A MARKETER'S ADVENTURES IN THE DIGITAL-LAND 

A middle-aged marketer, Alice is bored while using traditional media, when she notices a digital Rabbit run past. She innocently follows it down the rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked social media doors namely Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. Which door should she open to avail these attractive marketing opportunities and what should she expect? Is there any danger behind those doors?
 

She opened the door which was labeled as "TWITTER" and saw a small blue bird which chirped to her "TWEET ME". She felt so naïve after reading several tweets about a recent high-profile AP Twitter hack which brought her to my blog about precautions to stay safe in the Twitter world.

Which companies could be hack worthy? 

 Not everyone has millions of Twitter followers, and not everyone's tweets or hacked Twitter accounts can move markets. Still, every social media user must take basic precautions to protect social media passwords, to avoid ugly hacks and stolen personal information, not to mention sparing followers from spam. 

How does a hacker attack a social media account?
Hackers are very clever. They pretend to be your friend. One of the sneakiest hacker tricks of late - those direct messages or Twitter mentions that appear to be from a connection, and ask things like, "hey, is this you in this picture?” It's tempting to click on the accompanying link and when users do, suddenly, a hacker can have entry.

What can a company do to keep its Twitter Account safe? 1^st step is to hire a Gate Keeper:

Your password is your gate keeper or the watch guard. Use a password that is hard to break in preferably a combination of numbers and letters. If your password is a cookie. Use zeros for Os and 1s for Is. Microsoft has a solid password security page that can help you to create a "safe" password. Change your passwords every quarter, at a minimum. And don't write your passwords on a machine that's not secure.

Have a different one for each social media account. That way, if hackers get into one platform, they can't get access to all of them. Social Media managers often find it difficult to memorize all of those number, letter and symbol combinations, consider an app that can manage them like "one password" for Apple, Android and Windows, or "one safe" for Apple products.
 

Hesitant to experiment with social media Alice asked, "Why does my brand need a social media presence?" There are multiple reasons rather benefits of social media. But I believe, one of the most important benefits of social media is to listen to your consumers better.  Marketers can stay in touch on a daily basis with what people are saying about you and your brands. So, track your handles through Twitter search, or, if you're business, an enterprise listening tool like Salesforce Radian6 is really helpful.  

Be alert and agile at all times:

For example, AP Twitter account quickly responded by saying that "That's a bogus tweet" to the "an erroneous tweet" posted through their account claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama is injured. Moments later, the @AP Twitter account — with nearly 2 million followers — was suspended. Immediately following the false tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered.  

What would you do right now if you found out your Twitter account was hacked?

- Keep an email list ready to send to if you need to take action.

- Keep all your passwords file safe so you can easily login to your social profiles and change the login information ASAP.

- Practice a Fire Drill i.e. take some time to do at least a mental run through so you're prepared when a crises arises.

Consult trusted experts:

When evaluating social media solutions keep data integrity at the top most priority. Talking about data once it is posted it is forever because even if you delete information from your account there are chances that someone has already saved or retweeted about it. Be cautious of what you post.

By using Hootsuite Security, you can setup secure profiles so that you have to approve everything that gets posted onto any of your accounts, and setting up limited permissions makes certain that employees can only create drafts of all your social media messages. Finally, this tool allows you to turn on HTTPS, which will encrypt your information so that hackers cannot see your information if they try to break into your accounts.

Avoid Add-Ons: Download carefully especially while updating softwares. It’s easy to download an add-on or click “ok” when asked if the add-on can have access to your account. This is one of the easiest ways for a hacker to get into your account and take your password and personal information.

Exit for once and for all:

And if you've simply stopped using an online platform, account or service, delete it completely.

Sources:

http://bit.ly/185H9rj

http://nbcnews.to/127Xm9l

http://bit.ly/1676TUI

Header image is a Bella Pilar creation

Images sourced from Tumblr

Brands walk a very thin line when it comes to leveraging a tragedy to gain attention through real time marketing or more popularly known as 'Newsjacking'. The jargon #NEWSJACKING got infamous by a book published under the same name by David Meerman Scott. A simple definition given in the book states that Newsjacking is the process of injecting your brand into the day’s news, creating a twist that grabs eyes when they’re open widest.

