So no doubt you’ve heard about the enormous popularity of JetBlue’s $599 All You Can Jet Pass announced last month. As was expected, seats sold fast – so much so that JetBlue had to end the program earlier than anticipated! Mission accomplished, right? Well maybe – in the old world that is – but not today. You see the All You Can Jet Program is just getting started. Ever since the pass was announced, eager travelers have been busy at work planning routes (traffic to the JetBlue route map has increased over 700% since the announcement), arranging for time off to travel like mad, and connecting with other members of their elite community of lucky travelers. A simple promotion to move seats has now become a social movement whether JetBlue planned it to be or not.
So what exactly happened? Well, JetBlue tapped into a passion shared by millions – Travel, with an innovative program that inspired thousands of lucky participants enough to establish whole new communities. In fact, it such a movement that even travel agents are getting involved. According to Jaunted.com, new micro-social communities and offerings have been quickly established around the program including blogs – Where We Jet and Twelve Hours in a City, dedicated twitter accounts like @599club to share experiences, and even special travel packages built exclusively around JetBlue destinations and All You Can Jet travelers. Amazing!
The big lesson learned here is that great marketing is great marketing and when you can tap into a communities’ needs and passions, the possibilities are limitless. For those of you trying to figure out your social media strategy – spend less time thinking about the medium and more time thinking about the message and the potential that message has to start a dialog or unite a community. Once you nail that, you can think about building an integrated marketing and communication program that helps you spread the word – and if you are lucky, like JetBlue, your customers may even do that for you.
‘Til Next Time
It’s planning season again and social media is not only top of mind but dominating the conversation. After a series of strategic discussions around social media with some of my top clients I’ve decided to take another look at the PMN case studies with a key question in mind – what can these programs teach us about marketing and the future of marketing? The findings were very enlightening — so much so that I’ve written a feature in this month’s eM+C Magazine highlighting some of big take aha’s. While the article showcased four big brands, there is a ton more. That’s why I’ll be showcasing some of those additional insights here as well as at future webinars and speaking engagements. In the meantime I invite you to check out eM+C Magazine. Here is a quick summary along with the key learnings:
Ford’s Fiesta Movement shows us the growing importance of creating “pre-launch” buzz and may forever changes the way marketers introduce new products.
Nike’s What Do You Play For campaign teaches us the importance of building marketing programs that are not only inspirational but identifiable – celebrities no longer need apply.
1-800-Flowers’ Happy Mothers Days demonstrates the importance of transparency and tracking and
Starbucks’ I’m In proves cause marketing is not only good for the world but can be very good for your brand and sales.
Let me know what you think and be sure to check out the more than twenty PMN case studies on our website.
‘Til Next Time
Amex is turning the spotlight on small business and they’re using social media to do it. At nearly 30 million strong, small businesses are the heart of the U.S. economy and will play a vital role in driving our economic recovery. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that American Express, in partnership with NBC, is making a move to position itself as the card of choice for new and existing small businesses ready to spend. With it’s new campaign, Shine A Light, Amex is inviting the public to nominate a small business that “inspires them.” Written nominations will be voted on by the general public and the winning small business will receive a $100,000 in grant and marketing support from American Express. In addition, the individuals who nominated the three small business finalists will each receive a $3,000 American Express Gift Card.
So what’s so great about American Express’ Shine A Light program? First and foremost it is a very positive and inspirational program. At a time when unemployment is reaching 10%, the American Express program and its ads featuring restaurateur Tom Colicchio reminds us all that the American Dream is still very much alive – that is if we work hard and want it bad enough. For the many millions of the unemployed struggling to find their way or contemplating their next move as an entrepreneur this is an important message and option.
