Campaign of the Month
22 Jul IMC Campaign of the Month: FarmersOnly.com Reaps What it Sows
Online dating sites cater to every age and income bracket. For many years, niche online dating sites specially catered only to ethnic and religious groups. But today there are sites for every kind of single person. Online dating sites use many integrated marketing tools and techniques to get visitors to the critical point where they feel it's worthwhile to join. The tools they use and the messaging that drives their marketing depend heavily on the audience they hope to reach. When Jerry Miller launched the FarmersOnly.com dating website in 2005, he filled a niche for people to connect to others in similar circumstances. Farmers, ranchers, and people who live in the relative isolation of small towns can browse hundreds of profiles of people just like themselves. FarmersOnly.com has quickly carved out a unique place in an overpopulated online dating market. Miller was working in agricultural marketing and heard the same story from many farmers: Dating was tough. Nobody else understood the relentless hours and how everybody knows everybody in their small rural communities. If they didn’t marry their high school sweethearts, they had a serious problem. So he started FarmersOnly, where over 4 million people have created profiles in the hopes of harvesting a relationship.
12 May IMC Campaign of the Month – The Jungle Book
After Disney issued extremely conservative predictions for “The Jungle Book,” the live-action film by Jon Favreau obliterated expectations with its massive $103.6 opening weekend. These powerful results make this our IMC Campaign of the Month. Disney made several smart marketing choices during the lead-in to the release of The Jungle Book that helped build hype and buzz for the movie. They combined typical marketing approaches, special opportunities available only to Disney and a few unique techniques and messaging particular to this film. Each of these aspects of the IMC campaign were deployed with terrific skill and a keen eye toward how each part of the plan fit together. The result was maximum marketing impact. Recognizing that the Disney Magic Castle logo is not an automatic plus for the male demo, Disney aggressively and repeatedly pitched the movie to male audiences. Commercials on ESPN created the perception that The Jungle Book movie was not coming from the studio that made Cinderella but from the studio that produced the Pirates of the Caribbean series. An extended 3D trailer for The Jungle Book was played during the showing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, of which the majority of the audience was male. Disney also rolled out an action-packed trailer during the Super Bowl. Plus Disney’s marketers targeted the Hispanic audience by teaming with Univision, the American Spanish-language TV network, for a five-week stint that brought The Jungle Book characters and clips to telenovelas, talk shows and sports coverage. Disney even built a tool to allow Univision personalities to appear in scenes. Word of mouth spreads faster than ever in the age of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. The Jungle Book had everything in its favor, and with the help of social channels, went over the edge in terms of popularity. Disney’s savvy online marketing campaign also contributed to the buzz. "With each new piece of material, you’re showing [fans] enough to have them understand what you are doing, but also just enough to keep secrets so there’s still excitement and discovery when they go to the theater," The Jungle Book director Jon Favreau told Mashable in a phone interview. To emphasize the “immersive world” (think Avatar)29 Feb IMC Campaign of the Month: Lego Marvel Avengers
Posted at 11:58h
in Campaign of the Month
Even for the biggest brands, launching a new video game can be a significant challenge. In a market where any game competes against thousands of other titles, many with long life cycles, it’s tough to get consumers’ attention – and money. And this is not a new phenomenon. As the popularity of video games has risen over the past 40 years, so have the number of titles available at any given time. Recently, one particular marketing and advertising campaign for Lego Marvel Avengers stood out among the rest as an excellent example of integrated marketing communications at work. The game’s success earns it one more accolade, our IMC Campaign of the Month.
Lego Marvel Avengers was released on January 26, 2016 by TT Games. TT Games was careful to coincide its television advertising with cartoons that targeted the key demographic – primarily younger consumers who have both an interest in Lego toys and superheroes. Cartoons presented a perfect vehicle to hitch to Lego Marvel Avengers ads. With compelling previews of game play and live action shots from the latest Avengers movie, the television spots had kids eagerly awaiting the release of the game in January.
