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Oreo’s success in Social Media Marketing

May 3, 2015 okaya88 Leave a comment

In 2013, Oreo transformed not only its image and but it had also changed the advertising landscape with a real-time marketing coup. Their social media accomplishment was the outcome of a renovated company’s marketing philosophy and processes. The marketing team that is behind the success of Oreo helped with making the shift from a self-involved advertiser to a creator of lively content that generated a lot of buzz. They are now famous for being creative, tweeting on culturally relevant topics, posting fun Facebook posts. They hit more than a couple social media home runs and have shown true mastery of social media usage for Brands, from their Super Bowl tweets, the 100-day “Daily Twist” Facebook campaign, the “Cookie Vs. Cream” videos on YouTube, to their Twitter mockery with their competitor Kit Kat.

Though this famous brand of cookie is notorious for its black-and-white striped exterior, the brand Oreo is a social media powerhouse, as they have millions of followers on various social media platforms. Oreo frequently monitors the return on investment (evaluation of the sales ratio spent on ads and promotional endeavors). The campaigns that are a combination of traditional advertising and digital and social media efforts are analyzed to be twice as effective. The predominant key to Oreo’s success in social strategy is planning and channel synergy. The brand skillfully administers popular accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest to form an network of channels that participate and cooperate with one another not only online but also in offline print, media, marketing and PR.

Important lessons that can be used by any other brand regarding how to run a successful social media strategy are listed below:

Be timely & topical with you social media messages

The term Newsjacking is the notion of placing a brand’s marketing message or opinions into a present news story. This is done to get extra notice from both consumers and the media. The term Culture-jacking has a comparable classification, but focuses on specific trendy events that are happening in a country. Brands can apply this lesson by beforehand creating a schedule of upcoming holidays and events, and posting on subject related to them on these dates. Speak on current real-time events while updating your status or tweeting, and thus be timely and topical.

Promote regularly and with consistency

Oreo was very consistent with their campaign messages and updated their statuses or tweets frequently. They have reached the form of viral marketing by having millions of fans online. These campaigns would not have gone viral, if they did not have millions of followers, but previous these big successes they were posting 5,000 simple tweets, at a rate of three to four tweets a day, engaging with fans and constructing a continuing dialogue. Brands can copy this idea by having a plan on frequently engaging on social media with their followers build up a social community.

Use graphics in your updates & make use of simple concepts

Oreo has posted social media campaigns with relatively high production quality. They do not only tweet or update their statuses regarding a current event, because they know that producing a well designed image while sharing a tweet or update can be more effective. The images of Oreo posted on social media are effectively designed and have a strong tagline. Brands can apply this lesson to by making use of more high quality illustrations, and simplifying their shared message.

Above all: focus on having fun

The true intend of Social media is to be social. So consumers online love to be entertained by fun-loving engagements. All of Oreo’s social media campaigns are intended to make followers smile. Oreo speed while tweeting is amazing to watch, their shared images makes users smile and even some are hilarious. Oreo is not afraid to be playful, seen in their Twitter battle with competitor Kit Kat. Companies must above all realize that when interacting with a social community it’s essential to have fun with it.

Every company anticipating to increase brand awareness via social media platforms should pay attention to commitment, consistency and creativity, in a similar way that Oreo applies to their social communications.

References:

Bullock, L. (August 19, 2013) “Social Media for Brands, What You Can Learn From Oreo.” <http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/social-media-brands-what-you-can-learn-oreo>

Hayes, C. (April 16, 2014) “In the spotlight: Oreo’s social media team.” <http://www.socialbro.com/blog/spotlight-oreo>

Sacks, D. (2014) “The Story Of Oreo: How An Old Cookie Became A Modern Marketing Personality.” <http://www.fastcocreate.com/3037068/the-story-of-oreo-how-an-old-cookie-became-a-modern-marketing-personality>

Hayes, M. (2013) “The Secret Behind Oreo’s Social Media Marketing” http://www.shopify.com/blog/7589919-the-secret-behind-oreos-social-media-marketing

