Shopping 2.0: Shopping in Stores But Buying Online Versus
14.1 Just Don’t Call It Advertising: It’s Content Marketing
paid ad used to be an end in itself, marketers are now developing integrated marketing con- tent that leverages the combined power of all the POES channels. Thus, many TV ads often aren’t just TV ads any more. They’re “video content” you might see anywhere—on a TV screen but also on a tablet or phone. Other video content looks a lot like TV advertising but was never intended for TV, such as made- for-online videos posted on Web sites or so- cial media. Similarly, printed brand messages and pictures no longer appear only in carefully crafted magazine ads or catalogs. Instead, such content, created by a variety of sources, pops up in anything from formal ads and on- line brand pages to mobile and social media and independent blogs.
The new “content marketing” campaigns look a lot different from the old “advertising”
campaigns. For example, to move beyond its long-running, traditional “Intel Inside” adver- tising, Intel recently teamed with computer maker Toshiba to produce an award-winning social media film series, called “Inside.” En- listing the talents of Hollywood directors and actors, the engaging series blurs the lines between advertising, social media, and enter- tainment. The most recent series, a comedy/
Sci-Fi adventure called “The Power Inside,”
chronicles the efforts of a Scooby-Doo squad of twenty-somethings to foil the plans of aliens
Content marketing: Intel’s and Toshiba’s award-winning “Inside” social media film series blurs the line between advertising, social media, and entertainment, creating high levels of customer–brand engagement for the two brands.
Courtesy Intel and Toshiba American Information Systems, Inc.
CHAPTER 14 | Engaging Customers and Communicating Customer Value 451
intent on taking over the world by disguising themselves as mustaches and unibrows.
Intel-powered Toshiba Ultrabooks play a cen- tral role, but the subtle product placement doesn’t come across as an ad.
“The Power Inside” was released in six epi- sodes on YouTube, with traffic driven through Facebook and Twitter (shared media), a dedicated microsite (owned media), and ads placed on Skype and Spotify (paid media).
Awareness and popularity of the series were driven higher by mentions and articles in inde- pendent blogs and the press (earned media).
“The Power Inside” earned even more public- ity when its launch coincided perfectly with the awarding of a Daytime Emmy and the coveted Cannes Grand Prix award to the previous Intel/Toshiba series, “The Beauty Inside.” In all, the integrated, multi-platform content market- ing campaign created high levels of customer–
brand engagement for the two brands.
Careful integration across the POES chan- nels can produce striking communications re- sults. Consider Samsung’s “Life’s a Photo. Take It.” campaign to launch its Web-connected Galaxy Camera in 18 regions worldwide. To show how easily images taken by the cam- era can be shared instantly anytime, anyplace, Samsung chose 32 prominent Instagram- ers (“the world’s most social photographers”)
and challenged them to use the new camera to prove that their cities—from London, Am- sterdam, Berlin, Madrid, and Milan to Paris, Sydney, and San Francisco—were the most photogenic in the world. Their photos were uploaded to Tumblr, and fans voted for their favorites via Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. The winning city—Berlin—hosted a massive final event, where influencers invited from across Europe took photos with the con- nected camera and saw them projected onto giant, inflatable, 3D projection cubes.
The “Life’s a Photo. Take It.” campaign, with its rich mix of marketing content, was an un- qualified success. During its three-month run, the campaign reached more than 79 million people worldwide. Awareness of the Galaxy Camera rose 58 percent; purchase intent jumped 115 percent. The campaign won a 2013 Interactive Advertising Bureau MIXX
award for content marketing, sparking a flurry of additional publicity. Finally, the social media campaign served as a foundation for a series of paid television ads. In the end, Samsung reignited a product category that many con- sidered to be waning—dedicated digital cameras—and became the market leader in Web-connected digital imaging.
So, we can’t just call it “advertising” any- more. Today’s shifting and sometimes chaotic marketing communications environment calls for more than simply creating and placing ads in well-defined and controlled media spaces.
Rather, today’s marketing communicators must be marketing content strategists, creators, con- nectors, and catalysts who manage brand con- versations with and among customers and help those conversations catch fire across a fluid mix of channels. That’s a tall order, but with today’s new thinking, anything is POES–ible!
