In case you missed it, Twitter was all a-buzz yesterday when @TassimoCanada launched a twitter giveaway which stated:
“ONLY 50 TASSIMO Systems remaining for Twitter Giveaway. DM your email if you want one! You must live in Canada and have 500 + followers!”
(Now, don’t think that you have been living under a rock because you haven’t heard of Tassimo because I expect 95% of the twitter entrants hadn’t. Tassimo is a Kraft coffee machine that has “patent barcode technology” that will brew a cup precisely each time.)
In a subsequent tweet, @TassimoCanada responded to a mom blogger and stated:
“we are trying to give TASSIMO Systems to as many moms as we can ... thank you for spreading the word!”
Like all the other entrants, I was excited because …well, who doesn’t love free stuff! But what intrigued me the most was the strategy and execution of this PR campaign and the fact they are trying to target moms. On a base level, there were many flaws to this campaign, which I believe will ultimately negatively affect the brand.
1. EXECUTION: Twitter 101: As many of the entrants pointed out, you cannot DM someone if they aren’t following you back. So everyone (including me) sent a general tweet to @TassimoCanada which first pointed out that you can’t DM them but that you wanted to be considered. The big problem was that their entry guideline was flawed by a lack understanding of how Twitter works on a basic level, which can translate into a negative for brand value.
They also created a storm in a teacup, which could have gotten much worse. By singling out moms on twitter, a few dads got up in arms about why they couldn’t enter. The company quickly rectified the situation by offering a machine to a couple dads but this brings me to my second point -
2. NO TRANSPARENCY & GUIDELINES: One of the #1 rules to any contest is the entrant needs to understand how you are going to choose the winner and make it clear for the entrant on how to submit their entry in order to have the best chance of winning. Well, I met the criteria of being a mom, having over 500 followers (I have 1100 in fact) and being Canadian but somehow, I didn’t get picked. Yet 3 (count them 3!) of my friends did and 2 of them entered AFTER I did. Before you say I have sour grapes, I should mention that I have a kick-ass Saeco coffee machine (valued over $1,000) so I didn’t really want or need a machine. What irritated me was that no one truly understood that they were being judged on; obviously there must have been some other criteria than what they said otherwise I would have won.
3. RESULTS & MEASURABILITY: As I stated 3 friends have won machines. They received a nice long email from the PR company that stated they received 1 of 300 machines for free. But what shocked me was that they stated they ‘chose’ them because they “love to drink and talk all-things coffee and tea.” - which they don’t and that definitely wasn’t made apparent as part of the original criteria to enter into the contest. The letter goes on to say that they “did a search for active bloggers and social media enthusiasts in Canada and you were within our top list”. Hmmm, since when did tweeting that you want a free item make you an active blogger and ‘social media enthusiast’? What this says to me is they are looking for quantity over quality of results (assuming that results are defined as number of tweets, number of blog posts).
Sure, the PR company generated a bunch of twitter posts but they are all based on a FREE value proposition – which is an easy route to take and could actually hurt the company’s overall brand value.
I also know that at no point in their communication with the winners has the PR company defined any obligation to post or tweet about the machine once they receive it. Perhaps they are hoping that everyone who receives a machine will do it, but I know from experience that unless you give people direct instruction and deadlines the novelty of the item quickly dissipates and so does the ‘buzz’ factor.
What are the measurements of such a program – number of tweets, number of blog posts? When I create a program I include those numbers as part of the measurement but I have quickly realized that the value of a campaign is in the quality of interaction and conversation with a brand – not in the amount of posts or tweets it receives. PR is about brand recognition and equity that is obtained through continuous, relentless and prominent presence in the media and key influencers. You cannot obtain this by ‘spraying’ a bunch of products into the twitter-sphere.
4. A "FREE" PROPOSITION DEVALUES A BRAND: At the core of my ‘beef’ with this campaign is the fact that when you give something away for free, you diminish its value. I’m sure this machine is great for rushed moms & dads who are trying to get out in the morning but instead of describing the benefits of how this machine will save time, save money and ultimately making these parents lives easier so they should consider BUYING a machine, they are doing us Canadians a favour and giving them away for free instead. In other words, why buy it when you can get it free!
