Inside the Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Google CPG Blog Guest Post on 4 Questions for Social Media Marketing Success

Let’s Ask Four Questions, via the Weighty Matters Blog

A quick note: I have a guest post on Google’s official CPG blog today, a new one for me. I’ve been focused on this vertical quite a bit more lately so if you are doing some interesting work helping consumer packaged goods brands engage with consumers through social marketing, I welcome chatting more.

Here’s an excerpt:

When CPG marketers are assessing various social marketing opportunities, answering four questions can help determine whether or not the opportunity makes sense for the brand:

1) Does the opportunity meet your brand’s objectives?

2) Does the opportunity leverage your brand’s existing arsenal of assets?

3) Does the opportunity abide by the social media rules of the road?

4) Does it provide significant value exchange?

These questions, as well as other tips and best practices, are detailed in 360i’s recently-released Social Marketing Playbook, a freely available 56-page guide on how to develop, execute and measure a successful social marketing strategy.

The rest of the post looks at examples relating to all four questions.

As far as where the examples came from, I often hear some from multiple sources, but two came from conferences I’ve been to recently, one came from a personal contact with a vendor, and one came from reading industry trades. It does help having multiple arenas to draw from, and I always welcome personal connections to hear more.

Thanks to Tyson Foods, Red Bull, Oscar Mayer, and Vitamin Water, along with Facebook, House Party, and MySpace (it’s safe to say Twitter didn’t have anything to do with the Tyson execution while the other vendors played more active roles).

Killed Ideas Contest – and Get a Blurb Book for a Comment

Update: The deadline has been extended to April 7, 11:59pm PST (it was previously March 31 and the text below has been updated). And there are still some Blurb codes left.

I’m a little late in posting this one thanks to my travels, but I did want to share some info on this contest:

A lot of my favorite ideas are ones that never materialized into anything. There’s one client where I’ve given them a lot of homeruns (okay, and a few bunts, and pop outs, and fly outs, and flat out strikeouts) and they just haven’t done anything with them. It’s a part of the job.

Blurb, a pretty impressive company for making printed books from digital content (blogs, photos, etc) is now running a Killed Ideas contest. Your best ideas will be included in a book.

The bad news: The deadline is April 7, 11:59pm PST.

The good news: You can still enter. And the curator? Only the ever-awesome Steve Hall of Adrants.

The better news: Share a comment here and get your own Blurb book – in the form of a coupon code, valued at $29.95. I have five coupons available, and I’m not even taking one. Just post ONE relevant comment about a killed idea you’ve had and include some way for me to email you (or comment and then email me directly at marketersstudio @ gmail . com).

For full disclosure, this isn’t a sponsored shill or anything. I get nothing out of this, not even a free book. I’ve actually tried to use Blurb for awhile to print a book based on my blog and couldn’t get it to work because you can’t select date ranges and I have too many blog posts. But it is a good service, as I’ve tried using it for other stuff, and I’m a big fan of doing this kind of printing; I have a few hard copies of travel journals from services like Blurb’s.

Again, first five relevant comments get a Blurb book. Not a bad deal. And if there are a lot of comments, I’ll see if Blurb can pony up another code and I’ll pick the best one for another winner – heck, even if Blurb doesn’t, if there are 10 or more relevant comments I’ll give a Blurb gift card to the best of the others.

Technorati Tags: books,blurb,contests,killed ideas

Indiana Jones Plays Ball

This was a surprise when I was checking out the Mets schedule this month: Indiana Jones is pictured on the calendar for opening day. Only after looking did I notice the ad to the left. It's definitely an attention-grabber. He's there for every team, though growing up in Princeton, NJ (according to Wikia), I fear he's a Phillies fan, and I'd have a hard time rooting for him.

Wait, he was born in 1899, two years before the Philadelphia Athletics were founded. The A's moved to Kansas City in '55, and then Oakland in '68. He's definitely an A's fan. I can live with that.

There's a Possum in Your Kitchen, or the Best and Worst Viral Calling Campaign Ever

The phone rings. It's a vaguely familiar voice saying there's a possum in your kitchen, or your car's about to be towed, or someone found your doll collection. At the end, there's some reference to pizza. That's it.

The call's courtesy of a DiGiorno pizza MySpace page that presents The Ditcher, and it's one of the best and worst campaigns I've seen. As a consumer, I love it. As an ad agency exec, I'm less convinced.

The idea is that you can set up a time to get a call or text message with an excuse. But it's really fun when you schedule it to ring others.

Here's what's fresh:

• It's easy to use - you just enter a name, a phone number, select the excuse, and pick the time. It takes under a minute.
• The excuses range from the plausible (the possum in the kitchen bit is great for anyone living a bit outside of a city, though many are far more likely than that, such as a kid having trouble in school to a washing machine haywire) to the less likely (a celebrity wants to party with you). The variety of options make it easy to think of lots of people to use it with.
• The recipient doesn't know who's sending it, so you can remain anonymous if you choose.
• There are several calls to action to print a coupon.
• Mrs. Purple Kisses says it's the best idea ever in the comments. And who dares argue with Mrs. Purple Kisses?

