Author: Drew Neisser

Guerrilla Marketing Insights

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Business Insider ran a feature today on guerrilla marketing which included a couple of quotes from yours truly.  Here are my notes from my interview with reporter Bianca Male.

What is the best way to define guerrilla marketing? And what is it most definitely not?

Guerrilla marketing is a state of mind not a particular channel. Guerrilla marketing is about making more out of less, combining innovation and elbow grease to cut through. Guerrilla marketing can also be defined by what it isn’t. It isn’t traditional media like TV and print. Today’s guerrilla marketers capitalize on social media with a vengeance; listening, researching, conversing, engaging, supporting and ultimately selling. That said, just using social media channels like Facebook doesn’t make you a guerrilla. Using Facebook in a fresh way like Burger King did with Whopper Sacrafice is guerrilla. It simply isn’t guerrilla if it isn’t newsworthy.

How can a business decide if a guerilla marketing campaign is right for them?

There are a few highly regulated industries like financial services and insurance that make considering guerrilla approaches a risky proposition. That said, just about every other marketer big or small can benefit from guerrilla, its just a question of risk tolerance. Guerrilla marketing typically carries some risk since it requires a brand to step outside its comfort zone and do something they’ve never done before. Guerrilla marketing done right is newsworthy. As I said earlier, It isn’t guerrilla marketing if it isn’t newsworthy. One of the risks of guerrilla marketing is that it simply won’t cut through as planned simply because it wasn’t original or it was just a dumb idea. Another risk is that the guerrilla idea was a mere moment in time and didn’t include sustaining elements. One of my favorites: Renegade launched the HSBC BankCab in 2003 with a search for the “most knowledgeable cabbie in New York” which got tons of PR and concluded with a one-year contract for Johnnie Morello. Seven years later Johnnie is still on the road providing free rides to delighted HSBC customers in a vintage 1982 Checker Cab.

How does a business develop a guerrilla campaign? Any guidelines?

The article I just wrote for my blog on Fast Company provides several relevant guidelines. Generally, its best to start by setting clear objectives followed quickly by doing your homework, really thinking through your category, brand and consumer. Ideally, this process will yield a true insight that can be transformed into a big idea. Then its time to think 360°, imagining all the ways your idea can come to life, online, offline and in-between. It often helps at this point to imagine the story headline you’d like to see, the tweets you’d like to read, the photos you’d like to be taken and YouTube videos that you’d want to view. Talk to some PR professionals you trust to make sure these story ideas might in fact find purchase in your ideal media outlets. Google your idea to make sure it hasn’t been done the same way you’re planning to do it. Guerrilla programs usually start when a client says to us, “we don’t have any money but we’d really like to get some media attention.”

One of my favorites: A few years ago, Panasonic was introducing a new line of alkaline batteries called Oxyride that were far more powerful than Energizer. Since they didn’t have the budget to compete directly, Renegade came up with a truly guerrilla program called “Neuter your Bunny.” This tongue-in-cheek “public service” effort focused on heightening awareness of the benefits of bunny neutering. Turns out it calms the male bunnies down and prevents female bunnies from getting cervical cancer, a disease that otherwise strikes them with remarkably frequency. So Panasonic Oxyride batteries established Neuter Your Bunny day, donating 5 free neuterings and $10,000 to the House Rabbit Society. And despite the fact that PETA gave Panasonic an award for caring, the American press thought this was veiled yet hilarious competitive campaign writing headlines like “Panasonic Wants to Neuter Energizer” in over 30 publications from Time Magazine to Newsday.

Is there anything a business should NEVER do when it comes to guerrilla marketing?

It is generally not a good idea to do something that will cause someone on the team to go to jail. If you have to break the law to get attention then you probably need a different business model. Try not to annoy your target. A street team performer once shoved a donut in my face in order to get me to stop and go into a bank branch—this was not a fun experience for me or productive for the bank who would never ever get my business after that. Try not to think of guerrilla as a moment in time or as a simple street stunt. This will limit your horizons and the potential impact. And never tell the boss that your guerrilla program is going to be a hit before it becomes one. Its always better to under-promise and over-deliver especially with often unpredictable guerrilla endeavors.

