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Future Implications
Social media has dramatically changed the relationship between consumers and brands. It has given a voice to consumers when it comes to the marketing of a brand. Gone are the days of one way marketing campaigns where brands choose the message that is relayed to their consumers. Consumers that love a product can easily spread that love around to massive groups of people via social media. They can also spread hate if they are dissatisfied with a product or service they receive.
Positive word of mouth can be a huge benefit to a brand because word of mouth marketing is known as one of the most effective ways of marketing. Word of mouth marketing can have a much broader and more significant effect than that of traditional marketing as it is the most influential type of recommendation. Another bonus…IT’S FREE! This is a self-sustaining strategy with a long-term value. People who share positivity of a brand, share with other potential customers who share with even more potential customers. This approach provides a low cost high value strategy that builds long term customer relationships.
Did you know that…
- 83% of consumers say they either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family, colleagues, and friends about products and services – making these recommendations the highest ranked source for trustworthiness.
- 90% of people trust suggestions from family and friends.
- 70% of people trust consumer reviews online.
- 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision.
- 72% of people get news from friends and family, making word-of-mouth the most popular channel for sharing.
- 68% of people trust online opinions from other consumers, which places online opinions as the third most trusted source of product information.
- 88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.
- 32% of consumers trust online reviews only if there are multiple customer reviews.
- 30% of people give online reviews equal trust when they believe them to be authentic.
- 26% of people trust online reviews depending on the type of business.
Word of mouth marketing is great, great, great….until it isn’t. Brands that have existing social media strategies but that didn’t include crisis management in their strategy might see a negative impact on their brand’s reputation if they aren’t prepared to deal with a social media crisis. “All marketing is good marketing is not always a true statement. Negative word of mouth can be debilitating for a company. Consumers are more likely to believe a bad review than they are to believe information that is being presented directly from the company and bad reviews can spread like wildfire across social media.
I think the implication that word of mouth marketing will have on brands in the future is a result of changes in technology. In the past, before the invention of social media, word of mouth marketing, whether it be positive or negative, didn’t have the ability to reach millions of people like it does now thanks to social media. Sure, people have always talked about their experiences with products, brands and customer service, but with the arrival of social media, the impact of word of mouth marketing changes the way businesses are affected.
References
Grinnell, B. (2014). 4 benefits of word-of-mouth marketing. Retrieved from http://www.twolegit.com/4-benefits-word-mouth-marketing/
Kapadia, A. (2018). 40+ Word of mouth marketing statistics that you should know. Retrieved from https://www.getambassador.com/blog/word-of-mouth-marketing-statistics
Viral Marketing Initiatives: Old Spice Man
What makes a marketing initiative go viral? I’m definitely not a marketing expert (yet), but from my experience, content that goes viral seems to always stir emotion. Whether it makes you feel happy, sad, laugh, or cry… it makes you feel something and that is often why things are shared on social media. Emotion is defined as “a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body”. Much research has been done on the connectivity of emotions and viral posts and the research has proven that content going viral isn’t really a matter of luck, but more a matter of the content being able to create a powerful emotional experience for the viewer. Marketers who understand how use their content to stir emotions and create an emotional connection with their audience can greatly increase their chances of going viral.
Emotion isn’t the only aspect a marketing initiative needs to go viral… the content should also be engaging, informative, short and sweet, and relevant. A marketing initiative that has all of these characteristics has the potential to go viral and mean increased sales, increased brand awareness and increased consumer engagement.
A great example of a marketing initiative that went viral is the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign which starred Isaiah Mustafa. This campaign was informative about the body wash product, the message that was relayed was short, sweet and to the point and they were able to craft a clear concise message that described all they wanted to accomplish with the video, they took an older established brand that has been around for a long time and made it current and relevant, it defintiely stirred emotions through humor and entertainment and last but not least the campaign engaged with consumers when Isaiah created response videos on YouTube to consumer questions that were posted on Twitter.
Part of what makes their marketing so successful is that although Old Spice is typically a product for men, they know that often times women are the ones purchasing the product for their husbands, boyfriends, sons, etc. This campaign is heavily targeted to get the attention of women showing them that their product is able to give their man the qualities they are looking for.
Was it good for business? You bet! This one campaign launched a brand that has been around since 1937 into social media stardom. The Old Spice videos are on youTube with over 15 million views and more than 20,000 comments and produced an increase in product sales. This particular campaign helped revamp the brand to give it personality and more appeal.
While it does have multiple components that are listed above, I still feel the humor of the videos and the laughter they caused are the main reasons that the campaign exploded into popularity.
