On Social Media (Part I)

I recently finished a 12-month contract for a medical publishers, which was interesting and probably deserves several posts of its own, but in the meantime I am currently in the process of sorting out another position. In a recent interview, there was a question on social media and which channels they should be using.

Who let all these guys in here?

Whilst there are an ever-increasing number of options, there are a number of core platforms that have managed to maintain users and market share, and it’s choosing between these that can cause grief.

So how do you know which ones you should be using? Well, it's a combination of a number of things and there's no one good answer because different channels have different pros and cons.

Before you start to register your name on YouTube or Facebook, you need to ask yourself these questions:

1. What do you want to achieve? This is obvious, but are you looking at improving customer care, or are you trying to make a way for people to place complaints? Are you trying to create a way to keep people up to date with your company and products? Do you want to encourage conversation or build relationships? Do you want to establish yourself as an authority? Each one of those aims leads to a slightly different media channel.
2. Do you meet an unmet need for your target group? Whatever your aim is, as with any digital project you should aim to meet an unmet digital need to give people a reason to look at your social media, even if that is to give a good communication channel to your potential customers.
3. Where do your target audiences go? If you know who your target audience are, try and identify where they already go to. People are creatures of habit, and it’s much easier to hijack off an existing habit than make them go to somewhere different. Perhaps Instagram would be perfect for your goals and targets, but if your target market all use snapchat, then go there. Hunt where your targets roam!
4. Your available resource (staff): Doing any sort of social media takes a lot of resource in terms of time. You are looking at a minimum of three and a half hours per week: half an hour per day with an extra half hour on Monday and Friday to initially plan the week and assess how the posts went at the end for each channel. Additionally, the higher the interaction and speed of reply needed, the more your staff need to have flexibility be able to respond to social media, so the staff cost goes up. Additionally, you need to consider where your staff are physically: responding can be more difficult if they are field-based rather than desk-based, and how will you manage holiday cover? What do you have the staff resource to do?
5. Your available resource (Money): YouTube is a fantastic channel, but unless you are doing videos on your smartphone or have basic recording equipment in your office, videos (both animated and film) will cost you money to produce. Similar with high quality photography. You need to be aware of ongoing costs in the channel/s you choose.
6. Frequency: How much do you have to say? Do you have exciting news every day that you want to convey? Are you mainly reposting existing articles/videos/opinions? Some channels need more new content than others and you need to bear that in mind.
7. Company fit: Some channels are more formal, and some are more informal. This can be tweaked, but if you have a couple of options it’s worth trying to use one more in keeping with the ‘tone’ of the content and the vision you have for your communication. 
8. Industry fit: Are you in a highly-regulated industry? Do you need all marketing collateral to have regulatory approval? Does your company culture like to check all communications before they are sent out into the wider world? The stricter the controls you are under, the slower the channel you want on social media. You can get away with a 24 hour turn around on Linked-In, but that’s not going to fly on Twitter where more than an hour could spell the difference between a PR success or a disaster.

Once you have a clear idea of your aims, your targets with their habits, your available resource and how you want to be perceived, you then need to pick your channels.

As this post is already getting fairly long, more on the channels themselves in Social Media (Part II).

Oasis and the New Honesty Marketing Campaign

I've been amused lately by the new Oasis campaign. If you haven't seen any of the latest campaign, the main tagline is "It's Summer.  You're thirsty. We've got sales targets".

Honesty Marketing at it's finest

Well, do they say honesty is the best policy, but is it likely to work?

The history of Oasis is a little muddled.  It was originally launched in 1966 by Volvic under the name 'Pulse', but poor sales led to its rebrand as 'Oasis' in 1990.  Its history then gets a little complicated, but in essence it was acquired by the then Cadburys-Schweppes who launched it into the UK in 1995. It was then acquired by Coca Cola Enterprises in 2005 along with a number of other European drinks brands.

Oasis has been positioning itself as a "healthier soft drink" solidly for 20 something adults who are happy to pay premium prices for a relatively standard purchase - in this case, squash from concentrate. By suggesting itself as an alternative to water rather than something like Coke, it links the brand to healthy options and positions itself firmly in the health category.

