Harmonic Aftershock

The (Domino’s) Pizza Turnaround – Is it working?

We all remember the Domino’s Pizza YouTube incident last April that affected the restaurant chain’s sales according to the company’s Q2 earnings report, “Unfortunately we experienced a short term hit to sales primarily in the weeks following the incident that we estimate cost us between 1% and 2% in domestic same store sales for the quarter.”

There were many who noted that this was a big social media lesson learned for Domino’s and that brands need to ensure they’re actively monitoring and listening on the social web.

And (seemingly) listened they did. Last week Domino’s released a short documentary-style video demonstrating how consumer feedback led to a complete overhaul of their pizza recipe.

Yesterday the brand bought YouTube’s homepage mast head featuring “The Pizza Turnaround” video trailer which linked to the Domino’s YouTube Channel housing the full 4 minute 21 second documentary complete with a Facebook feature and Twitter Channel (using a #newpizza hashtag).

As of December 29th, their video has a little over 31,000 views*.

[So is their campaign working so far?]

Google searches for Dominos are trending higher than the April incident.

Mentions of dominos  as of yesterday’s launch are actually quite a bit lower than normal, could this be because of the holidays? UPDATE: See most recent chart on Hill Holliday's blog.

Source: Radian6

Comments on their YouTube video skew negative with some calling it a marketing/PR stunt while mentions on Twitter are generally positive praising the brand for listening. 

Not surprisingly, on Facebook (and YouTube) there are those who are asking for the old pizza back but that's also balanced with others who really like the new recipe.

According to their Facebook Page, their broadcast just started running yesterday and it doesn’t seem to be available online to watch. I’m hoping that they’ve integrated their social properties into their spots (i.e. send people to YouTube or Facebook for more info) to create a cross-media experience.

[It's too early to tell.]

We don't yet know how this campaign (and Domino’s reengineered product) will ultimately affect sales – and, as the media and awareness begin to take hold, what the true reaction will be from the general public. But they seem to be off to a decent start.

[Kudos to one key ingredient.]

In the end, what’s great about what Domino’s is doing, so far, is the feel of authenticity behind their actions. The video does a great job humanizing the brand and showing what seem like real emotion and passion for their product – and that is one very key “ingredient” to creating brand loyalty.

*UPDATE: As of 9:30pm, the Domino's video on YouTube now has 117,892 views. I'll also be posting an updated Radian6 chart tomorrow once today's stats are aggregated.

UPDATE #2 (12/30 - 2pm): I cross-posted on Hill Holliday's blog with updated charts and a few extras.

Top 20 Websites Ten Years ago and Today

These two lists say a lot about the development of the web, media consumption, and user behavior over the past decade. The world (wide web) has changed fast and there’s a lot more to come.

Most Visited Websites in January, 2000 (Nielsen Net Rankings)
1. AOL Websites
2. Yahoo!
3. MSN
4. Lycos Network
5. Excite {AT} Home
6. GO Network
7. Microsoft
8. NBCi
9. AltaVista
10. Amazon
11. eBay
12. Time Warner
13. About.com
14. The Go2Net Network
15. ZDNet
16. CBS
17. LookSmart
18. CNET
19. AT&T
20. Fortune City

Most Vistied Websites (US) in December, 2009 (Alexa)
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Yahoo!
4. YouTube
5. Myspace
6. Amazon.com
7. Wikipedia
8. eBay
9. Windows Live
10. Blogger.com
11. Craigslist.org
12. Microsoft Network (MSN)
13. Twitter
14. AOL
15. Go.com
16. Bing
17. ESPN Sportszone
18. CNN - Cable News Network
19. LinkedIn
20. WordPress.com

Banner Ads: Not just for Direct Response

It was great to read Gian Fulgoni’s (chairman of Comscore) quote in a recent eMarketer article, “There is compelling evidence that an ad impression on the Internet works just like an ad impression in traditional media.”

He makes the point that just because clicks can be measured on the web doesn’t mean CTR (Click Through Rate)/direct response is the right (or only) measurement of digital media effectiveness. We’ve seen traditional media, like broadcast TV and print, work as successful brand building mediums and there’s no reason why the web can’t also act in a similar and effective capacity.

This Pringles display ad which recently won a Cannes Cyber Lion award is less about direct response than it is about brand building through engagement.  (You can be the judge on whether or not it’s effective in doing so):

Source: Chris Rawlinson

I’m often fascinated at the lengths we, in the interactive marketing field, have to go through to build the case for digital programs that cost a fraction of a broadcast media buy and production.  “We don’t hold traditional media to the same standard of accountability”, Fulgoni says.

Yet I expect that to change as our media channels continue to converge and become as measureable (and direct response-enabled) as the web is today and then some.  If anything, the justification and proof behind marketing programs, regardless of their medium, will only increase in demand. What Fulgoni’s interview underscored for me is that we must push complacent boundaries about what constitutes success in the first place.

Social Media: The Best Focus Group.

Everyone’s got an opinion. And with the exception of paid blog posts or paid tweets (which you already know my thoughts on), I LOVE the real-time, unaided consumer reactions/intelligence one can get on pretty much anything by just doing a simple Twitter search.

One of the great things about working in Advertising/Marketing these days is having the ability to hear raw, near real-time feedback as to what people think about your execution as they experience it – especially broadcast spots (TV Commercials). People are a lot more uninhibited in the comfort of their own home hidden behind the security of their computer.

Let’s take “Pepsi Throwback” as an example. The company at their very moment has instant access to the very latest consumer sentiment about the product – and without paying a cent for the intelligence. Some of the reactions are very positive and some are negative. But in general there seems to be an overall positive vibe to the new (or, more accurately, old) Pepsi product and some people want it to stick around beyond its limited 8-week lifespan.

