Old Spice – the archetype of THE integrated marketing campaign?
July 2010 in the US was marked by the Old Spice wave. This 72 year-old P&G brand comprehends a large product range, from (grandpa’s, as it is widely perceived) Cologne to deodorants, through body wash products.
The launch
To rebuild a brand awareness and consciousness, Old Spice contracted the agency Wieden + Kennedy to create a new media campaign. A poster campaign was launched and Old Spice first commercial was broadcasted in February 2010 on the main US TV channels during the Super Bowl, THE sports event of the year in the US. Full of humour and charm, this first video won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June 2010.
The link between social media, crowdsourcing, creating targeted audiences, generating buzz, and greater online distribution of media assets is beginning to transform the PR and Media Relations industry. While this has been in a growth mode in the US, its rare to see it being acted upon in Europe.
Yesterday, Usain Bolt the fastest man in the world, took part in a charity event on the organised by watchmaking brand Hublot, for whom he is an ambassador. He was on the starting line in front of the Hublot’s Headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland pitting himself against 10 child athletes. Hublot had agreed to donate 10,000 US dollars for each child who reached the finish line before “Lightning Bolt”, and ended up paying $100,000 USD to the Usain Bolt Foundation. LABEL vigorously supported the event in creating new channels and online communications through social media channels, assisting the WorldTelevision ENG, video streaming and media relations team to further the reach and awareness event.
Companies and brands have been quick to adapt to social marketing principals and delve beyond the banner advertisement. Online communities present a significant opportunity to engage people around a topic they care about. Whilst many brands are building their own communities online such as Nike+, BeingGirl and Lego, human beings will spend their time and attention across multiple communities. So how does a brand capitalize on their own community and participate in other like minded communities?
The video was made by netinfluence at Lift 10 where Maria was giving a workshop about the challenges brands face to edge their way into the sacred space of conversation. Download her presentation on Slideshare and retrieve the pictures of her workshop on our Facebook.
In the past year Facebook saw an unprecedented growth worldwide and there is no current indication that this growth will stop in 2010 or beyond. (New estimates show it is fast approaching 500 million users.) Brands, companies and organisations cannot ignore the network effect driving Facebook’s and other social networks adoption across the world. Its no longer a matter of asking whether they should be involved in this media it’s a matter of when and how they can becoe involved. LABEL recommends that elements of social media marketing and communications should be included as digital touchpoints that support traditional communications channels for any brand, company or organization today. (more…)
I think this article is a must read – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8590306.stm
At the F8 conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a number of products he says are aimed at putting users and their friends at the “centre of the web”. It will surely work on the further unseating of Google being the site or service synonymous with internet usage and the webs most used or visited service.
In terms of SEO Facebook has become one of, if not, the largest influencer in organic search today. This is something not to ignore for any SEO oriented marketer or communicator. Its very easy to work out what is driving this .. the sheer size of its user numbers pages and content links have driven it to prominence.
400 M registered users with 200 M logging in each day
More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
Here is a simple list of tactical steps on how to benefit from using Facebook’s SEO advantage (adapted from All About Facebook)
1. Start with a good URL
URLs are critical in search engine optimization. Google (and other search engines) use as much information as possible to determine the relevance of a particular page for a given search. Currently Facebook enables those pages with over 100 fans to get a vanity URL. A vanity URL is the short Facebook URL that helps people easily access your page.
The most important reason for the meteoric growth of Social Networks is something called “The Network Effect”. This equates to a tipping point when the value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it. In the past year, we have witnessed one such rising star, Facebook ( but it begs the question is it the only one? ). It took 5 years for Facebook to reach 150 million users and then a further 8 months to double that number. Today, according to Facebook Statistics, it has 400 million users. In 2009 we saw Facebook become almost ubiquitous in every conversation swirling around Social Media and social networks. It was the year in which Facebook exploded into a global phenomena, dominating the Social Networking market worldwide as it became an international social network giant. While its dominated the english speaking press and displaced MySpace its not the only Social Network in the world.
