REALLY into his dance. He was doing his own thing, going for it 100%. And he kept at it. He was the only one doing the dancing for quite some time.

Next, there was guy number two. For whatever reason, he thought the dance thing looked fun, so he jumped in. He was key because it provided “permission” for all those that followed to join in. Same for the third guy.

Once this small community got into it, it wasn’t long before people started joining in ever larger numbers. While it took more than half the video to get past the first few guys, the Tipping Point had been reached early in the third minute of the video.

But back to the first guy. Was it his intention to get others to join him, to “start a movement?” Who knows. All we can tell is he was really into it, and he kept at it for quite a spell. I would venture to say his enthusiasm for what he was doing is what attracted others to at first check him out, then join him. The same can be said of creating a Social Media program. If we start out just wanting others to “join” us, we’re doomed to failure. We have to do what we do well—and what we enjoy doing—if we are to get anyone’s attention. And you need to draw attention before you have any hopes of getting anyone to join up.

Note, also, that building a true community takes a while to build. You don’t want to “rent” followers, you want people who really get it. And that’s going to take some time. But if you keep at it, and stay true to your intentions, your community will grow.

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Mickey New Media, Social Media crazy dance, peer to peer, Sasquatch, Social Media

Funny how a scene from a movie set in the 1930s can help provide a lesson for audience engagement in the 21st century.

This 2½ minute scene from Jean Shepard’s classic holiday film “A Christmas Story” provides a great example of how a “worst practice” can kill a community of followers.

Nine-year-old Ralphie is a devoted follower of the “Little Orphan Annie Radio Hour,” and listens to the program religiously. In an effort to build a community of dedicated followers, the program’s sponsor allowed kids to become “members” of a special club: “Annie’s Secret Circle.” Club members received an official-looking letter and a special decoder ring which allowed them to decipher coded messages that were broadcast at the end of each program.

Only Official Club Members with the official decoder ring could decipher these messages. Once you opted-in, you were part of a community of kids who also followed Little Orphan Annie and her adventures. You could identify fellow members by the ring they proudly wore. Suddenly, you had a connection to kids you didn’t even know through membership and shared allegiance to a radio show. Only this community had the ability to decipher Annie’s secret messages.

While this was a great way to build and engage a community, the sponsor ended up blowing it. As demonstrated in this scene, as Ralphie was decoding his first much anticipated secret message (hoping no doubt to discover the location of a hidden treasure or find a clue to next week’s adventure), he was let down to find the coded “messages” were no more than “lousy commercials” from the show’s sponsor, Ovaltine. In frustration, he threw his decoder ring away.

This scene dramatizes an important point in engaging your audience. Once you have a community, be sure the content you send them is relevant, useful and wanted. If your content becomes about “you” and not about “them,” you’ll see followers drop off and fall away, just as Ralphie did.

From a content standpoint, it always helps to be thinking in terms of the next engagement. Filter your content by asking, “Is what I’m about to send enough to get my followers to come back the next time?”

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Mickey New Media, On Customers, Social Media, Uncategorized audience engagement, building community, Christmas Story, Little Orphan Annie, Ralphie