Harley-Davidson Route 66: SMS Case Study

7 Media Group, the marketing agency behind Route 66 Harley Davidson in Tulsa, OK took a very smart approach to its SMS campaign during the Christmas season in 2011. The campaign was called 12 days of Christmas and you guessed it, run for 12 days. Each day, Harley-Davidson would offer a different discount through texting and the customers just had to come to the store and present the offer.

The campaign was promoted through social media, in-store marketing and word of mouth. Once the consumer texted the number they got offers for the 12 days. The sales for those 12 days were remarkable, on the day of the t-shirt sale, sales went up 250 percent, in addition, higher priced items also sold especially on the sale days. On Helmet Day, they sold the same number of discounted helmets as they had the entire previous week the leather jackets sold well too, selling 16 percent more than the previous week. Lastly other merchandise that wasn’t on sale had increased sales because there was more traffic in the store.

Harley-Davidson Route 66 targeted existing customers to fill in a usually empty time of the month. However they were able to bring in new customers because the existing customers loved the deals so much they told their friends!

They successfully used a text subscription and will now be able to utilize it in the future since they have a positive rapport with their customer base and the customers know they won’t be hit with spam messages. That is probably the most important thing Harley-Davidson did during this campaign is earn the people’s trust. Now more people will join their text subscription plan because they have gotten positive feedback from real customers. This will lead to more opportunities and as the last text campaign has shown, more sales.

The campaign was so successful that it was brought to other parts of the country such as Silverdale, Washington and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Harley-Davidson was very advanced in its mobile marketing, as only recently have companies been starting to put money into this outlet. According to Kari Jensen, apparel and accessories retailers will spend twice as much in 2014 as they did in 2013 to build relationships with consumers through mobile. This is because of the simple ways to get people involved in these campaigns such as flyers in stores, social media campaigns or ads on the mobile websites. The importance of mobile marketing has only increased, as two-thirds of mobile phones in the Unite States are smart phones. This allows more connectivity and ability to be creative. If an ad is successful and intrigues a consumer they can instantly buy the product or share it with a friend or two. Harley-Davidson has the advantage as a first mover and innovator. Harley-Davidson also has several apps such as a ride planner and can integrate all of the systems together being efficient and more interesting to the consumer. It will also be easier to track as micro-sites give instant information.

References:

Click to access Mobile%20Outlook_2014.pdf

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/resources/case-studies/12164.html

http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/route-66-harley-davidson-revs-sms-promotion-0/

Social Media Case Study: Harley-Davidson

UFC: Social Media at its Best

For the social media case study I decided to focus on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, more commonly referred to as the UFC. I am biased because I follow and enjoy the product but part of the reason I am attracted to MMA and the UFC is because of the marketing and business side. MMA provides the greatest opportunity for expression in sports because it is not only a sport but an art. There is no one way to do it and it is encouraged to be different. Raw emotion is guaranteed and it is full of action.

The UFC captures all of this content through several modes of social media, most notably Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. What makes it so effective is that they use it as an interactive news platform. They are constantly posting fighter updates, matches that are made and video content.

It is also very interesting to see how they engage fans; they have fighter takeovers on social media. The fighters will take over the UFC Twitter or Instagram account and post photos from their point of view or on Twitter answer any questions fans may have. What is also very compelling about their social media content it isn’t intended to sell, yes they post that tickets are available but that isn’t the focus. The focus is clearly engaging content, asking fans to share their opinions and join the conversation. In fact the best thing they do is connect fans with other fans. There are often times hundreds of comments on posts. They are also able to connect fans to fighters through video content such as the embedded series. Embedded follows the top fighters on a Pay-Per-View event around each day the week of a fight, The UFC posts a video each day to show the fans what the athletes go through.

