As part of its renewed Hispanic marketing efforts under its new “Viva Hoy” platform, Pepsi is one key sponsor of an Alejandro Sanz concert to be live-streamed internationally on Dec. 6 by Terra Live Music. The event will mark the first time that Pepsi’s U.S. Hispanic and Latin American marketing teams have worked together on a cross-border initiative, Javier Farfan, senior director of cultural branding for Pepsi, tells Marketing Daily. It also marks the first time that Pepsi as a whole has sponsored a live performance across borders. Although the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets are Pepsi’s key targets for the sponsorship, the concert will be broadcast live in the 19 countries reached by the Terra digital media company’s entertainment, lifestyle, sports and news content, including Spain and other European countries, notes Terra’s U.S. CEO, Fernando Rodriguez. (In total, Terra says it reaches a monthly audience of 100 million.) Like other Terra content, the HD concert will be offered in English, Spanish and/or Portugese, and viewable across multiple screens/devices, including PCs, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and DOOH screens -- and will offer viewers a variety of social and other channels through which to interact and share about the event. The event, the first time an Alejandro Sanz concert has been live-streamed, is also being sponsored by American Family Insurance, Kia and T-Mobile. Bestselling Latin music artist Sanz is among the most influential Hispanic social media influencers, with some 7.7 million Twitter followers and nearly 2.4 million Facebook fans, currently. The concert’s mobile reach was particularly important to Pepsi, because U.S. Hispanic and Latin American consumers are particularly avid users of mobile devices, says Farfan. (Terra reports that about 20% to 30% of its audience connects with its content through mobile.) Pepsi is promoting the live-streamed concert on its Spanish- and English-language site, MiPepsi, as well as MiPepsi’s Facebook and Twitter presences, reports Farfan. In addition, Pepsi is running a sweepstakes in 12 Latin American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador) offering a grand prize of a VIP trip package for two to attend the live Sanz concert in Miami and meet the singer/songwriter. To enter, consumers send a tweet to @TerraMusicaUS explaining why they want to see Sanz live, using the hashtag #DondeHayPepsiHayMúsica. (See accompanying graphic.) For Pepsi, the concert sponsorship is an important step in extending its renewed Hispanic marketing focus beyond the U.S., to Latin America in particular, says Farfan. Pepsi’s “Viva Hoy” platform -- a translation of the overall brand’s new “Live for Now” marketing platform -- reflects Latinos’ higher-than-average consumption of carbonated soft drinks, as well as Hispanic population growth trends. Pepsi was among Advertising Age’s top 50 Advertisers in Hispanic Media from 2004 (when it was #6, with $68.5 million in spending) to 2007 (#27), but it dropped off that list thereafter. This past July, Pepsi kicked off its multiplatform “Viva Hoy” initiatives with -- among other efforts -- a TV spot featuring Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi, aired on both general media and Hispanic networks. The Sanz concert sponsorship is also representative of the digital initiatives that will be key in Pepsi’s overall, global, multicultural “Live for Now” marketing approach going forward, notes Cesar Sroka, group account director for OMD, which is part of a cross-agency, multi-disciplinary team of Omnicom agencies working on the “Live for Now” global campaign.