CMO Insights: How A Cosmetics Brand Achieved Beautiful Growth in An Ugly Economy.

Posted on by Drew Neisser

When Ted Rubin grabbed the reins as CMO of e.l.f. cosmetics in 2008, he knew he was going to have to be inventive.  “There’s not a lot of margin in a $1.00 cosmetic,” he noted in my interview with him last week.  “I simply didn’t have a budget for paid media,” he added.  Yet despite this limitation, in just under two years Ted was able to help the company significantly increase its sales in one of the worst recessions in history, providing a textbook case for any aspiring guerrilla marketer.

1. Listen Up

Anyone who’s ever met Ted knows he’s a great talker who prides himself in responding to any query from any person as fast as humanly possible. BUT what they might not know is that he’s also a great listener, and he made listening his first priority when he arrived at e.l.f.  What he learned in his first 90 days provided the foundation for his subsequent success.  Scouring the web, Ted found hundreds of fans across multiple channels, many of whom provided invaluable feedback — feedback that he continued to seek as ideas began to percolate.

2. Sniff Out an Insight

Up until recently, e.l.f. cosmetics were sold mainly online, direct to consumers at an unbelievably low price point. Therein lay the challenge.  Even bargain hunters asked, “How could a one dollar cosmetic be any good?”  Ted realized that this rampant skepticism could not be overcome by any company messaging, and in fact would require extensive word of mouth in which one consumer reassured another that e.l.f. is indeed a high quality product.  Fortunately, during Ted’s listening period, he had found hundreds of delightfully chatty fans dispersed all over the web.

3. Hug Your Fans

Though e.l.f. had been early to the blogosphere, in late 2008 they had almost no presence on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.  So this is where Ted started, zealously responding to any mention of e.l.f. and engaging customers with instructional content that emphasized conversation over sales pitches.  In the process, Ted discovered hundreds of consumer-generated videos that featured e.l.f. products and consolidated these on a branded YouTube channel and created a hub for them on the distinct AskELF.com url.  During the course of 2009, e.l.f. became a social media powerhouse, accumulating in excess of 50,000 Facebook fans, over 50,000 Twitter followers (including Ted’s presence), and an astonishing 2.3 million+ views of user-generated videos!

4. Hold the Right Hands

Lots of brands pay lip service to the influential blogging/micro-blogging community by parsing out chunks of content they hope will be repurposed.  Ted took a far more personal approach, “nurturing each relationship” to the point that many became his close friends.  They also became a sounding board for ideas, one of which became the “Make Up at Home Parties,” a program that delighted the targeted bloggers so much that after 70 such parties, there is a waiting list of 250, and a galaxy of party-related content including text, pictures, Whrrls, and video that has been shared and shared again by thousands upon thousands of e.l.f. fans.

5. Tap into Metrics

As e.l.f.’s social media efforts were starting to take hold, Ted realized that “just building a large base of fans was insufficient.”  He needed to understand who was really engaged and if/how this was affecting sales.  Fortunately, the news was good.  As the fan base grew, so too did traffic to their online commerce site from social media sites, 75% of whom ended up being new visitors.  These new visitors demonstrated their commitment by buying product and signing up for the e.l.f. newsletter.  In fact, the e.l.f. database nearly doubled to 2.3 million by the end of 2009, a metric that was music to the ears of the company’s owners AND prospective marketing partners.

