Media, Reputation, Intangibles, Brands, Crisis. Based in media and social media impact and content analysis. By Francesc Pujol. A Blog of Media, Reputation and Intangibles center MRI Universidad de Navarra
Like many other million people in the world, I followed live the magic moments before and after the record stratospheric jump by Felix Baumgartner within the Red Bull Stratos project. I wanted to feel the experience and its storytelling personally as I planned to analyze this branding case, like many other professionals and professors interested in branding and reputation.
I have read several quick reaction analyses published within the first couple of days after the event (this is in fact also a quick reaction comment-analysis). There is unanimity among marketing and branding experts praising Red Bull strategy.
Many analyses reach almost the level of euphoria. I was amused to see that some analysts talk about a NEW ERA opened by Red Bull project. Some blog readers may know that I have a rather contrarian mind. But no, this time I will not say that I dislike Red Bull branding strategy and results. I praise it, without proposing caveats. Bravo. Great job!
In fact, I participated in the social media conversation showing my admiration to Red Bull marketing team.
@jlcea A risky game (also for Red Bull). But they created a perfect story matching RB brand values. They won. Jackpot! http://t.co/SKyigDry— Media&Reputation (@NewsReputation) October 16, 2012
Shock Co-Branding
All the same, my perception is that Red Bull has not created something new. This is just marketing, more precisely through sponsorship means. They selected an excellent partner in order to create a powerful storytelling, the event reached the desired visibility, it created very nice branding results, and all this was perfectly activated by Red Bull marketing guys’ team. Red Bull just mastered all the pieces of this very special branding project.
There is really nothing new in this story for people, professionals and experts dealing with sponsorship as a corporate branding strategy.
Nevertheless, there is truly something that makes this story special and worth to be analyzed and proposed as example to take lessons from: the size and impact of the event. It was monstrous, and there are many published metrics showing the vast media and social media impact.
In this sense, Red Bull Stratos project shared a lot of commonalities with genuine sport mega-events, like the Olympics or FIFA World Cup. In terms of branding and marketing, the difference is that Baumgartner’s show and global media attention was concentrated in just few hours, against three weeks for the other mega events.
While strongly concentrated in time, it was a mega-event by its global reach and intensity in terms of media impact.
This allows us to consider Red Bull Stratus as a shock co-branding event.
Shock co-branding is a concept that, as far as we know, we forged here at MRI Universidad de Navarra by 2009. This was a report by professor Francesc Pujol (myself) about media impact of Beijing Olympics 2008 and its implications in terms of city and country branding.
Francesc Pujol (2009) ‘Shock Co-Branding: When Olympics Meet Beijing and China’, Presented at Sports Mega Events and their Legacies Conference, by International Association of Sport Economists, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2-4 December 2009.
Thinking in sport mega-event as shock co-branding strategies allow us to approach in a simpler way the intangible benefits and legacies associated in hosting such events or, in Stratus case, to get the naming rights.
This is how we understand shock co-branding and its implications, as presented in Pujol (2009) report:
Elements of Shock Co-Branding
Two independent brands
Both brands have complete different business and markets
Common, complementary and divergent brand value elements
Both brands establish a common project, linked to a short time span event
The event produces and extraordinary temporary increase of media coverage of both brands.
After the event, media coverage decreases to normal times
Each brand separates again, working in their original business
Consequences of Shock Co-Branding
Two independent brands merger during the short time event
Extreme increase and time-concentrated media coverage
Brand perception can be dramatically and durably affected by the event and media treatment of it
Temporary merger of brands during the event can produce a transfer of brand values from one brand to the other
So, a modification of brand value and brand perception may be consequence of the time concentrated increase of media coverage and/or the acquisition of brand components of the other brand.
Our perception is that the check list gives positive results for all points concerning the alliance between Felix Baumgartner team and sponsor Red Bull within the co-brand Red Bull Stratos.
Our conclusion is that right now many of us love Red Bull brand more than three days ago, as now its brand value profile includes new attractive components channeled by Stratus storyline, while it has strengthen its own core values, as they were all of them perfectly aligned with the stratospheric jump. And yes, the improvement of Red Bull brand value will drive new and loyal energetic drink customers.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch
Red Bull got a perfect score.
Sure.
But this was not achieved against nothing and didn’t come in a magic, automated way. Red Bull Stratos success story is not telling us how corporations should spend their marketing money from now on. Not that directly, for sure.
This case cannot be easily replicated, as far as is it quite unique by each one of two co-branding partners. This case provides some sponsoring insights, but it does not consist in just applying a marketing technique.
I am persuaded that we will find in the next future a lot of imitators. My guess is that many of them will fail and will waste a lot of marketing money. This goes in the same way that a successful viral campaign. You cannot produce new viral successes by just replicating all the ingredients of the magic recipe. We have a lot of examples on this.
Furthermore, Red Bull company did not run the project at zero brand costs. A crucial element of the thrilling Stratos storyline was that there were some probabilities to suffer a human casualty. If Felix Baumgartner died in his world record attempt, the current massive and unanimous praise would turn into a tremendous corporate reputation crisis. Red Bull took the risk and won. Taking risks is apparently part of Red Bull DNA brand values, but it is probably not the case for many other corporations.
UPDATE: According to media sources all Loewe bags from Colleccion Oro 2012 are sold out in Spain, two months after the controversial ad analyzed in this blog. Loewe does not profide official information about sales, and continue with its policy of not commenting the ad.
“La nueva colección se está vendiendo muy bien. Están gustando las novedades introducidas por nuestro diseñador. De hecho, no tenemos algunos modelos en todo Madrid y otras ciudades, lo sabemos porque nos comunicamos entre tiendas para pedírnoslos”, declara una dependienta.
(Agotados los bolsos de la polémica campaña con los jóvenes modernos de Loewe, La Vanguardia, May 10, 2012)
*** Note: As the analysis of Case Loewe is becoming too long, it is currently organized in three parts. This is the structure of the three posts in this blog.
3. Monitoring the reaction of viewers after the crisis.
4. Reaching the desired target, as never before
5. A substantial increase of people loving Loewe (+39% or +157%)
6. New targeted customers discovering old Loewe products… and loving it
7. Reaching International Markets, As Never Before
8. The role of parodies and spoofs: parodies of a parody
9. Tangible Benefits: Increase of Twitter Followers of 21% in one day
10. Tangible Benefits: A Sharp Increase Of Loewe Followers’ Engagement in Twitter and The Social Media
11. New Dimension of Loewe in Social Media Brand Visibility
12. Sharing My Loewe Experience. Photos Upload By Twitter Users
Part III: A Winning Marketing Strategy With 95% of Negative Ratings
This crisis emerged after Loewe launched its 3:27 minutes long Youtube video in social media channels. It presented young models wearing the new Oro Collection 2012 bags, some of them showed alternative style looking like punky. The sorpresive elment of the video is that models make rather insubstantial, banal and naïve comments about life and love. natural reaction by almost all viewers was to consider the whole video and comments as an stupidity. It eventually became viral and was a hot issue for several days. In order to avoid unnnecessary overlapping and repetitions, please refer to the previous post for watching the video and all the analysis we did concerning the measurement of the direct negative impact of the video diffusion (part I post), plus the mechanisms behind the video that clearly suggest that all this controversy was clearly planned on purpose (part II post).
I will bear in mind in this section of this post my own understanding of the strategic goals pursued by Loewe campaign. You can find in Part II how I elaborate the analysis to reach my conclusions. This analysis holds as far as the core diagnostic is accepted:
Loewe has decided to rebrand its profile. It is currently associate to tradition and conservative style. This is praised by many mature and old people but limits the growth of sales to active and professional people. Loewe’s bet is to become a reference brand for sucessful professionals, women and men, in the range 30-45.
Loewe has chosen social media as the best channel to access the desired new target, to show them products that match with their fashion demands (Oro 2012 Bags) and to persuade them that now Loewe is a brand that incarnate their values.
Controversy is the only way to reach desired target outside the circle of current Loewe brand lovers. The controversy tactics best adapted for a luxury brand in a rebranding process is extravagance. Extravagance will be understood by many as ridiculous and stupid, and their negative reaction will drive the viral process. Explosive viral diffusion will allow targeted people to discover the audacious green-orange-pink bags, covered by the envelope of an extravagant ad. Desired target makes perfectly the difference between the quality and attractiveness of the product and the absurdity of the commercial. Common viewers non targeted by Loewe don’t use the make this difference.
The quantitative analysis of the impact of the crisis (our first post) shows a trade-off. This is an exceeding success in terms of diffusion, well beyond the company expectations. But this has been made at the prize of an unanimous negative reaction against the commercial, probably in a higher extent than expected and calculated by the company.
This is our theoretical background. We present now the brand gainings for Loewe.
If you are convinced that all this ad is a perfect mistake and a nighmare for Loewe reputation BECAUSE Loewe is a brand based in tradition, you will probably maintain your position.
1. The value for Loewe of a negative rating
First task is trying to find some light in the darkness of viewers disliking the video. We can identify five groups of ’I dislike this’
a. Outraged Loewe customers.
This group corresponds to the undesired but assumed victims of the new branding strategy followed by Loewe. If a Loewe customer feel ashamed wearing Loewe products after watching this ad and by being personally affected by the massive negative of others, they can stop buying Loewe products. It is undeniable that this is a net loss. Some of them have been lost probably by the excessive negative reception of the ad. Artistic director and marketers would be right now wondering if they pushed beyond reasonable limits extravagance and auto-derision. This loss cannot be neglected: marketing team will be judged by future sales, and this group of outraged customers is translated into decrease of sales. Probably worst than sales, this is also translated into calls and pressures by these angry all-my-life-loyal-Loewe-customers to stop taking these autodestructive strategies. (For instance, we have just learnt that Emilio Loewe, former owner of the company is very upset with the campaign and considers it a big mistake, Diario de Sevilla, 23 March 2012) Yes, if they abandon Loewe is a direct loss. But this may become part of the indirect benefits of this campaign, as far as Loewe maintains the bet till the last consequences: if traditional Loewe customers stop buying and wearing Loewe products, the substitution rate with the new target customers will accelerate. If tradition style customers abandon Loewe, they will help to ensure the new brand perception transformation.
b. Desired new target viewers.
Some other negative reaction may come from active and wealthy people that are in their 30-45, but are not currently Loewe customers and weren’t aware about the new line of products. They are the new customers Loewe is yearning for. This is a very bad debut if they say that thy dislike you. Here again we have to be more conscious concerning the sense of a disliking vote inside this group. They are saying that they dislike the ad. But this does not mean necessarily that they also dislike the bags. Of course, it would be better to access your target with a double win in product and in packaging (the commercial). But we have considered that probably many inside this group are able to distinguish between their personal negative reaction against the ad, and their appreciation of the bags that are profusely visible in a commercial that takes more than 3 minutes, instead of the conventional 20 seconds ad. There is a fraction of people among the negative viewers that discover and love the bags presented by Loewe. They will have to decide if they can put aside the negative feelings linked to the ad and the social media controversy and become a new Loewe customer. We will show alter that we can measure empirically that these disliking the video-loving the bags constitute a relevant group.
c. Non core target
Loewe may receive negative ratings from potential customers that come from people in the selected segment. They may be too young or too old. Too young people (teenagers) have time to change their mind and become Loewe customers in the future if it succeed in maintaining its profile attractive to dynamic active people. It’s not very damaging. Also, if there is old people that are not Loewe customers and feel outraged by the ad, this is not really a severe loss for Loewe, as they won’t become customers in the future because they don’t match with the new brand profile.
d. Undesired targets
A vast majority of negative rating come for sure from people who dislike wearing luxury products, or who cannot afford reasonably to buy Loewe products (remember that the advertised bags are sold by 1,600 euros). Loewe should not care that much from losing the affection of these video viewers, as it has probably never had them as lovers before. Moreover, the bold negative reaction of the undesired targets in needed to create a debate and a controversy that ignites the viral diffusion of the ad. Loewe needed to provoke them to use them as channel to reach the desired target. Finally, having non desired targeted people disliking a luxury company makes it more attractive and even as a reference brand for some luxury customers that like specially the brand values associated to extravagance: narcissism, exclusivity, calling attention, provoking reactions in both sides.
All in all, we find that behind this apparent terrible disaster of 93-95% people disliking you there is a lot of good things. Again, we can conclude this based in the very specific nature of the present case. This analysis does not hold for other circumstances.
2. The value for Loewe of a positive rating
We have argued that not all negative values have the same meaning and are identically harmful. Let’s consider no the relevance of positive votes from people watching the controversial ad. Again, in order to simplify the explanation, we need to analyse them by separate groups.
a. Desired new target viewers.
Receiving a positive vote from non Loewe customers who are the new target is a victory and a treasure. These people that openly manifest their approval to what practically all people is detesting are strong contrarians. Manifesting that they love the ad is a strong statement supporting also Loewe bags. If they feel that Loewe maintain its new brand promise with new sophisticated designs and products, they will become the new prescriptors of the luxury brand, as they will buy the products and show them publicly with pride and ostentation. These strong contrarian are people committed with design, trends and style, and become the trend setters for many other people. Each positive vote coming from this group is a treasure. It represents also a new responsibility and to some extent a burden for the company. The loyalty of these cherished new costumers is conditioned to the fulfilment of the new brand promises that Loewe is showing of innovation, aggressiveness and modernity.
b. Non core target
There are probably luxury goods buyers that love the ad but do not pertain to the desired segment of age. There will be some people liking it above 45 but few above 65, as the rate of aged people using regularly social media drops substantially in for aged people. Those new potential customers in the range 45-60 are also welcome even if they are not main target. If they praise Loewe in the midst of the turmoil, it also means a vote for buying their products. Even if older than 45 are not the main target, as they are looking for rejuvenating their image, it is probable that the profile of those voting positive as strong contrarians reveals also a very dynamic personal profile. As for younger than 30 years old people and teenagers, with economic power, they are also interesting, but their impact on sales will probably be linked to gifts and not direct shopping decisions. This has a lower impact on sales.
c. Undesired targets
People loving the commercial and the bags but with low income, are a segment that is not targeted by Loewe. They become only occasionally actual buyers of Loewe products. But having them as new brand lovers is an additional valuable asset for Loewe. They contribute to create the brand value of an aspirational and admired brand. They increase brand engagement in social media and they increase the impact of any new corporate move by spreading the information with passion.
3. Monitoring the reaction of viewers after the crisis.
We have shown updated information about number of views and the proportion of positive-negative views. Comparing this data with the one shown in the previous post, we find that the share of positive ratings increase slighly (from 5% to 7%). This seems marginal. Total numbers tend to hide trends. This is why it is useful to show the share of positive-negative ratings each day. This is shown in the figure below.
We find that in the heart of the social media viral diffusion (14 and 15 March), positive rates were just 6% of all votes. New votings since 17 March more around 10%.
You may argue that as for a victory, this is a rather Pyrrhic victory. There is still 90% of people that right now consider that this ad is misfortunate.
Yes, but the important thing behind this data is simply that during the massive and unanimous critics against the video and the models, the share of people actually loving it was the double than the data revealed by actual voting. Many people restrained to vote positively wieving the strong unanimous opposition. As each positive vote counts and it is valuable in terms of gaining new potential costumers, this first empirical results tells us that the size of people loving and discovering Loewe bags double the initial figures.
We will see if the trend stops at a 10% level or futher increases when the impact of the critics diminish.
