Target in Trouble for Targeting?

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Marketing Musings

Recently, I read a fascinating (at least, to me) article about how Target is using data analysis to, well, target their marketing efforts. I won’t recap the entire story, but the gist is that Target used sophisticated data mining techniques in order to predict which women were most likely to be pregnant—based on their purchasing history. Target then sent coupons for pregnancy-related products to these customers.

One father got upset when his teenaged daughter received these coupons in the mail. Turns out, she had yet to tell her parents the news. Enter current brouhaha.

I found out about this story via Twitter (nearly my only source for news these days), and the commentary that accompanied it used a variety of inflammatory words, including: “creepy marketing,” “gross,” or―my personal favorite—“creeptastic.” Meanwhile, I found myself feeling a bit awestruck by how ingenious Target’s approach was.

I understand that the pregnancy thing is what makes this example stand out and seem a bit “creepy” to some readers. But, it seems to me, the real story here is just how powerful data has become for marketers. This story highlights the fact that you can learn a lot about a customer with the large amounts of data at your disposal, and marketers are going to do everything they can with it. Do marketers have a responsibility to use the data appropriately?

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Annoyance or Altruism? How Super Bowl Spots Tried to Engage You

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Customer Engagement, Marketing Musings

Just a few weeks ago, we blogged about the Super Bowl vs. Social Media question and how Intel and Pepsi had answered it. Now that the Super Bowl and its commercials are over, let’s take another look. Who made a splash? How did the commercials attempt to engage beyond their 30-second ad spots?

Here’s what we saw on Sunday:

  • Pepsi’s withdrawal from the Super Bowl time slot meant an easy monopoly for Coke. Coke ran two ads during the game as well as sponsoring the Hulu.com AdZone 2010 (for those lacking televisions) and running a philanthropy-based promotion on Facebook. As the New York Times’s Stuart Elliott put it, “Coca-Cola is telling Pepsi-Cola that when it comes to Super Bowl advertising, you can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
  • Much of the post-game ad-analysis focused on pants (or a lack thereof) and alleged misogyny. In ads for Budweiser, Dockers, GoDaddy, Chrysler, and even Dove, gender stereotypes were trotted out and replayed for laughs or titillation. Unsurprisingly, those ads were also the ones that showed up embedded in critical and defensive blog posts, roundups, and rants. One way to engage people through social media, it seems, is to give them something to be mad about.
  • Other companies—like Intel, who we’d discussed in the past—opted for much safer, less potentially offensive material. A cute lunchroom robot and a pair of geeky friends made for amusing, appealing spots that highlighted the passion Intel inspires in nerds.
    But what about Pepsi? Did they miss out by shifting their energy to social media?

Instead of spending on Super Bowl ads, Pepsi invested $20 million ($13 million less than they spent on the 2009 Super Bowl) in the Refresh Project, which will donate that money to social causes nominated and voted on by fans. According to Nielsen Co., Pepsi received over 20% of online chatter about Super Bowl advertisers over the last two months—not a bad percentage for a company without an ad spot.

But to gauge the real impact, we’ll need to watch what Pepsi does with the Refresh Project going forward. Will they give away the $20 million to deserving causes and resume TV ads as usual? Or will they use Refresh Project as a way to transform the way they reach consumers? For instance, what if Pepsi were to film the idea owners and the people they help to show how this $20 million dollar investment changed the world? And what if that inspired others to donate money or create new efforts to help people?

Super Bowl Switcheroo: Pepsi and Intel Place their Bets

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

Every year much of the pre-Super Bowl buzz is about the ads, and this year is no different. Some weeks ago, Pepsi made a splash (at least on the marketing blogs) by announcing they’d be forgoing the big ad spots to invest $20 million in social media campaigns. Pepsi’s caused a stir just by making the announcement—which won’t be true for the second, third, and forth companies to forswear the Super Bowl. It’s entirely possible that this move is just as much a PR gesture as a genuine bet on social media.

