sumitaggarwal-blog

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Engaging Customers on Social Media

While reading the article about not so happy ending of #McDStories I was reminded of two great social media campaigns run by Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) brands. This post means to illustrate those two campaigns and if there any pointers on how brands can engage with customers on Social Media.

A. Taco Bell - Cinco De Mayo 2016 - Snapchat Taco Head Filter

The brand launched a sponsored lens campaign that turned consumers' heads into a giant taco shell to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and when the created videos were played they played featured audio with the fast food restaurant’s bong sound. 

The campaign set a record by receiving 224 million views in one day.  They paid an estimated $750,000 for 24 hours of that filter. That works out to be 0.3 cents per view. Also, an average user played with the filter for 24 seconds before posting, that means complete attention of the users for those 24 seconds. To me, this campaign represented the gold standard in User Generated Content.

The campaign was successful as they created Platform appropriate content. Snapchats allows brands to be nimble and efficient in creation and audience has an affinity for lightweight and humorous content. The Taco Bell marketing team in this campaign demonstrated a great understanding of both the platform and the audience.

2. Most retweeted tweet ever - #NuggsforCarter

On 5th April 2017, 16-year-old Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) tweeted Wendy's and asked how many retweets it would take to give him free chicken nuggets for a year. Wendy’s responded "18 Million."

This brief exchange went viral and in no time brands and celebrities started supporting Carter. In just 5 days he reached 2.5 million retweets to become the second-most-retweeted tweet of all time surpassing tweet by Louis Tomlinson from the band One Direction.

Other brands like Linkedin, Gamestop, Apple Music, and the official Twitter account tweeted in support of Carter and celebrities like John Legere, Clay Aiken, AJ Joshi, Genie Bouchard, Martha Hunt, Aaron Paul, and Austen Creed chimed in as well.

To top it all Ellen DeGeneres whose Oscar selfie was the most retweeted tweet of all time did a segment in her show with Bradley Cooper asking for support to ensure her tweet remains as the most retweeted tweet ever and hosted Carter on her show next week. 

Results of the campaign

Carter's tweet about Wendy's chicken nuggets earned 3.5 million+ retweets -- the most-retweeted tweet ever

Won a retweet challenge against Ellen DeGeneres, who hosted Carter on her nationally syndicated show

Generated over 2.5 billion earned media impressions from 1,076 placements, including top-tier outlets like Fast Company, The NY Times, the TODAY Show, Time, NPR, USA Today and more

Over 5 million online mentions of Carter's quest for Wendy's nuggets, also organically boosting conversation mentioning Wendy's 376% year over year

Other brand accounts like Guinness World Records, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google chimed in -- along with celebrities like "Breaking Bad" actor Aaron Paul, comedian Andy Milonakis and T-Mobile CEO John Legere

Twitter verified Carter's account AND donated a custom emoji triggered by the #NuggsForCarter hashtag, used 234,000+ times

@Wendys earned 213,000 new Twitter followers and 23.9 million visits to its Twitter profile

Wendy's gave Carter his year of free chicken nuggets

It may seem that the Wendys just got lucky with the content which went viral. However, I beg to differ.  Brands can’t predict which content will go viral but they can place themselves to ensure that their chances increase and they harness it well when it goes viral.

If we look at Wendys Twitter feed it has consistent, conversational voice with topical, relevant humor and playful sarcasm. This ensures that they do great things with their social community. Also, they harnessed the opportunity quite well by reaching out to Ellen, ensuring Carter goes on her show and pledging $100,000 to charity when Carter’s tweet beats Ellen.

According to me, there are five lessons for any team managing a brand on Social Media from Wendys:

1. Keep a consistent identity and don’t try to fake it.

2. People like interacting with humans. Keep that touch in all communication.

3. Stay true to the brand

4. Plan for mistakes - Apologize if needed, remove content

5. Listen attentively

Source: 

A. https://www.vml.com/our-work/wendys

B. http://www.adweek.com/digital/taco-bells-cinco-de-mayo-snapchat-lens-was-viewed-224-million-times-171390/

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

30 seconds....that's it !!

