CHAPTER 1: DIGITAL MARKETING
1. What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is the new age form of marketing in which companies or brands use modern digital mediums like that of the internet. At its core, digital marketing centres around the extremely powerful medium of the internet. The internet can be used to “push” a message to someone like email, RSS etc as well as to “pull” content serving a banner ad & Pay Per Click search terms. Digital Marketing as a term has been around for too long but suffers from the lack of a clear & lucid definition. It does not include more traditional forms of marketing such as radio, TV, billboard & print because they are not real time & do not offer instant feedback. Thus the definition of Digital Marketing would be:
Digital Marketing is the technique of promoting products & services using database-driven online distribution channels to reach consumers in a relevant, personal & cost-effective manner.
Digital Marketing includes:
1.1 Online Marketing
• Website Optimisation
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Video Search Engine Optimisation (VSEM)
• Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
• Blogs & Forums
• Online Display Advertising
• Email Marketing
1.2 Mobile Marketing
• Messaging (SMS & MMS)
• Mobile Internet
• Mobile Apps
• App Advertising
1.3 eMedia Marketing
• Video, Audio & Content delivered via electronic devices
• Digital Billboards
Digital Marketing can be implemented in two ways: Push digital marketing & Pull digital marketing.
A. Push Digital Marketing: In this the business owner needs to push the information about his/her business to the intended customers through digital channels & mediums. Digital banners, mobile SMS, email & pay per click marketing are some examples.
B. Pull Digital Marketing: This involves strategies to ‘pull’ the intended consumers to your business. The customers need to be attracted to a particular address in the cyber space where they may obtain all required information about the business. Having a website or blog is a common example. Video streaming sites like Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion etc are also popular pull digital marketing tools.
1.4 Why use Digital Marketing?
• Increase website traffic
• Increase brand recognition
• Improve search engine rankings
• Generate leads
• Increase online sales conversions
• Improve internal communications

CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS
Part A

2.1 7 Most Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns

The researcher studied & analyzed extensive secondary data from credible sources for the list of most successful digital marketing campaigns. This helps the researcher understand techniques that could be applied by iCrave for its viral marketing campaign when the portal launches.

2.1.1 Dockers’ ‘Pant Dance’
Dockers is a clothing brand owned by the US behemoth Levi Strauss & Co. In 2009, Dockers launched a brand rejuvenation campaign to highlight the brand in the minds of active, professional male consumers. Thus their target audience was fashion-conscious male consumers in the 18-45 age groups.
• The Campaign
Razorfish, a creative agency developed a concept for the world’s first ‘Shakeable Ad’ for the burgeoning iPhone market- a market that fit in well with the target segment.
Called ‘Shakedown 2 Get Down’, the ad featured a freestyle dancer called Dufon from a Seattle group. In the ad, Dufon dances around the screen wearing Dockers Vintage Workwear Khakis. The ad was built into a number of high profile iPhone apps, including iBowl, SGN Golf & iBasketball. It ran as a full stop motion video & had great interactivity.
• The Benefits
The campaign intended to enhance brand recognition & awareness among the target segment. The campaign wanted to be engaging & innovative in a whole new way. The results were there to see. The average time per interaction for the ad was 42 seconds compared to about 12 seconds for online rich media ads. The interaction rate was 33 % compared to 8% average for rich media mobile content. Source: Digital Marketing e-book 1

• The Lesson The campaign was a phenomenal success & shows how tailoring a campaign that delivers innovative content through a cutting-edge channel can resonate with consumers. The manner in which Dockers & Razorfish tapped into the rapidly expanding iPhone market & served ads to their target demographic, harnessing the iPhone’s innovative features like the accelerometer, all came together to deliver a unique & successful campaign.