Subaru is growing fast. The brand has seen 78% growth in sales over the past four years, and has over a million fans on Facebook. The company, which has focused strategy on social media, in recent years built a strong brand identity around a theme -- love -- that at first glance seems absurdly vague and sentimental, especially in a sector that sells expensive, engineering-driven things like cars. Love? Maybe for Chanel, but for cars? Yet, it works, says Michael McHale, who heads both corporate communications and social media at the Cherry Hill, N.J., company. After all, he says, owners say that's how they feel about Subaru. At a recent meeting of the International Motor Press Association, he gave a history lesson and explained how the campaign, "Share the Love," has put wind in the sails -- and sales -- of a once-stagnant brand. McHale recounts how the company, on deathwatch in the ’90's, pulled itself out of the ICU with Forrester, Outback, and Legacy, but hit a ceiling because it lacked brand identity. "Driven by What's Inside," launched in 2008, didn't help. "It was too subtle and clever," said McHale. The problem: survey respondents said they had no opinion of Subaru. "They said 'it's not for me,' and that Subaru wasn't relevant to them." But owners "saw us as ready for anything, and progressive, and adventurous. And unless the heart's engaged, you aren't going to buy." Research also showed that the Subaru owner base is three times more likely to hike and bike, three times more likely to be cause-oriented, volunteer-oriented and 3.5 times more likely to own a pet. Which, he said, led to the new, highly emotional brand positioning that also tried to promote Subaru as virtuous and transparent. Ads have real owners talking about their cars, and focus on the brand sponsorship of things like the ASPCA, a rally and performance team, the Geological Society of America, and the science-education foundation AAAS. The brand also tends to eschew traditional marketing tactics and sports. Instead of the Super Bowl, Subaru did a "puppy bowl." It prefers to sponsor things like PBS' "Antique Road Show," and markets around South by Southwest, the Cherry Blossom Festival in Philadelphia, and fall festivals at organic farms, per McHale. He said Subaru's social strategy on places like Foursquare, Facebook, and Pinterest is to engage influencers, podcasters, commentators, opinion leaders, citizen journalists, social-media mavens, bloggers, and forum gurus. The latest effort was the fifth iteration of "Share the Love" on Facebook, where users could vote to select two charities to join a roster of three organizations -- the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Make-A-Wish, and the Meals on Wheels Association of America -- that Subaru sponsors. In a yearly fourth-quarter program, Subaru donates $250, up to a total of $5 million, for every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased. "Instead of advertising, we try to provide valuable content."
Barnes & Noble brings the holiday wish list into the modern age via a new television commercial that shows off the “Catalog” and “Scrapbooking” features (which enable people to save and organize images in one place to easily share with others) of its Nook HD and HD-plus tablets. The television commercial, which will begin running this week, shows a mother and her daughter perusing electronic catalogs on their Nook HD. When the mother leaves, the girl continues, saving different pages and images in a single file that she calls “Dear Santa.” After she completes her list, she leaves the Nook in the family’s mailbox addressed to the North Pole as a way of sharing her wish list with Santa. “If you think about the way people –- especially women -- shop catalogs, all the stuff they collect and the mountains of paper that can be organized, it’s a whole new world for people to go through catalogs and collect imagery,” Glenn Kaplan, creative director at Barnes & Noble, tells Marketing Daily, adding that the feature is much like Pinterest in its manner of visually organizing information for recall at a later time. “It’s absolutely a very similar mindset, and it resonates brilliantly with what people are doing on Pinterest. This is the way people are discovering content, organizing their content and sharing their content.” Along with “Share” -- a pre-Black Friday television commercial that showed a family passing a Nook among each other with different user profiles set up for each member -- the new commercial (which will run in concert with “Share”) is meant to position the Nook HD and HD-plus as the “ideal tablet for families,” Kaplan says. “With ‘Share,’ we’re saying that with profiles, everyone gets to have their own unique device,” he says. “The scrapbooking, which is a unique build in feature for Nook HD and HD-plus, solves a lot of problems and creates a lot of value for families.” Since first creating advertising for the Nook in April 2011 (when it was positioned as the ultimate e-reader), Barnes & Noble has subtly evolved the product to show off more tablet features. That evolution, however, does not mean the Nook has lost sight of its primary purpose or core audience, Kaplan says. “Our strong suit and our mission is reading, but the world of tablets affords a wider array of choices,” Kaplan says. “Our way into the world of multimedia is through people’s interest in reading.” Both “Share” and the “Dear Santa” commercial, which were created by advertising agency Mullen and directed by Todd Field of Smuggler, will run throughout the holidays on broadcast and cable networks, on programming such as “The Voice,” “X-Factor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Mindy Project,” “The Good Wife,” “Survivor,” “Nashville,” and several others. The company estimates the commercials will receive 1.2 billion impressions nationally throughout the campaign. Not surprisingly, the “Dear Santa” spot will also run in digital channels that also appeal to heavy Pinterest users.
