Perhaps a little much for a Monday morning, but Sex on Tap is what we’ve had on our minds for the past few months while we’ve been working with YouthNet, the UK’s leading online charity for providing advice, information and support to young people aged 16 to 25.
Back in March, YouthNet asked us to help them raise awareness amongst their key demographic (see above) around firstly, an issue that affects a lot of young people: the often volatile and potentially sticky (ahem) relationship between sex & alcohol, and secondly (and concurrently), the services that YouthNet’s ‘online guide to life’, TheSite.org, can provide.
So, sex & alcohol, surelyeveryone knows about the possible dangers and risks of combining these two pleasures (and who’s denying they’re pleasures?). The number of responsible drinking and/or safe sex campaigns out there must equal at least a year’s worth of drunken fumbles at (or after) a student night out!
But, irrespective of all the work that goes into this area, it still remains an issue. With statistics showing that after drinking, 11% of young people engaged in unprotected sex in 2007 and 11% again claimed to regret that sexual encounter. On top of that, Boyd et al. reports that heavy drinking amongst students (aged 18-24) is associated with high risk sexual behaviour and sexual aggression.
Not a good place to start.
It was clear that we needed to tell the story differently, in a way that would really capture young peoples’ attention and make them think. We know that being disruptive makes people talk and what better way to engage young people than to shake things up?
As I mentioned, YouthNet is a wholly online charity providing emotional support through services and sites such as TheSite.org. We wanted to drive awareness of the charity and its services amongst young people, but we wanted to do it in the place that they most need to listen, and that place (believe it or not) is not in front of a computer screen but in the ‘real world’ - offline, where they make their decisions… in the bar.
Based upon this insight, the Sex on Tap campaign and the ‘Morning After Brewery’ was born…
The results? 6,000+ students experienced the Morning After Brewery across multiple university bars and were exposed to TheSite.org for the first time, 17,000 fully branded assets were given away as well as the odd thing being ‘misplaced’ from the bars (well they are students after all!).
And outside of the uni bars? The activity was talked about online by students, university unions, university press and local press including the Manchester Evening News, The Coventry Telegraph and BBC Radio Manchester (who even interviewed some students from Manchester about the campaign).
In all Sex on Tap reached over three quarters of a million people with, in the words of one student from Warwick “…a good message, a good good message!” that they couldn’t help but listen to.
We’ve been talking about running different themes here at the ‘heads of late and one that continually pops up over and over is that of Travel and Tourism; who’s engendering positive word of mouth and who isn’t.
Not one to focus on the negatives, I thought I’d kick this session off with a focus on my favourite social-airline; KLM.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (to it its full name) has been playing around in social for a few months now and their activities to date really are quite interesting. Rewind back to December last year and you’ll find this delightful ‘social (media) experiment’ around putting smiles back on the faces of KLM’s travellers.
I’ve talked about ‘Surprise and Delight‘ before and how brands (big and small) can reap success in this area; believe it or not, creating smiles and happiness is a fantastic way to build both customer loyalty and positive conversation.
The great thing about KLM is, they didn’t stop there. After testing the water with the above marketing campaign, they then added social to the care side of the business – with their ‘Extended Service on Social Media‘ initiative.
To quote:
“Want to get that seat by the window, rebook your ticket, or find out how to bring your surf board? Tell us on Facebook, or send us a ‘tweet’!
Ask your question on any day of the week, between 8:00 and 23:00 hours, and we will reply within the hour.
Requests such as rebooking your flight, we try to arrange for you within 24 hours. By using “instant messages” or private messages, your personal data remain protected.”
Good job guys.
Finally, to top it off, last week they launched this neat little viral video to demonstrate the new space available in their business class section.
Being charming, funny, informative and coming in at 1min 40s precisely, the video hits the sweet spot just right. So that’s Marketing, Care and now Comms; all covered off with smart use of social media.