4. Reaching the desired target, as never before
We have argued that choosing social media as medium for presenting its new brand values was smart as the segment of people most widely using Youtube and Twitter are in the segment of age desired to be reached by Loewe. It counts also with a limited presence of mature people, supposed to be the main customers of Loewe.
We count with some tools open accessible to all to address this relevant issue. Which segments of age are predominantly watching the video and the bags?
We present first the results concerning viewers of Youtube videos about Loewe just before Oro Collection 2012. This analysis corresponds to the 40 videos about Loewe with more than 3.000 visits. It represents in total a little bit more than one million visits. For each video we count with the information of the three segments of age where the video is most popular. Results do not correspond to total effective views for all segments of age, but it provides a good representation of the demographics of the age of Youtube users views of Loewe videos.
We have chosen green for segments corresponding to what we considered the desired target of Loewe (25-44), yellow for second best options (45-54); white for segments that are not relevant for Loewe (13-24), and red for segments that Loewe is currently avoiding (55-64). We have indicated with a pink frame the data concerning female.
We find that all videos (in Loewe official channel and elsewhere) responding to the perfect matching (25-44) are just 15.6% of all viewers. More aged people than desired (45-54) represent the majority of viewers, with 57.9%. There is a presence of relatively aged people (55-64) with 4.6% of total views. Finally, there are some 20.6% of young viewers, including 15.5% of teenager girls.
We present now the results concerning the segments of age where the Oro Collection 2012 is currently more popular. Data refers to all videos, including those with individual interviews with the models. Total views are almost 1,5 million.
The result is clarifying. The majority of segments attracted by the video are comprised into the desired range 25-44 (62,9%). Only 4.8% is derived to people between 45-54. Almost one third of views correspond to young women (18-24). Remember that this not corresponds to actual views but to segments of ages where the video is more popular. The video has been watched also by teenagers, but their weight is smaller in comparison to the segments included in the figure. There is an almost 50/50 distribution of viewers by sex. We find also that women watching the video are younger in average than male.
We have here one of the benefits assigned to the otherwise apparently terrible marketing campaign. For the first time Loewe is really reaching in a massive way young people and the very desired segment of 25-44, who represent 62.9% of all viewers. Compare this results with the mince 15.6% that this segment represents in all other existing Youtube videos about Loewe.
This is yet a positive result of this campaign. We know that the vast majority disliked it. But now we can confirm empirically that those loving the commercial and the bags pertain practically all of them to the segment of age desired by Loewe.
5. A substantial increase of people loving Loewe (+39% or +157%)
There are only some 7% of people that like the video, against a massive 93% people disliking it.
Ths is a poor performance, for sure. Nevertheless, we have seen that Loewe does not need to care too much about the negative opinion coming from non targeted consumers. Loewe is not a mass consumption brand, but an exclusive luxury brand. Moreover, these negative ratings are encouraged by Loewe, as this is not a conventional ad but a controversial one, on purpose.
By contrast, Loewe should care a lot about people rating positively the campaign. We have seen that those voting ‘I like you’ in a context of an unanimous negative reaction calling the ad and the brand as ridiculous and pathetic is a sign of loyalty and engagement towards the new brand promise.
7% is a really thin set of new supporters. But how much does for Loewe as a brand?
Combining the information that we have already presented, we come to revealing and maybe surprising results. We find that, as shown in the figure below, that these small minority of people liking Loewe Oro 2012 commercial correspond to 28% of all positive votes that Loewe has received in all its videos available in Youtube. This means that just one week Loewe has increased the number of liking votes by 39%. This is a dramatic impact for any kind of brand.
Positive rates coming from the Oro 2012 video have a substantial impact due also to the controversial profile of the video. A controversial video not only attract views, but it also pushes for direct reaction and participation. As it can be appreciated in the following figure, the participation rate is some 3.5 times higher than the average videos of Loewe.
We can proceed to a more detailed analysis, and focus the attention on the quality of the ‘like’ votes. We have seen that Loewe videos (before the controversial ad) present a poor profile in terms of the segment of age that is attractive for Loewe strategy purposes. Only 16% of people watching Loewe videos where in the segment of age 25-44. In contrast, the vast majority of people watching, and liking and disliking Oro 2012 video, come from the wished range 25-44 (62.9%).
We have thus reestimated the impact of the positive ratings before and after the controversial ad, adjusting each liking vote by the share of people in the segment 25-44. Now, the results appear even more impressive. Total number of adjusted positive votes moves from a value of 391 to 1006, in a matter of just a week. This means an increase of 157% in the targeted segment of age.
Loewe has created its own Youtube corporate channel almost two years ago. It contains 72 videos. There are many other videos in Youtube about Loewe at least since 2007. If you create an ad that in a couple of days increase the volume of positive rates about your company in 40% (or 157%), many people would judge this marketing campaign as a tremendous success. It is possible that other companies have experienced such a dramatic increase of positive rating, but probably not that many.
If this ad is a branding defeat, one could start considering it as a sweet defeat.
6. New targeted customers discovering old Loewe products… and loving it
We commented in the previous post that we did not observe a contagion effect just in the aftermath of the viral crisis. There was not an ‘attack’ to previously existing videos of Loewe, by people writing negative comments or choosing the ‘dislike’ option. This kind of phenomenon may happen for companies or institutions suffering from a reputation crisis. This is what happened to FedEx videos. This is what is happening to all videos by Invisible Children, the NGO that launched KONY 2012 action: the critics coming from some groups against this proposal moved from main video to all other videos by the organization, even if unrelated with the proposal of capture of rebel leader Joseph Kony.
We count now with an interesting case. As the degree of critics and even attacks and insults against the content of Loewe Madrid Oro Collection 2012 ever increased, Loewe took as first measure to disable the comments option in all videos about the campaign contained in their official Youtube account. As the negative ratings were unanimously negative, the luxury company decided to remove the video from the main page. It was replaced by the video ‘Masters of Leather’. It is ‘A Loewe film that pays tribute to the house’s craftsmen’.
When the crisis started, this video had some 4,800 visits. In these few days as leading brand video, number of views has increased to more than 12,000. This is a relevant impact for Loewe standards. Consider that the 72 videos in the official channel had as average 2,050 visits (we do not include in this list the Oro 2012 videos). If we exclude the video commercial with Spanish matador Cayetano Rivera presenting perfume 7, the average views per video is just 1,450. In fact, ‘Masters of Leather’ is now the second most popular video in Youtube official channel, excluding the Oro 2012 series.
What do we learn from the visits received by this video in the midst of a flow of outraged comments and reactions provoked by Oro 2012 ad?
First of all, that this video is watched by the best target, as the segments of age watching it more intensively are Male 35-44, Male 45-54 and Female 25-34. Please note that the content of the video is not specially appealing in the sense of attracting per se the interest of young audience. This means to us that viewers are mainly non traditional Loewe users, but people attracted by the brand thanks to the controversial ad.
The second result is that people love this video, and they manifest it so. The positive rating reaches a 94% score. The approval degree was similar at the beginning of the crisis.
We will see in the future if this new gain is repeated in the future with the new content upload by Loewe.
7. Reaching International Markets, As Never Before
Loewe opened its firs store abroad in 1963, in London. Then followed Hong Kong and Tokyo in the 70s. In 1985 Loewe reached an international distribution agreement with LVMH. Global expansion was promoted after Loewe was acquired by group LVMH (1996). It currently counts with stores in Hong Kong (8), Guam (3), Australia (3), Canada (1), China (16), Germany (1), France (3), Finland (1), Colombia (1).
Loewe and LVMH create and develop brand awareness in each country by marketing actions addressed to target public. In big markets like Spain Loewe can launch marketing operations that reach all publics, through TV commercials.
How international or even global is Loewe’s brand reputation and awareness? As being part of global luxury group like LVMH, it is certain that LVMH managers try to develop internationality of all brand in their portfolio. Loewe is the only brand in the group with a clear Made in Spain profile. Which is the mission of this brand in the global group?
If Loewe is planning to enter into new markets or increase its relevance in existing markets it requires as s first condition to increase brand awareness and recognition. Youtube videos, social media platforms and the internet may become new channels to expand brand awareness internationally. Youtube video is probably an strategic branding tool for fashion firms and for luxury firms. Short videos with commercials and catwalk shows are perfectly adapted for Youtube users, and can perfectly transmit the core brand values of fashion firms.
Youtube can be used also in the other way round. Gathering information from Youtube viewers by their geographical originl can provide extremely relevant information about brand power of fashion firms by country. People watching the videos of a brand is telling us how visible this brand is in each country.
We have monitored this information for the portfolio of videos about Loewe in Youtube. In the figure below we present country indexes of brand awareness for some selected top markets. Results concern all videos about Youtube exceptp all related with Oro 2012 campaign.
Our index moves between 1 (null visibility) to 5 (maximum intensity of viewing).
We find that, as expected, Loewe has a very strong brand awareness index, with 4.16. Outside Spain, the country where Loewe videos are watched more is Russia (1.97 points). Remark that Loewe is not directly present in Russia with company stores. Third market with more relative followers is United States, with 1.5 points. The rest of the countries present a very low profile of brand awareness, moving between 1.1 and 1.3.
We have monitored also the viewing of Loewe videos in Spanish speaking countries and Brazil. Main market in terms of interest is Mexico, with 2.27 points. Argentina follows, with 1.96 points. Brand awareness is stronger in Latin America, but it is still rather poor.
We will present now the international impact of the controversial videos about the campaign Oro 2012 Collection.
We present in the next two figures the impact of the new campaign, and we compare it with the existing values, for each country.
The results tells us that its brand awareness has been strenghten in Spain, the unique market where the brand had strong brand awareness. With th controversil videos it has increased its brand awareness in all international markets, with the exception of Russia and Brazil.
How shold we evaluate the impact of this sudden increase of international brand awareness ‘thanks’ to a controversial and highly criticised video?
The story that we have told about the need for Loewe to create a controversy in order to ensure that viral marketing helps all people know that a new fresh Loewe brand is emerging does not hold for international markets. Why? Because we have just proven that except eventually for some few countries, there is a low international brand awareness about what Loewe is. As global people abroad don’t know about Loewe, they don’t know that Loewe is/was associated to traditional fashion style and a strong women mature segment of customers. Loewe does not need a rebranding strategy abroad, as people watching the viral video learn about the existence of Loewe for the first time ever.
If international viewers do not have a previous judgement about Loewe, they discover a luxury brand choosing a bizarre, extravagant commercial to present itself. Many people abroad will judge, like in Spain, that models appearing in the commercial are rather stupid and that the luxury brand behinds design very strange marketing products. People will laugh at it, and they will probably think that Loewe is a brand oriented to young people an teenagers -the critics that many people say about Loewe strategy for customers in Spain, diagnostic that we have discarded-. Loewe will probably attract some new customers among people in other countries discovering Loewe and loving its bags thanks to this video. The bad image that Loewe may create among non target viewers is no relevant for Loewe brand reputation.
8. The role of parodies and spoofs: parodies of a parody
The impact of the controversial original video by Loewe was so deep, that soon imagination and creativity were in action for producing new versions of the video as parodies. If the parody was funny enough, the creators could seize the opportunity to enter into the viral diffusion process and reach a substantial number of views. These opportunities are very attractive for Youtube bloggers, amateur comedians and TV comic and satirical programs. There is one video that is approaching to the 1 million visits, and many others that have received thousands of visits. Loewe Collection Oro 2012 has become a very appealing story for many people.
Youtube parody videos about brands, institutions or personalities are feared as the evil incarnation. They may have devastating consequences for brand reputation of the ‘victim’ chosen. In some cases, these spoofs or fake commercials correspond to direct attacks to a company. One classical case is the campaign made by Greenpeace against Nestlé, accused to use palm oil for producing Kit Kat chocolates. Palm oil recollection destroys forest in Indonesia according Greenpeace, and this is destroying the natural habitat of orang-utans. The video launched by Greenpeace seems at the beginning a true Nestlé ad, and then it introduces disgusting images. It has a very negative impact on Nestlé reputation. Another Youtube reference as reputation killing video is the parody protest video ‘United Breaks guitars (we commented its impact in the FedEx case).
Parodies are reputation killers because they succeed, by using irony, sarcasm and fun, in transmitting to the viewers images and messages that show that the chosen target has serious problems with some brand values that the company is trying to hide. There is probably nothing worse for a company reputation that a successful parody video.
We have considered the impact of parodies in some of the crisis analysis considered in this blog.
We found for instance that the negative impact of the video of a FedEx worker throwing a computer monitor over a fence was increased by the success of some parodies made by TV programs. (see Case FedEx). We also showed that political parodies dominated by far Youtube content viewed during the General Elections in Spain, November 2012 (See case Election in Spain and Youtube).
Parodies have gained relevance in the Loewe crisis; they benefit from it and they have helped to further develop it, as some people got in touch with the story first by learning the existence of the parody and going to the official video afterwards.
Consider, as we have shown in our previous post, that from the total 2 million views of videos related with Loewe campaign crisis by 18 March 2012, almost 700.000 came from parodies and spoofs.
There are four sorts of parodies in Loewe case:
Usage of original images and manipulation of voices and/or music. There are videos using the full lenght video, and some other just selecting some scenes.
Youtube bloggers videos showing the blog star commenting or acting like one of the models
Versions of the original video trying to reproduce the spirit of the original video using amateurs actors
TV presenters commenting the images of the video.
How harmful are all these videos for Loewe prestige and reputation?
If, as perceived by many, Loewe was pursuing just to launch a more creative, youth and fresh commercial to present the traditional values associated to Loewe, the negative reaction by the public shows that this strategy was a terrible mistake and it its tarnishing Loewe brand reputation. Under this assumption, parodies are just an extension of the nightmare, as they reveal the weaknesses of the original video, increasing the sense of ridicule and stupidity, that are perceptions completely opposed to a renowned luxury brand. The parodies and their success is then an additional punishment for Loewe, and, like spoofs attacking other brands, they will create lasting negative perceptions that harm long term brand equity. This negative effect would be even more perverse in this case, as luxury brands rely entirely in excellence in brand reputation.
What if you analyse the impact of the parodies inside the explanatory framework proposed in this series of posts about the case Loewe? Assume, as I have tried to proof, that Loewe has designed a campaign with the clear and first mission to create controversy. Assume that the goal of the controversy was twofold, first to ensure viral diffusion of the video to reach the new desired target, and second, showing by the facts (extravagant campaign to present extravagant luxury bags) that the new brand Loewe is not mainly oriented to mature fashion conservative women, but young adult active and trendy and stilish women.
Under this framework, the interpretation of the impact of the parodies is completely modified. Parodies are just exacerbating the extravagant gestures that were included in the video as the igniting mechanism to generate shock, not by scandal, but by sense of ridicule. Parodies just strengthen the sense of ridicule. It would seem damaging for a brand to be associated to ridicule and shame. But in this case, these feeling are just confirming the inner nature of the commercial: extravagance. The excellent news for Loewe is that parodies have chosen the storyline proposed by the artistic director of the campaign, Luis Venegas, instead of exploring other values that could block the impact of the message of the campaign. In this campaign, the only parodies that can harm Loewe strategy are spoofs showing old ladies still loving Loewe. If parodies associated Loewe to traditional values, they would transmit the message that the rebranding strategy is not credible, and Loewe will always be perceived as a very conservative and traditional fashion brand. There are no traces at all of this kind of critique against Loewe.
