Meme-orable Marketing

Lately, your company has been in think tanks discussing ways to deliver in the realms of social media. Your Facebook page and Twitter accounts aren’t driving the interest you anticipated. Seeding viral content on a regular basis is difficult. You need a next step and searching for a new social media platform seems redundant (and it is). But before you go running to re-departmentalize your PR division to have them solely focus on exercising a major viral campaign, consider – viral marketing campaigns have no set formula or recipe to ensure their success. The measurables of digital marketing are still being quantified. Metrics include everything from hits, time spent on site, retweets, sharing, forwarding, digging, liking, views etc. And so far, marketers are unsure how many YouTube views = a Twitter retweet. So, before you spend any amount of company $$ or resources on your next digital marketing campaign, review the successes of others’ attempts at viral grandeur.

Today, an Internet phenomenon or “meme” is a piece of information that reaches a vast group of people strictly by word-of-mouth, person to person sharing. Not limited to video – memes come in all shapes and sizes, from Facebook groups to trending topics, almost any virtual avenue with multiple engaged users can be a springboard for the next meme. Famous memes become Internet inside-jokes shared exponentially like YouTube phenomena “Rick Rolling” and “David After Dentist”. WOM marketing has no measurable or formulaic approach. There are, of course, best practices to follow in order to reach your potential audience of millions – but in some ways, luck has a lot to do with it. One thing that can be agreed upon is the emotion any Internet phenomenon evokes upon first watch. The reaction is always strong. Although some may argue otherwise, humor doesn’t define viral potential but categorically, it doesn’t hurt. Most viral videos are humorous because humor is an easy way to incite strong emotion from users – and users pass it on because of their desire to share experiences with others– in the same way myth and ritual, fads and trends have existed organically throughout human culture.

The anatomy of a meme:

1. Memes are first and foremost, memorable.
2. Usually, displayed on a medium that has a tell-a-friend feature.
3. No formulaic approach to meming, but if there is one – it’s humor.

Memes are the unconquered marketing domain. They are measured in hilarity, absurdity, or shock value. Getting your next advertisement to go viral is invaluable. It places your brand in front of an audience of millions with little to no legwork after its initial production. Turning your digital campaign into a recognizable meme allows your brand an opportunity to have major social impact, placing your company on the tip of everyone’s tongue for a period of time. Not to mention that your viewers (new and old) will be more likely to link back to your brand page.

But there’s no need to reinvent the wheel to produce viral content. Best leave meming up to the amateurs and become a distributor, a discoverer of fresh viral content rather than a creator or producer of it.

Take these campaigns for instance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_6tdoaIdKM
http://www.youtube.com/user/itsthegecko#p/u/7/HItwu7PNdNo

Both Visio and Geico recently capitalized on the success of Gary William Brolsma AKA “The Numa Numa Guy” by incorporating him into their latest advertisement campaigns. The younger demographic responds well to recognizable icons of Internet culture due to their own potential to become famous in the same way Gary has become famous – by being completely original. Hiring a model or actor to represent your brand is dated and expensive. Instead, consider hiring that kid on YouTube who has had a few million hits and thousands of subscribers. Utilize Google trends/diagnostics to estimate the staying power of the viral content you wish to capitalize on and be sure to quickly mobilize your resources for a trend that has a large audience, but may be fleeting.

A social media department will be key down the road, but don’t go out and hire the most impressive twitter-er on your block just yet. Bring in a 3rd party marketing specialist to assess your needs and viral potential. For now, extrapoloating on what America’s Funniest Home Videos has done for years is a best practice: have your users create the viral content for you with a video contest and award prizes to the best of the bunch. This strategy will bring you a pool of fresh content and who knows, one of them may be the next meme.


Guest post by Jenna Hanlon, Promotion Coordinator in Marden-Kane's NY Office. Jenna can be reached at jhanlon@mardenkane.com.

Driving User Engagement: A Roadmap to Online Sweepstakes Success

Before you embark on your journey to a successful online promotion, take some time to map out the checkpoints that will help you along your way! A solid roadmap in the form of a scoping document is crucial to the overall success of your promotion and will ensure your arrival at your intended destination without lost time and money.

• First, figure out where you’re going – what are your success metrics? Is the goal of your promotion to increase page views? Click-throughs? Average length of time spent on the site? Are you looking to gain more Facebook friends and fans? Would you like to see increased user engagement with your brand? Gauging your company’s expectations before you hit the road will help your chances of arriving at your destination successfully.

• Don’t throw up roadblocks – create an entry method that is as straightforward as possible for your consumer. Make it easy to use, but relevant and engaging.

• Yield to pedestrians– too many steps, difficult rules and boring content will deter through-traffic from entering. While the overall aim may be to increase brand awareness, avoid utilizing a direct sales pitch to your consumer, keep it subtle to keep their interest!

• Offer exciting new vistas to your consumer – the site experience should be fun! Not copy heavy, but rather like a road sign: direct and to the point. Provide the required legalese, no more and no less on the entry site but be sure to point the user in the direction of the official rules/terms and conditions.

