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Seeking to take Twitter beyond a social phenomenon, its founders have lately set their sights on making it business-friendly as well. For marketers, this means new opportunities are opening up all the time.
Twitter never seems to rule anything out. The company is philosophically opposed to banner ads, but has nevertheless dabbled with them in Japan. Likewise, it recently experimented with text ads in the U.S., but, according to Adam Bain, president of global revenue for Twitter, that doesn’t indicate much. “I wouldn’t read too much into it,” he says.
The experiment has yielded some winning ad formats, Bain says. Chief among them are Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts. All comprise very new forms of advertising that leverage Twitter’s strengths. However, many marketers don’t seem to know what to make of the formats, or Twitter itself, for that matter. Taking that into account, here are some Twitter marketing guidelines for those who are making a move.
Of course, you can easily create an account to tweet on behalf of your company, but read on for further advice to get the most out of the microblogging platform.
Twitter is all about discovering what’s going on right now. As Bain notes, many users return to Twitter’s homepage a few times per day just to see what’s trending. Promoted Trends leverage that phenomenon by giving advertisers a premium position on the page.
Bain says that this can yield much higher engagement rates than standard online advertising, for example, banner ads. Introduced in 1993, banners have notoriously low click-through rates, even though such advertising is still growing rapidly. (Proponents of banners also point out that, while the ads work fine for raising awareness, direct sales are still measured by clicks.)
Nevertheless, Bain says Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets yield engagement rates between 3% and 10% on average, and sometimes much higher than that. For instance, Volkswagen got 52% engagement on an April 18 Promoted Tweet for its 2012 New Beetle launch.
In this case, engagement is defined by click-throughs (which usually accounts for 80% of the total), retweets and “favorited” tweets. The buying process for Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets and all of Twitter’s ad products follow a model similar to Google’s — marketers buy them in an auction at a cost-per-engagement rate, and then pay based on engagement.
Obviously, if you’re running a Promoted Trend or Promoted Tweet, it helps if you have some kind of news, product launch, or associated event. For instance, For instance, Coca-Cola earned high engagement during the 2010 World Cup — whenever a goal was scored, Coke would unleash a celebratory tweet.
While Coke’s case is instructive, Bain says that Promoted Accounts are likely a better vehicle for long-term brand building. “We ask, ‘What’s the lifetime value of a customer?’” Bain says, “We look at it almost like a joint business account.”
With a goal to gather as many followers for a corporate account as possible, Twitter positions Promoted Accounts in front of users who might be interested in the brand. Twitter gauges such interest by noting who said people follow and what they tweet. If you follow a lot of baseball teams, for instance, then a Promoted Account for Major League Baseball might make sense.
While “follow us on Twitter” messages from marketers appear ubiquitous, Bain says that hashtags can be more effective. For instance, after Audi included the hashtag #ProgressIs in its Super Bowl ad, the company “completely dominated” Twitter discussions about progress for the month, Bain says. RadioShack also used #youneedanewphone in April, and Comedy Central ran a #TrumpRoast hashtag at the bottom of the screen during its March telecast.
Like Audi though, you might decide to opt for an open-ended hashtag that encourages people to add their own thoughts. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon has driven engagement by running hashtags that invite audience participation, like #myparentsareweird and #thereshouldbealaw.
During March Madness, AT&T aired constant television ads, but rival Verizon bought up all tourney-related Promoted Trends on Twitter. Verizon’s tactic secured the online discussion, Bain says.
Cultivating an audience for your brand via social media is more complicated than simply blasting out a TV ad. The key difference is follow-through.
Patrick Kerley, senior digital strategist with Levick Strategic Communications, says that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese’s recent Twitter promotion illustrates the consequences of a brand that fails to recognize the campaign tools available. In March, the brand ran a program called “Mac & Jinx” that rewarded people who used the phrase “mac & cheese” in their tweets. Kerley won the contest and its prize, but has yet to receive an email or other promotion, despite having submitted his email address. He also notes that, at the time, around 2,700 people followed @KraftMacnCheese. Kerley suggests, “Had the brand said, ‘Be the first person to follow us’ or ‘Follow us and visit this URL,’ they would very likely be sitting on a very large online audience that could be reminded every day about the brand, its products and other promotions.”
