Last week, we spoke at the Austin Internet Marketers Meetup at Dave & Buster’s and had a blast! The group was very diverse which always makes for a great educational event, especially in the question & answer portion. We noted that we would share our presentation for those interested and in true Murphy’s Law fashion, all of the images in the presentation are corrupted, so in lieu of the presentation, we’ll break it down into a few parts for those who didn’t make it out last week!

Part One: Benn’s Presentation

Part Two: Social Media Primer

Benn showed this video in his presentation to drive home the point that social media and online social networking is not a fad, it’s a shift in communication:

Part Three: 14 Social Media Case Studies

We shared seven failures and seven successes in social media campaigns and while not everyone can implement every single campaign, it should be noted that most of these efforts that succeeded cost little to nothing and all and required creativity and some man hours.

Pizza Hut Twitter Intern- this was a big fat failure. Pizza Hut ran an ad for this position stating that “the successful applicant will speak fluent OMG and LOL and correctly use the terms DM, RT and #.” On the surface it seemed harmless, but the Twitter community was outraged because the implication was that an intern with texting capabilities should be the face of a marketing effort and Pizza Hut proved not to understand the culture of Twitter and belittled and offended it.

Burger King Whopper Sacrifice- campaign also failed. This was a facebook application Burger King developed that asked, “what would you do for a Whopper? Would you insult an elected official? Do a naked handstand? Turn your back on a friendship?” The application sent anyone who was willing to unfriend someone on Facebook a coupon for a free Whopper which led to Facebook users to be angered, asking “my friendship is worth $3.00 in the eyes of Burger King?” The average Facebook user has 100 “friends” and it is common to selectively connect with real life friends, so Burger King took it on the chin for not understanding that culture.

CNN vs. Ashton Kutcher raced to 1 million Twitter followers. Ashton took out a billboard, CNN promoted the race on their broadcasts and Twitter users got upset. Although the winner was to donate to charity, it became a way for celebrities to game the system, degrading all of the hard work it took for normal users without their megaphone to garner their following. Ashton came out and said, “I’m more important than the news” when he won which upset many because as traditional media struggles, celebrities continue to be worshiped. The bottom line though is that social media is bigger than CNN and Ashton and the outrage online was loud.

House, MD on Fox failed last year when one of their lead characters (Kutner) left the show suddenly to pursue a position in the Obama camp, so Fox had to kill him off and they chose suicide. The way the character was killed was fine, but Fox took advantage of the death and made an online memorial encouraging people to go visit and leave comments to the fictitious character. The web community was outraged and called it an insensitive exploitation of such a delicate matter so they could garner web traffic. Viral website fail.

Motrin ran an ad in fall 2008 that said that moms who do “babywearing” (wearing the baby on their chest in a harness) need Motrin because “let’s face it, kids can be heavy” which sent mommy bloggers into a rage. Mom bloggers revolted saying it implied mothers resented their children and to this day, new blogs and videos are being made in protest of the ad despite Motrin’s fast public apology and removal of ads. The loser in this situation could have been Motrin, but unfortunately is the mom bloggers as they painted themselves as an irrational lynch mob, counter to the collaborative, forgiving community that is blogging.

Skittles turned skittles.com into a search of twitter for the word “skittles” which was a great effort to do something innovative and transparent and show their confidence in their brand, but it turned into an echo chamber of “omg i love skittles” and eventually devolved into “omg i wish they had [insert bad word here] flavored skittles.” There was no community behind the website, nothing to share and it rewarded gaming the system because people wanted their usernames to be featured on the site and all they had to do is say “skittles” in a tweet. The Twitter community was mad and annoyed because of the manipulators that emerged by saying “skittles” in every single tweet they created.

Titleist created a website about a fictional golfer and the adventures the golfer went on. The idea was good but the execution was poor, there was no community, no incentives for anyone to share the content (much less buy Titleist products) and the content was boring. The failure was not in the website but in how it was promoted in that Titleist didn’t reach out anywhere online or to bloggers, instead chose to promote the site on television during major tournaments online. So, they relied on old media to support their new media efforts and never cross pollinated which left a stain on their marketing team.

SUCCESSES:

Starbucks Ice Cream Giveaway on Facebook was a hit. In July, Starbucks said that they would give out 20,000 pints of their ice cream to people who added their starbucks facebook application to their profile. They ended up giving out 280,000 coupons (yes, we got ours and have already eaten the ice cream which was awesome) and since have remained in the top 15 Facebook Pages with over 3.7 million fans and growing at an average of 3.41% weekly. The fan page continues to be highly interactive with polls and giveaways, but most importantly, they encourage a dialogue once they pull you in which is their success.

