James W Baker

Dominos Pizza Vlog

This week I am looking at the Dominos Pizza VLOG’s on YouTube. There are about 59 videos on the site and only 14 are within the last year. Their YouTube channel has 209K subscribers, which I thought was kind of low for a worldwide company especially when compared to their Facebook page that has over 20 million following it. This may be an area that Dominos could use to expand its marketing beyond TV ads. Some minor changes and additions like suggested by Weber (2020) or exclusive videos about deals could drive people to their channel.

Most of the videos on the YouTube channel are about the culture of the company from corporate to store from. It seems like a good strategy that can entice people to want to join their company. There are also some of their commercials but some are repeats for the same advertisement with different run times (i.e. 15 or 30 seconds TV spots).

One of the more videos that I thought was interesting was “A Piece of the Pie Culture 2019”. Mainly it caught my attention because, within 20 seconds, the speaker talks to transparency and when Domino’s admitted their pizza wasn’t that good and started their ‘pizza turnaround’(Oh Yes We Did, 2009) campaign. I remember this time. I lived in San Diego back then and my family tried dominoes before the ‘turn around’, not only was it not very good, it upset my tum-tum. Thinking it might be a fluke, we tried them again several months later with the same result. We didn’t order from them again for the rest of the time we lived there. This came about around the time of expanding social media and the ability for customers to give open comments about their experience and not just call the store. This direct feedback to the company must have impacted them.

After moving to the small town we now live in a couple of years ago, we decided to try dominos again. This was for a couple of reasons.

It was a new town.
I remembered their “turn around” campaign on trying to improve.
We don’t have a lot of options to choose from in the small town we moved to.

Turns out, the pizza was pretty good. I guess their campaign worked (Than, 2017). It was way better than the pizza we had tried years prior. Domino’s is our “go-to” delivery food. Mainly because there is such limited availability in our small town but their improvements have made it so that like them.

Another video on the channel I would recommend was “Elevator” where they showed pizza being delivered to people stuck in an elevator with the door cracked open just enough to fold a piece of pizza and pull it through. This made me laugh. I don’t really watch a lot of TV and when I do it is normally recorded so I skip the ads so this was the first I had seen this spot.

References:

Oh Yes We Did. 2009. Retrieved from http://pizzaturnaround.com/

Than, C. (2017). Domino’s Admitted Their Pizza Tastes Like Cardboard And Won Back Our Trust. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/cynthia-than/dominos-admitted-their-pizza-tastes-like-cardboard-and-won-back-our-trust.html

Weber, I. (2020). YouTube Marketing. Retrieved from https://mention.com/en/blog/youtube-marketing/

Humor or heartstrings in advertising… which will have more success?

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The Old Spice ad “The Man your Man Could Smell Like” was first run during the 2010 Super Bowl. This spot is a normal 30 second commercial and targeted the female audience which has the vast majority of spending in the consumer market (Graham, 2020). The investment in the ad was a success for Old Spice as it not only helped double sales from the year before (Effie.org, n.d), but is also won an Effie award, The Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix, and was nominated for an Emmy (but sales also. The ad varied quick humor, a good looking ex-NFL Player Isaiah Mustafa, and high end items like boats and diamonds mixed in to appeal to their target demographic. The intent was to get the females to look at a more masculine scent for their partner without leaving out the male that would be using the product. I think part of the reason for the success was that they used Mustafa, (the male audience would more than likely recognize him during the NFL game), items that would more than likely get a females attention, and then tied them together by using humor. Humor in advertising is normally successful because it gets attention, uses positive emotion and leaves an impression (Karell, 2018).

Old Spice brought back the campaign under a reboot last month but this time will go beyond TV air time and target social media (Graham, 2020). Only time will tell if this newest campaign will yield an increase in sales and return on investment.

The second campaign “The Scarecrow” was launched in 2013 by the Mexican food chain using CGI-animation and the lyrics of “Pure Imagination” (originally from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) sung by Fiona Apple. This is not a short 30 second commercial but rather a short story that focused on improving the world.

The story works to tug on the viewers heart-strings by showing images of sad cows in boxes as a worker drones through his day. This worker eventually ends at home and is seen creating a meal using vegetables in an attempt to show sustainability and then moves to a small stand where he is selling the prepared food.

The biggest problem I had with this campaign (beyond the politics that I will avoid here) is the length of the spot. Its total run time is over three minutes. Personally, I will not normally sit throw an ad campaign that long. It can turn off viewers unless they are part of a very niche market. To make things worse, there was no clue that the story had anything to do with Chipotle until the final seconds when their logo was shown.

