10 Tips for 360° Marketing - Metallica vs Yael Naim: Steamroller vs Word of Mouth

Thanks futurelab for this rundown of how to work on all fronts

Guest Post by: Frédéric Baffou

Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola or Nike are experts in steamroller approach when it comes to a worldwide product launch.

What about a Rock Band?
Metallica, one of the most popular metal band in the world, released one month ago their new album : Death Magnetic.
and yes..I am a fan of this band since the beginning.

After one month of sales, they have reached 1 million copies sold (source: Nielsen SoundScan) with almost half of them done within the first 3 days after the launch. They secured the all-time record for most consecutive #1 debuts in chart history!

I wanted to understand how they have supported the launch of this new album. In the meantime, I looked at the song New Soul (from Yael Naim) which became popular around the planet earlier this year thanks to the commercial for the Apple Macbook Air. This approach based on Word of Mouth (WoM) led the album of this young girl entering the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. Only 18 songs have done so since 2000.

At the end of the day, some marketing Tips can be identified based on these experiences.

A very good execution of a 360° Marketing strategy
One of the principle of being Customer Centric is to approach with consistency the consumer from many different angles. Metallica is definitely a master (of puppets) on this battle ground.
They have used the full scope of marketing tools before, during and after the release of their new CD. The support stems from pre-launch website to CRM through community based tools.

What did Metallica control?
The different building blocks are organized with consistency and interacting across each other which contributed to expand the snow ball effect.
You can click on each of the image to get the details of various examples.

Branding mmm Pre-Launch Website Main Website

Advertising

Video games mmm Goodies m Music
mm mm

Interviews mmmmmmm mTV Shows mmmmm Concerts

Social networks

What did Metallica NOT control?
Quality of sound
In the meantime, they have been exposed to a polemic about the sound quality of their new album. Many fans claimed that the sound was too loud which created a major buzz. Even, The Wall Street Journal published a detailed article on the subject 2 weeks after the official release of the album. It led Lars Ulrich (drummer) to make a public statement few days later. However, the Buzz is still on air! A petition which has collected more than 15 000 signatures is growing everyday.
Length of songs
The band had contributed to the end of the free Peer To Peer (P2P) platform, Napster. However, some original new songs were circulating on the web but had been remastered by a fan to be shorter than original tracks (7′ in average).
The Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan commented positively this initiative. Universal Music issued a press release and cancelled the interview planned with the journalist. This local event was largely commented internationally on the web beyond the fans’ community.

What is the result?
Metallica achieved a record sales supported by a major investment. The main challenge is now to maintain such level of performance while keeping a genuine interactivity with fans.
Yael Naim has reached a worldwide awareness thanks to her talent (and David Donatien), an album done in their apartment and a 30 secs advertisement…Not bad in terms on ROI.
She was opportunistic, flexible and build momentum when Apple’s commercial pushed her over the Tipping Point. WoM was the main vehicle benefiting from a very good fit between Apple’s brand image and the music.
Metallica and Yael Naim have aligned their resources with their goals. However, they have in common one fundamental which is the quality of their “product” as both people and critics have appreciated a lot their music.

10 Tips to practice efficiently 360° Marketing
1- Define first a clear set of goals and the related strategy
2- Understand well your audiences/consumers and the way they use & interact with your brand(s)/products (incl. opinion leaders)
3- Identify clearly the different marketing channels (and their mix) that consumers are using (and not using) to get informed, to communicate, to entertain, to try and to purchase
4- Define the most appropriate channel(s) related to the status of your consumers (e.g. acquisition vs loyalty) and allocate a precise role to each of them
5- Keep always the ears, the eyes opened to what is going on the maket
6- Deliver a message if it brings value to your clients or audiences
7- Be consistent within and across all channels (one size doesn’t fit all) and produce regularly new content
8- Seek feedback and involvement from consumers and integrate it in the next steps
9- Measure, benchmark and allocate resources accordingly, i.e Quality over Quantity
10- Keep in mind that the best advocate about your products is NOT the brand but the consumer

Really lazy post with some stuff i found last year

From Contagious - a story about a cool geotagged, mobile documentary in South Africa: http://tinyurl.com/56lhdd

Uniqlo's Human vending machine, from PSFK: http://tinyurl.com/6tzfok

Cool street art location community: http://www.streetartlocator.com/

Techcrunch article about predicting the success of youtube videos: Researcher Claims “Attention Spirals” Hold Key To Predicting Success Of YouTube Videos

Cool community build around 3D modelling / printing and creation of objects: http://www.shapeways.com/

And finally, the full text from a Social Media Success Story by Econsulantcy:

I'm a professed 'social media' skeptic. I believe that much of the hype around social media is unjustified.

I believe anyone arguing that every corporation should be seeking out 'conversations' and becoming 'friends' with customers on social networks largely reflects a misguided and naive marketing philosophy.

That said, I don't doubt the power of 'connection' and 'community.'

Before the phrases 'Web 2.0' and 'social media' had even been coined, I had been intimately involved in the creation and development of websites with strong community components. All told, these websites had generated hundreds of thousands of thousands of registered users and millions upon millions of interactions in the form of message board posts, content uploads and user-to-user communications before Friendster had even launched.