As you can tell, I’m up-in-arms about this so I’m committing to the fact that my next post will be on how I would have done it differently. It will be a few quick tips so that hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes as these big players did. Stay tuned!
15 comments:
Really glad you wrote this. The whole experience left me feeling really frustrated. I showed an interest, but was not followed back. They seemed to arbitrarily decide who they were going to follow back so that they could be DM'd. They suddenly announced you had to have 500+ followers (which I have). They also arbitrarily gave coffee makers to people who had less than that who had people lobbying on their behalf. Or who happened to have something coffee or food related in their name! And now people are literally begging for them and they aren't responding. I am not going to beg for a coffee maker, but I am left frustrated by following their contest, and following their 'rules' only to have things change.
Whoa... they never, ever, ever said they were only targetting moms, nor did the giveaway begin only yesterday. If you look back into their history of tweets, I was contacted, along with MANY others on September 29th (http://twitter.com/TassimoCanada/status/4477871430), to be given a system. It had nothing to do with me being a mom, and in fact I have no idea how they chose me; I ended up sending an email to Tassimo to verify that the giveaway was not someone phishing for email & real addresses, just in case. I happened to receive my Tassimo machine on the 7th and that's when I started tweeting about how awesome it is (http://twitter.com/AVeryGoodYear/status/4684839251) and that's when people who follow me starting asking for one as well. The buzz definitely began to crescendo on the 8th when I continued tweeting about my Tassimo machine (http://twitter.com/AVeryGoodYear/status/4708197168) "Cappucinos in my awesome new machine from @TassimoCanada are taaaasty! Just like the lattes, and the chai, and the green tea...6:02 AM Oct 8th from TweetDeck" and got the attention of some ladies who are really active on Twitter, who started asking how they could win one, and the buzz continued to build.
The tweet you reference (http://twitter.com/TassimoCanada/status/4714845776) about them wanting to give Tassimos to moms is taken COMPLETELY out of context here. I wrote (http://twitter.com/AVeryGoodYear/status/4714768470) "Fingers crossed that all you mamas out there wantng to win a @TassimoCanada system get one. No one deserves it more!" because my Twitter stream was flooded with my Twitter friends who are mothers requesting machines. That was Tassimo responding to me using MY classification, not Tassimo responding to me saying "hey, moms are our target audience". Any non-moms feeling discriminated against were doing it to themselves.
Now, I do agree with your basic gist here, that the brand has run the giveaway sloppily and that it could have been done much better. I'm just trying to clear up some misunderstandings here.
I haven't followed the entire promotion, so I can't speak to whether proper rules were in place. But I did want to point out that we don't know what Tassimo's goal for the promotion was. As you pointed out early on in the post, a lot of people don't know what a Tassimo is. But now there are 1,000s of people in Canada (maybe Moms!) out there who do know and have probably visited their site and entered their info to attend the event they're promoting. So I agree that if this was the only tactic they were using that it wouldn't be the best approach to build brand enthusiasm. I'm not sure that was their goal here. I'm guessing the goal was to get some attention, increase awareness and drive traffic.
Good piece Jeanette!
I was one of those people that saw some tweets referencing the give-away was targeting moms and sent out a tweet that was born out of the frustration that dads feel as participants in social media: because of the market research about the buying habits of families and who often makes the purchasing decisions, dads are rarely targeted in marketing campaigns, give-aways, product reviews, promotions, etc. In fact, often, dads are explictly excluded. Often. And you know what? It gets very frustrating. It seems to me that -- especially in social media -- that the people you're already reaching are the people you want to be targeting and why alienate part of that group? But I digress.
Anyhow, I fired off a tweet that was ... erm ... well, less filtered than it could have been. Might have been an over-reaction, but as you point out, there was frightfully little information about the campaign, and in fact there was much discussion on whether it was just a scam.
To the credit of the @TassimoCanada account, they kept at it, plugging away. Maybe not as quick as they could have; there was a period of several hours that the twitstorm was brewing on the West Coast in which many people had questions and @TassimoCanada wasn't responding ... publically at least. The way they handled things showed a learning process was underway, but I don't think they fumbled too bad. Clarity was their biggest problem. What were the selection criteria? What was the reason for the promotion? Some tweets talked about "50 left" but those tweets were spaced out over hours and the "50" didn't change. Then there were some tweets referencing 300. Then some sort of give-away event that you didn't find out unless you clicked through is to be in Toronto. Confusing at best. And, as I mentioned, there was much discussion over whether this was just a scam.
