True Engagement via Social Media: Honda's Latest Campaign

Honda launched a very creative social media campaign recently designed to truly drive engagement.  The company created a powerful back-and-forth conversation with its customers.  To kick off its summer promotions, Honda asked customers to write tweets using the hashtag #wantnewcar if they were itching to ditch their old car for a new set of wheels.   The company responded with six-second personalized Vine videos in response to some of these creative tweets.  The Vine videos made suggestions for new Honda cars and encouraged these potential customers to take a closer look.  As you might imagine, this campaign created quite a conversation between Honda and potential customers, as well as among consumers.    Check out this creative exchange as one example of the type of back-and-forth that emerged.  You can see that Honda was truly trying to have some fun with this campaign. 

Did the social media campaign have an impact?  It tripled Honda's engagement via Twitter.  According to this article, the hashtag has been used nearly 7,000 times.  The article reports that, "The word 'Honda' received an estimated 247 million impressions between July 14 and Tuesday morning." 

Has this incredible level of social media engagement with the consumer led to increased revenues?  That will be the key question.  We will watching closely to see if Honda reveals any data on the connection between the increased social media engagement and auto sales. 

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Flocking Behavior on Social Media Can Lead to Narrow Thinking, Flawed Decisions

Ethan Zuckerman has written about an important issue regarding our use of social media.   The Harvard Gazette recently wrote about a talk that Zuckerman gave at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  Berkman noted, "Human beings flock; we tend to seek out people like us."  He argued that individuals tend to engage in a great deal of "flocking" behavior on social media platforms.   They find and follow people who are very similar to them.  He says, "We have a talent for finding people with the same socioeconomic background or racial background. But this tendency to flock may be keeping us from finding the information we need... My fear is that our tools are not promoting diversity."   In short, we are not experiencing a wide range of perspectives on issues and topics.  We are hearing from voices that are similar to ours.  As a result, we are vulnerable to the confirmation bias, i.e. we are looking for information that confirms what we already believe.   Cognitive diversity can be an important factor when making decisions, yet social media seems to discourage the nurturing of this key attribute.  For more on Zuckerman's work, see this Ted Talk below:

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Amy's Baking Company: From Bad to Worse

Gordon Ramsay recently featured a restaurant called "Amy's Baking Company" on his popular TV show, Kitchen Nightmares.  I have posted a trailer for the episode below.    Erik Sherman of CBS Moneywatch writes, "The clip actually does justice to the full episode. By the end, Ramsay has done something for the first time on the program: He walks away from the restaurant, declaring that the owners can neither accept criticism nor follow suggestions."   The company had itself a major public relations problem.  What did they do?   They took to social media to respond.  Things got worse.  Instead of accepting the criticism and trying to apologize and promise to make amends, they attacked their critics!   Then, when the public relations nightmare got worse, they claimed that their social media accounts had been hacked.  Amy's Baking Company then launched a new Facebook page.  What did they do?  They continued to attack their critics!  Now they have removed that Facebook page as well!   It's an unbelievable story.  What's the lesson?  Where do I begin?  Let's just say we could start with one piece of good advice when it comes to social media:  Take a deep breath.  Sit on that draft for awhile before you post it in a fit of anger or frustration.  Maybe even better... don't go on reality shows! 

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Oreo: The Power of a Nimble Social Media Strategy

By  now, many of you have heard of Oreo's social media grand slam during the Super Bowl.  While all of us sat through that lengthy delay due to the power outage, Oreo's social media team unleashed the tweet heard round the world.   The tweet read:  "Power out, No problem."   The tweet included the photo shown here.

15,000 people retweeted that simple message.   More than 20,000 people "liked" it on Facebook.   Oreo's Instagram followers mushroomed from 2,000 to 36,000.   

Forbes reports on the most interesting part of the story - namely, how they managed to engineer such a rapid and highly creative response.  Apparently, Oreo's brand team had set up a "command center" at advertising agency 360i’s offices in New York City.    All of Oreo's advertising agency partners set up shop together at those offices, with Lisa Mann, an executive from Oreo's parent company on the  phone.   Mann explained how they moved so quickly:  “Because everyone was together, they had everyone in place to jump on a real-time marketing opportunity, which was, how would Oreo see the blackout? And Oreo saw the blackout as an opportunity to dunk in the dark.”

