"Buy the Way…" Insights on Integrated Marketing Communication

It’s quite hard to ignore the election today, even if you are just reading a blog post. Earlier today everybody greeted to each other with one simple question “Did you vote?”, even if they were greeting to me, who couldn’t vote at all. At first I would simply reply  that I’m an evil communist. Later I realized that this would only bring an awkward end to a conversation. People would unnaturally smile and then turn away.

After giving it a second thought, I should have handled those conversations with election-related marketing cases. There is so much to talk about.

For instance, the jet-blue campaign introduced by the professor the other day was a remarkable one. In fact, quite a number of brands took the advantage of presidential events, like debate, voting and lectures. Most common practices are like 7-11’s election coffee poll campaign, in which they provided two kinds of coffee cups. Each stands for a candidate. They also launched series of viral videos, Facebook background pictures, and free coffee samples.

Similar ideas have also been adopted by “Bliss”: a spa and beauty brand; “Tortilla’s”, a California chain restaurants brand; and “Boston Market”, which is also a restaurant brand who launched a “left wing vs. right wing” bowl poll.

The most brilliant part of this idea is that customers can take sides by simply purchasing their products or services. And according to the sales records, we can get a clue of which candidate is leading. This year, the 7-11 coffee poll almost foretold the final result of the election, whereas Toritilla’s result was quite biased. Maybe between the Obama chicken teriyaki bowl and the Romney Mexican Mitt-Loaf Bowl, some customers simply decide based on their flavor preferences rather than political inclinations. Fortunately whether the results are accurate or not does not affect the fact that these brands will catch eye balls during the election.

It’s difficult to trace back who came up with this idea first. However it can be identified that since 1984 Busken Bakery, located in Cincinnati, has been making presidential cookies. And they proudly claimed that their result matches the votes count within 2%.

There are also other ways to connect brands to this election: “Cheetos” conducted an online poll about the “big cheese” via social media. “Pizza Hut” promised lifetime free pizzas to those who could raise a question about pizza during the debates. And there are some basic apply of homonym, like Tostito’s “One Party” campaign.

Generally speaking, it seems every brand doesn’t want to give up this national event; otherwise it’s going to be another four years. Some brands, like jet blue, came up with something innovative and eye-catching, while others, like Tostito, simply stepped into previous footprints.

 ‘Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy.’

What came into your mind when you heard the above sentence in an advertisement?

Believe or not, this statement comes from an advertisement released by the Barack Obama’s presidential campaign on October 25^th. The new advertisement is featuring Lena Dunham, who is an American filmmaker and actress, famous for her performance in the HBO TV series GIRLS.

Here is the advertisement: Lena Dunham: Your First Tim

My First Impression

Do you enjoy the advertisement? Do you like such creativity? Can you imagine that a presidential campaign advertisement contains such implication of sex/virginity?

Frankly speaking, I was shocked by such creativity of the girl’s statement of analogizing her ‘first time’ voting to her virginity. Personally, I don’t like the advertisement very much.

First of all, Lena is comparing sex with voting, which makes the idea itself weird. What’s the relationship between politics and giving virginity?

‘It’s a fun game to say, who are you voting for? And they say, I don’t want to tell you. And you say, no, who are you voting for, and they go, guess.’

‘It was this line in the sand. Before, I was a girl. Now, I was a woman. I went to the polling station, I pulled back the curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.’

Secondly, peer pressure would be created as virgins are mocked to a certain extent in the video. Judging from Lena’s facial expression, you can see she did not agree with virgins who were not ready. Isn’t she bragging about having sex?

 ‘It’s super uncool to be out and about, and someone says, did you vote? No, I didn’t. I wasn’t ready.’

The Conservative Voices

No wonder that once this advertisement was released, it has stirred up a fair amount of controversy and outrange over its comparison of voting to giving virginity. Quite a few conservative people criticized her a lot and regarded the video as ‘disgusting’ or ‘stupid’.

