Alberta Business Marketing

So unless you have been completely off the grid (which is possible) you have probably seen the Old Spice advertising campaign. Yes, the cheeky one which features former NFL football player Isaiah Mustafa playing the role of "Old Spice Guy."

A conservative guess is that Procter & Gamble (owners of the Old Spice brand) spent tens upon tens of millions of dollars on a massive advertising campaign according to an agency side friend of mine. The campaign was a recipient of the 2010 Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix and received an Emmy nomination for outstanding commercial. Yes, this is the very same brand that I previously associated with my beloved grandfather.

If that wasn't enough this campaign was then taken to the next level. What was done exactly? The agency responsible for Old Spice (Wieden & Kennedy) launched a terrific social media campaign that built on the previous campaign momentum.

For a limited time period, fans could interact with Old Spice guy via Twitter, Facebook and/or YouTube and ask questions. The Old Spice Guy then replied in personal manner to those blessed enough via a 30 second YouTube spot. The social media campaign is brilliant from a creative perspective and didn’t cost a lot (compared to prior media expenses) to engage with fans besides the cost of employing the actor, writers who scripted the responses, production expenses and other ancillary costs.

Here is an example of one answer by the Old Spice Guy to a question posed by the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team via Twitter.

You may not like hockey. You may not like Old Spice. But you must admit this is a brilliant concept. An agency team responded to roughly 200 questions in a personalized manner within a 48 hour timeframe. We’re talking real-time answers that were hilarious, in character and in keeping with the desired brand positioning and creative goals. As Leigh Himel points out, it would be pretty cool to see what the agency creative brief looked like. Especially when having to sell a typically conservative organization like P&G.

From personalized answers to celebrities to marriage proposals the whole gamut was covered. The agency also wisely leveraged momentum built up by previous mass media advertising and media coverage that created the persona of Old Spice Guy. They also did little things like leverage the promoted trending topic on Twitter. I don't suspect it cost that much and the agency probably didn't have to do it as the campaign became an organic trending topic all on its own but it's still a good type of marketing insurance to have.

There has been some debate as to whether this social media campaign was successful. The digital results according to P&G speak for themselves. Nearly 105 Million YouTube views, 1.2 Billion media impressions, 2700% increase in Twitter followers, 800% increase in Facebook fan interaction, 300% increase in traffic to the Old Spice website. Not to mention the countless sharing, promotion and mashups created by fans. In my view you have clearly hit a nerve when consumers start creating their own derivations of a commercial. (*Warning about the language contained in the aforementioned link as typically happens lately when Mel Gibson is involved.)

My friend Tamera is firmly of the belief that this social media campaign was a success. Other detractors take the view that digital metrics are window-dressing and the creative was very juvenile. Everyone has an opinion and rightly so.

So it really all comes down to sales, right? Show me the money! That's what P&G shareholders and executives ultimately care about. According to Neilsen, sales of Old Spice Body Wash rose significantly since they launched the campaign. Kind of tough to argue with those numbers even if they are projections. Ultimately the folks at P&G will know the truth.

But I think there are bigger questions in all this. For the agency folks, is your shop capable of pumping out this kind of quality content in a very short time frame for a digital campaign? We’re not talking about days or weeks but minutes and hours to engage with potential customers. We’re talking about your creative directors & content writers working closely with the social media marketers, talent and production team in a truly integrated manner. Do you have the creative juices that leverage previous marketing efforts and support them? Do you truly understand the philosophy of engagement and conversation with customers? Because that is exactly why the Old Spice social media campaign was successful.

And those of us on the client side need to face the music also. As Dave Stubbs aptly notes in a terrific post, P&G put a lot of trust in their agency to pull this off. To react with the speed required means there wasn’t time for 4 different layers of approvals. There wasn't time for a full financial audit about costs on a line by line basis. There wasn't time for every pixel and prop to be mercilessly scrutinized by the brand police. So here is the rub. Can you do that in your company? Do you empower your agency to make bold decisions without fear? Have you built up enough trust with agency partner(s) where you are willing to put your neck on the line when executives start asking pointed questions in the boardroom?

Those are the spicy questions we must all (including myself) ask ourselves. And no amount of Old Spice will cover that up.

Sulemaan Ahmed

Tags: Digital, social media, Viral
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Part 2 of a 4 part series

Which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers to spread the word about your product? In this second of four posts, I take a look at email.

In part 1, I blogged about some of the reasons marketers still consider direct mail an effective way to reach influencers, but the truth is that was only part of the story. Because while DM still has a role to play in engaging influencers to spread the word about your brand, email is also a powerful channel and one that’s becoming more so all the time.

There are, of course, the obvious reasons email is so effective: it’s easy for consumers to forward – a sort of digital word of mouth – and, especially these days, it’s easily accessible whether you’re on your BlackBerry, iPhone, Mac or PC, at home, at work or on the run.

An email campaign may also be cheaper and less labour-intensive to launch: although these days consumers report opening up less of the vast amount of emails received so perhaps cheaper is an illusion. But we do know that recent technology has made targeting, tracking and offer redemption much easier than in the past.

Perhaps where email marketing can be most successful at reaching consumers and convincing influencers is in its interactivity. You can include a url link to your website or blog or Facebook page in which the consumer can immediately connect. And of course you can design an email to offer a level of animation to engage the senses.

Plus, based on a study we just conducted, people have very specific reasons why they like to be marketed via email, including:

• Speed: It’s in your inbox – or in your trash – in a flash
• Convenience: You can read it at work, at home, or anywhere in between
• Environmental: Unless you want to print it out to save or share, trees and our environment get a break

That said, the truth is DM and email can live with each other because they both have an important role to play, as ClickSquared’s Dan Smith explains:

Not all customers respond to communications in the same way… In certain industries – charities come to mind – direct mail remains the primary method for new donor acquisition. Email is used primarily to solicit renewals from existing donors – and in the absence of a response, is often followed by yet another direct mail piece.

