Posts filed under ‘branding’
Twitter Identity Theft Strikes Brand Mascots
With Many Marketers Choosing to Keep Icons Voiceless Online, Impostors Are Rampant
On Twitter, Mr. Clean isn’t Procter & Gamble’s bald-headed muscleman. He’s a designer from Pennsylvania. As for Mr. Peanut, there are two: a French-Canadian and a nut that wields an ax.
Many of the most-loved brand mascots, from the Pillsbury Doughboy to Tony the Tiger, are on Twitter in some respects, but not in any official capacity. Everyday people not affiliated with the brands have picked up those familiar names and cartoon faces, as many marketers have left them idle. @TheChefBoyardee, for example, is foul-mouthed, wears a chef’s hat and applied to Charlie Sheen’s #tigerblood internship.
“Brands can’t do anything about [fake Twitter handles] other than complain or set up a verified account, but they need to put something into its place,” said SapientNitro Creative Director Derek Fridman, who hosted a panel on this topic at the South by Southwest Interactive conference last month. During the panel, a real McCoy, @Smokey_Bear, responded to people tweeting with the hashtag #brandmascots. “People often want to see those brands online and will create them on their own and assume the role.”
One reason why so few are online might be because many brand mascots are highly controlled. Long, detailed marketing documents often dictate exactly what these cartoons can wear, say and do. But leaving these highly protected characters voiceless in social media has opened the door for the public to drag these highly guarded brand characters into dicey territory.
If people aren’t making money off brands’ character copyright, marketers aren’t likely to be able to claim legal damages for misrepresenting, say, the California Raisins. Yet, “even if they are used for non-commercial purposes, I think it would be prudent for brands to be vigilant in protecting their assets because consumers might well believe there’s some connection here,” said Linda Goldstein, chair of advertising division for law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.
Twitter does not police user accounts, but does accept reports from individuals or companies about accounts that want to take down impersonators. Some brands have contacted Twitter to reclaim accounts that use their trademarks or characters and, increasingly, those requests come through the social network’s growing ad sales force. But Twitter has strict rules about these accounts: Parody, fan or commentary tweeters are just fine. It is accounts with clear intent to deceive or confuse that are prohibited as impersonation accounts and subject to suspension.
With famed mascots such as the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger unclaimed on Twitter, regular people are picking up those brands and tweeting what they wish. One account, @PillsburyDboy, uses images of the General Mills mascot for its profile picture and background. His name is listed as “Pillsbury Doughboy” and his location is grocery stores. “Being the pastry mascot, my life is routine — get bought at a grocery store and eaten later on everyday,” he once tweeted. After a period of frequent tweeting, Dboy appears to have abandoned the account in October 2009.
As for Mr. Clean, if P&G ultimately decides to push the more than 50-year-old man onto Twitter, it plans to ask that his eponymous handle be returned to the brand, said a spokesman. But nothing’s happened yet. “Mr. Clean does not have an official Twitter handle, and no steps have been taken to reclaim the brand name from the fan who created the account,” said a P&G spokesman.
Mr. Peanut, who only uttered his first words months ago after being silent since 1916, is not ready to debut on Twitter, said a spokesman for Kraft, Planters’ parent company. He is, however, already very active on Facebook and Kraft owns the @MrPlanter handle. As for squatters such as @MonsieurPeanut and @Mister_Peanut: “We have no plans to share at this point regarding other Twitter handles that are similar to Mr. Peanut’s,” the spokesman said.
Not all old mascots are missing on Twitter. General Mills operates an account for Green Giant, the massive mascot for its frozen-vegetable products. While @GreenGiant has been uttering wholesome tweets like “Do you have any fun weekend plans? Lil’ Sprout is hanging out in Costa Rica!” since October, a Washington pot dispensary has been spreading the marijuana gospel from @420jollygreen, using General Mills’ Jolly Green Giant name and image. General Mills did not provide comment on this account.
“This is something brands should want to police,” said Manatt’s Ms. Goldstein. “This kind of activity could result in tarnishing of the brand.”
One newer mascot has taken action to dethrone squatters. Aflac, with help from digital agency Digitas, has run @AflacDuck for its famous 11-year-old mascot since early 2009. After Ad Age inquired about a copycat account, @RealAflacDuck, the brand’s new media director James Wisdom said it was in the processing of having the account shut down. The account has since been suspended.
Quaker Oats’ cereal brand Cap’n Crunch also recently pushed its mascot on Twitter. The move coincided with a Chicago boutique social-media agency’s guerrilla campaign to cajole the PepsiCo character onto Twitter. The agency Giant Steps launched a “Where’s the Cap’n?” website, Twitter feed and Facebook page and handed out missing posters. The agency wasn’t responsible for getting the brand onto Twitter, said Barbara Liss, Quaker Oats director of social media and digital, but it definitely caught her attention. Last month, Quaker launched @RealCapnCrunch and has so far seen limited returns.