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More About: coca cola, hashtag, MARKETING, Promoted Accounts, promoted trends, Promoted Tweets, social media, Social Media 101 Series, twitter, volkswagen
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Solidifying its relationship with SCVNGR, Coca-Cola has launched a summer promotion with the location-based service to challenge teens to go around malls, concerts and amusement parks to get instant rewards.
The game, called “Happiness in Numbers,” asks consumers to fulfill challenges like taking photos and checking in at various locations to accumulate points. Prizes include T-shirts and gift cards.
Coke and SCVNGR launched a smaller version of the program in November around Black Friday. Like that program, Coke has seeded Simon Malls locations with challenges. But this time around, Live Nation is participating and will offer challenges at 31 “secret sound check” locations.
The promotion expands SCVNGR’s relationship with Coke, a coup for the location-based service, which competes with the likes of Foursquare and Facebook Places.
SCVNGR surpassed 1 million users in February and continues to score new partnerships, including recent ones with Subway, Sears and Swatch. For its part, Coke’s big rival, PepsiCo, chose Foursquare for a location-based loyalty program last November.
More About: coca cola, Facebook Places, foursquare, scvngr
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Before the Internet, media agencies planned clients’ campaigns with a fairly straightforward menu of TV, radio, print and outdoor advertising options.
These days, TV buys still take the largest piece of the global spend, but the share of money going to Internet advertising is rising steeply, and the options for those dollars are multiplying and morphing just as quickly. Twitter, YouTube and Hulu each offer their own menu of customized advertising options, and Facebook ranked as one of the Top 10 online advertising properties earlier this year. And since online ad spending is not yet keeping pace with Americans’ time spent on the Internet, the upward trend in spending still has plenty of room to grow.
Of the money going to online buys, nearly half goes to search and a quarter goes to display. But even within these categories, online ads are becoming more social, and spending on lead generation and email marketing is shrinking. At least a quarter of social media users connect with businesses along with their friends, and the most valuable campaigns lead to an alchemy of the traditional and the social. This past year, several big-budget Super Bowl ads lived on as viral YouTube hits, gaining popularity and millions of views that money still can’t buy.
Check out the infographic below for more details on how agencies are allocating online media budgets.
The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. IDG predicts online ad spend will reach almost $35 billion in the U.S. for 2011, an increase of nearly 14% from 2010. While online advertising continues to register significant gains quarter to quarter, the percentage increases are nowhere near pre-recession levels. Click here to learn why.
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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ooyoo
More About: advertising, coca cola, facebook, Mashable Infographics, Modern Media Agency Series, online advertising, social media agency, Super Bowl, Super Bowl ads, youtube
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Coca-Cola is celebrating its 125th birthday with a fancy coffee table book that fetches up to $650, but you can get the same content on the iPad for $4.99.
Coke’s iPad app, created by Assouline, is presented as a “visual journey” through the brand’s history, just like the book. The app features vintage ads, photos and celebrities like James Brown, Run-DMC and President John F. Kennedy, as well as extra video content.
This is the brand’s first iPad app; it was released Thursday.
The company also celebrated its anniversary last month with a with a 3D projection display on its Atlanta headquarters.
More About: coca cola, ipad apps, MARKETING
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Coca-Cola is celebrating its 125th anniversary in a very 2011 way: With a 3D projection display on its headquarters building in Atlanta.
That 3D technology has been the rage with marketers. In the past year or so, Samsung, Hot Wheels and BMW, among others, have launched 3D projection campaigns. Coke’s campaign, which started on May 6, may be the largest one yet. A spokesman for the company says it takes 45 projectors to create the effect shown in the video above. The effort will run through the end of the month.
There’s also a social media component. Coke will pick photos from fans on its Facebook Page to be projected into the stream.
More About: 3D projection mapping, advertising, coca cola, facebook, MARKETING, trending
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To promote the new, smaller version of its signature beverage, Coca-Cola transformed a crowded highway into an outdoor theater in Bogotá, Colombia.
