Merriam Associates, Inc. Brand Strategies » Viral Marketing

Old Spice in a Win-Win Duel Between Mustafa and Fabio

LDMerriam — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:47:42 +0000

When Old Spice announced that Fabio would be replacing Mustafa, the outcry was instantaneous. Was Old Spice going to end up like The Gap and quickly backtrack when customers on social media screamed loudly enough?

Not so fast. It was a set up from the beginning—a set up perfect for generating buzz and involving fans. Fabio has issued this challenge on “the internets” for a duel with the “old new Old Spice guy” against him, the “new, new Old Spice guy.”

Fabio or Mustafa? Who will win? Clearly Old Spice will!

Consumr: A Yelp For Consumer Goods—No Help

LDMerriam — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:59:57 +0000

Advertising Age reports the launch today of Consumr, a new social media ratings site. It’s meant to be Yelp-meets-Foursquare to rate consumer packaged goods like Cheerios and Tide. This is a service without a need.

Consumr is working with publisher Rodale to import Yelp-style product reviews for some 50,000 products you can find on grocery store, drug store, and mass merchandiser shelves. Also, like Foursquare, consumers can “check in” with brands they like and earn badges, called “flair.” With enough “flair,” participants can earn the distinction, for example, of being named a “flavor fiend,” exclusive for connoisseurs of Chobani yogurt. Wow! We’ve written about pointless social media activity before (i.e. people taking the time out of their busy lives to “like” Ziploc bag on Facebook), but building a business around pointless social media activity seems a bit much.

Sites like Yelp work because the businesses, services, and products they review are relative high stakes. Here are the five key high stakes consumer motivations that make review sites like Yelp work:

1) Expense: You might look at car reviews because buying a car is a high stakes financial investment.

2) Longevity: Using the car example again, you are buying a product with a long life—the high stakes are you’ll own it and use the product for years and will have to live with the decision, good or bad.

3) Time Consuming: You might turn to Yelp to find a plumber, because of the high stakes involved in taking the time and effort to search for a reputable service provider.

4) Pain: Again, using the plumber example, making the wrong choice could wreak havoc in your home and to your bank account. The high stakes of choosing the wrong dentist or leg wax service could also be extremely painful.

5) Information Scarcity: Choosing a restaurant in a new town is a gamble without services like Yelp. The high stakes are if you choose the wrong place to eat, your evening is ruined.

The problem with a consumer goods rating site like Consumr, is that these high stakes motivations are totally missing. Buy the wrong yogurt and you waste a few dollars. It takes little effort to return to the store and buy another brand. A yogurt mistake just doesn’t have major implications. Furthermore, most people already know what yogurt they like. They don’t need to invest time in doing research. And how many people in our over-scheduled world are going to carve out time to earn “flair” so they can be known as a yogurt connoisseur on some random Web site? Those people are probably already too busy friending Ziploc bags on Facebook.

Social Media Forces Candid Truth from Brands

LDMerriam — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 03:57:38 +0000

Rance Crain has an interesting post in Advertising Age: “Back in the Mad Men days, when the “pioneers of advertising,” as my old boss Stan Cohen calls them, ruled the roost, it was commonly held that a little exaggeration was not unreasonable to accentuate the selling points of the ad messages.”

Don’t try that today.

Between bloggers and Tweeters, your advertising “exaggeration” will be called out as a lie and your brand will suffer.

Consider these two recent stories:

On the one hand, Chevy Volt initially claimed a 40 mile range per battery charge. Check Twitter and you will find it is between 23 and 25. GM has “revised” the claim to between 25 and 50 miles–still not quite in line with what consumers who use the product are reporting. The buzz on the Volt brand is not positive. Despite GM’s revision, angry tweeters and bloggers continue to attack the discrepancy. The lack of range and lack of “clarity” on the part of GM is one of the reasons depressing demand for the product.

