Month: September 2015

The power of Instagram in beauty & skincare product marketing

Beauty and skincare product marketers spend increasing amount of money and time on advertising their products through social media and engaging potential customers through interactions on social media. Social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have their uniqueness in terms of being venue of digital advertising and marketing. Facebook, with a […]

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Selfies in the Wild

According to eMarketer, 18- to 29-year-olds account for 71% of US Internet users who accessed Snapchat in the past 30 days. Millennials’ share here was higher than their portion of users for any other social network studied [1]. Long story short: if marketers are looking to reach Millennials, this is the place to do so. […]

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Budweiser #BestBuds

The Campaign

One of my favorite campaigns that I have seen within this year is the Budweiser “Best Buds” series of commercials.  These commercials have run on television, but were cleverly designed and promoted over social media.  The campaign has been running for quite some time now, and ads have been shown on both the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowl.  This campaign is not only a different taste of beer advertising but it taps into the emotion of a man and his best friend.  The one below is one of my favorites from the series, since the message is clear and makes me tear up. Every. Single. Time.

If you go to the YouTube link, you find that it has been watched over 23 million times, and liked over 60 thousand times. If that isn’t social engagement, I don’t really know what is.

In this particular advertisement, it evokes an emotion that is hard to come by in today’s era.  If an ad makes me tear up, I always consider it a good one – because I hardly tear up for anything.  The thought of a loved one dying is one thing that is hard to evoke, but instead of making it about humans, Budweiser decided to make it about the dog.  Not only is it a perfect twist, but it makes viewers realize what effect it has on our favorite four legged friends.  I think this advertisement really resonates with a lot of people – and that’s why this campaign did so well.

One of my favorite parts of this commercial and campaign is that it promotes safe drinking and driving.  I think everyone this day in age has known someone who has been in a car accident, and furthermore, I’m sure many of those people know someone who has gotten into a drunk driving accident. With the upcoming generation of millennials entering the legal drinking age, we have been taught that drinking and driving is something you should never do.  It’s very encouraging to see a beer company promoting the same thing in a way that reminds you in a lesson that isn’t a high school teacher telling you what not to do.

 

The Target

This Anheuser-Busch campaign, is targeted towards people of the legal drinking age.  However, it is more specifically targeted towards drinkers between the ages of 21-27.  Anheuser-Busch wanted to specifically capture the 21-27 target because this demographic consumes and shares content via the internet; mainly though social sites and news sources.  According to the Anheuser-Busch article, the main purpose of the campaign was to promote responsible drinking and driving.  The campaign voices that it is super important not to drink and drive, but is even more important to have a safe place to stay.  From the YouTube video that was shown, it is clear that that message has been obtained.  From other commercials, like the one below, it is a little harder to tell – but none the less, the campaign is still a strong one.

This YouTube advertisement above generated close to 59 million views and has over 246 thousand likes.  This “Puppy Love” commercial was aired during the Super Bowl XLVIII, which is why it has more views than the other ads.  This last advertisement I will show below, was aired during the Super Bowl XLIX.

“Lost Dog” commercial generated 29 million views with 120 thousand likes. This ad was as a result of the campaign’s success from the prior year.

 

The Strategy

As seen by the ads that I have posted in this article, the strategy of this campaign was to promote safe driving to all alcohol consumers.  The importance of safe drinking is one that has always been promoted by the alcohol industry, but Budweiser took it to a whole new level. Alcohol advertising is actually self-regulated, and no advertising focuses on partying or getting drunk.  Rather, alcohol advertisements focus on the taste and or social aspects of enjoying a beer with friends.

The strategy of this campaign was very smart and well thought out.  As noted before, Anheuser-Busch wanted to advertise to all alcohol consumers, and advertising online was a great way to do so because viewers would tend to see the post during the day and notice it was posted and shared by a friend.  For a discussion that is centered on safe drinking and driving, it is almost better to have a friend share the information, since its saying to a friend “hey, don’t let this happen to you, because if it does, I will be crushed.”  Budweiser, in my eyes, did everything right, they had a goal, they achieved it, and they gained a lot of earned media.  News sources listed Budweiser as having one of the best commercials on the Super Bowl – always something people talk about after the football game. Huffington Post, WGNTV, and AdWeek all promoted Budweiser through earned media.  The advertisement that ran during Super Bowl XLIX had the highest ranking by increase in positive comments according to Venture Beat.

Besides the sharing of the YouTube videos via social media, Budweiser also promoted their brand through other vehicles.  In this tweet below, you can see that Budweiser ran a sweepstakes.

This Tweet alone, which was sent on the 23rd of January 2015, generated 4,373 retweets and 2,950 favorites.

Twitter was not the source Budweiser used, they also got the Vine community involved by getting famous viner Vincent Marcus to create an ad.