Photo Credit: <http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0070/7032/files/Oreo_Daily_Twist_Ad_Campaign.jpeg?817>

<http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0070/7032/files/Oreo_Cookie_Social_Media_Marketing_Advertising.png?815>

Business Case

Customers-first philosophy: Success of e-commerce giant Alibaba

May 3, 2015 okaya88 Leave a comment

The chairman and CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has a deep appreciation for the role of consumers in navigating a business. Alibaba’s social responsibility includes providing 0.3% of their revenue to environmental protection. His priority list, even surpassing social responsibility, includes businesses concentrating on Alibaba’s beliefs and hopes, the reasons as to why they got into this business and their approach in satisfying consumers, in contrast to focusing solely on profits and margins.

There are vital lessons that other businesses can learn from Alibaba’s customers-first philosophy:

Businesses need to think like their customers.

Many technology innovators accentuate technology and place products above everything else, thus loosing sight of the target audience. Alibaba states that they look at technology through the eyes of their consumers. The great achievement of Alibaba thus far has been achieved through placing consumers first. This can be seen by their acquired knowledge and understanding of the Chinese Market, which has had an effect on their approach to even their product variety. They help small businesses and are adamant about caring more about them than caring for yourself.

“Focus first on customer satisfaction and second on teamwork. Shareholders’ interests come third because they are outcomes, not inputs.”

-Jack Ma, Alibaba chairman and CEO

Alibaba makes it effortless for small businesses to use their website as they have constructed a customer-oriented design that makes it more easy for consumers to seek and buy items on this website.

Businesses should treat their consumers like a crystal ball.

Alibaba is dedicated on having a long-term vision for their business. The company has previously stated that this long-term vision requires them to not be sidetracked by transitory of the economy as it will have its ups and downs.

Alibaba achieves this by being focused on the consumer and watching their actions as they have also predicted the rise of customer-to-business (C2B) corporate strategies for the near future, and predict that consumers will be empowered resulting in fully commanding their needs to companies.

Businesses must create value for their consumers.

Alibaba acknowledges that consumers are more then customer who buy products. The consumer of today is a member of society that is concerned with their environment and social outcomes.

“Your business model, it should create value and be good to society.”

– Jack Ma, Alibaba chairman and CEO

Companies must have this wider lens perspective when it comes to consumers. In this new era of empowered consumers, they select the brands that demonstrate the same ideals that support theirs, making them the values-driven consumers.

References:

Najberg, A. (October 20, 2011) “Jack Ma: Business Model ‘Should Be Good to Society’” The Wall Street Journal (WSJ Blog) Web. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/10/20/jack-ma-business-model-should-be-good-to-society/

Claveria, K. (December 8, 2014) “What CMOs and CEOs can learn from Alibaba’s Jack Ma” Visioncritical.com Web. https://www.visioncritical.com/jack-ma-customer-centric/

Photo credit:

<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/09/19/business/dbpix-alibaba-jackma5alt/dbpix-alibaba-jackma5alt-blog480.jpg>

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Business Case

Loyalty through Social Networks

May 3, 2015 okaya88 Leave a comment

Due to the drastic transformation in the media landscape Social Media has surfaced and has become widespread as it is growing rapidly in the last couple of years, totaling the number of active social media as of January 2015 to account for 2.08 billion worldwide according to Statista.com. Businesses’ accelerating investments in Social Media, especially in in Facebook, is the status quo right now. Yet, a lot of firms still do not perceive social networks to be a vehicle for gaining customer loyalty. These companies perceive social networks to be a source for generating brand awareness.

A different view was added to this discussion of Social Media by researchers Gamboa & Goncalves (2014), who did a case study on Zara and their use of Social Media as a source towards building and enhancing customer relations. On the social network site Facebook, Zara classes in their respective category of fashion brands, as having one of the largest number and most valuable fans. This study showed that companies could increase customer loyalty through building upon important factors such as trust, customer satisfaction, perceived value, and commitment. Fans as well as non-fans of brand on Facebook were used in this research and it showed that relations are more improved for Facebook fans of the brand compared to the non-Facebook fans, showing that the most important cause of loyalty is customer satisfaction, as seen in Table 1 below.

