BrandWeek 2011: Social Media Immersion

Last month was Fall Break at Owen, which means one thing for first-year marketing concentrators: BrandWeek.

Brandweek is a three-day short course of lectures and group activities for Owen students exploring the topic of how companies manage their brands. It is an exceptional chance for students with and without marketing backgrounds to learn more about working in marketing and brand management positions. Our focus this year for BrandWeek was brand building at work in social media and how it can amplify a brand launch, secure consumer engagement and generate business. This year, we were helping create a social media strategy for one of MARS Petcare’s top brands, Whiskas, to enable them to communicate effectively with their customers.

The first day kicked off with executives from MARS Petcare giving us an overview of the brand and the details on what they were looking for in the project.  Next up was Mr. Jack Kennard, our BrandWeek co-leader, with helpful insights on how to go about making our case for MARS. He covered an entire gamut of topics including positioning, ROI, and the concept of cornerstones for brands.

To get warmed up for the project we broke up into teams and got started on a simulation project for Delta Airlines. As a team we were charged to come up with five cornerstones of Delta’s past strategy and then to create strategies for the company to lead them in the future.

Day two kicked off with breakfast followed by a session lead by Julie Tisera, Social Outreach Manager for GE Appliances. During the course of her presentation Julie covered the importance of social media in today’s world, giving the example of GE’s recent expansion into social media through various consumer outreach initiatives. For example, migrating GE Appliances’ Facebook page from being an appliances specific informational outlet to a more informal setting for people to interact with GE and discuss recipes. Julie also discussed how GE has started engaging with consumers who post online about their experiences with their appliances and then concluded her talk with an outline of the various tools GE uses to measure social media metrics.

Marjorie Dufek, Global Manager Interactive Marketing for Jack Daniels, was up next with a behind the scenes glimpse of how Jack Daniels went about generating a buzz for its new product, Tennessee Honey, through social media channels like Facebook. We had a comprehensive look at how it is important for new launches to be consistent with the existing brand image, how Tennessee Honey successfully leveraged the strong brand equity of Jack Daniels, and the ways in which they were able to not only create but successfully garner a major chunk of the honey-based whisky shots market within a short time of entering the field. JD’s Facebook page featured teaser videos featuring the king bee mascot thus involving current JD lovers to become strong advocates of Tennessee Honey. The other highlight of this session was the use of earned marketing to increase brand awareness, through advocates of the brand having substantial Facebook following.

To round off the speaker series, we had a session by Sara Hawkins on intellectual property rights. Sara took us through the windfalls and the pitfalls associated with a company’s involvement in social media. She also discussed some dos and don’ts pertaining to the MARS Petcare competition.

After lunch we were pleasantly surprised by a gift card from Papa John’s. Jim Ensign the Vice President, Digital Marketing for Papa John’s took us through Papa John’s initiatives in maintaining the leadership position in generating online transactions. By a process of securing consumer engagement through online media Papa John’s was the first pizza chain to break through $2 billion in online sales. He also talked about how Papa John’s was effectively leveraging the public image of their founder John Schnatter to emphasize the brands commitment to quality.

We then broke up into teams to review and fine-tune our strategies over snacks and beverages, in light of the new information we had received.

The final day dawned bright and sunny with many a bird chirrup heralding the magnificent contest on hand. Prof Steve Hoeffler, who had done a splendid job of organizing the whole event, decided that the teams should present in the descending order of their numbers. So team 4 went ahead and wowed everyone with their comprehensive strategy for social media marketing. Other teams successively followed with many big ideas for social media marketing success.

Kudos to the MARS Petcare team who were most receptive of our plans and stratagems for them. After a nerve-racking 15 minute wait, the results were announced. A winner had been found, and after many high-fives and congratulations, we filed out of officially ending our eventful three day BrandWeek sojourn.

Overall, the week was full of insight into how companies are using social media to connect with the consumer, promote their products, and leverage internal communications and provided hands-on demonstrations of real world problems facing these initiatives.

Click here to see the photo gallery for Brand Week 2011!