15. @sheepstop ‘s offline to online campaign at a Mumbai street festival. They had a simple prop, people clicked their picture with the prop and uploaded it on Facebook to get some free discounts.

16. An iPhone repair shop in Singapore has a customer service group on Facebook.

No marketing or small talk. Just cutting the crap and to the point!:)

17. Nike’s campaign, bringing social media raves by the sport fans to the field! http://t.co/i8M2pFyk

Sport fans would really love this!

18. Mac N Jinx campaign where two tweeps who tweet about Mac n Cheese, have to compete to win freebies!

Bringing in the Jinx game element made the campaign different and exciting from other usual freebie campaigns.

19. Chappal Maro campaign by @thebombaystore in time for the Mumbai elections and their new Flip Flop collection!

catchy!

20. “Bourgeois gentilhomme” Twitter campaign by a classic theatre group in Canada to bring in youth to their programs!

Play characters tweeting to each other, would catch the attention of a lot of people!

21. Lunch for the two offices who tweeted the most every hour to @benitoschat with #dayofthedead

A simple giveaway campaign by a Mexican cuisine restaurant, making use of a Mexican holiday!

22. Women had to tweet their proposal ideas with #hphproposal , chance to win overnight stay for two on 29th Feb.

Campaign around the concept that women can propose to their men on 29th Feb!

Thats all folks with the #1caday… we will be coming up with interesting campaigns soon, so stay tuned!

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! 

3. Jimmy Kimmels ‘I gave my kids a terrible present‘ campaign.

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! 

6. KLM’s social seating, puts relevance of social profiles on the next level!

Not know anything about the person sitting next to you, makes it tough to break the ice. Now that is not a problem anymore!  

7. Find your dog twin! The ‘My Dog ID‘ app from Best Friends Animal Society to spread awareness and boost dog adoption!

Viral element and good cause  —> great combination

Let us know any awesome social media campaign you want to add to this list @ #1caday on Twitter or on our Facebook page!

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.

They were the fastest growing brand on Facebook at one point!

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.

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.

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!

All in all great stuff and more power to them!

It looks like ‘toy-world’!
While looking out for some great social media activities targetted at kids, I just passed by the McD’s Facebook page and was totally floored! Another confession, I love board games! My ipad games all consist of free board games so when I saw ‘MONOPOLY’ I just swooned! Okay maybe that was a bit exaggerated, but I love the way the McD’s page looked a few days back (currently it is changed to promote a product launch)! The bright red color, landing page, focus on Monopoly, the top pictures showing the various tokens in the game! Also the landing page makes it clear that there are freebies to be won (Oooh!)
In order to play the game we need a game code which can be found on some of their products – a clear action to generate some sales!

Content is the key!
So going past the Monopoly and the look of the page, I took a closer look at their status updates and saw that they are clearly targetted towards a younger audience! Notwithstanding the fact that ‘kids’ atleast younger than 13 are not allowed to make their accounts on facebook, McD knows they are on Facebook and does the most sensible thing to cater to them – churns the right content! Using games like Farmville and Cityville McD keeps its content oriented largely towards the young folk on facebook. I know a lot of kids who have signed up on Facebook and they are the friends from whom I get all those many game requests. From all the millions of fans that respond to the fact that McD has a farm on Farmville would be these young people and that is who McD is catering to!

New Snitch… errr Product Launch
It seems they are to launch a new food product in their menu, and the hype around it seems to have a serious Harry Potter appeal to it! The design and graphics, for a second make me think of all those awesome RPG’s I keep playing! (I also love RPG’s)! I am half tempted to participate in all this even though I am not in the US and more importantly I am vegetarian so the ‘pork goodness’ has no meaning for me!

So what really makes the page tick?
Clear Target Audience
They are catering to the youngsters, not their parents nor their educators. They are saying ‘play monopoly with us, you might have to buy a few of our products while you are at it, but we will give you freebies too’! All their updates are in tune with the young folk psyche.

