Studie: Social Media Governance 2010

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Love the Omnipotent Marketing Strategy?

This post was inspired by an article by Hubertus von Lobenstein about „love“ being THE thing in marketing these days.

Here is how he approached the topic:

So love is the new thing, right? You don´t love your audience? You are doomed. Your brand doesn´t produce enough reasons for your audience to love it? Your brand is doomed. The agency doesn´t produce enough lovable content to be aired in various love channels? The agency is doomed. At least that´s the impression I start to get reading some recent blog posts.To achieve this kind of relationship between a brand and its audience those apostles of love don´t ask the brand community to adjust. No, they are preaching the coming of a revolution. Our learnings, our experience, our tools? All useless when it comes to create the future love relationships. It is a brand new brand world out there that needs to be conquered with brand new thinking and brand new methods. And love is not everything, it seems to be the only thing that can deliver.

Just like not every brand is suitable for Social Media Marketing, creating a very emotional „love“ campaign will not guarantee higher brand awareness, loyalty or sales. You cannot make every brand lovable. But you can easily create a dangerous love bubble. Drawing parallels to human beings and their coping with the love phenomenon is quite helpful in this context. Often there is a huge difference between desire or lust and real love. Statistics show that we do not marry the hottest chick around but the attractive woman who seems to understand us blindly, who fascinates us and with a single smile can dsitract us from a really shitty day.

Many commercials suggest we have to desire that new phone, fragrance or car. But to really love it you have to know it, be familiar with it. Just as human love often needs time to grow, the same goes for brands. Love here can be initiated by desire just like when we find a person very attractive. This would also apply for an iPhone. But to love it, it has to convince me or satisfy my expectations. And here lies the danger. If we are told to love a brand but are disappointed by its qualities we easily get angry. I do not love McDonalds but I appreciate the constant quality and product range along with the often speedy service.
However if I have to wait long until being served I easily get annoyed. I find BMWs highly attractive but I would not say I love them because for that a car would have to proof its qualities in the long run.
What I love? My Samsonite trolley for being so fast, my Nokia for being so reliable and shopping at DM. Why? Because they meet my expectations over and over again. And they take great care that this remains so.

Thus, you can center a campaign around how lovable your brand is, but do make sure that this is not just a lovely bubble you create but that all the expectations you create can be met or even surpassed.
Love is not only a „burning flame“ but also a dangerous word whose usage should be well considered.

Tune up your presentations

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Radio wirkt – auch unbewusst!

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Einer neuen Studie zufolge werden Werbebotschaften im Radio auch unbewusst von unserem Gehirn wahrgenommen. Und nicht nur das, auch soll die Kaufneigung bezüglich der beworbenen Produkte sich als Folge sogar erhöhen. Jedoch nicht immer. Ausschlaggebend dafür, dass eine auch unbewusst wahrgenommene Werbebotschaft sich auch im Kaufverhalten niederschlägt sind laut der Studienreihe attraktive Versprechen bzw. Belohnungen. Nur wenn diese deutlich genug sind und die vom Konsumenten wahrgenommenen Impulse stark emotionalisieren kommt es zu einem Kauf.

Es besteht also durchaus noch Hoffnung für Radiowerbung. Es stellt sich die Frage inwieweit die Ergebnisse sich auf TV übertragen lassen.

Mehr zu diesem Thema in einem aktuellen Artikel der absatzwirtschaft online

BVDW: 10 Tipps für den Einstieg ins Social Media Marketing

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Die Fachgruppe Social Media des Bundesverbandes Digitale Wirtschaft e.V. hat Einsteigern einen kostenlosen Leitfaden „Messbarer Erfolg im Social Media Marketing / 10 Tipps für den Einstieg“ bereitgestellt.

Und hier kommen Sie schon:

1. Orientieren Sie sich auch im Social Media Marketing an den Grundregeln erfolgreicher Kommunikationsplanung
2. Legen Sie konkrete Zielvorgaben fest
3. Nutzen Sie Targeting
4. Behalten Sie die Bedürfnisse und Wünsche Ihrer Zielgruppe im Blick
5. Beweisen Sie Kreativität
6. Wählen Sie die richtige Art und die richtigen Orte der Ansprache
7. Messen Sie den Kampagnenerfolg und überprüfen Sie mögliche Wechselwirkungen
8. Entscheiden Sie sich für den richtigen Mix in der Erfolgsmessung
9. Achten Sie auf die Erhebung relevanter Daten zur Erfolgsmessung
10. Berücksichtigen Sie die Erfolgsfaktoren von Social Media-Kampagnen

Und hier gehts zum kostenlosen Download auf den Seiten des BVDW:

Bounty Rap: A fresh breeze in the paper towel industry

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How to promote paper towels?