Companies need to be observant, quick to react and skilled at communicating. It’s a powerful tool that prepares you to stay ahead of the competition and attract the attention of highly-engaged audiences by taking advantage of breaking news. Breaking news is reported all of the time, and as a marketer, you have a unique opportunity to take advantage of these trending topics and generate higher brand visibility through a relevant campaign. It boosts SEO, grabs attention of readers with real-time commentary and exemplifies thought leadership. A typical News Life Cycle looks like this:

The author warns marketers 'To be open to Serendipity; But Happy Accidents only'. A military coup, the death of a celebrity, a national tragedy, a natural disaster — these are strictly not the kind of events you would want to piggyback. 'Newsjacking' requires enhanced sensitivity — a characteristic that some major brands have demonstrated they don’t have. In such cases, newsjacking can do a lot more harm than any good to the brand. Here's one example:

The April 15th Boston Marathon blasts are still quiet fresh in our memories. While we are still trying to recoup from the devastation caused by the unforgivable behavior of two adults. On April 16 Epicurious, the food website blasted the following insensitive tweets to its 385,000 followers:

What was Epicurious thinking? The food company completely alienated itself from its loyal fans through these absurd tweets. It is the perfect example of 'newsjacking' going bad. Here's the reaction of some of its loyal followers who are now considering to delete the branded app. 

"@epicurious Get your legs blown off by a terrorist? Try these scones! Lose a cherished friend? Maybe this bowl of breakfast energy can help!"

"@epicurious First, let’s be clear: the earlier tweets didn’t “seem” offensive. They were offensive. The word “seem” shifts the burden of blame onto their readers, who the brand seems to think were overly sensitive. It stops short of fully acknowledging the obliviousness of their tweets."

Within next few hours, Epicurious deleted the old tweets and repeatedly tweeted apologies to salvage the bad PR.

What else the company could have done?

For starters, the brand manager could personally take charge of the situation, acknowledge the misjudgment, formally apologize through interviews and tweet about imparting social media training to their entire staff to be a little more compassionate while representing the brand.

Second, repeatedly tweeting a template-style “apology” should have been avoided.

And lastly, the company could have engaged with readers individually and offered human responses such as going completely dark to express their solidarity and condolences for victims of the tragedy. Like Dunkin Donuts, they could even pledge a donation to the victims of the Boston tragedy in an effort to make something good come out of this experience. Another thing they could have done is to get on to the ground and set up a pro bono food service to feed all on duty staff.

In the real time world, newsjacking could be like playing with fire. There are several instances where companies had to remove their content due to the sensitivity of a current issue. Fun and humor cannot replace compassion. People are forgiving provided marketers stop being pretentious and behave like humans. Once a mistake has been made, immediate acknowledgement, followed by ultra-timely rectification and crisis control is critical for a brand's reputation. 

Sources:

http://bit.ly/15vQhWG
Images have been sourced from David M. Scott's book, Twitter Feeds and Bella Pilar Creation. 

CAN BIG DATA FIND THE MYSTERY SHOPPERS OF "BEST STUFF ON EARTH"?

"The Best Stuff on Earth" are found missing from store shelves. Data scientists are trying to investigate the data analytics report to find the Mystery Shopper. Who is the Mystery Shopper? Where does he/she live and what does he/she do ? How many are they?

Snapple Iced tea, the pioneer product 'Made From the Best Stuff on Earth' whose huge success created a whole new category of Ready-To-Drink (RTD) Iced Tea in the over-cluttered and saturated beverage industry. In 1972 (pre social media era), an All-Natural refreshment drink was sold for the first time through health stores in New York City. The Snapple craze soon spread to all 50 states by 1992. Witnessing the phenomenal growth in this category big giants such as Brisk (Pepsi-Lipton), Nestea, Arizona, Honest, Sobe etc entered the market. And thus, the Hunger Games for market share began!

Hunger Games Part I: Companies started to invest money to create unique product differentiations such as owning a distinct product attribute like "Made From The Best Stuff on Earth" by Snapple, "Real Brewed" by Lipton, "All-Natural" by Honest Tea; launching product variants for instance "Half & Half", "Diet", "Fruit Punch"; attracting shopper attention through packaging differentiation such as "Wide mouth Glass Bottle", "Colorful Graffiti Cans" etc.

Hunger Games Part II: After each brand assured a pie of the market share, companies invested more money to build loyal tribes of customers through content-driven brand engagement. Now the RTD Iced Tea category is more than 40 years old, all major brands have a dedicated website building engagement through unique content to subtly boost product advocacy, consumption, usage rate, usage occasions etc. For instance: Lipton Iced Tea has created a whole community of mothers who share their recipes using Lipton Tea products whereas Snapple Iced Tea has its followers raving about 'Sip on some knowledge with Real Facts' printed under its bottle caps.

