Out of 675 posts examined, PBR posted six of the top 10 posts that yielded the highest engagement. Meanwhile, Budweiser, which has by far the largest community doesn’t have a single post in the top 10. In fact one of Budweiser’s posts doesn’t show up on that list until number 28!

The#1 winning post from PBR is an image of PBR customized Iron Man. It was well perceived to be cool and fun by the audience.

The 2^nd most engaging post also came from PBR.

 Both posts are not directly about beer. They both contain images however they do not simply display the products nor portray excessive drinking or partying. The posts are simple and broadly applicable, and also related to the brand’s core values, intended meanings and its culture that can resonate with PBR customers.

Marketers must first clarify their brand’s values and meanings in order to build a community that your audience will likely react to. It is also extremely important to make sure your brand’s intended meanings are clearly delivered to your audience. It is the first step Molson should have taken back in 2007 before running their cold shot campaign.

 

J

Molson Brewing Company’s infamous failed social media campaign got me wondering: how do beer companies manage to encourage user-generated content on social media and are avoid being criticized for promoting irresponsible drinking at the same time? It sounds tough. Typical tactics to increase user engagement on social media may not work for beer companies like Molson. For example, UBC Bookstore is currently running a photo contest where users are encouraged to upload a photo of themselves posing with one of the products carried by UBC Bookstore. Implementing a similar campaign for Molson will be highly controversial, and will create numerous complaints as users are most likely to post outlandish (if not outrageous) picture of themselves being engaged in binge drinking to win the prize.

Then, are beer companies involved in social media marketing at all?  Yes! Many beer brands are still active on social media, successfully forming a trusted community around their brands among users. Molson’s Cold Shot Campaign clearly exemplified what social media misuse can result in and taught many not to cross the line when using social media channels to promote their products.

An article “Which Beer Brand is the King of Facebook Marketing” by Kieran Wilson compares six different beer brands that vary in size and style, including, Budweiser, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Sam Adams, Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR), and Fullsteam Brewery to see how each brand  is doing on Facebook. She also examined the number of posts and engagement level for 6 different beer brands (675 posts from the six brand s in total). The following graph summarizes the results.

 

*Please note that this data is only for the six brands, so it is not representative of the entire beer market.

Budweiser has the largest community by about 8 million fans. Budweiser is the biggest, followed by Coors Light and Miller Lite. But does a big community mean big engagement? According to our data the answer is no.

 Pabst Blue Ribbon tops the list of all posts examined by yielding the highest engagement.

To be continued in Part 2 (I want you to READ, not be overwhelmed by a lengthy post!)

Today in class, a guest speaker came to talk about how to write a better subject line for e-mail promotions. He demonstrated the use of Mailchimp, an email marketing service provider that tests and evaluates how good your e-mail subject line and its expected open rate. Personally, I never really paid attention to which e-mails I click and don’t click – I guess I tend to open the ones from the brands I really like (mostly cosmetics and fashion) or last-minute travel deals. To experiment, I opened my gmail account to see which promotional e-mails appeal to me the most.

 Out of 500+ promotional emails I left unopened, only three emails on the list survived and did not get sent to trash.

The first email was from Coach, a fashion retailer and its subject line was: Enjoy $100 off $300 Now: Don’t Miss Out!

The second one was from Booking.com: Last-minute deals for Rome and Milan. Get them before they’re gone!

Well the last one was from BCom Career Centre… I don’t know why it was classified as a promotion. I will ignore this one!

Whether I open specific emails or not totally depend on my personal preferences and what I am seeking at the moment (a travel package for winter vacation or a gift idea for Christmas), however they certainly stood out among the emails from their competitors. Both emails have one thing common: they all emphasize on urgency using words like “last-minute” and “don’t miss out.”

I came across a useful article “How to Write the Perfect Email Subject Line [Infographic]” by Oli Gardner, which discusses tactics and tips on how to write a good email subject line which can lead to the increased open rate.

According to Gardner, there is a simple golden rule to start off, which everyone should be aware off.

Do
Set your subscribers’ expectations and clearly state what’s inside the email

Don’t
Write your subject lines like advertisements. The folks at MailChimp say it perfectly: “When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside

 There are 6 steps to improve email open rates.