Next, I think perhaps most importantly, it shines a light on the importance of building a solid foundation and business strategy like so many small businesses in our own neighborhoods do so well. While the American Express program leverages new marketing tactics like social media to help spread the word and increase nominations, the success of many of these business are built on the marketing basics we should never forget. Basics like offering great products at a great price with exceptional service – something Joe’s deli or your local coffee shop may have perfected. In fact many of these operations have achieved a level of CRM that would make some of the world’s largest brands turn green with envy – they not only know their customers first name, but they know their favorite products and what makes them tick. Take my local butcher, Town Meats. What we love so much about Rich, Andy or Nick at Town Meats is that they sometimes know us better then we know ourselves – our favorites, the cuts we prefer, how much we order and even the kinds of things we would probably like if we gave it a try (that’s up-selling at its best). And if that’s not enough… heck they will even deliver – customer service is not dead. The point here is that small business is not only the key to our economic recovery, but most successful small businesses also hold the key to marketing success. In fact, they remind us that before we jump on the latest hottest trends — be it social media or whatever is next — it critical to get the basics right: clean your database, understand your customers, build great products and service the hell out of them. Once you do that, you’ll be ready to leverage the power of social media to shine a light. For more information or to nominate a small business (like Town Meats) near you, visit the Shine A Light website.
‘Til Next Time.
I love the fact that brands are now conscious about building communities. They’ve finally realized that the social internet matters and that these communities have and will continue to have an enormous impact on their brand, sales, and future success — whether they like it or not.
The latest to announce a new online forum/community is Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) with their new Freestyle Voices website. The site officially makes NCL the first cruise line in the industry to allow guests to connect and participate with each other. It gives users the ability to post their own opinions, reviews, pictures and personal stories about their NCL cruise vacation. And it seems to be working. In just a short period of time NCL’s Freestyle Voices is a vibrant community with more than 3,500 questions submitted, 200 stories posted and over 770 shore excursion reviews. But what I like best about the NCL Freestyle Voices is the following:
- It’s not a separate community/url: Freestyle Voices is part of the NCL main website and heavily promoted on the homepage. This allows NCL to take advantage of the close to one million unique individuals who visit the NCL website each month. Furthermore, quotes from happy cruisers help NCL do the selling. In a world where people are turning to other people for the things they need rather than brands, this is great marketing.
- It’s flexible and fully integrated: Users of the Freestyle Cruise can not only share their stories amongst themselves but also have the ability to link to those stories, photos, etc. to other social networks like Facebook — so that people who don’t visit NCL, can view the experience. This also enables the customer and NCL to reach a larger audience.
- It’s a database & viral tool: NCL doesn’t stop the conversation there. NCL encourages visitors to Freestyle Voices to sign up for the Inside Scoop, their company newsletter offering the latest updates on cruise specials, hot destinations and vacation planning. Visitors can even share the page/site with others across a multitude of destinations including delicious, newsvine, Twitter and more.
What the NCL site (and others like it) demonstrate is that it is not just about the popular social networks (i.e. Facebook), its about being and building community everywhere your customers are, including your own web site – especially your website since that is where you’ll likely find you best customers.
‘Til Next Time
Riding around my suburban neighborhood this summer, I will occasionally see an enterprising youngster set up on the sidewalk selling fresh lemonade in the afternoon sun. It gets me thinking about how challenging and satisfying it is to take an adverse situation and turn it into a positive – particularly in the world of business. Wouldn’t it be great to take negative chatter about your brand and convert it into something that promotes it? Well, Frank Eliason from @comcastcares has done just that by “socializing” customer service. By embracing Twitter and using the micro-blogging service Frank and his team respond to customer problems and issues in a timely and efficient manner. The result has been amazing – what could have been a legion of frustrated customers is now just the opposite – Comcast brand advocates. Many have sat up and taken notice, including BusinessWeek, which has called him “the most famous customer service manager in the U.S., possible the world.”
That’s why I’m really excited to announce that Frank has agreed to lead the PMN’s next webinar on October 21, 2009. In this interactive session, Frank will share his thoughts on the importance of listening and participating with customers and how you too can leverage interactive tools like Twitter to converse and ultimately convert customers into brand advocates. The addition of Frank to the impressive line up of PMN speakers — including Charlene Li, Ron Shevlin, Steve Rubel and Dave Evans — continues our mission to provide marketer with the very best know-how necessary to start marketing with customers rather than at them. We hope to see you at the Webinar and for those of you wanting to learn more about how to leverage the power of Twitter for your business check out TWTRCON DC the following day, October 22, 2009 where dozens of other leading brands will be sharing their thoughts, advice and stories.
