A branding expert would say that this is no accident: it’s the emotional tug of a successful brand at work. We thought it would be interesting and useful to compare two brands with very similar inheritances: Oxo and Marmite. One has tremendous, contemporary appeal.  The other seems to be dying in front of our eyes.  And yet it could all be so different.

History

Oxo and Marmite were both invented by talented German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803 – 1873) who discovered that you can create novelty foods out of the by-products of the new food processing industry.

First came Oxo, created around 1840 when von Liebig devised an efficient method of producing beef extract from animal carcusses and trademarked as Oxo in 1899. Marmite came when Liebig discovered that brewer’s yeast could also be concentrated, bottled and eaten. The Marmite Food Extract Company was formed in 1902.

Both Oxo and Marmite are concentrated versions of other food products. Both were invented around the same time, by the same person. Yet, both brands have followed radically different trajectories over the past 100 and a bit years.

Today, Oxo is owned by Premier Foods (current share price 4.69) while Marmite is owned by Unilever (current share price 2083.00). Oxo is generally viewed as static, characterless and dusty, while Marmite is considered cool, witty, savvy.

What the data tells us

A look at social media quickly determines gross disparity between the brands.

In the time frame 4 October 2011 – 17 November 2011, we have:

This is more than a case of Marmite simply being more involved in social media; the Marmite brand is “healthier” than Oxo.  It is more relevant, more current.

Conversations Determine Brand Health

This gulf in reach and appeal between Oxo and Marmite did not always exist. In fact, Oxo saw great success in the 1980’s with its “Oxo Family” TV ads staring Michael Redfern and Lynda Bellingham.

Marmite followed a similarly humble path, with the slogan “My mate, Marmite” chanted in commercials by an army platoon.

Why Marmite Succeeded

Marmite really took off when the brand used social cues from consumers to shape its branding. They realised that its distintive flavour had earned it as many lovers as haters. They played on this in 2009, when they invited netizens to join the “Marmarati“, a secret society invited to try an extra-strong version of Marmite, thus leading to great word of mouth and a lasting crew of loyal brand advocates. Marmite continues to play on the “love/hate” relationship in its branding, running a dual-skinned website and actively fueling the debate.

Marmite recognised that the social web word-of-mouth marketing means everything to a brand and consumer conversations determine a brand’s health. Not only that, but you can actually measure these conversations in terms of currency, advocacy and engagement.

Why Oxo Fell Behind

Oxo, however, has done little to adapt its identity to the social web. Their website is basic. They have no Facebook or Twitter presence. In fact, the brand seems to have little identity. More importantly, Oxo has failed to use consumers to inform their marketing. In fact, they appear to have done little to adapt their marketing to what consumers are actually talking about.

This is a shame: Oxo once had huge brand value and excellent positioning. It represented the family, the warm feelings of shared meals, home comfort. Now it represents very little.

Oxo’s Opportunity

Despite the dearth of conversation about Oxo, what’s there reveals that the Oxo brand IS worth something. It has potential.

The conversation that’s there is very positive and good-natured.

We’ve seen people tweeting to Katy Perry:

“@katyperry crush an oxo cube into ure beans and cook them.. You’ll be california dreaming ; p x”
http://twitter.com/#!/gems2000_uk/status/125914117696524288

Footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is nicknamed “oxo cube”:

Can some explain to me how Rosicky starts again and oxo cube doesn’t even make the bench? I’m beyond confused
http://twitter.com/#!/15Gooner/statuses/125538875505512448

Oxo is starting from a good base here. People have warm feelings about it, and even associate the brand with some major personalities.

What should Oxo do?

Oxo may or may not have a big marketing budget and during this time of austerity most brands are in this position. Fortunately, social media is free, and there are low-cost ways to benefit from it.

The thing to do is to opportunistically get involved in these conversations.

Oxo should do as Marmite have done: pick up on the conversational cues that are already there and ride it. Work on the Oxo-ness of Oxo cubes. Send Katy Perry and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain a couple of boxes of Oxo cubes.  Set up a stand selling Oxo outside Arsenal’s next home game.

Oxo needs to build on the cranky, old-fashioned Englishness of the brand to drive PR and conversation. By simply observing existing conversations, Oxo can discover what the brand means to the different people who discuss it, be it slimmers or football fans.  The brand should try out strategies and themes of conversation, see what works, test it.  When it finds a theme that resonates, build on it.

