Schaefer (2016) reminds us that customers are people. Not just data points. At the end of the day, no one wants to feel like just another number feeding from the hands of yet another corporation. We need to feel wanted. Just as seen in Lynn’s (1996) research demonstrating how in restaurants we are more likely to tip if the server performs simple yet welcoming actions such as smiling, greeting and squatting next to us.

The question is though. How can we make our target audience feel like we’re talking to them still? Personalisation has been around for so long that we have become accustomed to seeing our names at the top of house list emails. It has become the norm to see targeted ads based on our geographical location or tailored lists of recommended products to purchase. It has become such common practice that the beguiling effect it once had has withered away. A good marketer will stay on top of the game, pushing the limits of the technology available to bring that unprecedented head turning campaign.

Let us start easy.

Coca Cola – Share a Coke

The most basic of ideas, yet the most phenomenal impact. Who can deny that they didn’t spend some time rummaging through the shelves in an attempt to find their bottle? With that key word… “their”. It was your name. Yours. No one else’s. It created that sense of belonging that Coca Cola made that bottle… for you.

Of course this campaign no doubt is only the beginning of the new approaches to personalisation. We’ve often seen our names being used to attract our attention before but it was the new advertising medium being used that really stood out. The change created an unexpected unique experience.

Facebook – A Look Back

Facebook celebrated their 10^th Birthday by giving all their users a personalised video montage looking back at their interactions, most liked posts and life events over the years. Again, a sense of belonging is created. It makes you think “this is my video… Mine!” and unlike the Share a Coke campaign this one truly is only yours.

This is where things start to get exciting. As Dey (2001) states, when we interact with other individuals we use varying ‘implicit situational information’, otherwise known as context, to enhance the communications with have with them. When this is applied to video, a medium that was once only possible to provide one off content, we now have the ability to deliver a unique product on a mass scale.

Incorporating a video into your website results in visitors staying for an average 350 seconds compared to 72 seconds without, with respective bounce rates of 59% and 87% (Shaviv, 2016). Add in personalisation and some businesses have seen increases of 500% in email conversion rates (Gadway, 2016).

As seen below Coca Cola once again through their ‘Share a Coke’ campaign created a personalised advert using the viewers name taken from their 4oD ID.

Orange Poland created a personalised video to entice customers to renew their contracts using their current contract details.

The issue with these examples is that they all use data which is already attained, they are effectively established customers. What happens when you want to target new customers which you don’t hold any information for?

Let’s get Customising!

I’ve yet to see any methods that use dynamic media to create real time targeted ads that don’t require any pre-established customer information. But why? Surely the concept is simple? I can understand the initial outlay would be higher than standard advertising and the more distinct the personalisation the greater the cost, but craftily using templates counteracts this somewhat.

Imagine this concept of an audio advert for ‘JOB SITE’. Targeted at the user because of four items that can be collected from their internet browsing history.

This is only audio but why not do it with video? Why not utilise the power of HTML 5 and incorporate street view data into adverts alike The Wilderness Downtown. The possibilities are endless yet only just beginning.

Be careful though. When we do things on a large scale and use data that we don’t truly know ourselves, the sense of belonging we are trying to achieve can shattered.

• How did all the customers whose name did not appear on a bottle of coke feel? Unwanted? A nobody? Let down? Coca Cola saw this and created a site that allowed customers to buy their own coke with any name they wanted.

• How did all the Facebook users who saw their ex as part of their ‘happy’ video feel? Once again listening to the sentiments of users Facebook introduced an edit button to allow people to modify their own videos.

It still takes consistent monitoring of campaigns to ensure we can actively respond to those disheartened.

What I want to take away from this post is the reminder that it is easy to be a sheep and fall into the trap of only following current trends. If you want to create a big impact you have to stay ahead of what is going on to be able to deliver new fresh content that is unused by competitors.

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Dey, A.K. (2001) Understanding and using context. Personal and ubiquitous computing. Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 4-7.

Gadway, J. (2016) Businesses See 500% Lift in Email Conversion with Personalized Video. [Online] Available at: <https://www.vidyard.com/blog/businesses-see-500-lift-in-email-conversion-personalized-video/> [Accessed 2^nd April 2016].

