How do companies use Web 2.0 to create a relevant and engaging customer experience to market their products? With blogs, wikis, Youtube, facebook applications, myspace, twitter, podcasts, etc, the Web 2.0 social media options seem to be endless. I’m interested in examining how different businesses can use these tools to not only create an experience that will successfully link to their product, but also how these marketing campaigns can find out more information about their customers and what segment they should be targeting.
In my previous blog, I mentioned the Mountain Dew Dewmocracy marketing campaign that spurred fans to vote for their favorite flavor of Mountain Dew drink. After the voting ended and the raspberry-flavored Voltage was chosen to be part of the Mountain Dew line, Pepsi started a new marketing campaign in which consumers could create their own commercial to advertise the new Mountain Dew Voltage. I believe that it was a contest to see who could make the best one and it would be launched as a real TV commercial. However, most of the videos were posted on the website during the time span of the campaign. When I checked back now, they are using online games to attract users to win Voltage gear. With the easy and convenient sharing of media via Youtube, and the overall faster speeds of the Internet, companies can leverage the user-generated content of videos to promote their products. However, a 50-year old retired senior won’t usually be posting Mountain Dew videos, so Pepsi has segmented their population quite well to the generation of teenagers and young adults who use this form of media to communicate. If you don’t believe me about the video communication, just check out the video option on Facebook wall. If you think no one uses it, think again. A few of my friends in California had a music video wall posting war, where every other day a new video was posted on someone’s wall. The guys would post a Kelly Clarkson video one day, and the girls would respond with the Backstreet Boys the next day. This only proves social media is a huge hit and communication tool among my generation, if only companies can use it correctly.
Social media is still a new horizon for some companies though, and something like viral videos is a hit or miss. In the case of Burger King, you may create a huge make the chicken dance viral website, but it has nothing to do with your brand. In traditional media terms, it would be one of those commercials that you talk about to your friends and then can’t remember what it was advertising. Great entertainment value and possibly experience for the customer, but horrible brand advertising.
Specifically in my paper, I want to analyze a few companies and how their social media campaigns were successful or not in creating a customer experience. I’m not sure if I should focus on a specific social media though or a specific company or pick a few. How much information should I need for a 10 page paper? I found an interesting article on how Cheeto’s has a Random Acts of Cheetos where consumers can upload their own RAOC videos on their www.orangeunderground.com website. Click here for the article.
It is similar to Mountain Dew’s second campaign. The video marketing campaigns may be easy to find, but less diverse in terms of the targeted segment. Although I haven’t done enough research, I might want to look into Facebook Applications and what companies have created popular ones and what experience made it so popular for consumers to download. As you can see, I’m still processing my thoughts. Do you have any suggestions or ways to narrow my focus?
Rachel - My first thought is to do what you suggested by picking a few companies (3 or 4, maybe even from different industries/areas) that have been fairly successful and break down their approach to create a set of 'lessons learned' for others. You could certainly take the approach of picking a few social media tools and going in depth on each one with mini case examples. Either approach would be fine. And, by the way... I would target 15, rather than 10 pages, so that you are more certain to build a really rich, thorough paper.
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