Virgin Active jumps on the Wimpy bandwagon
This week saw the fast food lovers in South Africa ablaze with Wimpy’s promotional offer of a free breakfast. The offer simply put was that Wimpy restaurants were offering their streaky bacon breakfasts for free between 7am and 8am on the 19th of January, 2012.
This however is not what I want to write about; I would rather like to talk about the stroke of guerrilla marketing mastery from Virgin Active.
Their offer broke on Twitter :
This tweet was sent out short ly after breakfast and encouraged non-Virgin Active clients the opportunity to take advantage of a free workout at any Virgin Active (bar Classic Clubs) and work off the extra calories they just took in with the free breakfast.
This is sheer brilliance because of the following :
- It cost Virgin Active NOTHING.
- When non-members go to a Virgin Active club, they need to sign in and give their phone and email details – thus making a FREE list to which Virgin Active can market.
- It piggy backed on a lot of FREE exposure that Wimpy had paved the way for. There was a lot of buzz about the free breakfast and Virgin Active slid in right on top of that.
The only criticism that I have is that Virgin Active could have used this opportunity far more than they did. The Virgin Active tweet went out on the 19th of January – the same day as the Wimpy special. Wimpy started making noise about their special a few days before the special and had a few media punting it. (This memeburn article highlights which media they used.)
I feel that Virgin Active ran their response as a quick fire way to jump on the bandwagon and failed to realise how powerful it could have been for them.
I would be really interested to hear from Virgin Active if they have any Online Mention tracking in place to see how far their tweet went and then further to that see how many receipts were handed in from the free Wimpy breakfast!
Woolworths : Great social presence; terrible delivery
I am not generally one of those who get up on their soap box and start sprouting negative sentiment until the cows come home. I am also aware that some of my followers and readers of this blog are not fans of “brand trashing” through social channels. But (as there always is) this time I feel that I have been seriously betrayed by a much loved and admired brand in South Africa. Not only that, but there is a major example here – real life – of how brands can damage themselves should they not be adequately prepared.
The story goes like this.
Last week Tuesday I needed to get a R 100 Christmas present for a friend of mine as we were having a get together Christmas party on Saturday evening. I started scouring the internet to look for ideas and the thought struck me to try Woolworths. I had seen their offline ads about their shopping portal and how super simple it was to use. I had also seen the Woolworths SA twitter profile @Woolworths_SA making a lot of noise. So I gave it a shot.
I went online and looked around at the men’s section. I browsed until I was blue in the face and eventually found something that I thought my friend would like. He likes hats; so I found him a hat!
I hit the equivalent of “add to cart”; filled in my delivery address and selected my method of payment. I indicated my delivery time for Saturday morning between 10:00 and 13:00. It was smooth; it was almost nirvana! I proudly sat back thinking, “wow, when online shops like this work, it makes it so much easier – I will be back to do this again!”
I went and spoke to a colleague who was also looking for something and told her to go and order from Woolworths – which she did!
Shattered dreams!
Now the reason why I included the screenshot of the product I was going to buy; and please note that this screenshot was taken on the morning of writing this article, not 4 days prior – when the following transpired.
Friday afternoon at about 16:20; I was sitting in traffic when my cellphone rings with an unknown number. I hesitate before I answer thinking it is going to be someone selling me another cellphone contract; nevertheless I answer.
The gent on the other end of the phone proudly announces that he is calling me from Woolworths EASTGATE (my first suspicion something is about to go wrong). I miss his name as he mumbles it out before plunging in to tell me that the item I ordered from the store is not in stock.He continues to tell me that they cannot source another cap for me as there will be no time to do this before my requested delivery time. My blissful Woolworths dream is about to come crashing down.
After further interrogation; I tell him to cancel my order as if Woolworths cannot supply what I ordered; then I do not wish to proceed with anything further. After a few uhms, he says that he will get the call center to call me and officially cancel my order; after which he promptly puts the phone down (without saying good bye).
