Last night was really cool. I was fortunate to be included in the 40 digital marketing executives that P&G invited to Cincinnati to participate in “Digital Hack Night,” an Apprentice style competition, where they paired us with 100 P&G marketing directors and divided us into four groups competing head to head to sell T-shirts with all proceeds going to charity. Here’s the full story from Ad Age.
I enjoyed being in Cincy and thought this was a great step forward that P&G is taking to immerse their marketers in the social media world by rolling up their sleeves, making it fun, creating a sense of purpose and aligning with a great group of people that eat, breathe and sleep social media.
Here are some of the lessons that this night reinforced:
· To connect with your audience, you need to use your voice. At one point, a copy writer came into the room and asked if he should write up the copy, so we could all distribute. Umm. That was uncomfortable. (Although, I am convinced he is a better writer than me!)
· Good preparation pays off. The P&G team did an amazing job of providing us all of the details, so that we could hit the ground running. They had all of the facts lined up, monitors to create a real sense of competition, tracking to immediately know what was working so that the teams could iterate and all the necessary resources to support the teams efforts.
· You will always need to iterate. It is difficult to anticipate how people will react. One example came from some of the mom bloggers upset about the lack of range in size of t-shirts. Although there was a huge sense of urgency, as we only had 4 hours, it was hard to methodically roll out a thought through program. With social media, you have to be flexible, listen and adjust.
· Trust. Trust is the lubricant for any social media buzz campaign and the trust from this exercise was built from established relationships, credibility, influence and social media smarts. Brands have a huge opportunity to build up trust across the internet.
To show an inside scoop to some of the tactics part of our team quickly pulled together (this list was just the things I was aware of) that resulted in the winning 1000+ t-shirts sold. Overall $100K+ will be donated to help families affected by disaster.
· Presence on highly trafficked sites (MySpace)
· Getting in front of bloggers (TypePad, Blogs.com)
· Visibility on thousands of blogs through promotional badges across Six Apart media (there was a .03% click through)
· Outreach to high HH$ segment
· Outreach across influential bloggers across Federated Media, Six Apart Media and Blogher (monthly reach is about 50-60m monthly uniques)
· Involvement from influencers that were there creating posts (David Armano, Peter Kim, Chas, etc.)
· Outreach to everyone’s social nets through Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
· Contributions as incentives for high unit purchases (all people donating their time)
· Live streaming from Armano who was masterfully bringing as much of the event to his bloggers through pictures, video, commentary and challenges
Here are some other event-related posts:
· David Armano: Make A Difference. NOW.
· Everything Typepad: Get A Cool Shirt, Save The World
· Blogs.com: Get A Cool Shirt Save The World
· Jory Des Jardins: Blog for your life! ... and help save Disaster Victims
· Chas Edwards: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief
· Kevin Dugan: Being Digital at P&G, Raising $100k for Disaster Relief
· Chas Edwards: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief
· Bob Gilbreath: Helping Victims of Disasters—LIVE at P&G ‘Hack’ Night
· Dave Knox: Support Charity with a Tide Loads of Hope Vintage T-Shirt
Google the words Tide, #pgdigital or check this out. Links to www.tide4.com continue to propagate across the long-tail.
Big thanks to everyone who bought a T-Shirt and supported the cause!
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