Bcadgroup's Weblog

Letting Your Fans Take A Crack at Your Advertising

nicolem — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:57:26 +0000

I have written often in this blog about what Ford has done with social media – especially since the government bailouts for the big 4 and Ford choosing not to take the money. With Scott Monty – touted as a social media leader especially via Twitter – Ford Fiesta is getting it right!

What has precipitated me writing this post - was a call out from my best friend Debra Oakland, in Laguna, CA. On her Facebook page she asked everyone to follow and support her friend Sebastian and his Ford Fiesta movement. Team Los Angeles. http://www.fiestamovement2.com/los-angeles/team-profile/team-los-angeles. Of course I went to go and see what this was about. I had written about phase one of this marketing plan for the 2011 Ford Fiesta - that has yet to be launched and sold in the US. See below as the 1st chapter is outlined on the Ford Fiesta Movement site. (If you want to read my earlier posts on this subject, type in our search box Ford and those posts will come up.)

“Last year the Fiesta Movement started with our 100 Chapter 1 agents. In the ultimate foreign exchange program, our 100 agents each spent six months behind the wheel of a European Fiesta. They shared their experiences and completed monthly missions to show you what the Ford Fiesta was all about (months and months before it would be available in the U.S.). Visit the Chapter 1 site to find out more about our original 100 agents and what they did on their missions.”

This year they have taken the movement to the next level by engaging the team’s friends and fans to participate. In essence they are asking the fans to do the marketing and advertising by celebrating local creativity and demonstrating - how each team can build a profile for this soon to be launched product. Below is an outline of this years addition to the product launch and campaign.

“For the next chapter of the Fiesta Movement – and in anticipation of Fiesta arriving in the U.S. – we’re letting our fans take a crack at the advertising. They’ll use their creativity to promote the new 2011 Fiesta. And you get to be the judge.” “The Fiesta Movement is bringing ideas and art to life in your backyard. Our teams of agents bring the passion. We bring the public spaces. Support one of the teams near you as they work with the best creative talent they can find in the area to promote the car, host local events and compete for the keys to their own Ford Fiesta. Agents participating in Chapter 2 will get to use a Ford Fiesta over the program period. We’ll pay for the gas. Team members will compete for prizes (of varying dollar amounts) and will have an equal chance to win a Ford Fiesta.

There are so many reasons to love this campaign. It allows the customers to use the product and SHARE their experiences on a daily basis with their respected community- Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. This campaign combines both offline and online marketing channels - so people can physically go to events, get involved directly and contribute to a team - while learning about a new product and see first hand how that product could add value to their life. The company in this case - Ford presents the product in a way that builds respect, trust and a real human touch to this soon to be launched product. WHY? Because the voice for the product is no longer a one way dialogue from the parent company - but rather a collective voice from all the customers, their friends and fans that can speak to real experiences -which can then be leveraged through various advertising and marketing channels - to help build the momentum and excitement.

It is fun for the teams, supports competition, creativity and passion and for the community and allows the community be a part of and support a movement with their “tribe” of like -minded community members - while learning about the value of this new product and how it might enhance their lives. Absolutely brilliant.

Every company should be looking at this brilliant marketing and advertising campaign and creating their own versions for 2010 – 2010. It is a true collaboration between social media, the customer, the brand/corporation and the various marketing and advertising channels that can create brand evangelists. In turn corporations get to receive the dedication and passion of those customers who in turn spread the new product love! How easy can it be.

Best Nicole

Online Spending Continues to Rise – A Graphic Worth a Million Words!

nicolem — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:30:57 +0000

There are many retailers that are still not online. Many claim they are not ready. Some are dabbling—but even the dabblers are unsure of how to truly leverage the success that can be attained. A few weeks ago I attended a launch at a major retailer. They have done a 360 degree turn in their brand offering and are certainly looking to expand their old reputation for a new contemporary one in order to attract a broader more modern customer. At the launch, they had some laptops sitting out with the idea that people could go and tweet from the event at the computer stations. Great intentions but from my perspective here are some ideas about how they could have kicked it out of the park.

Firstly, they had models there that were wearing the clothes, who were mingling with guests and dancing to the cool dj beats. Those models could have had smartphones or PDA’s and circulated through the crowd—taking photos with the guests and uploading those photos with tweets from their phones. No one was standing next to the laptops to explain (to those that may have been unsure) how Twitter works or to ask people to come over and tweet. They could have engaged their twitter followers to come to the event and created a “tweet up” for those that came to the event via the tweet invite. They could have had a contest, with the entry being a mention and hash tag of the event for those that were attending, and selected the winner via their tweet profile name. Simple and easy ways to get started, engage and connect with your customers online and integrate the great offline and in-store milestones—using a simple but 21st digital strategy—to begin to build the community you want to engage, as these customers are online shoppers. Both for research as well as purchasing.