High Engagment
The Monopoly is a highly engaging ongoing activity! A good game with freebies would keep people strung to it for days on end. It can also become a very potent sales generating mechanism. A fan wouldn’t think much about buying a few McD’s products to get whatever code goodness they need in the game!

Flipside – Page Spam Management

Obviously the page spam management is quite non-existent. One look at the comments and you have to wonder where the McD fans are cause most of the comments are spam! I am sure all major brand with huge fan following would attract its share of spam but its upto the page management to keep the page clean so there is decent conversation happening. This is sadly lacking from the McD’s end. This is probably also the reason why they don’t give us the option to look at fan posts on the page.

Note: There has been some controversy on social media regarding these activities targetting kids who are then incentivized to buy these products which are bad for their health! Like I earlier mentioned as a social media case-study here is one where a lot of brands can take pointers from! Regarding the ethics of it, I personally am not a fan of McDs. I think that overall every country needs to have a legal policy regarding marketing & advertising and that is where the question of whether a McD can or should be able to entice kids in this manner must be decided! If traditional ads and promotions are okay then so is this. IMHO.

Very recently my brother had a baby and all of us have gone into a ‘baby zone’ – where its all about the oh-so many baby products needed to manage everything well! Its still a few months before she starts playing with toys but the one toy set I am most excited to get is Lego blocks! I know once I get it, me and bro will be as excited playing with them as will my niece! I can still remember the thrill of Lego blocks we had as children. That particular set then got passed off to my younger cousin and from her to some other kid and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is still being played somewhere with a few pieces missing!

When I was looking to cover social media case-studies for the ‘kids demographic’, one of the first thoughts I had was ‘what is Lego doing in the new media space?’. I had come across some interesting stuff regarding LARPs – Live Action Role Playing games being organized for groups of people and Lego LARPing is very popular! Given this huge fan love Lego can totally having a huge social media presence with very cool activities.

Life of George
Lego recently launched a ‘Life of George’ game with their classic brick game, an itunes app and augmented reality features. It challenges the kid to recreate a brick structure from a given picture of George’s various travels! They photograph their creation with the app and get points depending on how well the models are made! Multi-player option is available where two people can compete in the game. Check out the video, its exciting to see a timeless game of building blocks combined with new technology!

Social media is a great platform to make this app-set go viral. They did a number of Facebook activities to create buzz around the product before launching it.

Picture Contest
The entrants had to make George from their Lego bricks and take his picture in a cool place. The best uploaded pics would win! This activity has been done before but always manages to excite – one of my favorite use of this theme was in the movie Amelie where she takes her Father’s garden gnome statue, clicks its picture in different locations around the world and sends it to him. It finally got her dad to travel!

So besides being a popular and exciting activity this contest capitalizes on the fact that Lego players love making mini-figures and then sort of ‘LARPing’ with them. Kids would totally enjoy making George and taking him to exciting places in their neighbourhood and clicking his picture. It can be seen from the numerous and varied entries the contest received! Even after the contest was over people uploaded these pictures cause they really loved the idea!

I am George
George got a Facebook page and I am not sure why the custom URL is i.love.numbers. The updates are actually whacky and cool – about George’s family, behind the scene stuff in the office for his ‘secret project’, art class work etc.. Its a cool page that kids would definitely engage with!

Secret Project
The new product was hyped well with references to ‘George’s secret project’ scattered in the contest as well as George’s page. It sort of builds a mystery around what seems to be a simple picture contest. These references would have gotten the imagination of a lot of kids. It can be seen from the excitement and peak in interaction when the product is finally announced.

Building ‘George’
What is totally expected on a Lego page are fans drooling around and showing off their new creations! The ‘George’ page is no different there are many entries from fans about the game – what they made, their level ups! and if they are dissapointed cause they don’t have the right phone to play this game! It was good to see George’s cool replies to most of these entries. These replies and updates build up George’s personality which is one of factors that lead to success of such a campaign.

