Successful Social Marketing

The best way to approach a customer in the recent past was probably run commercials in television or radio, but, with the constantly growing of social media, the companies felt the need to expand their business to this new and dangerous place called internet. But as we already discussed before, the way to do so, in many cases were completely different from what the public (and the company) expected. To be successful in social media you have to think and act like a costumer and most companies don’t. 

According to the American university of Purdue and MacAfee, the report “Web 2.0: A Complex Balancing Act–The First Global Study on Web 2.0 Usage, Risks and Best Practices” shows that 3/4 of the companies who used social media tools gain money, and countries who lead the run are Brazil and India, mostly because “the companies feel pressed by the market to use social medias”.

http://alllogos.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/red-bull-logo-pictures.html

Red Bull is an energy drink sold by an Austrian company with the same name, which is the highest selling energy drink in the world. Since the beginning, Red Bull focused their marketing in sports, particularly those like soccer, formula one, and extreme sports. By the end of 2012, the energy drink company had sold over 6 billion dollars’ worth of product and sponsored countless sports teams, and most notably , the Red Bull Stratos Jump. In addition to the regular kind of marketing, Red Bull created their own record label, a record studio company, an online radio channel, a digital video service under the name of “Red Bull Media House”. 

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The most known marketing campaign of Red Bull was the Red Bull Stratos Jump, when the Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon 39km from the surface of earth, and broke several world records, such as speed (1,357.64 km/h), altitude (39km) and  live stream views on YouTube: eight million.

The main Red Bull facebook account has more than 44M fans which post one or two updates per day. Instead of focusing in being a simple energy caffeinated drink, Red Bull promotes itself as a lifestyle. Red Bull is also present in Twitter (1.6M followers), Pinterest and Google Plus (3.5M followers), not mentioning the secondary accounts, such as Red Bull Stratos, Racing, Studio, Gaming and X-Fighters.

Tessa Barrera is Red Bull’s former global head of social media, who explains the success of Red Bull social media with three items:

1 - Understanding how people actually use the various social channels so you can effectively use them too. According to Tessa, this is the biggest challenge to small business, because they don’t take time to understand the ins and outs of the various social channels.

2- Having a good social media strategy. Instead of focusing in viral marketing strategies, a good media strategy is more effective, which means: Knowing your objective, knowing your audience, making relevant content and making relevant changes.

3 - Being authentic. Be creative, connect with people in a personal level, not on a business level.

http://broadcast.futuremail.com.au/admin/temp/newsletters/4062/havaianas-logo.jpg

Haiavanas is a company that basically sells rubber flip flop sandals. The company is based and created in Brazil more than fifty years ago, conquered more than 80 countries and turn out to be a huge success. They sold more than 3 billion units and are now considered as basic fundamental product in Brazil, like rice and beans. That extremely simple product became worldwide known (starting in 2000) for its simplicity, durability and good looking. According to James Anstey, marketing director of Havaianas, “The various digital channels and different platform involved makes the digital audience more fragmented and harder to keep track”. 

http://www.kidsstars.de/media/upload/designer-az/designerimages/havaianas.jpg

The company has strong influence in well-known social medias, like Facebook (5M fans), Twitter and Instagram. The company uses a monthly social media report that analyses the popularity of photos (for example, how many “likes” a new product get) and then forecast how popular it will be. This social medias increased the quality and quantity of feedback, allowing the company to predict futures successful new models. Also, they use a social data to map the competitors, to see what they are talking about.

Have any interesting thought or question? Use the comments down below! Thank you!

References

Abramovich, G. (2012). How Havaianas Battles Digital Fragmentation - Digiday. [online] Digiday. Available at: http://digiday.com/brands/how-havaianas-battles-digital-fragmentation/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

Dragon, R. (2014). The Big Brand Theory: Red Bull's Social Media Marketing. [online] Socialmediatoday.com. Available at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/big-brand-theory-red-bulls-social-media-marketing [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

En-au.havaianas.com, (2014). About Us / History - Havaianas Site Oficial. [online] Available at: http://en-au.havaianas.com/en-AU/about-havaianas/history/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

Energydrink-us.redbull.com, (2014). Who makes Red Bull? Red Bull Company - Origin & founder :: Energy Drink :: Red Bull USA. [online] Available at: http://energydrink-us.redbull.com/company [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

Mulready, R. (2013). ISM 034: Tessa Barrera, Red Bull's Former Head of Global Social Media - RickMulready.com. [online] RickMulready.com. Available at: http://rickmulready.com/red-bull-social-media/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

Mulready, R. (2013). The Secret to Red Bull's Social Media Success is There is No Secret - RickMulready.com. [online] RickMulready.com. Available at: http://rickmulready.com/social-media-success/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

P. McAfee, A. (2006). Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration | MIT Sloan Management Review. [online] MIT Sloan Management Review. Available at: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/enterprise-the-dawn-of-emergent-collaboration/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].

Turpin, D. (2014). GROWTH - HOW HAVAIANAS BECAME A GLOBAL BRAND - The potential for emerging countries to become international marketers - By Professor Dominique Turpin. [online] Imd.org. Available at: http://www.imd.org/research/challenges/TC062-09.cfm [Accessed 11 Aug. 2014].