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Key Topics
Requirement
1) Select three examples of brands that have used a similar technique within a marketing campaign. A description of how each brand used the technique within a campaign should be included as an appendix and may be taken from a referenced source, or from personal experience.
The technique considered could be any of:
a) Content marketing
b) Social Media marketing
c) Email marketing
d) Mobile marketing
e) Online advertising
f) Search marketing
g) Affiliate marketing
2) Analyse what makes the brands’ use of the chosen technique more or less successful.
a) Your analysis should include a reflection on how to judge the campaign and technique’s success, including consideration of how appropriate the measures are for this purpose.
b) Consider both the technique itself and how it integrates with other marketing activities within the overall campaign.
This is a piece of individual coursework which is an element of assessment for this subject. This coursework will be marked out of 100 and weighted at 40% of the overall module marks.
c) Your conclusions should aim to draw out what your analysis teaches us about how brands can use the technique successfully. Be careful that your conclusions are drawn from your own analysis and do not introduce new referenced material.
d) Your recommendations are then action-oriented ‘advice’ for brands wanting to use the technique as a consequence of your conclusions.
e) All analysis to be backed by research evidence. Marks will be awarded based on the breadth, depth, authority/objectivity and time-value of your evidence.
f) Harvard Business referencing must be used and accurate English is expected.
Solution
ABSTRACT
This assignment has identified social media marketing as the digital marketing technique to be analysed in the following discussions. This work elicits the social media marketing strategy adopted by three popular international brands to increase their revenue streams. Social media marketing has become essential for any company to reach its customer base all over the world and also to remain relevant in the marketing space. This paper discusses the various techniques employed by three different brands to position their products suitably in the minds of its customers. It critically evaluates the various facets of social media marketing especially in the light of innovation, sales augmentation and customer feedback. Finally, this work touches upon the various elements of social media marketing that should be essentially included while embarking on any marketing campaign to establish a strong brand of products in the consumer space.
INTRODUCTION
Social Media Marketing had emergedquite some years back and within a few years it has established its inevitability in every marketing space, be it brand building for an airline operator or penetrating the market for coffee shop chains. Social media has opened up loads of new opportunities for businesses that want to grow both financially and geographically. It has helped to develop new business models, revenue streams, innovative product attributes and customer feedback had never been so much easy to gather. Let us first start by understanding properly what is meant by social media marketing .
Social Media Marketing encompasses broadly all the attempts made by the companies or organizations to persuade consumers in believing that their products are best in the market and apt in adding value to their daily life. It primarily uses online media, blogs, online communities, social networks and more.
FINDINGS
This paper does in-depth research of more than 20 academic writings from varied sources and has collated information for further analysis. Information gathered suggests that traditionally the marketing mix consisted of product, place, price and promotion. However, with the emergence of web 2.0 social media marketing has opened up new opportunities for the marketing managers. It has helped in adding another element in the marketing mix that is participation. Consumers are now actively participating in uploading-downloading of data, content, pictures, comments and feedback for products and services .
WHAT IS A BRAND?
Simply put a brand is a name, term, symbol, design or any other feature that distinguishes and sets apart a particular companies’ product from its competitors. The legal term that is suitable to define a brand is trademark. A brand may encompass one item or a family of items of the seller. This paper has identified three popular brands namely Starbucks, Oreo and Cisco for its analysis on social media marketing as a tool for brand building. It analyses the various digital marketing techniques employed by them to establish a strong brand
BRAND BUILDING:
This paper has chosen Starbucks as the first international brand whose social media marketing ventures have touched almost more than 50 million lives world over. Starbucks has emerged as a true global brand with more than 21,000 stores in 65 different countries. It has reported record revenue of around USD16.4 billion and has no plans of remaining stagnant.Although all the leaders in the industry understand and accept the need for an active social media platform and digital campaigns, most of them fail to launch a campaign or strategy which is well integrated with the other marketing mix of the brand. It is in this respect that Starbucks has done an incredible job over the years. It has successfully combined the triangular puzzle of consumer, product and social media marketing which has led to an increased brand resonance and more profitability. Starbucks has more than 35 million followers on Facebook, around 7 million Twitter followers and 3 million subscribers in Instagram that tells the story of social media success of Starbucks .
