Another first for the blog to see us into the bank holiday weekend – this time we welcome Julian Schollmeyer, our Client Services Manager based out of Berlin, with the salutary story of a German social campaign… ^MF
It started out as just another social media crowdsourcing campaign along the lines of Walkers’ ‘Do Us A Flavour‘ and Mountain Dew’s DEWmocracy.
“Pril”, the well-known brand of washing-up liquid from German FMCG company Henkel, was due for a makeover. Henkel launched a campaign on the net where users could design their own ‘individual’ bottle using a tool set with mostly predefined graphics (i.e. colourful flowers, birds etc) to stamp on the virtual label. The two designs with the most votes would then hit the shelves in October. So far, so predictable.
However, having users stamp pre-defined flowers on a label and then hailing it as a crowdsourcing campaign struck copywriter Peter Breuer as, frankly, lame. So he chose the pen from the tool menu as his weapon of choice and produced a more, well, unique design – then asked his followers on Twitter to vote for it:
His idea? Chicken flavoured Pril!
His design quickly went up to number one and blogs as well as news magazines were quick to cover the story, resulting in even more votes.
Looking at this, I’d say Henkel had it coming, but maybe they had a premonition that something like this might happen, as they built in insurance: the fact that an internal jury would choose two designs from the top ten. Surely there’d be two designs in there containing only those lovely flowers and birds!? Well, there are, but Peter’s Chicken flavoured Pril inspired a lot of people to upload their weirdest ideas and see if they can steal one of the top positions; at the time of writing this is the leader.
As the story unfolded, blogs and online magazines discussed the bigger issue here: what does a crowdsourcing campaign need to look like if it wants to be taken seriously, and how could the Pril campaign have been better designed?
In the meantime, Peter Breuer stated on Facebook that he in no way intended to protest against Henkel or its brand Pril and that he never imagined that his doodle of a chicken would cause such broad repercussions. However, he was pleased to see that bloggers and media alike posed the question whether a campaign like this can actually be classified as being an effective marketing tool. He adds that he would like to see social media being used more for benevolent and socially beneficial purposes instead.
I’m confident that the next German crowdsourcing campaigns will look very different, and that this will mainly be thanks to the learnings from the Pril campaign.
A big welcome on the blog to our brand new Strategy Exec Josh Bourne. Today he continues our theme of the month, retail, with a look at how the big F is dominating social commerce… ^MF
Let’s go back to the Harvard dorm room days of Mark Zuckerberg. Besides spending hours and hours typing code and designing the look for what was then known as The Facebook, Zuckerberg needed to think hard about why people like you and me would want to log onto his site on a repeated basis.
Fast forward to today, and online publication Social Commerce Today attempts to explain that motivation by looking at seven core Facebook uses and activities. These unsurprisingly include connecting with people; sharing; updating statuses; and investigating people (or “social surveillance”).
But what’s most interesting is that buying from brands and connecting with brands is not included.
Did Mark Zuckerberg realise in his dorm room that The Facebook could be so much more than just a place to connect? That it could, indeed, be a place to buy?
Retailers are realising that making products available to buy for followers of their Facebook pages is a great way to increase awareness of their brand while also earning additional profit; Social Commerce Today also posted an article last month of their top 50 Facebook stores and the top 20 store solutions used to power them.
Take the Facebook page of the movie Batman: The Dark Knight:
Facebook gives users the option of purchasing credits which can be used to buy a variety of products, and The Dark Knight’s social media team takes advantage of this by conveniently allowing followers of the movie to use these credits to watch the movie.
Of course, different stores are used in different ways as different brands offer different kinds of products for purchase…
Here is the facebook store of musician Jason Mraz:
With more than 7.6 million likes, Jason Mraz (and his social media team) used the Bravado store solution to integrate merchandise into his Facebook profile which fans can view and then buy after two clicks.
When Facebook followers engage in social commerce and use Facebook as a means to purchase products from brands they love, success doesn’t go unnoticed.
A New York Times article states that clothing retailer American Eagle has been able to quantify Facebook, or at least show that referred facebook page followers to their website produces measurable results:
“American Eagle saw users referred by Facebook spend 57 percent more than average on the site.”