(Table 1: Gamboa & Goncalves , 2012, p.714)

Personal Relationship Focus

For businesses, the greatest task is forming a personal relationship with the consumer, similar to the interaction of them with their friends on Facebook. A company’s Facebook brand page must be a “place” where consumers can dialogue with the brand as well as be part of a community. The old-school era of only focusing on commercial goals has ended, as the important of a relational context is a definite requisite for companies to survive in Web 2.0.

Customer satisfaction is crucial

Businesses that desire to attain customer loyalty must have a priority in seeking customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the most important driver with the most positive (direct and indirect) effect on fans’ loyalty. The social network site, Facebook is a communication channel that can increase consumers being more satisfied, and as a result of this, can create deeper client-brand relationships. However, as customer satisfaction is an outcome of the consumer being fulfilled of created expectations, brands on the social networking site should be quick and transparant in answering their Facebook fans’ questions. The most crucial element is frequent interaction as well as maintaining an active and dynamic presence on this platform.

Tools and practices

Being dynamic and interactive with fans are essentials in making consumers come back, trust a brand, and be satisfied. Creating content (such as quizzes or poll questions) that encourages fans’ active behavior is also essential, and it can also serve as a mean to gaining knowledge about customers’ opinions regarding the brand.

Facebook to serve as a stand-alone tool. Customer questions or critiques should receive answers very quickly. When consumers are forced to use other methods to come in contact with the company, it will increase customer dissatisfaction.

Content relevance of the brand page is important. Only sharing brand advertisements or internal information not be effective. Content sharing such as news, funny updates, suggestions suggestions for the weekend or holidays are great ways to achieve engagement.

Identify target group and their interests. Specifically targeting consumers while sharing content will increase customer satisfaction, trust, and commitment.

Create exclusive content. Such as games or applications for Facebook fans. Consumers love campaigns that propose advantages to them and posting exclusive content via Facebook will create alertness of the Facebook Fans to the brand page and as a result they will become loyal.

Always be professional, yet never boring. Brans will lose fans if they consistently post advertisements, post too much, too few or post irrelevant information.

Brands can communicate with consumers by by integrating Facebook into their marketing strategy. The expectancy is that Facebook will maintain and even increase its effect by 26%. In this current landscape of web 2.0 and social media with substantial growth margins, businesses should start being very active on Facebook by maximizing the benefits of it and by captivating brand loyalty in the online world.

Reference: Gamboa, A. M., & Gonçalves, H. M. (2014). Customer loyalty through social networks: Lessons from Zara on Facebook. Business Horizons, 57(6), 709-717.

Business Case

What the consumer wants, the consumer gets.

April 26, 2015 okaya88 Leave a comment

When a company’s vision is to offer “Earth’s biggest selection and to be Earth’s most customer-centric company”, they’ve got some big shoes to fill. Due to the popularity of the term “customer-centric”, everybody’s been claiming they’re dedicated on the customer, however, are their real-time activities supporting this claim?

Amazon’s Vice President of External Payments, Patrick Gauthier is not in agreement with the statement that everybody is truly focused on the customer, as too many are obsessed by the industry lingo, too fixated on generating the next big cash cow, and repeatedly overlooking who’s voice it is that they are representing, namely that of the consumer and the merchant. Payments and commerce leaders should analyze the situation with a customer-first mentality in this industry in order to enter into true innovation.

“Start with the customer and work backwards.”

Most companies claim they begin their processes with the consumer in mind, however in amidst of the translation, the lingo which is used in the industry – that of the insiders, in essence keeps innovation away from the vision, as the true message appearing in the lingo of the consumer is lost in translation. Gauthier perspective, also shared by payments, commerce and retail experts at Innovation Project 2015, proposes a backward motion of customer-first mentality in seeking what a business model needs to solve. For example, every Amazon product manager is known to write and internal press release, which focuses on the problem of the customer and the current solution they are offering and how this offering fails. Following this, the managers write down every single benefit that the new product will provide to this problem, and will not stop until the benefits will be of interest for the customer. They stay that the money will follow once the company focuses on what the customer truly want. In this new era, having the perspective of a customer-focused company is surpassing having a financial perspective. Starting with the consumer in the back of your mind and going backwards, thus focusing on what a company believes the business model is intended to solve, as this will deliver diverse methods of serving those customer needs. Innovation can occur quickly, but more importantly, instead of focusing on the speeds, it is more significant that innovation happens right as well as for the right target audience.

