giannicozzi-blog

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That’s a wrap!

Well here we are. Twelve weeks of immersion into the world of stakeholder relations and emergent media through learning and practice. I can now say I’m older and much wiser when it comes to stakeholders, social media affordances, networking and storytelling.

Coming into this course with a background in social media I was interested in what I would add to my repertoire and how my previous knowledge would be reinforced in an academic setting. I’m proud to report that through the challenges and triumphs of the past three months I have grown as an emergent media communicator.

So what did I learn?

(via GIPHY)

THERES A LOT OUT THERE

Taking a focus on men’s mental health and designing my participatory social media project around the #grabafroff initiative to encourage mates to catch up for a beer and a chat to promote mental health in men took me across the internet in search of similar campaigns I could use to mould my own efforts and reach out to stakeholders for feedback.

(Vimeo 2019)

I came across so many interesting groups doing great things for men’s mental health via social media and out in the real world. Craft Beer Coopery are an awesome organisation running a beer subscription service designed to share a beer with 3 mates a month and catch up to chat about…whatever. Then there’s a with ‘solo beer; for some much needed introspection. Among the other usual suspects like RUOK? Day and Movember, there’s also Mr. Perfect – a grassroots organisation based around BBQ meet ups with anonymous blokes.

Each of these organisations deftly utilise the disruptive capabilities of the online space and emergent media platforms to connect with communities of practice online and spread the reach of their grassroots campaign without the funding once required by not for profit organisations. With the internet, real initiatives can be put in the hands of those who need them most.

(@mrperfectau 2019)

The biggest finding from my research was that there’s definitely a lot more out there than I first thought. Although men’s mental health conversations are still pretty new, it’s fantastic to see so much being done. And plenty more scope for development.

VISIBILITY, VISIBILITY, VISIBILITY!

One glaring realisation from the experience, however, was the amount of organisations I did not yet know about. Of course, for the smaller grass roots organisations, this was likely a matter of not personally needing to look out for mental health assistance. However for emergent media organisations such as these, visibility is key.

Shining a spotlight on these organisations is more important now than ever so any assistance that can be provided from the heavy hitter such as Movember and Beyond Blue.

(@movember 2019)

One of the most valuable ‘affordances’ of social media as Sadler (2014) puts it is that it is all pervasive, wide reaching and relatively cost free. It takes nothing for these smaller guys to reach out for exposure and the bigger guys to help in return. A simple campaign in the ilk of #grabafroff in partnership with Beyond Blue for example opens up so much potential reach and backing.

CHALLENGES

Reaching out, however, is not that easy. As I experienced first-hand in my own efforts to set up a networked dialogue throughout the participatory project – the biggest barrier to creating a meaningful project was the lack of responses gained from my call outs.

(@giannicozzi_ 2019)

Admittedly, at first I was the barrier to my own success in struggling to work up the courage to reach out to my networked group. As most of the social accounts I created from scratch for this project, I had no followers and believed it would be quite difficult to gain much engagement.

Nevertheless I eventually mustered up the courage to reach out, starting with a few tweets sent out for general feedback on Twitter. Although I was unsuccessful in getting feedback this way, I decided it was better to contact my networking group directly via Facebook and Instagram ‘dm’ as it was a more direct way of obtaining feedback and was not dependent on the number of followers I had.

(Gianni Cozzi via Facebook 2019)

(@giannicozzi95 2019)

(@giannicozzi95 2019)

This was a much better option on reflection as I has some luck in getting feedback from RUOK? Day and Craft Beer Coopery. I found the real value in crafting my call out using storytelling. This allowed me to use language and context that was appealing to my networked group and audience in a way that would give me the best opportunity to obtain he feedback I was looking for. As the volume of communication thrown at organisations increases with the speed and ease of the internet, storytelling definitely helps cut through the clutter and distinguishes online communications from the pack (Johnston & Taylor 2018). 

When I finally got into the groove of things and started engaging with my network, taking the plunge turned out to be really rewarding. I was able to engage with some amazing people, get out of my shell and write some reflective pieces, and make a video presentation with a little help from Google and the voice memo app on my phone – I can’t even imagine how many takes it took!

(via GIPHY)

All in all I’m proud of what I and, and we, have achieved as a group this semester. Here’s to seeing #grabafroff materialise as a real world campaign one day!