So the Facebook store examples above provide a glimpse into how companies can use social commerce differently: they can allow users to browse products and then head to the parent website to make a purchase; or customers can buy a product by using facebook credits instead of pounds, euros or any other currency. There are some companies that allow users to purchase products without ever leaving the social networking site, but tit may take a while for others to get comfortable with using their online payment processing systems.
From a word of mouth perspective, companies allowing its customers to purchase their products on a journey that starts with Facebook has big advanatges: it gets your fan base talking about products, recommending them, and connecting with other people in the process, which is where the real ‘ripple effect’ kicks in.
So what do you think? As a business owner or knowing someone with a business, would you recommend using Facebook as a social commerce tool?
This month’s blog theme at 1000heads is retail, and no examination of how social is transforming shopping would be complete without a peek at Walmart.
The US-based retail giant, which Forbes ranked last year as the world’s largest public corporation by revenue, was early to get in on the social act but with infamously varied success – including a networking community called Hub they shut down after 10 weeks and fake blogs created with their agency Edelman.
However, by 2009 Forrester social guru Josh Bernoff seemed to think that they were finally heading in the right direction with a range of effective initiatives including elevenmoms.com, the promotion of on-site recommendations and reviews using Bazzarvoice, and, perhaps most importantly, a shift in management attitudes resulting in “a company open and receptive to embracing and empowering its customers and employees online, regardless of what they end up saying.”
And yesterday things got really interesting with the announcement that Walmart have spent $300 million acquiring social media startup Kosmix, creator of the ‘Social Genome’ platform “which filters and organises social network content and creates profiles of users, products and places”.
The aim is to produce an innovation project called@WalmartLabs, as described by Kosmix co-founder Anand Rajarman:
“We are at an inflection point in the development of ecommerce. The first generation of ecommerce was about bringing the store to the web. The next generation will be about building integrated experiences that leverage the store, the web, and mobile, with social identity being the glue that binds the experience. Walmart’s enormous global reach and incredible scale of operations — from the United States and Europe to growing markets like China and India — is unprecedented. @WalmartLabs, which combines Walmart’s scale with Kosmix’s social genome platform, is in a unique position to invent and build this future.”
We’ve discussed the development of social commerce manytimesbefore, but it is clear that when companies of this size start investing volumes of money that large on combining social, mobile and retail, the resulting alchemy is going to define the way we shop in a pretty short timescale.
They got stuck into social early and they’ve made lots of mistakes; but they’ve weathered the knocks, learnt from them, and keep pushing forwards with bold initiatives when most retailers still think social commerce means selling your daughter to a duke.
This Friday we bring you the debut blog appearance from our much-loved Account Manager Mr Riccardo Webb… ^MF
Why would a company create an awesome ad that posed a question – a question you’d be tempted to answer – and then forget to give peoplethe platform on which to answer?
Washington Lottery has just released a really cool TVC that depicts what a bunch of guys would do if they won the lottery: Segway jousting. I love this. I’d probably do the same thing. And others loved it too; the ad received coverage on some great sites including Engadget, Crunch Gear and Geekologie.
Washington Lottery stated that:
“The campaign, strapline Play Together, Win Together, aims to position the Lottery as a social experience and encourages friends to play it together to make their dreams come true.”
Great…inspiring, even…so why not celebrate that idea by providing the tools for people to do just that?
The reason I like the ad is not just because it’s pretty damn funny and well shot, but because it exploits the deeply human truth that every one of us has at some point considered what we’d do with a fist-full of cash and our imagination! Social media is the ideal platform where a company can connect in that human way and deliver a little more value to their consumers than a pamphlet under the door which I’ll probably end up using as poo-under-the-shoe scraper.
What Washington Lottery did well
They created an ad with social traction that’s fun to watch, easy to share and raises a question that anyone could answer.
What they didn’t do well
They failed to use their social presences to support what they did; instead they blocked user generated content and interaction with the very people who think they rock for making this ad.
Simple solutions to fixing the problem
Make it easy for people to share and create. Use YouTube features to your advantage (see Molly’s post on Desperados from earlier this week for an example of how to exploit YouTube to the max). Think of descriptions or annotations that could direct people to your Facebook page or simply say “Submit your story to [insert email address here]”.