To register for the PMN webinar on October 21, 2009 featuring Frank Eliason from @comcastcares click here. To register for TWTRCON DC Early Adopter pass, just $395 on October 22, 2009 click here.
‘Til Next Time.
After 3 years and 50,000 entries Netflix is ready to announce the winner of its movie recommendation challenge – or are they? While the contest ended on Sunday, two teams are reportedly in a dead heat for the million dollar prize. In fact, Netflix has delayed officially announcing the winner to validate the results – yes it was that close between the top 2 teams (BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, The Ensemble). So what was the challenge and — more importantly — the key lessons learned? The challenge was to improve Netflix’s movie recommendation engine by 10% – a task requiring deep expertise in predictive modeling and statistical scoring, which makes the 50,000 entries all the more impressive. However, one of the more interesting phenomena’s that resulted was the participation and collaboration among team members and eventually across teams in the later stage of the contest. Once the benchmark of 10% was passed, it set off a 30 day race that allowed other teams some time to surpass it. What actually occurred was fascinating – teams and rivals merged, consortiums were built and passions were ignited. So much so that one team, started their own company to develop recommendation systems for e-commerce players.
So what was THE key lesson learned?
- Participation & collaboration and teamwork leads to innovation and invention: When you engage a community great things can happen. There are countless examples of communities generating great ideas – My Starbucks Idea, Dell’s IdeaStorm and others. However, when you get the community to collaborate and you build teams comprised of different yet complementary skills sets truly amazing things can happen. This is why the Netflix participatory marketing program will be one that will be studied for many years to come. Not only did Netflix receive some great ideas on how to solve the problem, but they got a diverse group of people from around the global to focus on building a solution that they could not otherwise buy or build themselves.
For me the Netflix program reminds me a little bit of what 3M is so famous for – that is their ability to assemble small teams to collaborate and innovate new products. But while 3M pulls its talent from within the company, Netflix tapped into the social web to reach and engage the best minds in the world to solve their problem – amazing. So the next time your company faces what seems like an insurmountable challenge – ask yourself how would the “community” solve this?
‘Till Next Time
In a new report, social media guru Charlene Li, in partnership with wetpaint, reviews and charts Interbrand’s top 100 brands based on their social media presence and the level of engagement they have with their customers. It’s an innovative and important report for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the report attempts to actually measure the depth of engagement and provides additional insights on trends by industry and the number of social media channels used by each brand. Next, the report goes on to correlate financial performance of these brands with level of engagement.
Not surprisingly, “Mavens,” (those brands engaged in seven or more social media channels with an above-average engagement score), enjoyed double-digit revenue and margin growth (as a category) in spite of the current economy compared to “Walflowers” (those engaged in six or fewer channels and had a below-average engagement score) who had negative financial performance on those same metrics.
Additional insights from the report include:
- Being there is important: having a presence on social networks and micro-blogging outlets is important. The report goes on to say “social media reach alone may have a positive impact” as the more touchpoints used can cause a “ripple effect”, by increasing or “boosting” brand recognition and driving sales volume.”
- Depth is critical: In some respects focusing on depth over breadth may be an effective strategy as depth gives brands the opportunity to understand customer needs and to react quickly – “which in turn generates pricing power” and drives success.
- Scalability is key: Make the customer and a commitment to social media a part of the culture. “A few minutes each day spent by every employee adds up to a wealth of customer touchpoints.”
- Doing nothing is not an option – but doing it all may not be appropriate: Building a social media strategy depends on many factors including who your target is (remember Forrester’s POST methodology), your industry, etc. However, being where your customers are and a part of their online experience is critical.
