Customized Multi-channel Marketing - hosted by L2When You Let the Customers Do the Marketing
Published by Ariel around lunchtime on April 24th, 2006 in Marketing, Alternative Marketing, Viral Marketing.
Similar idea, better execution - in my opinion - than the Chevy video contest.
98.9 The Rock! solicited videos from their listeners for their next TV ad and people are now voting for the best. The videos aren’t as, er, professional as corporate-supplied clips would be but that is a fantastic thing. What this does for them is the following:
- Entries were more likely to contain creative ideas because the participants were not locked into using supplied resources.
- Entries were all positive due to the higher barrier to entry. Honestly, who was going to spend the time to create and submit something that wasn’t going to get offered for voting?
- Likely that more buzz is generated because all of the videos are easily accessible. Contrast this to the Chevy website. I’d like to see some of the positive entries but I never have been able to figure out where they might be posted for browsing. A search on YouTube is finding plenty of satire, though.
One thing I would recommend for this kind of campaign: some kind of searching or sorting capability. I’m not interested in poking through all 360 videos they’ve got here. If the entries were, perhaps, categorized so I could look at the humorous ones or the ones with specific subject matter, then finding and voting for my favorite would be much easier.
Thanks to Church of the Customer for this pointer.
Oh, and MasterCard is doing their own version of the create-your-own commercial at Priceless.com but with less creativity than GM allowed in theirs. There are only two clips available to choose from. (Jon reminds me that he introduced this story in his comment to another post. Sorry, Jon. Here’s your recognition!)
Nice one on 98.9.
I like the apps on our stuff where our clients let customers log in to create their own brochures or other marketing material. I wish we had some that would let them create their own OFFER as well. But I admit that would take some guts and strong oversight.
"Empowering Customers" is an old theme but I think it could realy mean something new these days. Imagine if you could create an interaction with your customer that was efficient exchange of what THEY feel your marketable points are (the values to them) and what YOU want to offer. Generally, I think this would be a good thing. Marketers get a better view of what their customers are looking for, directly, interactively and unpolluted by the negotiation or purchasing process. Customers can shape product and pricing and perhaps even future development by clearly articulating what their needs are. Trust would rise and even if price did not come down, value of the exchange would go up. Customers would be valuable as product marketing advocates as well as potential revenue sources.
So.. to tie it all together, I wonder what these companies will learn from these 'roll your own' marketing initiatives?
They will clearly get a 'thumbs up/thumbs down' view of what people feel about them.
They'll get a good idea of the demographics they are actually reaching.
They'll see what parts of their branding message is making it through the customer's filters and is seen as relevant to the customer's view of things.
Perhaps raw numbers of responses can be extrapolated into the reach of the campaign.
Secondary marketing of 'the winners' will test the message and probably impact future marketing efforts.
Even the non-winners/bad submissions probably have solid nuggets of information that will give some indications of the complex buying landscape many companies face.
I think we're going to see more of this stuff and I am excited to see where it goes!
I should probably put something up on how we allow this kind of marketing. Allowing users to respond via the web or Fuse to make whatever 'version' of an offer they want and report that back to the marketing dept. Any ideas for a particular topic?