buzzle digital marketing

We all loved the Old Spice campaign.  It was such a clever and engaging mix of character, script, set and simplicity that entertained us.

In fact, we were so entertained, that it is regarded as one of the most successful social media campaigns of all time.

But, the very reason a brand invests in such a campaign is to, well, sell more of what they are promoting.

You can argue that there is a branding and awareness benefit – blah, blah, blah, but all this is a waste of time and money if it does not equate to increased sales?

Now that all the hoopla has blown over, and the smoke has cleared, people are taking a lot of interest in actual ‘results’ from the campaign – you now; what is the bottom line?

With such an enormously successful campaign online, it is a fair question to ask too.

From early reports – the numbers are not looking so good (Mike Ryan over at Yahoo TV in fact reported that there has been a drop in sales?)

From our perspective – you have to wonder how much more ‘successful’ this campaign had been for Old Spice, if they had taken the time to actually develop an entirely new product line, or consider a new sub-brand (to remove the stigma associated with Old Spice – i.e. “my father use to wear that stuff”).  Imagine if Procter and Gamble ( the brand behind the Old Spice brand), had seen this exercise as an exercise in innovation; and taken the time to really capitalise on what went on to be a highly successful campaign!

Granted, when you are focused on ad land and in the midst of a campaign, it is difficult to see the forest from the trees – and you always think that the campaign will translate to sales…but who did some research to understand what the numbers for Old Spice really looked like, and who was buying it?  Rub these numbers against the target audience – and the actual consumers of the recent campaign, and we think there would be a serious mismatch.

20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing – but lost opportunity off the back of the most successful social media campaign is not.

This must prompt brands and consumers alike to ask “what good is social media anyway”.  Surely it is time to raise the bar on the conversation and recognise that at the centre of every ‘successful’ campaign there needs to be an even more successful product and innovative product development.

Or is this why the campaign was such a success – people did not feel like they were being sold too as they quipped “I wouldn’t buy it anyway”…

It will be even more entertaining to see how the campaign is regarded at upcoming ‘ad awards’ – no doubt it will win numerous awards and recognition; and no doubt business will ask again “did it generate any sales?”

And rightly so…

Update (thanks to Yahoo TV): A representative for the Old Spice ad campaign clarifies the sales trend and goal of the “Old Spice Man” commercials as follows: “[The] campaign is for Old Spice Body Wash overall, not specific to just Red Zone After Hours which just happens to be the body wash bottle used in the TV spots….Since the Smell Like A Man, Man campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month over month strengthened its market position and is now the number one brand of body wash and anti-perspirant/deodorant in both sales and volume with growth in the high single/double digits.” – ah, sphinn

Who can believe that twitter has been around for 4 years?

Today is the official Birthday of Twitter…

Yiying Lu created this special Birthday Card for the twitter team, wo we wanted to share it with you all!

What will twitter look like at 5?

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. – the gospel of St Matthew

Or more simply put…the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer!

Otherwise known as the Matthew Effect; developed in the 1960′s by sociologist Robert K. Merton, explains that those who possess power and economic or social capital can leverage those resources to gain more power or capital.

And this is also true with social technologies and social media…

Torsten Henning Hansel, from Nouve, a brand, innovation and design company from Berlin, put together this beautiful and informative presentation to remind us of the power of links, and the relevance of the Matthew Effect online!

This is completely relevant to social media - Hensel says, “Social media is a linking machine” and the more links you can get to a piece of content the more likely that content is to become viral when compared to a similar piece.

The more links you have, the more powerful your voice and influence becomes…reach and response can be achieved rapidly through linking with the right people online, and inviting the right people to connect with you.

This helps to explain what makes a piece of content go ‘viral’ – and makes us think about the importance of links; not just links to anyone, but links to and with the real influencers in your community?

A few years ago, Charlene Li (now of Altimeter) developed the original Social Technographics ladder whilst at Forrester as a way to explain your markets social behaviour online.

For its time, this was a very good way to look at behaviour and personality types on social networks…and as time has passed, the segments and descriptions have changed.

As a result, Forrester has recently revised the Social Technographics Ladder, and most notably, have made room for Twitter!

In all that time, only one thing has been bugging me: there was no place for Twitter.

Previously, the behaviour demonstrated on Twitter could not be nicely fitted against any of the categories of behaviour.  Well, now with the addition of the category “conversationalists” Twitter can be explained!

So how can this data and model be used for good?  The team at Forrester give three examples of how the social technographics ladder could be used;

1. Convince your boss this stuff is for real, and that if you haven’t jumped on it, you’re late.

2. Profile your customer base, and see what they’re ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them. (After all, People is the first step in the POST process.)

3. Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)

How have you used this data before, or how will you be using it in the future??

Do a survey across your office – do the number match up?

Where do you fit…and are you atypical of this category?

I am a creator…you?

Forrester Social Technographics Ladder

You cannot manage what you cannot measure…

Whoever said this in the first place made a lot of sense.

One of the tremendous advantages of social media and using digital channels is the wealth of data that can be collected, analysed and acted upon.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Barack Obama understood this, and when Ben Self (who ran the digital campaign for Obama) speaks about what they did well, he refers to the measurement and analysis of the data they collected as being the crux of their campaign.

It is no secret that we are fans of location based apps at the moment (like foursquare) and what they could mean to businesses and organisations who embrace the medium.  For example, Harvard and Columbia University have already developed specific uses for foursquare, which is starting to generate observations like these on twitter?

Clearly, businesses are starting to embrace the idea of location based services, and game mechanics to help generate interest and traffic.

Services like foursquare, gowalla and loopt and to a lesser extent Google’s Latitude have been around long enough now that data patterns are starting to emerge…and for marketeres, this is very exciting.

Loopt published a report today on Mobile check-in data – read the full story on Mashable that highlights the check in patterns of its users.  And no real surprise, Starbucks came in as the #1 most popular check in place!

Creative manipulation of the data aside – there are opportunities here for those who care to analyse these numbers (and collect them in the first place).

What do you measure in your business, and what do you do with the data when you get it?