After recently reading Adobe Digital Marketing’s blog post ‘Marketing to Millennials This Holiday Season with Social Media’ I found myself rethinking how to properly market over social media.

Joe Martin, the blog’s author, raises a good point in saying that 96% of millennials (who I find myself categorized under) belong to at least one form of social media. The biggest thing to note with this audience is how sensitive they are to advertising – a social network loses its appeal if a user feels as if they’re marketing towards.

As someone who frequents a few social networks myself – reddit, snapchat, facebook, and instagram – I find that I go through a massive amount of content per day, stories and posts numbering in the high hundreds. But even with my only concern being getting to my intended destination (whatever site I mean to reach), passing by all those ads can create a subliminal association effect. Therefore online marketers succeed only when they play the game of averages with advertisements. How many pieces of information can a social media provide a user via posts peripheral to the intended story? Martin elaborates on this with the statistical measurements of social network advertising – the shift from the cost per click to the cost per thousand models. As the traffic increases, the cost per visit to a site goes down.

While the tailoring of advertisements on social media has improved (I myself am impressed with the shift from dating site advertisements to concert listings in my own feed) I think the true value of social network advertising will be in the subtlety of page positioning. A user could quite easily find themselves with an index of information on various sites they didn’t know they’ve been influenced by.

I can dismiss these ads while I read, but I still see them.

If I don’t realize how many billboards I’m seeing as I drive through Time Square, I’m going to keep driving through this part of town. If I drive through Time Square every day, I’ll somehow know of deals I never paid any mind to. Eventually I’ll be in the store. If I don’t realize how many promoted posts there are in my feed as I race through my facebook getting caught up on content, I’ll suddenly find myself with knowledge of, and eventually visiting the site I would never have heard of.

Time Square

Reference:
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/social-media/marketing-to-millennials-this-holiday-season-with-social-media/

Rogers Wireless was a particularly dynamic company to pick for marketing strategies. Due to the oligopoly nature of the cellular communication industry, the pricing structure was very set in stone. What we were able to work with was what was offered by a subscription-style market. The significant difference in our thinking was then not to think in terms of a consumer who purchase a product several times, but a service that helps dictate lifestyle and finding the best fit for the various types of customers we thought we might have.

The unique part about the cell phone industry is how young it is. The first cell phones came out the same time the members of my group were born, and unlike many of the adults running the wireless companies we have been raised with texting and anywhere-calling as a staple of communication. While smart phones came in a bit later, our generation has been the one to mold the development of the major apps such as Instagram or Snapchat. This gave our group some pretty opinionated, yet informed, views on how the marketing strategies should work.

In my opinion, our strongest suggestions revolved around the diversity of technology. We very quickly came to the agreement that securing new technologies in our marketing mix would be a key play to attract and commit customers to our chosen company. Once we had our market segmented, determining how to leverage those segments was the next step and the PhoneBloks suggestion was perfect way of attracting more customers to the smart phone plans.

Making the video itself was rather straightforward, although I still felt time restricted. I personally pursue cinematography as a hobby, and while most of my work on the subject tends to be more artistic I found it pleasantly challenging to try and make an informative video. I have a new found respect for catchy, easy-to-follow informational videos on products.

Despite the last minute rush, I learned a lot through the collaboration involved with making this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI6nZ7oxdUU

In 2006, Dos Equis established character of “The Most Interesting Man In The World” in their advertising campaigns. This man, played by Jonathan Goldsmith, depicts a suave elderly gentleman who has accomplished daring feats and finishes the advertisement with ‘I don’t always drink, but when I do, it’s Dos Equis’.

A few years later one can find this phrase reformatted for a plethora of posts across social networks and image sharing sites as it has grown to a running joke across internet, known as a meme. The format of “I don’t always [x], but when I do I [y]” is used to describe tendencies between two activities in a humorous manor. When displayed as an image the phrase is accompanied by The Most Interesting Man.

Is this a sign of successful marketing? The Most Interesting Man campaign has been going on for six years now, and Dos Equis sales went up 22% while the rest of imported beers went down 4%. While the numbers are promising one what must take into consideration how the use of the phrase has transcended the advertising campaign itself. Many people could have no idea the back story behind the jokes they scroll past, or the opposite could occur in that they’re exhausted by the repeating sentence structure.

The true sign of good marketing is getting into the audience’s headspace. By inserting an idea into a customer’s imagination, an advertisement becomes part of their thought processes and eventually their lifestyle. The customer then associates with the product unknowingly and will relate to it without question.

Hands down, The Most Interesting Man in the World has entered the audiences headspace. The fact that hundreds of internet users re-type out the phrase, perhaps unknowing of what it relates to, shows that the idea of The Man has a positive, witty connotation. A consumer who knows the phrase will eventually see the advertisement and associate the beer with all the jests they’ve read in the same format. Every time someone impersonates The Man, they bring themselves closer to Dos Equis.

In a fellow UBC student blog post, Georgia Sakurai elaborates on Virgin America’s new safety video by saying ‘Sass sells’. She draws attention to the versatility Virgin’s video, mentioning how Virgin was able to get the video across multiple platforms like YouTube in addition to their in-flight movie screens. She celebrates Virgin’s ability to take something boring or redundant and turn it into entertainment for their customers.

While the new take on a boring safety video is clever, Georgia’s analysis of it is a bit under developed. She discusses ‘sass’ as if it’s a new technique, and is a hot commodity in the marketing world.

In reality, such against-the-grain methods have been commonplace for quite some time. Advertisements making gags of previous advertisements have been a tool to draw attention to products since the 60s. Recent examples that come to mind are Geico’s bait-and-switch style from the early 2000s, where a normal looking advertisement would come on and the line ‘I have fantastic news though, I just saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico” would suddenly be thrown into the script. Another example is Adidas commercial in which a majestic looking runner is portrayed with ‘this is Nike, and the man following with him wearing the 50-pound camera is wearing Adidas”.

These witty ads reward potential consumers for being able to see through more stereo typical advertisements with humor. In doing so, the company advertising appeals to the viewers intellect, establishing a more intimate connection in being able to condescend the other advertisements. In Virgin’s case, they’re poking fun at how boring a normal instructional safety video might be.

Another thing to note on Sakurai’s analysis is that she underestimates how niche such a video is. While it can be publicized via various forms of media, she fails to note that the advertisement only applies to those about to get on a plane. Maybe for the weathered traveler this is a common experience, but to the everyday man or woman air travel is an uncommon nuisance. Sure, it bodes well that Virgin can poke fun at itself, but the video is five minutes long and holding a customers attention for that long, even prior to lift off, is a challenge.

References:

Sass Sells

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DtyfiPIHsIg