Monday, March 26, 2012

March 26, 2012

6 Things to Know About Using QR Codes in Content Marketing

By Nate Riggs | Published: July 27, 2011
In 2010, we started to talk about QR codes … a little.
This year, QR codes are on the rise, popping up at every interactive conference, in magazines and books and anywhere you can print the fancy little squares. You’ll find some interesting statistics on consumer adoption of QR codes in this fascinating presentation by Austin & Williams.
A recent recent report published by ScanLife, estimates that 30-40% of all smart phone users have, at one time, downloaded a bar code scanning application. The report also revealed:
  • 61% of all scanned bar codes are from Android operating systems, compared to Apple’s 20% ownership of market share.
  • The top five US cities that have adopted QR codes are New York, Houston, Chicago, San Antonio and Las Vegas.
  • The largest demographic that has adopted the use of QR Codes are 25-34-year-olds, with 35-44-year- olds close behind.
  • 26% of QR code users earn an annual income of less than $50,000, and 35% make between $50,000 — $100,000 per year.
  • There was a 1,600% increase in mobile bar code scanning in 2010.

Adoption momentum

From an adoption standpoint, it’s probably going to be some time before QR codes make it out of the hands of Internet geeks and into the mainstream. But the trend is beginning to gain momentum.  My gut tells me that widespread adoption will occur faster than we think largely because of the marketing and consolidation of the QR code reader market and deeper integration with smart phone operating systems.
As consumers become more used to technology adoption in general, the habit becomes much less scary for us. Couple that with the rate that new startups are pumping out shiny objects and the widespread success of platforms like Facebook, Groupon as well as Andriod, and suddenly, the barriers are much less intimidating.
Beware the gimmick syndrome
Team Cbus and Friends at SXSW
My trip to SXSW this year was a virtual QR code frenzy.
A dense crowd of tech-savvy humans who knew what to do with these fancy little squares descended upon Austin as they do each year. This audience created the perfect environment to experiment with applications of QR code technology.
Some of the applications were very effective. Some were not. Some were simply annoying.
For instance, we saw a ton of shirts displaying QR’s. Good idea, right?  Not so much. Notice the slight fold in the individual’s T-shirt?  Good luck getting an application like QuickMark to actually process that image and bring up the link.
Then there were the cupcakes. While tasty, this was a completely failed use of the technology in my opinion.
If you think the shirt was difficult to scan, you should have tried these little snack items.
But don’t worry. My frustration was quickly calmed by the yummy icing.  I never made it to the landing page as the company would have liked me to. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you one thing about the company. Can you see the problem with this gimmicky approach?

Doing it right

44Doors is doing QR codes right in all directions.  While this is a paid platform, they are light years beyond the free QR Code generators you can find online.
One of the case studies that caught my attention immediately centers on 44Doors’ work with Kendall Jackson Wines.
By placing a QR code on the label or as a tag around the neck of the bottle, Kendall Jackson can offer its customers all kinds of different information at the point of purchase. It’s relevant, timely and unique, which can influence the ultimate purchase decision.

6 things to know about using QR codes in content marketing

When you are thinking about using a QR code as part of your interactive strategy, make sure you consider these important points:
1) Know where your audience is and what they need when they encounter your QR code.
Many users are not tech savvy and do not know what a QR code is. Provide some instructions to educate them on what QR codes are, what they do, and how to use them.
2) Suggest a QR code reader for your audience to use.
For less savvy audiences, you may want to suggest one or more QR code readers they could download. Make sure to recommend what you know works, and make sure readers are compatible with both Andriod and iPhone OS. Here are some readers I recommend:
3) Use an appropriate call to action.
Where do you want to take your audience so that they can take the next step? Once they land, what will you ask them to do?
4) Create the right landing page.
Once the QR code is scanned, make sure the information you deliver is relevant to where the end user is at that place and time. Location is a critical factor.
5) Display QR codes on a flat surface.
If you’re QR code is wrinkled or folded, your audience will have trouble scanning it, get frustrated and move on.
6) Always keep it simple.
Essentially, a QR code is a conversion point in real life. Don’t get too fancy or clutter up the code with noisy and distracting images and graphics.
There’s plenty more to consider.  What else would you add? How would you use a QR code in your marketing?

