Sorry for the delay with the week 2 review we were just busy digging up cool, unknown campaigns for you!
8. @sweden ‘s citizen run Twitter account! Read more.
I love this campaign! Its so unique from the usual marketing gimics.
9. A facebook app to give you a glimpse in Alzheimers. sortmeout.sg
I really like this app, its so different from the usual! What it attempts is such a difficult task and I think its overall done very well. Simple and yet effective.
10. Philz Coffee have tweaked their free wi-fi login process to bring logged in customers straight to their Facebook page! Read more.
Nice touch!
11. Help catch crime suspects via social media! @TAGchallenge
Quite exciting, it gives citizens a chance to be useful in such hunts and also helps overall crime patrol eco-system.
12. Jaag Utho a political campaign on social media in Pakistan. We had also reviewed it a while back.
Its good to see such a large scale political campaign across Pakistan! There seems to be some trouble with their page management, lets see how they can sustain it!
13. McDonalds India gave a free Coke float with a meal in Mumbai, to all those who had voted for the BMC elections! http://twitpic.com/8ka0ue
Good to see something genuine, especially from McDonalds!
14. iAmbassadors - An interesting campaign designed for travel & tourism sector!
Liked how structured it is…
It has been quite intriguing for us to dig up these campaigns, do share your thoughts!
Follow #1caday on Twitter or our Facebook to stay tuned for more!
We have recently launched a 1-campaign-a-day series on our Facebook and Twitter communities where we talk about 1 exciting social media campaign daily for the month of February.
Campaigns covered in the first week,
1. Use of Facebook credits for movie rentals by Miramax & Warner Bros. David Guetta selling his Nothing but the Beat album on Facebook via credits!
These features and campaigns are making Facebook a comprehensive web element. Brands can have their stores, sales, marketing, customer services and et al managed on Facebook alone!
2. Like the Facebook page and win a Car! Fan the flame campaign by Car brand Mini
Many contests that provide an incentive for Liking the Facebook page, but a chance to win a car is unique!
One more successful Youtube campaign by Jimmy Kimmel! Such campaigns provides an all time humor value!
4. Burberry’s crowdsource site/facebook app campaign Art of the Trench!
Just one of the interesting social media initiatives by Burberry, started many years back and still going strong.
5.Campaign by the fans of Sherlock Holmes! #believeinsherlock is gaining popularity on social media as fans respond to the last episode of Season 2 in the TV series!
Always amazing to see the people take to social media whether its for a revolution or just expression for this classic literary character or wait…. Moriarty is Real!
This blog is part of our Social Done Right series where we bring to you some outstanding social media campaigns and our insights into its success!
This week I am covering a very active brand on social media – Toys R Us. I was amazed when I came across this brand as I saw them to be doing almost everything in the Book, not the Book of Toys but the Social Media Book of Tips and Tricks!
Social Media Hat
They are wearing the social media hat and rocking it! They have used every trick in the social media book …
Facebook picture tab – check Cross promotion of social media profiles – check
Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube…
Sales Generation – check
cyber sales, discounts, mystery deals – you name it! Apps – check
Scavenger Hunt, Book of Toys, Write a letter to Santa…
Daily frequency of updates – check
Customer queries & comments – check
The rule #1 in social media is to respond/converse with fans. This is usually not done by larger brands. Understandably they can’t respond to all queries and comments due to sheer number of them, however few brands like Toys R Us do respond to some of them.
Sales Generation
As the social media clients keep coming back to “enough with all this storytelling, engagement and communities…..are the activities generating sales?”
With Toys R Us you don’t need to ask! They have Special ‘Online Only’ Sales, Discount & coupons, mystery deals, interesting updates to promote the online toystore items! In fact it is so commercial that I tried going past the Cyber Sale, Black Friday Sale, Free Zoobers, Cyber Sale, Fisher Price Savings, Halloween Sale and so on to some actual interactive content but there wasn’t any or maybe I didn’t dig deep enough Sometimes a simple, interactive update without rushing everyone to buy stuff would be nice!
High Engagement
This was one of the important aspects of the McDonalds Monopoly that it had a ‘high engagement’ value. It would get fans to spend hours on end at an online McD hub. Toys R Us have their own ‘Scavanger Hunt‘ going on! The brand is sending daily messages to fans to check their various brand marketing material to win prizes!! Did I mention how commercial that is?
Its good to see a brand doing so much on their social media channels. In fact I think social media professionals can truly appreciate how much effort goes behind the scenes to actually bring about a real integration of the brands various marketing efforts including offline stuff. Clearly the customer support staff, various marketing teams, store event planning staff and different social media marketing channels are all co-ordinating things with each other to bring about such an integrated and cohesive marketing.
Having already mentioned the commercial-ness of the activities, I would really like to get some stats on the sales they are generating via social media channels.
This blog is part of our Social Done Right series where we bring to you some outstanding social media campaigns and our insights into its success!
So far in social media for kids we have looked at brands that cater directly to kids, this we take a look at a brand where kids are not at all the target group, atleast not directly.
When I first came across Compare the Meerkat website, I was a bit confused! Obviously this is a campaign targeted towards kids, so why does it have such a formal looking website and why do they keep talking about car insurance?
