Digital CPG Blog

Consumers want ‘free stuff’ from social, marketers think they ‘want to be heard’:

According to the 1,300-plus consumers surveyed online globally, there was found to be an expectation that a brand follow, like, post or preference in a social media environment would enable a person to; be eligible for exclusive offers (67%), have the opportunity to interact with other customers who share the same experiences (60%) and gain access to games or contests (65 %).

When the same question was asked to over 120 CMOs, the results were very different.

The CMOs surveyed believed that social engagement is more of a by-product of quality content, and are less concerned with incentivising loyalty among their followers.   According those surveyed, customers interact with brands because they; want to be heard (41 %) or are looking for news or information about products (40%)

Only 33% believe their fans are looking for incentives or rewards, and only 27% believe customers are seeking special savings or experiences exclusive for followers.

Think Facebook is the be-all-end-all? Think again:

“We call email the original social network because it really is social,” said Tynt CEO Derek Ball. “If you follow the popular media today, you would believe that the world revolves around what they deem social — which means Twitter, Facebook, and other things, which have social components to them.”

Social media is an important marketing platform for sure, he said, but “email is still a very, very critical component and will be for a long time.”

Ball offered data from March 2010 that shows 73% of sharing was happening on email, 25% on Facebook and 2% on Twitter. That has since changed markedly. Now, Facebook represents 69% of sharing and email represents 27%. But Ball said email marketers should not be unnerved.

“This initially sounds ominous,” he said. “This sounds like Facebook is cannibalizing email … [but] sharing as a whole has gone up massively in 18 months … so in fact, sharing via email has gone up a little over 20% in 18 months, so email is continuing to grow. It’s just that Facebook grew faster — much faster.”

Ball offers the following reasons why email maintains an advantage over social.

1. It’s “asynchronous,” meaning time is not necessarily of the essence. A received email waits for the recipient in an in-box.

2. Email is more personal than, say, Facebook or Twitter. Ball referred to them as “broadcast platforms,” while “most of what comes into your email is very personal and tuned to you.”

3. Email is also very trackable, with data on open rates and other behaviors, while it is “infinitely flexible” — there is no need to build a following or “friend” people or join a group.

4. And,  it is “decentralized.” There is no big brother — no one controlling force. Facebook may change a rule and frustrate millions. Email has no rules.

Let’s take a quick trip to Sweden to get some digital marketing inspiration. I am loving the concept and think it would be a great way to engage blog communities.

To seed buzz and demand for the opening of a new online store, Swedish interior design retailer Lagerhaus (no they don’t sell lager) has implemented an interesting variation on the online pop-up fan-shop trend.

Rather than take the traditional route of opening a temporary pop-up shop on their Facebook page, as Oscar La Renta, Burberry, Chanel, Joop!, Electronic Arts, Heinz, and others have done, Lagerhaus created a distributed pop-up shop widget for blogs – and invited leading popular interior design blogs to embed the widget on their blogs and customise it with their favourite products (see campaign video below).

…what’s smart about this alternative blog-based pop-up shop campaign is the extra reach and credibility they have.  By embedding the pop-up shop on popular blogs, more people are more likely to see it – than on a brand’s Facebook page, and it will have  implicit, if not explicit, third-party endorsement from the blogger hosting the pop-up shop.  It’s social proof, baby.

CPG’s core demographic – the young mom – is usually a very active blogger, and this seems like a no-brainer to try back here in the States. What do you think?

Is it time for the public relations industry to take on themselves? And is it time to redefine your own strategies and definitions in this age of social media?

Finding a new definition for public relations is “a process we know is overdue,” said Rosanna Fiske, the chairwoman and chief executive of the public relations society who is also associate professor and global strategic communications program director at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University. “We felt we could no longer let it go.”

“Before the rise of social media, public relations was about trying to manage the message an entity was sharing with its different audiences,” Mr. Lavelle said. “Now, P.R. has to be more about facilitating the ongoing conversation in an always-on world.”

“In a world where the ordinary consumer is walking around with global publishing power in his or her pocket,” said Mr. Tisch, who is also chief executive at Argyle Communications, “the role of public relations and corporate communications has shifted from creating content to attempting to influence the content that’s created by others.”

YES!

But they often don’t. Which makes very little sense to me and shows a lack of understanding of the social space. But alas, let’s get to the latest research on the topic:

According to customer experience research company Maritz Research, nearly half of consumers who tweeted a complaint directed toward a brand expected the company to respond—or at least to read their tweet. However, only a third of those consumers received a tweeted response from the mentioned brand.

Consumers ages 55 and older are particularly expectant of a company to read their complaint on Twitter. Gen Y and Gen X consumers, who tend to be more active on Twitter, were less hopeful that a company would read their complaint—perhaps because they believe those expectations will not be met.

