SMMC Project

Oreo Social Media Monitoring Project

Denis Dynan

Social Media & Marketing Communications

February 2013

The Oreo cookie brand has a long established and profitable history. Here are some facts from the Oreo Fact Sheet .

The Oreo brand was introduced to the American public March, 6, 1912.

Oreos are the best selling cookie of the 20th century.

Oreo generated ~ $1.5 Billion revenue in 2012.

Oreos can be found in 100 countries.

Oreo has a street named after it in New York City called Oreo Way where the first cookie was made.

Twist, Lick, Dunk ritual; 50% of all oreo eaters pull apart their cookies. (This is a reocurring advertising theme).

Memorable advertising slogans through the years include;

1950 - Oh! Oh! Oreo

1986 - Who's the kid with the Oreo?

1990 - Oreo the original twister cookie?

2004 - Oreo Milks favorite cookie

Kraft recently split the company into 2 separate organizations as described in a Morningstar article . Oreo has been assigned to the new Mondelez (Spanish for delicious) (~ $34 Billion) organization. According to the article the focus of this new entity is Global sales and the companies business strategy was chacterized as low margin, high growth.

A presentation given by Beth Reilly, Linkedin Profile, Global Digital Strategy lead for Mondelez International, lays out Oreos social media strategy. The presentation was given 8/11/2010 so it is somewhat dated though still insightful. Her presentation, one of many, on the topic How Big Brands use Social Media was given at the McDonalds Hamburger University. It was sponsored by Gaspedal and the Social Media Business Council . The title was How Oreo learned to fish where the fish are.

Here are some of the key points from her demonstration and from answers she provided to industry representatives from Fidelity, Allstate, Dell etc;

1) Facebook is now the key focus for all of Oreos marketing communications. All print, on line advertising, TV commercials etc are directed to Oreos Facebook page.

2) Oreos Facebook page is rapidly replacing Oreos URL as the brand destination.

3) "Moms are our target" population. I'd add that Oreo is targeting Moms through their children. For instance the Oreo Counting Book is targeted to children 2 and up.

4) Oreo is a social cookie with passionate customers. Its is third in Social Media mention behind Starbucks and Coke. She cited numbers from Famecount .

5) Oreo views their Facebook page as a way to entertain, inform and engage customers.

6) Oreo does not directly measure ROI based on Social media metrics. Rather they view Social Media as a long term brand advocacy strategy.

7) Oreo does not see the need to engage with every customer that asks a question. In fact with 28 million facebook fans there are too many comments. They are happy to see the community answer most questions.

8) Oreo does not engage in deep learning from customer engagement. She said Oreo has the world's largest focus group that they are not utilizing.


I searched Social Mention for aggregated internet user generated content regarding Oreo cookies. My first search was simply for Oreo.

The search shows that the brand has an extensive reach and great sentiment but is currently weak with little passion.

Oreo Social Mention search

Oreo Fan of the Week Social Mention search

One of Oreos intersting Facebook promotions is the Oreo Fan of the week. This effort encourages engagement and has been well received. However, it shows trends similiar to the search above. Extended reach with more neutral comments and weak results.

Oreo Whisper Fight Social Mention search

The Oreo Whisper Fight super Bowl commercial displays strong sentiment but, again weak ratings, little passion and less reach.

The Google Trends graph below demonstrates product strength every December. Oreos are searched for extensively during the Holiday season. The only other peak strength event ocurred in 3/2012 when Oreo kicked off the brands 100th "birthday" celebration.

The graph below depicts worldwide search activity for Oreo in 2012. The 1st spike occurs in 3/2012 when Oreo turned 100. The second spike occurs when Oreo kicked off their highly successful Daily Twist campaign which featured a new Oreo cookie per day and is detailed in  New York Times - Daily Twist article .

 

Representative Tweets

Oreo Cookie‏Verified account@Oreo

We're the cookie that all your friends talk about and Milk wants to dunk with. We're serving up tweets guaranteed to make you want to Twist, Lick, and Dunk.

Alfredo Flores‏@AlfredoFlores

So many Oreos and soooo many Freddo bars. I can't even eat anymore. Thank you! #LOVE

Andrea Avendaño‏@heeyitsandrea_

I like you so much, I'd share my Oreos with you

Honest Toddler‏@HonestToddler

You think flour says "I want to be a scone when I grow up?" No. They dream of greatness. Churros. Frozen waffles. Oreo cookies.