Lynn, M. (1996) Seven ways to increase servers’ tips. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly. Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 24-29.

Schaefer, A. (2016) Your Customer Is More Than a Collection of Data. Get a Holistic View! [Online] Available at: <https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/web-experience/customer-collection-data-get-holistic-view/> [Accessed 31st March 2016].

Shaviv, M. (2016) Personalised videos: The next big digital marketing trend. [Online] Available at: <http://www.brainstorm-digital.co.uk/blog/personalised-videos-the-next-big-digital-marketing-trend/> [Accessed 2^nd April 2016].

The aim of combining game mechanics and experience design is to get us to digitally engage (Burke, 2014; Insley & Nunan, 2014). It incorporates a fun element into our interaction with brands but how much we engage can depend on a variety of internal and external factors. Gartner (2011) predicted that over 70% of the Forbes Global 2000 would be utilising gamification by 2014 with M2 Research (2012) claiming that gamification strategies can result in an engagement increase of 100-150%. With this being the case lets take a quick look at how a couple of companies deployed the technique.

Collapse

Taking inspiration from the upcoming game The Division, Ubisoft unveiled a web-based simulator called Collapse to show how a hypothetical virus can quickly spread and be the downfall of society as we know it. The concept in itself creates a confusing mixture of curiosity and fear which is increased manifold by only the addition of a small piece of personalisation.

The game draws on real life data from Street Map, NASA & IATA and makes you, yes you, patient zero. You can choose your starting location to be anywhere in the world, but who chooses anywhere in the world when you could start somewhere you know? Somewhere you feel safe? Somewhere like home?

You dictate how the global pandemic ensues. Your choice of local hospital you visit. Your choice of local pharmacy to get medicine. Your choice of shop for rations. All these familiar places that you know in the physical world create an emotional response which can lead to a greater connection with the brand.

Games have been seen to increase spatial memory (Lin et al., 2014) with research from Friestad & Thorson (1986) showing that emotional messages create stronger memories and more positive judgments. It is suggested by Hupbach et al. (2007) that memories can be modified when they are reactivated. Does this game have the potential to latch onto our memories we’ve had at the physical locations we chose and seep into the new ones we make?

This simulator is based largely around a one off marketing strategy to promote a final product, so let’s take a look at how else gamification has been used to stimulate people to participate.

Code Academy

The website Code Academy helps you to learn everything from basic HTML through to Ruby & Python. It took my interest back in 2012 before I came to university because it made for an interesting and simplified way of learning to code but I never really considered though at the time as to why it drew me in so much.

Just like in school no-one has a text book dumped in front of them and are expected to read it cover to cover in one go (well hopefully not!). The site breaks down the learning into manageable chunks or lessons which users get awarded with badges and achievements for completing. More so users also get rewarded for coming back everyday to continue their learning.

This gamification style successfully utilises the ‘Development & Accomplishment’ and ‘Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback’ sides of Chou’s (2015) Octalysis framework through positive motivations. Although this technique is used for relatively objective learning maybe it could pave the way to a complete overhaul of certain education systems. One where people can learn at their own pace but be motivated to do so through rewards and leader boards.

We shouldn’t be too hasty to implement gamification for gamification sake though. Google attempted to reward users with badges for their achievements in reading news articles. It sounds nice in the beginning but when you think about it? Why? Just why? Unlike Code Academy where you earn badges because you want to learn how to code there is no real motivation to achieve badges because you have read more than someone else. After all who’s to say you even read the article properly? Unsurprisingly, Google quickly scrapped it.

We’ve seen two examples here using different approaches on what could make for an effective gamification strategy. Using emotion and using rewards. The possibilities are almost endless but we of course have to remember don’t just do it because everyone else is, do it because it adds value to the users experience.

 

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Burke, B. (2014) Gartner Redefines Gamification. [Online] Available at: <http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_burke/2014/04/04/gartner-redefines-gamification/> [Accessed 1^st April 2016].

Chou, Y-K. (2015) Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework. [Online] Available at: <http://yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/octalysis-complete-gamification-framework/> [Accessed 1^st April 2016].

Friestad, M. & Thorson, E. (1986) Emotion-Eliciting Advertising: Effects on long term memory and judgment. Advances in Consumer Research. Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 111-116.