As always, drop me a line in the comments if you have any thoughts!

Cheers!

Ali, T n.d., ‘The Way Men Talk About Mental Health is Changing’, Australian Rotary Health, viewed 18 October 2019, https://australianrotaryhealth.org.au/the-way-men-talk-about-mental-health-is-changing/

Johnston, KA, & Taylor, M 2018 ‘The handbook of communication engagement, 1st ed., John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Sadler, T 2014, ‘Communities of Practice’ in Encyclopaedia of Science Education, Springer Science + Business Media, Dordrecht, pp. pp1-6.

Wenger, E 1998, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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The #grabafroff Campaign

Welcome to the #grabafroff initiative, a social media campaign encouraging mates to catch up for a beer and a chat to promote men’s mental health.

We would love to year your thoughts and feedback on the project so please leave a comment below ☺️

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The best cold beer is Vic

Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) sits atop the Australian beer industry with a commanding market share of 47.7% (Reeves 2019, p. 24). It boasts some of Australia’s most iconic brands such as Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught which are etched into the fabric of Australian culture.

Many of these brands date back to the mid 19th century, with Victoria Bitter first brewed in 1854 (Victoria Bitter 2019). Since that time, the Australian beer market and the commercial landscape within which it exits has changed dramatically to what we see in present day. In recent years, the Australian market has experienced a decline in overall beer consumption coupled with the emergence of craft, slowly drawing consumers, particularly younger beer drinkers, away from brands like Victoria Bitter and beer altogether (Cloutman 2018).

Despite this, the uniqueness and history of Victoria Bitter as a brand, paired with an adaptation towards emergent media strategies, has been an effective step in maintaining the relevance of the brand, particularly with younger consumers. In this post, we will delve into emerging developments of digital stakeholder engagement by Victoria Bitter, critically analysing their platform selection and community engagement strategies through examples from their social media marketing activity.

The changing nature of social structures in the face of the rise of social media has been the topic of discussion by a number of theorists. Castells (2011) as a foremost theorist on this proposed that hierarchies of communication and social engagement have been broken down to create a more networked model of communication. This transcends not only interpersonal interactions, but social hierarchies and market transactions as well. Now more than ever, stakeholders are a mere comment, tweet, or hashtag way from demanding the attention of entire organisations and the world.

As a result, organisations have been challenged to re-think the way that they communicate with their audience, through the emergence of new platforms and different hierarchical structures. This has presented new challenges such as an increase in consumer activeness with a desire for greater transparency from and access to brands (Kaufmann & Manarioti 2017, p. 58). On the other hand, it has also brought about the potential for organisations to leverage online communications with consumers as a free crowd sourcing platform for content and data which has proven effective in strengthening loyalties between consumers and a particular brand (Kaufmann, Loureiro, & Manarioti 2016, p. 517).

A key element to Victoria Bitter’s effective digital stakeholder engagement lies in its platform selection based on the affordances that these platforms provide in moderating the activity of their participants. The concept of affordances traces its origins back ecological psychology theory, used to describe the ‘action possibilities’ latent in the environment (Gibson 1979). It has since been a key element of design theory and has more recently been applied to understanding social media platforms in the way that each one’s unique characteristics provide affordances and constraints for social behaviour (Bucher & Helmond 2018).

Analysing the brand strategy of Victoria Bitter in emergent media, it is clear that the selection of specific platforms is based on the possibilities created by their  different affordances. The brand is particularly active on two main platforms, Facebook and Instagram, with Facebook the most utilised. The two directional nature of Facebook makes it extremely valuable for the kind of content sharing and co-creation mentioned earlier, encouraging followers to comment, post, share, and react to posts on the Victoria Bitter page. This has allowed the brand to foster engagement, crowd source ideas, and generate content that adds value to the brand in the face of a consumer base that is generally trending down in their beer consumption and looking for more when it comes to what a brand can offer outside the product itself.