2.1.2 Mercedes’ ‘The Truth About Smart’
Mercedes Benz launched their smart car called the fortwo. They knew it’s an cute-looking two-seater that is easy to park & commute in around town. But due to its compact size & form factor, people tended to assume that the car lacks the ‘real car’ credentials. Common misconceptions that the fortwo would be cramped, have negligent boot & leg space abounded.
The smart fortwo actually measures up very well against many of its larger counterparts. Its front seats are bigger than those found in many saloons, its boot is big enough for a washing machine & is safe enough to withstand hard hitting impacts. It features the very latest in automotive technology.
Mercedes Benz wanted to change the public misconceptions regarding their compact car & decided to target the young couples aged 20-35 living in cities.
• The Campaign
The campaign was a combination of rich media advertising & a website called www.truthaboutsmart.co.uk to dispel the abounding rumours & misconceptions about smart fortwo. The theme was about exposing the truth & to drive home an honest message so the website was very entertaining & dynamic & yet it was without flashy technology. Instead it embraced a clean, neat design & featured an engaging narrator with an amiable tone to lead people through the site.
The site featured a series of interactive sections for visitors for their opinions about the car. The site also highlighted previous responses, allowing people to gauge others’ perceptions about the car.
• The Benefits
The site received more than 2,70,000 visitors within 4 months of launch & visitors stayed on for an average of more than 4 minutes. Mercedes spent very little on this media campaign & yet the campaign generated a boggling 2,113 request for further information on the car.
• The Lesson
The results show the potential of a well crafted digital campaign to change negative misconceptions or presumptions about a brand. The campaign shows how an innovative application of rich media, applied in a focused manner can work effectively to engage & inform. Source: Digital Marketing e-book 2

2.1.3 Pizza Hut’s iPhone App
In this age when consumers want everything now & are eager to find cool new ways to get what they desire, US Food megabrand Pizza Hut was looking for engaging new ways to thrill their target segment. They wanted something fresh, young & innovative that fit in nicely with people’s hectic lifestyles & would make pizza ordering fun, fat & easier.
It was time to take the experience of ordering pizza to a whole new level.
• The Campaign
Pizza Hut hired imc^2 to solve this problem for it. The agency developed a customized app for iPhone & iPod Touch. This app allowed people to connect with the brand anytime, anywhere. It gave iPhone users a virtual Pizza Hut, allowing them to become a part of the experience.
The app brought the fun part of making a pizza to the consumer, allowing them to make their own pizzas, their way. Using the device’s accelerometer a person could resize their pizza, drag & drop toppings, put your choice of sauces etc. Once the order was done, the consumer could tap to place the order with their nearest outlet, calculated using your GPS location.
The app created a brilliant & consistent way for consumers to engage with their favourite pizza brand. This in turn built trust & increased sales.

• The Benefits
The app resulted in over 1.2 million downloads in 8 months & 1,00,000 downloads within 2 weeks of release.
The Pizza Hut app featured as the Top 25 free apps in Apple’s app store. It won several industry awards. The app also generated more than US $1million in sales in 3 months. Hence, the app was a game changer & an innovation that continues to be talked about.
• The Lesson
The real lesson here was all about innovation. If you make your customers’ lives easier even in a small, fun, engaging manner you can achieve amazing results. Source: Digital Marketing e-book 3

2.1.4 Tourism Queensland’s ‘The Best Job In The World’
Australia’s Tourism Queensland wanted to increase international awareness of Queensland’s islands of the Great Barrier Reef with the goal of transforming this popular tourist destination into an international tourist’s dream holiday. They wanted to increase the islands’ profile & drive up the number of visitors annually. They wished to target youthful travelers who were educated & well versed with the latest technologies.
• The Campaign
The creative team decided to offer something priceless to encourage participation in the contest. They decided to offer a job as the caretaker of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. A part of the campaign was to launch it when the winters were ongoing in the northern hemisphere. The island caretaker job wasn’t a gimmick; it was a genuine employment opportunity with Tourism Queensland, to live on the islands of Great Barrier Reef & reporting back to the world online via social media. Anyone could apply for the post. The job was set up to highlight the region & its beauty, satisfying the target market’s thirst for information.
The island caretaker would have specific duties: cleaning the pool, feeding the fish & reporting back to the world on their adventures on this beautiful tropical island. Applications for the job opened in January 2009 & applicants had to submit a 1 minute video showcasing their skills & creativity. After a worldwide search involving 34,000 candidates, Englishman Ben Southall emerged the winner & was offered the job as Tourism Queensland’s Islands Caretaker.
• The Benefits
The campaign was a resounding success that succeeded all expectations. The campaign had an immense overall reach & had received an unprecedented response from the world over. It received global news coverage from CNN to BBC, to an Oprah segment, Time magazine article & everything in between. Estimated media coverage was roughly $368 million. The campaign was ranked 8th on the Top 50 list of world’s best PR stunts of all time by internationally renowned PR firm Taylor Herring. More than 4,75,000 votes were cast for the applicants. There were 84,65,000 visits to the website & their Google search achieved 148,000,000 listings.
• The Lesson
‘The Best Job In The World’ is a truly original idea executed brilliantly. It was a phenomenal success & demonstrated how effective cross-channel campaigns can be in a world where social media & traditional mass media are intertwined. The campaign harnessed all appropriate channels & delivered outstanding results. Source: Digital Marketing e-book 4

