Alleblog

What do Gap, Tropicana, and Pepsi all have in common? That’s right; they have all received branding “face lifts” over the past two years. Well, that was their goal at least. As we have been in the long process of redesigning and launching the new packaging for Hatfield Quality Meats, I immediately thought of these larger companies and the backlash they have been receiving over their re-branding.

Gap announced just 4 days after confirming its new logo was indeed legit that it would be going back to their classic blue box logo. Thanks to social media vehicles like Facebook, Gap was able to receive the response and critiques of the new logo from their more than 720,000 fans. Once they deemed the new logo a fail, they were able to pull the plug hopefully before any damage was done. So what part of the logo was not well received? Why were consumers not feeling it? According to Advertising Age via an article written in Huffington Post, “they chose the new design because it was more contemporary and current. It honored the heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward.” While Gap might have felt this way, their fans dubbed the logo as bland and boring.

In 2009 when Tropicana dumped their “straw in the orange” brand-icon for a simpler packaging design that focused more on words, the company’s line sales plunged almost 20% post re-branding. Not surprising. People know and recognize Tropicana as “the straw in the orange” orange juice brand. It would be like taking Trix the Rabbit off of the Trix cereal box. As a consumer, I didn’t associate the new packaging to Tropicana partly because (looking back now) the brand name was so small and therefore I did not buy. That was the day I tried out the Simply Orange brand and have been pretty loyal to them ever since.

Luckily, the web allows consumers to be vicious criticizers, and in return allows big brands the ability to receive and react with adequate timing. Just because a design is new and innovative doesn’t make it good and doesn’t mean it will be perceived well by a loyal consumer base.

Published by: Lindsay Reasner, Media Director

By Kevin Schluth

The title of this entry is a quote attributed to David Ogilvy. When guys my age (mid 30’s) think of Old Spice, we usually think of the aftershave that our dad kept in his medicine cabinet. My dad was an Old Spice guy. So when I was a kid and I wanted to pretend I was a grown up, I would go to my parent’s bathroom and splash on some Old Spice. Shortly afterward I would do the Macauly Culkin scream a la Home Alone.

Nowadays, it seems the only thing ‘old’ about Old Spice is everyone’s perception of the brand. With their recent ‘Your Man’ campaign they have completely transformed many peoples perception of the brand. They certainly changed mine.

Showing that they were not satisfied with the positive responses they got from TV and YouTube ads, Old Spice took it up 10 notches with their recent ‘Your Man Responses’ endeavor that included producing 186 virtually real time video responses to online users questions.

Who’d a thought that Old Spice would be getting compared to, and competing with, the hippest, youngest and most popular male fragrance/body wash brand out there – AXE?

I have yet to buy Old Spice or AXE, which is ultimately what marketing and advertising is supposed to achieve, but that’s more because I’m married then it is a reflection on the brands. Married men like me usually wear cologne our wives like, or buy for us, or none at all. But these brands are mostly going after single men, still looking for that special someone. If I were single, I’m sure I’d be after one of these 2 brands.

I’d say AXE is more likely to attract young single men, while Old Spice will attract older single men, or those that are divorced. Which unfortunately is also a pretty big demo. So I foresee both brands being successful with their marketing efforts. But how much is all this attention affecting sales?

According to an article in AdAge: the thing Old Spice, Gillette and Nivea have in common isn’t Mr. Mustafa (the ‘Your Man’ actor), but rather multiple national drops of high-value coupons. They included buy-one, get-one-free offers from both P&G brands and up to $4 off a single bottle of Nivea Men from Beiersdorf, reflecting unprecedented levels of promotional intensity in the category.

While the sales figures may be tough to attribute to one thing over the other, one thing that can’t be denied is the amount of awareness and buzz this campaign has generated. Mr. Mustafa, the actor used in the campaign has broken through all previous viral-video records and achieved pop-icon status. As of July 18, Old Spice, with 94 million views, had become the No. 1 all-time most-viewed sponsored channel on YouTube. Old Spice had eight of the top 11 most-popular videos on YouTube on July 16. In the six days following the start of Mr. Mustafa’s personalized videos, he reached more than 100 million followers.

The effort sent Old Spice to more than 80,000 Twitter followers (finally ahead of Mr. Mustafa’s own follower base of 30,000) and its Facebook fan base to 630,000. Facebook fan interaction jumped 800% since the launch of the personalized videos.

