Ryan Rigoli from Yahoo! presented a case study around the Doritos CGM commercials that aired during the Super Bowl. The ads, Ryan pointed out, are funny, are CGM, and are relevant beyond the Super Bowl. The "Live the Flavor" ad, specifically, cost $12 to produce (the cost primarily consisted of bags of Doritos).
The decision to use Doritos CGM ads in the Super Bowl was something the brand orchestrated in order to engage the creativity of its consumers and to create something unique and interesting. Part of the reason they decided to use Yahoo! Videos as the medium to promote their videos -- instead of a microsite or a page within their own corporate site -- was because of Yahoo!'s superior audience size, thriving video community, and an easily-customized video hosting platform.
Frito-Lay was extremely focused on community engagement -- and made it a point to answer questions within the message boards where the viewers/submitters were asking them. All comments were moderated, approved, and heard.
According to Ryan, 72% of survey respondents couldn't remember a URL immediately after watching a TV spot, almost all of consumers are motivated to search after viewing offline media -- creating a solution where TV viewers were told what to search for ("Go to Yahoo! and search for 'Doritos.'") instead of the URL to remember was integral.
For Doritos, campaign's objectives were to engage the target (18-25- year-old men) with the Doritos brand, drive purchase frequency, build buzz around an innovative ad campaign, and create a kick-ass Super Bowl commercial. For Yahoo!, the objectives were to reinforce Yahoo! as a destination for video creators, generate unique, high quality videos, and establish Yahoo! as a leader in participatory marketing.
So, Ryan said, they launched and announced the campaign, opened it up for submissions, created and enforced a submission deadline, opened community voting, announced the top five finalists, opened voting for them, flew the five finalists to see who won LIVE, and announced the winner as it aired during the Super Bowl.
Having good content coming in was a key component of the success of this campaign, Ryan pointed out. Because of the, the initial outreach of the campaign was extremely important. The outreach strategy involved:
* Personalized communications -- Make one-on-one phone calls and emails
* Targeted communication -- Focus on the "right" people over "many," and knowing where to find them
* Arm the influencers and employees -- Let the influencers speak for you, people will listen, and share PDFs and text for localization and distribution
* Keep it real -- Use authentic language and avoid spin at all costs
Results:
* Winning Ad #4 USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter
* Highest rated ad on YouTube's Super Bowl Page
Some helpful hints:
* Keep it simple and original
* Ensure the reward is compelling to the target
* Don't get hung up on smaller advertising budgets
* Challenge yourself on "wordofmouthiness"
* Make the consumer the hero
* Don't underestimate the power of people's creations
* Ensure the campaign fits your brand
* Consistently engage and collaborate
Jory Des Jardins, BlogHer and Larisa Hall, TheFind.com, addressed how to reach the true influencers on the web, women. They shared a campaign that they completed online.
Jory described what BlogHer is and how they have grown over the past year to over 10,000 members, almost purely WOM driven. They do not advertise. Jory views the site as the TVGuide to women bloggers.
Jory sees the marketing dollar moving, and more of this is moving online. While people spend 36.4% of their time online, advertising only spends around 5% online. Looking at BlogHer stats: 94% female, 64% between the ages of 28-40, 51% visit daily, 94% with high school education. The women are also not afraid to buy online.
In October of 2006, TheFind.com launched a new 'search by color' feature. The campaign objective was to drive women to the site to use the service and build buzz about the feature. But how do you market a service like this? TheFind knew they wanted to support a charitable cause as part of the program, TheFind.com looked to BlogHer and asked their members how they should proceed.
The BlogHer network wanted to support Doctors Without Borders. TheFind.com donated $1 for searches for anything red on its shopping search engine. BlogHer was given the exclusive run of the campaign so they could have a sense of ownership. The members appreciated that.
When users completed searches on TheFind.com that resulted in a donation they received immediate feedback and thanks.
The campaign resulted in an increase in 'red' searches from 1% to 12%. Over 10% of the searchers came back 5-6 times in order to search again and donate. The donation to Doctors Without Borders was $10,000.
What's better click-thrus or blog chatter? Jory and Larisa think that blog posts are better since it also helps boost your SEO.
What did they learn?
- Be creative, but keep it simple
- Identify a cause that your target is known to care about
- Give examples, help them out
- Interact with those bloggers who participating
- Always solicit and respond to feedback
- If you are choosing a philanthropic route, choose your charity carefully to make sure they spend their money wisely
Doing good = ink in the blogosphere. If your campaign can be a story in itself then it will be talked about.
"What others say about Cold Stone is more important than what we say about ourselves," Jami Clark of Cold Stone Creamery said. And one of Cold Stone's main objectives is to create the ultimate ice cream experience.
