"Buy the Way…" Insights on Integrated Marketing Communication

While just years ago people usually got beauty product recommendations by asking their friends: “Where did you get that lipstick”, within years the number of YouTube’s beauty influencers has enormously expanded and they gradually become the main source for beauty products recommendations. Beauty brands began to rely more and more on influencers’ marketing, and in turn, the contracts signed with big beauty brands also become the main source of income for influencers. 

When this kind of business model became widespread and standardized, the new business also emerges: a number of influencers have already developed, or planned to develop, their own brands instead of fully relying on established brand sponsorship. Some successful examples are Kylie Jenner and Huda Kattan, who have grown their beauty brand into billion-dollar businesses. However, there are also a lot of influencer brands that didn’t live up to the expectation, which not only lead to the failure of the brands but also a heavy blow to their influencer careers.

Quality control is one of the primary issues, as influencers are not merely consumers when they start their own brands — they need to be the manufacturers and take responsibility for whatever happens to the products. While the well-known beauty influencer Jaclyn Hill was quite successful in promoting established brands, her own cosmetics brand had quite a disastrous launch and was accused of poor quality and sanitation problems. As influencer largely relies on followers’ support and trust to survive, such failure can be disastrous, which leads to Hill shutting down both her brands and her social media accounts for a long time. 

Despite the risk, there are still lots of influencers trying to launch their own clothing or cosmetics brands, as the benefits brought by the success can be quite tempting — not only can they more effectively turn the subscribers into consumers, they also turn the short-term influencer career into a long-term business. Numerous successful examples seem to prove that, while many critics have pointed out the saturation of the market, there are still opportunities to take a share. 

Facing this trend, established beauty brands also realize it becomes more difficult to collaborate with big influencers, as most of them are working on their own brands. The fact is that influencers are no longer merely a marketing tool, they are gradually changing from cooperators into competitors. Some brands also start to make adjustments and tend to cooperate more with micro-influencers, but it is predictable that when more and more influencers begin to achieve the scale of economy, the competition will be more intense. What do you think?

Resource:

Do you remember when the readings for the class told us we needed to give people something to share in social media? Something to talk about? Probably, you didn’t think in a Barbie mansion, right? Well, Airbnb did. And got attention.

“Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse is listed on Airbnb for $60 a night,” was one of the NBC headlines. The New York Times reported that “a life-size version of Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse opened its doors at the beginning of November. And Downton Abbey — that is, Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England — will take two lodgers this month. In Malibu, the Barbie mansion didn’t really exist as such until Mattel teamed up with Airbnb to promote the Barbie brand’s 60th anniversary. Adorned with pops of pink specifically for last week’s booking, the property was open to four people for just two nights. Still, it earned news media coverage from CNBC, The New York Post and Fox News.”

The article also mentioned that a stay in a Goodyear blimp was covered by CNN, USA Today and Maxim and “a listing for a November reservation at Highclere Castle, a filming location for Downton Abbey, targeted fans of the television series and the movie released in September. It was covered in The Los Angeles Times, Town & Country and Forbes.”

Airbnb gave people something to share in social media. For sure. But Airbnb got more attention than that: headlines. News media covered the innovation at the lodging company. Such an amazing outcome of a marketing campaign! Bravo!

Weeks ago I wrote that marketing industry is in problems because people hate ads and Internet users are avoiding them. But people don’t avoid Barbies’ mansion neither Downtown Abbey castles. People love them! They share pictures on social media, they talk about it with friends. Bingo!

As professor of marketing at a Wharton School explained, “It needs to be more of an interesting story — let’s call it an aspirational experience — than an actual experience.” That is exactly what we have learned from authors like Anthony Young, and I love to find examples from reality.

The future of marketing, as Airbnb’s chief executive said, could be in the news media. “I think a lot of brands, in the future, they need to be in the business of making news, not just advertising,” said Brian Chesky to the NYT. “And to make news you have to do something that is worth somebody reporting about.” The question is how to attract reporters… the answer is by creating Barbies mansions.

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/business/airbnb-jim-beam-barbie.html

Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a popular comedy show, in which celebrity hosts join an ensemble of comedic actors often to perform funny sketches. A lot of the time, pop culture references or brands become the brunt of the joke or incorporated into them somehow. While these jokes may not always align with the brand’s values, there’s no doubt they still help give a massive amount of free PR for the brands, and if a brand can harness the ensuing virality in the right way it can work out in their favor.