The flipside of this page I find is that, the activity on the pages is just too low and too few! Contest updates were not even daily. The ‘I am George’ page keeps missing updates and then the next update talks about George being too busy with his secret project… While the tone and content of the updates is exciting, a more robust and dynamic social media presence for this brand is missed!

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!

One of the few things that I do not forget to do when I am on Facebook is to visit all the latest fashion page updates. It is a ritual that I have been following ever since I have been on Facebook. The other thing that my girlfriends and I do not forget to do is to share latest fashion and the hottest sales updates regularly among ourselves. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction and manages to keep me happy for the rest of the day. There have been mornings when my body refuses to wake up early in the morning. The first thing that I happen to do is visit the Jimmy Choo and Zara website. It immediately wakes me up!

Women have the unique capability to shop even when they are eating, cooking or even when they are in the shower! Beauty and fashion will always strike a chord with them at any given time of the day. Thus I was thrilled when I came across the news that the ‘GILT GROUPE was offering exclusive sales on Facebook’. I wanted to see if women behave any differently online when it comes to fashion and beauty.

Gilt Groupe is an online shopping portal for designer products. They offer up to 60% retail discounts on the designer items. Founded by two friends Alexis and Alexandra in 2007, recently Gilt Groupe has integrated business to consumer functionality on their Facebook page. This feature allows the Gilt members to shop directly on Facebook.

Gilt Groupe is offering exclusive facebook sales on their respective Facebook page for Gilt Women, Gilt Men, Gilt Children and Gilt Home. Each week the respective pages will showcase few handpicked fashion items that will not be available on its regular site (www.gilt.com).

In the first week the Gilt women page offered three products handpicked by one of their buyers and a resident style blogger. The Gilt man page had three items based on the theme ‘Man about town’. Gilt home gave consumers early access to merchandise from Vera Wang’s home line. While the Gilt children partnered with Nickelodeon for the kickoff.

Here are few of the highlights from this initiative -

1. Replicating an online strategy based on a woman’s social shopping trends in the real world.

Discussing fashion and beauty products among women is not a new phenomenon. It has been in existence for decades now. As I see it, it will never fade away. I had a neighbor called Mrs. Mukherjee, a friend of my mother. She was an Avon representative. My mother and her set of friends would often meet at our place for tea. One of the thing that I took a note was that Mrs. Mukherjee would always bring her Avon beauty catalog with her. Updating each of the women in the group on the latest fashion product of the season. By the end of the evening she would have had a tiny list of orders and requests from the group. It is a behavioral pattern in women to talk fashion, share information about the best deal in town with their girlfriends. They love to learn about each other’s closet and ask for all the details. This clearly is high up on the list of priorities in a woman’s life.

Women love shopping when she is accompanied by her friends. She would like to listen to her friend’s opinion though she may not agree with them often, its just a feminine trait. Also, they would like to buy an item which her peers envy. The other thing about a woman is she is a great salesperson coupled with the fact that if it happens to be her area of interest. She has an innate quality to build relationship, create interest around a product, create a want before selling a product. However, the point that we must note here is that they buy or sell when in a group.

Gilt Groupe’s initiative to sell fashion line on facebook is based on this basic framework of women’s behaviour in the real world. The exclusive sale on Facebook feature allows women to connect with similar like-minded women. They would like to see the interest generated by other members of the page for a particular fashion item on sale and make a decision. She needs the assurance of peers in general that the item that she has picked out for herself is envied by all. Facebook as a platform provides exactly that.

As a woman myself and a fashion enthusiast, I would treat Facebook as a real world destination with several rooms for each of my interest. Gilt’s fashion page would stand out to me as a room which allows me to discuss, discover and more importantly buy new fashion products. I would make a purchase on Facebook since I would have the acknowledgement of my peers. As mentioned earlier, we like to shop when we are accompanied by our friends. Gilt Groupe understood this behavioural shopping in women, thus created a space and an application for members to not just preview but a counter to sell items.

I see this as a sustainable initiative which will soon be replicated by many brands. More so if the brand happens to deal with consumer products for women or her subject of interest.