Next brand that this work will discuss has won the heart of millions through its social media campaigns. It is none other than the cookie giant Oreo that has devised innovative and out-of-the box campaigns in social media to remain relevant among its consumers. It has a quirky way of making a statement in social media and does not shy away from taking a jibe at its competitors like Nestle.Oreo has created the highest buzz in recent years with its campaigns especially the famous Super Bowl Tweet and established itself as the leader in the agile marketing field .
Lastly, this paper deals with a completely different player from an unrelated industry while highlighting the importance of social media marketing. Cisco that is one of the network equipment manufacturer giants has also adopted social media marketing strategy as is preferred mode of reaching its customers. Cisco has a major footprint in the B2B segment and thereby focusses on such activities while it comes to social media marketing. Cisco had recently identified social media as its campaigning platform for its new product launch which had enabled it to reach 90 times more viewers at one-sixth the cost.
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USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BRAND BUILDING:
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MyStarbucks.com - It all started with the “My Starbucks Idea” campaign launched in July 2008. It was an initiative created to interact directly with the customers. It was an online community wherein all the stakeholders of the organization like customers and employees can upload their suggestions and new ideas for the betterment of Starbucks. Within a few days the campaign was a huge hit and people poured in their suggestions. The ideas ranged from giving a cup of free coffee on customer’s birthday to announcing loyalty programs for regular customers.
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Twitter Initiatives - Starbucks was looking for new innovative ways of increasing their customer interaction. They appointed Brad Nelson as their Twitter campaign manager in July 2008. His main aim was to interact with customers, chat with them and blend in so that they can have candid conversations about improving service and product quality at Starbucks. He identified unhappy customers, took their feedback and transformed this entire process into an engaging social media presence . Starbucks had several twitter accounts each for a different purpose. Starbucks Coffee was the general account, Starbucks Idea was for generating and sharing of new ideas, and then there was StarbucksStore.Com for the sale of its merchandise that had also become quite popular .
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Facebook Campaigns – Before Starbucks launched its official Facebook page there were already few fan pages. When they launched their original Facebook page on November 2008, they asked them to join them. Slowly but steadily they developed their page through relevant experience sharing, offers and pictures. Starbucks never tried to sell any product on Facebook but always informed its users about new product launches and services. They were able to launch a successful Facebook campaign only because they had a strong brand and product behind them.
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Super Bowl Tweet – In 2013, while match was going on in the Super Bowl League there was a sudden power cut in the New Orleans Stadium that persisted for 34 minutes. Oreo latched onto this opportunity for making a mark for itself and tweeted “You can still dunk in the dark” which became immensely popular among social media visitors and was re-tweeted for about 16,000 times. Later on articles and reports were written about this social marketing ploy of Oreo in Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc..
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Daily Twist Campaign – Oreo launched a unique campaign during its 100-year anniversary naming it the Daily Twist Campaign. In this campaign for 100 days Oreo tried to report the daily news in its own offbeat and unique style through cookie shapes. During this initiative it had made Shark Week Themed Oreo and Mars Rover Oreo. There are lot videos in social media sites that went viral and added to the popularity of Oreo. The number of images shared in Facebook had increased considerably after this campaign. Oreo also received numerous awards for its daily twist campaign .
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Cookie vs Cream Video – Oreo has always found a humorous and funny way of putting its point and value proposition to its customer. In this specific campaign, they created a video wherein it was shown how mechanically cream could be separated from the cookie. It was done all in good humour and uploaded on Oreo’s YouTube Accounts. The video was a huge hit among its viewers and it achieved 4 million views in only just 3 weeks.
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Integrated Campaign – For its new product launch Cisco now uses an integrated campaign strategy wherein global advertising, mobile, digital and social media all are integrated together. This approach was responsible for nearly 11 million views in the pre-launch phase and 16,000 blog views .
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Listening Centre – It is an avenue to listen to what customers have to say. In this approach, they have set up LCDs in front of their offices wherein visitors are able to converse with Cisco professionals. It also enables the executives to understand the pulse of the market. They also have plans to ramp up the entire system of Cisco Listens.
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YouTube Calls – It added clickable calls apart from actions on videos. The first CTA is a part of learning drive where the visitors can learn more about Cisco whereas the second CTA drive is intended to create own YouTube channel.
THE HUMAN ASPECT
During MyStarbucks campaign, it had engaged 48 personnel to engage with customers through online media and special training was imparted to them to resolve any query or any other issue related to social media. Starbucks vetted all the ideas that were posted and even displayed them on their website so that anyone could comment on them. They even implemented few of them.
