Social Media Thingys

Sampling: a 20th century model perfect for 21st century marketing

Nader Ashway4 Comments

Ever try a piece of that mystery meat in the supermarket?  Ever been to a trade show and strapped on some gizmo to “see how this thing really works?”  Ever take a free bottle of thirst-quenching ade at an outdoor event or concert?  Ever taken a test drive at your local auto dealer?  Then you’ve engaged with a sampling program and, perhaps, one of the most underrated routes to marketing success.

Sampling – sometimes called product sampling, or product seeding –  is the simple act of giving products and even services (think massages) away to get prospects to engage with the experience at no cost.  Typically, the results are very positive, as prospects that interact with or try a product at low risk tend to enjoy the interaction and tend to favorably recall the experience.

Sampling jumpstarts many of the most desired marketing outcomes:
–    creates brand and feature awareness
–    is an engaging and memorable experience
–    is real-time, and therefore creates immediacy
–    is a trial-based experience (perhaps the most important facet here)
–    is a strong acquisition tool

Sampling may reach more prospects than you might consider.  According to a 2008 study by Arbitron and Edison Media Research, nearly 70 million consumers aged 12 and older sample a product every quarter. And talk about lift:  about one out of every three consumers who try a sample buy the sampled product during the same shopping trip.  Further, sampling can impact future buying decisions, as the known experience creates a bond to the brand: six out of 10 consumers who sample products plan to buy these products again. That’s a pretty convincing ROI.

Now, no one here is saying that sampling is so monumental an option that you should abandon your other tactics and shift all your dollars into a seeding program.  However, there are aspects of sampling that simply outgain many of the more known marketing approaches.  For instance, advertising, long accepted as the heavyweight champion of marketing communication, can, at best, only serve to stimulate demand for a product.  Sampling, on the other hand, induces trial.  It’s simply a matter of scale: if advertising didn’t have the benefit of riding along the broadcast channels, it would lose to sampling as a model of efficiency.

Does sampling have any drawbacks?  A few minor shortcomings are evident.  Sampling is hyper-local, and with that comes a scaling challenge. [You can get around this by including a product sample in your next physical mailing program…scaling problem overcome, but watch out for postage fees.] Also, sampling creates a minor headache if you’re bent on attribution.  It’s easy to see same day sales lift, but long-term brand building and incremental sales gains are hard to attribute unless you’re isolating markets or specific product varieties.

Finally, sampling does have a few parameters that must be considered…it’s hard to sample large or expensive products outside of the confines of the test-drive model.  You do have to eat the manufacturing costs of the products you’re giving away as you hedge your bets against future sales.  But regardless of these minor drawbacks, you can gain advantages in your market through sampling.  And if you do it with an intelligently conceived, creatively executed program, promoted through social media and even mobile alerts, chances are you’ll be enjoying those advantages with newly acquired customers for years to come.

Death and Social Media

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This is a morbid way to discuss an idea, but let’s talk about death.  And while we’re at it, let’s talk about social media. I was (briefly, fleetingly) thinking about what would happen after I die, and the kinds of things people would remember about me.  (And more exactly, the kinds of things I hope people will remember about me.)

In my life, (and I’m not quite done yet,) I have created volumes of content in the social media world:  blog posts, and blog comments, Facebook statuses and comments and likes and picture uploads and all those Tweets, reTweets and direct messages on Twitter!  I’ve yelled about firing the head coach of my beloved Buffalo Bills on the fan forums on buffalobills.com, and helped people solve technical problems on support forums for Apple computers and some software platforms.  I’ve written record and book reviews on iTunes and Amazon.  I’ve even commented on videos posted on YouTube!  (Eeek.  What a geek.)

So I wondered, will this become part of what people remember about me?  Will there be people at my funeral saying, “yeah, nice guy…oh! And did you see his Tweets from the IAB mobile conference back in 2010?  So insightful.” Instead of a collage of photos, will there be a screen somewhere with a streaming feed of my life’s digital output?

On one had, I seriously doubt that these bits and bytes of my recommendations, forwards, hashtag snips and extemporanea will have any bearing on what people think about me. But on the other, there’s no getting around the fact that social media content is now a contributing editor to my legacy.  I also submit that I think it would be an interesting, revealing and even fairly intimate way to chronologically peek into the ebbs and flows of my (mostly) professional life.  Which makes me think:  are we (am I?) Tweeting accordingly?  Is the overall tone of my social commentary admirable/useful/honorable?  Will my children be proud of what they read?  Does it really matter how many check-ins I have, or if I’m the bloody mayor of some local bar?  Jeez…maybe we better start looking at all of this in context.

In older days, we might have discovered a diary under a bed, or a journal tucked away in a closet somewhere, long after the departure of a loved one.  But now, we have a digitized database of someone’s every thought and comment for years and years.  And since most people in the world will never author a book, or write a professional article in a real journal, or be interviewed for television or radio, is the chronicling of social media verbiage a new means to endure? [Uh oh, I think I smell a new business model being hatched.]

