Nike's Mobile Advertising Success

With the popularity and predominance of the Apple iPhone continually rising, it should come as no surprise that today's standard push companies to complement their existing marketing mixes with iPhone applications that can be downloaded by iPhone users. There are different types of applications that companies can provide for their consumers such as those focusing on entertainment featuring activities and games or others mainly focusing on product information. Essentially, with applications every company has an opportunity to create a unique and relevant message and experience for their target audience. One company that has created multiple entertaining and useful applications for its audience is the popular shoe and athletic company, Nike.

            One of Nike’s most popular applications is based around its NikeiD line of shoes, in which users chose any blank product and make it their own by picking the colors and logos displayed on the shoe. This is a great line of shoes for consumers because it puts them in charge of the design process and allows them to create exactly the product they want, even if it is not one that Nike mass produces. The NikeiD iPhone application provides users with multiple helpful features that help with things like color selection, color matching, and the design of the shoe. One function of the app allows users to take a picture and the match the chosen color in the picture to the colors that Nike has available for its shoes. This helpful color-matching feature can assist users in matching a variety of items such as their favorite team colors to a random color swatch they see in an unexpected place. The application also allows users to create their look to get an idea of what the finished product will look like. They can pick the style of the shoe, colors, and other aspects of the appearance of the shoe, allowing each user to experiment and interact with the brand in a way that associates their own identity with the Nike Identity. Nike even created a Nike storage locker function for users to store their favorite designs and access those customized designs at any time using their iPhone application. The app also features store and other product information, making it easy for consumer to transition from the design to purchasing process. For NikeiD application users in New York, Nike created a large interactive billboard in Times Square where users can message their designs, which are then posted on the billboard, and broadcasted for all to see. This is a great way to get consumers interacting with the Nike brand because of the excitement that comes with seeing ones own design on a live jumboron.

            Together, all of the interactive aspects of this application create an outlet for shoppers to truly become engaged with the Nike brand and its products as it puts users in the creative seat, allowing them to give each Nike product their own personal design.  This campaign is smart because users will come to associate their own identity with the Nike identity, strengthening the brand associations between themselves and the company and encouraging them to keep purchasing the Nike brand in the future. 

Repercussions of Targeting the Wrong Audience

Many companies focus on targeting the consumers that they feel are most likely to use and purchase their product or service, but in 2006, the once popular GM line, Hummer, decided to target children, rather than the adults who can actually afford to purchase the cars. The campaign started when Hummer teamed up with McDonald’s to create a Hummer car Happy Meal toy to be given to children with their meals.  This seemed like a good idea to the companies who were attempting to target adults through their young children. Around the same time, Hummer launched a website called HummerKids.com, where they offered various advergames and branded fun for kids to engage and interact closely with the Hummer brand. Like many kids sites, the racing themed advergames featured colorful graphics and exciting audio features, allowing kids to fully experience the Hummer brand.

While this campaign may seem well intentioned, it resulted in a huge amount of negative PR for both McDonalds and Hummer brands. Many enraged parents and environmentalists spoke up about the campaign and criticized both companies for attempting to target parents by using their innocent and impressionable children.  Environmentalists also claimed that trying to make the car seem “cool” to kids sends the wrong message about the importance being environmentally friendly and doesn’t take into account many of the repercussions that come with having such a large, gas-guzzling vehicle. McDonalds chose to address the controversy over their blog, defending themselves by saying that when “looked at through children's eyes, the miniature Hummers are just toys, not vehicle recommendations, or a source of consumer messages about natural resource conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, etc." While this may be true, McDonalds made the mistake of deleting most of the negative comments on their blog about the campaign, further enraging many people who then took their opinions to other websites, bashing both companies even more.

Essentially, the controversy here boils down to the McDonald's and Hummer brands targeting the wrong audience to promote the new H3 line of cars. While this was only one of many ad campaigns Hummer had going, it still managed to anger quite a few people and put yet another dent the Hummer brand. As a guideline, companies should always steer clear of targeting children to promote products used by adults. Parents are very protective of their children and although it may not seem harmful, people don’t like others trying to persuade their children of anything, especially controversial items that have negative effects on the environment. This campaign was very harmful to Hummer’s credibility with consumers and was just one of the many mistakes that lead to the companies eventual demise. 