If the parodies use exactly the same storyline that was designed on purpose by Loewe marketing team, then the conclusion is direct, and again paradoxical: every viewer laughing at parodies and spoofs, sharing with others or sending the video to friends are acting as positive multipliers of the audacious rebranding strategy launched by Loewe. Viewings of the parodies reinforce the message that Loewe is not a brand for old conservative ladies.
Think again in the examples presented in the Part II post of other personal brands that used extravagance as strategy to present their values and to increase brand awareness, like Lady Gaga and Salvador Dalí. If Lady Gaga or Dalí are ‘victims’ of parodies by people laughing by imitating the meat dress or using flowers in the moustache, they are not tarnishing and destroying their reputation. In the opposite, they are just reinforcing the association of these artists to the values that they have chosen to incarnate.
Parodies are providing additional return to the original campaign, in several ways. The main one, as just explained, is that they reinforce and make more credible the message that Loewe is not a fashion conservative firm. Secondly, many people learn about the campaign and the controversy not thanks to the original video, but because of the parodies. All these people captured by the parodies are almost forced to watch the original video to establish comparisons. Third, by the nature of the parodies, it also attract the segment of people from the desired age, 20 to 45 years old. Finally, all these new viewers discover that Loewe is launching some very provocative and innovative green-blue-pink luxury bags, specially if they watch parodies that are based in manipulations of the original video.
9. Tangible Benefits: Increase of Twitter Followers of 21% in one day
We will present a series of measurable positive results for brand Loewe directly associated to the impact of the controversial campaign.
We have previously shown that it has also increased substantially the number of positive votes received in Youtube (+39%), but critics with the ad may argue that this results has been reached at the prize of a terrible deterioration of global reputation in Youtube as now the number of people disliking Loewe videos have increased substantially. We have tried to explain that positive and negative votes have a very different interpretation and impact for Loewe as a luxury brand. We have also shown that number of views to other Loewe videos increase and are rated positively. We have also shown that Loewe has reached as never before a very attractive target and international audiences.
These benefits can be weakened of sense and value by those considering that the right place of Loewe as a brand is linked to tradition, and that this attempt of brand repositioning has been a big mistake and so its consequences.
Now we will present results that should be considered net gains, whatever your position is about which is the right brand profile of Loewe. They are positive for the old brand based in tradition and for the new one based in creativity and youth.
We have been monitoring the impact of this campaign in the social media profile of Loewe. We wanted to observe the reaction of people actually following Loewe in the social media, and if the controversial and very negatively perceived ad attracted nevertheless some new followers to the new brand, even in de midst of the turmoil.
We present here the results concerning the Loewe official Twitter account, Loewe Madrid 1846 (@LoeweMadrid).
Early in the morning of 14 March 2012, when the crisis started as new Twitter TT in Spain, Loewe counted with 5,200 followers. Did Loewe lost its asset of brand lovers, outraged by the new campaign and by the extravagant new bags? We cannot provide a direct answer to this question, as we have the evolution of total number of followers, and movement is made by the difference of new followers minus the people that decide to unfollow. If total number of followers increase is that the eventual loss of old brand lovers is compensated by the entry of followers loving the nee brand profile.
Loewe is a rather late adapter of social media channels, as it created Twitter account by 1st September 2011. This more than seven moths of presence with 5,200 followers correspond to an average of 27 new followers per day. The results concerning the daily movement of net new followers after 13 March 2012 are quite spectacular for us. They are shown in the figure below.
Loewe attracted new 1129 followers during the peak of the reputation crisis. Loewe gained in one day the equivalent of 42 days. It added another 413 followers the day after, 15 March 2011.
Loewe increased its Twitter power by 21% in one day, and 30% in two days. Even ten days after the start of the crisis, the number of new followers doubles the rhythm compared to pre crisis average numbers.
We present in the next figure the evolution of total number of followers since the opening of Loewe Twitter account.
If social media power of brands means something to the companies, the controversial ad has had at least a direct positive impact by increasing the number of follower in a remarkable way.
Consider also that all these new Loewe social media fans have taken this decision in the framework of an unanimous attack to the brand. The clearly form part of those contrarians who take personal and shopping decisions disregarding completely is they will find support or critique from external and social opinion. The new followers are for sure not just passive followers, but are some of the new prescriptor of the brand that will explain loud and proudly their support and attachment to the new Loewe brand.
10. Tangible Benefits: A Sharp Increase Of Loewe Followers’ Engagement in Twitter and The Social Media
In the previous section we have shown that the controversy created as a by-product an extraordinary increase of the size of Loewe brand supporters as registered in the social media channels. They took this decision in an incredibly position of minority, as there were an almost unanimous reaction of people criticizing what Loewe did.
This new Loewe followers entering in the hard times should be strongly committed supporters and prescriptors. In a lesser extent, this is probably the same for many previous Loewe followers that decided not to quit.
We provide in this section another empirical evidence that the apparently disastrous campaign has derived some tangible and unquestionable benefits for the brand.
We said that Loewe is a relative newcomer in Twitter world, as it opened its official account by 1st September 2011. Between opening and 23 March 2012 Loewe Twitter CM has published 412 tweets or retweets from other sources. The vast majority of tweets, especially in the first months contained also photos or videos. It shows photos about new Lowe products (mainly bags), about catwalk sessions presenting new collections, about leather craftsmen, and some photos about celebrities wearing Loewe products. This kind of content is essential for a luxury brand, and this is why social media channels are powerful tools for creating brand equity. A valuable element of Twitter official account for companies is that the content and the message is almost completely controlled by the firm.
We have monitored all 412 tweets posted by Loewe, including retweets from other sources, selected by Loewe CM. We have identified retweets (RT) and ‘Favorited’ (Fav) made to each tweet, by other Twitter users.
We present first the results for each one of the tweets, since its inception.
We find that before the presentation of Oro 2012 campaign, there are some few tweets that exceed 10 RT mark (8). There was a RT from male model Andres Velencoso Twitter account that reached more than 50 RT. This was a photo in the backstage of a Loewe presentation, but he was not wearing Loewe products; this was a portrait photo. There are 5 tweets that break this barrier after 13 March 2012.
In the newt figure we show the detail of all tweets published in March 2012, to better appreciate the before and after effect. Direct observation reflects a sharp increase of willingness to promote content created by Loewe in other Twitter users’ accounts.
We summarise and capture the specific impact of the campaign in Loewe followers’ engagement in our final figure. It presents the monthly average of RT and Fav per tweet, since September 2011. Before the presentation of new 2012 collection of Amazona bags, monthly average moved between 1 and 3. In a sharp contrast, the average number of RT and Favs for the 18 tweets posted since 13 September 2012 is 12.2 (10.8 RT + 1.4 Fav). In fact, if we restrict the analysis to those six tweets showing the new and controversial Amazona Oro bags, the average impact is 23.3. This is an extraordinary increase of engagement by Loewe followers in Twitter. This is a big marketing success, desired by all companies.
11. New Dimension of Loewe in Social Media Brand Visibility
Diffusion of the controversial Loewe Ad video become viral mainly due to Twitter communication as leading TT during more than 24 hours.
We will provide later detailed information about how the viral diffusion evolved, and how it moved from social media to traditional news media. We will show also Twitter content analysis for understanding better the impact of the crisis.
Now we want to show the profile of Loewe in terms of social media visibility, before and after the crisis. The aim is to show the new stature of this brand, once it decreses the impact of the controversy and Loewe become another of the consumers brands that may be part the text of a tweet.
The measurement refers to the size of Loewe in Twitter messages, just before the crisis (7 to 12 March), comparing it to its current post crisis presence in Twitter, one week after the crisis (20 to 23 March).
A way to evaluate the impact of the transformation is to compare Loewe visibility against other luxury brands. We have monitored the presence of some selected brands in messages written in Spanish.
Before the crisis, Loewe had a size of 3.6 points, comparable to Fendi. This was more than 20 times less than Chanel, Dior or Gucci.
Now, one week after the crisis, we find that the social media size of Loewe moves aroung 306 points, eighty times higher than before the crisis. This makes Loewe the leading luxury brand in the Spanish speaking Twitter market, well ahead all other international brands.
Of course, there is still a lot of content related to the crisis, the parodies, and the evaluation of this crisis for the brand. But there are many other tweets about Loewe products. Many more than before the crisis.
What is currently happening is that Loewe is the brand chosen for discussions, comments or jokes about fashion, luxury, ‘pijos’ (wealthy trendy young people). Before this controversy Loewe was almost never chosen in this kind of tweets, and this place was taken by other luxury brands as the ones presented in the figure. Loewe has reached a new social media status. This means not only a substantial sustained increase of brand visibility, but also a complete diffrent brand perception compared to pre crisis context.
12. Sharing My Loewe Experience. Photos Upload By Twitter Users
Results from the previous section of this post show that the presence of Loewe in social media before the ad controversy was limited. This also mean that pics upload by Twitter users in relation with Loewe were scarce and occasional. many times they were created with people with direct interests with the company or the company itself.
The controversial ad has provoked a tsunami in the social media. Now Loewe is a brand with a strong visibility. We have shown in the previous section that one after the shock, Loewe is still the main reference in luxury and fashion brands in Twitter conversations. There are still a lot of mockery, attacks, references to parodies, but right now Loewe is the reference in Twitter.
Now we will provide an extension of the results applying an indirect content analysis, by showing the pics posted by Twitter users in relation with Loewe. Uploading pics show a much stronger personal engagement with the topic that just publishing a written message.
This is a selection of pics, but they are really representative of all pics upload by Twitter users. These are pics from tweets published between 20 and 24 March 2012. This is one week after the crisis.
We have selected more than thirty pics, to show a variety of uses made by Twitter users.
What is the global picture and the verdict in terms of brand perception of all these photos?
It will depend again if people still consider that Loewe is a traditional centennial luxury brand, and that it is a trahison and a mistake trying to provide a new ‘false’ image. In this case, many of all the photos (all from group 1 and 2, and the first ones of group 3) are the confirmation that Loewe has completely distroyed its prestige and its brand. Now Loewe is the source of mockery and contempt. This shows images that are associating Loewe to stupidity, sillyness, vulgarity, ‘pijos’, banality, bizarre, provocation, ridicule.
By contrast, you could consider that Loewe was trying on purpose to provide a new position to its brand, presenting it as trendy, creative and young; or you simply discover Loewe as a brand because you have not previous knowledge of the brand or its brand values. In this second case, you could feel that practically all images show an incredible refreshing and attractive image of Loewe. You like it because they show amusement, enjoying, youth, originality, sympathy, creativity, a point of positive bizarre, modernity, urban style. You decidely love it.
Whatever your camp is, the selection of the images and context chosen by Twitter users, and even your positive or negative reaction to all these photos paradoxically pointing out the outright marketing triumph reached by Loewe: all positive and negative values that you can associate to these pics are all linked to extravagance. Extravagance is with no doubt, the storyline genre chosen by Loewe ad creators to create controversy and to show the new brand profile (see our analysis in Part I and II). I fing that this reflects an astonishing branding success, as Loewe has been able to completely control the context of the new message. If you dislike the photos, it is because you love a brand that does not extist anymore. In this case, if you are a luxury brand buyer, you will have to choose another brand, as Loewe is not ready anymore to cover this market target. If you, in spite your probably negative reaction to the campaign find that these captions are positive and you agree that they correspond to the new brand profile that has emerged after the crisis, you are confirming that Loewe has accomplished an almost suicidal but final successful rebranding campaign that will open to Loewe a new target of luxury consumers.
This is in fact a similar analysis and conclusion that we reached concerning the impact of video parodies. If the parodies appearing in the photos are just a simple replication of the eccentricities shown in the original campaign, the parodies just strengthen the power of the message launched by Loewe creative. All parodies repeat the extravagances of the official video. Twitter users do not tarnish in fact Loewe reputation, but in the opposite, they make stronger the credibility of the new brand position desired by the company.
The collection of images reflect another second extraordinary gain obtained with the campaign. There is a big success in what is not appearing at all in any one of the photos captured and upload by Twitter users. There is no single reference to mature or old ladies, adopting a conservative fashion style. Remember that the opening statements of the young models in the official commercial was to refer to Loewe as my mother or my grand mother brand. This second result is an extraordinary performance achieved by Luis Venegas. By creating a shocking auto-derision and critics to Loewe as being an old fashion brand by the own company models, that are young, modern and proposing marginal fashion styles, they are breaking this brand stereotype. It has been implicitly assumed by all people reacting to Loewe campaign: there is no one accusing Loewe to be a traditional old fashioned brand that is trying to create a false new auto-image. People assume the new brand position, and discuss about it in favour or opposed to it. If you look again to the images, you will see that there is no even an indirect mention to old ladies.
Making credible a complete rebranding strategy is not an easy task at all. When a company tries to create a new brand image, it is always attacked by many observers who remind consumers about the ‘true’ visage of the corporation. Parodies showing the opposite values are precisely used to counteract the company movement. Think for instance to fast food companies launching campaigns or programs for a healthier products, or oil companies embracing the green economy values, or financial institutions presenting non profit initiatives. A number of parodies emerge in each case manipulating corporate commercials, with the aim to ridicule the main message and to show that it is not since and credible. We have not observed reactive parodies attacking the credibility of the new brand position of Loewe, neither in the videos, nor in the pics upload by Twitter users.
We can appreciate some additional interesting results from the selection of Twitter users photos.
People smile in all photos. Even if pics are upload to make mockery of Loewe commercial, they do not show angry reactions; all parodies reflect people having fun. Loewe increases the emotional profile of its brand values.
The auto-parody proposed by Venegas, using bags as hats has had a so strong impact that now, and probably for a while, it is becoming a common popular reaction to create a ‘Loewe moment’ when people is having fun with friend or relatives, or even at work (captions 9 and 10). The social media virality of the video and this ‘bags over the head’ was so intense, that it oblige all people doing this to refer explicitly to Loewe, and not simply to bags. This is really a ‘Loewe moment’, which will be experienced thousands of times in Spain. When an becomes so popular that it enters into the lives of many people, it maintains the impact of the campaign and the new brand values channelled in it, in the long run. Another brand that succeeded in creating slogans entering into daily life was for instance carbonated sweet water Casera, with its arch popular ‘Si no hay Casera, nos vamos’
Captions 6 and 17 are also revealing, and a nice victory for Loewe. Spanish fashion company Desigual launched its advertising campaign using the same idea with models showing the bags over the head. This was presented to public practically in the same time than Loewe. Now people refer to Desigual ad as an imitation to Loewe movement, and not the opposite. It is amazing to find that tweet for photo 6 is labelled as a ‘Being Loewe is very cool! … while using a Desigual bag. This kind of results shows that Loewe moves from follower brand to leading brand in consumers’ perception.
Photos from Twitter users willing to share publicly that they own or that they have seen a Loewe product is also a very powerful reflect that after the ad many people are considering Loewe as an aspirational brand.
Photo 23 is another triumph and direct consequence of the commercial and rebranding strategy. This is a young stylist who proudly shows a yellow bag owned by her mum that she has rescued and now she will happily use. Try to imagine if this would happen before the ad.
Many people consider that this campaign is a failure. A vast majority of experts in the fields of fashion, marketing, social media, communication crisis, branding consider that movement made by Loewe is a mistake. Not me.
Communication, advertising, marketing, branding, sales, strategy, sustainability. Enrique Loewe labelled this current crisis as a meteorite in the story of the luxury brand. Fpor the former owner of Loewe, this was a destructive meteorite, and he showed disappointment (Diario de Sevilla, 16 March 2012). Loewe is a brand. Loewe is just a company. The verdict of this risky marketing campaign is not given by the 95% people disliking it (nor the 5% liking it). It is not given by the experts (nor me). It is not given by Enrique Loewe. Verdict will come in the mid and long term, by the evolution of sales. The future will tell us if the disruption of this meteorite has created something new and highly valuable, or if it just killed or strongly damaged an otherwise old well established luxury brand.