My Comments:  Nate Riggs has very interesting ideas on marketing and is very intelligent in his field of marketing. I have heard him speak and he has some great ideas and insight into where marketing is headed with technology. This article talks about the proper ways to use QR codes. QR codes are used similar to bar codes in stores, each has a personal meaning that brings users to a particular website. Companies use them to make it easier for consumers to visit the companys website by eliminating the need to remember and type out a long URL and instead simply scan the code. Nate looks at different ways QR's can be abused and ways they can be utilized well. I think QR codes are very effective, people are eager to take part in this new technology and it prevents people from forgetting to write down URL's they might be interested in.











































 
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

March 23, 2012


Pizza heavyweights build brand affinity and vie for customer loyalty

March 01, 2012
 
 
Domino's Pizza
Annual revenue of $1.6 billion
4,927 U.S. locations
Pizza Hut
Annual revenue of $855 million
7,566 U.S. locations
No matter how you slice it, the experience of ordering and consuming a pizza should be fun, fast, easy and, of course, tasty — concepts Domino's Pizza has hungrily embraced with its “Oh Yes We Did” campaign. Direct competitor Pizza Hut, owned by Yum Brands, however, lags behind without a clear purpose to bolster its marketing positioning, says Bernie Pitzel, creative-in-residence at the Jacobs Agency.
“Domino's is the more fun brand now because it's more honest, it's more off-the-cuff and it's more approachable,” Pitzel says. “Pizza Hut seems kind of dated.”
Though both pizza brands endeavor to use social media and mobile to create engagement and engender brand affinity and ultimately push consumers to order on their respective e-commerce sites, Domino's is doing so in a more personal way. Pitzel says the Domino's experience gives pizza eaters a real reason to rethink the brand, which, until it launched the “Oh Yes We Did” turnaround campaign in 2009, was in a tailspin. The wide-scale multichannel campaign was designed to revitalize Domino's' reputation by shining a light on its shortcomings. Domino's changed its ingredients, began using chefs instead of cooks, included honest testimonials from customers and employees in its advertising, posted unedited user reviews on its website and encouraged its Facebook fans to post real photos of their pizzas for the chance to win cash in the recent “Show Us Your Pizza” contest.
Pizza Hut, on the other hand, announced at the beginning of 2012 that it was bringing back the “$10 any pizza” deal for a limited time, something it also did back in 2010.
“Five years ago, I would have laughed if I'd heard Domino's was doing artisanal pizzas, but the whole transparency thing is intriguing in a big way and their approach is integrated throughout all their media,” Pitzel says.
“I could get a better $10 pizza anywhere,” he adds. “So why should I want one from Pizza Hut?”
Representatives for both pizza brands did not return repeated requests for comment.
Troy Scarlott, VP and group creative director at advertising agency Ignited, gives Pizza Hut a bit more credit, calling the brand's $10 push a “bold move” and a promotional branding campaign that's more than “just branding for branding's sake,” he says.
“Pizza Hut has done some great work using branding, like the slogan ‘America's Favorite Pizza,' which means they're basically saying: We're the best and that's it,” says Scarlott, who worked on the Pizza Hut account at BBDO in the 90s and on Domino's at JWT in the early 2000s. “That slogan isn't so different from 10 years ago when their slogan was ‘The Best Pizza Under One Roof,' so Pizza Hut hasn't moved away from its core brand values.”
One small strike against Domino's e-commerce site is a gate that requires visitors to enter a physical address before being able to view anything other than a basic menu, a fact that Scarlott says could impact cart abandonment rates. However, once inside the gate, the Domino's site is more dynamic than Pizza Hut's, including giving visitors the ability to literally build an animated pizza and access the Pizza Tracker, a tool that allows customers to follow the progress of their order from when it's popped into the oven until it's delivered to the front door.
“Once you're inside the Domino's site, it's fun and way more engaging than the Pizza Hut site, which is very standard and kind of looks like they took some direct mail and put it on the Web,” Pitzel says. “As far as I can tell, Pizza Hut doesn't stand for anything — they need to go back to the drawing board and figure out who they are and what they stand for, and it can't just be $10 pizza.”
Despite this, both sites maintain similar traffic. According to Web audience measurement firm Quantcast, the Domino's site receives 2.3 million monthly visitors, while Pizza Hut has 2.5 million. Domino's receives 1.2 million unique visitors per month and Pizza Hut has almost 1.6 million.
When it comes to social, both Scarlott and Pitzel agree that Domino's comes out on top. Scarlott says he especially admires Domino's decision to “walk the walk” by including reviews on its website, of which there are thousands, both positive and negative.
“Domino's is doing better with social because they're combining it with their branding campaign,” Scarlott says. “They're not just putting out a branding campaign, they're living it.”
Pitzel says he is unimpressed by the Pizza Hut Facebook experience, joking that the page has little to differentiate it from the brand's actual website.
“When I clicked on the link for Pizza Hut's Facebook, I had to make sure I wasn't on their homepage. It looks like it's out of business or something,” says Pitzel. “But the Domino's Facebook page feels like real people are talking on it, which you can see in the personal way they respond to posts,” he says.
Though Scarlott says he gives Pizza Hut props for being the first of the two pizza brands to enter the mobile space — its iPhone app was named the top branded mobile app of the year by Forbes in 2009 with more than 2.5 million downloads — he feels its forays into social engagement leave something to be desired.
“I'm giving the nod to Domino's because it's reestablished itself as a player and completely embraced what social media is all about, which is one-on-one consumer dialogue and listening to the people who love their brand and then, more important than just listening, actually hearing what those people are saying,” Scarlott says.
As far as Twitter is concerned, both brands use it, seemingly successfully, as a customer service platform.
Pitzel says he finds the mobile experience provided by both pizza brands to be similar — not bad, simply unnecessary, calling them in his view simply “apps for apps' sake,” he says.
While Domino's appears to be the brand leader when it comes to using social and e-commerce, it failed miserably in the email arena, mostly because it took more than a week for Scarlott and a Direct Marketing News staffer to receive an email confirmation after signing up to receive communications from Domino's, a major faux pas in an automated age when digital-savvy consumers have come to expect almost instantaneous electronic acknowledgments. Pizza Hut's email arrived right away, with coupons for garlic bread or cinnamon sticks with the next online order.
As Scarlott dryly notes: “Really, the [Domino's] email should have come in 30 minutes or less.”