The letter, as you discussed, was a bit laughable. I actually felt put off by it, because while it seemed like they put lots of effort in finding *ME*, the truth was they reacted to a spur-of-the-moment tweet without actually doing the research or actions that they said they did. I was very interested to see that letter, to see what strings or obligations would be attached to the give-away and was supremely surprised to see none.
Very interested to see your comments about brand dilution. As someone with no background in marketing or promotions (other than being a target) I did rather wonder why they were giving so much product. How good could it be if they had to *give* it away?
Anyway, they are definitely getting exposure.
Thanks for an interesting analysis!
Thanks for your input ladies. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
Tatiana - by no means did I single out you as a cause of their bad strategy & execution. I realize that they aren't ONLY approaching moms but because of the nature of twitter and their conversation with you, they admitted that moms were part of their 'select group' (which again, 'Jo-Twitter' didn't really know because again, we didn't really know what their key criteria was to begin with). Ultimately though, this is about HOW they target, not WHO they target.
Kathryn - absolutely, I don't know the full extent of their program so let's open up the discussion on measurement. What are we measuring in our PR campaigns? This is something I'm passionate about and believe that a lot of PR companies have not been held accountable to measure their PR programs in anything but traditional "numbered" metrics - numbers of placements, ad value equivalent, and now there's number of twitter followers or tweets.
If their goal was to get some attention, increase awareness and drive traffic then how do we measure this? In today's world where engagement is key to a brand's success, measuring the amount of tweets or web traffic is too narrow of a scope. Numbers do not reflect the true sentiment of consumer's thoughts & opinions - and THIS is what generates positive word of mouth and ultimately sales.
What I find sad is that now people have Tassimo associated with FREE - not the benefits, not the convenience, not the technology or the system itself. THIS is what the centre of the Twitter conversation should have been about - not how do I get something for FREE.
Thanks Anthony!
Wow, are you ever forgiving. I'd love to have you as a client.
Perhaps I'm a hard-ass when it comes to PR firms that charge a premium price and don't bother to learn the ins-and-outs of basic social media tools before they recommend and use them on clients.
Don't get me wrong, everyone has a learning curve and I could perhaps forgive this attempt at developing brand awareness and brand loyalty via a narrow scope of social media outreach from a less-experienced (and less expensive) PR firm but I was shocked to see that this is one of the biggest names in the business. They should know better!!
So a question for everyone - now that you've started following @TassimoCanada - what do you expect they will tweet about in the future? Did you follow them just to win a machine? Will you continue to follow them when they stop giving away machines? Is their twitter presence now an aggregator to give stuff away rather than participate in a conversation? When they do stop giving away machines will you run out and buy one? And what's this decision based on?
Ah yes. I'd conveniently overlooked the Ogilvy factor. Being a fan of Terry O'Reilly I'm actually a bit aware of Ogilvy. It's a good reflection of what a strange new world everyone has found themselves in, and just how far behind even the biggest firms have found themselves. I bet there are opportunities there now for some social media consultants...
I followed Tassimo yesterday and tweeted about hoping that they were not restricting their giveaway to just moms (I may not be a mom, but I drink a lot of coffee).
I never heard back which didn't really surprise me.
But then this evening I saw that they have now restricted their next giveaway (50 machines) until they reach 1000 followers. Which is changing the rules again.
And I think this is going to be the crux of their brand challenge - and some of this you touched on in your post - that they haven't really thought the promotion through, know what they want out of it and know what they want the long-term brand impression to be.
This also points out the limitations of Twitter - trying to run a contest/promotion in 140 characters with poor private communication channels isn't ideal.
I've actually unfollowed them - not b/c I wasn't included in the most recent group, but because they don't really have their sh&t together and they keep changing the rules. It's not the kind of content I want in my Twitter stream and I think it sets such a bad example for other companies.
There have been so many great giveaways on Twitter; I'm really surprised that they didn't do a bit more homework first.
Thanks for your analysis of this, Jeanette!
