Go Confidently! - Inspired by Kappa Delta Sorority

The Confidence Coalition, which began last year, is an effort funded by Kappa Delta Sorority to bring together the organizations, companies and individuals that promote confidence and self-esteem among girls and women. The Coalition has grown to 40+ members in it's first year, including Girl Scouts, the Dove campaign, and Vera Bradley. As the website states the vision of this movement is to build "A world of confident girls and women who embrace the belief that they can achieve anything, and consistently exceed their own expectations." Today, the WKU Delta Gamma chapter of Kappa Delta raised awareness for this campaign by participating in the "You Make Me Smile" event, passing out balloons with inspirational messages to women throughout campus.

 

The main reason that I believe the Confidence Coalition has flourished in it's first two years of existence is due in large part to it's social media presence. To broadcast the WKU event, Kappa Delta members posted announcements to their Facebook and Twitter pages. On the website, you can sign a pledge to commit to the movement, get ideas for events and watch videos. The website has an area at the bottom titled "Socialize with us" offering links to their Twitter , Facebook , and Vimeo .
As we have discussed in class, women are more likely to use social media, and I believe the Confidence Coaliton is using this statistic to their advantage to further the campaign.

Hi, my name is Kayla, and I'm addicted to Pandora.

I'm prone to losing my cell phone (really I'm prone to losing everything), so I have stuck with a "go-phone" through most of college.  I must say, when I finally got an iPhone just a few months ago, I was really only interested in getting the Facebook app.  I was excited for the simple things: checking my e-mail, GPS, weather updates, etc. As anyone with an iPhone knows, it quickly became a much bigger obsession. Suddenly every chance I had, I was playing "Words with Friends". However, the real infatuation began when I added the Pandora App.
For those of you who don't know, Pandora is a free, mobile, digital radio station that uses a genome to create a playlist around an artist or song of your choice. This is what the App looks like on the iPhone:

I have researched a number of websites and learned that I'm not alone in my love for this App. According to a report released this Tuesday by the Pew Research Center and Nielsen, the most popular apps on all platforms are those made by Facebook, the Weather Channel, Google Maps and Pandora — all mobile versions of well-traveled Web services and sites. When Pandora first unveiled their App in 2008, it gained a new listener every 2 seconds. More than 36 million people listen on smartphones, 19 million in cars, 1.5 million on CE devices, 1 million on TVs/DVRs/Blu-ray players and 39 million on computers. This chart was released in June:

Pandora has capitalized on the success of this App through a marketing strategy called "hypertargeting".  When you sign up for Pandora, you fill out your general information, including your gender, age, etc. This allows the advertisements to reach the right person, at the right time, without waste. The ads are based on age, day, gender, location, mobile platform, time and type of music. For example, an advertisement I might hear would be about a sale going on at Target that week or a discount on a restaurant opening in Nashville. This location-based use of social media marketing is one of the best I can think of. Pandora only plays 3 ads an hour, and never when the phone is locked or dimmed in order to make sure the ad gets full consumer attention.  I can't really say I ever get annoyed by these commercial breaks so that must mean they are doing something right!

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Hello blogging world! Over the course of the next few months I will be posting about different usages of social media and practices as it relates to marketing. For my first post, I didn't really know where to start. I began by thinking about advertising campaigns that have really caught my attention.
More than likely you have seen "The Most Interesting Man in the World" commercials for Dos Equis. This would be him:

I have always enjoyed these commercials but over the past summer really started to take notice of them. I worked at a golf course, which meant I was mostly around men and beer. Almost everyday I heard a reference to one of these commercials. Once I chose Dos Equis as the topic for my first post, I started researching their use of social media.

First, I went to YouTube. I watched multiple Dos Equis commercials but I noticed that the user name kept changing. Dos Equis doesn't even have a YouTube channel. It kind of blew my mind. Why have such a catchy video campaign and no YouTube channel to display all of them in one place? Next, I went to Dos Equis' website to see if it linked to any other forms of social media. I will say this about the website, everything you could ever want is there. You can learn insults in foreign languages or read a study on different types of beards worn around the world. Quite a few of the commercials are posted as well. I was excited to find a link to a Facebook page. It seems the people over at Dos Equis have put all their efforts into building this page, but it mainly consists of posts from users. There is little interaction from the actual company, outside of posting videos and pics. My search for a Twitter page was basically a failure. I came across 3 different pages, none of which looked authentic. It made me wonder, how many marketing opportunities are being missed by Dos Equis by not involving themselves in all forms of social media? Let's compare Dos Equis to Old Spice's The Man Your Man Could Smell like. This would be him:

Old Spice YouTube Views: 11,880,916           Dos Equis has no YouTube Channel

Old Spice Twitter Followers: 119,031              Dos Equis has no Twitter

Old Spice Facebook Followers: 880,469        Dos Equis Facebook Followers: 768,940

In my opinion, most consumers don't just use one form of social media, they use multiple. Dos Equis' campaign is successful but I can only imagine the attention a YouTube channel or Twitter would garner.