On Purpose Read online

  http://youtu.be/iccscUFY860

  Neither of these ads promoted a brand or a product. They told a story that was emotionally engaging about a higher purpose – being with people whom you care about at Christmas.

  So we have two interesting but opposing trends: one is the decline in consumer attention to traditional advertising and therefore the increasing cost of buying awareness; the other is the increasing trend for consumers to willingly view marketing material and even share it if it strikes a chord. How much would John Lewis have had to pay to air their ad on prime-time television to attract 23 million viewers, we wonder?

  Some brands go even further. LEGO’s purpose is ‘to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow’ and it does this through its range of plastic building blocks but also increasingly through its social platforms and media activity. In February 2014 it released The LEGO Movie to critical and consumer acclaim. By September 2014 the movie had enjoyed sales of $468 million and LEGO was reporting a shortage of product. The trailer has also been viewed over 27 million times on YouTube. If you are one of the apparently few people that haven’t yet seen it you can do so here.

  http://youtu.be/fZ_JOBCLF-I

  Think about that for a moment. LEGO has earned nearly $500 million in income by enticing consumers to sit through a 98-minute advertisement for the brand. A very high proportion of those viewers were ‘highly qualified prospects’ in the jargon of marketers – kids, to you and me. LEGO achieved this by creating marketing that is so infectious that their target consumers are willing and enthusiastic participants.

  Bigger is not better

  One of the things about infectious communication is that it is a great leveller. You don’t need to be a large corporate or spend mega-bucks to get your message across. In fact, the less you can spend the more likely it is that you will hit on something that really works because it forces you to be innovative.

  For example, Air Canada staged an experiential event in a bar in London called ‘The Maple Leaf’ – which is popular with Canadians – in order to highlight its London to Canada service. A pilot and flight attendants visited the crowded bar and gave away free tickets so that expat Canadians could be with their families at Christmas.

  http://youtu.be/r5YvVB1FJrs

  First Direct, the online bank owned by HSBC, went out to 580,000 of their customers and asked them what they liked most about the brand. Their answer was that being able to engage with a real person rather than an interactive voice response was really important for them. So First Direct said, ‘Great, would any of you like to be in our ad?’ Hundreds of customers said, ‘Yes!’ and so First Direct’s advertising agency created a number of advertisements featuring customers speaking about their First Direct experience. One, named ‘Call Centre’, featured a customer speaking about her experience of calling First Direct and being able to speak to a person to get help any time of the day or night. The ad was shot in a bare room with the customer speaking to a single hand-held camera. She is nervous and stumbles over her words, but her enthusiasm for First Direct is clear. The simple treatment, engaging tone and authenticity are estimated to have produced £3.8 million in incremental revenues for First Direct – the ad cost next to nothing to make. This was probably one of the first examples of crowdsourcing, and First Direct has continued to engage with its customers since then. It now has a section of its website called ‘Lab’, which tests new product and service ideas and invites customers to try them and give their feedback. First Direct has won numerous awards, including Best Banking Brand by Which?, and it remains the most recommended bank in the UK2 – achieving an NPS rating of 62 per cent in an industry that scores an average NPS of 0 per cent, according to Satmetrix Systems UK research. First Direct’s score is remarkable for any brand, let alone a bank.

  Traditional marketing can be costly, slow and unengaging. Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad, says, ‘Marketing is a tax that you pay for being unremarkable.’ There is a great deal of truth in Stephens’s comment; it often seems that the more boring the brand, the larger the marketing budget.

  The average marketing campaign can take months to plan and execute, with all the risk that by the time it is aired circumstances have changed. For example, AT&T, Accenture, Gatorade and Gillette all dropped Tiger Woods from very expensive sponsorship and advertising campaigns in 2009, when he was involved in a car accident following a row with his wife and disclosures of infidelity.

  The benefits of infectious communication, by contrast, include cost-efficiency and speed. Infectious communication allows you to be ‘in the moment’ and communicate something that is topical and relevant. But you have to be clever and you have to be fast. In 2014, Nissan produced an ad just seven minutes after Clarence House announced that William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, were expecting their second child. Featuring the Nissan X-Trail, the company tweeted a picture of the interior of the vehicle with a crown on each seat. The message accompanying the image was ‘It could be triplets and there would still be enough room for the Queen.’

  You also have to be prepared and organized to take advantage of opportunities. In 2013, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII, a power outage at the Superdome caused the lights to go out for more than half an hour. Within minutes, Oreo cookies tweeted an ad that read ‘Power out? No problem’ with a picture of an Oreo and the caption, ‘You can still dunk in the dark.’ The message was shared 20,000 times on Facebook and Twitter and gathered 525 million earned media impressions (five times the number of people who actually watched the Super Bowl (and its ads) on TV). Despite the fact that it was a spontaneous, unscheduled tweet on social media, Adweek voted it one of the Top 5 ads of Super Bowl night. Oreo achieved this because they had a 15-person social media team ready to respond to whatever happened at the Super Bowl within 10 minutes or less – and they were aware of a survey that showed 36 per cent of the Super Bowl audience would be consulting a second screen while watching the game.

