Instant Gratification + Branding = Success?

Marketing is shifting–towards more customer interaction, towards a stronger social media presence, and now towards the need for marketers to think and act like publishers.

Publishers? Why? Because word-of-mouth advertising and social media occur with absolutely no delay, and thus marketers should also interact with their customers and advertise their brands in a real-time way; that is: instantly.

If a customer posts a complaint on a brand’s Facebook wall, the brand should respond quickly. If a customer tweets that they love a brand, the customer should receive a response quickly as well. Catch my drift?

In Teressa Iezzi’s article, “Goodbye Campaign, Hello Publishing: The Moment Studio Creates Brand Content Built to Share,” Iezzi explains,

Traditional advertising campaigns can take a long time to produce, making it difficult to keep up with the lightning-fast pace of pop culture. But with “real time” brand content production, marketers can jump on timely trends in order to drive fan engagement.

As a part of the digital agency Deep Focus, The Moment Studio was created to help brands keep up with the insanely fast pace of the internet by creating content that’s meant for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

One of The Moment Studio’s clients is Purina. In order to create meaningful content quickly, employees will run out to the dog park on a nice day, snap a few shots, edit them, and send them to Purina for approval. Once they have the go-ahead, these photos will be immediately published to the company’s Facebook wall.

Not surprisingly, this strategy works. While Purina once had only 10,000 Facebook fans, since working with The Moment Studio, its fan base has grown to 60,000 engaged customers.

The same studio has been working on Pepsi’s Facebook fan page as well. The Moment Studio’s campaign publishing strategy has allowed Pepsi to reach its goal of 20 million fans  per week. Pretty impressive.

What’s not working? Traditional, boring, one-way marketing. We’ve all seen it. We’re all over it. Apparently, Kodak hasn’t gotten the memo. Whereas other camera brands have fresh and trendy campaigns, unique ways of interacting with fans, and innovative products, Kodak seems to be rather stuck.

Why? Because Kodak refused to develop and embrace new technologies. Well, that just won’t work in this day and age, now will it? Consumers want to interact with companies, we want brands to “keep in touch–” (think The Moment Studio), we want to feel like the brand has a personality and values.

In his article, “Kodak Failed By Asking The Wrong Question,” Avi Dan writes,

Kodak made a classic mistake: it didn’t ask the right question. It focused on selling more product, instead of the business that it was in, story telling…In an age in which the consumer is in charge, approaching marketing from the perspective of products or services alone is not enough to make consumers want to engage.

My recommendation? Kodak, wake up! You coined “the Kodak moment,” of all brands, you should be fantastic at keeping in touch with fans on a moment-by moment basis. Engage consumers! Create a strong presence on social media! Blog about photography tips! The possibilities are endless…otherwise, your Kodak moment will be cut short.

{This post is part of a series pertaining to a New Products and Branding class at Elon University.}