Gartner. (2011) Gartner Predicts Over 70 Percent of Global 2000 Organisations Will Have at Least One Gamified Application by 2014. [Online] Available at: <http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1844115> [Accessed 1^st April 2016].

Hupbach, A., Gomez, R., Hardt, O & Nadel, L. (2007) Reconsolidation of episodic memories: A subtle reminder triggers integration of new information. Learning & Memory. Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 47-53.

Insley, V. & Nunan, D. (2014) Gamification and the online retail experience. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. Vol. 42, No.5, p340-351.

Lin, C.-H., Chen, C.-M., & Lou, Y.-C. (2014). Developing Spatial Orientation and Spatial Memory with a Treasure Hunting Game. Educational Technology & Society. Vol. 17 , No. 3, pp. 79–92. 

M2 Research. (2012) Gamification in 2012: Trends in Consumer and Enterprise Markets with Metrics. [Online] Available at: <http://www.slideshare.net/wandameloni/gamification-in-2012-trends-in-consumer-and-enterprise-markets-13453048> [Accessed 1^st April 2016].

Gone are the days of badly drawn islands on falling apart parchment. Now, the “X” that marks the spot is found not in a sealed glass bottle drifting aimlessly at sea but in everyone’s pocket. Access to these hidden treasures are at our finger tips, we just need to know where to look to reap the rewards.

As seen before with the Brandwatch – Game of Thrones case study, some companies have successfully combined the real world interactions we have with digital campaigns to achieve huge numbers of engagement. This could be due to, as Smilansky (2009) puts it, having a ‘lived experience’ gives more chance of things being remembered.

Let’s take a look at some examples of how customers and brands have struck gold using digital hunts.

Jimmy Choo – Catchachoo

Utilising the geo-location based app Foursquare they sent a staff member out with a single pair of trainers to check into well known fashionable locations. After checking in they only remained for a couple of minutes before moving on. If participants could track them down while still at each location, they would win the pair.

After media coverage of the event they saw a 33% increase of in store sales. A down side to this approach is that the potential win reach was limited to only people in London at the right time. Additionally, they set up separate social media profiles for the treasure hunt meaning people began following the campaign rather than the brand.

Not too bad an attempt though for their first ever social media campaign. More details of the campaign can be found here.

H&M & Boiler Room

The retailer hid 20 pairs of tickets amongst their Cracow and Warsaw stores for a highly sought after and sold out event. Alike the Boiler Room format of hosting disappearing events in secret locations they used Snapchat to give vanishing clues for participants.

The campaign racked up an impressive 3.8 million unique views and gained almost 1000 snapchat followers.

What’s good about this treasure hunt is that they did it on the perfect channel that their target market, 18-25 year olds, use. They also used a great ‘associative link’ which Till (1998) says can benefit future recognition.

LG Ticket Hunter

With the aim of boosting sales to more 16-24 year olds, LG set up stalls in multiple UK cities with the first 25 people to find the stalls receiving two VIP tickets to various high profile concerts. To assist participants they generated an online map that gradually zoomed into the precise location whenever the #LGtickethunter was used.

The choice of prizes and format ensured the competition reached a large portion of their target audience. On the first day alone they received 5,000 interactions, building to 50,000 by the end of the campaign.

When digging for treasure don’t fall in your own hole!

That’s what Chipotle did. Their 20 day treasure hunt campaign ‘Adventurito’ incorporating a selection of problems to solve for free burritos started out well. Yet a ‘tactical’ fake twitter account hack to provide clues may have caused more of a stir than originally intended.

The fake hacks gained over 12,000 retweets which, on the face of things, is great publicity even if people knew it was fake. However, customers felt duped by stunt and as a result brand ad awareness, and purchase consideration plummeted. As seen in Aula, they effected customers expectations of the brand which resulted in reputational damage.

Whats to think about?

We’ve seen that customers are motivated to participate if they feel they could be rewarded, but at the same time retailers are rewarded by the increased interaction they receive from their participants. It’s almost a win win.

Some things to take away from these treasure hunt initiatives is that the right channels should be used to engage the aimed target market. Also, baring similarities to the previous post on loyalty schemes, the right set of rewards that fit the market need to be used. Let’s not forget though that even after the campaign starts rolling it needs careful monitoring to ensure you don’t get lost on route.

