Established companies are turning to online social sites to build brand communities and boost sales. This past year, companies have transformed these networking sites into a means for marketing and advertising to potential consumers. Recently Starbucks and Pizza Hut have proven to be top competitors in the social media marketing world.

Starbucks is now the top brand on Facebook. They have surpassed Coca-Cola in popularity, acquiring over 3.6 million followers on their fan page. They contribute their success to an aggressive social media marketing strategy and the construction of an online coffee community where Starbucks’ coworkers and customers can exchange stories and company ideas, connecting Starbucks fans worldwide. In addition they are using the social site to promote new products including the Via instant coffee. Last month Starbucks offered their Facebook followers a free cup of coffee for taking the Via instant coffee taste test at local stores.

Pizza Hut is also expanding their company with the help of iPhones. After downloading the Pizza Hut application, users are able to create and customize their pizza using the iPhone’s touch screen features. Similar to Starbucks’ strategy, Pizza Hut hopes customers will enjoy the interactive ordering experience, connect with the brand, and become loyal customers.

This demo video on the new iPhone application demonstrates how Pizza Hut is revamping the pizza industry.

The future for these social sites and devices is uncertain. Will they sustain popularity with users as more businesses utilize them for marketing purposes or will this just be another technology trend that will be replaced by something bigger and better?

In the war to win your customers’ attention, you are not competing against other marketers; you are competing with your customers’ friends’ Facebook walls. On September 17, 2009, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of Trust Agents, talked to us about how to win attention in a world of information overload.

It’s all about building trust with people so that they will listen when you have something to say. Brogan and Smith provided helpful tips from their own experience for breaking through the white noise of everyday life and getting attention.

1. Make a Habit out of Breaking Habits.

When you interrupt the patterns that govern people’s lives by saying and doing the unexpected in a manner that is helpful or insightful to others, you wake them up, you jolt them out of their mental auto-pilot mode, and you become visible.

With social media, you have the opportunity to become visible through many channels and to be seen as a whole person rather than a flat corporate entity. Brogan and Smith encourage companies to put a face to their marketing. Also, when you have a habit of breaking habits, you become more creative and more open to new ideas, which in turn fuels your ability to develop new angles and opportunities for yourself.

2. Stand Out, Start Something.

If you’re competing against others, you’ve already lost, say Brogan and Smith. Citing Cirque du Soleil and the iPhone as examples of game changers in their respective industries, they noted the importance of carving out more profitable spaces in which your company can operate.

For instance, PodCamp, a Barcamp-style “unconference” for new media enthusiasts and professionals co-founded by Brogan and Christopher Penn in 2006, was a way of standing out and starting something. By creating a community around a shared passion, they created the Next Big Thing without quite realizing it. That flood of attention and enthusiasm benefited them even as it created momentum for everyone involved.

“The only difference between a community and an audience is which way you point the chairs.”
—Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan on the evolution of PodCamp (interview with Adele McAlear)

(Toward the end of the presentation, an audience member amended this advice as “listen and then start something.” Don’t forget to check out what’s already going on and start participating before starting something new. Perhaps your Next Big Thing has already begun and is waiting for you to join.)

3. Build Your Network Ahead of Need.

Just as the worst time to find a job is right after you’ve lost one, the worst time to find a customer is right when you need one. If you have built relationships with people before you need the sale, it’s that much easier to get them to be receptive to your offer.

4. Create a Culture of Giving.

Chris Brogan describes his call-to-action as “Come back—I’ll give you more.” He says that by creating a culture in which he makes a habit of doing things to help people, he’s “training people to be nice” to him. Indeed, by setting the example of giving value to people without asking for something in return, you train others to pay it forward in a similar fashion. It’s no wonder that eventually you would become the beneficiary of that goodwill. As with collaborative efforts like PodCamp, generosity and inclusion build conversation and engagement, which is a recipe for trust and attention.

And speaking of recipes…

5. Give your customers recipes in which you are the ingredient.

You won’t find a can of cream of mushroom soup that doesn’t have a recipe on the label that requires cream of mushroom soup. Likewise, you should frame yourself as a necessary ingredient in your customers’ success. I found this piece of advice to be one of the most concrete of the presentation, and one that many of us could run with, when we decide how it applies to us.

