Going Viral. Organic Conversations. Facebook this, Twitter that... I'm plum tuckered out just from listening to all the talk about social media and marketing. While brands struggle to figure out how social media fits with their strategies and consumers, some are learning to walk the talk and deliver value added campaigns.
Earlier this month – during Fashion week – Burberry broke new communication ground by creating a #tweetwalk conversation on Twitter where it shared each “look” in a tweet before it hit the runway. Taking a lesson from Donna Karan and Marc Jacobs, who livestreamed their Spring runway shows via Facebook, Burberry also livestreamed its Fall show on its own website, in addition to Facebook creating an additional point of engagement with brand fans and customers.
Other recent examples – like Coca Cola’s use of Facebook to extend and entrench it’s Happiness positioning – is indicative of a huge push to social media as a communication tool.
Hold your horses…. This doesn’t mean that traditional media is dead. In fact, a large portion of the global success of #tweetwalk can be attributed to regional “Twitter Takeovers,” in which editors of traditional media tweeted on behalf of the brand via accounts such as @burberry_turkey (the editor of Elle, Turkey), @burberry_russia (the editor of Vogue, Russia), and @burberry_korea (the editor of Elle, Korea). Vogue & Elle (among other traditional media) recognize that they must move forward and work with new, digital formats - and brands like Burberry are taking advantage as they extend their influence across these platforms.
Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s CCO (Chief Creative Officer) spoke with Mashable about the importance of a media mix to the brand's communication strategy:
… the online experience Burberry has developed on its own behalf doesn’t detract from or diminish the role of traditional media, but provides another channel for consumers to experience the brand. “A brand is not just about product, it’s about experience as well, and experiences need to come from the center of a community,” he said. “I get excited about using all of those platforms to communicate to all of our different communities around the world about what we’re doing.”
In another Mashable interview, Dennis McEniry, President, Online, Estee Lauder Companies (often thought to be the owner of some of the most “digital forward” beauty brands) illuminated the old vs. new media debate:
Traditional is still important, but it’s becoming a different blend.
When you look at it across all our portfolio, TV and digital are the highest priorities. Television is becoming even more important for most of our brands than it has been in the past. And of course all of our brands are doing digital and doing a lot more with digital than in the past.
Print is still a big priority with our largest brands like Estee Lauder and Clinique, but they’re changing the mix.
In the end – the brands that leverage social media the best (like Coca Cola, Burberry, and Estee Lauder mentioned here) are the ones that have moved past buzzwords like optimization, viral, and engagement towards INTEGRATION of communication media. While today, the media may be new, the goal of the brand stays the same - to create a consistent voice that gains volume as it resonates across many (old & new) media platforms.
One doesn’t have to look past Coca Cola (a very old school brand that consistently steps up and leads the way in the digital new school) and what it has done with integrated “audiomarks” that form the backdrop in virtually every communication piece the brand produces. Give this Vimeo clip a viewing and listen for the audiomark - this is an amazing example of how deeply embedded aspects of branding can be, both inside us as consumers, and in everything that is wrapped up in, and associated with a product.
No comments:
Post a Comment