Recently a classmate wrote an article on LinkedIn referencing a study by British Medical Journal. This study analyzed average consultation length in 67 countries. Average consultation length varied from little over 30 s in Bangladesh to 22.5 min in Sweden. There were 15 countries with their most recently reported consultation length at <5 min, 25 countries with a consultation length of 5–9.9 min and only 3 countries with a consultation length of ≥20 min.

Such short consultation times adversely affect patient care and are reflective of the broken state of healthcare systems across the world. This combined with rising burden of chronic diseases and high economic cost to the society means that the sector needs innovation and disruption. 

American Well is one such disruption.Their early communication was centered around the unpleasant experience of visiting a doctor and if you can get doctor consultation at home why go to a doctor?

Coming back to the case, I have used 5Cs analysis to conduct situation analysis which can help in determining which opportunity will be most valuable for American Well to pursue. 

Analyzing Customers

·       Patients - Patients need affordable, convenient access to quality care.

·       Doctors - Doctors need a cost-effective solution to manage their load of patients. Also, not all doctors across the country have a high patient load.

·       Insurance Companies - They need to provide medical care in a cost-efficient manner. They are in a highly competitive market, hence there is a dire need to build strong equity with consumers as well.

·       Large Employers - They need a solution which prevents absenteeism & provides employee satisfaction.

 Analyzing Context

 ·       Political environment -  In 2009, the healthcare environment in the US was volatile owing to the recession and the commitment towards health care reforms shown by President Obama.

·       Economic Environment - 14% of Americans did not see the doctor due to cost concerns 17% paid out of pocket because of no health insurance schemes.

·       Legal Environment - HIPAA - Users of the new IT healthcare systems remained wary about HIPAA compliance and malpractice risk, therefore were more stringent of their requirements from IT service providers.

·       Technological Environment - Rising internet penetration and increasing comfort of patients to interact with doctors over emails.

 Analyzing Company

 ·       Strong previous experience in healthcare

·       Entrepreneurial Roots

·       First Mover advantage

·       Linking real-time excess capacity with real-time excess demand

·       Patients have the flexibility to choose the specialists

 Analyzing Collaborators & Complementers

 ·       Doctors - They can earn more by getting a regular flow of patients and avoid costs like the hiring of employees and leasing of office space and equipment. It could also benefit doctors who have retired from regular practice and doctors in regions where the demand for healthcare services is low.

·       Hospitals and Health Clinics - The system can enable the more efficient use of their resources by having a more predictable flow of demand and also managing queues in these places.

·       Employers of Medium/Large enterprises - Employers can offer the benefit of online healthcare to its employees. The resultant benefits can be:

o   Higher employee retention due to satisfaction and ease of health care.

o   Higher employee productivity by reducing absenteeism.

o   Ease of access, through kiosks which can be installed at the workplace itself.

Analyzing Competitors

A number of companies were involved in health-related electronic exchanges in the US with the objective of improving patient care. These companies provided interaction directly between the physicians and patients. These companies focused their activities only on interactions between patients and physicians and didn’t involve Health Insurance companies. However, in 2009, Cisco started developing a nationwide network in collaboration with a large U.S health insurer.

Apart from this, there were offline competitors delivering inpatient care like Nurse Practitioners, MinuteClinic, RediClinic etc.

Which opportunity should American Well pursue?

Based on this analysis Insurance companies represent the most lucrative opportunity for American Well to pursue.

Insurance companies can provide access to a large pool of patients & doctors. Insurance companies bring in marketing resources to increase adoption by care providers and patients. 

It made economic sense for insurance companies in terms of reduced costs. A 2009 analysis reported that Online Care could save insurers $3.36 per patient per month (Exhibit 9), which given the total number of interactions can be a considerable saving.

The system can help insurance companies get new customers who might be willing to buy insurance for just online consultations at a lower cost.

Insurance companies were viewed as being primarily driven by profit. Online care facility will provide an opportunity to these companies to improve their imagery amongst consumers.

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Why Google created Alphabet – A branding perspective

In their blog post “G is for Google”, Larry Page and Sergey Brin explained why they just created a new company.

They said” Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make "smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses." From the start, we've always strived to do more and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have.