Brand Champion
Domino's is the clear engagement and social media leader. Its innovative “Oh Yes We Did” campaign personalizes the pizza experience. However, Pizza Hut deserves credit for being the first pizza brand in the mobile sphere. Domino's fails on email, neglecting to send an immediate acknowledgement or coupon in response to registrations, which is inexcusable in the digital age. It will be interesting to see what Pizza Hut does next to compete with Domino's.

My Comments:  This article really opened my eyes to something I hadn't noticed before consciously. When Pizza Hut and Domino's are such stiff competition, it's crazy to think that both wouldn't try extremely hard to stay on top, as you see with fast-food burger places. I had always thought I felt the same about both the places but now when I think about it, Pizza Hut's marketing lately has somewhat lagged behind Domino's, they are repeating their deals and not adding anything special. It feels very much like, as Pitzel mentioned also that Pizza Hut is out of business.
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March 21, 2012

Pinkberry to accept Google Wallet at 69 retail locations

March 19, 2012
Google Wallet, which the company rolled out May 2011, is designed to store credit card and coupon data directly on a mobile device. Customers with Google Wallet can tap their phone on a point of sale (POS) kiosk to transfer payments or redeem discounts.
As part of the promotion, Pinkberry will give consumers who use Google Wallet in 69 locations throughout New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles a 10 percent discount on frozen yogurt through April 30, the blog said.
"Pinkberry customers can now pay and redeem coupons with one simple tap of their phone at the register,” said a Google spokesperson. “We're excited to have Pinkberry join a fast-growing ecosystem by demonstrating how easy it is to implement the Google Wallet SingleTap experience."
Other brands listed by Google that use SingleTap, which allows companies to accept payment and process coupons and discounts, include Banana Republic, Bloomingdales, and Jamba Juice. Brands that use Google Wallet for “tap and pay”, which can only be used for purchasing, include Jack in the Box, Duane Reade, and Radio Shack.
closeAs part of the promotion, Google and Pinkberry will be hosting free tasting events at two of the stores locations in the Los Angeles area, where consumers can also try out the app.
The frozen yogurt company, which could not be reached immediately for comment, did not specify if this would lead to a roll-out to all of Pinkberry's stores.