What would a recipe for your business look like? If you sell widgets, could you suggest projects on your Web site that use that widget? If you sell expertise, could you create an event around that area of knowledge? AMA members, write in with your ideas and get some collaboration going!

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.

On May 12, 2009, hundreds of Austin marketing professionals gathered for Marketing Jam ‘09 hosted by The Austin chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA). Marketer, Blogger and AMA Member, Darren Drewitz gives a recap of all the activities.

“I wanna rock-n-roll all night and practice marketing every day.” With apologies to the legendary rock band KISS, this was the adopted slogan for Marketing Jam 09. The Austin chapter of the American Marketing Association hosted a hybrid night of marketing best practices, networking and live music at the always hip Cool River Café in North Austin. With the VP of Programs Elect Simon Salt emceeing the way, AMA members were treated to a fun and informative meeting featuring some of today’s top marketing acts.

Simon introduces the speakers

The “opening band” was Pierpont Communications and the AMA groupies were treated to a duet presentation from Senior VP, Michael Russell and VP, Stacy Armijo. Michael’s set list included a situational overview of today’s business climate in a down economy and how to do more with less when achieving marketing success and new business. The “must haves” in today’s marketing world as sung by Michael are strategy, targets, messaging and differentiation. “Times are tough,” “capital is restrained,” and “we never have enough money or time for new business leads” were the catchy tunes belted by Michael Russell. But with each set of challenges comes a set of solutions and the SVP of Pierpont had a valuable list of low-cost tactics of developing new business. Ideas included hand-written letters, hosting c-level luncheons, power mapping and speaking at great events like Marketing Jam 09.

Stacy speaks to the crowd on the role of a Marketer.

Pierpont VP, Stacy Armijo struck a chord with every AMA attendee when with her anthem “Defending the Role of Marketing.” A veteran of corporate marketing, Stacy offered insights and real-world tips on how a professional marketer can defend their role and value in today’s uncertain employment world. Stacy’s insights and advice included speaking to your bosses on their level, marketing yourself internally, tracking and reporting progress and showing a direct correlation between your day-to-day efforts with the company’s success.

Check Pierpont’s rock’n presentation, for more on what Michael and Stacy had to say.

Next up, was TradeMark Media. A solo act lead by Nick Weynand, Nick’s hit song was “Stop Tweeting and Start Thinking.” Tweet, tweet, tweet is a catchy tune, but Nick was quick to point out that tweeting without strategy is a tune that falls a bit flat.

Nick asks everyone to think before you tweet.

Nick took the crowd through a step-by-step approach to identifying the building blocks of developing strategy for clients. Determine your goals, understand your audiences, use research, survey your customers, and develop appropriate messages to the appropriate segmented groups. Nick touched on the DISC personality test and profiling system, then he declared the room an “I” given that so many marketers were in the audience. We’re know as a bunch who is sociable, talkative, energetic and talks more than listens.

Jam through Nick’s power point below.

The next act was another duet. This time, it was Annie Williams and Jim Hitch with Emma. With a dose of humor in their set, Annie and Jim wanted e-mail marketing and social media to give each other a “hug.” Their presentation was aptly titled “Social media and e-mail marketing are friends. And not just on Facebook.” E-mail marketing expert, Annie Williams, politely asked social media to “drop your weapons” and then took the AMA groupies through a series of definitions of social media and industry statistics. It first hit Annie that social media was big when her mom’s friend requested her on Facebook. The AMA Marketing Jam attendees learned that if Facebook was a country, it would be the 6th most populist country in the world. Additional stats included Facebook growing by 600,000 users per day and receiving more daily searches than Yahoo.

Annie and Jim declare Email Marketing and Social Media are friends. Really!

Jim Hitch joined the set half-way through and together, the duet from Emma demonstrated how companies can utilize e-mail marketing to send their clients relevant, targeted messages and create an online community for branding purposes in the social marketing medium. Marketing is a team sport, so said Jim and Annie and they demonstrated how e-mail marketing and social marketing can and should work together with real world case studies with Southwest Airlines and the New York Times.

For more on what Jim and Annie had to say, careen their groovin slide deck.

And with that, the Marketing portion of the evening was completed and it was time for the AMA crowd to get to the Jam portion of the evening. AMA members and guests were treated to fun, networking, food and spirits while the band Lip Service played our favorite hits from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The vibe was all Austin - casual, fun and energetic. The AMA attendees had ample time to hang with each other, network and enjoy a Tuesday evening in Austin with good tunes, friends and marketing discussions. Check out some additional pics from the event from our FlickR stream.

