In this final segment of a four-part transcript, Ogilvy's Maria Mandel continues sharing about Unilever, and both panelists answer questions.

This conversation took place as a breakout session at February's iMedia Brand Summit in Florida. Read part one and part two, in which Mark Hughes, CEO of Buzz Marketing, describes the Buzz Marketing Model. In yesterday's segment,  Maria Mandel, Partner, Director of Digital Innovation, Ogilvy Interactive, presented a case study of a Unilever campaign. Here's more on that, plus answers to attendee questions.

Maria Mandel: You can’t be in consumer packaged goods marketing without providing offers. So another key part of these communications was to provide offers -- everything from samples to coupons to sweepstakes and contests, to really engage the consumers on a regular fashion, drive them to the site, and get them to forward information to their friends and come back often.

I mentioned registration -- registration was a key way to really profile and segment the consumers. It was a way to capture information, not only about themselves, but about what products they use, lifestyle information, information about their home and family. All of this data was put into a database so the consumers could be profiled so that we could come up with content to better suit their needs and to match up the products that are more suitable for them.

It really engaged consumers via contests and sweepstakes. This was an incentive to get them to register. It was also an incentive to get them to come back and come back often. It was also used as a way to really amplify the program, by not only getting them to interact with various types of products, but to also forward the information to their friends. So, for example, by joining a contest and giving us some information about some of their friends, they could get extra entries into the contest. What this allowed us to do was to really get consumers to start marketing the program for us and getting their friends involved. What better way and what more cost-efficient way than to get consumers to start marketing your products for you?

Ultimately what we used these channels for -- through the integrated programs, the magazine, the website and the email communications -- was to really start building this dialogue and this relationship with the consumers. It wasn’t us talking at the consumers. It was really this two-way communication. We asked consumers to engage with us, not only through the message boards in the communities, but by also regularly asking for feedback and trying to get them to communicate. This dialogue was very important. And it was interesting because a lot of the brands thought, okay, the consumers, they’re not going to want to talk to these brands. They don’t want to talk about, you know, fabric softener with Snuggle. But they may want to talk about, you know, how can I engage my kids better, how can I provide activities for them to do during a rainy day? So those types of things, that type of dialogue, is very important.

Regular newsletters were sent out by mail to encourage people to come back to the site, to encourage them about the program. So this is an example of the email portion.

Also, retailers are a key piece of consumer packaged goods' programs. We actually were able to leverage this program with the retailers as well. This actually drove a lot of point-of-sale type of activities and really expanded the program. A program like this -- and the reason I brought the site up, is that it’s not just consumer driven. It could also be used to really leverage and develop relationships with your retailer customers as well.

So ultimately, this is a unique example of a relationship marketing program. It’s unique because it is used by low involvement products, which is consumer packaged goods products, and is used to develop most valuable consumers, and develop this meaningful long-term relationship. This program has been going on for five years now, so it’s a long-term very successful program that we’ve actually been able to measure back to increased sales. So by using this type of program, even low involvement consumer packaged goods products can create this integrated direct marketing program that drives not only consumer long-term relationships, but also drives sales.

Questions now? Do we have time for question?

Kevin Ryan: All right. I think we’ve got a couple minutes for questions here, but first how about another round of applause for our speakers? [Applause] Thank you. 

I don’t think we have roving mike, but go ahead and shout them out, if anybody has any questions. Mr. Calder?

Craig Calder: A question for Mark. The three takeaways that you gave, would those hold true for B-to-B products and services also?

Mark Hughes: Yeah. I get that question a lot. And I think they do. The value proposition you need to define may be different, but in reality it’s the same people who are making decisions on B-to-B projects, RFPs, et cetera -- they’re consumers also. So they buy Crest toothpaste just like anyone else. And I think there’s really a common thread in that. You know, we’re all consumers. We all want good value for our money. And I really don’t think that it differs that much. It depends on the category, but I think probably the more stale the category, the easier it actually is.

I’ll just use a banking example I love, which is Washington Mutual. You know, WAMU. They’re a fantastic marketer and they really inject personality into their campaigns in a category that -- you know, banking is really just very, very boring. They have a tagline that they’ve used “human interest.” It’s a two-word tagline and it plays upon the interest rates, you know, “human interest” -- it’s fantastic. 

