From Spam to Scam, Text Message "Marketing"

Recently I began receiving oddball text messages from 452-44.  Odd messages such as "A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours", "IQ Power: Welcome to Trivia Alerts!  3xmsgs/wk Monthly charge billed.." and " Frogs cannot swallow without blinking".  With all the text messages I typically get, I ignored the first couple but finally noticed the stream.  Some research on the net showed that scammers are now capturing your cellphone number online, auto-billing you for unknown services.  A quick check of my iPhone bill showed the $9.99 charge and I knew for sure I was being scammed since I had never signed up for any text services. 


Given the nature of this thievery, I had no interest in trying to contact this organization to stop the charge.  Apparently their website re-directs to a password protected site and any calls are fruitless, you either get hung up on or validation that you will be charged AGAIN.  No need to play by the rules when dealing with crooks.  Calling up AT&T, I had the charge reversed and put a block on my account for text purchases. And further research showed that the common denominator may be Vistaprint, a printing service that provides free business cards.  But I am just totally amazed how easy it was to scam me for $9.99, very hard to pick it up since my cellphone billing is primarily done online and electronically.  

But it also made me think about the future of text-message advertising and marketing which is in its infancy.  When one of your first experiences with text-message marketing is a scam, do you start to distrust the medium?  I mean email survived all the Nigerian prince scams but those were plainly criminal and no money was lost without interaction.  In this text-message case, I've lost $10 just due to the fact I didn't pay close enough attention to my texts and my electronic billing.  


All I know is that companies who are at the early wave of text-message marketing really need to make sure these rogue companies and communication legislation with regards to e-commerce and texting are handled properly.  Because without trust and credibility, these thieves can taint the entire industry.  And while I don't think these scammers are common, one bad experience has made my cellphone off-limits to future purchases.  I recently read an article about how your cellphone number is your most guarded piece of information after your social-security number. After this experience, I'd have to say I totally agree!  

Fiat USA's Score a Scorpion: Social Media with a Sting

I recently stumbled upon Fiat USA's "Score a Scorpion" social media campaign and let's just say I was a little impressed. For those of you who are into cars, Fiat is an Italian marque that has recently returned to the US. Known for stylish but unreliable cars, Fiat's return after 27 years out of the market presents some unusual challenges. Especially given that Fiat specializes in small, gas-sipping compacts that Americans are typically not fond of.

The first Fiat advertising campaign that I ran into featured the Fiat 500 with J-Lo driving into her old hood. As she steps out of the Fiat 500 all I could think of was that J-Lo would NEVER be seen in a $16,000 car and driving herself. Her shoes probably cost more than that car! But yes, the Fiat 500 is a "cute" car, one better fit for the urban scene and more likely for women so this advert was probably on target for its audience. Nevertheless I wasn't sure how effective this campaign would be, at least for me.

Roll forward three months later and I get an update from Fiat USA on Facebook and it's titled, "Score a Scorpion". Total exact opposite of the J-Lo campaign. You've got a bad looking, special edition Fiat 500 decked out in black and red. Pumped up to 160 horsepower and built for performance, Abarth has been a high-performance tuner whose insignia is the Scorpion. Fiat USA puts out one clue every 3 or 4 days and your job is to find the Scorpion online. The first four clues are sort of simple and are good for entries into a branded merchandise giveaway. The last four are much harder and are for the Fiat 500 Abarth sweepstakes. The clues bring you to several of Fiat's social media profiles like the Tumblr blog, Twitter feed, Google+ page and their website to learn more about the history of the vehicle. And the clues will bring you to more entertaining websites like Top Speed, 0-60 Magazine and National Geographic. As you find and click on each scorpion, your "Score a Scorpion" registers the found clue and gives you another entry in the sweepstakes.

But yes, as people are looking for clues, their was a lot of online activity within their Facebook page, Fiat enthusiasts online and what have you. What I liked about this marketing campaign was:

* Fiat USA used the excitement of a limited edition product and giveaway, magnified by social media to generate online buzz and create long-term engagement for repeated exposure (one month).

* Fiat USA targeted Facebook users who had already shown some interest and were most likely to engage in the online scavenger hunt, and amplify the giveaway activities.

