Can We Have Our Hat Back?
How Arby’s Won Our Hearts With A Simple Tweet
So, unless you have been living under a rock for the last day, you probably already saw or heard about the 56th annual Grammy awards that went down on Sunday. Say what you will about the show itself, there were some definite “pop-culture” moments that created some major buzz and news worthy clips that you’ll be reading about for days. Although today, I’m not going to write about Madonna and her gold grill, but I will write about how one brand decided to plug itself in the conversation online to create a massive marketing impression and how you can do it too.
Great Social Media Marketing Leverages Pop-Culture
Lets face it, businesses and brands in today’s age have only seconds to be able to compete for the attention of your customers. Its no joke, your customers are usually on their smartphone, tweeting, texting, and watching tv all at the same time, while you’re trying to grab a couple of seconds of their attention to remind them that you still exist. Although, in those brief moments of their attention, if you do it right, you can garner a laugh, a cry, or some type of engagement that can help your brand build some emotional equity to help you sell to them later.
So… how do you do this and why should you care?
Well, for generations people have used pop culture to start up conversations at the school yard, during lunch break at work, and even during girls/guys night out. People love talking about celebrities, music, movies, and sports. Why wouldn't your brand be able to show your customers that you also love those things too? I mean in today’s social media age, since we’re all trying to compete for the attention of our customers doesn't it make sense that, as brands, we should speak the same language as they do?
With One Single Tweet, The Internet Was Rocked
Since this entire article is about how Arby’s killed it during the Grammy’s I’ll just jump in and show you what happened, why it was successful, and how you can use this in your business.
Now, if you didn't get a chance to see the Grammy’s and are wondering “what the hell is this nonsense?” let me put into context with another photo of @Pharrell during the Grammy’s so you can see why this matters.
Get it Now?
See, Arby’s had enough forethought to have a social media person/team set in place to watch the Grammy’s. They were ready to tweet in their brand voice about any pop-culture reference that would create some sort of marketing impression for them. Well, as you can obviously see in this picture, it paid off. As of right now Arby’s has gotten 80,000+ retweets, 45,000+ favorites and started probably millions of conversations nationwide both on and offline about their brand that is worth millions of dollars in ad impressions. The best part of all of this was that it didn’t cost them millions of dollars, heck it probably didn’t even cost them thousands. All it cost them was the time and creativity to pounce at the right moment.
Now I know Arby’s is a huge national brand and your business is just a locally based shop with locally based customers. Doing something like this would never garner that type of attention for you right? Wrong! As a business owner in the people economy, creating value for your customers nationally or locally is the most important thing you should be concerned about. Staying relevant in the eyes of your customer using “best practices” like this can help your business get the attention from your customers who have maybe forgotten about you. Plus you never know, maybe one of your customers who follows you on twitter or facebook retweets / shares your post online & they’re close friends / family with someone in your local or national news channel. Maybe that person sees your post and thinks its hilarious and retweets / shares it with thier thousands of followers giving you exponential exposure. Maybe that one tweet garners enough attention that your local paper and / or your local news want to do a story on how you’re killing it on social media. It’s happen before and it’ll happen again, trust me.
The point is, with more and more competition making noise in this social world, business owners need to make their marketing efforts more relevant so that they can create value in the eyes of their customers.
So hopefully when the next big national or local event happens in your neighborhood or TV, you’ll be ready to pounce just as Arby’s did and capture the hearts of the people who matter most, your customers.
Oh and if you’re wondering about @Pharrell and what he said about the tweet…
Seriously, thank you for reading this, if you felt that this was informative and /or brought you some value, please do me a favor and hit the “recommend” button listed below! Thanks ☺