I came across and article today where a diagram is worth a million words. It comes from Fast Company and is written by Maccabee Montandon. It says that online sales continue to soar—and those that are looking to refresh, rebuild or expand their brand should be aiming their efforts to this eager and willing customer base that is looking to their favorite retailers to be engaging them to shop online!

Quoted from the article and most eye opening is the following: “Perhaps the most eye-opening figure of all is the average amount that an Internet shopper spent last year: $1,006.50. Sure buys a lot of Lady Gaga downloads.” Wowza! That’s worth getting in the game!

Best Nicole

Click, Buy, Repeat: Consumers Flocking to Virtual Shopping More Than Ever

BY Maccabee MontandonThu Mar 11, 2010

It’s been the retailing story for years–and new research says it still is! Yes, online sales continue to soar, recession be damned. We were all probably at least vaguely aware of this phenomenon but to see it in such stark numbers astounds anew. Perhaps the most eye-opening figure of all is the average amount that an Internet shopper spent last year: $1,006.50. Sure buys a lot of Lady Gaga downloads. Or these.

Share Your Brand Evangelism

nicolem — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:46:11 +0000

We live in a world where consumers actively resist marketing. So it’s imperative to stop marketing at people. The idea is to create an environment where consumers will market to each other. (from Seth Godin’s Super Ideavirus Vook)

bcadgroup — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:02 +0000

How to Access the Benefits of Social Media and Where to Start

nicolem — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:37:51 +0000

The word catalyst is a great definition for social media these days. The dictionary defines catalyst as “something that causes activity between two or more persons or forces without itself being affected.” For the majority of us, there is enough evidence to support the value of social media as a key marketing channel. Most businesses understand and know about the tools most used. But for many, the one aspect of social media that still lacks clarity is the implementation aspect. Many still need guidance on how to go about incorporating social media so that they can reap the benefits and build a community of brand evangelists that understand who and what their brand stands for. With the right implementation, this can ensure that you are speaking to and building your “tribe members” to spread the word.

This part always leads me back to the ongoing conversation topic that continues to come up: strategy. I have meetings with new businesses all the time. And they always tell me that they want to get started with social media but don’t want to do any strategic planning—they just want to get on Twitter and Facebook. There is nothing wrong with this approach by the way, BUT it can also decrease your one’s ability to maximize results and meet your milestones. Some of the things to consider in a strategic plan include your other marketing initiatives and how your social media will be integrated. Are you currently using offline and in-store channels? What about the social computing behavior of your target market: maybe they don’t use Facebook or Twitter, but read blogs instead…and only from a spectator vantage point, which means they are not going to be the ones that comment. Deciphering some of the answers to these questions, and many more, certainly up the odds for successful connecting and engagement.

Mashable.com posted an article by Chris Allison, today called the “4 Ways to Effectively Use Social Media as a Catalyst“. His article speaks about 4 ways to which you can begin to look at the big picture and begin to put together some thoughts and ideas about how you are going to use social media, in the context of your brand and marketing goals, to maximize results.

Like I said ya gotta have a plan! This article should help you gain some perspective as to where you might want to get started.

Best Nicole

As social media marketing becomes more widely practiced, the questions of the day are less frequently focused on the benefits of social media and more often focused on its implementation. Justifying social media to superiors is no longer the marketer’s biggest challenge.

Instead, marketers are being challenged not on the potential benefits, of which there is ample evidence, but rather on how to get those benefits. Where to start?

Social Media as a Catalyst

With this challenge in mind, it’s vital to understand that social media is neither the end nor the beginning of any marketing effort. Rather, social media is a catalyst that works most effectively when it is finely woven into the fabric of a brand’s other activity.

When putting together a puzzle, it helps to take a look at the big picture on the front of the box. Likewise, when putting together a social media strategy it’s necessary to zoom out a little and examine how social media will fit into the context of your other business activities. Below are four pieces of the puzzle that brands can mesh with social media to maximize results.