Contrast that with Taco Bell and the “not beef” controversy. A law firm in Alabama sued the company claiming it was not actually using beef in its tacos–and it invested plenty in promoting its beefless claim to get major coverage from media major and minor. Taco Bell has shown that when your brand is honest and does a good job of getting the true story out there, it can weather a public relations storm. Witness how Taco Bell responded to a lawsuit charging the company with not using real beef. The company responded with an integrated campaign combining traditional public relations and newspaper advertising along with new details on its website, offering to give away 10 million tacos to people who “like” its Facebook page and a straightforward video on YouTube featuring Taco Bell President Greg Creed saying, “Our seasoned beef recipe contains 88 percent quality USDA inspected beef.” In addition to listing the beef content, he provides a detailed list of the remaining ingredients. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.

From Wikileak threats to Twitter snipes, the truth about your brand will get out. Exaggeration no longer sells, it repells.

Huffington Post Won’t Hurt AOL Brand; Then Again AOL Isn’t Much of a Brand

LDMerriam — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:23:01 +0000

The media universe is in a tizzy (and a-Twitter) about AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post. The Wall Street Journal interviews top media buyers who are worried that the liberal voice will hurt AOL’s brand. The problem is that AOL doesn’t really have much of a brand. The company’s move away from an “access” business model (remember the old days of getting CDs in the mail from AOL that let you get on the Internet for $19.99 a month?) to a content company has been slow and less than successful. Competition in the area is overwhelming.

Buying a successful media company, any media company, will help AOL make the transition regarding content. The question is does AOL want to have a political point of view:

They could take the anti-Fox position as a national liberal voice. The problem is that the field is crowded by “mainstream” media including the three legacy broadcast networks, big city newspapers, and other upstarts like the HuffPo.
Beating Fox at its own game is not a good bet to make.

Perhaps the best option is to keep the Huffington Post as a separate brand and retaining its voice and focus intact. AOL can then buy additional focused brands across the spectrum of interests. Each brand can stand distinct and earn its own special following (see this article on the multiple brand approach to brand architecture). AOL with Huffington Post has a better chance at this strategy than, say, NBCU. Many of NBCU’s most high profile brands carry “NBC” in the name. Such a unified naming approach makes it impossible for MSNBC to stand as a liberal voice and NBC to stand as just-the-facts-neutral. And the supposedly separate MSNBC.com brand is not separate at all. (More on NBC brand problems)

Indeed, statements from AOL indicate this could be a possibility. Huffington Post’s traffic is only 15% politics, according to Arianna Huffington, with growth mostly in the areas of women’s issues, books and culture. Yet, with Huffington at the helm, how successful will AOL be in achieving broad reach?

Brands: Fight WikiPanic By Being WikiReady

LDMerriam — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:57:15 +0000

Wikipanic—it’s the new word for the latest marketing threat. What will happen to your brand if Wikileaks attacks it? As Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, and Bank of America are finding out, marketers need to be ready in advance of disaster, whether a plane crash, an oil well explosion or a wikileak/hacktivist attack. Companies can’t risk a wikipanic. They need to be wikiready.

Wikileaks Logo

The New York Times is reporting that Bank of America was threatened by Julian Assange with a promise to bring them down and expose “the ecosystem of corruption.” The company is trying to get a jump on the crisis by finding out where they are exposed, how they are exposed, and what will be exposed. Their expensive counterespionage team is conducting a massive document review, investigating every lost, stolen, or missing computer, and crafting a security, operational, and brand reputation response. What should you do to be wikiready for a Wikileaks attack?

Don’t Be Evil

Google’s informal corporate motto may be derided, but it is one everyone should adopt. Even before Wikileaks, our “information wants to be free” world had become too transparent for companies, governments, executives and politicians to have a realistic expectation that their actions can stay hidden. The days when a president like FDR could keep his wheelchair secret or a senator like Chris Dodd could conceal his sweetheart Countryside mortgage deal are long gone. Task one for companies seeking protection from a Wikileaks-type assault is to avoid doing anything that would be embarrassing or damaging when made public (not if). Know that someone is always watching.

