Having a national social media campaign through Facebook is great, but when it comes to selling high-end mobile sound and video systems, it’s important to have a local advantage as well. In a first-of-its kind offering, JVC Mobile Entertainment has created a network of 84 Facebook pages that link the company’s national product lines with local audio and video dealers. The pages will be a resource for JVC fans to learn about not only JVC products and promotions in their area, but also lifestyle topics like music, action sports, body art and fashion, according to Chad Vogelsong, general manager of marketing for JVC Mobile Entertainment. “Every brand has a national page, and they talk about what they’re doing on a national level” Vogelsong tells Marketing Daily. “We thought, ‘Why not create a community of local dealers?’” JVC and its agencies (PR company American Rebel and ad agency e2amp) will be responsible for posting content to the 84 sites every day (as well as to the company’s national Facebook page), though the ultimate goal will be to connect with local businesses (such as music venues and tattoo parlors) in the 84 markets to have their Facebook updates and promotions appear on each local page as well, Vogelsong says. “Other than the tech stuff we put up once a week, the rest of it is content from these local areas,” he says. “It becomes a truly regionalized community.” Granted, setting up the network was no easy task. First, the endeavor is the first of its kind for any national brand, Vogelsong says. So much so, that Facebook initially shut down 84 separate JVC Mobile Entertainment pages until the company explained what it was trying to do. Another issue is the nascent nature of social media among JVC’s local dealers. “We noticed a lot of our dealers had not embraced Facebook,” Vogelsong says. To maintain each regional page, JVC is encouraging dealers to either interact with the pages independently, or to send photos and promotions and JVC and its agencies will update them daily. The payoff, according to Vogelsong, is a deeper level of communication with potential customers and fans to engage with on a daily basis on terms that they’ll find meaningful. “It’s an 84-page magazine that I get to fill with whatever I want,” he says. “It’s a daily news machine that we take to the local level.”
New research from the National Retail Federation confirms that smartphones and tablets will play a major part in shoppers’ holiday foraging, with 52.6% of smartphone owners using them to sniff out purchases. And those who own tablets are even more keen on shopper technology, with 70.5% of tablet owners planning to shop with them. Mostly, they plan to research products (31% of smartphone users and 50.8% of tablet owners); look up retailer information, such as location or hours (25.1% and 33.8%); make a purchase (14.1% and 34.8%); and redeem coupons (17.3% and 21.5%). But they’ll be spending less. The NRF’s 2011 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, concludes that shoppers plan to spend about $704.18 on holiday gifts and seasonal merchandise, down from last year’s $718.98. (But overall spending is expected to rise, and earlier this month, the NRF forecast a 2.8% rise in holiday spending to $465.6 billion. While that tepid gain is in line with many other forecasts, it is still a snowflake or two above the 2.6% average of the last 10 years.) And increasingly, consumers say their holiday spending is less about the holidays and more about bargain-hunting. About six in 10 holiday shoppers (59.9%) say they plan to take advantage of retailers’ sales and discounts to make additional non-gift purchases for themselves and their families, up from $112.20 last year. Gifts still amount for the biggest bite of the budget, with an average spending of $403.26 on kids, parents and other family members, and another $68.23 on friends, co-workers and even pets. The typical consumer also anticipates spending $46.73 on decorations, $26.52 on greeting cards, $96.75 on food and candy, and $18.23 on flowers. While some surveys have shown that discounters are slipping a little as Americans’ favorite way to shop, this survey finds that a few more people, 66.1% vs. 65.1% last year, plan to spend money there. Department stores are also gaining in popularity, with 56.9% planning department-store buys, versus 54.5% last year. But the big gainers are likely to be online retailers, with 46.7% of consumers in the survey planning to purchase something online, up from 43.9% last year. More tellingly, those online consumers plan to do just over a third of their shopping, 36%, via the Internet. And adults between 25 and 34 day say they intend to do 43.7% of shopping online. And gift cards will again loom large: For the fifth year in a row, and at the highest level in the survey’s history, 57.7% of shoppers say they’d like to receive one this year.
