Musical Desires

This week while watching a show on the Food Network, I saw an experiment regarding food cravings and music. In this experiment, the host had an ice cream truck and conducted the experiment twice. First, he stood in the ice cream truck with a sign for free ice cream and did not play any "ice cream truck" music. As a result, he had a few people approach the truck for the free ice cream within the hour . In the next hour of the experiment, he played the "ice cream truck" music. The host had such a different result, many more people approached the truck for the free ice cream. People were even waiting in line for the ice cream this time around!

http://www.bestcoloringpagesforkids.com/

Why?

The host of the show went into this explanation of how the music is what people associate to ice cream. This music makes people think of and crave ice cream. Ice cream is often associated to summer and happy times for people. Most people also associate the truck's music to their childhood, summer, and as one person on the show said, "running outside to the sound of the truck". The host went into an explanation of how the ice cream is a positive reward to the music. The topic of Pavlov's dog was brought up. For those of you who do not know this experiment, it refers to classical conditioning and how Pavlov conditions a dog to salivate when they hear him ring a bell. The dog does this because every time the bell rang prior, they received a treat. 

Why Should Marketers Care?

When I was watching this show, I instantly thought of marketing and how marketers use music to get their consumers to think and crave their product. In my marketing courses, we have discussed the Pavlov's dog experiment, so I knew that the situation of the ice cream and the ice cream truck music makes sense. Marketers can use music to create that positive reward for their consumers. Consumers will hear a jingle or music and instantly crave the feeling the associate product provides. 

http://downeybeat.com

Open Happiness

The immediate company I thought of when relating a product to music was Coca Cola. A few years ago Coca Cola had a song called "Open Happiness" created by a few different artists. The song incorporates a sound Coca Cola is known for. This sound is typically played in some Coke commercials. They incorporate this associated sound into their song which I actually have from a few years back. This is not exactly the same as the ice cream trucks example, but it is the same basic concept. You hear this song, you associate it with Coke and quite possibly crave a coke. Even if you do not crave a coke, you have the company on your mind. So the lesson is keep sounds and music in mind when creating or viewing ads. 

Check out the Coca-Cola song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTk5dRytUI8

Tell A Story

http://www.google.com

Throughout this semester in my Marketing Campaign Planning & Management course, we have discussed the benefits and goal of telling a story to your consumers. Using a story to capture consumer interest and engagement is important because your message will be more memorable to the consumer. A compelling story will evoke emotions in your consumer and allow your message to come across. On Forbes.com, I found a great article which expresses the value of using storytelling in your advertising.

Why Tell a Story?

This article states that consumers are spending an average of five hours a day consuming posted content via mobile and the social sphere. It is important your story can capture this large amount of time consumers are using to read content. As I have said in past posts, it is important to know your market and to not just sell to them. People are more receptive to ads which do not come off as selling and pushing to buy. Consumers will not receive ads that come off only to sell, which is where a story comes into your ad planning. 

Steps to Take

As I stated, you need to know who you are trying to reach. Once you know who you are targeting, it is best to know what media your target is most utilizing. Is it Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Linked In, or any of the like? After you do your research on your targets, your story telling can be geared in the best way to compel this audience. Your story should include a process, solve a problem your consumers may face which leads them to need your product or service. A good story conveys the process, presents the problem and solves it in a brief period of time. Consumers are more likely to stay focus and interested in an ad which is not too long to lose their interest. The ad must be long enough to convey all of which you need to do. 

Febreze

In my class, we watched the Febreze commercial about what they call "nose blindness" with a woman who can not smell the cat odor she has in her house anymore because she has gone "nose blind". 

Check out this story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j8CSYoCXkI

http://www.google.com

This funny and brief ad shows the problem consumers have and how Febreze solves it. The ad is not focused on just selling the Febreze pet odor spray but it is focused on solving a problem. People will find this commercial humorous but also question if they have gone "nose blind". 

This is the link to the Forbes article referenced above: http://www.forbes.com/sales-marketing/

People to People

http://desismartgrid.com/

Consumers want to hear from other consumers. With the growth of digital media, there has been a growth of engagement online, including with reviews and recommendations. In my past posts, I have discussed word of mouth and viral marketing and the positive effects of both. I want to elaborate on the key importance of how people listen to friends and family or people they trust. A person is more likely to trust a recommendation or negative review from somebody you know as opposed to the company itself.

Utilizing Online for Feedback

Companies have a huge potential for feedback from monitoring recommendation sites. Many consumers are utilizing sites to share their insight on products. Amazon is a great example of consumers (including myself) who use the rating and review sections on products. Companies need to keep track of these recommendations to make improvements and ensure customers are happy with their services. These reviews are also of great importance to other consumers when deciding to purchase. Typically, people are going to use reviews more often when the product considered requires more knowledge and consideration, making it a higher involvement product.

Rating & Reviews from Amazon.com

Consumers tend to trust what they read about products because those writing the reviews do not have much stake or benefit in the company. Companies can greatly miss out by not offering these review functions on places such as their Facebook pages. Companies may not offer these functions because they do not want negative comments, but there will always be other places for unhappy customers to complain. It is smarter for a company to have control over reviews and being able to respond and help resolve customer concerns. 

Touchpoints

https://www.google.com/

It is always important to reach your consumers, but the question this week is how to know what touch point (s) is the most accurate for the audience you are targeting. In case you do not know, a touchpoint is "any point of contact between buyer and seller". Contact between buyer and seller is critical to reaching and selling. The contact needs to be effective because it plays a large role in marketing your message.

