Why Holistic Media Strategies for Reaching Consumers in the Social/Mobile World Depends on Multiple Touch Points.

The seismic shift in media consumption and the social/mobile explosion have created a mad dash by some of the smartest people in media and marketing. Desperate to both understand and exploit the opportunities in our new world and fend off the increasing power of the upstart to supplant brands that have reigned supreme for decades. To readers of this blog it is no secret that data + creativity have always paired to power the most successful marketing strategies in modern times.

LoudDoor is laser focused on measuring the power of social connections to drive sales and lift brand advocacy. Our research continues to highlight the increasingly predictive power of understanding and exploiting the richness of the social graph for driving sales and increasing brand advocacy. In simple (“non-Einsteinian”) terms—brands that stay relevant to their consumers absolutely must create multiple mobile and social touch points. Two recent case studies illustrate the power of these multiple connections to drive revenue and increase brand advocacy.

Predicting Travel Bookings Through Social/Mobile Connections

We recently worked with one of the largest online travel agencies (OTAs) to answer a simple question. Is there a predictive relationship between mobile app installs, social media engagement and bookings? Focusing on four large publicly traded OTAs: Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz and Travelocity, we surveyed the travel booking habits of 4,270 people. We asked them first if they had booked travel in the past year and subsequently where they booked that travel. We then looked for relationships between app installs, social connections, and actual bookings.

We found the findings to be very surprising.  While, not surprisingly, having at least one social connection such as being a Facebook Fan or having installed an OTA’s App increased the consumers advocacy of the brand as measured by NPS[1], none of those relationships individually allowed us to predict whether someone would book travel with one of the OTAs.

When we looked at a combination, however, we found that survey respondents who have installed an OTA app and also have engaged on at least one other OTA Social Media site are greater than 3x more likely to book with that site. In fact, it was the ONLY combination that had a correlation high enough to justify predicting that the individual would book with the site!

We then turned this around and asked which of the large OTAs had the greatest percentage of Facebook Fans who had also had installed their respective app and found the Priceline won that battle hands down!

This theory paid off in a big way for Priceline as they also led the pack in defending their turf against the other big boys in this study. Priceline App installers were also the least likely to have booked travel with a different agency.  Fewer than 1 in 4 of the survey takers who have the Priceline app installed had not booked a trip with Priceline in the past year—a 36% advantage over the last place finisher in this study.

Connecting with the “Kool-Aid Mom”

Kool-Aid and VSA Partners recently utilized a similar approach to use innovative multiple touch points as they reactivate their classic brand and the iconic Kool-Aid man for the social world with a wildly successful and fun Kool-Aid Man Photobomb app. Working with Kool-Aid and VSA we dug in to compare the advocacy of their core consumer segments and learn what else these advocates had affinity with. We found that the “Kool-Aid Mom” loves her Kool-Aid.

The key, however, to maintaining this lead and reactivating the brand lay in understanding and inserting themselves into the entire social world of these moms. Without stealing all of the thunder for our presentation at PivotCon, VSA worked to combine the insights from our study to create multiple fun touch points with these moms via the app and social media connections such as Facebook and Pandora.

Combining the traditional market research survey with the social graph layer had an added advantage in this campaign in that it also provided the brand and its agencies rich information about what other likes and interests theses moms cluster around. For example we found that the “Kool-Aid Mom” is over 30x more likely than the average person on Facebook to like Tim McGraw and The New Kids on the Block. This data not only provides key insights to the strategy and creative teams but also enabled Starcom to more effectively target their Look-Alikes precisely for Kool-Aid’s paid media campaign.

On October 15^th at 12:25PM we will be presenting at the Pivot Conference in NYC. In our session, attendees will hear a case study on how LoudDoor, in conjunction with VSA Partners who created the vivid new Kool-Aid Man Photobomb app and Starcom who drove an effectively targeted paid media campaign helped Kool-Aid find and target an audience segment on Facebook with very specific demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral characteristics. We are excited to share the incredible opportunities of utilizing the social graph to power intelligent go-to market strategies and efficient media campaigns. We’ll share what we did and why it worked for Kool-Aid!