Photos from Marketing Jam 2009

“I wanna rock-n-roll all night and practice marketing every day.” Let us know what you thought about this year’s Marketing Jam. I had a great time and learned something new along the way. See you at Marketing Jam 2010.

About Darren Drewitz

Darren has 16 years of strategic and integrated marketing experience on both the client and agency sides. He has experience in both B2B and B2C marketing, including the multi-location, food, logistics, building & construction and tourism industries. Darren specializes in developing year-long strategic and integrated marketing plans designed to align business objectives with marketing initiatives. Darren lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Melissa and their two sons. Darren serves as an account director for MQ&C Advertising, a 25-year-old, full-service marketing and advertising agency.

Did you like the programming you just read? It’s always better in person. Visit the Austin American Marketing Association website (www.austinama.org) for upcoming events, membership information and volunteer opportunities.

When John Ellett, owner of local advertising agency nFusion, speaks in front of college groups, it’s an Anheuser-Busch account that gets the most attention. Using interactive marketing, nFusion created a Bacardi Silver brand campaign, The Pick-Up Hall of Shame. The interactive campaign launched in January 2007 and is still running and pulling in viewers.

Yes, you have to be 21 to enter the website featuring all the flavors of Bacardi Silver. So, many of those college students have only heard of, not sampled the brand. After skimming through the over 1500 entries made by site visitors, the real list of Pick-Up Lines is surprisingly small. My favorite line was:

I wish I was a tear, that way I’d be born in your eye, live on your cheek, and die on your lips.

Many of the pick-up lines referenced advertising slogans:

When I studied advertising at Syracuse University, I chose a Bacardi ad for a critical analysis assignment. Through that exercise, I learned my first rule of advertising: Men like to look at women in ads. Women like to look at women in ads.

Bacardi often sells the social aspect of its product. So it was natural to continue the “fun feature” of the branding in nFusion’s campaign. The “Worse Pick-Up Line” feature is very viral. Of the viewers that “stick”, 82 percent of them will share the campaign with their community, add or rate the lines. That is an outstanding metric which shows the conversion of lookers to doers. The viewers spread the campaign through social bookmarking, adding it to their MySpace pages, or by forwarding it to their friends.

While we can’t trace actual sales that result from the Pick-Up Line feature, the Anheuser-Busch executives approve of it enough to let it to run for two years. In interactive marketing, that’s like dog years. I like how nFusion runs the flavor buttons at the bottom of the screen with a new flavor tag for the latest version of Bacardi Silver. The new flavor tag refreshes the content.

Bacardi Silver’s interactive marketing accomplishes the goals of stickiness and engagement with its target demographic. It also has a timeless quality — the pick-up line, “You must be wearing spacepants, because you’re out of the world,” could have come out of the David Bowie disco days of the 70s. There’s no other explanation for such a bad pick-up line. Why do you think this campaign works?

About the Author

Brenda Hessney

Brenda Hessney is a successful Austin marketing specialist with a knack for quickly analyzing, planning, and implementing effective, cost efficient sales campaigns.

From Nick Wenand, President & Strategy Director, Trademark Media. Nick will speak at the AMA Marketing Jam on Tuesday, May 12^th.

I’m excited about the opportunity to share the knowledge I have with people in the marketing profession. I hope I’ll be able to deliver an impactful presentation with some real takeaways that everyone will be able to go back to the office and start using right away.

The title of my presentation is Stop Tweeting and Start Thinking: Developing your Interactive Marketing Strategy. I chose this topic because the landscape of interactive marketing has evolved so much since the advent of the Internet 20 years ago. Now there are so many platforms to make yourself heard: Web sites, blogs, social media, search engines, etc. The list goes on and on.

I believe that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for marketers to choose the best tools from this complex web of possibilities and really do a great job marketing online.

In order to do this, it’s my argument that you need a very solid interactive marketing strategy, one that consolidates the most useful platforms for your audience and product and sets forth a clear plan of action that will meet your end goals.

In my talk I’ll discuss how to go about developing this strategy, and we’ll touch on some of the latest tools that marketers are using to make themselves heard online.

If you have ideas about how I can make my presentation even better, please send them my way by commenting here.

