OUGD406- Communication Is a Virus- Existing Distribution Methods Research

Existing Distribution Methods 


I have to research existing methods of distribution in order to select an appropriate method of communication.

Twitter

Twitter seems to be the best method of distribution. Its fast and can spread a message in a short period of time. Also, there is a variety of ways in which it can be manipulated to best communicate our given task. 


Giveaways 

Twitter Powered Vending Machine

The idea was simple for the consumer to understand- Just send a tweet to the vending machines account @bos and tweet using the hashtag #bostweet4t and the vending machine will dispense you a delicious free sample of BOS Ice Tea.

A win-win for both the consumer and the brand. The consumer gets a free tea and the brand gets people talking about their brand and sampling their product.

VW’s Twitter Zoom Campaign

Fantastic campaign from VW. The more tweets that are made with a certain hashtag, the closer a map zooms in to show people where free tickets are located. The hashtag was in the top trending tags almost immediately. Just goes to show that giveaways are still a great strategy for twitter and people will do just about anything for free stuff. It’s another great example of bringing twitter to life in the real world and not just online.


Allen Solly: Twitter Powered Billboard Sampling

Here is a pretty cool twitter powered billboard from India, created to launch a new clothing collection at Allen Solly. The billboard houses about 60 shirts, each rigged with a solenoid and the new collection graphic behind it, and with every tweet, a random solenoid would inch forward, helping to randomly punch the shirts from the billboard, revealing the new collection whilst rewarding the tweeter who knocked it off the wall with a sample…

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Kelloggs: The Special K Tweet Shop

This isn’t the first Tweet Shop, but its probably the second or third ever, and a very cool pop-up style store turning customers social currency into real goods and positive sentiment… Passers by can walk into the store, sample the range of new cereal crisps and then tweet about them to buy a box to take home. 

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Interactive

Canadian Interactive Installation Tweet Aggregator

The Canadian Tourism Commission wanted to get the attention of busy Americans to tell them about visiting Canada. Instead of a big glossy billboard, they choose a more innovative and real time type of advertising to get the word out there. They installed huge interactive murals in NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles and pulled in real time Tweets about Canada. Passers by can interact with the wall by clicking on tweets or zooming in on pictures posted to Twitter. The slogan of the campaign was “Every minute hundreds of great travel experiences happen in Canada” and Twitter was the perfect medium to prove that’s true.

Hashtag Campaigns 

Domino’s Pizza UK Twitter Tweet for Treat

Here’s an excellent example of a well executed and effective twitter campaign from Domino’s Pizza in the UK to get more customers in the door for lunchtime. From 9am-11am on March 5th, 2012 everytime one of Domino’s customers tweeted with the hashtag #letsdolunch, the price of their Pepperoni Passion pizza would be knocked down by another 0.01p. At 11am, they stopped counting tweets and offered the pizza to all their consumers at the reduced price until 3PM that day. The price of the pizza ended up dropping from the original price of £15.99 to £7.74 in the two short hours. That’s 85,000 tweets with the hashtag #letsdolunch in 2 hours!!

This works for large and small businesses, because it is low risk, effective and quick to execute. Domino’s did protect themselves by including legal language that required a minimum order of £10 for deliveries and stating that the featured pizza could not drop below £6.59, but this was in the fine print that many people do not read. I also like that they used a hashtag that didn’t contain the name Domino’s pizza in order to peak the curiosity of people who saw their friends tweet about it and clicked the hashtag to find out what it was all about.

Contests

Southwest Twitter Photo Contest

Southwest created a simple photo contest that they put together using Twitter. For a week, they simply sent out a tweet asking their followers to submit an original photo of a very specific travel/tourism-related place or thing. An example might be the AT&T Park in San Francisco or Mickey Mouse ears.

Once they tweeted out the photo they were hunting the first person to tweet them an original picture of that place or thing would win a ”sweet travel package” (2 roundtrip plane tickets, 2 nights at an MGM Property in lovely Las Vegas).

By encouraging their followers to “keep a close watch on our Twitter account” they were able to get out many other messages in the meantime as well as gain additional followers.



