The feel-good social marketing bribe

Time and again, studies show that people’s trust in advertising is going down while word of mouth goes up. Digital is accelerating that. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, we can easily get recommendations from friends and networks. That’s great.

Where does that leave our advertiser friends? Well, if their product and service is wonderful, it’s great. People get to tell others about it – and it’s free. OK, so let’s talk about everyone else. Well, ads in Facebook do OK – better than a lot of what you read would make you think – but they’re clearly not enough. Twitter is full of advertising, only its mostly social media gurus, ninjas and black belts pimping their services or regular users marketing themselves. That’s where charities come in.

See, marketers have to get us to do the marketing for them. But that sounds a little too Amway for most people. After all, if I offered you $10 to send some marketing message to a bunch of friends, you probably wouldn’t do it. Ah, but what if I asked you to add a Facebook app and invite 10 friends to do the same? That works. This is what was going on last night at the P&G Digital Hack Night, when P&G got a bunch of agency types, media execs and others to troop to Cincy to perform for it. The idea: use social media to get people to buy Tide t-shirts –- some of the proceeds going to Feed America -- with an emphasis on "use." It was cooked up as a marketing exercise for the CPG giant’s army of brand managers to see the true power of social media.

It was really the corporate version of the #daniela cause David Armano took up last month. What quickly ensued can only be described as a social media telethon. People were encouraged to retweet the message, leading to a mess of Twitter activity around Tide. There were offers from popular bloggers and Twitterers to give links to those who bought t-shirts. Jerry Lewis, meet Twitter. It was all captured with a hashtag for bright-eyed brand managers to contemplate how to get their CPG marketing done through Twitter.  I’m sure the gerbils in their head were working overtime on the treadmill calculating the “earned media” value. I'm not sure if the use of Twitter qualifies as a success. The AdAge summarizes the lessons this way:

Fewer than 150 media and marketing people leaning heavily on their social-media friends and followers, resorting to big-name incentives and spending a total of about $4,000 on digital media can sell more than 2,000 T-shirts at $20 a pop for charity and hit the top 10 trending topics on Twitter in the process.

This was a marketing exercise, nothing more, yet I wonder if it’s going in the wrong direction. The optimistic view of all this is it’s a win-win-win for users, charities and marketers.  After all, users get to feel like they’re doing some good, charities get some needed cash and marketers get some nice buzz. Awesome. The problem is charities are being used to get people over the ickiness of marketing for gigantic corporations. As was pointed out yesterday, if people really want to help Feed America, they can donate to it directly. Why is P&G needed? (Only about $6 of the $20 for the t-shirt went to the charity, according to the Q&A on Logic + Emotion.) What's more, even as a marketing exercise, the lessons it is teaching the world's largest advertiser is social media is a great place to broadcast stuff, even if it's untargeted by going to people who couldn't  buy the t-shirts outside the U.S. Using charities as a guise for people to do marketing for enormous corporations gives me the creeps. Even among the tenuous relationship in Twitter, what happens when we commercialize those bonds? Do any of us want an avalanche of application requests and corporate-sponsored retweets? I take a dim view of these attempts to prey on people’s do-gooder instincts for some marketing exercise. Am I too cynical?

Comments

[scottrcrawford]

Nope.

[Nick]

Brian, I totally agree with you.

This is a major letdown for a few different reasons.

Mostly for the ones you covered. There's no doubt social media gurus have on their list of common-sense commandments 'don't pimp your base' but then, licking their chops at the prospect of impressing the universe's biggest marketer they headed to Cincinnati and did just that.

P&G earned $33 million a day last year; $40k matching is an absolutely meaningless number. And 2000 shirts? 150 determined salespeople sold 2000 shirts in four hours? That's 13 each. I've seen better results from bake sales.

Further, I can only imagine most T-shirt buyers will feel suckered pretty quickly, knowing their interest and $20 was converted into a case study for the social media minds they diligently pander to.

But the bigger issue, for me, is the education issue. Clients still don't understand the fundamentals of digital. I hear it time and time again from frustrated companies. It's great P&G wants to help employees understand. But, as a learning exercise, you put 40 invitees into crisis mode to sell T-shirts for four hours? Is frenzied Tweeting the behavior you want to impress on clients as how you work for them?

At least everyone gets to post self-congratulatory blog entries about it.

[David Armano]

Brian,

Great points as usual because you are a thinker. Especially about the "feel good" nature of all of this. It is after all marketing is it not?

Advertising, marketing—it's all meant to play on emotions. It always has been by design and that's probably why many people won't like this. And you're right—it felt like a Jerry Lewis Telethon! I know because I was there. It was hot, sweaty, and not all that glamorous as we were all feverishly working our networks in the name of what seems to be a decent cause.

At the end of 4 hours we were all told that we raised approx 50k and P&G matched that. That's 100k that will go to people who get get hit by the next Katrina.

In short, yes your view is smart, accurate but in the end could be a bit cynical. I think the tone of the event might be turning you off to the outcome. Not every marketing effort can be a Nike + and nor should it be. Have you you talked to anyone at P&G for more info? I am told they are going to show results.

