iMedia Connection - ad:tech blog

How do you get message and community to line up and take notice? How does one organize and structure an initiative so that all the pieces of the marketing puzzle come together? Denise Zimmerman and Dave Larkin of NetPlus Marketing, Inc. offered some great advice and a smart case study on the tools and intelligence you need to make good things happen.
Speaking of making good things, today's big question at the iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas lined up around getting customers to fall in love with chili fixins. Queso, for the indoctrinated, is a southwestern style cheese dip concoction with as many combinations of recipes as there are colors in the rainbow. Ro*Tel is ConAgra's chili fixin product, but the campaign we reviewed today had very little to do with chili.
ConAgra partnered with NetPlus to make it all happen with social media (Facebook and Twitter engagements) and ultimately created destination content that included contests and recipe awards.
Denise Zimmerman offered the following advice when building an engagement campaign:

Deliver strategy that drives campaign elements, ideas, creativity, channel, tools…
Maintain a true focus on the customer
Make certain there are clear roles and expectations and agreed-upon objectives
Maintain consistency in message integration
Establish... Read more

Listening technologies are all the rage for marketing on the web, and a multitude of companies have chimed in with new means of keeping in touch with customer conversations on the web. But the real challenge isn't getting access to the conversations; it lies in how to truly separate the wheat from the meat when it comes to sentiment and influence.
During her master class session at the iMedia Brand Summit, Jennifer Rivas, Red Robin's director of national marketing described how listening to your customers can become an integral part of a brand's identify. First up, how can you separate brand discussion from noise? Ms. Rivas cited the all too common example of a generic brand name: Are people chatting about bird watching, the Red Robin comic book, or the restaurant brand?
Rivas offered the following key areas of influence: Relevancy, sentiment, and measuring influence are key in developing an understanding. Red Robin is using Listen Logic, and Rivas pointed out that understanding syntax while listening is important as well. For example, few understood that "nom nom nom" is quite the compliment for a restaurant.
Where the rubber meets the road lies in answering critical questions and detecting threats before they... Read more