Reference
AgentDigital (2011). The man your man could smell like – viral video. Retrieved from https://www.agent.media/digital/blog/entry/the-man-your-man-could-smell-like-viral-video/
Differentiation: Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts
The Great Coffee Debate
The great debate from coffee lovers all over the world…Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? Based on their social media strategies and the volume of social engagement Starbucks is a definite winner in the social media game. In a study completed by ShareIQ, Starbucks tallied nearly 17 times the engagement of Dunkin Donuts, with 5 times more engagement on Facebook and more than 12 times the Instagram followers. Starbucks is a vastly larger chain than Dunkin Donuts and has a larger following on their social media channels. They have over 36 million fans on Facebook and 11 million on Twitter while Dunkin Donuts has 13 million Facebook fans and 1.06 million fans on Twitter.
Simplistic and Elegant vs. Cheery and Fun
There is a definite difference in the look and feel of the two brands. Starbucks has created a social media persona that exudes a feel of being simplistic, upscale, cool and somewhat subdued, focusing on a more mature audience while Dunkin Donuts appeals to a different audience with their social feed being bright and colorful with a pink and orange aesthetic, appealing to a much younger audience. Nearly half (48%) of the fans posting about Dunkin Donuts are under 18 years of age. As seen below, both brands have a totally different feel to them.
Show Us Your Coffee
Both brands engage with their audiences on social media and repost user-generated content, but Starbucks appears to do it a little better. Starbucks works with influencers that repost their experience with the brand with more of a stylish content that has an artsy appearance while Dunkin Donuts posts seem to be less about content that can live on across multiple social media platforms.
Where Are You From?
The coffee war battle lines have definitely been drawn because the battle of the brands is also tied to where each brand was founded. Dunkin Donuts was founded on the east coast in Boston, while Starbucks was founded on the west coast in Seattle. While each brand has used their social media campaigns to build and define their brands across America, Dunkin Donuts dominates the east coast and Starbucks owns the market on the west coast, Midwest and most metropolitan areas.
Starbucks is well known all across the globe and Dunkin Donuts is more of a regional brand. For this reason Dunkin Donuts strategy has been to use social media to market themselves as a brand that serves delicious and economical coffee with more of a fast food style atmosphere that differentiates themselves from Starbucks that has focused on creating a more laid back experience for consumers. Starbucks are more known for their coffee house atmosphere that encourages its consumers to stay awhile, slow down and enjoy their coffee.
I’ve Already Seen That… BORING!!!
Both Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have a presence on all of the main social media channels and are very active with their consumers. One of the main things that sets Starbucks apart in the social media world is that the brand changes its content across platforms, tailoring the content to the platform. They’ve done a great job of customizing their posts for each social media network, giving customers a reason to follow the Starbucks brand on multiple different platforms. Dunkin Donuts shares the same content across all platforms not giving the brand a tailored feel.
Set Some Goals.
The strategic goals of both brands social media accounts are to create brand and product awareness and encourage followers to choose their product over their competitors. The two brands have certainly created a different feel to their branding with Starbucks having a more simplistic and sophisticated feel and Dunkin Donuts having a more child-like appeal. Ultimately, it’s up to the consumer to decide which brand is more appealing to them.
What Team Are You On?
What appeals to you? Simple, classic and elegant Starbucks or bright, cheery and fun Dunkin Donuts?
Reference
Cohen, D. (2018). What Dunkin Donuts can learn from Starbucks’ social strategy. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/digital/what-dunkin-donuts-can-learn-from-starbucks-social-strategy/
Goodbye Orkut, Hello….Hello?
Have you ever heard of Orkut? Nope…me neither. Orkut was once a popular and widely-used social media network in Brazil and India that launched in 2004 around the same time as Facebook. It was owned and operated by Google and named after its founder, Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer and Google product manager. The social media platform was shut down in 2014 and at the time of its shutdown it had become a community of over 300 million users.
During that ten-year period, Orkut offered multiple interface changes and a variety of different features to allow people to build connections with one another. At the start of the social media site, one feature allowed members to become a fan of any friends in the list and evaluate on a scale of 1 to 3 if they thought their friend was:
Orkut was different than their competitor, Facebook, because they allowed anyone to visit everyone’s profile unless you were on a person’s “Ignore List” whereas Facebook you can only view profile details of people in your own network. Orkut was a platform that was similar to its competitors Facebook, Myspace, and Ning and during the years of 2005-2008 it was the only thriving social networking site in India.
Like all social media sites, Orkut experienced its fair share of controversy’s during its lifetime like:
- The black hole of lost messages
- Fake profiles
- Hate groups
- Security issues including hacking and spam
- Legal issues
Eventually it faced its final demise and was completely shut down on September 30, 2014 giving users a timeline to export their profiles, scraps, testimonials and community posts.
