Archives for posts with tag: brand

Skittles’ Twitter Experiment – Lots of Buzz, But What Next?

March 2, 2009 //
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The twitter world has been buzzing today due to a social media experiment by confectionary brand Skittles.  Skittles.com was handed over to the twitter community when the website was redirected to a twitter search page for the phrase “skittles”.  Cue thousands of twitter uses tweeting the phrase to get their 20 seconds of fame on the skittles homepage; hundreds of bloggers (like me!) were posting their thoughts on the social experiment, some good, and some bad.

skittles-twitter-trendSome believed it was a clear example of a company “not getting it”.  Social Media is about engagement right?  You should be listening, thinking, and engaging the community surely? Not just displaying a load of random tweets that include your brand name?

Some were complimenting skittles.  For trying something new, for experimenting with twitter and social media.  After all the world of twitter was buzzing with skittles mentions, every other tweet mentioned skittles and surely that counts for something right?  Well I doubt it is going to sell many extra bags of sweets, but I can’t remember the last time I mentioned or thought about skittles, so there something gained from the stunt.

Whether you believe the move to be a success or not depends, as always, how you define success.  If the aim of the exercise was to put something out there, in the aim of getting some exposure and trying something new, then it is a clear success.  Brand wise, the only harm came from the spammers and comedians who chose post less than complimentary words about skittle and revel in the irony of the statements appearing on skittles.com.

skittles-twitter-experiment

If the objective was to sell more skittles, well, hmmm….I’m not sure it could be deemed a success.

But the bigger question for me is what next for skittles?  They have gained all the buzz which came from the experiment.  But surely the homepage isn’t going to stay like that for an extended period?  It’s not much of a user experience!  It’s not even been done in an aesthetically pleasing way.

So where does skittles take it next? Do they have another stunt lined up? Are they going to use any of the posts they have received today for further activity?

The Buzz was great, loads of exposure for the brand, if only within the twitter community.  They also gain a bit of kudos for having the balls to pull such a stunt and doubtless they will go into numerous presentations as an example of twitter usage, but without something more to follow it up, this will only last so long. Buzz and the viral impact of marketing only last so long, so where next skittles?  What else have you got in store for us?

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Categories Social Media

Interflora Legal Battle Could Set a Precedent

December 9, 2008 //
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Interflora this week launched legal action against Marks & Spencer and Flowers Direct in a case which could set a precedent in pay per click marketing.  They are claiming both companies are infringing their trademark by appearing in the sponsored results for searches on “interflora” and various mispellings.  This, of course, does not break any of Google’s brand bidding guidelines since they were changed earlier this year as they now only prevent advertisers using a trademark in their ad text.  But many large companies still believe that bidders are infringing on their trademark and the brand they have worked hard to build.

Up until now their only option has been to send the obligatory cease and desist letter and hope it scares people away.  But this case could set a serious precedent and if successful pave the way for numerous other cases, and who knows, perhaps a reversal of Google’s policy?

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Categories Google

Trademark removal – the aftermath

May 7, 2008 //
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So after all the hoopla about Google removing the trademark protection from its Adwords system (of which I only got chance to write about once as I was too busy doing something about it at work!) what was the outcome?  The removal happened on Monday (bank holiday, coincidence? I think not) while most of us were enjoying the good weather or a badly played round of golf in my case.  You can be damn sure there were no affiliates out on the golf course as they were all in-doors getting on as many brand terms as possible to make the most of the changes.

The net affect from what I have seen is the obvious rise in brand ownerships CPCs (about 30-60p increase on average) which is a big deal if you are somebody who relies no their brand sales to bring down the overall cost of the medium.   Affiliates and clued up competitors are having a field day at the moment with not many people following Tesco’s moral stance of not bidding on competitors terms.  I personally think it will all begin to die down as people realise the inflated CPCs they are going to have to pay to bid on competitors terms due to their lack of quality score will see a lot of them decide it is not worth the bother.  But many companies are going to have to review their affiliate strategy and make sure they have clear guidelines on what is allowed and what isn’t otherwise they will end up paying out a small fortune to affiliates who are doing nothing more than brand bidding.

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Categories Google

Trademark mayhem in the name of ad dollars

April 10, 2008 //
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So Google have finally done it.  Sacrificed their morals on trademark protection in the name of more revenue by opening up all brand terms, whether registered trademarks or not, to anybody who chooses to bid on them.  This has been their system in the US and Canada for a while now and their arguement is that it provides a better user experience by offering the searcher companies which provide the same product or service as the one whose trademark they have searched for.  The changes will come into play on May 5th and from this point any advertiser will be free to bid for any brand terms they choose.  Fittingly this is a bank holiday in the UK and so the mayhem which will undoubtedly unfold will do so when the majority of industry representatives are away from work!  If you remember what happened when Google made changes to their minimum bid system (and it all went t*ts up!) it makes you wonder whether this date has been set intentionally by the big G.

So cue brands bidding on other brands, hiking the prices out of spite and affiliates of a field day.  But will this be the case?  No doubt initially companies will begin to bid on their competitors terms thus raising the price the brand owner has to pay.  But how will the quality score deal with this? Well you would like to think the competition will have to pay hefty minimum CPCs to even list in the first place given that their websites will have no relevancy at all to the keyword.  But will the big boys care about this?  They will probably be more concerned with stealing their competitors traffic and be willing to pay the price. 

Theoretically they wont be able to include the trademarked term in their creative but that doesn’t account for DKI which, no matter what Google suggest, isn’t going to change any time soon to combat this.  Therefore a clever search engine marketeer will get round this quite easily.

What do I think will happen?  Brand CPC’s increase, affiliates have a field day, the overall cost of PPC increases, and then when it all dies down it is back to business as usual and people forget the day brand protection was in place.  The trick is for companies to have a plan of action for May 5th, to know how they are going to deal with their affiliates, to develop and stance on competitors terms and closely monitor the first couple of weeks after this change comes into place.  Then to reassess and get on with the business of generating leads from paid search, after all we are all at the mercy of Google anyway, so why bother trying to fight it!

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Categories Google, PPC, Search Engine Marketing

The Importance of Brand

March 28, 2007 //
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In a recent bizreport article travelocity’s CMO Jeffrey Glueck made the observation that in PPC “most of your profits come from buying your own brand term”. No kidding! This is a basic principle of search marketing and one which is a constant area of discussion between agencies and clients. In a market such as travel where competition is high and price is everything building a strong brand is essential to your success. Glueck goes on to say he is “dismissive” of the approach of buying a large range of generic terms in a PPC campaign. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this dismissal and say that in my experience of managing travel campaigns it is essential to hold whole range of generic spcific and brand terms in your campaign. Due to the price sensitivity of the travel market search engine user go through a number fo research stages before deciding upon a purchase, they will research different countries, followed by regions of a country and then hotels within a region before finally searching out the cheapest price for their chosen destination. In the final comparison stage they are likely to take note of the cheapest site they find during their search before returning through a brand search. Hence it is importnat to have a presence at each stage of the buying process in order to have a chance of getting the sale. Full article is below, make your own mind up!

article here

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Categories PPC