* The campaign was a nice mix of education and entertainment, requiring people to search for Fiat all over the Internet. And their partners also got great online exposure with the contest activities.

* Participants were led to Fiat USA's social media streams across Tumblr, Twitter, and Google+ and I'm sure some people subscribed to these properties for cross-marketing purposes.

* Fiat USA switched gears to show another side of their vehicle. From the stylish, female-centric J-Lo 500 to the hard-nosed, performance based Fiat 500, great re-positioning.

So what's the final tally? Fiat USA's Facebook page (as of February 2012) is showing 453,000+ Likes, 19,000+ Talking About's and for the Score a Scorpion app, 100,000 monthly users. If I had to guess at the cost of this campaign, we're looking at three Fiat 500 Abarth's ($22,000 MSRP), Fiat Abarth shwag (guessing $20,000) plus design costs for the Facebook app and leaving clues (guessing $25,000). Given that there was probably existing promotional materials for the Fiat Abarth, I doubt that they had create much new media/design for this online campaign.

Estimating a high-end cost of $150K for this month-long contest, you're talking about maybe a $1.50/engaged user, i.e. Score a Scorpion contestant. Not to mention all the other people who are seeing and hearing about Fiat and the contest in general. Plus the long-term activity generated by people who have subscribed to Fiat USA's other social media streams, and exposure for partners.

All-in-all not a bad deal for the price, don't you think? And while B2B certainly can not match the sexiness of a limited-edition sports car, I certainly think there are lessons to be learned here about how to leverage social media. Signing up for a booth at a tech event and sending three or four employees to man it would typically cost $50 - $100K and maybe generate 300 random email addresses. So where would you rather spend your money?

Removing the Fear in Enterprise Software Deployments

During a recent stretch of interviews with a top 5 enterprise technology company, I was asked to put together a presentation on my approach to product marketing for one of the their ITSM management offerings. It was a short deck and focused on inbound-content marketing with the main underlying theme:

Remove the Fear.
Create Reassurance.

Now what do I mean by that? Over the course of my 10 year IT career, I covered a lot of ground. But nothing was more challenging than being asked to lead an Enterprise management software deployment from one of the big vendors. It's the type of software tool that has tendrils and connections into many aspects of your environment. AND requires coordination and cooperation from multiple IT technology silos. When you invest $75K to $150K in one of these tools, you're making a commitment and your job is somewhat on the line. And when you've got a slew of work just maintaining your network and fighting fires, you often don't have the internal expertise or resources to launch an additional project like Enterprise management.

And what support do the big Enterprise management vendors provide you online? The answer is: not much. As I perused the competitor websites, the ability to get substantive, helpful content to help me truly learn and evaluate this ITSM product was difficult to find. The ability to download a trial copy of software was buried in the online content. And it made me realized that not much has changed in this domain since my own deployment in 2004.

And given the changes in online marketing and the web 2.0, I really scratched my head as to why things had not moved forward. Why wouldn't you want your customer to have as much information at their disposal for making an educated evaluation and decision? How does an IT manager make an objective apples to apples comparison between competing products? And why wouldn't IT vendors make this whole education and evaluation process easier? I can't imagine many professionals who would invest $100K based upon a couple of sales demos and product sheets.

Then during a conversation with a pre-sales Engagement Manager, I got some insight. He mentioned that in his role, he is asked to educate and counsel IT customers through the purchase process. He described them as having the "deer in headlights" look and the need to help facilitate the purchase with enterprise architects, line of business and financial people. Reassuring the customer on both the technical feasibility AND the political feasibility of an IT enterprise software deployment.

And it really makes me wonder why technology marketers don't take some of this readily made content, that's already available, and provide it to customers earlier on in the purchase cycle. Admittedly, pre-Sales needs to hold back some value-add assets in their toolbox for their discussion but wouldn't providing some of this information earlier help the sales rep get the conversation started? Is marketing so fixated on giving away $10 Starbucks gift-cards and mugs for events that they don't have time to make this extremely valuable information available to prospects?

I don't know but if my IT job and career was on the line, I'd say please keep your mug and help me make the right IT enterprise management software decision. And the vendor that provided me with more valuable information to help me evaluate choices, would have a leg up on the rest. But that's just me...