Well advertising arguments usually revolve around the same old „soaks up more“ or „more tear-resistent.“
As boring or common as these products might seem at first glance, they represent an industry of attractive proft margins and increasing sales. In the U.S. the big players are Procter&Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and of Georgia-Pacific. In Europe these players are accompanied by SCA and Meta Tissue. The European market alone accounts to EUR 8.5 bilion and makes up one fourth of the global market for hygene tissues. In Germany the consumption of such tissues sees a strong growth and accounts to a stunning 13kg – not per household but per capita!

In Europe and supposedly in the U.S. too, the market can basically be split up in two segments: the low-priced products and the premium ones. Prices differ greatly. A premium brand such as Bounty or Zewa can easily cost twice as much as a low-priced ALDI or Wal-Mart version (although often the production facilities they come from are the same. Have a look at the ZIP Code!).

While the cheap products sell by the price, the expensive ones have grown into strong brands that need to be cultivated in order to maintain their position and of course survive the strong competition. I personally love paper towels because you can use them for anything and once used you can simply throw them away. Organizations such as the WWF of course see these products critically as the production not only consumes a lot of cellulose but also a lot of water. But for many consumers convenience still plays the bigger role and this explains why sales for the premium brands remain strong.

Back to the commercial. Bounty (by Procter&Gamble) here took the old approach of enumerating the benefits into a new look. No longer showing household scenes and mothers cleaning up after their children, the ad seems to address children directly. Although the scene shows a class-room, the students to me look like in their 20s. Maybe it is rather a college class-room than a school class-room (although the name of the school „Central High School“ is displayed). It could in fact address college freshmen many of whom are now for the first time confronted with having to clean their own dorm themselves. And this is where paper towels come in handy. Which brand to purchse if you never before bought cleaning utensils? Ah wait there was that fun commercial for Bounty! Yes, this is how it works…

Overall I must admit I like the fresh approach and I am sure the campaign will be worth its spendings.

Here is a helpful article by RISI, the leading information provider for the global forest products industry, to get a better insight into the market for paper tissue

Wieden+Kennedy's Old Spice Case Study

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A great example of a modern campaign which did it all: increased awareness, unbelievable word of mouth, direct interaction with its customers, strong brand loyalty, a huge crowd of brand fans and last but not least a significant increase in sales. Congrats!

Wow, just had a look at their facebook page: Incredible consumer reactions! This thing is going trough the ceiling…

SOM_P&G_old spice

Social Media's role in events and catastrophes

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The recent catastrophe at the Loveparade in Duisburg, Germany once again showed how Social Media has changed the way we produce and share information and thus how news are made today. Information has been democratized. No longer are we dependent on the information provided by the government or the nearest newspaper. News arrive immediately and right from the place where it happens. Information helps us mak better decisions. It is not far-fetched if some argue that tomorrow’s wars are no longer won by the better equipped army but by the better informed army.

To provide a better impression of the point I am trying to make here, I have simplified the events and grouped them into three stages: before the event, during the event and after it. In this order, I will discuss the role Social Media has or could have played.

PRE-PHASE:
Running Social Media analysis tools could have provided a good impression of how many people were expected to show up in Duisburg. As we all never „walk alone“, we ususally try to attend events with our dearest friends or at least with people who share the same interests as we do. Thus many of the guests used social communities and platforms to organize. They talked about the upcoming event on Twitter and in blogs and forums in order to inform themselves about the event. They searched for recommendations of experienced love parade goers to find out about how to best get there, where to spend the night, etc. Aside from all the hype and anticipation, there were also critical voices who no only spoke out their concerns but also wrote them down: in forums, blogs, social communites or on Twitter. Obviously they were not heard or not considered important (maybe the recent trend of crowdsourcing has not arrived in this segment)
Both aspects can be traced afterwards as „the internet does not forget things…“

EVENT PHASE:
Major events attract thousands of people. The closer you come to the center of action, groups merge with bigger groups, join the stream of people and become masses of people. And usually there is only one way: forward. One easily looses orientation and even has trouble staying together as a group.

