It’s always fascinating to watch a social media or content marketing campaign blow up in a brand’s face. Whether it’s McDonald’s with their “Our Food. Your Questions” campaign or the NYPD with the “#myNYPD” fiasco, many brands have tried to ride the social media/content marketing bull only to get tossed to the ground. There are many reasons why these campaigns did not turn out as successfully as the brands who launched them would have liked, but one of the bigs ones is that many modern consumers have become very, very marketing savvy.
The Modern Marketing Savvy Consumer
Now as always, marketers use tools and techniques to engage with potential customers for their brands. With the advent of the Internet, information on what these tools and techniques are has become more readily available to individuals who aren’t marketers. The engagement-heavy marketing strategies employed on social media have also given these savvy consumers a platform to complain when a particular marketing tactic or campaign displeases them.
For instance, when McDonald’s launched their “#McDStories” campaign, they assumed they would be able to get people to talk about their brand in a positive way. Unfortunately, savvy consumers saw through the campaign and used it instead to lodge complaints about the brand.
Marketing to Savvy Consumers
Marketing to savvy and often angry consumers can seem like a very, very difficult task. However, if you keep these three tips in mind, you’ll be on your way to more successful campaigns:
- Don’t do anything that will make people angry. Stop building campaigns that are meant to interrupt people’s everyday lives. Your consumers, for instance, probably hate pop up ads. Make ads they want to see and not ads they’re forced to see.
- Be one of the good guys. People like brands like Chipotle because they stand for something. In Chipotle’s case it’s ecologically responsible food. Get behind a cause or causes that make sense for your brand, then let people know about it. Make it a core part of your brand mission.
- Acknowledge that Your Consumers Understand What You’re Doing. Newcastle launched one of the most successful campaigns of the year with “If We Made It,” a viral marketing campaign skewering Super Bowl ads. By creating something that acknowledged the fact that consumers get how marketing works, and being (somewhat) honest with them, Newcastle built a winning campaign.
