For years I’ve been a big fan of the Webby Awards—mainly because they are not just another advertising industry occasion, but rather an annual attempt to reward what is truly the “best of the Web.” This year we are thrilled that our banner ad for Pringles—”Can Hands” (above)—is a finalist in the Webby Awards, and you can help by voting for it in the People’s Choice category!
If you love the ad and/or just want to do a favor for this grateful blogger, please take five minutes to register at the People’s Choice Webby center, and vote for Pringles in the “Banner Singles” category. The competition is tough in this little category—as we’re going head to head with banners from Apple (TBWA) and Burger King (Crispin Porter). Right now we’re leading with 31% of votes, compared to 29% each for these two. Net, it’s going to come down to the wire and your vote will be meaningful! Voting ends Thursday, April 29, so please vote now.
Thanks for your support—and please share with your friends!
A few weeks ago I was having a beer with a friend at a local watering hole, and something caught my eye in the background. It was a YouTube logo that flashed on the screen of the Golden Tee virtual golf video game machine behind our table. Being a passionate meaningful marketer and always on the lookout for a new blog entry, I ran over to the game to check it out. I discovered a very cool add-on to this ever-popular bar game.
One of my personal goals in my job as head of strategy at digital agency Bridge Worldwide is to convince my clients that they don’t necessarily need a “social-media strategy.” Yes, heretical as it might sound, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all important and offer great marketing opportunities, but that does not necessitate a specific “strategy.” Rather, we should stick to strong overall marketing strategies, and discover ways in which new social-media tools might fulfill a need or take advantage of an opportunity. A few months ago I made this point here and used an example from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to show how great social-media ideas can deliver on a solid marketing strategy. Let me try that exercise again here in an effort to continue to make my case.
Background
Golden Tee is a coin-operated (i.e., arcade-style) golfing game that was introduced in 1989 . The game is produced by Incredible Technologies, the largest producer of these types of games in the world. Golden Tee is its biggest platform, and there is an update to the game system each year. Just like producers of home sports games such as Madden NFL and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Golden Tee must add must-have features to its game system each year in order to keep players and bars interested.
Business Objective
Like real-world golf, Golden Tee (GT) is not for everyone. It is played in bars, standing up, with loud music in your ears. It takes some time and skill to master the roller ball used to hit the ball. It also sucks a lot more quarters from your pocket than what casual users are used to. In my personal experience, it normally attracts two or three guys who spend hours at a time on the machine pumping dollars into it.
My assumption would be that the company has a very thin number of customers who are responsible for a vast majority of the playing time. So GT’s business objective is likely something close to: Increase the playing time and occasions among regular customers. This puts more dollars into the machines for GT, and bars love their share of the cut and added drink and food sales, ensuring that they make the move to the annual game upgrade. And it is a business objective that is very easy to measure.
Customer Insights
First, these regular players are very competitive. They spend hours on the game going against close friends, and I’ve seen rampant wagering (often for the next round of brews). There is even a national tournament for GT players. One thing you have to know about competitive players of ANY game is that they love to remember and share the stories of their greatest feats. Basketball players remember their greatest shots. Regular golfers love to talk about their longest drive or first birdie. I will never forget taking the lead for my team at 5 a.m. in the Bourbon Chase run a few weeks ago. That’s the key insight for passionate players of any game or sport. The more we remember and share, the more the game becomes a special part of our lives, and the more we will (pay to) play.
Strategy/Execution
Put these together and the strategy is simple: Find ways to help regular users remember and share their greatest shots. But how do we deliver on this idea? Back in my days of playing at arcades this would be a real head-scratcher. The closest thing I can remember from those days was that Activision had a program in which if you got a certain high score on one of its Atari 2600 games, you could take a photo, develop it, and mail a copy to the company, and months later they would send you a commemorative patch. I still have a towel that I sewed all my patches on somewhere (unless my mom or wife has disposed of it by now).