The other move by Gilt that I really liked was the fact that they chose to introduce the person behind selecting the items for the exclusive sale section on Facebook. This too can be traced back to our behavioral pattern. Women like to know the source and they want to identify with the person’s taste in fashion. Selecting an individual as a fashion stylist among the buyers is an added bonanza, which the Gilt Groupe realized. Its important to make your women customer feel at ease and make sure that she can relate to the stylist and the fashion forecast.

2. A Flagship store but wait a minute it exists online and not in New York!

The fashion items displayed on Facebook were exclusively for the members of the Gilt Groupe Facebook fan page. These items were not available or showcased on their Group e-commerce website, thus providing a reason for members to visit the Gilt Group’s fan page on a regular basis. The strategy of exclusivity will also drive the crowd to the page, increase the exchange of conversation between the brand and members.

As I see such initiatives, I find Facebook evolving into virtual world’s Paris or New York. This platform ensures that each brand has the capacity to make their respective page as the flagship store thus slashing barrier to entry for businesses. The initiative by the Gilt Groupe indicates much the same . I am sure the concept will evolve further.

It excites me to be able to visit a flagship store of a hi-fashion brand without having to spend my money on the travel. Flagship stores are known to house more exclusive designs and collections than their stores elsewhere. I see this as a win-win situation that both the customer and brand will benefit.

While growing up as a college girl, I would only hear about the inaugural of designer or hi-fashion flagship stores in the news. I had made a small wish list of all the stores that I would visit when I had the means.The rate at which the social media platforms are evolving, I wont be surprised that my wishes will be fulfilled sooner rather than later,with just a click of a button.

The idea to evolve the fan pages into a flagship store excites me. Benefits of an online flagship store in facebook are plenty:

a. Empower the customers rather than intimidating them – Flagship online store will allow them to explore the collections, find peers with similar fashion taste, discuss fashion, ask for advice and be able to comprehend the latest in fashion. More importantly, it will not intimidate the buyers. The prospective customers will have plenty of time at her/his disposal while browsing through the collection without having to worry about wasting others time.
As a consumer, I should have the ability to visit the brand as many time as I want even if I do not make any purchase during those visit. I should be able to drool over the design without being disturbed. These experiences lead to brand association.

b. Connects to a larger audience – Social networks such as Facebook, Ren-Ren (Chinese interpretation of Facebook) or Vkontakte (Russian interpretation). These platforms are the beehives and as they continue to attract more and more audiences, it only makes it lucrative for brands such as Gilt Groupe to do more with the page and not just focus in the count of membership. Women in these platforms are very active and why won’t they be? These platforms provide women with gossip, allows them to brag about themselves, also gives them the opportunity to peep into each other’s wardrobe and lifestyle. They are buzzing all the time and just the kind of doze that a woman would need.

While the fashion group pages allow women across the globe to share their latest fashion update.

3. Social fan pages makes closet sharing tips more fun and engaging.

During my boarding school years, we would constantly exchange clothes or mix and match items among our friends. Though each of the girls had enough dresses of their own yet we still chose to exchange/borrow among ourselves to put our best foot forward during any social gatherings. In these fashion fan pages, we can still find those glimpses of behavioural traits among women. As a matter of fact, the Gilt team had their blogger stylist over for a limited time frame to answer and advice fashion related queries from the members of the group. It was all about closet sharing tips as I followed the conversations.

It resonates an intriguing fact about a woman’s shopping habit is her ability to adapt favourably to changing times and means of communications.

When it comes to fashion, women are like hunters. They are willing to tread the extra mile to satisfy their taste for beauty and fashion. This has been proved in the ‘CatchaChoo’ campaign by Jimmy Choo in UK 2010. Women went crazy about the trainers that was launched by the brand. The team would ‘Check in’ the trainers at several hangouts in UK using the social application called Foursquare and then send out real time updates about the whereabouts on the ‘CatchaChoo’. Whoever could catch the trainers in time would win a pair of the Choo trainers. It raised the sales of Choo trainers by 33%.