Sources: Randall Rothenberg, “What Is Advertising Anyway?” Ad Week, September 16, 2013, p. 15; Joan Voight,
“Intel and Toshiba Peddle Product Placement in Branded Film ‘The Power Inside,’” Ad Week, July 29, 2013, www .adweek.com/print/151476; Peter Himler, “Paid, Earned & Owned: Revisited,” The Flack, June 21, 2011, http://
flatironcomm.com/2011/06/paid-earned-owned-revisited/; Paul Nolan, “The C Word: What Is Content Marketing,”
Sales & Marketing Management, January/February 2014; “Samsung’s Galaxy Camera,” 2013 AIB MIXX Awards Winners Gallery, www.iab.net/mixxawards/gallery2013/strategies-and-objectives/content-marketing.html; http://
samsungcamera.tumblr.com/latest; “Life’s a Photo, Take It,” Jam, www.spreadingjam.com/our-work/samsung/life- s-a-photo-take-it, accessed September 2014; and “‘Life’s a Photo. Take It’—Campaign Overview,” Vice, www.vice .com/sgc/lifes-a-photo-take-it-campaign-overview, accessed September 2014.
FIGURE | 14.1 Integrated Marketing Communications
Carefully blended mix of promotion tools
Today’s customers are bombarded by brand content from all directions.
For example, think about all the ways you interact with companies such as Nike, Apple, or Coca-Cola. Integrated marketing communications means that companies must carefully coordinate all of these customer touch points to ensure clear brand messages.
Personal selling
Public relations Sales
promotion
Direct and digital marketing Advertising
Consistent, clear, and compelling
company and brand
messages
communications ties together all of the company’s messages and images. Its television and print ads have the same brand message as its e-mail and personal selling communications.
And its PR materials are consistent with Web site, online, social media, and mobile market- ing content.
452 PART 3| Designing a Customer Value-Driven Strategy and Mix
To develop effective marketing communications, you must first understand the general communication process.
Author Comment
Often, different media play unique roles in engaging, informing, and persuading con- sumers. For example, a recent study showed that more than two-thirds of advertisers and their agencies are planning video ad campaigns that stretch across multiple viewing plat- forms, such as traditional TV and digital, mobile, and social media. Such digital video ad convergence, as it’s called, combines TV’s core strength—vast reach—with digital’s better targeting, interaction, and engagement.7 These varied media and roles must be carefully coordinated under the overall marketing communications plan.
A great example of a well-integrated marketing communications effort is Coca-Cola’s recent “Mirage” campaign. Built around two Super Bowl XLVII ads, the campaign inte- grated the clout of traditional big-budget TV advertising with the interactive power of social media to create real-time customer engagement with the Coke brand:8
Coca-Cola’s “Mirage” tells the story of three bands of desert vagabonds—Cowboys, Showgirls, and Mad Max-inspired “Badlanders”—as they trek through the blazing-hot desert pursuing the same elusive mirage—a frosty bottle of Coca-Cola. The Mirage campaign began two weeks be- fore the Super Bowl with a 30-second teaser ad on American Idol and posted on YouTube and other online destinations inviting fans to visit CokeChase.com to get to know the story and teams. Then, during the big game, a 60-second Mirage ad set up the exciting chase, with a cliff-hanging close that urged viewers to visit CokeChase.com, where they could help decide the outcome by casting votes for their favorite team and throwing obstacles in front of rival teams.
During the rest of the game, Coca-Cola listening teams monitored related activity on major social media, and put fans in the middle of the action by posting real-time chase updates on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter and chase photos on Tumblr and Instagram. After the end of the game, a second Mirage ad announced the chase team with the most viewer votes—the Showgirls, in their glam pink and silver outfits, won the Coke. But the real winner was Coca-Cola. The Mirage cam- paign exceeded all expectations. In addition to the usual huge Super Bowl audience numbers, during the game, the campaign captured an eye-popping 8.2 million online and social-media interactions and 910,000 votes, far exceeding the brand’s internal goals of 1.6 million interactions and 400,000 votes.
In the past, no one person or department was responsible for thinking through the communication roles of the various promotion tools and coordinating the promotion mix.
To help implement integrated marketing communications, some companies have ap- pointed a marketing communications director who has overall responsibility for the com- pany’s communications efforts. This helps to produce better communications consistency and greater sales impact. It places the responsibility in someone’s hands—where none existed before—to unify the company’s image as it is shaped by thousands of company activities.
A View of the Communication Process
Integrated marketing communications involves identifying the target audience and shap- ing a well-coordinated promotional program to obtain the desired audience response. Too often, marketing communications focus on immediate awareness, image, or preference goals in the target market. But this approach to communication is too shortsighted. Today, marketers are moving toward viewing communications as managing ongoing customer engagement and relationships with the company and its brands.
Because customers differ, communications programs need to be developed for specific segments, niches, and even individuals. And, given today’s interactive communications technologies, companies must ask not only “How can we engage our customers?” but also
“How can we let our customers engage us?”
