NOT HAPPY YELLOW!!

Yellow Pages, we have all heard of it before and in most households you will find, hidden in a cupboard somewhere, the large, yellow book. But the outlook for Yellow Pages is not good........

In an attempt to increase the number of people using Yellow Pages, and therefore to encourage businesses that they should advertise with Yellow Pages, they created a new advertising campaign “Hidden Pizza Case Study”. This campaign involved creating a pizza restaurant that was hidden in a basement, and then placed advertisements only in the Yellow Pages challenging people to find the restaurant. If they found the restaurant, they would get a free pizza. In two weeks, the hidden pizza restaurant received 8,521 calls, with 71% of the calls coming from Yellow Pages searches.

The idea behind the campaign is great – show businesses how advertising in the Yellow Pages will increase the number of customers. It has one main flaw though; the number of people actually using the yellow pages is decreasing.

When was the last time you opened that big yellow book to search for a business? For me it would have been years ago. And the Yellow Pages website? With increasing usage of the internet, it is more likely that people will use the website over the hard copy. What discourages me to use the website though is the lack of relevant search results that you get when you search. For example, when I searched for "Plumber, Brighton 3186 Vic" results of plumbers from Mt Waverly, Ringwood, Templestowe came up - THESE ARE NOT BRIGHTON PLUMBERS!! I did get some results that are actually in Brighton, however a lot of the search results are plumbers that 'service’ the Brighton area.

So will this new advertising campaign work? I don’t think so. With less people actually using the yellow pages, why would businesses spend the money to advertise in it? Businesses are better of trying to increase search result hits with search engines such as Google than using the Yellow Pages.

What do other people think? Is there any hope for Yellow Pages? Does anyone prefer using Yellow Pages to other search sites?

Accepting and rejecting Consumer Generated Content

Consumer generated content - A term that is the basis behind social media. The idea that it is everyday people, the public you might say, that are creating the content that makes up these sites. The immese popularity of YouTube, with people watching 2 billion videos per day, and every minute, there is 24 hours worth of video content being uploaded, YouTube is a great example of how popular consumer generated content is.

The interesting thing about consumer generated content is that there is no way to control it. This is a problem for many companys as a lot of videos posted on YouTube are related to different brands and companys - whether they be advertisements, spoof videos, testimonials, etc. The decision companies have to make is whether to encourage consumer generated content, or to disapprove of it and take action against it.

The decision to accept or reject consumer generated content is a personal decision that varies amongst companies. There is a growing trend however of companies that are moving forward in their thinking and beginning to accept and even encourage consumer generated content.

A great example of a brand encouraging consumers to create content for their brand is the Doritos 'Make an Ad, Make a Fortune' competition where they encouraged consumers to create their own Doritos ad. A panel of judges, including Merrick Watts selected the top three clips out of an amazing 1,350 entries. The top three ads having being chosen, Doritos is now involving the public again to vote for their favourite ad. I think this is a great campaign idea for Doritos as it gets their consumers involved in the brand, and at the same time, they will end up with an ad that will most likely be more accepted by consumers as it was their peers that created the ads.

Consumer generated content can be an amazing tool for companys. Especially with generation Y, push marketing is having little impact on them. Consumer generated content takes word of mouth to a whole new level with individual's peers being the ones to create the content. Generation Y individuals are more likely to pay attention to an advertisement (video) that their peers have created, than having companies force advertising onto them.

What do other people think? Do you think that companies should encourage consumer generated content? What do you think about the Doritos campaign?

Follow the Finger

Are you a 'Social Media Guru'? Would you like the opportunity to join Powderfinger on their farewell tour of Australia as their official blogger?

http://www.jetstarsunsetstour.com.au/

Well as part of Jetstar being tour sponsor of Powderfinger's farewell tour, they have created a competition for one person to win the chance to join the band on their tour and being the official tour blogger. This involves updating a daily blogger, creating videos, updating twitter, etc - in other words, run the 'official' social media campaign for the tour.

I think this is a fantastic idea as Jetstar are tapping into the idea of user-generated content in order to promote the tour. Instead of chosing an existing staff member to attempt to use social media to interact with consumers, they are running a compeition which should result in a social media-saavy Powderfinger fan doing it for them. This should result in content that is actally relevant to consumers and is what they want. By using consumers' peer to write the blog, Jetstar are attempting to make it more personal, rather than a corporate view of the tour. Hopefully, it also will mean that the sponsorship of the blog isnt in your face as much as if Jetstar was writing it.

What do other people think? Does the idea of getting a person from the public to write the blog a good idea? Post comments and let me know.