They also have access to a lot of the Coca Cola distribution network; if somewhere sells Coke, they are likely to sell Oasis and include it in their deals.

There were product problems that needed fixing when CCE acquired it: Oasis used to have a heavy sugar content which meant it failed originally as a healthy option.  This was eventually sorted by reconfiguring the recipes, but there were several false starts on the way with low calorie versions such as 'Fusion', 'Lights' and 'Extra Lights' which, despite over £3m launch spend in marketing, were withdrawn quickly afterwards due to bad sales.

So far, so good.

However, Oasis does have a problem in that it's never quite seemed to manage to fix its brand image

The ill-fated and pulled Cactus Kid campaign

in a clear and coherent fashion, despite obvious heavy investment from CCE. Numerous advertising campaigns have been and gone with varying levels of success and memorability.  Do you remember the "Chug it?" adverts, the first after CCE took over?  They pretty much sank without a trace, so it's not that likely.  Or the 'Cactus Kid' campaign the year after, which had a wide multi-media approach including adverts, videos, websites and a whole fake mythos, which was abruptly pulled after complaints to the ASA that it encouraged children to drink Oasis instead of water?  There have been more, but all fairly without impact.

Still, CCE isn't going to abandon Oasis to its fate.  The global soft drinks business is falling as people look for healthier options; soda consumption globally is now equivalent to what it was in 1986 having been falling steadily since 2005.  In additional, Coca Cola has been targeted specifically by health groups such as the CSPI in Amercia (the Center for Science in the Public Health) partly due to its high profile and market share.  To counterbalance, CCE has been adding non-soda companies to its portfolio in the last 7 years to try and diversify their risk, including investing in 5 smaller companies and buying 3 more.  It owns companies like Glaceau (who make SmartWater), Fuze tea, Zico coconut water and Honest Organic tea.  Even the flagship brand itself is feeling the pressure by releasing new formulations such as Coke Life which replaces sugar with sevia, although this still hasn't been launched in the US to date.

Oasis, as a brand in the right place at the right time is a potential goldmine, if they can just get the right messaging.

The latest campaign has been created by 'The Corner' agency, and have gone into what is called 'insane honesty marketing' and 'humanised marketing' (thanks to Cuco Creative for the terms and some of the info in the next couple of paragraphs). It's a big change from some of the glitz and style that they've delivered previously.

This shift is designed to appeal to millennials; i.e. people who reached adulthood around 2000, so will now be in their 30s and who value transparency and honesty in the communications from big brands rather than slick presentations. So Oasis are changing their emphasis slightly from 20s to 30s: not something they would do lightly and without a lot of consumer research. The Pioneers of this sort of thing were companies like Innocent with their smoothies and vegetable pots. It's also notable in companies that actively engage in social media, especially those that have a distinct personality and human voice.

The ultimate payoff of this strategy is trust: if a brand is willing (or at least seen as being willing) to be open about their weaknesses, then when they talk about their strengths, the listener is far more likely to believe them.  It's a known phenomenon known as the Halo Effect.

The likelihood is that this campaign will be more successful than their previous ones, and this time they are looking at a segment with more disposable income and more health-consciousness.  They are also more likely to have children, and so be under more social pressure to provide healthy options for lunches and outings. My guess is that the next push is likely to focus on health benefits, which will be more believed than previous claims after this initial bout of honesty.  So my feeling is that yes, it will work, as long as they can maintain whatever claims they make and continue with the human messaging.

I'll be interested to see how it goes!


     

The Golden Circle

Netflix is a wonderful thing.  As well as providing hours of distraction and enabling a deadly snack food habit that's going to have me looking like Jabba the Hut in 20 years, it’s got a good line in documentaries and lectures, and recently added a chunk of the TED back catalogue.  For those people who are unaware of TED, it’s a global set of conferences run by a non-profit organisation which are in some way inspirational, extraordinary or significant either because of the speaker or the topic. 

