When someone does something out of normal, it must prepared for positive reactions (that will mostly be silent) and negative (that will be loud!). The trick, is not only to understand the end game of them (did we generate more positive than negative impact) but also to manage them - meaning to boost your positive and to actually minimize your negative.
A good example is the latest activation from Cacharel - "Searching for Diana. It was the ("true"...) story of this average guy that met the girl of his dreams during a demonstration and was searching for her throughout Lisbon. Besides massive social media exposure (Facebook, Twitter,...), the campaign actually bridged to newspapers and TV (it had massive exposure right in prime time!). But then, yesterday, the story exploded - it was a fake, an advertising campaign. It received a strong backlash from consumers that felt cheated and it received even more media attention than before - but negative one...
Now, there are a few lessons to take out from this:
- enhance your positive reception - when L'Oreal explains that this activation matches the newest Cacharel perfume campaign communication idea, I get. But I need to be explained. Nothing in the campaign actually hinted at Cacharel. Branding connection was low and too subtle - you had to actually now this connection existed to bridge it to this new perfume. So, the positive PR you could get was not reverting to the brand. You could improve this a lot by using a couple of simple techniques.
- attention to details - the story was blown over by someone that spotted that... the Facebook page that "the in-love guy" created to search for Diana had actually been created 3 days prior to the demonstration where they "met". Blunder! This has put the activation out of the brand's control.
- control the negative PR - brands need to understand that creative and different activations might generate negative reactions - specially the ones that mess up with strong human feelings like love, solidarity, compassion, like this one. Everyone fell for the poor guy searching for this girl - every guy has a "I should have gone there I and get that girl's phone number" situation and every girl wants to be desired by a stranger (especially if it is a nice and handsome guy, like this one). It is slice of life! So, brands need to understand the risks of these campaigns - and they should have plans. Plans for "this will might go wrong anytime if this is exposed ahead of time". You need to have your PR contacts ready to control and minimize this negative exposure, so that people accept this was an ad stunt.
More than minimize negative exposure, and if it is well done, the end of this campaign (even if ahead of the planned) should be about bridging to the brand's communication core. That their core target has this romance dream, and that Cacharel keeps their dreams alive. If you shatter them by making this (great) campaign look a corporate trick, then, you are losing your "share of heart" of consumers. So, there is a lot to learn from this one - keep an eye on it.
Loved your conclusions and the way that you did it. More than criticizing as everyone else (anti-Cacharel movements were already created), you managed to do a splendid summary of key learnings we can take from this.
ReplyDeleteI would add another one:
- be aware of the place and moment where you do it - this exact same event played in a northern European country, with open mind culture and in a stable economic situation would probably be a success. And the fact that it was discovered before time could even work positively, like "meet the guy who discovered the truth!". Portugal, however, is a country in the middle of very hard social and economic conditions, where people are suffering, on top of already having the trend for being very emotional. They hold on to any thing that takes them out of reality and puts them thinking about different and happier things like Love or Helping Others. So the probability of a flop was obvious, even if no one had discovered the truth before the brand revelation.
Having said that, I must confess I didn't feel cheated or offended with the brand, I just felt sorry for their naiveness. I honestly think people are over reacting and get puzzled with the time they loose with this things. But, once again, if Consumers are like that, it's our marketeers duty to adapt...
Fully agree on your learning! Thanks for enriching my initial post.
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