What Went Wrong With the Digital Death Campaign

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the celebrity Digital Death campaign that was intended to raise money for AIDS relief in India and Africa.  I had no idea that on the very same day, it all ended when Stewart Rahr, a pharmaceutical executive handed over $500,000 at the request of the celebs enabling them to jump back on Twitter.  I found out through Facebook when a friend,  Mateo Gutierrez , had posted a NY Post article about the news.

I don’t know why, but I often say or do things that are (by sheer coincidence) related to other events that I had no knowledge of.  I get this feedback from other people quite a bit.

The main site for the Digital Death campaign is Buylife.org. Today they were able to announce their accomplishment of reaching the $1,000,000 mark. 

With your help we raised over $1,000,000 to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. Your generous donations will help bring critical care and medicine to the millions affected by this horrible disease. But so many more still need help. Please continue to BUY LIFE – the one thing none of us can alive without.

Here is a screenshot from their homepage today.

A Dose of Realism

The NY Post article mentioned that the stars were frustrated by how long it was taking to reach the 1M mark.  They thought it would take 24 hours to a week at the most.

I am not sure how they reached this conclusion. But this type of scenario is all too familiar in the world of marketing.  It’s natural for people to want to know how long it will take for a campaign to accomplish it’s goals. It’s also common for marketers to come up with projections that only amount to wishful thinking.

The truth is that most projects will experience delays, especially when it comes to getting people to act.

Because of this, I wrote a previous post about anticipating realistic outcomes.

Lesson Learned:  No one can serve as a fortune teller before the start of a campaign, unless the exact variables and results have been repeated numerous times in the past. Also there is a dynamic called the Law of Unintended Consequences, where “actions of people…always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended.”- Rob Norton, author and consultant.

Behaviorism Helps Explain

Most of what happens in the world of marketing and social media can be explained through the findings of research psychology. These arenas have yet to coalesce.

The word “research” is not one to be taken as sheer fluff.  Experiments in this area involve researchers who repeat trials over and over until a result is statistically reliable (not due to chance). The principles of behavior have been studied in this fashion. They weren’t just made up.

According to these theories, behaviors are universally driven by the consequences that follow. If you want to increase the frequency of a particular behavior,  it has to be met with a consequence that is valuable to the subject.

The Digital Death campaign wanted internet users to make donations within a short time frame.  In this scenario, there was no consequence for the targeted behavior (texting to donate).

“I am not going to tweet unless you donate” is contingency called extinction, when you with hold a consequence altogether.  According to research,  this will reduce the likelihood of a particular behavior, instead of increasing it.

A Celebrity Campaign That Illustrates Positive Reinforcement

Twitchange is a charity auction site powered by celebrity influence.  Participants donate. In exchange  their favorite celebrity retweets, follows or mentions them, depending on a bidding process.

So the behavior of donating receives the positive reinforcement of being acknowledged by a famous celeb. This works in alignment with behavioral laws.

This probably explains how the Haitian relief campaign managed to receive over $1.5 million for emergency tents after the earthquake in Port Au Prince. More

Lesson Learned:  Behavior operates according to dynamics that have been studied by researchers. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Create strategies that make sense according to behavior principles.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, I am a little disappointed that the celebrities of the Digital Death campaign didn’t hold their ground. But I guess there is a bright side to many things in life. Even if Stewart Rahr gave the pivotal contribution, at least the targeted level of donations became more quickly available to help AIDS victims.

Digital Deaths For World Aids Day

World Aids Day was on December 1 2010.  Celebrities stopped their online presences . These photographs represent their digital deaths.

The concept is unique and evocative.  The actual results however,  have  not been as impressive.  According to PR Junkie, the campaign brought in less than $200,000 during the first week.

See the full article here.  To give you a heads up, it’s quite harsh. Alan Pearcy who wrote the post had this to say:

Amid the current social media frenzy, it’s completely unfathomable to think how wrong this campaign went–just terribly, terribly wrong. Nauseatingly wrong. Someone should be fired wrong. Yes, that wrong.

Creative Just to Be Creative?

Even though the campaign is quite clever and different, and I do think the comments above are a little mean,  I will agree with PR Junkie.

Creativity could have been used to have the celebrities ask their social media followers to contribute, instead of dying digitally. As of today, about $420,600 has been raised. The celebrities will not return to their social media profiles until the one million mark is reached.  Read more in this article by USA Today.