The company, already widely recognized for its various attention-grabbing, smile-inducing guerrilla marketing tactics, built a screen and hired models to hand out Coke Minis and other standard theater fare such as hot dogs, nachos and fries. Passersby were prompted to tune into a radio station to hear the accompanying soundtrack.
We think it’s a fitting promotion for a brand whose purported mission is to “spread happiness.”
More About: coca cola, guerilla marketing, MARKETING, trending
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Coca-Cola will help Maroon 5 crowdsource material in a program that gives the band 24 hours to come up with a new song.
The session, set for March 22, live from London, will use an interactive project technology to let fans interact with the band at Coca-Cola Music and weigh in on lyrics, riffs and rhythms from the new single.
As the session is streamed live, fans will be asked to send in words, pictures and comments to aid the creation of the song. Fans will also get a chance to ask Maroon 5 members some questions.
Coca-Cola plans to promote the program on its Facebook Page, which currently has more than 20 million fans. Coke’s Twitter account will also keep fans posted on how the session’s going.
The program is the latest example of real-time marketing, which is designed to foster social media discussion. While Coke’s program isn’t piggybacking on another event, many advertisers tapped real-time marketing efforts in an attempt to inject themselves into conversations related to last Sunday’s Academy Awards.
More About: coca cola, Maroon 5, Real-Time Marketing
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Coca-Cola, whose Happiness Machine video became a feel-good hit for the brand last year with 3 million views, is back with a sequel that offers more of an international flavor.
“Happiness Truck” takes place in Rio de Janeiro and is a twist on the original idea, which showed a Coke machine that spit out free Cokes, flowers, balloon animals, pizza and submarine sandwich at a college cafeteria. This time around, a special truck dispenses free Cokes as well as a beach toy, a surfboard, sunglasses, beach chairs, t-shirts and soccer balls. Coke is launching the video on its Facebook Page today.
In between the two videos, though, there have been some 40 others that took inspiration from the original “Happiness Machine,” says Shane Grant, global brand director for Coca-Cola. Grant says the brand chose Rio for this major project because “we wanted to show how happiness translates in markets around the world, not just the U.S. or Western Europe.” Grant says there are no plans to cut this video into a 30-second version and show it on TV in the U.S., as the company had with the “Happiness Machine” video.
Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor Associates, says “Happiness Machine” was “brilliant” and fits in well with the brand’s image. “It was an unexpected moment of joy and surprise around one of the most mundane touch points there is — a vending machine.” Adamson favorably compared the viral videos with Coke’s Super Bowl spots, which he said were good, but didn’t get the water cooler buzz of, say, VW’s “The Force.”
More About: advertising, coca cola, viral videos
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For food and drink brands, crowdsourcing new products and flavors makes perfect sense. Not only does it increase engagement, it gives the people that consume the products a say in their development. That interaction makes them more likely to shell out cash when the item hits shop shelves.
Thanks to social media, it’s become easier to to ask your customers to contribute to product development or collaborate on other creative endeavors. Not only is it doable, it’s been done, and with great success, by major brands.
“This trend is a direct reflection of the new meritocracy caused by the rise of the social web. Now everyone had the same power to not only consume but also produce things,” said John Winsor, founder of Victors & Spoils, and the author of Baked In and other books about co-creation. “Brands can use the power of their digitally connected consumers to co-create new products or face the wrath of those same consumers as they go into competition with them.”
We spoke to three major brands — Ben & Jerry’s, Coca Cola’s vitaminwater and Dunkin’ Donuts — to find out more about their recent crowdsourcing campaigns. If you are interested in the new people power that connected consumers wield, then read on for some delicious insight into how each campaign went down.
1. Ben & Jerry’s “Do the World a Flavor”
Ben & Jerry’s is no stranger to fan feedback; some of its best-selling flavors were born from customer suggestions, but in 2010 it took the concept a step further with the “Do the World a Flavor” competition.
Fans were able to invent their own variety of the popular ice cream via a fun online “Creation Station.” Finalists won a trip to the Dominican Republic to see a sustainable fair trade cocoa farm and the winning flavor was produced as an official Ben & Jerry’s product.