6. Reach for Partners

One of the ways Ted was able to stretch every precious marketing penny was by partnering with a host of brands with shared interests.  Conde Nast’s Allure Magazine provided content and gifts for the House Parties while the SheSpeaks.com network of product testers and bloggers helped find party hosts that would spread the word.  ExploreModeling.com was the perfect partner for a marketing contest called the “New Face of e.l.f” which sought out 4 models of various ages. Viral by design, contestants garnered over 800,000 votes supported by 40,000 pictures that in turn gained 35,000 comments.  With results like these, it is little wonder marketers like Virgin Mobile and Warner’s Bra along with J.C. Penney reached out to e.l.f. for more cross-promotions, most of which cost e.l.f. next to nothing.

7. Kiss and Tell

In the 4th quarter of 2009, e.l.f. was suddenly in 1700+ Target stores with a 4 foot end-cap. For a primarily online brand this was a huge retail expansion. “Target was totally enamored with our social media presence,” noted Ted, who suddenly had a “currency” he could exchange not just with other marketers but also retailers eager to share e.l.f.’s social media cache.  Marveling at how quickly the product sold once in Target, Ted noted, “A good part of what we built in social media enabled that to happen.”  With over 400 blog posts about e.l.f. entering Target, 2000 retweets of the new retail presence and customers snapping photos of product flying off the shelf, Target was so thrilled with the results it helped e.l.f. secure a permanent in-line presence in a significantly larger percentage of stores in early 2010 than originally planned.

Final Note: Early in his career, Ted worked for “America’s Greatest Marketer” Seth Godin, who by then had already co-authored The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook. Clearly Ted learned at the feet of a master, one who instilled the guerrilla credo that inventiveness and elbow grease can make up for a small budget every time.  Ted is taking that same spirit of inventiveness to OpenSky, introducing Relationship Commerce, and something he says “will change the face of e-tailing.” Ted is also a proud member of The CMO Club.

CMO Insights: The Importance of Innovation

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In October 2008, Barbara Goodstein, Chief Marketing Officer of AXA Equitable was only slightly nervous as her company launched an unprecedented customer retention program called MyRetirementShop.com.  Creating a “retirement portal” more focused on “value add” than lead generation, Ms. Goodstein was moving her company into unchartered territory, delivering a “marketing as service” program that became far more successful than even she had anticipated.

Since its inception, MyRetirementShop.com has attracted over ½ million visitors who spend a whopping 11 minutes browsing highly relevant content from top experts like Kiplingers, Service Magic and MyRecipes.com.  Current customers were quick to thank AXA for this resource with not just words of praise but also by buying more AXA products, generating revenue far beyond the program’s cost. The press responded to this innovative marketing approach with over 200 stories that yielded an equivalent of $4.0mm in paid media coverage.

Since the old proverb “success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” also applies to marketing, it is often difficult to get the real story on what it takes for innovations like MyRetirementShop.com to come into being.  In this case, however, after an extensive interview with Ms. Goodstein in which she reviewed the development process, it became very clear that her journey has provided a textbook case on innovation, yielding the following seven critical elements of success.

1. Innovation Starts at the Top

Ms. Goodstein is no stranger to innovation.   Having guided the highly effective 800-Pound Gorilla advertising campaign for AXA into being four years ago, she knows a big idea when she sees one and she knows how to stretch a budget for maximum impact.  But she is also the first to acknowledge that “innovation more than anything starts at the top” and that if her CEO, Kip Condron, didn’t encourage and support innovation, her efforts would never see the light of day.  With senior management saying, “We should try multiple creative options and see what’s going to work,” and encouraging innovation with financial incentives, the virulent skepticism that typically inhibits new idea development is diffused if not silenced.

2. Listen to Your Customers

The impetus for MyRetirementShop.com sprung from an annual study AXA conducts among its customers. According to Ms. Goodstein, “We built MyRetirementShop.com on years of data that revealed the topics that were most relevant to pre-retirees, so we just had to take all of this content and make it accessible.”  Pre-retirees noted their interest in everything from home and family to health and fitness, from travel to finance, from self-improvement to entertainment.  So it came as no surprise to Ms. Goodstein that these topics gained traction with their target.  The only surprise was divergence between the expressed interest in volunteering and concierge services in the research versus the actual behavior on the site.  Ms. Goodstein speculates that disinterest in these areas may be more a reflection of current economic realities than the ultimate value of the content.