Thus, the communications process should start with an audit of all the potential touch points that target customers may have with the company and its brands. For example, someone purchasing a new wireless phone plan may talk to others, see television or maga- zine ads, visit various online sites for prices and reviews, and check out plans at Best Buy, Walmart, or a wireless provider’s kiosk or store. The marketer needs to assess what influ- ence each communication experience will have at different stages of the buying process.
This understanding helps marketers allocate their communication dollars more efficiently and effectively.
To communicate effectively, marketers need to understand how communication works.
Communication involves the nine elements shown in Figure 14.2. Two of these ele- ments are the major parties in a communication—the sender and the receiver. Another two
CHAPTER 14 | Engaging Customers and Communicating Customer Value 453
are the major communication tools—the message and the media. Four more are major com- munication functions—encoding, decoding, response, and feedback. The last element is noise in the system. Definitions of these elements follow and are applied to a McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it” television commercial.
• Sender. The party sending the message to another party—here, McDonald’s.
• Encoding. The process of putting thought into symbolic form—for example, McDonald’s ad agency assembles words, sounds, and illustrations into a TV advertisement that will convey the intended message.
• Message. The set of symbols that the sender transmits—the actual McDonald’s ad.
• Media. The communication channels through which the message moves from the sender to the receiver—in this case, television and the specific television programs that McDonald’s selects.
• Decoding. The process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender—a consumer watches the McDonald’s commercial and interprets the words and images it contains.
• Receiver. The party receiving the message sent by another party—the customer who watches the McDonald’s ad.
• Response. The reactions of the receiver after being exposed to the message—any of hun- dreds of possible responses, such as the consumer likes McDonald’s better, is more likely to eat at McDonald’s next time, hums the “i’m lovin’ it” jingle, or does nothing.
• Feedback. The part of the receiver’s response communicated back to the sender—McDonald’s research shows that consumers are either struck by and remember the ad or they write or call McDonald’s, praising or criticizing the ad or its products.
• Noise. The unplanned static or distortion during the communication process, which results in the receiver getting a different message than the one the sender sent—the consumer is distracted while watching the commercial and misses its key points.
For a message to be effective, the sender’s encoding process must mesh with the re- ceiver’s decoding process. The best messages consist of words and other symbols that are familiar to the receiver. The more the sender’s field of experience overlaps with that of the receiver, the more effective the message is likely to be. Marketing communicators may not always share the customer’s field of experience. For example, an advertising copywriter from one socioeconomic level might create ads for customers from another level—say, wealthy business owners. However, to communicate effectively, the marketing communi- cator must understand the customer’s field of experience.
FIGURE | 14.2
Elements in the Communication Process
Sender Encoding Receiver
Media
Decoding
Feedback
Sender’s field
of experience Receiver’s field
of experience Response Message
Noise
There is a lot going on in this figure! For example, apply this model to McDonald’s.
To create great advertising—such as its long-running “i'm lovin’ it” campaign—McDonald’s must thoroughly understand its customers and how communication works.
454 PART 3| Designing a Customer Value-Driven Strategy and Mix
This model points out several key factors in good communication. Senders need to know what audiences they wish to reach and what responses they want. They must be good at encoding messages that take into account how the target audience decodes them.
They must send messages through media that reach target audiences, and they must de- velop feedback channels so that they can assess an audience’s response to the message.
Also, in today’s interactive media environment, companies must be prepared to “flip” the communications process—to become good receivers of and responders to messages sent by consumers.
Steps in Developing Effective Marketing Communication
We now examine the steps in developing an effective integrated communications and pro- motion program. Marketers must do the following: Identify the target audience, determine the communication objectives, design a message, choose the media through which to send the message, select the message source, and collect feedback.
Identifying the Target Audience
A marketing communicator starts with a clear target audience in mind. The audience may be current users or potential buyers, those who make the buying decision or those who influence it. The audience may be individuals, groups, special publics, or the gen- eral public. The target audience will heavily affect the communicator’s decisions on what will be said, how it will be said, when it will be said, where it will be said, and who will say it.
Determining the Communication Objectives
Once the target audience has been defined, marketers must determine the desired response. Of course, in many cases, they will seek a purchase response. But purchase may result only after a lengthy consumer decision-making process. The marketing communicator needs to know where the target audience now stands and to what stage it needs to be moved. The target audience may be in any of six buyer-readiness stages, the stages consumers normally pass through on their way to making a pur- chase. These stages are awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and purchase (see Figure 14.3).