If you go to the website now, you’ll find a letter from the founder stating that their new site Hello will be replacing Orkut and “will be the first social media site based on loves, not likes”. He is planning to launch Hello in India, where a Beta version has already launched with around 50,000 installs of the app. The new Hello app features the ability to create and join communities with people who share the same passions. Hello features will include:
- Over 100 interest-based personas that reflect your passions
- An easy way to fine, follow and friend people who share your interests
- A personality test that helps you connect with users you’re more likely to get along with
- The ability to build reputation within your personas and attain status as a persona leader
- Explore any persona, uncover new passions and expand your horizons
In a recent interview, Büyükkökten said “If you look at social media today, it has isolated people instead of bringing them closer. It has become more about broadcasting than sharing. We need a fresh start. Hello is built around interest-based communities where users with same interests can connect, leading to true connections”.
References
Hello, it’s Orkut again! (2018). Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/Companies/UuVDfpDkyEykbZHJCMT9cN/Hello-its-Orkut-again.html
Orkut.com (2019). Retrieved from http://www.orkut.com/index.html
Pathak, P. (2018). Orkut is making a comeback in India under a new name called Hello. Retrieved from https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/orkut-is-making-a-comeback-in-india-under-a-new-name-called-hello-1147495-2018-01-17
We know what you want!
In China, one social media platform is dominating the market by knowing what their audience wants and providing all those tools in one easy to use platform. Weixin, is a social networking tool in China that combines the ability to send messages, read and share news stories, post photos, videos and web links, find a taxi, book airline flights and hotels, connect with friends, play games, buy movie tickets, one touch voice recording, sell products, and make quick and easy payment transactions to friends or to pay bills.
One app. That’s it. In China, that’s all you have to have on your phone to do all of those things!
We can do all of those same things on social media in the United States, but the difference is we have to download and open multiple apps to do it. We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Lyft, Ebay, Etsy, PayPal, ApplePay… the list goes on and on and on….in China they download one app and have access to all of those functions.
Just three years after being introduced in China, Weixin had nearly 300 million users – a faster adoption rate than Facebook or Twitter – giving the app a dominant position in what is now the world’s biggest smartphone market. This one app is now how almost everyone in China communicates. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been blocked in China by the government and that is when the idea of Weixin was born by Chinese Internet powerhouse, Tencent. The company knew that if it didn’t do something big, it would face extinction in the Chinese market. The threat of extinction inspired this company to reinvent themselves and become the next big thing in China, and they did it! Product managers and developers searched for new ideas and researched what the Chinese consumers wanted and the elegant and easy-to-use Weixin app was born.
One thing I think that makes this app so special for Chinese users is that they included a feature for red envelopes. Red Envelopes are a special tradition in China where people give monetary gifts in red envelopes at special occasions like weddings and holidays. The app took an old Chinese custom and brought it into the modern world. The Weixin app allows users to give red envelopes by sending predetermined amounts of money to either a group or an individual, but the money can be sent in randomized amounts. So let’s say you have a group chat set up with five friends, and you want to share $10 in red envelopes to your group of friends. You can set the envelopes to disburse equally so each friend receives $2, or you could set it so that the first friend to tap and open their red envelope gets $5 and the other friends get a random cut based on the order that they open them. The envelopes expire in a day, so this adds an element of excitement and keeps people coming back to the app as quickly as possible.
Red envelopes was a genius idea as it got people comfortable with sending money online, making people dependent on using other features of the app once they realized how easy it was to pay bills, pay for meals, purchase movie tickets… The company introduced red envelopes during Chinese New Year in 2014 and the number of people using Wexin payments more than tripled from 20 million to over 100 million in a month. During the first Chinese New Year holiday, which is a 6 day holiday period, users sent each other 20 million red envelopes. Just one year later, that number reached 3.2 billion, again showing the importance of knowing what is important to your audience!
Is it really activism, or is it slacktivism?
Most people know that October is breast cancer awareness month and the color pink, specifically a pink ribbon, is widely associated with breast cancer awareness. The pink ribbon has become a national symbol. “Pink is the quintessential female color,” says Margaret Welch, director of the Color Association of the United States. The pink ribbon shows support, but does it do more than that? I often wonder, is the pink ribbon becoming more about the appearance that one cares rather than a way to find a cure?
Being creative on social media is one of the best ways to get people’s attention and spark a discussion and response. In recent years, someone came up with the idea of the secret meme that was sent by private message only to women asking them to post a status update that included only the information about where they liked to put their purse. Responses were things like, “I like it on the bed” or “I like it on the kitchen table”. At first many people were confused by these updates, especially men since they weren’t clued in to what the meaning of the status was, but it started to spread and before long thousands of females were posting it. The fun status updates were developed to raise awareness for breast cancer. But did it really work? How many people who changed their status for that actually were active in trying to help find a cure or support someone with the disease? Or did it just get people talking?