The big question, as a colleague pointed out to me, is how much weight should Twitter or the greater social web hold in terms of making business decisions? To what degree should companies/brands rely more on social media intelligence versus the comfort of more traditional consumer research & testing methods?

I think both have their place in the marketing world but if brands/agencies are only employing traditional methods to produce consumer insights, they’re missing out big time on a goldmine of useful data.

When does ad targeting get too micro?

Coincidentally, I caught a few minutes of Minority Report today while catching up with Google Reader which alerted me to more information about Facebook’s “precision” in placing ads as well as Google’s announcement to beta its “interest-based” advertising through AdSense.

In the movie, Tom’s Cruise’s character walks into a mall which quickly scans his eyes along with all of the patrons’ surrounding him. Personalized ads are served up, video-style, on various monitors around him as he and others enter the store – they’re based on past purchases and personal preferences – highly targeted, arguably relevant, and seemingly prophetic…and for all to see & hear.

There’s a lot to be said for timing and relevance. But when does micro-targeting become invasive and eerily violating? Facebook can scrape/capture aspects of your profile to get a sense of who you are and serve “social ads” based on the conversations that are happening on your wall and the info you’ve chosen to reveal on your individual profile -- And now Facebook can target based on the language you speak and your proximity to a certain specified city.

And then there’s the latest announcement from Google about  “interest-based” advertising within their AdSense network that, based on sites you’ve browsed, will determine your interests and serve you category-relevant display ads . Minority report anyone?

The reality is that pixels (cookies) are constantly being deposited on your computer – most of the time without you even knowing about it. There’s a lot to be said for track-ability and measuring successes/failures of all marketing programs. And online has been come to known as a medium that is highly measurable because of its ease and granularity of metrics.  But in the wrong hands,  information about us is being sold, distributed, and learned by individuals and companies who are “sniffing” for  the next big sale.

Our online activities are being captured in the most minute of details. And while Google enables us to “opt-out” of its  “interest base” advertising, most will not even know about it, let alone take action to prevent it – Afterall, we’re becoming more and more transparent every day…is there a line or limit? When does it become like George Orwell’s 1984 – and if it does, is it an issue or are we, at that point, simply used to being under the proverbial “spotlight” at most waking (and maybe non-waking) moments?

Interactive Marketing: It Takes a Team

As CMOs continue to shift budget dollars to digital/interactive marketing, it begs the question how agencies need to staff and evolve to create and deploy these kinds of programs as compared to the days of Mad Men.

While traditional advertising was/is more about passive media consumption (i.e. watch a TV commercial, listen to a radio spot, read/skim a print ad), digital marketing has what I’d call a very high “utility factor” – one actively engages with it (hence why it’s often referred to “interactive” marketing). And this utility (or interactivity) adds a great deal of complexity when conceiving digital-centric marketing programs.

Here are 4 key phases of a marketing program’s lifecycle and a few thoughts of the impact digital/interactive is having on them.

(1) Strategy & Planning: In addition to business objectives, consumer insights, and traditional market segmentation, Interactive Strategy must immerse itself in emerging trends and best practices. How are people behaving and interacting online? This starts to get into things like ethnographic studies, user behavior, and advanced analytics. Add to that the fact that web technology is changing so fast that one’s “possibilities toolbox” containing the kinds of interactive marketing is constantly shifting, evolving, and growing. And, of course, Social media effects brand planning/strategy as it can no longer be about the messages that advertising pushes out.

(2) Design: The phrase “design” is broad and complex in the digital marketing space. Not only is the “presentation layer” (what people see) multi-faceted due to the “utility factor” but there’s the added dimension of making the thing work on the back-end with technology.  This adds to the list of stuff that needs to be “designed” and includes:

• Functional Design – Describes the requirements and features of the solution

• Interaction Design – Includes user personas, information architecture, and usability

• Visual  Design – Layers on the Graphical User Interface (GUI) which includes “look & feel” and what one may deem the “creative” in the traditional sense.

• Technical Design – Selects and assembles the appropriate technical solution to construct, configure, host, and power the solution.

In addition to web-savvy Art Directors and Copy Writers, agencies see their cast of creative-minded marketers grow to include Digital Strategists, Interaction Designers (Information Architects), Usability/User Experience  Strategists, and Tech Leads.

(3) Production:  With the added complexities, specialties, people, technologies, and vendors involved, a Producer in the interactive space needs to be a pretty hard core Project Manager. The Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) alone, is enough to drive any normal person nuts. The interactive producer must have a broad enough subject matter expertise in both front-end (design) and back-end (technology) as well as the “battle scars” to help determine how the strategy/design gets implemented through thoughtful choreography, risk mitigation strategies, and appropriate resource allocation/budgets.

(4) Post-Production: I love Jeremiah Owyang’s advice that with social media “marketers must purge the term campaign from their lexicon”.  Just about everything within the interactive marketing space needs to be maintained once deployed. It can range from optimization of adwords or or display media to content creation and functional/technical enhancements.  Measurement & maintenance plans (and the staff to execute them) are a must when launching anything digital.

I could have gone into a lot more detail but I’ll stop and ask what do you think? Is the process to design & deploy interactive marketing really all that different from traditional marketing? What would Roger Sterling say?

Music and Metrics

With Coldplay now streaming, for free, their new album (which gets released for sale on June 17^th) it begs the question, what music is hot and how do you measure it? All I know is that I’m hearing less and less about “record sales” and much more about artists that have the most number of downloads.

This further underscores the fundamental change in the way in which media is being (and will be) distributed as more and more people turn to their computers and iPods/MP3 Players to consume music. Physical media like CDs will soon be a thing of the past and companies like Billboard, who rely on Nielsen Soundscan, for their metrics will find that digital downloads will comprise the largest share of their data.