But I think it does hold true in B-to-B. Usually the challenge is convincing everyone that breaking out of the mold is really the right thing to do.

Ryan: All right. Anyone else? We’ve got time for one more. Go ahead.

Audience Member: How do you measure the word-of-mouth carried through to ROI … ?

Ryan: Let me just repeat the question. It’s how you’re measuring word-of-mouth and the ROI follow up there.

Hughes: Yeah, measuring word-of-mouth and the ROI, there’s several different ways. I’ll give you one example. One client did a pre-wave/post-wave study of a campaign we did for them in a geographic market in Boston, Massachusetts. It was a phone survey. Pre-wave, they found that there was 10 percent unaided awareness of their brand -- 10 percent unaided awareness. And then after the campaign, if you know anything about unaided awareness numbers, they’re like glaciers to move. They move really slowly. But they jumped to 21 percent. So the method that they used was a phone survey, pre-wave/post-wave. 

Another way, in terms of measuring word-of-mouth is simply to do an exit pop-up or an exit pop-under. We did this at Half.com and we found that 31 percent of our consumers came in through word-of-mouth -- friends, family, co-workers. The trick there is you've got to make it really short. You know, it’s like three questions and that’s it. You’re asking for people’s time. They’ll give it to you if it’s just short and they feel that it’s of value. Ask them a 16-question survey, forget it, you’re done. So that’s method number two.

Method number three is simply kind of gut feel. One of the companies that I featured in my book, which is a company called Game Ready, the Director of Marketing came from PowerBar and the Board of Directors at PowerBar asked him to measure every single possible marketing initiative out there. And there was no silver bullet. I think this really kind of comes full circle in terms of what we’re here about, is really an integrated approach. But one of the things that he just measured on his own, you know, visceral gut was when people came up to him and started talking about -- "hey, I saw PowerBar and da-da-da-da-da … and I experienced the same thing with several different campaigns. When I heard friends and family members and they came up to me and said '… hey, my mom in North Carolina saw our campaign, da-da-da-da-da…,' you know, when we had professors in Milwaukee asking for a copy of our marketing campaign, you kind of know it’s working because people really don’t talk about traditional magazine ads. If people are coming up to you and saying, 'Hey, I saw that …' you know in your gut it’s working." In that extent it’s harder to quantify but you have two other ways to do it as well.

Ryan: Excellent. All right, we can squeeze one more in -- the young lady in the back.

Audience Member: Maria, are you doing customization and personalization, and if not why? And also, how do you control blogging?

Ryan: Okay, let’s do one at a time. Okay, ‘cause I’ll get confused. It’s terrifying. The first question was: Are you doing customization and personalization, and if not why?

Mandel: In terms of what’s been done to date, personalization has primarily been done for email marketing. On the site, the goal is to move towards more of a personalized type of experience. But part of the challenge is to get enough input from the consumers in terms of information about themselves and their preferences. And that comes over time. That comes over determining not only information about the consumers themselves, but what their interests are, where they’re going on the site, what they’re doing -- in order to have enough inputs to create more of that personalized type of experience.

At this point, most of the customization that has been done has been around needs versus actually specifically towards individual consumers.

Ryan: Thank you. And the second question … oh, blogging control … posting the names of competitive products …

Mandel: Actually since I don’t really know, I'll turn to Ed, since you’re sitting right behind …

Ryan: Ed from Unilever?

Mandel: Yeah, Ed’s from Unilever. Ladies and gentlemen, Edward Kim from Unilever. So is that a “yes” or a “no” Ed?

Kim: There’s no answer.

Ryan: The politically correct answer to that is we closely moderate any information presented for accuracy.

All right I think that’s going to be about it for us. It’s now time for my favorite panel which is: Will tofu ever truly be integrated into a conference luncheon environment? And it’s being held, as Rick [Parkhill] mentioned, right out on the lawn there. So thank you very much for coming … and another round of applause for our very talented speakers here.

[Applause]

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