I don't live in Quebec, and I have no interest in the Quebec election, however I do listen to CBC, and I like Jean Charest.
I met Mr. Charest in Montreal in April of 2008 at a training session hosted by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Mr. Gore was doing a session on the proper delivery of his "Inconvenient Truth" slideshow, and I was one of a handful of people who got to participate.
It's no wonder that this man has been the premier of Quebec for the last 6 years; he is a confident and charismatic leader, is impeccably bilingual (frequently going between english and french during our session and in conversations at the breaks), and I finished my conversation with him thinking "Why did the country elect Kim Campbell instead of Jean?" (Note: Kim Campbell was the Prime Minister of Canada for about 7 minutes in the 90s).
Why is this relevant? The Liberal Party of Canada is heating up for a battle in the coming months for the leadership of an absolutely decimated political infrastructure. Bob Rae still reminds me of NDP/Ontario frustrations and his roommate from University Mike Ignatieff hasn't demonstrated any aspirational, hopeful, emotional leadership since coming on the scene the last time. Dumb and Dumber. Wouldn't it be great if Jean Charest was our own 'Obama' ?
Recently in Chicago and Orlando, wallets started appearing. They had instructions for the finder to "Keep the wallet", and contained cash ranging from $1 to $100 (Timely considering the financial situation in the US), a burger king gift card, and a fake 'king' drivers license.
This is similar to a McDonalds promotion from a while back, and this is extremely similar to a GE Financial campaign from 2000 There are also a few other examples of this idea (the lost wallet with a message) being used in history. It clearly works, and generates buzz, whether it's original or not.
Right now this guerrilla campaign is only on the radar of bloggers, and tweeters, and one Chicago media outlet. I heard about it from Twitter. I'm now finding myself using the Twitter search page to tell me what's happening in the world, BEFORE the news knows. That's how I heard about the MotrinMoms, and about GMail's new themes! What a weird side-effect of twitter search-- news that's SO current people don't even know it's news yet...
Motrin recently launched a new set of ads for baby week in an effort to connect with their market. The ads aren't that bad in my mind, but I'm by no means a baby-toting mommy.
The epic failure that has virally grown out of this new campaign is what's happening on Twitter. Popular tweeter and mommy Jessica Gottlieb piped in with some opinions about the new ads and rapidly won support of moms and twitter users, arguing that the ads don't truly understand the market, and speak down to the audience. This isn't new. Moms have been complaining forever.
So that happened on the weekend.
Have Motrin brand managers, community managers, PR people, or parent-company reps (Johnson & Johnson owns both Motrin and Tylenol) joined the conversation? Is there an official response? The real problem is that huge companies like this aren't nimble enough to be waiting in the wings when a new campaign launches to immediately respond (conversationally) with detractors. Imagine if after the first blog post or tweet, J&J had their community team reach out to these bloggers and tweeters and dig a little deeper. --Or even better, show the top 5 mommy bloggers the ads AHEAD of time as your test audience. Get their feedback, and tweak as necessary...
(From the motrin.com homepage, an official message from marketing...) We are in the age of people-publishing, and as cool as the ads look-- it's about the response from the blogosphere that will make it or break it online. Reputation management is not a monthly meeting with your PR agency; It's a minute-by-minute strategy that has to be real-time and deployable and adaptable at a moments notice.
The more I speak with marketing people in big companies, the more I detect caution and 'analysis paralysis' when it comes to Social Media marketing. There are many things that you can do right, and an almost limitless number of things you can do wrong.
Doing something wrong in the social space can either go unnoticed and unheard, or can cataclysmically destroy a brand. Rarely do we see the latter, with mistake makers ending up somewhere in between.
5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes
Exploiting a network too early - When venturing into a social network as a company, your objective shouldn't be to sell your product on day 1. You are there to build a network, so that when you have something of value to share-- people may actually listen, and there are enough people that is some listen, you get your ROI.
Faking anything - Use your real name. Tell people that you work for the company. Let them know that your monitoring conversations, if that's what you're doing, but absolutely do not impersonate a 'fan' of your brand and spoof comments and cred. Somehow, people always find out, and it can hurt the brand more than it will ever have helped it. What's so wrong with being genuine and telling other humans what you're all about and what you're trying to achieve as a company. Honesty can never be beat up.
Taking more than you give - Social networking should create value for the consumer, for your customer, and for the participants. If all that happens, you WILL get the benefits you're looking for. If it's all "register now" or buy-one-get-one, or "we have a walled garden and restrict access, but please feel free to share with us all your inner most thoughts"-- you'll lose people (if you can even get them in the first place) and you'll find the ROI of such a venture will suffer.
