Big brands looking to Facebook

Thanks WARC

Big brands looking to Facebook

PALO ALTO, California: Advertisers including Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Kraft are all using Facebook, the social networking service, to generate consumer insight, but their varying approaches and experiences show marketers have not yet established a consistent approach to using the website.

Many brands have displayed an increasing enthusiasm about utilising social media as popular interest in the medium has grown, but the developing nature of this channel means that few "best practice" examples of how to do so have emerged as yet.

As previously reported, Coca-Cola's main page on Facebook was originally created by two brand enthusiasts, and now has over three million "friends", making it one of the most popular areas of the Palo Alto-based website.

Michael Donnelly, director of worldwide interactive marketing at the soft drinks giant, argues that “many consumers are already sharing information regularly on Facebook," meaning the fan-page was "just one more way to quickly share information in a place where they are already spending time."

He also asserted that the "ease of creating content makes it so that we get very high engagement, far beyond typical page views" by using Facebook, which also "gives us a great platform to listen to the feedback we receive from our consumers."

In support of this, he added that every time the company added "photos, videos or status updates from the page, our fans are quick to tell us what they think. Their feedback is shared with their network of Facebook friends, exposing them to our fan-page."

Starbucks, the coffee house chain, which currently has 1.5 million "fans" for its official page, has also previously employed the social media site to communicate with users about its efforts to raise money for Global Aids Day.

Alexandra Wheeler, the firm's director of digital strategy, said the initiative "became the most viral event in Facebook history," and meant that "not only were customers excited about the brand, but they came together on one day to do something good."

Overall, she asserted that Facebook "helps us get a pulse on what is important to our customers. We can have a real dialog with them about the values and ideals that they share with us."

Kraft, the food manufacturer, also launched an "app" on the site last December, donating six meals to the not-for-profit organisation Feeding America each time it was downloaded.

Over 230,000 people did so within the first six weeks of its launch, while an unofficial page for the company's Oreo brand has also acquired more than 1.3 million "friends."

Stephen Chriss, director of consumer and customer engagement, at the company's US snacks business, said that while the company currently doesn't "formally interact with fans" on Facebook.

However, it does "keep an eye on the content, conversation and number of fans" on the service, and is also "reviewing" its approach.

Victoria's Secret and Sears have also used the site to offer discounts on products, and Unilever's Simon Clift has previously encouraged brands to make full use of such social media

Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble's general manager for interactive marketing and innovation, however, has warned against brand's trying to "hijack" the conversation between consumers.

Data sourced from Brand Channel/ClickZ; additional content by WARC staff, 26 May 2009
portals.

Humour and irony boost sales by a gazillion percent

Well maybe not, but i think these two post from eConsultancy and BazaarVoice make some really intersting points about the role CGH (Consumer generated humour - yes, finally, my own acronym!!) can play in sales.

now go out and buy a really crappy shirt because we all love taking the piss... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NZW3IY






Thanks Econsultancy -http://econsultancy.com/blog/3876-ironic-user-reviews-boost-t-shirt-sales-by-2300
User reviews come in many shapes and sizes, but typically people either love or hate a product. It’s normally a simple black and white issue, as few people bother to leave reviews for mediocre products.

It turns out that this either/or thinking is plain wrong, and there is a third factor to consider: irony. And tongue in cheek reviews stand a better chance of going viral, at least judging by the success of the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt.

The t-shirt, which features three wolves and one moon, has become one of the top sellers on Amazon, thanks to some classic one-liners and other more detailed reviews, with most written with an industrial-sized dose of irony.

Here are a few of my favourites (there are 455 to choose from):

• "Unfortunately I already had this exact picture tattooed on my chest, but this shirt is very useful in colder weather."
• "Every night, for the past 6 weeks, I have been visited by 3 wolf sprirts. And every night, they bestow upon me endless amounts of knowledge and offerings of imitation crab meat."
• "The Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt gave me a +10 resistance to energy attacks, +8 Strength, and added 30 feet to my normal leap. I cannot list the specific effects involving the opposite sex as I am still discovering these. And they are many."
• "I had a two-wolf shirt for a while and I didn't think life could get any better. I was wrong. Life got 50% better, no lie."
• "The second that these 3 Wolves touched my chest I benchpressed 5 meth labs and wrote an essay about moonlight. When I wear this shirt as pants I can run to Canada in only 42 days."
• "I once ran into Chuck Norris at a bar. He noticed I was wearing this shirt and he ran away."

Not all reviews were positive…

• "They SAY it's three wolves, but how do we know it's not the same wolf from three different angles? We cannot assume they'd be above airbrushing or the use of creative lighting just to save on wolves..."
• "I'm beginning to believe that some of the benefits ---- as described by other reviewers ---- are exaggerated. For example, not ONE supermodel has approached me."

In response to that one-star review the company that created the t-shirt responded in kind:"We at The Mountain do not guarantee that you will become a magnet for super models. There is no governing the fate of one man to secure the kindred love of a like-minded mate for life while baying at the moon on a warm Summer's night; to the man who wears not the 3 Wolf Moon and stumbles through life on a path of loneliness of one forgotten by the mortals he walks among… we feel we deserve at least 3 stars from you."

The company did however take issue with some of the comments, saying that “We appreciate humor as much as the next company, but we don't approve of some of the Classist remarks that are being generated here… some say ‘Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all’. We however disagree if it's at the expense of others in a Classist, Racist or Prejudice manner.”

So there it is. Ironic reviews are a winner.

And there I was thinking that the rise in popularity of animal t-shirts was linked to The Flight Of The Conchords…

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“H” is for Humor

May 25th, 2009 by Brant Barton | Co-Founder and VP of Business Development

In addition to tagging reviews, questions, answers, stories and other customer-generated content with descriptive codes like “CR” for references to competitors and “CS” for customer service issues, I am starting to think that our content moderators should apply “H” to content that could dramatically boost a product’s conversion rate (because after a fit of uncontrollable laughter and the delirium that follows you simply cannot resist the urge to buy the product that is the subject of the “H”). That’s some actionable business insight for merchandising teams.

The inspiration for this post is the now infamous “Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt”, currently the #1 selling Apparel product on Amazon.com. No, that’s not a typo. I could efficiently end this post by just telling you to read a few of the reviews for this product. That would more than accomplish my goal of demonstrating the value of not taking yourself (or your brand) too seriously. But I have a minimum length requirement to meet, so I’ll go on . . .

Our good friends at Econsultancy in the UK beat me to the punch with an entertaining blog postThe Washington Post published an article on the same day. No matter who you trust, that’s one damn funny t-shirt. If you trust me and took my advice above to read a few of the reviews, I bet you are now making your way through the checkout process while you finish reading this nailbiter of a post. That’s impressive multi-tasking. on the t-shirt.

We see our share of humorous reviews and many of those are just too inappropriate to post, but as reviews of the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt aptly demonstrate, there is a very fine line between inappropriate humor and pure genius, not to mention a word of mouth marketing bonanza. I won’t speak for my colleagues at Bazaarvoice (you know who you are), but this t-shirt is responsible for a major drop in productivity last Friday because I was personally contributing to the millions of word of mouth “impressions” that the product received. While it may be difficult to put a dollar value on each of those impressions, you can most definitely put a dollar value on lost productivity.

In closing, if you offer customer reviews of your products and services, whether you are a Bazaarvoice client or not, I urge you to evaluate whether your definition of inappropriate is too strict and your tolerance of humor too low. Millions of dollars and an immeasurable wealth of customer word of mouth could be at stake!