3. Make Sure It’s Truly Innovative

Before developing MyRetirementShop.com, Ms. Goodstein and her team did an extensive review of retirement portals and competitor’s websites.  When it was clear there was nothing like it out there, the AXA team then “did our own screening to find the best possible content providers.” According to Ms. Goodstein, “It took over a year to line up all the partners, and an internal SWAT team dedicated to every area of the site” to pull it all together. To insure relevance, they insisted that all the content had national reach and users could even “drill down by zipcode.”  And though much of MyRetirementShop.com content exists on other sites, AXA is the first to aggregate it all in one place, and is the only retirement portal without highly intrusive advertising.

4. Service First, Then Branding

The intention of MyRetirementShop.com from the beginning was to be a service – not an advertisement, a service that would help retain existing customers, and one that would reflect the deep expertise of AXA Equitable and its sincere commitment to help consumers with retirement planning.  “We wanted the site to be value add” noted Ms. Goodstein, “and we didn’t want it to be a commercial for us.” This commitment to service had a strong influence on the design of the site, which has almost no AXA ID other than their 800-pound gorilla who serves as “branding anchor and host.” The now familiar gorilla sits on top of each section and offers a “pithy audio message” that Ms. Goodstein anticipated “would create more of a connection” with site visitors.

5. Service First, Then Sales

Once the site was launched, AXA representatives were provided with a number of tools to share it with existing customers.  Direct mail, email and brochures described the content and invited customers to visit the site.  Then the unexpected happened, this so-called retention program started generating sales. “For $40 worth of DM, our reps generated an incremental $60,000 in sales,” added Ms. Goodstein with glee.  Suddenly the sales team that usually put the kibosh on programs considered “non-revenue generating,” embraced the site, acknowledging its power to increase sales among existing customers and even to attract new ones.  By providing a genuine service to its customers and prospects, AXA found a friendly way to break the ice and renew the conversation about retirement with a now receptive target.

6. Innovation Requires Perseverance

MyRetirementShop.com took over two years from conception to launch, with multiple hiccups along the way.  Getting the technology right was challenging and the site, which was developed by internal IT resources, went through several iterations.  “It took us a while to get it right,” acknowledged Ms. Goodstein and of course, she did not have “universal support initially.”  Importantly, AXA Global and top management voiced their confidence in the project, which Ms. Goodstein gained by outlining a clear vision, defining the content with crisp wireframes and by providing prototypes that fueled expectations.  By demonstrating what it would look like and never wavering from the quest, Ms. Goodstein and her team were able to build consensus from top to bottom, setting the stage for its ultimate success.

7. Don’t Rest on Your Laurels

Despite exceeding expectations on every metric, Ms Goodstein and her team continue to seek ways to improve MyRetirementShop.com.  New original content is in the works that will simultaneous enhance the visitor experience and increase the natural page rankings on the search engines. New content partners that could increase consumer appeal are being evaluated.   “We are also going to change the enroll button so interested visitors can reach us more easily” added Ms. Goodstein who marveled at the unexpected benefits of a true “value add” program, “Because we are willing to work so hard, people want to connect with us.”

Bottom line: Marketing innovation is neither easy nor linear, requiring support from the top, a clear vision from the start, steadfast determination along the way and ultimately a desire to do right by the consumer, a consumer that will thank you many times over with not just words of praise but also their pocketbooks.

 


Pepsi Refresh Serves All

Posted on by Drew Neisser

What I love about the concept of Marketing as Service is that when done correctly it is a win win all the way around.  The consumer wins because they get something of real value and the marketer wins because they get something of real value too, not the least of which is a meaningful consumer interaction.  Done correctly, marketing as service can increase loyalty, attract new customers, generate favorable PR and even increase your fanbase on Facebook.

