Impressions vs. Engagement:

A key point of focus for digital marketers has been encouraging consumer engagement with brands rather than blasting out messaging. With the recent changes in its insights platform and expansion into how brands can promote itself through the site, Facebook seems to be disregarding this idea by placing brand impressions at the forefront.

Potential for Backfire:

As even brand page content has now become potential ad space, consumers will become continually exposed to branded content but also may become dis-engaged. As brands begin to fight their way onto user’s newsfeeds marketers may see a potential backlash where consumers decide to unlike pages to decrease the onslaught of content aimed towards them. This will be because while the content will have higher visibility it may have little relevance to the audience it hits.

Getting back to basics:

My thought on this is that it’s a move backwards towards pay and spray advertising and away from the relational marketing that I personally hold in higher regard. As a consumer a brand creates little to no interest to me by continually exposing itself through ads and promotional activities. Instead I have higher affinity for a brand and its product when I feel a sense of value from the relationship it has built  and the worth that I place in using the product. While through advertising I may see the brand more often, it probably won’t change my opinion when this advertising provides me with no demonstrable value.

Its all about the data…

Why would Google want to get into the mobile payment industry? Think about the purchases you make on a daily basis and what they say about you. By compiling a list of a person’s purchases you can tell their geography (where they live and hang out), approximate their demographic and financial data and get a deeper look at their spending habits (what stores do they frequent, what sort of products do they buy etc). Like any other initiative that Google does they will be using your data to target advertisements in the form of offers and loyalty programs.

Further implications:

Without knowing the governance of this type of consumer data (and not knowing Google’s future plans) through the help of Google, companies could potentially have a wealth of data at their fingertips as a result of this initiative. First through the use of loyalty programs companies can link offline user accounts to their online accounts and compare their purchases. This could help them see the recency and frequency of purchases ( good ol’ RFM) but also see how consumer behaviour differs between the two outlets. By having this data they can make a wide variety of changes to what consumers experience either in store or online.

Again if privacy regulations allow it, companies can also get a better view of their customers and the general public on a more macro view. Having access to this wealth of purchase data companies can see what segments of customers are purchasing their products, what other products they are likely to buy and in some instances get a better sense of the purchase cycle. In terms of a supply chain view companies could also see at what times in the year consumers are more likely to purchase products and as a result they could work harder to move customers into their stores at these peak times.

Looking at this from a marketing and CRM point of view this development from Google has a lot of potential for companies to better reach customers and optimize efforts. On the consumer side of things it could get a little scary. Essentially through the use of this app  you could potentially be  giving away all of your purchase data for Google to sell to companies.In the past this hasn’t gone that well in the realm of public opinion ( remember Facebook beacon?). With more companies looking to move into the mobile advertising and payment field this will definitely be a development to watch for as to whether it works for the better or worse.

At some restaurants you can find a ‘secret menu‘ where there are  items that they don’t advertise but if you’re in the know will make for you anyways. Its a bit like a secret club where customers get something that publicly no body knows about and as a practice is something that ( to my knowledge) hasn’t been really explored in retail as much.

Recently I came across an unadvertised discount from the GAP that spurred my interest in secret promotions. Its  since been taken down from this marginally legit sounding page.  I had come across this link on a Reddit sub forum from someone who had came across it somewhere else. It asked for my cell number and in exchange sent me a discount code to be used at checkout. With some hesitance I tried it out as the site didn’t seem to have much relation to the GAP other than having its logo. Had I not trusted my source for the link I would have passed on it thinking it was a phishing attempt. It did end up working even though not even the employees had much of a clue about it having just come across it once before.

How is a promotion like this useful? Well in my case it gave me a feeling of exclusiveness (mouhaha! I’m one of the few!) and it brought me into a store I don’t often place at the top of my shopping list. With this promotion being so out of the ordinary it encouraged me to research further and with no promotion time span given it placed pressure on me to use this sooner rather than later.

Looking beyond myself as the customer, I estimate the benefits of this approach would be even further expanded when an influencer or content creator comes across this type of content. By seeing this ‘hidden’ content they have the ability to share and build further credibility with their audience. As a result I would presume a two fold result: this person would have a greater affinity for the company (Hey this company had awesome content that I could share with my following. I like them!) and there would be the seeding of this content to this person’s trusting followers who will be more likely to go through with a  purchase.