I still employ 'connection' and 'community' to this day in several of my online ventures, although I would argue that artificial attempts at getting consumers to develop relationships around toothpaste and laundry detergent are not the best uses of these concepts.

If one considers that 'connection' and 'community' are the key components of 'social media,' there is perhaps no better recent case study highlighting how social media can be applied in a truly effective manner than the Twilight series of vampire-romance novels that teenagers have really bitten into.

If Twilight sounds familiar to you, it may be because the movie adaptation of the first Twilight novel (also called Twilight) was recently released and in less than 10 days grossed nearly $100mn. Blockbuster status, to be sure.

How did a then 32 year-old stay-at-home-mother named Stephanie Meyer, with no prior novels published, take a dream she had about a romance between a vampire and a teenage girl and turn it into every author's dream - more than 25 million books sold and a knockout Hollywood adaptation?

The Internet had a lot to do with it.

As the Los Angeles Times details, despite the fact that publisher Little, Brown paid $750,000 to win a bidding war for the Twilight manuscript, the book house initially only published 75,000 copies and created a less-than-inspired website to promote the new book.

That wasn't good enough for Meyer. So she created a personal website, StephenieMeyer.com, that was far more personal and intimate than the website Little, Brown developed. She posted blogs and was eager to engage personally with those who would comment. Not content to relegate the 'conversation' to StephenieMeyer.com, she went to other websites and interacted with individuals on their online turf.

In the process, Meyer built up a small but passionate fan base. She encouraged her fans and supported their efforts to build and contribute to the "community" that was growing around Twilight.

To be sure, it wasn't easy and success didn't come overnight. The Los Angeles Times notes that Twilight didn't 'go mainstream' until the third novel in the series was released in 2007. The rest is, as they say, history.

Before we praise Meyer's savvy use of the internet, however, we need to praise the quality of her product. Twilight's success is obviously not only the result of her promotional prowess but the result of the creation of a 'product' that appeals to its target audience.

If Twilight didn't have enough substance to spark readers' imaginations and to keep them turning the pages, no amount of strategic marketing would have taken the series as far as it has come.

In short, Meyer had a viable product and using many social media components, was able to help it get the exposure it needed to thrive in the marketplace.

Today's breed of social media proponents, of course, will extoll the virtues of Meyer's use of social media and they'll eagerly highlight how the same principals that provided promotional umph for Twilight can be applied by corporations.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

Twilight is a story, an idea, fantasy, entertainment. It is not toothpaste. It is not a commoditized consumer electronics product. It is not a soft drink.

People interact, engage and build communities around passions, causes, ideas, fantasies - not everyday products.

The same principles that Meyer employed to help gain exposure and build loyalty amongst readers can be applied by corporations but they're not likely to produce a similar result.

Of course, this isn't all that surprising.

One need only look at the popularity of virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and video games like the Legend of Zelda and the relative lack of popularity of most of the virtual world initiatives created by corporations to see that what people want to interact around is based on a lot more than the mere availability of something to interact around.

Twilight is a fantasy world in novel form and Meyer, through her personal interaction with readers and support of the formation of community around the fantasy world that original appeared in her dream, was able to inspire others to make the Twilight fantasy their own.

Fans were interacting with Meyer - the author of a book they liked - not a 'Community Manager' at a multi-billion dollar corporation that makes pet food.

Creating similar types of interaction around products like pet food and toothpaste isn't likely and trying to do so probably isn’t a worthwhile investment for a consumer goods brand, which has a different set of marketing goals, different resources and more formal ROI criteria than Meyer did when she went online to engage in her own life's passion - the books she wrote.

In my opinion, the success of Twilight demonstrates perfectly the value inherent in taking a holistic approach to marketing. When evaluating which parts of the media mix are ideally-suited to achieving the desired outcome, one needs to understand his or her product and its place in the world.

Had Stephanie Meyer promoted Twilight in the same fashion that Gillette promotes shaving products, for instance, I probably wouldn't be writing about Twilight. Conversely, it's no surprise that as companies try to foster 'community', 'engagement', and 'relationships' around everyday products, I am not writing about their successes.

10 Mobile Social Networks to Check Out

Thanks ReadWriteWeb yet again for this sweet list:

Written by Richard MacManus / January 4, 2009 9:00 AM / 15 Comments

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Earlier today we covered a mobile social network called Buzzd, which will be featured at the music festival Bonnaroo. In this post we outline 10 mobile social networks to keep your eyes on. It's a developing field - and there are issues such as hardware compatibility to overcome - but we expect some of these services to make a big impact in the next year or two. Because, as Sarah Perez recently noted, with 975 million mobile web users expected by 2012, this is a potentially very lucrative market.

Editor's note: Looking back over 2008, there were some posts on ReadWriteWeb that did not get the attention we felt they deserved - whether because of timing, competing news stories, etc. So in this end-of-year series, called Redux, we're resurrecting some of those hidden gems. This is one of them, we hope you enjoy (re)reading it!

