Digital CPG Blog

CardSpring, an Accel Partners and Greylock Partners-backed start-up, went live last month with its application platform, which allows developers to create applications that can work with credit cards. Now, the nascent system is getting a huge boost with the help of payment processor First Data. First Data is using CardSpring’s API as the basis for its OfferWise solution, a program that allows publishers to attach offers, coupons and loyalty accounts to a consumers payment cards or mobile wallet. First Data, which serves more than 6 million merchant locations including 4 million in the U.S., is piloting OfferWise with dozens of merchants and will roll out the service to its retail customers starting in May.

The partnership addresses the growing shift toward what First Data calls “universal commerce” as consumers look for a shopping experience that bridges online and offline channels and incorporates personalized deals and product information at all times. Increasingly, consumers are looking for deals online and through mobile channels as they look to save money. But many retailers who conduct outreach and marketing online often run into problems trying to close the redemption loop on offers. With OfferWise, retailers will be to send out a deal through an an offer provider and they can now see which deals are actually redeemed at the store through a debit, credit or pre-paid card. It doesn’t have to be a card transaction either. OfferWise can also connect to NFC-contactless payments and digital wallets like PayPal.

American Express and Visa have also tried similar efforts to connect offers and actions to their cards. AmericanExpress allows deals offered through Facebook, Foursquare and LevelUp to be connected to a card transaction, so a coupon can be processed at check-out. Visa did a test with the Gap , allowing Gap shoppers who sign up, they can get offers pushed out to them when they make a purchase on their Visa card. With OfferWise and CardSpring, all cards are accepted, making it more flexible for consumers. And merchants can also tap into First Data’s analytics engine to improve consumer targeting and get performance analysis of their campaigns.

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Could these initiatives help your loyalty program?

Many social-media “experts” insist that a “two-way conversation” between marketers and consumers is the whole point of social, and anything less than that is a reflection of outdated, broadcast-style thinking. But the reality is that many people follow and “friend” brands simply because they want to hear from those brands, not necessarily talk back.

If you look at the behavior of the Twitter audience of one particular specialized business publication (@adage, with more than 350,000 followers) and one well-known art-rock band (@okgo, with more than 650,000 followers), you’ll see that most folks are only listening. Though Mark Naples could have reached out to OK Go or Ad Age on Twitter, he chose good old-fashioned email — wisely, I’d say.

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Agreed! Do you have all your eggs in the social media basket? How do you approach social media “conversations”?

Here are three ways brands can leverage Pinterest now:

1. Add Pinterest Content to Your Existing Facebook Presence.

Images are more effective than text at encouraging engagement, and an effective technology platform will allow you to surface visually appealing content on one or more Facebook Tabs. This content can be presented as a simple pinboard, as part of a game, or even in the News Feed.

2. Optimize Your Web Properties to Draw People to Your Pinterest Content.

You can always put a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on your website. But remember, a user’s choice to “Follow” may not be brand-specific, but rather board-specific. This gives you an opportunity to segment your followers in ways relevant to your business. Lowe’s does a nice job of this and has seasonal boards (the Big Game, Valentine’s Day), themed boards (Craft Ideas, Unique Pet Projects), and boards that tie to specific merchandise areas (Lighting, Bedrooms, Bathrooms).

3. Make Your Pins Work Harder For You.

This means using a URL shortening and redirection strategy, preferably one that aggregates your Pinterest analytics (views, Repins, etc.) in a central location. This will allow the metrics to be combined with, and compared to, those from your othersocial properties. You also need to combat the link rot that can occur when the source image feeding your Pin is removed from its website.

Lastly, the pinned images themselves can be set to click through to a variety of sites. Imagine a Pin of a product that, once clicked, takes you to a flash sale where the product is sold at a discount after a minimum purchase threshold is met. All of this is possible now!

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Online shopping for CPG is most popular with those 45 and older. Surprised?

“The Checkout,” an ongoing shopper-behavior study, shows increasing comfort with shopping online among all age groups, with baby boomers taking the lead. Fifty-two percent of shoppers ages 50 to 54 buy health and beauty products online, and 29% of those ages 45 to 49 buy food and beverages online. “Grocery shopping online is a concept most shoppers have yet to adopt, which means there are conventions ingrained in their shopping behavior that must be disrupted,” said Craig Elston, senior vice president of The Integer Group.

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All hail consumer packaged goods.

Throughout 2011, CPG brands spent more than any other group on video advertising — making up 24% of all dollars spent, according to new data from YuMe. Health and pharmaceutical brands came in second — with a 16% share of the video ad market– despite a 400% year-over-year increase in spending.

The 25-54 consumers were the most-requested demographic — making up 15% of RFPs — the video ad network found.  Females 25-54 were the most-requested female demographic in 2011, with 39% of requested RFPs.

In another finding, the majority of ad impressions that YuMe served in 2011 were in California at 11.0% of total volume, followed by New York at 7.9% and Texas at 6.8%.

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Here are five reasons your brand should consider marketing on Pinterest.