• Step 1: Be useful and ultra specific – make sure it’s relevant and useful for your customers
• Step 2: Identify yourself – mention your most identifiable brand product in the subject line, or prefix the subject line with a consistent identifier
• Step 3: Be visually different – make you subject stand out visually by trying square brackets, sparing use of capitalization, phone numbers or quotes
• Step 4: Use timely topics and urgency that are top of mind, and use urgency occasionally to point out deadlines
• Step 5: Use a call-to-action (CTA) by asking a question
• Step 6: Test your subject lines so you can repeat what works best

I personally receive over 50 emails a day. Emails range from clubs I am involved with to class project group members , from an online shopping mall I randomly signed up for to a retailer I recently made a purchase from. I tend to just delete all the ones I have no interest in in order to clean up my account – the number of random promotional emails is just overwhelming. Writing the perfect email subject line and making sure your email doesn’t get dumped into Trash right away is perhaps the hardest part in email marketing. Keeping the above rules in mind and utilizing a website like Mailchimp will surely help!

Kenneth Cole

Kenneth Cole, a fashion retailer based in New York, certainly was not considerate enough to think about what their action will cause when trying to take advantage of political spotlight. When Egypt became the center of the world’s attention as masses demonstrated and rioted for regime change, Kenneth Cole tweeted, “millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC.” Many criticized the brand for making light of a serious situation and even called for the boycott of the company and its products.

Lesson #2: Don’t make light of a serious situation for cheap promotion
Think twice before posting something online. Think carefully about what it means to others and possible negative consequences it may result in.

Ketchum Inc.

An employee from Ketchum Inc., the PR agency working for FedEx, insensitively tweeted ““True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!’” upon his arrival in Memphis, Tennessee, headquarters and hometown of FedEx. Such negative tweets by the person who is supposed to represent FedEx surely angered his client FedEx, and the relationship between the agency and FedEx was strained.

Lesson #3: Every employee, partner and service provider represents your brand
Please keep in mind that anyone has access to your post even though you are posting on your private social media accounts. God knows who stalks your page! Staff should be reminded that they are representatives of a company.

As social media became an important tool in communicating information about companies, brands and products, many marketers have turned their attention from traditional marketing tactics to the use of social media as a part of their integrated marketing plans. Instead of pushing messages out to customers, Social media allows marketers to monitor, listen, and converse with customers to maximize their company’s online presence. However, when misused, social media can be detrimental to your brand, often resulting in irreversible consequences.

Social media marketing can be extremely effective in multiple ways. It creates two-way conversation between the brand and its customers in which roles of “broadcasters” and “receivers” are continuously changed back and forth. It easily facilitates community building, allowing marketers to form a strong trusted community around their brand. Moreover, all the events are normally available and easily accessible; retrieval of information is available for anyone who has interest in looking at them at a later date.

I came across a great article by Vijayananthan who discusses three corporate missteps in social media. The lessons learned from their failures are what all digital marketers should be aware of when using social media platforms as a part of their integrated marketing communications.

Molson Canadian

On November 23, 2007, Molson brewing company pulled its promotion on Facebook after numerous complaints that it promoted binge drinking. Molson’s promotion involved a photo contest targeting 19-24 year old college and university students. Participants were encouraged to upload outlandish drinking and partying pictures for a chance to win a trip to Mexico. The company was immediately criticized for encouraging (although not intended) irresponsible behaviour and under-age drinking.

Lesson #1: News travels fast, Social media mistakes travel even faster
Because every online content is easily available and accessible, once something goes wrong, you can’t undo it – people have already seen it and had access to the wrong /or negative information and it leaves a record online forever.

Moreover, nobody has complete control over any content. It can be problematic for Molson because the content created online may be different from what the company intended it to be. Even if the content being created conveys negative meanings and negative associations, the company did not have control over them.

To be continued in Part 2

Note: I have divided my latest post Seven Golden Rules for Viral Videos into two parts. I hope it is easier for you to read this way!

4. Surprise but don’t shock

One of the best viral tactics is to embed a surprise factor into your video. But it is important to surprise, not to shock! Having coarse language or overly explicit scenes that provoke fear and disgust do not work.  Viewers may remember your video for a longer period of time, but they will refuse to share your video with others or even stop watching it.  Always remember to play within the limit and provide sharable contents.

Watch the following video as an example:

 

5. Engage the tastemakers

Your video has a greater possibility of becoming viral when it is mentioned by key influencers. For example, one viral video” Double Rainbow” initially had a small number of views on YouTube until it was tweeted by American comedian Jimmy Kemmel. Being mentioned by Jimmy led the view counts to exceed 37 million. Make sure to encourage influential bloggers, comedians, or actors to watch and share your video if you can.