Here’s where digital and social media come in: They give marketers unprecedented tools that allow them to deliver on strategies in amazingly rich and cost-effective ways. Golden Tee now flags certain “Great Shots” in the game (holes in one, for example) and provides players with a code that they can use to see and save a replay of the shot on their computers back at home. GT uses YouTube, a free, ubiquitous service that allows the company to organize all of its videos and provides players with a way to share them on their personal websites and social-networking profiles. Here’s one completely random example of a Great Shot from a player named “sixfootsixbrad”:
Results
The folks at Golden Tee have not shared results that I can find about the program or how it has affected their sales, but that won’t stop me from trying to measure it. On the Golden Tee YouTube channel, more than 58,000 videos have been uploaded by players. Most videos have anywhere between a handful and 100 views, and the most-viewed one has more than 7,000. My guess would be that there have been at least 1 million collective views of these user-generated videos in the year or so that the tool has been in use. If this is compared to the many other user-generated video contests, it would be at or near the top in terms of total participation and views. Not bad at all.
More evidence of success of the program is seen in the recent upgrade to Golden Tee 2010. Now the game maker has added the ability to update your Facebook status through the game itself.
The Lesson
The folks at Golden Tee might or might not have gone through my specific steps to come up with the idea of integrating with YouTube. However, I would bet a lot of quarters that they also didn’t pay an agency to “come up with a social-media strategy.” The company might very well have simply come up with this idea out of the blue, but it was a deep understanding of their marketing strategy and consumer needs that led them in this direction.
Brand managers don’t need a social-media strategy. They need to understand what social media is and what it can do for brands and their customers. Then, by laying out strong marketing strategies, they might find new and powerful ways to deliver on them.
I believe Sam Adams has been the most consistently meaningful beer marketer that I have come across. Last year I wrote about its launch of specially designed beer glasses that—at least in this beer drinker’s opinion—really do make the amber ale taste even better. Today I want to share some things I’ve learned about the company’s dedication to encouraging home- and craft-brew competitors.
As a subscriber to the Sam Adams email newsletter, I’ve had a chance to learn about its annual LongShot challenge among home brewers. It is an annual competition with judging events around the country that gives people the chance to have their beer mass produced in a special promotional six-pack. What I love about this contest is that it is much more than simply a “name our next flavor” or “make your own commercial” marketing promotion, which many brands have done with little personal engagement or connection to the product itself. Instead, this challenges the most dedicated brewers against each other and offers up the special reward of possibly seeing their years of investment pay off in peer admiration and distribution across the country.
My only disappointment is that Sam Adams doesn’t make the LongShot contest a bigger deal. After looking for the SKU in stores for years, I only just found it last weekend in a dusty corner of a local liquor store. There are actually three different winners in each six-pack: Cranberry Wit, Traditional Bock, and Double IPA (my favorite of the three with tons of citrus from the seven different types of hops). The Cranberry Wit was actually created by a Sam Adams employee, Carissa Sweigart. Giving employees the chance to participate is a pretty neat cultural build for the company. In total there were a little more than 1,300 entries from about 1,000 home brewers.
Last week I found another great story of Sam Adams support for small brewers. In a video at Fast Company I found an interview of Sam Adams founder Jim Koch. He tells the story of a recent national hops shortage, and how he ended up selling excess hops to competitive craft brewers who did not have access to this key ingredient. Koch put the reason simply: “They are my colleagues.”
The question is: Why would a mass marketer such as Sam Adams do small things like this that only touch a handful of their consumers? Where’s the scale, right? Well some might argue that these brilliant marketers realize that their positioning in the market as a legitimate microbrewer means that they must stay close to their roots and do things that the big players find too small. True, but I think Koch and his team are making these “small” efforts first and foremost because they want to. After all, Koch first brewed Sam Adams in his kitchen sink, and today they continue to behave like a bunch of passionate believers who want to make great-tasting beer. That’s just the easiest way to do the right thing for the business.
