DHL understands better than most that a traditional advertising campaign is expensive and ineffective. But it still wanted to market itself, especially in the face of more efficient and effective competition.
So the firm decided to trick its competitors into advertising DHL across a city in the US.
DHL sent packages via competitors such as TNT and UPS to addresses that were awkward to deliver to. To ensure they weren’t caught the boxes were covered with a special ink that turned black when the boxes were chilled to sub-zero temperatures.
The ink was temperature-activated and as it warmed up, the ink faded revealing a large message that said “DHL is faster.”
The poor deliverymen had to struggle through crowds to deliver the large boxes. Whilst it’s unlikely many people actually noticed anything but it is bound to get a lot of viral exposure.
I’m looking forward to the response from UPS and the others!
Wonda Coffee, owned by Asahi Group of Japan used The New Straits Times (NST) a Malaysian daily to launch its hallmark canned coffee with what the NST called “its first 5D advertisement campaign.”
According to the NST the campaign for the ready to drink coffee was “widely touted as the most amazing print-enabled campaign.”
It ran for four days and readers of the newspaper were promised they would be able to “engage their senses of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste with the launch of Wonda.”
There were multiple teaser ads before the launch, at least four full page ads in one edition of the paper, wraparounds of another, a four page ‘pop-up’ ad and sponsorships of whole supplements of the paper that required the use of 3D glasses. The 3D glasses were supposed to come with the paper but ours didn’t.
There were advertorials on the benefits of coffee, teaser ads and even a little music box that played a Wonda coffee Jingle that probably went out across radio. I couldn’t get it to work although it does now play occasionally, normally when nobody is near it.
Typical Wonda print ad
There were also multiple messages, taglines and headings used in the campaign that I found confusing.
I don’t know the cost of this campaign but it won’t have been cheap. It is not uncommon for a brand to launch with a mass advertising campaign like this. It’s the wrong way but if you give your product launch to an advertising agency, what else can you expect?
One of the key points of a launch is to ensure that if any buzz is created and consumers buy into the idea of the product, their ability to engage physically with the brand must be seamless. In other words it needs to be available or better still be everywhere the consumer goes.
Although I’m a coffee drinker, I’m not a fan of instant coffee but I decided to buy the product. On the third day of the campaign, I went down to my local convenience store to buy Wonda. They sell most drinks here except it would seem, Wonda.
The following day the NST carried another full page ad for Wonda coffee with a coupon offering a can for 10 cents if you buy from 7eleven. So I tore out the coupon and went over to the local 7eleven. I had a look in the fridges and there was no sign of Wonda coffee. Competitor brands from Nescafe and others were represented and selling for RM1.90 (local brand) – RM2.20 (Nescafe).
I showed the coupon to the assistant and asked for my 10c drink. He wasn’t aware of the offer. However after some cajoling and a couple of rereads while the queue grew he went to the storeroom and got me a can. I asked what the retail price is and he said RM1.90. On the tin it says premium coffee yet is priced below Nescafe.
Since the big splash in the NST I’ve seen Wonda coffee posters at toll booths and there is at least one TVC (see below) so they are obviously spending a lot of money on traditional media.
But of course the initial buzz around the product launch will die down within a week or two once the advertising has stopped. In this era of social media, there is a great opportunity to maintain any traction by taking the marketing to the community.
I had a quick look on Youtube to see if there is a consumer driven competition there. All I could find was this TV commercial.
The TVC has been up for a month and has only received 400 views. Interestingly not one like or dislike. Seriously underwhelming but at least we know they haven’t paid for likes!
Determined now to find out how Wonda is engaging consumers on Social Media I figured there would be a big splash on Facebook, right? Nope. I couldn’t find anything. Twitter? Nothing.
I wonder why Wonda isn’t using FB to launch itself
So here we are in 2014, launching a new product in Malaysia and there doesn’t seem to be any use of social media!
Even though Facebook is the most visited site in Malaysia – There are 10.5 million Facebook users in Malaysia (out of a population of about 27 million) and 3.5 million of those are 18 – 24, probably the perfect target market for this product. Social media is responsible for 33% of all web traffic in Malaysia.
Globally 93% of marketers rate social tools as important and 90% of them support this by using social media channels for business. In this social media dominated era, why aren’t the team responsible for launching Wonda using Social media?