Go to them, don’t wait for them to come to you. Using Twitter, you could simply search for people talking about the lottery, what they’d do with a winning ticket, people talking about a holiday with their friends, heck, you could even search for people talking about Segway jousting! The idea is to find relevant conversations that are happening online, and to engage with these people like a human being…be fun!
Open the platform, start the conversation. First off, get the Facebook page set up and working properly. Allow people to upload cool photos of what they’d love to do with their winning lottery tickets. You could even start a discussion that allowed people to start the conversation themselves or create a poll to kick it off.
Capitalise on your success. If people are talking about your ad, milk it! Comment on the articles that praise your work. Be the first person in the world to create the Segway jousting society and set up the world’s first jousting event sponsored by Washington Lottery.
The point is this: with social, explore all the ways you can turn a good idea into an big, effective movement. As long as you are consistent, sincere and tell stories that kick ass, you won’t go far wrong. People can smell “corporate” a mile away, which deters some brands from engaging; but don’t abandon them just as you’ve got their attention.
OK, it’s not rocket science. It’s clichéd, gimmicky, no doubt rather expensive and it’ll be interesting to see the business value it generates.
But it’s fun. It ties into Desperados’ more traditional cinema advertising. And it also shows how quickly social content, and people’s expectations of it, is evolving: everything has to be interactive, everything has to be personalised, everything has to be instantly shareable.
Whether you’re producing some bells-and-whistles social content, or you’re thinking about your shelf space in a retail store, those are three excellent principles to keep in mind.
Should the leader of your business also be your social media star?
High profile ‘social CMOs‘, who use social platforms to express their opinions and connect with their customers and the general public, have received a lot of attention over the past few years – as shown by this recent infographic from Mark Fidelman and Henry Min.
But how important do you think it is that a leader within your business – be they the CMO, CEO (such as Zappos’ Tony Hsieh), COO, MD, or other high-ranking individual – has a social presence when building a social business?
Doubtless, there are clear advantages.
It shows a commitment to social that starts from the very top. If your busy boss thinks it’s worth investing time to listen and connect, you’ll be much more likely to value social too.
It gives the brand a clear personality – and by definition indicates certain traits such as openness, sociability and accountability. If this is the person ultimately running the show, knowing how they think and what they love can generate an emotional connection with consumers that translates into big brand loyalty.
If your leader is being exposed to the conversation out there, they are more likely to be led by what people really want, rather than their own preconceptions or pipe dreams, and to filter that through the business.
However, there are also a number of dangers.
The voice of the CMO or CEO can overwhelm the others in the company and give the impression of a very autocratic model. Empowering people across the business at all levels to engage online results in a much more eclectic and groundswell feel.
Not all leaders have what you might call, um, engaging characters – no, not even heads of marketing. If people simply don’t like their personality, it can reflect badly on the brand.
Other less senior team members may feel intimidated – at a recent conferenceGavin McGlyne, who got employees at TGI Fridays blogging, admitted that they would be horrified if the boss joined them on the blog.
It takes huge commitment; especially if they are not from the marketing team, the leader must collaborate with PR, customer services and HR to answer the inevitable questions thrown their way – either by quickly sourcing the right answers or redirecting people to appropriate profiles.
The truth is that outside the US, and the obvious brands, social CMOs, CEOs and other senior spokespeople are more rare; many businesses still rely on the savvy intern to run their social show. Social engagement is either not valued enough to warrant the big cheese’s precious time, or they are simply not confident enough to take on such a prominent and apparently high-risk role. For more insights into what CMOs in particular think of social, this 2011 BazaarVoice survey is an interesting read.
But what do you think?
Does the effectivness of the social CMO/CEO concept always depend on the size, style and staff of the company, or should all reluctant leaders pull up their social socks regardless, and get to grips with what becoming an essential part of business leadership?
For one thing, there are three outlets very near our office, and their salmon and tuna sushi with extra ginger and wasabi makes my lunchtime just that bit lovelier.
For another, they have an inherently social style. Sure, their social media presence is poor. They run some Foursquare deals but they’re not on Facebook or Twitter, which is surprising considering their health-conscious, urban, new-media sort of patrons. But social media isn’t everything. What they do have is a charismatic founder; a strong, authentic and playful identity that permeates everything they do; talkative, helpful staff; and a great, constantly evolving product.
