July 2010 – Page 3 – Andy writes!

Look at your social media strategy. Now look at Old Spice‘s. Now look at yours. Now back to theirs.

Does your strategy look like theirs? No. Could it? I don’t know.

But there may be a few lessons higher education marketers could glean from Old Spice’s ridiculously successful social media campaign featuring the Old Spice Guy, actor Isaiah Mustafa (@isaiahmustafa on Twitter).

The campaign, carried out by Old Spice’s ad agency, Wieden+Kennedy, is already being hailed by Mashable as the archetype of a successful social media campaign. By using the @oldspice Twitter account (personified by Mustafa’s character) as an avenue to solicit questions for Old Spice Guy to answer on YouTube, the campaign elicited “almost unequivocally positive results” across social media platforms. “Hell, even the comments on YouTube were overwhelmingly positive — and that never happens.”

So, what worked for Old Spice that could work for your social media efforts? Here are five thoughts to ponder:

1. Integrate. Yes, Old Spice has a marketing budget that is sixteen bajillion times greater than even the most prosperous higher ed marketing department. The company spent a lot on television air time to build awareness of the Old Spice brand before executing the online campaign. But the point here is not about budgets. It’s about connecting your social media marketing and visibility efforts with your other marketing. Is social media integrated into your overall marketing strategy?

2. Imitate. It’s the sincerest form of flattery, they say. But too often it falls flat. By now, the Old Spice shark has probably been jumped. But one higher ed entity that seized the opportunity of parodying Old Spice Guy in a YouTube video was Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library. The library’s Study Like a Scholar, Scholar video is a clever send up. (Thanks to @radiofreegeorgy, et. al., for sharing the link via Twitter.)

3. Personalize it. Old Spice has done some great marketing over the years. But one key to success with this campaign was the way Wieden+Kennedy personalized the brand in the form of Old Spice Guy. Even beyond personalization, the campaign showed the ridiculously handsome and chiseled Mustafa to be a real human being. In one video response — this one to his daughter, Haley — he speaks to her directly, explaining that he was until recently just another unknown actor. How can we in higher ed move away from speaking in the institutional voice and better personalize our brands?

4. Take risks. Opening up the Old Spice brand to social media, soliciting questions and daring to respond with such immediacy, was risky. How willing are we to step out beyond our social media comfort zones and open ourselves up as Old Spice did?

5. Be prepared to respond — in Internet time. How long should we wait to respond to a comment or post on one of our social media venues? If the Old Spice campaign is the new standard, the answer is: Don’t waste a second. On the marketing blog mUmbrella, Tim Burrowes tracked the Old Spice Guy’s rapid response to Twitter questions. “In the last 24 hours,” he wrote, “I count 116 new Old Spice videos. Every one in response to a Tweet. Let’s say that again – 116 videos. Wieden + Kennedy must have an army of copywriters working on this.” Insane.

So, is the Old Spice campaign a true game-changer for social media? Is it the social media campaign our social media campaigns want to smell like?

I’m on a blog.

Since reading Tim Nekritz’s recent post about creating a campus presence on Foursquare, my head has been buzzing with thoughts about how to incorporate this platform into our campus’s social media efforts. I don’t necessarily have any solid ideas to share right now, but I thought I’d throw a few things out there that I’ve learned in the process of digging into this location-based social network.

Even though a few universities have created official outposts on Foursquare (like SUNY Oswego, thanks to Tim’s efforts), the platform is still largely uncharted territory for higher ed. According to aboutfoursquare.com, Harvard, Texas A&M and Stanford all have official Foursquare partnerships. A fourth campus, Cornell also appears to have a Foursquare partnership. (Thanks to @LoriPA for pointing out the Cornell site.)

The Harvard arrangement with Foursquare was picked up by Mashable last January. “The primary idea behind the collaboration,” Mashable reported, “is to encourage students to connect more with friends and professors through location-based game play, as well as to inspire campus visitors to explore the grounds and uncover tips or share to-dos.”

Even before the Harvard announcement, though, the auxiliary services department at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte announced it was using the platform “to spread dining services information and promotions to students, faculty, staff and campus visitors.”

So, what can a campus do with a Foursquare presence?

An aboutfoursquare.com post from a few weeks ago suggests that the platform is a natural for our highly mobile student populations. “Students are usually in close proximity to each other, so the hot spot where your friends are checking in is usually only a short walk away. Changing your mind as you see other friends at a different venue typically doesn’t require a long car ride.”

The article suggests a couple of ways campuses can take advantage of Foursquare to solidify relationships and build a sense of community:

By offering “tips” that highlight interesting or historical facts about campus buildings or other venues. Stanford’s site did a nice job with this for its Red Barn, posting: When a horse is trotting, do all four of its hooves leave the ground at the same time? Eadweard Muybridge answered that here, with his famed 1878 “horses in motion” photographs. Such tips can provide visitors a better sense of history about the institution.
By offering “specials” that reward users for checking in repeatedly. This is what UNC Charlotte’s auxiliary services is doing, and a coffee shop on our campus is doing something similar (offering a free coffee with every 10 check-ins). But as Tim points out in his blog post, it’s tough to provide much in the way of specials if you don’t have a budget.

The aboutfoursquare.com article provides a good primer on getting started on Foursquare. But if you want a broader perspective on geotagging platforms in general (since Foursquare isn’t the only game in town), check a series of posts by Tim Nekritz from earlier this year (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). Another good resource is Shane Haggerty’s 10 suggestions for using Foursquare in educational marketing. And if you want to find out where the hot spots are on your campus for several geotagging platforms (including Foursquare), check out Checkin Mania.

One of the latest Foursquare innovations is the ability for subscribers of official Foursquare sites to add “layers,” or tips from third-party sources that Foursquare users could subscribe to. This recent ReadWriteWeb article discusses how two online organizations — the Independent Film Channel and the Huffington Post — are using Foursquare to push tips for people who want to see locations the way these organizations and their fans choose to annotate information. This idea of “location as platform” could open new possibilities for colleges and universities.

Is your campus doing anything with Foursquare? If so, I’d like to know about it. Please leave a note in the comments below.