Having attended EXP’s African Experiential Marketing Summit, and
listened to at least half a dozen speakers, it is still quite evident
that experiential marketing is having to define itself as it goes along.
At the moment I feel there is no clear cut, precise definition of
exactly what Experiential Marketing really is. In fact, most of us are
defining it with every activation or event.
So if you can ask me to define XM today, I would find it almost
impossible to give a scientific definition or a one-liner. In my
opinion, I feel that of all the ingredients in the marketing mix, XM is
probably the most potent and least understood. Kind of like Asterix’
magic potion In the right hands, it can work wonders but in the wrong it can be disastrous.
Then I came across this piece by Tomasito Bobadilla,
the former marketing manager of Red Bull North America and I felt it
kind of ’rounded up’ how XM can be defined as a summary today:
In my hands on experience in building a
category and brand via experiential touch-points. The following
strategic experience must be met. 1. Sense 2. Feel 3. Think-(provoking) 4. Act (call-to-action) 5. Relate We (Red Bull) marketers built a category
and brand on the following experiences that daze the core user senses,
touch their hearts, and stimulated their minds. Engaging the core user
in a unique experience (proprietary events), a personal
interaction/activity first hand, while the brand/product delivered an
experience and lifestyle directly back to the core/new user.
Experiential four KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators are: 1. Focus on Core user experiences 2. Enhancing the consumption – how is my
product or competitors packaging, advertising message prior to
consumption enhancing the consumption experience 3. Core users are emotionally driven –
consumption experience are often driven by pursuit of fantasies,
feelings and fun (naturally emotionally driven) 4. Ideology – use what seems appropriate be diverse and multifaceted. Don’t bind yourself to one method.
Red Bull is an Experiential Marketing
brand/company, product is secondary. It is built on answering a unique
experience to the CORE USER thus bringing New users into the brand. The
entire company/brand is to deliver a UNIQUE experience. Nothing more,
nothing less. In a nutshell, experiential stimulates, entertains,
educates and challenges the core/customer needs in one cohesive action…
EXP should probably think of bringing him as a speaker next year. For
me, the summit was a great opportunity to meet with some of the most
respected people in XM not only on the Continent but around the world.
It was indeed an honour to meet with Dan Hanover of Event Marketer Magazine
and eventmarketer.com However, I felt the conference didn’t quite delve
into details of how XM can be applied in the African context. That
would have added more value.
Social currency is a term thrown around a lot in the social media space, but it’s more than a buzzword, it’s a concept that can explain the proper use and benefits of using social media in your organization.
Social currency is a significant factor in your marketing budget, it’s currency that can be cashed in for permission to interact with consumers. The more currency you have - the more enabled your organization is to reach users and gain their attention.
When building this currency, the relevancy of your communications to followers becomes just as important as the size of your following. This means that having a lot of Facebook fans with whom you never interact with is not a strong asset, and won’t earn you much permission to interrupt those fans with marketing messages. The key to capitalizing social currency is creating a large fan base of fans who allow you to interact with them. Remember; social currency is both online and offline. There are 5 Social Equity Factors that influence a brand’s Social Currency. Consider them Social Cash or Investments, available for use in the production of further assets and hopefully sales:
Affiliation
What, and who, do fan’s with your brand? What is the quality of those affiliations?
Conversation
How relevant are your conversations with your fans? Do those conversations practice reciprocity?
Advocacy
Are your followers advocates for your brand? To what extent do they help promote and market your brand?
Information
Online content is over-abundant, do you share information others care about?
Identity
Who is your brand? Does the face of your brand go beyond your product or service?
A brand’s successes in the above factors determine just how much social currency that brand has. They also level the playing field for smaller brands to gain users' attention, and larger brands to have personalized conversations with their customers. Having the biggest monetary budget no longer buys you the most eyeballs/conversations, and being a large brand no longer prevents you from having personalized and relevant conversations with followers.
What makes the times we are living in so exciting is that the youth today are rewriting the future by creating new rules of engagement. What has been held sacred as the 'rule of thumb' is gradually becoming irrelevant as the youth invent new means of interaction. From SMS to IM, the youth are coming up with innovative ways to keep themselves engaged while at the same time locking out brands, in the process making them less relevant. So how do brands remain relevant to youth? By partnering with them to enable their engagement processes. The focus should be on how you are going to support, and not interrupt, their conversations.
Traditional media is becoming more like noise - it keeps interrupting their conversations. The fact of the matter is; no matter how many ads you splash in the media, youth don't wake up thinking about your brand. Consider this interesting media consumption behaviour: Did you know that youth actively filter 95% of all messages in the media? In simple English: unless you are relevant to them, you are being ignored. So how do you make yourself relevant? Change your storytelling.
