March Madness and Skin Care: My Final Analysis of Dove Men+Care

For as long as I can remember, March Madness has been a part of my life.

Nate Silver debunks filling out your 2013 NCAA March Madness bracket

For those who are unfamiliar with March Madness, is represents the period in March in which the NCAA D1 College basketball finals take place (aka: The Final Four and National Championship).  This crazy period of bracket building, games, upsets and cinderella stories has earned the fitting title of March Madness.

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*

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.   

These two posts, meant to energize the public, embrace the seasonal March Madness marketing campaign.  The bonus?  Each of these posts include a famous athlete that people recognize!  Now consumers can put a face (aka Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat and Duke University Alum) to Dove   Men+Care.

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) 

There are a variety of customers who both praise as well as condemn the Dove Men+Care skin care products.  Other facebook users were quick to add their comments and personal feedback to other consumer posts which (whether it is negative or positive) is great for the brand!  Conversations are being had about the brand, thus making it a little more visible comment by comment.
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.

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.

Facebook Analytics show that the number of users talking about and liking Dove Men+Care spiked and then gradually slipped after the March madness campaign began.  From looking at the trend lines, I believe the dips related to the time before the tournament officially began and the gradual rise (displayed on March 22nd) represents the beginning of the tournament.

February 14th

March 14

March 22nd

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.

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.

Just as the new campaign was being released

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.

February 26th

March 19th

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!

March 10th

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.

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

Talking within the Groundswell

(My second reading response post)

There always seems to be someone talking in the groundswell.

“@ThelegendaryKB just had an amazing workout”

“@TheeQueenB522 is tired of slipping on ice #ineedboots #LLBean”

“@PrettyKathy91 looks so awesome in these new jeans #imawesome”

Awesome, but what is this accomplishing?

As a business, creating a steady flow of conversation between customers and the business is a vital aspect to success.  But in the groundswell, conversation is changing.

Instead of speaking with a representative on the phone or speaking face to face (which in some cases is not even an option), customers are sparking conversations about products and services within the groundswell.

This means that businesses need to listen to the conversations that have already started and start their own conversations via social media platforms.

Companies already spend copious amounts of time trying to engage with customers via broadcast television advertisements and print adds.  Li and Bernoff of Groundswell refer to this as shouting at the public, not speaking with them.

I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand being shouted at.

{Now, I realize that we are almost finished with the book, but I really found this chapter interesting… please indulge me in this slight backtrack}

In chapter six of the text, Li and Bernoff focus on how to successfully talk within the groundswell.  They begin with saying that the marketing funnel (“a venerable metaphor that describes how consumers march down the path from awareness to purchase and loyalty”) is broken.  Today people are not as susceptible to the  “shouting” that takes place in the beginning; it is the conversations and connections that are formed in the middle that lead consumers to become customers.

Given that the real action is taking place within the middle, Li and Bernoff have recommended four of the most common and the most effective strategies for talking within the groundswell.

1.YouTube.

First, let’s take a minute and remember that YouTube is not even 10 years old. It  hasn’t even been around for a decade and has already significantly impacted the world of marketing and PR.

Li and Bernoff give the example of Blendtec’s “Will it Blend?” series on YouTube.  This video caught the public’s attention and went viral in a matter of days… sales also increased a whopping 20%.

My example of a company that utilized YouTube well is Old Spice.  In 2010, sales spike 107% after the release of the YouTube videos with the manly old spice man doing seemingly manly things.  Even the products that were slipping in sales saw spikes one actor Isaiah Mustafa showed them on in the TV and Internet adds.  WOW.

2.  Facebook (and other user-generated content sites)

“Creating a personality within social networking sites such as facebook and twitter is one of the simplest ways to extend your brand reach”, says Li and Bernoff.  One of my favorite brands of athletic wear, Lululemon Athletica has a facebook page that I follow.  They are constantly posting photos of new apparel and events they are having.  However, turning these posts into conversation can be hard…

Though I love the brand, they do not necessarily succeed in conversing with customers.  In this example, some customers are expressing negative feelings towards the new Out and About jacket, but Lululemon fails to respond to them.

The original Post

The string of comments

A more successful approach would be to acknowledge the problem and try to address it.  This is a clear attempt at starting conversation, but the people behind the athletic wear company do not follow through.  Their approach of avoiding the issue is an example of what NOT to do in the groundswell.

3.  Blog.

Li and Bernoff also suggest for people within a business to keep a blog as a way of stimulating communication with the public.  To me, Southwest airline’s blog, Nuts About Southwest, is a great example of a successful business blog.