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Social Login – This feature has been specially created for B2B sales. Although it was difficult to achieve such a feet Cisco was able to create such facility. It should be mentioned here that although Cisco offers twitter, LinkedIn and Google Ids, Facebook id is by far the preferred one.
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Social Ambassador – Cisco underwent an analysis to find that there were around 14 groups in LinkedIn where the Cisco was mentioned. Therefore, they took the initiative to gather all of them and consolidate them on a single platform to establish the Cisco Ambassador Program. It has enabled them to have a personal interaction and peer-peer connection. It has also eased the sales process since now everything is done after the authorization process.
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Social Demand – There is a methodology in place for social demand generation so that every viewer has to undergo a registration process before they can land on Cisco’s Facebook Page. In just about 60 days Cisco generated 1881 clicks with a completion rate of 4% which can be considered as immensely successful. All these points put together Cisco is doing an incredible job of establishing itself through social media marketing.
PERSONAL BRANDS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Recently, there has been a surge of personal brands and the best way for marketing those brands is social media. Celebrities across the world from diverse fields of work are now coming out with their own line of clothing, jewellery, accessories and other branded products. These celebrities are already quite popular in the social media and to cash in on that popularity they are promoting their own line of products in social media.
Twitter Wars – Oreo often takes a jibe at its competitors in twitter through numerous banters that add to the popularity of the brand. One famous instance was on the launch of Xbox PS4 when it had posted a picture of its own version of PS4 Controller. Oreo undertakes some of the social media campaign activities that are of highest standard and an epitome for modern-age digital marketers.
In the Starbucks Facebook page there were different tabs informing about employment opportunities, discounts, offers, etc. During one specific Frappuccinos Happy Hour campaign, they used the Facebook page to inform their customers about the time and day of discounts.
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In all the social media campaigns, Starbuckshas tried to portray the values they stood for by showcasing pictures of their employees working in children homes, environmentally responsible quotes or showing solidarity with AIDS patients.
Oreo is equally active in Instagram and they might have been here for 100 years but they sure know how to improvise in terms of marketing campaigns and establish their positioning in the consumer’s mind space.
As the work reaches the end of critical evaluation of all three brands and their efforts in social media campaign, the similarities that can be noticed are that they all have tried to launch campaigns that are highly interactive with the clients and have a common theme of trying to understand customer feedback. All the campaigns have a participatory approach to go about the campaign and generate consumer enthusiasm with respect to the company as well as the product .
CONCLUSION
This paper has picked three most popular brands in the world from different sectors and made a critical analysis of the social media strategies employed by them. All three of them have been immensely successful in implementing social media campaigns and have created a buzz about their products in the minds of consumers. In Starbucks we can see it had an early mover advantage since it had entered the social media arena quite early and had time to build up its identity in the social media while Oreo had demonstrated tremendous agility in its marketing strategy when they used the Super Bowl blackout to their advantage. All these examples help us understand the importance of social media marketing strategies in today’s globalized world which help companies to reach new customers, generate new revenue streams, develop new products and interact with customers. Finally everything put together it is justified to say that every fledgling organization should take a leaf out of these marketing giants’ pages and make a compelling presence in the social media to boost their growth.
RECOMMENDATIONS ON HOW TO BUILD A BETTER BRAND
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Timeliness – While launching any social media campaign all the companies have to make sure that they are on the right side of the time. Building a story around a current event or a value that is very close to the consumers can help in creating the necessary buzz in the campaign. This will help in brand recognition and rejuvenation which may not be so much popular among customers.
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Consistency – Consistency and frequency are the two main pillars of social media campaigns. One has to continuously come up with new innovative ways of projecting the value proposition of their products to occupy a space in the consumer mind. Periodical initiatives may not have the required impact as a frequent one can have.
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Graphical – All social media campaigns or messages has to be simple graphical ones so that it does not become too turdy for the viewers. It should be such that consumers can connect to them and build a story around the brand. This will help in generating brand resonance among the consumers. Moreover, graphical depiction have a higher impact on human mind than simple written text.
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Fun element – There has to be some fun element involved in the campaign that will attract the viewers. Nowadays most of the visitors in social media spend them leisure time visiting social media websites. All the posts should lighten up the moods of visitors after a hard day’s work.They would enjoy a fun message over an esoteric allusion as the brand message of a product or company. Moreover, it needs to engage them by uploading-downloading, sharing experience, commenting on the product or service.
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