Office Max's Branded Holiday Fun

While it may seem that an ad campaign for a business chain specializing in professional office supplies couldn’t hold much entertainment for consumers, this next example proves that any company, no matter what products it sells, can make a fun and creative online presence for its target audience.  Office Max is a chain of stores that specialize in office supplies and in the 2006 Holiday Season launched its elfyourself.com viral campaign/website.  The website allows visitors to create their very own Christmas themed video featuring the friends and family of their choice. Each viewer inserts pictures, those pictures are transposed onto elf bodies, and a  video  is created featuring each visitors customized elf friends dancing in silly ways to Christmas music. The visitor is then able to forward their own personalized and Office Max branded video to all of their friends and family.

The link to the website was sent out to Office Max shoppers via direct email, in order to make it easy for consumers to pass it along to their friends. The campaign was created to primarily target working aged adults and offer them some silly holiday entertainment while in the office, but ending up gaining attention from all age groups. The website was huge hit and was passed among many offices, but also caught on with many kids and teens as well. The type of fun that Office Max offers at this website is appropriate and entertaining for all ages and asks consumers to engage directly with the brand with a fun branded experience. The website also features links to product info, a store locator, Office Max ads, and other helpful information.

The success of this site can be attributed to a few factors. First, is the fact that the website holds a great deal of amusement and fun for its visitors. This kind of user-generated fun is appropriate and relevant to people of all ages.  The Christmas Season is a joyous time of year with an emphasis on spreading joy, kindness, and laughs to those closest to you. The Office Max website provides consumers with a amusing way to spread holiday cheer with friends and family. The videos are so silly that it is hard not to laugh and feel joy when watching them. These feelings are then tied to the Office Max brand in the minds of consumers and will hopefully be remembered when purchasing office equipment in the future. Another reason the Elf Yourself site was such a success, is because the site makes passing the videos along to friends and family extremely easy for its users.  Because of this easy message transferability, it is more likely that site visitors will actually pass the message along to others. While Office Max did send out emails to consumers advertising the site, these emails probably didn’t earn the site as much traffic as the emails forwarded to others by friends and family did. This is because viewers may have seen an email in their inbox from Office Max and assumed it was spam or junk mail, possibly disregarding it before even opening the message. On the other hand, when the sender is a personal friend or family member a person is much more likely to open the email as well as pursue the actual content of the email when they know and trust the sender of the message.

Though the website is only fully functioning for a couple of months out of the year, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get Office Max enough attention. During the 2007 holiday season alone, the website was visited by over 193 million viewers and over 123 million elves were created. In addition to this, because of the sites huge popularity it was featured on a wide variety of credible news shows including Good Morning America, the Today show, CNN, ABC World News, Fox News, and more, gaining the site a lot of positive PR in the press. This publicity served as unofficial advertising for Office Max and created more buzz around the site, inspiring interest from consumers, and eventually driving more visitors to the site. 

The Power of Viral Content

While the majority of my blog entries consist of topics related to intentional ad campaigns launched by companies to promote their brand to consumers, this is not the only type of advertising that persuades consumers to purchase products. In fact, a more credible form of advertising is user-generated content, which is how the brands Coke and Mentos were able to gain positive PR without even trying.

It all started with www.eepybird.com, a website created to showcase videos featuring scientists Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz doing entertaining acts with ordinary objects. One line of experiments involves the use of Mentos and Coke to create a powerful geyser with the soda. For example, in one experiment the two scientists create Coke and Mentos Rocket Car that is launched to a record distance using over 300 bottles of Coke and over 600 Mentos candies. This YouTube video quickly went viral and visibly featured both the Coke and Mentos brands.

In response to these videos, viewers began creating and posting their own user-generated versions of Coke/Mentos experiments, hugely increasing the impact of the campaign. This line of videos inspired people to try something exciting and potentially dangerous and noticeably increased sales of the two brands. These videos provided users of the Coke and Mentos brands with new and exciting reasons to purchase and interact with the brands that were unknown before this viral phenomenon.  While it is difficult to say exactly how much attention the videos have generated, it has been estimated that over 50 million people were exposed to the idea of the experiment. This is a huge amount of exposure, considering neither coke nor Mentos paid a penny to earn the PR. This example illustrates the massive power of word of mouth because people were intrigued by the idea of the experiment and wanted to share it with others, resulting in a viral internet phenomenon. Fortunately for Coke and Mentos this line of videos resulted in a positive PR experience, but other brands have not been so lucky. For instance, many dissatisfied consumers choose to video themselves complaining about unsatisfactory or dysfunctional products, which can result in negative PR for those brands.