For the Cold Stone case study, Jami explained a program around Valentine's Day in which Cold Stone decided to "Marry" two ice cream flavors -- tapping into people's emotional connections to the brand, as well as creating an experience.
Integrated Marketing Elements of the Mr. & Mrs. Cheesecake Wedding Experience:
* Website
* In-store POP
* FSI snipe
* Local PR
* Co-op satellite media tour; Countdown to romance
* Viral Video
* MySpace Page
Jami shared the viral video with the audience -- which included the requisite Barry Mannilow song.
Results:
* Generated buzz and awareness for strawberry cheesecake ice cream
* 24 million earned media impressions
* 350 local print and broadcast placements
* Increased ice cream sales
* 44,000+ users added to the Birthday Club
* 123,000 + total views on MySpace, YouTube, and IceCreamWedding.com
Jami also went on to explain Cold Stone's "Shake it Up" campaign, which was implemented to generate buzz and awareness around a new shake and smoothie line. For this campaign, customers were charged with creating dance videos to demonstrate their enthusiasm for Cold Stone.
Results:
* Exceeded shake sales goal by 51% and smoothie sales goal by 32%
* Secured celebrity judge Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas just as her solo career was taking off
* 45 million earned media impressions
* Coverage on Today Show, Fox & Friends and ESPN Cold Pizza
* Placement in USA Today, Star, InTouch Weekly and American Baby
* Granted a Wish for the Make-A-Wish Foundation
* Engaged 25,000+ crew members in new product campaign in a creative way
Christine Morrison, Intuit, and other panelists presented a case study on an exciting topic, taxes. All joking aside, the topic is something we can all relate to at this time of year.
Christine serves as the product manager for TurboTax and makes sure the entire customer experience and product lives up to the expectations of customers. To get things started you need to listen to your customers. Customers are you best teachers.
Most importantly though, you need to act on what you hear from your customers. That's what separates listening from engagement.
So what does WOM have to do with taxes? Believe it or not there are passionate users of TurboTax. Intuit built the Inner Circle as a community for their passionate users. They wanted to solicit their input and then give something back. One of the difficult things it keeping the balance between what we give and what we get. The majority of the members are mostly looking for recognition.
In the product development cycle TurboTax has to be on time. Uncle Sam doesn't push back his tax deadline, so they can't push back the updates to TurboTax.
They currently have 10,000 members out of a customer base of 15 million. This small little sandbox gives Christine and Intuit a great place to test new things. One thing they have been doing are local events for their members. On the internal blog, users have begun to stick up for Intuit, they are becoming brand advocates.
A huge issue for Intuit is the listing of their software on sites like Amazon and the accompanying product reviews. This past year Christine invited their beta users to leave reviews on Amazon. Reviewers were required to disclose that they had received a preview edition of TurboTax.
Intuit works with Informative to collect data about their customers and Inner Circle members. Intuit uses this data to understand what's important to their customers. Content that is discussed is also ranked by the members. The goal is to have scalable conversations with customers.
Promoters want to have an ongoing dialogue with brands while detractors want action to be taken on their issues. This allows Intuit to provide different content to promoters and detractors.
One of the major benefits is that Intuit can allocate resources to fix the issues that matter most to their promoters/detractors.
Building great products builds great WOM. Their research shows that 46% of new customers arrive because of WOM. Rather than mining for customers they think of it as mining for gold. The Inner Circle was mostly a product development program. The decision was made to use the Inner Circle for more outreach programs.
While many organizations use the net-promoter score as an indicator, how many of them actually follow-up on this? What this means is if the person was likely recommend our product, did they actually do it? Intuit learned that 14% of their Inner Circle members were true advocates.
Stefanie Manning of O Magazine started off by assuring us all that Oprah was not, in fact, planning an entrance -- sorry folks.
Since the O Magazine launched seven years ago, the soul of the magazine -- Oprah herself, who holds the title "The O of O" at the magazine -- has remained the same. Today, the Oprah show has 22 million viewers, and the magazine has more than 16 million viewers -- yet within those numbers there is only a 16% rate of duplication. What this means is that O Magazine is in itself a formidable.
According to Stefanie, Oprah has often been called the "Queen of Word of Mouth." Just as the show is able to create mountains of buzz around products and services, so does the magazine connect with and engage consumers in a way that prompts results.
O Magazine's commitment to guaranteeing their advertisers that their readers are engaged is based on the following factors:
* Reach women through a mission that is unique and organic
* Extend the O, The Oprah Magazine connection to marketers
* Connect with women -- emotionally and intellectually
* Deliver an affluent, influential, and diverse audience
* Leverage their passion and advocacy
* Year-over-year success and results for participating advertisers
The "O You" conference sessions were part of the magazine's solution to extending their footprint and creating an experience -- instead of simply creating and delivering a magazine. O You event attendees are given personalized treatment and are pampered, all the while engaging with brands and products around the events.
