On August 27, 2009, Hilton Graham, Director of Digital Strategy with Hanes Brands, Inc, and Adam Keats, Senior Vice President at Weber Shandwick, discussed how Hanes is using social media to build better relationships with its customers.

What Is Social Media?

Social media is an umbrella term for the tools and technology people use to interact with content. It is the mechanism by which brand marketing has evolved from a monologue (one-to-one communication from advertiser to consumer) to a seriously super-charged dialogue in which many people can publish their message about a brand to many others.

Social media content is characterized as:

• Easy to interact with
• Easy to share
• Capable of generating realtime feedback
• Not being constrained by time and space

Social media has democratized brand messaging. Hanes was ready to join the conversation. Here is how they did it.

Hanes and Social Media: Tiptoeing into the Fray

Hanes’ overall strategy is to using social media tools to start a dialogue with their customers. They plan to accomplish this by:

• Developing a blogger network (the Hanes Comfort Crew)
• Tapping into their customers’ passion points (Passionately Pink for the Cure, Disney Celebrate in Comfort campaigns)
• Going where their customers are (Twitter, Facebook, real-world events such as the BlogHer conference)

I found it notable that several times during the presentation Graham described Hanes’ strategy as “tiptoeing.” To me this indicated a level of seriousness and humility that companies need if they are to survive and thrive in social spaces on the Web. Hanes is entering the social networking realm with a plan that prioritizes its customers’ needs and does not attempt to define or dominate the conversations that it starts with them.

The Hanes Comfort Crew

The Hanes Comfort Crew is a group of bloggers who broadly represent Hanes’ customer base: moms and dads, fashion and lifestyle mavens. These bloggers are not paid to write about Hanes. They were selected because they already had an affinity for the brand and had followings who were likely to share or be receptive to that affinity. Hanes gives these bloggers opportunities and ideas to talk about the Hanes brand in an authentic way. For instance, Hanes held its Comfort Crew kickoff by inviting the bloggers and their families to Disney World, where they discussed the products, tested out how the Hanes “wedgie-free panties” held up against a day of roller coaster rides, and created a lot of fun memories worth blogging home about.

Hanes also attended the BlogHer conference for women bloggers, where they built up even more buzz with their conversation-sparking T-shirt swag bags, footrubs at their Hanes Comfort Social, and expansion of the Comfort Crew (the original crew members each were invited to find 3–4 recruits from the conference attendees).

Hanes Got Crafty at the BlogHer Conference With These Cool T-shirt Totes

How Hanes Measures Success

Hanes takes a methodical approach to social media marketing, carefully crafting its message, setting goals, and measuring successes, just as it has always done with its traditional marketing tactics.

• They determined benchmarks for success in both traditional and social media.
• They looked at current brand conversations in both traditional and social media (e.g., number of blog posts about Hanes, number of tweets, print and TV ad circulation, etc.).
• They set goals to increase levels of conversation by 10% in both traditional and social media.
• They continued tracking and reporting monthly performance in each category.

2 Must-Do’s for Your Company

Graham and Keats left us with two cardinal rules for interacting with our customers in the social media realm:

1. When someone praises your brand, say Thank You.
2. If you make a mistake, apologize (quickly).

Other Takeaways

• Create real conversations by having interesting things to talk about and giving people things and experiences that they value. Hanes has a lot going on! They’re partnering with companies and celebrities we love to offer experiences worth talking about and participating in. I Googled Hanes and came up a T-shirt design competition to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, a Disney World vacation giveaway, a Michael Jordan celebrity invitational golf trip giveaway, an invitation to share your most embarrassing wedgie story (for a prize, of course!), dozens of news stories and videos, and reams of blog discussions.
• Don’t restrict your “social media marketing” to virtual venues. Go where your customers are in the real world, too.
• Create goals and success criteria for your social media marketing campaigns. Be methodical. Measure your results.
• Don’t say you’re great. Just be great. Social media gives people a way to spread their approval further and faster than ever before. Many thanks to Graham and Keats for showing how well Hanes has learned this lesson.