Retweeted 865 times 

          

Given the long term success of the Oreo brand and passionate social media following it is challenging to critique their strategy. However, every business has challenges and opportunities.  Some of my observations are;

1) The company tends to employ Facebook similiar to advertising as a broadcast medium. They focus on entertainment and information rather than engagement.

2) There are exceptions such as the Fan of the week campaign, 100th anniversary celebrations, Daily Twist campaign and Super Bowl Dunk in the Dark Tweet.

3) The Whisper Fight commercial strikes me as contrived by Oreo to create tension or comedy.  A top down approach which has generated little passion.

4) With 28 Million fans and successful social media campaigns Oreo has difficult record to live up to. The company will only turn 100 once and Super Bowl blackouts are rare. The brand needs to continually reinvent itself to be relevant.

5) There are opportunities beyond Facebook such as Pinterest, Youtube, Flickr and Instagram. There are also opportunities to engage with the middle of the marketing funnel.

The Marketing Funnel updated (Reading Response 2)

In chapter 6 of Groundswell, Charlotte Li and Josh Bernoff describe how the social media age is transforming the so called Marketing Funnel, a long established marketing metaphor, used to describe how consumers "march down the path from awareness.... to loyalty".

 

 

According to Li and Bernoff, traditional methods of influencing customers, Advertising and Public Relations,  are aimed at the large end of the funnel. They characterize advertising as shouting which thrives on repetition and frequency. While Public Relations attempts to influence traditional media to write stories which are then picked up by other outlets.  These forms of marketing are still widely used. The authors cite a Pricewaterhouse Coopers analysis that estimates $400 Billion was spent on advertising in 2009.   However, these forms of  marketing have little influence on the middle stages of the funnel. The authors assert that social media provides companies rich opportunities and challenges to affect other stages of the funnel such as consideration, preference, action and loyalty. They offer an updated version of the marketing funnel which is driven from the bottom up rather than top down similar to the graphic below.

 

 

 

 

 

 In the middle of the funnel top down communications such as traditional advertising  and public relations  are counter productive. The company/customer relationship is redefined. Customers have more trust in friends and fellow customers than in company representatives. There is a word of mouth dynamic which increases the influence of "regular" people. Social Media Customers in the middle of the funnel seek information from blogs, forums, ratings and connections not broadcast media. The United Breaks Guitars video below is a good example of the peril a company runs by ignoring active "regular" people in the Groundswell. It also underlines the marketing maxim that your brand is what your customers say it is. The video is approaching 13 million views.

While the Blendtec Will it Blend video is an example of a company using the medium to engage and entertain. With it's hokey acting, cheesy set and 70's style music the company invites viewers to play along. Blendtec is entertaining and marketing in an interactive way.

The authors suggest methods to engage the redefined funnel and the necessary analysis which should take place before embarking on a campaign. Companies need to ask; What are my customers doing in the middle of the funnel? What is the most effective way to engage, interact, listen and talk to customers? They recommend;

• Use the Technographics profile to verify your customers are in social networks.

• Move forward if people love your brand.

• See what's out there.

• Create a presence that encourages interaction.

Once the analysis is complete companies can engage in a focused campaign. For instance;

Blendtec determined they had a awareness challenge which they addressed with a video that, fortunately for Blendtec, went viral.

HP had a complexity challenge they addressed with targeted blogs produced by internal experts.

Ernst and Young had an accessibility challenge hiring graduates which they addressed with an interactive web site.

Adidas analysed social media responses and determined they had a segmented clientele with different goals leading the company to separate their customers thereby extending their brand within each group.

The authors leave us with the following advice; "If you learn to talk, listen and respond you will master the middle of the funnel.

Social Media Attention Span (Original Post 2)

A Google search of Social Media and Attention Span generates  numerous academic studies, newspaper articles and casual posts concerned with social media users and a perceived diminishing ability to focus on complex or moderately complex subjects for extended periods. 

Judy Ordioni in Social Media and Short Attention Spans provides tedencies in the new media which may be driving this asserted diminished capacity.

• Twitter has a 140 character limit

• Vine is an app for sharing 6 second videos

• Facebook posts of 70 characters or less get the most likes; the number drops when the post is 140 characters or more

• Pinterest, Instagram and Flicker virtually do away with words

• 29% of the most popular Youtube videos are 1 minute or less

One repeated theme from these posts is that a fundamental change is taking place in human cognition producing negative results. Brevity is replacing thoughfullness creating a shallow social media population.