By sticking to their brand purpose and retaining a personal, hands-on engagement in the product, the marketing stuff comes naturally, and Sam Adams continues to be one of the best big brands in beer. Actually, with Anheuser-Busch’s takeover by foreign-based InBev, Sam Adams is now the largest American-owned brewery. I can think of no better beer representative for our country, and no better representative of where I hope our country’s brand marketing is heading next.
Tonight I am at an event at Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a group of marketers, agency folks, and other assorted digerati. We’ve been brought together to help the company… sell T-shirts.
You read it correctly. A few weeks ago Advertising Age created a stir by announcing that P&G was bringing together a large group of digital folks for a “Hack Night.” Since then people have speculated about what would come from this event—say, setting new ad-unit standards, figuring out how to monetize video, or maybe even Google, Facebook, and MySpace would face off in a cage match? To add to the mystery, all participants were sworn not to spread a single word of the event. This left many in the digerati world quietly asking each other if they were on the list, and several others were working the phones to get on it.
I’ll share more on the event tomorrow, but right now I need to get back to work selling T-shirts. We have been spread out and broken into four teams with an assignment to sell as many Tide T-shirts as possible before 9 p.m. It’s a great cause and a perfect-fit example of Marketing with Meaning. 100 percent of profits go to victims of natural disaster. Tide has been running the program for years, after starting with a group that traveled to New Orleans to help people wash and dry their clothes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
So if you love our cause and purpose, please help out and buy a shirt at www.tide3.com. And remember that if you buy two it’s free shipping and handling!
It is the sworn duty of every agency thought leader to play Monday morning quarterback with the annual orgy of advertising known as the Super Bowl. Yeah, I’m a little late to the conversation, mainly because the whole “building the business” thing has sucked my time away. (But, hey—we pulled out a couple of new business wins!) My tardiness actually works to my advantage, as it allows some time for the Super Bowl marketing efforts to actually start showing postgame results in the market. So, I present the Inaugural Marketing with Meaning Super Bowl Winners and Losers!
Let me begin by laying out a bit of the criteria for selection. First, just making an ad doesn’t count. I will leave that type of ranking to an agency I recently discovered called a&g, which has been running what it calls a “most meaningful” ranking for six years. a&g has a nice idea and good ranking criteria, but its focus is only on the ad itself, rather than a complete marketing campaign. The second requirement is that the marketing campaigns must fit with our twin definitions of meaningful marketing: (1) the work is something people choose to engage with; and (2) the marketing itself adds value to people’s lives. Enough with the rules; let’s play ball: Winners 1. Denny’s—When people heard this fading diner chain was making a play for the Super Bowl, most people figured it was quite a Hail Mary. (Sports metaphors are fun!) But we never expected that the company would use its precious time to unleash an offer of free Grand Slam breakfasts on Tuesday, February 3. A campaign that cost $5 million (including $3 million to the single commercial) led to 2 million takers in 1,500 restaurants. CEO Nelson Marchioli felt the time was right to reintroduce people to Denny’s—and instead of spending money on more interruptive, over-promising TV ads, he gave something back and reaped great rewards. The $5 million generated $50 million in PR already, and Marchioli claims that with sales of drinks and other items they probably broke even on the day. Aside from great strategy, the company was prepared for its giveaway with extra wait staff and cooks. 2. Hyundai—The brand had two ad slots, and while one was a forgettable farce around how other auto CEOs are cursing the brand, the award goes to Hyundai for the promotion of its Assurance guarantee. This clever and beneficial marketing approach provides a service for wary customers by agreeing to take back bought or leased cars in the event that the household has an unexpected financial issue: losing one’s job. I blogged about this a few weeks ago, and shared that Hyundai claims the results are strong. It’s not a funny ad and falls near the bottom of popularity polls, but by sharing truly original news of a meaningful marketing program, Hyundai has a good chance of winning market share and greater profits—while its buyers receive some extra security in these troubled times. 