New Marketing Experience : comparing the use brands make of social media. How they change our use of products. How firms deal with it. And how YOU can use them.
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 !
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 !
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...
When I took the train this morning I saw a print ad for the series "The Walking Dead" and I wondered: how do series sell themselves? Do and can series use new technologies?
For the record, zombies, as well as vampires or other gloomy/freaky creatures, benefit from a very large online and offline buzz. Partially propelled by the success of Twilight (not that I endorse that movie, but I have to face its large success and buzz)
As an introduction, let me present to you two print campaigns to promote the series "The Walking Dead":
- Norway
The Norwegian campaign (December 2011)
The principle of that campaign.
See the first poster? You could actually strip off bits of the poster to get the adress of the website www.foxcrime.no. Just as a zombie would fall apart.
- France
Translation in English : "I see dead people, and then I kill them"
Translation in English: The only good dead people are dead dead.
This print campaign was made by the agency NoSite, to promote the first broadcast of The Walking Dead on Sundance Channel France, for the 12th January. The aim of the campaign was to show the human side of zombies, which enables an even more shocking contrast between the characters and the catch-phrases.
NoSite, of which this print campaign was the first campaign, also animates the twitter account of Sundance Channel France, the French antenna of the American Sundance Channel, that will broadcast the Walking Dead in France. The aim of the Channel: broadcast independent American and foreign movies.
Seeing the campaign, I wondered if NoSite used other communicational devices.
And the answer was: not really.
- Use of Twitter: no twitter account was created for this specific campaign. Likewise, the Twitter account of Sundance Channel only relayed the information, therefore undermining all the surprise effects created by the print campaign.
- Use of Facebook: Sundance Channel France has more than 13 000 Facebook fans, but the information about the imminent broadcast of The Walking Dead was, just like on Twitter, only relayed. Photos of the print campaign were posted, but without any inspiring quotes, without all the zombie effect which attracts so many people to view The Walking Dead.
There is clearly a lack of use of the success of the zombie phenomena, new technologies speaking.
For instance, the Walking Dead Facebook account gathers nearly 5 million fans, with a minimum of 3000 likes for each post from the owner(s) of the page (AMC, the US channel that created The Walking Dead, and Mad Men for instance) and hundred of comments for those posts.
NoSite could have used this success to make a more interactive campaign to promote the broadcast of The Walking Dead in France. There is a huge online community of The Walking Dead fans: aside from the official facebook and twitter accounts, there are at least a dozen of non-official accounts that gather thousands of The Walking Dead fans.
The official French Facebook page for The Walking Dead nearly gathers 5 000 fans, but there is no information as to the official character of the page: who created it, for which purpose. Moreover, the owners of the page do not seem to control 100% of the content published on their page. Commercial links are for example posted without being controlled.
My advice: zombies are great (in communication). Why not take advantage of the existence of a gigantic fan community to use breaking-through communicational devices. For example, QR codes, or smartphones apps which could use all the fantastic imaginary behind the concept of zombies.
As all the previous articles show it, it has become indispensable for brands to use social networks to create a relationship with their customers.
However, more and more studies seem to proof a saturation of the commercial use of social networks: using your Facebook page to say "our products are great, why don't you try them ?" is not enough.
A few figures:
- Only 15% of French customers consider social networks as a good platform to buy online products.
- 60% of worldwide Internet users don't want to be disturbed by brands on social networks
(Source: study "A digital life" 14th December 2012, TNS Sofres)
My question: what can brands do in this context? Can a brand still create a real buzz online?
Yesterday, I went to the great inaugural conference of the Week'Up conference cycle at EDHEC business school, where Michel et Augustin (represented by Christopher, communication) and Faguo Shoes (represented by the co-founder Nicolas) were present. And, according to them, there is still a place for social brands in the communicational strategy of brands.
- Michel et Augustin's use of social networks is particularly interactive; users love the brand and the atmosphere on the Facebook page is very lively.
Lastly, Michel et Augustin launched a competition in which users had to find four golden cows (one hidden in one of their products- a giant cookie, one hidden in Paris, another one hidden on their website and still another one that was hidden in their building) to win a ticket to travel with Michel et Augustin to New York. I followed the reactions of the Facebook-users during that chasse, and everyone seemed to help each another.