*** Note: As the analysis of Case Loewe is becoming too long, it is currently organized in three parts. This is the structure of the three posts in this blog.
3. Monitoring the reaction of viewers after the crisis.
4. Reaching the desired target, as never before
5. A substantial increase of people loving Loewe (+39% or +157%)
6. New targeted customers discovering old Loewe products… and loving it
7. Reaching International Markets, As Never Before
8. The role of parodies and spoofs: parodies of a parody
9. Tangible Benefits: Increase of Twitter Followers of 21% in one day
10. Tangible Benefits: A Sharp Increase Of Loewe Followers’ Engagement in Twitter and The Social Media
11. New Dimension of Loewe in Social Media Brand Visibility
12. Sharing My Loewe Experience. Photos Upload By Twitter Users
Part II: Loewe Is Dead. Long Live Loewe!
This post is the Part II of our analysis of the ‘Case Loewe’. Based in our measurements on social media impact and content analysis, we are trying to tackle the reputation impact for luxury brand Loewe of the crisis created by the company launching an ad designed as a viral marketing strategy that turned tremendously negative in terms of reaction by viewers of the video.
We will try to prove in this second post that Loewe will gain a lot of benefits from this apparently devastating campaign. As always, our analysis and conclusions are driven by data analysis, more than following my own feeling and perceptions about the case.
The controversy emerged when a Youtube video created by Loewe to present the new Madrid Oro Collection 2012 bags reached viral status becoming a Twitter Trending Topic. There was a negative consensus among viewers, accusing the young models appearing in the ad as stupid, naïve and pathetic. The controversy lasted for days and the videos reached extraordinary number of views. Many people and experts consider this marketing campaign as a disaster and a tremendous mistake by Loewe.
You can watch here the controversial video. You can follow the statements made by the models, as they are subtitled in English.
Loewe has made available the commercial in its short version. This edited and shorter version version becomes a more conventional fashion video, as it consists in a combination of images and music. The controversial comments and remarks by models have been excluded in this new version. You can watch it here.
*****
Stating at this point that Loewe has something to win after the massive negative impact of this terrible video may sound ignorant, stupid, pretentious, just provocative or a combination of all of them.
I assume that I am taking in this post a very minority position, and that I at this point of the reading I am facing a natural opposition from readers familiar with this case that consider it a complete branding mistake. I am playing the role of a contrarian, and I am conscious that I have the charge to demonstrate that I count with tangible evidence to support my position.
I have tried to prove in the previous post that I am not ignorant or unaware of the catastrophic negative impact of the campaign. On the contrary, we have shown data and figures that reflect an extraordinary and probably unprecedented negative reaction to a marketing campaign.
1. Measuring the direct negative impact of the campaign. An update.
As a way to summarize the results, we present the basic facts concerning the measurement of the impact, updated with current numbers. In our previous post we showed results right in the aftermath of the campaign, with data after two days the emergence of the crisis. Now we count with information covering two additional days.
In our first post we showed that views of the controversial video reached the half million mark. Now, it has exceeded the 1 million mark, by far. This refers solely to the official video about Collection Oro 2012, plus the complementary videos presenting the models individually. But in the meanwhile have grown substantially parodies and spoofs based in the original video. We distinguish between parodies of the original video that modify the sound but maintain the original images, and spoofs that are critics created by video bloggers that don’t use the original images and Loewe bags. All together, these videos linked to Collection Oro 2012 make more than two million views in Youtube.
New content does not modify greatly the picture obtained previously concerning the share of positive-negative ratings by Youtube viewers: 93% are negative. This is a rare unanimity of people disliking a video content.
Total number of views sounds quite impressive for a diffusion of a commercial. How relevant they are for Loewe as a brand? We have a perspective of it if we estimate their weight compared to all videos about Loewe in Youtube.
The updated data shows that currently the videos linked to the current controversy represent 65% of all content about Loewe. 44% corresponds to the content created by Loewe, and 21% are the parodies and spoofs. As previous content is almost all positively rated and almost all new content receives negative votes, the distribution shows also the present share of positive-negative reviews of Loewe’s content in Youtube.
The verdict of the direct negative impact of the campaign is unquestionable: devastating. This was in fact the title chosen to present the Part I of this reputation crisis case.
Our goal now in this post is to respond to the question about how harmful this negative impact is for the brand equity of Loewe. Our answer is that, paradoxically, we feel that Loewe brand value has increased… if Loewe assumes coherently its newborn brand profile.
There are some people and even experts praising this marketing movement on the common ground that ‘it is good for a brand if all people it talking about you, even if they do not say nice things about you’. This is not at all our reasoning and assessment of this case. It is true that in some cases (political leaders) this may be a strategy to easily reach your goals. It is much more difficult to admit that it apply also to luxury brands in the fashion industry.
The way to find the positive branding impact of the ‘catastrophic’ campaing is twofold: to assess first how are the perceptions about Loewe brand among the targeted customers, before and after the campaign. Secondly, to evaluate how this campaign has affected loyal Loewe customers.
2. About the target of the marketing campaign
We disagree here also with the diagnostic made by a vast majority of observers who have already commented the case. With almost no exceptions, experts or journalists consider that Loewe has decided to enter into the market of young fashion victims, like the twelve models presented in the video. This choice is the basis of the position taken by each expert to then attack or applause the strategic decision taken by Loewe or, more correctly, by group owner LVMH.
No, my perception is that the targeted group by this ad are no young people in their twenties. I am convinced that the new target chosen by Loewe is active people, mainly women, in the range of ages 30-45. People with a powerful professional career or being part of a wealthy family. People active, ambitious, loving culture, trends and innovation. Loving fashion products that incarnate these values. These people are not those represented in the ad. But these people are not either the ones that people used to associate to the brand Loewe before this ad. Loewe products were associated before the crisis to an elegance always based in quality, tradition and discretion. This profile was highly appreciated by ladies with a conservative fashion approach, and also by aged people. Loewe was typically associated to ‘señoras’, distinguished mature women.
We have shown how Loewe takes the audacious move to use their own models to tarnish Loewe’s own reputation as being ‘my mother’s brand’ or even ‘my great grand mother’ brand. This apparent branding suicide is converted into a shocking paradox by the fact that these statements are made by young trendy models.
As we explained in the previous post, we understand that this is the main message and goal of this marketing campaign: to tell all buyers of luxury fashion products that now Loewe is a trendy, creative and innovative brand. The creative and provocative campaign based in contradictions and extravagance is the tangible proof that Loewe is really calling all people loving ultimate and fresh designs to consider Loewe as the perfect choice. The campaign breaks the schemes of classicism and fashion conservatism, because the products shown in the campaign also create a divorce with the perception of traditional products. Loewe is presenting a collection of bags that are provocative and extravagant by themselves, as they combine the tradition of their ‘Amazona’ bags with these new aggressive fluo colours.
This message is clearly addressed to these active and successful professionals willing to show their personal values with these kind of new products. These professionals are only by exception people in their twenties. It is addressed directly to people above 30 years old, but who do not want to be associated by their wearing as being traditional and moderate.
If this diagnostic was correct, why then choosing very young and inexperienced models, instead of people similar to my suggested target of 30-45 years old people? Because if they had chosen established models they kill all the shocking effects produced in this video. If you eliminate the shock, you block the viral diffusion.
The target was 30-45 years old, active, wealthy, loving the newest fashion proposals, and that were not customers of brand Loewe because they considered it suitable for older people with more traditional approaches, being thus unfit to manifest their own values.
Young between 20-35 are not the main target of the campaing, but are nevertheless an interesting segment for Loewe new brand position. They are not main target because the proportion of young that have the personal financial ability to buy Loewe luxury products is lower (consider that the bags appearing in the ad are sold for 1,600 euros (2,100 US$). They may become costumers more via gifts. They are nevertheless an interesting target segment for Loewe, as each young using a Loewe Oro bag is confirming elder customers that Loewe is a trendy brand loved by luxury fashion victims.
Youger teenager people are not direct target of the marketing campaign, as they are not the natural users. It is interesting for Loewe to attract them not directly as customers, but as brand followers. This increases the aspirational profile of the brand, and increases the desire of being a Loewe user when reaching the appropriate age.
What about people older than 50 years? They are not of course the target searched with this campaign. Loewe assume that they can even become the victims of the new brand positioning. Some traditional and loyal Loewe customers will feel shame with this new extravangant approach and will feel uncomfortable by using in public a bag that has changed its public perceived values. Some of them will stop buying Loewe products, at least in the short term. But we cannot exclude –at all- that many other mature and aged Loewe users will love the new reputation created around Loewe (once that the strong direct negative reaction of the ad passes away). They will become the users of a luxury product that now is also accepted and appreciated by younger customers. They will find that their tastes and fashion choices are now recognized as trendy. Nevertheless, Loewe does not want that mature customers wear products designed for younger segments, in order to ensure that opinion see in practice that Loewe is not anymore the brand for old wealthy people.
Loewe is now (20 March 2012) starting to expand the use of the Oro collection 2012, now that the social media enters into more clam waters. They have included a selection of photos of the models. They have proposed also a collage of photos that provides the interpretation of what Loewe considers is the lifestyle of a Oro 2012 bag owner. It represents the profile of someone with extremely wealthy conditions in a classy but young atmosphere. We still mantain our key of lecture of the marketing campaign.
You can contrast our diagnostic with the official statements by Stuart Vevers, Loewe Artistic Director, concerning his views for the luxury brand for the next decade:
As ostentation is replaced with a taste for the refined, Loewe will continue to focus on its core values of creativity and craftsmanship exemplified by the most sumptuous bags, prestigious leather and suede clothing for men and women, silken scarves carrying tales of Spain and, of course, all the promise of its famous gifts in beautiful packaging. Retail design, starting with the Marqués de Dos Aguas store in Valencia, is now the responsibility of international architect, Peter Marino. “This is a great time to reinterpret the DNA of a noble House to which so many Spaniards have a deep emotional attachment”, says Stuart Vevers. “There’s a pulled together, almost aristocratic sexiness to Spain that I’m trying to do a provocative take on. I want people wherever they are to say, ‘That’s really Loewe!’ “Everything starts with a delight to the senses. Loewe – where one touch tells the story”.
Loewe had different options to reach the desired main target of customers (30-45 years old), selling a credible message. The option chosen was through social media channels.
3. About the channel used to present the campaign
If Loewe wanted to reach specifically the segment 30-45 female and male interested in luxury fashion products they may have considered fashion and women’s magazines. This choice had two incovenients. The first one, is that it circumscribes the impact of the campaign and the new brand proposal to local Spanish newspapers. We will come back later to this point, but it is also clear that one of the strategic goals pursued by LVMH is to build Loewe Madrid as the brand of the group with strong Spanish flavour, but with international reach and awareness. Launching an international campaing in fashion magazines in several countries presenting a Spanish brand with limited visibility would be extremely costly and probably poorly effective. The second inconvenient of using the natural channel of specialised magazines is that they are also bought by women older than 50 years. Those are the traditional target of Loewe, and is the one that could feel more dissatisfaction and perplexity by a rebranding movement that imply a modification of the secular brand values. If the marketing strategy can also limit the exposure to their loyal traditional customers, it is better, and this is not possible going to fashion magazines.
The option of a short commercial to be aired in TV suffers from similar shortcomings. The 20 seconds format imposes a lot of creative limitations for sending in an effective way that now Loewe is a trendy luxury brand non anchored anymore in discretion and tradition. If this is made using a shocking message in order to capture attention, thi may affect adversely current loyal but old fashioned customers.
And there was the option finally chosen, to tell all the story exclusively using social media platforms. The content was perfectly designed to always stay in the social media sphere. By creating a more than three minutes commercial, Loewe prevents that the entire ad goes to television in TV News. It obliges all interested people in watching it to access it through the YouTube platform. This ensures that the natural medium of diffusion remains in the social media world, mainly by Facebook and Twitter comments, reactions and recommendations to view it and to enter into the debate about its content.
The benefits of maintaining the diffusion of the marketing campaign in the social media world is that, if successful, it ensures that it will reach all the desired new target, as Twitter and Facebook is predominantly used by people in the range 15-50 years. Also, the active successful established professional who are the main target are heavy users of all these social media tools. Finally, social media is the platform that prevents the more its access by older people with traditional values who are the main asset as current consumers of the brand. In conclusion, Loewe made the perfect choice of the platform to present the new collection, and designed properly the commercial in order to ensure that it remained always in this social media platform.
Once the platform to communicate the new collection of bags is made, the marketing or communication department is asked to propose the best way to ensure that it actually reach the target objective.
4. About the genre chosen in the commercial.
We have the target, the channel, and now we need to consider the genre chosen by the marketing department to explain the story that Loewe is from now on a luxury brand perfectly suited by active and professional successful women and men loving trendy and quality fashion proposals.
The choice of the genre required two main components: it needed to provoke bold reactions (positive or negative) in order to engage the viral process to ensure that the new main target is reached. The second element of the genre is that once the main target is reached, their ability to appreciate the brand values linked to the luxury product that they are discovering (the bags) is not punished by the characteristics of the envelope (the ad).
There are many companies that have exploited directly social media virality as direct and unique channel for a marketing move. Those are the marketing campaign based in Youtube videos that are longer than one minute. These videos can be watched only in the social media platforms (in Youtube or in embed formats in Facebook, Twitter or blogs) and cannot go off-line. If the videos produce strong reaction, talking and sharing social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, sms, whatsapp) ensure the viral diffusion, ‘for free’.
Loewe could consider different genres when designing the campaign with the mission to reach the 30-45 years old audience.
In any case, the genre chosen, either through positive or negative responses, require the following reactions:
· I have seen an incredible video. I am under shock
· Hey, watch this video, it’s simply amazing
· What’s going on with this story that all people is talking about?
· Hell! I have not yet watched the video! Please tell me where I can watch it.
· I thought that you all were exaggerating, but now that I have watched the video I see that it is true.
First option is to create strong a positive reactions.
Motivational and inspirational videos
They create personal positive emotions, that people want to share with friends.
The problem with this approach is that attention and ractions are all focused in the story itself as a whole. The product or the brand never enter into the story as one of the leading protagonists. This is a suitable strategy for creating an association of values to strenghen the perceived values of a brand. But they are not useful for presenting a rebranding strategy willing to present a divorce with previous brand values.
See for instances the cases of Nike and Pantene.
Nike
Pantene
Videos showing extraordinary performances and talent
These videos produce admiration and amazement. In some cases, the brand can be used as theme of the story, and is used as a way to stress one of the brand values. In other cases there is no clear connection with the company brand values, and the viral diffusion simple enhances brand visibility and awareness, linked to something viewed as positive.
This strategy could be followed by Loewe. But the problem of using ‘an amazing video’ is that there are clear risks that the main goal pursued by the luxury company could be lost: its is difficult to design an amazing positive video telling the story that Loewe is no more an old fashion brand.
There is here a couple of examples.
First one is by Honda, and it finds a perfect match between the video content and brand values.
There are two other cases, with weakest relation with corporate brand values. One if them refers to a luxury brand.
