HONDA Press R ad Campaign: Interactive Marketing at its "craziest" best

Interactive Marketing is a technique through which a marketer promotes his product or service to the prospective customers by getting them to interact with the campaigns. Such marketing campaigns are known to develop a sort of curiosity among the customer and they end up getting more excited to know more about the product.

Honda Motors and Weiden + Kennedy London developed a masterpiece ad campaign for the former's latest offerings the Honda Civic and Honda Civic Type 'R'. The campaign is known as "The Other Side" campaign.

I this marketing campaign the user's are required to interact with the advertisement by pressing the "R" key on their PC or Laptop in order to see two sides of the ads. On pressing the key the viewer is able to see a parallel side of the story of the ad.

Don't believe me?

Head to the Honda YouTube channel to get involved!

Due to the video's settings and privacy policy we can't upload it here. Kindly bear with us.

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Social media and Apple "Bendgate" controversy

Looking at the fierce competition in the mobile phone manufacturing market mobile phone makers are looking to grab every opportunity to promote/market their product even if it is directly targeted at their competitors.

Such instances were very prevalent in the recent past on various social networking sites.  These were in response to the latest events which involve Apple’s latest offering iphone 6S’s flexibility (notice the sarcasm there).

Leading smartphone makers took this incidence as an opportunity to directly attack Apple in order to promote their offerings. Ofcourse, social media played a great role in amplifying the impact of the “bending” controversy as the tweets and comments by major mobile phone makers spread like wild fire across the various public platforms. The companies include big names like Samsung, LG, HTC and Nokia Deutschland. Even the Nestle; the sponsor of Android KitKat targeted their tweets at Apple. All these companies noted that their products do not bend unlike the Apple iPhone 6S.

The first attacks on Apple came from LG and HTC. This led to the hashtag #bendgate trend worldwide on Twitter.

“ Designed to withstand the most demanding environments. Like your pockets. #HTCOneM8

— HTC USA (@HTCUSA) September 24, 2014

“ Our phone doesn't bend, it flexes...on purpose. #bendgatepic.twitter.com/d1DudxDQgf

— LG USA Mobile (@LGUSAMobile) September 24, 2014

Among the various social media marketing attempts our 

favourite came from Apple’s arch rival Samsung.

“ Curved. Not bent. #GALAXYNoteEdge pic.twitter.com/OTPIYlI07f

— Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) September 25, 2014

Samsung promoted its latest offering the Galaxy Note Edge through this tweet which fetched them over 10K Retweets.

The picture that they posted on Facebook was an icing on 

the cake.

The overall impact of the “Bendgate” controversy has been huge on Apple. To worsen the situation the tweets and comments by rival companies are spreading like wild fire. These bend test videos that are being put up on YouTube wherein people are comparing the Apple iPhone 6 and 6S with other phones like HTC One and Moto X. These videos are also trending worldwide.

Lessons for marketers:-

The power of Social media is huge and immeasurable. It is the sole responsibility of marketers to understand this fact and there should be a realization that if social media can be good for a product it can be bad for it too. All the efforts must be targeted to check all the information about the product that is shared online. In most cases it is out of the control of the marketers to prevent the information from going online. This information can be a feedback, a complaint or a service request. Marketers must keep track of the genre of the information that is shared on the various public platforms and provide assistance accordingly.

Keep in mind that any post that goes ignored can be vulnerable for the product, the company or the brand.

*Please share this post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social networks given on the left. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.* 

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Expiry Date, but for your Facebook post

It has been quite long since I did a post. I tried writing something on the biggest fad "Ice-bucket challenge" but I couldn't really finish it and that remains as a draft in my account so, chuck it.

So, today I thought of doing a little comeback post for you guys. I wanted to share a small piece of news from the social media world and how important it will be for the people of our species i.e. "Marketers".

Recent reports from TheNextWeb indicate that social media giant Facebook is soon going to give you the power to decide when your post(s) go off the Facebook servers; and it will all happen automatically. Engineers at Facebook are testing a new feature which will allow you to set an expiry date and expiry time for your Facebook post.

Yes, you heard it right "An expiry date for your Facebook posts".

Wondering what's in it for us marketers?

Well, this feature will be of a great help to you if you are operating in a B2C environment and use Facebook as a medium to reach out to your customers by hosting contests, offering discounts or coupons to them.

Imagine how would you feel when you will no longer have to worry about disappointed fans who tried to use one of your offer or coupon that expired 6 months back.

If you have an offer for your customers which will expire in the next 1 hour you could see a sudden increase in the number of fans. This feature can be very useful if you primarily post unmissable time sensitive posts.

This feature is still in its pilot phase and the company will be rolling it out gradually to all the devices around the world.