Despite the gap between consumer expectations and brand delivery, consumers are overwhelmingly positive when brands take the time to actually respond to them on Twitter. The Maritz study indicates that 86% of Twitter complainers would have liked or loved to hear from the company regarding their complaints—and out of those who heard back, 75% were satisfied with the company’s response.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and you’re all caught up! Last week, we talked about “Social Moms”  and continuing on with that research, let’s discover how much “liking” women do on Facebook:

The research focuses in particular on the consumer-packaged-goods category, based on an analysis of 40 CPG brand pages on Facebook. Women account for 65% of CPG Likes, while they make up 55% of the U.S. Facebook population overall and account for 57% of all Likes. This lends support to the notion that women are more apt to Like a CPG brand than men.

“It is very interesting to note that older women make up a large percent of Likes for CPG brands than for average pages analyzed. My assumption is that older women tend to be the decision makers for CPG products in their family,” wrote Fred Stuk, Vitrue’s analytics manager, in the company’s blog.

Looking at the Facebook audience more broadly, it’s clear that younger users tend to be overrepresented when it comes to Likes. For example, 13-17s account for 29% of Likes generally, although they only make up 6% of the U.S. Facebook population. Similarly, the 18-24 age group is 24% of the Facebook audience, but drives about 38% of Likes. By contrast, the 35-44 bracket makes up 28% of the audience, but only drives 8% of Likes.

“Social moms” (defined as females with at least one child who actively participate in social networking) are quite influential. They’re more likely to do just about everything:

How Social Moms Access Content
The social mom is highly active in accessing social networks via mobile devices. Fifty percent of all moms actively participating in social media access platforms via mobile devices, in comparison to 39 percent of females overall, and 37 percent of the overall population in general.

How Social Moms Shop
Social moms tend to be cost-conscious, being 56 percent more likely to download coupons than the general population. They are also more likely to shop online for CPG products than other product categories, with the research showing that 86 percent are more likely to shop online for cosmetics than the general public, as well as skincare products (85%), hair care goods (74%) and fragrances (68%).

Social Moms: Likes and Dislikes
The growing influence of women and moms is increasingly apparent, and so too is their level of activity in social media. Moms who actively participate in social media are 81 percent more likely to become a fan of or follow a brand online, 86 percent more likely to post a status update, and 84 percent more likely to comment or post content than the general population. The research also shows that social moms definitely aren’t shy in sharing their advice and reviews of products with others. This segment is 85 percent more likely than the general population to share frequent advice about beauty and cosmetic products, 28 percent more likely to provide frequent advice about online shopping/e-commerce and 6% more likely to post a product review online.

For better or for worse?

A comScore analysis of online ad impressions from July shows CPGs have become the heaviest users of “socially enabled” ads that appear on sites outside Facebook but include “visit us on Facebook” or other “Click to Facebook” appeals to get users to brand pages.CPG marketers are 10 times more likely than advertisers to use “socially enabled” ads, which appear outside of Facebook but urge visits to a Facebook site, finds a comScore analysis.

They were 10 times more likely than advertisers generally to use socially-enabled online ads.

“In many ways the fan page is replacing the brand website as the primary destination for outbound marketing online,” said a comScore executive.

The only thing that makes me nervous about this is that it is a short-term strategy. Yes, Facebook is HUGE, but wasn’t MySpace? I worry when marketers spend all their time, energy and money building on one platform only to have it disappear a few years later. ultimately, marketers should have a diversified strategy that always includes their own brand website where they have full control on collecting data and emails.

We really enjoyed this post from Chris Brogan about some CPG brand’s failed attempts at social media. We’ve pasted one example below, but encourage you to head on over to Brogan’s blog for the full review of CPG brands on Twitter.

There are plenty of abandoned “official” Twitter accounts for food. With the poor quality of these tweets, no wonder someone was discouraged and let this account lie fallow. Dear someone who likes Swanson’s chicken: please go rescue this company’s account and put it to better use.

View all CPG on Twitter examples >

Ocean Spray launched a pop-up restaurant inside a cranberry bog at New York City’s Rockefeller Center on Oct. 18. Only 30 guests were invited, though.

The “Cranberry Mix & MINGle” program, featuring culinary creations of Chef Ming Tsai, was a promotion dangling a chance to partake of the cranberry-infused drinks and appetizers within a 1,500-square-foot bog filled with 2,000 pounds of floating cranberries, per the company.

Visitors to the bog had the chance to enter a ballot drawing, to determine the winner of a ticket to the “Cranberry Mix & MINGle” experience. One person and a guest received a trip to New York and a seat at the cranberry-themed meal via Facebook “Perfect Pairings” contest.

To vie for a chance to attend, consumers could go to Ocean Spray’s Facebook page (facebook.com/oceanspray) and submit recipe ideas using cranberries for the chance to win the cranberry themed trip to the Big Apple.

At the event itself Ming Tsai answered questions from inside the faux bog, via Twitter. Fans could ask questions to hashtag #askMing or ahead of time via an “Ask Ming” tab on Ocean Spray’s Facebook page, per the company.