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Aula, P. (2010). Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management. Strategy & Leadership. Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 43-49.

Smilansky, S. (2009). Experiential Marketing: A Practical Guide to Interactive Brand Experience. Kogan Page Publishers: London.

Till, B.T. (1998). Using celebrity endorsers effectively: lessons from associative learning. Journal of Product & Brand Management. Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 400-409.

Just like friendships, faithfulness provides us with imperceptible cognitive bonds with brands. This loyalty can be maintained through schemes of various natures to lure us into a false sense of entitlement and greater willingness to part with our hard earned money. For any scheme to work we have to have a firm grounding of what needs to be done and what needs to be done right.

What is the aim?

First, we have to understand the purpose of the program. What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying gain? If we don’t know this then we are potentially throwing money at something with no guaranteed return. Nunes & Drèze (2006a) give five core strategic drivers for the use of loyalty programs.

• Encouraging additional purchases. Goods and services where consumption is flexible can be increased easily. Valued rewards, such as buy 4 get the 5th free, can lead to accelerated purchases by consumers and in turn increased overall consumption levels.
• Collection of customer data and consumer behaviour insights. The greater the amount of information held about a customer the more effectively and personally they can be targeted.
• Gain greater customer share. Encouraging customers to consolidate more purchases with a specific company rather than multiple ones.
• Reduce churn rate. Preventing customers from defecting to other companies by providing something others cannot offer. In other words, locking them in.
• Generate a profit. Besides revenues being boosted through additional sales, reward points can be sold on to other business to use as rewards for their own customers.

What components do we need designed right?

The possibilities for program design are endless but care must be taken to make it attractive for customers to use yet not result in unnecessary expenses being incurred. Some areas for thought are:

• Sense of Momentum. Research by Nunes & Drèze (2006b) has shown that the further a member is along in a loyalty program the more they use it. The term they call “endowed progress” gives a psychological push to not only jump start consumption but give faster consumption cycles by giving customers 2 free stamps on a buy 10 get one free card compared to none on a buy 8 get one free card.

• Type of Reward. Maritz Loyalty Marketing found non-utilitarian rewards that customers would not usually spend on, such as memorable treats, give the best results. It only takes a quick look at how you can spend your Nectar card points to support this.
• Customer Relationship Expansion. If a customer is willing to buy a product (x) amount of times to gain a free one, then they are likely willing to purchase the (x+1) as well. Rewards should help expand the customers ‘repertoire’ of purchases so instead of a free same product, a different product to promote additional future sales should be considered.
• Use of more than one Channel. Engaging with customers across multiple channels can give big benefits (Big Commerce, 2015). Whether this be through Chaffey’s (2010) channels such as social media, online affiliations or more direct offline approaches, consideration has to be given to the 33% of customers who view not having the right channels as a pet peeve (Capgemini Consulting, 2016).

Who’s doing it well?

Boasting over 8 million members Starbucks appears to be leading the way with their loyalty program by seamlessly integrating it into their mobile app. Even the CEO Howard Schultz states it is their most important business driver. The app allows customers to make and view their purchases & rewards in real time through use of simple yet effective QR codes (Forbes, 2014).

Air Canada’s “Earn Your Wings” program utilises gamification to give a unique twist of attractiveness for customers. When flyers check in at specific airports they earn badges as a form of virtual currency which build to form rewards. Further details on the campaign can be found here.

What’s to watch out for?

Unfortunately not everything can work all the time. A digital program can be design and delivered perfectly yet if your target audience are not tech savvy they will feel disheartened if they miss out on opportunities available to others (Tnooz, 2015).

Care must also be taken when collecting data on customers to ensure that companies comply with the Data Protection Act as set out in Act of Parliament (1998). Failing to do so will lose customers confidence.

Takeaway

Overall, when creating loyalty schemes we need to know exactly what our objective is, design a program that fulfils this in a manner that is easy to use and inspires customers to want to use it.

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Act of Parliament. (1998). Great Britain Parliament. The Data Protection Act 1998. (Chapter 29). London: HMSO.