RedState editor-in-chief and CNN contributor Erick Erickson wrote,

‘If you need any further proof we live in a fallen world destined for hell fire, consider the number of people who have no problem with the President of the United States, via a campaign ad, ridiculing virgins and comparing sex to voting.’

Monica Crowley, a Fox News contributor and Washington Times conservative columnist,  called the advertisement ‘sick’ and ‘degrading’ on Twitter:

‘1 of the many sick things about this degrading Lena Dunham “lose your virginity to Barack” ad? The Left thinks it’s “empowering” to women.’

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro, an American conservative political commentator, wrote:

‘So she chose to do it for the first time with Barack Obama, since he “cares about and understands women.” In fact, he understands them so well that he exploits them for insane commercials comparing losing your virginity with voting. Obama has young daughters. But that didn’t stop him from releasing this commercial. Because this is what Obama thinks of your daughters. This is Obama’s official campaign ad. Paid for with his campaign money. Distributed by his campaign. If this ad were any more demeaning to women—who apparently care only about having sex, if you listen to Lena “You Want To Do It” Dunham—it would be produced by Bill Maher and star Bill Clinton.’

Like or Dislike the Ad?

To my surprise, the advertisement still gets supports from a lot of ordinary people. The original YouTube clip, which has more than 2.3 million views, has 14,418 likes and 18,615 dislikes so far.

A YouTube user judged the advertisement as:

‘Tacky, tasteless, low, dumb, shallow, foolish…um…drone? Government control of your doctor, 6 trillion debt, um….dumb.’ (cloudi9video 1 week ago, with 486 supports).

Although people who dislike the advertisement are more, I have to admit that as an advertisement targeting young girls, Lena’s advertisement does have impact on the young generation. Some viewers expressed their support to Lena and this advertisement. For example,

‘Why is this creepy? I mean really you guys are the ones who all seem to presume that “first time” means sex. What about first time walking or first time going out on a date or first time saying mama. Not all “first times” are of the sexual nature. I think it’s great. She made it so it was speaking to a certain audience. Young women who are just being able to vote. I love it.’ (Jacky Kay 1 week ago)

‘I’m a young woman I did not see anything wrong with this ad. It’s really centers on my age group and it’s fun and entertaining to watch. Not to mention that everything she said is true and it should really open up some women’s eyes when they see it. Seriously, why would you vote for someone who doesn’t care about your rights at all when you could vote for President Obama who looks at woman with respect they way we should be. I’m not voting for a guy who wants to take my rights away end of story.’ (5335rockstar 1 week ago)

Perhaps it is not appropriate to presume that ‘first time’ means sex, but it should be admitted that the advertisement is quite controversial. Agree? Or, did you also make such a presumption?

Lena Dunham: Your First Time PARODY

I also found the following four interesting parodies made by Youtube users.

1^st. Lena Dunham: Your First Time PARODY  (Published on Oct 27, 2012 by TokenLibertarianGirl)

In this video, the girl expresses her view upon the idea of comparing voting to losing virginity in the Lena’s advertisement. She points out women are not only care about birth control and abortion but also concerned about economy and foreign policy. In addition, she lists a few facts that Obama didn’t perform well in the last 4 years. From her perspective, comparing voting to losing your virginity is NOT FUN and CUTE but GROSS and CREEPY.

2^nd. My First Time: Lena Dunham “Your First Time” Parody  (Published on Oct 26, 2012 by TheDefineLiberty)

In this video, the girl criticizes the politicians of their lies and she expressed the feeling of not being respected. ‘It’s time to focus on ME! ’ She believes she deserves better and doesn’t want anybody to control her life. At last, she appeals to the viewers to vote nobody this year.

3^rd. Your First Time Obama : Lena Dunham Response (Published on Oct 27, 2012 by Win4Romneyin2012)

The girl in this video voted and trusted Obama once. But she wishes she could take the vote back as the experience after her first time voting for Obama is not as good as expected. She was disappointed at the ‘lies’ Obama made and hopes others learn from her mistake. Different from the previous two parodies, the girl shows her distinctive position, ‘I am voting for Mitt Romney’. See? The advertisement does not work for her.