I'm biased because I participated. But you should have seen the P&G folks who were looking over our shoulders watching everything we were doing. They were taking notes and learning. And P&G kicked in a few bucks to a charity. Is this all really as bad and icky as you make it out to be?

[Ian]

A fascinating debate all around, but I have to take exception with something Nick commented ... I don't care how deep P&G's coffers are, $40K (or $50K - whatever) is A LOT of money.

You think Donald Trump wouldn't get upset if he lost his wallet with $1,000 in it? I do.

Brian, Nick and Dave: Thanks for an interesting dialogue!

[Max Kalehoff]

Brian,
Moreover, looking at the attendees and direct "social-meidia" expert participants of this hack night, it seems very much a bribe. I could be wrong, but it seems most of the participants are from companies or personal consultancies that would die for a piece of the multi-billion-dollar P&G marketing budget.
Max

[Steve Woodruff @swoodruff]

As we learn this medium together, and figure out the boundaries of network propriety together, I'd certainly hope we won't all agree. Group discussion and courteous disagreement will be a sign of health. Groupthink won't.

[Paull Young]

I was an interested observer of the event via Twitter last night - always interested in some smart cause marketing & good to see the P&G crew spending some time trying to do some good.

Ultimately I couldn't bring myself to spend $20 to turn myself into a walking billboard for Tide when I knew only $6 from that would go to the charity.

[Jessica Gottlieb]

I am so with you.

It's Procter and Gamble, if they want to give it takes them just a few moments to cut a check. I don't understand why I'd be asked to use my relationships to try and sell people tee shirts that should be a giveaway so that a charity (I'm not even going to talk about the quality of the charity) can get a relatively small burst of money.

It didn't work for me and I really resented that I had to say "no I'm sorry, I can't help you" to so many people in social media who always help me.

[Warren Sukernek]

Brian,

You hit the nail right out of the park! Most of us who watched are feeling a little "one night standish" and now must take our walk of shame. For $20 we were captivated and gave a social media marketing lesson to corporate America. Somehow it just doesn't feel right today. Would I do it again? Maybe she wouldn't look so pretty after after drinking all of the social media kool-aid.

[John Lane]

"As was pointed out yesterday, if people really want to help Feed America, they can donate to it directly. Why is P&G needed?"

People "can" donate directly, but did the P&G involvement — and the assembled gurus working their network — move people to actually "do" it? How much money would Feeding America have made if they tried to Tweet, Facebook and MySpace it up by themselves? And who would've doubled the amount?

Sure it was a marketing exercise. But it wasn't an icky one.

Twitter: @johnvlane

[BarbaraKB]

Tide t-shirt campaign was done by P&G already for Katrina relief. Last night's "two hour super bowl football advertising campaign" was an experiment to get all of us marketing folks chattering. And it's working. Like Skittles experiment, perhaps?

Today's blog posts, tweets & chat is to *show* P&G marketers that social media is not a campaign like advertising but a strategy. All of you are being "read" so these marketers can learn more.

What will happen today, I wonder?

[Dana]

You nailed it.

[Clay Parker Jones]

A little perspective is always warranted.

This is a marketing stunt, not a great day for charitable efforts. Nor for the idea of "Cause Marketing."

1. Pay $20 for branded tee-shirt
2. Donate your square-foot of logo space to Tide (15,000 sq. feet of logo placement that YOU PAID FOR
3. Feel good for having donated $4 to a good cause

Or...

1. Donate $20 to that same cause and feel good

And secondly, even huge charitable events like Live Aid, etc. contribute foreign aid in amounts that are dwarfed by the amount of debt repayments underdeveloped nations GIVE BACK to the Global North every year. Altruism may make you feel good, but in the end there are structural issues at play that need to change. It's a sad, sad reality.

Social Media gurus jabber about changing the paradigm from "ME" to "WE". This effort may be a "WE" effort on the micro scale, but if you raise up to the state level, it's awfully self-centered.

Seems to me like a lot of inward-focused talk about a very small contribution.

[Mandy Jenkins]

So much of the social media marketing sphere seems to be centered on those who wish to market themselves emulating others who are marketing themselves. This event seemed to feed right into that.

Who follows marketing people on Twitter and Facebook except for other marketing people and people who want to emulate them? Of course they bought a shirt - everyone else was doing it! Would the same results have occurred had 150 random Twitter users been given this task? I have my doubts.

[Alan Wolk]

A bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking:

1. THE AMBUSH - talking to people yesterday and today, it seems that the biggest mistake P&G made was turning this into an ambush while pitting teams against each other. The process made it seem far more tawdry than if they'd announced it well in advance and let people know what was going on. The rationale behind the "hack" escapes me: had they made an announcement about this, put time and effort into promoting it IN OTHER MEDIA and gotten across that this was a project they were committed to, long term, I suspect you (and many others) would not have been left with such a bad feeling about this. As it was, it felt like they were going to forget about the whole thing in a couple of hours. (The fact that @armano felt he had to write a blog post explaining what the charity was about sort of bears this out.)

