Increasing Brand Loyalty: The revival of Consumers and Contests
Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at a winner. Last week, I won an Australian low-flow toilet from Grist.org and Caroma through a contest I read out about on Twitter. Admittedly, as the renter of a small apartment in San Francisco, this does create more problems for me than it solves. Yet I still manage to feel awesome because of it. A toilet? Yes. Why did I enter? Several reasons:
a) It was easy. The contest itself came about organically, based off a post designed to skewer Libertarian Senator Rand Paul's war on toilet & light bulb efficiency. The toilet company read it and partnered with the site for a giveaway. I was a fan of the original piece, and the contest merely requested I provide my name and email address to be entered to win.
b) It was interactive. The writer, publication, toilet company and I have exchanged a few hilarious tweets and those interactions brightened my day.
c) The genius and novelty of Free Stuff. For nothing. Enough said.
Contests have humble roots, usually of the corn-picking/hula-hooping variety at small, community-oriented events. Winners were celebrated as small-town heroes, and eventually companies in these communities began sponsoring and organizing their own contests as a means of gaining exposure and credibility with the consumers they coveted. While Mom would be gearing up to take home the $50,000 prize she hoped to win in Pillsbury's annual Bake-Off contest, her kids were busy writing an essay to Kraft's panel of esteemed judges for the chance at winning a full-sized rocket simulator (between saving their Bazooka Joe comics and cutting out General Mills box tops for their growing collection of decoder rings & spy watches, of course).
Over the years, many companies grew up and lost their small town appeal. Contests got more outlandish and gimmicky (sometimes even dangerous - remember the woman who died during the "hold your wee, win a Wii" contest?). Contest-driven consumer-brand interaction has had a long, strange trip, but thanks to smart consumer PR and the rise of social media, it appears to be approaching another golden age.
From the perspective of a brand (be it established or aspiring), the rules have been re-written. A simple reply or RT can quickly make a customer into a brand loyalist. Most of the active Twitter and Facebook users I know follow several of their favorite brands (whether they fancy themselves consumers or not), and clever brand awareness campaigns that leverage social media are a great way to drive conversation onto facebook walls and twitter feeds and beyond, to water coolers and barstools.
From a consumer’s perspective, expressing appreciation for or airing a grievance at a brand via twitter and facebook is a far more effective means of eliciting a response than waiting on hold for someone half a world away to take your call, or writing a letter expressing your gratitude or dissatisfaction. In our increasingly connected, socially-driven lives, this type of transparency directly translates to power.
While I have no idea what I will do with my new toilet (by the way, it can flush a freakin' potato!), my next mission is to taunt the Wheat Thins tweet team (@CrunchIsCalling) and inspire them to track me down with their creepy windowless van and present me with a free box on camera. Do I need a box of Wheat Thins (or even *like* them that much)? No. But it’ll be fun. No word yet on whether the concept of brand taunting actually works. Consider this case-study “in progress."
Written by: Peter Johnson
@joecarryon
Tags: Consumer PR, social media, twitter contests
Posted by Kim Angell on April 4, 2011 at 7:52 PM