One of the talks I've watched recently is Simon Sinek’s “How great leaders inspire action”.  Sinek is very charismatic and watchable, but once you boil it down, his key premise is simple.  He believes that you have to have a core proposition, whether as a person, business or brand that you understand and believe in, and all messaging that works flows from that core belief.  Without that understanding, your messaging will fail.  He encapsulates this in the idea of the ‘Golden Circle’.

The Golden Circle

• Why: Why are you here?  What makes you get out of bed in the morning?  What drives you?  Or, what is the core of your brand/product/company?
•  How: How are you going to do what you do?  What enables you to be that person or deliver that service?
•  What: What is it that you are?  What do you provide?  What product/service do you offer?

His supposition is that most people go about this backwards, talking about the easiest first, which is the 'what'.  Most people know what the do in an operational sense.  "We provide [X] product",  They sometimes get the how, but generally miss a lot or all of the ‘why’.  This fails because he believes we make decisions with our limbic brains which controls our decision making but not language and rational thought which sits in the neocortex.   

The idea is not completely new.  It’s in the core theory of branding when you need both a vision and a mission statement for your brand to understand what you are and why you are there.  It’s also in marketing 101 looking at ‘Features, Attributes and Benefits’ or F/A/Bs, where you look at each tangible feature of a product/service or company, and list out what that can mean and what the more intangible benefits are for the recipient, whether it’s saving time, money, increasing prestige, aiding self-validation etc.  For example, if talking about a new medical device to a procurement department: "Our new device has a simple menu system that is 20% faster to set up,/ which will allow your staff to see more patients in a day / so reduce waiting lists and save you money in staff time" And in certain companies, they do encourage your external messaging to be B/A/Fs where possible, rather than F/A/Bs.  i.e. “Save money by reducing your waiting lists/by using staff time more efficiently and enabling them to have more appointments per day/ made possible because our devices have a simple menu system that is 20% faster to set up”.  

But it’s the simplicity of his model that works.  If you can articulate the golden circle in one or two sentences for your core products/brands, you’re probably a lot further along the curve than many of your competitors.  Even well known and loved brands probably lack a chunk of ‘why’ inside the businesses they serve.  Then you need to check the consistency of that message; you might be able to layout the proposition but can your colleagues in Customer Services?  Operations?  Because if they can’t, something’s not been carried forwards.  And that's not even looking at your customers and how they perceive what they receive (hint: it's often not what you think).     

The talk also struck a chord when thinking much more in the context of leadership: until watching that talk, I’d never really considered the repercussions of leaders/managers personal F/A/Bs on the team around them.  You can do a really good job managing a team and it's performance even if you don't believe in the company; but you're managing rather than leading or inspiring and that is different.  And you'll have lesser outputs from your team.  It’s having some core beliefs that shape your actions and that will cause  other people to follow, in internal and external roles, such as: “I believe we can be main influencers in the global company/through excellence in strategy, planning, implementation and innovation/ whilst providing marketing and commercial services”.   

It’s a simple but effective method of ensuring that teams remain focused and dedicated even if changes are going around them, be it changes in structure, personnel or direction.  If you have an influencer in your company, then they have to believe in what they and their team are doing, or everyone loses focus.  I feel that this is part of a manager's role and responsibility: to define the core 'why' of their team or department and be that role model.  

It's not about being falsely positive, it's about being genuine and finding something within what you are doing that you believe in.  It doesn't even have to reflect the currently reality because aspirational visions can pull a team towards that goal.  Believe that your team are at the core of commercial strategy, and your requests to them, the questions you ask, the projects you all work on will be in line with that goal, and cause your team to become those strategic leaders, even if they weren't before.   

At worst, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you understand the importance of belief, and recognise your lack of belief, you can change it.  The slightly clichéd affirmations in front of a mirror have a basis in clinical trials: Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) studies on forced compliance demonstrated that if you act in a way contrary to your beliefs, you will change your beliefs to match, and numerous other studies have replicated that.  Act like you believe in what you are doing long enough, and you’ll start to believe it yourself, although I would question why you're working in for a company you really don't believe in! 

So the core is, know why you’re doing what you’re doing (with conviction!), understand how you are going to do it, and then do it, and people will follow.    

Guess I'll be off to do a bit of Why/What/How then!