The specific aim of the contest was to raise awareness for fair trade ingredients, and with around 10,000 new flavor suggestions from the U.S. alone, Ben & Jerry’s achieved that goal. We asked Sean Greenwood, “grand poobah” of public relations for Ben & Jerry’s about the “Do the World a Flavor” competition:
Why did you opt for crowdsourcing for the campaign?
It’s always a tremendous opportunity for us to tap into our fan’s passion, creativity and their own interpretation of “Peace, Love and Ice Cream.” Our incredible fans come up with some great flavors. Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey, Chubby Hubby? Ever hear of those? Yep, all from our fans. The crowdsourcing offers an opportunity for fans to participate and create some fun, and as Jerry says: “If it’s not fun, why do it?”
How was the campaign a success for you?
It was a tremendous global opportunity for us to talk about our belief in the fair trade model. Since then, we’ve been hard at work making our own flavors using still more fair trade goods and communicating Ben & Jerry’s commitment to transition to using all fair trade ingredients, globally, by 2013.
Do you think crowdsourcing will be big in the future as a way for fast moving consumer goods brands to engage their audience?
I think any chance that companies have to connect with their fans in a fun manner is golden. For us, in this program, crowdsourcing was the hot fudge, whipped cream and nuts on top of our sundae!
2. Dunkin’ Donuts’ “Keep It Coolatta 2: Flavor Boogaloo”
Dunkin Donuts has run two very successful “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contests in the past, allowing fans to design their own perfect pastry product. Last summer they tried something a little different.
To promote the “mixology” potential of its Coolatta drinks, Dunkin’ Donuts asked fans to collaborate on a playlist of summery songs that would go well with fan’s favorite Coolatta flavors.
The campaign netted 300,000 new Facebook fans while over 40,000 Pandora users added “The ultimate Coolatta summer music mix!” to their list of stations and spent nearly 14,000 hours listening to the station.
We quizzed Ben Smith, interactive marketing manager for Dunkin’ Donuts, about the “Flavor Boogaloo” project:
Why did you opt for crowdsourcing for the campaign?
Allowing our Facebook fans to help us create an upbeat custom Pandora channel dedicated to playing, “The ultimate Coolatta summer music mix!” was a great opportunity to connect with our fans in a meaningful way while highlighting Coolatta mixology.
We leveraged Pandora as the home to the “The ultimate Coolatta summer music mix!” because of its reach and appeal.
How was the campaign a success for you?
The campaign was designed to raise awareness of Coolatta mixology and encourage Dunkin’ Donuts fans to try our Coolatta products throughout June and July, while also increasing engagement on the Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook page. We found the greatest success engaging with fans through sparking fun discussions of the best songs of summer and Coolatta mixology on Facebook and Twitter. As a result, Dunkin’ Donuts was able to achieve and sustain a high level of engagement throughout the campaign.
Year over year, Dunkin’ Donuts has seen double-digit growth throughout its frozen and iced beverage category.
Do you think crowdsourcing will be big in the future as a way for fast-moving consumer goods brands to engage their audiences?
Before jumping into the conversation on our social media channels, we always listen to what our fans are saying. Social communities are interactive by nature and listening to what our fans want to hear is how we have been able to engage with them in a meaningful way. By listening and participating in an ongoing conversation with our fans and followers, we have developed programs and promotions that are fun and interesting, while also encouraging brand advocacy with our fans’ and followers’ network of friends.
We will continue to provide our fans with a superior social media experience, and if we remain authentic and committed to listening to our followers and engage them as we have, I see our number of followers continuing to increase, especially as we continue our brand’s growth and expansion throughout the country.
3. Vitaminwater’s “Flavor Creator”
Coca-Cola-owned Glaceau brand vitaminwater gave its fans the vote with a “flavor creator lab” on its Facebook page. The goal was to come up with a brand new variety of drink. Fans could vote for their favorite flavor, play games and answer quizzes to help determine which “functional benefit” the beverage should offer and even have their say on the design of the label.
The winning flavor — named “connect” — hit shop shelves in 2010, after 40,000 Facebook users had created unique label designs via the lab. Participants spent an average of approximately seven minutes engaging with the application. Matt Kahn, Senior Vice President of Marketing for vitaminwater, reveals the thinking behind their social strategy:
Why did you opt for crowdsourcing for the campaign?