Sounds as chaotic as an anthill at a quick glance. But ants do not collide. While the ants usually have total control of the situation, humans easily get lost. In fact many experts who deal with behavior analysis or traffic analysis ofte draw parallels to animal kingdom. Very often animals seem to have become experts when it comes to organize large numbers.
Humans also manage to get along. Take a big railway station or an airport for example. Thousands of people each with different destinations manage to get along without permanently crashing into one another. I experience this a lot. And it works perfectly fine. Individual distance is one of the phenomenon helping us to find our way. But there are limitations. As soon as the crowd is very heterogenous this automatic sense for passing by does no longer work. We see this on the autobahn (highway) or during rush hour in public transportation when everyday commuters meet people on a holiday trip, or when young dynamic people mix with elderly more slow people. Their different habits and speeds collide. The same goes for large audience who often due to small causes panic.
Is there a solution? Well yes, communication is one way. But as soon as a certain number of people is reached this won’t work anymore, there are simply too many people. Here cell phones and text messages but also microblogging services such as Twitter but also facebook for your phone could be of great help to communicate and to get rational objective information about what is going on. While in the Woodstock era you had no chance of sharing information with people in the distance, today many of us become real-time reporters, sharing their impressions by text, image or even video. These news are often very accurate and foremost, they are fast as hell. People report things as they happen.

And things happened in Duisburg. People attending the love parade not only broadcasted the fun and joy but also the fear and panic when all of a sudden there were simply too many people for a narrow tunnel.
This reminded me of Crowdsourcing, another buzz word in marketing these days and a technique often used to solve complex problems. While there are some who praise crowdsourcing to be the source of all solutions, others deem it to be inefficient and an illusion. Or in other words: the crowd is stupid so better rely on few experts. Now with the Duisburg loveparade case, one could argue that yes, the masses were stupid or behaved in an irrational and fatal way. Having put the decision into the hands of one single smart leader could have avoided the panic. Maybe. But how do you want to communicate in a group of several hundred thousand people and why should they listen and to whom? Impossible.
Also, crowdsourcing is a strategy that can be applied only to a certain fixed situation. It requires that you are free to choose between alternatives and also have the time to do so. In the case of the loveparade the crowd had no moderator or leader who organized them and could have filtered every single persons best strategy. Thre was no structure behind like when you ask 20 people to guess the exact weigth of any given person. But even when there is no framework, crowdsourcing techniques may work for a limited number of people. But without a framework, even Social Media cannot provide the necessary transparency to bring some order into the masses. In sum, there were simply too many people, they were in a state of lacking information or a lacking transparent information and their actions where impulsive, subjective and rather reactions. There was no control and thus panic.

However, Social Media did have a positive effect: it enabled people to use their cell phones and communicate to the braod public that something was going wrong here. In real time.

POST EVENT PHASE:

Merriness soon turned into madness. But even with all the sad events having happened, Social Media again plays a helpful role. It enabled people to contact their friends, discuss their impressions and thus provide first-hand information to the public. Forums and blogs as well as social networks enabled people to get into contact. Again, the fact that the internet has a pretty good memory turns out very helpful for the police and other institutions investigating the case. It is as if the whole area had been plastered with video cameras and paparazzi. User-generated content now becomes highly relevant material for the case. And there is plenty. „love parade 2010“ returns 7460 video results on youtube.com
Hopefully this will contribute to find out who is to be hold responsible for the panic.

As for the extreme speed at which Social Media travels, it raises the question if analyzing Social Media is not a mandatory element for major events. Just as major corporations and consumer brands should always keep track of what is being said about them. Maybe then, previous warning messages posted by people familiar with the Duisburg area or those who have participated in previous loveparades would have been heard and taken into consideration. As smart as the sum of minds may be, in a state of panic humans often behave irrational and counterproductive. Looking into animal kingdom may be of help to better organize masses. During an event the possibilities to control a group are limited. It is best to provide in advance options to escalate the event. And one should always take into account the worst case. As said before, masses are irrational…