What a terrific story!   I love the fact that preparation yielded such a great result.  They knew that the Super Bowl represented a unique opportunity.  While so much attention is focused on the television ads, social media represents a huge opportunity at low cost.  With the blackout, everyone took to Twitter.  The volume of tweets exploded.  That posed a challenge for many firms though. How do you stand out when the Twitter world suddenly became so crowded.   Being prepared and ready to move so quickly turned out to be a tremendous advantage.   

Notice that Oreo did not try to be controversial or outlandish.  They stayed true to the brand.  So many social media and television advertising efforts associated with the Super Bowl yield poor results, because they emphasize being funny or controversial at the expense of communicating an authentic and consistent message about the brand.  Think about some of the ads you saw this weekend.   How many times did you think to yourself:  While that ad was funny, I'm not sure I know what it has to do with that product or brand.  

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Do we really care about internet privacy?

Why do people disclose so much personal information on Facebook?  Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John and her colleagues have conducted several fascinating experiments regarding internet privacy.   For instance, they developed a set of provocative questions regarding activities such as the use of drugs, viewing of pornography, etc. - creepy questions according to Professor John!   Then they examined whether the form in which they asked the questions might impact the extent to which people disclosed private behavior.  In one experiment, they established three conditions - all with the same questions - with data collected from respondents passing by a set of laptops set up on the Carnegie Mellon campus.   HBS Working Knowledge describes the three conditions as follows:


In some cases, they took an online survey titled "How BAD Are U???" - deliberately designed to look unprofessional, it featured red font and a pixelated cartoon devil.  Other participants received a deliberately professional-looking survey titled "Carnegie Mellon University Executive Council Survey on Ethical Behaviors," which sported the school's official crest. A third set, the control group, received the relatively neutral "Survey of Student Behaviors." 

What did the scholars find?   Students taking the purposely unprofessional-looking survey tended to admit to many more of these private behaviors than the students in the control group or the professional condition.  It seems odd, in a way, because you would think folks would be more hesitant and concerned about privacy on a site with a very unprofessional appearance.  Instead, it makes them less inhibited!   According to John, "When you're on a very official-looking site, it sort of cues you in to think about the concept of privacy.  We argue that oftentimes, privacy isn't something that's at the forefront of people's minds until you cue it." In fact, further experiments showed that privacy cues embedded in the surveys tended to make people more hesitant to disclose certain private behaviors. 

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User-Generated Content: Engaging Customers, Enhancing Brand Authenticity

Leading edge companies leverage user-generated content to bring their brands alive, engage some of their biggest fans, and emphasize the authenticity of their brand.  They don't just solicit customer reviews, collect likes on Facebook, or ask customers to vote on items that they should sell.  They actually encourage customers to help them tell their brand story.  Paige Beaumont, Assistant Editor of the Post Advertising blog, writes about the impact of user-generated content:  

Great user-generated content (UGC) should not exist in a vacuum—it should be reused, when and where appropriate, to bring color and authenticity to a brand’s marketing.  As brands expand their social-media footprints, many have also (smartly) placed more emphasis on engaging with their fans. As a result, they’ve begun proudly featuring selected consumer contributions in print, TV and online advertising. Dedicated fans often create a gold mine of content that’s just waiting to be explored, and in due course, brands have begun to dip into this resource. It’s the easiest and most direct way to build relationships with customers, because their passion for their favorite brands makes them happy to respond and share their stories—messages that are infinitely more compelling than what the brand might say.

Paige offers some terrific examples in this blog post.   For instance, she highlights an advertisement by Target that features real home videos of high school students opening their college acceptance letters.  The ad clearly evokes an emotional reaction, and Target appropriately makes a connection to their own efforts to donate a portion of revenues to schools throughout the country.  

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Averting a Social Media Crisis

Perhaps you have heard this story of how the American Red Cross averted a social media crisis some time ago.  I heard about this incident from one of our accomplished Bryant alumna with expertise in social media.  I felt that the lesson was worth sharing for those who have not heard about it.  The story can be told by three tweets.  First, an employee at the Red Cross mistakenly used the Red Cross official account, rather than her personal Twitter account, to write about her personal (drinking) behavior:

Ok, so now we have a problem.  It's not a major crisis.  The Red Cross could simply have issued a standard apology.  However, they added a creative twist.  They used a bit of humor to spice up their apology.  Here's the tweet:

The story gets better.  Then Michael Hayek of Dogfish Head Brewery noticed the events transpiring on Twitter.  He chimed in with a third tweet.