The key for Oxo is to just get out there, mix it up, and start making itself relevant.  Learn from the success of Marmite and make itself relevant for the next hundred years.

cultural shift (1)
bully boys (1)
works bus (1)
property shows (1)
class-coded oscillation (1)
countless young men (1)
record player (1)
black-and-white films (1)
sure many people (1)
bouquet of gladioli (1)
local leisure centre (1)
second-hand copies (1)
humdrum town life (1)
studio audience (1)
fey schoolteacher (1)
guitar-rock lineage (1)
yacht-rock opulence (1)
collective pride (1)
lead singer (1)
sexual identity (1)
dowdy jeans (1)
store ad (1)
prog-rock musicians (1)
spinning lights (1)
open-buttoned shirt (1)
body-popping moves (1)
least favourite (1)
mumblecore film-makers (1)
political refusal (1)
tape recordings (1)

Please leave answers below!

It was the decision to bring back Wispa that created the impetus behind it. What drove that decision was social media research showing the strength of interest in the bar. This is the “causality” referred to. The Wispa phenomenon – cleverly communicated – then caught the wave of interest in social media, and became a case study, used by Mark Zuckerberg himself, demonstrating the power of social media. It should be clear that arguments for the ROI on social media rest on the outcome of the original decision to bring back the bar. Thereafter many other marketing channels played a part in driving sales.

When Cadbury and their agencies won the prestigious IPA effectiveness gold award for the Wispa campaign, 2007-2009, Market Sentinel were invited to share our insights and data for the effectiveness case study. The results were a little surprising, however.

Our original hypothesis was that Wispa was the buzziest brand during the period. We naively thought that buzz=sales. That turned out not to be the case. Although there were strong peaks of activity pre-launch in 2007 and when the Wispa gold launched in 2009 in general the buzz was no greater for Wispa than for other confectionery brands. And – curiously – there was far less activity for Wispa than (e.g.) for Creme Egg, particularly over the crucial Easter period. This was counter-intuitive.

Wispa volume versus Cadbury benchmarks

We wondered if the story of Wispa was the story of the adoption of Facebook. The two things happened simultaneously. Facebook was cited in the context of the decision to reintroduce the Wispa. Wispa was much discussed as an example of the new trend of social action through the website and was even mentioned by CEO Zuckerberg in this context in a Guardian profile. Here is the growth of the Wispa conversation normalised against the growth of Facebook. (The data is a bit spotty here as we are going on estimates of Facebook size from public sources)

Wispa fan growth % normalised versus UK Facebook

The “Bring back Wispa” campaign pre-dated Facebook. There were petition sites dating back well before 2007. There was a stage invasion at Glastonbury in the summer of 2007. As Facebook took off in the UK, the bring back Wispa campaign grew there, first in the “group” functionality and then on the “Fanpage”. Growth plateaud off after October 2009. Wispa now lives on Twitter, which represents % of commentary on the brand.

Wispa all mentions Sept-October 2011 by site

Was there anything, in fact, unique about Wispa? What made the social media campaign resonate? What led to sales of £86.5 million over three years?

Two key things: first the brand did not try to ventriloquise the social media conversation, it simply acknowledged it and celebrated it.

Second: the brand, because of its status as a bellwether of the coming together of social media with a consumer brand, became itself (as in this piece) a case study. The result is that there IS something unique about the way Wispa is discussed, which is that it has more positive connotations than equivalent brands.

Sentiment Wispa vs. other Cadbury brands

People feel more warmly about the brand and talk more positively about it, for a simple reason: the brand itself has become emblematic of social media. That’s a hard thing to pull off, but Wispa has done it. And when you tweet about Wispa, you are celebrating the medium as well as the chocolate bar.

Wispa is an example of social media ROI, and in rather a complex way. Its rearrival was triggered by the existence of social media monitoring (our own) and amplified by the delighted discovery by consumers of their own empowerment. Can one attribute £25m+ a year of sales solely to “social media”? In this sense: the brand would still be languishing in Cadbury’s museum without the social pressure exerted during 2005-2007 by the internet petitioners.

Earlier this month we presented on the measurement and monetisation panel at the Chinwag Insight: Facebook Marketing conference. You can view our slides above or by visiting Slideshare.

My slides focused on the challenges of Facebook from a data perspective: Facebook is difficult to measure, and what little data there is suggests that brands are really struggling to engage with their customers on an ongoing basis. So how do brands prove the value of Facebook?

I offer a few suggestions, but admit that the jury is still out on ROI: How do you prove ROI when the data are lacking and its difficult to measure the flow from social media to sales?

This is something we’re very keen to discuss so if you have any thoughts on this, whether you were at the conference or not, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always open to ideas.

View presentation: Measures that Matter for Facebook Marketers

Nescafe’s recent 3-in-1 advert depicts the aftermath of a twenty-something hipster party, most notably in the form of awkward glances between men and women who obviously had a romantic interlude the night before. What did it mean? Does she like me? Will he call? One cup of Nescafe later gets the morning “back on track”, and soon we find our couple, giggling and flirting once again, albeit a bit more soberly.

What is with the propensity for coffee brands to market themselves as elixirs of passion and lust?