Moreover, the contents published by regular Facebook-users are not censored and left as such: no censoring for Michel et Augustin, it's all about having an open dialogue with their customers. Users regularly comment on the taste of the products, about their last culinary discoveries and their love of the brand. To give an example, each time Michel and Augustin publish content on their page, at least 20 users "like" it, and, which is unusual and the signal of an excellent Facebook-relationship, it is quite frequent that more people comment than like the content.
At the conference, Christopher gave a clear answer to my question: yes, brands can still use social networks. Especially if the values of the brand are to create a real proximity relationship between the brand and its customers.
The main role for social networks: enabling customers to participate to the Michel et Augustin adventure.
- Faguo Shoes
For the story, Facebook was a key-ingredient in the success of Faguo shoes, a 3-year-old brand, created by two students while still studying in a parisian business school. The first sale events of the brand were created on Facebook.
Nevertheless, the use of Facebook users of the Faguo shoes page fan is different from that of Michel et Augustin. Even if the content created by the page is viewed and liked by around 10/20 people per post, there are not many comments.
Likewise, Nicolas saw Facebook as a way to communicate with customers about which products they would like. In other words, Facebook is a direct tool for asking customers what they want, and getting a quick answer. Customers also interact with the brand in that way: most comments posted are about where to find Faguo products. Sometimes, users post pictures of themselves with their Faguo shoes on, a nice way of creating a direct relationship between both parts.
My conclusion: the future of commercial uses of Facebook belong to the brands close to their customers, brands who take the time of answering as many customers as possible and who want a relationship with their customers. It is not enough to use social networks as a commercial tool, there should be a real will to create a community of lovers of the brand and to animate that community.
When you think about ecology, you might think first of wind turbines, protection of polar bears or of the Amazonian forest...
According to Rapanui and Natimeo, ecology is not only that: shopping for clothes can be a way to invest yourself in the protection of nature and of humans !
A brief history
• Rapanui: a Isle-of-Wight based firm, founded by two brothers in their early twenties in 2008. Products: organic wear for men and women, produced in ethical factories, and energy-powered with wind turbines. The aim: make eco-fashion cool !
The products are not what you would expect organic wear to look like (no itchy brown socks and itchy smelly sweaters). And, in addition to being fashionable, they are very agreeable to wear.
Slogan : eco-fashion
Save our Seas T-shirt - Rapanui
• Natimeo: created in 2011, Natimeo is a brand of the group Decathlon (sportswear and equipment). They furnish Decathlon's other brands in ethical and organic wear. For example, the image on your left is a merinos wool shirt they produced for the brand Domyos.
The products of Natimeo are not aimed at being fashionable but at fulfilling a promise of technicity of the product (not letting water pass through them, comfort for intense / sportive use of the clothes...)
Slogan : "let nature wear you"
Natimeo Wool Shirt
An innovative presentation of products
Both firms have understood very well what is at stake in customer relationship management, and more globally in the new terms of concrete marketing.
• A global presentation of the issues of ecology
People might know what ecology is ... or not. This is why both Natimeo and Rapanui explain their general approaches to ecology and their business models in specific pages. Video and image devices are very nicely displayed on the Natimeo website, from the second you enter the adress http://www.natimeo.com/ in your browser.
The business model of Natimeo
The above video for example explains the steps of the Natimeo products, from the water used in the production of cotton to the final product.
The same global explanation is present throughout the Rapanui website, but their approach is more "product by product".
• Presentation of the products: both sites aim at making traceability of the product from A to Z possible. Both Rapanui and Natimeo for example display maps of where the products come from (where the plants where produced, where they are transformed in a tee-shirt), how they are transformed, how they come to the consumer
However, Natimeo's presentation is more tricky: they do not sell directly the products they make : the products are sold through the other brands of Decathlon. And, Decathlon does not yet use a traceability map for each of its product. Moreover, on Decathlon's website, there is no specific rubric for organic products / products coming from Natimeo.
