Luxury Brand Gimmicks – Do They Really Work?
May 31, 2010
Luxury brands commonly use gimmicks to give their brands a little something extra that the commoner brands simply can’t compete with. Often these gimmicks are completely unnecessary and don’t add any real benefit at all, but they do appeal to emotional triggers that the luxury brand customer responds to.
Infiniti recently launched an ad campaign for the 2011 Infiniti M that is filled with luxury brand gimmicks. Do you want a car with an air conditioning system that mimics the gentle breezes of a rain forest? How about a wood-grain dashboard sprinkled with silver dust? You can get both in the new 2011 Infiniti M.
Unfortunately, the pixie dust version that enables your car to fly is not yet available, although that would actually be useful, unlike the silver dust. Alternately, you could buy a bottle of Goldschlager and pour it over your dashboard to infuse it with real gold flecks. But I digress.
Check out the commercial for the 2011 Infiniti M below to see for yourself.
So back to my original question — do gimmicks in luxury brand messages really work. Do they really motivate consumers with high discretionary incomes to choose one brand over another?
It would seem that the answer is yes, when those gimmicks target those emotional triggers related to being a leader, keeping up with (or staying ahead of) the Joneses, and so on. Most of these gimmicks are fairly short-lived though, and brand managers have to come up with new ones fairly frequently to keep the attention and interest of the luxury brand consumer. It’s an interesting difference from non-luxury branding.
What do you think? Do gimmicks truly work in luxury branding or have they become laughable to not just the masses but also the target audience they’re trying to appeal to? Leave a comment and share your opinion.
Do You Know the Hardest Working Person in America?
May 28, 2010
Mitchum dubs itself as the hardest working anti-perspirant in America, and in an effort to extend that brand promise, the company behind the brand is turning to a clever new social media marketing campaign.
In Mitchum’s new “Are You the Hardest Working Person in America?” campaign, consumers are invited to enter to win $100,000 and the opportunity to have a film made about them by legendary filmmaker Albert Maysles. To enter, consumers simply have to upload a video to Mitchum’s YouTube channel of themselves telling the story of why they are the hardest working person in America.
Now, here is the clever part of this social media marketing campaign that many large businesses would be too scared to allow. Contestants in Mitchum’s contest are encouraged to spread the word about the contest and actively try to get votes for their entry videos across the social Web. In effect, Mitchum is giving up control of the online conversation and letting it spread far and wide at the hands of consumers, but the company is doing it in a clever way by asking consumers to promote themselves.
You see, Mitchum will be indirectly promoted as people talk about their videos and ask friends and family to watch their videos, share them, and vote for them. Conversations across the social Web will undoubtedly center around the content of the videos, not Mitchum. However, each conversation gives Mitchum indirect marketing exposure that spreads far and wide. You can’t buy that kind of exposure!
You can check one of the commercials hyping the Mitchum “Are You the Hardest Working Person in America?” campaign below. Not only are the commercial and the campaign entertaining, but they are also inspirational. Bottom-line, this is simply a great effort by Mitchum to leverage social media to build its brand and business.
Brand Messages Affect Just 1 in 10 Purchase Decisions
May 27, 2010
A new study from Alterian (via eMarketer) reveals some statistics that are actually not all that surprising if you’ve been following my posts here on Corporate Eye for the last year or so.
According to the survey, only 1% of respondents (made up of Internet users from the United States and the United Kingdom) never compare products and services before making a purchase. The results of the survey were as follows:
- 51% always compare products and services before making a purchase
- 44% sometimes compare products and services before making a purchase
- 4% rarely compare products and services before making a purchase
- 1% never compare products and services before making a purchase.
And of those people surveyed, 71% said they look for as many sources to find information as possible to ensure the information they find is accurate.
However, the above findings are not the most interesting from the Alterian study. The far more interesting information comes from responses to who respondents are most likely to trust for advice when researching a product or service. In answer to that question, only 13% said they trusted what a company says about itself or advertising or promotional features. The results of the survey were as follows:
- 40% trust friends and family
- 28% trust professional reviews on Web sites, newspapers or magazines
- 19% trust reviews from people “like you” on Web sites
- 8% trust what the company says about itself
- 5% trust advertising or promotional features
This is not the first time these type of research revealed similar findings. Back in 2007, I remember writing a piece about research conducted at that time that showed consumers trusted advertisers and companies less than they trusted friends, family members, and even complete strangers who wrote about products and services online.