100 Years of Advertising Agency Deliverables – In Three C’s.

Nader Ashway5 Comments

The history of advertising and marketing communications – about the last 100 years or so – has constantly demanded agencies to evolve.  And the evolutionary pace is moving faster than ever, thanks to the advent of the Internet.  New media, new technology, new formats – all of these play critical roles.  But looking backward – and then forward again – this history can be described in three primary phases, each beginning with the letter C.  And if you care to read through, there’s a bonus!

The first C:  Copywriting

In the early days of advertising, say, from its provenances through the late 1950’s, businesses engaged the services of advertising agencies mostly for their superior writing skills.  Copywriters weaved dazzling tales of adventure and promise around products and services.  The primary media were radio (you had to “paint” the scene with words) and print, mostly expressed in newspapers and the burgeoning magazine business.  Consider the scheister-ism of PT Barnum’s “Greatest Show on Earth,” long-copy (and long-promise) miracle cure-all ads and the culmination in the late 1950’s to “E-Day” for the Edsel.  Copy carried us through two world wars.

The Second C:  Commercials

By the 1960’s, art started to capture our imagination. Helmut Krone’s 2:1 layout ratio reduced copy to a shrinking afterthought:  Think Small.  Flowery language and superspun tales gave way to big, beautiful product shots, and – gasp! – moving images on the new-fangled television thingy.  For the next 50 years or so, American advertising would become a bubbling volcanic eruption of 30- and 60-second commercinematic lava.  Rain-slicked roads for car commercials, the beckoning bubbling overflow of the beer money shot, all those great talking heads and one very large, very iconic Mean Joe Green having a Coke and a Smile.    What could possibly top that?

For the better part of five decades, commercials flourished, and made advertising a sexy career choice. And even got big-time movie directors stoked about a supershort form. But in the late 1990’s there was trouble afoot. A new and powerful medium had sprung up, and there were – gulp – NO RULES.  Heck, for a long time, with no IAB, there were no STANDARDS!  But there sure were lots of eyeballs. The Internet did change everything, especially advertising.  And you could almost see the second “C” getting desperate…trying to articulate the new medium with, of all things, ANIMALS:  sock puppets, energized bunnies, and when will cavemen and chimpanzees ever get old?  It was clearly time for a new generation.

The Third C:  Content

Like its predecessors, content will change everything about how advertising agencies go about their business, about the kinds of people they will hire and about the kind of work that will be produced.  In some ways, content is already surpassing commercials – expensive to create, produce and air – as the chief and ultra-scalable deliverable.  Today, in the social media morning of marketing history, content development is as valuable to our clients as the storyboard once was and the concept outline before it.  Programs, movements, essay-writing contests, blogs, handheld video diaries, flash mobs, tweets and check-ins:  all content, and all fueled (okay mostly fueled) by our beloved industry.  Next time you’re having lunch with your client, start talking about content.  You might see a real relationship start to bloom.

The fourth C:  I told you there was more.

Although Content has become the unobtanium of the marketing world, there is a good chance that its reign will not last nearly as long as its forebears.  In the next 10 years (yep, you heard it here first,) if agencies cannot deliver COMMUNITY to their clients, they will be as valuable as shiny, mint-condition Edsels. And we all know where they ended up.

Five reasons David Ogilvy would like – and approve of – social media

Nader Ashway5 Comments

I’m a big fan of David Ogilvy. The principles he laid down in his books and in his work are still being expressed to great effect – decades later and in more languages he might have ever imagined – by the Ogilvy network worldwide.  When Ogilvy passed away just after his 88th birthday in 1999, he would have had no idea (as the rest of us didn’t) what incredible changes were about to re-shape the marketing and advertising landscape.   Changes like website functionality and enhancements to HTML and search and later paid search and mobile.

But David was all about was the BIG IDEA.  And while all those channels would have made sense in an expanding media world, and maybe would have made great strides under his stewardship, none would likely have tickled him or inspired him more than the proliferation of social media.  Based on some of the more important principles he articulated in “Ogilvy on Advertising,” his veritable how-to for all marketing practitioners, here are five key reasons “Uncle Dave” would have been agog over social media.