This is a unique example because it is not user-generated content with the sole purpose of advertising or promoting either brand, rather it is promoting a fun experiment that people can modify and try their own version at home. While the reaction of Coke and Mentos has been known for many years with products like the Geyser Tube, for people at home to create their own 25 geyser, these products did not have near the powerful effects that word of mouth and viral presence created for the brands.  

Positive Aspects of Online Advertising

      While I have previously blogged about some of the negative aspects of online marketing efforts there are many positive aspects online advertising, especially for marketers. First, and most importantly is the interactivity aspect of online efforts. More traditional forms of advertising simply throw a stimulus at groups of consumers, hoping that they will not only be exposed to it, but will also attend to and retain it.

However, online advertising allows two-way communication between businesses and their consumers, allowing companies to better tune their marketing mix to meet customer needs. For example, the Internet provides more outlets for consumer feedback than traditional advertising through things such as online brand communities or email surveys. Also, many websites provide sections for consumers to give product feedback. Other examples include brand communities that encourage consumer conversation about brands and product preferences. These types of outlets are much improved from traditional forms of feedback that surfaced from consumers at a brick and mortar store and had to travel back in the channel to the product producers, which didn't usually happen. No longer are consumers simply expected to idly attend to ads, now they are asked in interact more closely with the brand by talking to other consumers, playing advergames, and allowing the consumer to generate the ads.

Another positive effect of online efforts is the ability to target consumers more precisely and individually, rather than by large demographic or psychographic groups.  For instance, behavioral targeting allows advertisers to track the click patterns and site usage, so they are able to ensure that the ads that are being displayed to users are ads that are relevant to their needs and interests as consumers. Also, affinity targeting allows advertisers to monitor the sites most visited by consumers, being their favorite and most familiar websites. They have found that if they place ads on the sites that individuals favor they will have better impression of the ads displayed and feel that they are more credible. The ability to measure these types of user preferences allows advertisers to individually target consumers, rather than segmenting them as large groups.  For example, Google AdWords allows marketers to precisely track click patterns and has quickly become one of the hottest new ways for companies to track ad effectiveness. They can see how many people actually click on their ad, leading them to the website, and then can also later see if they come back to the website for purchase action. This type of tracking is a much better indication of ad effectiveness than traditional forms that don’t allow for this type of measurability.

Another great aspect of online marketing efforts is that they are lot more cost effective than the expensive forms of traditional ads like newspaper, magazine, or TV ads.  They are also a lot more easily dispersed. For instance, an ad campaign featuring direct mail would take time for the mail to reach each resident, where as the email version of this type of mail can be composed and instantly dispersed to consumers worldwide with the click of a button. For example, if a company decided to do a last minute sale, and were faced with the feat of alerting thousands of customers in time for the sale, advertising using the Internet would be the only viable option.

So although there many be many negatives associated with online advertising, marketers have a lot to gain form the interactivity, targetabilty, and reachability aspects of online marketing. 

Evolving Brand Communities

Brand communities are a fairly new concept, but have become a great marketing tool for promoting various products and brands as well as receiving customer feedback.  A brand community is simply a forum where consumers come to share information about branded products and have traditionally used mass media outlets like the Internet. One special aspect of these communities is that they bring  large groups of consumers together who share similar wants and needs. These consumers then interact with each other, sharing opinions and tips about the product. Online brand communities are great for advertisers because there are no geographical limitations, meaning that users can easily connect from all over the world.  Unlike other forms of advertising that try to create a link between the company and the consumer, the purpose of a brand community is to connect consumers with other consumers, fostering a sense of shared values and standards among them. Within these brand forums, there is also some level of consumer responsibility. This means that it is up to the consumer to share with others if they have had a bad experience with a product, or conversely if they find a really great product, they have a responsibility to pass that information along as well in order to help out their fellow consumers.

