“Creativity is key to making a success out of any campaign”

– Xolisa Dyeshana -

These were the words that sparked the conversation at the Journal of Marketing breakfast debate on 30 July 2011, which lead to some interesting views on how Direct Marketing should be used. Direct marketing today is no longer about a junk pamphlet in your post box, it is about finding clever and attention grabbing ways to get the message across to a very specific group of people. According to Lynn Madley, CEO at Euro RSCG and one of the panellists at the debate, the shotgun approach does work in some cases, but targeted communication works much better. She also adds that brands should speak to consumers in a way that they want to be spoken to and Social Media plays a large role in this.

Today, traditional media is used in Direct Marketing to drive the audience to other platforms, like social media. Brands are warned to not be on social media for the sake of being on social media, but rather to have a well thought out strategy to work from. Because social media gives consumers the power to voice all their opinions, it’s better to just watch and respond if really necessary if your brand does not have the ability to provide quality content on a regular basis. On the other hand it is also important to remember that in this age, due to social networks, reputations are fragile. You need to know what is going on with your brand online and few brands can get away with not having a social media presence – brands need to engage on a personal level.

From a direct marketing point of view, what can be more personal and more direct than engaging on social media platforms? It provides the brand with the opportunity to become more than a brand – to become the consumers’ ‘buddy’. This will of course be strongly regulated by the new Consumer Protection Act (CPA), which defines direct marketing as a personal approach to directly or indirectly promote goods or services.

So, engaging directly and becoming the consumers’ buddy is important as we are no longer in the business of marketing, but in the business of engagement. And this again is important as the success of any direct marketing campaign can be measured by the interaction received from the audience.

That leaves one final question: Do consumers today, in this multi-tasking era, have the attention needed to participate in prolonged campaigns?

*A note of thanks to the panellists, whose wise comments contributed to this article.

Lynn Madley (CEO: Euro RSCG), Andrew Ambrogioni (CEO: Action Ambro’s) Danie Strachan (Senior Associate: Adams & Adams) Brian Mdluli (CEO: Direct Marketing Association of South Africa) and Xolisa Dyeshana (Creative Director and Partner: Joe Public)

A key part of the success of the evening was the informal and open forum established by host Willem Eksteen, Stone Founder. The audiences throughout the evening actively took part in the topics on discussion which enabled a greater sharing of experience and knowledge.
Some of the key insight from the evening:

• One of the key benefits of digital communication is the realization that this channel facilitates a dialogue between you and your clients.
• Digital reduces the cost to serve clients
• Digital provides all business with a global client base it’s therefore critical to know where clients are hanging out and what they are saying.

The changes in Facebook search bring a new kind of emphasis to the significance of Facebook when it comes to Reputation Management of brands online.  It opens up a whole new source of information as companies will be able to monitor conversations between friends and acquaintances in relations to their brands.
It will be interesting to see how this develops as Facebook makes more changes and possible expand the range of search history in the future.

A packaging change by PepsiCo illustrates social media’s growing influence on corporate marketing. Just another example of how consumer behavior is changing the world. With a huge stage called the internet to voice opinions, upload video content and share with friends and foes the opinions they harbor, the citizen journalist can be a dangerous enemy to make.

In January, Pepsi tried to introduce a new label on its Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice cartons in the US. They soon discovered that to replace the traditional straw-in-an-orange logo of 24 years might not be such an easy task. Consumers immediately turned to the internet to show their clear dismay.  Annoyance over the new packaging became clear through a series of blog entries, emails and letters to PepsiCo. It didn’t take long for titles like the Sucky new Tropicana orange juice carton and Pepsi Takes the Tropic out of Tropicana to make it up the Google result pages.
The power of social media resulted in PepsiCo bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to Tropicana  and reverting back to the old design.

Who would have thought 10 years ago that public outcry over the design of a product can be escalated to such a level that it would influence corporate decisions on the highest level?

The truth is that the internet is a powerful tool in the hands of your consumers, can you really afford not to know what is being said about your company or brand out there?

This shows once again that although there is much talk about this subject online reputation monitoring is still very much in the early adopter phase.

However if you look at the clear benefits of using information gathered from monitoring your reputation online I find it hard to understand companies reluctance in utilizing this tool as part of their ongoing strategy.

