Jim Gaffigan and Hot Pockets: How to deal with negative brand attention online

Jim Gaffigan is one of my favorite comedians. If you haven't seen his bit on Hot Pockets, check it out. He completely rips apart Hot Pockets -- of course in a humorous, non-malicious way. Whenever I think about Gaffigan's routine, it makes me wonder how the people at Nestle, maker of Hot Pockets, feel about it as marketers. They're doing their best to get the public to buy their product, and here they have a comedian poking fun at their hard work and their livelihood.

So let's take Jim Gaffigan's Hot Pockets skit and apply it to social media.

Catharine P. Taylor at MediaPost recently wrote a blog entry about how Target faced negative publicity because of two errors it made in handling bloggers and Facebook. So between Hot Pockets and Target, you have two examples of brands that got less-than-stellar attention -- one due to a comedian and something Hot Pockets clearly could not control, and the second because of Target's poor handling of social media. In both cases it spread virally. Even though the Jim Gaffigan bit wasn't social media to begin with, the YouTube videos have certainly turned it viral and grown it from a simple comedy bit into a small Internet fad. (Hot Pockets has tried its own viral program at HotPocketsDojo.com, featuring games and e-cards.)

You might be saying, "So what? I don't work for a huge national brand like Target or Hot Pockets. Why do I need to worry about this sort of thing?"

With social media, it doesn't matter how big or how small your brand is -- you can still face this kind of publicity crisis if your company makes a mistake. Even if you don't make a mistake, an unsatisfied customer could do damage to your company's reputation and brand. So be prepared. A few thoughts:

1. Monitor the blogosphere, relevant discussion boards, YouTube, etc. Make sure you're trying to find your customers' reactions to your products and services, both positive and negative! Google Alerts are my favorite. Set up several for your brand, your products, etc. Think about all the different ways people could be talking about your brand -- this includes common misspellings too. Do a set of Google Alerts with key words in quotation marks, and another set without.

2. If you ever run into negative social media, my number one recommendation is don't overreact. Think carefully about how you will respond. Talk to your smartest, most level-headed people to see how they would handle the situation. Call a trusted friend in the industry who doesn't work for your company. Tell them the facts, and ask them how they'd respond.

3. Speed is important, but it's not everything. It's tempting to embrace speed when you see a negative item. After all, a swift response is essential, right? I agree to a certain extent -- you shouldn't let a situation sit for a long time without dealing with it. Move quickly, but cautiously too. A smart response is more important than a quick one. Make the wrong move, no matter how fast it is, and you're going to be pouring gasoline on the flames.

4. Sometimes a response isn't necessary. It's often tough to judge this one, and I'd say the more experience you have with negative publicity, the more likely you are to know when not to respond. Depending on the claim someone makes, how credible their story sounds, and how other Internet users are responding, in some situations you should not respond and let the offending material die a slow, quiet death.

Here's an excellent blog post by Glen Allsop that offers some additional pointers for how to react to negative blog posts.

Who knows...the Jim Gaffigan / Hot Pockets situation may have actually helped Hot Pockets in the long run, by getting the name and jingle on many people's lips. Of course the context of the additional awareness wasn't ideal for the Hot Pockets brand. But sometimes as marketers, we need to understand that we're not always in control. In these situations, make sure you're able to kick back, eat a Hot Pocket, and laugh at your own product.

Posting business-related videos on YouTube

Dianna Huff asked the question whether or not businesses should be using YouTube for video. If you read through the comments, you'll see the opinion is mixed.

For situations where you can point people directly to your video (e.g. when you already have people on your website and you want to show them a clip), embedding the YouTube code on your page (or Google Video would work just as well here) seems to be the way to go...as mentioned by a few people in the comments of Dianna's post. That way you're not taking people to the YouTube site where there might be links to objectionable content appearing alongside yours. The other no-brainer way to post video on your own site is of course to put it on your own server, but because of the technical setup that's required, this might not be the best option for many people.

Of course, two of the major benefits of posting a video on YouTube are the viral component and the universality of its platform. These are benefits you won't get by keeping a video confined to your own website.

