Duane Reade: Generating Millions of Impressions Through User Generated Content

The Challenge: Since consumers now trust peers more than most brands, Duane Reade, the drugstore chain, utilized their VIP Blogger Team to create user generated content about an important new promotion and launched a comprehensive social strategy. Results include: The Duane Reade Legwear campaign increased Duane Reade brand hosiery sales year over year by close to 20%.

Most consumers are wary of most forms of advertising.  A recent study by Nielsen showed that fewer than half of consumers trust most major advertising channels. On the other hand, 92% trust recommendations from people they know, and 70% trust online consumer opinions.

Duane Reade has been effective in leveraging the power of peer groups. Early in 2012, the New York City drugstore chain launched its VIP Blogger program.  Working with its social media agency, Collective Bias, Duane Reade recruited 20 bloggers with thousands of engaged followers and a clear interest in Duane Reade and its suppliers.  In exchange for perks, special deals, and privileged access to suppliers and events, they agreed to write about Duane Reade. The relationship between the bloggers and the brand is completely transparent. They’re free to write whatever they’d like. Calvin Peters, PR/Social Media Manager for Duane Reade, supervises the program: “Controlling consumer-generated media isn’t something I want to do.  Unlike traditional media, social media conversations are a two-way discourse.” The campaign’s effectiveness depends completely on its authenticity.

According to Peters, “User-generated content or consumer-generated media is not only more trust-worthy, it also runs throughout the shopping experience and afterward.  A great example is our Show Us Some Leg campaign.”  The campaign asks customers to upload their original photos wearing Duane Reade brand hosiery via a Facebook page application. VIP Bloggers built awareness for the campaign with their own pictures and stories. The bloggers provide much of the content and traffic for the brand’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Google+ – even in stores through QR codes.

The results?

1. The Duane Reade Legwear campaign has increased Duane Reade brand hosiery sales year over year by close to 20%.

2. The Show Us Some Leg campaign has generated 10.9 Million Impressions for DR Legwear so far, which is more than all competitor conversation at Duane Reade combined.

3. The Twitter party around Show Us Some Leg helped deliver almost 2 million impressions while trending #DRLegwear throughout. A promoted trend on Twitter is now a $200K media buy and it indicates a “paid promotion” not an organic trend.

4. In 2012, Duane Reade Twitter followers grew from 2,200 to over 200,000; Facebook fans went from 21,000 to over 58,000 by strategically disseminating relevant and dynamic user-generated content.

               

Key Takeaways for Marketers

1. Enlist brand enthusiasts to tell their stories.
Consumers trust their peers.  Find real customers with influence, and encourage them to write about, photograph, or video blog their experiences.

2. Pay attention to customers after they buy the product, not just beforehand.
Duane Reade encouraged customers to share their excitement with a picture contest creating more dynamic consumer-generated media.

3. Understand that user-generated content is not something you can control.
Marketers need to monitor online conversations and can initiate some, but trying to dictate what bloggers or customers say, detracts from their authenticity.
                     
4. Amplify user-generated content via your full social media menu.
Marketers can increase the impact of content by linking to it from other social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest.

Twitter: Taking Multichannel Marketing To New Levels

The Challenge: During Ad Week, Twitter VP Joel Lunenfeld drew a staggering correlation between a user’s activity on Twitter and their television watching habits. What could this mean for multichannel customer engagement?

During his IAB Mixx presentation at Ad Week, Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter’s global brand strategy VP, shared data that Twitter had gathered about users’ brand relationships. According to Lunenfeld, 9 out of 10 users follow at least one brand on Twitter.

While most users followed brands for the sake of receiving promotional news, 87% followed brands for entertainment purposes and 80% did so for access to exclusive content.

More interesting, however, was the correlation found between Twitter usage and TV watching habits. “Twitter is the EKG of action for television,” said Lunenfeld, citing data that showed 50% of Twitter users do so while watching TV. This provides massive opportunities for multi-channel engagement, and brands are capitalizing on this by turning their Twitter conversations into ad campaigns.

Audi, for example, noted that a fan posted a tweet with the hashtag “#IWantAnR8”. In response, they brought the fan an R8 to test-drive, and turned the entire experience into a commercial. Instances like this demonstrate that the barrier between advertising channels is blurring every day, and that content is quickly becoming more important than ever.

American Express is also taking advantage of the Twitter multichannel phenomenon with their Sync program, which transforms special Twitter #hashtags into savings for card members. If a U.S. card member is eligible, they can sync their AmEx Card with Twitter, and when they tweet using special offer hashtags, savings are automatically loaded onto the synced Cards, with no coupons or printouts required. In this game-changing example, AmEx is turning Twitter content into commerce by connecting card members directly to merchants and delivering value to both.

Key Takeaways for Marketers
1. Engagement on multiple channels is essential.
Consumers have come to expect a multichannel experience from their marketing. Twitter may not be the first to attempt multichannel marketing, but it’s quickly becoming a bastion for companies that want preference-driven, engagement-rich campaigns.