A few months ago we were contacted by a company that wanted to market a new brand of coffee. They asked us to look at the conversation around drinking coffee – what were the main themes and contexts of conversation?

What we found was in startling contrast to how most coffee brands market their goods.

Romance? Passion? No. What people care about when it comes to coffee are the real life circumstances that surround coffee: taking a break from work, the need for caffeine, and socialising with friends:

• “Some days I love working at home. Currently drinking coffee, blasting electro music and catching up on work.”
• “Drinking coffee to stay awake.. I dont even like coffee.”
• “A cup of coffee and conversation with a good friend. The perfect pair to enjoy with a sunrise. The world is so quiet today.”

We identified, measured and visualised these contexts and created a “brand map” of conversations around “drinking coffee”. We also did the same thing for Starbucks to see how a major coffee brand compared. The brand maps show the size and average distance of these contexts from the central topic. The size and position reflect the size and relevance of the conversation; in other words, a big circle close to the centre indicates a relatively large context that is highly relevant to the central topic.

The brand maps show that the largest conversational contexts around “drinking coffee” are Work, Energy and Socialising. The most relevant contexts are Coffee making, Flavour and Coffee shop. In contrast, the largest contexts for Starbucks are Work, Socialising and Price, whilst the most relevant contexts are Snack, Price and Socialising.

It’s not that you don’t find conversations about romance and flirtation – you can see it there for “drinking coffee”, hovering diminutively between “Relaxation” and “Price”; it’s just that it’s not what most people talk about. The opportunity for a brand here is bring its branding closer to the real conversational contexts of a topic, so that it associates itself more intimately with the brand attributes which give a product social media currency.

We have performed these studies on a number of different consumer contexts and have found a pattern which suggests that brands are in danger of ignoring the real reasons why consumers give products currency. Those have a lot to do with the intersection between a product and real life: the school run, working late in the office, making time during the day to meet friends, even the big events like bereavement, marriage. A lot of brand messaging ignores reality – and why shouldn’t it? Brands often speak to dreams, hopes, aspirations. But our work on coffee suggests that many products are missing an opportunity to be useful, relevant and TALKED ABOUT.

So who’s going to step up first?

This Thursday is Chinwag’s full-day Facebook Marketing Conference in London, an event that will show senior marketers how to develop and optimise their Facebook Marketing strategy and, most importantly, ROI.

Our own marketing strategist Monica Shaw will be there presenting on the Measurement panel, discussing how we measure Facebook performance and what our recent data reveal about Facebook monetisation.

You can find more details about the conference here. Hope to see you there!

Social networks have a dilemma in formulating an offer to brands. Social networks are about direct communication between individuals. How can a brand add value to this without appearing obnoxious? A brand has to wait unobtrusively with practical assistance, taking cues from the thematic context (shared links and topics). It risks being irrelevant, or misinterpreting the context at every stage. I sat next to a woman yesterday who was offended by being offered weight-loss treatments on Facebook. She has never expressed any interest in the topic. The ad is most likely being served based on a rather crude demographic cue – she is single, early thirties.

Considering the richness of the data Facebook is sitting on, serving weight-loss adds based on the age and sex of the user is not very sophisticated or – as we see from the low click-through rates – fruitful. The challenge that Facebook has set itself is that since f8 2010 its user settings now prohibit it from using more sophisticated methods (such as the tastes of the consumer) to serve ads UNLESS THE USER HAS OPTED IN TO AN APPLICATION. To spell this out, the key value Facebook could offer to brands is now closed to it.

Mark Zuckerberg’s f8 2011 announcements make it clear that Facebook too is coming to believe that its value lies in the hands of those (like Zynga or Spotify) who can use the network as a platform for their gaming or entertainment-based applications, offer entertainment to user in return for their data and then use the data to serve far more targeted advertising based on collaborative filtering (people who like X also like Y). The network (Facebook itself) could serve as a CRM repository for an ecosystem of application providers.

Facebook’s job is to keep those application providers on its platform (rather than moving off to iOS or Android) by adding so much value with its CRM data that it is worth content providers paying the “tax” to use the platform. It is this thinking which sits behind the controversial idea of “frictionless” (i.e. constant, involuntary) sharing.

If Facebook can persuade users that this trade-off (privacy for useful suggestions about cool stuff) is worth making, then this would be a good outcome for the business. When I worked at Amazon.com the collaborative filtering links post-purchase were by far the best performing on the website. The approach can work.

There are two challenges: one is the users themselves. Amazon’s collaborative filtering is anonymised, discreet. Facebook are proposing something in your face. Mary likes The Saturdays, Tom likes Blazin’ Squad. Not surprisingly this feels a bit intrusive to many users.