Traditional media is about telling your story; product benefits, beautiful models, funky music, a little humour and a big logo. It's time to flip the script from one that tells the story about your brand, to one that helps your consumers tell theirs. To become relevant, you need to leverage your brand engagement activities to be in sync with youth conversations. You have to co-create your brand management strategies with your consumer. One of the ways to achieve this is to invest in a youth marketing asset - a Permission Asset. Why? Assets last. Assets go to work while you sleep. A permission asset in particular, allows you to create a platform that allows for dialogue between the consumer and your brand. At The Insyder, we have been partnering with our clients to help them develop permission assets for 10 years. Interested in engaging the young consumer more effectively in 2011? Check out our activation calendar...
We have about
400,000 form 4 leavers coming out of high school this November. That's a fresh, raw group of people coming into the market. Think about it, if your strategy was to convert at least 25% of these consumers into your brand, you would have a potential market of 500,000 dedicated consumers in five years.
We're talking
about close to half a million individuals who are about to get unprecedented
freedom…social, religious, sexual and most importantly for you…ECONOMIC!
These individuals
are about to enter a phase in their life, where they will begin spending an
unprecedented amount of money – more than they have ever spent in their
lives.
Now to the
interesting part: This new, increased spending power will have little or no
parental gate-keeping influence. From November henceforth, their purchasing decisions
will almost be 100% theirs. Don’t forget that we also have a tradition of
rewarding form 4 leavers with cash gifts…form 4 leavers will be loaded this
December!
Not convinced
yet? Do you know that amongst the first things they will buy after completion
of high school is a mobile phone worth an average of KShs. 5,500? Your new
market awaits...
Question is; will they buy into you? What is your form 4 leaver marketing strategy?
About a month into the mobile telecoms price wars, Zain and Safaricom
have this week removed their gloves and are now engaged in a brutal,
bare knuckled brawl. Like with all price wars, the consumer blissfully
enjoys rock-bottom prices, while the corporations eat into their profit
margins. The current SMS price war seems to be a classic example.
Unfortunately, price wars rarely provide win-win situations for the
corporation – in virtually all cases, the only winner is the consumer…and
this is only short term (once the wars end, prices shoot up once
again). Furthermore, the lowering of prices alone does not guarantee
consumer conversion in the long term; the key to winning over consumers,
especially the youth, is LOYALTY. Ultimately, youth do
not leave (or join) brands because of marketing, advertising, price or
offers – it is because these brands are offering them more social
currency value for the money they are spending. It’s all about the brand
providing a unique service that makes the young consumer socially
relevant. That’s social currency.
Back to the price wars; On Wednesday, Zain went for the jugular by
posting ads in the dailies claiming to be the ‘cheapest’ mobile network
in Kenya. They even went as far as making a direct price comparison
between their SMS rates and those of their main rival, Safaricom.
The following day, Safaricom reacted by firing a salvo of their own
through an ad that cheekily “closed” the heated argument by ‘making the
final judgment’ on the case of the lowest SMS rates in Kenya. Through
their new “Masaa Ya SMS” product, Safaricom were
offering SMS bundles that cost the consumer as little as 20cents per
text. Like all consumers in Kenya, I waited in bated breath for Zain to
come back the following day with a counter argument aimed at ‘quashing’
the “final judgment” made by Safaricom, but it was not to be.
So does this mean that Safaricom (currently) has the lowest SMS rates
in Kenya? Well, on face value it would appear so, but after analysing
these considerations brought to my attention by a question posted on The
Insyder magazine’s Facebook Fan Page, you might think otherwise.
Firstly, Safaricom’s new Masaa Ya SMS product is ‘subscription based.’ This means that consumers have to use the USSD
(Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) format to access it (you have
to dial *188# to activate the service). Therefore if a SMS rate
comparison is to be drawn, it has to be against another ‘subscription
based’ SMS service. Enter Zain’s Club 20 – a product aimed specifically at the 16 – 24 year old demography.
Zain’s Club 20 offers subscribers unlimited SMS texts at a cost of
20/-, compared to Safaricom’s Masaa Ya SMS which limits the number of
SMS’s to 100 for the same 20/- charge. Of course Club
20 only has one bundle (charged at 20/-) compared to Masaa Ya SMS which
allows consumers to spend as little as 5/- per bundle. However,
Safaricom does not have any unlimited offer.
Another observation brought out was that Zain charges the consumer
1/- for Zain-to-Zain SMS’s (which are not subscription based e.g. Club
20), the same charge also applies across all networks as well. On the
other hand, Safaricom charges 3.50/- for intra-network texts (which are
not subscription based) and 5/- for cross network SMS messages.