2. Give people reasons and ways to share.
Giving customers the tools and incentive to share across multiple channels is the perfect way to engage them and enrich their experience. AmEx exemplifies this, giving their customers both value and the means to share that value with others via Twitter.

3. Blur the lines between conversation and marketing.
As we saw in the Audi example, social media marketing can be enhanced by crossing channels and bringing conversations to life for users. It generates positive press, gets people talking, and creates a genuine level of trust between you and your customers.

5 Best Practices for Marketing on Twitter

The Challenge: Real-time platforms like Twitter make it easier than ever for public conversations about customer’s brand experiences—for better and for worse. Marketers need to be part of the conversation.

In the past, marketers had a clear distinction to work with: Facebook offered great demographic targeting options and opportunities for social endorsement, and Twitter was a real-time platform. But with the growth of Facebook's News Feed (and, now, Timeline) both platforms are truly real-time. So what is the unique benefit of Twitter for marketers? Twitter is the major platform for monitoring and participating in the public conversation around your brand.

As we reported before, "Regardless whether your business is on major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, your customers are—and they're talking about you." This is especially true on Twitter: whether customers are reporting positive experiences or service outages; passing on a special offer or a negative review Twitter allows customers to alter the market perception of your brand instantly. As always with social media, what some regard as a threat, others see as an opportunity: manage an effective presence on Twitter, and you'll be broadcasting a positive brand image to 140 million users.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR MARKETERS

» Select a Branded Hashtag

Given the millions of tweets produced every day, there's only one effective way to track mentions of your brand: by selecting a memorable brand hashtag. These can range from simple branding (@Dropbox), or more creative subbrands like Audi’s #WantAnR8 campaign. In addition to simplifying Twitter management, branded hashtags are the centerpiece of branded Twitter pages.

» Track Mentions of Your Own Brand 24/7
Twitter was built for viral messaging: within minutes, someone's 140-character compliment or complaints can be retweeted hundreds or even thousands of times. Catch every mention of your brand early, and mitigate damage or amplify opportunities accordingly.

» Monitor All Conversations Relevant to Your Business
Monitoring mentions of your own brand is essential, but it's not enough. For a truly successful approach to Twitter, you should also monitor conversations around your area of expertise, and participate where you can add value. Music streaming service Songza received more than 2,000 retweets when they responded to fans discussing Dawson’s Creek on Twitter with links to their playlist of “every song featured on Dawson’s Creek.” If they monitored Twitter exclusively for mentions of their brand, it’s an opportunity they would have missed.

» Actively Manage Your Twitter Feed
Because Twitter is a real-time platform, customers expect a constant flow of updates and new content. Don't let your feed go stale: add something of value multiple times a day.

» Maintain an Authentic Voice
One of the keys to success with social media is maintaining authenticity. Robotic content will fall flat with customers; updates with personality will be appreciated. As one user tweeted in response to an interaction with the Internet Education firm Grovo, "People like to know who they're talking to. That there's a name and a face behind the brand makes your brand more trustworthy." Don't efface your employees on social media platforms; let their personalities come through.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google: Too Big To Care?

The Challenge: Major Internet companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have decided that customer service call centers are obsolete. Many customers disagree.

Last week, The New York Times reported on the fact that nearly all major Internet and social media sites, including Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, have done away with call centers altogether. "The companies argue that with millions of users every day, they cannot possibly pick up the phone."

Facebook's automatic phone message explains that they cannot provide phone support because they are an "Internet-based company." This claim neglects a crucial fact: there are no "Internet" companies. All companies must be multichannel.

The key to successful multichannel service and marketing is not just to deliver "the right message to the right person at the right time”, but to do it per that customer's media preferences. As we've repeatedly emphasized, "If you focus on a single channel at the expense of others, you're neglecting a significant portion of your customer base."

Single channel service and support is based on the assumption that most customers prefer email. As The Times wrote, " Voice calls have been falling out of fashion with teenagers and people in their 20s for some time (text only, please)." This assumption neglects a huge percentage of customers―and it's false.

As ExactTarget reported in their 2012 Channel Preference Survey, "consumers still do prefer the phone under certain circumstances. ... 37% of US online consumers told us that they’ll call a company when they have an issue with its product or service."

If Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn keep their phones off the hook, they'll be neglecting over a third of their customers.

These companies were brilliant enough to create transformational services. If they cared enough, they would figure out how to provide high quality, affordable, live customer service.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR MARKETERS

» Multichannel businesses provide value to all customers.
Effective businesses serve all their customers, and that's not possible without multichannel service. Give customers a full range of options, including email, live chat, social media, F.A.Q.'s―and phone support.