1. Cause Marketing

The socialization of the web has made it evident that brands that want to succeed online must feel and act like humans, not like desperate, distant corporations. Accordingly, some social media marketers have taken on the role of teaching brands how to be human: don’t say stupid things, don’t feed the trolls, and don’t dominate the conversation – pretty fundamental stuff that somehow got lost during the incorporation process.

However, guidelines for not screwing up aren’t enough for brands to really benefit from social media. Until you bring something interesting to the table — something that inspires passion, laughter, or curiosity — nobody will care if you have a Twitter() account.

One of the most effective, simple ways to get people to care about what you’re doing is to do something worth caring about: get behind a cause. Brands have been benefiting from cause marketing for a long time, but the catalytic nature of social media has brought three additional benefits to the cause marketing table:

Access to increased publicity

The ability to be a vocal activist instead of a silent philanthropist by joining conversations

The ability to bring customers into the support process

Pepsi is one of the best examples of a brand that has recently seized the opportunity to leverage a mix of social media and cause marketing. Their Refresh Everything project incorporates votes from users to decide where Pepsi will donate their funds as well as a variety of other simple social media features: single sign-on, a Facebook() Fan Page, and a blog.

By involving users with a voting process, Pepsi has effectively done three things. First, instead of just doing good themselves, they’ve helped their customers do good, which helps establish a very positive brand association. They have also created a situation that will compel users to share with their friends (in order to accrue votes for the cause of their choice). Finally, they have built a feedback mechanism that will ensure the causes they support are also the most popular among their customers (which is great PR).

Brands can benefit greatly from integrating social media with cause marketing, and they can learn a lot about how to get started from the tactics that Pepsi has used.

Disclosure: Pepsi sponsored Mashable’s() NextUp NYC: The Future Journalist event.

2. The Offline World

Isolating the impact of social media to the web is an easy mistake to make. It seems natural enough to meet online goals with online activity, but the tangible world of physical objects, locations, and events can often provide a compelling medium to drive fans to engage with you online, or vice versa, you can use your social media efforts to drive activity to guerrilla marketing events like Red Bull’s stash, or simply to brick and mortar stores.

Integrating your social media efforts with real products, store locations, or activities is an important way to acknowledge that you care about the complete customer experience, and that you’re not just in the social media space because it’s popular.

Some of the most successful campaigns, such as Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice, have been focused on driving the purchase of offline products. Similarly, customer support profiles like Comcast Cares would be much less successful if they didn’t have the power to influence real offline change by working with customer support representatives that can help customers on location.

On the surface, social media may look like a simple set of social networks that people use to communicate, but when marketers look deeper they find that it presents a whole new venue for empowering all of their existing services, online as well as off.

3. Media Coverage

Though citizen journalism and user generated content have proven to be extremely powerful (Iran’s() election crisis, Barack Obama’s massive online get out the vote efforts, etc.), it is important to remember that brands can still benefit enormously from traditional media coverage.

When it comes to social media, or any marketing for that matter, brands must find ways to leverage all of their assets in the same direction. Just like the offline world can easily be used for online gain, so too can traditional media be leveraged in the new media space.

Amit Gupta, founder of several wonderful startups like Photojojo and Jelly, sheds some light on how his businesses have benefited from traditional coverage:

Mainstream press is harder to get, but still drives significant awareness, especially among ‘everyday’ people who aren’t spending all day on the internet. And the names of old media carry
significant cache, enough to drive double-digit increases in conversion rates simple because of the credibility their names lend.

I exchanged e-mails with Amit and he was kind of enough to lend some extended insight on what to expect from traditional media. TV, web, and radio are all able to generate fast, measurable results. With these mediums, people are either interested, or they aren’t. There are comparatively few lagging responses. Newspapers and magazines on the other hand, while carrying significant credibility, produce results that are harder to measure because their content is often read over days, weeks, or even months.

The ultimate success of a social media strategy depends on your ability to recognize problems and seize opportunities to solve them. When considering the needs of your campaign, whether it’s brand equity or an immediate spike in interest, consider traditional media as another tool in your toolbox that could meet those needs. However, remember that part of your strategy should involve doing, saying, or making something interesting and worth talking about. If you don’t do that, no amount of good press can save you.

4. Technology

Lastly, your social media strategy is inherently paired with technology. Without technology, social media cannot exist. However, technology’s role in creating a social media strategy often goes understated.

At SoCon10, a social media conference in Atlanta, Carol Kruse (head of interactive marketing at Coke) described the pain her team went through creating a Facebook application, only to find two months later that changes in Facebook’s design would require Coke to restructure the application – a maintenance cost that hadn’t been anticipated. Having a plan in place for making technological changes on the fly is an important ingredient in the fast-paced social media world.

