Intuit Jingles All The Way From Software To Heartstrings

Intuit campaignGetting individuals and small-business owners to build an emotional bond with accounting software isn't easy. Intuit QuickBooks might manage to capture the lion's share of annual sales, but when it came to pulling on consumers' heartstrings, the company needed another hand.

That hand came from EVB San Francisco. The digital content marketing firm built a campaign around fictitious music producer Tommy Silk and Web-based tool "jingle generator,"www.thejinglegenerator.com, to help small businesses build tighter relationships with their customers.

Kim Kline, VP of account management and planning at EVB, says: "Every business needs a jingle to connect with customers."

The campaign promotes Intuit's online accounting software QuickBooks Simple Start 2008, which is free to those visiting the site--from the stay-at-home mom who offers accounting services from her kitchen table to the local flower shop with five employees.

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Music producer Tommy Silk, a nostalgic 1980s rocker that EVB dreamed up, walks jingle-makers through the process of either recording their business's names and addresses or typing that info in a box that is then translated by text-to-speech software.

Intuit and EVB posted Silk's profile on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, promoting the partnership between Intuit and Silk Studios, the production company owned by the 47-year-old jingle producer. As of Monday, he had 17 MySpace friends.

Intuit wants that personal connection with customers, too, says Kira Wampler, word of mouth/social marketing leader for QuickBooks.

Aside from posting profiles on social network sites and a video on YouTube promoting the campaign, Intuit launched a company trivia contest to raise awareness and get employees involved. Questions include: In what city was the first jingle created? Answer: Minneapolis in 1926. The awareness has prompted QuickBooks employees to create jingles for customers, friends and family businesses.

Wampler declined to provide cost estimates for the campaign, but says "when you build a very engaging experience, you will see results that outperform traditional online advertising," such as banner ads and video clips. Often, she says, marketers make consumers take too many steps, lowering the response rate--but if the steps are fun to take, response rate increases.

Last fall, QuickBooks launched the "Just Start" campaign, Intuit's major foray into a WOM promotion encouraging people to start a business. QuickBooks learned that small business owners want to engage with the company in ways beyond using its products. That engagement spilled out into the jingle generator concept.

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