The marketing communicator’s target market may be totally unaware of the product, know only its name, or know only a few things about it. Thus, the marketer must first build awareness and knowledge. For example, to introduce consumers to its innovative new Microsoft Surface tablet, Microsoft spent an estimated $190 million on marketing in only the first 10 months. The current campaign introduces the Surface 2 tablet as the “One device for everything in your life”—it’s lighter and thinner than a laptop but with a click-in keyboard and fuller features than competing tablets. The extensive introductory campaign used a broad range of traditional, digital, mobile, social, and in-store media to quickly cre- ate awareness and knowledge across the entire market.9
Assuming that target consumers know about a product, how do they feel about it? Once potential buyers know about Microsoft’s Surface tablet, marketers want to move them through successively stronger stages of feelings toward the model. These stages include liking (feeling favorable about the Surface), preference (preferring the Surface to competing tablets), and conviction (believing that the Surface is the best tablet for them).
Now that we understand how communication works, it’s time to turn all of those promotion mix elements into an actual marketing communications program.
Author Comment
Buyer-readiness stages The stages consumers normally pass through on their way to a purchase:
awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and, finally, the actual purchase.
FIGURE | 14.3 Buyer-Readiness Stages
Awareness Knowledge Liking Preference Conviction Purchase
A goal of marketing in general, and of marketing communications in particular, is to move target customers through the buying process. Once again, it all starts with understanding customer needs and wants.
CHAPTER 14 | Engaging Customers and Communicating Customer Value 455
Microsoft Surface marketers use a combination of promo- tion mix tools to create positive feelings and conviction. Initial TV commercials help build anticipation and an emotional brand connection. Images and videos on the Microsoft Surface’s You- Tube, Facebook, and Pinterest pages engage potential buyers and demonstrate the product’s use and features. Press releases and other PR activities help keep the buzz going about the product. A packed microsite (microsoft.com/surface) provides additional information and buying opportunities.
Finally, some members of the target market might be con- vinced about the product but not quite get around to making the purchase. The communicator must lead these consumers to take the final step. To help reluctant consumers over such hurdles, Microsoft might offer buyers special promotional prices and up- grades, and support the product with comments and reviews from customers at its Web and social media sites and elsewhere.
Of course, marketing communications alone cannot cre- ate positive feelings and purchases for the Surface. The prod- uct itself must provide superior value for the customer. In fact, outstanding marketing communications can actually speed the demise of a poor product. The more quickly potential buy- ers learn about a poor product, the more quickly they become aware of its faults. Thus, good marketing communications call for “good deeds followed by good words.”
Designing a Message
Having defined the desired audience response, the communica- tor then turns to developing an effective message. Ideally, the message should get attention, hold interest, arouse desire, and ob- tain action (a framework known as the AIDA model). In practice, few messages take the consumer all the way from awareness to purchase, but the AIDA framework suggests the desirable qualities of a good message.
When putting a message together, the marketing communicator must decide what to say (message content) and how to say it (message structure and format).
Message Content
The marketer has to figure out an appeal or theme that will produce the desired response.
There are three types of appeals: rational, emotional, and moral. Rational appeals relate to the audience’s self-interest. They show that the product will produce the desired benefits. Ex- amples are messages showing a product’s quality, economy, value, or performance. Thus, an ad for Aleve makes this matter-of-fact claim: “More pills doesn’t mean more pain relief.
Aleve has the strength to keep back, body, and arthritis pain away all day with fewer pills than Tylenol.” And a Weight Watchers’ ad states this simple fact: “The diet secret to end all diet secrets is that there is no diet secret.”
Emotional appeals attempt to stir up either negative or positive emotions that can mo- tivate purchase. Communicators may use emotional appeals ranging from love, joy, and humor to fear and guilt. Advocates of emotional messages claim that they attract more attention and create more belief in the sponsor and the brand. The idea is that consumers often feel before they think, and persuasion is emotional in nature.
Good storytelling in a commercial often strikes an emotional chord. For exam- ple, Anheuser-Busch aired two emotional Budweiser commercials during Super Bowl XLVIII. The first ad, called “Puppy Love,” portrayed the special, heart-warming rela- tionship between a Budweiser Clydesdale and a puppy, who were separated and then reunited. The second commercial, another tears-of-joy affair called “A Hero’s Welcome,”
recounted a Budweiser-arranged welcome home for a young American soldier, complete with a home-town parade and a ride on the famed Clydesdale-drawn Budweiser wagon.
Neither commercial said anything at all about the qualities of Budweiser beer. But both ads made deep emotional connections between the Budweiser brand and viewers.
Moving customers through the buyer-readiness stages:
Microsoft used an extensive $190 million marketing campaign to create awareness and knowledge for its innovative new Microsoft Surface tablet.
Microsoft