How to approach this according to Gauthier:

Being part of more dialogues with outsiders
Connecting to the merchant and consumer
Having more conversations that are focused on actual consumer needs
Conversing less regarding payments
Conversing more about the commerce experience

Drop the industry jargon

When the industry jargon is dropped, a focus can be given to consumer identity and true innovation, and in turn enables a full customer experience. Companies can only provide this by forming an open setting of transparency, enabled through conversations. Listen and acknowledge who the consumer is, and it will answers how the consumer prefers to pay will come to the surface. This in turn has the potential to open gateways to a richer commerce experience for the company as well as the customer.

Botch the customer and the merchants in essence want be part of a commerce experience, in contrast to a payment experience. Gauthier states that companies need to focus less on payments and more on the individuals that are making the transactions. He discusses identity and economics in the same sentence, as he believes it is pivotal.

“Who I am [as a consumer] is pretty key to what I’m going to do. Today, the economics is very centered around how I pay. And maybe at some point the economics should be centered, or certainly migrated, not with just so much just how I pay, but who I am. The who I am, and the willingness to share who I am — what I choose to share — should potentially change the economics of a transaction.”

– Patrick Gauthier, Amazon’s VP of External Payments

Both identity and payment experience are part of the commerce experience. Yet, from the merchants’ side, the occurring conversations focus on the payments side. The downside of this occurrence is that it diminishes the key role of the retail and commerce experience during the transaction stage, loosing out on the important achieving merchant-centric experience.

The industry is battling with conflicts due to having opposing viewpoints, on how payments and commerce ought to be engaged into the consumer experience. This tension of sort is a result of commerce innovation is completely being overtaken by payments innovation, similar to the example of a current successful business model Uber.

“The [retail] industry needs to embrace customer-centricity in order to really get to what it can be in the next 10 years.”

– Patrick Gauthier, Amazon’s VP of External Payments

Many views, and opinions from payments-, retail- and commerce sectors as well as managers with innovative perspectives are opening up discussion points. What is essentially needed though is a dialogue regarding what and who these individuals are actually chatting about.

References:

Pymts (2015) “Amazon’s customer-centric Focus.” pymnts.com. 24 Mar. 2015. Web. <http://www.pymnts.com/in-depth/2015/whos-talking-about-innovation/#.VT0yIxOUee4>.

McAllister, Ian. (2012) “What Is Amazon’s Approach to Product Development and Product Management?” Quora.com, 18 May 2012. Web. <http://www.quora.com/What-is-Amazons-approach-to-product-development-and-product-management>.

Bulygo, Z. “Becoming a Customer Centric Company” 9 June 2014. Web. <https://blog.kissmetrics.com/customer-centric-company>

Header image: http://pretiumsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Customer-Experience-Management-Customer-Centric-Organization-copy.jpg

Infographics: Web. <https://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/how-to-survive-and-thrive-in-the-customer-revolution-exacttarget-infographic.png>

Articles

Reviews & Ratings: Consumer online-posting behavior

April 5, 2015 okaya88 Leave a comment

“Unfiltered feedback from customers is a positive even when it’s negative. A bad or so-so online review can actually help you because it gives customers certainty that the opinion is unbiased.”

– Source: Gail Goodman, Entrepreneur, 2011

Social media delivers an ultimate platform for customers to broadcast their personal opinions regarding purchased products and services and therefore accelerate word-of-mouth (WOM) or consumer reviews to travel fast. Nearly 63% of consumers are more prone to buy products on a website that has online consumer reviews (iPerceptions, 2011). Online consumers reviews are trusted 12 times more, in comparison with descriptions of the product stated by the manufacturers themselves (eMarketer, February 2010). Companies who provide space for reviews on their websites, have an increase in company sales of nearly 18% (Reevoo). This video below defines how customers can assess online consumer reviews and recommendations while researching and shopping online.