The circle of life – marketing style.

In part 3 of this series, I’ll focus on the new kid on the block – social media.

Thoughts?

Gillian MacPhersen

Tags: Customer Experience, Digital, Direct Marketing, Integration, Research
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Which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers to spread the word about your product? In the next four posts, I’ll take a look at the pros and cons of the most widespread channels, beginning with direct mail – hope you’ll join me and share your thoughts.

When VCRs achieved mass-market success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many pundits predicted the demise of the movie theatre. Who would want to drive to a cinema and sit with a bunch of strangers to watch a new movie when you could now do it in your own living room or bedroom? A lot of people, it turned out. VCRs, then DVD players and other home movie systems, didn’t kill off old school movie-going. They simply created a new channel for Hollywood to market its product. Both have lived together quite successfully ever since.

The same, it turns out, has happened with direct mail. Pioneered on a mass scale in the 1950s by Lester Wunderman and others, this way of reaching consumers and businesses caught on with marketers because, unlike traditional print, billboard and broadcast advertising, direct mail’s effectiveness could be tested, measured and improved on in subsequent campaigns. Despite the advent of email marketing in the 1990s and social marketing today, marketers still consider direct mail a viable and effective way to engage consumers in general and influencers in particular.

Why? Well, for starters, there continues to be a segment of the population that likes to receive things in the mail. While I’m selective about what I like and don’t like to find in my mailbox – I’m not big on grocery flyers, for instance – I do like when I get useful information about products or services that I can hold right in my hands.

I’m not alone and marketers know it. After all, with 90% of word-of-mouth happening face-to-face (Keller Fay Study, 2010), marketers understand the usefulness of offering influencers something tangible they can carry in their purse or pocket and pass along to the friends and family members they’re influencing – like a brochure, a catalogue, even a business card with a name, email address or url printed on it.

And direct mail is also still the king of easy and accurate personalization, in spite of digital marketing’s advances. Plus it continues to beat traditional media in its ability to target industries, regions, niche markets and other highly specific local audiences.

Finally, as effective as marketing via email, Facebook or mobile may be, none has (yet) managed to beam a sample or gift into consumers’ homes without using direct mail to get it there. The tactile surprise and delight factor that direct mail offers highly engaged consumers cannot be underestimated. You know they’ll open it immediately and pay particular attention to the contents from a brand they know and trust.

In part 2 of this series, I’ll focus on direct mail’s spry marketing cousin: email. It’s fast and inexpensive, but is it influencing influencers? Tune in next time when we discuss...

Gillian MacPhersen

Tags: Customer Experience, Digital, Direct Marketing, social media, technology, Viral
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

As we reflect on the 30th anniversary of the death of scholar and philosopher Marshall McLuhan, we reflect on the role of media in our lives and marvel at his eerily accurate predictions.

Many of these predictions perfectly apply to our work at Transcontinental's Rastar in new media, photography and communications. McLuhan mused in the sixties that in the future we’d all be connected in real-time, with messages flowing back and forth, as if we sat side by side. Doesn’t this sound familiar to you, my tweeting, texting & IM’ing friends? This web of sharing, creativity and collaboration, spun thanks to digital media and the internet, is itself more interesting and important than any content created (a.k.a. ‘the medium IS the message’). When the medium is photography, McLuhan’s specific quotes on the subject were very pointed. He called the photography used in advertising and media during the sixties a ‘brothel without walls,’ which still rings true considering the transformative power in the hands of whoever wields a camera lens. Long before photoshopping, airbrushing and other virtual fibs, McLuhan noted photography’s ability to deceive: “To say that the camera cannot lie merely underlines the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name.“

In 1994, fourteen years after the death of McLuhan, the first series of digital cameras took the consumer market by storm. Now that digital photography is sixteen years old, we can reflect on the impact of digital photography, the web and the prevalence of sharing images easily and instantaneously. This past October, the 4 billionth image was uploaded to Flickr, while the largest photo-sharing site in the world, Facebook, boats average monthly uploads of 2.5 billion photographs among its 400 million active users.

At Rastar, we recently witnessed how Canadians experienced their first Olympics through a digital photography lens. With over 50,000 pre-registrants within 4 days of the Olympics ‘Memories’ photo site launch, Canadians leapt at an opportunity to put a personal touch on memorabilia, with photo journals and posters emblazoned with users’ own snapshots. McLuhan would likely feel vindicated if he could witness the extreme speed and cyclical nature of new media, thanks to digitization and the internet. Today, Canadians aren’t just passively watching a sporting event on television or online, they’re texting, tweeting or blogging about the matches, and then taking their event photographs, often snapped from a mobile phone, and uploading them within seconds for their friends and family to enjoy.

Do you think that this new cycle of creating and sharing me-first media bring with it increasing narcissism, as many post-McLuhan cultural theorists have cautioned? Personally, I think that there will always be Canadians with a passion for photography, those who can capture the essence of their subject in a portrait or who have an eye to perfectly frame a landscape, regardless of how many glamour-shot profile pictures are uploaded to Facebook. For the sake of Canadian photography’s future and in honour of our media maven Marshall, let’s stay cautiously optimistic.

Melisa Jeffers is Senior Vice-President of Business and Corporate Development for Rastar, a Transcontinental Company, (www.rastar.com) which is a North American leader in print on demand solutions and social expression products. As a critical part of the Transcontinental Marketing Communications Sector, Rastar’s expertise result in robust solutions that help businesses provide their customers with highly personalized experiences.

Melisa Jeffers, Senior VP Business and Corporate Development, Rastar, a Transcontinental Company

Tags: Digital, social media
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