I’m really looking forward to May 12^th.

Join us for Marketing Jam ’09 as we rock out and share new ways to grow your business and make the most of your marketing dollars. Attendees will learn from Austin’s leading marketing experts, including: Pierpont Communications ; TradeMark Media; and Emma Email Marketing. Following the presentations, attendees will enjoy networking, appetizers, cocktails and live music from Austin’s own Lip Service. Let’s rock!

Nick Weynand is the founder, president and strategy director for TradeMark Media, an award-winning interactive agency located here in Austin. Nick started the company in 1999 shortly after earning his degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1999, Nick has dedicated his time at TradeMark Media to building a company that supports the highest Web standards in the industry.

If you haven’t seen John Adams, seen, it’s an award-winning, 7-part mini series made by HBO Films on the life of the 2nd President of the United States.

This 2008 marketing campaign serves as a good example on how to create a successful multi-aspect campaign. When HBO started promoting this back in Feb. of 2008, they did several interesting things that made this truly an innovative stand out campaign:

“Stand out” Idea

HBO took the only written communication medium in 18th Century America - the letter - and linked it to a fairly obscure historical figure. In this “Power of the Letter” campaign, HBO focused on the letter (and strategically, the Postal Service), as being an extremely revolutionary tool of persuasion and power. Using this provocative idea, they invite us to learn more about the written word, and ultimately, John Adams.

Central Call to Action

HBO, along with their mail fulfillment partner, built the mini-site PowerOfTheLetter.com as the central call to action. The site enabled people to customize any of 6 different greeting cards with John Adams’ quotes and send them to friends and family for free. The greeting cards all had designs, quotes and even fonts from the early colonial period, but were modified using an online design tool. HBO picked up the cost of this viral marketing campaign (including postage)! The result was an online experience that enabled consumers to communicate with friends and family using the theme of John Adams as a context. For the direct order marketers out there, it is true that HBO paid for all this marketing under the flag of the show launch and brand building (as there were no immediate direct sales made), but the important aspect that could be extended to direct order models is that they focused on enabling a conversation amongst their audience. Once you enable people to talk in an arena that you facilitate, it adds to brand credibility and revenue down the line. Also, post-launch, I would imagine HBO would send a follow up to contest entrants & greeting card senders - as these types of offers are some of the few ways a television studio can use direct marketing with their audience.

Use all Marketing Vehicles Possible

Another aspect that is remarkable is the myriad ways they publicized this central call to action. Among them:

• Inserted John Adams quotes on USPS receipts (3.75 million daily)
• Window “standees” (6 foot tall cardboard cutouts) in 4,000 post offices nationwide
• Window “clings” in 12,000 locations
• Worked with the USPS to stamp cancellations on relevant letters in the USPS mail stream which included a John Adams quote and the mini-site URL
• Partnered with a high school educational org, to educate kids on John Adams
• Presence on main HBO site and web banners
• Agreement to temporarily re-brand the USPS’ own website (see image below) with the theme of John Adams

Rebranded US Postal Service Website

While a smaller company may not have the resources for such a partnership with the USPS, there are a myriad avenues to publicize your central call to action with a similar energy (email, blogs, social media, direct mail, flyers, etc.)

Keep the Conversation Going

What HBO did not do well was to use this incredible marketing effort to continue a community. When you visit the www.poweroftheletter.com website today, it goes nowhere. This is really astounding considering that the campaign began less than a year ago. If you really dig on the John Adams website, you find a place for an HBO Users Discussion Forum, but it’s rather lifeless compared to the other discussion forums out there (MySpace for the high school crowds, Facebook, etc.) A better execution would have been to transform that mini-site into a functioning interaction point for history buffs, possibly by offering the same “send a greeting card” functionality that the original site offered, but with more cost paid by the end user. If a quality experience (and community) was facilitated, such a site would take very little to keep it running and generate long term DVD sales & possibly syndication interest on other cable channels. In the long run, communities & relationships are what persist. Has anyone else seen post-campaign interactions and community facilitated well by a brand?

About Luis Paez

Luis Paez

Luis is a Market Intelligence Analyst at QuantumDigital, researching direct marketing trends and new market opportunities. Luis also blogs on marketing, technology and business at his personal website, Overlinked, and on direct marketing trends at The Direct Marketing Voice.