Leslie Berland, SVP digital partnerships and development at American Express, has a five-second rule: don't tweet something that takes a consumer longer than five seconds to figure out. That, in a way, applies to a lot of what the financial services firm does on social. If it isn't quick and easy, you end up with a sieve -- not a channel. Speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ Creativity Conference in New York on Tuesday, Berland said the company's efforts on digital platforms like Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Apple -- and most recently, Xbox -- follow a nearly year-long rethink of its digital strategy. That involved a fresh look at how it used social media to link merchant partners, cardmembers, sponsorships and awards, and technology. "We talked about social and how to monetize it, but the way to do it is to look at core assets, re-imagine and execute in a seamless way. What's the unmet need? Is there a problem we are solving? Are we adding value?" The big changes in strategy, she said, came from the realization that AmEx's opportunity lay in actually making it easy for cardmembers to get it and use it. "We see data on cardmembers, merchants, and transactions," said Berland. "When it comes to live on digital, we need a slick user experience." Berland said AmEx recently did a program with Xbox (millions of cardmembers play) around Halo, that linked to merchant partners by rewarding players for their scores. "We knew cardmembers were playing Halo, and we found that if we could reward players seamlessly on that platform the game meant more to them, they spent more with our merchant partners, and got cardmembers more engaged with us." Another program had a side virtue that deals with the elephant in most consumers' rooms: fraud. The company did a program with Apple that offers real-time statements, so every time a consumer made a purchase with a partner, they'd get a thanks for AmEx card. "Cardmembers love it because it works like a de facto fraud-tracking system.” So where do traditional ads fit into the social strategy? Berland said the key learning is that if you run a program on social platforms, the best way to drive engagement is to advertise on those platforms, because there are too many steps the consumer has to take elsewhere. The exception is campaigns requiring broad awareness. "Our Small Business Saturday campaign was focused on social, yes -- but we had to do traditional because awareness is so important." Berland's advice to other marketers: "A lot of times companies want to do fun things that are not core to their business. Where are your customers actively engaged and where? And how do you engage them in an authentic, focused way. Someone has to prioritize and choose."
While many marketers -- including Starbucks, Macy’s and Nordstrom -- are seamlessly guiding customers from one touchpoint to the next, others, even the likes of BMW and the Gap, are actually stranding them mid-transaction. That’s the conclusion of Forrester, in a new report on managing messages across multiple channels. “Today’s consumer uses a wide range of touchpoints in order to research, buy, and receive service from brands, and these touchpoints overlap and influence each other in ecosystems that are difficult to perceive,” writes Martin Gill, a principal analyst with Forrester. “Too many firms focus on each touchpoint in isolation and fail to enable their customers to transition easily between them, even when the experience suggests to the consumer that this should be possible.” For example, while BMW’s Mini brand has a way-cool tool that allows potential buyers to try on “millions of potential combinations of color, body style, and optional extras through its car configurator,” he writes, there’s no way for consumers to send that information to dealers. So if they want to actually take a test drive, they need to start all over. And while Gap allows its shoppers to pick up online orders from any of its Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic stores, it falls down on returns. Shoppers can only return a Gap product through a Gap store, for example, “leaving customers struggling to engage in a cross-touchpoint transaction that could potentially offer the brand an opportunity to cross-sell.” That’s frustrating, he adds, because consumers around the world have increasingly high expectations of cross-channel efforts. They expect to be able to use the Web to make shopping in stores easier (ordering online for in-store pickup, for example), and for each store to be digitally enabled, allowing them to use online kiosks, like those offered by Macy’s and Nordstrom. (In fact, Forrester says more than a quarter of shoppers in the U.S. have used such kiosks.) And increasingly, they also expect to have wi-fi access so that they can use their smartphones to research purchases while in stores, including checking reviews and using social media sites. Gills writes that Starbucks’ use of mobile as a link between the digital and brick-and-mortar world via its “My Starbucks” mobile app, is simple and intuitive. “Starbucks uses geofencing to push relevant and timely offers to potential shoppers in order to drive restaurant footfall. The “My Starbucks” app acts as a prepay payment device at the physical point of sale, using a QR code on the phone, and stores customer loyalty data to encourage further engagement.” In summary, he writes, marketers need to follow three basic rules: “Don’t try to please everyone; optimize the journey rather than each single touchpoint; and manage the transitions.”