The effort also bumped traffic to OldSpice.com to 300%, inspired a fan to create a website (oldspicevoicemails.com) where people can download voicemail messages that sound like Mr. Mustafa, and many more spin-offs and parodies.

These kinds of results are what all brands that want to be social networking and viral players dream about. It may not directly tie into sales, but they’ve already won when it comes to bringing their ‘old’ brand back into the ‘new’. So while ‘old’ fashioned coupons may still rule the day as far as sales, you can’t put a price on awesome creative execution.

So while the venerable Mr. Ogilvy’s quote does hold true, in this competitive age of ‘social networking’ and ‘infotainment’, I think even he’d be impressed with the brand awareness this campaign has generated and the creativity that made it happen.

Link to AdAge Article: http://adage.com/article?article_id=145096

By Nancy Landis

Listening and being engaged can make a difference on so many levels.

The other day I found myself exhausted purely from listening. As we grow increasingly busy here at the agency, I’m required to listen on a deeper level. A level that involves not only listening but actually engaging.

It’s made me think. How are brands interacting with consumers? Are they listening? Are they engaging?

In this day and age when most people are glued to their blackberry and only moments from a computer, where are you? Social media is a tool accessible to everyone. In fact, it’s a great way to engage and show we are listening.

Here are just a few ways being engaged in social media can make a difference between you and your consumer:

1. Prospects not only search for guidance and comparisons through Google, they are becoming more and more social in how they make their decisions. If brands do not recognize this and get involved in social media, they will miss opportunities.

2. Connect with prospective customers. Go where they are. Facebook (51%) and Twitter (67%) users are more likely to purchase a brand who has a presence within the network.

3. Be active and engage consumers in their social networks. It’s been said that “It’s EXPECTED that a company have some digital face… they need a strong electronic presence or you doubt their relevance in today’s marketplace.”

It used to be said , “It’s who you know.” It could now be said that where you listen and how you engage, determines who you get the opportunity to know. Do you care enough to work at your connections?

By Kevin Schluth, Senior Account Executive

I recently read about an advertising agency that entered a consumer-generated contest for Go Daddy.com just to see what would happen and what could be learned. Since there were no specific rules that excluded agencies from entering the contest, the agency was able to shoot for the top prizes…just like everybody else.

“Being on the user side of the contest turned out to be an enlightening experience — particularly when we were notified that we had advanced to the finals, at which point we were no longer an agency doing field research, but competitors vying for the gold.”

Here’s the three most important takeaways from the contest:

1. The prizes have to be big enough to break through the clutter.
It’s very easy to ask people to go out and film a bunch of videos for your brand, but if you don’t provide a real incentive, you’re going to have trouble getting the submissions. A low-value prize will lower the production bar because no one will want to spend what they can’t earn back. GoDaddy’s high-value prizes, which included a $100,000 first prize and a broadcast during the Indy 500, attracted dozens of broadcast-quality responses.

2. Deputize your entrants.
When you have a great opportunity, word will spread organically, at first through the video contest community, but then outward to other networks and beyond. A great idea GoDaddy had was the “community contest” aspect of this campaign. By having a second tier of winners based on online public voting, they created an army of independent publicists for what were, in effect, commercials for their brand. To have awarded their primary cash prizes to the community vote would have been dangerous, as online votes are subject to abuse in the forms of click spamming and outright hacking. Instead, they awarded lower-value prizes to the community winners and reserved the cash prizes for closed judging within GoDaddy. In the end, they get great word-of-mouth while avoiding any controversy or accusations of foul play.

3. Keep it open.
GoDaddy became a household name through its controversial Super Bowl ads. They helped to set the tone for the creativity displayed in the video submissions. Many simply followed the form of those original infamous spots, but others took cues from the underlying attitude to create original spots full of humor that were still recognizable as the GoDaddy brand. GoDaddy was able to learn a lot about its brand’s perception through the hundreds of videos it received from across the country.

With the rise of such contests, and the high-quality video capabilities that are more accessible then ever to Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public the line between amateur and professional quality is getting blurrier. Contests like this and other crowdsourcing efforts, if well-orchestrated and providing the proper incentives, can make the cream rise to the top. And that means all agencies must push themselves harder than ever to make sure their milk has not gone sour.

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=144332

by Jamie Allebach

Asking the right questions to get the right answers, will eventually lead you to right results. The problem is you have to know the RIGHT questions to ask.

