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Helping Brands Hit the Airwaves

We had a lot of fun producing the new Dormin commercial  that was recently showcased on Drug Store News. We are excited to be a part of the team that will bring Dormin sleep aid to store shelves this spring. We look forward to more exciting things to come for this brand in 2017!

Growing Consumer Brands

It’s always nice when a client confirms that our marketing efforts are working for them – and even better, when the media showcases that success. Here’s a great profile piece on one of our clients in MMR’s October 31^st edition and how they’ve been turning around their 45-year old brand, from new packaging and increased distribution into chains to integrated consumer marketing with RLA Collective. And the data show it’s working, with double-digit 52- week sales increases.

Social Marketing is More Than Social Media

What an OTC brand (really, any brand!) is doing on their social media channels results in what is ultimately a real-time transcript of their marketing efforts (one that not only marketers, like myself, can see, but also your consumers, investors and retailers who sell your products or services).  We may have no idea how many flights of that TV spot you are running, not a clue where you might be sampling, or no inkling at which HCP trade shows you are exhibiting, but we can see how you are engaging with your audience in channels that instantly allocate popularity, drive movement to trial, generate conversation, and, in doing so, create trust and goodwill for your brand.

If a video is uploaded to YouTube, we can see the views and comments.  If a photo is posted on Instagram, we know the number of likes and tags.  On Facebook, well, there’s so much more to see.  We can see who likes, who shares, who comments and how you invite and manage this engagement (Is your content interesting and applicable to your brand’s focus? Do you take an interested consumer and push them further along the purchase path with a “where to buy” link? Do you even respond in a reasonable time, or at ALL?).

See, the channels are social media, but how these channels are managed is social marketing, and I can tell you that a large number of brands who have social media ARE NOT doing social marketing.  Posting pictures in a calendar schedule using hashtags isn’t social marketing. Sharing third party links of content quasi-related to your brand category and or demographic isn’t social marketing.  It’s not wrong, it’s just not right. The brands doing this, and there are many, are leaving so much on the table.

Here’s an example: I recently perused the Facebook page of an OTC product I was interested in approaching in the cold category – one that’s well-known, yet still has a cult-following vibe (perfect for social marketing!) only to see that their daily Facebook posts get extremely low (um, almost zero) engagement (yet the page size is more than 1 million, though size is somewhat irrelevant these days).  To be honest, their community manager could accidentally post the letter “T” as a status update and get more engagement and curiosity on that than some of their slick, well-produced visual content.

The sad reality is that most of what people consider their social marketing is really just smoke and mirrors. Stylized product shots may make your internal brand marketing/managers happy (the person I talked to from the above-mentioned company thought their social media was doing great!), but what is the consumer really doing with it? If the answer is “not much,” then you have social media, but you definitely don’t have social marketing.