The economy has slowed and for many companies shrinking revenue means much smaller marketing budgets.  Shrinking marketing budgets can shrink results as well so what is the savvy marketer to do when looking for more results with drastically smaller budgets?  They recycle.

Five ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle:

1. Don’t throw out advertising too early - Redefine “worn out”.  Extend the schedules on which you would normally rotate your creative.  This turbulent economic climate leaves your customers and prospects seeking familiarity and stability.  When you find the effectiveness of your current creative waning, evolve what you have by introducing a new element rather than going completely back to the drawing board. For example, a sticker can take care of a change of address on a brochure. And when you do new things, plan with longer life and “refreshability” in mind.
2. Do something with that old bridesmaid’s dress you’re keeping - Reuse favorite advertising campaigns and direct mail pieces that worked well in the past.  Sure, a few things will have changed over the three years or so since you last ran an ad but editing is always less expensive than creating a new piece.  A few updated touches will create something new from something that might be old to you but thanks to audience turnover and poor long-term viewer retention, plenty of people will be enjoying for the first time.   For those that remember it, showing an old campaign can be a way to demonstrate that you are stable and give them a feeling of security.  Many large traditional brands have begun getting back to their roots and re-airing old campaigns for that reason alone.
3. Look in the trash pile - If you hired an ad agency for a project, chances are that they provided you with multiple concepts for earlier projects. Perhaps you can make use of one of the alternatives. There may be a charge to finish the piece, but it’s usually less expensive than starting over.
4. Car pool - See if anyone in your organization has unused seats.  Many organizations are siloed, especially around the area of technology.  Your IT department may have implemented a tool for Operations that might have marketing capabilities which are going unused.  A good example of a tool like this is Microsoft’s SharePoint. While your organization might be using it for internal collaboration, it is also an excellent tool to make external websites, secure micro-sites, promotional pages, and even to manage an electronic prospect dialogue strategy.
5. Switch to electric power - Marketers are still struggling to find ROI from broad use of the newest social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter but one thing is clear already.  The cost of reaching an audience using these tools is extremely low.  While they are not yet (and may never be) ready to carry the weight of a large portion of your marketing strategy this is a perfect time to replace some of the poorest performing media channels you pay for and add some inexpensive social media to your mix.

All of these ideas will be much more effective when used by a company with a well developed brand identity, and if yours doesn’t, there is no better time to focus on building your brand and taking bold brand actions.

Bill Cutshall

Kirsten Cutshall

On June 18th, 2009, the AMA hosted speaker Jill Griffin, author of Taming The Search-And-Switch Customer, at the Cool River Cafe in Austin. With her North Carolina accent in full effect, Jill shared “oodles” of knowledge and research aimed at helping companies with customer retention.

Jill Griffin is known all over the world as an expert in the three customer-keeping competencies: customer loyalty, winning customers back, and managing the search and switch customer. Customer retention has become a trending topic at a time when buyers are more price sensitive and budgets are being drastically cut. In addition to the current economic conditions, the popularity of Google and Social Media have muddied the waters even more. Customers seem only as loyal as the lowest price they find online. Fortunately, those of us in attendance last Thursday have the benefit of Jill’s strategy for defending our customers from online competition.

For those AMA’ers who couldn’t make it, and the millions of Austin AMA blog readers around the world, here’s what all businesses need know about keeping their customers:

1. Make defending your brand, and your customers, online a priority. This one seems obvious, but I’m sure Jill mentioned it for a reason. Defending your brand is kind of like exercising. It’s good for us, we need to do it, we might even enjoy it, but we always put it off until tomorrow. Actively making this part of our strategy is half the battle.

2. You need to ace the “Worth It” test. The longer we’ve been in business, the less we know about what’s going on in the mind of our customer. We may not know what the next best buying alternative is, or maybe our front liners don’t know what sets the brand apart. Jill’s “Worth It” test shows us exactly where we need improvement in the search and switch customer department.

The “Worth it” Test:

1. Versus your next best buying alternative, my brand provides real, substantive differences that you consider important.