To believe that Facebook or english speaking social networks are the only “players in Social networks” worldwide would be nothing short of one sided owed to very narrow perspective of the hyper connected world we live in. According to Wikipedia, there are some 1.5 billion members worldwide. Across the world there a number of culturally, language, local and regionally driven social networks , that both singularly and accumulatively pose the question whether Facebook can dominate the world in Social Networking. As startling as it is, the ” Facebook Network Effect” is not only a Facebook phenomena and its also occurring across other Social Networks in the world , albeit with different speeds.
At the time of Avatar, of augmented reality, of multiple web identities, etc and in a world where everything seems to become virtual, what place is left for what’s real? The first and most important one, of course.
Most of online successes are but a reflection of reality. Our marketing strategies, now called 2.0 strategies, are based on our emotions, experiences, reactions and not on those of machines or computer programms.
The rise of the importance of the Facebook fan page has become an integral part of companies social media campaigns or presence. Its not hard to understand why. Facebook is the web’s most popular destination after Google ( it is number 1 in Indonesia, Philippines , Malaysia and Singapore ) where the average user spends in the order of 33 minutes per day and its registered user numbers are upwards of 350 million. As the use or entry to a brand’s website are in decline due to a shift in how consumers use the web this days it makes common sense to to add Facebook into the online marketing mix. With number of brand, star, cause or business fans ranging close to 5.3 billion , that means News Feeds to user’s pages are carrying a range of brand content and updates.
Last November “The Big Money” part of Slate Magazine, ranked 50 brands that they see as making the best use of Facebook. The ranking is based on factors like number of fans, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity and fan engagement, not just numbers of fans. According to “The Big Money” Coca-Cola is ranked as the brand that makes best use of the social network thanks to its “organic fan-centric page without a corporate feel” and some extremely good apps the currently coin the phrase “Share Happiness” in a campaign to boost the diffusion , awareness and contact with the brand in social media.
When it comes to using Facebook as the primary point or integrated into the marketing channels, some brand are beginning to find there feet by working with the endemic functions of the service. Lots of brands have also begun an integrated approach to engaging with their consumers to build buzz, distribution and awareness of their campaigns either through or surrounding Facebook. The reality is that Facebook has become the perfect supplement to any website and online marketing efforts and in some cases become a pivotal or primary focus. While not all efforts are excellent here are some that we think are working extremely well.
IKEA’s Facebook Propagation Planning Campaign has used the concept of tagging in an online competition to support the opening of a new store. Some call it a genius use of one of Facebook’s inherent functions. While some of the best campaign strategies in Facebook are simple, and nothing should be simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition. Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms in a store Ikea was due to open.
“People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!”
From advertising and brand identity (brand management) to development of information technologies solutions (business intelligence), via web, multimedia & social media, LABEL delivers a fully integrated services offer.
With 60 experts based in Geneva, LABEL not only advises more than 100 customers such as Nestlé, Baume & Mercier, Tag Heuer, CIO, Swissquote, Veolia, Hayek, ..., it conceptualizes, develops and implements business solutions.
Brian Solis, l’un des auteurs de référence dans le domaine des Médias Sociaux, introduit dans son dernier livre, intitulé «Engage», le concept du SRM (Social Relationship Management). L’article qui suit s’inspire fortement d’un article lu récemment sur son blog – www.briansolis.com et que je vous recommande. […]
In the past year Facebook saw an unprecedented growth worldwide and there is no current indication that this growth will stop in 2010 or beyond. (New estimates show it is fast approaching 500 million users.) Brands, companies and organisations cannot ignore the network effect driving Facebook’s and other social networks adoption across the world. Its no longer a matter of asking whether they should be involved in this media it’s a matter of when and how they can becoe involved. LABEL recommends that elements of social media marketing and communications should be included as digital touchpoints that support traditional communications channels for any brand, company or organization today.
