Tag: Old Spice

  • Multi purpose content

    This post over at GigaOm, titled “Apple doesn’t target markets, it targets people” sparked a tiny debate between Mahendra and me, on the effects of ‘antennagate’ on Apple fanboys, though the article itself had little to do with this line of thought. I wondered, like I’d written here earlier (last two paras), whether the continuous dissing in the media and the product flaw itself would create skepticism among the fanboys and affect future purchases, Mahendra didn’t think so.

    The subject of influence has cropped up here earlier, but the focus was on new media platforms and people. The above conversation made me think about the challenges that brands face on content that’s created on multiple media platforms.

    Even as traditional media platforms are being unfavourably compared to new media thanks to their constraints, the abundance of content – the media tsunami, on the latter does make one wonder how much of consumption by the intended crowd really happens. Meanwhile, despite the constraints,  technically, the reach of the traditional media platforms is still significant. A brand’s consumers exist on/consume these media.

    That really poses interesting questions on the notions of brand imagery, consistency etc, which have been holy cows of a previous era. Take this video, for example. Its a massive hit on Facebook and YouTube

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl3U6aSd2w

    “Where’s the Gillette logo?!”, if this were a traditional TV spot, and what’s the message here? A close shave? 😉 But at 5 million + views, surely this must count for something. But what? This fuzzy nature of social media content and the media on which its propagated is exactly what raises difficult  but important questions on brands’ participation in social media.

    The answers are obviously not simple ones, and would have to be adapted to each brand’s needs. But as these lessons from Old Spice would suggest,  an important requirement is to understand objectives and define roles for each platform. The challenge then would be to create a content strategy that not only uses the inherent strengths of the different media, but also understands the motivations, consumption habits and preferences of the different kinds of people who use them. Instead of blind adaption across various platforms, exploring content options and finer segmentation is perhaps the order of the day.

    Perhaps Apple’s success is because of what the original post says “It focuses on users. And Apple lets them decide how and where they’ll use its products.” I wonder how many brands use that kind of understanding in their communication and brand strategy.

    until next time, iWash 😉

  • Hairsay

    So, the Old Spice man  increased the sales of the product. Now we can renew the debate on the efficacy of social media on the bottom line. We obviously won’t ask for correlation data. 🙂 The other side effect is that every brand manager will now want to replicate it – especially the viral and the ROI. Quite like a poster child (in India) of an era gone by – Sunsilk’s GangofGirls, which at that point had made many a  brand manager experimenting with digital media tell their agency “I want one too”. Damn virals work at meta levels!!

    I recently read Kapil Ohri’s article on afaqs, on the site’s makeover – the shift from blogs and gangs to trends and forums and the ‘mandatory’ buttons – Facebook and Twitter. Its early days, so it’d be unfair to make a comment on the numbers, even if they were to be considered a parameter of success/ failure. But while, on buttons, I think YouTube videos would’ve been a help. More on that in a bit. A revamped GoG, and the Pantene vs Dove war for hairspace being fought offline and on blogs (Karthik, L Bhat) gives me enough food for thought.. and opinion.

    Sunsilk Gang of Girls: GoG could have (like an industry person commented on the afaqs post) integrated Facebook in a much better way. Check out what Levi’s has done at their online store. Instead of separate registrations and profile, Facebook’s plugins could make life easier for the user and automatically bring in the ‘gangs’. It could get them to pull their own photos from Facebook for the ‘Makeover Machine’, suggest it to friends, and so on. Or build a Twitter app that uses the display picture. It could have perhaps thought bigger and had their ambassador (Priyanka Chopra?) interact with the users through her own identities on these platforms. Or used a location based tool like Foursquare (or FB Pages or later Google Places) to start building a resource for salons and tips at each place (think of a Burrp! for salons), maybe in sync with a YouTube channel for tips.

    Pantene: Good Morning! They obviously missed a little thing when they didn’t pay attention to the pwnage of DNA at the hands of the Times Group during the former’s launch campaign in Mumbai back in 2005 (?), or the more recent Airtel- Reliance DTH fun. Not to mention the cliche that after a certain point, the only person who gets teased is the brand manager. Ok, I won’t overstate, but c’mon this is a real-time era AND they did walk into a Dovetailed ambush. Since the internet already has made them un-mysterious (thanks for that info, Karthik), maybe Pantene should have just added those FB page and Twitter links to their mass media communication, and solved the mystery immediately online. Mind you, thanks to our dismal internet penetration, they could still demystify it again on mass media, later, after perhaps, adding the content from their online and offline activities. (think non market research agency 80%) That way, there would’ve been at least some buffer against a Dove’s sneak attack. Arguable, but possible.

    Dove: All of us should take the time and remember the controversy over the ‘campaign for real beauty’. But hey, they saw an opportunity and used it. Effects on long term goals are again arguable.

    A little note on ‘low involvement’. I wrote about brands, content and new media platforms in the last post, in the context of the Old Spice campaign, and also mentioned the importance of ‘intent’ and setting objectives. Once the ‘why’ is done, the relevant crowd can be identified, along with the platforms and activation strategies – ‘(to) who’, where and what. (Read Rohit Awasthi’s comment on Karthik’s first post) When the ‘right’ content is pitched to the ‘right’ people at the ‘right’ time (and the ‘right’ platform too), very few categories are low involvement.  (read Naina’s comment on that post) And that’s the beauty of the web in general, and the tools that social media have provided marketers. Old Spice could be seen as low involvement too, until they did this campaign.

