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#FindNewRoads and #CruzeToLA

November 19, 2015intro-multimedia, UncategorizedBlog site, chevrolet, cruze, cruze to LA, Digital, events, facebook, Grad Student, IMC, Integrated Marketing, outdoor, radio disney music awards, Social Media, sweepstakes, University of Floridastacielscott Leave a comment

Company Analysis: Chevrolet

When someone says describe Chevrolet, one mark seems to always come to mind with consumers and that is the Chevrolet bow-tie emblem. This slanted plus sign has been the logo identity for the company since 1913 and is featured on the front of most if not all Chevrolet models. Wiki defines Chevrolet as the following, “Chevrolet colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM)”. In North America, where we will focus on the Domestic marketing efforts of this project, Chevrolet produces a variety of automobiles from compact cars to trucks to sportsters. Chevrolet has been around for over 100 years selling cars under the GM brand. Chevy became a volume leader in 1919 selling mainstream vehicles to compete with Henry Ford’s Model T. By 1929, Chevy became known as the best selling car in the United States overtaking Ford. Since the company’s inception, the goal of the company has been to be a leader in the automotive world. Despite fierce competition, Chevy has done a great job at remaining mainstream. That’s not to say that in years past, Ford and Dodge haven’t edged Chevy out for best vehicle awards and overall brand popularity, but Chevy is making it’s way back to number one. In 2015, Chevy had three vehicles rank number one for the J.D. Power Initial Quality Award. The Silverado LD won in large light duty pickup category, Malibu took the midsize car category, and Equinox for the compact SUV category. For 2016, Chevy won Motor Trend Car and Truck of the year for their updated design and innovative features in the Camaro and Silverado! With momentum like this, it is imperative for Chevy to continue marketing their vehicles to consumers with an integrated marketing approach. It isn’t 1913 anymore where newspapers were the primary form of advertising for cars. Now more than ever, it is time to think about television everywhere and how every screen and platform is an advertising opportunity.

The goals and objectives for Chevrolet’s overarching brand are as follows:

Goals/Objectives

Reach moms and families and build awareness of Chevrolet brand.
Increase purchase intent for Chevrolet vehicles especially the Cruze and Equinox.
Build awareness of the cool factor and connectivity of Chevrolet vehicles.

The primary target audience for a campaign featuring the Chevy Cruze and Equinox is moms and families. The vehicle features for these models entice both moms and their families when purchasing such a big-ticket item. Everything from gas mileage to innovative technology features to comfort is analyzed before signing the purchase or lease agreement of a brand new vehicle. Moms want to know if the vehicle will entertain their children, is it safe to drive from point A to point B, and is it cost effective. Kids influence the model purchase by the cool factor.

Notably, the automotive industry as a whole is very competitive in design and available features. The biggest rivalry in American Motor history is between Chevrolet and Ford, closely followed by Dodge. The American automotive industry has the most competition between US brands, but lest not forget about the various other automotive companies out there vying for a piece of the auto pie like Toyota, Honda, BMW, Volvo, and Volkswagen just to name a few.

With such a competitive environment comes much opportunity!

Opportunities –

Ability to create innovative features and products offered first or only available in Chevy models.
Become more innovative and try edgy attention grabbing marketing promotions that resonate with the current market.

Strengths –

For 2016, Chevrolet won two categories… Motor Trend Truck and Car of the year. These awards help boost sales and visibility of the brand.
Integrated Technology – Keeps moms and families connected to everything and everyone by introducing Wi-Fi feature within the vehicles. (Up to 7 devices)
As of May this year, Forbes noted Chevrolet as the sixty-second most valuable brand in the United States.

Why Leverage an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Plan Traditional marketing has always been about brand awareness and having the media platforms push advertising campaigns out into the world for people to consume. Traditional advertising campaigns are time-consuming on the front end due to the production lead-time required and the extensive planning of media buys.

With a growing number of social media options, which are far less costly than traditional media, the question arises about why spend so much money on those pricey TV, radio and print ads. However the answer is simple, using both traditional and new media together, as opposed to one versus the other, you can move your message further and reach a larger audience.

“IMC is not a new concept, but it’s more important than ever, as there are now more marketing channels than ever before. Back in the 50’s, marketing campaigns relied heavily on print, radio, and television. It didn’t take much to keep these aligned. But, now with digital media, we have everything from newsletters to social media campaigns. Our marketing tool sheds are filled with new and effective tactics that range from broad messaging (your website’s homepage) to targeting more niche groups (via Instagram),” states Kyle Eliason from Pi Portent.

Quite simply put, your social footprint is just as important as having a website for consumers to find information about your company as is the television spot for additional brand awareness. The platforms all work together to reinforce your marketing message to your targeted consumers.