4^th. Lena Dunham: Your First Time (PARODY) (Published on Oct 27, 2012 by JaclynGlenn)

This video is a ‘low’ one. In the video, the girl totally transformed the original idea of voting for the first time to having sex with Barack Obama. There are a lot of obvious implications of sex, dirty words in the video. I am not sure whether the girl is just acting fun or mocking the Lena’s advertisement in such an extreme way. Yet, it is certainly not what the Obama’s campaign was expecting.

My Second Thoughts

Lena Dunham is one of the many celebrities called on by the Obama campaign. It is said that the young people in US, whose record-breaking turnout on Election Day 4 years ago was playing a critical role in the Obama’s victory in 2008. This year, Obama is eager to have the same turnout among younger generation to win his second election. From this perspective, it is wise to appeal to young celebrities, such as Lena Dunham to get involved into the presidential campaign advertising.

However, from my point of view, Obama’s campaign chose a right person but not the right topic. The topic around ‘the first time’ may attract attention from or even resonate with girls. However, relating politics with personal intimate issues is weird and doesn’t make sense. In addition, it also leads to endless criticisms. How would other female response? How would mothers react to the advertisement? Personally, I don’t like the way Lena talks about how super uncool not to voting for the first time. Young women should not be peer-pressured into doing anything, including losing their virginity.

Similar to the idea of ‘asking younger generation to commit vote’, I prefer the actress Scarlett Johansson’s speech. From my perspective, when inviting celebrity to speak for the campaign, we don’t need to hear too many dramatic statements. Instead, small but true stories may resonate with more audience. Therefore, what need to be conveyed through the advertisement should be letting women or others realize how they are being empowered and make them vote voluntarily instead of peer-pressuring them into voting.

To sum up, having the great spokeperson, targeting the specific audience and using a creative BIG IDEA can not necessarily ensure the success of an advertising compaign. Ethical issues should also be taken into consideration. In other words, it is important to rule out any possibilities of leading to controversial issues before launching a compaign.

P.S.  Congratulation to Obama for winning 2012 presidential election today.

Hope you enjoy this blog. Feel free to express your opinions or disagreements.

The new and unexpected Chanel No.5 commercial was just released on Oct 14, 2012. It had already been a hot buzz when Brad Pitt, the world famous movie actor, signed the contract with Chanel and was paid 7 million dollars for the role. And Chanel spent 10 million dollors to promote this campaign. It is the first time that Chanel uses a male spokesman to promote this classical perfume with 91 years’ history. The female stars who have been the spokesmen of Chanel No. 5 include Monroe, Nicole Kidman, Audrey Tautou and Catherine Deneuve. Those attractive women are all seen as the embodiment of elegance, sexuality and beauty in the campaigns. It would be a surprise that a male can endorse a classic female’s scent. Actually, many audiences doubted the effects that a man speaking a female perfume.

On Oct 9, Chanel first released three teasers of this attention drawing commercials.  It only includes three questions: Are you going to somewhere? Do you feel lucky? What is the mystery? Pitt just said a few words, and did not even show his handsome face. And these three questions do not mention the perfume at all. After the release of the teasers, people on social media started to guess how Brad Pitt could convey the idea of Chanel No.5.

Here is what it is:

“There you are”

The commercial is directed by Oscar-nominated director Joe Wright, who is also the director of Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina.  I think this commercial might make some of you confused and feel like he is talking nonsense. It is the final version of the commercial. Some audiences are excited about the Pitt’s commercial and see it as a revolution of female perfume. However, it received many negative reviews from the audiences, too. According to the reviews posted online, some audiences think that this commercial has nothing to do with the perfume, and some say it cannot reflect the beauty of Chanel No. 5. And many females said that they would not purchase this perfume because of the commercial. From my point of view, I fell the voice of Brad Pitt is super sexy even though I don’t like what he says. I listened his voice three times when I saw this news at first time. So it can attract customers who like Brad Pitt and his voice.