Which brings me to Pepsi’s Refresh Project.  If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading this and click here.  In their words, “Pepsi is giving away millions of dollars  to fund great ideas.” Here’s a quick recap from MediaPost:

PepsiCo introduced the Pepsi Refresh Project to a large audience during the Super Bowl. The yearlong project, whose mission is to fund entrepreneurial projects with “a positive impact,” encourages fans to submit ideas — as well as vote online to decide who will be monthly winners of multiple grants ranging from $5K to $250K apiece.

At first you might ask what does saving the world have to do with Pepsi but the simple answer is in the program tagline, “every Pepsi refreshes the world.”  The reality is that Pepsi is finding a deeper way to connect with its youthful target, a target that is indeed keen on saving the world or at least making sure that young artists find an audience or that an eco-friendly play gets produced in NYC. If the target believes Pepsi actually cares, Pepsi moves from soda to soul mate.  The project has been gaining momentum over the last several months according to MediaPost:

Using no broadcast media to publicize the contest in December, Pepsi closed the submission period for ideas in 72 hours. Then the company added a little media to the mix in February and closed submissions within 24 hours. By March, as the project became more well-known, Pepsi closed submissions in less than 12 hours. There have been millions of votes, more than a billion media impressions and hundreds of thousands of new Facebook Fans.

This program is worth studying in further detail for its state-of-the-are use of social media, crowd sourcing and good old CSR (corporate social responsibility.)  But alas, I can’t do that for you right this second as I need to take a Pepsi break.

The Ideas of March (are free)

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Caesar’s assassination aside, the Ides of March typically heralded the coming of spring and a free parade for all Romans. As befits this epic recession, here is a parade of free ideas that just might spring you into action.

Count your Clicks with Bodacious Bit.ly

Sharing links is a cornerstone of social media interaction, yet few take the time to figure out which links generate the most interest. Set yourself up on bit.ly and you’ll see how easy it is to track the response to links you share in emails, newsletters, articles, PDFs (yes, you can embed links), blogs, Web sites and of course, Twitter. You can also drop your bit.ly “API key” into Tweetdeck for easy tracking of the same link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo. And finally, bit.ly has a Sidebar you can add to your browser to make the process of sharing/tracking links even easier.

Go Gaga over Google Analytics

This is such a ubiquitous tool that I hesitated to remind you of its potency. Then I remembered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s quote: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” The obvious fact is that Google Analytics can help you monitor the performance of your Web sites quickly, easily and for FREE. For example, we recently used Google Analytics to help cut the bounce rate on one of our client’s landing pages to half the industry norm. Sure, there are a lot more robust Web site measurement tools out there, but none that are as easy to set up and or as cost effective.

Monitor the Mayhem with Tweetbeep

Even it you don’t tweet or spend time tracking “tweeple,” you may still want to know what others are saying about you, your brand, your competitors and/or your category. Tweetbeep makes this easy allowing you to track up to 10 topics being talked about on Twitter for free on an hourly or daily basis. (Note: some prefer SocialOomph, which can provide the same kind of free tracking.) You could also use addicticomatic.com or search.twitter.com (which are both free) to track the same topics on a real-time basis but these are both a bit more labor intensive.

Trend Tracking and Topical Techies

With info overload commonplace, the need for insightful editors and trustworthy aggregators is more important than ever. For daily trend watching, I recommend TrendHunter on the cultural side and recent Emmy winner Shelly Palmer on technology. SocialMediaInsider and Mashable will keep you in tune on social media. And trust the folks at Trendwatching for a monthly dose of eye-opening insight, including the just-posted 6 Trend Videos for March.

Freebie Fridays in Your Future?

