Case Study: We Are Many

Toyota’s “We Are Many” social media campaign is interesting for many reason. Most noticeably, it is a Latino-centric campaign. Not too often do you see a whole campaign that targets an ethnicity so transparently. Chances are that this stems from a fear (sadly, a legitimate one when considering the temperament of the public) of alienating other ethnicities. A large corporation like Toyota does not want to seem to be playing favorite in regards to who they tailor their marketing to. Also, considering the climate around issues involving the Latino community regarding immigration rights, this seems like a risky move for Toyota. But when you consider that Latinos are firmly the second largest group in the United States, it would be difficult to say that targeting and appealing to that large of a group is a bad idea. Also, Toyota is the top brand of automobiles for Latino buyers, so this stood as an opportunity to strengthen that relationship.

So, exactly how is Toyota appealing to Latinos. Through their heritage. The term Latino is considered an ethnicity while their country of origin determines their race. No matter which way the consumer wants to look at it, Toyota provided a way for them to show their pride in their heritage by offering free decal stickers on their Spanish-langauge only page on Facebook. The default versions say “Somos Muchos Latinos” or “We Are Many Latinos”, but fans can customize the decal even more by specifying a country of origin, for example “Somos Muchos Mexicanos”. This campaign was wildly successful, leading to over 400,000 orders for these decals and a crossover deal with Telemundo.

Blake’s Exploration into the Usefulness of Delicious

When I initially got the idea to make a blog post about Delicious, it was going to be a rant on how stupid I thought it was. What’s the point of a website that does something that every browser ever does, keep bookmarks. Even Yahoo has a bookmarking service in case that you aren’t around you’re main computer. So what’s the point?

I took a look at my phone and it hit me. My Galaxy SIII came preinstalled with an app called Flipbook, which curates stories, articles and pictures based on suggestions that you give the app when creating your account. I believe that Delicious is based off of the same principle, combined with Twitter. You can follow people that interest you like Twitter, while they provide links that are in line with those same interests. They curate based on their interest, and people follow them because of that. I love Twitter’s format, and I think that Delicious has even more potential because of the content that is available even though the site itself does not hold the content. But that is OK, because that simply isn’t the nature of the site.

Just another example of not judging a book by its cover, or in my case, the summary on the back.

The LeBron Campaign

In America, the narrative about a man or woman can change so fast with one action. From selfish to humbled. From arrogant to winner. From sinner to sanctified. We’ve always been known as the nation of second chances. More often than not, that second chance comes along much faster if you can run, jump, hit or score. When the whole world is against you, nothing else quite seems to  says “I’m sorry” like winning a title. This is the story of LeBron James over that last 6 months. After leaving his home state of Ohio for the sunny shores of Miami, and proclaiming to win oh, 8 or so NBA titles, then losing in his first opportunity, the negativity surrounding him had never been worse. Fast forward to today, and he’s among the most revered and celebrated athletes of the time.

And you can be sure, LeBron is aware of it all.

From that awareness, comes the Samsung Galaxy Note II campaign starring LeBron featured on YouTube. It is an ode to his life, and almost says to the viewer “This is the person you claim to hate. Not so convicted now, are you?” Sure, the commercial makes note of some of the features that the phone/tablet has but its true meaning seems to be a commercial about LeBron. This shows the power of James, this is the second time his name has been proven strong enough to carry a firm into helping him promote himself more than anything. The first time was for the Decision, his own ESPN broadcast where he revealed his signing with Miami.

Case Study: NBA 2K13

Calling me an avid NBA 2K13 player may be an understatement. I’m always first to know new info on the upcoming edition, and often among the first to purchase it. In the past, I stayed ahead of the pack due to an almost obsessive search for any bit of information. This year, 2K Sports made sure that me or anyone like me would not have to go above and beyond for info about their game again by implementing a revamped social media strategy. This year, the company enlisted Ronnie Singh, known on Twitter and various sports forums as @Ronnie2K, to be the face of NBA 2K13’s social media marketing push.