Mac & Cheese Turns Tweets into Commercials

In March of 2011, Kraft along with their agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, launched a campaign that asked people to “tweet their love” for Mac & Cheese. In return for tweeting about how much they love the brand consumers had a chance to be featured in a TV commercial. The only requirement for the tweets was to mention “Mac and Cheese”. Meanwhile, the people at Kraft and the agency were using search.twitter.com to go through all the tweets mentioning “Mac and Cheese” and picking out the best ones.

The goal was to pick five tweets and write and shoot ads based on the tweets all in one afternoon, which they did. Welcome to real time advertising. The two day twitter campaign apparently generated 10 million impressions.

All information above unless linked was sourced from: link

Facebook


Although I don't think Facebook is the best means of distribution theres no denying how popular it is. If we could think of a clever way to utilise it like this Starbucks game application it could be a way of spreading the word to a large quantity of people.

Starbucks went big when they decided to use their 24 million Facebook fans to help usher in the fall holiday season, and announce the return of the popular Pumpkin Spice Latte. The company unveiled a Pumpkin Spice Latte application and beverage-branded game on its Facebook page. Fans participated in points-based activities to try to win the prize of having the latte flavor be available in their city first. The campaign also included this awesome spoof video.

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Tea Cup Reading

We could design something similar to this that suggests blends of tea depending on the mood your in or what kind of benefits you are wanting. For example, blend x and y for a blend that combats a hangover.

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We could simply set up a Facebook page where viewers can share their favourite blends and flavours and post photos etc.

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Phone Apps

Smart phones are a massive part of modern society so if we could design something to engage the audience we could use it as a tool of distribution. 

Starbucks Cup Magic

Starbucks launched their first major augmented reality app: "Cup Magic." The free app, for iPhone and Android devices, works by the user pointing the phone's camera at special Starbucks coffee cups and additional objects, such as bags of coffee. Doing so causes the characters to animate on the screen, and customers can then interact with the characters. Those who activated all five holiday characters were entered in a prize drawing. The app also included traditional and social sharing capabilities.

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We could apply this idea to our concept by using a shake wheel to decide on different flavour combinations.

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TEAVANA
PERFECT TEA TOUCH

Something like this would perfect for what we are hoping to achieve. However I think the design could be much more simple and aesthetically pleasing.

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Gorilla Advertising

We could use gorilla advertising cleverly to create a buzz amongst the public making them want to further investigate our subject matter. I like how it engages the audience in a non-conventional way opposed to the bog standard methods of distribution.

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The image above has given me the idea to have clear boxed off sections within the display with smell holes with the different flavours of tea so the public can interact with it.

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Mail Shots

Mail shots are a way of making the customers aware and a means to sample the product within the comfort of their own home. This in-turn could encourage them to visit the blog to further explore the flavours.

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We could design a little teabag shaped mail-shot with samples of the best selling teas of the week etc.

The Springbox is a compact, pocket-sized promotional marketing box that is absolutely full of surprises. Just flick open up the clasp on the Springbox cover and out jump 4 pop-up cubes! The size of the pack bears no relation to the size of the surprise as one pop up cube interacts with another to spring up into the air. The Springbox has been produced for many different promotional marketing uses but has been very successful as an event invitation and as a trade show giveaway.

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Each fold in the image above could contain different flavoured tea leaves that the customer could combine to make their own custom flavour.

We could design something similar to this which could have flavour samples inside. Once folded out, the inside could contain info-graphics with different flavour combinations.

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Tea Campaign

With the help of SS+K, Honest Tea launched a guerilla social experiment across the seven largest American cities to catapult the organic tea from niche to mainstream status. To introduce the beverage to new customers, a pop-up shop called ”The Honest Store” was installed on sidewalks and stocked with ice cold bottles of Honest Tea. The shops relied solely on the honor system of passersby as a money box and sign read: “$1.00 on the Honor System.” Hidden cameras were in place and recorded the actions of those who decided to pay $1 for their drinks and those who simply stopped by without paying. The experiment proved that 87% of Americans were honest!

The campaign received incredible media support, garnered YouTube views, and millions in impressions and ad value. All great news, but what’s most striking is the sales growth which set the brand on its way to furthering its mision. In each market Honest Tea doubled their sales, achieving record sales in the process. Creating brand awareness through a simple strategy of testing human morality via honesty was a smart way to stay true to the brand values as well as test America’s.

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