2.1.5 Star Trek
When Paramount released the latest Star Trek movie in 2009, the tag line that accompanied it was ‘Not Your Father’s Star Trek’. The creative team faced the obstacle of taking a 40 year olf franchise & trying to make it feel completely fresh, hip & cool for a brand new younger generation. Paramount was targeting all movie going audiences, especially sci-fi & action fans.
• The Campaign
One of the major issues was to make the science fiction plausible, to make audiences think about where we could be 30 years from now. The creative team decided to use the latest technology in order to make their plan work. The creative team worked closely with rich media vendors, media agencies etc before the campaign launch. The team designed a 728x90 rich media unit that had a 360 degree revolving recreation of the new Enterprise’s bridge. The unit featured audio-visual effects that came straight from the film. For the final phase of the campaign, the team designed a series of home page takeovers that launched on the day of the film’s opening.
• The Benefits
The film was a huge grosser on the opening weekend. With creative, innovative technology, Star Trek campaign bridged the gap between hardcore trekkies & the general movie audience, bringing sci-fi back in fashion. Star Trek opened at number 1 on the US Billboard.
• The Lesson
This big budget campaign showed how far rich media ads have come today. It showed how an innovative digital campaign coupled with cutting edge technology & targeting the right audience could strike a chord & become very popular indeed.

2.1.6 Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign
2 months before the elections of 2008, Obama’s campaign needed to reach out to voters in 15 critical states. They contacted Pontiflex, an agency for a method to collect information of interested voters.
• The Campaign
The campaign focused on a 3 step program:
a. The Obama campaign used a range of high ROI display banners that allowed them to collect contact information from within the ads itself. So, the users did not have to click on a separate page to fill out contact details which resulted in a vastly improved conversion rate & more returns on the ad spend.
b. The campaign also sent timely emails & notifications to potential donors & voters through a newsletter program. This way, they were able to maintain a steady stream of messages to their target segment.
c. The Obama campaign also used email to direct voters & donors to Facebook pages, Twitter forums, Youtube videos & mobile apps.

• The Benefits
The campaign achieved great success. Driven by word of mouth, the campaign received high levels of engagement through the cyberspace. The Obama iTunes app had about 30,000 messages & its Facebook page had more than 3 million supporters.
The ultimate benefit was an unprecedented presidential victory for Barack Obama.
• The Lesson
The Obama campaign has been widely hailed as one of the best political campaigns in the world. It resonates across all forms of online marketing & was a masterclass. It kept things simple for the users & engaged them to provide an all-round experience.

2.1.7 Old Spice’s Youtube Campaign
The Old Spice campaign was probably one of the best of all time. Old Spice needed to well, spice up its image & use an innovative way to connect with its target segment, that is the urban men who are macho & very manly.

• The Campaign
Wieden + Kennedy were hired by P&G, the owners of the Old Spice brand to come up with an innovative & engaging Youtube campaign. W+K came up with an original ad for the Super Bowl ad spot. The ad featured former NFL athlete Isaiah Mustafa & was a campaign that centered around the social media.
• The Benefits

a. The video was number one most viewed sponsored channel on Youtube.
b. It received 236 million Youtube views.
c. It got nearly 80,000 followers on Twitter in 2 days.
d. Since the campaign launched, Old Spice body wash sales were up 27%, and in the last month up by 107%!
e. The campaign cost just a modest $2,50,000 but the ROI was way, way more than that figure.

• The Lesson
The Old Spice campaign was an instant hit as it as short, snappy, innovative & was just about everywhere. They were on social networking sites & Youtube. Also, the video was easy to share & spread like one of those viral videos thorough pure word of mouth. The campaign also came out with 100 plus videos in under 24 hours led by a team of 4 writers & a camera crew. They kept it fresh, hip & very new. The team responded personally to tweets with customized Youtube videos that surprised & wowed audiences worldwide. Source: Digital Marketing e-book 6