Looking at this from the perspective of Brand Relationship. Google, employed the "branded house" strategy with Google Glass, Google Play, maps, books etc., and was getting into a "house of brands" strategy with Nest, Fiber, etc. However, as the company began moving into driverless cars, health care, and other fields, they were growing more distant from their brand promise and corporate mission. This needed a change in brand architecture for proper management.

Creating a new company Alphabet helped was aimed at doing the following:

·       Make the structure and business more transparent.

·       Enable google to hone its brand focus

·       Help every division focus on their brands

·       Eliminates confusion in consumers and investors’ minds

The downside is, it requires each brand to have its own marketing budget, market position, and customer segment. Not only do you have to take into consideration the customer and vision, you'll have to consider your marketing budget and the capacity of your marketing team. 

A reference list of brands which Alphabet own is given below:

·       A - Alphabet / Android / AdSense / Analytics / Ara / AdMob / Alerts

·       B - Blogger / Boston Dynamics / Books

·       C - Calico / Cardboard / Capital

·       D - Drive / DeepMind / Design / DoubleClick

·       E - Earth / Express

·       F - Fiber / Fi / Flights / FeedBurner / Firebase / Finance

·       G - Google / Gmail / Glass / Groups

·       H - Hangouts

·       I - Images / Ingress / Inbox / Invite Media

·       J - Jump

·       K - Keep

·       L - Life Sciences / Local / Loon

·       M - Maps / My Business / Makani

·       N - Nest / News / Nexus / Now

·       O - Offers

·       P - Plus / Play / Photos / Picasa / Pixate / Patents

·       Q - (Nexus) Q

·       R - Refine / reCaptcha

·       S - Search / Shopping / SageTV /Stackdriver / Skybox / Skia / Scholar

·       T - Translate / Tango

·       U - N/A

·       V - Voice / Ventures / VirusTotal / Video

·       W - Wallet / Wing

·       X - X Labs

·       Y - YouTube

·       Z - Project Z / Zagat

Source: https://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2015/08/alphabet-architecture-success.html#.Wt4ch4jwY2w

http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-and-sergey-brin-explain-why-they-created-alphabet-2015-8

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Singapore Girl, You are a great way to fly

Singapore Airlines turned 70 last year but the Singapore Girl introduced in 1972 is ageless; her smiling face inseparable from the carrier. Dressed in iconic Malay sarong kebaya she personifies the hospitality, luxury, quality, and comfort of Singapore Airlines (SIA).

The campaign concept over the years has been criticized as being sexist and also accused of stereotyping Asian women as being subservient. However, she gives an imagery to the brand and epitomizes the warmth and care of Singapore Airlines. Also, as the airline faces competition from both full service and low-cost carriers it helps the brand stand out as not many brands have the imagery of a living icon.

The following quote from Singapore's The Straits Times sums it up.

“To remove the Singapore Girl icon from SIA is like removing Mickey Mouse from Disneyland…”

Singapore Girl has helped SIA in establishing a powerful positioning of superior overall experience on board delivered by a caring cabin crew supported by superior products and processes. All campaigns of the brand over time have delivered the same consistent messaging to create an icon who is graceful, charming and above all caring.

2011 Campaign

This campaign while highlighting different destinations catered to by SIA retained the core message of great In-flight service reflected in the care and warmth of Singapore girl.

2013 Campaign

The whole 2013 campaign was centered around great lengths to which Singapore Airlines goes to take care of its customers. I especially like this creative as it moves beyond the obvious in-flight services and credits the Singapore Girl with even selecting the fabric of the seat to improve the customer experience adding to her persona.

2018 Campaign

This campaign with a fairy tale beginning demonstrates how SIA creates personalized experiences for customers designed around their needs with Singapore Girl delivering these experiences.

Singapore Airlines brand is a great example of establishing a service differential through consistent messaging and more importantly complementing it with actual delivery.

You’re always there Across the world I see you smile I see you care You have that way of knowing  What to do  And what to say You have that touch of magic As you carry me to places  I have never seen And more I’ve never known The world looks great when I’m with you The sky is yours alone You’re always there  Across the world I see you smile I see you care Singapore Girl  You’re a great way to fly

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Singapore Girl, You are a great way to fly

Singapore Airlines turned 70 last year but the Singapore Girl introduced in 1972 is ageless; her smiling face inseparable from the carrier. Dressed in iconic Malay sarong kebaya she personifies the hospitality, luxury, quality, and comfort of Singapore Airlines (SIA).

