You care about yourself, right?

How to reach today's teenager

 

              Who did not have to sit through the school assembly and listen to the adults tell you about the dangers of smoking? “Do not smoke” they say in a monotone voice and you twitch and turn, hiding your yawn under your sweatshirt.

 

 



With cellphones and tablets galore, it is almost impossible to get teenagers attention anymore...



Let's be honest...


We are all Calvin sometimes...

 
Teenagers are a difficult audience to successfully market to. They do not want to hear adults tell them what to do. They do not want to be spoken down to. They do not react or respond to the traditional public service announcement. To reach teenagers, you need to think like a teenager and talk "straight to them”.

The Food and Drug Administration understand that, and their latest PSA campaign effectively ties directly into what our class is all about--effectively taping into the Groundswell by speaking directly to the consumers.

They most recent campaign is called “The Real Cost” and was launched nationally on February 11, 2014 across multiple media platforms including TV, radio, print, and online.  The campaign will continue to air in more than 200 markets across the country for at least one year


This ad series directly target teenagers by addressing their desire to ;

-          Take care of their physical appearances

 

In these ad, the teenagers need to give up their teeth and nice skin in order to smoke.

-          Be independent and not bullied

o   In this ad, we have the personification of the cigarette as a bully. When you put the cigarette as a bully (taking your money, telling you to go outside), you make the teenager look like the victim of a bully- a position that no teenager wants to be in.

 

 

In this example, the FDA is using the viral videos to “punch through the noise (p.124)”. Traditional advertising, or the typical parental speech of “just say no”, is not cutting it anymore. By reaching out and touching the teenager on what they care about, the  ad is a lot more effective.


However, this add is not only unique because of the content, but also because of the way it was distributed. Instead of pamphlets or brochures, these ads can be found on Youtube and on Hulu- websites that generate a lot of traffic (by mostly teenagers).On YouTube, these ads have been seen by over 500,000 times, which is impressive. On hulu, these ads can be found

FDA's goal is to keep “The Real Cost” campaign authentic through a peer-to-peer approach. Thus, “The Real Cost” campaign website (www.therealcost.gov⁸) and social channels are intended for teens.

They are going viral with this content. As can be seen with

 

 

This ad campaign is fascinating and hopefully will bear fruits since teenage smoking is a great public health issue.

 

 

Talking to the Groundswell: McDonald's

In the book Groundswell, the authors make two very interesting points:

• ·         Listen to your consumers
• ·         React to the public and individual posts

McDonald's is an organization that took Groundswell, advice to heart during their rebranding of the Chicken McNugget.

A couple of years ago, McDonals was accused of putting pink goo (otherwise known as pink slime) in their food. The picture below went viral and appeared on all the different social media outlets. 

Youtube:

Facebook: 

Twitter 

There was even a online petition on Change.com 

The rallying of the online community bore its ground and was effective. Indeed, a mere nine days into the petition (when it reached over 200,000 signatures), USDA announced that starting in the fall of 2012 it will offer school districts a choice of beef either with LFTB or without the filler.

 

Instead of sitting on their hands and assuming that the crisis will blow over, McDonald responded to this crisis by creating and maintaining their own online community. Why? In my opinion, the company wanted to control the overall mood of their customers. While I think that there will always be customers for McDonald low cost, low quality products, why risk having negative publicity? As the book says, you do not control your brand, your customers do.

 

With the subtitle " Our food. Your questions", the website tries to improve their brand by speaking with their customers (as opposed to yelling at them or even worse, ignoring them)

For example, (going back to the pink goo) Armand from Alberta asks about the pink goo in the chicken nugget . McDonald's responded via a Youtube video. 

 

 

This YouTube video is a great example of a effective way that McDonald invalidates the accusation of pink goop in their food. By seeing the process from beginning to the end, the viewer can not help but be convinced of the validity of their position .

and on their website; 

   

Notice the Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ opportunities at the bottom of the answer.

 

 

I am sure McDonald would love it you posted this answer on your own social media page… generating free advertisement and increase their reach into your social network.  In this interactive website, McDonald effective put in places an online community that they can respond to (read ..lie to)in case of a crisis. 

THE DIGITAL DIARY: THE INTERNET

Since I can remember, I have always had a diary. It is not a journal, I do not write in it daily or on a regular basis. I write in it when “big” things in my life occur- grades are posted, friends are lost and gained, trips are taken, secrets are received, fights occur and yelling happens. I often joke with friends that if ever the diary landed into the hands of a stranger, that stranger would think that I was an emotional and dramatic wreck who is solely focused on grades and boys. The beauty of this diary is that it is written evidence of the changes that have occurred in my lifetime- that is the changes that I think is necessary to write down. Getting them down on paper helps get them out of my brain. 

Recently, I learned that one of friends was violently raped. However, I was not told in the traditional manner- word of mouth, phone call, letter or email. She blogged about her experience. On a traditional Saturday afternoon, what starts like a regular blog posting quickly turned into a confession. Instead of telling people of her experience in a common way, she used her greatest strength, he words as her weapon and her shield.

What pushes a person to blog about a traumatic experience? What is that person looking for when she is giving the world access to her most private and intimate thoughts?

By posting about her experience, she is trying to empower other women who went through similar experiences and are ashamed about it. The plethora of traditional advertisement like the posters below or the video, can only reach so many people and are limited in their effectiveness. 

In digital media, the reach of one blog post can go very far.

According to her blog post:

“I'm putting this out there because when I was raped I remember thinking that no, Law and Order SVU does not prepare you for this sort of situation. And no, not everyone is kind or supportive. I know there are people who will read this and judge me for it, and I'm ready for that. I was a strong character to begin with, and this whole ordeal has only built me up with more courage to speak out about injustice. If someone reading this is a rape victim I hope my late night post gives you some comfort. There is so much isolation that comes with this type of trauma. I hope you know that you can get through it.”

