Corporate Eye

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Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius

Quantifying the Online Video Opportunity for Brands

The word among marketers for quite awhile has been that online video represents a significant opportunity for brands to deliver content in a format that consumers actively seek.  In other words, online video presents the opportunity to connect with consumers and engage them in branded experiences that they might not have access to elsewhere.

Still not sure if online video should be part of your brand’s marketing strategy?  Consider the numbers for a moment by reviewing the chart from Nielsen below.

nielsen_online_video_statistics

According to this chart, Google’s YouTube is by far the dominant player in the online video channel.  In the United States alone, over 100 million unique viewers watched nearly 6 billion online video streams in February 2010.  Clearly, people are watching online videos!  However, YouTube is a crowded and cluttered site.  How do you get noticed on YouTube against the viral sneezing kitten and Justin Bieber fan videos uploaded by teenage girls?

The key to getting noticed is not relying entirely on your online video destination to grow your video audience.  Online video should be an integrated part of your broader social media marketing strategy.  Yes, online video is an effective form of social media marketing when you create share-worthy videos and actually allow people to link to, embed, email and share your videos with their own audiences via blogs, Twitter, social networking, and so on.  Even your offline marketing should be integrated with your social media marketing and online video efforts.

As an example, Samsung created a unique marketing initiative that tied into the 2009 Super Bowl — one of the biggest annual sporting events in the United States — where consumers were invited to create their own videos explaining how they enjoy watching the Big Game.  The campaign leveraged traditional advertising as well as social media marketing with online videos, fan voting for the winning video, and more.

In other words, if you create an online video and publish it to YouTube, that doesn’t mean consumers will find it, watch it, or share it.  Your job as a marketer is to drive the audience to your online videos by creating integrated marketing efforts and creating amazing content that people actually want to see.

Putting Hard Numbers to the Value of Social Media Connections

computer_hand_moneyThe company that develops an accurate way to measure the value of social Web connections would etch its place in marketing history, but is it really possible to put hard numbers to the value of social Web connections and conversations?  One company, Vitrue, is trying to do exactly that and with new research reveals that one million social Web connections translates into $3.6 million in media over the course of a year.

According to an article on BrandWeek, Vitrue developed its valuations by researching Facebook impressions and updates and discovered that connected people deliver more impressions overall.  That means, if you have an audience on the social Web, you should actively interact with them.  They are listening to you.

Vitrue is quick to point out that not all brands are created equal on the social Web.  “Sexier” brands have more engaged audiences and get more impressions than less exciting brands.  It’s all about perception though.  How can you make your brand more like the brands that are having success in engaging their audiences on the social Web?  That’s just one opportunity for you to find added success in your own social media marketing efforts.

Vitrue’s research also didn’t analyze the value of the engagements and relationships that develop between brands and the people who connect with them on the social Web — just the variance in brand impressions that those connections experience was analyzed.  Clearly, the more interactive and engaged the audience is and the deeper relationships grow, the greater the value of those connections.  That means the $3.6 million value is probably much higher.  However, like measuring brand value, measuring the value of social media connections still alludes companies.  The point to take away from this research is that social Web connections do impact brands in the long-term and social media marketing should be an integral part of any marketing plan.

Image: Flickr

Design as a Catalyst for Brand-Building

A recent article about Procter & Gamble published by Advertising Age, tells the story of the company’s new focus on design as a catalyst for shaping marketing strategy and building consumer products brands.  The new design focus seamlessly integrates product, package and marketing for a stronger presence at the store-level rather than relying on a silo approach that was no longer working.

P&G invested time and money into research, design, and execution to revive many of its brands, and the results so far have been very positive.  The company’s new direction requires that every marketing idea can prove its potential for success at the shelf-level before it is pursued.

It’s a bold shift in thinking that feeds off of 2009 research by Nielsen Co., which reported that half of respondents (who came from six developed markets, including the United States) to the Nielsen survey claimed that they learned about new products in-store while just one-third reported television as the place where they learn about new products.  Furthermore, 71% of the consumers who reported that they learn about new products primarily in-store cited seeing a product on the store shelf and its package as the source of their awareness.  According to these results, in-store promotional displays have clearly been trumped by package design.

Many of P&G’s new design efforts haven’t launched at the store level yet, so results are forthcoming.  However, the company can cite a 2-point market share increase for one of its brands since implementing a redesign effort for it.

shampoo_store

Overall, P&G’s efforts sound positive, primarily because they’re attempting to listen to consumers throughout the redesign process to learn what consumers truly need and want from P&G products and brands.  We’ve all been to the supermarket and stood in front of shelves and shelves filled with shampoo trying to find the brand we prefer.  And once you find your brand, you need to carefully read each label to ensure you select the formula or scent that you like.  P&G is finally accepting that shelf clutter isn’t boosting sales and market share.  For example, the company is redesigning its Pantene hair care product line by cutting 25% of the items in the line and adding an easier to read color-coding design to its packages to help consumers find the specific item they want faster and with less frustration.

When was the last time your marketing team took a look at your package design and evaluated its real performance on the shelf?  Are you sure your design is working?  Consumers’ tastes, needs, and wants change faster than ever these days.  Brands need to not only keep up with those changes but also to seek out every possible way to gain even the slightest advantage over the competition.  Packaging and design just might be the catalyst for your own brand building efforts.