Being a proponent on online and social media; I decided to Tweet Woolworths to alert them of my dissatisfaction.
To date I have not heard anything from them in response to this Tweet.
The plot thickens.
I didn’t think terribly much of this until earlier this afternoon. I was speaking to a colleague (the same one who also placed an order last week) and was telling them about my misfortune with my online order. To my shock and horror on Friday afternoon she also received a call and was told that her order could not be fulfilled! Surely this cannot be a coincidence? Two separate orders both getting the same response?
The only difference with her dealings with the call center agent is that she received an email confirming her order cancellation (something I am still waiting for).
I love the quip in brackets about them hoping it was not something that they did! 
What went wrong?
For my money there a few things that have gone wrong here :
- The online brand promise is not being fulfilled by offline promises.
- There seems to be a supply chain issue if the Eastgate store is calling me about an order when my closest store (which I indicated) is Fourways Mall.
- Staff monitoring the Woolworths online social presence are not properly trained in dealing with all their mentions or their monitoring techniques need some revising.
- The stock control for their online store is not sufficiently updated in real time with the in store POS (point of sale). (i do realise the complexities here and understand how difficult this point is to get right).
Is Search Engine Optimisation becoming Search Optimisation?
This article really does contemplate a very interesting question about search. Is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO); the concept that an entire industry has been build on, primarily around the awe-inspiring Google; shifting gear and morphing in to Search Optimisation?
The hypothesis is quite simple. Where are people spending their time online and more importantly what are they doing while they are online and not using a search engine?!
For my money, the answer in short is that internet users are spending their time online using their social networks – the places they spend a lot of time – to search a few things :
- the product or service that they are looking to make use of.
- references from friends who have used the product or service that they need.
In short the power of search within social networks is only really beginning to be understood. These social influences are what drive people far more than what you can say on your website or blog.
According to Alexa the following sites have the most traffic in South Africa : 
- google.co.za
- facebook.com
- google.com
- youtube.com
- yahoo.com
- wikipedia.org
- twitter.com
- blogger.com
- gumtree.co.za
- news24.com
- linkedin.com
- bidorbuy.co.za
- standardbank.co.za
- fnb.co.za
- live.com
While Google is at the top of the list – which means that they are getting a the most of the traffic – there are sites like facebook, youtube, wikipedia, twitter and linkedin that are being highly visited and searched. In other words, here are the average search statistics for a number of networks :
- Google: 88 billion per month (this is ALL Google properties (youtube, Google web search, Google image search etc)
- Twitter: 19 billion per month
- Yahoo: 9.4 billion per month
- Bing: 4.1 billion per month
With 19 billion searches on Twitter every month; can you afford not to be found if someone is looking for information on a product or service that you are able to provide?
As I said in the beginning, this is very much just a hypothesis; but ultimately you cannot afford to put all your eggs in 1 basket.
Internet users are getting more and more savvy about where they are searching for what they need. If you are not positioning your company to be found online – yes that’s right – online; not just on Google; then I am afraid that the internet using public is going to pass you by.
Search engine optimisation is not dead… It is just evolving…
Social Media in the South African Local Government Elections
By the looks of things; some South African political parties are finally waking up to the digital revolution and are beginning to embrace online marketing and its integration with offline media. From having a functional website, through to using social media like Twitter and Facebook – the times they are changing!
Of course as with everything; there needs to be a balance and there needs to be integration between everything that is being done offline and everything that is being done online. Added to this in politics is the fact that different parties are trying to attract different sections of the market so we cannot look at their marketing strategies and assume that they are both targeting the voting public. So let’s look at arguably 1 of biggest horses in the Local Government Elections, 2011: The Democratic Alliance and their entrenchment with new media.
Website.
The DA website has a decidedly Barack Obama feel to it; especially compared to when he was running his last electoral campaign.