Nicholas Carr in Is Google making us stupid extends the subject and suggests that Google in particular and social media generally are "remapping the neural circuity" of our brains and "chipping away at (our) capacity for concentration and contemplation." Carr suggests that the issues with social media communication go far beyond brief tweets and short videos. He states that the Internet is "subsuming our intellect." He asserts that he has "lost the ability" to sit down and read War and Peace. He fears that Google is striving to create an all consuming Artificial Intelligence which will think for us  like the computer named HAL in the Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. 

I'd like to offer a contrary view and make some observations.

The Social Media Attention Span postings also exhibit tendencies.

• They tend to be alarmist warning us to take action now or dire consequences will follow. Our children will be unalterably transformed.

• They tend to have a linear view of social media communication evolution pointing in a negative direction.

• They undervalue positive aspects of social media communication.

• They generally exhibit a resistance to change.

While I agree that Social Media communication is fundementally different than speech, writing, reading, radio or video I think the basic negative evolutionary shift  posited is premature. The introduction of  new communication technologies are invariably accompanied by dire predictions of negative consequences that never turn out quite as bad as originally thought.

• Oral cultures viewed speech with suspicion. Athens ostracized the sophists. 

• As Carr (and many others) point out; Socrates bemoaned the invention of writing fearing that people "would cease to use their memory and become forgetful." 

• Vinyl records, eight tracks and cassettes have been burned by preachers and excoriated by educators due to perceived power over teenagers.

• James Joyce's Ulysses was originally banned in the US due to fear of it's alleged corrupting influence. The book was eventually named the best novel of the tentieth century.  

• Television has been blamed for dumming down it's audience by broadcasting reality shows.

Social media and internet communications will continue to evolve and modes of understanding will change. This has been going on for millenium. In this isolated case  the venerable Socrates is not close to the truth. Instead, Heraclitus was closer. Briefly, Heraclitus insisted that change is constant. He famously said that " No man ever steps in the same river twice." Humans, rivers change and people adjust.  Change is predictable as is resistance to change .

Linkedin (Original Post 1)

 

Linkedin is a Social Media juggernaut. The numbers from Wikipedia ( article here wiki/LinkedIn ) are impressive;


As of 1/2013 200MM members in 200 countries.

21.4MM visitors monthly.

2011 IPO generating $130 MM

2011 advertising generating $154 MM

The company reported quarterly revenues last week and Wall Street was breathless ( Mercurynews.co article here Linkedin Soars ).

While this is great news for Linkedin and company investors, the companies success leads me to ask: What are the benefits, if any, for Linkedin's members? Are there any
negatives?

There are potential negatives to being a Linkedin member. For instance:

• Privacy is an issue that potential Linkedin members need to consider before joining

• Companies can purchase (~$5K fee) a license and have access to the complete database. Corporate recruiters can then search profiles and send Inmails (Linkedin e-mail) to promising members. I suppose that could be an annoyance but I do not consider this a major negative.

• Companies could monitor Linkedin members and take action for  behavior considered adverse. If that happens then you are working for the wrong organization.

• Utilizing simple Boolean logic employment agencies can access member profiles and obtain your Linkedin information.

www.linkedin.com AND "Denis Dynan"

 

 

 

 

What are the benefits to being a Linkedin member?

 

The application allows you to create connections to members and connections to your connections (2nd degree connections) and a third level of connections creating a powerful tool members can utilize for professional networking purposes. Linkedin is redefining the employment industry but networking is still the most effective way to find jobs and make professional contacts.

 

Source of New Job (Forbes Article Job search techniques )

	2010	2009	2008
Networking	41%	45%	41%
Internet Job Board	25%	19%	19%
Agency/Search firm	11%	9%	11%
Direct Approach	8%	8%	8%
Online Network (2010)	4%	na	na
Advertisement	2%	7%	7%
Other	10%	12%	14

Members can research hiring managers to see if they have connections in common and  ask for referrals directly to decision makers. Receiving a recommendation from a source trusted by the hiring manager provides a solid advantage.

Members can follow companies to assess whether the employer fits their desired profile.

Members can join Groups to make connections; participate in or create discussions; make new connections. Members have the opportunity to reach out to decsion makers or become a decision maker.

Members can receive recommendations from colleagues; receive endorsements; and build an on line portfolio.

Robyn Levin has a good YouTube video that describes the benefits of Linkedin. She does speak about a service called Answers which Linkedin has discontinued.



If you are able to live with the privacy and membership benefits tradeoff then I believe that Linkedin a valuable professional networking tool.