My Comments:  The way technology has been advancing amazes me. When you walk into an apple store you see many employees walking around with Iphones, at first glance you believe it's just as if they're modeling them. Then when you ask to check out and purchase whatever you want to buy, or if you have a question about your account, they don't go anywhere, not to a cash register, or a back room. They turn on their Iphone ask you a few basic questions while they type away as if they are texting and next thing you know they are swiping you credit card on a device attached to the top of their phones. This is the same thing that Pinkberry is looking to do. They will be using Google Wallet as a way to store the customer information that they need. Along with apple, I feel like Google is becoming so popular. Any computer program that you might need, Google has. There is a social network, documents, email, even this blog is Google!
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March 19, 2012

A Groupon Alternative Aims to Offer Small Businesses a Better Deal


Constant Contact has been one of the big success stories when it comes to online companies that specialize in serving small businesses. Some half a million of them count on the company’s Web-based help in building, managing and creating marketing campaigns around customer e-mail lists.
You're the Boss
Started 14 years ago, the company, which is based in Waltham, Mass., went public in 2007 and has expanded into other areas, including managing social-network marketing campaigns. In February, it introduced yet another service: coupon-based deal marketing. That brings Constant Contact into a crowded field of competition along with Groupon and LivingSocial. In a recent interview, condensed below, Gail F. Goodman, Constant Contact’s chief executive, explained why she thinks small businesses will prefer her company’s service.
Q. A lot of consumers are already burned out on deals. Are you too late?
A. We think of SaveLocal as building on the consumer experience that the daily deal companies have demonstrated. Their model has been about large-scale consumer lists, but we saw a while ago that it wasn’t perfectly serving our customer base of small businesses, 70 percent of which have fewer than 10 employees. We started talking to our customers about what did and didn’t work for them with Groupon and LivingSocial. We knew there had to be a better way, but it took us until the beginning of last summer to come up with what we thought would be a twist on the model that would make coupons work.
Then we spent six months developing and testing it to make sure we had it right. We think the timing is actually pretty good, because the merchant community has had a chance to become aware of the issues and problems with the daily deal market, and they’ve become very open-minded to the idea of structuring deals in a different way.
Q. What’s different about your model?
A. If Groupon provides quantity, we want to provide quality. We think the way to find your next great customer is through your existing customers, rather than through a big list of consumers who don’t know much about you. SaveLocal is about sending coupons to your current customer base, and providing them with an incentive to share the coupons with their social network in order to bring in new customers. We also turn the economics of the deal on its head, by letting the merchant control the amount of the discount so they’re not losing money on it.
Q. What’s the incentive for a small business’s customers to share a deal with their social network?
A. The small business chooses the incentive. The reward might be an extra $5 discount on the coupon, or 20 percent off on a second visit, or a free item, or whatever the business wants to offer. But the biggest difference with SaveLocal is that the customer gets the reward just for sharing, whether or not the friends buy anything.
Q. By offering smaller discounts, your merchants may protect per-customer profits, but won’t the deals be less compelling to consumers?
A. We’re seeing success with discounts of less than half off. We haven’t tested it enough to know exactly at what point you get diminishing returns from decreasing the discount, but we’ve seen a customer be wildly successful with a 33 percent discount. A smaller discount might not attract as many customers, but it’s the rabid deal-seekers who are going to find it less appealing, and that’s not necessarily who small businesses want to attract.
We’re changing the whole economics of the deal. The daily deal companies not only make merchants offer about half off, they keep about half of what the merchant takes in on the deal. We only charge $1 to $3 for each coupon. And we help our customers think through the best way to structure the deal. Restaurants can offer a coupon for less than the average ticket and make more when the customer buys up, so that if customers spend $40 on a dinner, the merchant can offer a $20 coupon for $10, and keep all of the extra $20 that the customer spends.
Q. If your customers e-mail their offerings only to existing customers, are they giving up the opportunity to attract lots of new customers?
A. About a fifth of the people responding to our deals are new customers for the merchant. But more important, because they’re getting the offer through an existing customer, they’re much more likely to be local than the people who respond to daily deals, and they’re much more likely to turn into loyal customers. They’re learning about the deal from an existing customer who’s endorsing the merchant. And we give merchants the means for following up, by helping the merchant get the new customer’s e-mail address and opt-in permission during the purchase process. Groupon and LivingSocial don’t share contact information with merchants. 