A little research later I figured the campaign was promoting Compare the Market and found that to be really cute. Putting in some thought into the companies target audience and marketing situation I think that this sort of a campaign which has universal appeal, gave the brand a clear advantage on many fronts. 1. Marketing Focus
It’s obviously a good thing when your service is relevant and needed by a large number of individuals. From a marketing perspective however, it sort of creates a dilemma. We at DigiWhirl have faced this while working with some clients when their target audience is very vast, it is difficult to bring any focus to the client’s social media activities! This is the case with ComparetheMarket.com too. The sheer number of people who would find this company relevant are from all walks of life, different professions, different backgrounds, different age-groups and so on! I think you get my point
In this scenario a focus on ‘meerkats’ works! ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign brings about a marketing focal point around which all companies fun promotions online as well as offline can be made! 2. Family Brand
When I was younger, companies related to insurance, health, medical, finance would all be irrelevant for me. That is adult stuff, it is ‘parent business’. This is the norm for financial brands from the days of old. Now a days we can see some change in the advertisements where they feature kids in the advertisements thus perking the interest of those little ones who are most often sitting with their parents while watching the TV! This Meerkat campaign immediately appeals to the children of the family and voila – the boring finance brand just became a hit family brand!
Nothing would pique the interest of parents more than when their kid asks them to buy a certain insurance so that he/she can get the free Meerkat toy! Its so kooky that it works!
3. Animal Appeal
Many brands have been successful with animal campaigns. Greenpeace’s Name the Whale campaign, Hello me hippo and Stripey the Cub campaigns in India are all examples where animal mascots bring about a certain appeal to the campaign and make it go viral. Meerkat campaign builds on this brand appeal.
I can see such a campaign going instantly viral when it is launched, however this campaign is not recent! It was launched way back in 2009 and is still going strong! Some of the aspects which contribute its long term success,
Going all the Way!
The company is going all out with the Meerkats! There are special videos, images and facebook apps to build up Meerkovo – the land of the Meerkats. Mr Meerkat – Aleksandr Orlav – has his own personal twitter and facebook account! He even has his ancient family history and other Meerkat friends who are often as popular as him!
Integration with Product
What I find interesting to analyze in such in-direct marketing campaigns is how it all ties in together. How much or how little is the integration of the campaign and product. In this campaign a lot of inter-mingling is seen. ComparetheMarket – talks about free Meerkat toys with its insurance thus involving its clients into the Meerkat campaign. While the Meerkats simply talk about the difference between, ‘Compare the Market’ and ‘Compare the Meerkat’! Simples! Thus giving a huge push to the Meerkat followers to consider ComparetheMarket as their choice for cheap insurance!
There are also deeper tie-ins where a brand ambassador selection is done on both communties,
Traditional advertisements all portray the Meerkats as brand ambassadors for comparethemarket!
What I found lacking was a 2 way dialogue between the company and fans! Aleksandr doesn’t talk one-to-one with fans!
It is often difficult to maintain and tedious to manage such a brand mascot if there was actual conversations involved. It would need to be in character for all its replies, and still keep the fan excitement going…
Genuine fan comments about not receiving the toy etc.. are barely ever responded to. What I found queer is that the company ‘ComparetheMarket’ has barely any social media presence. Customer support is entirely via email, phone channels. Their social media campaign remains just a promotion channel albeit an engaging one.
After the McDonalds activity analysis last week, Kmart is a very different study. The page overall caters to the adults in the family. When considering the store’s target group this makes sense as they sell a lot of different stuff which is ideal for families to come and shop there together. Most content on the page targets adults but some activities cater directly to kids! This makes it an interesting study to see how the kids specific marketing is being done, and how well it is integrated into other page activities.
Kids Ambassador
Only a kid would know what brings a smile to a kids face and K-mart brings Rico Rodriguez to make this point! Releasing a toy collection is a cool way of getting attention of kids and parents alike. And when they do take a look at what the collection is all about they would really enjoy it with their ambassador kid Rico! I really liked this ambassador idea and I think it can be taken a lot further by having a kid specific section where Rico maybe looks around the store finding cool stuff for kids to enjoy! They have also added couple of videos to give a behind the scene feel to it adding to the fun and excitement of it all!
Useful Apps
Apps can have different purposes, most of the times they are entertaining and fun. K-mart has some interesting apps that are also very useful. One of them is back-to-school app for Mommies. I thought it would be a simple to-do listing sort of app, but its a whole lot more! Parents can sit with their kids and go through a huge catalogue of items, check the price & specifications. They shortlist what they want to buy and add it to their list, they can also figure out estimated costs etc.. I think this can be very useful and it is something that parents can do along with their kids – cause parents don’t shop for their kids on their own. Every kid wants to buy his/her shoes and clothes, they would never let the parents do it without them! This app caters to both
Kid Updates
The page has a hotch potch of updates from different sections of their merchandise. Some of them are toy updates, which are addressed directly to kids. Parents form a large section of their community and we can see some interesting discussions happening at the various updates including those addressed to ‘Barbie Girls’!
Some of the exciting aspects I found in this page that I would like to highlight are,
Fun & Excitement
The brand brings in many exciting features into the page like a toy collection unveiled by a kids brand ambassador, halloween specific activities, free coupons and useful apps like the one mentioned above. These touches are very important to increase fan engagement and bring about a viral word of mouth going.
Parent to Kid Buzz
Since their primary focus is on the buyers of the family – the parents, they are doing a good job bringing activities that involve kids on their page too! More importantly they are bringing in stuff that parents would talk to the kids about. Kids would not ‘like’ this page since many of their updates about home decor and kitchen appliances etc.. don’t appeal to them, but if parents spoke to them about an activity like the shopping list which they could work on together then the kids would be interested to fan the page and eventually interact!
Buildup Potential
Their current activities are very scalable, they can be built on for a much more happening page for the kiddos! The brand ambassador can be used in many other activities within the page. Maybe have a ‘kids day’ on the page where kids and parents can participate in updates, apps and contests!
Sometimes a simple, interactive update without rushing everyone to buy stuff would be nice!