Big Commerce. (2015). How to calculate the cost of a loyalty program and why it’s important? [Online] Available at: <https://www.bigcommerce.co.uk/ecommerce-answers/how-calculate-cost-loyalty-program-and-why-its-important/> [Accessed 8th February 2016].

Capgemini Consulting. (2016) Fixing the Cracks: Reinventing Loyalty Programs for the Digital Age. [Online] Available at: <https://www.capgemini-consulting.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/reinventing_loyalty_programs.pdf> [Accessed 8th February 2016].

Chaffey, D. (2010) Applying organisational capability models to assess the maturity of digital-marketing governance. Journal of Marketing Management. Vol 26, No 3-4, pp187-196.

Forbes. (2014). Why Is The Starbucks Mobile Payments App So Successful? [Online] Available at: <http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/06/13/why-is-the-starbucks-mobile-payments-app-so-successful/#1f0610814c2a> [Accessed 8th February 2016].

Nunes, J. & Drèze, X. (2006a). Your Loyalty Program Is Betraying You. Harvard Business Review. Vol. 84, No. 4, pp. 124-131.

Nunes, J. & Drèze, X. (2006b). The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial Advancement Increases Effort. Journal of Consumer Research. Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 504-512.

Tnooz. (2015). Hotel loyalty programs can bring digital rewards in real life. [Online] Available at: <http://www.tnooz.com/article/hotel-loyalty-programs-can-digital-rewards-in-real-life/> [Accessed 8th February 2016].

Not to be confused with the Olympic sport nor divide that prevents your neighbours prying eyes, geo-fencing applications have grown from strength to strength. Since it’s first appearance in academic literature from Munson & Gupta (2002) geo-fencing has been used for a wide range of functions across multiple industries.

The location based advertising firm Verve reports marketing campaigns that utilise location based technologies receive an average click through rate of 1.21% compared to 0.61% without. Verve also found that consumers who received a geo-fenced advertisement were 3.9 times more likely to visit the advertisers store and 23% less likely to visit a competitors.

It has to be said that companies would be foolish not to somehow take advantage of these figures. So here are 3 examples of ways brands have used geo-fencing to boost sales.

Domino’s Pizza

Pizza companies have been delivering to hotels for years. Now that many chains utilise mobile check in and mobile keys it would have been crazy not to try and take a bigger slice of the action.

Using a selection of well known mobile apps Domino’s were able to target customers arriving at, and checking into, geo fenced hotels to push through deals for that specific location.

An ingenious tactic to take advantage of hungry travellers who aren’t familiar with the area and looking for a quick fix.

More details about the campaign can be found here.

Subway with Voucher Cloud

The money saving brand Voucher Cloud is providing some extra filling for Subway stores. Those users who have the app downloaded will receive offers through automatic push notifications from participating retailers when within the radius of the participating store.

Retailers can customise the geo fence size, messages and timings of notifications. They say to have received an average conversion rate of 30% with some days seeing click through rates of up to 45%!

This provides an interesting platform to gain impulse buys from consumers who may not have previously considered a purchase.

McDonalds Extended Hours Campaign

After extending a 1/3 of their restaurant opening hours from 11pm to 7am McDonalds had created a huge sales opportunity. The challenge though was to get people aware and drive footfall to only their participating stores.

Adverts where pushed to consumers through mobile sites that they found their target audience viewed but only whilst in the geo-fenced area around each of their restaurants. The mobile channel used for this campaign generated a ROI of £3.99. Enough for a very happy meal.

More details of the campaign can be found here.

McDonald’s Extended Hours on Vimeo.

It’s not all good news though.

Boxever explains how timing needs to be right. An individual who is in transit between locations isn’t a potential customer unless they are available to actively take up an offer. On your Monday morning commute to work you can’t stop in to take advantage of a BOGOF bowling offer however you would be able to on a Saturday afternoon when looking for something to do.

This shows that companies have to be careful with how they target potential customers to avoid wasting paid ads and not run the risk of pushing them away through bombardment. Kupper’s (2005) model of context aware and location based services shows how using other contexts besides spatial & location can support LBS’s.

