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

Some food brands have done a decent job at engaging and marketing to consumers on social networks, but few have it down to a measurable, effective science. Here are two tools that can take your social network marketing to the next level.

First, you have to seek out and find those who are already enjoying your brand or would be likely to purchase it. As well as those who already have an affinity and are sharing with others the wonderful attributes of your product.

One of the tools you can utilize to gather this intelligence is a software called All Access™. It’s the next-generation of social media monitoring and analysis. All Access finds, aggregates, and interprets conversations taking place in ALL social media outlets, by category and brand.

All Access gives you the ability to:

• Search and analyze web-based conversations around unlimited topics:
  • Product, service, and brand names or categories
  • Pre and post marketing campaign and product launch initiatives
  • Customer service and investor relation discussions
• All Access has the ability to take a specific topic or category of interest and find EVERY credible two-way conversation on the web.

Now that you know who is consuming your product and who would be likely to, you have to target them with marketing communications. Working hand-in-hand with All Access is a program called AdSlider™.

AdSlider™ has the ability to:

• INSERT associated content – static or animated banner ads, coupons, videos, blog entries, posts, and sweepstakes entries – into relevant conversations about your brand or category.
• CONTENT can be part of the actual conversation or in a promotional format.
• DELIVER content based on consumer sentiment and specific conversations about your brand, category, or competitors.
• ANALYZE the content, format, number of views, actions performed, etc., allowing you to track success in real time.

Today’s consumers have adopted and embraced these new mediums where they have a voice–where they have influence within an affinity group of peers. This type of marketing approach will allow you to measure your share of voice, know what consumers are saying, join the conversations, effectively target consumers and potential consumer, and much more.

Social media is an incredible avenue available for you to build your food brand–as long as you use a strategic approach with measurable results.

The theme behind Finding the Silver Lining was to first determine “your new consumer.” Who is this new consumer and how do you determine who this person is now, as opposed to yesterday? As we are slowly coming out of the recession, consumers are redefining their needs and wants. Some products that were once “needs” are actually being pushed to “wants” in the eyes of consumers (i.e. IPhone vs. Blackberry). Since consumers are redefining their shopping purchases, it is our number one job as an agency to make sure our client’s products are staying in the need category. Unfortunately the good old days of solely creating awareness to create loyal customers is long gone and frugality will be sticking around.

According to Valassis “the new consumer” is limiting, deal-seeking, and trading down. This person is budget conscious and “all about the savings”, which requires us to speak differently to them in all aspects. The media outlets and the creative we use to communicate our message must approach this particular consumer differently. They are buying only needs, cutting back on luxury, postponing purchases, and making fewer purchases. We want our products to make that need list because 61% of consumers are in the “value seeking” category.

So…where is the Silver Lining? Answer: Disruptive Behavior. Purchasing behavior is a three step cycle: original habitual conditions, disruptive behavior (i.e. economy), then new conditions. We are in the “new conditions” now as we are coming out of the recession so we need to learn how to advertise to the “new consumer” that is living in them.

By Lindsay Reasner, Media Director

We’ve all heard it at one time or another from our mother, “If your friend jumped off a bridge would you?” Of course not. That is unless your friend happens to be in the 6.2% of online adults who generates 80% of the influence impressions on social networking sites, or among the 13.8% of online adults who generate influence posts via a blog or a blog comment. Add all these impressions together and they reach the remarkable total of 500 billion impressions made yearly regarding products and services by influential online users.* Then, yes, you may just find yourself jumping off a bridge. Or trying a new product that you just can’t live without.

Now, let’s couple these impressions with the fact that women, who control 73% of household spending, make up 55%** of active users on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. These figures reflect two key points for food marketers: one, your most influential consumers are online, they are blogging, they are Facebooking, they are tweeting. They are waiting to be engaged. Two, your influential consumers are actually easier to find and begin a dialogue with in order to gain your share of the 275 billion impressions women make yearly. You just have to reach out.

However, just as you shouldn’t jump off a bridge, you best watch your tone when engaging with these women. Simply put, it isn’t nice to fool Mother Nature and if you try and fool the Real Mom with false promises and a false, disingenuous tone, you’ll be the fool. Dubbed the Real Mom, by marketers, these women range in age from 24-45 and act as the emotional and operational core of her family’s life. These women plan the majority of meals, they do the grocery shopping, and they prepare the meals. All on top of working, very often, a full-time job and having the overwhelming feeling that personal time must be sacrificed for a clean and organized home.

Thus, when the real mom goes to unwind and relax in the evening, they do so, very often, online while chatting with friends or visiting social networking sites and blogs. And, because she is the core of her family’s values, very often she is connecting with friends regarding products that make an impact on her: what foods make her life easier at meal time; what healthy, all natural snack does she feel good about giving her kids; what yummy treat is she craving for a pick-me-up; what are her diet secrets. She is a real person, providing her real opinion, and she expects, in return, from her friends and her brands, Real Engagement. A community.

In recognition that her life is a series of trade offs, the Real Mom is willing to seek a sense of community online. Furthermore, she is seeking out brands that offer a community where she can be both engaged and entertained, as well as have a voice, and she knows her friends and other moms are looking for those brands who get what it means to be a Real Mom. As a food marketer you need to ask yourself: are you targeting the Real Mom? To meet the real mom on her terms, you have to first listen and then act. Respond to her comments, appreciate her ideas, and offer her support – these are actions that speak directly to her needs. These are the actions that will make a real impression - She and her friends will make the other 274 billion.

*Forrester Research, Inc., World Wide Research Center, 2010
** The Rise of the Real Mom, Ad Age White Paper

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?

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

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?

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

“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

By Kevin Schluth

Did you know that most people tell 3 people about a product they like, but tell 11 people about a product they hate? Why is it that bad news is almost four times more likely to be spread than good news?

Like me, you probably thought it would be the opposite, that people would naturally want to spread ‘good’ news rather than ‘bad.’ Turns out if people hate a product, they appear to take it personally, like they were duped or suckered-in by ‘false advertising’, and they don’t want their friends and family to suffer the same fate. They also want to stick it to the brand that is responsible for ‘tricking’ them into dropping some coin on their product. Fool me once…

Any brand worth its salt will always want to know what their customers think of their product, and email is the preferred form of communication. You’d be amazed what people will tell you if you just ask. The trick is, how do you ask these questions without being annoying, and what questions do you ask in order to get the info you need?

Bottom line, email is a powerful tool…when used wisely.

Here are some tips from the article Customer Research on how to go about getting the information you need via email communications.

First and foremost, Respect the Customer. People don’t go on the Web to fill out questionnaires. You have to do at least three things to get quality feedback:

• Make it worthwhile. What’s in it for them? Offer them a free subscription to your on-line newsletter, product coupons, or a tip of the day.

• Keep the questionnaires short. How many questions are too many? No one knows. No one has done any research on this topic. You can usually get what you really need to know in seven questions (name, e-mail, phone, address, where they purchased, how they heard about your product, and how they use your product).

• Protect their privacy. Always assure customers that you won’t sell their names or give away their private information.

By knowing what your customers think about your product, it will be easier for you to maintain great customer relations and promote new products, as well as, stay in front of any potential problems that may come up.

Here is a link to the complete article:

http://efuse.com/Grow/marketing-visitors-talk.html