One such example can be seen from a SNL skit this past weekend in which famous singer Harry Styles “plays a Sara Lee employee who’s in charge of the brand’s Instagram account but has mixed it up with his own personal account and posted some inappropriate comments on others photos through the Sara Lee account.” (NYPost) Sara Lee is an American consumer goods company known for their desserts and breads, and many of the saucy and raunchy comments they used in their jokes definitely don’t really align with Sara Lee’s family friendly branding. After the skit aired, many consumers turned to the real Sara Lee social media pages to comment some of the scandalous comments from the skit that Styles’s character had accidentally left from the Sara Lee page.

While the comments being left across all the pages may have initially seemed like chaos for the brand, soon the hashtag #SaraLee was trending and people were tweeting things like “So who’s now adding Sara Lee to their grocery list?”. When reached out to, Sara Lee told the NY Post that they “didn’t participate in creating the skit and its content doesn’t align with Sara Lee’s brand. But, we all know SNL pushes the envelope for laughs and we are taking it in stride.” They eventually deleted some of the more inappropriate comments and temporarily deleted their Instagram comments, but overall didn’t seem too bothered by the whole ordeal. Due to a completely external thing not associated with their own marketing efforts at all, they were able to ascend into virality.

 Similarly, paint brand Farrow & Ball that were the brunt of an SNL skit last week where it referenced it as having high prices and flowery descriptions had increased buzz for a little bit, and the brand actually even capitalized on this moment by responding with a tactical ad in the New York Times. It read “Introducing our Saturday Night Live special edition col-our” with a paint called English Roast alongside the caption “A rich and good hum-oured hue with subtle hints of bone-dry satire and a lingering aftertaste of charred British beef. It’s not just paint, it’s Farrow & Ball.” (AdAge) Anthony Davey, CEO at Farrow & Ball, spoke to this saying “Whilst Farrow & Ball doesn’t always use jokes in their creative, it’s still a warm and human brand. Embracing humour is just another facet of that.”

https://s3-prod.adage.com/s3fs-public/styles/width_792/public/20191111_Farrow%26Ball__3x2_0.jpg

So what can we learn from this? How a brand can appropriately harness publicity they gain that may not be exactly what they want or in favor of their brand values. When external things happen that are out of one’s control, such as SNL launching your brand into virality, you can embrace the buzz it’s bringing (like the adage says there’s no such thing as bad press) and take it in stride or even harness it by responding to it and using it in your marketing strategy to feed off of the virality it had created.

Some questions this left me with, however, included once virality is created and if a brand embraces it, what happens to the consumers who are engaging with the content—are they just engaging while it’s a trend, do they have higher brand awareness as a result and/or are they actually converted to consumers of the brand? I also wonder about what the best internal mechanisms within a marketing agency of handling something like this would be. The turnaround on their end in response to an event or incident like a SNL skit about your brand would have to be quick, so what kind of protocol is best internally to discuss the best course of action and execute that?

Sources:

https://nypost.com/2019/11/17/sara-lee-reacts-to-harry-styles-raunchy-snl-sketch/

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/marketing-media/sara-lee-goes-viral-after-snl-skit

https://www.prweek.com/article/1666130/snl-skit-gives-social-media-managers-nightmares-using-wrong-account

https://adage.com/creativity/work/farrow-ball-english-roast/2214611

Do you know the most crowded place around USC campus recently? Surprisingly, many people will tell you the same answer- Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, which is famous for its fried chicken. Its latest product, chicken sandwiches, were sold out just two weeks after launching and right now the sandwich is back.

Many people have been wondering why a sandwich can attract so many costumers in such a short period of time. As long as they follow the official Twitter account of Popeyes, they will understand that the use of social media is one of the most important factors that help Popeyes win the battle against other fast food brands such as Chick-fil-A and Wendy’s, and maximize the advantage of its marketing plan. It is undeniable that the quality of sandwiches is the foundation of the great success this time. But it’s the power of social media that makes Popeyes and its sandwiches become a phenomenon.