The first part of Evans Model on engagement is consumption, meaning how the consumer goes through information, as previously mentioned, the UFC does a fine job providing interesting material as well as the proper context for the material. The second part of the model is curation, when the UFC puts on an event it makes sure there is information readily available about the participants. The make previous fights available for free, the provide stats among other things. The third and often most difficult step is creation, the UFC encourages creation through simple items such as a hashtag, by creating a hashtag that everyone can follow provides a sense of community. It brings all the tweets and photos with the same hashtag together and identifies who is there and participating. By knowing that there is a community of people like each other, more people are comfortable posting their own material.

The last and most important part of Evans model is collaboration; the other steps are often done individually while collaboration is often done with several. The UFC does this extremely well by having fans interact on comment sections or tweeting in opinions about who should fight who or even what was fight of the night. The UFC also does a good job connecting its fighters and employees as previously mentioned. Almost every UFC employee is on social media and all the fighters are tagged in posts and encouraged to interact with fans. Dana White, the president of the UFC is well known for his interaction with fans on social media, even if it isn’t for the most pleasant reasons.

Overall it is very clear that the UFC gets it. The fans are the most important and they have treated social media the right way. They give fans an opportunity to interact with fighters and executives as well. They also provide unique content made to be shared and encourage collaboration between fans.

Ethics of Copyright Laws

Michelle Phan is passionate about makeup and beauty ant the lifestyle industry and she decided to take her skills public. So she started making videos on YouTube teaching women and girls how to do certain looks that and gained extreme popularity after showing how to makeup like Lady GaGa and other celebrities. She would also use songs by one of her favorite artists, Kaskade as background music.

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Now the extremely popular YouTube star is being sued by Kaskade’s record label, Ultra for violating the copyright act and using the songs illegally. However Phan is countersuing alleging they gave her permission and encouraged the behavior.

Phan said she reached out to Ultra in 2009 requesting permission to use the songs by artists contracted by the record label. In return, she would credit the artist and include a link to an iTunes purchase link. She claims she got a positive response from the record label that was “more than happy to let [Phan] use this content”. Then in March of 2014 they sent a cease-and-desist notice to her that said her use of the songs was unauthorized. The record label also sent YouTube’s Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notices for 12 of her videos. The videos were initially taken down though later some were restored.

Another interesting aspect of this case was that Kaskade wasn’t against her using his music. In fact he took to Twitter to defend and apologize to her saying

 

There are multiple levels to this particular case on whether it infringes on the copyright law. First, she was given written permission to use the songs as background music if she fulfilled certain requirements. Second, she only used portions of the songs known in their entirety. The last part of it she can argue was its initial purpose wasn’t commercial.

The main argument in this case is confirming whether she did or did not get permission to use the artist’s work from the company. If she did, then the company’s claims are irrelevant and the lawsuit should be thrown out. Companies should not be able to claim damages because someone did better then them in a deal. By agreeing to let her use the songs in the video, the record label allowed Phan to profit off of it and not have to pay Ultra. What Ultra is allowed to do is deny future use of songs and work out a new deal with the star. All videos that were taken down need to be restored in a timely fashion and an apology made.

The second argument isn’t as convincing since it may not have been a whole song used it was a significant portion. If it was a small snippet of a song then that is acceptable but more than a quarter seems excessive especially now that Ms. Phan is able to profit off of her videos.

However the record label of Ms. Phan in this case does not make the most important point, it’s by Kaskade. Mentioned earlier in this post, Kaskade pointed out that the copyright laws aren’t working in this generation. This is the generation of user-generated content whether it is on YouTube, social media sites or blogs. There needs to be a more user-friendly way for people to share and alter content while the artists can make a living. It is actually hurting many artists for users not to be able to manipulate and share the content because it creates more opportunities for exposure and new audiences. How many times have people watched a video on YouTube, enjoyed the song playing in the background and went on to download it? I know I have! This is a way for artists to be heard and that’s what they are striving for. There is no better advertisement or endorsement than someone to use your work to make they look good. I do agree there needs to be change to help the artists more but both sides are important.

Articles Referenced:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28418449

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/19/phan-vs-ultra

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/youtube-star-michelle-phan-countersues-dance-label-ultra-records-1201308374/