E-Marketing Project – Fairview Internet Consulting

My blog is focusing on how games are linked to online marketing. This post is about the youtube game made by Alvalle called “The hottest diner”. http://www.youtube.com/alejandroalvalle

Alvalle is a brand of Tropicana (PepsiCo) making gazpacho, a cold soup based on vegetables and mainly tomatoes, and originally coming from Spain. Healthy soups are a booming trend in France, and so is gazpacho, with competitors such as GreenShoot and a lot of retailer’s brands.

In order to push the awareness of their gazpacho, Alvalle launched a youtube campaign targeting at women. The campaign is taking the form of a role-playing-game, a type of game in which you are the main character and you are making some choices that change the story. The game started with you (a random girl) knocking at the door of Alejandro, a  young handsome Spanish guy. After introducing himself and offering you a rose, Alejandro will make you choose the music that you want for your date. You will then dance with him on the music that you chose, and will be asked to choose which part of Alejandro clothes he should take off! The atmosphere is getting hot while Alejandro is cooking a natural healthy gazpacho from his mother recipe… You then have to choose how to refresh him, and if you want him to put olive oil on his body. Finally, you have dinner with Alejandro and you eat his gazpacho…

This campaign is a mix of several elements that really appealed to girls: a romantic dinner, a handsome latino boy, a sexy and funny part, and healthy food. Allowing girls to make some choice convert the game into a more realistic and involving experience. At the end of it, girls are invited to put their feedback about this dinner on their Facebook wall or to share it with friends.

I think this campaign had a great success: many of my female friends shared it on Facebook, and a lot of famous bloggers or website for girls shared the information (such as aufeminin.com).  I am pretty sure that the awareness of the brand has increased, and when going to the supermarket, women may be attracted by a gazpacho (as they were attracted by the boy) that would remind them a good experience.

 GreenShoot is the main competitor of Alvalle in the soup market segment. As gazpachos were booming, they wanted to enter the market with a different product: a green / bio gazpacho. Nevertheless, how can you create awareness for your product when you come after a very successful campaign from your competitor?

They found a pretty inventive solution: they made a parody of “the hottest diner” from Alvalle.

They produced a video in which a pretty girl with a strong Spanish accent, Alejandra, is doing the same things as Alejandro but on a funny way. At the end, the girl falls and a message appear saying “that’s too much”. The girl comes back, but with a normal voice and without make up, very natural, asking us if we want to taste her natural green gazpacho.

 I think this is a really good idea: surfing on the buzz created by your competitor, making fun of it and promoting your product as a better one (here, a more simple and natural gazpacho). However, it did not get the success of the Alvalle campaign, gathering for now less than 6,000 views on Youtube. One possible explanation is that it took one month for GreenShoot to make its parody (Alejandro’s video appeared on May 13th, Alejandra’s one on June 14th) and so the buzz was already over…

Video of the GreenShoot Campaign

My blog is focusing on how games are linked to online marketing. This post is about the mobile phone application of the game Just Dance 3.

Just Dance 3 is a video game developed by Ubisoft and launched on October 11th on the Wii, PS3 and Xbox360. The positioning of the game is that there is no perfect way to dance: you just need to move and have fun with your friends. It is the sequel of Just Dance 1 & 2 launched in November 2009 & 2010, and that were now among the best-selling games on the Wii.

Trailer of the game based on UGC videos and cameos from famous people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRnMHfaIsHg

I worked for this brand as assistant brand manager from January to June 2011 and we were wondering how we could increase brand awareness, while making something fun and not serious, as the brand is. We decided to launch a mobile application that would allow people to capture 4 different videos and make a funny choreography from it. The final result is often amazing (the videos are remixed and synced to the beat of the song) and you really seem to have fun dancing skills. The application was mostly designed to be played or shared with friends. At the end, you can choose to share online your video.

http://just-dance-thegame.ubi.com/just-dance-3/en-gb/autodance/index.aspx

I think this application had a certain success, with people from all over the world sharing their videos on the youtube channel (nearly 1 new video every minute at http://www.youtube.com/user/JD3Autodance#p/a). I don’t have the figures of how many times the application was downloaded, but I do know that the sales of the game are huge: 85% more than Just Dance 2 the year before!

http://www.gamingunion.net/news/just-dance-3-keeps-the-wii-afloat-another-month–7022.html

My blog is focusing on how games are linked to online marketing. This post is about online games and advertisement.

Online games have existed since the beginning of Internet & the Flash technology. However, they have got much more popular with the rise of Facebook. For example, Farmville is one the most played game on Facebook. Zynga, the company that created the game, has now more than 150 million customers, mainly from Facebook.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/12/business/la-fi-ct-zynga-20111012

Indeed, Facebook is the website where people are spending the most time, socializing with friends.  They go to Facebook nearly every day, and spend there from a few minutes to several hours. This was an opportunity to create simple games (gamers is not the target audience) where customers would only have to spend a few minutes to enjoy butwould have to do it every day (for example taking care of a farm). A lot of companies found there a good opportunity to promote their product: while playing, people would interact with the brand (buying for example a white and purple Milka Cow for their farm) and so gain awareness.

