Arnold: YouTube viral hit no brand home run
With a nod to the hip-hop cupcake guys, Smirnoff launched its new malt beverage, “Raw Tea,“ last August with a hip-hop video parody of its own: “Tea Partay.”
The professionally produced promo video showcases “Prep Unit,” a “gang” of young, attractive preppies rapping about throwing a “Tea Party,” Ivy League style with a big splash of Smirnoff malt attitude.
Smirnoff’s advertising agency plotted and planned to ensure the “Raw Tea Records” clip became a “viral” YouTube video sensation, and they succeeded. The brand sponsored marketing piece has joined the YouTube million views club!
Smirnoff’s online video investment paid of bigtime! Or did it?
Fran Kelly, President & CEO, Arnold Worldwide, questioned the bottom-line effectiveness of Smirnoff’s interactive branding play this morning in his keynote at the Interactive Advertising Bureau Agency Summit in New York City.
In discussing “Building Breakaway Brands in an Interactive World,” Kelly indicated that Smirnoff dismissed the agency that created “Tea Partay” and he hypothesized poor bottom-line sales results for Smirnoff’s “Raw Tea” product.
HOW CAN THAT BE?
Kelly gave a big thumbs up to the power and potential of interactive brand marketing but cautioned that Web marketing tools and techniques alone do not guarantee brand success.
At Arnold, Kelly evangelizes a holistic integration of “breakaway” brand messaging across all media. To achieve “breakaway” success, a brand’s “mindset marketing” must be inspired by brand believable, simple insights.
Kelly put forth Royal Caribbean’s “Get out there” brand communication as “breakaway” brand messaging.
Kelly cited Arnold research on the cruise industry; Cruising is a favored leisure activity for only 12% of the population, the great majority “wouldn’t be caught dead” on a cruise. In other words, cruising is for the:
Overfed,
Newly wed,
Almost dead!
Royal Caribbean needed a “breakaway” brand message to attract new, live cruising customers to fill its new, vibrant cruising ships.
Message created? “Get out there” and take part in new experiences, new locales, new activities!
Such a “mindset marketing” message supports integrated, “breakaway” brand marketing programs, according to Kelly. A brand’s core communication must be fused throughout the multiple stages of the marketing process: Testing, Positioning, Tagline, Media
Promotion, Public Relations, Buzz Marketing…
While all facets of an integrated brand marketing campaign play important and complementary roles, for Kelly there are two “eight hundred pound gorillas” in the marketing room: Television and The Internet.
Kelly recommends a “one-two” brand punch integrating television’s uncontested mass reach with the Web’s one-of-a-kind direct communication.
Why is the new Web as compelling as tried and true television?
Brand marketers are attracted to interactive for:
Building community
Driving results,
Stretching budgets,
Growing loyalty,
Modernizing brand.
For his part, Kelly has modernized brand practice at Arnold Worldwide.