Attack of the SMS

Your phone beeps, indicating that you have received an SMS. Excited you check your phone, wondering which of your friends or family has smsed you. Excitement quickly turns to annoyance when you see that the SMS is not from your friend but from a company trying to sell something to you.

SMS advertising, a concept that has been considered for a few years as a method of reaching consumers. In an attempt to overcome the revenue issue facing Twitter, SMS advertising was proposed a potential solution.

I hate the idea of SMS advertising. It feels like an invasion of privacy. To me my phone is a method of communication that is personal, just between me and my family and friends and doesn't involve advertising.

The idea of SMS advertising as opposed to internet advertising seems very different to me. When you are on the internet, most sites have some sort of advertising, generally in the form of banner ads. These ads are very easy to ignore; most of the time I don't even notice that they are there. Advertising through email is a bit harder to ignore than general internet advertising, however, if you see an email you don't want to read, it is very easy to delete it. SMSs are different though. There is no way to 'filter' what you read which is why i see it as invading my personal space. Its the fact that SMS advertising is able to get through my anti-advertising barriers that I put up that is what frustrates me. (This is probably why advertisers like the idea so much)

Everyday our senses are bombarded with advertising; on the streets, on tv, on the internet. Mobile phones (ignoring the fact that many people access the internet on their phones now) is one form of communication that is free from advertising and I want it to stay that way.

What do you think? Do you like the idea of SMS advertising? Does the annoyance of customers outweigh the benefits of breaking through the advertising stimulus clutter?

"...I'm on a horse"

"Hello, ladies, look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using ladies scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me..."

When you think of Old Spice, what do you think of? Brand associations with Old Spice tend to be that it is for old men; something your Grandfather might use. This has all changed though with the ‘Old Spice Man’ and their new commercials. If you haven’t seen the Old Spice ad ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ ad, then im sorry to tell you but you have been living under a rock.

For those of you living under a rock, here is the link to the original ad that started all this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

After winning the Grand Prix title at the 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the Old Spice Man ad went viral. The astounding success of this campaign was due to the effective use of social media. Old Spice has shown us how social media can be used to the best of its ability, showing us the true value that social media can provide in today’s society. Social media is a two-way street, and companys need to understand that to get the most out of it they need to create conversations with consumer, rather than bombarding us with one-way communication. What amazed me about Old Spice’s techniques was that they were creating advertisements on demand. Through the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and toher social media sites, they were asking people to ask the Old Spice Man (ex-American Football player Isaiah Mustafa) questions. They would then choose the best questions for Mustafa to answer. This two-way interaction between the brand and consumers helped skyrocket the success of this campaign. Within 3 days, Wieden+Kennedy, the advertising agency behind the campaign, created 183 personal responses to questions ranging from "If there was an epic battle between you and a rabid lion, who would end up looking better after?" to "When two men both using Old Spice Body Wash meet, do they cancel each other out? ".

As of today, there were

• 16,844,491 YouTube view for the ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ ad

• 749,763 Facebook fans

• 100,669 Twitter followers

After the amazing success of this viral campaign, the issue still is whether it actually worked. Many viral campaigns might be successful in gaining attention, but do they actually achieve their intended purpose of increasing sales? In my opinion I don’t think they do. I tend to look at a video for its entertainment value, however they don’t tend to influence my purchase decision. In terms of Old Spice, reports coming in show that sales have dramatically increased as a direct result of this marketing campaign. Although I don’t think this viral campaign has changed my intention to purchase the product, it has changed my perception of the Old Spice brand. Now when someone says ‘Old Spice’ I don’t think of a wrinkly old man but instead think of a sexy, muscley man.

What do other people think? Are you more likely to purchase Old Spice now? Are there any better examples you can think of showcasing the amazing powers of social media? Have any other brands created ‘ads on demand’?

Comment about this blog, tell me what you think.

Until next time

Haley

"...Im on a horse"

Welcome!

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog.

It's official, I have now lost my blog-virginity. After never having even considering writing  blog, here I find myself writing one. When I was given the option of writing a blog for my e-maketing subject at uni, I was terrified at the idea. What do I write about? What if what I write is uninteresting? What if noone reads my blog? I was all set to do the 'safe and boring' option of a traditional business report, when I decided to take a chance and do something different. So here goes....

A little about me, I'm in my third and final semester of a business degree at Monash University, majoring in Marketing and Accounting. I have been called schizophrenic due to the weird combination of marketing and accounting but I plan to use this to my advantage.

As part of this blog I intend to explore e-marketing and how it is used. I plan to look at digital marketing campaigns as well as other aspets of e-marketing and to evaluate them - whether they be effective or not.

Until next time.......