A little while ago, Procter & Gamble has introduced a new product to the market named Sparkle. The target user for this product is ‘teen girls’ who are in the very heart of their development. Teen girls who are in the beginning of puberty. A very well known medium to communicate amongst the girls is the blog. So P&G’s marketing department has put together a blog that isn’t personally, but corporate. Although it gives readers a bit the impression it still is a blog from “just a teen girl’, it’s actually a promotional tool, and every post has its meaning.
Following Procter & Gamble, Unilever has also founded a character blog. This blog is about two guys looking for the perfect ‘first thing to say’ when you meet a pretty girl. Again you can see the clearly obvious promotional content of the blog, but still it attracts many surfers. It’s a new way to communicate, to support the release of a product, or to maintain customer realtionships with the possibility of instant feedback by the surfers. A unique way to experience advertisement.
From Adland :
“Unilever, owner of Axe brand, are trying to keep their brand top of mind with young lads in the united states by sending fictional characters Evan and Gareth out to try out score-lines on unsuspecting babes. Evan and Gareth ‘videoblog’ their adventures and the idea is that hopefully this whole thing will go viral, alas, it hasn’t yet. It’s been seeded on heavy.com and has a seven linkbacks according to technorati so far.”
You should really check out the vblog-entries. They’re all very creative and I must say that this was a very keen move of the marketing department to make. This really brings the brand closer to the people. By far the closest than any medium I know. Because it’s a medium that ‘pulls’ the prospects. You have to key in the address, or click on a link or bookmark. You WANT to go there yourself. It fits in your life at this time. Just as the product should. It’s a flexible and interactive way to communicate. This is direct marketing as it should be. Your waste is ‘almost’ zero percent.
“It’s not just the universe that’s changed, the media chosen is a big shift for Unilever who relied heavily on the 30-second commercial when they launched. These days reaching the target of 18- to 24-year-old men who are all armed with zapping remote controls and short attention spans isn’t easy. Unilever believes that they can reach the target by creating compelling content on the net to foster brand loyalty, they hope that the funny films will be emailed around – in short they want it to go viral. It’s not Axe’s first time on the web, www.theaxeeffect.com had some pretty raunchy films and a little graphic content.” says Dabitch on AdLand.
“Conductor, the firm behind the campaigns for the Spiderman films is helping to launch this site. Watch for the big bang on on May 18 when a game called Mojo Master will appear on EvanandGareth.com, where players can test their pick-up moves on virtual vixens using their home PCs. That kind of sounds a lot like the subservient chicken and the recent beer babes, lets hope it isn’t,” AdLand states.
May 18, that’s tomorrow ! Keep it in mind and check it out yourself !
So is this a good progression? From the marketing point of view, yes. The one goal every marketer has is to bring his product as close to the target group as (humanly) possible. We’ll dribble on the borderline of ‘about to shuv this product in your life’, but we’ll just not do that. Instead, you, the consumer, has to grab it. Preferably with both hands, hugging our product. Spreading the word. Telling others to grab it too. And I think this is exactly what this AdverBlog does. But. There’s a downside too.
Small-time intellectuals like myself and many others, who gather digital information and process it to eventually reproduce it to gain a bit of acknowledgement in the blogosphere will eventually be the victim of this hype. Being the first in a market segment, like P&G or Unilever is one thing. You’ll get what you came from. But the many thousands of companies who’ll think this is a sweet idea, which it is, will copy your moves, turning the blogosphere into the same ad-infested heaven the search engines are today.
Sponsored blogs, as we’ll call the AdverBlogs, will serve only product info. But they’ll rank on top of every query, -maybe even on the first five pages- as they do now in some derived engines that struggle to survive. It doesn’t feel right when a company ‘pretends’ to be its own satisfied customer. Especially not when it acts like a peer and serves information.
Unless there’s some sort of ‘Code of Conduct’, that forces those ‘fake blogs’ to clearly identify themselves as being ‘Advertisement’ I think this could lead to some serious misunderstandings.
Original post by AdLand
Check out the Sparkle Body Spray blog.
Check out Axe’s Evan & Gareth VideoBlog
Article in Dutch on MarketingFacts about P&G’s Sparkle.
Article in Dutch on MarketingFacts about Character Blogs.
Read the article on Second Law Marketing.