    But having mostly seen communication as advertising (except arguably PR), creating content for social platforms is in itself quite a challenge for brand managers. Even if they were to  view ‘social’ as ‘media’, it requires a complete realignment of how media and content strategy is done, mostly because the mechanics of distribution are completely different. At a fundamental level, brands are dependent on users of platforms to create a buzz, and money doesn’t always work. At this point, tools can help with the ‘time’ (including location and other contexts) and ‘people’ (interest), and the way it works, if the ‘content’ is done right, people will get other people.

    Therefore brand managers need to make a more diligent effort. The fragmentation of traditional media does not seem to have made much of an impact on the costs involved in using them as distribution channels. So when ‘social media’  presents ‘free’ channels, brand managers see a value proposition and jump right in with a TVC and or/other weapons of mass mediocrity. Brands, I believe, need to invest a bit more on who they’re trying to reach, and then invest some more on building content and designing networks and constructs (irrespective of platform) that will drive the crowd to interact with the content and share it more. Content and people that will drive more connections, and help meet everyone’s objectives.

    But yes, until Augmented Reality allows me to scan a shampoo and tell me how many of my friends liked it, and think I should use it, (though my hair won’t last that long 😐 ) lets keep playing all the shampoo games we can play. 🙂 And while on using social platforms purely with a sales objective, I’m reminded of how Grandma uses her laptop. (vid below) Can it be used for those purposes? Of course! But is that its best case use? We can argue 😉

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg6emajJmEo

    until next time, sometimes brand strategies can be real poo!!

  • The brand your brand could be like

    The world seems to have loved the Old Spice guy horsing around. Even though the campaign had been around for a while, (via Surekha) the last couple of weeks took it to a completely different level, with the Old Spice guy (actor Isaiah Mustafa) sending unique video responses to people who had blogged/tweeted/written to him  – not just celebrities like Kevin Rose, Alyssa Milano, Mrs and Mr Demi More, Ellen DeGeneres etc but regular people too. He even made a marriage proposal on behalf of one @Jsbeals. You can see all his work at the channel here. Mashable has some statistics, which are quite amazing, and yet unsurprising – 180+ videos, 22500 comments, and more than 6 million views, when I last saw it. But more than the stats, it is the amount of interest that it has generated. The Google CFO mentioned it during an earnings call, and closer home, my eminent blogger friends – Bhat and Karthik have been gushing about it, understandably so. The Old Spice Guy even managed to charm 4chan, (this one is the 3rd most viewed in the series) and that I don’t think has a precedent! Meanwhile, after some really hard work (the making of), he has now wrapped up with one final video, thanking the internet.

    There are many lessons from what is quite obviously a case study – an idea, its amazing execution, the co ordination between creative, social media and tech to get near real time responses done, the confidence/bravery/trust of P&G to allow this team the liberty to make the responses with minimal supervision and as Karthik wrote, the importance of creating some really kick a$$ content. And thus the point of the post – an example of brands being media.

    When one way distribution platforms dominated, things were relatively simple – print ads, billboards, radio spots, TVCs, and even internet banners. But then came the tools of self publishing, the acknowledged game changer, with several possibilities.

    It meant that brands, not unlike us common people, could create their own channels using multiple tools and services available. Some brands used it just as they would use the channels of an earlier era, and pushed until no one was interested.

    When they were done with understanding that questioning the veracity of the content appearing online wouldn’t get them anywhere, some brands figured that the only difference that had been made was that a new breed of influencers and opinion makers/breakers/changers had been created. So, they formed alliances, sometimes transparent and sometimes not so. The thick line is now represented by multiple shades of grey. But that just seems to be the way the world in general works now, the Cisco-CNBC case, for example.

    And then there were brands that went deeper and figured out that creating things that would spawn positive content would be a better idea, even if it meant that they had to rework everything. It could mean that they came out with a great product/service which created or mobilised legions of fanboys/girls. They could involve their consumers by asking for ideas. Or they could take on a cause honestly and contributed to the larger society. Not every brand has a CEO who sets a gold standard (here’s an excellent example of Anand Mahindra’s Twitter magic), but it definitely can create an environment that will make ambassadors of employees. It could create such great content or offer so much reward that  others generated excellent content for them (users created an Old Spice voicemail message) , or at least link to them. And if these aren’t possible, a brand could at least ensure that you offered a little value to consumers on the platforms they preferred. And these are by no means the master set.

    When brands and their fan boys and girls become media in themselves, it raises many challenges too. What happens when a brand goofs up on a product and makes its vocal supporters seem like losers?  (you got that signal, I hope) How much of ownership can the brand take for the fans and how will their action or inaction affect those common consumers who are watching it all? What happens when there’s random malice that uses your brand name? (the recent Coke Facebook scam) Even for the star of the moment – Old Spice, what do they do, when a celebrity retorts in the same vein, and asks them to donate to a cause, that’s creating erm, waves all over the world. I, for one, am waiting for a response.

    But despite all that, I believe that the opportunities make the challenges worthwhile. The work is definitely different – doing an eyewash research, releasing an ad, and adopting vague measurement techniques like reach won’t really cut it. With technology that discovers newer and newer contexts for consumers to express themselves, and their intent, brands have to learn to react, if not be proactive, in real time. So, since the web has successfully bottomed the costs of distribution, it is perhaps time that brands started investing the savings into creating good content, finding their way on platforms and with the people using the platforms.

    until next time, content. is. marketing. too.

    PS. next post, in a fortnight 🙂