But technology is more than just a potential cost that bloats social media campaigns; it’s also the life that fuels them. Applications like the recently launched MySpace Fan Video are powered by collaboration between experienced creatives and programmers, not just one or the other. Thus, perhaps the most important synergy to be formed by any company delving into social media is one between their technology team, internal or external, and their marketing team driving the strategy.

A Retailer That Gets it – The Power of Mobile Through The Eyes of Best Buy

nicolem — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:28:42 +0000

When is the last time that you left your house or office without your cell phone? Or went throughout the entire day leaving your cell phone behind on purpose? For me, my cell is my personal and business lifeline all wrapped up into one. It houses my contact list—the days of remembering a phone number are long gone. My calendar, my email, texts and the internet are all at my finger tips should I need to search something. My social media feeds are there too so I can Tweet and update Facebook as I move throughout my day. My alarm for the morning resides on the phone as well, and yes—it stays by my bed at night when I am asleep!

As your business navigates through the decision to engage in social media, you should be thinking about the ways that your customers will best engage. What are the tools that they use? Where are they likely to best utilize your information to connect—not only with you—and to take the types of actions you want them to make? With so many people as connected to their cell phones as I am, it is vital for every business to be thinking about how they can best leverage mobile.

This post and video from Retails Big Blog by Ellen Davis, VP and NRF spokesperson, is brilliant. It focuses on one of social media’s most important tools—and substantiates the opening to this post— that for the majority of people, this tool is becoming a conduit to engage your customers in ways that have not yet been leveraged. Best Buy is leading the way by acknowledging through this video that they realize and see this as a tremendous business opportunity.

If mobile is not on your company’s radar, this video is sure to change your mind!
Best Nicole

Benson, senior director of interactive marketing at Best Buy, began her presentation at the Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference by asking people to swap cell phones with the person sitting next to them. There was a lot (and, I mean, a LOT) of hesitation, but most people followed directions. Then we were asked to trade phones with another person close by. More hesitation ensued, but most people obliged.

At my table, I ended up holding the BlackBerry of a guy I’d never met and he (gasp!) was cradling my iPhone. It made me cringe. This short exercise was a powerful reminder to me – and, likely, many other attendees – of the personal value we place on our mobile devices.

What does mobile mean to Best Buy? A tremendous business opportunity. Best Buy debuted a video during Benson’s presentation about the value of mobile – not only on Best Buy’s employees, but also on the company. Take four minutes to watch this and you’ll realize, this is a company that gets it.

Mobile Social Networking – What Networks Have You Downloaded?

nicolem — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:30:36 +0000

For those that follow us on Twitter and Facebook - you know that yesterday I attended The Art of Marketing. It was a great event - but what I really enjoyed was the ability to SHARE with others – some of the many take-aways that I received from each speaker by Tweeting – better yet were the retweets I received from those that loved what I was SHARING. It adds a new dimension to be able to use your mobile device and be connected not just by email but in real-time to the social networks that are part of your day – to – day or I should re phrase that to say my day- to- day life.

I run on Blackberry and I have both Facebook and Twitter on my mobile devise. I tend to use Facebook to upload photos and share a more personal side of what might be happening and fun. I tend to use Twitter as more of a business learning and sharing tool. It is quick and easy and yes I actually find it fun. If I can do it – anyone can trust me! Now if I need to know something I have more than thousands of people I can shout out too – if something interesting happens in the course of the day or night – I don’t have to pick up the phone I can quickly post it. News in real-time and can connect instantly with my followers.

Apparently according to this Mashable.com article, I am not alone. Author Christina Warren writes about mobile social media and provides stats about social networks and their usage on mobile devises. These stats clearly indicate that this area has had huge growth and will continue to rise.

I remember that old commercial for Yellow Pages that said “let your fingers do the talking”. These days its “let your mobile devise connect you” so that you can talk in real-time! How easy it can be……. with your mobile device!

Best Nicole

Digital measurement firm comScore released a study today highlighting the rise in social media access via mobile phones and offering some comparison metrics for some of the biggest social networks and their usage on mobile devices.

comScore measured the changes in both mobile browser access to social networks and the access numbers to specific social networks from January 2009 to January 2010.

Some highlights:

– 30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009.

- Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage.

When it comes to specific social networks, Twitter () and Facebook () both had increases in mobile browser usage in the triple digits. Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112%.