The campaign concept over the years has been criticized as being sexist and also accused of stereotyping Asian women as being subservient. However, she gives an imagery to the brand and epitomizes the warmth and care of Singapore Airlines. Also, as the airline faces competition from both full service and low-cost carriers it helps the brand stand out as not many brands have the imagery of a living icon.

The following quote from Singapore's The Straits Times sums it up.

"To remove the Singapore Girl icon from SIA is like removing Mickey Mouse from Disneyland..."

Singapore Girl has helped SIA in establishing a powerful positioning of superior overall experience on board delivered by a caring cabin crew supported by superior products and processes. All campaigns of the brand over time have delivered the same consistent messaging to create an icon who is graceful, charming and above all caring.

2011 Campaign

This campaign while highlighting different destinations catered to by SIA retained the core message of great In-flight service reflected in the care and warmth of Singapore girl.

2013 Campaign

The whole 2013 campaign was centered around great lengths to which Singapore Airlines goes to take care of its customers. I especially like this creative as it moves beyond the obvious in-flight services and credits the Singapore Girl with even selecting the fabric of the seat to improve the customer experience adding to her persona.

2018 Campaign

This campaign with a fairy tale beginning demonstrates how SIA creates personalized experiences for customers designed around their needs with Singapore Girl delivering these experiences.

Singapore Airlines brand is a great example of establishing a service differential through consistent messaging and more importantly complementing it with actual delivery.

You're always there Across the world I see you smile I see you care You have that way of knowing  What to do  And what to say You have that touch of magic As you carry me to places  I have never seen And more I've never known The world looks great when I'm with you The sky is yours alone You're always there  Across the world I see you smile I see you care Singapore Girl  You're a great way to fly

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Four Products : Diffusion : Rogers’ Five Forces

Perceptions Matter!!

As the HBR article on Innovation Diffusion (Note on Innovation Diffusion: Roger’s Five Force) mentions that innovation is any new product or idea that is perceived as new by a given set of people. Also, while analyzing “relative advantage” of a product over the another, what really matters is the perception of the potential adopters.

Given below is an analysis of four products given in the case based on my perception. I have also given a rank to each of the products basis my views on their diffusion.

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Think Beach - Think Corona

Vivid Imagery is at the forefront of Corona’s branding strategy. Corona appeals to its younger-skewing target demographic by selling the imagery of an escape to a beach. Chilling with friends on a beach holiday appeals to this audience and with brand messaging associating Corona to the beach, the product also becomes appealing by association. Interestingly, Beer drinkers don’t really like the taste of Corona but its association with friends and relaxation seems to be driving consumption and sales.

This is also echoed in the statement by Michael Foley, President, and CEO of Heineken U.S.A in the case. 

“….There’s no mystery about brewing beer. Everyone can do it…Beer is all marketing. People don’t drink beer, they drink marketing.”

Another key feature of Corona’s strategy is consistency. The advertising theme has constantly emphasized “Fun, Sun, Beach” theme. A lot of brands tend to move to completely different themes but for Corona, even the new campaigns like “Find your beach” and promotions revolve around the same theme. This consistency is also reflected in other processes in the organization like long-term import partners, reliable pricing, production locations etc.

Heineken – Just being the best is enough

Heineken’s strategy, on the other hand, revolved around product quality and they even portrayed other brands as being stupid in their campaigns. As per my understanding of the information in the case, Heineken is being positioned as a premium beer and is meant for special occasions.

The elitist image is not endearing them to the young population which is spending more money on alcoholic beverages compared to older ones. This is further accentuated by the focus on premium quality and tradition.

[sumitaggarwal-blog]

Brand image is a shared perception of the product amongst the consumers. There is a very strong linkage between customer perception and brand image. Brands must be very mindful of what image brand projects to the consumers. 

Not all customer segments make objective purchase decisions. When customers can’t make objective decisions they rely on their perceptions to judge a brand, make purchasing decisions based on perceptions and share their perceptions with other consumers.