As a matter of fact, Popeyes suffered a supply chain issue two weeks after the national launch of chicken sandwiches on Aug 12 and it ran out of sandwich buns. Rather than shying away from the shortage, Popeyes is embracing this problem through social media. Popeyes soon launched its campaign called “bring your own bun”. The campaign aimed to encourage consumer to bring their owns bun to make a sandwich with Popeyes’ famous chicken tenders. In this fried chicken sandwich DIY movement, a new video jokingly suggests diners buy three chicken tenders and put them on a bun from home.

This campaign came after the Popeyes chicken sandwich proved so successful. This twitter had 325,000 likes, 87,700 retweets and 5,200 replies. That’s roughly 418,000 engagements for a single tweet. Compare that to the average of the last five tweets Popeyes made: 1,105 engagements per tweet. Meanwhile, at the start of August, 19 percent of Americans said they saw an ad for Popeyes. By September, the number jumped to 28 percent.

One secret is keeping ad awareness high, which depends a lot on what time campaigns are launched. Thus, the great timing contributed a lot to the success since Popeyes chose to strike when the chicken sandwich iron was hot. It also used the most visible player in the game to generate its own noise. Popeyes catered to the tribe mentality of the Internet in a way few brands before it has, which made it a status symbol. It emphasized the idea that it wasn’t enough to just eat the sandwich.

After that, a campaign also set off what was called the “chicken sandwich wars” on Twitter, a viral social media debate that has captivated the internet. Popeyes, Chick-fil-A and other fast-food brands traded barbs on Twitter, arguing about whose sandwich tasted best. As sandwich memes proliferated, customers flocked to Popeyes restaurants across the country. Once the fuse had been lit on Twitter, and the fire started to rage in the mainstream media, actual customers started to take an interest. And, with that interest, came curiosity in trying Popeyes’ new chicken sandwich.

The success of Popeyes sets a perfect model for marketing campaigns in the fast food industry, especially for those brands that want to explode social media. Here are some tips that they can take into consideration. One is that strong video contents with great interaction and storytelling that combines online and offline campaigns will play a more and more important role since the ultimate purpose is to attract your consumers to come to your restaurants. Another recommendation is regularly engaging in conversation with fans. Simple things like including the customer’s name and answering specifically make each response feel personalized. Social media can be the perfect tool for these brands to connect with fans.

Resources:

https://www.business2community.com/trends-news/its-time-to-call-the-popeyes-tweet-a-huge-social-media-win-02238068

https://www.businessinsider.com/popeyes-chicken-sandwich-social-media-reactions-2019-11

https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/popeyes-offers-playful-solution-its-chicken-sandwich-shortage/2196181

https://www.qsrmagazine.com/fast-food/just-how-big-deal-was-popeyes-chicken-sandwich

Technology has shifted how society watches television. Streaming capabilities have given consumers reason to get rid of any sort of cable they have ever had. Watching TV on the go, is the direction our world is heading. All of the heavy hitters are now coming out with their own streaming outlets. Netflix and Hulu have been established, but Disney is now all in with stream

qualities on all devices.

Disney is already one of the most powerful, profitable media companies in the world. However, they are willing to spend billions of dollars on creating this new media outlet. CEO Bob Iger believes it is the way the world is heading. There is no other option, there is no reason to sit back and relax. It is necessary to jump on it, so they are not forgotten. Disney+ will give its consumers access to all of old school and new school princess movies. There is an endless amount of media that this new platform gives access too.

The way the world is progressing there is no other option than to take a loss. Disney believes that this is one of the better moves they have made for their company. In years to come who knows if people will have the cassettes and DVDs that keep their legacy living. This platform gives Disney the opportunity to not only flourish but also grow.

They have used their legacy to continue desire by releasing old school videos that may have not been seen. But what I believe they have done with releasing this new platform is gain another audience. The audience that is going to become the audience for years to come. It is something to stick with the old and be stubborn. But Disney made it clear they were all in with this new wave. They did not want to be in the passenger seat when everyone is already on board.

There is much to learn from this article. I think this is a testament to the direction of media. And how consumers are consuming the media that Disney+ is attracting. But the question is how they stay ahead of the curve. They have been successful in previous years, so why change and gamble now. In addition, can they keep up with content competition between its competitors?

Reference:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/11/media/disney-launch/index.html

Instagram is a social media site that requires constant validation and justification from your peers. Not through them texting or telling you about your post. But the justification comes from how many “likes” one receives on a post. The higher that number goes the more validation and justification you might receive. The lower numbers usually indicate a small following.