JetBlue Airways will match all customer donations made through its TrueBlue Giving program up to $25,000 from Dec. 10-17. The New York-based airline launched its True Giving program, which is part of its loyalty program that provides members with alternate ways to use their TrueBlue points. TrueBlue customers now have the choice to redeem their points for future travel or donate them to benefit others. Points can be donated locally or globally to more than 2.5 million causes in the True Giving database, which is powered by Kula Causes, Inc. "With True Giving our customers can turn their TrueBlue points into dollars and support non-profit organizations around the world that they are passionate about," said Mike Stromer, JetBlue's vice president of customer connections, in a release. On a corporate level, JetBlue supports youth, education and the environment throughout the cities the airline serves. The airline understands that each community has its own unique needs, and each TrueBlue member has causes that are important to them. Caring and passion -- two of JetBlue's core values -- were the motivation for True Giving, he said. JetBlue partnered with KULA Causes, Inc. -- the world's largest online giving platform -- to create the True Giving program, providing its customers with a choice in their charitable efforts. JetBlue supports a number of national non-profits on a corporate level including Carbonfund.org, DoSomething.org, KaBOOM!, and FirstBook. Customers can make donations to the charity of their choice by entering a charity name, a keyword or selecting the regions and countries or local causes of interest. Next, customers can view their selected cause's profile for additional information and then click donate. Donations are made in increments of points; transaction fees apply. Customer donations can be applied to categories specific to each charity including development, training, advocacy, etc. Once the donation is completed, a receipt is emailed to the customer from Kula Causes. True Giving is an evergreen donation program and it follows JetBlue's most recent donation campaign for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. Throughout the month of November, JetBlue mobilized to engage customers and TrueBlue members to raise funds for the Red Cross. In one month, customers donated more than $835,000. The donation site, also powered by Kula Causes, provided the platform for customers to donate directly to relief efforts in their local communities in the New York tri-state area. For every one dollar donated via the site, TrueBlue members received six TrueBlue points in return. Through this transactional giving program, JetBlue's loyal customers became both donors and brand advocates.
Fondue restaurant chain The Melting Pot will be the featured company on the Dec. 9 episode of “Be the Boss,” a new A&E reality-competition show. For the chain, the exposure on the one-hour program will provide a prime opportunity to get the word out about its revamped menu, which is to launch officially in all of its restaurants by February 2013, reports Sandy D'Elosua, national director of marketing and communications for Front Burner Brands, the restaurant management company for The Melting Pot. The show, from the executive producers of CBS’s “Undercover Boss,” ups the competitive ante by having two employees from a company vie to earn what they think is a promotion to a management position. In truth (the audience is in on this), the winner will be given his or her own franchise business with the company, while the runner-up gets the promotion. In the case of The Melting Pot -- the second of six companies to be featured over the show’s first season -- the contestants are Jason Long, general manager of the chain’s Warrington, Pa. location, and Terry Love, lead server at its Louisville, Ky. location. The runner-up will be named the chain’s “director of team member communications,” according to D’Elosua. Selecting the potential competitive candidates involved extensive vetting both by The Melting Pot, with the assistance of its franchise business consultants, and by A&E -- and from The Melting Pot’s standpoint, a critical criterion was evaluating how well a candidate could convey the chain’s new menu/positioning, says D’Elosua. The new menu will “highlight customization of the dining experience, encouraging guests to take charge of how much they want to eat and the amount of time they spend dining at The Melting Pot,” she sums up. The backdrop: The Melting Pot, a fine-dining chain, began to see sales slow in the U.S. in 2010, nearly two years after the recession hit. According to Technomic’s Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report, its sales declined by 2.1%, to $225.5 million, in 2010. Since then, its sales have been flat, Franchise Times reported in May 2012. Reasons: The chain has been best-known for its four-course, $40 dinner -- an offering that tends to make it a destination mainly for special occasions, particularly during an economic downturn. In addition, a four-course meal can take up to three hours, VP, franchise development Dan Stone told FT. While that fits very well in the cultures of other countries into which The Melting Pot has been expanding, the time factor -- along with the average dinner price point -- poses a challenge to growth in the more harried U.S. culture. The new menu/marketing positioning, based on research, isn’t down-pricing individual offerings. Rather, instead of pushing the full-evening fondue experience, it’s letting diners know that they can drop in to have “just fondued cheese and wine, or just a chocolate fondue dessert after a movie,” says D’Elosua. Goal: Up the average customer’s annual visits (currently about 1.8 times per year) by emphasizing the ability to opt for less expensive and less time-consuming fondue experiences. The challenges presented to the contestants on the “Be the Boss” episode provided ample opportunities to highlight this new positioning, says D’Elosua. In addition, during the Dec. 9 airings of the Melting Pot episode, the company will run a Twitter gift card sweepstakes. Those who become Melting Pot Twitter followers can enter by tweeting messages about the episode to @TheMeltingPot, including #BeTheBoss and #FondueEffect hashtags. Ten randomly chosen winners will receive $100 Melting Pot gift cards. The chain isn’t paying for the exposure on the show, but is paying for collateral materials to promote it -- as well as, of course, the costs involved in funding the winner’s franchise business and the runner-up’s promotion, according to D’Elosua. The Melting Pot is supporting the show exposure with promotions and engagement content on its Web site, Pinterest and Facebook presences; videos on its YouTube site; and a Facebook advertising buy. Its efforts also include public relations outreach to national and regional trade media, and consumer bloggers such as the Clever Girls network. In addition, it’s invested in promotional collateral materials such as wraps on the menus in its franchised restaurants. A&E is promoting the episode through its own media assets, and its sister Lifetime network. The Melting Pot currently has 140-plus restaurants in 36 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico, and has more than 15 locations under development. One focus is the Middle East, where about a dozen locations are being developed through a deal with a global franchise service provider based in that region.
