The Holmes Report featured an op-ed by Schneider Associates’ EVP and Launch Expert Julie Hall about how social media is changing the way we launch new products.
Hall and Schneider Associates introduced the Most Memorable New Product Launch (MMNPL) Survey in 2002, and since then, the poll has surveyed thousands of consumers about the most memorable product launches each year, analyzed media consumption and purchasing habits, and predicted trends based on the results.
Hall highlighted one significant change in this year’s MMNPL findings: “Facebook was nowhere near the top 10 sources of information about new products – and in the span of one year, it became the third most used source of information on new product launches, jumping from 17% to 40%. And this is just Facebook.”
Based on this and other findings, Hall coined the fifth P in the product marketer’s arsenal – Participation (the original four: product, price, promotion and place). Hall insists that consumers can be engaged by “Relationship Marketing,” which allows them to interact more closely with brands and products they love. Going forward, campaigns must consist of a blend of participatory marketing through various sources of old and new, traditional and social media marketing techniques in order to succeed.
Launching a new product or service in the age of social media isn’t easy.
As product launch specialists, we know that now it’s harder than ever to get your customer’s attention, and their dollars. Bust as more people embrace social media, brands have an opportunity to deepen customer relationships, drive loyalty and increase purchases. Extending relationships with and among customers is the new norm. It’s time to explore collaborative marketing and messaging with customers-and brands working together to find the right words and action to motivate customers to try and buy new products.
Consumer integration in action
Several brands are using customer integration in developing new services and products. New Balance customers helped design their Minimus running shoe line. Baskin-Robbins crowdsourced the creation of a new ice cream flavor. Mountain Dew’s Dewmocracy campaign called on customers to advocate and gather votes for their favorite discontinued flavors.
Getting engaged
By involving customers before making product development and management decisions, brands can acquire new customers and get existing customers excited before product even hits the shelf, leading to robust initial sales. What’s better than that?
The State-Gate Solution
Brand managers can profit from adapting Dr. Robert Cooper’s State-Gate approach to developing new products and initiatives by incorporating customer input:
In the Preliminary Investigation phase, consider and identify what your customers really need. Why do they choose your products and brand over others? What would they change?
For the Detailed Investigation phase, consider starting a beta program to test your product or services with a few core customers, secure feedback and use their input to refine your product.
The Development phase provides the opportunity to craft your message with input from customers. What are they saying about your brand, product or service? What do they want to hear?
In the Testing and Validation phase, introduce the redesigned product to the customers who provided feedback.
During the Manufacturing Production phase, provide your employees with the training and tools they need to become ambassadors for the launch.
In the Market Launch phase, involve the customers with whom you initially recruited to create the launch marketing strategy.
To learn more about cutting edge public relations tactics and trends from our PR agency partners around the world, download our free eBook from WorldCom Public Relations Group.
If you would like help planning your next launch, contact us at launch@schneiderpr.comor on Twitter @SchneiderPR.
At this year’s SXSW 2012 event, brand names vied for exposure in a space teeming with messages and activity, with everything of course being shared in existing and new social media platforms. For more about what’s hot in the digital world and being launched and experienced by the 20,000 visitors to SXSW, be sure to watch the following videos with Launch Expert Julie Hall of Schneider Associates and our on-site correspondent, Lynne Viera, president and CEO of Rival Marketing.
No SXSW conference is without free food and sampling, and this year was no different. Some of the brands displaying innovation and creativity include Chevrolet, Nikon, Miller Lite, Monster Energy, and Doritos. Doritos JACKED, the newest tortilla chips from Doritos, were being sampled at a Doritos sponsored concert that also featured a chance to win special prizes. Doritos also displayed a nearly six-story tall pop-up vending machine with giant oversized quarters, to help promote the new extra large chips flavored as Smoky Chipotle BBQ or Enchilada Supreme. Doritos also recently launched a Doritos branded taco shell which is being served at Taco Bell. For additional commentary on food brand promotions at SXSW, check out the post from Dom Celentano, The Foodpreneur, on About.com.
SXSW also launched its first Tex-Mex Taco Table that featured participating restaurants Taco Deli, Habanero Mexican Café, and Matt's Famous El Rancho. What better place than Austin, Texas to promote foods and restaurants with Hispanic flavor profiles and influences? This year, FedEx delivered food and free coffee from their food truck, along with providing a power up from their human chargers (see photo). Even world champion eater Kobayashi showed up to scarf what we think was a record number of grilled cheese sandwiches. The Today Show also had a food truck, as many brands find it is easier to get the attention of attendees outside the convention by offering free food or other services.