So…. how is this type of promotion or even campaign implemented?  That’s probably the harder part. Does the firm put up a site and just wait for people to come across it? Should content be seeded through chosen users or be  placed on specific sites? As interesting as this idea is implementing it is the much more difficult part and needs to be explored further. But looking at this just as a concept there may be opportunity in this rather than continually   building larger advertisements to get into the faces of the company’s potential customers.

As always feel free to contact me at either @kevrichard on twitter or kevin@kevrichard.com

*A note about this post. I’m not in anyway trying to say that lying or being not upfront with your customers can be used as a tactic. Obviously lying  equals angry customers which goes on to decreased sales. I mean to discuss the use of content delivery strategies that are outside of a firm’s owned properties (website, Facebook page, store front).

For the past year+ I’ve been following Microsoft’s product entry originally called Project Natal and now called the Kinect. Starting with the presentation  of the Milo project  during E3 2009 I definitely got chills and came to  think that this technology had some major potential ( See  the video below to see what I mean!)

1 year passed from the release of the project Milo video and I didn’t really hear much further about the Kinect until this summer from E3.  The thing was that  there was no mention of Milo, instead there were  announcements of games such as Kinect Adventures and and Kinect Joy Ride. Essentially games aimed towards the casual market  that looked like they were taken from the Wii. After being shown such a great tech demo this was hardly anything ground breaking. Another aspect which shaked my confidence a bit  in the machine  was the discussion from reporter previews making mention of significant play lag when using the Kinect . Would the Kinect not meet its full potential and just turn into a Wii wannabe device?

Recently I checked out the Toronto Kinect preview put  on by  Xbox Canada. Getting to try the system hands on (or hands off really) would finally help me to determine if this was a peripheral that would withstand the lifespan of the Xbox 360 or be eventually discontinued (much like the Xbox HD disc drive).

What are my thoughts on the Kinect now having played it? There is some serious tech behind this machine but its still early days. Getting to try most of the game demos on display I had to say except for Kinect Joy Ride the control of the games were very tight and the game play was fun. I wasn’t experiencing any sort of lag and my in game character was mimicking my every move flawlessly. Being shown a device tool (shown in the picture below) you could see that the Kinect was essentially a motion capture machine and more. When showed another Kinect tool I was amazed to see the level of detail in the image it was displaying back to me. In a pixelated view of myself even smaller details like the writing on my sweater were being displayed.

More than just motion capture!

My concerns for the system? That it will be nothing more than a tool to attract casual gamers pushing out games that contain just short mini contests and family trivia. While it has been confirmed that Fable 3 will have some sort of conectivity and at the Kinnect preview I was assured that they had more in depth games in the works, Microsoft needs to get a few blockbuster quality games on the Kinect for it to be accepted by their primary audience who play games like Halo, God of War and Madden NFL. If they can get games out  with similar game play to the commercial below I’d be completely sold!

While to a smaller extent, I was also concerned by the demands of the Kinect in terms of how much space and energy it required to play this game. In one demo, I found to be successful in the game I needed to be moving in a floor area that if played in my apartment  would place significant demands on my  living room space.

The games  also if played for long periods are definitely a workout ! They aren’t ones you can simply sit down for, they take your whole body and movement into it. As gaming is often something people  play to to sit back and unwind,  being required to be on their feet and active may be a bit of a put off.

Overall I’m converted back into thinking that the Kinect will be a killer app for the Xbox 360. I hope that Microsoft is able to put the marketing push into this device and persuade gamers to purchase it as I know I will!

Looking at the video from Hyundai its pretty obvious that this was done for promotional purposes and to take complete advantage of the viral nature of this hit and run.Even I contributed to spreading it around the net. That being said I think it was an awesome idea that was a great initiative in marketing the Hyundai brand. Heres why:

It was timely: Hyundai didn’t wait forever to react. Within a few days they grabbed a camera and filmed the video while this event was still fresh in peoples minds. Sometimes marketing can be a slow and drawn out process and by not acting on a sudden change in the market or current events companies can miss out on major opportunities.