Shazam!  The Red Cross managed to turn a mini-crisis into a positive moment.  For me, it shows the value of using a bit of humor appropriately to handle problems that sometimes emerge on social media.  Moreover, it shows how you can turn negative moments into positive ones with some creativity.   For Dogfish, it was a good moment to connect with fans and encourage them to do something positive for a worthwhile charity.  Talk about a win-win scenario. 

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Is YouTube An Oppportunity For Terrific Advertising Experiments?

Alex Konrad has written an article for Fortune titled, "Pepsi, Brewing up viral magic."   The article describes how Pepsi debuted a new "Uncle Drew" ad for Pepsi Max on YouTube.   According to the article, "In the five-minute clip, 'Uncle Drew' amuses, then mesmerizes, a pick-up basketball game and its fans with crossovers and dunks unbecoming of a white-bearded, paunch-carrying old man, and only possible because the true identity of 'Uncle Drew' was a carefully disguised young basketball star, the clip's writer-director Kyrie Irving."  (Irving is the former Duke player and current NBA Rookie of the Year who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers).   What's interesting is where the ad went next... it is now appearing on television as a 30-second spot during the first few games of the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder (go Thunder!). 

That progression is somewhat unique, going from YouTube to television.   I find it very interesting though, and I think more firms should emulate this strategy.  This story proves that firms can and should use YouTube not just as part of a social media marketing strategy... They should think of YouTube as a land of experimentation.   YouTube offers an inexpensive way to experiment with new ad strategies.  The cost of failure is minimal, and even the ads that don't become viral sensations can be "useful failures" in that they may provide powerful learning opportunities.  

If firms are to use YouTube as a powerful mechanism for low cost, low risk, fast experimentation, then they need to have clear methods of evaluating these experiments.  Konrad's article explains that Pepsi had just such a method of evaluation:

"Pepsi Max brand team member Sam Duboff, who led creation and development of the piece, says 'Uncle Drew' had to satisfy three major metrics in order to justify its adaptation into a television segment. 'Uncle Drew' had to keep viewers engaged, hit the brand's target demographic, and generate its own legs through word of mouth. With 80% of viewers watching through the 4-minute mark, a 82.1% male viewer group that skewed towards the brand's core 25-44 age group, and over 5 million views from embedded YouTube players suggesting the viewer watched over a media site or Facebook, Duboff and his team hit all three." 

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Jon Stewart on the Internet and Social Media

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The Facebook-Instagram Deal

Wow! What else can you say?  Facebook pays $1 billion for a company with 12 employees and no revenue.   I'd love to see the discounted cash flow model that my students could come up with to determine that valuation! 

What's going on with this acquisition?  First and foremost, we have to remember that photo-sharing is a crucial element of the Facebook experience.  As my former colleague Mikolaj Jan Piskorski likes to say, Facebook made it socially acceptable for all of us to become exhibitionists and voyeurs to some degree!   In that sense, Instagram has emerged as a major threat to Facebook.  As people spend more time sharing their photos via Instagram's mobile app, they are likely to spend less time on Facebook.   That reduced time on Facebook will cost the social media heavyweight a significant amount of advertising revenue.  Moreover, rumors of a possible link-up between Twitter and Instagram (or perhaps even Google and Instagram) surely made Mark Zuckerberg more than a bit nervous.

What challenges will Facebook face with this acquisition?   Zuckerberg has announced that he intends to continue operating Instagram as an independent company with relationships to other social media platforms such as Twitter.  Users will still be able to post photos on other social media services, follower users outside of Facebook, and can choose not to share photos on the Facebook platform.   In some sense, this move is a type of vertical integration.  When that happens, firms also face the challenge of competing with their customers.  Instagram will now be competing with its customers - i.e. Twitter and Google Plus compete with Facebook.  Will that cause friction?  Will it cause Instagram competitors such as Hipstagram and PicYou to steal away users?  Facebook will have to be quite careful as it manages those relationships.

Some experts have wondered why Facebook could not have achieved some of the same benefits without having to acquire Instagram. Could they have formed an alliance or partnership with Instagram?  Perhaps they could have.  However, such an arrangement may have made it more difficult to engage in the type of close coordination required to integrate Instagram more deeply into the Facebook platform moving forward.  If Instagram simply were to remain an independent company, then an alliance might have made more sense.  However, I think more intense coordination and integration is coming... and a merger probably makes more sense in that instance. 