(Fedex Human Chargers)
(Today Show food truck)
Beer company Miller Lite gave its consumers a chance to enter the “SXSW 2012 Instant Win Game” for a $200 gift card or more. Attendees can also "Tweet a Beer" to someone, buying a Miller via PayPal which is redeemable at some bars. They also sponsored giveaways and downloads on Pandora, Spotify, and other music apps. Another beverage brand, Monster Energy, offered free breakfast and morning beverages during its events.
On the non-food front, Chevrolet developed an innovative promotion by providing taxi cab rides to Austin, Texas venues. Dubbed “Catch a Chevy,” the shuttle service showed off a full line of cars including Cruze sedans, Volts, Camaros, Corvettes and Mailbu Ecos featuring their updated OnStar service. People test drove the vehicles from the convention center or hailed a car to take them to their next destination.
Nikon put its new Nikon D4 and D-800 HD SLR cameras in the hands of fans. SXSW attendees sampled the devices by snapping pictures of featured musicians.
The annual SXSW event began in 1987 in Austin, Texas, at the Austin Convention Center, and has become one of the best chances brands have to get in front of a core audience of influencers and trendsetters.
If you would like help planning your next launch, contact us at launch@schneiderpr.comor on Twitter @SchneiderPR.
Axe, the body spray and grooming brand by Unilever, famous for its ads that turn average young men into heroic “girl-magnets,” recently launched the newest addition to its line of body sprays: Anarchy, a scent marketed towards men andwomen.
The campaign, by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, focuses on the idea of chaos and commotion, using dramatic online and print advertisements to stir up attention. The online promotion kicked-off with a teaser commercial, also seen in movie theaters, which featured the "Anarchy" concept without revealing the new product for women.
Social media, specifically the Axe Facebook page, played a key role in unleashing the “anarchist” scent. Up until the launch, Facebook users were greeted with a countdown to the fragrance release using the text “Anarchy is coming.” Free samples were distributed before the product hit stores for Facebook users who answered all of the questions correctly on an Axe quiz.
Axe also launched an original graphic novel in partnership with Aspen Comics, appropriately titled “Anarchy,” via YouTube and Facebook. The graphic novel, “Anarchy Girl,.” Was created with fan feedback in real time, with Axe consumers voting on the comic’s plotline, characters and other aspects online through Axe’s social media channels. Some lucky fans also had comic versions of themselves featured in the novel after “liking” specific Axe Facebook posts or contributing their ideas.
To elaborate on their “Are you ready for unexpected attraction at every turn?” marketing campaign, Axe produced their usual suggestive commercial: a female police officer chasing a male robber through the city, only to meet with an incredible force of attraction at the end of the ad.
A limited edition release, the question is will the body spray make women forgo their normal stand-by and make Axe Anarchy body spray their new choice? Barret Roberts, Senior Brand Manager at Axe, told the New York Times, “We’ve been hearing for some time that females have been asking for and looking for their very own scent of Axe.”
At SA, we believe this is not anarchy, just smart marketing.
“The omnipresence of the Internet in everyday life has been a prime game changing phenomenon for new product launches, and has created a new paradigm for marketers—the arrival of business-to-everyone, or B2E. In the United States, 74.7 percent of the population has Internet access; that’s over 304 million people. Overall, the Internet is the medium with which users spend the most time (32.7 hours/week), according to IT market intelligence giant International Data Corporation (IDC). This is equivalent to almost half of the total time spent each week using all media (70.6 hours), almost twice the time spent watching television (16.4 hours), and eight times more than reading newspapers and magazines (3.9 hours).
"When literally anyone around the world can visit your Web site, you are no longer aiming your messages at only your carefully targeted business to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) customers. Instead, you are talking to everyone—B2E. This may have broader implications for those in the B2B market since B2C companies are more accustomed to thinking of virtually anyone as a potential customer. In the more tightly controlled B2B arena—particularly in the business service sector— companies usually talk to a carefully selected group of target customers and prospects. Now anyone, including your competition, can visit your Web site and see your products, pricing, and case studies, and learn how you are positioning your wares. No one cares whether you characterize your product, service or company as B2C or B2B; all they want is information available 24/7 brought to them by Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines that provide rapid search access.”
