Marketing Brew Gone Bad

I just finished reading about a group of individuals that FIFA detained for 'ambush marketing'. In the original article, it describes a number of individuals wearing a nondescript orange dress. Apparently, this orange dress could either be worn by the Dutch women in question to honour the Queen or to market Bavaria beer.

FIFA, is not sponsored by Bavaria beer, and they don't want to create the appearance of 'watering down' their image by allowing another company free marketing at the event.  Peer Swinkels of Bavaria beer is doing a very good job at spinning this his way. I don't believe a word coming out of his mouth, but he is taking every chance to leverage the current situation to his advantage. He says that there is no link between the 36-odd women that simply chose to wear Bavaria's new dress, and instead says that it is very fashionable and appeals to our sense of freedom, saying that fans should able to wear what they want, and that corporate entities like FIFA don't have monopolies on colours.

Personally, I don't buy it, but FIFA should have been able to prepare a response for the press. Almost every headline on the subject suggests that FIFA asked innocents to leave, or that these women were wrongfully ejected. A number of articles, including a particular favourite, includes FIFA's response that it is "a clear ambush marketing action by a Dutch brewery company". The article writer reminds us that something very similar happened in 2006, except with branded uniforms. Occasionally, this is paraphrased in the article and attributed to FIFA as an association.

So Bavaria launches a new line of dresses that is still available on their website and 36 people all show up to the game wearing the dress. I don't see how anyone cannot see this as a Bavaria marketing attempt. However, unlike the Aqua Teen Hunger Force LED bombs, this was not done accidentally and without knowledge of consequences. Something similar was done in 2006, but with branded outfits. One wonders if they even had this particular instance in mind as a long-term plan when they developed the unbranded DutchDress. Whether that factored into Bavaria's design or not, Bavaria is playing their cards better than FIFA right now, and almost every article I read reflects a bias against FIFA implied in language choice and grammar.

I know journalistic integrity is, well, mythical. That's why I identify my biases, then represent both sides. That said, I think that there is a detail most people writing on this topic completely skipped. This is not a jersey at a sport game, this is a dress. What usually happens when two women are wearing the same dress to prom night? Alright, now take that and multiply that by 36, at a soccer game, where tensions are already high. How come there is no video of that? The answer is quite simple: these women were being paid to wear these dresses and have fun. If they weren't being paid, it be like 90210 all over again.

Is Social Media the Ultimate Massage?

So should we just throw away old media and marketing rules? That's the question posed by Marketing Magazine today and it's a question that deserves an answer.  New social media such as blogs and tweets show a great focus on brands, but Marketing Magazine asks if this really creates a relationship with the customer, if the customer wants a relationship with a brand.

Well if we read up on what the Globe and Mail says, experience is a key part to marketing to women. Since a number of companies, especially video game producers and car manufacturers, marginalize their focus on the female demograph, maybe this is a moot point. However, to all the industries that still want to sell their product to more than half the population, now may not be the time to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

There are a number of ways people can both embrace the new while continuing to create the 'experience' that the female demograph seems to prefer. In fact, there are websites specifically dedicated to marketing specifically to women. There is even a website dedicated to Marketing to Women Online, and it is a perfect demonstration of merging old with the new.

The new forms of media may change the methods, but the rules of the game remain the same, in most cases. However, one notes that recent events do demonstrate that use of these new online tools could have enhanced marketability. Social media spread BP oil's crisis and there was no viral response, no antibody. BP oil used the old methods of responding to a two-prong crisis. The first and most important crisis was of course the spill and the second was their responsibility to stakeholders to remain profitable. BP oil stocks were already going to suffer due to the spill. Had they responded to it with new social techniques, they could have stopped hemorrhaging value.

Imagine if they had admitted the mistake and raised a call to arms to have this handled as quickly as possible. In addition to hiring the usual people to do cleaning, asked for environmental volunteers to step forward. BP oil pays for transportation from a single rally point and uses them to assist with the easier parts of the cleanup, manual labour, et cetra. It involves BP in the local community, creates interaction between them and a loosely-tied demograph, and creates the experience that BP oil is looking for the planet. So it does everything their marketing campaign does, but for a little less money.

So Marketing Magazine is right, new social techniques are important and even vital. However, they cannot function by themselves. These techniques must be integrated into existing marketing. Using only social media, or refraining from it completely are both ways that one risks becoming impersonal and distant from their demographs.