I can’t imagine a fan wondering to themselves, “Wow, I didn’t see a tweet from Kim Kardashian today, something must be wrong.” Nor can I picture this sequence of actions:

1. Wondering why the tweets had stopped

2. Investigating the answer as to why the tweets stopped

3. Stumbling upon Buylife.org and deciding to make a donation.

Highly improbable. Direct requests from someone like Alicia Keys would have been more effective at getting people to donate.

But on a more positive note, I think there are many people like myself who are  now aware of World Aids Day/Keep A Child Alive campaign because of the Digital Death event.

Much like with advertisement  billboards, it is difficult to know what the numbers are behind this awareness.

In the world of communications, creativity cannot be left unbridled.  Good ideas need to be aligned with direction and campaign objectives.

Tool versus Solutions- An Illustration

One of my previous posts discussed the difference between tools and solutions.  Again, there are the tools themselves. And there is the result of using these tools. I thought it would now be fun to illustrate this distinction. Understanding concepts is a completely different experience from seeing actual examples.

Pencils

Pencils are cheap. They are readily available. Most of us think of them as a tool for writing. But they can also be used for drawing too.

Anyone can create this.

(image courtesy of JamesJean.com)

But what about something like this?

The Piano

Of course, the piano is considered an instrument, not a tool. But nonetheless, it is something that requires skill.



Beginners start off learning simple tunes like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. With practice and a sincere passion for music, it may be possible to sound more like this.

There are countless examples beyond the ones I gave above. But I didn’t want to let this post get too long.  The lesson is this.There’s more to the advanced levels than just technical prowess. It takes imagination and inspiration to come up with results that make us go, “wow!”

Back in February, I wrote about a company called Threadless as an example of a social media campaign to learn from. They harness the power of collaboration with their customers to create products that sell.

And if you follow my tweets, you will also learn about other successful campaigns. Cultivating the intangible in an extraordinary way is how you get the most out of tools and instruments. It’s an inner game.

With this said, I’d like to leave you with a quote by Spike Humor, a speaker, author and consultant.

“Great things come to great people who create great value.“

How To Advice- When There’s Too Much of It

Headlines that offer to advice on how to do something to make your life better are very catchy.

 

• 10 Ways To Monetize Your Social Network

• How to Use Customer Insight to Improve Your ROI

• Smart Tips on Reducing Clutter in Your Home or Office

• 4 Mistakes You Should Never Make In Your Marketing Campaign.

These are just a few examples that came up with off the top of my head. But the list is potentially infinite. It seems like everywhere you go, people are offering advice. Sometimes all these lists get overwhelming.

Don’t get me wrong. I like advice. I like to give advice and consider the helpful information of other people. I’m all in favor of people making efforts to improve and do better.

Advice is an attention getter. It implies a promise to help make our lives better. And this is what causes us to immediately respond.

It makes us feel good when we’ve read through the information. But do we ever really follow through and implement a new plan of action based on this new knowledge?

If the advice was something that we actually searched for, then I would say yes. But if the advice was something that we stumbled upon, it’s easy to just leave it on the back burner, even though it offered helpful insight. It becomes easier to collect information than it is to implement it.

I’ve been through this many times before. I feel guilty when I don’t take action to change something or move to the next level.

This is a perpetual cycle for a lot of people. The best way to address it is to really make a commitment to continuously evolve ourselves and our work. We can make the choice to be one of those people who reads a lot and overly indulges in the intellectual aspect of it. Or we can make the choice to make real changes happen.

Just as metatags help in web development, metacognition is something we can use to manage the information we come across on a day to day basis. Metacognition involves having thoughts about thoughts.

* So the first thing to do when we find information that we plan to use is organize it. Create folders in your bookmarks list and organize all the links that you plan to revisit. If its a loose piece of paper, punch holes in it and save it in a binder. If you are reading a book, underline what is most relevant to you. And even take steps to type up an actual workable list for yourself that you will revisit as many times as needed.

* Then instead of trying to tackle the entire list, ask yourself which piece of information is most directly relevant to an issue that you are trying to solve in your life. It’s usually best to go with your first instincts as opposed to your rationalized thoughts.

* Most importantly, commit this information to paper and stick it on a corkboard or tape it somewhere so that you won’t forget about it. Try to mentally see how this piece of information applies to you or your project. And again, commit this to paper so that you will remember to actually implement this new piece of information.

Taking these steps may seem really cumbersome. After all, it is about breaking the cycle of the idea junkie of just collecting information and neglecting to take action. In the end, this investment of time is worth it if you want bona fide results and bigger rewards.