19 Nov The rise of the dogfluencer, our IMC campaign of the month
When you think of a brand ambassador campaign, you probably think of either a) a Klout (or similar) perk that may garner no substantial reviews in return for the product or b) a disparate smattering of blog posts that become difficult to track and measure,...
09 Sep IMC Campaign of the Month: Cerveja Feminista
What happens when advertising creatives fed up with gender inequality brainstorm a creative way to draw attention to the problem? In Brazil, what happens is Cerveja Feminista, or Feminist Beer. And it’s our IMC campaign of the month.
In Brazil, 65% of women feel they are not represented by ads and a mere 10% of advertising creatives are female. Inspired by this, the creators behind Cerveja Feminista also founded the activism group 65|10 to work in tandem with the beer to raise awareness and combat inequality in their country.
Cerveja Feminista is a brilliant example of cause marketing though its motives are more altruistic than profit-driven. It’s also a strong example of good branding, careful audience analysis, clever advertising, public relations and social media working in an integrated fashion.
As one would expect from a group of creatives, the beer itself is well branded down to the color of the ale inside the bottle – an Irish red, chosen because red is the color associated with social causes. Plus, red ale falls between the typically “male” dark beers and “female” pale beers. It’s intended to attract both genders equally, showing an understanding of ideal buyers that is the cornerstone of good IMC.
The logo is simple and hip, appealing to the current generation of savvy beer drinkers. What’s more, the actual idea of choosing beer as the product to highlight 65|10’s cause is extremely smart. There are few things as stereotypically sexist as beer ads. That Cerveja Feminista hits hard at a market saturated with big brands targeting a largely male audience with demeaning messages about women is a bold move, and one that’s garnering a lot of media attention.
What’s more, Cerveja Feminista’s creators are banking on the fact that the beer’s label itself will spark meaningful discussion about gender inequality. One of the founders, Thais Fabris, explained to Co.Exist,
10 Aug IMC Campaign of the Month – Amazon Prime Day.
[gallery ids="6721,6729,6730"] During the month of July it was nearly impossible not to hear talk of Amazon Prime Day, either through the press or the numerous emails the company sent to its customers. Now that Amazon Prime Day has come and gone marketers and consumers are left assessing their views on the manufactured retail holiday. It is easy to focus on the negative. Consumers berated the brand on social media and much of the post-Prime Day press suggested that the event was a dismal failure. But was it? Amazon announced Prime Day on July 6th just nine days ahead of the sale, to celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary. Prime Day was a one-day shopping event on July 15, 2015, with Amazon promising “more deals than Black Friday.” The real goal of Prime Day was to acquire new Prime customers. (Industry experts estimate Amazon has somewhere between 30 and 40 million Prime customers.) We all know Amazon to be a ubiquitous mailer, having sent out 1 billion emails in the 9 days following announcement of the sale, with an average read rate of 23%. Of those emails 78 million promoted the Prime Day sale by using subject lines that referenced the sale. Many of those emails were intended to build excitement about the event. Subject lines included, “Prime Day is coming soon!” which prompted 41% of the recipients to read the email. A major goal of Prime Day was to encourage members to be more engaged with their accounts. Free shipping might be the most well-known benefit of Prime but members also get instant streaming video, unlimited ad free access to music, unlimited storage of photos, early access to deals and free books on Kindle. In an effort to encourage customers to benefit from the full value of the Prime Membership a big part of Prime Day was about getting customers to utilize its streaming music service. More than half the emails sent to promote Prime Day encouraged customers to play any Prime Music song for the chance to win $25,000 in Amazon Gift Cards. While Amazon’s music and video services aren’t on the same scale as competitors Netflix and Apple the real strategy might be in the devices that Amazon sells to work in conjunction with its services. According to the media Prime Day was panned in social media with many shoppers frustrated that the most coveted items either weren’t on sale or sold out too quickly. Many best-selling items were not included in the sale, making consumers skeptical of the company’s claim that Prime Day deals rivaled Black Friday deals. The social media numbers tracked tell a slightly different story. On July 15th there were over 500K mentions of Amazon, a 78% increase from the day before. Of those mentions, over 60% were positive. Despite complaints, customers focused more on shopping. Amazon said that by 1 p.m. the speed with which customers were ordering had surpassed 2014 Black Friday. If nothing else, Prime Day communication increased brand awareness and attention making Amazon top of mind for online shoppers.30 Jul IMC Campaign of the Month: Apple Watch
Apple faced an uphill battle marketing with the Apple Watch. Wearable consumer tech is still a relatively new phenomenon, at least where typical
smartphone functions are concerned. Other leaders like LG actually released their own smart watches before Apple even started promoting theirs. Marketers puzzled over the initially slow and pace of the Apple Watch marketing campaign, but Apple may just have been living by the maxim “slow and steady wins the race.”