More consumers than ever are switching the companies they buy products or services from (particularly if those products or services are wireless phone, Internet or retailing industries), but they aren’t necessarily happy about it. According to Accenture’s eighth annual Global Consumer Survey, one out of every five people (20%) switched the companies they typically buy from, an increase of 5% over 2011. However, 85% of those people said the companies could have done something differently to prevent them from switching. According to the survey (which polled 12,000 people in 32 countries), among those who said they would have stayed if the provider had acted differently, two-thirds (67%) said having an issue resolved during their first customer-service contact would have changed their minds. More than half (54%) said they might have had a change of heart if they had been better rewarded for remaining loyal. “That overwhelming majority is basically saying they don’t want to switch, but either an overt action -- or more importantly an inaction -- by a company caused [them to switch],” Robert Wollan, global managing director of sales and customer services at Accenture, tells Marketing Daily. “Think of how much revenue is at risk. You’ve got to get the basics right.” Among the 10 industries covered in the survey, the ones with the highest switching rates were the wireless phone industry (26%), Internet service (23%) and retailers (22%). Wollan notes that these industries -- particularly wireless and Internet -- have come to accept customer churn as a matter of business, but they don’t have to. “There’s hyper-competition in those marketplaces. That hasn’t changed,” Wollan says. “What’s different is that it doesn’t have to be baked in to [those industries]. They don’t have to accept those high, high levels of churn as part of their everyday operations. The opportunity for them is massive.” Among the top complaints: the broken promise of not following through with customer service on promises made upfront. More than three-quarters (78%) said they were likely to switch when they encounter such broken vows. People also have increasing expectations about how much a company should know about them. Half of the survey respondents said it’s extremely important for customer service representatives to know their history so they don’t have to repeat themselves during a service call. A third said they prefer companies that use information to make the customer service experience more efficient, but only a quarter said their current providers offer such a tailored experience. (The travel and tourism, retail banking and life insurance industries earned the highest marks in this area, according to the survey.) “Expectations are rising faster than companies are able to respond,” Wollan says. “It’s not that companies aren’t trying to move forward, they’re just not keeping up with the customer.”
No one is hoping that record numbers of shoppers (both cyber and otherwise) will translate into record holiday sales more than the stores that sell consumer electronics. The category, after all, is a perennial keister-saver for retailers, and this year’s shower of new tablets, smartphones and e-readers makes it especially promising. But a new report from NPD Group, a market research company based in Port Washington, N.Y., isn’t so promising -- at least on the more traditional end. Sales in consumer electronics -- which admittedly excludes such hot items as Amazon Kindle products, iPad, Surface, mobile phones, and video games -- slipped 5.6% on Black Friday, it says. “This slow start is merely a continuation of the challenges seen in the consumer electronics business throughout 2012,” writes Stephen Baker, a VP at NPD. “In an unbalanced market, where just a few categories deliver significant dollars, and even fewer offer any growth, the ability to deliver positive results will remain difficult for companies exposed to the entire consumer electronics marketplace.” NPD says the slip follows last year’s loss of nearly 4%. “Android tablets and TVs accounted for 58% of all sales dollars, up from 51% of sales in 2009.” While unit sales for flat-panel TVs gained 4%, revenue fell 6%, with 32-inch TVs going for an average of just $194 each. GPS, point-and-shoot cameras and MP3 player sales all fell. The company says sales of detachable-lens cameras (with revenues up 16%) and headphones (up 33%) were among the highlights. Meanwhile, other indicators are more promising, with Chase Holiday Pulse reporting that in the week following Thanksgiving, consumer electronic sales gained 32% year-over-year. And the Consumer Electronics Association is far more bullish. “Thanksgiving weekend was one of the busiest ever, and tech was one of the big winners,” spokesman Steve Kidera tells Marketing Daily in an email. “Behind clothes, tech was the second most popular purchase of the weekend. As our holiday sales and forecast predicted, TVs, tablets, smartphones and laptops are the most popular gifts, not just within electronics but overall, this holiday.”