Vincent Marcus made this content exclusively for Budweiser, and you know it’s an ad with “#BestBuds Budweiser #ad.”

 

Conclusion

The Budweiser brand went ahead to create content in a way that would engage users – which I think is one of the most important things to do in this time period.  If a brand doesn’t create conversation, how do you really know if you are truly reaching consumers? Budweiser understood their target and they realized how important social media is for promoting their brand.

Budweiser, I think did a phenomenal job with the #BestBuds campaign and while I would love for Budweiser to do another commercial for the 2016 Super Bowl, I doubt it will happen, but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

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Girl Scouts, Cookies and Twitter

Girl Scouts take to Twitter to encourage downloads of their new mobile app.

We have all tried to find the nearest Girl Scout representative to get our cookie fix and been unsuccessful, resulting in less sales for the organization and sad consumers. Fortunately, that’s what the Girl Scout Cookie Finder mobile app takes care of. You put in your location and magically your phone spits out the nearest Girl Scout: probably pretty dangerous for us as consumers but genius for Girl Scouts USA. The organization famous for empowering young girls has found a way to encourage downloads of their app that links local Girl Scout chapters with potential cookie consumers. However, just because something amazing exists doesn’t mean that people are using it. The Girl Scouts noticed that not only were people not utilizing the app, they also didn’t interact with it much after the initial download. This defeated the purpose of creating such a useful app. So, the girls had to figure out how to get people connected to the app, and increase usage by those who already had the it.

Objectives:

The Girl Scouts wanted people to download the Girl Scout Cookie Finder mobile app in order to connect potential buyers to local Girl Scouts during the cookie season. But more than that, they wanted people to search within the app and utilize more of its functions. The Girl Scouts knew that they had a solution to consumer’s problem. They just needed an authentic way to get the product in front of the consumer.

Strategies:

The Girl Scouts started doing some social listening to learn about their target and what platforms they frequented. It’s important for any organization to know who they are talking to and where those people are. It’s a waste of money and time if you don’t research the consumer. Their biggest insight was that people often want to buy Girl Scout cookies but can’t find where they can make the purchase. This is a big problem because the Girl Scouts thought they had solved this problem already with the app, but they learned people weren’t using it.

The group also needed to know what platforms would work best for their objectives. A larger consumer base and a platform with valuable opportunities for brands lead the Girl Scouts to Twitter. Twitter is the optimal platform for brands who want to drive app downloads because of their app card function. The app card function allows brands to create a highly stylized visual representation of their app that allows consumers to click on a “download” button. Couldn’t get much simpler than that. Twitter also has great targeting capabilities that allow brands to find exactly who would care about their message.

Lessons learned:

By using Twitter’s app card function the Girl Scouts gained more than 19,500 app downloads. The Girl Scouts used their most iconic flavors in the images on the app card in hopes of catching the most attention and showing how valuable the app could be. Twitter’s app card function was really the perfect choice because you can open the and download the app right from the tweet itself. They increased the number of app downloads but they also used learnings from social listening to engage existing users of the app. The Girl Scouts learned that by including existing app users they were able to drive engagements. By doing this they increased their audience, which helped create buzz. Girl Scouts learned that it wasn’t enough to just promote the app, they had to teach consumers how to use it and why it was important. Although the case study did not explicitly say, a good assumption would be that a by-product of this campaign was an increased following on Twitter.

One thing that wasn’t present in the campaign was a consistent hashtag. The Girl Scouts really should have implemented a hashtag to go with the campaign if only to help document engagements, but it would have added to the professionalism of the campaign.

Examples:

Source: https://business.twitter.com/success-stories/girl-scouts

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The World Needed a Selfie

Looking at the major social media campaigns that I have seen over the past year, I wanted to look at one that I never exactly noticed, when I definitely should have. The one that comes to mind is NASA’s Earth Right Now campaign, featuring the #GlobalSelfie for Earth Day in 2014. First, I would like […]

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How #RefreshinglyHonest Are You?

Social media is everywhere and with so much to look at, it’s important to have campaigns and events that make an impression on social media consumers. Through social media campaigns, companies can hone in on a specific message that they want to spread to the public and encourage engagement and participation that could lead to […]

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UNICEF Tap Project Case Study

The UNICEF Tap Project campaign was a highly successful example of expert social media, digital, and phone application marketing. The basis of the campaign itself was app-driven involvement from supporters. UNICEF asked followers to sacrifice time on their phone to provide clean water for someone in need for a day. In fact, they declared that […]

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Honda Fit Kit Case Study

Personal Blog Link https://willmucha.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/honda-fit-kit-case-study/ Honda A band that many people will say is one of the most reliable and safe car brands you can buy on the market. People often say a Honda vehicle, if taken care of, can run over 300,000 miles before finally going to that big parking lot in the sky. However, […]

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