I am surprised with the Mother’s Day Promotion at Kenny’s Cardiology outlets. The poster doesn’t connect with the warmth of the season. It also puts a fictional mum in a semi crime type look whereas Mother’s Day is all about our mums and mums we know.
The Kenny’s pitch feels too masculine / butch for what is a feminine season. Has anyone else see this and if so what did you think?
In my newsagencies we are 100% focused on mums of our customers for Mother’s Day. We’re connected with fund raising. We have products we know our shoppers will want for their mums and we are using our Mother’s day cards themselves as the focus of our shop floor displays.
As a consumer promotion I don’t mind this one. I think it’s purposely geared towards men who don’t naturally gravitate to the femininity of traditional mother’s day promotions.
Nothing grabs attention like a “wanted: dead or alive” style poster and because this idea is so foreign to people as a mother’s day promotion you can’t help but be interested in finding out what the hec it’s all about… hence you go to Facebook to find out and you learn that you have to like the page in order to find out more. You become a captured audience. Well done, I reckon.
I disagree Chris. Our experience is that male shoppers at Mothers Day (and other seasons) use femininity as a beacon for direction. They know they aren’t shopping for themselves and use anything that looks remotely girly as a tool to guide them.
The same with actual product. Its best to make the selection overly abd overtly feminine to make it blindingly obvious to male shoppers that the product is suitable for Mothers Day.
I suspect there will be a very big disconnect between this poster and the product offering in-store.
well it worked because you found it and put it up here
My first thought on seeing this……..Kenny doesn’t doesn’t know who or where his mum is.
In the TV show South Park they had a character called Kenny who at one stage was killed weekly in each episode. Motivations for this poster may well be, A, the Name of the Chain and the B, a play off on Kenny from South Park. Kenny’s mum used to wear a T Shirt with Ï am with Stupid” printed on it with an arrow pointing to her husband.
It stands out from the pink fluff, and Mark you posted about it. so as a promo it is working as it gets people talking.
I like it, it’s different. Pink and feminine can be a bit boring.
Kenny’s mum looks cool, not butch.
The photo reminds me of the posters they had at the old Pancakes on the Rocks eatery in Sydney long ago.
True Jarryd, but the point of the poster isn’t necessarily to get shoppers to buy a mother’s day product. It’s to get them to engage with the brand. You buy a product in store (any product), jump on Facebook (which 90% of the population use), like the page, enter the competition with your receipt number and say in 25 words or less why your mum is awesome. After that you receive the great Facebook posts that Kenny’s cardiology uses. From a pure marketing strategy perspective it’s brilliant: Engage, capture, inform, then repeat.
We could only know if we had sales data. My view on the campaign remains unchanged. I think it’s a misstep.
Chris,
In theory that sounds great. In reality that is not how the vast majority of people engage with Facebook.
If they have to keep their paper receipt, go online, enter the number AND write something to enter the competition you’ve already lost 99% of consumers. As a tool to grow their Facebook audience, it sucks even worse than as a in-store seasonal marketing colateral.
Just how do the vast majority of people engage with facebook-ive seen some absolute crap on facebook that people engage in/with
Jarryd, I couldn’t disagree with you more.
This sort of campaign and Facebook integration has been used with great success by many brands. Nike, Coke, Pancake Parlour, Qantas, The Project (formerly 6:30pm Project, formerly 6pm Project, formerly 7pm Project) and the list goes on.
The majority of Facebook traffic is now conducted on smartphones – iPhone, Android etc. People can buy a product, get their paper receipt, find the page, like the page and enter the competition right there and then.
I agree that writing 25 words is not the ideal marketing capture but at the very least you have to like the Facebook page before knowing you need to submit 25 words. Someone might be pissed off at that but the likelihood of them going to the effort of unliking the page is very low.
On what do you base your perceptions of how people use Facebook? To be frank (and no offence meant) your comment smacks of a lack of understanding of consumer use of Facebook.
We’re all going to have differing opinions on whether this works or not and it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out if this campaign was successful. However, the fact that Kenny’s is trying something new, stepping out, pushing boundaries and traditions is a GOOD thing. Kudos to them for being brave.
And just to qualify my statement about understanding consumer use of Facebook – I’ve spent 9 years in consumer marketing with a particular emphasis on digital.
Facebook is not an ideal platform for business as I and others have written. http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2012/12/07/facebook-not-the-platform-for-business-we-thought-it-would-be/
The way Facebook as a company is engaging is what is making it not that useful right now. Businesses asking my advice are recommended to use other online tools.
On this campaign specifically, as I noted, the proof will be in sales.
I have just searched facebook in search and have found more postitive than negative comments about the use of facebook for business that alot of people have written or commented on -what has changed your mind (for the record i hate facebook )the sooner it goes the better
Chris,
I’m not aware of any of these brands using this same marketing strategy to rake in Facebook followers. They use it in a completely different manner and thats what makes their campaigbs successful. They play to the platforms strengths and the campaigns are designed specifically around the natural behaviours of Facebook users. In fact here is a recent article that indicates that Nike specifically doesn’t use such campaigns.
http://econsultancy.com/au/blog/62412-how-nike-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google
The Kennys campaign does not even require, or encourage, you to like their page. A consumer can see that they need to enter 25 words when they go to the page – it requires no social interaction with the page itself. Forcing someone to write 25 words on FB is practically asking them to write an essay.
When you enter the competition you actually have to put in more of your personal details (which could easily be drawn from FB instead of having to be entered again). It’s another barrier.
It’s an old style competition trying unsuccessfully to integrate with Facebook.
Ive been to my local kennys. They have 2 posters and thats all. For a promotion like this to work it needs to be better embraced. Instead they have the 2 posters and nothing else. Theres no fun in it at all. Mothers day is about putting your mum in a spotlight in a good way.