And why? To create positive word of mouth, brand loyalty and of course, ultimately – an uplift in sales.
Car leasing is a boring business, right? Not when you are Ling Valentine it isn’t.
Ling runs a car leasing business in Gateshead which is spectacularly, gloriously eccentric, and we love it.
Her website is a deranged collision of hideous graphics, mind-bogglingly weird competitions and anarchic content but it is touched by genius.
Ling has brought colour, entertainment and no little madness to the world of car leasing. On Twitter she is quite unafraid to call customers ‘idiots’ or a ‘pain in the ass’ and they love her for it.
She also is fond of posing with military hardware and has her own armoured truck complete with nuclear missile, a familiar sight in the North East.
But behind the lunacy is a hard-nosed businesswoman who shifts up to 250 cars a month.
Say what you like about Ling, and many do, but she knows the value of daring to be different.
This video tells the story of a nice little advocacy project we ran over in the US for the launch of the Nokia E73 Mode.
It pretty much speaks for itself, although when you watch it you should spot the elements we believe to be essential to effective word of mouth: careful profiling, personalised engagement, long-term relationship building, putting the product at the heart of the campaign, and above all, a glorious experience that brings social media advocacy into the real world.
Also, it’s nice to remember the beaches of L.A. from our rain-bound London office on a Monday afternoon.
We like a good case study here at 1000heads and, having wrapped up some work with Sainsbury’s recently, we thought we’d take you one of our latest efforts.
1000heads is built on three core competences; understanding, ideas and relationships. Each one of those areas of expertise has a direct link to the different units within our business and, each one of those supports the other with their own unique work. Montoring to analysis, analysis to insights, insights to activation, etc etc…
Through understanding (we miss our food!) we formulate ideas (let Sainsbury’s give it back to you!) that ultimately build relationships between people and brands (positive word of mouth + recommendation = sales).
As I’ve said before, 1000heads don’t shout much about what we do. But as we move into our tenth year of executing word of mouth campaigns (blimey), it seems about time we start to get a bit better at sharing some of our successes, challenges and learnings with you.
So to kick things off we’ve pulled together a case study for one of the disruptive trials we run for Nokia – in this instance to help launch their E72 device. Hopefully the deck speaks for itself, but please do comment below, spread it around and get some debate going, or get in touch if you have questions or thoughts.
Those among you who are regular readers of our blog may well have seen the post Product trial, WOM style by our evangelist Miss Flatt. Well those ‘big, beautiful boxes’ have been at the centre of quite a bit for the past few weeks.
The N97minitrunk involved us cutting through a crowded market with a unique trial experience – challenging Nokia enthusiasts to live life without the feature laden N97mini.
Nokia’s objectives were to encourage positive WOM around the device, focusing on its features and capabilities, while positioning the brand at the forefront of creative consumer engagement.
We began by using WOMTrak (our online monitoring software) and our dedicated team of analysts to identify influential online Nokia fans that had used an N97mini. We asked if they’d like to be part of an exciting new Nokia experience, with the stipulation that they had to have a friend (their ‘trunk buddy’) who had no experience of the device.
Once these guys were on board we sent them the trunks. Enormous parcels landing on doorsteps created plenty of intrigue and after some larger-than-life unboxings our plan began to unfold.
Each trunk was styled to represent a N97mini and was full of items that represented features of the device – portable CD player, tape recorder, map measuring tool, travel compass, quill pen, telephone index, photo album, pinecone, giant snakes and ladders game, address book, calculator, alarm clock, envelopes, disposable camera…and an N97 mini nestled in amongst them.
There then followed a series of challenges designed to illustrate the versatility of the N97mini using the items in the trunk, such as a maps challenge (how did you navigate in the days before Ovi maps?), share your photo album (not so easy without being able to take a pic and upload it straight to Flickr, twitpic and Facebook…) and many more.