Threadless, A Social Campaign to Learn From

When people first start to consider social media as part of their marketing efforts, the first thing they think of is “money.” This is natural tendency of course. But thinking of dollars every minute throughout the duration of your campaign will only stifle it instead of moving you towards increasing returns.

A healthier perspective is to ask yourself, “how can I interact with my market and build a stronger relationship with my customers?” A name and a logo don’t give people a strong enough reason to choose one company over another. A personalized engagement is. Aren’t you more likely to choose a company whom you’ve had a positive personal interaction with. Or would go with one because you liked their name, logo and tagline?

“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” I used this quote in another post by Maya Angelou. But since it is an important lesson to keep in mind, I thought to include it again.

Threadless is an example of a company who executes social media successfully by prioritizing quality interactions above everything else. In case you are not familiar with the name, they are a youth culture T-shirt company that lets their target market participate in designing and voting for shirts. Here is a video with Bob Nanna of Threadless.

As you can tell, their social campaign is quite thoughtfully done. It’s a great example that illustrates how returns will follow with consistent quality engagement.

What Marshmallow Can Teach You

Success is largely determined by one’s ability to delay gratification. This applies to just about any endeavor. Being the kind of person who likes to observe things, I noticed that social media and online marketing are no exceptions.

The Marshmallow Test & Delayed Gratification

Walter Mischel, a Standford psychologist, conducted a delayed gratification study in the 1960′s on a group of kids. He gave each of them a marshmallow. They were told they could earn another one for being patient, if they refrained from eating it (for 20 minutes) until the instructor came back.

Some of the kids ate their marshmallow right away. Others resisted their impulse and waited. Mischel followed up with both groups 14 years later.

The kids who immediately ate their marshmallow were described in these later years, by parents and teachers as “stubborn, prone to envy and easily frustrated.” (fitzvillafuerte.com)

The kids who waited were “more self-motivated, educationally successful and emotionally  intelligent.” (fitzvillafuerte.com) They even scored higher on their SAT’s. You can read more details  about their career success as adults in newyorker.com.

Here is a reproduction of the marshmallow test:

Gratification Delay and Online Marketing

There are 2 ways to acquire new business/ traffic. Please note, I am not saying that one is better than the other. I am  just saying that there are 2 routes for marketing. Ideally, both should  be done for optimal results.

1. short term tactics
2. long term tactics.

Patience for number 2 is obviously needed.

The Short Term Path
Examples of short term tactics include:

• email marketing
• pay per click
• SEO

Short term tactics give you fast  results. But guess what? They are done by practically everyone. Eventually, these do hit a point of diminishing returns. When you rely too heavily on them, you lose opportunities to develop and differentiate your brand. In the eyes of your target market, you are just a name in a sea of comparative companies.

The Long Term Path
What I call long term tactics are those things that strike most companies as frivolous, fluffy, nice to haves.  At first, they seem like a waste of time. But they are all ways to present unique philosophies & perspectives.  And they allow you to entertain, engage and develop quality relationships that motivate brand loyalty & greater visibility and recognition. Sounds fluffy? Maybe at first. But long term strategies are certainly not fruitless.

Examples:

• regular blogging
• team brainstorming
• white papers
• person to person networking
• professional photography
• thoughtfully produced video content
• feedback gathering to evolve your offerings
• podcasts
• social network tools, community building etc

Oh I can hear the groans and moans already. After all, most businesses just want to eat their marshmallows RIGHT NOW. Many of them don’t want to wait for more candy at a later point in time.

When done correctly with the needs of customers fully in mind, these kind of strategies build valuable sentiment. I can just imagine some readers vehemently resisting this concept. What does touchy-feely, sentiment have to do with business?

Here is a quote by Maya Angelou which sum up the answer really well.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,  people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you  made them feel.

And if the sentiment is strong and compelling enough, they might even refer you to their friends. Remember, this is where word of mouth, viral marketing starts.

In the eyes of prospective customers, users, members etc, do you want to be remembered or forgotten?

Again, I am not saying you should ditch all short term marketing strategies. They just need to be balanced out with the foundation building that long term strategies require. When you reach the point of diminishing returns, there will be no need to worry if you’ve laid the groundwork for increasing returns to come your way.

On this final note, here are more words of wisdom by Maya Angelou.

“All great achievements take time.”

 

Peppermint Bark and the Social Experience

Last year, I had my very first taste of peppermint bark. I’m not a big fan of candy canes, so the idea of peppermint+ bark was not particularly appealing to me. I decided to take the plunge and try the one by Trader Joe’s. I’ve never been so wrong about a candy in my life! I fell absolutely in love with peppermint bark.