6.  The first 24 hours are crucial

When you post a video, YouTube counts views, shares, likes, and comments within the first 24 hours. If there has been enough interactions made, your video is then promoted to your local YouTube chart. I also read somewhere that when you post does matter a lot. Posting on Monday or Tuesday morning is found to be the most effective since many watch YouTube videos and read news at work (ironic, eh?).

 

7. Look at the big picture

Don’t focus too much on YouTube counts. There are various ways for your video to go viral. People share interesting videos on blogs or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. If your video is shared on social networking sites, it is exposed to more users therefore gets more chances to generate WOM. Think about what other channels you can utilize to make your video shared and viral.

Viral videos for advertising purposes normally work better if they provide sharable qualities whether it be fun, entertainment, or emotion. They also work well when the products or services you are trying to advertise are targeted towards younger generations since they spend much more time on YouTube, blogs, and SNS compared to older generations.

Remember to follow the Seven Golden Rules when creating a viral video. It might not be so hard to become a YouTube star after all 🙂

 

J

 

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/ebuzzing-partner-zone/making-your-video-go-viral-the-seven-golden-rules

https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/d19d9b9465de

What made PSY a world star? As a proud South Korean, I say “Gangnam Style”!

Along with PSY’s notable talent and passion for music, his 18^th K-pop single “Gangnam Style” video played a vital role in making the South Korean musician a globally known celebrity. “Gangnam Style” video reached one billion YouTube views for the first time in history on December 21, 2012, becoming the most-watched YouTube video of all time.

Many people think producing viral videos is easy. Throw in a cute baby or a puppy, add some fun and excitement, and ta-da! There you just created a viral video. It is not that simple. Videos don’t just go viral overnight; it really requires thoughtful efforts from the producer.

Pierre Chappaz, CEO of Ebuzzing, shares his Seven Golden Rules to make successful viral videos:

1. Tell a great story

2. Kick off with a bang

3. Build an emotional roller coaster

4. Surprise but don’t shock

5. Engage the Tastemakers

6. The first 24 hours are crucial

7. Look at the big picture

 

1. Tell a great story

Your video must have a great content that is worth sharing. There are multiple ways to make a sharable content: make it funny, sad, inspiring, surprising, etc. It does not really matter how amazing the product or service you are trying to sell; your video should not only consist of product features and benefits unless you want to bore your viewers to death.  If you have a great story that resonates with viewers, the impact will amplify even if the product name is not mentioned in the video.

For example, P&G’s Thank You Mom 2012 commercial was shared countless times on SNS, topping my Facebook newsfeed for a certain period of time last year. The video unfolds a touching story of mothers, successfully making the world weep and effectively delivering a message that being a mother is the hardest yet the best job in the world.

 

2. Kick off with a bang

If you don’t capture the viewers’ attention within the first 5 seconds, you may lose them forever. Use a “hook” to lock their eyes on your video, whether it be the use of celebrities, dramatic suspense, or exciting background music.

Two great examples below demonstrate an effective use of celebrities in the videos.

3. Build an emotional roller coaster

Many of viral videos often employ emotions to attract more viewers by building meaningful connections with the brand, products, and services. Humans remember things more clearly and deeply when their emotions are triggered (e.g. happiness, laughter, sadness, etc.) Make sure to keep viewers emotionally engaged by making them laugh, smile or cry.

Here is a great example that can drive you to tears:

 

AND to be continued in the following post! Thanks 🙂

J

Have you heard of Amazon.com? I think it is a stupid question to ask. I wonder if there is ANYONE on earth that has never heard of Amazon before. In fact, Amazon.com, Inc. is the world’s largest e-commerce retailer today with more than 43,200 people in 18 U.S sates and 14 international locations. Products available for purchase ranges from books, movies, and electronics to sportswear, automotive parts and garden items.  Amazon’s wide range of product offerings well captures its mission statement – the company is working towards becoming “earth’s most customer-centric company where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.”

I came across an interesting article that illustrates how Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive officer, responds to customers’ email complaints. When unhappy customers complain to Bezos’ public e-mail address, jeff@amazon.com, he reads many of the complaints himself, and also forwards them to the relevant Amazon department, with a question mark.

When Amazon employees receive this panicking e-mail with a question mark from their employer, they are expected to react instantly to resolve the issue and provide Bezos with a thorough explanation. These e-mails are known as Bezos’s “way of ensuring that the customer’s voice is constantly heard inside the company.”

Bezos’s method of dealing with customer complaints has contributed to Amazon’s outstanding customer service which certainly helped to bring the company to the current level of success and scale. However, one Amazon employee raised a question, “why are entire teams required to drop everything on a dime to respond to a question mark escalation?” In my opinion, it might not be the best way to manage your employees – as these kinds of fire drills certainly frighten Amazon employees, but it is impressive in a way because it really shows customers that the company truly cares and values every one of them.