The participants all had day jobs, studies and other responsibilities so there were no deadlines set for each challenge. We just asked them to fulfil the tasks as they felt was most fitting and that come the 17th May we set about judging all that had been created. The winning team would receive two N97Mini’s, one for the Nokia enthusiast and one for their trunk buddy.
We really relished the chance to do something different to the majority of offerings within the mobile tech online space. At its heart the N97minitrunk challenge was playful and collaborative, and blasted through the boundaries of online and offline consumer engagement. And the best part – it celebrated a cross section of a community who are passionate about mobile tech but also highly inventive and creative, something reflected in their output throughout the campaign.
Yesterday, Hayley posted an account of her less-than-glorious experience with a House of Fraser personal shopper. Although she had some pretty bad service, it was a light-hearted, balanced post, encouraging the store to up their act. She even sent it in an email to their website so they could use the feedback
Today, she received a comment on her post which she traced back to the House of Fraser server.
As Hayley says, “For a company who, lets face it, probably would like all those 20 somethings coming and spending their disposable income in store, this is quite a cockup. Social media, such as blogs and Twitter, is quite an important thing in terms of advertising these days. Within 5 minutes of posting the above picture on Twitter, I’d had lots of replies from people saying how disgusted they were.”
But that’s not really the issue.
Lots of employees are still unfamiliar with social media etiquette. Many won’t have been invited to a conversation with management which outlines best practice and the need to remember that you’re a company rep when giving opinions about them online. Consumers don’t expect brands to be perfect.
No, the real problem comes in the subsequent silence. Despite Hayley’s generous call out that “perhaps theres a really good reason for this. House of Fraser, I can’t wait for your reply!” they have apparently failed to respond in any way.
Is it because they don’t care? Is it because they’re twisting themselves in knots trying to think of a strategic thing to do, rather than just reaching out and saying ‘Sorry, our bad. We’ll do our best. In the meantime, have this discount on us.’
Or, most likely, is this because they simply aren’t listening?
Nowadays, we expect it. Not listening is not an option any more.
Yesterday, Hayley posted an account of her less-than-glorious experience with a House of Fraser personal shopper. Although she had some pretty bad service, it was a light-hearted, balanced post, encouraging the store to up their act. She even sent it in an email to their website so they could use the feedback
Today, she received a comment on her post which she traced back to the House of Fraser server.
As Hayley says, “For a company who, lets face it, probably would like all those 20 somethings coming and spending their disposable income in store, this is quite a cockup. Social media, such as blogs and Twitter, is quite an important thing in terms of advertising these days. Within 5 minutes of posting the above picture on Twitter, I’d had lots of replies from people saying how disgusted they were.”
But that’s not really the issue.
Lots of employees are still unfamiliar with social media etiquette. Many won’t have been invited to a conversation with management which outlines best practice and the need to remember that you’re a company rep when giving opinions about them online. Consumers don’t expect brands to be perfect.
No, the real problem comes in the subsequent silence. Despite Hayley’s generous call out that “perhaps theres a really good reason for this. House of Fraser, I can’t wait for your reply!” they have apparently failed to respond in any way.
Is it because they don’t care? Is it because they’re twisting themselves in knots trying to think of a strategic thing to do, rather than just reaching out and saying ‘Sorry, our bad. We’ll do our best. In the meantime, have this discount on us.’
Or, most likely, is this because they simply aren’t listening?
Nowadays, we expect it. Not listening is not an option any more.
We’re always banging on about how word of mouth affects every area of a business: from TV advertising to customer service, packaging design to internal comms, retail stores to social media presences.
Brands should even be asking how they can make their billing conversational. Don’t believe us? Watch this lovely bit of work around drink driving from OgilvyBrazil, and you might realise you’re missing a trick.
Ready to disrupt, delight and open a dialogue with your customers at every touchpoint you have? Give us a call, send an email or a tweet, or just drop in.
Heads up to on-the-ball ‘Head Riccardo Webb for spotting the video.