The social media era is thought to be helping cases of activism succeed, but does changing your social media status or posting a picture of a pink ribbon to your social media account actually do anything to help find a cure for the horrible disease, or is this a case of slacktivism? Slacktivism is a “feel good” measure that allows people to feel like they did something to support the cause, but really they just boosted their ego and aren’t truly engaged or devoted to supporting ways to find a cure.
Sure, the campaign was funny and maybe it got people to talk about the disease when someone asked what their status update meant, but the viral campaign could have been more successful and beneficial to the actual survivors of the disease by:
- Providing links to organizations to donate money to help find a cure such as Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Susan G. Komen, National Breast Cancer Foundation, or the American Cancer Society
- Including useful facts or information about the disease like the ones provided by the Maurer Foundation.
- Providing links to information about how to support friends or family dealing with the disease like this one… 22 ways to help a friend with breast cancer.
- Containing breast cancer statistics and warning signs with information of how to prevent or survive breast cancer. For example, one in eight women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime.
- Providing links to sites that give useful ideas of how to organize a fundraiser that supports breast cancer awareness like this one… Double the Donation.
- Encouraging volunteers for breast cancer awareness events.
- Or at least posting funny memes encouraging women to get their yearly breast cancer screenings like this one….
But it didn’t do any of that. Instead, it made people feel like they did something to support the cause when actually they didn’t really do anything. They didn’t make a big change in the world by posting the status update. They just passively posted to their social media and never actually engaged in an event that could truly make a difference in the life of a cancer patient.
While I did not participate in this viral social media campaign, I did do something to support people around me with cancer. I’m a firm believer in using my talents for good, so I offered my photography skills to people who were battling cancer as a way to create memories, either for them or their loved ones. I’m not a doctor, or scientist, and I’ll never find the cure for this horrible disease, so this was the least I could do to provide my support.
RIP sweet Mindy, you are missed dearly.
Great to “see” you!
I have bad vision, like really, horrible, bad vision. If I wasn’t wearing my glasses or contacts and you were sitting right in front of me, I wouldn’t be able to tell who you were. My vision has been this way since I was in fourth grade. I remember being teased in elementary school and getting called “four eyes”. Growing up in rural Missouri, I’ve always had limited choices in eyeglasses to choose from. The town I grew up in didn’t have an eye doctor and we had to drive about 45 minutes to get to the nearest one. I remember sitting in the room with about twenty pairs of eyeglasses on the wall trying to choose the least embarrassing pair.
Fast forward about thirty years to the experience my kids now have. We still live in rural Missouri, but now there is an eyeglass company called Warby Parker that has chosen a non-traditional way for people to get their eyeglasses. Thanks to Warby Parker, gone are the days of limited choices of the least embarrassing glasses. Warby Parker recreated the eyeglass buying experience and made the customer experience a fun one, not one to be dreaded.
The key to their success can be attributed to the strength of their word of mouth marketing. They created a buzz right off the bat during their launch by doing these 3 things:
- Social BOGO – Warby Parker successfully built a social mission into their company’s DNA. They created a buy one, get one campaign. For every pair of glasses purchased through their company, they donate a pair to a non-profit company called VisionSpring. I mean, who doesn’t love a company that gives back. Most millennials love to buy from companies that have distinct core values. That alone makes me want to try them.
- Read all about it – Warby Parker had a genius plan and had press lined up with their company launch. They arranged for GQ to run a story timed perfectly with their startup launch which got people talking. Being associated with GQ gave them instant credibility. Within 48 hours of their GQ article and their website launch they had a waitlist of 20,000 customers!
- Easy Peasy – Warby Parker simplified the customer experience. The GQ story focused on their home try-on program which instantly set them apart from other eyeglass companies and exploded their target audience reach with positive word of mouth. Try on five pairs of glasses from the comfort of your own home, keep the pair you like, return the rest at no charge. Why not? How much simpler could it get? Oh yeah, and once you’ve done that, take a great selfie in your new specs and post it on all of your social media sites and tell your friends all about it! It’s genius I tell ya…
You can see from their social media pages that they have created a successful social media following with over 730,000 followers on Facebook, over 85,000 followers on Twitter and over 482,000 followers on Instagram. The company has done a fantastic job at engaging with their customers and can be used as a model company for anyone wanting to build a successful brand. The simplified model would go something like this…
- Build your company with a vision that people will love.
- Make each customer experience special.
- Be thankful for those who support your brand.
The success will follow.
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision” Helen Keller
The Journey Begins
Thanks for joining me!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
The Wandering Yogi 33 