Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category

Location Aware STDs: MTV and Foursquare Gain Recognition for GYT Campaign

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Branding, Marketing, Media, Public Relations (PR), Social Media, Technology, Tolls/Gadgets
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October 08, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978584428

MTV and Foursquare are being recognized by Mashable as one of the most creative social media campaigns of 2010 for their efforts on the first-ever cause-related badge: GYT. In September of this year, FourSquare and MTV partnered to launch the GYT campaign, which stands for “Get Yourself Tested.”

The campaign seeks to promote STD testing among young adults by offering them the GYT badge of courage for checking in at an STD clinic. As reported on Mashable, “The Foursquare partnership encourages people to follow MTV on Foursquare, check in after getting tested and shout “GYT” to their followers. After doing so, users will earn the GYT badge, and thereby make it known that they’re taking control of their sex lives. Those who score the badge will also be entered to win a trip for two to New York City, as well as backstage passes to MTV’s 10 on Top.”

Despite the offer of a trip and backstage passes, one would think that the still-widespread cultural stigmatization associated with STD testing would keep users away from this campaign. Yet the campaign has achieved a solid amount of success, with more than 3,000 GYT badges awarded since the campaign was launched a few weeks ago.

The campaign is most definitely a vital first, and a great example of how geo-location technologies may help non-profit organizations all over the world to mobilize and support positive causes. It remains to be seen how many non-profits are able to capitalize on the success of this particular campaign, and use location-aware technologies to aid in the struggle to promote their own causes.

Old Spice, Chickens, and Bears- Oh My! A Look at the Art of Interactive Advertising

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Academics, Advertising, Art, Branding, Industry Research, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Tools/Gadgets, TV
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September 02, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978491387

Smart advertisers and marketers know that part of building awareness of a brand and attachment to a brand these days involves allowing the consumer to feel as if they are a part of the brand, and the brand is a part of them.

The most innovative way to elicit this feeling among increasingly jaded consumers is to allow them to participate in the way a product is sold to them, or presented to an overall greater audience. In other words, to integrate elements of “interactive or collaborative advertising” into their overall marketing strategy.

Some of this is revolutionary stuff, and is still regarded as too dangerous by most traditional advertising, marketing and brand agencies the world over. Ostensibly, what it means is giving consumers permission to experiment with, and command some control of, a brand. If I may go down a yellow brick road of an analogy, this is no less than cutting down the Wizard’s curtain and revealing the small man behind it, subsequently allowing the consumer to revel in his or her discovery of the small man, and as a result of said revelation, being amply empowered to get Dorothy back from Oz to Kansas his or her self.

But when it works, it works so, so well.

Let us take, for example, the Old Spice Guy. If you’ve never seen or heard of Isaiah Mustafa, or any of the YouTube response videos that the company launched in response to Tweets it was receiving, then you must be dead or on a remote desert island with no smartphone. This ad campaign which has incorporate TV ads, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube so well has dominated most of this year’s buzz conversations.

How about something more recent? Tipp-Ex is a correction fluid brand (think White-Out), who recently launched a YouTube video ad campaign which allows the viewer to determine the end of the story. The viewer first watches the setup video where a guy camping with his friend is alerted that a bear is right behind him, and is urged by his friend who is videotaping the event to shoot the bear. The video viewer is at this juncture permitted to decide if the man should shoot the bear, or not. After making the decision, the viewer is redirected to a video in which the camper urges the viewer to rewrite the story.

The whole thing is highly reminiscent of “advertising and design factory,” CP+B’s groundbreaking 2001 “Subservient Chicken” campaign for Burger King, where visitors to the website can type in any command and a man dressed in a chicken suit on a webcam performs the requested function. So while Tipp-Ex’s overall concept isn’t new, their delivery is.

Largely what’s interesting about interactive or collaborative advertising is that it nicely paints the line between earned media and paid media. A company pays to create the initial ad, but then by virtue of the fun of interacting with it and collaborating it, consumers share and continue to virally promote that ad, which is where your earned media begins to kick in.

These concepts aren’t exactly brand new, but their integration into basic marketing strategies is, and increasingly larger companies are beginning to take notice of how much buzz can be generated through earned media without having to necessarily pay for every step of it. In addition, not every company has experienced skyrocketing revenues as a result of investing in interactive advertising, so the science here and how to master it is still relatively new.

One thing’s for sure, however. It sure makes advertising a lot more fun from the consumer perspective.