I would post a business-related video on YouTube if I thought it would help the clip gain a wider distribution and popularity among my target audience, even with the chance it might have links to not-so-wonderful content alongside it. It's not like business users have never used YouTube before and don't know what kind of content is posted there...and that they'll be shocked if they see a link to a stupid or objectionable video. I'd be willing to bet more than 90% of business users have been on YouTube before. They know that YouTube is like a soup with lots of ingredients floating in there -- some good and others not so good (lima beans!). They will choose to pick out the good bits and ignore the undesirable bits floating in there, without changing their perception of your brand.

Here's an example of good execution of business video on YouTube. Cap Gemini seems to understand the medium. The company is posting video regularly (when I checked, they had several videos that were posted within the last week, some last month, others two months old, etc.) so they're consistent. They also have a few formats of video -- interviews, case studies, etc.

The use of business video on social sites like YouTube is still in its infancy. I think you're going to see a lot of companies trying different things -- some succeeding, others failing miserably. The potential is there, especially within markets where visuals are important (e.g. construction equipment). But in the long run, once a set of best practices has been established for business video on social sites -- whether it's a business channel within YouTube or it's another website that gains traction and fills this market need -- you'll see a much clearer path for business video. Until then, it's the wild, wild West!

Customization of online advertising creatives: follow up

A couple months ago, I wrote this blog post about Wilkes University and how it's "targeting" ads in several media to individual students the institution wants to recruit. I briefly mentioned the "Find a mortgage in insert your community name here" types of ads that you see around the Web. A few more thoughts on that topic:

• Cory Treffiletti of Catalyst:SF just wrote a brief post about ad creative auto-development, where you can get a company to personalize your ads and how they're delivered. He links to three companies that provide this service, although in slightly different ways.
  
  
• A number of advertisers and agencies outsource their design work (or perhaps "final assembly of an already designed ad" is a better way to put it) to arrive at a customized look for their ads. First they'll design an ad template or look and feel in house. Then they'll outsource the final step -- the "assembly" -- to companies in China, India, and other low-cost nations. The inexpensive workers will start with the template and will actually develop hundreds, thousands, or more GIF or Flash-based creatives that are personalized for the specific targets of your campaign. It's a much lower tech way of accomplishing the same thing, rather than dynamically inserting the information into the ad. But it's probably just as cost effective in many cases.
  

Google's erratic behavior and relevancy declines -- is Google getting greedy?

Here's a great blog post from Tom Pick about Google and its recent erratic behavior. It's something all online marketers should keep an eye on, because many of Google's actions trickle down and affect so many of the things we eMarketers do every day.

Google's entire business model is built on relevancy. That's what got the company where it is today. Back in the late 1990s when the search engine wars were in full combat gear, it was Google's great search relevancy that made it stand out from the pack.

Tom's article contains links to several other articles, a couple offering "conspiracy theories" about Google's erratic relevancy of late. Is Google getting greedy? Personally I don't buy any of those theories. This almost surely isn't an intentional move by Google -- probably just a series of bad decisions and slip-ups that have snowballed. I think Google will correct them and move on.

Google knows search relevancy is its golden goose. Why would it risk killing the golden goose for short-term gain? That doesn't make sense.

Here's an interesting question though: Could Google be dethroned as the "king of search", if its search relevancy slips and someone comes along with a more relevant product?

I think the answer is yes. But it would take a dramatic turn of events. Google would need to make a series of major and sustained mistakes, of which killing the relevancy goose would only be one of several huge strategic errors.

You'd also need a new king. Could Yahoo or MSN (or with all the Microsoft/Yahoo talk in the past few months, the two joined...) take over Google's top spot? Or would it take a new, different, better kind of startup -- a la Google in 1998, with such a huge relevancy advantage -- to take the crown? It's a much more mature search market today than it was a decade ago when Google entered the game. So I think a new player would need Rupert Murdoch kind of money to even make a dent.

Engagement mapping: good article, and links to more information and resources

About two months ago, I blogged about Microsoft's Engagement Mapping (see post here) and how it could change the industry, since it's a more accurate representation of how online ads really work.

Here's an interesting new article about engagement mapping written in MediaPost's Online Publishing Insider. It does a nice job of breaking down a couple recent reports and white papers on the topic. The article also links to some resources on engagement mapping provided by Atlas, such as a white paper, two webcasts (one for advertisers and another for publishers), and an FAQ about engagement mapping.

Buying advertising from ad networks versus individual websites: Which is the better approach?