Vitaminwater has always had a very loyal, interactive fan base and once the brand joined Facebook we heard more regularly from our consumers. At the time, the vitaminwater flavor creator program was a natural next step — it allowed for us to bring more exclusive content and real programming directly to our fans.”
How was the campaign a success for you?
The vitaminwater flavor creator was a three month, three step program that allowed us to have a two way conversation with our consumers. We gave our fans the tools to help develop something they were passionate about — in the end, we heard loud and clear what it was that they wanted when it came to vitaminwater.
Do you think crowdsourcing will be big in the future as a way for fast moving consumer goods brands to engage their audience?
Vitaminwater was among the first companies to use social networking to give fans such level of control over product innovation — a variety of vitaminwater was actually made by our fans, for our fans. Crowdsourcing was a great way for us to tap directly into our consumers — we were able to get them information faster and interact with them directly.
ConclusionFor savvy brands, product development has moved from a sterile lab to the social web and become a fantastic marketing opportunity. If brands want to engage today’s connected consumer, they need to get social and start listening.
“Today there is no choice. It’s either collaborate with your consumers using co-creative and crowdsourcing tools or perish,” Winsor said. “There will be collateral damage for those who don’t want to play.”
Did you take part in any of the campaigns above? Do you see crowdsourcing playing a big part in the future of food and drink product development? Have your say in the comments below.
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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Synergee
More About: ben & jerrys, coca cola, crowdsourced, crowdsourcing, dunkin donuts, facebook marketing, MARKETING, trending, vitamin water
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Coca-Cola today announced 15 finalists for its 2011 Brand App Challenge, which asked developers to create mobile apps for Coca-Cola, Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
The developers who made the final round include Mike VanBeneden, who came up with an app called Share Happiness that lets you create a “Happiness Playlist” of songs on your iPhone and then find other people via Facebook who put the same songs in their Happiness Playlists. VanBeneden actually made the cut twice. His Reward Goals app was among five finalists for the Coke Zero brand.
Another app, by Mobext of Spain, called Happiness Is Everywhere, uses augmented reality to spot “Happiness Places” around the globe. When the iPhone or Android-based device using the app points to the Happiness Place, “iBottles” are revealed. Those who collect the iBottles get perks like contents and coupons.
Three winners, one for each brand, will be announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress on February 14 to 17 in Barcelona and given a prize of $10,000. The winners are chosen by managers on the brands and are likely to be notified today, a Coke rep says. The contest started on November 26. To sign up for future contests, visit mobileappchallenge.com.
While brands have previously asked consumers to make ads for them — in fact Frito-Lay and PepsiCo will air six such ads in Sunday’s Super Bowl — the idea of making apps is new. It represents a new model of advertising, says Mattan Griffel, marketing coordinator for appssavvy. “It makes a lot of sense to outsource the development,” says Griffel. “I’d encourage companies not to make their own apps. It’s a bit counter-productive. You wouldn’t make your own TV show, you’d advertise on one that already has a following.”
Here’s a full list of the finalists:
Coca-ColaMike VanBeneden, U.S.A. “Share Happiness“Marco Reinbold, Germany “Happiness is Now“Mobext, Spain “Happiness is Everywhere“Ed Barlow, England “Coke Music Maker“Hana Cadlecova, U.S.A. ” Cokeoke“Diet Coke
Intelmind, Poland “Robocoke“Ron van den Berg, Netherlands “Light Moment“Pete Herron, U.S.A. “Lighten Up“Maksymilian Jorza, Poland “Diet Coke Extra Studio”Antonio Garcia, Spain “Diet Coke Good Vibrations“Coke Zero
Two Bulls, U.S.A. “Heroes Meet Zeros“Mike VanBeneden, U.S.A. “Reward Goals“Andrei Neculaesei, Romania “Cola Dance“App Factory, Denmark “Meeting Your Favorite Pop Star“Slawomir Baranowski, Poland “Crazy Voice Coca-Cola Edition“More About: apps, coca cola, contest, Mobile 2.0
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