Honey Maid Responds to Homophobes

Honey Maid recently released an ad that contained a family with two dads, and a family with parents of different races. The ad was meant to  celebrate all types of families and make the point that there is nothing except love which makes a family a family.

Although it was an exceptionally beautiful commercial which celebrates the new modern America’s values, there was a lot opposition. A lot of the hate was generated by the fact that some users didn’t agree with the families in the video. Some comments were homophobic and some were racist, but the main idea is that they were filled with hate. Honey Maid could have just let the comments be and come back with no response. They did not do that. Honey Maid made a very strategic marketing move that responded to the negative comments, while creating some loyal customers at the same time. The company hired two artists two print out all of the negative tweets and comments and make something with the hateful messages. The messages first start out as just rolled up tubes, but are transformed into a beautiful image which spells out the word “love.” It doesn’t stop there. They then printed out all of the positive messages and used them to surround the negative ones. The best part: there were nearly 10 times as many positive comments as there were negative. Honey Maid showed the country that they believe in equality and are a company with good intentions for all families. This marketing move really tied the idea of caring and kindness to the Honey Maid brand. These types of outreaches are very unique, and when successful like this one, can really make a lasting impact on the millennials.

 

 

 

 

Let’s get BREAKFAST at TACO BELL?

Yes, you read that right. Breakfast at Taco Bell. I never thought I’d see the day that a Mexican fast food restaurant would come up with some way to make an applicable breakfast menu. And don’t be fooled, they’re not only serving burritos! Check out some of the headliner items:

So why does this matter to us millennials?

This was a huge move on Taco Bell’s part. Since the day I came out of the womb, Taco Bell has specialized in lunch and dinner. Now, as the brand started to lose a bit of traction, BAM, comes breakfast to complete transform the brand. With a very strategic marketing move like this, Taco Bell has built a huge buzz around their name and created new hours for the store that us customers could have ever imagined. Now, even if its 8 AM, its acceptable to say “Hey, lets get some taco bell for breakfast.” Traditionally this statement would have never been used. We all now have a newly sparked interest in visiting our local Taco Bell and give the new menu a taste. Now, Taco Bell is driving more foot traffic and potentially bringing back some old customers who simply just forgot about Taco Bell until this viral campaign. The best part? Reviews say that the food is actually good! So, Taco Bell, you swayed me. I’ll be visiting your restaurant in the near future, and maybe, just maybe, Taco Bell will hold a new connotation in my big book of vocabulary.

March Madness: Buffalo Wild Wings’ Risky But Worthwile Ad.

Its March Madness season and the period of frantically filling out last minute brackets is over. Although not comparable whatsoever to the SuperBowl, the advertising industry once again has a sports event to take advantage of.

This is very true. Seeing that the NCAA tournament is played by millennials like us, there is a large chance a big portion of viewers are millennials whether it be to watch friends play or to simply root for their school in the tournament.

There are many different ways in which marketers could target us during a sports event like this one, but Buffalo Wild Wings’ really outdid themselves. Creating an ad costs money. And in order for it to be with a company’s expense, it ideally needs to be viewed by consumers (obviously.) Buffalo Wild Wings’ took a gamble this year once again with an ad that would only be relevant in the case that any of the March Madness ended up going into overtime. (This as was made a few years back, but hasn’t seen success until this year with the large number of games seeing overtime.) Now, the risk that they took in producing this ad was the fact that there is a possibility no games would have ended in overtime, thus making the ad they spent large amounts of money on useless. This year, 5 of the games so far have gone into overtime, ultimately allowing Buffalo Wild Wings to play their ad and to their luck, its success. The ad plays like this:

The ad is hysterical. Generally, overtime games are more excited and allow more adrenaline to flow freely through our veins as the clock winds down slowly for an unexpected period of the game. By making a parody and implying that Buffalo Wild Wings controls the game, they are showing that they do all they can for a customer in a subtle way. Instead of an old-fashioned “Our products are super great and better than the competitor” ad, they took a new funny approach that doesn’t directly state that message, but implies it. This is a perfect example of not being so “in your face” towards us millennials. The ad gives us a laugh, and satirically tells us that we will always get great service at Buffalo Wild Wings. This ad worked so well, that in a six hour time frame, the company was tweeted about 6,000 times. Among us millennials, any ad that can spark that many tweets should be considered a millennial success.