- Find your sweet spot: Understand what resonates with your customers and engage with them in the channels they use and prefer. If resources are an issue – start small, lobby for more assets and engage fully.
The report goes on to highlight some very compelling case studies including profiles on Starbucks (ranked #1), Dell (#2), SAP (#9), Toyota (#21) and also includes a complementary website that allows brands to engage further and even complete their own brand’s profile. Another great report from Charlene! However, with the focus being so heavily placed on measurement these days it would be great to better understand the “engagement attributes” used to rank these brands (but I guess that is the secret sauce). Furthermore, I would have liked to see how much of a lift these brands experienced on a series of other metrics. Specifically, in a world where people are turning to other people for a things they need rather than the brands themselves, it would have been great to see if these brands experienced any lift in metrics like satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, likelihood to purchase.
To download the report click here.
‘Til Next Time
It is that time of year again – Back to School and the ads are everywhere. However, the one thing I noticed this year that was very different is that some of the big brands have added a bit more participatory marketing into their existing promotional efforts. One of the more innovative on that front has been Bed Bath & Beyond. In a series of print ads placed across several magazines Bed Bath & Beyond is mixing it up by including its standard 20% off coupons along with a participatory marketing twist. For the ad placed in People Magazine that twist includes a “Student of Invention” participatory marketing promotion that encourages readers to submit a great dorm room product idea. Similar to the My Starbucks idea effort, the ad calls for readers to submit ideas. Ideas in this case are “to help students conquer the challenges of dorm room living: space, organization, storage, cleaning, lighting, comfort and decorating.” Done in partnership with Edison Nation, the ad goes on to say the winning invention may be sold in the more than 900 Bed, Bath and Beyond stores across the nation. For more information on the program and to enter your idea visit the Bed Bath & Beyond website.
In a related effort, a Bed Bath & Beyond ad found in Real Simple the same week, offers readers the possibility to win $55,000 for college and a $10,000 donation to the college of their choice if they user their MasterCard at Bed Bath & Beyond between July 1 – September 8, 2009. The ad looks and feels very similar to the ad found in People magazine with three fourths of the ad devoted to the promotion and remaing portion to the coupon, but obviously the message is very different. So what is so intriguing about Bed Bath and Beyond’s effort here? Lots.
- A mix of old & new approaches. The 20% coupon is a Bed Bath & Beyond staple. While Bed Bath & Beyond may not be completely comfortable messing with success the latest effort demonstrates the company is willing to try or at least test something new and embraces customer participation as a key component of the effort. I suspect coupon redemption tracking and impact on sales will yield some great learnings.
- Media/offer targeting and the social web. It is very interesting to look at the placement and demographics of each ad. As an example, People Magazine’s demographics index very high among 18-24 year olds and those under 44. One look at Forrester’s social technographics and you can see that the audience comprises a segment of the population that is very active on the social internet and includes a high number of joiners (maintain social networking profiles) and creators (publish blogs, upload video, write articles/stories and post them), which is very aligned to the promotion activity required. On the other side we have the ad in Real Simple whose average reader skews older at 44. In fact, about 52% of Real Simple readers are between 35-54, according to the media kit. Here again, a look at Forrester’s social technographics data provides some interesting insights – this segment is much less active on the social internet. Therefore it seems fitting that the promotional element showcased in the ad in Real Simple requires no participation outside of a purchase at Bed Bath & Beyond in order to be automatically entered into the sweepstakes. Coincidence? I think not. To me it looks like Bed Bath & Beyond took the time to think about its target audience segments and built relevant offers that would best appeal to each.
- Tracking. This is a company that has, in many respects, has taken a mass marketing approach to the market. Each and every month one thing was certain in our household – that 20% off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond could be found in the mailbox. This latest effort demonstrates that Bed Bath & Beyond is willing to mix it up a bit and it looks like they are doing it intelligently with a targeted approach that most likely includes sophisticated tracking that can not only measure lift in sales and redemptions but participation as well.