2. My brand provides you tangible, convincing proof of these differences.

3. You can easily articulate my brand’s differences.

4. You are served by employees who exemplify my brand’s differences through word and deed.

5. Relative to the price difference, you perceive my brand as delivering substantially more value than your next best buying alternative.

3. You have to think beyond the tactics to win. It wouldn’t have been a gathering of professionals without the mention of social media. Jill pointed out something we might miss as our excitement for Twitter grows. If we don’t have a point of difference to communicate to our customers, it doesn’t matter how big our reach is, how many mentions we have, or if Oprah is following us.

I know I might have been too busy with my steak and asparagus to catch all the best points of Jill’s presentation, so please add anything I missed in the comments below. Also, any feedback or experiences implementing the “Worth It” test would be immensely helpful to everyone.

-@joshdward

Josh Ward is the Relationship Strategist at Volacci, an Austin based SEO company. He specializes in applying essential human relations and communication techniques in the online world of conversations. His services are available for your corporate event, birthday partys, and weddings. Read Josh’s blog about life, the universe, and everything at partner.Volacci.com. Josh lives in the Austin area with his beautiful wife and their 4 kids.

One of the earliest and most visible steps in developing a strong brand is choosing the right name.  Branding veteran Mike Carr offers five great tips for selecting the right name for your brand.

Naming Tip #1: MEMORABILITY

Think about building a brand as a war.  In a war, there are many battles to be fought, some of which are OK to lose.  But, there are a few key battles you must win to win the war. The key battle when it comes to the brand name is memorability.  If the name is sticky, if it gets inside the head of your target quickly and isn’t forgotten, then you can spend your budget building preference in your brand.  If the name isn’t memorable, you often burn through your budget just trying to build awareness. You then have nothing left to build your brand.  You lose the war.

Naming Tip #2:  NO NEGATIVES

Don’t allow anyone in your naming session to say anything negative until the very end.  New names are inherently fragile.  Allowing critical comments to surface too quickly kills off some great ideas.  Also, the majority of what you’ll come up with in your naming session is garbage, anyway. So focusing on what you don’t like is distracting.

Naming Tip #3:  BE AN ADVOCATE.

Taking the negative off of the table isn’t enough.  You need to encourage everyone to advocate for their favorite names rather than be the silent skeptic.  Ask everyone to pick their favorites and share with the group what they like about them.  Or if they don’t like the whole name, ask them to talk about the part of it they do like.  Is the idea behind the name appealing to them?  Is there a root embedded in the name that they find intriguing?  Do they have any new ideas to suggest using an existing name as a starting point?  What you are after during this process is for everyone to become as engaged and as upbeat as possible.  You will find yourselves talking one another into names that you initially weren’t that excited about.

Naming Tip #4:  THINK LIKE A CUSTOMER.

Try to react to each idea as a prospective customer might react to it.  Maybe they’ll react positively to a name that connects with them emotionally, rather than a more literal or descriptive name that is easier to understand but sounds like all of the others that are already out there. Or maybe they’ll look at a number of different names before deciding what to buy. Thinking like your customers and prospects is what great naming is all about.

Naming Tip #5:  GO WITH A RISKIER NAME.

The best names are rarely the safest. They’re typically the riskiest. There is no such thing as a perfect name.  The names with the greatest potential often have the most glaring weaknesses.  So focus on the potential a name brings to a table.  Is it memorable?  Is it easy to say and spell?  Does it connect emotionally?  Is it engaging?  Does it differentiate from the competitive set?  Is it a name that generates excitement and passion.  A name people want to talk about.  An engaging, sticky name.

Mike Carr

Mike Carr, an AMA member since 1985, has over 30 years of experience in marketing and marketing research, including more than 20 years in the branding and naming business. Prior to founding NameStormers, Mike was President of The Salinon Corporation and was Sr. Vice President of Compucon, an A. C. Nielsen subsidiary where he led Communications Marketing Research for U.S. and European Nielsen clients.  Mike can be reached at mike@namestormers.com or 512-267-1814.

On May 21, 2009, marketers from all over Austin converged on the Hilton for the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) where the Austin AMA and the OMS jointly hosted the luncheon as a part of the Power Lunch Series. The speaker was Paula Berg, who shared her successes and failures in Social Media for Southwest Airlines.