I must add here that this initiative by the Gilt Groupe is not a mere campaign. It is sustainable and scalable and is here to stay for a long time ahead. I will not be surprised if this grows to become a common feature in all social networking sites.

The advent of technology or evolution of social media would never be able to change the way women think, behave or react to beauty and fashion. To us it will always remain a subject of great interest and will be pursued with immense enthusiasm. This basic behavioral trait shall remain intact just that it will be replicated on different platforms.

About Rita Chowdhury

Rita is a public relations and corporate communications professional who has rich and extensive work experience. She has handled several PR campaigns and product launches for national and international businesses. She is a regular blogger and passionate about the dynamics of Social Media. She is currently helping DigiWhirl as research analyst!

Her Blog, Twitter, Linkedin

Twitter plays an increasingly important role in our lives. Both my husband and I wake up to Twitter and other news feeds each day. My husband is an investment analyst. He follows several investment experts, Government officials and corporate bigwigs on Twitter. He monitors their tweets closely. He agrees that tweets from these stalwarts can have an impact on the market.

To give you an example of the importance of tweets from a stalwart, the name that springs to my mind is 50 cent. 50 cent a famous contemporary rapper and has 4million+ followers on his twitter account. Earlier this year in January, he took to Twitter and tweeted about a company called H&H Import (a Penny stock). He sent out a tweet to his fans encouraging them to buy the stock of the company. As a result, the stock jumped by 290 percent! (This obviously created issues with the SEC, but that is a separate issue which we will not address in this article).

We live in a time where it takes only 140 characters to create chaos!!

For this weeks post, I had been searching for a case which withstood the whiplash of a negative tweet from a famous personality. The quest for such a case landed me at the doors of the US Census Bureau. Allow me to introduce the US Census Bureau 2010 campaign.

The US Census is a government organization. They collate statistical population metrics in USA. It is mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution and takes place every 10 years. The Census information helps to evaluate the number of seats each state occupies in the U.S. House of Representatives. The census data are also used to advocate for causes, rescue disaster victims, prevent diseases, research markets and locate pools of skilled workers. This makes it a very important report for the development in each state in North America.

The campaign started on a high note in early 2010. It was a water tight campaign with a fantastic integrated communications strategy in place. Starting from their launch to building a sustainable hype. The main objective was to reach out to as many people as possible and encourage mass participation in a government survey.

Here are the highlight from the campaign, as to what went wrong and how the team’s effort won over the odds.

The issues faced by the campaign:

i. Senator John McCain tweeted to his 1million+ Twitter followers that he was upset about the money spent on commercial ads by the US Census Bureau during the Superbowl tournament.

ii.  Minnesota Rep Michele Bachmann urged people not to participate in the survey since she felt the survey asked for information that was not required.

Senator John McCain and Rep. Michele Bachmann , both are influential leaders in their own right in the US government. They have millions of supporters and some have blind faith on their views and opinions. Thus any negative comment from such stalwarts had the potential to jeopardize the campaign negatively, and this is just what happened post the above mentioned reactions to the US Census Bureau 2010 campaign. Every distinguished media channel and paper picked it up and before we knew it, their comments on the campaign went viral.

I am sure you would want to know how the US Census Bureau team went about controlling the mayhem. Allow me to take you through the well executed strategy which ensured the success of the US Census Bureau 2010 campaign.

1. Listening – It is important to aggressively monitor for any mention of the brand online and identify the tone, keywords and advocates.

Sometime back, I wasn’t keeping well. I paid a visit to the Doctor at a clinic nearby. She listened to my complains with patience before she even checked my pulse. I felt good that the doctor heard me through. I knew that we were on the same page. It gave me confidence on the medicine that she prescribed.

The point is not that I was indisposed but the fact that the doctor was a keen listener to her patient. Listening is an important factor in all aspect of our lives. It applies to all corporate houses and Government organisations. It plays an even bigger role when a crisis arises.

