The Brief>br>
An African designer has created a luxury premium brand watch selling for R40,000. It needs to be marketed to the super-rich in Gauteng, foreign business people and tourists. The campaign will run over three months and your budget is R3-million.
There are two very exciting aspects to this campaign. The first is that the product is locally designed and produced. The second is that, given the target market, the campaign lends itself extremely well to the online medium.
The great thing about it being local is that one is unfettered by a global mandate. That is to say that all too often an international product languishes under the mindset of “if it worked in this country, it has to work in others the same way”. This is nonsense.
South Africans are quite different in their consumer behaviour from the rest of the world, although it is a stretch to say we are unique, it is definitely fair to say we have our quirks.
That being said, let us consider the second exciting aspect of this brief, the fact that it is ideal for an online campaign.
The brief states that the targets are affluent consumers from Gauteng and similar affluent regions as well as travellers and foreigners, it follows from this that connection to the world wide web in this target market is high, if not pervasive. In this day and age of online flight bookings, ticket sales and holiday planning, booming broadband connectivity and a veritable ‘second coming’ of the internet, the campaign I am envisioning is pretty much the reverse of a traditional campaign as we know it.
Traditionally, most spend would be allocated to television and print, ensuring that the maximum number of potential buyers is reached. Traditionally we would then ensure that these potential buyers are reached more than once (or three times) in order to convert them from potential into actual customers. We’d supplement the TV/print campaign with some strategic outdoor positioning, train some sales staff about the specifications and functions of the product, maybe sponsor an event or do a launch. We may even throw a few rands at an “Online Campaign” consisting of some banners and (yawn) buttons and place them on sites that our target market is likely to visit. Traditionally that would be the end of it.
What I propose is different. Given the online medium’s tremendous capacity for engagement, this medium would be the lynch-pin that is supported by our traditional media. It was stated previously in this section of the magazine that reach and frequency are become less and less the guiding stars by which to navigate our campaign. Quite rightly they have been identified as the points of departure. Anyone can do a computer based analysis of the target market and their interaction with the various traditional media and produce a cold, clinical strategy based on the numbers. Not to impugn the use of computers, these cold strategies do indeed produce results, but why not use computer based media as a means of engaging the consumer?
Case in point, R40,000 for a wristwatch is— pricey. What better way than to harness the consumers ‘buyers remorse’ than by turning them into a brand champion? By educating the consumer and allowing them to interact with the product through the online medium, for example by means of a downloadable desktop widget, a high resolution image of the watch that is ‘always on top’, that is clickable and links to travel sites, ticket sales, the company website; by allowing the consumer to experience what it is like to own one of these products it establishes a connection with the consumer. This connection, a veritable two way street between consumers and producers, is far more modern than the traditional ‘hook’ we have been trained to seek.
“Word of mouse”, a term coined by Louis-Marc Germishuys, is destined to be the next most powerful form of advertising. Picture it: our first few converts, proudly South African, sitting in the local country club, or foreign first class lounge wearing this locally designed and manufactured watch and a fellow traveler/larny remarks on its style. By giving our customer the necessary ammunition through online information and interaction our proud owners will happily list its functions, the cultural heritage of its designer, and of course a URL where the interested party can learn more, interact himself and ultimately acquire one of these beauties.
Sustainability is an often neglected criterion of a campaign. As opposed to spending the entire R3-million budget on making a big splash would it not be better to use these funds to breathe life into a campaign, get its heart beating, and let it take on a life of its own?
Correct implementation of an online strategy would allow exactly that – long after the campaign has finished an information residue clings to those who have interacted with the online campaign (in the form of customer relationships).
Not to be neglected are the online social networks, a fantastic forum for generating interest and gathering vital feedback about the campaign. Of course the caveat is that these communities cannot be bought or influenced, and they have a sixth sense about members whose motivations may not be bona fide (they can sniff out a plant they way a bomb dog sniffs out plastique!).
The advantage of an online campaign is that it can be very finely tuned to suit a very specific target. On top of this it is very accurately measurable and responses to the campaign can be measured virtually immediately. With a flexible approach the campaign can be amended ‘on the fly’ as opposed to the rather rigid structure of a traditional campaign that once it has been planned is, if not cast in stone, is still rather cumbersome to adjust. Many key issues are often only identified in the post campaign phase.
In summation, traditional media still retains its place as necessary, but there is a shift toward a fully integrated media strategy where online is no longer treated as the ‘red-headed stepchild’ – included merely as an afterthought. For a product such as this there is still room for launch events, TV ads and glossy magazine insertions but to neglect the massive potential for online media (in this case) is folly.
In the briefed three month period a strong online presence, way beyond the static homepages of Web 1.0, can be established. Consumers can be engaged to interact with the (virtual) product, and with each other, producing genuine relationships that last long beyond the three month campaign.
Reach and frequency will still be with us for the foreseeable future, as will the traditional media, but there is a new kid on the block. Online brings with it a whole new set of standards for measuring effectiveness.
Interaction and engagement.