When You're Hot, You're Hot...When You're Not, It's Time to Rethink Your Strategy

Clorox. A household name-brand since 1913. Unfortunately in recent years, sales had been declining and dust had been settling on and amongst the jugs of stain erasing potion. 

The Problem: Typical purchasers of this product were aging. Clorox needed to find a way to reach a new younger generation of purchasers who didn't understand this product's relevancy to their lives.

Last year, Clorox took a look at messy situations that were being actively discussed on social media sites. Young parents, just like their parents, and their parents before them, had messy kids. Discussions included dirty diapers, bloody nose leaks, sick child accidents...some things never change. 

Even though they were talking about the mess, 

they weren't talking about solutions for clean-up.

The Solution:  The marketing professionals for Clorox seized this opportunity to join in on the discussion. They created mini-site bleachitaway.com and encouraged parents to share their most memorable messy moments. With contests, games, incentives, and promotions, influencers shared their stories and in return, Clorox provided them with prizes and stain clean-up tips.

Facebookers voted for "The Most Bleachable Moment'  

from the stories shared on the Clorox Facebook page.

Utilizing Twitter, Facebook, online forums, blogs, and newsletters, Clorox injected itself into existing conversations which ultimately resulted in an increase of sales by 2% during the 13-week "Bleach It Away" campaign. These astonishing results surpassed their traditional and social media goals. In addition to sales increases, Clorox saw a definite spike in the buzz surrounding their product including:

• 83 million media impressions—including nearly 13 million social media impressions
• 2,500 #BleachItAway hashtag mentions
• 35 influencer blog posts
• 21,670 stories shared
• 38% increase in Clorox Bleach online conversation. 
• 131% increase in Clorox Bleach and mess correlations online (Clorox now owns more than 70% of mess-related conversation online)
• 72% click-through rate on Twitter that led to the “Bleach it Away” hub
• More than 21,670 “Bleach it Away” story submissions
• More than 25,000 tweets using the program hashtag #BleachItAway

  

As you can see from the infographic here, the most prevalent user of social media is the 18-29 year-old. Of that, 67% are female. The next largest group is the 30-49 year-old. It appears the Clorox marketing group did their homework before jumping into social media. They know who their target market is (mom's of children infant-13) and they went directly to where these people are involved in conversations regarding the daily minutia of raising a child.

They worked together with the groundswell, they listened, they collaborated, and the situation for Clorox turned out to be a win-win for everyone who participated.

In addition to this example and the Dunkin' Donuts story I blogged about recently, here are more companies who have boarded  the social media train and have launched successful campaigns: 

•  Nike - with more than 16,000 tweets and 77% boost in Facebook interaction during the Olympics, Nike's campaign honored everyday athletes; positive feedback outpaced Adidas, the official sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics
• Sephora - engaged customers with its '15 Days of Beauty' promotion on Facebook; they placed iPads and iPod Touches in their retail stores to drive mobile traffic...mobile app downloads exceeded 2 million
• Honda - leveraged Pinterest by offering $500 to the most active Pinners to promote the new CRV throughout a 24-hour period. Honda reached more than 5.5 million Pinners...winners created a board about the activities they engaged in during their day off 

Through these examples, it is clear to see that these businesses understand how to talk, listen, engage, embrace and connect with the groundswell. There is no magic formula here, no secret ingredient. It is simply applying smart integration with the right social media channels that suit your brand image, knowing your target market, and playing nice. You want your customer's overall experience to be fun and engaging. These companies know that if they are going to utilize crowdsourcing they need to be prepared to hear what consumers really think about them and about their products. 

They know that their responses and engagement with 

consumers is the key to their business' success.

 On the flip side, there are a number of not-so-successful campaigns using social media as well.  In these examples, you'll be able to see where the company failed in their strategy to incorporate social media into their marketing plan. We covered Clark's Spree Day and the WalMart Facebook debacles in class and my last post included the United Airlines lack-of-customer-service-response fiasco. Here are a few more examples I've heard about since the utilization of social media has become prevalent:

• McDonald's launched a campaign, at the beginning of the year, asking followers to share stories about 'how they eat their McRib sandwich.' The backlash from this  caused McDonald's to pull the campaign within two hours of its launch. Instead of generating heartwarming anecdotes, the Twittersphere responded with viral tweets of horror stories involving fingernails, beaks, and E-coli.
• General Motors viral marketing campaign for their SUV asked consumers to 'Create Your Own Ad,' backfired when environmentalists created negative ads against the manufacture, distribution, and sale of these types of vehicles.
• L'Oreal, Sony, WalMart - these companies were caught posting bogus blogs to extoll what consumers loved about their products. Written as though they were from an enthusiastic customer, these comments were posted to con consumers by pushing their own propaganda.
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A failure to realize the exponential reach of social media caused each of these businesses some damage.  In an age when a video of a Comcast Tech who falls asleep on a customer's couch, or one of a Fed-X delivery person throwing a package over a fence, can go viral, brands have to remember that consumers are gaining new weapons in the war of bad brands and worse service.

Success is no longer about fancy packaging and carefully controlled messages. When everyone can see what you're doing, the most essential values are transparency, honesty and credibility. Even with advanced privacy tools — like private lists, tweets and circles — the most foolproof way to stay safe on social media is simply to be who you say you are. Pretending to be something you're not, or attempting to conceal or manipulate the truth is a surefire way to fail. 

You win by matching your image with reality, 

acting with integrity, and sincerely apologizing 
when you're wrong.

The fact is, social media fundamentally transforms the rules of marketing – from messaging to metrics – and unless you’re prepared to shift your perspective and expectations accordingly, your social media experience could get pretty ugly. 

(original blog post #3)