Monthly Archives: October 2012

BodyForm’s response to negative viral comment on their Facebook page

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Well played Bodyform.

On October 6, 2012 Richard Neill decided to post this witty comment on Bodyform’s Facebook page, a British company that sells feminin hygiene products:

This comment shortly went viral and attracted 40,000 likes within 20 hours.  Instead of completely ignoring it (like some companies would), Bodyform decided to come up with this smart little Youtube video along with a Facebook comment 10 days later:

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What I liked about this video:

  1.  Responding back through the same channel. Some companies have made the mistake by responding to negative commentary on social media through their corporate websites.  If you want the same people who saw the comment to see your response, you have to respond back at the same place!
  2. Fast reponse. That’s the beauty of Youtube videos. Fast, Cheap, and Targeted.
  3.  Classy humour.  I loved that this video was so ridiculously funny and classy at the same time. I think it makes it even more humorous that they directly referred to Richard by his actual name and the exact things he said in the comment – “You forgot horse-riding Richard”.
  4.  Playful burn: *farts* “Oh Sorry Richard, you do know that we do that too. Did you?”
  5.  And finally “The blood coursing from our uteri like a crimson landslide”
BUT WAIT. I’m not done.  What if this whole thing was a marketing ploy itself. I mean the whole thing, including Richard Neill himself.

Either way, brilliant. Well done Bodyform.

What do you think? Is Richard Neill hired by Bodyform?

Building consumer evangelists with Lush Forum Parties

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Consumer evangelists are those who become voluntary advocates of the company; spreading their positive experience and love for the particular brand.  Every business aims high for this, and those who do it best save a lot in their marketing budgets.  When it comes to engaging their advocates and giving them special treatment, those who live the Lush life know it best.

The people who work at Lush truly know how to treat their customers – or Lushies- right.  From the first moment you step into that store and are welcomed by many friendly smiles to the generous free samples that they include with your purchases, the company definitely differentiates themselves through exceptional customer experience.

If you think treating you well in person isn’t nice enough, Lush also created an online community forum for those who are more then just the casual customer.  How is it just for the advocates? This community forum monitored by Lush admins is not promoted anywhere on their official website; only found by those who are passionate enough to.  Or if it is, it is definitely in a very discreet location.

Lushies can unite here and talk about their favourite products, how they store their products, interesting ways to use them, and ask almost any question Lush related.  The forum even includes a section called ‘Poles, Surveys & Campaigns’, where site admin can ask questions like, “What is your favourite scent?” and get direct customer feedback in a quick and nearly costless way.  Users could even start their own topic on suggestions for improvement of the company.  Here’s a snippet of some of the conversations happening:



To keep those Lushies on the forum feeling special, Lush hosts events called Lush Forum Parties where limited edition products are offered exclusively to them.  These items could only be ordered by phone and are usually only offered during specific times. Sometimes they even bring back retired products, called Retro Lush, that were once loved by many.

Here’s the link to the Lush community forum.  shhhh…

Youtube Beauty Gurus = Marketing Gurus?

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Let’s get real.  I have to admit, I’m one of those million other girls who spend hours on Youtube a day watching so-called beauty gurus sit in their room at home applying make-up on their faces.  Something about these videos, the gurus, the products and the community that makes it all so engaging and addicting. A few of my favourites are AndreasChoice, NikkiPhillippi, Missglamorazzi, and RachhLoves.  If you also like to indulge yourself in these videos, –High Five- I completely understand why you just can’t stop!

If you own a business in the health and beauty industry and you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have got some homework to do. This is a community where influencers are born, and if those influencers are advocates of your brand, you have just effortlessly created a free walking, talking and video-making advertisement.

For those who have never understood why these videos are so important, you’re in luck because I’m about to explain to you the marketing side from a first-hand point of view.

First, let’s talk about why people watch these videos and what makes them keep coming back for more.  I remember the first time I ever watched a how-to beauty video on Youtube was three years ago on Michelle Phan’s channel . Honestly, I thought it was a joke and didn’t care too much about it. (Some of you may think the same now) One day I did a simple search on a mascara that I wanted to get reviews on before I bought it, and I was given links to people’s video reviews on Google. Out of laziness, I chose to give the video review a chance rather than to read it off a beauty forum or blog. After that, I never turned back again.  The information you get from some videos is so much more than just the text alone.  Being able to visually see the product, sometimes even shown how to use it in the video adds so much more to content.  These girls make you feel like they’ve done the hard work for you and have carefully picked through and chosen the best products to show you.  Since they represent ordinary girls with honest and genuine opinions, viewers feel like they could connect with them easily and hence rely on their advice.  Plus, each channel is like a mini community where fans can interact with the beauty guru and with other fans as well.  To sum it all up, it is the engagement factor that reels people and keeps them coming back.

Here’s an example video by Missglamorazzi showing you her fall makeup, hair, and outfit.