A shining example of this strategy is Victoria Bitter’s recent ‘Big Cold Gear’ campaign which saw the release of branded merchandise such as hats, t-shirts, and hoodies for purchase via an e-commerce store linked to their social channels (CUB 2019). The success of this campaign was unprecedented, with most items sold out within weeks (McDonnell 2018a). The brand’s Senior Marketing and Sponsorship Manager Hugh Jellie pointed to “requests on social” leading the push for the merchandise drop which was able to convert online sentiment into not only added revenue for the brand but a diversified income stream independent of beer sales (McDonnell 2018b).

On Instagram, the strategy is similar. The brand has modified its stakeholder engagement strategy to suit the affordances of the platform. Victoria Bitter’s presence on Instagram is predominantly supplementary to Facebook, with a large portion of images cross posted from one platform to the other. What the brand have pinpointed as their main focus for Instagram hinges on the ability to ‘regram’ images posted by their followers that include the brand. This is beneficial in two ways, fostering stakeholder engagement by leveraging followers as advertising content creators for the brand, and encouraging them to continue promoting Victoria Bitter through their social accounts in the hope that their photos might be shared on the official page.

Their emergent media strategy doesn’t end at the repost, however. Through their carefully selected content, the brand are always on the lookout to use this platform to increase revenue. A recent repost of a follower’s handmade VB earrings was accompanied with the caption “If you’ve got some ideas for VB merch, were all ears”. This indicates a desire to use social media to continue optimising their offering, generating revenue and adding value for their customers.

While the influence of platforms and their affordances is important to the discussion of stakeholder engagement in participatory media, so too is a deeper analysis of online communities themselves and their established patterns of behaviour. Wenger’s (1998) ‘communities of practice’ theory has been closely attributed to social media use in the way that behaviours online are typically the result of learnt actions through participation in communities, rather than didactic instruction.

As a result of this, social media participation is open to interpretation and negotiation of what the community deems valuable. This can change over time as different behaviours become more valued and are thus established as the new norm (Sadler 2014). Taking Facebook as an example, where once sharing statuses and posting photos were the dominant practice, far more value is now placed on commenting, reacting, and sharing. By capitalising on these established behaviours, this is where Victoria Bitter has been able to harness value from their followers on the platform.

In the lead up to the 2019 election, Victoria Bitter capitalised on community practice on Facebook, leveraging the viral capabilities of polls, sharing, and hashtags to launch their own debate: Tinnies vs. stubbies. Co-opting the official election hashtag #AustraliaDecides, the brand were able to tap into a wave of user led viral buzz around the election using it for their own purposes and generating 32.6k votes, 3k comments and 229 shares on their Facebook poll. Not to leave the campaign there, VB then pivoted back to their e-commerce platform by releasing branded t-shirts for each side of the debate.

As participants in communities of practice continue to learn, they transition from peripheral users into more seasoned content creators and contributors, adding value to the community (Sadler 2014). Emergent practices of Victoria Bitter in the social space, have attempted to utilise this phenomena by promoting engagement and involvement. Through encouraging participation from its followers, they become more and more engaged, create and interact more, and therefore provide more value to the brand’s marketing and promotional efforts ultimately impacting the brands bottom line.

In their most recent campaign, celebrating VB’s 50th birthday, the brand invited highly engaged followers on social media to get involved in re-creating the iconic VB jingle and sharing it using the hashtag #VB50yearsofcheers (McDonnell 2018a). Capitalising on audience co-creation, the campaign was both able to generate buzz for the brand and deliver a wealth of content to be posted on social platforms, with snippets of different submissions eventually remixed into a commercial posted on social channels. This is yet another prime example of emergent practices in stakeholder engagement that both involve the stakeholder and benefit the commercial efforts of the brand.

Summarising Victoria Bitter’s emergent media strategies, it is evident they have made great strides to implementing highly engaging participatory media campaigns, while also leveraging their highly engaged online community.. In both their platform selection and stakeholder engagement, they have been able to add value to their business by capitalising on an understanding of what resonates with their customers and targeting their needs. There is little more that has not already been touched on by the brand in terms of emergent media strategies however there are a few options that they might pursue to further expand on their innovative stakeholder engagement.

The increasing popularity of AI and the use of bots for customer service such as messenger might be one way to help deliver the product directly to the consumer. Companies such as Dominoes have already started using this kind of software to deliver deals and field store location enquiries (Dominos 2019). In the same way, Victoria Bitter might use this service to direct drinkers to their nearest VB stockist or pub converting social engagement into real beer sales.

