WOMMA/Summit - Day 1: Stunts vs Science: What does it take to spark the conversation?
What is a "Stunt" and what is "Science"? (Seems like this is different based on the person answering the question)
Lloyd Silverman - communic8
Tips for sparking conversation
* Make it shareable
* Provoke
* Entertain Me
Doesn't need to be a big, huge offer/content to get a response... it just needs to be relevant and desired. When a brand inspires a friend to tell another friend, tracking and creating messaging this can be very difficult.
Cricket Warden - Popular Media
Of the people that talk about your brand, 2% drive nearly half the buisiness of the other 98% combined.
New music download program: 2% drove 42% of downloads.
Healthcare project: 4% drove 35% of revenue. Tested 60+ messages to find the right one.
Retail project: 1% drove 46% of revenue.
These "influencers" are necessarily the "best customers. Often there's a big overlap, but just as often it can be a normal customer that drives massive additional revenue through their networks.
Neal Stewart - Flying Dog Brewery
Project Challenges:
* Beer Geeks not advocating the brand
* No strong regional markets (mile wide and an inch deep)
"Canis Major Series": high margin product that needed attention
Found that the Beer Geeks were writing off the brand because they didn't like the label design. (Who knows what makes people love or not love you, eh?)
Objectives:
* Build image and credibility among the Beer Geeks
* Champion Craft Beer (Get into the same "fight" as your competition)
* Take ownership of emerging craft beer trends online
* Enhance brand strengths via blogs
* Increase "extreme beer" share
Strategy:
* Go public with their company culture
* Play nice and help promote other brands
Execution:
* Email newsletter - sent every other week. Content is very relevant, and personality of brand comes through.
* Consumer interaction
* Social media/networks - Ranked #2 brewer for MySpace friends. #4 in Facebook Beer Search (unofficial FB fan group). Put a person in place to deal with adding content/conversation for the social networks specifically.
* Blogger outreach - tons of beer blogs, more launching every day (since it's a common "guy thought"... "hey, I think I'll start about blog about...hmm... beer!") Sending samples of beer to bloggers, which was likely the first brewery to do so. Also joined in blog comment threads to represent the company.
* Their own blog - created only one blog, although they thought about doing one per brand. Posting once a day at least.
Lessons learned:
* Have to start blogging to truly understand blogging
* Content AND Consistency
* Leverage industry trends to introduce consumers to the products and your brand
UPDATE: Neal says that they're seeing more traffic from StumbleUpon than Digg. I heard this multiple times at BlogWorld Expo last week, so it's clearly something to play with. (It's also easier and kosher to add your own content, unlike Digg)
Cricket says that badges are a fantastic option to drive traffic, especially with youth.