1. Shift in consumer behavior from search to discovery – Search is great for finding answers. Discovery is great for finding inspiration. Pinterest taps into that phenomenon. As Samil Shah explained on TechCrunch back in November, Pinterest is bringing some of that discovery online…which could lead to a revolution in how we purchase items. Right now we are trained to go to Amazon or Google to find what we want. Pinterest starts before that search, before we even thinking we want to buy a particular product. For example, if I wanted a sound system for my laptop, I might hop on to Pinterest, browse a category devoted to sound systems and then land on a product. Within that discovery phase, however, I may never end up at Amazon since Pinterest drives traffic back to a retailer’s site.
2. Little interaction needed for brands – A legitimate concern for any brand considering jumping into a new social media platform is the resource question: do you have it in the budget to staff? The nice thing about Pinterest is there isn’t a lot of overhead. Outside of pinning, categorizing and tagging images, you don’t have to worry about managing comments or playing the follower game. You can push content at your own pace.
3. Connect with the visual segment of your audience - Pinterest is visual. So it attracts an entirely different crowd…those who may have an appeal for an image over written words. Why is this important? Consider how content marketers typically engage their audiences…through words, videos or audio podcasts. You can open the doors to a new segment of buyers who may be interested in your product…but not know about it…by building a community around the images you pin. That can draw others in who are inspired by your account and lead to referrals.
4. Repinning is the new “retweet” –It’s quite possible that you can build a community from simply sharing other people’s pins…the same way some Twitter power users have built a following off of retweeting or Tumblr users who’ve reblogged.
5. It’s beating out Facebook referrals – Finally, perhaps one of the best reasons for using Pinterest in your social media marketing plans is that it is outperforming Facebook. The general manager of digital for the print magazine Real Life said that Pinterest was a huge source of traffic in October 2011…more than Facebook. Time to re-tool our marketing strategies, don’t you think?

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General Mills is updating the marketing concept of surprises in the cereal box.

“You point to a logo [on food packaging], and things start to appear,” said Chief Marketing Officer Mark Addicks. “Maybe some functional content will pop up on a cake-mix box, or you might see entertainment and games coming from a cereal box. What I’m hoping for is pure entertainment.”

Addicks hopes to update the marketing concept of offering a surprise inside the cereal box. Instead, kids could point a smartphone at the box and “see visual surprises.”

He’s looking at QR (quick response) codes to do this — those little square boxes that appear now in so many ads and, when scanned with a smartphone’s camera, take consumers directly to a website. But he’s also looking beyond the code to apps. He’s already got apps for Betty Crocker and Yoplait Yogurt and is exploring apps for cereal brands. “You point to a logo and things start to appear,” he says. “Maybe some functional content will pop up on a cake-mix box, or you might see entertainment and games coming from a cereal box. What I’m hoping for is pure entertainment.”

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The shaving division of Energizer Personal Care is mocking Gillette in a new campaign for its Hydro 5 shaver. The campaign, which is entirely online, takes a different approach from prior Hydro 5 creative. Ads for Schick Hydro have thus far focused on features like its “Hydrating Gel Reservoir” with creative offering metaphors for the shaving/hydration experience.

But the new ads, with football and baseball themes, compete directly with the big dog in the category, whose Fusion ProGlide launched shortly after the 2010 launch of Schick Hydro.

The central message of the Web video ads is that men prefer the Schick Hydro 5 over Gillette Fusion ProGlide at a better price. The effort includes a Schick Hydro 5 deal on Facebook.com/HydroExperience offering a $1 discount.

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Patrick Kane, senior brand manager for Schick Hydro, tells Marketing Daily that the company’s digital/social programs and coverage on social media have done a good job of building awareness and reach. The company launched the Schick Hydro Power Select Razor at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which garnered a lot of earned media, he says.

“We got a lot of pickup within social networks, which was a pleasant surprise,” he says, adding that the product also got play in tech pages at the New York Times, and other top-shelf consumer publications  “We had one of our engineers there who gave the razor to [tech writer and Leoville.com blogger] Leo Laporte. He tweeted about it and talked about it in a podcast. Two weeks later, [actor] Steve Martin tweeted about not being able to find it. So you get this pickup from social, but you really can’t predict when it happens.”

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Anarchy is the first Axe fragrance to be available in a women’s version, after many years of popularizing the “Axe effect” with young men. The Unilever brand has created many hilarious, often award-winning, commercials around the world to convince young men that the product makes them irresistible. The company, apparently testing Axe’s potential among women, says this is a limited-edition product.

BBH has also developed two Facebook applications as part of the campaign. The “Anarchy Matchmaker” invites people to select Facebook friends they fancy and then notifies them — although it makes the exchange public only if the attraction proves mutual. “Kissing Chaos” invites people to post photos of themselves in smooching poses, and then randomly matches them up with other participants.

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Dominos has a successful social media strategy that gets results. Here’s what they do:

1. Promotions work. More people follow brands via social media to receive promotions and deals than for any other reason. Domino’s understands this and successfully runs promotions to increase trial and sales of its products.
2. Be unfiltered. Domino’s has benefited from a number of campaigns where it amplified both good and bad feedback from users about its brands. In the end, the effect was that it increased transparency and made the brand seem more trustworthy.
3. Spread the load. Domino’s social media efforts are a cross-functional effort between its digital marketing and PR teams, but it also pulls in help from agency partners, and some content is even user-generated.

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