The use of big data can help provide insights into the personal and social contexts of individual customers movements and in turn result in more personalised adverts and thus better conversion rates. Brown & Harmon (2014) also show in their viral geo-fencing process model how the input of social media data allows for the demographic of the user to be ascertained and in turn calculation of a reference group through their connections to allow for specifically targeted promotions. The McDonalds campaign looks at these aspects more so than the other examples allowing them to understand where their ‘night owls’ have come from and heading to.

To be able to use geo-fencing to your advantage you have to have somehow gained permissions on the users devices. As seen from the examples above you can do this through advertisements on websites and apps which will result in pay per clicks. Alternatively if you can manage to get a user to install your own app, you would only have to pay development costs.

Though geo-fencing technologies involve no sabres companies can become involved in digital duels. Dubbed geo-conquesting, some companies are fencing around competitors stores in aggressive attempts to pull away customers.

It makes you think.

Are there currently any restrictions of digital boundaries? You may own the rights to the land you live on but do you own the digital space within it?

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Brown, R.L & Harmon, R.R (2014) Viral Geofencing: An Exploration of Emerging Big-Data Driven Direct Digital Marketing Services. Proceedings of PICMET ’14: Infrastructure and Service Integration.

Kupper, A. (2005) Location-Based Services: Fundamentals and Operation. Wiley: West Sussex

Munson, J.P. & Gupta, V.K. (2002) Location-Based Notification as a General-Purpose Service. WMC ’02 Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on Mobile commerce. pp. 40-44.

What was originally set up as a way to amuse their own staff the Drummond Central live feed of passers-by trying to circumnavigate a puddle became an internet sensation for the day.

Flooding across the internet to gain over 50,000 interactions on twitter and with more than 500,000 viewers watching the live stream on Periscope it certainly provided the medium to get a big footprint.

The #DrummondPuddleWatch Periscope has captured the world’s attention; over 50K Tweets. https://t.co/PyENbIq2Hb pic.twitter.com/si7ah7z8Pu

— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) January 6, 2016

With this accelerated interest companies couldn’t help resist, alike the pun,  ‘jumping in’ on the action and using guerrilla ambush marketing tactics for self promotion. Some, like innocent, latched onto the hashtag to draw attention via themselves with others using clever references as a way to promote their own products.

3000 people are watching a puddle in Newcastle. Great Britain at its finest #DrummondPuddleWatch https://t.co/SslNEpwurK

— innocent drinks (@innocent) January 6, 2016

We can end this here. #DrummondPuddleWatch ?
— Bounty (@Bounty) January 6, 2016

Now THIS is how you cross a puddle. #DrummondPuddleWatch pic.twitter.com/rHRivt0cCP

— DiRT (@dirtgame) January 6, 2016

This technique has unsurprisingly been seen before, with a notable mention to the effective and masterfully done #StopAbuseAgainstWomen campaign which drew tens of thousands of interactions through riding off the back of the ever so controversial Black and Blue dress… or was it White and Gold?

It met almost all the criteria of what Dobele, Toleman & Beverland (2005) call an ‘engaging message’ (which are more likely to be voluntarily shared) by capturing the imagination of viewers through being intriguing and utilising a product of high visibility.

Why is it so hard to see black and blue? One in 6 women are victims of abuse. #StopAbuseAgainstWomen pic.twitter.com/FgDdKdsMMb

— TheSalvationArmySA (@SalvationArmySA) March 6, 2015

The most successful company creating waves with the puddle, in my opinion, was Orange Bus. Berger & Milkman’s (2012) study shows that content that evokes arousal, such as amusement, is more likely to be shared. After one ‘attention seeker’ brought his lilo down who was to suspect a surfboard would have an ulterior motive. Unlike many others whose wake stopped at twitter they oh so stealthy slipped into being the face of the puddle in multiple national newspapers and even BBC news.

However, it’s not all success stories. Some tried to get their feet wet but took an almighty plunge in doing so. Higgidy, even though boasting 10.6K followers, only managed to rack up 2 likes on their attempt to free ride.

I think we need a bigger boat. #DrummondPuddleWatchpic.twitter.com/9nDfgrET89
— Higgidy (@higgidy) January 6, 2016

There’s no doubt that there was an amusing concept behind Higgidy’s content but what caused it to receive no recognition? Aula (2010) finds that companies run risk to their reputation if they do not meet the expectations of consumers. With Higgidy being a premium product you would expect the content they produce on social media to be of the same quality they produce from their ovens. In this case, using what would seem like MS paint to knock up a last minute attempt doesn’t quite cut the quiche for a nationwide company.