As part of its renewed Hispanic marketing efforts under its new “Viva Hoy” platform, Pepsi is one key sponsor of an Alejandro Sanz concert to be live-streamed internationally on Dec. 6 by Terra Live Music. The event will mark the first time that Pepsi’s U.S. Hispanic and Latin American marketing teams have worked together on a cross-border initiative, Javier Farfan, senior director of cultural branding for Pepsi, tells Marketing Daily. It also marks the first time that Pepsi as a whole has sponsored a live performance across borders. Although the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets are Pepsi’s key targets for the sponsorship, the concert will be broadcast live in the 19 countries reached by the Terra digital media company’s entertainment, lifestyle, sports and news content, including Spain and other European countries, notes Terra’s U.S. CEO, Fernando Rodriguez. (In total, Terra says it reaches a monthly audience of 100 million.) Like other Terra content, the HD concert will be offered in English, Spanish and/or Portugese, and viewable across multiple screens/devices, including PCs, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and DOOH screens -- and will offer viewers a variety of social and other channels through which to interact and share about the event. The event, the first time an Alejandro Sanz concert has been live-streamed, is also being sponsored by American Family Insurance, Kia and T-Mobile. Bestselling Latin music artist Sanz is among the most influential Hispanic social media influencers, with some 7.7 million Twitter followers and nearly 2.4 million Facebook fans, currently. The concert’s mobile reach was particularly important to Pepsi, because U.S. Hispanic and Latin American consumers are particularly avid users of mobile devices, says Farfan. (Terra reports that about 20% to 30% of its audience connects with its content through mobile.) Pepsi is promoting the live-streamed concert on its Spanish- and English-language site, MiPepsi, as well as MiPepsi’s Facebook and Twitter presences, reports Farfan. In addition, Pepsi is running a sweepstakes in 12 Latin American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador) offering a grand prize of a VIP trip package for two to attend the live Sanz concert in Miami and meet the singer/songwriter. To enter, consumers send a tweet to @TerraMusicaUS explaining why they want to see Sanz live, using the hashtag #DondeHayPepsiHayMúsica. (See accompanying graphic.) For Pepsi, the concert sponsorship is an important step in extending its renewed Hispanic marketing focus beyond the U.S., to Latin America in particular, says Farfan. Pepsi’s “Viva Hoy” platform -- a translation of the overall brand’s new “Live for Now” marketing platform -- reflects Latinos’ higher-than-average consumption of carbonated soft drinks, as well as Hispanic population growth trends. Pepsi was among Advertising Age’s top 50 Advertisers in Hispanic Media from 2004 (when it was #6, with $68.5 million in spending) to 2007 (#27), but it dropped off that list thereafter. This past July, Pepsi kicked off its multiplatform “Viva Hoy” initiatives with -- among other efforts -- a TV spot featuring Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi, aired on both general media and Hispanic networks. The Sanz concert sponsorship is also representative of the digital initiatives that will be key in Pepsi’s overall, global, multicultural “Live for Now” marketing approach going forward, notes Cesar Sroka, group account director for OMD, which is part of a cross-agency, multi-disciplinary team of Omnicom agencies working on the “Live for Now” global campaign.
Subaru is growing fast. The brand has seen 78% growth in sales over the past four years, and has over a million fans on Facebook. The company, which has focused strategy on social media, in recent years built a strong brand identity around a theme -- love -- that at first glance seems absurdly vague and sentimental, especially in a sector that sells expensive, engineering-driven things like cars. Love? Maybe for Chanel, but for cars? Yet, it works, says Michael McHale, who heads both corporate communications and social media at the Cherry Hill, N.J., company. After all, he says, owners say that's how they feel about Subaru. At a recent meeting of the International Motor Press Association, he gave a history lesson and explained how the campaign, "Share the Love," has put wind in the sails -- and sales -- of a once-stagnant brand. McHale recounts how the company, on deathwatch in the ’90's, pulled itself out of the ICU with Forrester, Outback, and Legacy, but hit a ceiling because it lacked brand identity. "Driven by What's Inside," launched in 2008, didn't help. "It was too subtle and clever," said McHale. The problem: survey respondents said they had no opinion of Subaru. "They said 'it's not for me,' and that Subaru wasn't relevant to them." But owners "saw us as ready for anything, and progressive, and adventurous. And unless the heart's engaged, you aren't going to buy." Research also showed that the Subaru owner base is three times more likely to hike and bike, three times more likely to be cause-oriented, volunteer-oriented and 3.5 times more likely to own a pet. Which, he said, led to the new, highly emotional brand positioning that also tried to promote Subaru as virtuous and transparent. Ads have real owners talking about their cars, and focus on the brand sponsorship of things like the ASPCA, a rally and performance team, the Geological Society of America, and the science-education foundation AAAS. The brand also tends to eschew traditional marketing tactics and sports. Instead of the Super Bowl, Subaru did a "puppy bowl." It prefers to sponsor things like PBS' "Antique Road Show," and markets around South by Southwest, the Cherry Blossom Festival in Philadelphia, and fall festivals at organic farms, per McHale. He said Subaru's social strategy on places like Foursquare, Facebook, and Pinterest is to engage influencers, podcasters, commentators, opinion leaders, citizen journalists, social-media mavens, bloggers, and forum gurus. The latest effort was the fifth iteration of "Share the Love" on Facebook, where users could vote to select two charities to join a roster of three organizations -- the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Make-A-Wish, and the Meals on Wheels Association of America -- that Subaru sponsors. In a yearly fourth-quarter program, Subaru donates $250, up to a total of $5 million, for every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased. "Instead of advertising, we try to provide valuable content."