Even better, this is what I found on my tray when I treated myself to a noodle soup yesterday.
Swiftly reactive, personal, heartfelt and conversational. Now that’s what I call super-social CSR.
There are itsu evangelists out there crying out for engagement; harness the brand’s existing instincts to some kick-ass tools and on/offline tactics, and these sushi sellers have stellar social potential.
Last week 1000heads was invited to attend the B2B edition of ‘Social Media Huddle’ hosted by Dell, Google and For Immediate Release [FIR].
The networking event – the third in its series – takes the unconference route in its execution, whereby guests can create their own sessions for others to attend on the day. I’ve been to a few events like this in the past and it can make for a really interesting day as you never quite know what to expect until you arrive.
The #dellb2b event (to give it its proper twitter name) however, had a very specific aim of ‘bringing together senior communications and marketing professionals to exchange and share experiences on B2B social media for their mutual benefit’. Nice.
The big draw in this instance was guest speaker and internationally recognised thought-leader in the social space, Brian Solis.
I’ve known Brian for a few years now but this is the first time I’ve heard him speak in the UK. A master of the soundbite, his talk was insightful and to the point. I’ll post the slides from the day in a second, but first – here’s a snapshot from my notes and tweets for the day [including key quotes from the man himself] -
Brian Solis James Whatley
“46% of B2B respondents said social media was perceived as irrelevant to their company”
“By not saying anything in social, you’re saying everything”
“B2B marketing spend will grow from $11m in 2009 to $54m in 2011”
“93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a social media presence”
So basically, what BS is saying is that, when it comes to B2B – believe it or not – you should apply the same rules of listening and engagement that you do to consumers – ie: You listen. You learn. You engage. You create.
“What is the ROI?”
“There is no ROI of social media programs.”
“However, there is definitely ROI for social media programs that are setup to do something”
Again. Not new. But a truism.
Some choice tweets?
All in all, plenty of food for thought there, raising a number of issues that we’ll come back to another day.
If you’d like to listen to the presentation yourself, Nevile Hobson has kindly posted the audio version and it may well make an interesting accompaniment to Brian’s slides, embedded below.
When talking with FMCG brands, I hear the same sentiment over and over.
Word of mouth is all very well for sexy or luxury brands – but why would anyone bother talking about products that are so everyday?
Our instinct is to assume that word of mouth has the biggest influence over the biggest purchases in our lives. We love to talk about our new car, because it defines us in such a visible way. We ask loads of opinions before splashing out on that expensive new tablet, because the stakes are so high. But do we really bother seeking out loo cleaner recommendations? Do we really evangelise about the awesomeness of our orange juice? Aren’t those transactions more private, daily, habitual – and rarely aired in public?
As is often the case with word of mouth, our instincts underestimate how inherently social a species we are.
Take beverages. The juice you swill in the morning, the soft drink you reach for with lunch, the tipple you sip after work – we are rarely aware of talking about our choices in these instances, let alone asking for advice. But research has shown that these low cost products fuel huge amounts of conversation on and offline. For example:
Consumers, on average, mention 7.2 beverage (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) brands to friends per week. These are two of the most common consumption categories to be recommended and to have recommendations requested
80% of consumers read other consumers’ reviews and feedback about food and beverage brands online
Beyond volume, another interesting discovery is that advertising triggers less word of mouth for beverages than other categories, making peer opinion more powerful:
Traditional advertising triggers 47% of general brand WOM – this falls to 38% for beverage brands
And most impactful of all, it seems that beverages drive the sort of WOM that results in recommendation and purchase more than any category:
40% of brand recommendations contains appeal to buy or try product – this rises to 53% for beverages
49% of consumers say a brand recommendation drives them to buy – this rises to 62% for beverages
In the words of Brad Fay, co-founder of WOM research group Keller Fay:
“Word of mouth, in beverages, sees a very strong linkage to purchase, even more so than we see in other categories. That’s why we think it would be worth the industry thinking about how word of mouth can stimulate the brand. These are people in effect saying they’re going to run out and buy the product.”