Results:
* 81% response rate on the survey
* 47% surveyed gave it a perfect 10; 87% rated it 8-10
* 69% responded with a 9-10 statement "I could clearly see Oprah's influence in shaping/creating the event
* 44% of attendees traveled over 100 miles
* 66% said they used/tried a product/brand they had never used before
* 69% bought or planned to buy a product/brand they used at the O You event
* 88% talked to friends/family/colleagues about things they learned at O You
Laura Schuler of Jack Morton spoke about the stats of word of mouth, which all point to the idea that hand-raisers are able to use their disproportionate power to move information through their networks, and that people will raise their hands to talk about things they are passionate about.
Laura outlined the steps that Jack Morton took to create the experiential brand program for O Magazine:
* Be crystal clear about your promise
* Translate your promise into behavior
* Cultivate your passionates
* Create experiences that ignite advocacy
* Watch & listen
I love LEGO and my son loves LEGO so I was interested in hearing what Bill Thompson from Informative had to say about how LEGO is using blogs and blogger outreach programs to connect with customers.
Bill asked how marketers cut through the static. But let's define static as: fixed or stationary, showing little change, lacking movement, not really static in the broadcast sense. Now think about static marketing or conversation, it's not good. In product development, static is not good.
What they want to do is adapt, they want to learn from our customers and their conversations. They want to anticipate and exceed unexpressed needs.
LEGO is a 75 year-old company that is re-inventing themselves. They have an extraordinary community. LEGO fans make Star Trek fans look like lightweights.
Recently LEGO embarked on a program to update the Mindstorms product. They asked their fans what they wanted and listened.
The conversation loop is an ongoing process. They ask, listen, prioritize and respond, then start again. With tools like surveys, forums, blogs and profiling they learn about their customers.
With their platform (illustrated below) they can quickly gather feedback from customers on a variety of topics. Not only do the validate certain programs they also rate/rank them. Not only can they look at overall data, the can look across segments.
LEGO uses blogs within their member communities and allows readers to rate posts for the benefit of others in the community. The feedback can be sorted by profile, so users can see what other people like themselves are saying.
A blog allows LEGO fans to:
- Talk to cool LEGO employees, icons
- Rate, rank posts
- Collaborate with others
- Contribute, influence future direction
- Understand, innovate with precision
Customer can contribute and help direct the future of the company.
Despite some technical difficulties, Ryan Berger from Euro RSCG kicked his presentation off to an energetic (if somewhat embittered -- darn you tech support!!) start. Ryan spoke about Euro RSCG's work for Jaguar -- specifically the role word of mouth plays in creating, promoting, and establishing luxury brands.
Part of working with a luxury brand like Jaguar, Ryan explained, was understanding the differences between automotive communications conventions and the conventions that are set for luxury brands. Where consumer communications strive to be all encompassing and inclusive, part of the cachet that accompanies the idea of luxury is the exclusivity associated with it. The same approaches that are applied to consumer communications, therefore, do not necessarily apply to these kinds of brands.
According to Ryan, Jaguar consumers are "connoisseurs of finer living." They have a high use of indulgences, enjoy fine service in their travel and leisure, and have extremely high standards of design. Luxury has become far more complex, Ryan explained, and keeping luxury brands luxurious takes a soft touch.
Luxury is driven by word of mouth ... and luxury conversations are driven by:
Access -- Luxury is what you can know, as opposed to what you can buy
Recognition -- Luxury is being recognized and rewarded
Rarity -- Luxury is exclusivity, limited edition, and scarcity
Experience -- Luxury fuels the senses
"Creating a gorgeous conversation" -- as opposed to a normal conversation -- is part of what brands can do to establish themselves as luxury, according to Ryan. It wasn't enough with a brand like Jaguar to simply create a conversation. It had to be a specific kind of conversation. Pretty wouldn't cut it -- which is where the idea of the "gorgeous conversation" comes in to play.
To do just that, Ryan explained, a variety of WOM-worthy events and experiences were staged. Everything from trips to the Hamptons and star-studded parties got Jaguar the association they wanted -- and also garnered some media hits.
Results:
* 83% of folks surveyed "strongly agree" that Jaguar is a luxury brand, and 95% "agree at all"
* 63% strongly agree that Jaguar makes beautiful fast cars, 85% agree at all
Brandon Evans, RepNation and Tracy Sanford, JetBlue led a session detailing JetBlue's ambassador network, CrewBlue.