Mirroring non-mobile usage, MySpace () mobile access was actually down 7% year over year.

It’s important to note that these figures are just from mobile browser statistics — they don’t even take into account the use of mobile applications for Twitter or Facebook.

Both Facebook and Twitter have prospered from having strong mobile strategies. Twitter’s mobile strategy and integration with SMS messages has made it a natural mobile player since its inception; still more and more users are turning to its mobile browser counterpart to send and receive messages.

Facebook has a great presence on mobile platforms, but the fact that so many people are continuing to use it from a mobile browser shows that its strategy of catering to mobile users is working.

Do you use Twitter or Facebook more on your phone or via your regular computer? Let us know!

Women and Word of Mouth = Social Media

nicolem — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:44:44 +0000

I got this link from Twitter via @thepowerofsmall author Lynda Thaler and CEO of The Kaplan Thaler Group.

We are working on all sorts of digital projects these days—many of them are contests—with the plan to build a fan base, so they can begin to engage and connect with their clients one-on-one. As we continue to guide and educate our current clients with social media strategies and execution – we are always trying to sell new clients who have yet to really get engaged. As a women owned and run business – I always use the analogy that social media is a natural for women. It is focused on how we communicate. We like to tell stories and share our ideas. If we have a great experience we want the world to know and when we don’t we want the world to to know that too.

I have written regularly on our SHARE Blog, about the stats that provide overwhelming evidence – about the influence that women have as decision makers and buyers of all products and services. The power of their influence is even greater in an online community environment. The breadth and depth of the reach alone – is many, many, many times greater than that of using traditional methods. Today’s post is inspired by a post from a blog called Whymomsrule.com - I say not just moms but women too! Written by Jamie Dunham, this post provides stats that reinforce the importance of women and social media.

Don’t have a campaign that you feel reaches your target “women consumer”? Time to take a good look at social media in order to reach the women – who are eager to recieve from you – information that is important, authentic and personal to them – as they look to fulfill their needs, wants and benefits. The ones that best fit their day to day life.

Best Nicole

A recent post by Socialmediatoday.com did a nice job of bringing together some new studies that reinforce the importance of women in social media. It’s not surprising to see that women are more active on social networks than are men.

The latest research from Royal.pingdom.com shows that across 19 social media sites, there were more female users than men on 16 out of the 19 most popular sites.

Here are some interesting facts:

Twitter and Facebook have approximately the same male-female ratio: Twitter is 59 percent female and Facebook is 57 percent female.
The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47 percent male, 53 percent female.
The most female-dominated sites are Bebo (66 percent female users), MySpace and Classmates.com (64 percent female users).

The three sites with more male users are functional, news related sites – Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.

So why is this female user important? She’s the consumer, the connector and the decision maker for most of the purchase decisions in the family.

But more important to marketers, women are three times more likely to share personal stories with a friend than men. Evidently, women are hard-wired that way – with more actual brain activity for bonding and connecting with others.

When we need a recommendation, we tend to ask our friends for their hairdresser, the dentist they go to, their favorite stores and what book they read last.

The multiple effect of a women’s Twitter or Facebook account has important implications for marketers. The average Facebook user has 130 friends. The more followers you have on Twitter, the most Tweets per day. Twenty-one percent of online women tweet.

But remember, marketers, women want information that is important, authentic and personal to them. Their age, their lifestage and their lifestyle are important indicators of how to address them.

Virtual Meet Ups Provide Support and Inspiration in the Real World

nicolem — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:09:08 +0000

In light of the Olympics taking place in Canada, I thought today’s post was definitely apropos! Virtual meet-ups and friendships are one of the great benefits of social media. Communities are being created in the online world and relationships are being extended into the real world. I know for myself—and many of my friends—that new friendships have begun on Facebook that have extended into the real world. Same goes for Twitter. Tweet-ups are popping up all over—where those on Twitter are getting together with their followers and fellow tweeters in real life. ING Direct Canada’s online bank has had a few “tweet-up” meet ups!

For businesses, this is one of the ways to facilitate using social media as a way to connect and engage with their customers online and create ways to get them to go to their bricks and mortar businesses offline. Many have leveraged coupons and free products via their social media pages on Facebook and Twitter—asking their community to print off coupons for these offers and bring them to their retail stores. I wrote an article about Starbucks’ social media success the other day. They have been very successful leveraging this online and offline relationship with their customers.