Officially titled, “2K Sports’ Digital Marketing Manager”, Singh took the burden of being the face of a brand has a large fan base, that while passionate, can also be a bit unreasonable. Despite that pressure, Singh always seemed to take it all in stride, helping those he could help by answering questions or simply letting the tweeter know that he has passed this problem on to people who could actually solve the problem. This was one of the biggest misconceptions about Singh during this campaign, that he was in fact the developer of the game or part of the think tank that created ideas for the game. He also took that in stride, informing people of what his purpose was or playing along in true Twitter trolling fashion. All in all, he did his job very well. He was the first to release 2K’ insights about certain aspects of the game, and any info that came directly from 2K. He also retweeted any articles or videos (positive ones, of course) from third parties such as online magazines and gaming sites. He and 2K even embraced the general public by enlisting “famous” YouTube commentators to take a look at the game before it was released in a Community Meet-Up.

Taking advantage of the different strengths of each social media platform is a concept that will stick with me from this class when trying to create or critique a social media campaign. With 2K’s use of Twitter as a news-breaker, Facebook as a hub, and YouTube’s video and community, it is safe to say the job that 2K did with their digital marketing was a success, as once again, NBA 2K13 set a franchise sales record.

Music Promotion on Twitter

I am a music producer. I’m also on Twitter. Sometimes I wonder if people that follow me know exactly what I do because my tweets are not exclusive to the promotion of my craft. According to Ian from MakeItInMusic.com, I’m along the right path. One of the tips he suggests (which has also been suggested in class) is that you set a ratio of self-promotion tweets to general tweets. This is an aspect I can surely improve on, as most of my tweets do not have anything to do with my craft. There are factors that play into this (other interests, school, work), but tailoring my tweets to what I want to be known for is a good way to build my brand.

Another good tip Ian gave was to make a strong bio. On Twitter, your bio has strong SEO power. Therefore, making sure that music producer is early on in the bio will increase my chances of people linking my producer name, Blake Superior, to what I want the name to be synonymous with, me as a producer.

Many of the tips that were given have been gone over in class, which tells me promoting yourself, no matter what the field, shares some of the same techniques and methods that promoting a firm does. This has inspired me to take a deeper look into how I can maintain my social profile while still promoting my brand to be what I want it to be.

Facebook and the One-to-One Commuication Channel

One of the most championed abilities that social media platforms allow for a firm is the ability to communicate to the consumer directly through a comment on Facebook. Never before has a company been so easily connected to their audience and vice-versa. Before these platforms were available, the only sure-fire way to get direct contact with a company was to write a letter, which allowed a multitude of ways for whatever was in that letter to get ignored. The company held all of the power in terms of communication, and now the tables have been turned. This has been a positive change to the world of marketing, and it is hard to deny that claim.

So why does it seem to be so underutilized on Facebook?

I ‘like’ almost every company on Facebook that I consider to be important to me (Nike, Image-Line [ makers of FL Studio production software], ESPN), but none of them seem to do much personal communication with their consumers. ‘Like’ this or “comment on this” don’t qualify as meaningful communication. I believe Nike has so much potential to gain a personal relationship with their audience using their Nike+ technology. Nike has always been good at asking the public to do a certain action and have them respond with information, but I have never seen them respond in a meaningful way. Image-Line produces a product that is heavily used, yet has endless competition. I believe that a more back-and-forth method of communication would allow for them to implement features that people feel FL Studio is lacking in that others succeed in.

A top-down approach to communication through social networking is nothing more than advertising through a new channel, rather than taking advantage of a powerful tool that results in meaningful dialogue.

*shameless plug* I’m a music producer! Please check out my page.

Since you are here, I’d appreciate if you all would take a listen to my beats! This is my passion and all ears are encouraged to listen. I’d really appreciate it and I’ll return the favor in any way I can. If you all could let me know which specific tracks you like via comment that would be awesome as well Thanks! 😀

Link here: www.soundcloud.com/prodbyblakesuperior

First Post!

I had to tidy up the place and tend to a few technical difficulties but I finally got this up and running! Looking forward to an insightful and interesting semester!