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Advertising and Public Relations

WEEK 3



TOPIC 1: TWITTER/FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM AND ADVERTISING/PR


One brand that I believe is using social media well is General Electric on Twitter.

GE Twitter

I like them particularly because unlike the often mentioned Fast Food brands on Twitter (Mcdonalds, Wendy's, etc.), General Electric usually has very complex ideas to convey. In addition, they are a large company filled with a variety of developing technologies, so they frequently have to create new ways to present them.

Unfortunately for them, they are no exception to the text limits of tweets. So, they have to still fit the format, despite the more technical concepts that General Electric is involved with.

Their pragmatic creativity to make complex ideas and products easy to understand has won them my admiration and kept me following their account.

CREATIVE VIDEO USAGE
General Electric uses video to convey a great deal of their information, but they don't exploit it. They make the effort to ensure that the videos themselves are short, including edited-in graphical elements to give the viewer any necessary context, rather than using lengthy commentary or having it occupy valuable space in the tweet. Other companies have sometimes gotten carried away with videos and used them like a dumping ground, that doesn't really "need" any editing. This can extend their videos out past 10 minutes and likely result in the loss of the audience's attention. While it takes more effort to produce each post, editing videos into the "bite-size" style content that have been historically successful on social media is well worth the labor.

Example:

PUBLIC RELATIONS / CUSTOMER SERVICE
In addition to their advertisement of new technologies, General Electric also uses Twitter to provide public relations / customer service to people tweeting at the account. Because these interactions are publicly visible, they're not only helping customers - they're also defusing bad impressions from negative comments by emphasizing that they would like to help resolve any issues.

Examples:

THE AUDIENCE
The target audience would likely be people with an interest in science and technology. The audience doesn't have to be professionally involved in those fields to understand the account's content, but without that interest, someone could discard it as "nerd stuff".

For their target audience, they're reasonably successful, boasting 448K Followers. The posts are frequent enough to make the account worth following, polished enough that it feels like they respect your time, and interesting enough to even bother clicking in the first place.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS
One area which I can think of as an area for improvement would be to lessen how canned/generic some of the responses they give to people tweeting at them. While it is difficult to be both individualized and efficient in customer service over Twitter, a little variety could only help to improve their emotional branding.

TOPIC 2: PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES

What WORKS:

 IHOP, or is it IHOb now? - That's kind of the point.

On June 4th, IHOP's twitter made a mysterious post showing that they would be flipping the last letter of their name to become "IHOb", promising that on the 11th they'd reveal what the b represents.


After broad news coverage and speculation, they kept their word, announcing that the b stood for "burgers".


With the reveal complete, the main portion of their ad campaign began on an excited and comedic note with their first "proper" commercial about the change.



THE AUDIENCE
The target of this ad campaign was actually quite broad - it was for anyone unaware that IHOP sells burgers. Which, prior to this IHOb fiasco, included me.

THE TECHNIQUES
IHOP used a bit of the "hidden-fear" appeal and played on the connection people had with IHOP being exclusively the "International House of Pancakes", serving breakfast. Instead of becoming something like the "International House of Pancakes and Burgers", they played on people who fear dramatic changes by claiming they'd become the seemingly burger-only "International House of Burgers", and the stunt got them the attention of both the media and their customers.

WHY IT WORKED
A critical element that I believe lead to the success of this ad campaign was that they left room for speculation by first only announcing that they're changing their name from "IHOP" to "IHOb". Many went for the safe guess that the b would stand for "Breakfast", something their ad team probably expected. In a similar "name-change" publicity stunt, Yum! Brands - the parent company of my DUD choice, KFC, took their Pizza Hut brand through a marketing rollercoaster. What looked like copyright-infringing knockoffs were actually two new "names" for the more recognizable Pizza Hut name - gaining "The Hut" to try and court millenials and "Pasta Hut" elsewhere to appear a more healthy restaurant.

In IHOP's case, they were actually always serving burgers, people just weren't associating IHOP with burgers (or anything other than breakfast), and weren't ordering them. While they introduced seven new burgers, those "new" burgers actually replaced six burgers on their old menu and fell into the same general categories. Compared to similar publicity efforts, IHOP saved considerably on the cost that it would take to spread the word. There was not an expensive roll-out of new products and some IHOPs only had to turn their last letter upside down to become an "IHOb". Meanwhile, new outlets across the nation fell for the stunt hook, line and sinker.

Beyond general social media fervor, large news outlets announced the change. They publicized the activity over twitter surrounding the change. Better, yet, when IHOP admitted that they faked the IHOb name changed - they posted articles for that, too. You just can't buy publicity like that.

On CNBC, Eric Schiffer, chairman of Reputation Management Consultants, praised their capture of the massive free publicity garnered from the news fervor sparked by the change:
Schiffer called the marketing campaign "click bait on steroids," but praised it for garnering so much attention and free publicity.

"This was a brilliant marketing stunt that didn't grossly undermine the credibility of IHOP and in the end will lead to people considering it for additional items and, at the same time, they got probably several hundred million dollars of free publicity," he said.