In an effort to continue leveraging “alternative marketing and brand strategies” that are the focus of the brand’s desire to capitalise on “growing popularity among younger beer drinkers” (McDonnell 2018b), alternative revenue streams such as their e-commerce platform could benefit from more consumer input. Updating new ranges of merchandise available in the store, directly informed by polls or feedback on Facebook and Instagram, would take the guess work out of catering to customer desires.

Regardless of their strategy going forward, it is evident the brand are headed in the right direction already with their emergent media strategies and are leading the way towards future development in the industry.

References

Bucher, T & Helmond, A 2018, ‘The affordances of social media platforms’, in J Burgess, A Marwick, & T Poell (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, SAGE Publications, London, pp. 233-253.

Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) 2018, ‘A hard earned thirst needed some big cold gear’, CUB, 11 October, viewed 15 August <https://cub.com.au/a-hard-earned-thirst-needs-some-big-cold-gear/>

Castells, M 2011, The rise of the network society: The information age: Economy, society, and culture (Vol. 1), John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Cloutman, N 2018, ‘Craft beer production in Australia’, report No. OD5071, Industry report, IBISWorld, viewed 15 August 2019, IBISWorld Database.

Domino’s 2019, Facebook messenger bot, Domino’s, viewed 15 August, <https://www.dominos.com.au/inside-dominos/technology/messenger-bot>

Gibson, J 1979, The ecological approach to visual perception, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.

Kaufmann, H, Loureiro, S & Manarioti, A 2016, Exploring behavioural branding, brand love and brand co-creation. The Journal of Product and Brand Management, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 516-526.

Kaufmann, H & Manarioti, A 2017, Encouraging participative consumerism through evolutionary digital marketing: Emerging research and opportunities, IGI Global, Hershey, PA.

McDonnell, J 2018a, ‘VB puts the future of its ads in the hands of the public’, AdNews, 27 November, viewed 15 August, <https://www.adnews.com.au/news/vb-puts-the-future-of-its-ads-in-hands-of-the-public>

McDonnell, J 2018b, ‘VB  steps outside traditional advertising with move into merch’, AdNews, 12 November, viewed 15 August, <http://www.adnews.com.au/news/vb-steps-outside-traditional-advertising-with-move-into-merch>

Reeves, M 2019, ‘Beer manufacturing in Australia’, report No. C1212, Industry report, IBISWorld, viewed 15 August 2019, IBISWorld Database.

Sadler, T 2014, ‘Communities of Practice’ in Encyclopaedia of Science Education, Springer Science + Business Media, Dordrecht, pp. pp1-6.

Wenger, E 1998, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Victoria Bitter 2019, The brew, Victoria Bitter, viewed 15 August <https://www.victoriabitter.com.au/pages/the-brew>

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Platform Affordances and Instagram Likes

This week’s topic around the affordances of social media platforms is a timely one considering the recent changes rolled out by Instagram to remove the visibility of likes on posts in select countries including Australia. It marks a shift for the platform, particularly the landscape of influencers that have monetised their popularity and will no doubt feel the impact of the change most.

The idea of ‘affordances’ dates back to ecological psychology, describing the ‘action possibilities’ of objects within the environment (Gibson 1979). It has more recently been applied to design theory and the capabilities and uses of objects and furthermore technology.

This leads us to a consideration of the affordances, and ultimately limitations of social media platforms in their vast array of different purposes and features. Each platform is different, Instagram places a premium on photos, Twitter encourages users to speak their mind through words, albeit in a brief 240 characters. Facebook, one of social media’s oldest platforms, has undergone a huge evolution over its time with affordances constantly changing to focus on sharing statuses, managing relationships, attending events, participating in groups, following news and live streaming.

So why are social media platforms designed in certain ways, and what dictates the affordances of each? The primary motive has to be differentiation. We see the constant changes and rise of new social media platforms, each one different to the next looking to fill a gap or facilitate a new social behaviour. 

Beyond this, however, the motivations for these affordances might be a little more sinister. With the intention of attracting the largest number of active users possible, platforms are clearly designed to be addictive and promote repetitive use by constantly presenting curated content based on personal data and keeping users clicking, sharing, and scrolling. At the end of the day, users x engagement = ad revenue, and this is how they make their money.