Higgidy has taught us not to cheap out on image from Dodaro’s (2013) first easy steps to destroying your reputation online, so what else do we need to consider when attempting to get some painless publicity?

Jumping onto a trend or event by having some form of input (direct or indirect) is going to get you seen, but not always in good light. Habitat destroyed themselves after attempting ride on the back of protests and conflict in Iran. On the other hand, Ann Summers play on words in their paid search campaign mastered this all the way down to how they described it –

“The strategy was not to deliver clicks – it was toleverage the paid search mechanic to cheekily insert the Ann Summers brand into unusual places“.

Another great example of using real world events with a play on words is Pieminister’s – Black ‘Pie’ Day. Though not gaining the mass of publicity off the original trend, after seeing it and combining it with the anti-consumerism message, it provides a psychological connection to recall it every year.

Free pies tomorrow from 8am in exchange for donations to @shelter #blackpieday #wastenot #stokescroft pic.twitter.com/2nBjOgUvlW

— pieminister (@pieminister) November 26, 2015

What we take away from this is the reminder that the content has to fit, be that time, place and delivery as well as invoke some form of emotional response to engage the user. Events used properly can provide countless free attention but not doing your research or implementing an idea properly can lead to a stumble that you may not be able to pick yourself up from.

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Aula, P. (2010). Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management. Strategy & Leadership. Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 43-49.

Berger, J. & Milkman, K.L. (2012). What Makes Online Content Viral? Journal of Marketing Research. Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 192-205.

Dobele, A., Toleman, D. & Beverland, M. (2005) Controlled infection! Spreading the brand message through viral marketing. Business Horizons. Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 143-149.

Dodaro, M. (2013). 10 Business-Killing Social Media Mistakes. [Online] Available at: <http://topdogsocialmedia.com/social-media-reputation-management-mistakes/> [Accessed 25th January 2015].

As seen the Brandwatch case study, SKY saw an exciting opportunity to increase its customer base through the largely popular TV series Game of Thrones. They utilised the marketing expertise of DDB New Zealand to create a tactical campaign to hopefully entice New Zealanders who had previously dismissed the show to join.

The concept of targeting existing fans for the project was unusual yet extremely effective. I myself was originally drawn into the GoT craze through the desire to understand what on earth all the people around me where talking about. ‘Stark’ this, ‘Lannister’ that, not to mention the ‘Baratheon’s’. The Baratheon’s who housed that ever so hated King Joffrey. Brandwatch picked up on this communal hatred through Brandwatch Analytics which when paired with sentiment analysis revealed he drove the most passionate discussions online.

The challenge was how could DDB New Zealand ride on the back of this shared hostility and translate that momentum into nationwide exposure.

As we have previously seen played out in history, the toppling of a statue symbolises the longing of removing or banishing someone from their position. It was decided that this gesture would be recreated through the form of a 7 meter tall statue of malevolent boy with rope, winch and all to see.

#bringdowntheking

Every tweet which carried the chosen hashtag brought the king ever closer to his fate. As onlookers began to share thoughts and photos of the event social media attention went through the roof. Continued analysis of users involvement allowed the campaign to shift from a nationwide project to a global phenomenon.  It was found geographic regions with low engagement could be targeted with native languages to produce a higher response rate and participants with high influence could be engaged further by providing them with a ‘special status’. The link between the physical and digital world aided the exposure the campaign received, reaching 43 million people across 168 countries. It appears that DDB New Zealand where successful in promoting Game of Thrones, stating they recorded 875,000 individual interactions, yet it is hard to say how many of these interactions actually signed up for a new SKY subscription.

Sky – #BringDownTheKing on Vimeo.

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Takeaways:

• The case has shown the importance of continually reviewing and analysing what is happening in on-going campaigns to allow for new insights which can be acted upon to generate new or strengthen any coverage already gained.
• The case could emphasise that the utilisation of a physical element linked with an artificial element in a media campaign can help bridge the gap between the cautious/unknown ‘digital world’ and comforting/familiar ‘real world’ through interaction with one having an effect on both.