Barnes & Noble brings the holiday wish list into the modern age via a new television commercial that shows off the “Catalog” and “Scrapbooking” features (which enable people to save and organize images in one place to easily share with others) of its Nook HD and HD-plus tablets. The television commercial, which will begin running this week, shows a mother and her daughter perusing electronic catalogs on their Nook HD. When the mother leaves, the girl continues, saving different pages and images in a single file that she calls “Dear Santa.” After she completes her list, she leaves the Nook in the family’s mailbox addressed to the North Pole as a way of sharing her wish list with Santa. “If you think about the way people –- especially women -- shop catalogs, all the stuff they collect and the mountains of paper that can be organized, it’s a whole new world for people to go through catalogs and collect imagery,” Glenn Kaplan, creative director at Barnes & Noble, tells Marketing Daily, adding that the feature is much like Pinterest in its manner of visually organizing information for recall at a later time. “It’s absolutely a very similar mindset, and it resonates brilliantly with what people are doing on Pinterest. This is the way people are discovering content, organizing their content and sharing their content.” Along with “Share” -- a pre-Black Friday television commercial that showed a family passing a Nook among each other with different user profiles set up for each member -- the new commercial (which will run in concert with “Share”) is meant to position the Nook HD and HD-plus as the “ideal tablet for families,” Kaplan says. “With ‘Share,’ we’re saying that with profiles, everyone gets to have their own unique device,” he says. “The scrapbooking, which is a unique build in feature for Nook HD and HD-plus, solves a lot of problems and creates a lot of value for families.” Since first creating advertising for the Nook in April 2011 (when it was positioned as the ultimate e-reader), Barnes & Noble has subtly evolved the product to show off more tablet features. That evolution, however, does not mean the Nook has lost sight of its primary purpose or core audience, Kaplan says. “Our strong suit and our mission is reading, but the world of tablets affords a wider array of choices,” Kaplan says. “Our way into the world of multimedia is through people’s interest in reading.” Both “Share” and the “Dear Santa” commercial, which were created by advertising agency Mullen and directed by Todd Field of Smuggler, will run throughout the holidays on broadcast and cable networks, on programming such as “The Voice,” “X-Factor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Mindy Project,” “The Good Wife,” “Survivor,” “Nashville,” and several others. The company estimates the commercials will receive 1.2 billion impressions nationally throughout the campaign. Not surprisingly, the “Dear Santa” spot will also run in digital channels that also appeal to heavy Pinterest users.