However, advertising on this kind of media is not always the perfect solution. First, the product or the brand should be related to the game. For example, Red Bull sponsored a mow on FarmVille. As this has nothing to do with the brand visuals or values, it seems a bit awkward.   Another example, Microsoft gained over 400,000 Facebook fans in only 1 day on their search engine Bing fan page by partnering with Farmville.  An in-game advertisement was proposing players to become a fan of Bing in exchange of free Farm Cash (the in-game currency). But what is the value of this kind of fans, who maybe does not even now the brand, clicked on a link and went back to the game?

http://blog.games.com/2011/11/07/facebook-game-advertising-rokkan/

There is an answer to this question. Signing up as a fan would turn people in an addressable audience for a company, as they will receive status updates on their news feed. In the Bing example, fans may be able to see “Did you know that with Bing, you can do…”, which would attract their curiosity, make them click to know more, and improve their awareness (even maybe driving trial and use).   Therefore, companies can really improve their awareness by making specific partnership with online games.

http://www.allfacebook.com/bing-advertises-on-farmville-acquires-400000-facebook-fans-in-one-day-2010-03

My blog is focusing on how games are linked to online marketing. This post is about Samsung and the mobile phone application Angry Birds

 Angry Birds is a game for mobile phone from the Finnish company Rovio. In this game, players use a slingshot to throw “angry birds” in order to attack pigs who steal the birds’eggs. With at the same time a simple mechanism and a growing challenge, it has now reached 500 million downloads, and became the largest success for mobile phone application worldwide.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Angry-Birds-tops-500-million-rb-3399719282.html?x=0

In May 2011, Samsung launched a 30 seconds ad for its smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Ace.  However, an astonishing point was that the ad was not focusing on the different characteristics of the mobile phone, but on a funny cartoon with the Angry Birds characters. I did not understand the utility of this ad: was the success of the game so huge that it would lead the purchase of the mobile phone?

However, with its iPhone, Apple is leading the market of smartphones. One of the main competitive advantages of Apple is its huge App Store, with thousands of application, among which Angry Birds. The final message of the advertisement is promoting the Android market, saying that all the best applications can be found on it. Therefore, by partnering with Rovio, Samsung tried to prove customers that applications are not an Apple exclusivity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZH2018XuHE

I am going to be a Brand Manager intern in December for the French version of Snuggle (Unilever). One of my missions will be to take care of the French Facebook page of the brand (FYI, currently there are nearly 45 000 fans, and one publication every 2 weeks).  I was wondering what kind of Facebook activities a consumer packaged goods (CPG) manager should propose?

The Facebook page serves several functions for product managers: attract new customers and drive trial, give information about the brand, aware customers of new product launch, etc… Indeed, it is an opportunity to dialog with the consumer and to involve him in the brand. Figures are proving it: 51% of Facebook users are more likely to buy/recommend at least a few brands after becoming a fan on Facebook. Moreover, people that are fan of a food/beverage brand on Facebook spend more than twice the money for it than people that are non-fans. But how can Facebook users be attracted to the CPG page?

One of the first tools is the online couponing. Couponing is no more an offline monopoly: it is for example the most done action when receiving an e-mail from a CPG company (e.g. printing a coupon), and also the first reason why Facebook users are fan of a brand. Therefore, proposing consumers to download and print a coupon from the Facebook page is a

possible way to attract them. For example, the Pretzel Crisps brand managed to double its Facebook fans (from 6,800 to 13,700) in two weeks with a $1 off coupon. One month later, they proposed an even more interesting coupon, with a “buy one, get one free” offer, and again they managed to double their fan base (from 14,000 to 29,000). Moreover, it seems that it created a positive wave: 6 months later, the brand was achieving more than 60,000 fans, whereas there had been 10 times less fans for several years before they started the couponing actions!

However, in today’s recession, customers are more and more attracted by lower-priced brands, and coupons may not be enough to attract them. So marketers need to get creative and use a second tool: the content building. Adding content to a page can take several forms: a quiz, a video, an astonishing notice, etc… The main purpose is to entertain and attract / retain customers and make them share with friends. It is also a way to initiate dialog with the consumer and strengthen his links with the brand. For example, visiting the French Facebook page of Snuggle, I noticed that they organized a quiz about “what is the main thing that you are nostalgic about when you think of your childhood”. By asking customers to speak about it, Snuggle is trying to improve the association between the brand and good childhood memories. Additional purpose of the Facebook page is to educate consumer. For example, Burt’s Bees launched a “What Skin Says” tab to educate consumers on its new lotions and how to care for their skin. They made it into a fun way to encourage sharing with friends, enabling participant to give their skin a voice (for example: “Sunburns, grass burns and a splinted. Can’t an epidermis catch a break?”). This operation resulted in 100,000 new fans, 60,000 posts of fans about what their skin was saying. Eventually, it drives trial of the new Smooth Infusion product (40,000 samples given away, 60,000 coupons printed). However, all operations are not assured with success. Content may sometime not interest the members, ending with very low involvement and a waste of time/money.

Another reason why Facebook users would like a page is only because they like the product or the brand. It is way for people to affirm their personality by showing what they support. For product linked to very high positive experiences (such as Apple products), people are really willing to show their devotion and become spontaneously fan of the brand. However, some companies do not manage to turn their customers into apostles as easily (mostly because all the CPG does not enable to do so). Therefore, they must rely on other elements, such as advertising, that will trigger the action of a person. Advertising (whether directly on Facebook or on other websites) to attract new members to a brand’s page already represents 48% of the social media budget of marketers.