However, this validation and justification is being brought to a temporary halt. CEO Adam Mosseri announced that Instagram will not be showing likes for some users around the USA as a trial. This is an attempt to counteract the possible addiction to the posting for likes and justification. Instagram has been speaking on possibly doing this for quite some time. With some of their following being completely on board. And the other part of their following feeling as if it is completely unnecessary to do.

There are induvial who receive a larger number of likes. Large enough to make a living off their following on this social media outlet. You could infer that this is the following who is not excited about this change to the platform. This experiment could go either way. The benefits improve self-esteem and create a sense of normality amongst all of its users. The normal platform allows a sense of competition amongst its peers.

Not only does this combat the superficial attitudes people believe it has created. But it is also an attempt to counter act screen time. Something that a lot of parents and individuals are worried about in their children and themselves. Not spending time worrying about who has the most could possibly be an answer to staying off your phone. So, this experiment could work out for the benefit of the company. How it will be accepted will surely be relevant to us sooner rather than later but it is interesting to see a successful company make drastic change like this.

 Or this could hurt their large following. Instagram has been based on this for many years. It is why people are posting. They want a large amount of engagement and justification from the outside world. This is going to happen shortly, how long will this go on is the question that will be answered. Only time will tell, because at the end of the day there a business too and they will make the decision that benefits them the most.

Reference:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/09/tech/instagram-hiding-likes-us/index.html

On November 4^th, Facebook unveiled a new logo that meant to represent the parent company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more. The logo just says “Facebook,” but in a really bland and generic font that looks like it would fit well on a credit card. A GIF shows the word mark displaying in different colors to represent the different brands — blue for Facebook proper, green for WhatsApp, pinkish for Instagram, and so on.

The changes will see Facebook introduce a company logo that aims to distinguish Facebook the company from Facebook the app. It has its own typography and capitalisation in a move that CMO Antonio Lucio says will create a “visual distinction” between the company and app.

The move highlights its effort to be more clear with consumers about the apps it owns. A recent survey by nonpartisan think tank Pew found that only 29% of Americans correctly answered that Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook, while 49% are “not sure” and 22% did not know.

This despite the fact that behind the scenes the three services are operating much more closely. For example, advertisers can now create Stories and share them across Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. That “interoperability”, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls it, is only set to increase.

“You should be able to use any of our apps to reach your friends, and you should be able to communicate across our networks easily and securely,” Zuckerberg told analysts during its first quarter earnings call earlier this year.

The corporate Facebook brand will now appear on all its apps, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus, Messenger and Portal. It will appear in prominent positions, for example users will see “from Facebook” appear on the log-in screen. This is the first time the corporate entity has had its own branding.

However, that increasing interoperability has not gone down well with everyone at the company. The founders of Instagram – Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom – reportedly left after becoming uncomfortable at the increasing role Facebook was paying in its operations. The same is reportedly true for the founders of WhatsApp, in particular Facebook’s different approach to privacy.

While there are benefits to Facebook of being more closely associated with Instagram and WhatsApp, the reverse is also likely true. There are other concerns about bringing the brands closer together. The Facebook brand has been tainted by a number of scandals over the past few years, most notably Cambridge Analytica.

As Mark Ritson wrote earlier this year: “The one obvious brand management implication would be keeping your current and future acquisitions ring-fenced from Facebook’s toxic brand image.”

Whether it’s good or bad to emphasize the unity and wholeness of all apps of Facebook company, we will wait and see.

Resources:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/04/tech/facebook-new-logo/index.html

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/4/20947854/facebook-new-logo-design-change-parent-company-instagram-whatsapp

https://www.marketingweek.com/facebook-company-logo/

In November 2019, a Chinese snack brand Bai Cai Wei held a Snack Show. The Show floor no longer just belongs to fashion, and it is used as a new type of marketing, similar to the pop-up events.

Bai Cai Wei is clear about its brand positioning and has expressed it in different situations. For example, it collaborates with the Summer Palace to design a new package. According to the founder Wang Jingshuo, the strategy for the brand is to create three IPs in the following year, including a Food Festival, to create consumer scenario; a concert, to collaborate with artists to increase awareness; a show, to display fashion content related to snacks.