Among the many records broken in the mobile ecosystem last week, Facebook’s Instagram was among them. The photo editing and sharing app proclaimed on Friday that “the day broke all Instagram records as we saw the number of shared photos more than double from the day before, making it our busiest day so far,” according to the company blog. The activity spiked, as one would expect, in the afternoon. As the East Coast was digesting and the West Coast starting to gather around meal tables, Instagram was hit with 226 Thanksgiving Day tagged photos per second. Overall members shared 10 million holiday images on T-Day. The best route for monetizing that staggering level of user-generated content and intimate involvement with the service goes on, however. The site last week also offered its own Instagram holiday gift guide, distributing items from third parties that touched the social net’s brand. Picks included an Instagram 35mm slide projector, a calendar of Instagram photos and a wood, cork and leather children’s toy in the image of the app’s iconic icon. As Instagram integrates more deeply with its parent company Facebook, it has gone through some its own transformations of late. There finally is a Web presence for Instagram accounts, making the images and brand presence more searchable across platforms. Last week Instagram also introduced “badges,” which helps link people to their online Instagram site. Facebook also announced last week that it would share user data with Instagram, suggesting that at some point we will see a fuller integration of profiles and accounts between the two services. Facebook is just starting to find its way into the e-commerce revenue stream, and a visual network like Instagram may be one of its best bets. Like Pinterest, Instagram is custom made for people to show off and share their favorite goods, and to do so at the point of purchase. Facebook perhaps could use some help in leveraging e-commerce. According to IBM Smarter Commerce and its analysis of Thanksgiving Day online purchasing, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social sites were responsible for a meager .2% of referrals on Thanksgiving.
When it comes to creating the optimal Web experience, nowhere are standards higher and the audience tougher than in the world of digital sports. In the same way that sports fans demand 92-inch screens, theater-quality audio and even 3D, the digital experience needs to be state-of-the-art as well. If you don’t offer the best, don’t get in the game. Only winning counts. Whether the NFL or Major League Soccer, sports has the most extreme challenge in satisfying a fan accustomed to constant action, high-intensity drama, and who takes great graphics and multimedia for granted. The major sports leagues and sports teams around the world provide all of this with state-of-the-art technology to support their efforts. For example, spend a few minutes at www.nfl.com, the digital home of the National Football League, or visit www.mlssoccer.com, the site of Major League Soccer, and you’ll find blogs, copious amounts of video, interactive schedules, quick links to Facebook and fantasy leagues, and plenty of game highlights and retrospectives. Sports sites often provide the best examples of bringing together content, community and commerce. To produce a winning digital sports experience, there are some key building blocks to ensure success: Mobile Content Experiences: Content is king. It’s important that the action never stops and that the viewer is continually engaged. RWD, or responsive web design, will ensure that your content is compelling on mobile tablets and smartphones as well as laptops and desktop screens. HTML5 options continue to evolve and offer the basis for an alternative presentation on Apple IOS devices, where Flash in not supported. Great content and interactivity must work together to produce a flawless user experience. The ability to tap into the user’s location can also open up compelling new marketing program options to increase consumer conversion rates. Video: For many fans, sports is video and video is sports. Highlights, replays and even the great games of the past are where many fans will feel most connected to the digital experience. The video has to be compelling, easily streamed, easily shared, and the interface for searching and finding just the right highlight has to be intuitive. On the backend, serving up the video through a content delivery network, or CDN, as well as transcoding services can be key to ensuring a smooth, reliable, and optimized video experience across device types. Video files are typically large and are good candidates for cloud storage. Social Networking: Connecting fans to the larger fan community is essential – and expected. Whether providing blogs, forums, or building that connection through Facebook and Twitter, give fans an easy way to share their experiences. Think “digital tailgate party.” Also, providing exclusive access to sports personalities via the community is another attractive way to improve engagement and excite a fan base. Rich Online Shopping Experiences: Once emerging fans are fully immersed in one of their teams, the last mile is getting them to buy the gear. Enabling transformative shopping experiences that embed rich content and social experiences often lead to higher sales and repeat purchases. Engaging fans at a higher level during the last mile of the customer journey can elevate a brand over the competition. Gamification: Fantasy Leagues are an enormous component of the online sports experience, and fans are passionate and committed. Incorporating participatory game elements when possible in your site will resonate with your audience. And the fantasy football/gamification experience also provides a rich social networking connection. The revenue stakes are high and competition for each dollar in the digital world of sports is, well, Xtreme. The technical platforms must offer a seamless intersection of content, community, and commerce to offer a compelling experience. Marketing success in the digital world of sports is as competitive as the Superbowl or the World Series. To get into the game, you must build an amazing site that leverages the latest technology – and be prepared to continually keep pace with the public’s definition of “the best.” In the competitive world of digital sports, that’s the only way to be a winner at every point in the fan’s journey.