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The successful beauty gurus can truly be crowned marketing gurus in this social world. Businesses crave for the same attention in their marketing efforts.  They want people to be talking about them, sharing their tips from them and be excited and engaged in any information they release to their consumers.

Many companies have tried to enter this Youtube world and create content as well.  None have really broke through to the success level of these powerful beauty gurus though. The more successful gurus have on average 500,000 subscribers; some surpassing the millions.  However, looking through some of the most well-known beauty brands like Lancôme, Sephora, Urban Decay, Lush, and others, MAC Cosmetics seems to be in the lead with just over 88,000 subscribers.

Why is it so hard for brands to reach the engagement level of these top beauty gurus? Lancôme, for example, is working in collaboration with the most famous guru, Michelle Phan, and still only reaching 3900 subscribers. Is it because of the real and genuine feel of the personal accounts? Or perhaps that the personal accounts only ever feature one main person as opposed to different employees or having a brand attached to it? Also- how can a brand balance between trying to be personal yet professional at the same time? To be honest, I’ve seen many brands try to emulate the feel of a personal account, yet none of them seems to have been the perfect result yet.

A channel that I would recommend keeping an eye on, though, is ChannelNineNetwork presented by Nine West. In a short span of just 3 months, they already have 6700 subscribers and over a million video views on their channel.  Quite impressive I would say!  As an advocate of these beauty videos on Youtube though, they still haven’t managed to convince me to subscribe.  They are close though! They recently featured one of my favourite gurus, NikkiPhillippi, and –I have got to say- they are on the right track on making me a daily viewer!

Why persuade your boss to use social media marketing

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Social media can be an intimidating subject to talk about and implement for some managers and CEOs.  They hear the news about how companies have lost market share due to negative commentary or how a viral hoax had spread as quick as the company’s brand loyalty dropped.  These can all be major risks involved with social media, however; simply negating it may hurt the company in the near future.

Whether you are the manager, or the employee trying to advocate going social, here are a few imperative reasons for businesses in the beauty industry to consider social media marketing.

Even in traditional marketing, each consumer goes through a process with different touch points for every purchase with the brand. Now that consumers are more inclined to seek information themselves, also known as ‘Pull marketing’, the touch points are slightly different. A basic consumer process goes like this:

  1. Consideration: at this preliminary stage, the customer is recalling the set of brands that call to mind or are available
  2. Evaluation: the customer proceeds to evaluating the different brands with certain criteria (price, size, etc)
  3. Decision: the customer will ultimately make a purchase decision
  4. Impression: the consumer will make a positive or negative impression on the overall experience of the purchase
  5. Advocate: if the consumer is satisfied with the purchase, they may share their experience and promote the brand by will   OR    Remonstrate: if the consumer is dissatisfied with the purchase, they may choose to antagonize the brand and sound complaints

At these different points of a consumer’s purchase journey, brands could use social media to influence the purchases at the right time and place.

The first and foremost action to take in social media is monitoring.  Listen to what your customers are saying about you, your products, and competitors. Monitoring is necessary in all touch-points of the consumer’s journey.  If your company has just launched a new hair-care product and wants to know the response of the launch, Twitter, Youtube, and community forums are a great location to listen to the conversation.  Perhaps purchasers love the content of the product but find the packaging inconvenient; this would pose as an opportunity of improvement.

After finding a lead through listening- trust me- your company will need to join the conversation and respond back on the same channels. For example, referencing back to the issue of negative complaints going viral, the ‘remonstrate’ stage is a critical stage.  Let’s pretend that one of your organic skin care products start to naturally change colour after 3 months of use. Sally, who bought this product may not be aware that this natural colour change is safe and complain on her own personal social media sites.  Soon enough, one friend will tell another about the faults of this product and so on. Now multiply this by the amount of Sallys in this world.  If your company can respond back ensuring the quality of the product, you could turn things around and have yourself a happy customer.

Now let’s say that you have many loyal fans of your cosmetic company.  Your customers come up to you in the store and tell you much they love your products and how they always recommend your brand to their friends. OPPORTUNITY! Through social media, your business can facilitate engagement and conversation with all your fans.  Your potential customers want to hear those genuine reviews from those customers in the ‘advocate’ stage as much you do.  Solution? Create a community blog or forum. Check out Sephora’s BeautyTalk forum for reference.

Finally, social media can simplify the purchase decision and complete the purchase.  Whether it is using some sort of promotional code on social media sites or discounts for targeted groups of people, the ‘evaluation’ and ‘decision’ stage is primarily where the money is at.  You want your customers to feel like there is no competition and that there is no need to further extend the search. However, if you didn’t even exist on the online search, good luck trying to stay on their consideration set.  Check out my article about How to SEO in the beauty industry if you want to improve on that.

Next time your company decides to re-allocate the marketing budget, you should strongly consider these points when questioning about going social.