Three Inputs

In Antony Young's book, Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in The Digital Era, he shares there are three important inputs used for touch point selection. These inputs are data, consumer insight, and communication needs. This strategy allows defining what is more important in reaching consumers depending on the product/service and the campaign strategy. All aspects of the three are used in determining effectiveness.  The importance of these inputs is integrating different tactics and seeing which work best for your company. 

https://www.google.com

Coca-Cola

A good example to demonstrate differing touch points can be seen through the Coca-Cola Company, one of the numerous companies out there. Coke used their "Share a Coke" campaign this paast year, hitting with one of their touch points. This company uses all sorts of media, TV, music, social media such as Twitter and Facebook. In case you have not seen this yet, the company placed the most popular names for the given area on the bottle, meaning "share a coke with...". I also found an interesting and creative tactic the company has implemented in London, England. At stores, there is a virtual assistant who is supposed to inform and share with customers who come in the store about the company. This example shows there are always different ways to reach consumers, especially with the constant evolution of technology.

For more on this virtual assistant tactic follow the link below:

http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/features/news-briefs/coca-cola-drives-campaign-awareness-with-tensator-virtual-assistant

Don't Just Sell

Active Consideration

http://www.screensaverspcs.co.uk

Getting consumers to purchase is not always the main focus of a company. Increasing participation and what is called "active consideration" is also an important goal which company's should have. A company does not want to come off as too forceful because this usually just pushes consumers away from the message of the company.  Building involvement is a part of creating active consideration. Companies want to reinforce their brand, and create more interactions from both sides of the equation. Having both active consideration and involvement makes it nice for prompting consumers to research and check out the product or service. 

Digital 

The question is what is a good way to increase both these areas? For many companies, digital online searches are the answer. As Young says in his book Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planing in The Digital Era, "a brand wants to prompt consumers' consideration and research of  the product, possibly by visiting the website or checking out reviews, articles or comparison sites". Young also describes online search as one of the most powerful media to increase active consideration. This is especially true with the increase in digital screens, meaning consumers can instantly research a product via their smart phones. Consumers can easily leave and read reviews on products when considering to purchase. This also means companies need to have easily accessible information to inform customers. It is important to have employees to maintain the internet aspect of the company. This means creating websites which provide ease of information as well as monitoring reviews and questions customers have. In today's world, everything needs to be convenient or people typically will not bother. A company must recognize this and know how to provide the best to their consumers, which in the long run builds the brand and consumer relationships. 

A Good Kind of Viral

http://www.webbythoughts.com

In chapter 6 of Antony Young's book, Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era, he discusses what he calls "The power of free". This chapter touches on how powerful social media and digital messaging can be for a company. Viral marketing, or word of mouth marketing, is an important part of marketing which if used right, can be a big part of spreading a message. With the digital outlets and advanced technology available today, it is so easy to spread messages through the Internet and social media. It does not matter the size of your company, anyone can send and promote their company or message via social media. The Internet gives an instantaneous access and ability to send your message which ever form it may be in. Viral messages can even be in the form of a video, which is shared usually through Youtube. Young touches on "the Youtube effect" in chapter 6 of his book. 

Ice Bucket Challenge

A really great example of a viral message, which happens to include video is of the Ice Bucket Challenge which really took off this past summer. As you may know, this is where all sorts of people from all over the country would take videos of themselves dumping ice water over their heads. They also gave donations for ALS (what the video was spreading awareness for) and call out their friends to take the challenge. People may say this does nothing but really it must have had some sort of impact seeing how viral it actually went. People all over knew about this challenge and it actually got people to become more aware of ALS. 

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/

Who Trusts Word of Mouth?

Consumers trust other consumers. A similar aspect of word of mouth outside of sharing videos or promoted messages deals with the positive impact of recommendations. People are more likely to believe what a friend shares with them over what a company may say about itself. I know that I tend to take and trust recommendations from friends or family more. How about you? I think the best way for any company to promote word of mouth marketing among their customers is to simply allow feedback. It is best to allow reviews on pages such as Facebook, this way you can maintain the comments but also allow everyone to see the positive reviews. Overall, using the media to your advantage, especially when including customers, is a great step to success. 

Consumer Insight & Brand Media Planning

Working as a Team

In brand media planning, it is important to ensure media planners and communication planners work together for success. A media planner is reaching the right people at the right time, as I discussed in my "Work out With Your Consumers" post. A communications planner is different, they focus on how to influence people. The two need to work together since both roles are important for successfully reaching consumers in the new ways of marketing.

http://www.govdelivery.com

A New & Improved Way to Connect

 As Antony Young writes in his book Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era, "an important part of influencing is to understand how the group you are trying to connect with thinks, behaves and lives their lives." In the old ways of marketing, statistics and numbers on consumers were of high importance. Now though, you may have all of these numbers but does this allow you to connect to consumers any differently than your competitors? Seeing consumers as individuals is beneficial to establishing a relationship of consumer to company. Young also says "To have insight, the communications planner needs to be the consumer's best friend." 

http://www.adweek.com/

Big Lots! Pets & How They Did It

Big Lots! released a comical but highly relatable ad regarding their stock of pet supplies. Big Lots! took on this idea of knowing how most pet owners interact with pets. How many people do you know who treat their pets as people? In their ad, two improv comedians sat down with animals for a 'focus group' on the Big Lots! pet products. They made the ad funny and connect with how these consumers behave in regards to their own pets. I can tell this company was conscious of what they were portraying. I can assume the Big Lots! marketers took their own experiences and knowledge of people with pets as opposed to just using numbers or stats on consumers. 

Check the ad out here:http://www.biglots.com/d/pets