• Determine what is the carrot driving your horse – is there something unique/different about your promotion? Is the prize relevant to your brand? Is the prize something a consumer would be interested in winning? Turn on the high beams; make sure it’s clear for all to see why they want to be involved in your promotion AKA, what’s in it for them. Whether it’s fame or fortune – it should be fun!

• Detour regular traffic to your entry site – use media outlets your target audience interacts with on a daily basis. If your target demographic uses social media such as Facebook and Twitter, it will serve you well to advertise your promotions directly on those platforms.

• Get their plate number! – collect all of the information necessary for you to contact the winners. Some agencies believe that collecting "PII" (personally identifiable information) such as mailing address or phone number will discourage users from entering but asking a user to provide additional contact information assures that they are entering a legitimate promotion and will not be spammed. Provide a link to your privacy policy so entrants can see how their information is being used. Complete contact information will make notifications and prize fulfillment more timely and cost efficient down the road!

• Signal before changing lanes – include relevant messages throughout the experience such as thanking entrants for coming as they exit the site. Remind them that they can come back anytime, whether it is to enter again tomorrow or check back for a new content and features.

• Never take your eyes off the road –just because your promotion has launched does not mean you can operate on cruise control. Select backseat drivers to champion the QA effort throughout the promotional period. It is a good idea to have mechanics on-call should the entry site malfunction after-hours.

• Watch your speedometer – use market data you collect daily to measure your promotions performance.

• Check your blind spots – work off of your market data to optimize the promotion’s goals. If your promotion is not meeting your expectations, jump start it with a PR push through your company’s social media channels or remarket to those who have already opted-in. Offer additional entries for every new friend, fan or follower referred by your original entrant to drive traffic to your entry site.

It is important to run diagnostics for your promotion after it has completed its journey. Be sure to backtrack through this roadmap during your project evaluation to gauge your mileage. Did you meet your final destination? If not, where were the bumps in the road? This debriefing process will help you better navigate any challenges your next promotion may experience.

MK calls “Shotgun” on your next marketing adventure!

Guest post by Jenna Hanlon, Promotion Coordinator in Marden-Kane's NY Office. Jenna can be reached at jhanlon@mardenkane.com

Cause Related Marketing = Social Media

Easily extending the reach of a consumer promotion has been the goal of marketers for years. Now, the leading Social Media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, allow marketers to do just that.

The question posed is how? Create a promotion-centric Facebook Fan Page or Twitter Page or utilize the brands’ (if one is available)?

For a Sweepstakes, Instant Win Game or Special Offer (e.g., coupon or BOGO) which is designed to raise awareness for a moment in time, incorporate the promotion into the current Fan Page and Twitter Page.

However, for a cause-related program which will be in the marketplace for months, and perhaps years, it makes sense to create its own “identity” and related Fan Page and Twitter Page.

Some tips:

1. Define objectives, key performance indicators and ensure consensus amongst all stakeholders!

2. Provide value. Give a reason for people to visit and to become a Fan or Follower!

3. If you are also including a contest as a means to raise awareness, provide guidance on entry submission dates and remember to merchandise your winner and finalists. If entry submission is also available on the Fan Page make sure that you have obtained Facebook permission - www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php. Guidelines change often and without notice!

4. Promote the Fan Page and Twitter Page via URL mentions, virtual gifts, Facebook ad buy, social media integration on the campaign microsite (incorporating Bookmarks, Share and Facebook connect)

5. When utilizing a celebrity spokesperson, ensure that the celebrity utilizes their Fan Page news feed and Twitter feed to spread “the word”. You also want the celebrity to add the campaign’s Fan Page to their Favorite Pages!

6. Create an editorial calendar to ensure new content is published on a regular basis. This includes relevant tweets. Ensure that the Fan Page and Twitter page are tightly integrated.

7. Moderate and respond to Fan and Follower comments and messages in a timely manner. The goal is to ensure that the communication flows in a 360 degree manner. For Pharmaceutical companies, the FDA has yet to provide regulations on social media usage, so you should work with your legal department to determine the appropriate strategy.

8. Continually measure and optimize your efforts.

What was cooking at this year’s PMA Law Conference

Recently, I attended the PMA Law Conference at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago.

The conference itself was very Digital/ Internet/ Mobile focused, with traditional sweepstakes and contests placed on the back-burners. One presentation however, given by Linda Goldstein (Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP), offered a “what if” look at a merge of the old and new.

Surrounded by one-click solutions and “There’s an app for that.” messaging, Linda’s presentation showcased a hypothetical “Promotion Risk Assessor App” – push the button, input some specs, and voilà: a quick and easy recipe for a legal promotion is served. A tour of the App gave some insight into its different features: laws, regulations, and even a smart function that would create the entire promotion for you…just push the button.