Social media and networking can seem to be a very complicated space to marketers, if you’re not fully engaged. Stopping to ask the right questions can help you determine what social mediums will be the best match for your brands—and deliver the highest possible ROI.

Here’s a good starting point:

Is your company ahead of the social media curve, behind, or in the middle?

Is your brand currently being talked about online?

If so, what are people saying?

How are your customers using social networks?

Does your company have an open dialogue with its customers?

Are there online evangelists for your brand who already exist that you’re not utilizing to increase market share?

Are your employees using social networks in their personal lives and can this help or hinder your brand?

Are your competitors successfully using social media to market their brands?

Would the brand marketers in your organization find value in this information?

Are you tracking and measuring your social media tactics?

Growing up in the South we are really only particular about one kind of food and that is our “Tex-Mex.”  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, let me provide you with a brief lesson.  Tex-Mex, or as I like to call it “the greatest food to ever exist” is a blend of Mexican cuisine made with ingredients found in the States.  It has the flavors of Mexican food without being too authentic.  It is delicious!

When I moved to the North East I learned very quickly that Philadelphians are crazy about two things, their cheesesteaks and pizza.  There is literally a homegrown pizza shop on every corner and people claim that each one tastes different.  I grew up on chains like Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and my all time favorite Mr. Gatti’s.  According to folks from the North East, I’ve been eating “fast food pizza” my whole life. 

I ran in to my neighbor last weekend while she was in the middle of the Saturday night dinner debacle. We’ve all been there, nothing sounds good and you don’t feel like cooking.  The decision finally came to pizza and that was the easy part.  Deciding the actual pizza shop is a whole other debacle on its own.  This particular family happens to be from New York so they are the pickiest of the picky pizza eaters I’ve ever met.  I suggested a few places that got shot down in less than a second.  Then to my surprise, Mrs. New York says “how about Domino’s?  They say they are better now.”

According to an article published in Advertising Age on 5/10/2010, Domino’s has claimed victory with their new marketing strategy.  It was a very risky move admitting to people that your product was terrible but now you’ve fixed it.  We’ve all seen the new ads that target people who haven’t tried their pizza and once they do they are amazed with the new product.  Domino’s saw a 14.3% hike in same-store sales in first quarter from utilizing this strange approach.  According to Advertising Age, Domino’s increased its media spending during the first two months of 2010, 9% to $38 million, from $35 million in the first two months of 2009.  Now the question is, was the hike due to higher ad spend that put the brand top of mind or is it the actual product?  Only time will tell.  But at least for now they are grabbing the attention of an audience that was unreachable in the beginning.  Getting a family to try their brand that has refused chain pizza their entire lives is a pretty big accomplishment.

Published by Lindsay Reasner – Media Director

by Nancy Landis

“Social networking has become a must for women this year, according to a new edition of the Social networking profile penetration climbed from 58% of Internet users in 2008 to 86% in 2009.” – eMarketer.

“Mom… where are you?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this over the years. No matter where I was in the house, I was about to be found. My children would get in front of me, presenting their concern until they were sure I had heard them. Companies today could learn a lot from my kids.

Over recent years my life has made some drastic changes, leaving me to take a fresh look at my social connections. So, in that same spirit, I decided it was time for me to open a Facebook account. It was a way of connecting socially, yet being able to control when and who I spent time with. I thought I was just making decisions about my social life, but soon realized that this was so much more than touching base with friends. I sometimes am invited to try a product, hear word-of-mouth experiences about a food product or a restaurant, play games, or become a fan of a product. I really like meeting and talking with others who enjoy similar benefits. My friends and I share information about what we like and dislike. Simply put: we influence each other. We are word-of-mouth marketing.

Now consider this: In November of 2009, the “Purchaser Influence Survey” by eMarketer.com, showed that US Mom Internet Users trust the consumer reviews 92.3% over the 7.7% that trust the manufacturer provided descriptions. Even more compelling, in a study done in October 2009, 72% of female internet users learned about a new product via Facebook while only 41% were introduced on Twitter. 50% actually purchased a product they heard of on Facebook, yet only 30% of Twitter users made a purchase.

Are you trying to get the attention of the women who make the decisions for their household? Maybe you should think about going where they are. They may not have time to go out with their friends for a few hours, but they can check in with them a few times during the day and seek out information between work and soccer practice, or after the kids go to bed. Will you be there? Will you give them reason to talk about your product? Or are you waiting for them to come to you?

My kids would advise you to go find them. “Mom… where are you?”

Follow this link to find them.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121401