  The effects of infectious communication are long lasting. If you Google Oreo Super Bowl even now, you will find a plethora of references and links to it. But the important thing is to ensure that your social media message is consistent with what your brand stands for.

  When infectious communication goes wrong

  When you let the ‘genie out of the bottle’ and invite customers to share their views and participate in brand communications, then, of course, things can go wrong – as the condom brand Durex discovered. They launched a social media campaign for a new brand called SOS condoms. They invited customers to visit Facebook and vote for which cities should get SOS condoms first. They imagined that it would be the cities of romance: Paris, New York or Rome, perhaps? The answer, thanks to pranksters, was a place called Batman located in a conservative Muslim province in Turkey. Not the result that Durex wanted.

  http://youtu.be/LJxSRZMgP1s

  We used to estimate that a dissatisfied customer would tell 9–10 others. In today’s socially connected world that has multiplied several-fold. Convergys, the contact centre company, found that the average detractor tells 45 friends via a social media site.3 However, that figure hides a wide range of potential impact. Dave Carroll, a United Airlines customer, created a YouTube video of himself and his band singing a song called ‘United Breaks Guitars’. His song relates the story of how, whilst travelling on United Airlines, his guitar was damaged and, despite all his efforts to claim for the damage, he was unable to get United to listen to him. Finally, in desperation he wrote a song about his experience and posted it on YouTube on 6 July 2009. United was quick to respond via Twitter and offered to compensate him, but by then it was too late – the damage was done. By the end of July the video had been viewed 4.5 million times and, as of January 2015, over 14 million people have viewed the video, with thousands more posting comments about it. It is impossible to gauge the damage this has done to United’s reputation, but imagine how much the aver
age company might need to spend in order to create and air an advertisement that attracted that many viewers.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

  The other problem is that social media are a channel open to everyone in your organization, not just your marketing department. As a result, your employees can send messages that have the power to undermine your brand and in this case infectious communication can work against you.

  Some companies have had to dismiss staff for comments they made on social media. Marks & Spencer disciplined 76 staff for participating in a chat forum where they described the firm’s customers as ‘idiots’ and ‘cheap little b******s’. Virgin Atlantic sacked 13 crew members who posted remarks calling passengers ‘chavs’. The results of a recent survey reported by Chadwick Lawrence, a UK law firm, and compiled by a recruitment agency, showed that 40 per cent of UK employees admitted to criticizing their employers on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. In fact, 20 per cent of employees admitted that they had ‘lambasted’ their employer online at least once.

  The availability of social media channels provides the opportunity for employees to do much greater damage than in the past. This means that brands have to pay even more attention to ensuring that they hire people who fit the desired culture and then educate them to understand what the brand stands for and to behave accordingly. But we are getting ahead of ourselves because that is where stand firm comes in, which we discuss in Part Three.

  How do you engage in infectious communication?

  Central to infectious communication is the plethora of social media. There are just too many social media platforms to describe here, and by the time this book is published undoubtedly there will be a lot more, but in searching for definitions online we came across this handy little primer of the main ones:

  Image 3.1 Social media primer

  Source: This image was posted anonymously on the Image Store so we print it with acknowledgments to the author, whoever he or she is.

  So what are some innovative uses of social media? To answer the question we turned to Alison Battisby, an expert on all things digital. Alison speaks and writes about social media and advises clients how to use them most effectively.

  Social media offer brands the tools to reinforce their customer experience through rich media including imagery, video and real-time interactions. They are also the only communication channel that allows customers to have a one-to-one conversation with a brand, in a very public forum. They can also be an extremely powerful tactic for businesses to build a loyal community of customers who are willing to recommend, defend and champion their beloved brands. Because of all of this, social media are therefore an excellent indicator in understanding whether a brand has an authentic sense of purpose.

  Jimmy’s Iced Coffee, a British family-run company, has created a seamless experience for its customers across social media, which has helped them to stand out against their giant competitors Nescafé and Mars. Founder Jimmy Cregan’s purpose is clear: he fell in love with iced coffee whilst travelling in Australia, became obsessed and wanted to start selling the drink in the UK. The brand’s purpose is to bring proper off-the-shelf iced coffee to the people of the UK and beyond. Now Jimmy’s Iced Coffee is stocked in Waitrose, Tesco Express and BP. So how have social media supported its growth?

  From the early days, Jimmy’s Iced Coffee has featured the brand motto ‘Keep Your Chin Up’ on its packaging. This happy ethos reminds customers that things could be worse, and to concentrate on the positive things in life – such as their tasty refreshing drink. By understanding how Twitter, Facebook and Instagram support the use of hashtags, Jimmy has managed to translate the motto perfectly into social media, as #KYCU, and now includes it in almost every post.