But what came first: The Chicken or the Egg? Let me rephrase the question: What came first The Mystery Shopper or Snapple? May be Big Data can help us solve that mystery!!Numbers have always fascinated humans and quite important to how we grasp the world around us. Numbers help us to measure our subject of interest to make better decisions. I believe our brains want to see patterns. Not only in numbers. We also see faces from clouds to moon craters. That's what Data Scientists, a fairly new breed of analysts do. They collect, analyze and report consumer insights and create brand stories to engage and enhance User Experience (UX) with the brand.

With all the talk about “big data”, I thought of sharing results of a latest CMO survey published in Feb 2012 issue of CMOSurvey.org indicating rise in the percentage of marketing budget spent on marketing analytics and number of people employed in marketing analytics. And most important, the trend is expected to continue in future. 

The big question is when is a brand ready to unleash the power of big data and reveal the identity of the Mystery Shopper? Factors such as product category, product life cycle, point-of-sale, drivers of consumption, marketing channel used to communicate and engage with the target audience etc play a crucial role in deciding the readiness of a brand to unleash the data big bang. The RTD Iced Tea is a growing product category which still primarily relies on product-centric advertising with erratic content driven engagement on social media platforms limited from campaign-to-campaign.

Now, Big data can change the rules of the game. It is helpful to analyze past sales and ad campaign figures to identify new growth areas, category trends, pricing power, higher segment penetration, better distribution, space/shelf management, key messaging, media channels etc. Research can show that ads with Little Fruits appeal to kids and adults in their 40s, but those in the in between ages are more interested in the upbeat, peppy spots. Taking this into consideration, Snapple came up with an idea to revamp the brand for teenagers through 34 year olds by animating its bottles depicting skate rats and punks, complete with clothes and hairpieces. Thus, personifying the bottle reflecting the target demographic based on research.

As part of its "Real Experiences" campaign, Snapple implements the 'Design Thinking' approach in its promotions. "What's Your Story" contest asks consumers to submit their own experiences through the Snapple website. The grand-prize winning spot is played out by the bottles and premiered as a Snapple commercial. Entry required applicants to provide demographic information, which in turn arms Snapple with more information on its target market. Here's a Snapple fan spotlight video from a 'cap creation' campaign.

Broadly speaking the Mystery Shoppers for RTD Iced Tea can be defined as college students and young professionals between 18-34 years of age, living in urban/sub-urban areas who are health conscious, look out for all natural, organic products and want to avoid soda, artificial flavors as part of their daily meals. They love to experiment with new flavors and patronize a unique blend which best expresses their personality. They love to hang out with friends and instantly share their fun experiences on social media platforms. Presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc. is a must to engage with these buyers.

Since the RTD Iced teas are sold through convenience stores, gas stations and local restaurants, brands remain shy on platforms such as search engine marketing and year-long TV advertising is rare to spot. Having said that some RTD brands even use traditional couponing to promote point-of-sale promotions to attract some value seekers such as Gen -Xers and Mothers. 

But a huge limitation of Big Data is that it alone cannot help you to innovate for future. So, companies use qualitative research such as Focus Groups, Ethnographic Studies, product home reviews etc, in conjunction with quantitative research to unfold the insights of the mystery shoppers. Ethnographic study can help to define qualitative aspects of the product consumption such as the tea-ness, sweetness, chug-ability (sip/gulp), worth, flavor, variety, health, nutrition etc in addition to a data-driven category trend such as a carbonated-iced tea or sports-iced tea blend. So, brands first need to build a basic market infrastructure and hit consumer bulls eye by digging hidden insights with the help of quantitative and qualitative research tools. 

Sources:

http://www.cmosurvey.org/blog/spending-on-marketing-analytics/

http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=107

http://www.snapple.com/real-facts/cap-view

The Priceless Plastic Which Has Emotions Too!!

@Marketers There are some things money can't buy such as emotions, love and trust. You can paint the whole city with logos and taglines but you cannot force a relationship with your customers or trespass  their memory cells. One thing that differentiates humans from all other species is emotions. We love, we trust and we care about other humans, species and the entire creation. The human brain is wired to think and rationalize logic but when in flux we tend to get swayed by emotions.

In the early 1960s humans were introduced to a new form of plastic which was neither 'made in China' nor was meant to 'use and throw'. The credit/debit cards were officially born. We were supposed to trust this plastic over our beloved cash. This required a huge behavioral change in the way we traditionally carried monetary transactions. So, the challenge was to make the plastic trustworthy, believable and lovable.