My Comments:  It seems like this new deal company might be going in a good direction. Many small businesses can't pair with Groupon because Groupon takes too much money that these businesses can not afford to give up. Save Local offers the same benefits as Groupon but on a smaller scale and with demands targeted more towards small local businesses. Save Local's model is based on networking which is typically a small businesses main form of advertisement anyway. Customers are rewarded by spreading the discount by word of mouth this is basically free advertisement for these companies. 
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March 16, 2012

U.S. Stores Learn How to Ship to Foreign Shoppers

By
Published: March 20, 2012
Macy’s has long marketed itself as a shopping destination for visitors to the United States. It offers a savings card with a 10 percent discount for foreign shoppers, custom programs for tour groups and travel agents, and a tourism Web site that lists shopping events and recommended hotels near Macy’s flagship stores.
Enlarge This Image
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A FedEx facility in Oakland, Calif. American retailers use shipping companies like FedEx to send merchandise around the world.
Enlarge This Image
Macy's
Macy’s, Williams-Sonoma, Aéropostale and Lane Bryant have added international shipping to their Web sites.

But only last year did Macys.com — which shoppers worldwide can look at — offer overseas shipping.
“We were getting international traffic,” said Kent Anderson, president of Macys.com. “It was coming whether we were offering them, frankly, any realistic way to interact with the site or not.”
Macy’s is one of several retailers trying to extend its international presence to its Web operations by shipping overseas. In the last year, Williams-Sonoma, J. Crew, Aéropostale, Crate and Barrel and Lane Bryant have added international shipping to their Web sites, while Ann Taylor and Neiman Marcus are working on it.
Some of the retailers are meeting existing or anticipated overseas demand, while others are testing the waters before opening stores in other countries. Either way, they are discovering that shipping beyond the United States is not a simple undertaking.
“Typically the guys we’re talking to start off thinking they can toss it in a box and give it to U.P.S. or FedEx and hope it gets there,” said Michael DeSimone, chief executive of FiftyOne, a technology company that helps retailers add international shipping capabilities.
But there are problems with ordering systems, customs and postal fees, he said.
For example, many retailers do not have software in their warehouse management systems that recognizes foreign postal codes, which — unlike those in the United States — do not always have five digits.
“It sounds like a really stupid reason not to sell internationally,” Mr. DeSimone said, “but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this was the biggest roadblock.”
The appeal to reaching customers in other countries is based largely on the popularity of mobile phone sales overseas. Forrester Research expects online retail sales in the Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America regions to increase 67 percent from 2011 to 2015, compared with 42 percent for the United States.
And traffic to American Web sites from international visitors is already high. In December, 14 percent of visitors to jcrew.com were from outside the United States, as were 36 percent of visitors to abercrombie.com, according to the research firm comScore.
“The retailers have been looking for new avenues of growth beyond the U.S.,” said John D. Morris, a retail analyst with BMO Capital Markets. A handful of retailers have sold internationally for some time. Abercrombie & Fitch, for instance, has shipped to overseas consumers for about a decade, while Nordstrom began doing so in 2009.
International visitors are coming to American sites because of lower prices and the availability of products they cannot get in their own countries, according to Forrester. Macy’s has found that Australian shoppers are particularly interested in its trendy clothes, while Canadians want basics like coats, shoes and underwear.
Some smaller retailers are handing over global shipping to third-party vendors like International Checkout. On those sites, shoppers click to transfer their shopping carts from merchants like Jockey and Bebe to International Checkout, which handles shipping, labeling and customs.
The customs piece of it can be substantial. Each item shipped overseas has to be labeled with information like country of origin and materials used. And certain products cannot go to certain nations — Spain, for instance, forbids imported playing cards, according to FiftyOne, while to send an alligator purse to someone outside the United States, retailers need a Fish and Wildlife Service permit.
Delivery, meanwhile, could cost as much as the product itself. Macy’s said that it could cost $200 to send $100 worth of merchandise to Australia after adding shipping costs and the value-added tax.
The Macy’s Web site will soon detect the location of international visitors, and show them a welcome screen in the local language that explains how international shopping and shipping works. After the welcome screen, the shoppers browse the English-language site used by shoppers in the United States, but at checkout they get a final price, plus shipping costs, in their local currency.
Macy’s said it was still learning how best to reach its overseas customers. The retailer’s standard one-day sales, a popular promotion in the United States, “seem to be understood across the English-speaking world, at least,” according to Mr. Anderson. But, he said, Macy’s was looking into how to capitalize on country-specific promotions.
“We need to pay more attention to Boxing Day,” he said. 