Millennial Grade:

“Generous” Billboards. The new craze?

A lot of you may be question what a “generous” billboard actually is. Well, it’s a term I coined for a new form of marketing that was recently seen being done by a soft drink maker, L&P, in New Zealand. Now, the big word on the street is that wearable tech is going to surge in popularity in the next coming years and that it will completely change the world we live. What about wearable advertisements? L&P, created billboards with the message to “hold on to summer.” What consumers didn’t realize right away though, is that the billboards were actually giving away free flip flops and towels with the L&:P brand name and message on them. Check it out here:

This is an extremely great move on L&P’s part. Not only are they improving relationships with customers by giving them free stuff, but they are creating an army of walking advertisements. When you use that towel or free pair of flip flops you got, you are promoting the brand whether you like it or not. Is this costing them a lot of money? Absolutely not. Flip flops and towels can be produced in mass quantities for prices way lower than some traditional advertising can cost. By providing us with a reward for looking at your advertisement, they are conditioning people to show that L&P cares about their customers. It is a really simple concept. You give us something, and we get the subliminal obligation to give back to the “generous” company by continuing to by their product, or ideally switching from your regular routine to buying this product now, all because of a simple cheap pair of flip flops. This is a prime of example of freshening the marketing world and taking creativity to a new level. Not only are consumers interacting with your ad for longer than normal, they get to take home a piece of the ad so your investment in the billboard space doesn’t stop working until the flip flops and towels get ruined. Its the best way for a marketer to spend their money because not only does it leave a lasting impression, it gives you a physical object to which you can tie your memory of that moment to. My advice to marketers: Take this is an amazing example of how to reach us millennial. We know you want us to buy your things, but show us that you care. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a piece of advertising a person can physically use is worth a million.

Weird Ways Marketers Use Twitters to Target Us.

It wasn’t until the Oscars last night until I realized how much the term “watching TV” has changed. It wasn’t too long ago that I remember that “watching TV” meant that we would literally sit down and pay our attention solely at the television. Nowadays, if you aren’t constantly looking at your phone during television, you aren’t a part of the majority. In this sense, television has become a completely interactive experience.

What’s crazy, is that marketers pay to advertise to certain people based on their hash tagging. For example, you could pay for you sponsored ad to show up on someones feed if they tweet with the hashtag #AmericanIdol. Marketers bet on what people will be hash tagging more during a certain broadcast and buy space on several different hashtags. It is a gamble for marketers, but they are extraordinarily smart in how they make their decisions.

One great example of this smart thinking can be seen in the decisions made by the marketers at Oxygen, who ran a campaign for their new show The Face. Seeing that Kim Novak’s plastic surgery has been a huge discussion, and the marketers knew she would be making an appearance, they bought out advertising around the hashtag #KimNovak. Although the two didn’t have anything in common, the ads still reached the same targeted demographic and their marketing was a success. This is a very good approach to marketing toward us millennials. We spend most of our time communicating on our phone and using that to a marketing advantage is really brilliant. 

(You can see that the ad really was not relevant to the #KimNovak.)

Marketers should really take this as an example when looking to target millennials. We watch TV. We use our phones. Connect the two and you have yourself an effective marketing channel. Bridging the gap between phones and television is what we are coming to and it is seeming as if it will be the new place to market effectively. Marketers, do some research and look up some of the trending topics going on in the news these days. Buy some ads around related hashtags, and I promise you we will see your ads whether we want to or not.

WhatsApp: Is Facebook really after grasping advertising?

Earlier this week, the big news leaked that Facebook had acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. This was a very large amount of money to pay for a company run by 55 employees and no real effective revenue model. So, this leaves everyone confused and question Zuckerberg’s decision in purchasing this international company. Here are some of my ideas on reasons why this transaction happened and whether or not it will really affect the advertising market. Enjoy these reasons in no particular order.

1) User Base

WhatsApp currently has a user base of about 450 million people world wide (people who use the app at least once a month). This provides a very great channel for mobile marketers.

