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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Pantene Knows Marketing - Secret Shampoo Revealed
Pantene is the world’s best-selling haircare brand, offering a variety of shampoo, conditioner and styling products, sold in around 100 countries.
But how does a shampoo become the best selling shampoo in the world? Is it the price? Is it the quality? Is it the branding and marketing? It’s the combination of all of them.
Pantene hair care products by Procter & Gamble are the number one selling hair care brand in the world, and after reading numerous (negative) product reviews in the online forums, seems like it still might not be voted as the “best shampoo in the world” *. This is an important note to take for the marketers when doing your marketing research, both quantitative and qualitative research is needed. The same people who vote another (higher priced) brand as “better shampoo”, still go and purchase the lower priced Pantene - the shampoo, which is giving them the overall better value than the “better shampoo”.
Pantene is a low price point shampoo, and the success of Pantene being the most sold shampoo in the world probably has a lot to do it being an inexpensive shampoo beating other cheap shampoos in the quality. What is worth the notice here, is that the Pantene advertising does not focus on their low price point, it focuses on quality of the shampoo, great visuals and to the feedback they hear from the consumers.
QUALITY OF THE SHAMPOO
2007 ad. Strong Hair, Glamorous, Hollywood Worthy
GREAT VISUALS
2008 ad. Strong Hair, No Questions Asked. Very strong visual
GREAT VISUALS INTERACTING WITH ENVIRONMENT
2008 ad. Stop Split Ends. Very strong visual, the message combined with the environment, the double light post.
2008 campaign. Strong hair. Interactive display, free shampoo samples distributed.
CONSUMER BASED & INTERACTIVE
Pantene doesn’t just encourage women to use their hair care products, but also cutting the hair - for charity. Pantene started Beautiful Lenghts last year to collect hair, 8 inches at the time, to be used for wigs for cancer patients. Pantene works together with American Cancer Society, who distributes the wigs made out of donated hair to women who have lost their hair due cancer treatments. Even the writer herself was inspired to cut her hair earlier this year. The Beautiful Lengths campaign is an excellent example of Pantene’s community involvement, philantrophy and interactive marketing. They for example host hair cutting events across the nation.
Another great example of Pantene’s community based marketing is their new song used in their commercials. Pantene held a user generated song writing contest at Midem in Cannes. “We are always looking for new ways to emotionally connect Pantene, the number one haircare brand in the world, with consumers,” said Freddy Bharucha, Marketing Director for Pantene North America about the song writing contest. The winning song was “Shine” by Rosi Golan, which has already aired in TV commercials like in the one below.
This TV commercial with the happy woman & girl also targets one of Pantene’s important target market: moms.
SALON SECRET SHAMPOO CAMPAIGN
As I write this blog post, Pantene’s “Salon Secret Shampoo” campaign is going on, and I am actually spoiling the secret here by telling, yes, the TV commercial with Stacy London telling you about the “secret shampoo” is about Pantene Pro-V.
Pantene teamed up with Walmart to create a Salon Secret Shampoo campaign, and the secret being told at Walmarts on November 24th. Walmart’s Eleven Moms **, real life mothers and also bloggers in Walmart’s social media reach out campaign, got to test the shampoo in a blind test and Pantene interviewed moms about their hair dilemmas. Pantene had done similar type testing in hair salons country wide and their results was that 70% of people liked Pantene shampoo better than the salon brand.
The participating moms of the Walmart’s Eleven Moms campaign are also featured in the Secret to Great Hair website and the videos, like the one above, are also in the campaign’s YouTube channel. The women are offering their honest opinions in the videos. What makes this campaign brilliant, is that the same women also promoted the campaign in their individual blogs.
They were not told what the shampoo was, but all of the Eleven Moms received a mystery box of the secret shampoo in mail and the anticipation was built online by their blog posts and videos. The bloggers also posted the Secret Shampoo badges to their blogs and told their readers they also they could receive free samples of the shampoo to test it at home.
A few weeks later, the blogger moms received another mystery box - revealing the sectet. This time with a lock and a note that the number code for the lock would arrive a few days later. The anticipation grew now even among the testers, and many bloggers (writer included) couldn’t wait the code to arrive and used creative ways to open the box to reveal the shampoo in fact was Pantene Pro-V.
The video star is Alyssa, Kingdom First Mom.
I will be very interested to hear what kind of results Pantene is getting with the Salon Secret campaign. But according the information on hand now, their target market was reached well so far online and off line. They participated in the community of their target market via the Eleven Moms, who made the campaign spread organically online. The beauty of the campaign was also that it was the real life consumers marketing the product by their honest opinions.
Ps. This Blog Post was mentioned at Advertising Age even before I hit the publish button.
* The writer hasn’t been using Pantene before, but received free samples of Pantene’s Pro-V Hair Care line during the Salon Secrets Campaign and was pleasantly surprised, but won’t quit using her salon brand shampoo. The negative comments can be found anywhere where Pantene Shampoo is reviewed, and no, the writer did not do any type of quantitative research whether Pantene got more positive or negative reviews.