The stuff is seen everywhere during the holidays. Martha Stewart has a recipe for making this yourself. And as with all her projects, she showed a really pretty picture of the final product on her website.

Here is a picture of the Trader Joe’s brand.

 

(image courtesy of houseoffowler.com)

I was so enamored with Trader Joe’s peppermint bark that I decided to Google it. Lo and behold, a lot of other people were also inspired to talk about peppermint bark online (particularly Trader Joe’s versus the William’s Sonoma version)

Here is a partial list, in no particular order

1. Waterowl.blogspot.com
2. Chowhound.chow.com
3. Typetive.com
4. Gothamist.com
5. Epinions.com
6. TraderJoesfan.com
7. Gigi-Reviews.blogspot.com

Heck. Even Amazon sells Trader Joe’s peppermint bark for about $14.95. It may seem pricey. But you are getting a lot of candy.

Lesson of the day
If anyone is still asking about how they can get people to talk about their product online, the answer is to make it good and worth talking about.

When I was on LinkedIn, a title caught my eye, “Are You Creating  Evangelists?” What a question! Most people…and this even includes major corporations will reluctantly admit that the answer is no. It’s so easy to get caught up in short term seemingly urgent details. And we brush aside the things we need to do to create brand advocates. Rochelle Moulton, the author of this post, gives some great advice on how to do this.

I doubt that the people behind Trader Joe’s sat around and asked how they could create evangelists. More likely than not, they were just concerned with providing quality food products & trusted that people would be happy to spread the word. Without direct effort, they got like me to be their evangelist!  The other day I did some tweets about their baklava.And today I am publishing this blog about their peppermint bark.

This is just one example. It may not apply in this exact form to every business. It might be best for you to make deliberate efforts to create brand advocates as Rochelle Moulton suggests.

Regardless of what industry you are in,  you  need to make deliberate efforts to make your customers happy.
If you are not sure what to do, reach out and get direct insight from them.

In Search of the Obvious, Words to Live By

In Search of the Obvious by Jack Trout is an eye opening read for anyone in the marketing field. It clarifies the cloudy thinking that many people fall prey to when it comes to marketing goods & services.

I’ve listed my favorite quotes to share with you.

• The search for any marketing strategy is the search for the obvious.
• When presented with a simple obvious strategy, most clients are not impressed. They are often looking for some clever, not so obvious idea.
• Common sense is your guide
• Research can obscure the obvious. A flood of data should never be allowed to wash away your common sense and your own feeling for the market
• Success or failure is all about perceptual problems and opportunities in the market. And it’s all about understanding that the perceptions in the mind of the customer are where you win or lose.
• Customer awareness of a brand does not link to real customer behavior.
• Research may promise to reveal attitudes, but attitudes aren’t a reliable prediction of behavior. People often talk one way but act another.
• How many people really want to chatter about products? Do you really want to talk about your toothpaste or toilet paper? Even people with prestige products tend not to talk about them. All they really want is to be seen driving in one.
• How do you get people to say the right thing or talk about your obvious idea? There’s no way to control word of mouth.
• All these new ways to reach customers are just new tools. You still have to search for the obvious right product, the right strategy and the right differentiating idea in relation to your competition.
• Reaching customers is one thing. Selling them is another.
• All advertising and marketing have to do is supply the obvious reason to buy your product instead of your competitor’s product.
• If you build a differentiated product, the world will not automatically beat a path to your door…news of your product has to have some help along the way.
• Every aspect of your communications should reflect your difference- your advertising, your brochures, your web site, your sales presentations.
• The basic role of an agency is to take that difference [differentiating factor] and make it interesting.
• Branding is all about what makes you different and what the benefit is in that difference.
• On GM versus Toyota: A successful brand has to stand for something. The more variations you attach to it, the more you risk of standing for nothing.

These are the quotes I pretty much live by in my professional life. You’ll probably be seeing them throughout my posts. Not that I am trying to sell copies of this book or anything. But I believe that when you encounter good advice, it’s important to connect the dots to other contexts, including projects and challenges that you are currently facing.

We tend to get quite distracted by fancy terms, new technology and prestigious facades that it becomes very easy to lose sight of the obvious objectives in marketing.

I do have a lot to say on this, but I will write about it all in subsequent posts. For now, I am just happy that someone is helping to clarify fundamental basic truths that marketing professionals and business managers should keep in mind at all times.

If you have this strong, burning impulse to get this book, here is the cover.