Image: Flickr

Brands Gaining Credibility on Social Networking Sites

A study released by Insites Consulting reports that brands are finally gaining some credibility on social networking sites, which leads one to believe that companies are finally figuring out how to leverage the tools of the social Web to effectively build brands.  Of course, there is still a long way to go and a lot of learning to be done, but the results of this study are promising.

The chart from eMarketer shown below shows that 32% of people surveyed in the study believe that brands are the most credible source for information about a brand on social networks while 38% still believe that consumers on social networks offer the most credible information about brands.

 

emarketer_brands_social_networks_credibility

 

Not only are people trusting brands on social networks more these days, but they’re also actively becoming fans of brands on social networks.  35% of the people surveyed as part of the Insites Consulting study claimed that they have become fans of brands on social networking sites in the past.  That’s not bad considering that 40% of respondents to the survey reported they have become fans of celebrities and 44% reported having become fans of bands on social networking sites.

It appears evident from this report that brands can find success on social networks.  Naturally, brands that listen to consumers and offer valuable, interesting content to their social network fans are the ones that will find the most success while those brands that try to control the online conversation and interrupt that conversation rather than enhancing it will find far less success.

In other words, brands that are backed by executive leadership teams that understand and embrace the new form of marketing required on the social Web will succeed and those that continue to attempt to make traditional marketing work on the social Web will fail.  Considering over 950 million people around the world participate on social networking sites, it seems like a strategic imperative for businesses to shift their marketing plans to focus at least in part on social networking sites for brand building.

Has your organization embraced the new rules of marketing on the social Web?

Toyota Turns to Digg to Change Negative Brand Perceptions

toyotaThe widespread Toyota recall that dominated much of the news in January 2010 did not go unnoticed by Toyota’s leadership team.  In an effort to regain trust among Toyota customers, the Toyota marketing team rolled out an integrated plan that involved both traditional marketing and social media marketing tactics.

The Toyota team launched a number of television commercials and placed ads online.  The company also made sure its side of the recall story was told on news outlets.  In terms of social media, Toyota turned to Digg, with whom the company already had an advertising relationship.  Toyota bought out as much ad space as possible on Digg and managed to book Toyota Motor Sales USA president Jim Lentz for the Digg Dialogg Interview Series.

During the live online interview on February 8, 2010, the ten most popular questions submitted by Digg users were asked of Lentz.  Interestingly, the majority of questions were about future Toyota plans related to gas-free cars and car design.  In fact, according to an article on BrandWeek, the most common question was “what do you drive?” which shows even though a certain topic might dominate the online conversation at any given time, that might not actually be what consumers want to talk to your business leaders about.  There is clearly a disconnect between what consumers really want to hear from executives and what company marketing and PR teams think customers want to talk about.  It’s also a good reminder that one of the most important aspects of successful social media marketing is taking the time to listen to consumers and not trying to control the online conversation.

Toyota seems to recognize that social media offers an amazing opportunity to converse with consumers and appear more human, but the trick is talking to them about things that add value to their lives.  Let’s face it.  All companies are trying to figure out how to successfully leverage social media to build businesses, and Toyota’s recent experience adds one more piece to the puzzle.  Even when it seems incredibly obvious what people want to talk to your business about, that might not really be what they want to talk about at all.  In other words, nothing can be assumed in social media marketing.  Instead, you need to be able to make changes on the fly and quickly respond to the ever-changing needs of consumers.

Consider this — the online buzz about the Toyota recall reached its peak quickly in January 2010 and was already tapering off by February 2010.  By the end of March 2010, the online conversation about the Toyota recall had already gotten much quieter as other news took over in consumers’ minds and discussions.  That’s another piece of the puzzle to add to your social media marketing strategy file.  People get bored talking about the same thing for an extended period of time.  Unless new information is added to the story to stir the pot, people move on to the next topic.  That’s how it works in face-to-face conversations, and that’s how it works in online conversations.  Businesses have to keep on top of the conversations that happen across the social Web so they know when to stir them and when to let them fade away.  Unfortunately, unlike science, there is no known boiling point to guide you.  The fact is, much of social media marketing success is still based on instinct and subjective analysis.  But that’s what makes it so interesting and keeps us on our toes!

Image: Flickr

Brands Play April Fools Jokes Too

Even brands are not immune to the fun of April Fool’s Day.  A trip around the Web on April 1st can cause confusion, concern, and laughs, which more companies join each year. This year, I stumbled across several branded April Fool’s jokes that either made me do a double-take or crack a smile. Several are described below:

1. Google changes its name to Topeka
In a hat tip to the mayor of Topeka, Kansas who recently said he was changing the name of his city to Google, visitors to Google’s Web site today were greeted with a new name and logo.  I saw this one first thing this morning when I logged into my computer and while I noticed it, I just kept on going.  Since Google changes its logo frequently to match the current holiday, I’d imagine most Google users didn’t think much of this change.


Google_Topeka



2. Gmail loses its vowels
If you logged into Gmail at one point today, you would have noticed that all of the vowels on the page were missing.  I saw it and paused for a moment before realizing it had to be an April Fool’s joke!


gmail_vowels



3. Starbucks introduces new sizes
Starbucks introduced two new sizes for April Fool’s Day — the micra and the plenta, which could also be called the Dixie Cup size and the Bucket size.


starbucks_new_sizes



4. Kodak announces Aromatography
Scratch ‘n sniff photographs are finally here … April Fool’s!


kodak_aromotography


Did you see any funny, surprising, or even annoying branded April Fool’s jokes this year?  Leave a comment and share your story.