Sparkpeople.com is a free social network that supports its users in their weight loss journey and relies on its users to sustain the community and the site. With obesity, health and wellness being at the forefront for everyone—First Lady Michelle Obama had chosen this as one of her key mandates for this year—Sparkpeople.com is a great universal cost free tool and a way for many to get support, encouragement and education to stay on track and attain success with meeting their weight loss and fitness goals. CNN contributor and writer Ashley Fantz has written a great article about the value and success that many have found by participating in the Sparkpeople.com community.

The excitement of knowing that there is a free place where you can receive support, education and build relationships that extend beyond the virtual borders into real life, adds a dimension not just to businesses but for anyone looking for ways to connect and engage with others—who have like minded interests, passions and goals. Amazing!

Best Nicole

Spark friends Rebecca Coats and Eve Rasmussen run in the Surf City marathon in Huntington Beach, California, February 7

CNN) — Becki Coats was embarrassed, so embarrassed that she didn’t want to show pictures of herself with her new grandchild.

“I couldn’t stand thinking about people saying, ‘Oh, my, what happened to you,’” she said. “Well, I’d become a fat, cuddly grandmother who cannot play with her own grandbaby, that’s what.”

Coats weighed 230 pounds. At 49, she was too heavy — and sidelined with herniated disks and a bum knee — to do her job as a firefighter, so her bosses gave her a desk job. But her physical pain was no match for the anguish to come when over the next year and a half her teenage son died in a car wreck, her mother died and she lost a friend to cancer.

“It was just constant bad news. I was told that if I didn’t lose weight, I was going to lose my job entirely,” she said.

Required to attend a work fitness program, Coats learned about Sparkpeople.com, a free fitness social networking site that, like Facebook, relies on its users to sustain it. They provide basic biographical information and weight loss goals and are automatically transferred to Spark Teams, small chat groups bound by similar shape-up goals.

The ad-supported site lets users build their own Sparkpages — which can be linked to Facebook — and have access to the lively written Sparkblog, which offers advice from certified trainers, the latest health articles and studies and recipes.

When Coats logged on she was connected with seven other women in a “40-something with 25 to 49 pounds to lose” message board. She quickly felt a kinship with these women she’d never met.

“They were talking about life — jobs, husbands, their kids, traveling, getting to know each other like they were your girlfriends sitting at your kitchen table having coffee,” she said. “It’s not like you sign on and it’s all about ‘Drop that weight!’

“Here were women who are going to encourage me to get off my butt but weren’t going to judge me if I didn’t look like a swimsuit model in six months,” she said.

Coats and several of the other women in her chat group met for the first time earlier this month to run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, California. Each ran a different distance, and they met at the finish line.

“It meant a lot to us to do this together, something that each of us never considered that we’d ever do,” she said.

Spark was launched 10 years ago by a wealthy early eBay investor. It is among the best known secrets in the weight-loss world. According to Comscore, it’s the most visited fitness site with 7 million users (162 million page views in January), but Spark has taken a low-key, word-of-mouth approach compared to its big bucks advertising competitors like Weight Watchers.

“Spark is built on a truth that people love feeling like they’re needed on a team,” said founder Chris Downie who, along with two business partners, sold his late 1990s online auction site to eBay for a reported $72 million and started Spark.

Downie spends much of his day in his Silicon Valley home messaging back and forth with Spark users or reading what people are talking about in the Sparkcafe. (On February 3, among the 798,784 cafe chatters, nearly 10,000 people were involved in a “Should you eat breakfast?” thread.)

“I always had shyness and anxiety as a kid, and I wanted to create something that would allow users to remain comfortably anonymous if they wanted but still connect,” Downie said.

“The key to me is that I felt supported and not judged,” said Jennifer Lang, an upstate New York psychotherapist who is part of the group. After having her fourth child at 41, Lang weighed 228 pounds.

“I had not exercised in 20 years,” she said. “Really. In 20 years. It just wasn’t a part of my life until it had to become my life or else.”

She found Spark while surfing the Internet and joined other Spark groups, including the pointedly named “Mothers with 2-year-olds.” She faithfully filled in her nutrition tracker every day, a function that not only automates calories but tells you when you type in “Dannon yogurt” what the heck’s really in that container and whether it’s really good for you. It also provides ideas for substitute meals. Spark’s software won’t allow someone to program a diet less than 1,200 calories a day.

A year later, Lang is 50 pounds lighter.

Stories like Lang’s and Coats’ are ubiquitous on Spark. CNN.com signed on to the site and messaged with several users who said they’d shed 5 to 100 pounds.