Here's what's stale:

• You can only schedule calls on the hour. If you're trying to get someone in a certain time and place, it might not work.
• There's no clear privacy policy, so conceivably DiGiorno could be doing whatever it wants with the phone numbers. I'm still using it freely, so hopefully DiGiorno won't abuse it. Oddly, there are lots of privacy seals and assurances when you go to print the coupon.
• There's no mobile couponing. Given the phone tie-in and the young audience on MySpace, that's a missed opportunity.
• The anonymity is a pro and a con. You can't spoof who the sender is, and the call appears to come from a random number.
• The biggest downside for DiGiorno is that no one who I've pranked is clear that this is coming from DiGiorno or what this has to do with them, and they can't come back in turn to the site. So it promotes a lot of engagement from the people who see the MySpace page, but none from the viral nature of it unless the sender later tells them where to make their own calls.

H&R Block Social Media Profiled in WSJ

Last month, I offered a profile of a campaign I've worked on for H&R Block ("Do Tax Prep and Social Media Go Together?"). Given that respondents appreciated the sharing, I'll post a follow-up courtesy of the campaign's coverage in the Wall Street Journal. (I try not to be too insular, but it's great to be able to share some information on a campaign when I can.)

Here's the coverage from WSJ, pasted in full as I never can tell if free links will be free for long:

MORE ON H&R BLOCK

 

• H&R Block's community site

• Facebook page

• MySpace page

• YouTube page

One concern for these [social media] sites is that some advertisers are creating campaigns on the sites without actually paying the sites to create the content. Tax-preparation giant H&R Block is running a social-media campaign on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, but the campaign was created by 360i, a small digital-marketing firm, and marketing firm MRM Interactive. The campaign involves games for the sites and even a profile and videos about a tax-obsessed character named Truman Greene. H&R Block simply posted the content to YouTube and Facebook just as anyone else would. One saving grace for the sites: H&R Block is buying standard banner ads on the sites to promote the new content.

"The question is, are advertisers just going to use their services for free?" says Paula Drum, vice president of marketing for H&R Block. She says the sites have to find ways to make their standard ads more valuable by using technology to better target users according to their interests.

For H&R Block, the social media plan was actually done in conjunction with its media plan; there was actually quite a bit of communication among agencies.

Still, the question Drum asked gets to the heart of a major challenge for how marketers approach social media. There are two parts to it:

1) Sometimes marketers perceive social media as something that should be free and so they're reluctant to invest in doing it right.

2) Sometimes social media channels really are free or close to it (like a Twitter account, for example), and marketers would rather run a media buy where they know what they're getting from it than take the time to experiment with new and emerging media.

There are no concrete answers. It differs for every marketer, campaign, and social media channel.

What's reassuring though from coverage like this WSJ piece is that the media and marketers are asking the right questions.

Do Tax Prep and Social Media Go Together?

The post starts with a question for two reasons:

1) There's a disclaimer: my agency, 360i, has been working on the emerging media strategy for the campaign described below in conjunction with other agencies and of course everyone at H&R Block.

2) I'm genuinely curious for your feedback. Rip it, praise it, comment on it, post it on your blog, email me directly - any reaction's helpful here.

The story:

H&R Block wanted to create a broad presence online to showcase their digital tax preparation offerings, and given their overarching campaign across all media hinges on the "You Got People" tagline, they were especially interested in tapping into social media.

The placements include:

* A profile page on MySpace, supported by a media buy there. The profile features the character Truman Greene, and it's clear he's a corporate shill, but he has some fun with it and creates his own 'fan videos', along with blog posts, a game, and other content. As of now he has over 2,100 friends.

* A YouTube page based around Truman Greene

* A Facebook page with a contest (5 fans get to file for free with TaxCut Online Premium), a Countdown to Tax Time app, a Tax Fact or Myth quiz, a poll, a game called The Deductor where you fly around collecting deductions and avoiding IRS agents, a Financial Match Quiz where you compare your finance style with a friend's, a video from the Common Craft Show on using their new web-based tax software Tango, and then photos, wall posts, and a discussion board. There are about 850 fans. H&R Block's also running an ad campaign which included a Facebook gift.

* Columns on eHarmony's advice site

* A new site Digits where people can discuss tax-related issues

* A presence on Twitter

Below's the Common Craft video. What's your take?

I'm a Talking Stain!

This Tide promotion took a few tries to get right and it's still far from perfect, but I've finally completed my audition for the part of the talking stain:

Though it wasn't a perfectly seamless experience, it was a clever execution and a lot of fun, so kudos on Tide and Oddcast for pulling it together.

Viral Personalization with Dexter

I love these personalized viral campaigns. I'm also how long we're going to keep seeing these until they jump the shark (a euphemism which has itself jumped the shark).

The latest: Dexter on Showtime. My sister keeps telling me this is the best show I'm not watching. I started watching Mindfreak because of A&E's viral. Maybe this will help motivate me too.

One caveat: it's much, much funnier if you happen to share the name with a serial killer.