بهترین زمان - شبکه های سنتی با جامعه ملاقات می کند

CHAPTER FIVE

The Perfect Date: Traditional Media Meets Social

If you live in the New York area, you might have seen ads for Crush It! on a billboard located right next to the Meadowlands, where my beloved New York Jets play football, and on a few taxi tops zooming around the city. You might have wondered why I bothered, especially since I have pointed out more than once that in the past, billboard advertising has brought me about 10 percent of the results that I got from tweeting.* Well, I’ll tell you why. Even though the viewership and absorption rates in traditional media are way, way down from where they used to be, they still carry some cachet and can offer some results. To many, you’re not a legitimate brand unless you have a presence on those platforms. So when I found myself in a position to barter consulting time in exchange for some ad space on top of a taxi for my book, I didn’t think twice. As for the billboard, it said, “Ask me how much I paid for this billboard,” and listed my email address. In one fell swoop, I got to promote my book, create an opportunity for dialogue, and gauge people’s interest in the question. To anyone who followed through, I gave the answer: I spent fifteen hundred bucks on a billboard for which many brands spend ten thousand.

I’m not that much more of a brilliant negotiator than some of the people buying billboards and ads for other brands, but I had two things going for me. First, I had a great relationship with the rep that sold me the billboard space. I’ve worked with him before. He’s a terrific guy, full of hustle, very persistent, and he pays close attention to what I’m up to and contributes lots of ideas to help me. By now, though, I know the billboard game, so I knew what to ask for, and I knew when to back down and when to press on. Because we have such a good relationship, we were able to work together to come up with a mutually acceptable deal. Second, I cared like crazy. Compare the mind-set of an account manager at an ad agency, whose big-brand client gives her $5 million to spend, $300,000 of which is allocated for billboards, with that of a small-business owner who feels as though every dollar she spends on media is coming from her own pocket. The small-business owner is going to fight much harder for the best deal. How much a person cares factors a great deal in how that person does business. That’s not to say that account managers and the other people companies hire and trust to manage aspects of their business don’t care about their clients. Many do. Many care a lot. But it takes a special person to adopt a sense of ownership and identification with his or her client. If you believe you’ve got someone like that in your court, hang on to that person with all your might.

The second reason why someone like me, who built his brand almost entirely via social media networks and has compared traditional media to the Pony Express, used traditional media to advertise a book about building brands via social media networks, is this: I wanted to talk to as many people as I could. I can reach a hell of a lot of people by caring them to death online, but I recognize that some people just aren’t there yet. Those people matter to me. I want to go where they go. I would advertise in every magazine, from Fortune to People, if I felt they were charging me the right price for their ad space. I am certain that the right price is not $35,000 for a full page. That’s a figure calculated upon circulation numbers, but not upon actual readership. There is no way you can tell me that every person who picks up the magazine is going to see the actual page upon which my ad appears. I believe the pricing should reflect that reality, and I believe that every company that buys advertising should demand fairer pricing.

Until that day comes, however, the majority of companies are simply going to have to get lean and mean; the only way to get rid of love handles is by trimming some fat. If you haven’t done it yet, you’ve got to find a way to reallocate some money in your budget toward social media, because it is utter insanity for any company not to have a Facebook and Twitter presence in 2011. There are some brands that might be able to get away with marketing themselves exclusively on social media, but there is not a single company out there that cannot benefit from adding social media to its marketing strategy. What’s more, a brand that plays exclusively on the social media field is doing itself a disservice by not examining the potential of traditional media. When used to their fullest potential, the two platforms can complement each other in amazing ways.

Extend the Conversation

If you were on a date, and there was some serious chemistry, you wouldn’t let it end at the restaurant. You’d probably suggest continuing your conversation over drinks or coffee or an ice-cream cone. You might take a walk, duck into a bookstore, or stop in at the retro vinyl shop. If you’re on a fabulous date, you don’t want the night to end, and you’re going to try to find any way you can to keep the conversation and connection going.