Beverages are just one example, but it’s evident that word of mouth can be more, not less, influential for fast-moving, low-cost goods – and there are some great case studies of how FMCG companies are harnessing its potential.
We like rewarding our engaged communities.
We also like being first…
As some of you may know, Facebook made some pretty interesting changes to the structure of their fan pages recently. These included iframe support for tabs; the ability to “like” and comment on other pages as your own page; and notifications when people comment on your page.
However, something that really caught our collective eyes was the new page layout which boasted images along the top of the page, just like user profiles:
From a community management perspective, it was good to see that Facebook had foreseen potential spammer problems with this release. Rather than sourcing the images along the top from fan uploads, they instead displayed the most recent five images uploaded by the brand, in random order.
Of particular note here are the words ‘random order’.
The pictures change order each time the page is loaded, thus making it impossible to create a montage image using the pics (like some awesome user profiles out there today). Most brands either defaulted to their logos or threw up some boring product images.
Here at 1000heads, we have been lucky enough to work with Nokia on their global fan page nearly a year now and, with around 2.9m fans at our disposal, ‘boring product images’ didn’t quite cut it.
Instead we decided to use the random organisation of the images to our advantage. How? Well there’s a clue in the image above…
First we created a Nokia.ly URL tracking link to a hosted image of an awesome device, the Nokia N8
Second, we took that URL and split it up into five images to post on the Facebook page
Once the images were posted (and here’s a key point) we didn’t update about them straight away – instead, we just let them appear along the top of the page in a random order
This meant anyone landing on the page would see this random jumble of letters and wonder what they were for (a conversation trigger)
Some socially-savvy proportion of those people would figure it was a URL
The URL was just the beginning. Once cracked – this is what it links to:
Yes, that is a Nokia N8 with a screen full of binary code. For those willing to take the time to transcribe and translate it (no mean feat as you can’t copy and paste) there is the chance to win a brand new N8.
This is a simple activity we put together that kicked off on March 11th, the day after the new fan page structure was rolled out universally across all pages (an optional upgrade has been available since mid Feb) – we believe we have helped Nokia become the first brand in the world to use this new image functionality in such an interesting and engaging way.
We’re ready to stand corrected if you can find another example, of course.
For those that are interested in the ‘Why?’ – the aim of this activity was not to drive huge numbers but to instead reward optimism and curiosity. As a fan of any brand you have to be very engaged to actually visit a page like this (90% of interaction happens in newsfeeds) but to go the extra mile of figuring out the URL and then translating all that code, you have to be someone who is both curious about what Nokia is planning and confident that this journey will take you somewhere worth going.
Has it been a success? Well the competition is still open and the entries are coming in slowly but surely, not bad at all bearing in mind it has an extreme barrier to entry and has deliberately not been promoted too heavily.
For us this kind of experimentation is important. It’s easy to chase numbers on Facebook – focusing on acquiring fans or getting 1000s of likes on an update (and judging success accordingly) – and, while this is important, it is worth remembering that if you chase simplicity and always set low barriers to entry you will never really engage or interest people at a high level.
On Facebook (just like everywhere else in social) a balance is needed between broad engagement with low barriers to entry, and deep engagements focusing on quality, not quantity.
This is what our client, Saara Bergstrom, community manager at Nokia Global says about it:
“Facebook is a powerful way for us at Nokia to strengthen our relationship with our customers. We take pride in not only coming up with fun things to do with the community, like the ‘Hidden Nokia N8′picture puzzle, but also responding to each and every question coming through to our page and channelling the feedback we get further within Nokia. We work hand in hand together with our brilliant word of mouth agency 1000heads on the creative ideas and engagement, including the Hidden Nokia N8 puzzle.”
Thanks Saara!
It is a pleasure working with a client that allows us to experiment like this – someone who understands what it means to be first out the gate as well as the importance of broad and deep engagements.
By hiding these easter eggs across different social presences, we’re encouraging fans to look a bit harder at what their favourite brands are up to. From now on, they’ll be looking out for the next hidden code or URL, thus spending even more time absorbing and interacting with other key messages too.
This isn’t the first time we have hidden an easter egg like this on one of our client’s pages and it won’t be the last – so keep an eye out!
As for what the binary code in the image actually says…
Why not translate it and see?