» Phone support is an investment, not a sunk cost.
American Express has repeatedly demonstrated the tremendous value of engaging customers on the phone., For businesses to argue that they cannot "afford" to speak with millions of customers is to miss an opportunity to grow engagement and revenue.

» Support quality directly impacts customer perceptions and brand equity.
Studies and statistics aside, one customer The New York Times spoke with made the essential point. After failing to reach Twitter via phone for two days, he said, "The plain and simple fact is that they’re too busy or too important to talk to us." Brand perception doesn't get much worse.

NASCAR: The Future of Branded Hash Tags on Twitter

The Challenge: Twitter just unveiled major changes to how they handle branded hash tags. Marketers have to act quickly to keep up.

Twitter ran their first TV ad last week. Their target audience? Marketers.

The ad ran during TNT's June 10 broadcast of the NASCAR Pocono 400, and featured NASCAR's branded hash tag: #NASCAR. Viewers who searched that tag got a glimpse into the future of Twitter hash tags.

In the past, hash tag searches on Twitter simply took users to a standard search results page. With #NASCAR, Twitter has introduced major changes to branded hash tags.

UPDATES TO BRANDED HASH TAGS ON TWITTER

» Brand pages now have a new URL: e.g., twitter.com/#NASCAR rather than twitter.com/!#/NASCAR.

» Searching #NASCAR takes users to a branded NASCAR page, with brand imagery and logos.

» The new page also included a showcase of images from recent tweets, and "Top People" associated with #NASCAR.

A few days before the ad ran, Omar Ashtari, Twitter's head of sports, called the pending updates to Twitter.com/#NASCAR an "experiment." But once the changes were revealed, industry watchers came to a different conclusion. As Owen Thomas wrote at Business Insider, "We don't think this is an experiment as much as it is a harbinger for how Twitter is going to revamp its site to be a far better showcase for advertising."

The new pages promise to be a great experience for users―and great experiences for users translate to high value for marketers. They just need to make sure they're ready when Twitter unveils the update to all businesses.

PREPARING FOR TWITTER'S NEW HASH TAG PAGES:

» Select a Memorable Branded Hash Tag
Customers will talk about you on Twitter, whether or not you're involved. Select a hash tag for your brand, and it will be much easier for you to monitor and moderate the conversation about your products and services.

» Prepare to Brand Your Twitter Homepage
The new #NASCAR page includes a brand logo and a prominent background image. Once Twitter makes these new pages available to all businesses, you'll need to have these ready. (If you currently manage a Facebook Timeline page, you probably have these assets already.)

» Drive Multimedia Tweets
Twitter's new hash tag pages prominently display photos from recent tweets. If nobody includes photos in tweets related to your brand, this showcase will remain stale―or empty. Add multimedia in your own tweets, and give users a way to engage with more than just text.

» Implement a Social Media Disaster Plan
Every time you make it easier for your customers to engage, you make it easier for them to communicate negative experiences. With a social media disaster plan, you'll be prepared to deal with these situations, rather than handling them ad hoc.

Starbucks - 3 Twitter Best Practices

Twitter can help your business get closer to its customers ... create better word of mouth and greater brand advocacy ... and generate great ideas from engaged fans. How? Start by learning from the best practices used by companies that have been successful with Twitter.

Start by learning from Starbucks. When a national brand accumulates nearly two million followers on Twitter, its social media strategies are worth examining. The Seattle-based coffee giant is currently ranked as the fourth most popular corporate brand in this space. (By way of comparison, General Motors has 44,000 Twitter followers.)

The Starbucks tweetstream is impressive. Check out these three easy-to-emulate Twitter best practices. Each can be adapted to any industry, and each is modeled consistently via the company's Twitter account, @Starbucks -- which I found to be deeply personalized to individual questions, complaints, and suggestions from customers.

Best Practice #1: Do Something You Know Your Customer Believes In. Starbucks uses Twitter to promote cause-driven promotions that resonate powerfully with its user base. One particularly successful example was a “promotion where customers received free coffee if they brought in a reusable mug. This promotion grew their online fan base by 21% outside of the U.S. and by 6% overall. It not only drove sales, it changed how people purchased and consumed their coffee." (Source: Smartblogs.) What causes do your customers believe in?

Best Practice #2: Ask for Pictures. Starbucks uses Twitter to post plenty of interesting, user-generated images of its followers drinking from, displaying, or generally having fun with something that bears the familiar green company logo. Circulating these images means more engagement, greater advocacy, and broader brand awareness. How easy is it for a customer to take and forward a picture of your brand image? What would happen if you tweeted those images?

Best Practice #3: Let Customers Know That You Are Using Their Ideas. Starbucks uses Twitter to update individual customers on the status of individual ideas they have submitted via @MyStarbucksIdea. Wouldn’t you follow a company that kept you up to date about that?

If you haven’t given your company’s Twitter account regular attention (as in, original posts at least once a day, and prompt personal responses to each customer post), take a closer look at the infographic above.