A brand community also provides a place for consumers to share brand stories, whether they reflect well on the brand or not. When visiting a brand community it is common to see many enthused and pleased brand members, but it is also common to see complaints about the brand from various users. While this is one drawback of the brand community as a marketing concept, the fact that people are able to see others first hand positive experiences will most likely override the few bad comments. This is because people are much more likely to trust other consumers that they believe to be similar to themselves, rather than a large corporation with a business agenda. One, example of a brand that has done a good job in creating a community for its product admirers is Harley Davidson. On the Harley website homepage there is a link to the community, where users are lead to a welcoming forum where they can interact with other members. They have even broken down the communities into more specific forums offering separate forums for Women Riders, Harlistas, Harley Owners, Iron Elite, and Military and Veteran rider groups to come and share their stories. Because Harley has developed their brand so well, users can come to the website and feel as if they are at home because they are able to interact with others who share a similar identity or sense of self as they do.

Today, with the rise of social networking popularity, many brands are able to expand their social online presence by creating brand community pages on websites like Facebook and Twitter, where brand fans can interact further. This type of strategy is best for targeting youthful age groups since they are so heavily involve  in social networking. Essentially, if a product or brand wants to have a favorable impression from youth they should create a brand community on the social networking websites that teens use most. While these brand communities were initially created with an advertising motive, now they are starting to evolve into a customer service and product support tool.  By doing this, a company can erase some of its own customer service responsibilities when problems arise by providing an outlet for consumers to help each other by posting product questions and answers. For instance, the Apple website prompts users to “join the conversation and share tips and solutions with Apple product users all over the world” in their product support community.

Advertising on Farmville

The popular game Farmville, created by Zynga, has led to the creation of more innovative ways for companies to truly engage with their target audiences. This is because Farmville doesn’t simply rely on traditional advergaming techniques. For instance, many advergames feature ads that are easily ignored by gamers and players are not encouraged engage or think about the brand. However, in Farmville, the players are provided incentives within the game to encourage them to interact with the advertising content because it can earn them free content within their Farmville game. Farmville is available to players as a Facebook and MSN Games application and is also iPhone, iPad, and iPod compatible. It has been called a “freemium game” because it is available to players free of cost, but gives players the option to purchase premium content. The game is currently the most popular application on Facebook and has about 215 million monthly users. With these statistics in mind, it is no wonder that Farmville popularity led the way for innovative advertising and marketing campaigns allowing advertisers to reach large populations in a relevant and engaging way.

Users are able to visit various company’s farms and receive items with company logos or colors. For example, the McDonald’s farm offers visitors the option of gaining a free McDonald’s air balloon or free McCafe products to be used within the game. Other brands such as 7 Eleven, Cascadian Farms, Farmer’s Insurance Group, Bing, and many more have created farms in the Farmville world. Another way companies use Farmville advertising to interact with customers is by asking users to engage with the brand in various ways such as watching an ad or playing an advergame and then in return, the company rewards the consumer by giving them free virtual Farmville dollars that they can use in the game. This specific type of advertising is through an ad platform called SVNetwork and has been very successful as far as engaging audiences with brand content.
In addition, the farming theme of the game allows great opportunities for agriculture-based companies to participate in a more creative form of advertising. For example, Cascadian Farms has partnered with Farmville providing promotional deals such as, organic blueberries to all farmers, coupons and organic and green living tips, as well as the ability to speed up the farming cycle. Farmville advergaming has also created an outlet for less thrilling services and brands to receive association with a fun form of entertainment. For instance, there is an option for players to buy virtual insurance for their virtual farm. This can be purchased from Farmer’s Insurance Group, a real insurance company that offers home, car, and life insurance. The goal of this campaign is for Farmer’s group to connect with their target audience using a more fun and hip message. Then, in the future when users are looking to purchase insurance they will remember the company who offered them protection in their favorite virtual game. The company offers players a virtual blimp to fly over their farm and protect them from plant damage.

These efforts are a great way for companies to reach youth audiences in a fun way since younger generations are so active in the social networking world.  Undoubtedly, in order for companies to keep their brands in the minds of youth, they will need to continue to find relevant and entertaining ways to reach the audience and provide legitimate incentives for the consumer to learn more about the brand.