Clearly the blog’s goal is to build a relationship between the customer and the brand.  They combine text, photos, surveys, and other multimedia to keep folks interested and engaged in their brand.  They make Southwest seem like a family brand… way to go!

4. Finally, Create a Community.

The final point Li and Bernoff give us to create a place online where a business can engage with customers.  I loved the example presented in Groundswell of beinggirl.com.  Proctor and Gamble took a clear risk by creating this page, but it definitely paid off.  This website acted as a forum for teenage girls to ask questions about anything in a safe, non-judgmental environment.  P&G successfully created a community where girls can interact with a brand that they can connect too… and then become customers.  By adding subtle advertising and providing free samples to girls, P&G scored big by creating a dialogue within a community that it had previously been excluded from.

The message here is pretty clear- business need to LISTEN and then TALK within the groundswell in order to be successful today.  Li and Bernoff end the chapter with this quote:

            “If we can leave you with one thought about talking with the groundswell, it’s this: the conversation will evolve continuously.  Even as the technologies change, the basic conversational nature of those technologies will remain central.”

Social Action on Social Media: One Billion Rising.

{For my second original blog post, I will be focusing on how the non profit V-Day has organized an uprising against violence called One Billion Rising.}

The moth of February has a lot of particular meaning to me.

Not because it marks a slow transition to the “end of winter.”

Or because it gives “legitimate” reasoning for single people to indulge in copious amounts of chocolate.
Or because it gives my boyfriend and I to reason to go on a romantic rock climbing date the 14^th.

No, it's for none of these reasons.

The month of February is particularly meaningful because it promotes advocacy and education about violence against women. 

There is plenty I could say about the importance of this issue…but there are others who have already made it their mission to do so.

Eve Ensler, the founder of V-Day, a global non-profit movement to end violence against women, has already made her sentiments known across the globe about how she wishes to end violence against women.  Primarily through annual performances of her play The Vagina Monologues on college campuses nationwide, Eve has helped educate and encourage people every where to take a stand in regards to this important, sometimes overlooked issue. 

 Before I continue though, I bet you are wondering why is this important or even relevant to our class on social media marketing?  Why, aside from my clear passion to educate and advocate for an end to violence, would I bring this up on my blog?

A Message from Eve

Because without social media, V-Day wouldn't be nearly as visible or strong as it is right now.

In other words, Social Media gives the V-Day non-profit a brilliant way to market themselves to the global community.

Here is a brilliant example: Take their newest initiative planned for the 15^th anniversary of V-Day: One Billion Rising. In short, One Billion Rising is an invitation to one billion women and those who love them to rise up, walk out, dance, and demand an end to violence. 

The V-Day Twitter Account home

The campaign, however, has primarily taken place within the groundswell.  From the One Billion Rising blog (which you should really check out if you are interested!), the facebook and twitter pages, to posting amateur and PR created videos on YouTube, it has been every day people who have put this campaign together and spread it like wildfire through social media platforms. PEOPLE are the ones who are driving this campaign, not necessarily traditional PR.

Break the Chain Dance performed by the New Light Girls

Why Rosario Dawson will Rise

A One Billion Rising Flashmob that was posted to YouTube

Through social media, people are able to communicate and plan “risings” in their own communities by downloading the official took kit and making their event official.  Online community members can also post when their risings will be held on the facebook page, or even share stories about their thoughts and experiences with violence.  This creation of GLOBAL connections is what has made One Billion Rising as huge as it is. 

The pink V's all represents scheduled risings for this February 14, all of which was planned through the internet and "broadcast" via social media platforms... AMAZING!

Interaction on the One Billion Rising facebook page

Their approach however is not flawless, as I am sure that there are some of you who have not heard of either V-Day or One Billion Rising.
Perhaps the people working in the marketing communications sector of V-Day need to take some tips from Li and Bernoff for working within the groundswell.  For instance, they could refer back to chapter four of Groundswell and re-evaluate their strategy within the groundswell; do they want to energize people, send a more specific message, or encourage online participation in their events?  Maybe they could even benefit from including even more traditional PR-like messages?  (See the video below for an exmaple)

Nevertheless, I feel that One Billion Rising is still an excellent example of how a non-profit has utilized the groundswell to actively educate as well as encourage participation in their 15th anniversary rising.

The official Call to Arms.

Note: this video clip may be upsetting or disturbing to some.  Everyone has a sort of “call to arms” or something they believe in fighting for.  Mine is violence against women.

I hope that with this blog post I have showed you a non-profit truly worth believing in and a snap shot of successful social media marketing strategies… But more importantly, I hope that I have encouraged you to “rise up” this Valentine’s Day and stand up to violence.

Take a line from Taylor Swifts song "Holy Ground" and dance!