GM Sonic with OK Go
NTT Docomo
Hermès
Second option is to provoke controversy by generating natural negative reactions combined by some positive reactions by others. Here the debate ensures the viral diffusion. If negative reactions strongly prevail, calls for a company amendment and retirement of the controversial ad also work as activators of the viral diffusion.
We can consider the following options:
Controversy by scandal
Designing a campaign directly tailored to create outrage by many viewers, selecting for instance sexist or obscene, making spoof of a respected and cherished personality or institution
This is an option followed by companies that suffer from inherent bad or poor reputation due to the fact that the sector industry itself is poorly considered (gambling, low cost products and services, sex related industry). It is followed also in some cases by companies whose main target is young costumers and chose a brand strategy based in transgression and provocation.
This strategy has been followed in many cases by companies like Ryannair, Bennetton, Ashley Madison (infidelity contacts).
This option was not suitable for Loewe. It needs to maintain its luxury brand status. Also, a scandalous commercial would not be perceived as a credible proposal coming from a brand perceived as a traditional one. Finally, Loewe is not looking for young customers, but for well established people.
Controversy by extravagance
We have explained in the previous post that we identify extravagance as the option clearly chosen by Loewe with its commercial. All the components of the commercial script are grounded in creating an atmosphere of extravagance.
Extravagance is a reasonable option for a brand in the fashion industry or in the arts. It is a common practice, specially in the haute-couture catwalks presenting season collections of fashion firms. Even if extravagance is shocking, it is considered coherent for a fashion brand, and it is well appreciated by many fashion lovers, even if common public uses to react negatively to extravagance.
The interesting thing of extravagance is that it is always linked to the brand profile of the product or the artists. Extravagance is made by using the brand in an unexpected way. Using extravagance implies that reactions to the ad will all be linked to Loewe and to values connected with extravagance. This option ensures that the controversy will be focused in the brand and in the brand values proposed in the ad.
We have plenty of cases of firms and artists using extravagance. The first artist using extravagance in a systematic way is probably Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali.
One of the current references in extravagance is Lady Gaga. Here some of the well know extravagant proposals.
In both cases, extravagant personal branding are coherent with their artistics values.
Showing the models with the bags over the head is a soft Dalí-Lady Gaga strategy.
As explained in detail in the previous post, extravagance is the key of lecture of all the content of the commercial. It is extravagant that a company depicts itself as old fashion, and it is extravagant that these statements are made by young models wearing Loewe products. It is extravagant that modern looking models (piercings, half skinhead) do not say scandalous or provocative comments, but instead very naive and banal comments about love and life. It is extravagant that the music chosen for a fashion ad is a circus-like rithm.
Extravagance is designed to create controversy. There will be negative reaction among people that see is as pure provocation and lack of good taste and moderation, which corresponds in some cases with people attached to traditional aesthetic values. Extravagance will be appreciated by those seeing behind it values like innovation, creativity, audacity, authenticity, independency, courage, exclusivity. Those people loving extravagant proposals don’t care or are event motivated by the opposition and negative reaction of the majority.
All this reflection lead us to conclude that extravagance was the perfect match chosen by Loewe to announce a dramatic shift of brand values.
Extravagance is an aesthetic genre. It can be used by designers, artists and actors. Playing extravagance is simply a role, not the reality. This is why I was so amazed to see so many observers reacting to Loewe ad by insulting directly the models accusing them of being stupid, immature, subnormal or cretins. This naïve reaction is like insulting the actor playing the role of an assassin. I was really surprised to find this kind of reactions in newspapers and professional blogs.
It is sure of course that even if Loewe was looking for creating controversy as means to create viral marketing, they did not expect to create unanimity against the ad. There was only one camp in the controversy, as only a really small share of viewers manifested publicly that they liked the commercial.
5 Communications Crisis at Loewe: Crisis, What Crisis?
Loewe publicly disclosed the long video presenting the Oro 2012 campaign by 13 March late in the evening. By 14 March early in the morning it became Twitter Trending Topic. It was soon evident that it would become viral as the immediate reaction of almost all people watching the video was a call effect to all personal contacts ‘Hey! Look at this. Incredible!’. It was soon clear that the reaction was almost unanimously negative. Loewe Corporate Communication and/or Reputation team had time enough to execute the ‘Contingency Plan’ for an ad designed to become controversial that was becoming too controversial and negative. If Loewe had not planned the ‘Plan B’ ex ante, it had all the day to design it, as Loewe was the issue concentrating all social media attention, and soon after also traditional media.
How did Loewe react to the reputation crisis? by doing nothing.
Before showing you the communications crisis strategy followed by Loewe, I would like to refer to some examples of communications crisis cases that we have considered in this blog.
Case FIFA. Bribery in Bidding Process: – FIFA took some weak disciplinary measures against top FIFA officials alleged of corruption. Instead of acknowledging that FIFA structure suffered from governance problems, they defended that their standards were good enough. Our measurement of media reaction shows that FIFA lost reputation.
Case Grand Resort Pigeon Forge, TN – The Dirtiest Hotel in America according to Tripadvisor. Grand Resort denied the validity of Tripadvisor’s users reviews. The Hotel management tried even to show that their cleanliness standards were excellent. They eventually sued Tripadvisor. We show in our analysis that Grand Resort was missing the opportunity to improve quality service by discarding the valuable information provided by angry customers.
Case Bankia. Becoming a Twitter TT due to a Housing Eviction- Activists succeeded in showing to Twitter users the problems of a family about to be evicted from a house with a unpaid mortgage to Bankia, creating the hashtag #HoyEsBankia. Reaction by Bankia was to stop the judicial order execution. No comment at all to this event was made by the bank. Bankia succeeded by its decisions, more than with declarations, to stop the viral social media crisis.
Case FedEx. Reacting to video of a worker throwing a computer – FedEx showed an incredible fast reaction, as they upload a video by a top representative from FedEx presenting excuses to customers. The video was positively rated by viewers and reaches half million views. Complete analysis of the impact of this communications crisis is pending.
Case AFLAC. Disgusting jokes about tsunami in Japan by your ‘voice’ (or download pdf version)– The actor giving voice to the duck, the mascot of AFLAC published some tweets with awful jokes about tsunami in Japan. Reaction from AFLAC was bold and immediate. They fired within hours the actor. Our media content analysis shows that the reputation of the company and the duck was preserved.
Case Blackberry. Outage November 2011. We show that the poor communications crisis management repeated the same mistakes made in April 2007 outage.
Case McDonalds. #McDStories or how to create a Bashtag – We commented this case within the analysis of a special promotion made by Telepizza. A Twitter conversation launched by McDonalds become soon a viral conversation against McDonalds. McDonlads stopped the promotion of the hashtag within two hours. McDonals official acknowledged that they were learning how to use social media.
Case Mourinho Real Madrid. Press Conference Accusing UEFA. Real Madrid lost the first leg of the UEFA Champions League 2-0 at home, against FC Barcelona. Real Madrid coach Mourinho considered that the red card for Pepe was determinant in the result. He accused UEFA to complot in favour of FC Barcelona interests. Real Madrid increased worldwide media impact of this affaire by launching new accusations against FC Barcelona. Our media content analysis shows that this controversy was damaging international brand reputation of Real Madrid. Later Real Madrid took a communications crisis of silence after Mourinho was sanctioned by his statements.
Case Saxo Bank. Using a sponsoree scandal to strengthen your brand values (or upload the pdf version). Alberto Contador was condemned to two years ban of competition for consuming doping substances. We show that his naming sponsor took advantage of this crisis to present themselves as a financial institution supporting its customers in both good and bad times, as they were doing with the cycling team. We show how this strategy has been praised, specially in Spain.
We learn that in general, communications crisis based on denial or in inaction tend to unsolve the crisis and tarnish corporate reputation.
This inaction seems to be the strategy followed by Loewe management. There were no statements at all during the two days when the social media controversy peaked.
We have mentioned in our previous post that things went not exactly as expected, as Loewe took some decisions in reaction to the crisis. It decided soon to disclose the access to comments in the videos of the campaign located in their official Youtube channel. They also decided to withdraw a video commercial about the perfume ‘Aire’ that was initially upload in the aftermath of the crisis. Finally, they moved the controversial video away from the main page of the Youtube channel.
El Mundo was able to get comments by the artistic director of the video campaign, Luis Venegas. He manifested surprise that people reacted shocked by ‘spontaneous’ and very candid comments about love.
Sobre las opiniones de los chicos de la campaña, Venegas cuenta: “Son frases que han dicho ellos. No hay un guión, pero me sorprende que pueda crear problemas que alguien manifieste que es guay sentirse enamorado. ¿Alguien opina lo contrario?”. El Mundo, 14 March 2012
There was an additional statements, revealing: my task and the command I received was not to create a sociological study about Spanish youth, but simply to show bags from a fashion firm. He felt happy and proud with the results obtained.
The models were apparently no allowed to comment about the design of the campaign. El País got some comments from the majority of them amateur models.
Maria Rosenfeld pointed out that ‘they have obtained what they were looking for, and well more than expected, as all people is talking about this ad’ She ads, ‘this was a joke. I am never combed like this, I don’t speak like this. It was funny. Martín Rivas said that ‘the result of the campaign is excellent, as it is for Loewe products’ (El País, 14 March 2012)
The critics continued during the following days. As all jokes and insults were addressed to the models and their comments, some analysts commented that Loewe was lacking of sense of responsibility by the absence of official reaction.
In accordance with this approach, the media confirm that Loewe refuses to provide an statement judging the results of the campaign (El Economista, 15 March 2012). There was no retraction or signs of attrition from the company.
Of course, this absence of reaction in the midst of a severe crisis has been criticised as another corporate mistake.
There is only a reason that may you to choose corporate silence: the denial of the existence of a reputation crisis. It is hard to accept this if you are a luxury brand and the commercial that you have just launched receives 95% of negative rating. But if the company plan the strategy a controversy by extravagance, rejection and ridicule is the price to pay for reaching your strategic goals. It is clear that these days are uncomfortable for all people working at Loewe. But if all was planned, you do not need to react and try to change the movement of the social media waves.
Then came the first official reaction linked to the controversial campaing, again by using social media platform.
Loewe posted a new entry about Oro Collection 2012 in both Twitter and Facebook official accounts.
When I saw it, I personally considered (and tweeted it) as a brilliant communication crisis statement.
What was Loewe telling as communication crisis with this message?
My understanding is that after their silences Loewe was confirming that the social media tsunami and its impact in Loewe brand was not a reputation crisis but a rebranding desired crisis. And than the new brand emerging after this crisis was not a provocative brand oriented to young consumers. The new Loewe aspires to become a trendy brand to be shown by customers and that all people identify it: ‘Look, it’s a Loewe’. And that the ones using proudly Loewe products are neither old women, not young alternative people, but active women professionally succesful, loving fashion, trends, elegance and quality. This is a brand for Angelina Jolie, Leighton Meester and Kylie Minogue, and by all other people in their age (not in the tweenties) admiring these role models.
Some top members of Loewe management were obliged to answer some questions to journalists when the firm presented the new refurbished flagship store in Barcelona.
Accepting this interpretation of the message provides a strong confirmation of the hypothesis and basic lines of analysis proposed in this post. Loewe has decided to take a ‘once in a life’ decision concerning the brand position of Loewe, and this required to destroy many (not all) well established perceptions about Loewe brand values. This taks could be reached only by creating a tremendous controversy.
This is Lisa Montague, CEO at Loewe. According to El Mundo, Montague confirms that loewe is in a process of creating a new brand profile; there is a strategy of rebranding, and there is a viral marketing strategy. They do not come yet to conclusions about the impact of the campaign. ‘Time will tell us’. (El Mundo Orbyt, 21 March 2012).
There is another statement by Stuart Vevers, Artistic Director. He commented that even if not having Twitter, he knows all things that have been said about the campaing. ‘Loewe is changing. Of course I have an opinion (about the impact of the campaign), but my mouth is closed’ (El Mundo, 21 March 2012)
If the communication strategy, top managers and the Twitter message shown tell us that Loewe does not see any particular problem in how the campaign is affecting its brand reputation, this imply that even after the terrible attacks by social media users, Loewe considers the marketing strategy not as a complete failure, but probably as its opposite.
So, let’s start proving with facts that this risky marketing decision was not a complete failure, but it contains all the seed to become a tremendous and brilliant success.
As this Part II was getting definitively too long, I have moved the analysis on how we measure the positive impact of this crisis to a new entry in this post. Please visit
*** Note: As the analysis of Case Loewe is becoming too long, it is currently organized in three parts. This is the structure of the three posts in this blog.
3. Monitoring the reaction of viewers after the crisis.
4. Reaching the desired target, as never before
5. A substantial increase of people loving Loewe (+39% or +157%)
6. New targeted customers discovering old Loewe products… and loving it
7. Reaching International Markets, As Never Before
8. The role of parodies and spoofs: parodies of a parody
9. Tangible Benefits: Increase of Twitter Followers of 21% in one day
10. Tangible Benefits: A Sharp Increase Of Loewe Followers’ Engagement in Twitter and The Social Media
11. New Dimension of Loewe in Social Media Brand Visibility
12. Sharing My Loewe Experience. Photos Upload By Twitter Users
Part I: Loewe Colección Oro 2012 – The Aftermath of a Devastating Ad
Starting presenting this analysis just 24h after Twitter and social media in Spain entered into one of its viral waves due to a shocking event. This time was not an scandal originated by personal or institutional misbehaviour. It was simply the reaction to the Youtube video ad showing the new collection of bags and complements by leading Spanish luxury brand, Loewe.
This is a 3 minutes, 27 seconds main video. There are some complementary videos showing developped stories about the models appearing in the main video.
The content of the video became very quickly a Twitter trending topic (TT), reaching top position by mid day, 14 March 2012. Visits to the video propelled. Online newspapers were obliged to react to this social media excitement presenting the fashion campaign and the controversy it created, early in the afternoon. It reached national TV news programs. The increase of traffic by people attracted by curiosity was soo intense that Loewe internet site went down, by 5pm, and was not available during the day.
There was no reaction at all from Loewe management cocnerning the ongoing controversy. Artistic director answered some questions about the goals of the publicity, that appeared in some newspapers in the afternoon.
This extraordinary marketing case is also attracting the attention of many academics and professionals related to the luxury brands industry, fashion, marketing, branding and rebranding, social media, PR management, communications crisis.Some early reflections are already emerging. Many deep analysis will be published in the newxt few days. Our aim is to contribute to the understanding of this case mainly by providing to interested people quantitative analysis concerning media and social media impact of this reputation crisis. We will provide explanation and interpretation of the empirical results. We do not pretend to act as specialist in anyone of the mentioned fields of interests, by judging the ad itself. We will try to let the numbers talk for us.
We will show in this post that first evaluation of damages show an extraordinary negative impact of this audacious ad. But we will show that behind the apparent catastrophic marketing movement, we identify a lot of positive elements and benefits for Loewe as a brand (again, based in data analayis, not in personal subjective perceptions).
Before explaining the the source of the controversy that ignited social media community in Spain, we need to present the message as proposed by Loewe itself.
Loewe Collection Oro Message: Loewe, did you say traditional and outdated?
There is currently a lot of discussion about what Loewe was looking for with this per se controversial marketing campaign. If the scandal and strong negative reaction that they have created was a complete unintended mistake or, by contrast, it was perfectly planned.
There is a corporate statement presenting the ad, as text presenting the video in the official page. It is as follows:
The colour Gold is one of Loewe’s signature elements. The characteristic golden beige is directly associated with what is quintessentially Spanish.
