The most recent innovative marketing campaigns. A paper by James Burkhardt.
Abstract
This presentation will provide insight and commentary on marketing campaign innovation. The early 2000’s marks the beginning of the Internet’s shift from outbound to inbound marketing. "Young people are suspicious about marketing as they should be," said Rick Bolton, founder of Fresh Machine that helped Toyota launch its Scion brand at that time. The 18 to 24-year-old Gen Y consumer Mr. Bolton was referring to then have grown up. Now they’re 33 – 39 and maturing. With that fact in mind, this paper addresses these questions.
• 1. What are the most prevalent types of marketing campaigns that you discovered in your research?
• 2. In your opinion, what 3 marketing campaigns displayed the greatest levelof innovation? What were each of the campaigns about and who was behind it?
• 3. What aspects of the marketing campaigns that you identified may be applicable to the launch of your marketing campaign for this course?
Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, and Taco Bell conducted the featured marketing campaigns. A campaign by L’Oreal utilizing an exciting new technology breakthrough that is currently in development is also highlighted. This paper concludes with insights and applications for 149Song.com based on the four featured campaigns.
Types of Marketing Campaigns
There are six types of marketing, in general; brand, B2B, referral, outbound (traditional), mobile, and digital marketing. Digital or Internet marketing focuses on search engine or SEM, keyword, inbound, social media, content, article, video, and affiliate marketing campaigns. SEM campaigns promote a website through search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing to gain traffic. Keyword marketing uses highly relevant keywords on its website to improve its rankings on Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs. Inbound marketing creates and shares content that is considered valuable by a target audience mainly through blogs and social media, which lures them into becoming loyal customers. Products, brands, and services are promoted through comprehensive social media platforms like Facebook or Google+ or dedicated channels like Twitter and Instagram by connecting people who have similar interests in common. Content marketing creates compelling content like articles, infographics, podcasts or videos that caters to interests of highly qualified prospects to convert them into a devoted customer base. A sub-category of content marketing, article marketing is about posting written articles on different websites, which drives traffic to a specific landing page or site promoting the product. Guest blogging on respected websites is considered an article marketing best practice method resulting in gaining quality links. Video marketing creates a wide variety of relevant video content that includes interviews, customer testimonials, branded films, animation, and commercials to promote a product or service. Affiliate marketing is a type of referral marketing where third party advocates who are driven to promote a brand, product or service receive a commission for every sale they generate through their efforts.
Marketing Campaign Standouts
The innovative campaigns cited are the re-launching of PG.com that yielded the long-running “BeingGirl.com” community, Taco Bell’s “Blackout”, and Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”, But first, there’s an upcoming innovative campaign from L’Oreal.
L’Oreal. A yet to be run campaign by L’Oreal seeks to have a mobile pay platform integrated into all marketing communications by using the new “PowaTag” from Powa Technologies, which made headlines in November 2014 by raising nearly $80 million to launch its proprietary platform. L'Oreal said in a statement that “the PowaTag technology can "transform any consumer touch point, from print and TV advertising to e-commerce, retail stores, and social media into a platform for mobile transactions, promotions and more on person's smartphone." PowaTag provides 2-D barcodes that consumers can scan with an app to order products quickly. This campaign promises to make all types of advertisements, both online and offline, “shoppable” by allowing direct response tags on all ads and promotions. In my opinion, this innovative “across all platforms” campaign is the one to watch in 2015. The main parties responsible for this groundbreaking alliance are Marie Gulin-Merle, chief marketing officer of L'Oreal USA and Dan Wagner, CEO and founder of Powa Technologies.
Proctor and Gamble. The re-launch of PG.com and other brand websites for Proctor & Gamble products has been an ongoing lesson in cutting-edge Web 2.0 marketing since 2000. When you log on to it, you see a consumer-friendly and content rich environment. Today, visitors can call up a wealth of information by linking to P&Geveryday.com that offers "tips and techniques" about family life, food, health & wellbeing, home & garden and beauty, plus brand information, communities, and coupons & offers. At 38, Greg Icenhower, was an associate director of corporate communications at P&G and the first man who took the lead in revamping PG.com. Ad Age named P&G the best marketer of the 20th Century. “In the 21st century, we want to be the best listeners”, says Icenhower who convinced his bosses that the focus of his team's work should be on experimentation. "I told them that we wouldn't get everything right but that by making mistakes, we would start learning lessons immediately." It’s all about new approaches to branding, and new ways to make the shift from shouting to listening. A great modern example is the “Empowering Young Women” community section, which now directs visitors to the current BeingGirl.com site. Make no mistake: this campaign is still about getting teenage girls to buy the P&G brands Always and Tampax. But P&G learned that to reach those young Gen Y girls via the Web, it had to create an environment where they feel no less at ease than they do at the nearest shopping mall. Now, it’s been updated to reach Gen Z girls. "The big keys for us are tone of voice and the nature of the content," says Derrick Tarver, who originally helped develop BeingGirl.com as a global brand manager for P&G Femcare Interactive. "And we always keep in mind that teens today have an acute awareness of commercialization", which is a key factor in keeping this innovative marketing campaign a success today.
Taco Bell. In late 2014, Taco Bell blacked out its social-media channels, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and even its website as part of launching a new mobile payment app. The idea was to attract attention with a Twitter feed, Facebook page and website all showing nothing but a black screen. Each of those pages only offered a link to the app download, available for both iOS and Android phones. The chain’s #onlyintheapp hashtag illustrated to customers how they could view and select specific ingredients for their food with the app in a way they previously weren’t able to. Under the watchful eye of Taco Bell CMO Ram Krishman, Digitas, created the app and the digital campaign, including the blackout. The bold move landed Taco Bell’s app at the No. 1 spot in the Food & Beverage category in the iTunes App Store, with thousands of app downloads. Many Taco Bell stores received orders from app users during the very first day.
Unilever Dove. Nearly ten years ago, Dove defied convention and launched what has become the “Campaign for Real Beauty” with an outdoor campaign. The “Little Girls” Super Bowl TV Ad in 2005, and the viral video “Evolution” were early components of what has become largely a worldwide print and social media mega campaign. It began with a 2004 survey conducted in 13 countries, and “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report” was issued. The most telling fact was “only a minority of women see themselves as above average in appearance, and only 2% of women claim to be beautiful.” Courageous Unilever executives warmed up to the genuine and transparency of the fact based creative which featured women in all shapes and sizes. Players included Steve Miles, SVP global Dove and Ogilvy & Mather creative Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin. Today, it’s alive and well on social media, and the campaigns significant impact are irrefutable.
Applications to 149Song.com Launch
The applications to the launch of the marketing campaign for 149Song.com can be characterized by “listen to what your customers and prospects are telling you, do your homework and due diligence, test and re-test then go big, go bold, communicate effectively by speaking one unified message in one voice, use the channel that best fits the message and target audience, and always remember that it’s all about the customer and their interests.” It is recommended to revisit the website testing and take a second look at the organization of the content to make sure that it is customer focused to the highest power. Proctor and Gamble’s website makes a great template.
Conclusion
Marketing campaign innovation continues because of thinking outside-of-the-box. One could argue that the dreaming is the easy part. All the campaigns did this; Proctor and Gamble reimagining their websites, Taco Bell’s social media blackout, Dove’s bold stereotype crushing creative, and soon L’Oreal driving instant sales with innovative technology. But research based strategy is key. True marketing campaign success always comes down to planning and execution, which is never as easy as it appears.
References
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