The “Twelve Days of Christmas” is nothing; Boost Mobile is doubling down (and then some), celebrating every day in December, even if it has to make the holidays up. In an online marketing promotion, the prepaid wireless carrier is offering up Christmas-like carols for every day, turning each of December’s 31 days into its own special holiday (as well as acknowledging the special ones already taken, like the 25th). Among the new mini-holidays being celebrated in song: Chocolate Covered Anything Day and Festival for the Souls of Dead Whales Day. The songs are obviously meant to be presented with a tongue-in-cheek tone. One, for “Gazpacho Day” on Dec. 6, follows the melody of the Mariachi song “El Jarabe Tapatio” (The Mexican Hat Dance), with the lyrics: “Gazpacho, gazpacho, gazpacho/It’s your special day we are told/gazpacho, gazpacho, gazpacho/The only soup they serve up cold.” At the end of the song, one of the musicians notes that gazpacho is actually a Spanish creation. “Boost has always given a voice to the underdog,” said Dave Horton, creative director at 180LA, which created the effort, in a statement. “So, for the holidays we aren’t just celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah, we’re going to celebrate them all. We wrote 31 carols for the 31 holidays in December, each using a different genre of music.” The month of holidays is being promoted through a microsite, www.boostcarolcards.com, which also includes an interactive calendar through which users can click on days and watch the corresponding holiday carol. (There are also carols for the traditional holidays of Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah). Each of the songs and videos are sharable to friends via e-mail and social networks. Users sharing the cards will receive a promo code redeemable for discounts at boostmobile.com.
You’ve heard of metrosexuals -- urban-dwelling young males with lots of disposable income spent mostly on pampering themselves. Now, in a new report, Interpublic’s media shop BPN has documented the rise of the “mansumer.” A product of the recession, this group is a growing breed of male shoppers that is supplanting their better halves as the “chief buying officers” of their households. “While the job market for men has recently improved, the lasting effects of the recession have altered the traditional ‘provider’ paradigm,” BPN states. “With that, the new chief buyer in the American household is the man of the house. With the rise of the mansumer comes a whole new set of potential seed changes in advertising, purchase patterns and common marketing practices.” The agency cites a batch of statistics to support its case. Forty percent of men are now the primary grocery shopper in the household, while 44% say they share equally in the task of housecleaning. And a whopping 86% agree that the male role in the household has been redefined and requires partaking in tasks that are “necessary to keep the household running,” including childcare, shopping and various other activities like buying the holiday gifts. But, while men shop more than ever, they shop differently and with less emotion and more focus on achieving certain goals. “Men don’t just shop; they buy,” stated BPN North American CEO Liz Ross. “Through our research and analysis, we are seeing that, whether by choice or obligation, men are doing more shopping than they have in the past,” said Ross. “These men are no longer disenfranchised; rather, they are empowered by technology and a growing recognition of the contributions they make.” The agency recommends that retailers create recognition programs in line with the mansumer's "need for praise." Also, retailers should consider increasing the number of price match opportunities they present to shoppers. A re-evaluation of gift card strategies might also help boost sales, BPN asserts. “Needs may be different this year because the mansumer is aware of exactly what his family wants this holiday season. He’s no longer unsure what to buy.”
With consumer attention dwindling in top markets, Gap has used new and innovative forms of out-of-home media this year to get noticed. That’s according to Chris Gayton, senior director marketing and brand management at Gap Inc. “In 2012, we came back to out-of-home,” said Gayton, speaking at an OOH event presented by the Advertising Club of New York Wednesday. As a digital medium, the data is rich, he said, and it provides a “great story telling platform,” that the company uses to make consumers aware of the breadth of the company’s products. Gayton also noted that the company’s research showed that Millennials, a core target of the company, are some of the largest consumers of OOH media. The company was the first advertiser to appear on the front of New York subway entry cards—a program that was initiated in October. The ads offered a 20% coupon, and the program generated a huge amount of earned media from press coverage of the program. “We had no idea it would as big as it was,” said Gayton, who added that the coupon redemptions alone paid for the expense of putting on the campaign. The company is also tying social media to OOH to get consumers excited about the brand during its holiday campaign. Posters in New York encourage passers-by to tweet photos to a certain hash tag and the pictures are then displayed on a giant digital billboard in Times Square. The company used the same approach earlier in the year when it re-launched its flagship 34th Street store in New York City. Earlier this year, it worked with Titan Communications to create a bus shelter campaign that provided offers that were specific to individual smart phones, complete with directions to the nearest Gap store. Gayton also said told the Advertising Club audience that the company increased its usage of cinema ads this year. Part of that effort included persuading theater owners to allow it to include a call-to-action via phone text in a campaign kicking off later this month. Given the great lengths that theaters go to to get movie goers to turn off their phones during the movie that was no small feat, said Gayton. “It took us a year to get that in place,” he said.