Madrid’s special light has been a constant source of inspiration for Loewe, and even today the city is a fascinating melting pot welcoming both young people in pursuit of their dreams, and those just looking to have a good time.
This 2012 collection celebrates this spirit. Discover LOEWE’S NEW GOLDEN AGE and let us take you on a tour fusing Madrid’s majestic landmarks with new trends which captivate the city.
The originality of this video is that is not just models present the luxury brand products, but it is also the models talking about themselves in an apparent unclear direction.
We have the chance that they have provided subtitles in English in the video, and this allows us to capture all the verbal messages channeled in the video.
We present first the statements opening the video. They are a combination of the answers to the questions, ‘What does Loewe mean to you’, and ‘What is your first souvenir about the brand Loewe’. Here, all the statements:
My personal reaction is that the company is providing little space for interpreation, as the opening statements don’t suffer from ambiguity.
We are confronted from the very beginning with a shocking and provocative message. While the models praise some brand values that are positive, like ‘class’, ‘leather’, ‘I love it’, they directly attack and tarnish Loewe reputation, labelling as an old fashion brand, traditional, which is well suited just for old ladies, really old ladies (‘my great grandmother’s coat’!). We find a luxury brand turning into derision itself.
The amazing thing is that this message it told, s oximoron, by young models wearing and showing their bags. Those Loewe products are part of their lives as young fashion victims. They represent different fashion styles, some of them marginal. This introductory scene of the story is closed by the brand logo, showing alternately its origins (1846) and current times (2012).
This introduction provides the hermeneutics of the whole story and message proposed by this marketing campaign. I really do not see other leading messages behind the ad. Loewe is announcing that the new Loewe Madrid 2012 brand is born. Loewe maintains its roots and core values of elegance, quality, luxury and leather that pertain to Loewe Madrid 1846. This is still Spanish fashion style, Loewe Madrid. But Loewe is no more (or no only) my mother’s luxury brand. From now on, this is also the luxury brand for active people under 40 loving trends, with character, ambition and personality.
This is what I read from the opening section of the ad.
The video continues as an apparently typical fashion production, by a collection of moments and images of the young models posing with the Oro Collection bags. As said, the modification from a typical fashion script, is that the video is dotted by ‘spontaneous’ personal reflections about life by models. This is where all the controversy comes from. Marketing director has chosen ‘naive’ statements about their vision of things that by its content have launched the debate about this Loewe campaign. As we will show later, the vast majority of the reactions about what the young models say is negative, showing repulse, disgust, outragement or sense of the ridicolous.
In fact, all the controversy has been completely centered on how stupid the comments by models were, and if they represented or not young people in Spain, or even if it tarnishes the image of Spain.
Now, you can check the content of the video, and judge by yourself if your reaction to it is negative or not.
We pick a sample of images and candid statements by models
Many people commenting and attacking the marketing proposal accuse Loewe of being incredible stupid for not being aware of how stupid the selected model comments are. According to many, these young people reflect vacuity, immaturity, lack of intelligence and good taste, an extreme and repulsive sense of being ‘pijo’ (something like I-am-so-happy-with-my-wealthy-looking-style-and-way-of-life).
The question arise automatically. Please, do you really think that nobody at Loewe, a luxury brand and management known by its traditional and conservative style, were aware that these statements would provoke strong reactions of disapproval?
So, it is impossible to deny that one of the complementary goals of the design of their campaign was to create a very negative shock among many viewers disliking high class and luxury products, the ostentation approach from wealthy people or the adverse reaction provocked by bland and flawed remarks.
Select, for each one of the following cases: Option A: Loewe pursued a traditional ad wanting to show their bags following their well known values of tradition, ellegance, stilysh and Spanish. Option B: Loewe has chosen a strong rebranding strategy towards trendy luxury brands; they need that people beyond loyal customers learn and believe that Loewe is no anymore an old fashioned and conservative and traditional luxury brand.
Greeting, not with the free hand, but with the bag
Young people saying banalities about ageing.
A modern looking model making naive statements about loving.
A punky model using a deeply outdated expression.
Using the bag as a hat.
Covadonga O’Shea, President of ISEM Fashion Business School of Universidad de Navarra commented that some people are naturally gifted to dress elegantly. Those not having this talent can exploit extravagance. Both elegance and extravagance are positive values in the fashion industry.
My understaning is that Loewe has chosen the strategy of extravagance as tool for presenting and marketing the new brand promise. All the content of the video is packed of contradictions and paradoxes designed to create reaction. Reaction of opposition for the vast majority. Extravagance has also the virtue to create reaction of interest and attraction for a minority praising extravagance and all its connected values. If you are comfortable by fashion proposals based in extravagance, you do not care about what other people think about your choices.
Look at the defintions of extravagant by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, to check if they fit with the content and philisophy of the ad:
Why would a renowned and very classical luxury brand deliberately choose a marketing strategy that provokes necessarily strong reactions, expecting to create adverse reaction from the vast majority of viewers an even from their own natural public? There is only one answer (if we exclude this Option A that all this happened by an horrendous mistake based on misknowledge of human being behaviour from marketing professionals): they were directly looking for creating a controversy as necessary means and channel to reach the new circles outside the traditional customers and lovers of Loewe brand.
Loewe took the bet to create a brand crisis in order to ensure that the inception of the new brand they were proposing reached its new public, still unaware of Loewe as brand for top-of-mind choices.
Creating a brand reputation crisis is a risky game, an extremely risky one. You know when, why and how a crisis erupts, but you never know how will it finish and how beneficial or damaging would be the effects.
I am persuaded that Loewe assumed and consciously launched a brand crisis. Did they evaluate correctly the extent of it and its actual direction?
The goal of this post is to provide some quantitative analysis of the impact of this campaign. The profile and mission of our blog is to provide measurement based in media and social media analysis. We try to proof that measuring the available information is an extremely powerful tool for understanding crisis and eventually provide useful tools for managing brand reputation.
Measuring the extent of the negative reaction to Loewe’s video.
As anticipated, Loewe provoked a social media turmoil that captured attention and lasted the whole day. Right now we are in the ending direct waves of the controversy, as it is still a hot topic in social media. We will provide later measurement in terms of quantity and visibility of the campaign. But before, we present information concerning how negatively this ad has been received.
The amazing thing of a social media driven crisis is that you have direct access to all the relevant information, live, minute by minute. This availability of information is a blessing for corporate reputation managers and for marketing and branding teams. Identification and measurement of the impact and stakeholders reaction of events outside the social media world is much more complicated, expensive and less reliable.
Teams at Loewe were perfectly aware that they were about to launch a social media bomb. They should also have designed the protocol to monitor it and plan what to do in the different possible scenarios.
What happened in practice is that soon was clear that the overwhelming reaction of people watching the video was negative. Everyone has this direct information as Youtube viewers reaction is directly and publicy available, through the like/dislike voting, plus the content analysis of comments posted by registered viewers.
We have monitored the evolution of positive-negative ratings since the inception of the crisis, when just 40 votes were sent, by 10am 14 March 2012. The evolution of this index is shown in the figure below. The share of negative votes was 75%. Soon the share of negative rates increased to almost 90% of all votes.
Were artistic director and marketing team laughing observing this results, as outraged reaction by viewers was needed to create viral development? Probably not. Too much is too much, and people at Loewe wer surely surprised by the extent of the negative reactions. Soon, and emergency measure (planned or not) was activated. Loewe decided to disable the comments in the video from their own corporate Youtube channel. This was before 10h30 am, when there were just 24 comments. If you check this information in Youtube, you will observe that the counting is stopped at that number.
The problem was that there existed another video uploaded from an external source that, of course, did not block the comments option. The flow of negative comments continued during of the reputation crisis, nourrishing the viral effect and the negative mood against Loewe proposal.
The share of negative ratings reached a peak of 95.2% by 7pm. It has decreased somehow since then, but one day after it still reach 94.3% negative ratings. This result is truly extraordinary. Such an unanimity is completely unusual. There are almost 100% of negative votes for misleading Youtube videos driving traffic with fake titles not corresponding with actual content. But it is hard to find a similar degree of negative reaction from videos with content intentionally provided by corporations or artists. Consider for instance that the infamous video with the song ‘Friday‘ by Rebecca Black reaches a negative share of 80.6% (It is true that the initial version had a highest negative ratio, but has been withdrawn. The popular but critizised song by Justin Bieber, ‘Baby‘, counts with 67.6% negative votes. There is a video from another of these promoted startlettes that approached to Loewe’s score: ‘O.M.G.’, by Jena Rose, with 92.6%.
Negative consensus against Loewe publicity proposal was not a matter of manipulation by a given group (trolls). Negative ratings are similar and consistent in all videos uploaded showing the ad. They came from an open source, as Twitter was the channel el viral diffusion of the video: all people for and angainst the video had free access to react.
Another complementary information is gathered thanks to teh fact that LOEWE has upload individual videos foe each one of the models of the marketing campaign. In their videos, they talk and explain their views… an they continue to show the LOEWE bags. These additional videos provide a very useful information. We can check the reaction against each one of them. Like this it is possibel to identify if the massive negative reception of the campaign is due to the role of a single disgusting model, or is rather an refusal to all the artistic concept.
Again, the results emerging from the figure below are revealing. This is not an opposition against a single model, its a strong disapproval to all aspects of the ad. All videos receive a negative rating share above 90%, with the exception of Martín Rivas video. Martín Rivas is a young actor appearing in TV series well appreciated by many young people (‘El Internado’). This is rather a global failure in terms of public opinion acceptance. The videos are all available at Loewe official Youtube channel.
This means a brand reputation crisis, by all standards. Even if marketing responsibles were not fully aware of how exceptional was the negative reaction to the video, they would surely be somehow nervous about the evolution of the events. A bet is always a bet.
Things did not run extactly as marketing team expected. We have a clear indirect proof. LOEWE upload a new video in its official Youtube channel in the afternoon. It was ‘Loewe AIRE Sensual Spot’. It announced a new parfum. The style of this ad was again rooted in classical elegance, with a dancer, in a black and white production. Launching this ad in the midst of a tourmoil showing a different marketing profile had little sense. The launching of the video was planned well before. It was withdrawn by the company just few hours ago, after a couple of dozens of views. The company attention was placed otherwise. (UPDATE 16 March: The video is back, two days later. Now it is just ‘AIRE Loewe Spot‘. Another lab test for measuring the impact of new LOEWE brand perception in the valoration of new ads and products).
We have the context and the global perception of the crisis. Next step that we propose is to provide elements to evaluate how intense was the crisis measured by social media impact.
Viral Diffusion Process: Measuring the Evolution of Video Views
This crisis was created by Loewe using social media tools. We count with the means to track and monitor the evolution of this crisis inside the main open social media spheres.
An event affected by a viral diffusion process is driven simultaneously by the complementary impact of different social media sources. In order to facilitate the presentation of the results, we will show the impact of this crisis separatedly in each social media platform.
We show first the impact experienced in the platform that acted as the primary source, that is YouTube. The video and its content is the required step that all people should experience before interacting and becoming another activating agent of this crisis.
We present in the following figure the evolution of the number of views of the ‘Loewe Oro Collection 2012′ video, in an hourly base. These numbers include the views of the two main videos used to watch the controversial ad. We do not include here the collateral videos proposed by Loewe. We do not include neither the parodies that emerged already in the afternoon of 14 March 2012. We will come back later commenting the role of these parodies.
The results shown in the graph indicate that number of views exploded soon, by 11am. During all afternoon number of views oscillated between 15.000 and 35.000 per hour. Massive attention decreased simply because entering into late night hours. Today there was still a sustained interest in vieweing the controversial video, but in a rather steady stage, between 5.000 and 15.000 visits per hour. The processus of sustained increase of interest was reached yesterday in the evening. But our results show that this is not a one day event: amount of visits today were far away from being marginal in comparison with the previous day. This means that the video will receive substantial addition of views in the incoming days.
We present in the next figure the evolution of total Youtube video views, based in the data presented in the previous figure.
The infamous ad reached the 100.000 views mark by 2pm; 250.000 by 9pm. It closed the first crisis day with 350.000 visits. One day after, it was broken the one half million views barrier.
These are fabolous numbers. We have shown before that each one of these visits meant basically a negative reaction against the content of the ad proposed by Loewe. The figure itself is impressive. But it is useful to provide elements of comparison to help to measure the extent of the reputation crisis.
How serious are 500.000 video views with negative reviews for Loewe brand equity in Youtube?
Half a million video views in a couple of days is something impressive. But more information is needed in order to assess the impact of this controversial campaign in Loewe global brand perception.
We count with available means to provide perspective. It consists in comparing this value with current presence of brand Loewe in Youtube.
We analyse first the impact of the last video in comparison with all other videos upload by Loewe. Loewe counts with its official corporate channel. The channel was created in May 2010. Since then Loewe has upload 72 videos. To evaluate the imapct of the new advertising campaign, we include only the controversial videos inside the official channel. As explained, it includes the main one plus nino other complementary videos presenting the models.
The figure below shows total number of views in Loewe official channel before and three days after the new marketing campaign. As it can be appreciated, total views have jumped from 121.000 views to almost 600.000 two days after (and counting). The channel has multiplied its size almost by five.
This huge impact has also an effect in terms of the brand profile of the company, at least in the short term. The explosive marketing campaign referred exclusively to bags, the Oro Collection 2012. We show in the two figures below the composition of brand profile of Loewe in Youtube, based in video content, before and after the current campaign.
Before the Oro 2012 ad, the main content associated to Loewe was parfums, due to the popular ad by Spanish matador Cayetano Rivera. Bags represented 15% of the content vwatched in Youtube official channel. Right now, in the aftermath of the current crisis, bags represent 82% of all views. This a strong brand product recomposition in the short term. Time will say if the other components grow again to reach precrisis levels.
Previous figures show the massive impact of the current crisis in the portfolio of watched videos from the official channel. They all refer to visits. We have also shown before that reactions to new videos were unanimously negative. We can then also measure the impact of the controversy on the global perception of content videos provided by Loewe to costumers and interested people.
The information contained in the following two figures are revealing. We show the share of positive-negative rating to all videos upload in the official Loewe channel before and after the viral impact of the new collection. The transformation of Loewe profile as brand in Youtube is dramatic. Before the new ad, Loewe enjoyed from a 90.6% of positive ratings in all their existing videos posted since May 2010. Three days later, the share of positive ratings drops to 12.6%, due to the massive weight of new launched videos. Yes, we labelled it as devastating ad, and it is so, indeed.
This is not all the Youtube story, as we have just showed the impact of the new ad in the Loewe portfolio from the official channel. There are also all other videos about Loewe upload by third persons and companies. There are many industries for which brand perception is created and evolves by its visual image. This refers to both photos about the brand and videos where the brand is protagonist. Having a strong and dynamic official Youtube channel is a basic branding strategy (not only social media strategy, by really global corporate strategy). If wisely used, the official channel is a tool that the company has to influence brand perception among customers and viewers. Youtube is ultimately the result of Youtube users’ preferences and choices. But the corporations count with the tool of the official channel as mechanism to lead or at least to contribute to the storyline of the brand. Official channel provides some relevant privileges. It allow the company to lanch the videos about products and services, or brand values that they want to promote. They could do it also by diffusiong content outside their channel. But the corporate channel allows you to have some control of the message: they provide an extremely rich information about the reaction of viewers, information valuable for deciding which videos should be promoted in the different online and offline platforms; the company can disable comments if they turn against the interests of the company; it can also simply delete a video if it is not running according to expectations. We have seen that Loewe has used two of these privileges ub the midst of the viral turmoil.