Through my recent adventures into Social Media I have found chests full of theory and only a few hidden nuggets of practical usable knowledge. At least that was the case until Paula Berg took the stage last week at the Austin AMA - OMS luncheon. As our barbecue lunch began to settle, Paula walked us through her ups and downs in Social Media for Southwest Airlines. Like most companies, Southwest started their foray into Social Media with a blog, but Paul and her team have since utilized everything from Twitter to YouTube.

Southwest Airlines Emerging Media Presentation

I’m sure that Paula didn’t have a top ten list in mind while she was presenting, but in the spirit of Social Media here are the 10 things Paul taught us about Social Media:

1. It can help you reach a new demographic. The Nuts About Southwest blog started as a replacement for A&E’s Airline. The show allowed Southwest to reach a different demographic by giving customers an inside look at their culture. All you need to know is who you want to target and where they hang out.
2. It’s OK to not have a strategy as long as you have a strategy?!? Paula mentioned she didn’t have a strategy when they started the blog, but I think she was just being modest. The strategy, or maybe we should call it a goal, was to give customers an inside look at Southwest. What they didn’t anticipate was all the things the blog would become. Social Media is so new, don’t try and put too narrow a scope on your strategy. It’s very much like a box of chocolates…
3. It’s good to have a presence in Social Media before you have a crisis. Blogs in response to bad press are not seen as authentic. You need to create conversations using Social Media before it’s too late.
4. Immediate, passionate feedback exists at no cost. Southwest was able to avoid using too much ink when customers print boarding passes, and discovered the real reason people don’t like their open seating policy. Paula has been able to create an open relationship with customers where they offer feedback because they know they will be heard.
5. You need thick skin. Criticism, warranted or not, hurts. The lesson is to be prepared to take the good with the bad.
6. When the media won’t listen, take your message directly to the people. Paula and her team “fought fire with fire” when responding to a couple of young ladies claiming they were treated unfairly because of their good looks. Since the media was only interested in one side of the story, Southwest created a video response that went viral. The only videos viewed more that week were of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
7. Listen. Some of the most valuable information Paula received was from listening to what people where saying- especially on Twitter. Southwest first discovered their “rapping flight attendant” through a twitter post. It’s amazing to think you might learn something about your own company reading your Twitter feed!
8. Never stop the conversation. When people comment on your blog posts, respond. This goes right along with listening. Social Media is a two way street. Don’t ignore people when they talk to you.
9. Social Media causes sleeplessness. Someone asked Paula what the ROI is for Southwest’s Social Media efforts. From Southwest’s point of view, it is huge. The only cost for them was paying Paula, and, over the past three years, she has worked many hours of free overtime. Social Media never sleeps, and neither does Paula. If you decide to immerse yourself this world, be ready with a case of red bull and a trusty mobile device.
10. Southwest will be flying to Hawaii and Mexico in the near future. Paula was kind enough to slip us this insider information after her presentation. This doesn’t really have any Social Media implications, but twitter probably works better on the beach.

- Josh

The following is a recap of Rohit Bhargava’s presentation at the March 18^th AMA Power Lunch Series luncheon. This post includes a podcast and a slide cast of the presentation, which you can play together.

Standing out from the crowd is the chief challenge for any brand.  To communicate brand identity in the new world of social media, companies must adopt a clear personality.  Sensing the underlying implications of the rise of social media, Rohit Bhargava wrote Personality Not Included, a book about the end of the faceless company and the need to build a brand with personality.

He brought his extensive knowledge and exprience to share with AMA members in a power lunch presentation entitled Why Personality Matters: The Untold Secret of Marketing in the Social Media Era.

During the lunch, Rohit explained that

“The story of the rise of social media is not about the tools that are out there…. it’s about a cultural shift, and that is that people want to see businesses with humanity.”

His presentation took the group through the definition of personality, dos and don’ts of social media marketing, and the ultimate importance of building personality “when you need to give people a reason to believe in something.”

Why Personality Matters

View more presentations from Austin ama Chapter.

Listen to Rohit’s presentation

 

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