Combining traditional and social media can allow you to do the same thing when talking to people about your brand. Denny’s, for example, had a great TV date with its customers during the 2010 Super Bowl. It ran three commercials announcing that for a few hours on the following Tuesday, you could come in for a free Grand Slam breakfast. The ads were funny and creative—chickens freaking out over how many eggs they were going to have to lay for the event—but what a missed opportunity to leverage all the people watching the ads with their laptops open in front of them! All Denny’s had to do was say, “Go to Facebook.com/Denny’s right now, become a fan [an option that was supplanted by the “Like” button], and receive a coupon for an additional free large OJ.” Hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of people would have gone to the site, spent some time engaging with the Denny’s brand, and gotten their coupon, and Denny’s would have had data that they could use and reuse for years. So, Denny’s spent about $10 million to produce three ads and gave away a lot of free product. They gave their customer a nice experience and more than likely gained some new customers, too. But had Denny’s established relationships with their customers on a social networking site, they would have stretched the value of those $10 million. By clicking “Like” on a brand’s Facebook page, customers show their willingness to offer data about themselves that allows the brand to communicate directly with them and tailor its marketing in an extremely personal, customized way. As the consumer-brand engagement shows up in the consumer’s newsfeed, the message spreads even farther through the social media ecosystem with no additional effort by the brand. If Denny’s had extended the conversation, the date might have ended with an invitation for a nightcap instead of a chaste kiss at the door.

Reebok, on the other hand, invited its audience in for a drink with its television ad for Speedwick training T-shirts. It featured Stanley Cup champions Sidney Crosby and his Pittsburgh Penguins teammate Maxime Talbot as they paid a visit to Crosby’s childhood home in Nova Scotia. The ad shows Crosby and Talbot heading down to the basement, where they admire the dent-riddled clothes dryer that caught every puck Crosby didn’t get into his practice net. The two start shooting pucks into the open dryer—first to get nine in wins. Talbot is leading 3–1 when the screen abruptly goes black and the words “See who wins at Facebook.com/reebokhockey” appear. Only by becoming a fan could viewers find out who won.

The ad showed off the brand in an entertaining, even personal way, inviting hockey fans into the inner life of a favorite player. Then it drew them in even further by giving them a reason to follow the brand to Facebook. And follow they did. In a short amount of time, Reebok saw their numbers jump by the tens of thousands. In and of themselves, numbers mean nothing—it’s the quality of one’s followers and fans that really matters, not the quantity. But in this case, Reebok had both, and the numbers represented tens of thousands of people who gave Reebok permission to remarket to them. In turn, they have the potential to fan Reebok’s message out to millions of people through status updates, comments, and other forms of engagement. Three years ago, all of those NHL fans would have seen the ad, and their date with Reebok would have ended in sixty seconds. In 2011, however, Reebok can keep that date going for as long as they can keep the engagement interesting and worthwhile to their fan base. Now that is marketing money well spent.

Learn to Play Ping-Pong

When traditional and social media work well together, as they did for Reebok, it’s like a friendly Ping-Pong match. Instead of spiking their traditional media and ending the match, Reebok hit the ball back over to social media. Ping. Then they gave social media a chance to return the shot. Pong. Anyone can do it. Develop creative work that allows the platforms to rally, to work together to extend your story, continue the conversation, and connect with your audience. Demand more from your ad agency. It’s not enough to simply throw a Twitter or Facebook logo at the bottom of your ad, or show Facebook.com/yourbrand at the end of your TV commercial. That’s about as exciting and useful as saying “We have a phone!” or “Found in most stores!”

What you might do instead is post a creative image or text, including your actual address on Facebook and Twitter, that piques the consumer’s interest enough to go there to see what else you have to say. Pull the viewers in, and keep the conversation going for as long as you can.

Layering social media on top of traditional media to extend the story is the most practical, executable, and measurable marketing move you can make today. It should therefore be a relatively easy strategy to sell to your team or to your clients.