Nate Silver debunks filling out your 2013 NCAA March Madness bracket
My brother and I were raised within a family of die-hard University of North Carolina basketball fans.
Throughout the college basketball season my parents, brother, extended family and I would crowd around the televison whenever a UNC Tar Heels game was on. We would sing the Carolina fight song, wear our Carolina blue apparel, and fly our Tar Heel flag my mom made outside our house.
You could even go as far to say that college basketball (in particular our love for the UNC Tar Heels) was something that linked our family together.
The 2009 NCAA Championship game between the heels and Michigan State... My family was DEFINITELY celebrating the win here in Massachusetts
In light of this background explaining my passion for March Madness, it did not come as a surprise to notice that Dove Men+Care is in support of the madness. It's simple really. March Madness brings people from all across the country together. It is something that many people can talk about.
March Madness in a way fosters building connections between people on and off social media.
Because of this, I personally think that it was a great move for Dove Men+Care to embrace March Madness and build it into their most recent marketing campaign!
For this final installment of my social media monitoring project on Dove Men+Care, I will be focusing on the brand's analytics and recent trends, how the brand has evolved since my last posting, information from the social media monitoring sites social mention, addictomatic, and ice rocket, and a conclusion of strengths and improvements that could be made to improve Dove Men+Care's groundswell presence.
*Please visit my first social media monitoring of Dove Men+Care for an overview of my initial findings*
*Please visit my first social media monitoring of Dove Men+Care for an overview of my initial findings*
Campaign Analysis: Social Media Platforms
Since my last posting on Dove Men+Care, the company was active on various social media platforms (I will mainly be focusing on Facebook and Twitter), their website, and YouTube. As I was researching the brand, I noticed that it stays very consistent in their "language" on both their social media accounts and their website. I believe this is to solidify some sort of "brand language" that can be recognized by the company, competitors, and consumers.The only major change has been in the marketing campaign. Dove Men+Care made a switch form focusing on past football greats to the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament. I think that this was mainly because the sport of the season getting the most hype is college basketball. If Dove Men+Care continues to focus on incorporating sports into their marketing campaigns, perhaps they will focus on baseball after the NCAA tournament is over.
Facebook, Twitter, and the Official Webpage
The brand's Facebook and twitter accounts have all remained consistent in their goals to energize, talk, listen,support, and embrace the groundswell. Dove Men+Care does an excellent job "staying on brand" when it comes to composing Facebook posts, tweets, and writing on the website. The language used is primarily positive, funny, and casual; it works to invite people to interact with the brand.
There are plenty of posts and photos posted that are, I feel, intended to start conversations about products and topics surrounding the skin care brand.
To the right is the most recent homepage for Dove Men+Care. As you can see, the marketing campaign has made a clear shift visually from the left image that focuses on one of their core marketing messages: being a good father figure.
Almost identical to their Facebook page, the @DoveMenCare Dove Men+Care twitter home has also embraced the theme of March Madness.
February 26th
March 14-Present
We can see the distinct differences between the February 26th home page and the March 14th- present home page.Even the topics of the tweets and Facebook posts have shifted with the marketing campaign. The Facebook and @DoveMenCare teams switched form posting and tweeting about football and traditional brand messages to Dwayne Wade and March Madness.
However, the core marketing messages that ground Dove Men+Care are not completely lost within this new campaign. We can see the combination of the March Madness campaign and Dove Men+Care's core marketing values come together on the company website.
On the banner portion of the website, there are five pages that rotate through, each with a different Dove Men+Care message. These two images represent different marketing strategies. The top image is an example of a seasonal marketing campaign message that brings in consumers during a set period of time (in this case, the duration of the NCAA D1 Men's College Basketball Tournament). The bottom image is a more foundational marketing message. The father figure banner has remained on the website banner since I started my monitoring assignment and will most likely remain long after the March Madness campaign is replaced with a new one.