Youtube: “Online Reviews and Recommendations”

Chen et. Al (2011) examined the interactions amongst consumer posting behavior and marketing variables such as product price and quality. An important part of the research was about how such interactions progress as the Internet and consumer review websites draw widespread approval where people use it more often. The study’s new automobile models data comprised of two samples that were gathered from 2001 and from 2008. As an automobile involves thorough searching before making a significant financial decision, these years were seen appropriate. Also more consumers made use of the Internet between 2001 and 2008 when considering purchasing an automobile. A total of 54% of new-automobile consumers made use of the Internet in when buying a car in 2001, reported by Morton, Zettelmeyer and Silva-Risso. According to a report by eMarketer, in 2008 this percentage was increased to nearly 80%. This study included prominent automobile review websites that covered the distinctive sections of the market— leading car enthusiasts (experts) as well as amateur consumers.

Motivations for Posting Online Consumer Reviews.

Gaining social approval – self-approval – indicating a level of expertise or social ranking – by demonstrating their superb purchase decisions, are all psychological reasons why consumers post online reviews. It can also be used to state satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Diverse types of customers are driven by distinctive motivations for posting reviews online. The earlier group of Internet users (in the study – year 2001) differs from the second group of Internet users (year 2008) when it comes to the reasoning as to why they post online. The consumers categorized as early group of users (a.k.a. experts – early adaptors of innovation) have high levels of product expertise, making them more likely to be psychologically seeking status and engaging in noticeable consumption. They are seeking to representing know-how and social ranking is particularly significant in the Internet’s early years (2001), as they tend to have high incomes and are more so price insensitive.

Conversely, the Internet has advanced and developed over this period, and it has appealed to a bigger population of types of consumers. Where, in 2001 it used to be a select group of Internet users who would post reviews, the Internet usage and online consumer review sites of today have become more mainstream. The Late adopters (2008) cultivate to be more no-nonsense and price focused compared to early adopters.

Marketing variables – effect on consumer online-posting behavior

Marketing variables indeed have an influence on consumer online-posting behavior. In the early stages of the Internet (2001) the price of products had negative relationship but premium- brand image has a positive relationship with the number of online consumer postings; differently, product quality has a U-shaped relationship with the number of online consumer postings. These different relationships are likely to be driven by early adopters of Internet usage.

The Internet infiltrates to mass consumers online, who are more inclined to be price sensitive as well as value driven.

Though certain marketing variables can lead to a big number of consumers engaging in online posting activities, these consumers do not automatically give higher ratings. The study shows that mass consumers lean towards posting online consumer reviews at higher as well as lower purchase price levels. In contrast to posting online consumer reviews primarily at lower price levels, which happened frequently during the early stages of Internet usage. The Internet has been accepted more by mass consumers online, where they express (dis)liking a product or service. This motivation of sharing reviews has become more important compared to sharing expertise of social status.

In conclusion, this research showed that the connections between marketing variables and consumer online-posting behavior are distinctive at the early phases compared to mature phases when it comes to Internet usage. High prices increase the overall consumer review ratings, which may be good news for a firm’s pricing decision. They found that the search for status is a core driver behind consumer-review behavior, predominantly in the early Internet stage. In market where it is difficult to assess quality, costly to assess quality, and where heterogeneous tastes are important factors when choosing a purchase, customers are occupied in all-encompassing decision-making. These conditions make it more likely for consumers to request external opinions online, before they make a decision on what they will be purchasing.

References:

Chen, Y., Fay, S., & Wang, Q. (2011). The role of marketing in social media: How online consumer reviews evolve. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 25(2), 85-94.

Charlton, G. (2012) “Ecommerce Consumer Reviews: Why You Need Them and How to Use Them.” Econsultancy.com

Featured image: http://splumber.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Plumbing-Online-reviews-1030×574.jpg