Surprisingly, regardless of the commercial content, Pitt’s commercial attract many people to make parodies of it, and there is even a rank for top 10 best parodies. It became another buzz among audiences after the Gangnum Style. The interesting parody certainly draw public’s attention. And the awareness and discussion is exactly what the company wants. Here are two parodies that I think is sooooooo funny (Especially the hamster one, I laughed so hard everytime):

Hamster Parody

 Brad Pitt Parody

As far as I see, this new campaign of Chanel still has some benefits. First, a classic product like Chanel No.5 needs to keep the fresh image among consumers. Brad Pitt’s promotion of female perfume can change its point of views to see the Chanel No. 5. Perfume is especially useful when females want to attract males. It’s exciting to know that how a man consider the smell and feeling of Chanel No. 5. Second, Pitt’s performance actually attract large amount of male customers, as people doing parody online are all males. They might consider buying the Chanel No. 5 as a gift for their significant others. Furthermore, the commercial is only black and white, and Pitt is wearing simple shirt and jeans. It is same as Chanel No. 5’s simple and deep brand image.

Psy – Gangnam Style

I’m pretty sure that almost everyone has watched Psy’s Gangnam Style video somewhere on the web (now that we mentioned this in class, I know everyone has watched it unless people weren’t paying attention!). The video has gone viral, hitting more than 400 million views and setting the Guinness Book of Records for the most likes on YouTube. The song has also topped both the Billboard music chart and iTunes chart despite the fact that all the lyrics are in Korean and there are no subtitles written for non-Korean natives. How could this be possible?

Well, there are several factors that made this viral video catchy.

1. Flashy visuals: From beginning to the end, Psy appears in various settings dressed up in a handful of colorful outfits. There is no time for the viewer to be bored, and the audience is caught being drawn into the video to see what comes next. Although Psy is nowhere near “handsome” or “pretty-faced” like most other artists, he was able to gain popularity through his “unattractive” looks and cocky attitude – which may in fact seem more attractive (reverse psychology maybe?).

2. Addictive music/Entertaining dance moves: The melody of Psy’s song is mostly repetitive and the moves shown in his video match with the current trend of the electro-dance genre. Many American celebrities have also performed this dance on stage which led Psy to gain even more fame in the US market.

3. Compelling message: Although the video seems too funny to actually depict a message, the lyrics of the song entails an anti-materialism theme that pokes fun at men who try to fantasize their lives as part of the “elite.” In a period of global economic recession, the story has helped to make the video more appealing to the wider public.

Applying these concepts to the business world

So, how would a brand/company create an ad that would 1) go viral and 2) gain interest on both hemispheres of the world? When I used to work in the marketing communications team for a tech company, the biggest dilemma our team had was to create one global ad that would be suitable for all markets. From my own experience at work and through watching this video, a few thoughts came into mind.

1. Embed non-culturally-specific humor in the ad: Psy’s video contains an emotional denominator that could be accepted across various cultures – humor. These days, I watch many ads on TV and find that a lot of the humor is for mainly for locals, and those outside of the US would find it difficult to understand the “inside joke.” I guess Psy made his video entertaining by using body language, which could be understood universally.

2. Be easy and share your brand:  Many artists these days license their songs so that they could earn more profit through official downloads, but this is not very helpful if you were trying to gain wider publicity in the long run. Studying Psy’s video, I came to learn that he withdrew the copyright of the clip so that viewers could easily own and share the video personally. You may not reap any benefits at the current moment, but releasing the copyright of your brand identity may help you to become more popular down the road.

3. Appeal to the public with an emotional message: Some of the most popular advertisements that have gained wide publicity include messages that give the viewer a reason to care. As for Psy, his theme may not be very evident to non-Korean speakers, but his message eventually was shared amongst the public, leading the video to be something more than an entertaining video to watch and share.

It’s too bad that this video was already shared in class today, but I’m sure the contents of this blog would be easier to understand now that it has already been discussed! The following is just an interesting video that I saw regarding viral videos. Hope you enjoy!