My Comments:  When I read this I was so surprised that Macy's didn't already have international shipping. It seemed like with this economy, retail stores, especially one as big as Macy's would want to take advantage of every opportunity possible. I understand that there would be some difficulties with it, as the article mentioned, with the postal codes that the computer software may not be able to recognize but with some remodeling it could be very successful. Also, it seems like a great idea because they can take advantage of all international holidays that we may not have in America!








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Monday, March 12, 2012

March 14, 2012

Subway racks up points with athletes

March 01, 2012

Subway's health-conscious brand image may have been sparked by the well-known and commodified tale of Jared Fogle, a consumer who began appearing in Subway commercials after he was featured in a college newspaper article (and shortly after, Men's Health) for his weight loss on the so-called “Subway Diet.” These days, though, you're more likely to see major national athletes fawning over footlongs in brand commercials, print advertising, email, on social media and in mobile.
For example, the New York Giants' Super Bowl victory prompted Subway's marketing team to post a shout-out on the brand's Facebook Wall for defensive end and Subway “Famous Fan” Justin Tuck, whose three tackles, two sacks and one safety helped the team take the championship.
These aren't your average endorsement deals, says Tony Pace, SVP and global CMO of Subway. “We choose fans of Subway who just happen to be famous,” he says. “We have to do it in an authentic way.” Regardless of the big name on the potential roster, Pace puts his brand advocates to the fandom test. It consists of one question: What's your favorite Subway sandwich?
For Tuck, it's the Spicy Italian Footlong. U.S. Olympic short track speed skater Apolo Ohno is a “double turkey guy” for the extra protein fuel. Michael Phelps — who the
brand stood behind during his marijuana scandal — takes it day by day. “When he's indulging, it's a meatball sub,” Pace says. “When he's training, turkey.”
Linking Subway's heroes with sports heroes is a fitting marketing paradigm for Pace, a one-time would-be journalist who served as a sports editor and writer during his school years. He claims this is partly a coincidence.
“Sports is a passion point for a huge swath of people,” he says. “It's not just my background. My marketing experience showed a lot of power there.”
Pace says he heard from athletes that when they were on the road, traveling to games, they would specifically look for Subway shops along the way. “Athletes are the embodiment of high-level perfection,” Pace says. Showing these athletes, who obviously care about their health, dining on Subway “is magnetic to consumers,” he says.
Pace is in his element in a Subway shop in midtown New York City, where a busy lunch crowd is an expansive mix of demographic profiles, including suited professionals, tourists, high school students, public servants and families. Pace — who typically commutes from New York City to the Subway world headquarters in Milford, Conn. — is ready for his lunch, too. “Today, I'll probably do a six-inch turkey and Swiss on Italian with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, a little bit of light mayo. Toasted,” he says.
Pace is buzzing with energy about his most recent campaign in collaboration with comedian Jimmy Fallon. “Subway Subs Across America” urged consumers to create video submissions in which they caught a flying Subway sandwich from the right side of the TV screen and tossed it off-screen to the left, all in front of an icon of their home states. The winning submissions were melded into a montage that Fallon aired on Feb. 1. “It was a celebration of the population and Subway both,” Pace says.
Pace joined Subway in 2006. He previously worked at Young & Rubicam and McCann Erickson, where his client roster included Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King. He is now responsible for Subway's $358 million dollar advertising spend, $12.7 million of which goes to digital marketing, according to Kantar Media.
Pace says as CMO, he's investigating a number of innovative marketing tactics to help Subway to continue evolving in a congested vertical where he truly believes his brand is a standout. “I feel there's so much opportunity to grow,” he says. “I thought that the substance of the Subway business was greater than consumer perception of the brand. I still think there are more opportunities.”
Subway has always leaned on local direct marketing and its loyalty program, but Pace says that in order to compete, these methods need to be supported by new marketing media, particularly digital channels. He explores many of these with MMB, Subway's lead creative agency, and MediaCom, which Subway named as digital AOR in early February. “We're in a position where we've added layers of marketing,” he says. “TV content works quite well, but so does digital, social, email, text, mobile.”
Fogle, a consumer favorite, is still a mainstay of the brand's marketing. “We use him where it makes sense,” Pace says. With so many ways to reach and engage consumers, Pace says his challenge as CMO is to identify the channels that have “a long trajectory” and “long-term appeal.”
Sometimes he enlists two of his favorite Subway fans to help him mull these things over — his 9-year-old twins. They, too, had to pass the fandom test (his daughter prefers the cheese melt; his son, the meatball sub). “They're always happy to critique Subway's marketing efforts,” he chuckles. “But they critique the other companies' more.”
Pace says Subway is exploring social marketing techniques, such as Promoted Tweets, targeted email blasts and incorporating QR codes into products and advertising. “They're nice extensions that allow consumers to get a little more,” he says.
Most importantly, Pace says, he doesn't allow himself or his team to simply be sated by Subway's success.
“My number one focus is being restless,” he says. “I don't want to be complacent. I ask myself, ‘How can I do better?' By being restless, you can answer that question.”