Volkswagen's challenge for the last decade has been maturing the brand for a new millennium. That sounds epic, but consider where the brand was in the 40 years prior, its fall from grace in the '80s and '90s, and its struggle to find a way back. Either the brand focused on too narrow a target for cars like GTI, or found itself in an irrelevant part of the market for all of its vehicles. The salvation, with the help of AOR Deutsch L.A., was a way to tell the human story. That is, after all, why those DDB ads from the ’70's still work. It's not a coincidence that those ironical self-demeaning ads happened when the Beetle was in a lot of garages. "That was happening when our sales were close to 600,000 units in late ’60's," said Justin Osborne, general manager at the Herndon, Va.-based U.S. sales arm of the company. Osborne and Douglas Van Praet, EVP, group planning director at Deutsch, held forth on VW and the agency's work on Wednesday at the 2012 Association of National Advertisers Creativity Conference. The former explained that the creative compass was oriented to the mandate that ads have to be more than pitches, and branding has to be more than sturm und drang. And if the brand is VW -- "the people's car" -- advertising must be especially imbued with a human story. Parenthetically, Van Praet noted that the efficacy of Deutsch's work was boosted by marketing director Tim Mahoney's idea of doing an agency brief at one time for the entire year. "It's great because when I'm briefing my team, I'm giving an entire view of the brand for the entire year, and they go create," said Van Praet. That creative process, he said, goes on for four or five months, "with extensive back and forth." Van Praet said the core challenge for the agency, when it picked up the account, was how to sell more cars without selling its soul. "We made a conscious decision to take a step up." The brand, after all, had no real position and resided in a purgatory between premium and mass market with no compelling reason to attract buyers. "People buy into your belief system. Our is the democratization of transportation," he said. The creative direction that "everyone deserves a better car" led to the tagline "That's the power of German engineering." "It's artfully vague and has roots in something tangible," said Van Praet. The advertising dogma was the power of human stories simply told. "We have to speak to humans, not consumers. And storytelling is how humans communicate. For 99% of human evolution, people were hunter-gatherers. And culture began as stories were told around the fire." Osborne said that those "human" principles -- creative directives, really -- led to advertising that worked regardless of the vehicle attribute it spotlighted. Thus, a spot that touts the solid "thunk" of the car door when it closes worked because it really told the story of the neighbor's kids who managed to lose all of their toys in the tree under which the car is parked. When the owner of the car closes the door, all of the toys -- and the family cat -- fall out. "We each have our own story, and our cars fit in. We try to capture the range of emotion -- fun, sad, happy," said Van Praet.
The Rolling Stones are 50 -- not the members of the band, but the band itself. Frontman Mick Jagger will be 70 next July, so he’s a bona fide senior citizen. It may be true that the Boomer generation is getting older, but they have not gone quietly into that good night. Nevertheless, the reins of power are in the process of passing from Boomers to Millennials right now. The youngest Millennials are still teenagers, but each passing year brings another group into the cold light of consumer adulthood. Not that they're any slouches as consumers already. Having been raised in a webbed world, with anytime accessibility and choices that match my profile, this generational cohort is already changing the game at retail. Millennials know they are in charge when it comes to shopping. They are comfortable making mobile purchases, and look to friends and peer groups for ratings before buying just about anything. Mr. Whipple has definitely left the building. Online shopping continues to grow with double-digit ferocity every year, driven in no small part by Millennials. And while they aren’t exclusive to online -- indeed they are quite brand-fickle overall -- they do expect to see some of the online shopping experience delivered by brick-and-mortar retailers. For retailers, it's possible that the only way to fully deliver on these expectations is by operating like an online store: gather information, mine it and use the insights to provide more relevant offers to shoppers. That’s a lofty goal that will require a fully deployed loyalty program as well as the time, investment and expertise to deliver. In the meantime, there are some things retailers can do today to make their stores more “Millennial-friendly.”