Being too cheap - Most social networks will let you participate as a brand with little to no investment (as far as actual money). Where you can cheap out is in resources, community management, brand reputation management, online monitoring, and incentives for your advocates. I heard a great example of being smart with 'social marketing' by David Meerman Scott, who described an marketing exec at Universal Studios who needed to promote the opening of their new (at the time) Harry Potter theme park. This exec figured out who the 7 most popular bloggers were in the Harry Potter world, and invited them to participate in the ultimate 'sneak-peek' video-cast introducing them to the idea, the park, some actors, the creators, etc-- and basically gave them the ultimate scoop. These 7 blogged, millions read, mainstream media picked it up, and for very little money, they reached over 350 million people.
Forgetting to Listen - One of the most common of Social Marketing mistakes. It's a conversation, and in a conversation, there has to be listening. The best way to succeed in Social Media is to listen as much as possible and start to dip a toe into the conversation. Learn about what your champions and advocates are saying (and to whom). Learn what your haters and flamers are saying, and communicate with them directly. Try to solve their problems, as though they were in your store complaining.
Comment with examples of companies that have made mistakes in this space...
LoyaltyOne Inc., a global leader in the development and management of coalition loyalty programs and operator of the AIR MILES Reward Program and other loyalty-based marketing services, acquired Green Rewards Inc., a Canadian company with well established relationships and expertise in the green loyalty program space.
I'm very excited to be able to share this news finally. Those in the Canadian loyalty industry may have heard already, however some of my readers may not have. As some added background, Green Rewards was a startup I was a part of since September 2007, primarily working on strategic marketing plans, online experience development, and mobile marketing, but with a voice in a very small group of entrepreneurs.
We had an interesting challenge in changing Canadian loyalty behaviour, and reducing the carbon footprint of the industry, but like many marketing coalitions, some of the hardest parts are getting someone to go first.
I look forward to the future development of the program and I'm excited to become a member in whatever LoyaltyOne's 'Green Program' ends up being. If you have questions about the acquisition, don't ask me, because I'm not an official spokesperson... Try Weber Shandwick Toronto.
November 5-6 in Chicago I was fortunate enough to be a part of the MeetingTechOnline Summit at the Intercontinental O'Hare in Chicago. (sidenote: This is a very nice hotel. It's brand new, very efficient, and extremely comfortable.) MeetingTechOnline, an industry site with resources for trade show operators, producers, planners, etc-- hosts these summits across the U.S. to bring together innovators of new technology and systems, as well as marketers and show planners. I really enjoyed listening to fellow speaker and keynote for the day, David Meerman Scott, who is the author of "The new rules of Marketing and PR".
I was there to speak about the impact of 'Green' and Web 2.0 on the industry. Green being a 'mega trend', it was on everyone's radar, and my session was very well attended. One of the things that I learned about this industry (having been involved only marginally in the past) is that show operators and producers are aware of the need to go green, and most even want to-- but most don't know how. This is the exact phenomenon that I see in the consumer research that's been done as a part of the launch of Green Rewards since 2007. Consumers have a desire to 'go green' but often times have no idea what that means, and what they should do. Most resort to the obvious "change a lightbulb" mentality, and assume the problem will sort itself out.
As part of my presentation, incorporating some of the "Inconvenient Truth" slides that I'm authorized to deliver, I attempted to shed some light on the major misconceptions, myths, and sins of the green world. I also used the opportunity to showcase some great examples in the Green space of how websites and organizations are using Web 2.0 tools to promote and expand and engage their audience.
Special thanks to Wendy Friewald and CDShowGuides.com for sponsoring my talk. CDShowguides is a technology innovator for the tradeshow industry that reduces the impact of these huge consumer and B2B shows by putting the massive amount of information, advertising, literature and (otherwise) paper materials on a single searchable disc. Better for attendees, and better for the planet.
I've been investigating some of the free tools available to big business that are seldom used, and that can powerfully add value to a brand in the social marketplace. I think that most big companies experience a little bit of fear from a lack of understanding of the various mechanisms out there in the cloud, and this can easily be overcome with some learning.
I decided to find some examples of companies making their way into the space already, to better explain to colleagues and business prospects the value of doing so. Things like corporate blogs, Twitter, Wikis, Application development and many others. Here are some examples that I found (many in the same place) Feel free to comment with more examples:
Before you try to master the next big thing, you and your marketing team, and your executive committee need to master the last big thing Thanks Peter Kim and Mashable for the great ideas, links and actual work.
I don't live in Quebec, and I have no interest in the Quebec election, however I do listen to CBC, and I like Jean Charest.