Now of course I don’t know what else is involved in the launch of Wonda and it could be that some sort of Social media presence is part 2 of the launch.
Although not the right way to launch a product, I hope this is the case because ultimately, it will be consumers on social media who determine the success or failure of Wonda Coffee and not a traditional campaign pushed out across traditional media, no matter how creative it is and how ‘amazing’ it is.
Asahi is targetting 20% of Malaysia’s coffee beverage market with Wonda. If it continues to use old fashioned methods to launch and market Wonda and doesn’t leverage on Social Media, it won’t achieve this goal.
In my previous post I gave 10 reasons why you should use video to build your brand. You can read that post here
But there needs to be a creative element to those videos. Looking at the airline business, far too many carriers believe the bulk of their marketing dollars should be spent on well produced but hugely irritating glossy videos featuring pretty stewardesses, cute kids and seats that look further apart than they are on any plane I’ve ever flown.
A case in point is Thai Airways. In 2010, to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the carrier released a well produced video that gnaws at the heartstrings but does little new to differentiate it from competitors.
The video has generated a respectable 150,000 views since its launch in 2010 but only 400 likes which would suggest it has made very little impact.
There are some though that are doing their best to move away from this predictable and instantly forgetable approach. Most recently, Virgin America and Air New Zealand have approached the safety video from a new direction.
Instead of the oft ignored stewardess standing self consciously in the aisle and demonstrating how to use a seat belt, where are the exits, how to put on a life jacket and what to do when the oxygen mask drops, these airlines have gone to great expense with a refreshing approach to the tried and tested.
Earlier this week, on the 29th October 2013, Virgin America launched an airline safety video that it claims is the first safety video set entirely to music. They are probably right and the result is impressive.
Obviously I’m not the only one to think so as the video has already been viewed by more than 700,000 people in just two days. What I like about the Virgin video is that they are keeping the story live by inviting dancers to audition for future versions.
Potential participants must send an Instagram video to a specially set up safety dance battle website. Some of those Instagram videos, that can only be up to 15 seconds long will then no doubt take on a life of their own, thereby continuing the Virgin America narrative. So far, the video has over 13,500 Likes on YouTube.
Earlier this year Air New Zealand teamed up with Eton educated ex SAS officer Bear Grylls to create a unique and captivating safety video. The pretty stewardess and cute kids are still there but I’m sure you’ll agree the rest of the cast is unusual!
To date, the Air New Zealand video has garnered more than 277,000 views on Youtube. Not bad for an inflight safety video!
I did a quick search of Youtube to see what Asian airlines are doing on Youtube. Cathay Pacific has created a lot of content some of which has generated a lot of views. Last year they did a ‘Day in the Life’ feature with flight attendants, pilots and ground crew.
This video of a day in the life of Grace, a flight attendant has a respectable 200,000 views but not too many likes.
Malaysia Airlines YouTube page suggests the carrier is creating a lot of video content but judging by the numbers of views it isn’t compelling enough for consumers to engage with, Like and share. However, when they do get creative, or rather innovative interest in the brand goes through the roof, as shown by this flashmob video that has generated over 1,100,000 views in just under 2 years.
Unfortunately this project appears to be tactical rather than part of a strategic initiative because it doesn’t seem to go anywhere or be integrated with any other activities.
According to Cisco, 90% of all Internet traffic will be video by 2017. These Asian carriers need to start producing content that is interesting and relevant. And that content needs to be part of a planned, strategic story that resonates with target markets in order for those markets to engage with and share across the ecosystem. Otherwise it becomes just another piece of expensive content that is out there, rarely viewed and therefore ineffective.
In 2002, Nokia was number two in the list of super brands in Britain. by 2010 it was 89th.
In 2010 Nokia, sold 450 million handsets, outselling Apple 10 to one. In 2012 the firm sold 16 million of its flagship Lumia handsets. In the same period, Samsung sold 384 mobile phones while Apple sold 125 million iPhones.
By 2010 Nokia’s mobile phone market share had slid from 36.4 percent share in 2009 to 28.9%. Nokia still sells more mobile phones than any other company but consumers no longer want mobile phones, they want smartphones.