Congratulations to Bed Bath & Beyond for demonstrating the importance of understanding your audience and building a corresponding offer and media strategy that encourage participation.
‘Til Next Time.
In June I detailed an innovative participatory marketing program at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel. The “running concierge” program demonstrated how leading brands can build a differentiated customer experience through participation and even operationalize it. It also showcased the importance of moving beyond data and using public-facing employees to engage customers in ways that provide a benefit while also reinforcing your core positioning and marketing messages. While I’ve detailed several examples of participatory marketing in this blog over the last 10 months, I think the Westin example and ones like it are among the most powerful. Why? Because they use real people and, like social media, demonstrate the power of getting as many people as you can involved in your brand, particularly those that work for you.
The Westin program also reminded me of the countless opportunities nearly every brand has to engage customers to participate with their brand on a daily basis – be it your help desk, store personnel, web site or online customer service consultants like Saturn’s — which was highlighted in my recent eM+C email marketing column. In the Saturn example the online consultant effectively moved me through the purchase process and offered me a special incentive to take a test drive. Where the program unfortunately fell a bit short was its inability to continue the conversation by asking me to subscribe to future emails from Saturn. However, the lessons are clear – every touch point is an opportunity to engage, encourage participation and continue the conversation. For marketers the next steps are clear.
- Audit all customer touch points
- Web site
- Communications
- Customer service/help desk
- In store o Etc.
- Build a strategy that:
- Engages the customer by offering value
- Encourages a desired action and engages the customer to participate with your brand further
- Attempts to continue the conversation
- Commit to innovation and open communication
- Involve employees in the process by sharing winning programs and case studies that encourage brainstorming and idea exchanges among critical consistencies.
- Train
- The Saturn program and other successful and notable programs like Comcast Cares, Zappos and others all demonstrate the importance of training employees and making the commitment to the customer front and center.
- Execute and evaluate
- Like any great program, success is in the details and your ability to not only execute but evaluate learnings so the program can evolve and get better.
Last but not least, as the Westin example demonstrated – the ability to operationalize a program can be the ultimate differentiator when it comes to building a truly unique and valued customer experience.
Til Next Time
Impressed with the eloquence and creativity seen from its customers’ product reviews (example one, example two, example three), Amazon is now turning to its customer base to help produce its next commercial. Specifically, Amazon.com is asking aspiring filmmakers and the rest of us to help create a short film or video advertising Amazon.com. The program entitled “Your Amazon Ad Contest” asks users to submit a 30 second TV commercial video for Amazon.com between 6/8 – 7/17. A panel of judges will then select five finalists and pick one of them as the Jury Prize winner. Then between 8/24 and 9/6, millions of Amazon customers will be invited to watch and rate the five finalists’ videos. The filmmaker who receives the highest average rating from eligible votes will receive the Audience prize. Finally on 9/21, the Jury and Audience Prize winners will each receive a $10,000 gift card and a screening of their ad at the 15th Annual Gen Art Film Festival in New York City. If you win both…you get both prizes.
The contest page goes on to ask participants to be creative – “show us anything, from how fast you can place an order to how excited your dog gets when he sees the delivery guy.” The program includes a partnership with Withoutabox which offers various tools, including film production and promotion services.
It was only a few short years ago that Ad Age (echoing Time Magazine) declared the Agency of the Year to be you. I guess you’ve now been hired by Amazon.com to produce a new commercial– Congratulations and welcome to the new world of participatory marketing!
It is definitely a new world and the Amazon program is another example of how participatory marketing is challenging traditional approaches. Amazon is one company that has fully embraced participatory marketing and is putting the customer in control of everything…from posting reviews, to selecting what products go on sale (remember Amazon’s Ready, Set, Go campaign last year), to how to best communicate what the Amazon.com brand means. For that, my hat goes off to the brave folks at Amazon.com – keep up the good work. Let this be a lesson to the rest of us that relinquishing control and putting your customers in charge can be a very, very good thing.
For more information about the contest or to enter – click here.
Participatory Marketing 