The second challenge is that serving ads using collaborative filtering techniques requires an ecosystem of “bought-in” vendors who are happy to share their data in order to benefit from the increased understanding it offers. Furthermore the big issue for Facebook is that this is not currently a business opportunity open to it. Only a successful application provider with really compelling content – an HBO or Warner Brothers – can take advantage of this, or an advertising network built on the back of a variety of such vendors.

When Google was in the same position in 2000 it benefited by from the work of Bill Gross, who brilliantly invented paid search at Overture and inspired the web’s most successful current business model. Facebook lacks a Bill Gross. In the meantime, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, you would have to say that Facebook still lacks a business proposition to make it investable at anything like the mooted $75bn.

This week there’s been a lot of buzz and debate around our latest Skyttle Friends research suggesting that brands are not doing as well on Facebook as they appear to be (Can Facebook Work For Brands?).

Both Econsultancy and Social Media Today have cited our work, adding emphasis to the results:

• EConsultancy‘s Patricio Robles: “…this discussion harbors a crucial point: it isn’t enough to rack up the ‘likes’; if those who ‘like’ your Facebook Page aren’t interacting with it, you’re probably not reaching them.”
• Social Media Today‘s Paul Fabretti: “If the loosest of all reasons a brand should be on Facebook is to increase audience engagement – then the figures uncovered by Market Sentinel are a worrying sight…Research shows that even the mega-celebrities are struggling to engage fans – so what chance do brands with less than 30,000 have?”

Unsurprisingly, this has led to some debate, as many brands and agencies insist that Facebook IS valuable. The trouble is, most case studies are anecdotal, and no one has been able (or willing) to publish solid figures on the effectiveness of Facebook for brands.

So with Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference tomorrow, many eyes will be watching for features that brands can take advantage of. The motto for the event is “Read. Watch. Listen.”, and several media companies are participating. Sounds like exciting things for users, but what about for brands, and how will it help Facebook’s bottom line?

A Business Insider article yesterday describes some of the threats to Facebook that we’ve been talking about throughout this debate:

“Facebook’s great potential is in better advertising. Yet, the social network appears to be ignoring some important foundational steps in that direction…The stakes for Facebook are incredibly high, because if there’s one company that understands the need for new advertising, and specifically social advertising, it’s Google.”

We’ll be watching Facebook closely and look forward to seeing how the debate evolves in light of tomorrow’s conference. On Thursday, we’ll be taking our observations to Berlin at Social Media Week, as we further address the question: Is Facebook Failing Brands?

For all of the research and debate, we do hope Facebook can find a way to make the business work for both brands and users, and we welcome all evidence anyone can find to support its effectiveness. Please share your thoughts, stories and case studies with us in the comments.

As of 15th August 2011, the folks at Facebook removed the ability of Corporate clients to “shut” their walls to comments. For pharma companies this is a headache.

The law is a mess here. A pharma company has a legal obligation to comply with adverse event reporting to the FDA, that is: information about any reported negative side effects of its products and another obligation to provide timely and relevant advice towards physicians and patients about its products. However exactly what it can say about its products is regulated by the FDA.

A pharma company has a broader, non-legal obligation to its stakeholder groups (employees, physicians, patient, disease advocacy groups) to keep up a reasonable dialogue. My understanding is that it would be illegal for a pharma company who were aware of an adverse event not to report it to the FDA to the best of their ability (including making attempts to identify the complainer via their Facebook profile). Any disclaimer would have no impact on this. Facebook privacy settings are ignored by this obligation (and could in theory be overridden!). This means that information about a patient which they have chosen to keep private on Facebook could be shared with the FDA by a pharma company which strictly followed adverse event guidelines as they exist.

The issue of whether the post could afterwards be deleted sits outside this obligation. The FDA’s (somewhat unhelpful) lack of guidance in social media matters means that this is unclear. My sense is that as far as the FDA is concerned, the company could delete the post. However, doing so would create an unfortunate impression and might be considered culpable if any civil legal action resulted from damage being done by their products. As far as Facebook is concerned the page owner has an absolute right to delete a post which falls outside the guidelines of that page.

In relation to the other social networks: of course the same issues remain. They are most severe with Twitter, where comments have to be detected “in the wild” and are not easily found as in Facebook because of misspellings, vagueness, brevity. My sense is that pharma companies can comply with the spirit of the law by monitoring the brand name and comments addressed directly to the Twitter handles they own (@pharmaco). Similarly the liability in relation to LinkedIn conversations exists only where

a) groups are public, or
b) a pharma company – or its officials – have a presence in a particular group conversation

It is somewhat depressing that almost two years from taking its decision to meet the stakeholders in social media in November 2009 the FDA still hasn’t managed to provide even interim guidance on this issue. 57% of Americans use Facebook at least once a month according to an eMarketer survey of February 2011.

For more on this take a look at Market Sentinel’s recent white paper on Facebook and pharma.