In blogging, people who do not know you are reading and reacting to your posts such as Jennifer Warren who writes that;

“Wow, your story was extremely moving. I am sorry that all of this happened to you and you had to endure that kind of pain and injustice. I do not know you, but I know you did not deserve to be raped-no one deserves that. I am happy that you seem to be trying to find the positive in your life and inspire other people. Best of luck to you at Columbia.”

When it is a victim blogging about her experience, the message is so much more powerful. You feel connected, you feel empathy, you feel outrage at the injustice committed. There is nothing more effective than having that personal touch.

The rise in homemade movies surrounding do not ask, do not tell and gay military members also demonstrates the tremendous influence that digital media has on interpersonal experience. After the repeal of  DADT, a plethora of homemade YouTube began sprouting up about military members coming out of the closet in the most public way possible. 

On Sep 19, 2011, a military man calls his father in Alabama and for the first time, LIVE, tell him he is gay. The raw emotions in this YouTube clip makes the viewer feel connected to the boy “ my heart is racing like crazy” “It is 2 in the morning, I am in Germany, I did not sleep all night” “ he breathes out as the phone rings. “Can I tell you something”“ Will you love me . You will always love me ? Dad I am gay. The father replies “Ok” “Ok”- “I still love you son. It does not change our relationship.”

This video has been seen over 7,000,000 times.

If one searches “gay military men coming out”, one finds over 45,000 results

.

Here again, we have a person who uses digital media as a way to empower other. With YouTube, the military man knew that others would watch his movie- and perhaps be empowered to come out as well. In Izzies post, she ends on a rallying cry to empowering cry to other rape victims. 

YOU ARE WRONG

“YOU ARE WRONG”

In this first 6 chapters, authors Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li discusses a variety of groundswell tools and their implication for traditional institutions. One of the groundswell tools identified are forums, ratings and reviews which allow customers to publicly comment on their purchases and activities. Due to the rise of digital media, everyone is sharing, tweeting, pinning and posting about their newest purchase, latest trip and best recipe. Online brand reputation is more and more linked to ratings posted rather than the millions of dollars that companies throw at the brand in the form of advertisement.

Below is evidence of such a difference.

       

In these two images, we clearly see the difference between community branding and institutional branding. Nike wants to highlight their strong athletic ties, the community wants to highlight Nike HR abuse and other “sucky” actions.

The stark difference between these two images highlight the need for traditional institutional to understand that they no longer control their own brand, the customers and reviews do. Even those who have never consumed, but take the time to critic and post, can be more influential that all the ads that companies might make.

Trip Advisor and Yelp are two platforms that thrive on user-generated content. They are popular online travel guide where customers review and give ratings to different places to eat, sleep and visit around the world. The interface is simple to use and customers are free to praise or critic the retailer.

So I ask...

Are these better than published review from a expert reviews ? and if so why? 

According to my sister, yes since they are more genuine by presenting the overall “average” experience:

“I am not getting special treatment when I am going to the restaurant, so why should the reviewer? I am an average customer, so I want to see what the ‘average Joe’ has to say”.

Also, she adds that Yelp is a great tool to see aggregated data : "In one second, I can see the reviews from not only those who had a good or a bad experience, but also those who just went for dessert, happy hour or with kids”.

This variety of online user generated content enables the publication of negative and positive ads. My family went to Colorado last summer, and were not thrilled with the suggestions of where to sleep. In response, we posted our criticisms…. and got a response from the management straight away on the website.

Comments from mother and sister;

The reply from the rental company, although somewhat generic, is still symbolic and demonstrates that they understand the need to listen, and respond to negative critics.  

 For Long Peak , while our reviews were more on the critical side, others were quite positive.

 

This variety of opinions is much more realistic that if all you heard was negative or positive Having a community discuss your product, is similar to being in a coffee shop with friends, all discussing the latest movie or book. Online, everyone’s opinion matters. 

Everyone is right and everyone is wrong

People are influenced when people in their entourage are recommending good books or appliances. They do not want to hear from someone who is PAID to tell them how good  something is, but rather want to hear from their friends the “nitty and gritty”truth.

Customer reviews are also important for small businesses that do not benefit from a large presence in the traditional advertising word. My parents just bought a apartment to rent out to tourist. Since there are a variety of other vacation rentals, consumer reviews can be the deciding factor for potential customers.

The apartment is on Yelp. Despite a rating of 5 stars, there is only one posted review… This can make potential customers not trust the review as much had there been multiple.

Despite the fact that we have tenants, there is a difference between those who read and those who write. This is refered to as the "difference between the spectators and the critics". For this reason, we have high average rating from a few number of reviews.

On Trip Advisor, we are doing a little better. We have a rating of 5/5 with 11 reviews. 

A final interesting point about customer’s reviews is that they exist in both print and digital media.However, most of the reviews are still in the print form. Rarely, if at all, do you find customer review in the form of a homemade movie. There are some YouTube videos that show consumers talking about a product, such as the clip below about Acai Cleanse Acai Berry Detox below, however I do not think that this type of review is effective as a written post. 

According to my sister, “the problem with video is that you are totally dependent on what they say”. When I read reviews, “I get to control what I read, or in other words you chose how much information you get...when you have written reviews, you quickly get the message ‘in one sec’.

So even if Youtube videos are more "personal" because you see the critique, written word enables us to to see the information that we need and move on. For this reason, I ask;  

-Is the written word still the most powerful word of all?