We present now the analysis of the impact of the crisis in the overal brand presence of Loewe in Youtube.
According to our analysis, before the crisis, Loewe controlled some 10% of the content available in Youtube, as shown in the figure below.
As a term of comparison, even if it refers to a completely issue, we find that videos from official channel of political parties in Spain had a marginal role in comparison with total views of videos in Youtube upload by other sources. You can access here the post about social media and general elections in Spain, 20 November 2011..
As for the composition of the content present in Youtube about brand Loewe, we find that the brand visibility is driven by Loewe parfums (85% of all Youtube views). Comparing with the structure of content in official Loewe channel we find that videos about parfums conquer the brand, videos presenting Loewe collections (Catwalk) mantain visibility, while the presence of product and profile ‘Bags’ and ‘Leather’ decrease to marginal size. Loewe in Youtube is dominated by the success of the collection of videos ‘Quizas, quizás, quizás’ about parfum.
As for brand reputation in Youtube, Loewe enjoyed a positive rating of 95.1% votes. This excellent rating is better that the one reached by Loewe official channel videos (90.6%)
Then came the ad, the viral diffusion and the extremely negative viewers’ reaction. Let’s see how the picture has been modified for Loewe as a brand in Youtube, three days after the crisis erupted.
In pure quantitative terms, the reputation crisis has doubled the size of Loewe as a brand in Youtube, as in just three days all existing videos about Loewe have exploded from 1.2 million views to 2.53 million. Consider also that the viral diffusion is not yet dead, and final impact of this add will represent many additional views. It is unquestionable that this video supposed a major milestone in Loewe secular history.
Now after the crisis, the relevance of the official Loewe channel has increased, as it controls now 19% of all videos in Youtube.
As we did with the official channel analysis, we can measure the impact of the ad in the composition of the Loewe portfolio of videos in Youtube, by content. There is a revolution. The weight of parfum related videos decrease to 37%, catwalk moves from 8% to 3%. The new size of Loewe’s bags in brand perception increases to 41% of all videos, compared to the previous 2%.
And a new disgusting content emerges after the crisis. Now Loewe is associated to the videos much feared and hated by corporations: spoofs and parodies using your brand as core element of the script. Now parodies about Loewe ad represent 17% of all content in Youtube. This is self evidently harming for Loewe brand reputation, as it means that in the future people loowing for videos about Loewe will find as leading results some videos making terrible spoofs about the models and products presented by Loewe in the risky ad. Right now, searches about ‘Loewe’ in Youtube propose two parodies among top 5 results.
This huge impact in terms of number of video views has also had a tremendous impact in Loewe brand reputation. Now, only 19.8% of viewers’ ratings are positive. We have counted positive voting on Loewe parodies as negative votes.
We analized recently in this post the case of another reputation crisis created and developed in Youtube. This was the crisis suffered by FedEx. In that case, the crisis was not provoked by the company intentionally. It was generated by the misbehaviour of a FedEx worker delivering (throwing literally) a computer monitor over a fence. In our social media reputation analysis, we found that the crisis had a double negative effect: a direct one linked to the number of viewers of the scandalous video, plus another one induced, due to the fact that all other videos with similar workers misbehaviour previously existing increased substantially. You can check here the analysis. In contrast, we do not observe a contagion effect in this Loewe case: views of Loewe videos and negative ratings are restricted to Oro Collection 2012, and do not affect in any sens all other existing videos.
We have shown in this post the source of the reputation crisis and the measurement of its most direct effect in terms of ad video viewings. We have also analyzed how this marketing campaign has completely modified the band profile of Loewe in Youtube.
Our aim now is to show the dynamics of the viral diffusion crisis through a time-series analysis and a content analysis. We present our analysis and results in a new separate post in this blog.
Telepizza is a Spanish based food company, specialized in delivery and takeaway service.
Telepizza was founded in Spain in 1988. It opens its first store in Madrid. Pioneers into the home delivery pizza segment in Spain. In 1996 goes public through an IPO. In 2006 Telepizza is no longer public and becomes part of private capital
According to company source, ‘Telepizza is the leader in delivery service and takeaway in Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Chile, Poland and Central America.’ In 1999 it had a market share of 62% in the Spanish pizzas market.
In 2010 Telepizza has more than 1.183 stores worldwide.
As many other fast food and delivery and take away services, Telepizza is very actively in the marketing strategy based in promotions. Basically all commercials are based in presenting promotions. See for instance Teleppiza’s Youtube Channel videos. A similar appraoch is ised in Facebook Telepizza Wall. As well as for main web site. Twitter is used rather as a channel to interact with costumers.
To ensure that promotions reach target audience, they require aggressive messages to attract attention, pushing to surprise, amusement or curiosity.
An unusual promotion for an unusual day
By mid February Telepizza announced an audacious new promotion: as 29 February 2012 is an unique day happening every four years, so it will be for Telepizza customers. This day they can buy as individual size many pizzas as they want for one euro each (1.3 US$). The normal price without promotions is 11.95 euros.
Telepizza has used in other cases to link a promotion to a specific day, like St. Valentine. Some call this marketing approach as Dayketing.
The promotion was so attractive for Telepizza’s customers that it could create a powerful call effect. My understanding is that in this occasion the message itself was the marketing tool chosen to become the channel to widespread the promotion to new circles. A promotion to create a reaction powerful enough to escape from the circle of traditional Telepizza customers and reach other costumers currently preferring other fast food brands. In other words, the cost of the subsidised pizzas is the price of an indirect ad campaign nourished and developed by customers benefiting from this unusual promotion.
The key element for transforming the promotion into induced publicity is paradoxically to renounce to the core business model. Being basically a home delivery and take away food service, the promotion was restricted only to those buying the products in the company restaurants. This restricted the options for consumers to on restaurant consumption and take away commands. Obliging costumers to go to the stores overcrowding the restaurants or showing to the public the pizza boxes if taken away was the obliged choice to ensure and multiply the visibility of the promotion and Telepizza products. If successful, this marketing campaign should show everyone that there is a lot of Telepizza lovers.
Why are we covering this marketing case in our blog about crisis, media and reputation?
Brand promotions as crisis.
Because when you create an ad campaign designed in purpose to become a viral event, you control as a company the starting point of the storyline, but if you succeed and you marketing idea become a viral phenomenon, the development of the storyline escape completely from the hands of the company. It is taken by social media actors, and public mood may stay attached and friendly to the company, or turn aggressively against the interest of the company.
We have plenty of examples of viral ad campaign launched by companies that turned completely wrong. One recent case that will become an epitome of branding suicide is the Twitter hashtag launched by McDonald’s, #MCDStories, to ask customers to share their best experiences. The hashtag was posted by McDonalds Twitter account by 18 January 2012. It turned quickly as a weapon used to create bloody tweets reproducing and increasing the impact of usual attacks against McDonald’s practices and products (health concerns, labor conditions, quality of the products, preference for rival brands). Twitter is a perfect platform for turning into derision, mockery and subtle or gruesome attacks any kind of otherwise serious items. McDonald’s pulled the campaign within two hours, but the hashtag developed and grew by its own eventually becoming a TT. You know how these kind of risky bets start, but you do not know at all how will they finish, as you do not control the final message. As Forbes Kashmir Hill journalist invented, a hashtag becomes for you a bashtag.
Within two hours, McDonalds pulled #McDStories, saying that the effort “did not go as planned.”
This was a hard price learning experience. “As Twitter continues to evolve its platform and engagement opportunities, we’re learning from our experiences,” Rick Wion, McDonald’s social media director, said in a statement today.
Going back to our Telepizza case, launching a potential viral marketing ad was not without risks. It contained some spicy ingredients. Risk of negative comments could come from:
Those that consider that all kinds of fast food proposals create unhealthy consumption behavior.
Those that consider that Telepizza, like other brand sin the food delivery sector offer low salaries and poor working conditions.
People loving fast food consumption but who prefer rival brands.
People considering that Telepizza offers poor quality products or poor quality delivering services
All these existed, as according to some sources Telepizza does not enjoy an excellent reputation. Even if numbers are not representative, you can check here the results from an Android app about customers’ satisfaction.
The specific profile of the promotion could create tailored negative comments and reactions:
It could reinforce the perception that products are of bad quality, and this is why they are offering them at that price.
In the context of the current severe economic crisis inSpain, reduced promotion prices could lead people to conclude that Telepizza is a greedy company getting extraordinary margins with normal times price of products.
The promotion could create the perception that Telepizza is oriented to poor working class customers and low income. This could create a bad segmentation of costumers, pulling out some people that do not want to be associated to a low income brand.
Of the conditions of the promotion are clearly labelled, faked consumers tend to overreact negatively crying against what they consider a misleading marketing operation.
Some other negative reactions could emerge as a result of the eventual success of the promotion in attracting a lot of pizza lovers.
Some locals could enter into shortage of products and could stop offering the promoted pizzas before 12pm, creating anger among customers.
If the promotion attract a lot of people, it could generate crowd agglomerations and long waiting queues
Tracking the impact of the 29 February events
If the indirect campaign has to run as ideally expected, the mechanisms for amplifying the existence of the extraordinary promotion should come all from social media channels. Main channels for a day-on-day social media viral diffusion are Facebook, Tuenti (a Spanish social media networks similar to Facebook, strongly oriented to young people and teenagers), Twitter and smartphones.
There is no direct way to track smartphone and Tuenti traffic. As for Telepizza, some analysis may be reached by using reactions and comments posted in Telepizza Facebook page. They are not representative of reaction inside Facebook community. The restriction imposed to the access of the content posted by Facebook users limits the utility of this channel for social media impact analysis.
By contrast, the very nature of Twitter, rooted on the principle of universal access to all content published inside the network makes it an excellent source for social media impact analysis.
We have monitored systematically reaction in Twitter community concerning Telepizza by 29 February and before and after this day. Based in the design of our data set and with the information collected, we propose in this post a brand perception impact analysis.
29 February 2012 at Telepizza Restaurants. Telepizza Social Media Diffusion Strategy
Stage 1: until lunch time.
Stores open al 11am. The dynamics of the opening hours are crucial for defining the momentum of the marketing operation. Approaching to lunch time (that in ‘Spainis different’ means 1:30pm to 4pm, even in working days) should create already the call effect coming from those already taking advantage of the promotion. It required that accumulation of people in Telepizza stores should be noticeable, and happy consumers share it to friend and social media community.
Checking out Telepizza Spainofficial Twitter account (@telepizza_es), we find that morning tweets were used to explain to costumers which were the affiliated stores (as a franchise system, not all stores accepted to apply the promotion), and which products were affected by the promotion.
They reinforced the message ‘take as many pizzas as you want’
Telepizza was also directly promoting the ‘share you experience’ movement by asking people buying a lot of pizzas to upload their photos.
Creating a visible crowd effect was also a crucial factor in the amplification impact of the promotion. Again, photos showing crows and agglomerations were asked to be upload by Telepizza Twitter. This was 12:04 pm
They promoted directly first photos showing people queuing in a Telepizza store. This was 2:30 pm
Then came the photos by customers chosen by Telepizza. here they are.
As crowds around Telepizza restaurants started to appear in different places by mid day, people observing the spectacle shared spontaneously photos in Twitter. We present here some examples of captions published before 3pm.
Points in common of photos published by Twitter users is that almost all refer to people queuing for having their pizzas. Some of them comment that these images are creating an excellent publicity to Telepizza promotion. In general, content is positive and do not show aggressive negative attacks.
As this is an open an public information, we show also in the last caption the profile of the Twitter user, as it gives the information of number of followers each person has. Twitter users become the prescriptors of Telepizza promotion and contribute to make viral its diffusion.
In fact, some to Twitter users publishing pics about people queuing at Telepizza stores aknowledge that they are sustaining the ad campaign, like the following two cases:
The way was paved to create an auto generated explosion of the diffusion of the effect.
Stage 2: during the afternoon. Becoming a Twitter TT
Reactions, comments and sharing developed during the afternoon through the different social media platforms.
And then, Telepizza became a Twitter trending topic (TT). This is a capture by 5pm. This means that pizzas for 1 euro by Telepizza becomes a subject to talk about for open public not directly related with the promotion (pizza consumers, witness of the crowds in front of the stores).
As explained before, it is at this very moment that the Telepizza brand enters into the crisis area. The company does not control or at least direction the message anymore. It pertains now to the Twitter community, and the evolution of the mood depend entirely on how ‘twitterstars’, ‘Twitter directioners’ and common users react to this new topic.
We have already identified which were the main risky items with the power to transform this promotion into a negative brand reputation crisis.
As commented in here and in previous post, Twitter is the natural place for mockery and ironical messages. With the ongoing evolution of events, reflected in uploaded pics, Twitter users had additional ammunition to refer and joke about the promotion: the growing long queues by people wishing to by pizzas for one euro each.
As we will show later in a quantitative analysis, messages related with the crowds longing for cheap pizzas eventually became the preferred component of the storyline linked to Telepizza promotion. There are some examples of imagination and mockery like this one tweet. ‘I am in the queue of a Telepizza… HELP!’ The author, @LoQueTuPiensas, has more than 5000 followers, and the tweet was retweeted by many.
Telepizza stayed as TT for almost all the rest of the day. For instance, by 7pm the TT became more explicitly linked to the promotion ‘Telepizza a1’
How did the visual content evolve after Telepizza became TT?
It maintained basically the same profile showed in the morning. Pics were mainly made by people queuing or witnessing the crowds. There were also pictures of people proud to show their collection of pizzas. Some examples below for pictures after 5 pm. Some of the pictures are a direct message of a successful an unusual popular phenomenon.
The queues and Twitter comments and messages continued well after the end of the promotion.
Measuring the impact of the promotion in Twitter
First relevant measurement is traffic received by Telepizza during all 29 February in terms of tweets explicitly mentioning the brand.
Normally numbers in absolute terms are meaningless. Relevant figures emerge when you provide terms of comparison to absolute values.
A fist way to approach the impact of the indirect publicity made for Telepizza by the Twitter community is to assess how much it represents in comparison to an average business day. We take as reference the tweets per day generated between 22 and 27 February 2012 by Telepizza. We give to this figure a value 1.
Our analysis shows that Twitter traffic was some 63 times higher than in a normal day for Telepizza. Abnormal high traffic started already the day before, as it reached a value 3.2. This shows the induced impact of the ads and commercials directly created 8and paid) by Telepizza announcing the innovative promotion. The day after was also a day of extraordinary traffic (due also to late night tweets just after the expiration of the promotion). Twitter traffic the day after, in 1st March was 7.9.
So, we find that Telepizza created a number of tweets equivalent to two months of normal traffic, in one single day. This result is for us extremely relevant. Not only because of shows the size of the impact of the promotion and the consequences of becoming a TT. It also implies that for many Twitter users that are no usual customers, brand perception about Telepizza quality of the product and attractiveness of the consumption experience would be highly influenced by the content of the messages channelled through twitter during 29 February. This is what we call shock branding. Content analysis is crucial. Before analysing content, we provide some additional elements of evidence about the impact of the marketing campaign.
We provide a second way to gauge how relevant is the increase of mentions received by Telepizza thanks to its innovative promotion.
We have show in the following figure a ranking of brand visibility in Twitter of competitors of Telepizza acting in the fast food sector. We have taken measures of presence in Twitter message between 25 February and 3 March 2012, for tweets written in Spanish. We have given a value equal to 1 to the average of all brands in our list.