*Please share this post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social networks given on the left. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.*

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Marketing to the "Echo-Boomers"

It has been a long time since we last posted something for our readers. So, you can consider this to be a comeback post. (Oh! I am feeling like Spidey already).

This post is related to our previous post on the learning for marketers from the FIFA WC 2014.

Basically it is a synopsis of how marketers of today can target the "Echo-Boomers" popularly known as the Gen-Y; the people who are born between 1980 and 2000. The echo-boomers are the most important demographic segment for marketers nowadays. They (or we) don't like "marketing", TV commercials don work with us (because we hardly watch TV) and we find online ads disturbing. It is very difficult to get us engaged.

Here are some ideas for brands to create a "Buzz" among the Echo-Boomers:-

1)     Tell a story- The echo-boomers are the ones who get attracted to something authentic. They are known to show support social causes by sharing, liking, commenting or retweeting. Echo-boomers care about their surroundings and are willing to contribute for the good. Marketers nowadays should look to associate their brand to some social cause. They can even “Tell a story”, a real life experience. Tell them what does your brand do for the betterment of the environment, which social cause do you support. Doing this will help them attract the echo-boomers and get them engaged to their brand/product.

2)     Don’t tell us to do things- The echo-boomers are also known as “Generation My life, my rules”. They like to go at their own pace and discover things on their own. If you will ask them to do stuff, or to buy something from a given location; they will never do that. In short, they won’t give a damn if you will keep bombarding them with instructions. You should look to get them involved, try to understand their needs and then provide them an offering. Ask them for their comments, feedback or opinions. They’ll be more than willing to provide their inputs and they will also ask their peers to do so.

3)     Find us on the right places- We live in a multiple screen world. We are watching videos on YouTube, we are streaming music on SoundCloud, the only thing that distracts us is a Whatsapp ping or a Facebook notification. You must be where we are in order to get our attention or be able to communicate with us.

4)     Review you marketing plan- You must review your existing marketing strategies in order to reach and communicate with the most influential demographic group. Go digital!


*Please share this post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social networks given on the left. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.*

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Lessons for marketers from the recently concluded FIFA World Cup 2014.

It was just a few days back when all of us (at least the guys at my hostel) used to be glued to the Television sets in the common room. These guys are a bunch of football fanatics who used to stay up till late night so as to watch the FIFA World Cup 2014. I also stayed up for a few games (not all, b’coz I pursue a hobby called sleeping).

The recently concluded tournament was loaded with special moments and some interesting events which caught the eye of the people all over the world.

Some of these events also caught the eye of marketers around the world (including me). It was really interesting to note how companies and businesses around the world rose up to the occasion and tweaked their campaigns to reach out to their customers during the tournament.

The infamous “bite” by Uruguayan and Liverpool star Suarez was one of the events which many brands around the world leveraged. Marketing techniques were tweaks, ad campaigns were changed, some of the major brands also bombarded the timelines of their followers on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.

Soon after the incident the brand “Listerine” the world renowned mouth wash tweeted the following post.

Apart from Listerine, Bud Light also tried to leverage the moment and tweeted a picture showing a person biting their bottle’s cap.

Both these tweets were part of the #PowerToYourMouth campaign.

Other companies like McDonald’s and Snickers also tried to make the most of the moment.

There were some negative reactions as well

The official sponsor of the Fifa World Cup, Adidas who had signed up Suarez as the Global Brand Ambassadors of the World Cup immediately reacted to the incidence by sacking Suarez from its world campaign.  Adidas also showed their support for the four month ban which was imposed on Suarez by FIFA.

This is a perfect example of how brands nowadays can remain alert in order to save themselves from the negative impact of such occurrences.

Some of the brands such as Unilever, even changed their strategy completely. These brands dropped their conventional rigid promotional campaigns so as to make use of real time data from the sporting event for connecting with football fans all around the world through Twitter.

*Please share this post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social networks given on the left. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.*

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Six pickup lines straight from your marketing books.

This one goes out for all my marketing friends who are still looking to solve the love riddle. So if you are looking for a hot date to spend your weekend with, or if you are looking to impress that cute marketer chick/dude in your college or at your workplace.

Why not try to impress her/him with an endearing pick up line straight from the books? (Trust me, you will really thank Philip Kotler for this)

Here are a few ridiculously cheesy pickup lines straight from the books:-

1. Hey girl, you can spam me all night but I still won't unsubscribe.

 2.There are 4P's of Marketing. But, you give a fifth P to my hormones. It's called "Pump".

3. You are my Powerbrand, I so wanna invest all of me in you.

 

4. God has segmented and positioned you so perfectly that you are my only target.

 5.You must be an SEO expert b'coz you are ranked #1 on my list.

 

6.You seem like a paid search campaign, b'coz you left quite an  impression on me.

*Please share this post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social networks given below. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.*

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Technology brings people together

Here's what technology can do to get people closer to each other.

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