The Snack Show held by Bai Cai Wei was organized around the idea of a traditional Chinese story. The show combined fashion, snacks and Chinese traditional culture together. With the development of Chinese culture in the young audience, people have stronger culture confidence nowadays in China. Bai Cai Wei upgrades its brand concept and becomes a story-teller of Chinese culture.

Chinese culture is one of the unique marketing points of Bai Cai Wei. The brand had made good use of it and by strengthening the relationship between the brand and consumers. Instead of following the consumers by focusing on their needs, Bai Cai Wei becomes a good example of marketing as it actively leads the consumers to explore for identity.

I am helping a store called Shine Marketplace to do marketing recently. It is the first Chinese streetwear store in the U.S. How to effectively help brands to be recognized in the U.S. is the hardest question that we need to figure out.

The biggest obstacle that brands are facing nowadays is that the unstable relationship between China and the U.S., and trade war and uncertain oversea funding environment. The common question of Chinese companies is whether they should positively speak for themselves or keep a low profile. According to the manager of PR Newswire Wei Xiao’s research, the better choice for Chiese brands is to speak for themselves actively and positively instead of waiting for the reports from oversea media.

According to Wei, 67% of audiences abroad would know about Chinese companies by the press, and 12% of audiences abroad would accept the information leaked out by the companies. Therefore, Chinese companies should pay more attention to the press, and this is part of the branding.

According to the Cision 2019 report, the press release is regarded as the most trustworthiness sources, while social media is only trusted by 4% of the audiences. It reminds us of the fact that though social media is increasingly popular and important nowadays, its reliability still cannot compete with the traditional press.

As part of the Chinese company that is willing to help Chinese brands to go abroad, it is inspiring for me to understand the importance of creating good content and win the media coverage. The following is the insight that I have summarized of four practical methods to help the company go abroad.

1. find the UMP of the brand, and emphasize it
2. connect the brand to the public interest
3. understand the positioning of the media and the need of the media before pitching the brand story to them
4. create events that are good for spreading ideas

Brands are gearing up for the upcoming Black Friday. As the busiest shopping season of the year, Black Friday will bring huge profits to businesses. According to Shopify, companies generated more than $1.5 billion online in revenue at this time last year. Also, based on the statistic from Adobe Analytics, online sales of Black Friday in the United States reached $6.22 billion in 2018, up 23.6 percent from the previous year and a record high. In order to seize business opportunities, brands actively take different approaches, hoping to stand out from their competitors. Simply sending email to offer discounts may not appeal to consumers, so sometimes they need to find a new way. Here are two ways that businesses used last year. You can also see if you have received similar email this year.

1. Don’t ignore sales before and after black Friday

According to Amazon, stores also generate excellent sales the week before and the week after Black Friday. Therefore, businesses can choose to take early action or postpone the end time to maximize profits.

Last year, Wool and the Gang started “Black Thursday” the day before Black Friday and informed the customers through email. Kate Spade also sent an email to the sender under the name Kate Spade Surprise, announcing the advance black Friday promotion.

In addition, in December, Doggyloot sent customers an email claiming to take them back to black Friday, hinting at upcoming deals. The company managed to create a sense of black Friday, even though the discounts were modest. Forever 21 has taken a similar approach, with a sale on a Friday in July that is defined as “black Friday in July.”

2. Find ways to get your customers to open the email

On black Friday, every shopping website will give “best deal”, “free delivery”, and other benefits. Giving these benefits alone may not make a brand stand out from competitors. When consumers receive countless emails, how to get them to open the email of the brand and enter the corresponding shopping website becomes important.  

Chubbies sent an email last year titled “Black Friday is CANCELLED.” At a time when other brands were pushing discounts like crazy, Chubbies’s uniqueness might catch people’s attention. Customers could only go to the website to find out why black Friday was cancelled.

Also, Glossier took a different approach — helping consumers prepare. Glossier’s emails allowed consumers to add events to their calendars by clicking the “add to Cal” button to remind people not to miss the discount. The email helped Glossier successfully boost their email conversion rates during the busy shopping season. Moreover, some brands, like Happy Socks, have chosen not to show specific discounts in emails. This way of hiding the offer took advantage of people’s curiosity to get them to open their emails.

Reference

https://www.business2community.com/marketing/stand-crowd-black-friday-cyber-monday-01701229