3. Doritos—It’s hard to believe that a brand could win both in most popular and place high in my meaningful ranking, but they really scored with this ad. The ad itself is just one leg of a now third annual consumer-generated marketing contest. For months, people have been engaged in creating and voting on videos, because the brand learned in 2005 that its young consumers love to create content and make brands their own. The output is a little juvenile, but people take it as lighthearted fun and marvel that it was created by a couple of guys with a handful of dollars. Losers 1. Go Daddy—Everyone is having a field day hating on this brand, which continues to think that the Janet Jackson episode is still relevant humor. One might argue that the ad is meaningful to some small slice of guys, who ended up scooping up the most domain names. But the reality is that the game’s audience is much broader, and, as a&g remarks, “These days, men are as likely to be offended by ads that disrespect women.” As a father of two young daughters, I agree wholeheartedly. Enough. And Danica Patrick isn’t helping her image, either. 2. Gatorade—”What is G?” Most people really don’t care to research an advertising tagline. I wrote about this campaign a few weeks ago here. Some brands and agencies still believe that a new advertising campaign will create news and turn around share—especially if you toss in enough celebrities. But the only real news this is generating is speculation about what the heck the brand is thinking. The ad itself fell near the bottom of the popularity list. Meanwhile, Gatorade misses a huge opportunity to follow Nike’s lead and actually create events such as the Nike Women’s Marathon and Nike+ service, both of which are great examples of the brand helping people actually achieve something. 3. Any other brand that just ran an ad—It is remarkable to me that after countless case studies of brands who used an ad to start a conversation or service, so many still spend 99 percent of their time and budget on this single 30-second spot. Brands that might have won a smile or two amid so many distractions, yet failed to really capitalize, include: Budweiser, Castrol, Cheetos, CareerBuilder, Pepsi, Vizio, and H&R Block. Special Note: Pedigree vs. Kellogg’s A few posts ago I commented on Pedigree’s move to join the list of Super Bowl ad entries on behalf of its campaign to drive dog adoption. My point was that after amazingly meaningful marketing around this cause, Pedigree took a giant step back with a funny ad that fails to connect emotionally, and fails to do more than tell people at the end to “get a dog.” Some commenters said I was too tough on the brand and that the humor might have tugged people. To those who think you cannot win with emotion on the Super Bowl around a cause, I direct you to Kellogg’s, which used the time to launch a campaign for rebuilding sports fields in communities around the country. The ad informs of the idea, while pulling the heartstrings of everyone who remembers those days of biking to the park and playing until our mothers called for us. But what’s really meaningful is that the ad directs viewers to get involved at frostedflakes.com. There, visitors actually can nominate and vote for a specific local park to be funded. The competition will spread over several weeks, and when you vote, Kellogg’s provides a downloadable $1-off coupon. Congratulations to Kellogg’s, Denny’s, Doritos, and Hyundai for using the spotlight of our industry to show stellar examples of Marketing with Meaning!
I’m not too ashamed that I have become a fairly serious gamer in the past couple of years. I was raised on Atari 2600, spent college with Sega Genesis, and recently jumped headlong into the Xbox 360. You could say I have a relationship with games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Call of Duty 4. I find these games to keep my mind sharp while providing me a disconnection from what went on at the office all day. Of course, I cannot completely disconnect from my day job in advertising, which means I have been a close observer of how these games have tried to inject advertising into my field of vision.
The marketing world is becoming extremely interested in the rising amount of time people are spending with video games. ”Interested” in this case means both: (1) worried about the fact that eyeballs are moving away from ad-supported media (e.g., young men are watching less Monday Night Football and playing more Madden ‘08); and (2) excited by the chance to put a marketing message into a gaming space where people are extremely passionate and paying close attention. Video games join new media options such as mobile and podcasts as a place where different marketing strategies are playing out quickly. I believe these approaches are breaking down broadly into interruptive vs. meaningful marketing. Today I share two examples of companies that are taking these different routes, and show us that the meaningful path makes more sense to both players and brands.