Fix The Problem First

If Wikileaks is going to reveal something damaging, fix it. Too many marketing and public relations people go into damage control mode, controlling damage to a brand reputation before fixing what is causing the damage. This kind of response is worse than counter-productive. BP doubled-down on the harm to its brand by trying to protect its reputation while the oil spewed. Focus on fixing the problem, not on minimizing the problem or on issuing defensive message. Honesty and transparency can be painful, but brands that respond this way do bounce back. Admit, apologize, atone–and don’t do it again. People won’t forget, but they will forgive.

The Bigger the Brand the Bigger the Target

Last week, I wrote on the expanding role of brands. No longer are they strictly commercial expressions. Brands are increasingly co-opted for larger economic, social and political debates. If you have a powerful brand, be ready for that power to get turned against you. Big brands are highly vulnerable to security breaches from:

Lost laptops or laptops left in places where others could quickly download information to a portable hard drive while you are out getting coffee
Data sent to outsiders by disgruntled employees—or customers
Data in the hands of outsiders who may not protect it adequately (Bank of America’s data may have escaped from the documents given to the Securities and Exchange Commission, congressional investigators and the New York attorney general’s office, though those organizations naturally deny it)
Old fashioned hacking–like the coordinated cyber-attack on 2500 companies in 196 countries that began back in 2008 and continued for years (finally revealed publicly in February 2010)
DNS attacks that can bring down a Web site like Mastercard’s
Co-opting of a brand to make a political statement (think McMansions or Disneyification)

Be Ready

If you have a valuable brand, digital vandalism, a wikileaks assault, or cyber-attack is a matter of when, not if. Have your communications infrastructure in place and operating. USAir and Continental didn’t seem to know how to use Facebook or Twitter before or immediately after their plane crashes. BP used one-way corporate-speak on Twitter and Facebook and were more than one step behind on YouTube.

Web Video: How-To Advice

LDMerriam — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:59:40 +0000

Web pundits are predicting continuing growth in Web video. With that in mind, here is a round-up of advice for producing effective video:

1) Light your shot—dark videos don’t invite eyes
2) Get the best sound you can—your viewers are likely listening through headphones
3) Use a tripod for Pete’s sake!!—You want to make visitors stick, not get sick
4) Script and plan your story before you shoot—planning is what makes a video interesting and worth the viewers’ time (which is harder to earn and even harder to keep)
5) Shorter is better—think TV commercial not TV show, 30 seconds is better than 30 minutes
6) Talking heads are boring—get other shots and work them into your story
7) Don’t forget Web video needs the written word—when you post on YouTube, Facebook, even your own site, you will need a title, brief description, and keywords.
8) Post and link and post and link and post and link—get your video in front as many people as possible and link back to your site; it is about maximizing exposure and maximizing traffic

More detailed advice from previous posts:
Good enough video:
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/03/when-%E2%80%9Cgood-enough%E2%80%9D-web-video-is-great/

How Web video differs from TV:
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/02/ten-ways-web-video-is-different-from-tv/

Video scripting:
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/01/web-video-six-keys-to-writing-scripts-for-video/

Ideas for Web video:
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/10/a-dozen-ideas-for-web-video-and-beyond/

And a series from a Fortune 500 corporate executive speech coach:
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/03/web-video-message-prep/
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/03/web-video-preparing-your-delivery/
http://merriamassociates.com/2010/03/web-video-thinking-about-the-visual-presentation/

China Censors 60K Websites; 350 Million Pages Including This One

LDMerriam — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:04:45 +0000

ZD Net is reporting today that China has censored some 60 thousand Websites (really thought it would be more) and over 350 million pages and is “proud of it”. MerriamAssociates.com is honored to be one of them.

The head of the State Council Information Office, Wang Chen says there is no stopping its campaign against offensive material (was it a tasteless picture or two, the nude Twitter followers post, or the frank commentary about branding and China on this site that got it banned?) Chen claims to have gone through 1.79 million websites, deleting 350 million pages and to have rounded up 4,965 people in China, “1,332 of whom received ‘criminal punishment’ with 58 jailed for five years or more.” They can’t get to me here in the US, thankfully, even though I posted two Bimbo articles.