As the mobile price wars intensify, it will be very interesting to
see what new strategies the players come up with. Perhaps I can conclude
by borrowing some insights and thoughts from my good friend from Mobile Youth, Graham Brown…
When mobile operators use low pricing marketing tactics, a race to
the bottom occurs among the competition. Ultimately though, the strategy
to win over the youth market can not be won on price wars alone – the
mobile networks need to start capitalizing on youth loyalty where it
exists and creating it where it doesn’t. Mobile operators must realize
that retention is the new acquisition. We are fast moving from an era of finding customers for products to finding products for customers. Mobile operators that have the deepest insights will win this game.
What if you could identify a super influencer,
before he/she became mega-influential and make them your brand
ambassador? Well, that’s what the teen talent search competition, XTR,
promises to do. Over the years, XTR has become famous for discovering
the musical talent of relatively unknown high school students and
turning them into national superstars within a few years.
When you consider the fact that a super influencer is about 100 to 1,000
times more influential than your regular consumer, then it makes sense
to start investing in these super influencers early enough. With XTR,
brands can be able to identify budding talent early, invest in the raw
up & coming talent, covert this talent into a loyal user and
ultimately create a super brand ambassador.
Some of the most notable student-musicians who have participated in
the XTR event and eventually grown and gone on to become nationally
acclaimed entertainers include: Boomba Clan, El Tezzy, Kleptomaniax,
C’zars, KenRazy, EMO, Kenzo, amongst others. For brands, investing long
term in a property that has the consistency of churning out genuine
music superstars could very well mean the creation of a super influencer
army.
Kenya’s global innovation in offering practical mobile solutions for
the developing world (and the world in general) continues to attract
global attention. An NGO, HumanIPO, has launched a competition targeting
young Kenyan techpreneurs. IPO48 is a boot-camp style initiative
created to build a new web and mobile service in just 48 hours. At the
end of it all, the best team will win itself a cash prize of 1M
shillings (10,000 Euros) in seed money.
IPO48 takes place on the last weekend of October in Nairobi, and is being hosted by my next door college, Strathmore University. I will definitely make a point of checking it out and reporting back on that.
For more information on project IPO48 and the HumanIPO, check out their official website: http://ipo48.org/
Safaricom Sevens as a rugby event leaves a lot to be desired for the diehard rugby fan and those who want Kenya’s standing in the 7’s circuit to improve. This is not to say that die hard rugby fans don’t appreciate the tournament, on the contrary, we love it! It’s just that we’re tired of seeing mediocre teams compete in the tournament for close to 15 years.
Over the past 3 years, our national 7’s team has matured and improved by leaps and bounds. It’s therefore no surprise that the national 7’s side has won the Safari 7’s title for the last 3 years running – a feat that has never been achieved by any other nation or team at the tournament. This improvement can be attributed to a more professional approach in coaching and team management methods, and a dedicated team of finest 7’s rugby players on the planet. In fact, so drastic has been the improvement, that it now obvious we lack the local technical knowhow to take this team to a higher level (a top 3 placing in the IRB 7’s World Series). It is unfair to demand for better results from the entire team, if the coaching approach remains the same. Like a famous scientist once said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them…” our national 7’s team cannot improve if they continue using the same approach – we need a new kind of thinking (or approach). Both on a technical and financial level. The popularity of the Safaricom 7’s tournament is clear indication that our country is ready for, at the very least, a semi-professional rugby league. Towns/cities like Mombasa, Nakuru, Kisumu and Eldoret can also host tournaments which have the potential of drawing massive crowds like those witnessed last Saturday. They already do so with tournaments like the famous Nakuru 10-a-side Championship, Driftwood 7’s, to name a few. The potential of creating a local version of the IRB 7’s Series is there for all to see – the social nature of the sport, coupled by the party atmosphere of a 7’s festival creates a winning formula; Nairobi and Mombasa can host 2 tournaments, with Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu and Nanyuki holding one a piece (kindly note that these are also the towns that attract hordes of local tourists on weekends or public holidays). If the KRU do not have the vision to do it, then a brave sports entrepreneur needs to step in and create a Super Sevens league. The fans are there for the taking and the sponsors are salivating at the opportunity of exploiting the ever growing 7’s rugby fan base.
Right now, KRU is then left with one of two choices; 1. raise the level of competition at the Safari 7’s tournament to match those of our national team (otherwise the tournament doesn’t really add value to the senior team) 2. remodel the championship into a premier, global Under 21 7’s championship
The high cost of running a top international rugby tournament make it extremely difficult for the Safari 7’s sponsorship team to raise funds to bring at least 3 or 4 of the top nations in the IRB 7’s World Series (we want South Africa [not the baby Boks], Fiji, New Zealand and Australia). This will continue to be a challenge for the tournament organizers as corporate sponsorship in Kenya hasn’t yet reached the dizzying heights usually seen in the northern hemisphere. The other alternative would be to make the tournament a premier U 21 tournament – on a global scale! It will be much easier to convince the top rugby playing nations in the world to bring their junior sides for the championship. Furthermore, the cost would not be that high, as there would be no costs and expenses that are associated with the game at the highest level. We would like to believe that it would be easier for the KRU to convince the IRB to fund the tournament, given it would be modeled as a grassroots development championship. Finally, this tournament would also help KRU nurture future talent that can feed our senior national 7’s side.
