ShipServ, a B2B e-commerce marketplace for the maritime shipping industry, sells to an industry that is not social media savvy and highly skeptical of, in their minds, an unproven way of doing business. ShipServ’s customer is a shipping supplier. To make money, those suppliers must pay ShipServ to list their offerings on the site.
The Video Campaign
They created a low tech animated video, “ShipServ Pages: The Movie” using Lego characters and even had a hero/star of the movie, Rex, depicting a typical owner operator of a shipping supply shop. Then posted it on their social channels, website and had their sales people send out emails to their leads with a link to the video. The goal was a low pressure approach to educate and entertain prospects and move them to try their online marketplace. Their CMO, John Watton reported that is was, “Highly successful. The innovation is really in how we’ve integrated it with our other social media and content marketing efforts.”
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is betting the kitchen on their biggest product launch in years, the Chunky Chicken Pot Pie. In support of the multi-million dollar TV, billboard, and print ad campaign, they started a lower cost social campaign with interactive mobile ads inside the popular Pandora iPhone app. Their target – 16-28 yr olds.
The Campaign
KFC is running mobile banner and audio ads within Pandora’s iPhone app. While you’re listening to your custom Pandora radio station, you are bound to get hungry and as a KFC ad pops up you’ll see the Pot Pie, get a discount coupon, check nutritional facts if you’d like, and then find a location so you can buy some pies.
Read rest of case study here. It includes links to other KFC social media campaigns.
Kotex launched a creative, low cost, well executed advocacy/influencer campaign using Pinterest. Great video below expanding on how they did it and what the results were.
Kotex first looked through thousands of women’s pinboards in search of 50 power users with a large number of engaged followers on Pinterest who could be future Kotex customers. They then studied the 50 women’s boards to get a better understanding of some of the things they are passionate about. After the analysis, they created custom gift boxes for each woman filled with goodies they believed would resonate with them. I would estimate they invested between $50 and $100 per gift box.
Upon receiving the gifts, almost all 50 did as Kotex had hoped. They talked about Kotex online. Kotex then asked the women to reciprocate by opting in to the campaign to share their stories about the cool gifts they got.
At the time of the video below, there had been 2,000 interactions between the 50 women and their friends and almost 695,000 impressions.
A singular focus proves successful. By holding true to their philosophy to only provide content that helps their visitors find more ways to look better and feel better after using their products, Burt’s Bees found the formula for success in converting visitors to paying customers. They are practicing the “dynamic liquid content” methodology Coke has been preaching since late 2011.
Burt’s Bees was founded in 1984. They started by selling beeswax candles and have grown into a global brand making over 150 natural personal care products. Their mission is to “try to make people’s lives better every day–naturally.”
Recently, Coke was so bold, they shared their marketing plan with the world on how they will own a disproportionate share of the conversations of popular culture by the year 2020. The mastermind behind this new direction is Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence at Coca-Cola.
The videos below are a profound look into the future of digital marketing. It will not be about the creative twist or angle or brilliant call to action to move you to buy a product. Soon, to succeed companies must think like inventors willing to invest in the cost of generating great content (blog posts, white papers, eBooks, videos, marketing campaigns). It’s the willingness for your CEO to create an R&D department in your company just for content creation. See 70/20/10 below. Think about Shakespeare’s masterpieces. They are inventions that came about after a heavy intellectual investment in “R&D like” practices and systems to create those works. To become relevant in the ever increasing noise of sales pitches and reused copy online, companies who adopt Coke’s goal to produce compelling content will succeed.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Future In Coke’s Eyes – Become Dynamic Storytellers
Dynamic storytelling is the process of identifying incremental elements of the brand’s core story and then dispersing those elements systematically/consistently across multiple channels of conversation for purpose of creating a unified brand experience. Your core story is the essence of what made you, including the ups and downs, the ugly and pretty. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s something all your employees can tell easily and is not memorized. It’s a unifying cry to all and a story new hires want to be part of unless you are a losy brand/company run by a selfish boss who is out to take and not serve. In that case, don’t read any further. You are doomed.
5 Types Of Dynamic Storytelling
Serial storytelling
Multi-faceted storytelling
Spreadable storytelling
Immersion and discovery storytelling
Engagement through storytelling
Keys To Success To Win The Content Wars
Behave like a ruthless editor to stop noise from getting through. Don’t extend conversations on your Facebook page that leave your core brand story. Let your tribe carry it forward but be focused. Every day, there is more and more noise online. Put a “Brita” filter on your content faucet.
Build system wide capabilities as in new processes, people, compensation plans, and technology to allow for dynamic storytelling.
Evolution From Content To “Liquid Content”
What is content – Coke holds a higher standard when defining content. They see it as stories expressed through every possible connection and channel that (1) add value and (2) add significance to people’s lives. Content is the “matter” or “substance” of brand engagement and conversation.
What is liquid – elements of content that move freely amongst themselves but do not become separate stories.
The 70/20/10 Liquid Content Investment Principle
Pay special attention around 3:30 into the second video and pause and take notes for you to fully understand this principle. It is a primary key to their vision over the next 10 years.
70% of your content and investment of time and money – Low risk content
Should take less than 50% of our time to produce these blog posts, stories, testimonials, campaigns… This pays the bills and gets the word out.
20% of content – this is where we innovate from what worked from the 70%. What took hold there we carry forward to this area.
Engages more deeply with a specific audience
We should invest 25% of our time and resources here but with higher paid writers and creative types.
This content still has the ability for broad scale and appeal.
10% of content – brand new ideas. Becomes next year’s 70% and 20%. This is high risk – this goes viral over night or fails as quickly. This is where you spend your R&D budget in content. The invention of great content is just that, an invention of something new to the world that you develop. You need to be investing in your future stories. This is where that is done. This is where a lot of A/B testing can happen.
This should take up 25% of our time and resources.
Paradigm Shifts To Consider
Going from design excellence to CONTENT excellence.
Move from one-way storytelling to dynamic story telling.
You need to produce sharable ideas/stories/concepts that earn a disproportionate share of popular culture (Own a Topic).
Constant iterations of your content, not replication of your production content.
Stop thinking in 30 second commercial bites and elevator pitches and website home pages. Think in story and evolving conversations.
Don’t stop campaigns too early. Keep the conversation fueled and going.
Pre-testing and approving content before campaigns begin can kill the campaign in this new world of evolving stories on and offline of a brand.
Plan your budgets (pad them a bit to be ready) that initiatives will evolve as they are being rolled out and allow for real-time testing during campaign so you can adapt as needed
Think in forms of tent poles (quickly setup shop like the Circus city to city) and tent pegs (hold the tent “core story” in place).
Activia launched a Facebook campaign targeting women aged between 20 and 50 in April 2010. The main goal was to bring the brand closer to the consumers and develop brand awareness, focusing on the product Activia drink. This was possible by asking consumers to compete in five different challenges through different stages. The campaign was mostly online, while one final challenge extended to a small offline event. Promotions were supported by television and POS terminals and created a big buzz around.
Users posted pictures with Activia products and spread the word. The main winner went to an organized trekking trip to Indonesia climbing a volcano 3726 m high. She reported back by writing blog posts every few days, so others could follow and see the whole great experience. With the right engagement the brand become more searched, more sheared, developing a 52 % increase in branded search and a 620 % increase in referring page views, not to mention the mouth-to-mouth communication. The campaign was one of 20 of the most innovative Facebook campaigns.
Tod Maffin, President of engageQ digital, is a digital communications strategist, specializing in social media, mobile marketing, and viral marketing. [keynote speeches | bio]
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