Carhartt is unleashing its own version of blue-collar chic, running the biggest ad campaign in its 122-year-history. The Dearborn, Mich.-based clothing company relies on machine-shop machismo with “Hands,” a TV spot that’s meant “to lift up working people,” Tony Ambroza, Carhartt's VP/Marketing, tells Marketing Daily. “We aren’t going to ignore the fact that it’s a tough time for people who live off their ability to work with their hands. Our research kept turning up, over and over, how resilient these people are, and how industrious.” In fact, he adds, “many of our customers say they don’t just work with their hands, they think with their hands. These ads respect that.” The "Hands" spot, created by Team Detroit, is airing on CMT, Discovery, ESPN and the History Channel, and scheduled to run through Dec. 18. While most of the hands in the ad are beefy and performing manly tasks with crowbars and chainsaws, there are some hard-working female hands, too. And, Ambroza says, the company is continuing its support of the women’s line, launched several years ago, with a dedicated print campaign. Ambroza adds that the brand isn’t just for hard-working urban types. “It’s really well known in the mountain states and Alaska, for example, and because it is such a strong outdoor brand, it’s warm and weatherproof, and in natural colors, it’s big with people who love the outdoors. In fact, in our Nashville focus groups, people told us they consider the pants snakeproof. And it also has strong appeal for many white-collar people who grew up in a blue-collar home.”
Now that video content is everywhere, video assets are the stem cells of advertising. Auto marketers clearly get that as more and more automotive video content, whether it's refigured from TV ads or web-only, are heading to interactive screens of all sizes in all places. At the recent J.D. Power & Associates Automotive Internet Roundtable in Las Vegas, San Mateo, Calif.-based Adap.tv offered a look at where online video from automakers is living and what makes it work. The firm, which serves as a kind of eBay for buying and selling online video ads through 4,300 sites found from a review of its own data automotive marketers are doing a good job engaging consumers. Completion rates -- the rates at which consumers watched entire online ads -- for 30-second spots are 45% above Adap.tv's marketplace average, leading food, beverage, retail, CPG, travel, wireless, financial/business, tech, entertainment, PSA, and Electronics. And auto was third among the top five categories for consumer engagement online after telecom, B-to-B, and classified and local. In the first six months this year, 30-second ads went from less than 25% of online auto ads to 75% by June. So, what are the keys to engagement? Regional targeting and interactivity: Adap.tv food that two out of three automotive video ads are regionally targeted to support local dealers, with 43% of spend going to non-geographically targeted ads, down from around 50% last year. Auto advertisers who used highly interactive ad formats saw a 20% increase in completion rate. The two are related, says Vijay Rao, senior director of strategic planning for Adap.tv, who says that what makes auto advertising engaging is also what makes it relevant and actionable. Rao tells Marketing Daily that savvier auto video advertisers are using dynamic overlays to do things like let viewers schedule test drives and configure vehicles. "When there are fewer steps, fewer barriers in the consumer pathway to purchase, there are fewer drop-offs," he says. "If you can make it easier for them to configure a car, they are 90 times more likely more purchase the car. And if they actually take a test drive, it's 180 times more likely." Rao says even with "massive growth" in online video advertising, the field is still far from saturated. "[Marketers] know TV is where they have to play, but it's cluttered. So, given the tools where you can plan, buy and executive, online is becoming more TV-like in spend and planning." Marketers, he says, spend about $4 billion on TV per year, while the entire online video spend across all categories is $2 billion, "So there is still a massive discrepancy in terms of the two media." Moving forward, Rao sees superior targeting making the traditional age-set demo-based buying for TV outmoded. "Typical age set isn't best indicator of purchase intent. But data providers are creating segments around hand-raisers and intent-to-purchase triggers." He says the web allows targeting to be broken down by things like consumers' budget, and predisposition to buy a vehicle or brand in the next ninety days. "It's all based on real-world data.”