What do you think about Bezos’ way of responding to customers’ complaints? Are there better ways to manage this? What would you do if you were Bezos?

J

To see the full article: CLICK here

I was reading Ariel’s blog APPLESANDNERDS the other day, and I came across a very useful post of hers on how to post effectively on Facebook company pages. As of September 2013, Facebook has approximately 1.26 billion users.  It has also announced that one out of seven people not only have accounts on Facebook but are actively using Facebook. That is 15% of the entire world!

Without doubt, Facebook is one of the most effective tools for marketers to expand their company’s online presence. However, if not used properly, Facebook can be completely detrimental for your brand (Imagine an angry post complaining about your product and you did not react quickly enough!).

With high interest in fashion and beauty like many girls of my age, I “like” and “follow” a number of cosmetic pages – Bobbi Brown, L’Oreal, Clinique to name a few. Among several cosmetic giants, Estée Lauder definitely knows how to catch my eye on my Facebook newsfeed.

 

With more than 1 million likes and almost 30,000 fans talking about the brand (which means users have taken an action such as making comments or sharing a post on Facebook page that will be visible to their friends), Estée Lauder is a great example that showcases Ariel’s golden rules.

1. Rich Media & Various Content: 

The brand consistently provides users with rich media, in various formats. The posts are not only limited to direct promotional content or product information; it shares behind scenes at fashion shows, educates users on new fashion trends and beauty tips or simply asks users questions. Estée Lauder effectively uses interesting images, videos, quotes or links to encourage its fans to interact and share them with friends. The content varies, however still relates to the brand to show that the brand is an expert in the beauty industry.

2. Be Consistent & Post Daily:

Estée Lauder makes 1~2 posts everyday to keep users updated but not to the extent that users feel bombarded with posts. Posting regularly really is an excellent way to generate online traffic and stand out on users’ newsfeed.

 3. Be a “Conversationalist”, Not a “Broadcaster”:

Estée Lauder shines when it comes to generating two-way conversation on Facebook. The brand builds a strong community among its Facebook fans through interactions by directly asking fans to answer a question, give opinions, or fill in the blank. It is also a great way to learn about your customers – what they like, what they want, what kind of lifestyles they have, etc.

4. Be Responsive: 

When it comes to customer service, the brand plays big. The above screenshot demonstrates how responsive the brand is on Facebook. When users ask questions or leave opinions, Estée Lauder always replies rapidly (usually within a day). Not only does the brand acknowledge the fans and thank them for sharing and posting, it takes an extra step to provide additional information or resolve an issue if there was one.

Of course, these rules don’t only apply to cosmetic brands. You brand needs to facilitate an environment to actively interact with consumers, listen to what they say, and respond quickly and properly to differentiate/stand out from your competitors.

If there are other brands that catch your eye on your Facebook newsfeed, please share and comment below! Thanks!

J

I recently stumbled upon one ad called “Click, baby click!” promoting Adobe Marketing Cloud, and thought I should share it with you guys here.

The ad, created by Adobe and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, illustrates a humorous story of a CEO of Encyclopedia getting excited and going crazy after noticing a spike in online orders. He quickly gives orders to suppliers, manufacturers and everyone on distribution channels to maximize production to meet skyrocketing demand online… to then discover things weren’t as it seemed.

My thoughts: what an effective and funny ad. It depicts tragic consequences inaccurately measuring and analyzing data in marketing can bring, and the message is nicely delivered in an amusing way.

The ad highlights the importance of carefully monitoring digital activities and precisely analyzing received data in marketing. The rise of digital technology and platforms enable marketers to collect, measure and understand data better than ever before. Companies invest a large share of their marketing budget into digital marketing, and high digital marketing proficiency has become a strong asset for many companies.  In fact, strong business performance is highly correlated with digital marketing proficiency; high-performing companies are twice as likely to rate their company as highly proficient in digital marketing (50%) than lower performing companies (25%) (Adobe, 2013).

It is the marketer’s job to effectively utilize technology as a marketing tool and make strategic marketing decisions according to the analysis. Adobe Marketing Cloud promises to provide marketers with “the most comprehensive set of marketing solutions”, offering services like targeting, analytics, social, media optimization, web experience management.

My question is: will Adobe Marketing Cloud help you marketers draw insights from data and help you avoid making terrible mistakes in marketing? Will it really maximize your impact and revenue? We will wait and see.