The figure shows us that during the period covered by our analysis, the main reference is the beberage brand Coca-Cola, with 3.8 points. It is follower by fast food burger McDonalds, with 2.8 points.Third place, at a substantial distance, we find Pepsi, with 1.3 points. It is followed by Kentucky Fried Chicken (1.06 points) and then VIPS (0.9). VIPS is a Spanish based chain of restaurants. Telepizza takes the eighth place, with 0.5 points. This corresponds to the natural position of Telepizza, and has been obtained by measuring tweets reveived excluding 28, 29 Feb and 1st March, as they do not correspond to normal business days.
We can appreciate the impact in brand visibility for Telepizza thanks to its audacious promotion in the next figure.
When we include the impact of tweets linked to pizzas for one euro promotion, Telepizza brand visibility rockets to a total 5.35 points. Thus all traffic received during this special week becomes Telepizza as the leading reference in of the fast food business sector in the Spanish speaking area, above giants Coca-Cola and McDonalds.
So, in terms of brand visibility, we can judge the marketing initiative as a tremendous success.
We can take a look on the dynamics of Telepizza visibility in Twitter during the day of the extraordinary promotion. It is shown in the following figure. We give a value 1 to the hourly average of tweets during day 29 February. The restaurnts opened at 11 am. The impact was not really noticeable since 1pm. Spain is a country of late eating schedule. Lunch time is between 1h30 to 4pm in week days, dinner time is around 9-10pm. Twitter traffic reached a first peak of 1.7 around 4pm. Lunch time attendance and initial crowds and queuing was the motor of tweets. It allowed Telepizza to become a Twitter trending topic (TT) in Spain, as we have shown, around that time. This created the perfect preparation of social media impact for dinner time, which is much more important for fast food and home delivery restaurants during week days. Number of tweets increased and exploded after 7pm. They reached their day maximum (and probably their history maximum) by 9pm, with a value of 5.1. Number of tweets were still extraordinarily high in the following hours, and ceased after 3am.
Next step is to assess to which extent quantity was connected to quality, and if this huge but concentrated increate of social media attention portrayed positive messages about the brand, and has strengthen or al least preserved the brand perception of the company.
The role of Newspapers
Before showing the profile of Twitter message, we present the results concerning the impct of this promotion in newspapers. We ahve chosen to monitor their online edition, as we wanted to track their reaction to the impact of crowds around Telepizza stores as possible news story. The figure below presents the number of news by day during February 2012 and since 6 March 2012.
The average number of news per day is 2.51. If we exclude the news about the 29 February promotion, the daily average is 0.85. This is a low visibility in newspapers. This low profile is explained by the fact that Telepizza is currently a private non traded company.
We have distinguished news in three groups: news about 29 February promotion, news about other promotions, and news not related with promotions. News about promotions (including pizzas for one euro promotion) represent 84% of all news about Telepizza during the period under analysis.
The special promotion for 29 February day was relayed by many newspapers, as it was published in 32 newspapers, de day before. This is 53% of all news in February. Almost all news were based in the content of the press release launched by Telepizza. Content was focused in the expected increase of sales (700%) estimated by the company thanks to the promotion.
The promotion was present in another 8 news during the promotion day. They were all of them news based in the Telepizza press release, acting as lagged media. There was no news at all published during the day commenting the pehnomenon of long queues around Telepizza restaurants. This is not a surprising result. But this is providing us a very relevant piece of information: the diffusion of the promotion, once it started, was not supported through traditional media: it was due entirely to the effect and impact of social media reaction.
Again, we conclude that this story was completely ‘told’ through social media channels.
Twitter Content Analysis: Crowds and Queuing
First reference that we propose concerning Twitter messages content analysis is to check the extent of the ‘look! there are crowds out there waiting for buying pizzas’ effect.
We have monitored the tweets explicitly reffering to crowds and queuing when posting a tweet about Telepizza. Our results, presented in the figure below, show that this topic played a crucial role in the storyline of how the Telepizza promotion was perceived by Twitter users.
Mentions to crowds appear as soon as the restaurants opened at 11am. At 2pm, the share of tweets talking about crowds represented 53.1% of all tweets about Telepizza. Overlapping this figure with the previous one, we see that by 2pm the number of tweets grew substantially. After this moment, share of mentions about crowds oscillated between 20% and 30%. This means that during the two peaks, at 4pm and at 9pm, there were a substantial proportion of them talking about the impressive crowds of people waiting for having their pizzas. This is a first element concerning the content profile of tweets about Telepizza: crowds around Telepizza restaurants was the main single topic of the storyline.
Now we enter into the territory of brand reputation analysis. We have shown in previous posts some tools developped by our Media, Reputations and Intangible center. Now we show new proposals on how to track and measure the impact of events and crisis in brand perception in social media.
First, we present a global measure of the share of tweets with positive-negative content. Reaching a value 100 means that all tweets with positive-negative profile are in fact positive towards the brand. If it reaches value 0, it means that all possible positive-negative tweets are in fact attacking or showing a negative perception about the brand.
Our analysis show that satisfaction index reached a 91 points value the days before the promotion emerged as topic. 27 and 28 February tweets were already driven by the approaching promotion day. The weight of negative content tweets raised, as satisfaction index dropped to 76 points. During the promotion day, that experienced this unpredecented explosion of tweets, the satisfaction ration was established around 80 points. Satisfaction ration dropped a little bit in the aftermath to 75 points. During the following days, where new content emerged, not related with the impact of the astonishing promotion, satisfaction ratio recovered previous values, to 90 points.
So, first results suggest that the massive social media impact was associated in the short term with a deterioration of the brand perception inside the Twitter community.
My personal view is that this is not telling us by itself that the audacious social media marketing strategy went wrong also in this case, and promoted hashatag become a treasonous bashtag. Consider rather that this promotion generated a Twitter traffic some 60 times higher than normal day, and that this massive impact was accompaigned with a satisfaction ratio of 80. This means that for every tweet with a negative content about Telepizza, its quality, the ridicoulous queues and so, there were some other four tweets with a positive content about this brand. If we consider that one of the constituent elements of Twitter is mockery, attacks to rivals and creative comments, Telepizza phenomenon creating crowds of people waiting for their pizzas did not receive a bad rating by Twitter community. Furthermore, it has to be taken into account that when you become a TT you are reaching new observers from outside the circle or people directly interested by the promotion or the event in the streets. You reach new people completely or partially unconnected with the story, who can react in very different ways.
All in all, we consider that these figures tell us that Telepizza survived quite well the risk of a global social media exposure in Spain, and bran perception was basically preserved. It also reveals that the brand did not receive a direct increase of praise and brand reputation. But this promotion contributed to build brand equity based in a substantial short lived increase of brand visibility. It was financed by the diminution of income per pizza, but this was the prize to pay for creating crowds around Telepizza restaurants as mechanism for free social media viral diffusion.
Next step is to consider what did Twitter used like when posting a tweet about Telepizza with positive content. We have also the information about the structure of negative comments, but we do not include the results in this post to control the extension.
In normal times, positive comments about a brand is mostly driven by product or service costumers having a direct and personal experience. There are also a portion of positive comments that arise from brand lovers reaction to a news about the brand.
Telepizza created a social media event, so it attracted in Twitter communication a lot of people not directly related with the consumption (and queuing) experience, nor the experience of acting as witness of the crowds around Telepizza stores. Lokking into the detail of what people find positive when talking about Telepizza provides useful information about the brand perception impact of the promotion for the global public opinion.
We present first the distribution of categories of positive tweets before the impact of the promotion, as represented in the following figure. This refers to tweets between 22 and 28 February. We cannot present here the details of the methodology applied to produce the results presented in this section, as we want to focus our analysis in the presentation of the results. Methodological steps are oriented to academic or professional readers. We find that in 45% of cases they refer to messages showing personal satisfaction experienced by the author of the tweet (‘I’m happy’). The same weight (44%) is given to messages showing that what they are doing, talking about or watching is amusing (‘It’s amusing’). We have 9% of positive tweets directly writting that they like Telepizza brand, products or services (‘I like it’). There are finally a small percentage of tweets (2%) that show surprise, astonishment or admiration (It’s amazing).
What can we say about the structure of positive comments about Telepizza? Nothing special. As we have pointed out many times in this blog, numbers taken alone are normally meaningless in the brand reputation sphere. They become informative and relevant by comparison with other moments in time, or if we comapre them against other brands. We could provide comparison of Telepizza positive brand perception against other fast food brands, but this is not the main aim of this post.
What we can do, is to observe how the structure of positive comments has been affected by the massive social media coverage during the special promotion day. Results are shown in the following figure.
We find that massive social media coverage during day 29 February has been translated into a substantial increase of the share of comments type ‘It’s amusing’, as they share increases from 44% to 69% of all positive comments. This is a clear reflect of the impact produced by people talking about queues in front of Telepizza restaurants. Many of them come from people being there, waiting for ordering their pizzas. They share the moment with friends. Other comments come from people witnessing the spectacle of long lines of people, and react with sympathy. Finally, some other comment all the events from the distance and find them amusing.
Direct positive experience (‘I’m happy’) drops substantially, as it moves from 45% to simply 18% of all positive comments. Clearly, the story is not in enjoying eating the pizzas, but in waiting for eating them. The same occurs for the ‘I like it’ comments.
Finally, we observe an increase of the weight of comments showing admiration, ‘It’s amazing’. It goes from 2% in normal days, to 7%. This is again a direct reflect of the crowds phenomenon induced by the promotion.
Finally, we have the after the promotion positive reactions. They are captured in the following figure.
We observe a retrenchment to normal times profile of positive comments: the share of ‘It’s amusing’ comments is reduced, from 69% to 61% and the ‘I am happy’ increases again, from 18% to 30%. The ‘It’s amazing’ comments disappear and lose the role played during the promotion day. The ‘I like it’ direct experience comments reach again the 9% level.
Of course, further time analysis is required to extract rubust conclusions about the impact of the special promotion both in the share of positive comments and in their inner structure. Our aim was just to show metrics and tools that allow to identify the impact of a relevant event in the brand perception of a brand. Depending on the very nature of each brand (a corporation, an institution, a personality, a star, a country) and on the type of event or crisis suffered, the design of the Twitter analysis should be defined in consequence. Each story requires its own interpretation schemes.
Impact on Visual Brand Perception
There is another way to check the impact of the promotion in Telepizza brand perception. It consists in analysing the influence it has had in the brand image of the company. We talk here about images in strict sense.
There is an indirect way to assess the perceived quality and reputation of a brand, corporation or personality by the systematic analysis of the images chosen by someone to represent a brand. This is brand analysis technique that it is not widely used according to our knowledge.
We have depelopped our own techniques on visual brand perception at MRI Universidad de Navarra. We have shown to the public some of our results in previous studies.
For instance, in this blog we have shown some reputation crisis analysis based in the photos in news articles chosen by journalists to explain a crisis affecting several corporations. We found out that Bank of America was the brand most punished in the collective lawsuit by FHFA against 17 banks.
We applied this technique also to show the negative reputation impact of the false accusations by German authorities against cucumbers produced in Spain of being the source of the E Coli contagion. We have a post about E Coli crisis in this blog. The analysis about the impact on visual perception of Spanish produced vegetables are included in the full report as pdf document.
We apply this technique in the Telepizza case, but using an adapted approach. Our aim is to evaluate to which extent the social media viral success of the marketing promotion and its translation into amazing images of crowds waiting for having their pizza may affect the global visual perception of Telepizza as a brand. News analysis is not relevant in this case, was we have shown before.
The alternative that we propose is to analyse the visual brand perception of Telepizza in internet. All different platforms in internet are currently the main source of contact with a brand (official websites, sites from other companies, online newspapers, blogs, forums, social media connectors like Facebook, Twitter or Youtube). We identify a selection of representative images, and we weight them according to the power and influence of the site showing them. We classify them according to content. We count with the results concerning Telepizza and many other brands.
In this post we will focus our analysis in a single component of the visual brand perception which is of strategic value for the business sector of restauration: images related with consumers experience. Images of people eating the products, seated in the restaurant or waiting for ordering are essential for food brand equity. The ‘we are happy’ images linked to a brand are crucial for creating customers call effect. In a mall, people tend to go to restaurants already full of people instead of chosing those with more free places.
In order to identify the visual brand perception in the ‘having a good time’ vector associated to Telepizza, we have performed an image analysis of the following brandds: McDonalds, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza, and local competitors 100 Montaditos and Pans & Company. As a way to ensure that results are comparable, we have monitored images published in documents written in Spanish.
In the following figure we have a visual representation of the weight of the ‘ having a good time’ vector of Telepizza and its competitors.
According to our results, the fast food brand that currently is more strongly associated to customers eating and drinking is Spanish based 100 Montaditos. Second brand is KFC and third brand is McDonalds.
Telepizza (with red line frame) is the brand that counts with the poorest records in this brand vector, less than one thrid that the average weight taken by its rivals. This is a result that should not be surprising. It is one of the brand perception consequences of the business model chosen by Telepizza. Their objective and strategy is to become the leading reference in home delivery and take away fast food services. Other competitors base their business in restaurant consumption. If main source of income for Telepizza comes from home delivery, consumption becomes a private experience that is not shared by other witnessess outside the inner circle. Telepizza renounces to the brand visibility that is created by seeing other people at fast food restaurants. This is also why Telepizza business model relies so heavily in continuos marketing campaigns based in promotions aiming to create a call effect.
Increasing perception as warm and convivial brand is withour doubt rewarding for Telepizza business. Those brands in the fast food sector being most associated to past good moments become top of mind brands, when a new consumption decision is planned for sharing a new good moment with family, friends and relatives.
This is why we consider that one of the main features of the marketing campaign designed by Telepizza is the creation of new experiences around the ‘we were in one of those waiting two hours for having our pizzas’ or the ‘look this crazy people ready to wait longtime for their pizzas’.
Measuring the impact of this specific commercial decision in brand perception requires the perspective of time. We have proven that the marketing strategy has been a success in creating an unprecedented event, relayed by social media channels. This creates what we call this short term shock branding impact. Only time will tell us if this short but deep association of brand Telepizza to crowds around the restaurantes will keep alive in the future as part of Telepizza brand identity (reinforced in the future with similar movements).
In the menawhile, we can provide some inshights about the short term impact in Telepizza visual perception. We have scrutinized a representative selelection of images upload in all kind of supports in internet during these few last days. We weight again each image by the power and influence of the site publishing it.
We have all the components of the visual brand perception of Telepizza. As before, we present here only thos related with our case. More specifically, we presen here the presence of captions directly linked to the 29 February promotion. We have organized the imto two groups. One for images about crowds and people carrying several pizza boxes, and another one concerning de ad material used by Telepizza to annouonce the promotion.
We present in the following figure the relative presence of 29 February promotion images just after it happened, by 1st of March, and a second measurement just one week after the events, by 6th of March. In order to have terms of comparison, we show the size of images that are associated to ‘having a good time’ before 29 February, and referred to all captions, and not only the recent ones.
Results are self explaining. The share of images showing people eating or waiting for eating pizzas at Telepizza explode. Share of images showing crowds by 1st March multiply by 4 the size of previous images about consumers in Telepizza images. Its weight further increase when considering images uploaded one week after. They represent some 7 times more images than the normal percpetion of Telepizza. The visual short term imapct of the promotion is reinforced by the images referring to the extraordinary prize offer.
The short term image of Telepizza as ‘we are having a good time’ brand is higher than any other competitor, including 100 Montaditos and KFC.