And at the heart of the smartphone is the operating system. By January 2011, Google’s Android, and its Chinese versions Tapas and OMS had become the top smartphone platform in the world with an 888% year-over-year growth.
Nokia’s Symbian system was a very close second with Research in Motion a distant third and Apple’s iOS way back in fourth. Microsoft’s mobile operating system barely warranted a mention with 4% of the market.
Under pressure in a market it once dominated Nokia panicked. Realising the key to smartphone sales is the OS, it began to muck about with Symbian, a perfectly good OS with no more flaws than the iOS.
But because of the now huge size of the organisation, issues bought up during the testing of touch screens and browsers were often ignored.
Desperate, Nokia launched the N-Gage with too few poor quality games and terrible network connectivity for multiplayers, the phone was blown away by the PSP and DS.
Next came another disaster, the Ovi. Nokia’s answer to the iTunes Store was an unmitigated disaster. In 2007, Nokia restarted its touchscreen development after deciding in 2006 that touchscreens were essentially a gimmick!
This delay meant that the N95 and N97, both good smartphones in their own right and with email, music players, the Internet and GPS as well as a slide out Querty keyboard were supposed to compete with the increasingly dominant and cool iPhone. Sadly they didn’t get anywhere near it.
Next up, the beautiful N8, launched in 3Q2010. Someone described the N8 as engineering porn with a 12 megapixel camera good enough for professional photographers. But the N8 was outsold 6 to one in Europe and did even worse in the tech savvy, gadget hungry and fast growing Asian markets.
By now frantic, no hysterical Nokia tried a completely new Linux based OS called MeeGo but it’s corporate heart wasn’t in it and MeeGo only got a year.
In October 2011, in what was seen by many to be a last throw of the dice, Nokia teamed up with Microsoft and launched the partnership with a US$112m global brand repositioning campaign launch of its first phone running on the Windows 7 operating system.
This was a big mistake. Microsoft’s Phone 7 had already launched in Q4/2010 on about twelve handsets from a number of manufacturers. During the quarter it achieved a meagre 1.5 million sales, earning it about a 2% market share and worse than Windows Mobile which had 4%.
During the same period, the latest version of Symbian (the all new user-friendly touch screen version that powers the N8) was launched on 3 Nokia smartphones and sold 5 million units. All Symbian products sold a respectable 32 million units.
The six month repositioning campaign, that was meant to regain lost market share from rivals Android, Apple and Blackberry failed and was soon consigned to the overflowing but ever popular positioning graveyard in the sky.
Yesterday on 21st October 2013, in a valiant but misguided attempt to steal some of Apple’s thunder, Nokia unveiled 2 new 6 inch window smartphones. These new smartphones are well designed and as always, have great hardware including a sensational camera, an app that displays the contents of the phone on a PC and more than one microphone.
Right phone, wrong OS
These new phones, developed before the decision to sell the handset business to Microsoft for US$7.4 billion was made, could give Android and iOS phones a serious run for their money. Except there is a problem. The problem is that these great products run on Windows mobile. And Windows is a dying brand. Widows mobile owns only 4% of the global market. And that is unlikely to change.
Windows is a dying brand
Today, Windows mobile products don’t come close to delivering the experience Android and Apple smartphone products offer. And that won’t change. And if Nokia can’t offer a compelling experience, Nokia (or Microsoft) can’t save the Nokia brand.
Malaysia Airlines issued a press release yesterday announcing the airline has one million “Likes” on Facebook.
You don’t need me to tell you Facebook is massive. But I will. Facebook is massive. If it were a country it would be the third largest in terms of population, the largest in terms of area covered and probably the richest in terms of income.
So it is understandable that MAS wants to use Social Media and in particular Facebook, to build its business. Indeed, Khairul Syahar Khalid, Malaysia Airlines’ Head of Advertising & Promotions says, “Social Media is a new frontier for marketing, and as many brands have discovered, going on social media certainly pays.”
Encik Khairul adds, “We have positioned social media at the forefront of our marketing mix. We will be pushing the boundaries even further with our next marketing plans, all of which will see the social media platforms at the forefront. We want to continue to engage with our fans globally at a much deeper level whilst growing our footprint further. Growing our engagement with fans globally has contributed significantly to our business turnaround successes.”
