Taco's And Ice Cream - Would You?

To Influence or Be Influenced Is The Question For All Brands Today - But Why?

We all know gaining #1 organic position for your keywords is the goal of every business, because coming 4th and thereafter means very few people will visit your site. Social media (without the intrusive adverts) is really about how we naturally 'discover' things that we might not be 'searching' for, it's the stuff that 'interest us', intrigues and informs.

Its stuff that our friends and work colleagues have found of interest, and some of their interest sparks our curiosity, its just social right?

The 'chronically-online marketing era'

Brand collaborations are nothing new, particularly in the luxury fashion and dining sectors. But the bizarre products sweeping TikTok  Kentucky Fried Chicken-branded Crocs clogs, for example are a result of what Jenna Drenten calls our "unhinged, chronically-online marketing era". source BBC.com

"Brands are like, 'Let's do it. Let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks'," says Drenten, an associate professor of marketing at Loyola University Chicago's Quinlan School of Business. She cites brands like Duolingo, the language-learning app with a uniquely passive-aggressive social media presence, along with fast food chain Wendy's, known for its irreverent, to-the-minute responses to meme culture, as two beacons of the "chronically-online" brand movement.

Chances are you've already invested quite a lot of time, resource, and no doubt hard cash into 'optimising' your website for all the relevant search engines, and now you have all these people telling you that 'Social Media' is the place to be found and seen, so what on earth do you do next?

"Consumers have a lot more opportunity to engage and interact with brands to tell them what they want to have conversations."

That same dynamic allows brands to have public-facing conversations, potentially sparking partnerships down the line.

That highly competitive ecosystem has created a perfect breeding ground for unexpected, sometimes edgy brand partnerships, says Shilpa Madan, an assistant professor of marketing at Singapore Management University.

"Today's consumers, especially those with spending power, have grown up with the internet and social media," says Madan. "Cheeky collaborations that leverage these digital platforms for storytelling and engagement are great for capturing these consumers' interests and wallets."

So let's take a fairly simplified view of the key differences between 'searching' and discovery;

Search is awesome -  if the person carrying out that task knows what they're searching for. 

Of course 'semantic' search helps to refine that search - try searching for 'hat' and see how many terms come up for that one keyword.

So, by making sure your website and related pages are technically optimised, and is able to be indexed by our friends at Google/Bing (its their bat and ball after all) then you may well win out over your competitors based on how well you 'rank', but as with anything in business its an ongoing process.

Yes, your organic ranking also improves, you magically 'own' that space, not just for keyword terms, but all those matched terms, and long tail keywords that also add up to the value recognised by the Google algorithm.

The 'halo effect'

Collaborations can also produce what Drenten calls the "halo effect" – a marketing term that denotes a positive experience by association.

"Our good feelings toward one brand carry over to another brand [during these collaborations]," she says. "That halo effect is happening with these brand collabs as well and giving them cultural capital."

The halo effect can also boost small brands looking to grow, says Tyler Malek, head chef and co-founder of Portland, Oregon-based ice cream company Salt & Straw.

Malek is currently working alongside Taco Bell to create a line of signature ice cream tacos, an echo of the beloved Choco Taco once available at the fast food chain via a partnership with ice cream company Good Humor.

Salt & Straw's ice cream tacos, slated for release this summer, will be available only at Salt & Straw locations – but working with the Taco Bell team has unlocked a whole new world of resources. "We release around 70 very intricate new products a year, but that's only at 40 locations," says Malek. "Being able to sit down with Taco Bell and learn what they do with 7,000 locations, it's a different world altogether." Malek notes that the partnership has resulted in significant capital, custom equipment, "plus a group of incredible people coaching us along".

Does it need special skills, not really but you will need training.

Its called telling stories, and we can all do that can't we?

Obviously, you need to exist in social media before you can start using it as your traffic machine. Less obvious are the details of it. These are the elements that will lay the foundation of your social stronghold.

At the moment most companies activities on social media are still replicating the 'advertise and promote' thinking they were adopting pre-Covid, yet that approach is inherently flawed because the metric you are using is outdated, it just doesn't really work in the social media landscape because you think its about reach.

I'm constantly amazed at people who are talented marketeers, who when they arrive at work forget to think about why they are on social themselves (not the company), what are their habits and behaviour's, and then I ask them to name the last 3 adverts they saw and did something about on social.

It's a rhetorical question of course because very few people can remember, and when pushed they tell me that adverts on social media have a habit of pissing them off because they are trying to be 'social'.

So, why do you think that everyone else is behaving differently than you?

Social media is just about that, its about being social and when we're social we don't want intrusive adverts (no matter how targeted) to interrupt what were doing, we use varying social platforms for slightly different purposes, and therefore brands need to think about how people behave on these platforms and adjust accordingly.

Social media when done within the context of a brand strategy creates conversations with people who are more inclined to 'listen' and 'engage' in those conversations if they are coming from our friends and peer groups - not the corporate bullhorn!

If brands started to create (not corporate) content, empowered by employees (who tend to have more followers than the CEO btw), engage in conversations, create conversations, and above all 'listen' you will be surprised at how your spend can go down, your sales can go up, and you can create, and join in with some very loyal communities. 

Stop measuring reach, and start creating and getting involved in 'engagement'.