** The writer is one of Walmart’s Eleven Moms, but did not participate the salon testing and this is the only blog post she has written about the “Secret Shampoo”.
Motrin Makes Moms Mad
Dear Motrin Marketing Team,
I am hoping you will feel our pain, and you have enough Motrin to survive the Motrin babywearing campaign headache you will be feeling in the next couple of days, maybe even weeks. I am truly sorry if someone looses a job over this, but frankly, this would have been easily avoided - by asking a few babywearing moms, what they thought of your babywearing = pain ad.
Me and several other moms in the online communities were offended by your ad targeting moms, which said:
Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.
I mean in theory it’s a great idea.
…
And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free.
Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience.
They say that babies carried close to the bod tend to cry less than others.
But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t?
I sure do!
These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back?!
I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid.
Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom.
And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.
The advertising video started a discussion on Twitter.com, and in the mommy blogging community. Jessica Gottlieb recommended using a #motrinmoms hashtag for the discussion and “a few hours and two thousand tweets later #MotrinMoms is the #1 search on Twitter, eclipsing SNL for the first time since Obama was elected” .
I asked my followers on Twitter what they thought of the the ad:
And the responses were flooding… I wanted to collect the message for Motrin, but unfortunately YouTube lets you make only a 10 minute video - and I couldn’t fit every comment for the ten minutes!
Here is only a short list of blog posts covering the Motrin ad fiasco:
Motrin’s New Ad Attacking Babywearing
Motrin Ad Bashes Baby Wearing
Motrin the Anti-Mom
Twitter Moms Uproar Over Motrin Video
Twitter Crouwd Isn’t Inviting Motrin Moms to Their Playdate
Motrin Moms React
And since it is 4 o’clock on Sunday morning when I’m writing this (it sucks that bad PR happens when the marketing team has a day off, doesn’t it?) , I’m keeping my marketing advice simple:
1. Always know your target market.
2. If you don’t know your target market - hire someone who does. For example, when marketing to moms - ask moms!
3. Don’t underestimate the power of the synergy of blogging communities like mommy bloggers.
4. You have to be using social media so you can monitor and take control when something like this happens. Monday morning is not fast enough. Everyone will know your story told by someone else but you by noon on Sunday.
The good news is, that any company marketing to moms can achieve amazing results by the help of the moms & the mommy blogging community. The ways companies can do this:
1. Hire a Chief Mom Officer, who knows the target market & marketing. Or hire Mom Experts to answer your questions how you can reach moms. (Motrin: hire a Chief Mom Officer, soon launching MomForce will be a great source)
2. Ask what you can do to moms, not what moms can do for you.
3. Show that you genuinely care, start a conversation and listen the answers your target market is giving you.
Written by Katja Presnal
Mommy Blogger
PR / Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mother of Three
katja dot presnal at skimbaco dot com
Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.
Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party
One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is
“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”
Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.
TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!
There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.
Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.
While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.
See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.
CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK
I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.Katja Presnal
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE
Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.
The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.
Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.
CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”
Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.
Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.
Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.
When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.
Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.
Ladybug Landings to you too
In many cultures Ladybugs are believed to bring you luck, money or even your future spouse!
What is Ladybug Landings? And for whom?
- Ladybug Landings is a PR service for small business owners, helping them to connect with online media and online retailers, as well as teaching them how to use social media as a marketing tool. Even small companies with shoestring budgets can enjoy big successes by using the tools new media offers, working hard, and with a little touch of ladybug luck.
- Ladybug Landings is a PR service for bloggers to find more ways to monetize their blogs and get more traffic.
- Ladybug Landings will bring together manufacturers, retailers, bloggers, website owners and PR professionals.
What will we offer?
- Networking. Tell us what you need and we will try to find a person to help you.
- Tips & advice. We will offer tips from marketing your product to how to make money blogging, and we ain’t inventing the wheel again - we are collecting a resource list for you of the already written articles.
- Results. What ever your short or long term goal is, we will help you to achieve it and support you.
This can’t be free, can it?
- Yes. At the moment the service is free for everyone. At some point we will start collecting a small membership fee and get more organized. But membership will always be free for people who pitch in by promoting us or our members, or writing us blog posts, supporting our bloggers etc etc. You help us - we help you.
- Ladybug Landings is made possible by product sales of our ladybug gear and by everyone working together. We also offer advertising spots for sponsors on our site.
What is it really about?
- With one word: SYNERGY
Synergy refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents.
Basicly synergy is when 1+1=3. When you and I work together towards the same goal, we both gain more than when working alone. Yes, with the same work input.
We have a lot of amazing women in this network. We all have something to teach and something to learn. Let Ladybug Landings to be the connector between people - you help someone, and someone will help you.
What are people saying?
“Thank you for your help! I tripled my blog traffic.”
“I would have never thought of doing that little change to my website and it making such a big difference. You really know what you are talking about.”
“Thank you for all those connections you got me within a few hours - I made a contact with one of them.”
“I just wanted you to know I just started a new venture. Thanks for inspiring so I had guts to do it.”
Luck lands briefly. Are you ready?