In regards to comments, posts, questions,tweets, and feedback from both the public and Dove Men+Care teams have remained consistent. Detailed feedback and questions about products are primarily asked via wall post or a comment on a photo on their Facebook wall. Random praise, criticism, and products mentions are found on their Twitter feed.
Different questions and remarks from the public are posted daily, and responses are usually given within a few hours from the Dove Men+Care team. The fact that there is a constant flow of information shows that people are talking about the skin care products or their most recent campaign.
Facebook Wall Posts
IceRocket compilation of recent tweets regarding Dove Men+Care show that tweets are focusing on the new marketing campaign as well as tweets regarding products and coupons (similar to what I found in my first monitoring in February)
Responses from the Dove Men+Care team are very consistent, and some times redundant.
For both of these customers Facebook posts, Dove Men+Care "speaks" in a professional way and includes customer service contact information. Responds are then tailored to the type of comment or post. Dove Men+Care either thanks the consumer and offering them coupons or something to "show our appreciation" (see above) or apologizes and offers some sort of explanation or solution to the their problem or complaint (see below). In regards to responding to or supporting the customer tweet, a member of the @DoveMenCare team will either re-tweet, favorite the tweet (as it was in this case), or send a public response to the one who gave feedback.
Overall, the Facebook, Twitter, and website do an excellent job incorporating the new March Madness campaign into their original goals to energize, talk, listen,support, and embrace the groundswell.
But what about YouTube?!
Unlike the other social media platforms i mentioned, YouTube does NOT have any new clips dedicated to the March Madness campaign or any new commercials however, this does not mean that YouTube is a lost cause of Dove Men+Care. Over the past two weeks, a french comercial for Dove Men+Care hair care has gone viral across the globe. Those who do not understand French may not fully understand the dialogue, but anyone can appreciate the humor and clear message that Dove Men+Care hair products leave your hair in amazing condition.
In addition to the French ad, I found a few more YouTube clips deeper in the Dove Men+Care vault. These clips did not focus on any products per say, but more values and characteristics that make a Dove Men+Care man; a "real man."
I found the one above particularly awesome and even posted it on my Facebook wall as my status. Kudos, Dove Men+Care!
... and how about Instagram?!
Instagram has been making quite the impression within the past two years becoming one of the fastest growing social media platforms across the globe. Like with Facebook and Twitter, businesses are beginning to pick up the photo app to help with marketing. After some serious searching, I found that Dove Men+Care does have an account... but it only has 65 photos. This, as well as their Flickr account, could use some serious TLC. With the increasing popularity of Instagram (and even more recently, Vine- a short video version of the photography app), Dove Men+Care could really benefit by having more of a presence in the social media app. Perhaps they could coin some "on-brand" hash tags for users to incorporate into their own photos.
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| Instagram photos taken by various users that fall under the category of "Dove Men+Care" |
Analytics
On the whole, Dove Men+Care experienced a spike in popularity within the groundswell. From Facebook to Social Mention to Google Trends, numbers show that Dove Men+Care is getting more attention then the previous few months.
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| February 14th |
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| March 14 |
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| March 22nd |
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| March 19th |
Given this recent rising popularity in the brand, I decided to use Twitilizer to more closly analyze the period of action on the twitter homepage/people using the Dove Men+Care handle or related hash tags during March 20-26. As I expected, the brand experienced a spike when the tournament began and has been rising and falling as games have continued. My guess is that there will be a huge spike during the "Elite 8" "Final 4," National Championship game, and the two-five days after the National Champions have been declared.
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| The number of users following @DoveMenCare increased from 10,862 to 11,378 in a little over a month! |
Google Trends also confirms my notion of the spike in interest when the campaign was released and when the games began.
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| Just as the new campaign was being released |
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| After the NCAA tournament had begun |
Social Mention- Note how the strength and reach significantly increase and the sentiment decreases (but still remains positive in regards to mentions about the brand) in the month of March.