This is why the recent changes by Instagram may be a little more self serving that they seem. While they claim the motivation for this change is to remove the “pressure” of getting likes, promoting positive mental health and encouraging users to share more, I see these changes as reactionary to user behaviour that has diminished their revenue model.

With influencers taking advantage of their exposure to earn up to $250,000 per post, this is advertising revenue that is being kept out of the pockets of the platforms own advertising features.

In an effort to change that, the removal of likes may take away the perceived popularity of influencers and the products they are being paid to promote and ultimately encourage businesses to spend their marketing dollars elsewhere.

Time will tell if this change to the affordances of Instagram as a platform will create any real impact, but it is certainly something to consider when looking at the ways platforms can be used and the reasons why.

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Social Beast

You’d be hard pressed to find a social media platform that I’m not on. Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, you name it, I’m anywhere from a daily user to a mildly interested occasional poster.

Each platform offers something different, with varying points of interest, communities and conversations and ever evolving practices.

Looking at my daily use, Instagram and Facebook belong to the constant refresh variety. Multiple times a day, often every hour, I find myself refreshing my feeds and clearing out notifications.

Interestingly, however, Instagram is the only platform I use to regularly post, participating in the evolving community of practice. Despite being ‘on’ a lot of social media platforms, my level of content creation varies from updating my story or the occasional Insta post, to a scattered tweet or Facebook tag.

I find myself spending a lot more time on platforms liking, responding, managing my life in Facebook events and falling down the rabbit hole of Facebook recommended videos.

Aside from the core group of Facebook, Instagram and to a degree, Twitter, the rest of my social media use is generally peripheral. My once avid use of Snapchat has been wholly killed off by the rise of Instagram stories, meanwhile platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit rarely get a look in.

To determine the difference between my professional and personal use of social media is a difficult one for two reasons.

Primarily, I don’t see myself as particularly having used social media for professional purposes in the conventional sense. When I think of professional social networking, LinkedIn and Twitter are the two that come to mind.

Posts like “Amazing opportunity participating in the @AusBusinessSummit for #NetworkingWeek with the #LeadershipTeam”. Cringe.

When I did use social media for professional purposes I was working in social media itself, were the everyday functioning of the platform was my job. Although I wasn’t posting or engaging from my personal accounts, they were regularly used to research and keep up to date with trends.

Secondly, as the industry I have worked in has changed, so too has the value of professional social networking, and the key platforms in which it takes place.

The beer industry is an interesting one, particularly the growth of craft over recent years and the community aspect of these businesses. As a result, the personal nature of the industry has resulted in more social twist on professional communication, focusing on Instagram and Facebook as key sites for promotion, interaction, and conversation.

Each brewery or brand has its own accounts with a unique aesthetic, meanwhile one can often find the brewers and shop owners themselves, interacting with the community on Facebook groups and Instagram comment sections.

This is a unique social media ecosystem I have only just started to scratch the surface of, but I can see myself digging deeper into as I work through this course and continue to establish myself within the community and industry. If only to find myself a few new favourite beers.

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About Me

My name is Gianni. I am currently completing my final semester of my Master of Communications and working part time in the Customer Experience Center (CXC) at Carlton and United Breweries (CUB). I returned to university to complete my masters last year after a two year gap from completing my Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne.

During the break, I worked for a year and a half as a freelance social media and digital marketing manager in the Melbourne hospitality industry while also discovering my passion for the beer industry working part time at Dan Murphy’s.

During my time in social media I had the opportunity to work for businesses with large and small customer markets, honing my skills and getting a feel for the industry.

My decision to return to study and complete my masters was motivated by a desire to learn more about the communications field and veer away from social media, with a passionate focus towards the areas of marketing and brand management.

Despite this, I still maintain a vested interest in social media and its platforms and am always keen to build on my repertoire within what is an incredibly fast moving industry.

I would love to continue my career trajectory following my graduation in anything regarding beer. My goal is to explore opportunities in marketing or branding within CUB or explore another opportunity in Melbourne’s thriving craft scene.

Outside of work and study I have a keen interest in sport and music, frequently attending concerts and supporting my beloved Geelong Cats in the AFL. I also play amateur football for North Brunswick Old Boys.