Additionally, I am not sure the campaign really hit the mark. It turned some people off (including myself) and did not motivate them to go to Chipotle for dinner or lunch (Petri, 2013). Although this campaign could be inspiring on some levels, if they were trying to drive the viewer to their restaurant, I think they could have gone a different route.

🤣😂Humor wins😂🤣

In my book, a humorous advertising campaign will tend to get my attention faster than any other type. I think Old Spice had a hit and will continue to reach their audience and improve sales. Chipotle may want to take a page from Proctor and Gamble…

References:

Effie.org. (n.d.). Old Spice. Retrieved on 02 Feb 2020 from https://www.effie.org/case_database/case/NA_2011_5666.

Graham, M. (2020). The Old Spice guy is back for the 10th anniversary of ‘Smell Like a Man, Man’ commercial. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/old-spice-guy-returns-for-reboot-of-smell-like-a-man-man-ad.html

Karell, D. (2018). Is Humor in Advertising Effective. Retrieved from https://online.pointpark.edu/public-relations-and-advertising/humor-in-advertising/

Old Spice (n.d.). Latest Innovations. Retrieved from https://www.pg.com/en_US/downloads/innovation/factsheet_OldSpice.pdf Petri, A. (2013). The problem with Chipotle’s Scarecrow commercial – and the Funny or Die parody. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/09/20/the-problem-with-chipotles-scarecrow-commercial-and-the-funny-or-die-parody/

Bambi 2?

Bambi 2 is trending…

Does this mean Disney is making a sequel…

or something else?

As of 0900 Eastern Standard Time (EST), 28 Jan 2020, the hashtag Bambi 2 was trending. According to Trends24 the Hashtag began trending about 0400 EST on 28 Jan. What is this?! Bambi 2!! Is Disney getting ready to make a sequel to the animated classic? My wife and I are big Disney fans and this news was exciting so I did some digging to see what was going on with this trend. As I looked at the Tweets, I learned a couple of things…

The first one really surprised me. Bambi 2 is already a movie (maybe I am not as big a Disney fan as I thought…). IMDB shows that the direct to video movie was released in 2006. The story is about the time when Bambi (voiced by Alexander Gould) was being raised by his father (voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart). The movie is available on Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. It looks like I have something to watch with my wife this weekend.

The second surprise, although it shouldn’t be, is that Disney may be planning a live-action version of the original. The company’s tendency toward remaking animated movies into live-action over the past decade or so shows this may be true. With the success of other live-action movies like Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King and so on, why wouldn’t they try their luck with one of the oldest movies they have? The original Bambi was released as Disney’s fifth film in 1942 (IMDB, 2018) and could make a serious return as a live-action film. This can be somewhat confirmed by an article from the Hollywood Reporter that came out four days ago stating that writers have been hired by Disney to start the screenplay (Kit & Galuppo, 2020). This directly plays into the trending of the hashtag that has minimal usage before Jan 24, 2020.

Disney is a master of marketing (Davis, 2017) and it would not surprise me if they used some back-channel means to have social media influencers drop the hashtag #Bambi 2 to start a buzz on the internet about the movie. This could be to see how people react so they can judge the audience before investing too much time and money. Knowing Disney, either way, I am sure they have some staff somewhere keeping an eye on the trend.

Myself, I will remain cautiously optimistic about the movie. I am not a ‘huge’ fan of the live-actions as compared to the originals, but I do like them. Only time will tell. In the meantime, if you want a laugh, there is always the SNL skit with “The Rock” as Bambi in a parody of Disney’s live-action movies…

References:

IMDB. (2018). Walt Disney Animated Films (1937-present). Retrieved on 28 Jan 2020 from https://www.imdb.com/list/ls059383351/

Kit, B. & Galuppo, M. (2020). ‘Bambi’ Remake in the Works With ‘Captain Marvel’, ‘Chaos Walking’ Writers (Exclusive). Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/bambi-remake-works-1272457

Who are you?

Can knowing a person’s name make a difference?

As part of my Master’s Degree program through Excelsior College, I was asked to follow hashtag #highered for 48-96 hours. When I first read this, I was thinking that it was a misspelling and that they really meant for us to follow #hired. Upon further reading of our assignment, I found the term #highered used more than once so I figured it was not a misspelling and I better get some searching done. My first step was to do a google search before getting on Twitter to see if this was really a word. As it turns out, according to Urban Dictionary “highered” is a term but not really what the class was trying to point me too.