While speaking to one of the team members, I was told that each day the team would be online monitoring for any mention of the US Census Bureau 2010 campaign. This exercise was part of their daily routine and it helped them to judge the situation. Accordingly, they were in a position to identify the tone and the source for causing a negative flutter around the campaign. This helped them mobilize their team and design a strategy to contain the crisis from getting worse.

My years of experience in the communications industry has taught me that during a crisis situation -

Never to respond without identifying the source and the cause of the negative communication. Especially when it involves influential public officials.

At this point, the team should be commended as they were vigilant in monitoring conversations online. I strongly believe that that the ‘monitoring stage’ is the most important step prior to controlling the crisis.
 

It forms the foundation to understanding the situation at hand.

It helps identify the reason and the source of the crisis

It allows the team to formulate and implement the subsequent fire-fighting strategies accordingly

2. Diagnose & Implementation – Applying the messaging strategy with appropriate responses without being involved in a direct confrontation.

I liked the way the team implemented their strategy in response to the negative conversations which were doing the rounds on the Internet. While following the campaign and also speaking to one of the team members, it was clear to me that they had a clear streamline strategy and social media engagement guideline in place.  It helped them to execute the plan in hand effectively.

They did not want to get into a direct individual confrontation with the high profile critics of the campaign while responding to the negative views on Twitter. Instead they took it up as a challenge and identified that there was a need to create additional awareness about the objective behind their strategy. A direct confrontation would have created a negative sprial effect for the campaign. Most of the cases that I have followed in the past, it is a fact that the ‘Primary Objective’ is lost during a direct confrontation. The feud between the parties grabs the limelight while the ‘Primary Objective’ takes a back seat .

The other thing that I noticed that they did not deny the expense or hide facts from their audience. I also applaud the team for steering away from verbal confrontation with the advocates instead they chose to continuously educate and share their strategy with the audience through the Director’s Blog, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.

Senator John McCain expressed his unhappiness over the expenditure on the advertisement commercial in his Tweet. Thus ‘Expense’ becomes the reason for his negative comment. Rep. Michele Bachmann accused that the survey asked for too many detailed questions for an individuals comfort. It did not imply that she did not want to participate in the survey but questioned the need for detailed information of an individual.

Thus, the team working for the US Census Bureau explained and created awareness through the social network platforms. In each of the responses on Twitter, Facebook and the Director’s blog that I followed, they had successfully answered the following -

a. What is the Purpose of the survey ?
b. Why is it important for every individual to participate in a state?
c. Why was there a need for an ad commercial during Super bowl ?
d. How does the integrated marketing effort save money ?
e. What is the broad motive behind the campaign ?

It implies that the team knew exactly what messages needed to be delivered to the audience. In my opinion the US Census Bureau communications team were able to identify the opportunity to create awareness even during the crisis. It gave them the space to connect personally with each of their audience. They were in a position to tutor the importance of the survey. While fielding constant queries from the mass helped them to eradicate any sort of stigma that might have existed in the mind of an individual.

Some of the key points that I take away from this campaign are -

1. The ability to listen with a keen interest and comprehend the situation
2. A strong team to regularly monitor conversations on all user generated platforms.
3. Never over-react during a crisis
4. To have a strong streamlined strategy in place
5. Clear goals and messaging
6. Identify an opportunity even during a crisis situation

The sincerity and authenticity of the team while handling the campaign ensured that they achieved the desired goals. I take this opportunity to also add here that US Census Survey 2010 happens to be the most successful census survey to date. It ended on a high note.

It showcases how a brand can overcome a crisis and create an opportunistic messaging strategy and ultimately deliver a quality product with just the right attitude.

About Rita Chowdhury

Rita is a public relations and corporate communications professional who has rich and extensive work experience. She has handled several PR campaigns and product launches for national and international businesses. She is a regular blogger and passionate about the dynamics of Social Media. She is currently helping DigiWhirl as research analyst!

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