Additional Integrated Marketing Communications: Ideation

Additional IMC marketing efforts that I would love to see executed in this cross-platform #CruzeToLA campaign are Print, Outdoor, Email and Social.

Flyers

At On The Road To events, custom co-branded flyers would be passed during the festival and to those that visited the Chevrolet booth on site. These flyers would provide all the details for the #CruzeToLA sweepstakes from what you could win to how to enter and earn more entries. The backside of the flyer would call out all the new features of the Chevrolet models they want to tout during this promotion. Additionally, due to the partnership with Nokia Theater, flyers can be handed to those leaving other events held at Nokia Live during the week of March 14 – 20 prior to the sweepstakes closing. Again, these flyers would be co-branded and tout features of the Cruze, but also the #CruzeToLA promotion. Granted these folks are probably from LA, but they can still be entered to win tickets to the RDMAs and a chance a keys to a new Cruze!

Email

Send sweepstakes promotion to the current Chevrolet email-marketing database to provide their super fans the opportunity to enter and just general awareness of the promotion.

Outdoor

Produce co-branded flag banners featuring the Chevrolet Cruze and RDMAs along the surrounding blocks of Downtown LA. This brands the outdoor space of the festival at Ardy’s Pre-show Party and adds to the overall brand awareness of Chevy’s presence and sponsorship of the RDMAs.

Pin-Party

Chevy and Disney to host a week long Pin Party encouraging moms to re-pin the custom promotional pin (found on Chevrolet’s Pinterest page) to their own boards for a chance to win $1,000 and a trip to the RDMAs. Should any of the Pinners also write a blog post about the promotion, and Tweet about it on their social handle hash tagging #CruzeToLA, they will receive 5 additional entries to the sweepstakes. This will be promoted on Chevy’s Facebook page and one of the main hero images on their website.

Pre-roll on YouTube

:10 second Chevrolet branded ad as pre-roll placement prior to main performance at the RDMAs.

For example, their branded spot could lead in to custom video content such as this:

View Here

Proximity Marketing

Those that opt in and accept to receive the offer from Chevy at the On The Road To tour and Ardy’s Pre-show Party will receive a free oil change at any Chevrolet dealership. This gets moms on Chevy lots to look around at the new models they saw at the RDMAs. There would be on-site signage at the pre-show festival about the opt-in offer.

Analysis: #CruzeToLA Sweepstakes Promotion

Analytics would be measured by sweepstakes entries, page views from the digital site and social engagement and impressions pulled from Sprinklr.

Thank you for your time and consideration of the pitch #CruzeToLA Sweepstakes presented by Chevrolet. This IMC promotion will meet your objectives and provide brand awareness to the cool new features of the Cruze!

Analytic Post Mortem and Creative Ideation for the Future

November 16, 2015intro-multimediaanalytics, Blog, campaign, facebook, HVAC, ideation, Integrated Marketing, post mortem, results, Social Media, yelpstacielscott Leave a comment

Assignment/Synopsis

This is our last week’s assignment for the Multi-media Communications class I’m currently enrolled. We’ve studied Integrated Marketing Communications, what it means and how it is executed by brands big and small. This final post is going to take us through a post mortem analytic review for a company labeled XYZ. Please note; this blog post is for academic purposes only.

XYZ is a heating and cooling company (HVAC) located in Western Massachusetts. This recently launched small business provides installations, maintenance, and repair to their customers. Currently XYZ utilizes the following platforms for advertising; website, Twitter, Yelp, Google+, Facebook and direct mail. The stats we will be examining below are from Facebook.

To date XYZ has 489 likes on their fan page. This means we have lots of room to grow the XYZ’s audience and followers.

Key Findings

Analytics like Research can be interpreted in a variety of ways. A lot of times Research can mean one thing to one person and something totally different to another. The same goes for how the research is translated and spun. With this in mind, here are some of my key findings for XYZ.

XYZ’s fans are online in the highest concentration at 12pm, 3pm and 6-8:30pm.
XYZ’s fans demographics are split with women taking 57% of the pie and men 43%.
Women are the dominant fan mix in every age range except 25-34.
The majority of XYZ’s likers are from Massachusetts or Connecticut.
For those that have commented, liked or shared XYZ’s posts in the last 28 days, the men demographic take the lead with a 65% engagement over 35% women.

Screen Shot 2015-11-16 at 8.07.01 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-11-16 at 8.07.12 PM.png

Campaign Improvements

Yelp is a great way to earn the trust of new customers. If you have great reviews, people are more likely to try your company over one that doesn’t have good things being said about their service. First off, XYZ could enhance and increase their reviewers on Yelp. (see Future Campaigns for additional details) Secondly, Twitter could be leveraged as a weather service update provider for Massachusetts area, service messages, or any cute type of heating/cooling related promotional tout that comes to XYZ’s mind. Leveraging SEO and tags within posts will improve overall awareness of the XYZ brand and their services.

