On November 27 last year, Smirnoff set out to show how people from different cultures party, through its Nightlife Exchange Project. 14 countries were engaged in the swap project, and Smirnoff Facebook fans from all over the world contributed with their ideas on the specifics of their country’s nightlife. Together they created a great buzz and a memorable cross-cultural brand experience.
The Nightlife Exchange Project kicked off with one week of TV advertising, calling on consumers around the world to visit a Smirnoff Facebook page and engage themselves in the project, by submitting their ideas about the best party night out in their country.
14 countries; Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Lebanon, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, Venezuela, UK and United States, took part in the project. Each country was given a special curator who helped out in sorting and selecting the absolutely best party ideas among the most highly-rated Facebook submissions. Submissions could be anything across fashion, food, music and more. A blogger outreach programme was also launched, and Smirnoff tapped into mobiles with its own channel Smirnoff.mob. MTV, Smirnoff’s global tie-up partner, delivered on-air and online coverage of each stage of the project.
There was a great buzz both before the party swap, as well as after. You don’t have to search the web for long to find comments such as “Definitely looking for the next party if there will be a second nightlife exchange!” and “Looking forward to the next and even bigger Smirnoff Event.”
As Benjamin Hill, youth writer for MTV Sticky, puts it, “There is something priceless in what Smirnoff did in the sense that they didn’t just create events, they created an experience.” We can’t agree more. By creating an experience, Smirnoff has successfully tapped into the hearts of their consumers. The Nightlife Exchange Project was however not solely about experiences, but emotions, engagement and exclusivity as well.
Many consumers probably wonder if Smirnoff is going to make a new party swap this year.
In this post, our friends at Splatter have taken a look at 2010’s hottest phenomena in China, the Music Festival. Below they touch upon what brands can gain from this phenomena. These benefits aren’t exclusive for the Chinese market though, but apply to many other markets.
Until relatively recently, China’s music festivalers were restricted to one option only, Heavy-metal heavy Midi which has been held in Beijing since 1999 and stood alone as the only regular event in China until, in 2007, two new players strode purposefully into town. Aiming at a more attractive (to marketeers at least) “indie hipster” crowd, Modern Sky Records in Beijing launched their eponymously titled 4 dayer, and Splatter’s sister company Split Works launched the Yue Festival in Shanghai, backed by Bacardi and Converse. Since 2007, Music Festivals have erupted in every corner of China, with (rough estimation) around 60 in 2010 and there is more to come…
Festivals are however an expensive game - creating a temporary village for 1-4 days, paying local and national government licenses and then of course artists fees, both international and domestic (domestic artist demands have tripled in the last couple of years due to the increased popularity and demand) - puts festival investments into the millions of RMB (1 RMB is approximately 0,15 USD). On the other hand, you look at the ticket prices of the average festival (60RMB/day) and the average attendances (2,000 – 8,000 – be wary of anyone who claims more, Splatter attend them all), it becomes clear there is a large financial disparity occurring.
How do the organisers make up this shortfall? In China, there are four ways currently:
A local government offers to underwrite the festival (Suzhou Holisland, Zhangbei Inmusic, Zhenjiang Midi Festival) as a way of promoting the town/ district
Sponsorship fees (Modern Sky, YUE, Nokia’s Strawberry in Xi’an)
Real Estate developers offer to host a music festival on their land to attract people to the area and then to hopefully sell them expensive property (Tianjin Dreamvalley, Great Wall Tanglewood)
Promoter funds the festival personally (at Niu Yu Hui near Guangzhou, the farmer whose land hosted the festival, sold his car and laptop in order to pay the bands due to poor ticket sales)
More often than not, festivals are funded by a combination of the elements above (e.g. Zebra Festival, a festival in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, is a joint venture between Zebra Media and the Chengdu Government/Chengdu Media Group and Suzhou’s Holisland was actualy underwritten by local government to draw attention to a new real estate development).
Because of the need for funding, brands and agencies in China are being approached by most, if not all of these festivals throughout the year. But, why would you want a music festival as a part of your branding strategy? Splatter tell their clients that music festivals scratch at least 4 distinctive itches.
First, brands get a great experiential and engagement opportunity to have a deep and meaningful interaction with their consumers. Going to a festival is the most exciting thing most people ever do; this makes them incredibly open minded to messages from sponsors.
Second, brands can use their participation at the music festival to tell a broader story to the media, by buying media and mobilising online communities. Festivals can deliver huge value in terms of PR and marketing when done well.
Thirdly, your brand benefits from increased awareness as well as a positive and often passionate association and alignment with the festival itself and the artists attending.
Finally, there are enormous sampling opportunities, which your target consumer will often pay for! On site, sales can be leveraged, and most experienced brands report substantial increases in sales post event.
Which music festival would fit your brand?
Splatter is a specialist music communications agency based in China. Split Works, Splatter’s sister company, is a Beijing- and Shanghai-based concert promotion agency. Together they maintain China Music Radar, a blog about the Chinese music industry.
Pepsi’s Refresh Project has generated tens of millions of votes and countless tweets and Facebook posts in 2010. Next year, PepsiCo will take it global.
In short: this year Pepsi shunned their US advertising budget for Super-Bowl (of over $20 Million) and decided to put it into social media and the Refresh Project instead. The project has generated tens of million of votes and a countless number of tweets and Facebook posts, and the Pepsi brand itself has reached more than 2.7 million fans on Facebook (a growth of more than one million within in less than two months and still counting).
This fall, marketing director for Pepsi, Ana Maria Irazabal, expressed that “the Refresh Project is helping sales by linking charity in customers’ minds with their feelings about the brand”, and she also expressed that Pepsi will expand the Refresh Project globally in 2011 (The Huffington Post).