Benefits:

• It enables companies to collect information in relation to competitors that can be used for communication and product strategy development
• Continuous monitoring provides early warning systems regarding brand or product issues.
• Allows companies insights into how your brand and product is perceived by target markets
• Online monitoring assists in recognizing industry trends early on and capitalizing on this information.
• Identify and find new customers and communities
• Pro-actively influence an industry segment and what people are saying about a company, its brands and employees

But since then Dominos has actually done a reasonable job in managing the situation, besides firing the employees and pressing charges against them, they continued to respond with their own video featuring President Patrick Doyle on the same medium that the original video aired on.  In the video Doyle assures people that the employees have been sacked and it will do all it can to avoid a repeat of the incident.

I give Dominos credit for joining the conversations already taking place instead of just putting out a traditional press release or placing something on the corporate website. They went a step further and also opened a Twitter account to answer the millions of questions and comments from people which turned out to be fairly effective.

It’s a pity however that it took more than two days to get all the necessary social media accounts up. If you do a search on Google for Dominos you’ll notice that most of the results are all about the video incident. If they only established themselves on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and the likes a while ago then those results would most probably have not been all about the recent bad PR. It is definitely going to take them a while to repair that Google CV.

The one important lesson we can learn from the Dominos incident is the importance of establishing an early and leading position on the social networks. You just can’t afford to wait till something like this happens to you before becoming part of the conversations.  Brands simply have to be aware where the conversations are taking place and involve themselves in the active discussions.

As for the Domino employees who started this mess… I would say good luck in finding a new job after this little bit of YouTube stardom!

The internet and search engines like Google and Yahoo have made it very easy to have instant information at your finger tips and a first impression about you gets formed by what the first two pages of Google hits turn up.

Consider how often you will access the internet to do a quick search before a meeting with a client or supplier? If you are doing it so are others. It’s much cheaper, faster and a lot easier to passively review information in the comfort of your own home without having to talk to an annoying sales person that only wants to make the sale.

Keep these 3 things in mind as you embark on building a first-class online identity:

1.    The world is but a stage … the internet however is not
The first thing to remember is that it’s not just about playing a role, trying to pretend you are somebody you are not. Be yourself. Due to the nature of the internet it will become apparent rather quickly if you are not being true to yourself.

2.    Be bold and be beautiful
This is also true for your online persona. The reality is people are complex with various interests and personalities. Don’t try to hide that – be as colourful and interesting as always. The key thing to remember is to be sure you can say what you’re about in one easy sentence and that others have a sense of what you represent without your help. Online identities should be available and sincere, but most of all, fascinating.

3.    No time for hide-and -seek
You may have chosen in the past to use pseudo names to protect your privacy but the reality is these days you want people to be able to find you. Unless you go around handing out business cards with your secret identity on you are not doing yourself any favours by using a pseudo name when blogging, taking part in forums or registering on social network sites. Building and managing a consistent online identity will help to project an image of an active, well-informed, progressive individual or organisation.

Whether you are looking for a new job, trying to meet some new people or canvassing for new clients, if you do a good job developing and maintaining a good internet profile, you will have a chance at make a good second impression when you first meet a person!

With consumer generated content, people discuss you or your brand and your reputation and you need to control it or at least engage with people, whether the conversations or perceptions are good or bad.

One way to control ownership of your brand is to own keywords related to your brand – people use keywords and associate your brand with these to either find you or descibe you.

Your brand need to appear for terms searched for in search engines and if your brand does not come up in searches then you are not effectively marketing your brand or product online. People won’t find you. You need to be in that space.

Apart from owning keywords or terms, you need to deliver relevant content to consumers and also need to engage with your consumers on the channel where they are. that means that you have to be out there, everywhere.

Everything offline goes online
Campaigns in traditional media are not only viewed offline, but people talk about campaigns or ads online. You need to discover, identify and monitor these mentions to assess whether your campaign receives a positive or negative response.

Your reputation + credibility = $

Ingrid then covered two case studies to illustrate user perspectives/perceptions.