Tracy started things off by reviewing how WOM impacts JetBlue and marketing in general. JetBlue was a brand that was really built on WOM. Their research has shown that 81% of JetBlue fliers recommend us to a friend. Their focus was the bring humanity back to airline travel.
From JetBlue's perspective they want to help amplify the conversation that already existed among their customers. It's a fortunate situation to be in.
JetBlue's communications strategy has a number of components (shown below). One of their first initiatives was a series of commercials featuring letters read by actual customers. The commercials were genuine and honest. No shots of planes flying off into the sunset or airline pilot hugging a small child.
Another focus is their Blue Betty mobile marketing unit. This traveling JetBlue program allows people to experience the JetBlue way of travel.
Much of the content their receive from customers is shared via a microsite.
The next question is how do we introduce JetBlue to college students while maintaining the passion that many of their current customers feel.
Previous to 2005 JetBlue had never used an outsider represent them, previously it was always a JetBlue employee. The other issue is that JetBlue is part of the culture in New York, but it's not always so big in other markets.
Their goal was to become the air carrier of choice for college students. But, for the most part many students had never flown JetBlue.
The first step was to select the channels and markets. For JetBlue they were looking for the individuals that made campuses move. When it came to campus selection they targeted the following markets: New York, Boston, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They wanted to indentify passionate JetBlue fans who are creative, responsible campus leaders.
A focus of the training was to make the ambassadors feel part of the team. They become part of your marketing team and really embrace your brand. They allowed their ambassadors some flexibility in customizing local programs. Sometimes a local event turns into a great idea for a national campaign.
Sam Decker of Bazaarvoice spoke about user-generated content in the web 2.0 world -- and specifically about how user-generated feedback influences consumers. Sam started by polling the crowd, using a (very scientific) raise your hand and indicate by fingers raised how you rate the WOMMA conference so far. The (very scientific) results indicated that the crowd poll gave WOMBAT a score of 4.2 out of 5.
According to Sam, customer ratings and reviews are an authentic way for consumers to influence one another by giving their genuine feedback about products and services. While Sam was quick to acknowledge that negative feedback is something that happens, the majority of the ratings and reviews -- I believe he quoted a Keller Fay study -- are positive, and that the same study has indicated that people have a much greater propensity to pass along their positive impressions than negative.
Sam discussed PETCO.com specifically, and PETCO.com is unique in that their customers, as pet owners, are extremely passionate.
Promotion, Sam explained, is essential to success. Burying ratings and reviews functions and results renders them useless, and in the online web 2.0 world we live in, customers want to be able to poll other users.
Some stats on customer ratings and reviews: Customer rating drives on-site search conversion, and, according to Sam, Searchers that sort by rating spend 41% more than searchers who do not. Visitors that browse the "Top Rated Products" navigation path convert at 49% higher and spend 63% more than non-browsers. PETCO.com saw 50% higher clickthrough rates on emails that feature customer review content.
Sam also noted that the ability to host customer photos within the ratings and reviews conveys passion -- such as the "pet using this product" pictures that feature heavily on the PETCO.com website.
According to Sam, ratings and reviews funtionality is rated higher than search functionality on websites -- which indicates that customers highly value the ability to easily peruse other peoples' opinions.
Key Takeaways:
* Customer reviews are a powerful Web 2.0 application and are measurable
* Use user-generated content as a powerful marketing data set
* Drive use through advanced analytics
Gary Colen, Alloy Media + Marketing, presented a case study based upon the work they had done with Helio, a new wireless brand in targeting college students.
First off we need to look at the market. The college market is usually defined as one market. but it's really hundreds of markets. If you look at a target, you have a college student, part of a larger group, money to spend, media editor, brand experimenter, strong friend-fluence.
College students are sometimes a good test market. They have grown up with technology and love to experiment. Also the college market is always growing. Today there are 17.4 million students.
They looked at how students spend their 'fun' money. Food is the number one, followed by entertainment, clothing, cell phone, personal care products, cosmetics. The average college student spends $32/month on cell phone service.
Their research showed that a large majority of students avoid ads on the internet, text messaging ads, direct mail and ads on social networking sites. College students are also prone to test new brands and often seek the advice of others when making purchases.
Helio recruited 21 on-campus ambassadors. These ambassadors received extensive training about the wireless market and the Helio brand. This included a visit to the Helio HQ.
Once on campus they began an incremental exposure plan. The reps used Facebook as a primary communication tool. They used the tools that the students use. The major goals included:
- Brand Impressions
- Product Engagements
- Event Attendance
Helio soon became a natural part of the Rep's daily lives. They integrated Helio into their social network profiles.
At the end of the day it's about having a great product. Helio was fortunate that they had a great product with a good feature-set.