How FourSquare Will Control Your Local Billboards

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Advertising, Branding, Industry Research, Marketing, Media, Mobile Technology, Search, Tools/Gadgets
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July 22, 2010: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978387268

The news recently broke that Foursquare is forming agreements to start charging search engines such as Google and Bing for their geographic location data. Instantly various news sources launched stories seeking to satisfy user curiosities by positing what these information transactions might lead to in the future. Among the many educated guesses were enhanced real-time search, social mapping, and more strongly developed mobile search. I would add one more: more strongly targeted traditional advertising and marketing media.

Internet analysts and emerging media connoisseurs may write disproportionately more about innovative new technologies, but if you ask the advertising and marketing executives of the world if they have abandoned traditional media as part of their integrated campaigns, the answer would be a resounding “no.” The data that Foursquare will provide is a solid reinforcement of retaining those traditional marketing strategies. What we physically see and interact with outside of the realm of our computer and television screens still matters.

Still, it might surprise most people to learn that the data they generate by using Foursquare’s geo-location technology will be used to determine what shows up on their local billboards. Yes, you heard right– billboard. Even if, admittedly, these days that billboard might be digital and therefore closer to a television than the enormous printed posters the term still conjures.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Geo-location data brings the internet back to the earth by collecting information on where you were when you saw what. With apps like Foursquare, suddenly it’s not who you are, but where you are and when that matters most again. That means that physical advertising efforts such as billboards can be even better data-driven and targeted to the interests of local populations.

How do you feel about these types of emerging social media and GPS-oriented advertising ventures that will know where you go, where you shop, and where you eat? Do you think of this type of geographically-targeted advertising as convenience, or as an invasion of privacy?

Cream and Sugar with Your Wifi? A Look at the New Starbucks Digital Network

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Advertising, Branding, Industry Research, Marketing, Media, Mobile Technology, Music, Tools/Gadgets
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(This post can also be found on Gather.com here: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978618733. It was originally posted October 20, 2010)

Although the coffee giant has been offering free Wi-Fi in the majority of its U.S. retail locations since July 1st, a new exclusive content network called the Starbucks Digital Network (“SDN”) launches October 20th in more than 6,800 of its U.S. operated stores.  The new content network will be specifically curated by the company and is being launched to enhance the customer’s in-store experience on what some might call a fourth dimension- the Web.

“The vision,” Starbucks’s Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman told Mashable, “is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that’s in all of our stores.” The move is a strategic one, despite the financial free-wheeling philosophy it seems to represent.

Starbucks has struggled publicly in the last few years with its big-brand, corporate generic image and how to compete with much-loved “mom and pop” coffee stores in big cities. The initial backlash was palpable, but with CEO Howard Schultz back at the helm, Starbucks is now trying to improve its public dedication to the local communities it moves into, and to incorporate many of the elements that make the neighborhood coffee joint a favorite for locals.

Because Starbucks relies so heavily on the in-store experience, the company is attempting to enhance the “third space” look and feel of the retail locations while also providing a stellar “fourth dimension” experience online.

As part of its extensive content network, SDN will offer access to news sites such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today, but will also offer additional content channels such as “entertainment, wellness, business and careers, my neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks.” The incorporation of the “my neighborhood” content channel is a pillar in the giant’s strategy to compete with the local feel of smaller community-based coffee shops.

As Brotman told Mashable, SDN “delivers on this objective by serving up content to users based on the exact whereabouts of the store where the user is accessing the free Wi-Fi. Community fare includes local news from Patch and a look at nearby DonorsChoose.org classroom projects that could benefit from small contributions. Foursquare users can check in via the web from Starbucks stores, and Zagat makes available full ratings for restaurants in the surrounding area for free.”

But when is too much, just, too much content? Reportedly, Starbucks will be tracking user activity via web analytics to get a sense of what users respond to. From there they plan to taper the content network and its offerings based on usage research what is most popular.

From the research the company has already gathered based on its free Wi-Fi offerings since July 1st they now know, according to Brotman, that “more than 50% of users logging on to the free Wi-Fi are doing so from mobile devices, so the company was motivated by usage behaviors to build a mobile web experience just as good, if not better than, the standard web experience.”

As a boon for what many regard lately as a foundering hi-tech company, Yahoo is the coffee retailer’s technology partner for the SDN, having developed the site, hosting the SDN, powering search and also providing content. Yet Starbucks is not exactly following a hi-tech profitability model. The coffee behemoth is not charging its content partners for placement on the network, and no financial transactions are taking place unless SDN users make purchases.

Yet as traditional tells us, location is everything. As emerging technologies and social media allow consumers to make more educated, location-based purchasing decisions, perhaps this is Starbucks’ and Yahoo’s way of embedding themselves in communities via an increasingly location-based technology market. As Brotman said, “We’re really excited about the fact that we can leverage the location-based nature of the site to connect our customers with the communities around the stores,” he says.

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