Social Amplification

The definition of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) according to Wikipedia is the application of consistent brand messaging across both traditional and non-traditional marketing channels and using different promotional methods to reinforce each other. XZY has a presence on their own website, Twitter, Yelp and Google+ pages. Having multiple social channels, promotions can easily be shared among the different channels to cross promote the overall brand promise of XYZ, but also any and all promotions that they may have to offer. What is great about sharing on other social media channels is that it is free to share to your current followers, and you have the opportunity to purchase or boost any content that you wish.

Future Campaigns / Promotional Ideation

HVAC is a seasonal business, and their marketing should be strategic and targeted. As we learned a few weeks ago, email marketing is not dead. Email marketing is very much alive, and XYZ should work on growing their audience’s data base in order to keep constant communication with their clients. Yelp and Google+ are two social channels that can be leveraged heavily to promote the brand and really provide a deep social footprint for the company.

Email Marketing – Build Database
- As customers start using XYZ’s services, they should start creating and building their email database. By doing this they will be able to send out reminders to their customers since their business is seasonally driven. Email marketing helps push consumers to make the call or purchase sooner especially if they have been thinking about a certain product or service.
Yelp – Increase Reviews
- Sometimes you have to give a little in order to build your brand and company. XYZ should invest in a Yelp promotion that would give consumers $100 credit towards heating and cooling repairs or maintenance after they have left a review. This would build reviews on their site, and promote repeat customers. Win, Win!
Google+ – Locate XYZ
- Building out the company’s social footprint is beneficial to the brand. It makes it easier for consumers to find information about the company easier than if information is only in one place.

Nike, McDonalds and Coca-Cola are Socially Savvy — They Just Do It and are Lovin’ it by Opening Happiness!

October 12, 2015Uncategorizedall day breakfast, coca-cola, coke, facebook, Grad Student, instagram, Integrated Marketing, just do it, mcdonald's, nike, open happiness, twitter, University of Floridastacielscott Leave a comment

Nike, McDonalds and Coca-Cola are Socially Savvy — They Just Do It, Are Lovin’ it and are Opening Happiness!

Below, check out how these brands use integrated marketing methods to promote themselves.

Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • Google+ • Pinterest • YouTube

Nike does take an integrated marketing approach to advertising, however, they do it without inundating the marketplace with their messaging. On most of their social platforms, it seems that the overall Nike brand retweets it’s sub-brands like Nike Football, Nike Women or Nike.com.

On Facebook, Nike posts once to twice a month. They limit their use of hashtags on the Facebook platform only leveraging their main campaign hashtags such as #JustDoIt or #NikeZoom.

For Twitter, Nike posted 4 times in the month of August (and they were all re-tweets), posted only twice in September , and has yet to post anything in October. When Nike posts, they do integrate a hashtag, but they keep it very simple and again stick to the main or trending hashtags.

You would think that hashtagging on Instagram would be a no brainer, but about half of the posts Nike disseminates via Instagram do not incorporate any hashtags at all. They do @tag their sub-brands in their messaging.

The content on Google + is posted more infrequently than any of the social platforms. This seems to be the same with Pinterest.

You can connect to the social channels below from Nike.com.

Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • Google+ • Pinterest • YouTube • Tumblr • Vine • Flickr

Has anyone ever craved breakfast for lunch, dinner or even a late night snack? Well, McDonalds released a new menu that serves breakfast all day long. This new promotion is being touted across all media platforms, and let’s just say Mickey D’s is rocking integrated marketing communications! Their television commercials even showcase people sharing their requests AND their joy for all day breakfast. I must say the commercials that touted the tweets for all day breakfast were hilarious. Well done McDonald’s… hat’s off to your creative agency for this promotion!

YOU CAN GET BREAKFAST ALL DAY

#AllDayBreakfast

McDonald’s instagram is highly stylized, very simple and is saturated with the primary colors in the color wheel. Insta gets around 4 to 5 posts a week.

Tweeting is a regular mainstay for the McDonald’s brand. The photo posts on Twitter are not like the photos of perfection you see on their instagram channel.

@McDonalds YAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS #alldaybreakfast SOOOOOOOO good

McDonald’s uses Google+ and YouTube to house all their videos so that they can be found in one easy location.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yCTopiYQoYw“>

McDonald’s also uses Tumblr to collect tweets, instagram posts, gifs, memes and collect them in one easy local for sharing and re-sharing purposes.

Talk about synergy between two major brands. Check out this Vine that McDonalds posted…

Raise your hand if you love a coke with a big mac! Yes please, my hand is up!!