At the end of it all, it's remained IHOP - but we're now much more aware of their burgers. Achieving that goal is a big win for IHOP, who've been trying to expand beyond the breakfast genre with consumers. While speculation remains active over ensuring sustainable sales from the campaign, it is undeniable that IHOP was very creative in expanding a simple letter turn into a multi-layered marketing campaign. A week ago we weren't talking about IHOP - then we were, and there's data to prove it.

According to AdAge:
IHOP was the second-biggest trending global topic on Twitter on Monday, even with the then-pending meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. In the U.S., the chain held the No. 1 spot (IHOP), No. 2 (IHOb) and No. 4 (International House), Rebelez notes. There were 86,000 tweets per hour at the peak on Monday, according to IHOP.

There have also been about 15,000 media stories, roughly three times as many as IHOP got this year for its biggest day, National Pancake Day.

What's a DUD:

 KFC. Specifically, their "Smoky Mountain BBQ" ad series, featuring Reba McEntire.

As an ad campaign, the resuscitation of KFC's late founder, Colonel Sanders, has received a considerable deal of negative feedback. A reason for people not liking the commercials that I found often was that they thought the company's silly depictions of him (typically played by a famous actor) were disrespecting the Colonel's death and legacy.

However, the ads have been associated with a minor rise in sales, with the CEO of KFC's parent company Yum! Brands, Greg Creed attributing the hatred of the Colonel to a "brand breakthrough" at a conference in New York, shortly after the reintroduction of the "mascot" of Colonel Sanders (played by Darrell Hammond) to KFC's TV ad cycle:
So far the response has been about 80% positive, 20% hate it. - And I am actually quite happy that 20% hate it, because now they at least have an opinion. They're actually talking about KFC, and you can market to love and hate; you cannot market to indifference.
For several years now, they've continued to run this Colonel Sanders doppelganger ad campaign. While they've no doubt had worse attempts at selling their brand, including a dancing chicken in the UK (which inadvertently committed the cardinal sin of reminding people that they're eating animals),

However, this ad in particular is not only one of the newest in the Colonel Sanders ads - it has some especially worrying flaws, being undoubtedly expensive (It featured in the 2018 Super Bowl, where a 30-second ad spot is estimated to cost around $5 million.), has a generally strange appearance, and seems to have forgotten that it's supposed to be selling something.

THE AD



The advertisement opens to a neon-lit saloon, scattered with ill-fitting KFC buckets that I only noticed after pausing the video to describe the ad in detail. Two seconds in, the ad centers on its focus, Reba McEntire - casting a silhouette on the brightened stage.

She holds the focus for nearly half of the ad (even throwing her hat to herself 15 seconds in) before announcing what the ad is for - the "Smoky Mountain BBQ". It's the focus of the ad for a single second before there's a hard cut back to the band. The 10 seconds before the ad returns its focus to Reba are spent on a woman throwing a man through a wall. When the focus comes back to Reba, it's muddled together with a man smashing a chair on his head, police being called in, and those police deciding to dance. Reba takes the last 8 seconds of the ad - swearing she's "not a famous woman" and the actual product that they're selling is afforded the meager last three seconds of airtime.

THE AUDIENCE
I'd assume from the saloon approach, that they're looking to appeal to customers in rural areas, with the goal of having KFC take the place of the local BBQ joint with their new menu items.

THE TECHNIQUES
They have the famous-person testimonial of Reba McEntire, a famous country singer who is even singing throughout the commercial. However, they are also using the "stupid redneck" stereotype for cheap laughs (man thrown through wall, smashed their own head with a chair, etc) that for the rural "plain-folks" who might like Reba McEntire, the ad is sending some rather mixed signals.

WHY IT FAILED
The largest reason I believe that this ad failed is that it simply isn't about KFC. Sure, you've got KFC buckets strung around the set and some KFC-themed decoration, but the focus is clearly on Reba McEntire. That is, Reba McEntire - not Colonel Sanders played by Reba McEntire. Even by KFC's ad standards, they've treated the image of the Colonel as a character, not just a costume. When I looked through the comments of people who liked the ad, I didn't see "I like this new Colonel" but more "Reba is amazing" or "Reba is da bom!". People who like Reba, like seeing Reba, but they aren't making any noticeable connections back to KFC or their Colonel Sanders mascot; The ad is just Reba.

The problem for KFC, is it doesn't sell Reba - It sells chicken. KFC's "Smoky Mountain BBQ" was the focus for only 4 seconds, a mere 6.66% of the ad's length.

Here's where I found the focus of the ad was spent:

 Reba - 32 seconds, 53.33% of total
(The ad's major focus)

Saloon Nonsense - 24 seconds, 40% of total
(Tossed people, smashing chairs, cuts to strange people, etc)

"Smoky Mountain BBQ" chicken - 4 seconds, 6.66% of total
(The product)

CONCLUSION
The creative focus feels completely disconnected from its commercial focus and if you dig further by browsing what's been posted on their official Youtube channel you'll find everything from a series of psychedelic videos to a shirtless man reading a KFC-themed romance novel. With the "Smoky Mountain BBQ" ad carrying 6.7K downvotes to 5.2K upvotes, some product-focused ads might be a welcome change.


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