2. THE MARKETERS IN THE BACKGROUND: This also seemed to raise all sorts of flags: was P&G doing this because they cared about the cause or because they wanted to give their marketing teams a lesson in social media? The whole idea of pitting Team Red against Team Blue and Team Green (or whatever colors they chose) made it feel like we were watching an internal training exercise, not a charitable promotion.

3. TONE: As many noted on Twitter last night, the tone of some of the tweets was very over-the-top, adding to the whole carnival like feeling.

4. THE 800-POUND GORILLA: As Max Kalehoff noted, it wasn't lost on anyone that P&G could, in the future, handsomely reward many of the participants. Not saying that was why they did it. But it is worth noting that this seems to have been a major topic of offline discussion and colored many people's perception of the event.

5. IT WAS STILL AN EXPERIMENT: Despite all the blips I just outlined, I give them props for trying something unique and different and realizing that it's okay to take a risk. My friend Brian Morrissey often talks about how the ad community is afraid to take risks and how, as per Silicon Valley, we can learn as much from our mistakes as from our successes. So I think this was a smart move for P&G, or at the very least, a step in the right direction. It didn't cost them a whole lot and hopefully they learned from it. If they're able to see what they did right and what they did wrong and improve their effort next time, then it worked.

[1cincymom]

Wonder if this was also a small scale way for P&G folks to find out what triggers backlash in social media, the better to avoid it in the future? Not suggesting P&G would plan it that way. I didn't mind participating, but also thought, "Not sure my contacts are going to go for this." It's always up to them.

[Guhmshoo]

A cartoonist's take on the whole thing: http://bit.ly/U5K6p

[Shannan]

My understanding was that 100% of the proceeds from T-shirt sales went to charity: "Buy a Tide Vintage T-shirt today* »All profits will go to support families affected by disaster."

[Peter Kim]

What a curious post from someone who makes a living off of mass media.

[Larry Irons]

What do you expect from people who set up a Social Media Lab with this kind of interface to the public? http://tinyurl.com/c29k76

[Adrian Ho]

Thanks for calling this one out, it stank - all the Tide in the world can't wash that away.

[Brian Morrissey]

@shannon: Yes, 100 percent of the profits. That's about $6, according to @armano's post.

@peterkim: Do tell more. What makes it curious?

[David Armano]

@Adrian Ho, OK fine, you are entitled to your opinion. I respect it. It's also interesting to see how on your own blog you "shamelessly" ask people to support your efforts by giving you votes at SXSW.

http://www.zeusjones.com/blog/2009/we-need-your-help/

I think what really stinks is all of the self righteousness in the space. Maybe we all need a crash course in human nature (myself included) which is what's driving all this and brands are no exception.

[Brian Chiger]

Brian,

You make some really great points in your post. However, I think you missed the point somewhat. P&G isn't interested in using Twitter to direct sell Tide or any other product. They are interested in understanding how they can use social media and emerging technologies to get the word out and engage with consumers.

P&G is a very smart company and one of their biggest obsessions is modeling. They model media so they can understand how information travels and propagates through each medium. They already have complex models that explain the impact of traditional advertisements. In addition to reach and expenditures, they examine the content of ads and create mathematical models for how they function. Things like how long you show the logo, how many times you show the product, did you include a comparison, and more. This, I might add, upsets ad agency people to no end. Still, their discipline allows them to be very effective, even if their ads don't usually win at Cannes. (Tide, I might add, is an exception.) I'm sure that much of this experiment was gathering data to create a similar model for the Twitterverse/Blogosphere.

Such information would be invaluable when creating media events and buzz.

It's also telling that their first reaction was to continue to raise money for New Orleans. I worked on the Folgers account during Hurricane Katrina. At the time, Folgers was owned by P&G (it has since been divested) and P&G operated the largest Folgers packing plant down there. When the hurricane hit, it tore up the factory and many of the worker's homes. P&G immediately worked to locate its employees and provided them with mobile homes and shelter. They also worked their media channels to reassure both consumers and families re: the situation.

At the time, the Folgers team worked with my Agency to produce a commercial to reassure consumers. It was necessary to explain that there might be product shortages and that the packaging might look different for awhile. At the time, we shot, produced and got a TV spot on air in 3 weeks. Pats on the back were gratuitous. Three weeks.

Imagine if we had been able to use a platform like Twitter. We could have had the message out in days. Imagine what the Red Cross would have been able to accomplish with such a capability.

I agree that on the face of it "Digital Hack Night" looked like a bunch of hacks "pimping their base," but, more likely, it was a study of how our greatest communication tool works. I think you're being overly cynical.

Let's see how P&G leverages what they learned before we bash them.

[Adrian Ho]

@David on my blog it's clear who and what I'm blogging for. I don't sell my space to other people, I use it (like you) to promote myself, my company and our point of view. I assume that only people who are interested in those things read it.

My issue isn't with you or those who participated, its with the mercenary scenario created by P&G. Essentially they got free learning, free sales and free brand impressions by leeching off people who've put in the time to build loyal followings.

The deck was overwhelmingly stacked in their favour and it leaves me thinking and feeling that they're not really interested in giving value as much as they are in receiving it. I'd say it has backfired for me but as you say we're all entitled to our opinion.