Today’s generation is driven by instant gratification. Transitioning magazines into the growing digital world provides customers with an efficient way to read what they want, when they want. Thanks to Zinio, consumers will now be able to read the latest issues of BusinessWeek or Cosmopolitan from their laptops and iPhone’s for a fraction of newsstand prices before the magazines even appear on newsstands.
Digital Publishing Company Zinio is the forerunner of online magazine subscription services. The San Francisco based company is targeting the growing number of consumers who are getting their news and information online and on-the-go. By creating digital editions of over one hundred popular magazines, Zinio is also appealing to a younger generation called “screen-agers” who prefer to download their information and read it on the Web.
"We aren't trying to erode print systems, but give publishers another way to redistribute their content," says Richard Maggiotto, CEO of Zinio. "It gives readers what they want in media formats they are increasingly using, such as iPhone, iPod, PCs," he says.
Zinio is also partnering with Barnes and Noble to sell digital magazines and books on the store’s Web site, along with offering free “digital classics” such as Moby Dick and Great Expectations.
Zinio’s paperless magazines even support popular environmental efforts to “go green.”
“We're saving publishers’ money and the forests trees,” Maggiotto says. “It can’t get much better than that.”
Will you, too make the shift to online reading as more and more everyday tools become accessible online?
It looks like Burger King’s (BK) brand promise is heading
from “Have It Your Way” to having it your way past midnight. Last year, BK required all franchises to be
open until midnight, and starting June 5, U.S. BK’s will be open until at least
2 a.m. from Thursday to Saturday. Who
better to announce this to late night club goers and concert fans than the king
of the night, Sean “Diddy” Combs?
Appointed the “Late Night Ambassador,” Diddy launches the
extended hours awareness campaign in a TV spot entitled “Diddy’s Way.” The
commercial is directed by the acclaimed Spike Lee in New York and features
Diddy discussing late night hours with the BK CEO (played by an actor). Diddy then
announces to late night crowds that “BK® IS OPEN LATE” and watches the
restaurant fill up immediately.
"Diddy is synonymous with late night and is a
natural fit for his role as our 'Late Night Ambassador,'" said Russ Klein,
president, global strategy, marketing and innovation, Burger King Corp. The
company aims to raise its profile among the music and entertainment crowd and
is finally taking advantage of its 2006 multi-year partnership with Diddy.
BK will continue its launch this summer through an
aggressive grassroots campaign. Promotions will include sponsorships, music
festivals, distribution of BK ™ Crown Cards and presence/onsite advertising in
bars and night clubs in select markets.
Currently, BK is the world’s second largest fast food chain. Will its new extended hours give BK an edge
in its competition against leading fast food giant, McDonalds?
There are lots of places online where you can share and compile your photos, but while the site name changes, the format on each is usually fairly similar. On December 11, 2007, Zoomorama presented its service at LeWeb3 conference in Paris, France. Zoomorama strives to make photo-sharing an easier and higher quality experience for Web users. Zoomorama President Franklin Servan-Schreiber said the following at the LeWeb3 conference:
Sharing photos is a huge part of the Internet experience, but it’s an experience that is disappointingly like sharing snapshots out of a shoe box, and in low resolution at that. Instead we think it should be like telling a story, sharing the emotions, and also enjoying your 5 to 10 mega pixels to the max… We aim to offer a platform for visual blogging, mixing full-resolution photos, videos, and text of course. We are convinced we have a 10 times better solution for sharing images online, and we have a way to monetize that solution.
In Zoomorama, you can create a photo collage and zoom in and out of specific photos that are all located on one page. Zoomorama is also planning to incorporate video sharing within their photo montage capability (as seen in the example below), but this feature is still in the lab.
As of now, you can download and use the Zoomorama service for free. Want to know more? The site has a helpful FAQ page outlining specifics regarding media formats and the ease of content sharing so you can learn more about all things Zoomorama.
We are looking forward to seeing how Zoomorama develops its services. What do you think of this new approach to photo sharing?
With Google Street View, there is really no excuse for ever getting lost again. If you are navigating the streets in any one of the 23 cities now included in the service, you have the option of viewing street-level photos along with traditional maps. Google initially went live with the service on May 29, 2007, and today it launches in eight new cities.
Now, if you want to visit the Launch PR team at Schneider Associates in Boston, you can use the Street View feature in our city. Along with Boston, other cities included in this new launch wave are Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Fort Worth, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Providence.
Do you find the Google Street View service helpful? Have you ever used the service when you were exploring a new city or trying not to get lost?
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