You can also find more information from this blog on McDonald’s social presence.

Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • Google+ • Pinterest • YouTube • Tumblr • Vine • Flickr (and I’m sure Many Many More)

Coca-Cola shares happiness across all media types and has a prolific social media footprint. Coca-Cola does integrated marketing well, and you can find brand consistency across all the media and social platforms they are on. They are very consistent in their messaging and posts.

When it comes to hashtags, Coke is very clever. They hashtag their campaign titles as well as hashtag current events with custom graphics like the blood moon post below.

Coke consistently updates each of their social platforms with new content every day or two.

I really love the pin boards Coca-Cola has on Pinterest. They are all related to events or a lifestyle thematic.

On Coca-Cola.com (United States version), the website has a module that drives to Social that features the latest posts, allows you to connect via the website and link outs to the following social platforms; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

Doggone Best Products USA is ‘Paw’rrific

October 5, 2015intro-multimediaamazon, Blog site, dog doggone doggone best products, email, facebook, Grad Student, IMC, Integrated Marketing, pinterest, Social Media, University of Floridastacielscott Leave a comment

Whether or not you are marketing yourself or a brand, you must define your objectives and strategizes to achieve your marketing goals. The objectives and strategies you outline act as a guideline for creating all the integrated marketing communications for a particular campaign.

For this week’s assignment, I choose to help out a friend of mine and create marketing elements and further the social footprint for their dog supplement company.

DOGGONE BEST PRODUCTS USA (DoggoneBestUSA.com is coming soon!)

Doggone Best Products is a pet supplement company dedicated to the health and happiness of your four legged friends. Let’s take a closer look at the company and their marketing strategy.

Objectives:

Further awareness of Doggone Best Products
Create and further Doggone’s social footprint keeping the brand message, look and feel of the content consistent yet customized for each platform
Create and distribute email communication for their newest product, a 5 million count Probiotic

Strategies:

Update product information on Amazon
Create Pinterest account to target women
- Pin health tips for senior dogs, the right amount of exercise your dog should be getting, and tips for weight management
- Pin boards that further promote the Doggone brand and doggie parent interests
Target customers that have previously purchased the Joint Supplement with product information regarding the new Probiotic supplement

Let’s take a look at the IMC elements created to promote and market Doggone Best this week!

Amazon Product Info:

Doggone Best had two different formulas for their joint supplement. After many focus group testing’s with beloved pets, the original formula which was chicken liver flavor won out over the beef flavored formula. To market that the original formula will be in stock as of October 6, I crafted position statement about it being back by ‘Paw’pular demand and the discontinued use of the beef flavored supplement.

BACK BY ‘PAW’PULAR DEMAND: Your furbabies have spoken and we listened. We are exclusively offering our original joint supplement formula that your dog loves so much!

Pinterest: Created the entire Pinterest footprint for Doggone this week

The visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.

I created 8 boards for Doggone this week, and many more will be added in the future – but it’s a great start in creating a pet loving community for Doggone Best. The first set of pin boards are creative ideas for fall images with your pups, Pet Care with a focus on joint health for senior dogs and weight management, inspirational quotes about dogs, and of course a board about puppies is cuteness overload!

Email Marketing:

In the previous week’s lesson for integrated marketing platforms, we studied email marketing. Email marketing is not dead and is a great way for companies to boost sales and distribute the latest product information and sales to their consumers.

Email is the most dominant way of sharing information. Back in the day, one of the best parts of logging onto AOL was the knowledge that after minutes of agonizing squeals, you’d be treated to that wonderful phrase, “You’ve Got Mail!”

If you stop to think about it, email has become a mainstay for most businesses and how the majority of business communication is conducted. Email has replaced faxing documents as well as replaced many face to face and telephone communications. Email makes it easy to document communication, and reference it at a later point in time if necessary.

More than one in five people worldwide use email. That’s about 1.9 billion people. It’s predicted to increase to 2.5 billion email users in the next 2 years. Yup, email’s popular. The Radicati Group, who came up with that info, also reckon that the world sends about 294 billion emails daily. 192 billion emails sent daily, that is an incredible amount of electronic communication!

Here is a screenshot of the email I designed that went out to Doggone’s distribution list. The two main points of the email is to promote the Probiotic and drive customers to connect to Doggone’s social sites. The email also reminds the audience of the free shipping and returns feature when ordering.

Facebook:

The strategy for this social channel is to continue to update the main content of the page including updating the brands imagery. For example, the use of the image with the golden retrieving the stick is the same image that was prominent in the email communication. I’ve also set the social post strategy for the next coming weeks that will drive to Doggone’s Pinterest board, promote the buy 2 promo offer, as well as posts that promote the overall health and care of your pet!