Active Cultures: Linking Value and Digital Marketing as Told Through Yogurt

Active Culture

sLinking Value and Digital

Marketing as Told Through Yogurt

by Steve Gottschling

Last May, Andrew Blakely repeated for us a tragic

story his boss had told him.

(you can read the whole thing here)

“This morning my yoghurt told me to find it on

Facebook. It didn’t tell me why, it just told me to find it. Why on Earth would I

want to find a yoghurt on Facebook? It’s a yoghurt!”

Up until that moment, the poor yogurt brand probably

thought they were doing everything right.

For starters, they understood the importance of engagement, of tapping into the new “empowered,

connected consumer.”

They knew the internet had changed the relationship

between brands and audiences, and they chose

to act.

But, as it turns out, simply being there

wasn’t enough. They lacked an

understanding of the ways their brand fit in their audience’s lives.

And the result was not just rejection but

complete bewilderment.

To Andrew’s boss, yogurt was a commodity with no

other meaning. He therefore had no reason to

engage with it online.

In the coming slides, we will show how brands can

successfully combine digital platforms with traditional

“passive” media to resonate with their

audience on a cultural level.

We will show how this sort of cultural resonance allows

even commodities like yogurt to weave

themselves into the stories consumers tell each other, the stories they tell about

themselves.

When everything goes according to plan, the audience

will not be scratching their heads,

wondering why they should ever engage

with your brand online.

It will make sense from the start.

Before we continue, it’s important to realize that the ingredients that

make for effective digital strategy are the same ones that helped traditional

“passive” media win over audiences for

years.

And the key ingredient is what Bernard and

Veronique Cova call Linking Value.

Source: Tribal Marketing: The Tribalisation of Society and its Impact in the Conduct of Marketing

In other words, good brands help audiences situate

themselves in their social landscape, to imagine themselves as part of

something bigger.

Modern identity is malleable, able to

be shifted and bended in an

entirely conscious way.

Every social interaction can be seen as an act of maintaining or

reshaping identity.

On the social web, this is more true than it ever has been before.

Participation in social spaces

online requires users to construct

digital selves from the ground

up.

With linking value, brands function as building blocks

in that process.

They connect our identity to ideologies, to broader

contexts, to communities of peers with similar

enthusiasms.

And the best part…

Most of this takes place inour imagination.

Although social interaction is key for identity building,

no one else needs to be present for us to change

the way we see ourselves.

I can be completely alone in my favorite chair and still imagine myself as part of the Go Green movement, as a LOMO enthusiast, as a modern health-conscious mother. The

list is endless.

This imaginary component is what makes passive

media like print or television a primary

provider of linking value.

We’re all familiar with the ability of passive media to

illustrate and dramatize benefits.

But its real power is to create linking value by imbuing

brands with cultural meaning.

Let’s see some examples.

(Click to see video)

Note the use of familiar symbols: the cubicles, the

muted colors, the clear social roles of the

characters, the business attire.

This TV spot uses these symbols to conflate AT&T’s Blackberry Torch with the middle-class white collar

milieu.

The Torch thus becomes a way for its audience to

identify with the values of that milieu and to imagine themselves as part of it.

Even though the Blackberry’s features can be found on many other smart phones, it is the

cultural associations that differentiate the Torch.

The Pepsi ads of the 1960s are a slightly more obvious

example.

Here, the source of the linking value is right in the

tag line.

Audiences are asked to imagine themselves as part of a broader “generation,” a spirit or a movement.

And now for a completely different kind of medium, observe the changes that

have taken place in McDonalds restaurants.

McDonalds recognized its audience had developed

epicurean aspirations– a taste for good design, comfortable public space, glimmers of the

upscale.

By overhauling its interior spaces, McDonalds created an

ideological bridge to the cultural context its audience

desired.

Why do we spend all this time with passive media?

Because effective digital engagement harnesses the same principles of “cultural

invocation.”

While passive media has the power to invoke imagined cultural membership, social media makes that membership more real (or at least makes it seem

that way).

Users can locate other users in the same

community rather than merely having to imagine

their existence.

But in the end, nothing has changed.

The real magic of social media, like passive media, is to give consumers a way to situate their identities within a larger cultural

context.

Now, let’s look at three yogurt brands that infuse their product with linking value, elevating it above mere commodity status.

First, let’s discuss Fage

Though Fage Greek Yogurt has received a brand tune up from both Ogilvy and Mullen since 2007, the

brand has always aligned itself with an upscale epicurean worldview.

(click any image to

see video)

Notice how this TV spot excises altogether rational

benefit descriptions.

No one even mentions what the product is.

Instead it presents a view of the world– a passion for beauty and aesthetics with

a slight bourgeois undertone.

To purchase Fage is to align yourself with a community

of aesthetes.

You can see this cultural association in past work as

well.

How does this meaning-making translate to the

digital space?

Currently, Fage’s Facebook page promotes

heavily its “Greek Getaway” contest.

By doing so, it performs a balancing act of advancing

the brand and inciting discussion.

The page presents themes of “getting the best from life,” of leisure with an

upscale bent.