For one, it’s been a challenge to update the decades-old brand for a 21st-century medium. “We’re working to figure out how do to use things that are relevant in pop culture and also makes sense for the Cap’n,” Ms. Liss said. For now, that mostly means thanking those who are tweeting about the cereal. After about one month, Ms. Liss said she hopes to see more followers than the Cap’n's current 1,500.
Not all brand mascots can weather current events. Shamu, Sea World’s beloved killer whale, resigned Twitter after the real-life whale killed a trainer. “At this difficult time, @Shamu will not be active,” he tweeted for the last time after the accident. “For Twitter updates follow @SeaWorld_Parks.”
Other recent brand characters have eschewed Twitter on purpose. Heineken brand Dos Equis decided against taking its Most Interesting Man into the tweetosphere.
“When we evaluated if Twitter should be part of our marketing mix, we felt that we also needed to apply filters to stay true to our brand character,” said Paul Smailes, senior brand director for Dos Equis and Sol beer brands. The man has also turned down movie studios and other advertisers looking to partner. “We believe the Most Interesting Man doesn’t spend too much time with technology. He’s busy with his worldly adventures.”
After decades on packages, in print and on TV, Tony, Mr. Clean and Doughboy could probably make the same claim.
Tim Burton Telling Crowd-Sourced Tale via Twitter
Ever had the burning desire to collaborate with Tim Burton? Well, now you can, as the director/producer/artist/writer has taken to Twitter to create a crowd-sourced tale to promote an upcoming museum showing of his work.
The Twitter project is titled “Tim Burton’s Cadavre Exquis,” which translates to “exquisite corpse.” An exquisite corpse is a game adored by the Surrealists in which a group of people add phrases to a slip of paper in turn to create a story. Images can also be used to create eclectic beasts.
That’s pretty much how Burton’s Twitter experiment functions. Burton has started off the game with a sentence detailing the adventures of “Stainboy” and is asking people contribute a line to the story with the hashtag “#BurtonStory.” The best tweets of the day are chosen to continue the story, which will run from today until December 6.
This experiment is meant to coincide with an exhibit of Burton’s work that will be opening in Toronto November 26 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. The exhibit previously opened in New York City at MoMA, where it drew the third-highest attendance of any exhibition in the museum’s history.
5 Trends That Will Shape Social Media
A recent piece at The Next Web highlights key trends that we’ve already begun to see influence the collective discussion of how social media and its related applications – geo-location targeting, tagging physical objects, etc. – will evolve over the next couple of years.
These key trends have implications for brands looking to reach consumers where and when it is most contextually relevant – and should be carefully considered as brands strike the balance between engaging consumers with a truly valuable, differentiated and interesting proposition or suggestion – and not just with an onslaught of promotional offers they will subsequently tune out.
- Identity will become embedded in devices: Our social media identities (Twitter username, Facebook profile, etc.) will be entered as part of the initial process of setting up our devices, and will be propagated into all applications. This will eliminate the need to enter your Twitter or Facebook credentials to access related functionality on mobile apps – instead, they will seamlessly access your profile. The recently rumored Facebook phone offers an example application.
- Online sharing will become embedded in media life: With social identity embedded into the devices we use daily, social sharing will become an integral part of the way we enjoy media on our regular TV’s, DVD players and music players. These devices will evolve towards all being Internet enabled and allow us to share likes, links and personal commentary. Remote controls may include “like” buttons which autopost to Facebook, while music players will sync preferences to preferred identity.
- Location will be embedded into all activities: Location aware devices will employ pre-emptive use of location to alert the user to things or people nearby that may be of interest. Users won’t have to check-in to a place to see if their friends are nearby, as their device will automatically alert them. This trend bears particular implications for marketers, whom will have to be particularly careful to provide consumers with value in that message and offer – and not just another annoying discount offer that they will eventually tune out if it becomes an onslaught.
- Smart devices and web apps will automatically check-in and post updates: Identity aware devices, empowered by embeddable RFID tags, will allow this type of technology to spread beyond the mobile phone. A smart coffee thermos, for example, could enable auto-checkins and send coupons to your phone as you enter your favorite coffee shop.
- Social networking will redefine how large organizations communicate: Social media inspired design patterns applied to existing enterprise software and/or intranets increase opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration will no longer be limited to sharing documents and version control, but will expand to the ability to find colleagues by shared interest and collaborate seamlessly in a multi-channel environment.