Of course, when you stumble on a Natimeo product, it is presented as such, but I haven't yet found devices that lead the consumer directly to more these more ethical and ecological products.
On the other hand, Rapanui do sell directly their products. Guidance through the products is very easy and you nearly instantaneously the product you were dreaming of. Nevertheless, these is a limited number of products, especially of the collection for women.
However, for the existing products, details about the product are very thorough and each product has their own specific webpage, where the consumer can find the traceability map and additional information about the product (why bamboo is more ecology-respectful than cotton for example).
At the World Forum of Lille in november 2011, I had the opportunity of meeting with the founders of Rapanui, who took the time of explaining me their use of new technologies. For instance, the use of traceability maps was seen as an innovative device enabling the consumers to make a transparent choice.
The products of Rapanui are also sold in shops (38 independent retailers, and one owned shop) and making a transparent choice is there made possible by the use of QR codes. On each product, a QR code is attached, and linked to the traceability map of the concerned product. Therefore, the consumer can see, even if in a shop, where his / her product was made.
Similarly, both firms promote eco-labels, to give their targets an easy way of determining the environmental and social impact of the products.
Natimeo Rapanui
Both indicators are very similar: the use of an A to E (and even A to F scale for Rapanui) scale, with colors (green : good, red : bad), that make recognition instantaneous. The principle is the same than that for cars for example.
Let's note that for Rapanui, creating an eco-label, which can lead to a transparent choice for consumers, goes further than Natimeo: Rapanui has aims at creating a proposal to the European Commission, to extend the creation of this eco-label to the European level.
The various letters of the label can be translated into:
• A – organic ethical sustainable • B – ethical with some work to sustainable • C – ethical • D – not bad, not good either • E – needs improving • F – some organic, ethical or sustainable • G – not organic, ethical or sustainable
How Natimeo and Rapanui reach out to their consumers is different:
- Social networks : Rapanui is present both on Facebook (2 081 fans) and on Twitter. They intensively use Facebook to direct consumers to their website, but the content is not perceived as spam: both the products and the ideas are presented, but not in a "commercial" point of view. It's more of a "hey ! Did you know that ?" communicational style. Moreover, adherents to the community benefit from regular discounts and information about the theme of ecology.
Natimeo is absent from Facebook and Twitter, a certain disadvantage. However, Decathlon, the final seller of products is very present on both networks, which helps nuancing this statement.
- Blogs. Both brands have understood that fixed contents are not the solution, and regularly produce updated content: the recent products, what the ambassadors are doing, discounts, commercial operations. Rapanui has even produced a Christmas documentary, very good initiative though the video itself (7:14 minuts) is rather long.
The Grotto documentary - Rapanui
- People. Obviously, both firms
have understood the importance of a quick customer service, and of the
availability of a material contact. It is therefore very easy to find, on both
websites, an email address. Moreover, the names and faces of people appear on the different pages of the website (for example, one of the co-founders of Rapanui appears as Father Christmas in the Grotto Documentary)
• Sports as a promotion tool
If Natimeo's final targets (through Decathlon) are sportsmen and women, the use of sport as a commercial argument is more exploited by Rapanui, who uses ambassadors (base-jumpers for example) to promote its brand and create a buzz !
• Rapanui's use of follow-up
There is an additional number of devices Rapanui use that Natimeo doesn't :
- A newsletter
An extract from a Rapanui newsletter (20th November 2011)
- When you order a product, you receive both an email when you have ordered it (to confirm the order) and an email when the product leaves Rapanui. This is quite classic, but what is not is the redaction of the emails, in a very informal tone :
"We will keep you updated via email on the progress of your order, which will be processed and shipped to you shortly via UK 1st Class Delivery.
For any questions meanwhile we're only a phonecall away." (extract from an email received from Rapanui)
- The redaction of the whole website is in this same tone. We can compare it to Natimeo's use of smileys on their website, partially aimed at constructing a close relationship with its consumers.
- You can ask for free Rapanui stickers
- You receive a hand-written note in your package. The person who wrote mine even noted that I come from France since he / she wrote a joyful "Bonjour" to salute me.