Chinese officials are foolish to be proud of this achievement in censorship, not because it is counter to our own particular American values (which are not relevant in China), but because they hobble China’s long-term capacity as an economic and political power. In a Web 3.0 world where “information wants to be free” and where viral communication, social media, open source sharing, crowd-sourcing and community-powered technology and process improvements are driving innovation and growth, censorship is a dead weight for China. China’s huge production engine will stay subservient to the world’s innovator brands as long as the Chinese government prevents the free flow of information that could empower brilliant Chinese minds and make future leaders.

Successful Marketers Using the Social Web

LDMerriam — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:49:14 +0000

Today on Mashable.com, customer engagement expert Matthew Latkiewicz writes about new online marketing
trends. He notes that early marketing efforts in new media were really attempts to apply broadcast
and print advertising techniques to this new world. But new thinkers are exploring new ways to communicate.
This article, which quotes Merriam Associates, reviews what is working and what isn’t.

Brands on Parade: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

LDMerriam — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:41:24 +0000

My daughter and I slipped out to meet a friend for coffee Thanksgiving morning. Serendipitously and inexplicably we ended up lost in the press section of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Talk about a wrong turn that turned out alright…

I took the opportunity to survey some of the brands on parade:

Congratulations to GM. The GMC’s pulling the floats are a prominent presence:

Pillsbury made a big impression:

Energizer zinged by:

Toro Storr tractors anchored the balloons:

Delta presented a holiday theme:

And just because, a Kanye West shot:

Ending with the Macy’s holiday brand theme “Believe”:

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, with 3.5 live spectators and 50 million more on television (at least), is an extremely effective marketing venue for brands. Here’s a typical face of delight:

Additional brand sponsors of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: Homewood Suites, South Dakota Department of Tourism, Hamburger Helper, Build-a-Bear, Morton Salt, Office Max, NY Daily News, Hess, Disney, Pixar, Abrams Books, Twentieth Century Fox, Pillsbury, Dreamworks, McDonalds, Sony, Marvel Entertainment, Nickelodeon, Kool-Aid, Ocean Spray, Food Network, Toro, Remo Drum Heads, Timberland, and the Affinia Hotel.

Social Media Brand Engagement Rules Toyota vs Chevrolet

LDMerriam — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:12:23 +0000

Firefly Millward Brown’s New Rules for Brand Engagement study discusses the trouble brands are having effectively using social media. As we have discussed in previous posts, many marketers come across as insincere, pandering, or boring. The relationship/conversation thing seems to still stump many, many marketers. Consider the different Twitter approaches of the worlds’ leading car brands:

Toyota Social Media Use: Real People Tweeting Real Things

Toyota’s Twitter presence prominently introduces the people who are doing the tweeting:

Each of these people have their own pages as well:

And they are real people, not a marketing personae created to give the illusion of being genuine:

During the Toyota recall crisis of last winter, the Toyota Twitter page was full of genuine conversation. The Toyota tweeters didn’t rush in and defend. They did interject occasional facts and direction, but mostly let the social media conversation roar.

Chevrolet Social Media Use: Robots Tweeting Promotional Messages

By contrast, who knows who’s tweeting for Chevrolet. Their Twitter presence is visually attractive, but there is nothing social (i.e. relationship or conversation-oriented) about it.

Whomever is the Chevy tweeter, they are clearly a PR machine, spewing out blather like: “Introducing our new ad — this is how America gets work done. http://bit.ly/cPyWFX.

Can you imagine someone at a cocktail party coming up to say that to you? Chevrolet violates many of the Firefly Millward Brown rules below, but mostly # 7. If you wouldn’t say it to a stranger at a party, think twice before tweeting it.

Ten Rules of Social Media

Be sure to download the full report from Millward Brown, but here is a recap of the 10 rules of social media:

More on social media on this blog:
Ziploc: Boring Doesn’t Work as a Social Media Engagement Strategy
BP’s Social Media Slip Up: BP Can’t Tweet
Viral Marketing Can Make Your Brand Sick
Crash Branding–Brand Communication in a Crisis
And more