Uniqlo’s U.K. Twitter Campaign Looks to Be a Perfect Fit for Retailer
Every Time Someone Tweets About an Item, Company Drops the Price, Boosting Web Presence and Brand Recognition
LONDON (Adage.com) — Japanese clothes retailer Uniqlo has found a novel way of encouraging U.K. shoppers give the brand a big presence on Twitter — by reducing the price of clothing pieces every time someone sends a tweet about an item.
The “Lucky Counter” promotion has been running ahead of the relaunch of Uniqlo’s U.K. e-commerce site this week, and has seen the brand’s name appear in Twitter’s trending topics list for the country.
In a web page dedicated to “Lucky Counter,” users can choose from 10 pieces they would like to see discounted on the website when it relaunches on September 9.
Clicking on one of the pieces of clothing brings up a pre-written tweet using the hashtag #luckycounter. Users can add their own message and then send it, and watch the price fall.
The more tweets users send about a particular item, the lower the price goes. At the time of writing, one of the items — a gray, crewneck long-sleeve T-shirt — had hit its target price of nearly 60% off, meaning it will go on sale on Thursday at $4.60 instead of $10.70.
Uniqlo worked with Hiroki Nakamura, web director of its global advertising agency, Dentsu Japan, to create the campaign. The U.K. is the first market that Uniqlo, which also has stores in the US, France and throughout Asia, has tried the approach.
The company has relied solely on users to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter, rather than paying for promotional tweets, as well as trailing the promotion heavily on its website, which was otherwise closed for business.
The tweets being sent are largely a mixture of people taking part in the promotion and those who are telling their followers about Uniqlo’s unusual social-media experiment.
Amy Howarth, head of marketing at Uniqlo in the U.K., said: “The initial aim was to maintain contact with the customer while the website was temporarily closed for its e-commerce migration.
“The campaign has been really successful and we’ve been delighted with the response to date. Customers seem to really want to engage with us, and it’s great as the campaign is so transparent and immediately dynamic, so they can see their tweets actually making a difference.”
After the new site goes live, Uniqlo will promote it with an online pinball game called “Lucky Machine,” offering a cash prize and discount codes.
Uniqlo has frequently used Twitter in its marketing campaigns. This year’s efforts have included Utweet, which delivered users a personalised video based on tweets that they had sent to promote the UT T-shirt line; and Sportweet, which also drew on users’ tweets combined with footage of athletes to promote Uniqlo’s sportswear.
With all its Twitter activity, Uniqlo%u2019s U.K. Twitter account has fewer than 5,000 followers.
Uniqlo and another of its agencies, Tokyo-based IMG SRC, won an award for the “Lucky Switch” campaign, which used a widget to embed Uniqlo images on other blogs and websites at the click of a button. It won the Grande Innova Lotus at Asian award ceremony AdFest.
U. of Kentucky Encourages Students to Check In via Facebook
College Tries Unique Marketing Effort Using Places
Posted by Kunur Patel
Just weeks after Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook’s location-based service at a press conference in Silicon Valley, a Places-based campaign has popped up on a Southern college campus. Literally.
The University of Kentucky has planted giant, wooden pointer thingies — like the tab that marks the map in the Facebook Places logo — on its campus to encourage students to check in at school.
“We’re encouraging students to check in, so when they do, it’ll show up in their news feed and maybe their friends still in high school will see it over and over again,” said Kelley Bozeman, Big Blue’s marketing director, adding that the university’s marketing efforts are focused on undergraduate recruitment.
So far, there are two large pointers on campus, both nearly as tall as Ms. Bozeman. She says Facebook was not at all involved in the campaign. The university’s ad agency, Lexington-based ad agency Cornett-IMS, came up with the idea after Facebook launched the service. The agency commissioned the statues to look exactly like Facebook’s icon, except in the university’s signature blue.
And, yes, with fleets of young coeds broadcasting their locations on campus, the issue of privacy did come up.
“We do think about privacy,” Ms. Bozeman said. “But this is about check-ins during the day, when you’re on campus, in the classrooms and going to athletic events. Adults use good judgment. It’s not about checking in at home.”
The university is now considering whether to make more wooden pointers, or opt for window stickers on the doors of campus buildings to remind students to check in.
Do We Still Need Websites?
Given Our Obsession With Social Media, It’s a Timely Question
So with all this relentless talk about Twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages and cool new apps, I have a serious and timely question. Do brand websites still matter?
Yes, I know — even asking this question is a bit digitally sacrilegious. Websites are to digital strategy as models are to fashion, but do we really need them? I mean, didn’t things seem a tad curious during the World Cup when brands like Adidas and Nike actively promoted their Facebook page — not their primary website — at the end of their TV spots? Just this weekend, I saw a similar cross-feed to Facebook for Kohls. Talk about kicking the ball into a different goal.