If the Safari 7’s tournament is to continue attracting diehard rugby fans, it needs to step up its game. Whether the KRU, fans and sponsors would like to admit it or not, the Safari 7’s tournament has played a better role as a grassroots tournament, as compared to its initial promise of delivering a world class championship attracting the finest 7’s rugby playing nations. One case is point is South Africa: In the last 8 years, the Emerging Boks have been in the main cup final in 6 out of 8 occasions, winning the title twice in the process. Die hard rugby fans are tired of celebrating victories over Baby Boks – we want dance in the rain after beating the fully grown antelopes from South Africa. If not, then let our Shujaalets do battle with SA kids and leave our senior team to do battle in the big leagues.
After touring the country for 5 months, the Pilsner Mfalme DJ competition finally culminated on December 27th, with DJ Krowbar emerging the overall winner. The win by DJ Krowbar will no doubt present a moral dilemma for both the Pilsner brand and the winning DJ. Why? Apparently, DJ Krowbar, is a born again Christian. He is popularly known for spinning the digital tunes with K Krew (Kubamba Krew), one of the most popular contemporary gospel DJ’s in the country.
Now two questions beg for an answer; is DJ Krowbar, his DJ outfit, church congregation members and church head (pastor) comfortable with participating (let alone winning) in an activity that promotes an alcoholic beverage and the nightclub beer-guzzling culture? Does he have a clear conscience with being associated with a culture that drives people away from the gospel, rather than towards it?
The other question is; how does a ‘sin’ product like Pilsner market an individual who proclaims to be a born again Christian? The DJ has publicly stated that he’ll not play secular music whenever he’s on the road with the alcoholic beverage brand (contractual obligations may dictate otherwise) – so it remains to be seen how Pilsner will engage a nightclub audience that predominantly consumes secular hits. Despite trying to put on a brave face, this scenario’s going to be a tough nut to crack for Mburu Kimani and the Pilsner marketing team.
Over the last few years, the big bang of the World Wide Web has shaken the realm of commerce. Today on the Internet, you can get everything from phone numbers and dancing babies to golf clubs and custom-built computers. Some of these Web sites are businesses that found their genesis in the advent of the Web itself, while others are longstanding companies trying to adapt to the reality of this new digital marketplace. Who will survive and who will be rendered extinct? That's what Evan I. Schwartz tries to answer by dipping into the Internet's "primordial soup" to discover the characteristics of the winners that will eventually emerge.
In Digital Darwinism, Schwartz identifies seven strategies that will separate the winners from the losers. These include building a brand that stands for solving something, elastic pricing, affiliate partnerships and integrating digital commerce with every aspect of business. Schwartz buttresses his arguments with analysis of dozens of companies already competing on the Internet, including Yahoo!, Peapod, Priceline, E*Trade, Dell Computer and Recreational Equipment, Inc. Schwartz views these early years of the Web as largely "irrational," but anticipates a general rationalisation. He writes: "As each successive generation of Web commerce passes, there will be more rational companies and fewer irrational ones, more fit business models and fewer unfit ones. In the future, there may be no such thing as an Internet company. The Internet is becoming so important that all companies will eventually become Internet companies."
Like his previous book, Webonomics, Digital Darwinism is succinct and easy to read. His analysis of the current state of Internet start-ups, their stock prices and their probable fate is provocative, especially when viewed from a Darwinian perspective. For managers, investors and anyone interested in Internet commerce. Recommended. --Harry C. Edwards, Amazon.com
Product Description A follow up to "Webonomics", this text looks at the rapid changes in the web ecconomy over the last couple of years and provides the reader with a sophisticated set of tools to help create, expand or enhance his/her business. Evan Schwartz also explores companies that have so successfully exploited the new rules of the web economy that their entire business or most of their profits are web-based.
I'm from the school of thought that believes beer advertising is probably the most fun exercise any creative can undertake. I mean, beer has probably been main recreational staple for many in the world for well over 6,000 years. I'm thus dumbfounded by EABL's most recent "refresh your roots" Tusker campaign. Whatever happened to the fun, free-spirited, catchy & easy-to-remember Tusker ads? If EABL marketing needs a hint of the types of ads beer drinkers love, they should take a look at Heineken's "Walk In Fridge" campaign. They have taken the epitome of any well-to-do woman’s house and hijacked it into a mans greatest triumph!
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In the right hands, it can work wonders but in the wrong it can be disastrous. 
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