Currently, there are no ads on the application, but no details of the deal or the future of the ad space on the application were released.  This user base is very coveted because marketers are struggling to find new channels of communication with customers as us millennials are drifting away from television to our mobile devices. Although the smaller real estate on the smart phone screens makes it hard to effectively communicate marketing messages, people are working hard on finding a new effective technique and I believe Mark Zuckerberg is confident they will.

2) Will Facebook ruin the appeal of no advertising on WhatsApp

In response to this comment, Facebook answered that they will keep the application ad free so that they could work on a new strategy over the course of the next few years. In fact, the founders of WhatsApp are vehemently against advertising on their application. The founder once tweeted the famous Fight Club quote “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.” In one of WhatsApp’s blog posts, they stated, “Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.” So, that leaves us with one question in terms of the advertising industry. Is this acquisition an amazing achievement for advertisers, or is it a complete nightmare?

3) WhatsApp currently has a bad revenue model.

Currently, the only money that WhatsApp makes is the $1 annual fee. Last year, the company only did $20 million dollars in revenue. Where did this valuation and logic behind the terms of the acquisition come from? If Facebook paid $19 billion for a company that only did that small amount of revenue, they must have something up their sleeve. Although they are denying that ads will reintroduced on the app, they definitely have some sort of plan on how to massively capitalize on the user base of their new acquisuition. What is this plan they have? Will they charge more for the service? Allow you to send presents or money and compete with the new popular payment app Venmo? No one knows, but we can all keep guessing or just sit back and wait for Facebook to surprise us once again.

P.S. I think this was a personal matter. I believe that Zuckerberg was so disappointed at Even Spegiel that he just had to buy something similar for a ridiculously larger amount to shove it in his face.

When Snow Hits Atlanta. Social Media Wins.

I stumbled upon a fairly interesting current event today. Atlanta was hit by a HUGE storm which rocked the city. A snowfall of a whole inch covered the roads and made the interstates and highways look like a scene out of your favorite apocalyptic movie.

A group of people started a Facebook page called “SnowedOutAtlanta.” On the page, many Atlanta residents are offering food and warm drinks to the drivers stuck on the roads due to the snow. The founder of the page, Georgia resident Michelle Sollicto, created a space where people stuck in the snow could reach out for help by posting short comments and their exact location.

As much as this page restores our faith in humanity, it also should shine a light in that brain of yours. This is a perfect opportunity for marketing. I’m not talking about dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a structured marketing plan, but it is a quick and easy event that could help any company gain exposure. For example, if Google noticed that the number of users in Atlanta is dwindling and the users are moving towards other search engines, this is the perfect opportunity to gain those users back. They could send any number of people to go out on the roads, and to hand out free hot beverages. The catch? Free hot beverages in Google cups. Now, all of these people who are receiving aid from Google, will feel a subliminal obligation to use Google. Using this tactic, Google would be saying “Hey, we care about you.” We like when people care about us. The days of the aggressive salesmen and ads are over. If you want to sell something or get people to use something, it’s no longer as simple as just throwing up some interesting ads. Today (at least with our generation), personal interaction with customers is key.

In the past: “Hey, this product will do xyz for you, and you know what? I’ll give you 20 dollars off right now!”

That does not work anymore. With the internet and endless options, you need to be unique. We can find reviews, compare prices, and even watch videos on different types of product. This luxury is something which eliminates the salesman’s advantage of unknowledgeable customers. We don’t fall for any of the *Store Closing Sale* *Limited Time Offer!*.

It’s our best time to buy? Why can’t I wait 2 weeks for the price to go down? Why can’t I just go on the internet and get it cheaper?

What works now: “You need help? I’d be glad to help you out. By the way, have you ever heard of xyz product?”

That’s an approach that makes us feel more like a person, and not just a customer who has money to spend.

These big companies looking for new ways to stay up to date and relevant, really need to take advantage of these situations. When you do something nice for us, we feel the need to pay you back. Whether it be just adding to your sites traffic, or maybe just using the new company that helped you out to replace a different that you’re currently using. Think about it. It makes sense.