My Comments: I don't know if I'm really a huge fan of this marketing plan. It seems like Subway is overestimating the amount of fan loyalty most people have. Besides crazy sports fanatics and maybe little kids most people won't be going to Subway to try a sandwich they saw on a commercial once just because one of their favorite athletes eats that sandwich. Also, they could run into some risky business standing behind certain athletes who maybe have some strong opponents and may subconsciously be turned away from Subway upon seeing this person in their advertisements. I personally really like Subway but I don't go there when I'm trying to eat healthy. Although the store may be a better alternative to many other fast food stores and may have healthy options, most people still understand that just because you're eating a "chicken bacon and ranch sandwich" on white bread with cheese at a Subway doesn't make it healthy.











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March 2, 2012

Friendly's Ice Cream launches online ordering system, loyalty program

March 12, 2012
 
 
Friendly's Ice Cream has launched an online ordering system in its home market of Springfield, Mass., and plans to roll out a revamped loyalty program this summer, said Richard Del Valle, VP of Restaurant Operations Support at the restaurant chain. For both launches, Friendly's will use technologies from MICROS Systems, a provider of ecommerce solutions for the hospitality and retail industries. Del Valle anticipates these developments will help Friendly's better serve consumers by marketing more directly to their needs. The card-based loyalty program, powered by MICROS iCare Consumer Relationship Management, will be fully rolled out to Friendly's stores by midsummer, Del Valle said. “This is actually an evolution for a program that we've had in place for three years called Best Friends of Friendly's, or BFF, which started out as an email loyalty program,” he said, describing the early program as “basic email marketing.”
When Friendly's decided to evolve to a more sophisticated solution, the restaurant chain used MICROS tools to broaden the loyalty program. Friendly's has an existing relationship with the vendor, whose technology already powers many of the electronic services at Friendly's. “We can now incent (customers) differently and we can react to things that they've done,” said Del Valle. “The loyalty program is intended to reach out to our existing guests to get them to use Friendly's in different ways. It's also designed to go out and get guests who normally would not have used us.”
Additionally, Friendly's currently is piloting MICROS webOrdering in four Friendly's locations in Massachusetts; as with the new loyalty program, Del Valle anticipates a full roll out by midsummer.
By introducing online ordering, Friendly's hopes to target missing demographics such as young, tech-savvy consumers and on-the-go consumers who might only have time to drive up to the restaurant and pick up food, said Del Valle.
To use the online ordering system users must sign up for an account before placing an online order, explained Dave Hoffman, director of consumer solutions at MICROS. This allows Friendly's to target first-time online buyers with coupons and track shoppers' “favorite” items, he added.
“The only way (Friendly's) can track unique first-time orders is by having consumers sign up for an account,” said Hoffman. “They can tell whether you've placed one or 50 orders with them.” An additional benefit according to Hoffman is that Friendly's can target customers with relevant promotions and coupons.

My Comments: I thought this article did a really good job of explaining Friendly's new marketing strategy.  I definitely agree with their logic that by adding new technology to their marketing plan, they will reach young, tech-savvy customers. I consider myself to be very tech-savvy and when I hear of new technologies for stores such as this that make my life easier I definitely am eager to use them. Also, the BFF program will be good because if a certain consumer is torn between two equal ice cream/food places they are more likely to choose the one that may offer them benefits down the line. Friendly's is definitely on the right track!





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