A few days ago I came across this article on Mashable (aka my favourite “news” source and the only one I have on my RSS) about Heinz running a promotion in the UK enabling people to send cans of soup to sick companions with “get well” messages written on them. Heinz joins what appears to be a growing trend of companies taking online content and turning it into physical/tangible products in “real life”. Some other examples: Apple’s recently announced Cards app, GetGlue’s check-in stickers, Kiip’s sponsored gaming rewards, and Lockerz’s virtual points prize redemption system.
And I think this trend has great potential to be big. As Apple has been given credit for playing a part in reviving the music industry, people are now calling the same thing for greeting cards. The Cards app model is the same as the Heinz promotion: you pay a little bit more than if you went to the store and bought the can of soup/card there, but for the extra price you save yourself the convenience of both the product purchase and personal delivery to your intended recipient. So, I don’t see the price being a hurdle (~$3 to send the personalized can of soup) – on the contrary, I’m more interested to know if that price covers all of Heinz’s variable costs of printing individual labels and delivering the cans (or paying a shipping company to).
This trend represents something even bigger in the marketing picture – ROI. With the emergence of e-marketing and social media in the past few years, the biggest question/catch has been determining their contributions to the bottom line, and I think this trend is one step in that process. The internet is enabling marketers to go one step further: instead of presenting a virtual advertisement, it’s getting products into people’s hands, which is all the more likely to build brand loyalty. I’m a big fan of the concept, and it’s a trend I’ll be watching closely.
One thing I really like about marketing is the fact that it’s such a dynamic field, and marketers are always pushing innovation and creative boundaries in order to keep up and get their message out. When their message isn’t being heard, it’s time to try changing the medium/method.
This year’s Advertising Week is currently taking place in New York City, and one of the topics that came up was social change and how to sell it. While we traditionally think of PSAs, brochures/mail outs, and those students with clipboards that stand on the paths beside the Chem building who you always try to avoid as methods to advertise social change campaigns, the newest idea method (which was being discussed at Advertising Week) is integrating the messages into entertainment – specifically, movies and TV shows.
I can definitely see why this is becoming a new trend, as I reflect on the impact some of the recent examples they brought up had over the past several years. They mentioned An Inconvenient Truth (climate change), Contagion (the threat of global pandemics) and The Help (civil rights and equality), which were all films that had entertainment value but also carried important underlying messages about social issues.
March of the Penguins: A film with a meaningful message
But it’s not as simple as creating a well-made documentary with good production value and Morgan Freeman as the narrator (although March of the Penguins was pretty good). As Jason Rzepka was quoted in the article, “It can’t be read as a two-hour P.S.A.” It’s important that the message and the brand be matched, otherwise the cognitive dissonance created in the audience’s minds may diminish the impact of the message. When musicians are the mode of entertainment being used to deliver the social change message, they may be negatively regarded as sellouts.
In any case, it’s a pretty new & thus wide-open stage in the industry, so I expect it’s a trend we will definitely see more of. I’m all for it if we get more epicly-narrated films by Morgan Freeman.
Note: I’m going to own up to the fact that this blog is coming about 7 hours late. After handing in our group marketing project last night, and the killer week we had, I had no energy left to muster to post this!