The Refresh Project embraces the four Es marketing model and represents a shift away from traditional marketing to marketing with a higher purpose.
Sounds Like Branding presents Heartbeats In Conversation With, a series of short conversations on relevant topics for marketing and communication. First out is a conversation between Heartbeats’ CEO Jakob Lusensky and Gerd Leonhard, media futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency. Watch them talk about the media of the future and what we can learn from the days of Gutenberg.
We have been digging a bit deeper into the marketing model of the four Es, and also explored three marketing campaigns which embrace the four Es. But where does all of this lead us?
First of all, it’s important to state that the four Ps still have many years left. For some companies, the four Ps still do the job. But for most they have to be complemented with the four Es. This marketing model is a recipe for branding. The right mix of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity depends on the business of your brand, the type of products or services you are providing and where your company is in its brand lifecycle. To establish a position in the mind (and hearts) of your customers, you have to find your own unique mix of the four Es.
However, brands are increasingly important for people in the expression of their identities and self-fulfilment. Therefore, brand building in the 21st Century also requires that brands ask themselves the question of their legacy.
The millennial decade has also been about defining brand truth, and this has raised the question as to whether brands stand for something more than solely profit. Today customers are demanding new standards from companies. In order to succeed today, companies may not only need to embrace the four Es. Companies need to be ‘good’ and stand for something more than ‘more’. There might be a need for a fifth E on the stage as well - ethics.
Now we would like to hear your thoughts on the four Es. Have you seen any more campaigns or marketing strategies than the ones highlighted, where emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity have been put into practice? Is there something we have left out, or something you would like us to elaborate on?
Could a soft drink really engage people and make the world a better place? Pepsi thinks so, if you take a look at one of the brand’s latest marketing initiatives, Pepsi Refresh Project. In 2010, Pepsi shunned their advertising budget for Super-Bowl (of over $20 Million) and decided to put it into social media and the Refresh Project. But, how does this project work?
Each month Pepsi gives a grant of 1,3 Million USD to businesses, people and non-profits having a positive impact on their community. Anyone can submit their ideas and promote people in their network, then visitors on the Pepsi Refresh site get to vote for their favourite projects. At the end of each month, finalists are selected to receive granted money in categories such as art & culture, health and education. The maximum 1000 submissions per day were entered in less than one day when the project first began. And the results, apart from an intense media coverage, is more than 1 600 000 fans on Facebook (still counting) and thousands of project submissions every month.
With the Refresh Project, Pepsi has succeeded in creating strong customer engagement across the US, by connecting emotionally to people. Through this project, Pepsi has also linked the brand to experiences of value; all ‘refresh projects’ have a good impact on society. The result of the campaign is that people associate the company with doing ‘good’. Besides this, the campaign also shows a bit of Pepsi’s brand personality, differentiating them from competitors. In this way Pepsi possesses an exclusive position in the minds of many.
The American technology company Intel is one of the top ten best-known brands in the world, positioned in the same league as Coca-Cola, Disney and McDonald’s. But what is it that makes Intel, a company providing consumers with computer processors and chips housed deep inside their computers, this successful?
Except for being known for its five-note sound logotype, we’d say its strategic marketing campaigns. Most recently, Intel combined creativity, bright young minds and technique to provide its audience with valuable brand experiences, connecting emotionally with the global youth. Earlier this year, Intel launched a new network, the Creators Project, together with media agency Vice. The Creators Project is a multi-year, multidiscipline, and multi-country campaign exposing new artists and facilitating the production and dissemination of new work with these artists and their collaborators in a world where artists can struggle to get by. Intel’s audience can watch 45 videos submitted by creatives from across the globe. They are also able to experience the brand live, through a series of exhibitions and performances in different urban centres rolled out around the world. Attendees can engage in all-day cultural extravaganzas featuring some of the world’s leading artists in music, art, film, design and architecture. The project is set to last for several years.
Intel is a brand already owning an exclusive position in the consciousness of many. But with the Creators Project, Intel positions itself also amongst the younger generation, not traditionally targeted by the brand - a generation of creative whiz kids and artists who use technology as their creative tools.
A brand that makes a good example of, first and foremost, connecting emotionally to its customers is Dove, with its ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’, adopted by Unilever back in 2004.
Before 2004 Dove had only communicated product benefits, just as the majority of personal care brands. With the Campaign for Real Beauty, Unilever and Dove took on an emotional stand instead, aiming to convey a more democratic vision of attractiveness. Dove wanted women to feel beautiful every day by widening the stereotypical views of beauty.
Dove’s commitment to this mission started with using women of various ages, shapes and sizes, not super-thin models, in their commercials. The brand was doing so to provoke discussion and debate about today’s typecast beauty images. Employing various communication vehicles including advertising, a web site, billboards, events, a Self-Esteem Fund and more – the campaign invites women to experience the brand and join the discussion about beauty, and share their views with others all around the world.
Dove has successfully taken a stand with the Campaign for Real Beauty, engaging their target audience by giving back something of value - the value of good self-esteem. At the same time, the brand has enabled customers to engage with both the brand and the customer’s social networks, spreading the word about Dove to others.
With regard to personal care brands, the Campaign for Real Beauty has been one of the most recognised ones during the last couple of years. With a movement of close to 200 000 fans of the brand online, Dove has successfully created an admired brand, which is now perceived as differentiated from its competitors, and has positioned itself as a preferable choice for many consumers, owning an exclusive position in their minds. The result of the Campaign for Real Beauty is a significant increase in sales of Dove’s whole product range.
