Getting the Most Out of Your Digimarketing

A shorter version of this column originally appeared in Ian Fenwick’s digimarketing column in the Bangkok Post, February 24, 2010.

The fact that customers’ attention is shifting to digital media is starting to be accepted by all but the most die-hard traditional marketers. Even the “yes I know but not in Thailand” argument seems to be fading a little. Helped by reports that put Thailand starting 2010 as the second fastest growing country in the world for Facebook users.

Doing digital best

Increasingly marketers are asking not if they should do digimarketing, but how to do it best. I always recommend that they pay carefully attention to the 4P’s of Digimarketing^©: ask permission, encourage participation, use participation to build individual consumer profiles, and pave the way for later personalization. The trick is to learn how to do all this while staying right on brand.

Staying “on brand”

The fact that marketing is going through digital channels doesn’t lessen the need for consistent branding. Branding rests (as it always has) on a consistent physical brand—the distinctive name, logo, packaging, colors etc. that designate your brand—presented at every customer touch-point, whether digital or not; coupled to a consistent product/service experience.

As customers repeatedly experience your product/service together with your physical brand, they learn to link the two. Gradually the physical brand creates an expectation of the product/service experience. Then the physical brand can be placed on other products/services and carry that experience with it. All this applies in digital, just as it did in traditional, media.

Learn from Volvo’s digimarketing

Traditionally Volvo had used product placements in TV shows and movies (some may remember the 60’s TV show, The Saint, with a Volvo 1800 coupe as “the Saint’s car”). But product placements are notoriously hard to own. Any competitor can outbid you and replace your product with theirs. Which is what happened in The Return of the Saint series when the Volvo becme a Jaguar! There’s even talk now of virtual product placements: if a brand doesn’t pay up, they will be digitally replaced by a competitor’s even in shows already filmed!

Pirates of the Caribbean

Looking perhaps for a more stable branding platform, and venturing in digital space, in 2006 Volvo developed a two month long hunt for buried treasure, tied-in with Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

The treasure was a Volvo XC90 SUV. To participate in this hunt, one had to register at a Volvo dealer (permission) , pick-up a treasure map, and provide an email address (the start of a profile).

Participants then received clues and submitted their solutions on-line. Those who answered correctly advanced to higher levels and received more clues. There’s a trailer for it here.

Eventually the field was down to seven finalists, who were flown to the Bahamas where they attempted to track down the actual treasure. In the end they all received Volvo cars!

Participation

Participation didn’t consist of just sitting at home and figuring out puzzles. The Hunt came with websites and blog. Clues were so difficult that participants worked together: harnessing social networks. Reportedly the average website visitor spent 30 minutes on site per visit, exchanging clues, guesses and hints with other users.

What’s more, more than 8,000 visitors to The Hunt site, clicked through to a “configurator” that provided prices of Volvos with different combinations of features: suggesting some interest in product purchase. Whether Volvo was able to link such visits to individual participants  and thereby personalize dealers’ marketing to those customers, we don’t know. Certainly their digimarketing had potential for that.

In a nice follow-up, all treasure hunters received rebate coupons as thank-you’s, and links to future purchasing behavior!

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

A year later, Volvo launched a second treasure hunt tied to the third Pirate’s movie. The prize became $50,000 of gold doubloons (a nice nod to the Pirates-ness of the movie) and a Volvo XC90 SUV: “the one car safe enough to drive the treasure home”. A rather brilliant reinforcement of Volvo’s positioning.  Again participants, registered (permission) at dealers. A very effective way to marry participants’ digital personas with real-world identities.

Globally the game website attracted 1.7 million unique visitors. Thailand was the most active South East Asian market, with over 50,000 unique visitors and well over 2,500 active participants in the hunt.

DRIVe Around The World

Most recently (January 2010), Volvo launched a Facebook application. This invited contestants to form teams to “drive” a Volvo diesel C30 around the world. The vehicle’s positioning includes its energy-saving, fuel economy. You “drive” it round the world by selecting a friend no more than 1,333 kms away (the C30’s range on a full tank). That friend selects a friend no more that 1,333 km from them, etc; until the car has been circumnavigated the globe.

The most efficient team wins. Even the prize is appropriate: Volvo donated 15,000 Euros, in the winners’ names, to a wind farm in Turkey. At its height the app was getting 400,000 daily active users.

Successful digimarketing is planned to cover the digimarketing 4 P’s while staying right on-brand.