Crediting Social Media with providing a significant contribution to the improvements in the airline’s performances recently is interesting and shows how important is Social Media.
Personally I think it is exciting that MAS is pushing the boundaries even further on social media, especially after the dreadful advertising campaign that is still being run. For more on that campaign please refer to this article
To thank fans for helping the airline reach one million ‘Likes’ on Facebook, MAS created a video with their social media ambassador, Malaysian singer Yuna. The video has been viewed 2,000 times since its launch a week ago.
Incidentally, I believe the Malaysian government has missed a trick here because I think Yuna should be the face of the Malaysia Nation Brand. You can read more about that here.
But how important are Facebook ‘Likes’? Are they a relevant metric for a business? What do they tell us and how can we leverage them?
The bad news is that 96% (BrandGlue goes even further, stating that only 0.02% of fans who ‘Like’ a page ever return) of ‘fans’ never return to a page after liking it. Moreover on Facebook, most posts are seen only by about 10% of fans.
Another little known fact about Facebook is that when fans create new posts on your Facebook page, other fans don’t necessarily see them. In other words, just because you go to your fan page doesn’t mean your fans are doing the same.
Consumers are increasingly sceptical about Facebook ‘Likes’ because it it is so easy and cheap to buy them. Twipquick is offering 100,000 Facebook ‘Likes’ for about US$750.
Any social media strategy must have clearly defined target markets and relevant customer data and content must be developed that will resonate with those customers. This content must resonate with those target markets. After all, there aren’t any groups for 18-35 year olds on Facebook.
MAS must avoid taking its advertising campaigns and trying to push them out across social media. Taking a video and dubbing it into the local language is not a social media strategy. This is simply mass economy marketing and there is no place for that model in the social economy where customers not companies define brands.
MAS must engage consumers and encourage them to contribute to the MAS story and then share and encourage the sharing of that content whilst enabling multiple channels for consumers to interact through.
At the same time, MAS must not forget its existing customers. MAS has millions of frequent flyer members but it currently neglects these existing customers, despite spending a lot of money to acquire them.
The 1970s are considered to be the decade in which Hollywood rebranded itself after the collapse of the studio system of the 1960s. Independent filmmakers (at the time) such as Scorsese, Lucas and Spielberg all got their breaks in the 1970s creating such iconic movies as Jaws, Star Wars, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Raiders, ET and Chinatown.
It was also a period (no pun intended) when some of the scariest horror movies such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Exorcist (in my opinion the scariest film ever), The Shining and Carrie which was possibly the forerunner of the teen horror flick, were released.
But for every successful blockbuster, I think that something like 7 fail. And those failures can be really, really expensive. John Carter, released in 2012 is rumoured to have lost RM250 million (US$90 million), despite a RM330 (US$100 million) million marketing campaign.
So in an attempt to reduce failures and to squeeze more money out of a successful franchise, Hollywood likes to remake films. The latest of which is Carrie. I saw Carrie when I was 14. I wish I hadn’t. Carrie is an outsider, her mother is a religious nut and all of her classmates hate her. But Carrie has special powers. Telekinesis powers which means that she can mess with your mind, especially when you piss her off. Add in her first period, pigs blood, a prom, nasty girls etc. You can imagine the rest.
But the movie still has to be sold. And selling a movie is not easy. Especially as international audiences are often the difference between a success and failure – John Carter only took US$80 million in the States, over US$100 million came from Asia. So they decided to come up with a digital marketing campaign whereby they would lay the foundations with a video and then encourage consumers to do the rest.
So far the video has received almost 10 million views in 2 days. The cost? Maybe RM320,000 (US$100,000). Sure a viral campaign is nothing new but it shows that marketing departments need to open their eyes to the social economy and in some sectors, there actually may be one size fits all solutions.
It’s official, the new tagline that was supposed to launch the Malaysia Nation Brand will not now be used. The official launch for “Endless Possibilities” was supposed to be yesterday however it was cancelled. You can read more about the cancellation here.
My sources tell me that McKinsey, Futurebrand, Leo Burnett, McCann Erickson and O&M were all involved although I haven’t confirmed this. Ignoring the fact that not one of them bothered to Google the phrase “Endless Possibilities” before giving it the Prime Minister and causing him much embarrassment, my main concern is that the whole sorry process will be repeated once again and we’ll see them trying to retrofit the Malaysia Nation Brand around a tagline.