1. The first was Stork and how they turned around bad reputation from an TV advertisement run in 2006 and made good with a new campaign. The new campaign is a new social networking site foodcrEATions. Read the Stork foodcrEATions case study.
2. The second was Absolute Vodka and there campaign launced in Mexico and how this negatively affected their brand. A official press release was not sufficient to stem the tide in terms of bad comments. Read the Absolut Vodka case study.

Managing your business or personal reputation
You need to let people know who you are. If you have an online presense, what’s on there and how up to date is it?

What should your personal reputation consist of?

• what’s your current position?
• What are your achievements?
• Do you have a history of your career?
• Is there a bio of yourself?
• Is there a picture of yourself?
• Are you showing that you’re a real person?
• You need to build yourself and your name as an industry specialist
• You need to respond to blogger posts and comments on consumer portals
• You need to write articles and distribute them

Steps to influence and control your reputation online

1. monitor the conversations
   • 24/7 monitoring required
   • respond in real-time
   • use all possible platforms
   • know your competitors and there names, brands and services
2. Insights
   • analyse and understand the information you have and found
   • know what they are talking about
   • is it positive or negative
   • corporate responses
   • potential brand crisis
3. Engagement and participation
   • engagement is everything
   • show understanding
   • put relevant action plan together to reduce damage and changes perception
   • pro-active monitoring
   • store sentiment over time to get full picture
   • continue to monitor

3 take-aways from this presentation

1. Online is a platform where consumers talk about you
2. You have to influence and control your reputation
3. Review and make sure you have a successful ongoing strategy

Facebook, which has over 681 000 members, quickly became the most popular (most-accessed) social network site in the country, though it has been overtaken among younger users by MXit. Clearly, there’s a marketing opportunity.

One of the opportunities to get some insights into Social Media is the Tony Koenderman’s Cracking the Digital Code conference which kicks off today. In fact, it starts in just a few minutes.

I am here, as are most of the longtail team, and we are ready to take notes and blog about every little detail. So hold on to your seat.

About the first session
Stafford Masie will open this workshop with a scene-setting examination of the new media, followed by Vincent Maher’s discussion of how marketers can use social media. Ingrid Rubin wraps up the session by explaining the delicate question of how to manage your corporate reputation in a landscape where consumer generated content can make or break your brand.

Speakers and Topics on the menu

• The digital future is now – Stafford Masie of Google explains the threats, opportunities and relevance of digital media to South Africa
• Vincent Maher of Vodacom examines why social media has taken off – and how to use them for marketing
• How’s your online cred? – longtail founder Ingrid Rubin on Reputation Management

The overall favourite Brands in the Country are:

-Coca-Cola
-SAB
-Nike
-Vodacom
-Pick ‘n Pay
-Eskom
-Nokia
-MTN
-Toyota
-BMW

It is interesting that while we have had the worst possible service from Eskom in the last year they are still 6^th overall, their reputation online was clearly poor, with consumer protest sites like eskomsucks being launched, this site is no. 5 on Google when you search on “Eskom”.

I am not surprised at Coca-Cola’s first place position, they continue to reinvent and embrace the opportunities that advertising brings in new media. Their “Brrrr” campaign earlier in the year was an example of this, the communication crossed all channels including mobile in a large way. Although they could have worked on the optimisation of this campaign online (Brrrr ranks no.1 for the myvideo site), so that the search engines would pick up the Brand site first.

Google is the top Brand in the world and says alot that it doesn’t feature in the Top 10 for South Africa. But I am willing to bet that next year it will make an entrance on the list with the company actually establishing a local presence in South Africa and localising content and its’ applications.

When I looked at process used by Markinor, I see that there is still a dimension of measurement that is not being included and that is what consumers are recording online about Brands. Face-to-face and telephonic interviews are great but often too spontaneous and not always accurate. A real measurement of Brand sentiment is when people feel strongly enough about a Brand to take a video showcasing the product; write a blog posting of how amazing the service that they received was or entering a complaint on a consumer portal. Even worse, feeling so strongly that they take the time to build, launch and maintain a site that completely damages a Brands reputation.

Online mention tracking should also form part of the overall Brand Relationship Score to really determine a 360 degree view of what the consumer sentiment is.

One of the tools that can be used for this is saidWot, the Markinor Team would do well to consider using this reputation management and Brand tracking tool as part of the process for their next survey.