The first example comes from Guitar Hero 3. In case you just landed on the planet a few days ago, GuitarHero and its close follower, Rock Band, have become the biggest brands in the gaming universe over the past few years. They have given millions of players the chance to take a tiny taste of what it feels like to rock, and they now have a channel directly into the home through Internet connections that provide a way to play with friends or download additional songs. This is a very, very tempting target for marketers. Since its beginning, Guitar Hero used real musical equipment brands such as Gibson in the game. It’s a modest type of product placement marketing that makes sense. But a few months ago I noticed something different in my field of vision – an advertisement. See if you can find it in the screen shot below:
It’s hard to find in this shot in the upper left corner, but it doesn’t look that much clearer on my 50″ HD plasma either. This is an ad for Microsoft’s Sync in-car audio system. The brand has bought ad space in the display monitor at a concert venue where your Guitar Hero song is being played. I saw another ad for the new Fox TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The ads are barely visible on screen, and even less so when you’re concentrating on hitting notes that are coming down your screen (i.e., playing the game).
This in-game ad approach is hardly offensive and barely interruptive, but it sure isn’t meaningful, and I cannot see how it drives sales. These ad examples are likely targeted perfectly, but they are unrelated to the game itself. Just as experts are saying with mobile marketing, I believe in-game marketing must add value to the experience in order to be tolerated by players and drive sales. This is no fun for the advertiser, the game producer, or (especially) the consumer. At best, it’s ignored wallpaper. At worst, the game owner feels that he needs a refund on the $60 he paid for the product.
On the other hand, a friend pointed me to another compelling approach where the in-game marketing adds value to the customer’s experience. Paramount Pictures has partnered with Ubisoft to “inject” a scavenger hunt into the game Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 in support of the release of its movie Tropic Thunder. In this game-within-the-game, players are invited to search for a series of nine branded clues. Those who complete the mission get a chance to win prizes such as a VIP game map and other Ubisoft games. Here’s a screen shots from the game:
Unlike the Guitar Hero example, Ubisoft and Paramount have created an experience that adds value to their customers’ lives. They understand the insight that many first-person-shooter gamers love the chance to try new missions and maps. And they know that word of such freebies travels fast among the connected game communities. Of course, they’ve also nailed the demographic targeting for the movie, and timed the promotion perfectly to start the critical release weekend buzz.
Leapfrogging Interruption into Meaning
The term “leapfrog technology” is increasingly used to show that developing nations may skip intermediate steps of technology use and go straight for the best-in-class standard. In Africa, for example, villages are going straight from no phones to mobile phones, not bothering to put up telephone lines. In Brazil, consumers shifted straight to debit cards. In Pakistan, rural villages are going straight to solar. In these and other cases, it simply makes sense to go straight to the most advanced technology.
Perhaps new media will similarly represent “leapfrog technology” for marketers. Instead of going to the old way of interruptive advertising when these new media options arise, we will “leapfrog” straight to meaningful marketing because it simply makes too much sense for consumers and companies.
(Side note: Look me up on Xbox 360, screen name: Barbobus.)
Each of us has been disappointed by under-the-cap contests hundreds of times in our lives. I specifically remember being a kid and collecting Coke caps in a contest that awarded a grand prize if you spelled something like “Coke Is It.” My favorite contest as a kid was with McDonald’s during the 1984 Olympics – the Soviets are out and everyone’s a winner!
It’s debatable whether such contests are truly meaningful. My guess is that, like most advertising tactics that have been overdone, people are mainly immune to the long-shot odds afforded by such contests. Meanwhile, people are outsmarting the contests and sharing how with everyone thanks to the Internet.
The other day I heard a fresh take on under-the-cap contests from Comedian Mitch Hedberg. Enjoy:
“I opened up a yogurt; underneath the lid it said, ‘Please try again,’ because they were having a contest I was unaware of. But I thought I might have opened the yogurt wrong. Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me. ‘Come on Mitchell, don’t give up! Please try again.’ A message of inspiration from your friends at Yoplait: fruit on the bottom, hope on top.”
Getting the sense that traditional marketing is increasingly falling on deaf ears? Join our online community for new ideas to connect in meaningful ways.