  1. The ability to articulate a unified brand image: Ogilvy wrote “products, like people, have personalities…an amalgam of many things – its name, its packaging, its price, the style of its advertising, and above all, the nature of the product itself.”  The many forms of social media allow a brand to articulate that personality across the vast expanses of the online landscape, and give its stewards (brand managers, CMOs and agency contacts) the opportunity to capitalize on that privilege or to puke it away.  As Ogilvy said, “it isn’t the {product} they choose, it’s the image.”
  2. Word of mouth: David was talking about this in the early 1980’s, while the rest of the industry came around about 20 years later.  Ogilvy was fascinated by this aspect of the business and even commented on how elements of advertising, like jingles and fashion styles, were crossing over into mainstream consumption.Of course, the bedrock of social media is word of mouth.  It starts with influencing and even starting conversations about your company or your brand, and then monitoring them.  Today’s social media tools and third-party-developed platforms allow you to develop, manage and monitor your social “voice” with increasing levels of accuracy.
  3. How to become a good copywriter: In the memorial full page ad in Adweek in August 1999, a picture of David Ogilvy was accompanied with his quote:  “I’d like to be remembered as a copywriter who had some big ideas.”  He knew the business was perched on good ideas, articulated well in copy.And what is social media but a bunch of copy?  Web copy, blog posts, comments, LinkedIn profiles, FB posts and statuses…all copy.  And the mothership of copywriting?  Twitter:  just 140 characters to say it right.  Although Uncle Dave was a fan of the long-form ad, he may have enjoyed this simple but effective restriction.  My guess is he would have summed it up thus: “It’s brilliant.  It keeps the rubbish to a minimum, and makes everyone else create new destinations from the same footpath.”
  4. Analysis, especially by medium: One important aspect of the business that intrigued Ogilvy was direct response.  He called it his “first love and secret weapon.”  He loved the  connection to visible, measurable sales.  He hailed the headline as the most important element in communicating benefits.  And he wrote that relating inquiries to the medium that produced them can help you fine tune your media selection.Ogilvy, a huge fan of direct marketing metrics and a fierce proponent of research, would have been tickled silly with modern tools like Google Analytics, or BackType (an engine that allows you to search conversation topics on blogs, mashups and other social networks.) He also would have been a master of leveraging combinations – a Twitter feed on his blog; latest posts on his Facebook fan page (jeez, how many fans would he have had?) and a LinkedIn profile that pointed to his video content on YouTube and Vimeo.  All of this of course, streamed to his fans and friends via RSS and managed simply via his Ping.fm dashboard.
  5. The #1 Miracle of Research: Ogilvy was a staunch supporter of research, writing “advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.”  In the book, he outlines 18 miracles of research.  This is #1:  “It can measure the reputation of your company among consumers…”How convenient that social media would allow Mr. Ogilvy to do virtually the same thing, in real time!  By monitoring conversations about the brands his agency advertises, or reading through recent entries of a help forum for a product his agency markets, or by measuring daily analytics on a website his agency built, David the Great would have had a moment-to-moment readout on how his brands were doing.  Probably while sipping a perfect gin on the veranda overlooking the garden at Touffou.Cheers, David.  How we miss you so.

Article also published by Nader Ashway as Five Reasons David Ogilvy Would Like – and Aprove of  – Social Media on Technorati.

Your policies. Your brand. Are they in sync?

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Last month, I planned on attending a business conference in New York City.  It was a breakfast meeting, held at the Union League Club on Park Avenue.  The conference was presented by BMA of New York City, an association whose membership is comprised of advertising agency professionals, media professionals and corporate marketers.

I come from the advertising agency side of the business, so I was dressed in the standard agency creative uniform:  blazer, collared shirt, jeans.  However, when I arrived at the door I was told that there was a strict policy at this club:  NO JEANS.  Despite being a prominent member of the board of directors, [and the immediate past president of the association,] there was simply no talking to the leadership of the club.  This is their policy.  No compromise. No exceptions.

My chief complaint with maintaining a policy like this is simple:  if you want rules, that’s perfectly fine.  But then don’t invite – and profit from – groups who may not adhere to the same structures (like dress code, for instance.) Would you open your venue to a gathering of Tibetan monks and then say their robes and native garb are not “appropriate?”  Not likely.

To be clear, this is not a let-me-use-my-blog-to-slam-the-club post.  Instead, it shines a light on an important aspect of marketing that should be examined by marketers of any size.  Is standing on ceremony getting in the way of making real connections with consumers?   Or does it help forge deeper ones?

I find this a most interesting question, especially since so much of the marketing landscape is dominated by discussion of social media and their applications.  It’s incredible to think that just two years ago, there would NEVER have been a forum for the average consumer to speak DIRECTLY to senior executives at a company like IBM, for example.  Today, that policy is shattered and splintered into multiple conversation streams and feeds, and being monitored very closely by those very executives as a barometer of the brand’s every ebb and flow.

That’s just one specific example based on the proliferation of a few important platforms, like Twitter and Facebook.  But if we dive deeper into business operations, it leads to further (and equally important) questions.  Questions like:  what are your current engagement policies?  When was the last time you evaluated those policies?  And most importantly, are those policies reflective of the ethos of your brand?

After reflecting on these questions, two important things have occurred.  First, I have unearthed several policies that are in effect at my own agency that simply have not been evaluated in many years.  I am now addressing them – solely as a reflection of our brand values.  Secondly, I have come to a deeper understanding of the “snub at the club.”  As much as I stomped and stormed and insisted on gaining entrance, they WERE acting in accordance with the values of their brand and honoring the spirit of the membership.  And for that, I not only applaud them, I hold it up as a simple example of a policy-as-brand-identifier model for any marketer.