Kevin Allocca : Why Videos Go Viral

Skout is a social app created in 2007 in San Francisco by two entrepreneurs, Niklas Lindstrom and Christian Wiklund, for people to meet new friends online and it has been growing to be the most popular dating app with over one million new users each month on IPhone and Android. The company has been using social media as a tool to promote the app but it seems to be not very successful. I’m going to list some pros and cons of its online marketing strategies on Facebook, Twitter and blog, and give 10 golden rules to improve its marketing strategies of social media.

Rule 1 – Hide the negative comments on social media.

Comments: “Skout is Top 10 paid iPhone social networking app”. Although only Skout itself likes the post on Facebook, any negative comments about the app should not be allowed to see by public on the page. On social media, usually three positive comments can offset one negative comment, and every single negative comment can affect the brand image. You’ve probably already noticed this when you check the reviews of restaurants on Yelp.com. It’s the same thing. So after you understand of this, read what Joshua left on the page. He described Skout as a “pathetic” app. It definitely hurts the brand and influences current users or potential users.
Conclusion: Skout needs to hide any negative comments about the app by using the special functions of Facebook. Many companies do this on their Facebook pages.

Rule 2 – Skout is Skout.

Comments: “Fall is here! Pumpkin latte or pumpkin soup?” Oh, please, Skout is not Starbucks. People don’t care about what Skout suggests them drinking; even if they want a pumpkin latte, can Skout offer? So here is the thing: if you open a restaurant, it’s very appropriate for you to ask people if they love organic food but never ask people if they like IPhone5. People like your page on Facebook or follow your blog or tweets because they care about who you are, not who you talk about.
Conclusion: Skout is Skout. When posting information on social media, you need to remind people the things ONLY Skout can offer or be related to. Find a clue to promote things related to your OWN brand.

Well, not always bad postings. Let’s see another example.

Comments: Yes! 44 “likes”! People seemingly like pandas over IPhone5 or pumpkin latte. But why? Because even pandas know to flirt with other pandas on Skout. How about celebrities? Let’s make one to cause buzz before considering getting involved in law suits.

Comments: Bingo! Divorced couples come to Skout to flirt? How do people feel about this? Weird, exciting, or untrue? It doesn’t matter! The point is Skout gets people’s attentions now. Did you get the point? Skout should create buzz on social media related to its own functions – flirting and dating. Posting pictures or words about these functions instead of a cup of Latte or any news that people can get everywhere. Offering things ONLY related to Skout and even something about “sex” in a fun or an artistic way to get people’s attentions. Here are two examples that you can use your imagination to connect with Skout.

Rule 3 – Limit postings about new functions of Skout.

Comments: Don’t suspect the new functions of Skout. But if nobody hit “like” on your Facebook page, what’s the purpose of posting this?

Comments: “Japanese language available on Skout”. 5 people liked it and 7 comments were left, but none of these comments were written in Japanese. Does this posting really want to cause Japanese users’ attentions?

Comments: “More control over your notification settings”. Only 4 out of 15166 people who liked Skout’s Facebook page liked this posting. May these four people also include a few employees working inside the company?

Comments: 18 is a very small number compared with the large number of people who follow Skout’s blog.

So here is what we’ve found out: Skout introduced a lot of new functions to its users on the Facebook page and blog, but do people really care about these new functions? Yes! Of course they do, but probably not on Facebook. People are usually able to notice a new function themselves when they get a chance to use it on Skout or get to know it via system messages.

Let me explain this a little deeply. What do you notice about the new things of IPhone 5? Metal back cover case, longer screen, new headsets, 3D map, blah blah blah. You probably can tell a lot in a few seconds. But if I ask you what new functions of Gmail you’ve noticed about, it probably takes you some time to think about it. So why? The answer is one is tangible and another is intangible. Most people can easily tell the difference of IPhone 5 from its appearance, but they probably aren’t able to tell the difference of an updated Gmail system until they start using the new functions of it.