The tremendous patience and control with which Apple introduced its Apple Watch to the world is a big reason Apple Watch is our IMC Campaign of the Month.
While LG, Samsung and other competitors hit the ground running with typical multi-channel campaigns to reach the widest possible (yet still viable) audience, Apple held off, teasing the world first with a 12 page ad in Vogue magazine. One very specific audience: fashionistas.
Marketers started buzzing about why Apple was marketing the Apple Watch specifically to women. The fact that the highest end Apple Watch costs $17,000 might have something to do with the choice of outlet – people reading 12 page Apple ads alongside stories about Manolo Blahnik or Valentino probably don’t blush at high ticket items.
But not all readers of Vogue are able to afford the things they read about in the magazine – many read about them and dream big, yet unattainable dreams. With the Apple Watch’s least expensive version costing just $350, suddenly a sexy, highly fashionable, highly valued item becomes much more affordable for the average consumer. A series of cover photographs of popular models wearing the Smart Watch cemented its image as functional fashion. When a trend is sparked with fashionistas, it becomes visible just about everywhere – from the arms of celebrities to the arms of fashion bloggers. Before you know it, everybody wants one.
02 Jul IMC Campaign of the Month: PEMCO’s #12
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in Campaign of the Month
28 May IMC Campaign of the Month: Starbucks, Well, Everything
Posted at 09:35h
in Campaign of the Month
Few brands have truly harnessed the power of integrated marketing communications as well as Starbucks. They embraced the concept of integrated and multi-channel marketing techniques well before most other brands, recognizing early on the value of, for example, a direct mail campaign that's supported by e-mail and echoed in social media. When it comes to the holistic picture of integrated marketing communications, Starbucks continues to blaze a trail that other big brands – and small businesses alike – should carefully examine.
The foundation of Starbucks' strength in IMC is twofold: consistent branding and consistent customer recognition. Visually, the Starbucks brand is undeniable. Travel to any major city around the world, and quite a few less major ones, and you'll see the familiar Starbucks face peering at you from coffee cups held by passersby. You'll identify a place to get the coffee you love in an airport, or wandering down some strange new street. There are other brands for which this phenomenon also occurs – like McDonald's – but whereas the reaction fast food creates can be mixed (especially when the restaurants are very close to historic or religious landmarks, which seems tacky), the concept of a soothing cup of coffee or cooling Frappucino is almost universally well received.
Starbucks is also meticulous about getting to know their customers, and maintaining long-term relationships. They've always understood the value of perks like birthday gifts, delivered via postal mail to customers like an actual present. And they have a website dedicated entirely to customer feedback. My Starbucks Idea brings together a global community of Starbucks lovers. Customer ideas can be voted upon by others and the company provides feedback. Some ideas have even been implemented. At this time, 214,553 ideas are cataloged on the site. My Starbucks Idea is powered by Salesforce, so there is a huge CRM component behind it.
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