Of course our list is subjective, so please leave a comment if we missed one of your favorites. Also let us know your thoughts on social networks going mobile. We've written before that MySpace, Facebook, and MSN are the leading mobile services - and March stats indicated that MySpace is the leader. But surely there will be one or two unknowns who rise to capture this nascent market. So with that in mind, here we go...

Dada

Dada is a mobile SNS that enables users to update personal blogs with pictures and video, download mobile entertainment, connect with and meet other local singles in real time and stay in contact with all their friends. Dada can be used on both PC and mobile, and dada.net is its portal destination page. The 3 main products within the portal are Dada Dating, Dada Life (personal space and social networking), and Mobile Entertainment.

See: Dada Leads Mobile Social Networking Charge

Strands

Recommendations company Strands started out as a music discovery mobile social networking service. Its mobile features include a mobile Web portal, a personalized radio station, and a personal version of partyStrands (its service for party organizers, bars, clubs and DJs). Strands' mobile social networking service basically enables its users to find music and network with their friends via their mobile phones.

See: MyStrands Revamp - More Integration Between Mobile, Online and Physical Worlds

Itsmy

The itsmy.com mobile community wants to be MySpace for your phone. By connecting people and content in both the U.S. and E.U., itsmy has already gathered up more than 1 million registered mobile users with 4 million mobile home and content pages and continues to grow. Recently, itsmy announced they've now launched 100,000 personal mobile TV channels - one for each of its top 10% of content-uploading customers.

See: itsmy Launches Personal Mobile Broadcasting

Frengo

In April mobile social networking company Frengo released a toolkit for development of Open Social and Facebook applications on mobile phones. The Open Social Mobile Toolkit supports MySpace, Hi5, Bebo, and Facebook and allows developers of applications on those networks to extend them to the mobile phone. In addition to extending support for the Open Social and Facebook platforms to the mobile phone, the Frengo toolkit allows developers to monetize applications via the company's social advertising platform or via premium SMS.

See: Frengo Launches Mobile Open Social Toolkit

Twango

In July 2007 Nokia acquired the media sharing service Twango. Twango combines online storage with social networking, allowing users to organize and share photos, videos and other personal media. ReadWriteWeb wrote an in-depth profile of Twango in January '07, in a post entitled Twango Tackles Lucrative Media Sharing Market. Nokia planned to use Twango to enable users to share multimedia content through their desktop and mobile devices.

See: Nokia Acquires Media Sharing Startup Twango

Shozu

Shozu is not strictly speaking a social network, but it enables you to share your videos and photos via your mobile phone - e.g. from your Flickr account, YouTube, Facebook. RWW reader Honor said in a past post that "it allows me to send the pictures I take with my n80 to Facebook and share with my friends, or email people pictures while I am at an event, shopping for stuff for them etc..."

The final 4 services are from Corvida's post on ReadWriteWeb entitled: The Future of Mobile Social Networks: 4 Promising Services

Brightkite

We recently profiled Brightkite as a winning mobile social network in the arena. Brightkite allows for your network of friends to keep track of where others may be at any moment. Since no GPS is required, users can send updates to the service via text messaging or email, to update their profile with location updates, pictures, and notes. With a host of privacy settings to prevent any form of stalking, Twitter users are increasingly using the network to update friends with status locations sent to their Twitter streams. Brightkite may be one of the best mobile networks to use, especially when going to a conference or big event in town.

Zyb

Taking a different approach from Brightkite, Zyb aims to be a mobile contact organizer for your social network. While we already have our address books for this, Zyb looks to provide a way for you to backup and synchronize your contacts online. You can store your phone numbers, calendar and texts, manage this information online, and transfer your information to a new phone if there ever comes a time. You can also use Zyb to find out who has you in their phones as a contact and even discover friends of friends. Think of Zyb as an expansion on your Facebook pictures and contacts, only more mobile.

Groovr

Groovr is your mobile network's night out on the town. Post a picture, message, or video to your Groovr profile and have it sent to all your friends too. Instant chat? Groovr's got you covered. However, some of these features are redundant. Can't we already send messages, pictures, and videos to our friends without a third party? The only feature we found remotely unique is a city's Explore page on Groovr. All of your posted items are sent to the corresponding cities Explore page. Here's a peek at San Francisco on Groovr:

Fon11

Developed by MoBlast Technologies, Fon11 could become the hottest mobile social network for the iPhone. With a nice UI (of course) and great features like the ability to see just how far away your contacts are from you, availability status messages, visibility settings and more, it seems Fon11 has a lot more to offer than the rest of the pack. Fon11 has already been ported to Android and Nokia Web Runtime with development plans in the works for J2ME and Windows Mobile platforms. While GPS remains an issue through no fault of Moblast, we've been assured that there are many strategies in development to find a resolution.

We hope you enjoyed this look at 10 interesting and exciting mobile social networks. The information in this post came from a variety of past ReadWriteWeb articles and we will continue to explore this promising market. In the meantime, please list your favorite mobile social networks in the comments below.

See also: Mobile Web Trends & Products, March '08 Update