Skout is an intangible product. People care about what they can experience rather than what they can see from new functions, so any buzz about new functions would lag behind. Before people start using the new functions of Skout and getting to know them, postings on social media usually cannot influence people’s behavior too much because users have no idea to tell their feeling about an intangible thing. This usually causes them to ignore the postings. Once they start using and getting to know a new function, people who dislike it are more likely to talk about it on social media than people who like it.

Conclusion: Postings about new fancy functions of Skout should be limited on social media.

Even so, you might still ask what can attract people’s attentions if we want to publish some information about Skout itself on social media? Let’s see some good examples in the fourth rule.

Rule 4 – Take use of visional attraction.

Comments: 97 people had liked the new logo on Facebook and 580 comments on the blog since Skout changed its logo to a blue target icon. People love creative stuff, and the new logo is a visual attraction they can see or talk about at once compared with a new function that leads to a psychological feeling people can have later on. The new icon is pretty simple and straightforward for people to understand what happens to Skout: it finally dropped that ugly red heart! Very cool!
Conclusion: Posting visional images related to Skout is a good way to promote the brand on social media.
Here let me give you an example to take use of visional attraction. Posting the logos of Skout and Target on Facebook. Ask people a question: do they shopping people more, or shopping goods more? One is a social dating app, and one is a retail store. The common thing we want to convey to the users is they both are great brands.

Rule 5 – Collecting users’ feedback from social media.

Comments: You can see a lot of messages that people posted on Facebook when they met problems of using Skout. Skout usually responds the inquiries just in a few minutes. From this point, Skout can use its Facebook page as an effective way to improve its customer service and collect feedback.

Comments: Skout’s blog is a good place for risk management or PR event management, and people who pay attention to these content are likely to send the link of the blog on their Facebook or Twitter accounts as well.
Conclusion: Skout can take use of social media to get feedback from users to the performance of new functions of its apps, and even can conduct customer research to develop its future products and functions.

Rule 6 – Who doesn’t like “Free”?

Comments: “Winning 1000 free points”. This post has most “likes”, “comments” and “shares” among all the posts on Skout’s Facebook page – 431 likes, 81 comments, and 12 shares. Why? Because people can have free points to win! When people get a chance to win free things, they usually like talking about it with other people, which can lead more people to join. The same situation also happened to Skout’s blog.

Comments: Yes and yes, who doesn’t like free things?

Comments: 983 comments – the second most popular posting on Skout’s blog after the posting “Skout Teen Community Suspension”. You can also find out that winning gift cards sounds more attracting than points for users! Even though less people would pay attention to the final results or think about whether the event is true, “winning for free” always sounds great to customers.

Comments: The posting had 190 comments on the blog, but only 1 person liked it on Facebook and 0 person retweeted it on Twitter. If you cannot find the words like “free” or “win” in this posting, you probably know why they didn’t hit “like” on Facebook or retweet it.
Conclusion: Initiating “winning/gift campaigns” on social media can cause a lot of buzz among users. There is one thing Skout can do better in the future is that Skout should consider how to synchronize all the events on Facebook, Twitter and Blog when promoting the brand. Do once but get triple payback!

Rule 7 – Create topics!

Comments: Skout launched these two topics about “relationship” and “dating tactics” on its blog and let people join the discussions. Both gained a large number of responses.
Conclusion: Skout should continue initiating different topics related to “relationship” or “flirting” to let people come out with their own opinions and lead more postings on its blog.

Rule 8 – Beat your competitors by learning from them!

If you want to win the market, you have to know how to beat your competitors. If you want to beat them, you must learn from them first. Let’s compare Skout with Match.com as an example.

Comments: Skout recently built up a new account @skoutapp on Twitter and has stopped twittering with its old account @singles since Sep. 14, which means it lost all old followers. From its new account, you can see it follows more people rather than being followed by people. Skout must find a way to synchronize two accounts and should never stop continuing twittering on its old account. We can also learn another method from Match.com: it has two versions on Twitter – @Match and @Match.UK.

Conclusion: Don’t throw away the old account on twitter because it means you are losing old customers/users and you have to invest more time and effort to make it up.