Many said they didn’t even mind being sent the flurry of Spark e-mails they say didn’t strike them as spam. A few examples: “Where to find the nearest running trail near your home” and “5 Ways to Avoid Hitting the Snooze.” A hip and glute stretch video was short and direct, and another e-mail containing a low-cal recipe did not, like so many in its genre, produce food that tastes like cardboard.

As Lang got healthier, Tammy Rhones signed onto the women’s chat group as “Marathon Mom,” even though the 49-year-old’s problems with weight and a clubbed foot sidelined her from most sports over the past few years.

“I never got past being that little girl who thought she couldn’t run,” she said, describing how she would watch Ironman competitions with amazement at the monster triathlon. A trainer told her about Sparkpeople.

Shortly after registering, Spark “woggers” (runners who walk) began sending her instant messages, motivating her to join a real-life running club to work on her foot. Months later, in a burst of extra motivation, Rhones completed a 2.4 mile ocean swimming competition and 150-mile bike ride. She also started competing in Spark’s online 5K and 10K races where users post their real-life mileage. It might take a week, but in the virtual races, the first one to complete the total distance wins.

“I’ve always had a competitive side, but Spark has given me the chance to appreciate my successes as opposed to comparing myself to everyone else,” Rhones said after running the half portion of the Surf City marathon. “I don’t need to look at a magazine anymore and say, ‘Oh I need to strive for that.’ I’m a size 12, not a size 6, and I’m happy with that, that’s OK.”

Melding Social Media With Offline Marketing Channels to Move Your Business Forward

nicolem — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:21:31 +0000

The best way to show our readers that a serious, planned approach to social media as a key marketing channel can lead to success (when integrated with offline channels), is to provide case studies or corporate examples of triumph and prosperity.

Today’s post is going to do just that. In 2008, Starbucks (YES, I am one of their devotees ) found themselves in some serious hot water. Sales were down, there were major corporate management changes (which included Starbucks former CEO Howard Shultz returning and some management being let go), store closings, and some of the rapid rate expansion was slowed so that the company could go back to basics. The challenge? “How do they get back their relationship with their customer — the one they had when they first began?” Shultz claimed that, “Starbucks had lost its soul.”

They began with MyStarbucksidea.com, where customers could submit their ideas, frustrations, ask questions and share opinions. They have received 80,000 ideas thus far and implemented 50 of them—which shows they are listening. It has paid off. What did the do right? They approached their social media campaign as a “customer relationship building movement”. Brilliant! They used their own blog, MyStarbucksidea.com, along with Facebook and Twitter. And in turn, they used those networks to feature promotions for “free” products that could be redeemed in-store. By melding both the online participation and offline engagement, they brought customers back into the stores. This relationship also allowed them to manage what is sometimes referred to as “issues management” rumors or negative press. Social media allowed them to clearly articulate the truth, answer questions and not let that negativity go unanswered.

The outcome? Starbucks is now beginning to see sales rise following its social media promotions and they posted in the U.S. their first same store sales gain in 2 years for the last quarter.

Can’t find a better example than this detailed blog article posted today by Ad Age Digital, written by Emily Bryson York. It shows what you can look forward to if you make the type of social media commitment that Starbucks has made and is making. Sales gain is a pretty great reason to me! What are you waiting for?

Best Nicole

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Let’s get this straight right away: Return on investment in social media is not measured in how many friends you have on Facebook or how many followers you have on Twitter. It’s not calculated in trending topics or YouTube comments. It should, in fact, be held to the same criteria other marketing channels are: Did it move your business?

It’s done just that at Starbucks, which is a digital marketer worth watching.

No one would have guessed at that turn of events during the chain’s dark days of early 2008. Sales and traffic had begun to slip for the first time in its history as a public company. Founder Howard Schultz, returning to handle day-to-day management, even admitted that Starbucks had lost its soul. As part of Mr. Schultz’s multifaceted turnaround plan, the chain launched MyStarbucksIdea.com in July 2008 as a forum for consumers to make suggestions, ask questions and, in some cases, vent their frustrations. The website now has 180,000 registered users. Some 80,000 ideas have been submitted, 50 of which have been implemented in-store.

Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks’ VP-brand content and online, said amassing Starbucks’ 5.7 million Facebook fans and 775,000 Twitter followers could be tougher for a dental-floss brand. “Maybe we have an unfair advantage because in so many ways Starbucks and the store experience is like the original social network,” he said. Consumers “come in, hang out and talk to our store partners. They sort of got to know us as a brand in a very social way.”