Online advertising networks have been around for a long time, but they've recently seen a resurgence. An increasing number of website owners are selling their inventory through ad networks now, which I think is due to several factors. Targeting on ad networks has gotten better than it used to be, social media has increased the amount of ad inventory (particularly what I'll call "non-premium inventory" because ads on social sites typically have much lower click-through rates and engagement rates), and advertisers are more likely to pursue The Long Tail of their audience.

From an advertiser's perspective, should you be running your ads on a network or should you deal with individual sites for your buy?

First of all let me say it's a complex question that depends a lot on your particular targets, the types of sites in your market, and a number of other factors. But whenever possible, I believe advertisers will get the best value for their advertising dollars by dealing directly with sites that reach their target market, rather than buying inventory from an ad network.

This is true because most site owners know their audience well, and they can make recommendations for how to reach the audience more effectively. Sure, there are lots of site owners who aren't willing to help you, might not want to give you insight into their audience, etc. But I think the majority of online publishers realize it's a win-win-win when they work closely with advertisers. Their audience is better served by seeing ads that are more relevant, the advertisers are happy because they're getting better performance, and the publisher is able to keep its advertisers happy which leads to repeat business.

For example, at IndustryWeek we see both types of advertisers: The ones who truly want to partner with us on a campaign and really care about making their campaign fit the site's audience, and also the advertisers who are buying ad inventory and applying a one-size-fits-all approach. I'm sure you'd expect to see the former group's campaign results outperforming the latter. But I'll bet you'll be shocked when I tell you how dramatic the difference can be -- it's often 10 times better! That's right...if an advertiser does a good job customizing its buy, creative approach, and watching and optimizing the campaign, they can get 1,000 click-throughs on an ad when other advertisers might only be getting 100 clicks. It's all about being relevant to the site's audience.

A lot of media buyers -- whether they're buying for their own company, or working on behalf of an agency for a client -- say that online ad networks are important because of scale. They might say, "We'd need to buy from dozens or even hundreds of individual websites, and it would be so cumbersome that it's much easier to deal with an ad network." This is certainly true, and I'm sure there are lots of advertisers who run into this situation. In many of these cases, ad networks might be the only way to effectively deploy a large-scale ad buy. But before you opt for a network buy, think about that 10x return I mentioned in the paragraph above. If you're able to get ten times the return for maybe two, three, or five times the work, often it makes financial sense to opt for the more custom, more personal relationship directly with websites -- even if it means throwing more resources (time and people) at the campaign.

Should we be producing LESS content on the web?

Scott Karp wrote a fascinating blog post about cutting down on the amount of content you produce, to avoid polluting the web. He advocates that writers reduce the amount of "stuff" they put out there, using effective linking strategies instead so as not to duplicate something that's already available on the web. His reasoning is why should you regurgitate, when a simple link will suffice?

It's something I've never thought of before. There's unlimited space on the web, right? (Ignoring things like the cost of storage, server costs, etc.) But Scott is saying there is a cost involved, and that cost is the amount of time people waste when they're trying to filter information.

It reminds me of a lot of the spam I used to get a few years ago. I haven't seen one of these in a while, but perhaps some spammers might still use this. The footer of the spam message would say,

Please Save the Planet, Save the Trees! Advertise via Email. No wasted paper! Delete with one simple keystroke! Less refuse in our Dumps! This is the new way of the new millennium.

Yes, that's true -- spammers don't waste paper to print direct mail. But countless hours of productivity are wasted each year by spam. (I'm sure someone has a study out there somewhere that quantifies how much time the average person spends weeding through spam, but honestly it's going to be such a big number that it's near meaningless anyway, so I'll conserve resources by not trying to find a link!)

So just like countless hours are wasted each year fighting spam, Scott asserts that since there's so much content out there, it's wasting people's precious time to go through it. Wow...producing less content? Can our Internet society handle such a radical idea?

So here's another way to look at it:
The answer isn't writing about less things, it's simply writing less about the same amount of things. According to Jakob Nielsen's recent column, users are reading at most 28% of the words on the average web page.

So if content creators identify the 72% of wasted words and don't write them, the problem is solved and everyone is happy! Everyone still gets to communicate, but there's no waste. Brilliant!

But like the old advertising adage goes, "I know half my advertising dollars are wasted, I just don't know which half," how will writers know which 28% of their content people are reading?

(If you haven't already figured it out, this comment is at least 28% tongue in cheek...)

