I guess this campaign is more than a year old now — but it is fresh and new to me. John St. is an agency based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is hard to call any agency an “ad” agency as most — like John St. — do all kinds of promotional efforts. The clever video below demonstrates a wide range of its services in a cute way. It actually fits as a B2B and B2C example at the same time — and it also demonstrates integrated marketing communications.
Marketing is most interesting when you can see many of the concepts you learn tied together. This article, “Philly Cream Cheese’s Spreading Appeal” (Bloomberg Businessweek, December 12, 2011) shows how some of the different elements you have been learning about in marketing can be tied together – with successful results.
Sales of Philadephia brand cream cheese were pretty much flat (mature or decline stage of the product life cycle) for most of the last decade. Then Kraft researchers (market research) noticed that heavy users of the product were using cream cheese (consumer behavior) as an ingredient in their cooking — not simply as a spread for bagels. Starting in Europe back in 2008, Kraft’s brand managers tapped into social media and the Internet to gather and share recipes using Philadephia brand cream cheese, they promoted it on cooking shows and with contests (Promotion). In the U.K. the share of customers using cream cheese as an ingredient (effective repositioning) has almost doubled to 37% — and sales are up 20% in Europe (results).
This is a great case study of a successful brand revitalization. Check out the article for more details on the strategy.
This provocative idea is put forth by Aaron Shapiro in his new book Users Not Customers. The video below is an ABC News video with Shapiro, who is also a consultant. I have not read the book and feel we must be cautious expecting that all businesses can use Google and Facebook as models. Online firms like this have a unique cost structure that plays some role here. Still, I think Shapiro has some interesting ideas that would benefit many businesses.
What do you think? Should all firms eliminate advertising? If not all firms, what types of businesses should heed this advice?
Two recent reports suggest that online reviews and other forms of social media are having a growing influence on consumer buying behavior. This post at Marketing Charts “Customer Reviews Affect 6 in 10 Online Shoppers” looks at the effects of a variety of different social media on buying. A blog post at Marketing Pilgrim, “80 Percent of Shoppers Change Purchase Decision Based on Negative Reviews [Research]” (August 31, 2011) highlights research conducted by Cone, a Boston-based marketing agency. The research demonstrates growth – by comparing 2010 and 2011 – in the use of social media in making purchase decisions.
What about you? Do you use social media to make purchase decisions? What type do you use? Do you trust social media as a source of purchase information?
Most students of marketing enjoy seeing examples of creative, clever and successful marketing campaigns. Well here you go — the background, the case study and at the end, the numbers to show it worked. Did any of you see this campaign while it unfolded — I didn’t but then I am not the target market and many of you are.
Marketers have always been excited about the idea of turning consumers into powerful Promotion tools for their brands — but fostering word-of-mouth isn’t easy. Now Facebook is hoping they have a strategy that makes it easy for consumers and marketers to work together to promote brands and products we “like” (as in pressing the “Like” button on Facebook).
No one is quite sure where this is going, but many consumers are already clicking the Facebook “Like” button on their favorite brands — or maybe mentioning in a post a recent purchase of the brand. Now it seems that Facebook will mention this ads targeting that customer’s friends. So for example, if I “Like” a brand like Ikea on my Facebook page, an ad could appear on my friends pages that mentions “Joe (and perhaps more of their friends) Likes Ikea.” In theory, knowing that Joe likes Ikea may make the store more appealing to my friends. This short article at Fast Company suggest that Facebook’s sponsored stories work – see “Facebook Sponsored Stories Performing 2 Times Better Than Standard Ads” (July 15, 2011).
What do you think? Will you be more favorable to a brand if you know that 10 of your friends like it too? Does it both you that your “Likes” might appear on your friends page as ads?
Nike is a fascinating and powerful brand. Growing an already large brand can be difficult as often many of the largest opportunities have already been exploited. Nike has set its sights on the highly fragmented (many competitors) action sports market.
This article describes “Nike Tries to Enter the Niche Sports It Has Missed” (New York Times, June 1, 2011) describes Nike’s latest efforts to sell to participants and fans of youth action sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, trick-bicycling and others – see. Nike is approaching this market using some familiar tactics — using top athletes in each sport to endorse Nike products, supported with dynamite advertising that appeals to its target market. The video below was released on Facebook (where Nike has specialty pages for various sports) even before it launched on network TV (during the NBA finals). Nike created the Nike 6.0 sub-brand (see its Facebook page here) just for the action sports market.
Many of you are members of these target markets. Have you seen this campaign? What do you think? Will Nike make inroads here — or will these customers reject a big corporate brand and remain loyal to the niche brands like Quiksilver and Volcom which are current favorites? Do you have ideas for Nike?
Here at L4Ps one of our goals is to spark your creativity by showing you great marketing examples. The Swedish Post (Sweden’s postal service) wanted to increase awareness and educate its customers on one of its products — pre-stamped parcels that allowed them to send almost anything overnight with the green boxes. The clever campaign generated online buzz and awareness across Sweden. What do you think of this idea? What were keys to its success?
As social media began to attract more consumer eyeballs, marketing managers were confused about how to deal with it. Now some best practices are emerging. Marketing managers have a better idea about which marketing objectives different types of social media might help achieve. This article, “Are You Talking to Me?” (Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011, non-subscribers click here) suggests five best practices used by companies with some success in social media. Many of the lessons come from “listening” closely to customers via social media. The early heavy users of social media are listening, learning, and adapting.
What marketing objectives do you see social media working best to achieve?