The site is light and dynamic; it invites you to interact and most importantly it highlights the critical campaign messages of the DA :
- Donate to help the campaign
- stamp out corruption
- build the country together without discrimination.
Social Media.
Helen Zille has thrown herself into social media and opened herself and The DA up to the public. Allowing the public to interact, to ask questions and to most importantly voice their opinions. This social approach has definitely done the DA good as they have ensured that their campaign messages have been heard by a very important voting demographic : The Young South African!
These social media users are literally the future of the country and it is a very strategic and brilliant move; in my opinion; that The DA have realised that this is where the elections will be won or lost.
There are a number of DA Twitter profiles and personalities who are taking advantage of the media. There are Twitter profiles such as : DA News; DA_SA; votetowin and DA_parliament. Each of these profiles is pushing out information relevant to either the local elections; what impact the DA is having in government as well as general party news.
Engagement is the name of the game in politics and social media is the perfect medium to completely engage with an audience in a way which has very quickly become second nature to young South Africans.
From Facebook to Twitter and from Flickr to YouTube; the Democratic Alliance has ensured that they have not left any popular social media platform unattended.
Integration.
Online marketing and by extension social media are merely one channel of communication though and it is the integration between each of these channels which truly makes for a powerful campaign. once again the Democratic Alliance has echoed the last Obama campaign and has ensured that the offline voter has been catered for as well by using TV, radio, print and outdoor media to adequately enforce and repeat the major campaign messages.
Good luck to all the political parties on voting day! But most importantly; good luck to South Africa! Remember, you can’t moan, comment or pass judgement unless you do your part and vote!
Marketing and Sales : Business Strategy Channel Surfing
Effective strategies are born out of more than just an excellent idea! There needs to be action and a certain amount of follow through to ensure that your stagnant piece of paper, which has the best strategy in the world right now for you and your business, actually lives and breathes.
There are particularly 2 main areas where business strategies fall short. Those are :
- Marketing Channels
- Distribution Channels
Marketing Channels.
A lot of the content that I write about on this blog is mostly around Online Marketing. But that is just one marketing channel. There is still a place in the world for offline marketing & it is rather the mixture of each of these channels which truly makes for a winning strategy.
The key to getting this balance right is to research exactly where your exact target market are consuming their media as well as effective ways on how to reach them.
Online marketing as a channel is becoming more and more effective as it is head and shoulders the most measurable and innovative of the marketing channels out there.
Distribution Channels.
Distribution channels are from where your wares are peddled. In other words – if you have an online shop, your website is a distribution channel (it’s also a marketing channel). It is the vehicle that gets your product to market, it can either be directly, through retailers, etc.
Typically you would have a different sales strategy for each of your distribution channels as each distribution channel may have a different specific criteria or target market.
Where Business Strategy Goes Wrong.
Where a lot of businesses lose their way is when they are not effectively optimising each of these independent strategies as well as the cross over points between these strategies.
Each of these individual marketing channels needs to be looked at first in isolation and then as part of the whole. Each of these will work with different strengths and intensities and drive different qualities of visitor to your site. These need to be looked at critically to return the highest ROI.
Simply put, using the online marketing strategy as an example.You embark on a grand online marketing strategy. This strategy succeeds and sends thousands of visitors to your site. This means that your marketing strategy succeeded with which ever channels you used to drive the traffic with.
This is where your marketing strategy and sales strategy cross over. As soon as they land on your site and begin to interact and are funneled into taking action they are skipping across the line of sales and marketing.
Should your sales strategy not compliment your marketing strategy and vice versa then there will be a breakdown in your overall strategy and your sales will be negatively effected.
Make it work.
Looking at each and every part of your business strategies; from sales and marketing to distribution and everything in between cannot be done enough. Many businesses today suffer 1 of 2 fates, either they didn’t spend enough time working on their strategies, or they got consumed by them and forgot that they still actually need to conduct business.
Get the balance right and make it work!