It then asks users to participate.

Also worth noting are the Facebook updates that do not align with the themes expressed in the passive

media.

The brand creates engagement by asking its audience to discuss more

everyday topics like recipes and flavors, departing from its main brand message but still holding the community

together.

Now let’s talk about Stonyfield Farms

Digging up any sort of passive media campaign for Stonyfield is a challenge, as Stonyfield invests less than

half the amount its competitors invest in

traditional paid media.

Instead, the bulk of Stonyfield’s

marketing takes place on its

website, which then serves as a sort of factory for cultural

meaning.

More specifically, Stonyfield positions itself and its

audience as part of the same grassroots activist

movement.

In Stonyfield’s narrative, the brand and consumer don’t exist in separate

camps. Everyone is part of the same whole, the push

for sustainable living.

Indeed, almost all of Stonyfield’s marketing

efforts ask us to imagine “real live” people in order

to invoke feelings of bottom-up mobilization.

One example is Stonyfield’s invitations for users to submit content of their

own.

Stonyfield then posts the submissions, effectually

depicting an entire virtual community as it

participates in the brand narrative.

(Click image to visit site)

“Just Eat Organic” is the quintessential visual

representation of a brand community.

Users post videos of themselves following a

specific set of rules (in this case, shouting “just eat

organic”), and others can see the results.

With so many visible participants sharing the same ritual, a

feeling of solidarity emerges, an esprit de corps around organic

food.

Stonyfield achieved a similar effect with the Your Organic Moment campaign.

(Click image to visit site)

In place of videos are written anecdotes, but the idea is the same– a visual

representation of the community surrounding the

brand.

Stonyfield doesn’t just ask its audience to imagine a

cast of likeminded peers– it uses visuals to make that

community real.

And we haven’t even mentioned the interviews

with the farmers who supply Stonyfield’s milk.

(Click image to visit site)

Meanwhile, Stonyfield’s yogurt lids create a bridge

between this virtual community of activists and

“the real world.”

Stonyfield is certainly not the only brand to surround

itself with a virtual community.

But what sets the brand apart is the way these

tactics work toward one cohesive brand narrative.

Ultimately, Stonyfield’s digital efforts are about voices– rounding

up a small choir of different stories from the people connected with

the company and with the causes it

champions.

To purchase Stonyfield yogurt is to lend your voice to that choir, to become a

part of its grassroots environmental movement.

And, finally, Yoplait

What sets Yoplait apart from Fage and Stonyfield is the huge role that gender

plays in its brand narrative.

Featured in Yoplait’s passive media efforts are

not just descriptions of the yogurt itself but portrayals of what it means to be a

modern American woman.

Here are some TV spots to illustrate my point.

Click each image to see the spot.

2008

2010

2011

First, note the use of movement in each ad.

There is always at least one character in fluid motion.

In the 2010 and 2011 ads, this motion is backed by an

equally locomotive soundtrack.

The ads’ constant motion helps imply something

larger than the individual– the 2008 ad whizzes

through one woman’s life from childhood to

motherhood, while the 2011 spot features

strangers passing the yogurt from one person to

another.

Next, note the use of rational statements of fact.

These explanations are then coupled with collective language like “we’re on the move

and we don’t want anything to slow us down.”

The collective language creates linking value by

implying a greater community of modern

health conscious women.

“We will not let a lack of calcium slow us down! We

will act together!”

Yoplait also creates linking value with its extensive line

of flavors, which many of the ads mention either

visually or verbally.

The following TV spot makes the flavors is chief focus (click the image to

view).

2008

The ability of these flavors to spur community

engagement becomes much more clear when you visit Yoplait’s twitter page.

On Twitter, Yoplait spends almost all its time responding to individual

tweeters, often asking them to engage with the community by discussing their favorite flavors.

In this way, talking about flavor (especially identifying with a

certain one) becomes a way of identifying with the community as

a whole.

Ultimately, the flavors alone drum up respectable community engagement,

but what’s even more important is the way Yoplait uses passive media to align

itself with a desirable cultural identity, thereby creating more excitement around its digital spaces.

So what can we recommend to that ill-fated yogurt brand that tried to

court Andrew Blakely’s boss?

First, using only the popular digital touchpoints like

Facebook and Twitter is not enough to create meaning.

Brands need to find another way to connect themselves

to broader cultural contexts, whether through

traditional paid media or, as Stonyfield shows, through digital properties of their

own.

Second, companies should view

engagement on those social platforms as the reward, the result of consumers imbuing

their brand with greater meaning.

Only when a brand has become more than a commodity will users advocate it digitally.

Third, there is absolutely no better time than now to

understand what communities surround the

brand already, what meanings the brand has

already adopted.

After all, linking value is only useful when it

connects people to the community or ideology with which they genuinely want

to identify.

In the end, it’s tempting to see

digital media as an upgrade, a “next

step up” from traditional passive

media.

But this would be a mistake. Instead, we should look at both media as equally important in the

creation and dissemination of

meaning.

Thank You

by Steve Gottschling