Arby's super-targeted direct mail campaign? Not quite

Shortly after making this post yesterday about a college's laser-targeted mass media campaign, I started going through my mail at home. I pulled out a direct mail piece that really caught my attention.

My wife and I are both rapidly approaching our 30th birthdays. Hers is only a few weeks away, and mine isn't that far behind. So when I pulled a mailer from Arby's out of the stack and I read "Save big on my 30th birthday!", I was excited and curious at the same time. Arby's is my favorite fast food restaurant, and for a few seconds, I thought they were doing some sort of clever customized mailer to people who were hitting milestone birthdays. (Especially since targeted mass media campaigns were on my mind, after writing that blog post!)

But then I read further. It turns out Arby's Beef 'N Cheddar sandwich turns 30 this month, and they're doing a special $.30 sandwich promotion to celebrate. So much for targeted mass media.

But at least I learned something. Two of the loves of my life (Michele and Beef 'N Cheddar) were born in the same month!

Wilkes University's super-targeted ad campaigns, and can they work online?

You may have heard about Wilkes University's unconventional ad campaigns. This is the second year the Pennsylvania school is using super-targeted ads aimed at a handful of top seniors. It's placing ads like "Scranton High senior Nicole Pollock: Our goal at Wilkes University is to be as much a mentor as your mother has been. (Now, if we could only make her ravioli.)" These ads are appearing on billboards, on TV, and even on pizza boxes. See AP article here, NPR story here (audio), and one of the TV commercials embedded below (also linked here).


These are the first college advertisements I've ever seen that don't make me yawn. They're smart, they convey the intended message (Wilkes cares about getting to know you as a person), and they clearly generate a lot of buzz in the community. Of course, their effectiveness at recruiting some of the top talent to the school is just one facet of the campaign's objectives. They're meant to get those students' friends, classmates, teachers and staff, and members of the community to talk about Wilkes -- and to get this lesser-known school on many Pennsylvania seniors' short lists.

It got me thinking about customized online ads. There's the "Find a mortgage in insert your community name here" ads that you see on many sites today. Those are customized based on your IP address and other technology that helps the ad figure out your location. The first time I saw one of them, it made me say wow, but it also creeped me out in a way too. It seemed a little big brother-ish, even though the site really doesn't have any personally identifiable information about me. These types of ads aren't even in the same league as the Wilkes ads, but they came to mind first.

Then you have some of the more targeted campaigns that I've occasionally seen in the B2B world. A while back, one of my colleagues got a direct mail piece. If I remember correctly, it was in a plain, hand-addressed envelope. Inside it had an invitation that had a customized URL with his name as the subdomain (for example, http://johnsmith.xyzcompany.com). When he went to that particular URL, the page was customized with his name, our company name, and a demo or pitch for a product that was somewhat built around him. After he showed it to me, we discussed it for a while and tried to figure out how they had built the program. It seemed like the kind of campaign where they had taken a list, micro-segmented it down to a couple hundred prospects they were interested in pursuing (either that or they spent a lot of time and money to make it seem that way), set up the custom URLs which probably took a little time but I'm sure was database-driven, and then of course hand-addressed the envelopes to get the personalized factor on the outside too.

Wilkes' ads make me think about the concept of The Long Tail and how the Internet is enabling companies and organizations to pursue a niche strategy. Although Wilkes is using mass media, the university is using it in a much more targeted manner than the "photo of the three students sitting under a tree with laptops" that's prevalent in most college ads. The Wilkes approach is an interesting combination of a Long Tail strategy but in a mass media way. I have a feeling many other companies and organizations will be experimenting with this type of ad campaign soon.

Media industry similar to music industry

I'm beginning to think the media industry is a lot like the music business. The music biz's main product (the CD) saw double-digit sales decreases in 2007. Music downloads are increasing, but they're increasing at a decreasing rate -- and they're not making up for the revenue loss the record companies are seeing with CD sales decreases.

This sounds like a similar story to what many B2B media companies are feeling. Marketers are spending more money on eMedia, but less money on print advertising, causing many magazines to struggle or shut down. Even with double-digit increases in eMedia spending, in many industries marketers' total spend with media companies is still decreasing overall.

To combat the problem, the music industry is trying to create a new business model by filing lawsuits against their customers. Maybe media should try that? :-)