=> Conclusions
Ecology has clearly took on a new step, with new products that correspond to the customers' expectations. And new business models such as that of Rapanui can be combined to older models like Decathlon : it is not only recent startups that can understand the importance of preserving the planet !
Moreover, it seems that both Natimeo and Rapanui have understood the new principles of marketing, and of establishing an informal and complicity relationship between firms and customers. Natimeo's use of new technologies for marketing purposes is still hesitant, but the firm was created very recently, that is three years after Rapanui.
For Natimeo, the use of these new technologies stay undermined by Decathlon being the final seller of products. However, the similarities between both firms (the business-model, anchored around the notion of "circular economy" - see the Elen McArthur foundation for more information, the use of new customer relationship management, the use of informal communication tools, the use of traceability indicators) are astonishing, and might lead to a new marketing and business paradigm.
For more, see : http://www.rapanuiclothing.com/ and http://www.natimeo.com/
As you
might have heard, Marks and Spencer came back in France last week. They opened
a 1.400 m2 store on no less
than the Champs-Elysées on November 24. This store’s opening was awaited by
many people, mainly those who had witnessed the closure of all Marks and
Spencer’s shops in France ten years ago. On the Champs-Élysées you could see
dozens of impatient M&S lovers waiting to get their crackers back.
The
clientele is different from that in England; while in the UK, Marks and
Spencers addresses the classic housewife, the clientele is much larger in
France: tourists, fashionistas, English ex-pats, English food lovers…
Rich tea biscuits
Products:
they are exactly the same than in the UK (name and descriptions in English…),
but little signs in French tell the customer what’s so special about each
product.
Is it just
another Marks and Spencer store? Apparently, no. Marks and Spencer’s
re-implantation in France also plays a role in their “bricks and clicks”
strategy, which consists in combining the store and e-commerce offer. Last October, the
French website http://marksandspencer.fr
was launched, and enabled French customers, a month before the opening of the
new M&S store, to order M&S products on a specific platform. The
website, quite similar in contents and presentation to the international
website (http://www.marksandspencer.com/)
is in French, which is less confusing for French customers than the English
website. Delivery prices are quite classic: 4,95€ under 5 days, 9,95€ under 2
days, free delivery over 35€.
International website French website
The
store’s experience aims at combining both “live” sale and online sale. You can
find 2 touch screen ordering points and 2 fixed iPads to buy products and be
delivered home. At first, you might think “Why would I want to buy stuff online
if I can get it right now?” Two main reasons: delivery facilities (do you
really imagine yourself carrying 5 bags of Cadbury around Paris if you are on a
5-days trip?) and shopping facility (you don’t have to win a ruthless the girl
next to you to get the last size 10 cardigan). A nice initiative, but a little
bit too cautious technologically speaking: M&S will anyways attract
customers to their brand new store so why not invest more massively in the use
of new technologies?
Smartphone
applications? None found… Which is again deceiving. Many concrete uses of
smartphone applications could be imagined, for delivery tracking for instance.
Indeed, an increasing number of customers require firms to produce a very
precise delivery tracking system, on all kinds of support (website, mail,
smartphone applications). Especially with the Christmas period coming up !
Once
again, their website is quite classic, and doesn’t jump at your eyes as THE
website where you will spend hours and hours, how much you may like M&S.
Where
Marks and Spencer scores in terms of new technologies is their use of social
media : they are present on Facebook (408 504 likes) and on Twitter (nearly 47
000 followers). M&S uses Facebook to present the current reductions and new
products, through open questions such as “if I could have
anything from Christmas from M&S it would be —". Even if their community
doesn’t assemble a tremendous number of fans (compared to Cadbury for
instance), M&S fans are attached to their brand and lively interact to the
content produced by M&S. The Christmas question above for example received
a total of 1077 commentaries (i.e "their bank account). Likewise,
the twitter feed is very interactive, and M&S answers very quickly to the
questions of their users. Let's note that M&S doesn't censor what users say: the comments are left as they are. A clever marketing, letting people know that M&S accepts some kinds of critics.
My
conclusion: a great new store, but a timid use of new technologies for now,
especially on smartphone applications. M&S’s community one of their strong
marketing assets, why not using it to become a trendsetter in new technologies?