Seventh Generation is emphasizing its natural ingredients with a sweepstakes that will send the winner to one of the growing regions where it derives its dish liquid ingredients. The winner of the “Nature Makes Perfect Scents” contest can choose a trip for two to France, Italy or Vermont, valued at $10,000. “The ingredients we use to create the scents in our Natural Dish Liquid come from fields, not factories, honoring their origins and the careful hands that cultivated them,” according to the website promoting the contest. The Web site includes links to learn more about the French lavender used in the company’s “Lavender and Floral Mint” scent and the Italian lemons and clementines used to create the “Fresh Citrus and Ginger” as well as the “Lemongrass and Clementine Zest” dish products. The inspiration for the “Free and Clear” dish liquid comes fromt the company’s home state of Vermont. The household and personal-care products company is promoting the contest and dish liquid sample giveaways on Twitter and Facebook. Consumers who share the contest on Facebook resulting in their friends entering can get up to five additional entries (one for each friend.) The contest ends Dec. 31 and a winner will be randomly selected on Jan. 2. The contest had gotten 159 “likes” and 35 “shares” on Facebook as of press time with many consumers commenting on where they would like to go if they win. The Burlington, Vt.-based eco-friendly company conducted another sweeps in April in honor of Earth Day. The prize for the “Green Your Town” contest was a $10,000 green home makeover and enough cleaning supplies to help the winner’s entire community to do their spring cleaning (1,000 Healthy Home Starter Kits valued at $55 each.) The company derives its name from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy that states: “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”
U.S. sales of salad and cooking oils, butter, margarine, mayonnaise and other fats had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.1% between 2007 and 2011, rising from $8.2 billion to $9.2 billion, according to a new report on the category from Packaged Facts. Growth was minimal in four of those years. The exception was 2008, when food inflation drove up dollar sales. The category is expected to show 2% growth next year, again largely due to inflation/higher pricing. However, the category’s growth is expected to pick up along with the economy and overall consumer spending, reaching 3.5% by 2016, when sales are projected at $10.6 billion. Of course, many categories would have welcomed a 3% CAGR in recent years. “These products have sold well enough, even in tough times, that they have emerged as relatively recession-proof compared to other food categories,” observes Packaged Facts Publisher David Sprinkle. The reality that many fat/oils items are staples not subject to being eliminated from grocery lists certainly works in the category’s favor. However, consumers’ increased awareness of the health benefits of monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats has become a key growth-driver -- one that should further drive momentum as makers leverage this via new products and marketing approaches, according to Sprinkle. “Thanks to recent studies indicating that certain fats can lower disease risk, ‘good’ fats as a component of food have left the nutritional doghouse,” he says. “Consumers who had embraced low-fat diets for years are returning to foods and beverages that feature the better-for-you fats.” However, private-label products pose a growing challenge to national and regional brands, at least in the butter and olive oil segments. Private-label fat/oil products are projected to reach $1.6 billion this year, accounting for more than one-quarter of total-category sales, according to Packaged Facts. Sales of private-label fats/oils product grew by 5.3%, compared to overall category growth of 0.6%, in the 52 weeks ending April 17 in mass-market channels (excluding Walmart), SymphonyIRI data show. Most of the private-label growth was in butter, where these products saw sales increase by 19% during the period, to account for more than half of all butter sales. Packaged Facts attributes this to large increases in butter prices, which drove many consumers to switch to store brands. While private-label sales within the cooking/salad oils segment as a whole actually declined, these products account for about a quarter of sales in this segment. And within the olive oil segment, private-label sales rose by 3% -- even though olive oil prices have been declining. Olive oil is the fifth-largest segment within fats/oils, in part because of a growing number of new entrants in the market, according to Packaged Facts analyst Shannon Brown, who authored the report. Some of the growth of private-label olive oil is attributable to some retailers’ increased emphasis on marketing the high-end quality of their store brands, she points out.
Ebay Motors has launched its first-ever foray into custom content -- an effort to boost the cachet of the eBay Motors brand and connect with auto enthusiasts and others with short-form Web-based shows about car customizing, featuring collectors, celebrities, and races. The programs are also bringing in automakers as sponsors on a per-episode basis. In September, the Web shopping network's automotive division launched the first show, auto lifestyle series, "World’s Fastest Car Show" both on the eBay Motors Web site and on its mobile app. That was followed by "Mod Jobs," a series about how to customize vehicles, which launched this month. The former, hosted by former Le Mans winner Justin Bell, mates road trips and other auto-focused adventures to celebrity interviews, car collections of people like Jay Leno, and others, and quiz-game elements where consumers get clues to a car, and can try to guess the model. Mitch Gross, senior manager of advertising from eBay Motors, says that since September the company has run six episodes of "World's Fastest Car Show." He says the show is geared both to enthusiasts and a broader audience, while "Mod Jobs" is for the hard-core enthusiast. Each series ("World's Fastest..." is produced by Swirl.net in partnership with Justin Bell Productions, while "Mod Jobs" is via Benchmark Entertainment) has a dominant sponsor -- typically an automaker -- and each has a segment dedicated to a car review. "We like to think it plays to our strength, with a marriage of commerce and content,” says Gross. “We have 14 million uniques per month, predominantly enthusiasts, so we target them and try to drive them to the experiences. We are also embracing social elements where we do things like allow the community to vote on, say, the paint scheme of a car. We are really trying to enable the auto brands to engage with our user base." EBay Motors, which is in the midst of testing a new home-page design, gets five million impressions per day -- so driving traffic isn't a critical problem, per Gross. "The goal in first series is to ensure the experience is absolutely right before the big splash," he says of the program, which eBay will fund through 2012. "It's really early, but there's been tremendous interest among OEMs," says Gross. "In the first couple of weeks we got 50,000 uniques with a soft launch, not a hard marketing push." He says eBay will promote "Mod Jobs" at the Specialty Equipment Makers Association show in Las Vegas in November. "I think we have unique proposition, because our transaction side is massive business -- we sell a car every second, 10,000 per month on mobile along, and 500,000 parts. [The shows] are a way for us to further engage with our community and give them a reason to come back. With 'Mod Jobs' we are trying to support our transaction business, and being inspirational in how we deliver content."