One of the leading network providers of plastic cards is MasterCard which successfully entered into relationship with over 2.5 Mn people across 112 countries and 53 languages with the launch of its Priceless campaign in 1997.  Here's a preview of the first commercial - 

Deciphering behavioral cues of MasterCard logo: The MasterCard logo uses two primary colors – red and ochre. The red color represents vitality, while ochre color stands for happiness, richness and prosperity.

After the successful launch of its first commercial, MasterCard has continuously worked to create campaigns that resonate with its customers and reinforce their loyalty and trust in the MasterCard name. The campaign had a significant impact on how consumers view the brand. In 2008, MasterCard ranked as No. 99 on BrandZ's list of the 100 most valuable brands with a brand value of $7 billion.*

Today, technology lies at the center of our world. With 'worldwideweb', we have access to immense amount of information and with smart phones we have the capability to multi-task while on the go.  Civilizations are not cultivated around rivers, farms, gold souks or industries any more. With social networking platforms we are creating communities and tribes of people brought together by similar interests and activities.

MasterCard had to evolve its campaign to stay relevant to its customers in the present digital world. Mr. Gangotena, current Chief Marketing Officer of MasterCard says, "The world is changing. It is a different place. Today, we have a new campaign that takes you from observing priceless moments to enabling priceless moments." So, the new campaign is dubbed as 'Priceless Cities' which is one-of-a-kind-experiential website www.priceless.com that connects people to their passions, whether that's shopping, dining, sports, travel, theater or music right in their local cities.

The campaign had several executions starting with New York. As part of the campaign launch, Mastercard partnered with R/GA and Facebook to announce  "Check In to the Ballgame" challenge at a special interactive event in Times Square. Customers were asked to find 20 decommissioned Yankee stadium seats hidden around the city restaurants, shops and landmark public locations. Those who find the chairs and check in will win special prizes, including VIP tickets, meet-and-greets with Yankee greats etc. The campaign was an instant hit and created over 55 Mn impressions. Check out the video:

MasterCard is using the new website to encourage card holders to share their tweets, Facebook pictures and YouTube videos from the events. Experience possibilities include setting up camp at the Bronx Zoo for an overnight adventure, reserve VIP tickets for Blue Man Group show , or dining at the famed Red Rooster restaurant with a VIP experience designed by owner and chef, Marcus Samuelsson.

MasterCard's priceless website instantly strikes an emotional chord with its customers by  offering an exclusive access to a luxurious lifestyle. The website serves as an intermediary genie between their surreal wish list and priceless experiences. So, instead of concentrating on volume of transactions MasterCard chooses to stay close to its customers and enable them to buy good things for good reasons. Complex financial jargons such as interest rates are replaced with our passions and annoying terms and conditions are replaced with pictures of friends and family experiencing priceless moments. And the final appeal comes as 'There are some things money can't buy but for all other things there is MasterCard.'

The future of marketing is headed towards mobile. Mobile web surfing will be replaced by mobile apps. Just like social security number centralizes an individual's information under one unique number similarly mobile apps will be the central ledger account of an Individual's transactions. MasterPass, a mobile payment system is already a step towards that trend. In future, I visualize a 'Saving Priceless Lives' app which will celebrate MasterCard's belief: 'Our cardholders are good people who want to buy good things for good reason'. ''Saving Priceless Lives' initiative will support non-profits working towards saving priceless lives of people struggling with life threatening diseases. MasterCard will match the difference to the nearest dime rounding up every cashless transaction and cardholders will have the option to sync their monthly penny savings towards a good cause.  

Sixteen years old and still going strong. In 2012, MasterCard was #2 payment system in the U.S., ranked No. 29 and valued at $20.8 billion while Visa ranked No. 15 valued at $38.2 Bn.* Surpassing visa in market share based on volume of transactions alone is going to be challenging. But an initiative like ''Saving Priceless Lives' will further boost MasterCard's goodwill, increase customer base, strengthen their loyalty and trust in the MasterCard brand. MasterCard is a pioneer in enabling people to experience priceless moments. This initiative will enable people to lead a lifestyle with good conscience and in the long run will create a strong brand equity for MasterCard. Now wouldn't that be priceless!!

Source:

* http://www.millwardbrown.com/brandz/Top_100_Global_Brands.aspx
   https://www.priceless.com
  http://adage.com/article/special-report-ana-ana-annual-meeting-2012/mastercard-s-priceless-evolution/237706
  http://mashable.com/2013/02/20/web-design-human-behavior/
  http://www.mastercardbrandcenter.com/us/index.html

Image in the header is a Bella Pillar creation