Blendtec won audiences over with a very simple video series called “Will it Blend?” where their lab technician in a super cool lab coat put various items including electronics (even an iPhone before they were released on the market) to prove the power of their product. The videos were viral because it was fun, shocking and barely believable. Another smart move was to send a blender to Seth Godin who asked “Will my newly published book blend?” and video taped himself blending his book. The content was not only easy to share but fun to share as it was an unlikely suspect, proving that *anything* can be popular online with some creativity behind it.

Moonfruit ran a twitter contest that asked users to tweet #moonfruit making them automatically eligible to win a Macbook Pro. Moonfruit is simply a local web developer that gave away one Macbook Pro each day for 7 days, choosing random winners that had said “#moonfruit” on Twitter. They made a big splash because they weren’t well known before the contest but have become a national name. The reason this effort won over Skittles is because it wasn’t purely a system gaming, there was a community backing it, a giveaway and they explicitly asked people not to game the system and asked bots to not run scripts… they actually added value.

Mountain Dew selected a small online community to tap into for market research AND free promotions with very little money. “12 seconds to choose the new Mountain Dew flavor” debuted on 12seconds.tv which was a site that hadn’t garnered much popularity at that time; they asked users to film what they thought should be the newest Mountain Dew flavor and chose 50 winners from the 12 second submissions and sent them limited edition boxes with seven flavors inside, fancy shot glasses and a flip camera to record their taste test and narrow it down to three flavors. Mountain Dew called it “crowd source soda,” which is how Mountain Dew Voltage was born!

Ben & Jerry’s took a simple approach in celebrating their new “Flipped Out Sundaes” by making a facebook application that allowed you to type in text and it would “flip out” the text and allow it to be copied and pasted anywhere (like a facebook status update for example). It was simple and lighthearted, but flipped out text began appearing all over the place online and when people said, “what IS that?” the answer was “Ben & Jerry’s flipped out text, go check it out” with a link to the app. Brilliant!

FrozenPeaFund.com made a splash in the very early days of Twitter and was the source of the first mass avatar-altering project. Frozen Pea Fund was born when Susan Reynolds was diagnosed with breast cancer, discovered that a bag of frozen peas was the only relief for her pain and she co-founded a breast cancer foundation. On Fridays, twitter users were encouraged to change their avatar to a “peavatar” featuring frozen peas somewhere in their picture, thus raising awareness of the non profit group. It was a success because it changed the culture of Twitter by having others focus on a cause which now seems common but it wasn’t originally part of the culture.

Kraft Foods is running a “Share a Little Comfort” campaign where all users have to do is click a button on their website to donate a box of macaroni to Feed America. After clicking “donate,” users can share with their twitter or facebook friends that they just made Kraft donate mac and encourage them to do the same. They get web traffic, press, mentions online and Feed America gets one MILLION boxes of macaroni!

We enjoyed meeting so many people at the Austin Internet Marketers Meetup which meets on on the first Wednesday night of every month and plan on going again!

Alpo is Awesome

The Alpo brand recently launched a new marketing campaign called “Operation: Quick, get that dog some ALPO!” Take a minute to watch the video below and while you’re watching, note how Alpo chooses to set themselves apart, is authentic to their brand, is a little silly and especially note how they are breaking stereotypes of Alpo alternatives that some see as superior:

Are YOU Awesome?

The answer is yes. By using social media in your marketing, be it blogging, video uploads or audio podcasting, you have a unique opportunity to let your hair down a little bit. You don’t have to be a comedian to create new media marketing strategies that are effective, nor do you have to spend a trillion dollars. Take some time to think about how you’re different than your competition (and “I’m just better” is not an acceptable, marketable difference).

For example, we pitched to a local artist that they film themselves painting then speed up the video, add cool music in the background and illustrate their skill with a unique time progression film. Uploading it to vimeo, viddler or youtube allows the artist to embed the video in their blog sidebar so people instantly know about that unique artistic niche of the particular artist. Are you a creative? Do you produce a tangible product? Consider filming yourself doing your work, speeding it up and showing it off!

Food vs. Dirt

For example, do you own or work at a restaurant? Film taste tests like “Mexican Food versus dirt” where Mexican Food wins every time and dirt makes people mad. Are you a vet? Interview the animals on film with answers you want silence to, so put a microphone up to a cat and say, “hey kitty, demurely blink if you think Dr. Vet is the best vet ever… [cat blinks] …and there you have it.” Are you in a band? Write an article with a chart comparing you to yodelers, a group of stray dogs and a pair of shoes (with your band being superior in every category).

Remember, YOU are awesome, YOU are marketable and social media provides the perfect opportunity to showcase that. You can be a little silly, just differentiate yourself with something truthful and memorable.