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| February 26th |
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| March 19th |
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| March 24th |
One very interesting thing to note was that Addictomatic routinely provided a lot of information about Dove Men+Care. Unsurprisingly, there was a little more information in the beginning of March. Nevertheless, there was continuously a wealth of information... which translates to many people talking about Dove Men+Care in some form within the groundswell!
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| March 10th |
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| March 24th |
Parting Thoughts and Recommendations for the Future of Dove Men+Care's Groundswell Presence
When I began this assignment, I had zero knowledge of Dove Men+Care... or many of the social media monitoring tools available on the Internet. And now, you ask? I feel much more confident with my use of analytic and monitoring tools. I have learned what is important to pay attention to when it comes to social media, and on my way to fully understanding how to make a free social networking program work entirely in a businesses' favor.
My Suggestions for Dove Men+Care:
If I had to give Dove Men+Care a letter grade representing their utilization of the groundswell, it would be a B-. I think that the brand did a lot of things correctly, such as embrace, listen, talk, and energize on their Facebook page and website. They posted a lot of great material that continuously got a variety of positive and negative responses from the general public. Yet, Dove Men+care is still just scratching the surface of the groundswell. If they want to really get more involved and invested within the groundswell, the people behind Dove Men+Care need to have an even greater, more aggressive presence in the facets of social media. Some of my main improvements include:
1.Creating a concrete mission statement on the website that clearly outlines the values of Dove Men+Care would be a great starting point. From there, social media teams could focus on ingraining the mission statement into their marketing campaigns, social media profiles, and language.
2. Having a blog that gets updated weekly or bi-weekly would also be a fantastic suggestion- that way, people could put a face other than a famous athlete (or maybe even have a celebrity blogger) or event to the brand.
3. Have posts and tweets about regional/ national promotions, contests, or any event that could possibly get consumers to interact with the brand. If consumers had the ability to help design an advertisement (or perhaps write a mission statement for the company), they would perhaps become more invested in the brand. Not to mention the power of word of mouth- the more people who get involved with and start talking about a Dove Men+Care promotion on social media, the more people will find about it and pass the information along!
4. Have more of a "visual" presence within the groundswell. Dove Men+Care saw a lot of positive feedback and energy from their super bowl add on YouTube as well as some of their other short clips representing "real men." I think that the brand should continue to explore the YouTube and Instagram avenues and post more pictures and short video clips that embrace the Dove Men+Care values. It should not stop there- YouTube clips and Instagram photos should then be shared via other social media outlets so more people can see them. Maybe Dove Men+Care should look at the Old Spice YouTube presence and work to achieve a similar following to video clips of their own.
1.Creating a concrete mission statement on the website that clearly outlines the values of Dove Men+Care would be a great starting point. From there, social media teams could focus on ingraining the mission statement into their marketing campaigns, social media profiles, and language.
2. Having a blog that gets updated weekly or bi-weekly would also be a fantastic suggestion- that way, people could put a face other than a famous athlete (or maybe even have a celebrity blogger) or event to the brand.
3. Have posts and tweets about regional/ national promotions, contests, or any event that could possibly get consumers to interact with the brand. If consumers had the ability to help design an advertisement (or perhaps write a mission statement for the company), they would perhaps become more invested in the brand. Not to mention the power of word of mouth- the more people who get involved with and start talking about a Dove Men+Care promotion on social media, the more people will find about it and pass the information along!
4. Have more of a "visual" presence within the groundswell. Dove Men+Care saw a lot of positive feedback and energy from their super bowl add on YouTube as well as some of their other short clips representing "real men." I think that the brand should continue to explore the YouTube and Instagram avenues and post more pictures and short video clips that embrace the Dove Men+Care values. It should not stop there- YouTube clips and Instagram photos should then be shared via other social media outlets so more people can see them. Maybe Dove Men+Care should look at the Old Spice YouTube presence and work to achieve a similar following to video clips of their own.
As a young branch off of a very successful company, I have high
hopes that Dove Men+Care will be able to adjust their social media strategies
and tactics to become more submerged in the groundswell
