Unilever: (Content) Crowdsourcing All Things Hair

Marketers are constantly looking to put out content that is engaging and creative. It is through the content that stands out from the crowd, the content that provides an extra value, and content that is unique that truly engages consumers. When brands start conversations that are past promoting its products and services, that is when not only consumers but any one is able to relate to the brand. Yes, beautiful videos and gorgeous ads can make the trick, but a marketer knows that there is so many hours in a day, and soon enough, designing and creating the content becomes unrealistic. Therefore, marketers often get creative and start looking for help elsewhere.

All Things HairUnilever, has done a great job generating content through crowdsourcing. It’s YouTube channel All Things Hair is an aggregation of hair care how-to videos that are created primarily by bloggers. As Unilever syndicates the bloggers content into a go-to channel, Unilever not only positions itself as a central part of the conversation but is also able to drive traffic from, to and between the bloggers and their channel. Most importantly, Unilever alleviates from the need to create all the videos and tutorials themselves, while also promoting advocates that most likely also use their products. Creating a sense of community and care with its consumers and the wider audience on YouTube.

Further Reads:
5 Ways Content Marketing Improves Your Content Marketing
5 Reason for Crowdsourcing Content

 

Bell: Reminder to Not Take Social Media Lightly

Through the rise of social media and online networks, customers have gained more channels to learn about the products and services that are available to them. No longer do customers solely rely on corporate marketing messages or confine on sales representative suggestions. Tech savvy customers have moved on to trusting others customers experiences with the product or service – they care about reviews.

Marketers, however have to be very careful on how to utilize these review platforms. They are based on trust and sense of community, and once broken or tampered with, unsought consequences could be arise.

Bell should provide a great example regarding how to utilize these review platforms – to stay away from them. An alleged attempt to raise the corporate apps’ review by “encouraging” employees to leave positive reviews. Although this practices can sometimes allegedly succeed, Bell reviews showed a contrasting message as employees left stellar reviews, but customers only displayed dissatisfaction with the apps. These led to a $1.25 million CAD fine.

    Besides learning how to use reviews, Bell also showed a great example as to how to deal with a PR crisis:

  • Address or acknowledge the occurrence of the mistake
  • Reinforce the corporate values and that the occurrence is not aligned with them
  • Provide plans has to how and what steps will be taken to ensure, it does not repeat

Source: Bell Canada Gets Though On Fakery As Bell Canada Gets Fined For Posting Fake Play Store Reviews

Facebook: Innovating Online Revenue Streams

As more consumers move to social networks to consume their media, marketers have followed suit and found ways to start advertising on those platforms. Unlike on traditional channels like newspaper and tv ads, customers could not easily get rid of these ads. On social networks and the internet overall, however, this can be done very easily through various free ad blocking software.This leads to two different options. Marketers could get discouraged and give up on the attempt to engage in conversation with customers, or they could take lead and innovate the playing ground.

Facebook has been working on a new way to advertise to customers in a way that customers want to be engaged with – through an app-like experience! These new format consist of a normal news feed ad that once clicked on, it leads to a personalized blank canvas for marketers to create compelling experiences to customers.

      This include:

    • Ads living within the Facebook app –> this leads to faster load time
    • Blank canvas format –> allows unique customization of content
    • Compatibility for multi-media: full-screen video, carousel photos, and interactive photos

It does seem to be currently missing an in-app e-commerce platform, but can provide a link to an e-commerce landing site, which would provide Facebook with a second tier CPC revenue stream!

Michael Kors, Carrefour Spain, Gatorade and Mr Porter seem to be the pioneers of the service. Experience this new app-like ads experience for the latter two brands bellow!

Further Readings:
Facebook To Outline New Ad Formats for Mobile in Cannes
Apple’s iAd Not Game-Changing, but Will Move Market
Microsoft Builds Its Own iAd for Windows 8 Apps

TELUS: How to change the playing field through social media

Canada’s telecommunication industry has been primary controlled by three large corporations. TELUS, Rogers and Bell make up what some call – the Big 3. Alongside this notion and inherent in monopolistic or oligopolistic markets, consumers tend to perceive that they are being overcharged and thus customer satisfaction lowers.

TELUS, however, has been hard at work in changing this stigma. Through a campaign called “Expect More” developed by The & Partnership, TELUS is emphasizing that customers should not be compliant with what the market is offering and should expect more from their telecommunication provides. The “Expect More” campaign that seeks to encourage better customer service is not a recent strategy to the company. TELUS’ culture centers heavily on providing the best customer experience, which has been an internal strategy coined “Customer First” that took place five years ago.

One of the key elements that make social media marketing successful is the ability to create true conversation with the online customer community. TELUS excelled at this during a Facebook exchange with a user called Colton. Colton left a comment claiming that all telecoms were the same. TELUS responded by asking Colton if they could prove him otherwise, and Colton responded, “Have a bear give a walrus a high five in a commercial”. Within 45mins, TELUS uploaded the following video commercial to YouTube. This is a great example of how to utilize social media to generate live conversation with customers and how the content can then be leverage to create high-visibility (viral) marketing campaigns from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvpuslPenQ

Source: Telus Campaign Urges Canadians to Expect More from Telcos

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