It focused on the company: The video that Hyundai created could have been an opportunity to take a direct swipe at the competition ( BMW and luxury cars) instead they focused on their company. Sure the parking demonstration teased a bit but in the end it took full advantage of demonstrating their product and how they care for their customers. This way all the attention is on them rather than sharing the attention with another company.

Its a good story: By doing good for the person affected by this park and run incident it makes you feel something for the company. It holds more value to the customer than a commercial or advertisement and its something people are more likely to talk about.

In marketing there is always talk about cutting through the clutter. In the past Gorilla marketing and shock tactics have been used to spur immediate attention from customers but after seeing many of these similar campaigns they become just the same. Instead I think being relevant to the lives of your customers may be a strong way to create a more memorable experience that people will talk about.

Not to seem exploitive but if companies would take a few moments to find a way to do something thats relevant to their customers but also fitting with what they do this may be another avenue of creating awareness for your product.

Mobile Devices: Iphone, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre ( and many others)

Computers: HP TouchSmart PC, Microsoft Surface,  and coming up the Crunch Pad, ‘Rumored’ Applie itablet, and Microsoft Courier. Laptops have gotten a lot smaller, much more tactile and are getting additional screens for added use.

Interactive Gaming: the hold in your hand Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and the Wii. Upcoming Xbox Natal and PS3’s new motion remote.

Other Products: touch screen GPS  and car displays, interactive footwear, Mp3 players with touch screens/internet/ video camera ….(truthfully I have a blank but the list definitely goes on!)

Even more recently I was interested to hear about how some television manufacturers were beginning to make 3d televisions , this is a drastic shift! Television has often been an inactive activity and now you’re getting placed into your shows!  Electronics becoming more tactile and interactive is an interesting shift. Perhaps over the years people have felt a lot more passive and immobile with the use of PC’s and low touch devices.

With the improvement of wireless technology’s, smaller devices  and a more social internet maybe what we are seeing now are people in general wanting technologies that offer them an  experience and further feelings of freedom and attachment. For me thats an important shift to take into account and is something that can be used in terms of business and marketing.  Looking at customer experiences ( whether its interactive or passive ) how products are used ( are there ways to let a person know if they are doing this right? How can this product improve their life experience?)  and what  materials go into these products ( will material X feel better than material Y).

This may all seem very rambly…. or it may put things in perfect sense. I don’t know. Its just been something thats been on my mind for while, driving ideas and thoughts. Am I headed in the wrong direction with this or do I have a sense of sanity in these thoughts ? Let me know what you think.

Experiment 2:

My second experiment involved messaging and how much interaction cans a personality or twitter brand can have with its followers. Yet again I decided to take a twitter alias(@socialmediabot2)  as I’m far from the average twitter user. Going to wefollow I decided to follow 50 people (close to the average of 69 )  and posted intermittently hoping perhaps for some interaction with who I’m following … a bit of a downfall of this experiment lack of true connection with people.

Afterwards, starting on the Monday morning I started posting messages from another account. 1 for every half hour for 7.5 hours for a total of 14 with the messages ( TEST #_ )  to see how this would be viewed on my feed. I wanted to see how the everyday  messaging from the people I followed would fit with the planned ‘corporate’ messaging and whether it would overload my feed and possibly cause me to want to unfollow the account

The Result:

Twitter Overload

As you can see there are portions of my feed where the messaging overlapped, for a casual user of twitter this may just be too much!  Especially for accounts with little customer interaction (  just sharing links, company news etc) a strong consideration will have to be  made regarding how many times to post daily will work to allow you to build and retain your audience.

Overall Takeaways:

Twitter is still a difficult area to get solid data from and you can’t just jump on twitter hoping for success in your campaigns or awareness.It takes planning and organization but even then trial and error is needed. I think something that is often missed with twitter  for heavy users like myself  is we forget that the vast majority of people don’t follow hundreds of people or have the equivalent # of followers .

They follow friends and organizations that they are close to and that needs to be considered when planning out a campaign. While heavy twitter users may be able to withstand messaging it probably would be seen as spam to these casual users. I think an excellent example of how to avoid this sort of twitter spam is from Best buy and their Twelpforce where they have once central account but many separate support accounts.