The idea was intriguing to say the least. Being in the industry, it’s easy to fantasize about how much time could be saved if all we had to do was drop in a few details, sprinkle in some eligibility, and add a dash of winner announcement. In a microwave world, authoring rules (and the successive versions thereof until they’re “FINAL”, “FINAL_REV”, and, of course, “USE THIS ONE_FINAL_REV_REV”) can sometimes feel like crock-pot cooking.

In the end though, everything boiled over when Linda pushed the button – it turns out there was a glitch in the program. The fictional App had created a promotion that was completely illegal (on a number of fronts) and would surely end up with the Sponsor in some hot water.

The moral of the story: “There is no App” for promotions. Promotions require knowledge, guidance, and experience. Each new ingredient has the ability to change the entire flavor of the promotion; and knowing how to combine those ingredients so that everything mixes together correctly is critical for all parties involved. Now, here at Marden-Kane, we’ve been cooking for over 50 years making promotions our bread and butter.

Guest post by Matt Bonatti an Account Executive in Marden-Kane's NY Office. Matt can be reached at MBonatti@MardenKane.com.

Newly Revised Puerto Rico Sweepstakes Regulations

Thanks to the recent amendments to the Sweepstakes and Games of Chance Regulation in Puerto Rico, effective November 27, 2009 promoters and advertisers will be able to conduct promotions in Puerto Rico without the previously restraining legal barriers. Until now marketers were forced to void promotions and exclude residents of Puerto Rico in participating in stateside promotions. This benefits both the 3.9 million residents of Puerto Rico and promotion marketers.

Changes in Puerto Rico’s Sweepstakes and Games of Chance Regulation align the Commonwealth’s rules and definitions with regulations in the United States promulgated by the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and individual States.

Highlights of the new regulation include:
• Rules certification by a notary is no longer needed.
• Notarized certification of drawing procedures is no longer required.
• Notarized certification of game piece security codes is no longer needed.
• Odds statements have been simplified to conform to typical odds statements.
• Tax liability, which was placed on the promoter, is now on the entrant.
• Requirement that full rules appear in print ad that covers more than two-thirds of the page is no longer needed.
• The requirement that the rules be published, announced and disseminated into Spanish is no longer needed. Now, you just need to publish the rules in the same language that the advertising appears in.
• An express provision defining "abbreviated rules" has been added, the regulation provides for the use of abbreviated rules in advertising as long as they point to where the full rules are published.
• Although rules still need to be published you can now satisfy that requirement by posting them to a website.
• The timing of which a winner must claim prize (from which he/she is notified) is still listed as 30 days, with and added exception of ”unless otherwise specified in the official rules”.

To view the full Regulation, please visit the Department of Consumer Affairs in Puerto Rico (DACO) at: http://www.gobierno.pr/daco/inicio.

Guest post by Gina Staffa an Account Supervisor in Marden-Kane's NY Office. Gina can be reached at Gina@MardenKane.com.

Contest Best Practices

Want to run an online contest, but not sure what to do or where to start? This is a quick primer:

1. Bring in Marden-Kane early


2. Define objectives and select best contest "processes"


3. Keep the contest simple!


4. Offer prizes that resonate with the target audience


5. Run contest for 6 to 8 weeks


6. Have Official Rules follow process flow


7. Limit number of finalists to 10


8. Offer finalists a "tool kit" with necessary elements to generate more views / votes and free media impressions for the brand


9. Open voting for 7 to 10 days


10. Hide public vote count


11. Monitor blogs


12. Allow 3 to 5 days for winner clearance


13. Minimize legal vulnerability with appropriate release forms


14. Fulfill prizes quickly


15. Analyze results


16. Optimize


17. Repeat!

Remember the goal of the promotion should be to engage your target audience while reinforcing brand attributes.

Communication… In today’s world what does that word really mean?

Email, text and other electronic communications allow us to conduct business without ever having to speak to someone. We can delegate projects, assignments, tasks, etc., all by email. In some cases I actually feel like I participate in an entire meeting via email. When I look back at the 30+ emails that have gone back and forth between colleagues all on the same topic, I ask myself, “Why didn’t we all just call a quick 5 minute meeting to resolve this issue rather than these 30 non-emotional, non-vocal, non-face-to-face emails all flying back and forth and crossing over?”

Yes, there are benefits to email. It is instant. It gives us a chance to think about and research what we want to say. It allows us to communicate with someone even when they might not be available. You can assign projects and tasks to a group of people and everyone knows who is responsible for what. Etc…

Email has its down side as well. It gives us the ability to ignore something. To say it got lost in SPAM. It makes it easier to “pass the buck” by just forwarding the email on to someone else and asking them to take care of it. Without facial expression or tone of voice, many emails get misunderstood and/or misread.

So it makes me wonder... Will our voices become extinct? Have we forgotten the power of face-to-face communication? Eye contact, body language, and tone of voice are very powerful tools that will never come across in an email or text message!

Guest post via Peggy Seeloff, a Vice President in our NY Office who is responsible for account management and promotion administration. Peggy can be reached at Peggy@MardenKane.com.