It’s that time of year when the editors of MEDIA and OMMA magazines invite nominations and submissions for their annual “Agency of the Year” awards. There is no pro forma submission process and any individual or organization is encouraged to provide any information by Oct. 31 to help with the selection process. The magazines’ main criteria are open-ended and focus on agencies, clients and media suppliers that have demonstrated “strategic vision,” “innovation” and “industry leadership.” Please contact Assistant Managing Editor Carrie Cummings at carrie@mediapost.com.
At the core of any successful marketing campaign is the ability to create an emotional connection between the brand and the customer. This is especially true when it comes to digital shopper marketing. Despite all the technological advances that have transformed the industry in recent years -- from smartphones and apps to geotargeting and biometrics -- it still all boils down to one thing: The relationship between you and your consumer. Sure, bells and whistles are great. Everyone gets excited about innovative digital campaigns and mobile strategies, brands spend a lot of money designing and implementing them, they look pretty, and corporate is happy. But often these campaigns fail in their execution. In almost every case the reason is that a campaign’s ultimate success is based on its ability to build a relationship with the shopper. Without this critical partnership, every digital shopper marketing experience that is put in motion will fail by any honest and objective evaluation. Planning Your Digital Shopper Marketing Program Don’t be discouraged if getting started is a little overwhelming. We get dozens of calls and emails every week from vendors pitching us on the latest and greatest digital solutions to everything from e-circulars to loyalty programs. Keeping track of what’s working and what isn’t can be challenging, even for experts in the field. Here are some things to keep in mind as you sift through the ever-growing list of ‘must haves’ in your digital shopper marketing plans: 1. Keep it Personal. Today’s digital consumers appreciate communication based on their past purchases and offers that are tailored to their needs. Remember this phrase: Hyper-personal means hyper-relevant. Hyper-relevant leads to a true, two-way conversation with the shopper. 2. Don't be afraid of creating a mobile app for customers. An app isn't right for everybody, but if it is developed properly and engages shoppers on their terms, a good mobile program could provide personalized, valuable content for customers both in and out of store. 3. Loyalty programs are the real deal. They’re everywhere and almost everyone is trying their hand. The ones who are most successful at loyalty are the luxury brands, in large part because they’re able to provide customers with an experience that makes them feel like VIPs. Experts in digital shopper marketing should take a cue from this and develop personalized and exclusive experiences that will enable them to connect with their customers in ways that were once considered impossible. 4. Make social media a key part of your shopping marketing campaign. Sure, just about everyone has a Facebook page, but few brands are leveraging them as effectively as they can. The job of your digital shopper marketing expert will be to integrate your social media platform into the shopping experience -- not just to help you get a lot of “likes” on Facebook. There is no doubt that social media is an important part of digital shopper marketing -- 60% of smartphone users are already social shopping, both in and out of stores. If you aren't out ahead in this space, you might as well stay home. 5. Carefully choose a partner to guide you through the process. As the worlds of shopper marketing and social media become more and more interconnected, it’s important to have expertise in both areas. The majority of digital shops have little or no actual shopper marketing experience, and most traditional shopper marketing agencies have never built a single successful digital experience. You must find someone who connects both your shopper marketing needs and digital know-how under one roof. Having a clear understanding of how to implement your digital strategy, and which technologies to leverage, will help you enhance your customers’ shopping experience while building a stronger bond between you and your target audience. These relationships are the true mark of success and the key to longevity in an ever-changing environment.