But he’s quick to point out that Starbucks’ advantage could easily have been squandered. “If we had approached it not from ‘what you know and love about Starbucks’ but as a marketing channel, we would have taken this down a path that would have been very different,” he said. “This was not [built as a] marketing channel, but as a consumer relationship-building environment.”

More important than the number of fans, however, is that the coffee chain is beginning to see sales lifts following social-media promotions.

Results
Starbucks posted its first U.S. same-store sales gain in two years for the last quarter during a time when the company relied on digital and social-media promotions instead of what had become an annual TV blitz. The chain partnered with Pandora to sponsor holiday playlists, staged a Facebook sing-a-long and leveraged its partnership with Project RED to drive traffic to a dedicated microsite — and its stores, offering a free CD with a $15 purchase.

Mr. Bruzzo said that the company is benefitting from a trend “toward this intersection between digital and physical.”

“We’re seeing the beginning of that,” he said. “The experiences you have online can translate to rich offline experiences.”

The first time Mr. Bruzzo noticed this intersection was on Starbucks’ “Free Pastry Day” last summer, when consumers could visit the company website or its Facebook page and download a voucher for a free pastry. Mr. Bruzzo, who visited multiple stores that day, said he was amazed at the number of people standing in line holding coupons they’d printed out. He said the impetus for free pastries was the volume of faithful online followers asking to be included on new products or other company news.

The secret to Starbucks’ social-media success is, at least in part, the fact that it plays it cool. “It’s not like we started our Facebook community, got to a million people and started pushing offers at them,” he said. “We built up a community of people who enjoy engaging with our photo albums from our trip to Rwanda, who loved to have these shared moments around their favorite drinks.” Then, fans started asking the company what was going on, and how they could be included.

‘Straight scoop’
An added benefit of Starbucks’ social-media progress has been the ability to quickly manage rumors that could have dogged the company for days. Last January, a story spread that Starbucks was donating its profits in Israel to fund the country’s army — even though Starbucks doesn’t have any cafés in Israel. These days, Mr. Bruzzo said, when misinformation gets out, it’s easier to nip it in the bud.

Chris Bruzzo, VP-brand content and online, Starbucks

Internally, it’s called the “embassy strategy.” Starbucks strives to make MyStarbucksIdea and its Facebook and Twitter pages places that “when you go there you know you’re going to get the straight scoop,” he said.

After ceding its usual first-to-market status to competitors, Starbucks launched two iPhone apps in September, one for general café purposes, with store locators, details about specific blends and nutrition information, and the other to support its loyalty card. Moving forward, Mr. Bruzzo said the company will be looking for ways that consumers can connect with each other from inside the apps.

In the meantime, Starbucks is testing functionality that allows loyalty-card holders to pay with their phones.

Starbucks’ agencies are BBDO, PHD and Blast Radius.

Starbucks tweeter in chief

Unlike many marketers, Starbucks doesn’t run its Twitter feed out of its PR department. The chain’s voice on Twitter is Brad Nelson, 28, a former barista who rose through its IT ranks.

When the company was looking for ideas to re-engage with its core customer in 2008, Mr. Nelson suggested that he begin a Twitter handle for the brand, and it now has 775,000 followers. The brand relies on the 28-year old to translate the Starbucks experience for the online community, search out confused or disgruntled consumers, chat about store offerings and even crack jokes.

Chris Bruzzo, VP-brand, content and online, said that Starbucks was beginning to institute its turnaround plan in early 2008 when Mr. Nelson announced he was ready for something new and wanted to get involved in the chain’s online efforts.

“I sent him away and said ‘Fine, sure,’” Mr. Bruzzo said. But about two weeks later, Mr. Nelson gave him a presentation about Twitter and the opportunity to communicate directly with consumers as questions arise. Mr. Nelson sweetened his pitch by adding, “It’s a lot like being a barista on the internet.” Mr. Bruzzo recalls greenlighting the project, and after a period of working with Mr. Nelson, let him loose on Twitter.

Mr. Bruzzo gives credit to Mr. Nelson and his “willingness to take smart risks,” but shares some of the kudos for Starbucks. “I guess you have to have a brand like this and an environment that’s open to innovation and someone like Brad with the passion and personality.”

Now Starbucks is finding more ways to use Mr. Nelson. He took a week-long cross-country drive last fall with comedienne Erin Foley and an Edelman entourage to help launch Via. The group made stops for a web series along the way, passing out product samples.