  A key part of how the company has grown in social media is by encouraging their customers to tag posts, images and comments in social media with the hashtag #KYCU. Similar target audiences to their own then see these posts, as social media platforms such as Facebook make it easy for brands to target friends of their fans.

  The active community very much feels like an online fan club, and the company has successfully reinforced this through their online shop, which sells merchandise such as hats and stickers featuring #KYCU. This motto helps Jimmy’s Iced Coffee remind customers why they exist, and what they stand up for.

  Jimmy Cregan’s social media posts follow the company’s adventures during their first few years of trading, and are all written in the first person. This really helps to support the fact that this is his mission to supply those with similar iced coffee cravings as himself with the sweet drink. His enthusiasm for life, and the coffee drink, is infectious and this is obvious from his happy-go-lucky tone of voice in social media. Often he will include personal detail in his posts, such as the arrival of his new baby, his sister’s engagement, or his regular morning snaps of the seaside in Dorset, where the company is based. Customers who have been following the growth of the company relate well to these posts as they make the brand more human, and reinforce the company’s values as being British and family run.

  https://www.facebook.com/jimmysicedcoffee/posts/876749095688853

  http://instagram.com/p/x_sKplxeKF/

  Jimmy Cregan has spoken about the fact that his social media have been a success because he is honest and open with his customers, about every detail around the business. In an interview with Enterprise Nation, he said: ‘I run my brand like we’re on The Truman Show by showing our community everything that is going on in the business. It’s important to keep your customers entertained by talking about your life and not just about the products. I even recommend letting people know about the mundane things – for example, share pictures of you out at meetings with potential buyers and get your community involved when you’re brainstorming new ideas. Getting support from your followers at pivotal points in the business will encourage a deeper level of loyalty.’

  https://www.enterprisenation.com/blog/posts/jimmy-cregan-s-five-steps-to-building-a-brand-that-customers-love

  Joining Jimmy’s social media community gives the customer an insight into the growth of the business, and he will often invite customers for feedback or the chance to help decide on big decisions. Questions he has put to the community in the past include deciding on the colour of packaging, which festivals they should take their promotional stand to, and feedback on merchandise. He even announced the day when the company was finally debt-free – to his social media community of 30,000 plus.

  http://instagram.com/p/ubFRqGxeD1/?modal=true

  http://instagram.com/p/hNx-YnReJb/?modal=true

  Go Pro

  Go Pro is a fast-growing brand with an army of passionate followers. It makes small but incredibly powerful video cameras that people can use to record activities. It is a fantastic example of a brand that is using social media to reinforce their authentic sense of purpose. The company states on their website, ‘We dream. We have passionate ideas about what’s possible in this world. Our passions lead us to create experiences and realities that expand our world and inspire those around us.’ They continue with their purpose: ‘Go Pro helps people capture and share their lives’ most meaningful experiences with others – to celebrate them together.’

  http://gopro.com/about-us/

  Go Pro is popular with active customers who have an interest in adrenaline sports, including snowboarding, surfing and mountain biking. Instagram is a popular social network with these groups of people, who find that the photography filters and short-form video features are a perfect way to share their experiences, and to inspire others.

  For this reason, Go Pro has adopted Instagram as its primary social media channel to highlight some of the creative and interesting ways their customers are using the product, as part of their active lifestyles. The Photo of the Day feature allows the brand to post images of their creative, fearless community.

 
Go Pro is actively monitoring brand mentions on the platform, as well as welcoming customers to submit photos via their website, and is sharing their customers’ content on to their channel, with the label Photo of the Day, which is featured to over 4 million subscribers. This results in a colourful, interesting community, which appeals directly to their target audience and reinforces the brand purpose of dreaming of what is possible in this world.

  http://instagram.com/p/yASxx8Lf0W/?modal=true

  http://instagram.com/p/xZqQZmLfya/?modal=true

  Go Pro was an early adopter of short-form video content, which has risen in popularity with apps such as Vine, Snapchat and Instagram’s video offering, and is set to be a large trend for 2015.

  Facebook now auto-plays video content as a user scrolls through their newsfeed, and Go Pro Facebook has adapted its posting strategy to ensure there are at least three videos posted a week to the channel. The content posted is usually unique, capturing the viewer’s attention, and encouraging them to share with their peers.

  https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152816196466919&set=vb.50043151918&type=2&theater

  It is interesting to note that both these brands focus heavily on the use of visual content in social media. Not only are the brands using photos they have taken themselves, but they also include user-generated content in their social media posts.

  Both of the brands have carefully considered which social network they are using for every piece of content, playing to the strengths and themes of each to reinforce their purpose and positioning.

  How to use infectious communication

  We have a mantra about brand purpose that works equally well for infectious communication: ‘You can’t force it, fake it or fudge it.’