Think about all the hoops we’ve jumped through to register proprietary domain names, in every country and business type — this perpetually rationalized by an almost unstoppable parade of GoDaddy ads (titillation and all). As a domain-name collector myself, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of asset deterioration.
But before you start penning the “ditch the brand website” memo, hold your tweets for a moment. Websites are not going away — they might be more important than ever — but they serve a different and evolved purpose today, especially in this new “social” context.
Think wholesale, less retail. Think distribution, less destination. Think serving, less selling.
At the end of the day, brands today live a decentralized, if not fragmented, existence. The brand “home” has line-extended itself into a network of smaller residences and rented apartments — or what we might call “brand stands” — all primed for meeting and interacting with the consumer at various stages in the purchase, loyalty or advocacy cycle. A Facebook fan page is a classic brand stand.
A smart website feeds and refreshes the brand stands. It anchors the brand database, arguably the most coveted asset, and sets the tone and standard for the brand’s ethos and attitude about feedback, expression and service. Put another way, it establishes that first critical (often unforgettable) impression. A great website also smartly syndicates, re-circulates and curates social content from the brand stands.
In a seamless “just in time” distribution network, content is refreshed from the website’s wholesale supply network. There are some variations to this, of course. YouTube, a de facto hosting and syndication platform increasingly popular to brands, mimics this hub-and-spoke model, but brands still control the primary distribution network or original video content.
Websites are important because you own them. They feed into your database, and the users they attract tend to more loyal and viral, a big reason we should never give short shrift to direct feedback flows. If you carefully analyze the migratory patterns of Apple influencers, for example, you’ll find that the Apple website is one of the most critical and effective marketing tools. The same applies to Patagonia, which effectively uses its website to nurture what VP-Marketing Rob BonDurant described at a recent Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference as a “tribe” of advocates.
Even beauty brands like L’Oreal, Estee Lauder and Olay are effectively exploiting their websites as influencer, advocacy and customization hubs. New initiatives like Kotex U have appealed to social connectors and influencers on its website through smart sampling, online couponing and robust Q&A involving moms, experts and peers.
Importantly, if we’re truly entering a POEM (paid, owned, earned) media mix model, brand websites are key. They anchor the owned, reinforce the paid and incubate the earned. Moreover, if search results are material to either your brand’s reputation or purchase cycle, websites take on an elevated level of significance, as they consistently index at the top of search results. Worth mentioning here that “earned media” linking to brand websites indexes at exceptionally high rates, which for the ROI-wringers out there easily translates into “cash” advertising value. Linking is also a product of trust, and research studies consistently rank websites higher than other ad or marketing vehicles on the trust factor.
Of course, most brand websites are ill-equipped and ill-prepared for an adaptive, sense-and-respond digital “social” age. The site platforms are often impenetrably bureaucratic, impossibly inflexible and all too commonly cornered by territorial IT or “digital” managers who have little incentive or reward structure to drive innovation or real-time iteration. Most marketers — most of whom “iterate” dozens of times a week in their own personal social-media pursuits — have little patience for this.
And so we inevitably have lots of “work-arounds” — essentially, rapidly assembled (and mostly “social”) brand stands without a cohesive or coordinated center. Hence the overnight brand Twitter account, or the sometimes over-priced “mini-site.” In the short term, that’s good for innovation, but it starts to get tricky, if not risky, for short- and long-term brand equity. Consumers hate inconsistency and duplicity.
So what brands need today is a complete rethink and “refresh” of their site strategy. Flexibility and agility should be the orders of the day. They also need open feedback protocols and warm welcome mats (for example, the friendly and inviting “contact us”) that drive consistency with the happy brand faces on all the external brand stands. They need to empower visitors with easy search and discovery, and enable tons of pass-along opportunity.
Most important, they need to be built to feed the next generation of brand stands sitting on mobile devices and app platforms, many of which will encompass next-generation e-commerce. Think of your next website as the mission-critical building block from which social media, mobile, e-commerce and other digital innovation draw. Keep in mind the skill that will be necessary to make all this come together. Indeed, curation, co-creation and distributed community management are the new lynchpins of “content management.”
Here’s a piece of good news. You don’t need to figure this out in a vacuum. Both internal and external measurements can quickly get you the 80/20 on what you need to do. As with search, a website is a database of intentions, and the data flows from search queries, video engagement and FAQ pings, and feedback can wonderfully inform the content choices within the brand stand network, especially the Facebook fan page and Twitter account. External conversation is also a wonderfully underused cheat sheet.
So again, don’t throw away the website. Listen, adapt and restock the exploding network of brand stands. Think less about “web master” and more about social “spoke caster.”
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Pete Blackshaw is exec VP of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services and author of “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000″ (DoubleDay). He is also chair of the National Council of Better Business Bureaus. His biweekly column looks at the relationship between marketing and customer service in the age of consumer control.
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