Is ecology wearable ? Part 2

Remember, two months ago I was telling you about Rapanui and Natimeo, two brands that had started to develop organic wear. 

This month, I tested two Natimeo products, offered by the brand and compared them with the Rapanui tee-shirt I had
(see http://newmarketingexperience.blogspot.com/2011/12/rapanui-vs-natimeo-is-ecology-wearable.html) 

         

On your left, the Arpenaz 400 L pants, with mixed components (part organic coton, part spandex). 

And on your right, a 100% organic coton tee-shirt. 

Both the pants and the tee-shirt are very confortable, easy to wear and don't loose their colours. Which is why I have a solid "Yes" answer to the question "is ecology wearable ?"

The comparison I would make with Rapanui is style-wise : being designed for sports, Natimeo products are not as stylish as Rapanui's. One of their first products was a limited edition teeshirt with the slogan "recycle, reduce, reuse. Too bad it's still not in stores...

My question: how can you communicate on organic wear ? 

The first intuition of many people told about organic wear is to say "organic wear... what's that ? I thought only food was organic". Therefore, in order to clarify your positioning, the first step as an organic wear producer is to make your consumers aware about what is organic wear. This way, your consumers will understand why choosing organic wear when they need new clothes is a more ethical and responsible choice. 

  

An example: Merinos wool by Natimeo

As you might have expected, I also recommend using social networks to communicate on your brand (assuming you are launching a line of eco-wear or organic products). For now, Natimeo is not yet present on social networks, but as it is a new brand and that its products are sold under the label "Oxylane", it is not a major default. 

What I want to insist in this post is on the importance that ecology is taking not only in theoretical debates but also in business. Look around you and you will see that more and more brands try to develop towards more ecological responsability or even base their entire business model on more respect of Nature. 

Natimeo is the perfect illustration of this tendency : it is part of a historical international group and yet it takes into account these new dynamics. It is very likely that the share of Natimeo products in the store shelves of our Decathlon stores will dramatically increase in the following years, so watch out, ecology is coming, and its growing fast !

How can a brand create traffic on its Facebook page?

The question of the day is: how can brands create real and sustainable traffic on their Facebook pages ?

Many solutions are possible but today I will only present three recent and possibly most pertinent ones to you! 

Use humour

One of my favorite pages as a marketer and as a consumer is the Oasis Facebook page (for the record, Oasis is a French brand of softdrinks). Content is regularly diffused on the page (https://www.facebook.com/oasisfunpage) : every 2-4 days or so, and yet it attracts many likes and comments per post. You can at least count a bare minimum of 1 000 likes and 60 comments per post. 

Why this success? The graphic quality of Oasis' marketing campaigns does have an important share in that, but my belief is that Oasis has understood what social networkers want from them : humour. All the non-socialmedia ads of Oasis are based on fun and humour and the same tone is conveyed through their Facebook page. 

A subtle technique : using the news

Two examples, inspired from the very recent victory of Jean Dujardin, first French actor to ever win the Oscar of the best actor. 

Oasis- The Poirtist

Ernie the hedgehog is back - The Grattist

Personalize your content

When you are a brand, you have to produce content in order to maintain a certain level of attention from your fans, but you also have to thank your fans. Many brands today don't hesitate in thanking frequently their fans, by posting phrases such as "thanks for being so many to like our page" in their weekly posts. Some brands go further and make dedicated fan-thankyou actions. 

These type of operations can be adressed to the community of fans as a whole  or search maximum individualization. Here are two examples:

Heinz's thank you post after reaching their 50 000th Facebook fan

Oasis' thank you after reaching 2 million Facebook fans. 

For this operation, Oasis created a special application, which took your profile picture and included it in a portrait starring a fruit of the brand and a thank you note. 

Create a competition between social networkers

The principle here would be using first the network of social networkers already fans of a brand, and the buzz potential of a brand to create a truly interactive contest. This could be for example a photo contest in which fans have to take pictures of themselves with a product of the brand in order to win the prize, with the condition that the picture with the maximum number of likes on Facebook wins the contest. 

Why does this work? Because fans who play the game become highly involved in the contest and generally motivate a high number of their Facebook friends in order to win the contest.

And thanks to a virality effect, assuming the brand has done previous efficient communication, the site and contest attracts thousands of curious people. 

My example: the Heinz Art Challenge

The challenge: draw online, with virtual ketchup, a composition of your choice on a plate in order to win the printing of your drawing on 3 unique plates. 

List of winners of the contest 

 Ad for the promotion of the Heinz Art Challenge 

However, there is a danger of non-implication of those fans and a risk of a very ephemeral relationship. Which is why brands should not only use contests in order to create traffic on their Facebook pages and should vary their initiatives. 

Thanks to all of you readers who contribute to my pleasure in writing this blog. Don't hesitate to answer to the posts, give your advice or disagree with me. Debate is highly encouraged ! 

Sponges and marketing

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered about the marketing strategies of rather odd or basic products, such as sponges. Can you really do an innovative marketing strategy to sell sponges ?

As you might have guessed, the answer is yes of course. But, how, you ask me ?

The marketing and communication strategy I chose to focus upon is Spontex’s, a french brand created in the 1930's and whose principal product is sponges... 

In 1999, Spontex launched a communication campaign starring a cute-as-can-be hedgehog, fallen in love with a sponge, whose characteristic was to be as scratching as the very same hedgehog.

Since then, the hedgehog has been the unstopped symbol of Spontex’s campaign, which allowed creating a somehow very cheeky tone in the very unsexy universe of sponges.

This campaign caused a huge buzz when it was broadcasted, and lead me to a question : how did the brand maintain the tone of the campaign?

The use of social media by Spontex is surprisingly very successful. The Facebook fan page (https://www.facebook.com/spontex) for the brand rassembles 197 419 fans. Their facebook strategy 

- Official posts, at least once a week

- Maintaining the same cheeky, and quite daring sometimes, tone as for the TV or print ads. For example, they have been publishing recently once a week, the "hot resolutions" of Ernie (the hedgehog, whose name appears to be quite known to Spontex lovers) 

Resolution n°9 - "In 2012, I will start music"

The hot resolutions are very followed by the fans of the facebook page and get between 100 and more than 400 likes, and 20 comments per post. 

One interesting thing to note is also the international success of Spontex's communication. Lots of amateur fan pages are created on Facebook, among which you can find a Ernie fan page in Germany (264 fans). 

- A harmonious communication between the print ads, the official website and the facebook page. Impertinent tone, and direct phrases are used : the allusions to sex are quite obvious and efficiently builds the loyalty of consumers to the brand. The official website directly refers to the Facebook page for games such as "find the G point"

- Keeping up with the news

Saint Valentine was one occasion for Spontex to publish a nice photo, in which the brand incited you to tag your friends...

... but more than that, Spontex also hijacks high-interest political facts, such as the current presidential election in France. 

This week, Nicolas Sarkozy, current French president, announced its candidacy to the 2012 Presidential election, with the slogan "La France forte" ("A strong France"), which Spontex diverted in to "La France frotte" (France is scrubing). A very nice pull, liked by nearly 700 people on the Spontex official page, and commented by nearly 40 users. 

However, to end with this analysis, Spontex's strategy has not always been the best, as shows the following video, broadcasted last year for Saint Valentine's day...