This is not the way to build a Nation Brand. You can get insights into how to build a nation brand here and here
On the 5th September 2013, I reported that the newly developed tagline for Malaysia “Endless Possibilities” would not be used. You can read the full story here. The official launch was supposed to be on 17th September 2013 but this has now officially been ‘postponed’. This is a hugely embarrassing situation.
Malaysia tagline: Dead in the water
Background
According to an article in the Malaysian Insider on 12th September 2013, “…the campaign and tagline was refined by two foreign consultancies and a market research firm after discussions with officials from the Prime Minister’s Department.”
The article goes on to say, “”The consultants refined it from the phrase ‘Endless Opportunities’ which was used in a speech to ‘Endless Possibilities’.”
“An advertising agency was then called in to create the logo, which the Tourism Ministry used together with the tagline last year before it was used in Davos.”
This process began in December 2011 and the new tagline was given its first outing by the Tourism Ministry in Dubai in 2012. It was due to be launched officially on 17th September 2013, almost two years after the project was initiated. You only need to read this blog or those of any other destination branding experts to know this is not the way to build a destination brand. So what can we learn from this nightmare?
Here are 5 general lessons we can learn to ensure that next time the Malaysia Nation Brand project is executed properly:
1) If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, YOU CANNOT DEVELOP A TAGLINE AND THEN RETROFIT A BRAND AROUND THAT TAGLINE USING ADVERTISING AND PROMOTIONS. It is a fundamental of branding. If you are responsible for developing a Nation Brand you must understand this. I don’t care if someone gives you a tagline and tells you to build a brand around it. It simply is not possible and you have to stand your ground. 2) A tagline is not a brand. Let me say it again, A TAGLINE IS NOT A BRAND. Too many taglines have made promises the Nation couldn’t possibly keep, have left potential customers underwhelmed, have been lost in the clutter of advertising noise or have been ruined by an event beyond the control of the Nation. Moreover, we live in a social economy. What is the first thing a prospect will do when he hears a tagline? He will look to the Internet to find out what is being said about the country. If he sees more negativity than positivity, he’ll believe what others are saying, not what the Nation says. It won’t matter how much you spend on corporate driven messages pushed out across mass media that try to convince him otherwise. 3) Ask yourself how many great ads you remember from yesterday or the day before. Not many, right? Even those in the industry find this a tough question. There is so much advertising noise that it is very hard for a campaign to be seen, let alone remembered and acted upon. There is a place for advertising countries, but not for using advertising to gain traction for the brand. 4) Just because you hire a research company to do your research, doesn’t mean you’ll get the right research. And if you are starting with a tagline and trying to retrofit your brand around that tagline, your research is going to be flawed before it even starts. After all, how can you develop the right research methodology if you are starting from the wrong place? 5) If you insist on starting with a tagline, Google it first before you do anything. A Google search of “Endless Possibilities” throws up 13 million results including destinations that have already used it – Mongolia, Israel, Sagada, corporations – BHS India and conferences, t-shirts, singers etc. Every stage of every element of any brand development should be checked and double checked again.
13 million results requires some investigation before acceptance
There are other, more specific lessons that can be learned from this issue but there is nothing to be gained by outlining them here. Let’s just hope that to avoid any more lost time and money, the project will now be carried out the way it should have been in the first place.
HubSpot, the inbound marketing gurus have come up with an impressive infographic that outlines the history of marketing from the first one dimensional ads of 1450 to the digital, more interactive model of today.
The history of marketing
It’s a massive infographic that features all the key moments in the evolution of marketing such as the print era that lasted 300 or so years to the introduction of new channels including TV and radio advertising and then onto the digital era of video, search marketing, inbound marketing, email and more before coming to the present era of social media and mobile.
Proton Edar CEO Hisham Othman stated recently that the company “Would pay greater attention to product quality and customer service”.
That’s a suitably vague statement that can be open to multiple interpretations and I’ll be commenting on it in greater detail soon. In the meantime, here is a useful graphic from Teletech that should help Proton accelerate the project.
Proton must accelerate its customer service programme
brandconsultantasia.com 