In the Fall of 2009 Simpleweb did an online marketing campaign for Fat Face (the high street retailer). It was their most successful campaign ever, increasing their number by grand% and the amount of "eyeballs" involved rivaled a TV ad. The construct was very simple - there`s a character study elsewhere on our website that will hold you plenty more details.
When analysing the results it was the start sentence that I could truly see what was happening in real-time, allowing an insight that has eluded me from the previous campaigns that I`ve done. The Four Pillars
Being the simple form of someone that I am, I distilled the results down into four basic building blocks:
A good balanced campaign uses all of The Four Pillars
If a cause is lacking in one of these key areas then at least one of the other pillars must pay for it. We`ll discuss this in a later post.
I`ll try to briefly examine each column with an illustration from the Fat Face competition and another (mobile) campaign I did in 2003 for Dizzee Rascal while at the now defunct YRmedia. Emotional content
You want to read your audience. Who are you communicating with and why? Once you experience this you can make an emotional hook_
Fat Face: Winning a VW Campervan. Who doesn`t need a sparkling campervan? A hugely desirable item for many different generations of people. Astutely Fat Face knew who they wanted to attract and what would tear their strings. By offering up a campervan as a treasure they tuned into their target demographic with a one off uber prize.
Dizzee Rascal: We gave away ringtones. Beggars knew their demographic were teenagers with small or no money so they needed something real and easily attainable. The ringtone was free and offered in all formats, no matter how well or bad your ring was it would work - to some degree.
Other examples to discuss include: Burger King`s Facebook friend culling, beext`s Haiti help. The Fan Base
Some campaigns begin well. There`s already a great amount of "fans" that bear the sum of the campaign, whether it be a product, artist or brand. Fans can be created via traditional advertising but we get to determine if this is necessary based on the other pillars_
Fat Face: Fat Face already had a full sized mailing list and a lot of loyal customers. Their customers are quite amazing in their commitment to the brand.
Dizzee Rascal: Dizzee Rascal was up for the Mercury Music award and was acquiring a lot of medicine press. With Beggars excellent team already creating awareness, the fan base while small, was vocal and loyal. The Mechanic
How does the actual online system process? Is it a microsite, Facebook app, Twitter retweet campaign? Do they signed up, sign in, share their address, share with their mates? What is it that we are stressful to achieve?
We want to acknowledge the principal business aim and so carefully craft a way to establish that happen. If we program it right we will see the benefits of petty and tertiary objectives being met.
Fat Face: We built a really simple prize draw for Fat Face. A user enters the draw. They then get their own page that they`re encouraged to deal with their friends through Facebook, Twitter and Email. Every one of their friends entering the trace gives the entrant three more entries into the competition. The entrant feels like they were "getting somewhere" the more they shared, the more they shared, the more they open the sword to new people (a secondary objective) and the more information was captured when new people entered the draw (primary objective).
Dizzee Rascal: For Dizzee`s campaign it was even simpler. We developed a way for users to inscribe their details into a site in substitution for a free ringtone (Fix up look sharp) sent directly to their mobile. Users were only allowed to get one ringtone to curb abuse. We used to predict this the "viral bribe" where both parties were happy with the resolution of their transaction and so told others. The principal aim of construction a highly targeted database of fans was achieved as good as creating a look of giving support to the community, brand awareness (I can`t say you how many times I heard that ringtone in public) and website traffic. Engagement
This is the least real of the pillars. You could indicate that the other pillars combined form the "engagement rating". Personally I imagine it can get a column of its own_
How does a customer/user/reader/client engage with the press? The mechanic facilitates the engagement. We`ve somehow got someone to "operate" with us, now what? We live what we want them to do, but how do we really get them to do that? This is where your psychologists and old school advertisers come into their own. Imagery, copy, branding, usability, anything that appears to be subjective can all be put at the engagement pillar.
Fat Face: A campervan, cool people, desirability and the use of personal recommendation combined to make a compelling engagement that even got people to re-word the messages that were Facebooked or Tweeted by the "mechanic".
The buy-in by the user was so luxuriously that they began to alter the substance to place their friends. We would never have known this if we were not monitoring Twitter and Friendfeed. A more powerful engagement process I am yet to see and we will definitely explore it further.
Dizzee Rascal: Dizzee`s was a completely different story. Kids were getting something for release AND cool. Most truetones at the clock were 4.50 when the real cost was really low. Fans felt like they were getting something of genuine respect for nothing_ All they had to do was give their mobile number, email address, musical taste, etc_ Why would they share it "illegally" when they could go and get it well and for release from the website? Round things roll off uneven tables_
As you can see in the Fat Face and Dizzee Rascal examples given, these two campaigns have about an adequate portion of the pillars. If only one of the pillars is disproportionately deficient then the others want to take up the "height".
Three Strong Pillars - needs to compensate...
For instance if you make a low initial fan base you will take a stronger mechanism, higher emotional subject and a deeper engagement level. Or, one super boost in one area, such as a really strong emotional pull such as beext.org and the Haiti people matching service.
Thanks for reading this far, I`m not surely how this situation ended up being this long. I`ll get a pair of imbalanced campaigns to run through for another post.
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