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin@kevrichard.com or send me a twitter message .

Experiment #1:

I think a lot of twitter users have come across the messages “Get more followers now” or ” Get X amount of followers today” and despite the general sentiment of  quality of followers over quantity I’m sure everyone even for a moment  where slightly tempted by this thinking that that more followers equals more people to get their messaging out to.  This is especially relevant  to  traditional marketing mediums as  more eyes =more marketing awareness= more customer action = money!  So I decided to put this to the test, can someone get tons of followers overnight using these follower programs.

The Scenario:

Starting off with an empty account ( @socialmediabot1) I joined the following  social media following programs:

• www.tweetswarm.com
• www.gatherfollowers.com
• http://www.getmoretwitterfollowers.info

Initially I started following 19 people and I noticed with all 3 of these programs that there were paid for premium options ( so basically paying for followers)  I also noticed that I almost immediately started sending out auto posts from these programs.  From there I left the account completely alone to let the followers come in, opting not to send out anything to not influence the result based on my content.

Result:

#FAIL

I started @socialmediabot1 on a Friday night, deciding to leave it  over the weekend. Checking it once I noticed that I was following over 100 people and had just 19 followers, no where close to the promised massive amounts of followers.  At the end of this experiment I come to above picture, no followers and 12 auto tweets and a suspended account.  I wasn’t completely surprised.

Conclusion:

I am by no means a great twitter user but my account certainly didn’t popup over night and I certainly didn’t expect this one to. A major marketing/branding implication of this is communities need to be built and  its not a matter of massively following people or hoping that  people  run to your brand. Relationships need to be formed  and this takes a lot of time and effort.

Often times I feel that platforms like twitter are advertised as a panacea for marketing and that suddenly you’ll see huge results. FALSE! Like all marketing efforts hard work needs to be invested and careful planning and organizing should be done.  Social Media is just another touch point to your customers, the only ‘magic’ there is the opportunity to have further communications with customers and the general public.

I’d like to hear  what you  think about twitter and  any of your thoughts on  best cases or usage scenarios for companies and organizations so please feel free to leave a comment, send me a twitter message or email me at kevin@kevrichard.com .

Picture from cote

A friend and fellow marketer Emma Brooks has declared today #InternetFAILday as a result of the multiple failures on social networking and commerce sites. This got me thinking what would happen if companies suddenly lost social media  as a marketing/business tool? Especially now that many customers are accustomed to these practices , how could current social media practices be scaled down into real life settings? Here are a few of my thoughts on this issue:

Customer Service: Many companies are trying to improve their service offering through their online channels having ignored the poor service their customers receive in person. Without this tool sales/service people to be successful would need to be much more autonomous and have the tools they need in front of them instead of outsourced to call centers/outside locations.

This would be a major business shift for most companies. Instead of having a sales orientation in their stores where metrics and the bottom line is the most important part of operations, a customer service orientation would need to be taken where relationships and customer satisfaction would need to be seen as a major driver of sales.

Customer Connection: With the loss of internet tools customers would lose the sense of connection with companies and other customers. They would lose the ability to come together and discuss the direction and changes to the company. Companies would lose a great market research outlet but they also may lose the strong brand evangelists that spread word of mouth for their company as well .

A company I feel that takes this relationship building and does it well on a personal level is Lululemon. By supporting the local yoga communities and offering interaction mechanisms in store (little fun activities and yoga classes) customers feel connected to the company on a deeper level.  Customers don’t think of the company as an organization that just sells them stuff but they also see them as a community hub. Social media places a large focus on grouping customers together and building communities, why can’t stores themselves work on building communities locally?

Customer Segmentation:  Without social media some things could be much more costly to do. Customer segmentation would be one of them and without social media this would be a be a large strategic challenge for companies. Using the internet and social media , companies have often times tried to attract all groups through customized product offerings and communities. Knowing each individual customer and customizing their experience would be too hard to do in the offline world. It would mean that a company’s customer list would either need to be scaled down so they know each individual customer to  place them  in a specific category or there would be a big brother scenario where every action a customer takes is recorded (not a very friendly situation).

