A while ago I had a post about how I thought one pet food company had a great Web site. Today I stumbled across the fact that Purina has a video site on yahoo (basically the equivalent of a youtube channel) called Animal All Stars.
I don't know why, but the pet food folks seem to really understand social media. They don't have to put these sites up, they could just let users post their videos to youtube. Yet by providing a centralized area for their customers to share videos of their pets they are deeply embedding their brand with the passion their customers have for their pets. They aren't just selling pet food, they are sharing and enabling others to share, the experiences of having a pet.
That's what social media is really about - building communities of people with similar interests and enabling them to share. Brands that do so make great strides in evolving their brand equity with customers - evolving from a basic brand tied to product quality to a brand that is integrated with the customers' emotions and interests - in essence becoming a brand that people feel connected to (which will lead to increased customer loyalty and brand equity for the business).
The only negative I had with Purina's site was that you can't embed the videos. So for instance, the video below of a dog praying, I had to go to YouTube to find and embed in this blog.
Not sure why Yahoo doesn't allow you to embed their videos. Perhaps Purina wants to drive traffic directly to the All-Stars page.
I could see a communications person wanting as many direct visits as possible as it allows them to measure success more accurately. It also helps them build-out the Purina video community.
This brings us to an interesting point on metrics though. In my experience, metrics are a tricky issue. Some management teams only care about metrics and as a result can sometimes cut off their nose to spite of their face. Yes, it's nice to be able to say "We got five million unique visitors" but what is more important is maximizing the reach of your content, even if you can't measure it! Admittedly, this requires backing from management to engage in activities that can't always be measured.
Not all management teams will understand this. Yet the ones who do will empower their communications folks to pull out all the stops in their efforts to extend a brand as far as possible and will understand that the metrics of the primary communication vehicles being used only reflect a percentage of the impressions made.
For instance in this situation, allowing people to embed video links in their blogs extends the Purina content further than not being able to embed. If someone clicks on the above video (anywhere in the screen) it will take them to the original video hosted on YouTube. That sucks for Purina, because what they should want is when you click on the video to be taken to the Purina / Yahoo video page.
But like I say, this is either a limitation of Yahoo video or of communications people seeking to get as many direct hits as possible (to ultimately impress their management team that their socmed initiative was a wild success). The trade-off though is that they have limited the reach of their content and as a result diminished the returns of this initiative, albeit returns that would have been very difficult to measure.
I think Purina would have been better off creating a video channel on YouTube myself. The only reason I can imagine them choosing Yahoo was probably some kind of special offer Yahoo gave them to choose them over Google. The problem though is that this initiative would have had further reach using YouTube.
I don't know why, but the pet food folks seem to really understand social media. They don't have to put these sites up, they could just let users post their videos to youtube. Yet by providing a centralized area for their customers to share videos of their pets they are deeply embedding their brand with the passion their customers have for their pets. They aren't just selling pet food, they are sharing and enabling others to share, the experiences of having a pet.
That's what social media is really about - building communities of people with similar interests and enabling them to share. Brands that do so make great strides in evolving their brand equity with customers - evolving from a basic brand tied to product quality to a brand that is integrated with the customers' emotions and interests - in essence becoming a brand that people feel connected to (which will lead to increased customer loyalty and brand equity for the business).
The only negative I had with Purina's site was that you can't embed the videos. So for instance, the video below of a dog praying, I had to go to YouTube to find and embed in this blog.
Not sure why Yahoo doesn't allow you to embed their videos. Perhaps Purina wants to drive traffic directly to the All-Stars page.
I could see a communications person wanting as many direct visits as possible as it allows them to measure success more accurately. It also helps them build-out the Purina video community.
This brings us to an interesting point on metrics though. In my experience, metrics are a tricky issue. Some management teams only care about metrics and as a result can sometimes cut off their nose to spite of their face. Yes, it's nice to be able to say "We got five million unique visitors" but what is more important is maximizing the reach of your content, even if you can't measure it! Admittedly, this requires backing from management to engage in activities that can't always be measured.
Not all management teams will understand this. Yet the ones who do will empower their communications folks to pull out all the stops in their efforts to extend a brand as far as possible and will understand that the metrics of the primary communication vehicles being used only reflect a percentage of the impressions made.
For instance in this situation, allowing people to embed video links in their blogs extends the Purina content further than not being able to embed. If someone clicks on the above video (anywhere in the screen) it will take them to the original video hosted on YouTube. That sucks for Purina, because what they should want is when you click on the video to be taken to the Purina / Yahoo video page.
But like I say, this is either a limitation of Yahoo video or of communications people seeking to get as many direct hits as possible (to ultimately impress their management team that their socmed initiative was a wild success). The trade-off though is that they have limited the reach of their content and as a result diminished the returns of this initiative, albeit returns that would have been very difficult to measure.
I think Purina would have been better off creating a video channel on YouTube myself. The only reason I can imagine them choosing Yahoo was probably some kind of special offer Yahoo gave them to choose them over Google. The problem though is that this initiative would have had further reach using YouTube.
Comments
Post a Comment