It will be interesting to watch how Pepsi uses that $20 million, and whether it works for them. So far, they’re using it to launch the Refresh Project, which will crowdsource the question of where Pepsi should donate the cash. Of course, corporate philanthropy is worth cheering for, but it’ll also be interesting to see if it works to strengthen Pepsi’s brand—and sales.

This week Intel announced they’d be taking a different tack by sponsoring the CBS post-game show and debuting two new commercials during the game. This set of choices, at first glance, seems almost backwards—with consumer giant Pepsi moving away from broadcast advertising and technology supplier Intel looking to reach a broader general audience.

But Intel knows social media. Their social computing guidelines are often cited as an example of best-practices policy, and they have an active family of blogs and twitter presences that are generally well-regarded. Because Intel knows social media, Intel’s marketers know that one of the most successful uses of video-sharing tools like YouTube is to serve as another channel for distributing popular TV ads (especially if they’re funny, which Intel hopes they will be). Their Super Bowl presence may be a counter-intuitive social media move, if they’re hoping it will spur online discussion, sharing, and viewership.

Which move do you think will work better? Can social media and traditional advertising work together?

Bing’s ad campaign aims high.

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Marketing Musings

This post is by Ben Hawken.

Last week Microsoft launched its new search decision engine, Bing.

Bing comes equipped with some very cool features, and offers citizens of the intrawebs a unique, impressive web experience.

Although it’ll be quite a while before we can see the lasting impact of this effort from Microsoft, there are several features that do bode well for the future.

First and foremost, Bing is a quality product, and Microsoft has the resources and energy to maintain and refine it.

Second, Bing’s advertising has taken a decidedly positive tone, focusing on the product’s features rather than calling out any direct competitors by name. Continue reading →

Tag, you’re it.

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Marketing Musings

What do you do if you’re walking down the street and you see an advertisement for something you’re interested in? Do you take a mental picture of the website address and try to remember to check it out later? Or perhaps you quickly type the URL address into your phone? What if you could simply point your phone’s camera at the advertisement and have it automatically take you to the website? Would you consider that a huge step forward in the continually evolving marriage between advertising and technology, or just another ease-of-use phenomenon that may never catch on?

Recently, on Jimm Wagner’s blog, he proclaimed that “Text URLs Are So Last Year” due to Microsoft’s new Tag Technology. There’s a lot of buzz – both positive and negative – about Tag on other industry blogs such as i started something and TechCrunch.

What the heck is a Tag, you ask?

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Logos and the Favicon

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Marketing Musings

All marketers can appreciate the importance of a good logo. Millions of dollars and decades of effort go into creating a strong, clear, recognizable symbol that represents a brand. Companies like Nike with their “swoosh,” products like Campbell’s Soup with its venerable red-and-white label, and even celebrities like Oprah with her “O” have succeeded in linking an image in our mind to a feeling of familiarity with what they have to offer.

The latest frontier in online marketing is the favicon. While you may not have heard of these little gems, you’ve no doubt seen plenty. A favicon (short for “favorites icon”) is that small graphic image just to the left of the address bar in your web browser. You can probably see the orange Projectline favicon atop this browser page. Favicons are popping up more & more, and that little piece of real estate presents a great marketing opportunity. Continue reading →

The Math of Viral Marketing

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Marketing Musings

In catching up on my RSS feeds over the weekend, I found myself staring at a short New York Times article that suggested a long story left unwritten. How does anyone build a viral campaign that succeeds out of any force other than blind luck?

Believe it or not, there is an equation for just that purpose:

[Be Amazing] + [Act Amazing] = [Get Amazing]

Viral is really that simple – just be worth talking about and do something worth talking about. The only catch is you have to have both to succeed. Notice also that I’ve not mentioned timing anywhere. There is a reason for this: Great campaigns always make their own timing.

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