The Emperor has no clothes on!

When it comes to new media success stories, YouTube can point to Dove’s Evolution spot, which increased visits to its website by 8000% (Fawcett, 2007) and Twitter can point to Sephora’s Sephora Claus campaign which generated $1 million in sales. (Economist Intelligence Unit Limited, 2011)  But what about Facebook?

Last week a Financial Times report touted the results of a December Facebook campaign for Nutella in Germany.  According to the company, the Facebook placement reached 30% of the country’s online users, and was responsible for 15% of sales.  But then the report goes on to say that TV, which was also part of the campaign, accounted for more revenue.  Hmm.  Talk about faint praise. (Goetzl, 2012)

Therefore, I was less than surprised when this Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal featured a front page story about GM’s decision to pull all its advertising ($10 million) from Facebook because the ads “had little impact on consumers.”  The company will still maintain its free brand page, but how much longer will that last, when the content costs $30 million to produce? (Walsh, 2012)

And as more traffic continues to move to mobile devices, it’s important to remember that Facebook does not offer any mobile ad-targeting options. (Sullivan, 2012)

Advertisers need results and models of successful efforts to build on if they are going to invest in media properties.  Right now, I’d rather put my money on YouTube, which is beefing up content to attract new viewers than Facebook, which has yet to deliver.  What about you?

Fawcett, A. (2007). Consumer packaged goods marketer of the year: Unilever’s Dove.  mediapost.com Retrived January 3, 2007, from http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=53208&Nid=2616

Economist Intelligence Unit Limited. (2011). The Social Shopper.  The Economist.  Retrieved May 16, 2012, from

http://socialcommercetoday.com/documents/socialshoppereiu_2011.pdf

Goetzl, D. (2012, May 7).  Nutella Says Facebook Ads Brought Sweeter ROI Than TV.  mediapost.com. Retrieved May 16, 2012, from

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174113/nutella-says-facebook-ads-brought-sweeter-roi-than.html

Walsh, M. (2012, May 15).  GM Slams Brakes On Facebook Advertising.  mediapost.com.  Retrieved May 16, 2012, from

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174794/gm-slams-brakes-on-facebook-advertising.html?edition=46897

Sullivan, L. (2012, May 15).  Facebook Needs Open Ad-Targeting Formats To Succeed.  mediapost.com.  Retrieved May 16, 2012, from

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174657/facebook-needs-open-ad-targeting-formats-to-succee.html?edition=46897

Will GM’s portfolio pruning assure its survival?

5/4/09

As part of its restructuring, GM has announced that it is eliminating 4 of its brands – Saab, Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac. This will allow them to focus on their 4 remaining brands – Chevy, Buick, Cadillac and GMC.

In reading about this, I was reminded of the discussions that I participated in when Uncle Ben’s launched Uncle Ben’s Country Inn Rice Dishes ®. Those in favor of not including Uncle Ben’s in the product name felt that it was stogy and would prevent the brand from reaching its full potential.

But, the VP of Marketing, who had the final word, pointed out that since she would not be able to support the brand with its own advertising campaign for more than a few years, it would need to live under the Uncle Ben’s umbrella so it could be supported with synergistic ads after the launch period.

Supporting 8 brands was clearly cost prohibitive, and supporting 4 will be easier, but has GM gone far enough? As market analyst Todd Turner pointed out in the attached article, the GMC division only appears to be profitable because there are no development costs associated with it.

Perhaps it would make sense to eliminate this division as well, or bring all the remaining brands under a common umbrella. Since GM spent over 2 billion dollars for marketing in 2008, the potential for savings could be huge. What would you do?

Greenberg, K. (2009, April 27). GM To Focus On Four ‘Keeper’ Brands. marketingdaily.com Retrieved, May 4, 2009 from
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104881

What were the folks at Skittles thinking?

3/16/09

In the past, the people at Mars Inc. have proved themselves to be savvy marketers, as evidenced by their fully integrated black & white campaign for M&M’s. (Carl, 2003) But, this time they appear to have lost their minds, or at least ignored what happened to GM when they ran their consumer-generated ad campaign for the Chevy Tahoe SUV. (Sandoval, 2006)

While there is no doubt that the growth in social networking has created an audience too tempting for advertisers to ignore, this idea may have been ill conceived from the start.

Initially, everyone seemed intrigued by the idea of Skittles turning their site over to consumers, by channeling consumer-generated content from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia to their home page. (Lukovitz, 2009).

But, it didn’t take long for consumers to turn nasty, so on March 3, Mars announced they were pulling the twitter campaign. (Sullivan, 2009)

And, on March 5 they announced that only the brand’s site on Wikipedia would be used for its homepage. (Sullivan, 2009) But, a visit earlier today led me to a homepage with YouTube content and still gave access to the twitter feed. So, at the moment is unclear what their current strategy is.

Are you surprised that consumers got out of hand so quickly? How should we balance the desire for consumer input with the tendency of people to turn nasty? How can we market brands in social networking settings without going to this extreme?

Carl, S. (2003) M&M’s are now black & white, no color. smgboard.com. Retrived March, 16, 2009 from
http://www.smgboard.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t12220.html

Sandoval, G. (2006) GM Slow to React to Nasty Ads. zdnet.com. Retrived March 16, 2009 from
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-147502.html

Lukovitz, K. (2009). Skittles Generates Buzz With Social Media Efforts. online media daily. Retrieved March 3, 2009 from
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101304

Sullivan, L. (2009). Skittles Pulls Twitter Campaign. online media daily. Retrived March 4, 2009 from
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101437

Sullivan, L. (2009) Skittles Settles On Wikipedia For Brand's Home Page. online media daily. Retrived March 6, 2009 from
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101628