Our agency had a few spare hours the other day and decided to surprise a client with a little extra service at no charge to them. We labeled it “Freebie Friday” and have elected to make this an ongoing benefit of working with us. So far, our clients have taken this in the spirit in which it was offered, and haven’t sought to add freebie Mondays and Wednesdays. In the continual battle to maintain happy clients and healthy margins, sometimes you simply have to put one ahead of the other. Is there something you could do to surprise your customers with a little free love? For inspiration, check out how Tropicana did just that by erecting a “sun” over a light-deprived town in the Arctic Circle.

Insuring Success (with Net Promoter)

Posted on by Drew Neisser

When I was just out of college, my oldest brother sold me a life insurance policy.  He needed customers and I was too naive to say no.  Every year since, when that premium’s come due, I’ve cursed my brother and the company for whom he once worked. Had Net Promoter existed back then I would have been identified as a dangerous “detractor,” the kind of customer whose profit does more harm than good, and undoubtedly my brother would have been shifted out of sales sooner.

This annual experience had shaped my impression of the entire insurance industry until just recently when I had the pleasure of hearing executives from Progressive and USAA address their impressively relentless focus on customer satisfaction.  These presentations were part of a two day Net Promoter conference that celebrated the power of monitoring and addressing customer satisfaction at every point of contact.

Richard Watts, General Manager at Progressive Insurance, started his talk with a family story not unlike the one I told above.  Richard, being English, told of his “mum’s” disappointment when the company’s automated system deactivated her account simply because she’d forgotten to return what proved ultimately to be an unnecessary form.  By simply eliminating this form, Progressive retained thousands more customers and fulfilled a new internal rallying cry, “Would you do that to your Mum?”

Then Watts delved into the math behind their extensive customer satisfaction activities.  With $14 billion in annual sales, extending retention one month represents $1 billion in annual premiums.  That’s big money to any company but few have integrated customer satisfaction measures to the extent of Progressive.

An employee dashboard reports real-time satisfaction by customer, by product and by region.  Customer verbatims are treated like “treasures” and bonuses are awarded based on retention figures.  Employees with the highest Net Promoter Scores are also celebrated at annual events.

This attention to customer satisfaction has also led to the development of new services and coverage areas.   Progressive’s 52 “concierge” service centers across the country allow customers to simply drop off damaged cars, select a loaner and return when the repairs are completed. Additionally, Progressive added pet insurance, and did so much to the joy of their customer base, that can now share photos with fellow dog lovers via a community site the brand hosts. And their “name your price” offering was developed in response to customer requests via c-sat surveys.

Another insurance company that goes to extraordinary lengths to please its customer base is USAA.  Focused on the needs of men and women in the armed forces, USAA has over 7 million customers, 97% of whom renew their policies each year.  This puts USAA 9 percentage points ahead of its next best competitor in the insurance arena.  As one happy customer put it “USAA is the best relationship (next to my wife / she’s sitting next to me) I’ve had my entire life.”

At the Net Promoter Conference, Wayne Peacock, Executive Vice President at USAA, noted that his company’s dedication to c-sat starts with their mission “to facilitate the financial security of its members” and in the process be “the provider of choice for the military community.”  It’s also embedded in their tagline “we know what it means to serve.”  But this dedication to extreme customer satisfaction is far more than lip service.

Mr. Peacock noted how the company stays focused on its members and integrates military life into their corporate culture. It starts with the hiring process, with almost 1 in 5 employees having served in the military or having a spouse who served.  From there, new employees go through a sort of “boot camp” that includes wearing 40-pounds worth of field gear and consuming MRE (meal ready to eat) rations.  Executives and employees are also encouraged to attend military events on a regular basis and “respond with empathy” to any customer inquiry.

The result of this dedication to service is the extraordinary loyalty I mentioned above and the highest Net Promoter Score across all industries according to Satmetrix’s 2009 study.  With this kind of customer satisfaction, it shouldn’t be a surprise that 90% of military officers who sign up with USAA remain customers for life.  Like Progressive, USAA is avoiding the “bad profits” made from poorly conceived sales efforts (like my ex-agent and brother!), insuring both short-term and long-term success.