I am something of a hashtag/twitter rookie and I didn’t know until I put the term in my twitter account that it was really referring to Higher Education. I saw the use of the word with different caps being used (Higered, HigherEd, higherEd), but the common theme was about college and education. I also observed that #highered is used a lot in tweets, but that it really was not an overly popular hashtag. I scrolled back through hundreds of tweets over 48 hours looking for retweets and comments. Most of the tweets did not get retweets or responded too. The ads that are intertwined had higher numbers than the tweets. I am not sure if this is because the time frame was over a weekend or if it says something about our society in that they are more interested in movies and amazon prime than #highered.

I did find one interesting tweet from Teaching and Learning Conestoga out of Ontario that addressed learning student’s names. The tweet spoke of how more effective learning and engagement can take place when the professor or teacher knows the student’s name. I am not sure if @TLConestoga would be considered a huge influencer in the #highered community, but they had more followers than any of the other accounts that I found in my search.

I also think that this tweet sends a great message to more than just educators. Leaders in industry could learn from this as well. As Business News Daily (Skye Schooley Staff, 2019) puts it, there is a difference between being a boss and being a leader. I have found during my 30 years of Naval service that a leader that knows the names and backgrounds of those that work for them were generally more productive and successful. Forbes (2017) has some great idea’s on how to know your employee’s and students. When a manager or leader calls a person by name and knows more about them, it shows the person that the leader cares.

References:

Forbes Human Resources Council. (2017). Seven Ways Leaders Can Get To Know Their Team Better. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2017/03/23/seven-ways-leaders-can-get-to-know-their-team-better/#79eae11b4449

Skye Schooley Staff. (2019). Are You a True Leader or Just a Boss? Retrieved from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1404-characteristics-good-boss.html

Lowe’s and Social Media

This is my first BLOG and I am excited to see how it works out. I have chosen to post this in a new format that I am just learning about, WordPress.com.

I am a big DIY guy. I have always enjoyed working on projects myself. Mainly because in some areas I don’t want to pay someone else for something I can do, but also because I know how I want the project to come out and can usually produce a better quality result.

Home improvement stores are very popular in today’s do-it-yourself (#diy) and make projects much easier than in years past. Personally, I am a big fan of Lowe’s and they are my preferred home improvement store. Mainly because they give a great #militarydiscount that is very user friendly but also because they have a fairly knowledgeable staff that is more than willing to assist when I have questions. I think Lowe’s has one of the best Military Discount setups for active duty and veterans and it is easy to sign-up.

In 2012, Lowe’s expanded their social media footprint by creating a custom Pintrest tab for users. This was effective almost immediately as Lowe’s saw a followership increase of over 30% in less than 8 days (Walsh, 2012). One of the reasons for the success was the linking of their Pintrest tab to their Facebook page. This allowed users from Facebook to Pin and see projects without leaving their Facebook app and going to Pintrest (Walsh, 2012). The added tab will also allow users of Pintrest to post their projects. Everyone likes to show off their DIY and this gives another avenue that can be used to show the social media world.

Since the success of Lowe’s, other retailers are working to add their own Pintrest tab (Walsh, 2012). The addition of these tabs will allow retailers to better track the data and interaction of the users from the various sites (Walsh, 2012). This will help them better tailor what they are putting on their sites in order to generate more likes and business. This also creates what Crenlin (2018) referred to as “Viral Marketing”. Viral Marketing (2020) is spreading ideas and information rapidly through the use of internet and email. This can be very effective for retail businesses by getting the word out on a new product or technique to more people than the conventional means of advertising.

I feel this was a smart move on Lowe’s part. They started their Twitter account @Lowes in 2009 and expanding into other avenues of social media can only help to get their brand and message out. They also have a social media presence on Instagram and YouTube.

The videos on YouTube that Lowe’s has put out can be very helpful to the novice and experienced DIYer. There are great videos that can walk the viewer through a lot of basic things like installing a bathroom faucet or patching dry wall to more advanced projects like installing tile.

Overall, I believe that Lowe’s has done a great job with their social media campaign. They have stepped beyond the traditional mediums and branched into area’s that will expand their business while attracting new customers.

Have you used Lowe’s or any of their DIY assets?

References:

Crelin, J. (2018). Digital marketing. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://vlib.excelsior.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=90558291&site=eds-live&scope=sit

Walsh, M. (2012). Lowe’s Hopes Pinterest + Facebook = Higher Engagement. Retrieved from https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/169843/lowes-hopes-pinterest-facebook-higher-engagem.html