If you check all tweets of Match.com and Skout, the content that both tweet are pretty close: it’s always about new service, topics of relationship, winning subscription or points, etc. However, if you look more close to match.com, you can learn something new from it. Here is a good point Skout can learn from match.com: initiating local networking events.

Conclusion: Launching events is another way for Skout to promote its brand, cultivate users’ loyalty, and of course make more money.

Rule 9 – Story telling by videos.

Let’s see some data. From Aug. 14 to Sep. 14, only 39 people re-tweeted the postings of Skout on twitter. It’s a very tiny number compared with the large number of Skout’s users. Match.com doesn’t have too many people to re-tweet its content either. So let’s expand our vision to Facebook’s twitter account and see what techniques it’s using.
All the time, social networks love to use story telling to promote their brands because people love intriguing and romantic stories of relationship and they are into repeating these stories to other people. Skout, Match.com and Facebook all want the users to speak out their own stories, and you can easily find out some examples on twitter that how they encourage people to tell stories. But seemingly only Facebook’s stories are mostly like to be re-tweeted and favored.

If you want to know the answer why Skout and Match.com have few people to share their stories or retweet other people’s stories, just link to the websites and you will find out the reason.

Skout – submit stories online.

Match.com – Long articles to read.

Facebook: Videos, videos, and videos.

Comments: The amazing part of Facebookstories.com is it includes a lot of interesting videos, and more importantly, these videos tell true stories about people using Facebook in different ways. Videos can impress people much more than words, and that’s why many people watched the movies of Harry Potter but never read the books. When people spread their stories via videos, it also indirectly helps to spread the popularity of brand as well, which also brings more business opportunities to the company.
Conclusion: Skout can build up a video website and even can shoot videos for its users to share their “flirting” or “dating” stories. The content can be how Skout influences people’s life and make their life harder, easier, dramatic, funny, ect., or what people learn from flirting or dating. Anything related to “relationship” can be made in videos.

Rule 10 – Buzz on Youtube.

Comments: Nothing is found on Skout’s Youtube channel except one about Skout’s funding boost. Do people working for Skout care? Yes. Do investors of Skout care? Yes. Do users care? Probably not. Users care about nothing besides what they can benefit from the app. If Skout is bankrupted tomorrow, they will choose another app at once with no worry at all. So let’s post some videos that can entertain or benefit them.
If you check videos on the channel of Match.com on Youtube, you can see it published many official ad videos to branding their website. The tones of these videos look very serious because Match.com claims “dating” rather than “flirting”. Skout is a phone app, and it should find its own way to create the tones of videos and it more emphasizes on “flirting” or “fun” rather than “dating”.
Conclusion: Buzz on Youtube in a fun or emotional way.
Examples: If Skout divides the target users into two different groups with the age of 25-year-old as the middle line, we can use a fun way to make videos and promote Skout to people who are younger than 25-year-old. Checking video scripts #1, #2 and #3 as follows.
For people who are older than 25-year-old, it’s better to use an emotional way to marketing Skout because people over this age are usually more selective to watch and retweet the videos. Please check video scripts #4 and #5.

#1. Shoot Skout! (Fun)

#2. Skout is a ring toss game. (Fun)

#3 Skout is a game show. (Fun)

#4. A Business Traveler. (Emotional. This video tries to tell people: we all feel alone today than ever before. Skout is a way to escape from loneliness.)

“I travel 200 days every year,

visit 3 cities each month,

and spend 30 hours talking to strangers every week.

I’m always on the way,

and I’m always alone.

I’m busy, but I never forget to bring one thing.

I can meet a new friend

just in a few minutes,

but probably for the whole life.

Skout. A friend on the way.”

#5. Story of Shy. (Emotional. This video tries to say that some people in reality look very introvert and shy, but Skout make them totally different online.)

“My name is Shy.

I like keeping quiet at work.

I never say No to people.

When I go to a bar,

I like sitting there, and keeping drinking.

People think I’m alone,

but they never know I have a best friend.

She knows I love talking,

without a voice,

but with words.

My name is Shy, but I’m not shy.

Skout. A friend on the way.”