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Old Milwaukee: A Low-Budget Super Bowl Ad?

Companies spend enormous sums of money advertising during the Super Bowl.   If you are Budweiser, you can afford to invest in this type of marketing.  However, if you are Old Milwaukee beer, it becomes more difficult to justify that type of marketing expense.   The firm simply doesn't have the scale to support that type of advertising.  Moreover, it's not a premium beer; the firm has a simple, low cost strategy.  Old Milwaukee came up with an ingenious solution though.  They developed a simple TV commercial with Will Ferrell, who happens to love their beer.   It didn't run nationally though.  The firm ran the commercial in only one market - North Platte, Nebraska.  The town has approximately 15,000 homes.   It's the second smallest TV market in the country by Nielsen standards.  Why run the ad in this market?  Old Milwaukee actually leveraged that low-cost TV ad to create excitement via social media.   Boston-based advertising agency Mullen has reported that the Old Milwaukee ad generated more mentions on Twitter Sunday night than many nationally aired Super Bowl ads.  Moreover, a user uploaded a low-quality copy of the ad onto YouTube.  Old Milwaukee set up a link to YouTube on its official Facebook page.  Soon, the ad had been viewed more often than Budweiser's primary Super Bowl commercial!

What's the lesson here?  If your firm has a low cost strategy, it must think creatively about how to market its products.  Social media offers an opportunity to promote a brand at very little expense.  However, many firms are blitzing social media platforms these days.  It's become a cacophony at times.  Therefore, you have to think about how to emerge from the clutter.  Old Milwaukee did just that with an ad that not only generated buzz initially on Twitter and Facebook, but that also had a second life as a story picked up in the mainstream media about an innovative marketing strategy.  That story, of course, will live on far longer than the immediate surge of interest generated on Twitter and Facebook Sunday night.  After all, look at this blog and many others which are writing about it!

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Public Speaking in the Social Media Age

Fast Company's Drew Neisser has a good column on public speaking in the social media age.  I thought two of his points are worth emphasizing here, though I recommend reading the whole column.  

First, he argues: "Don’t Panic if They Aren’t Looking at You."   They might be on a portable device, such as an iPad or iPhone.  However, it doesn't mean they are reading email necessarily.  They might be taking notes, or tweeting about your presentation in real-time.  Both of those behaviors could be very productive and useful for you.  If they tweet your message, you could be reaching a much broader audience.  Telling them to put away their devices is NOT the answer, according to Neisser.

Second, he explains: "If You Don’t Speak Twitterese, It’s Time to Learn It."  In other words, you need to share your Twitter handle up-front. In that way, people can share their thoughts about your presentation, and you will be able to see those statements. Moreover, you need to provide some concise phrases and sound bites that will be amenable to tweeting. Think of capturing your message in a few phrases of 140 characters or less.

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5 Social Media Lessons

At Business Week's site, Home Depot's Brad Shaw shared the following five social media lessons for business:

1. You can't control the conversation:  Companies can't just proclaim; they must engage in a dialogue with consumers.

2.  Be authentic.  Your online image and approach must match your offline image and culture. 

3.  It's about people.  Don't just communicate about products and services.  Share information about the people behind the brand.

4.  Your people need hands-on expertise in what customers care about.  Use front-line employees in your social media efforts, because they touch the consumers directly.

5.  Be patient and flexible.  Invest in small increments, gather feedback, adjust over time.  Stay agile. 

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JC Penney Reacts Quickly to Controversial T-Shirt

How quickly can and should companies react to a social media firestorm?  We have an interesting case study this week.   Bloggers and tweeters unleashed a barrage of criticism on J.C. Penney this week, after it began selling a back-to-school t-shirt that read, "I'm too pretty to do my homework, so my brother does it for me."  You can imagine how people reacted to this shirt.  To their credit, the retailer reacted within just a few hours to the controversy that erupted via social media, and they pulled the shirt.  What's the lesson from the story?   Most would say that you should anticipate such controversies and avoid them.  I would argue that it's nearly impossible to avoid all such controversies.  If you never experience one, you probably aren't doing anything fun or exciting with your products.   The key for any company is to TRY to avoid them, but to ACKNOWLEDGE that you won't prevent them all.  Then, you need to establish a monitoring process for detecting social media controversy and a rapid response mechanism for addressing such a firestorm. 

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