Social media offers information about customers that real world interactions don’t and in this case it would be strategically better to define the customer your company wishes to target instead. By doing this all efforts and resources are focused on  being a strong product/service supplier for a single group building market and mind share among these customers. While the downfall of this would mean that your market is significantly smaller, this also means that your resources are more effectively used saving you money in the long run.

Conclusion:

In closing I think this is a great exercise for companies to be doing. If social media were to just suddenly end today how would their company operate? What changes would need to be made? Looking at how they could improve their operations in real life situations could be an opportunity to further strengthen the company as a whole and create a company much more focused around the customer.

While this promotion was made with the best intentions, it seems that they didn’t consider the larger consequences. In this post  I’d like to play devils advocate  demonstrating why mass free campaigns  should not be on a companies radar for selling their product ,  after demonstrating a case that did the  the idea of free samples right.

So what are some of the problems with these large campaigns? :

1. Large Costs: Both of these companies will be taking a major hit when it comes to their bottom line with this promotion. To start off,  they face major promotional costs with a national campaign but there are also the significant costs of giving away product and reimbursing their franchisees.  Also an unforeseen cost is the temporary loss of regular paying customers as a result of this promotion, with long lines filled with people looking to get their free product paying customers with limited time and attention levels are more likely to avoid these restaurants till the promotion ends.

2. Lack of Relationship Building: Everyone enjoys a free product,  it doesn’t matter what it is , if its placed in front of them  they will want it because there is no cost.  The downside of this is that the consumer has little to no interest in anything else. In my personal experience volunteering  with the Canadian Liver Foundation, during  a promotion with the Women’s health convention the CLF  gave  away mesh shopping bags  which were a big success, people completely crowded the booth wanted to have these bags.

THE PROBLEM: the booth’s informational materials went completely ignored, people just grabbed the bag and left.  The giveaway defeated the purpose of  being there which was informing the public on liver diseases and the resources available to those who have them. Much like the Liver foundation , KFC and Popeyes wanted to expand their company awareness. KFC wanted to position itself as a place of healthy eating and Popeye’s wanted to increase its market position.  While both companies allowed  people to sample their product it created  little to no change in perceptions or connections overall with the company.

Giving something away for free doesn’t inform anyone or build long term loyalty to a firm, it may build some short term good will  but the bigger problem is that people are more interested in the free and not on considering the company on a deeper level.

3. Service Failure: Last and probably the longest lasting negative factor in giving away your product for free experienced through these campaign is when the promotion fails to meet expectations.  Within the examples of KFC and Popeye’s  deal seekers became angry and upset  when they didn’t receive the promised product (as shown in the following You tube clips):

Service failure like this not only builds negative feelings among coupon users, but negative word of mouth among those that they interact with as they describe their negative experience. A promotion like this  also effects the relationship held with current customers and franchises who’s regular habits are disrupted resulting in a loss of good will towards the firms.

Giveaway’s done right! : In a previous post of mine I discussed the case of Whopper Sacrifice, a promotion where consumers could get a coupon for a free Whopper by defriending 10 people they knew on Facebook. Yes it gives away a free product but here is what I felt they did right:

1.The Consumer was active in the process: instead of mindlessly printing off a coupon participants had an opportunity cost in receiving the product which was making the decision of which 10 friends they should  sacrifice. This was more than just getting a product, the person was actually forced to think and have a memorable experience.

2.It was limited: This campaign was not made open to everyone as it only ran for a short period and had a limited run of coupons. This decreased the costs and  demand on Burger King’s restaurants meaning there was very little opportunity for service failure for all parties involved . Also by creating  exclusivity this  also created a topic for discussion creating word of mouth for the brand.

3.Involved others: this promotion involved more than just the participant ,  those who were defriended were sent a notification that they were taken off someones’ friend list with a branded notice creating further discussion ( I’m worth 1/10 of a whopper wtf?!)  and expanding into a larger audience.

Many people equate free with being a good  idea , but  without a well managed campaign and a way to build stronger attachment to the firm what the campaign really works out to is taking on a large cost with little reward. While KFC and Popeyes got a lot of attention for these large campaigns they will probably fail to see any long lasting effect.

Have any questions/comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message .