If you go back and read the stream, they just kept hammering the same cut and paste tweets at different people. And look who they chose: Yummy Mummy, Globe and Mail, Metro...
This was just a run of the mill PR blitz that they turned in to a tweet storm. The people they would usually just send a review unit to for PR, were now involved in a "contest."
Kraft needs to fire the marketing team that came up with the campaign for pitching a twitter contest without knowing the rules of twitter. The PR company responsible for this should be seriously embarassed.
So many are waving the social media superstar wand to business without understanding the rules, or how to effectively execute.
Hey Kraft! Want a soc med pro? Hire a SOCMED PRO
In the end, it just boils down to the lowest common denominator - you even allude to it in your whining that your friends got machines and you like free stuff - Kraft has treated the bloggers and twitterers as cheerleaders. Easily movable mouthpieces who will scream their gospel from the mountains. It's sad that coupon clippers are so easily swayed.
Oh, and did you know, Kraft is owned by Altria. Also known as Philip Morris. Yes, the tobacco company. This coffee machine is laced with cigarette butts.
Hi Kate, such an insightful comment. So pleased you joined in the conversation.
I wholeheartedly agree and also unfollowed the company for the same reason.
I'm happy to help companies that are conducting a fun giveaway (as I mentioned already - I like free stuff as much as the next person) but if they are going to be part of my regular twitter stream then I want to see the company or product values communicated. A great example of this was the recent @naturespath breakfast group giveaway (the first 5 people from Vancouver to respond had the op to host a NP breakfast party in their home) . I follow @naturepath because I love their products and tweeted their giveaway to my followers but the company stays in my twitter stream because they communicate and add value to the overall conversation of healthy eating, ethical Canadian companies.
Buzz, I loved a lot of what you had to say but then you lost me when you said my friends were lowest common denominators (when in fact 1 is a leading mom influencer with a very large community of followers) and said I was whining about not winning. This discussion isn't about me or my friends; its about the lack of understanding of social media tools, how to use them effectively in PR, and the basic concepts of brand development.
The weakness in this campaign lies in the fact that although its easy to generate immediate excitement when you giveaway free stuff, that excitement will only last as long as the giveaways do.
As a (ex) radio guy I'm sure you'll appreciate the Les Nessman WKRP give-away of Thanksgiving Day turkeys - a good idea that was executed very badly. Just because there was buzz around it doesn't make it good buzz (in other words not all PR is good PR).
While I whole heartedly agree, all PR is not good PR, in a way Tassimo has resulted in a lot of conversation, and while all of it is not positive, they have created a discussion, which they can now turn in very positive PR.
Obviously they don't know anything about social media marketing, and someone had told them to give free stuff to get followers. By the way, a little bit over a year ago, Zappos did the same thing - they entered Twitter and gave away free pairs of shoes, and everyone thought it was brilliant back in the day.
But the two big differences here... Zappos was honest, and said we are entering this new media world, tell us what to do and continued the same what their brand is all about: customer service and connecting with people.
What is Tassimo about? If I was only following their tweets, I'd say they are about giving free stuff to Canadians who have twitter followers.
Excellent analysis Jeannette.
I think what it comes down to is the confusion of PR firms about how to integrate social media into a communications campaign. Using SM, in this case Twitter, shouldn't be a stand-alone campaign, but rather an integrated part of an overall communications strategy. If their plan was to build word of mouth for Tassimmo, having reviews of products by key influencers is a good idea, but it should extend through the entire media fabric, including SM.
If their target audience has a definition, I can't see it. And if their execution on Twitter stems from a larger communications strategy, I can't really define it either. What were their communications objectives here anyhow? You hit the nail on the head when you said they devalued the brand with their execution. And somehow I doubt that was the goal of the campaign. ;-)
Great insight!
Jeanette, like you take on the promo. As a father who received a DM from Tasimo early on and eventually received my Tassimo Coffee System I can say that they were also targeting 'men' (not sure about fathers). And I am a coffee lover who has tweeted about coffee so they may have searched me out.
I was also interested in the campaign from a marketing perspective (specifically social media marketing) and I documented my experience end-to-end as well as my opinion on my blog Anatomy of a Social Media Giveaway http://bwest.ca/blog/tassimo-anatomy-social-media-giveaway
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