In other words, the findings from this survey are not new, but they certainly do add to the growing pile of evidence that supports shifting marketing budgetary investments away from traditional advertising and toward new media conversations.
What do you think? Has your company made the budget shift to actually gain favor with consumers where their eyes, ears and trust are?
Image: stock.xchng
Be Careful with Blog Outsourcing
May 24, 2010
I recently had some dealings with a company that sells business websites and blogging services. An established company with a reasonable client list—so I was surprised by the fact that their plan doesn’t seem all that excellent.
Situation: The provider company needed some guest posts in order to fill the pipeline for a client blog. The client (a mid-sized company, not a start-up) is in a technical field that requires some moderately specialized knowledge on the part of the bloggers. I happen to know something about the field, so they asked me to suggest four topics to write about.
Here’s the first catch. They didn’t tell me the name of the client company, just the topic areas. I sent along four pretty good ideas, which they professed to love. Apparently, however, they did not notice (or did not know) that one of my proposed topics concerned a product that belongs to a direct competitor of their client company. So they okayed a topic that would have been quite a poor choice for the blog.
Second catch. I was told to leave my posts in a queue, and the blog editor would provide images. Which turned out to be true–but not exactly in a good way! Most of the posts had small, rather outdated-looking stock photos. And some of the posts had the same photo.
Third catch. Most of the stories had a generic by-line. I.e., “Posted by the [Client Name] Team.” I’m personally okay with being anonymous, but it’s hard for a blog to establish credibility if it looks like a string of unowned news bytes.
During my brief involvement, I received no communication at all from the editor–and if there was a plan or philosophy for the blog it certainly wasn’t apparent to me. Here’s the final catch, though. They paid in the top tier of market rates, at least for my contributions. Which probably means they are charging the client somewhere near top rates. And the product they are providing seems . . . well, not “top” quality. Or at least not so far.
Takeaway: There may be some very good reasons to outsource a business blog, especially when the goal is to provide industry-level content rather than company-specific content. “Inside Acme Widgets” should be written by Acme insiders, but “All About Widgets” or “Widgetmania” might be done as well or better by professional bloggers. Outsourcing is not the same as offloading, however! Give the vending company detailed directions and monitor their work carefully if you want to end up with a good blog.
(Thanks to ArséniureDeGallium for the delightfully “skeptical” smiley.)
Online Display Advertising is Growing but No Single Brand Dominates
May 24, 2010
According to comScore, display advertising is making a big comeback since the economic downturn in 2009. During the first quarter of 2010, the U.S. Internet audience received over 1 trillion display ads (up 15% from the same period in 2009).
Facebook and Yahoo! served the most display ads to the U.S. Internet audience during the first quarter of 2010 as shown below:
- Facebook.com = 16.2%
- Yahoo! Sites = 12.1%
- Microsoft Sites = 5.5%
- Fox Interactive Media = 4.9%
- AOL LLC = 2.9%
- Google Sites = 2.4%
- Turner Network = 1.4%
- Glam Media = 0.7%
- eBay = 0.7%
- Tagged.com = 0.6%
The story is a bit different, however, in terms of companies that pay for those display ads with no single company or brand leading the way. According to comScore, the share of first quarter 2010 display advertising impressions was spread across a large number of companies and brands as you can see from the list of the top 10 display advertisers by number of impressions to the U.S. Internet audience during the first quarter of 2010 shown below:
- AT&T = 2.4%
- Verizon Communications – 2.1%
- Scottrade, Inc. = 1.5%
- Experian Interactive = 1.4%
- Sprint Nextel Corporation = 0.9%
- Netflix, Inc. = 0.9%
- eBay, Inc. = 0.9%
- Intuit Inc. = 0.8%
- Privacy Matters 1-2-3 = 0.8%
- IAC – InterActiveCorp = 0.8%
- Everyone else = 87.5%
Online display advertising is fair game for any company or brand. The fact that does stand out from comScore’s findings is that the mobile communications carrier category is represented three times in the top 10 list of display advertisers by brand impressions (AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Sprint Nextel Corporation).
Another finding that’s not particularly surprising is Intuit’s place on this list. Given that the first quarter of the year in the United States also marks tax season, it’s not surprising that companies like Intuit (a tax software provider) is included in the top 10 list above. The vast majority of Intuit’s advertising budget is probably spent during the first quarter of the year.
I’d love to see a trend chart using this data over the course of a year or longer. What do you think? Any surprises in this list? Were you surprised to learn that there isn’t a dominant player (or players) when it comes to number of display ad impressions?
Image: stock.xchang
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