Experiential Marketing

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Kiva :: Our July Entrepreneur of the Month!

August 2nd, 2011 By greg Filed Under: Kiva

As part of Mash’s corporate social responsibility initiative, we provide sustainable loans through KIVA to aid entrepreneurs in developing countries.

For the July Entrepreneur of the month, we have chosen Alicia Margarita Ruiz Aguuirre, from Puno, Peru.

Alicia is a 58 year old, single mother to one son. She studied up to secondary school.

She has been building her business for the last nine years. She used her first loan to buy a pair of pigs. She also sells food, clothes, and soft drinks and sells livestock. So very much, products in general.

She will use this new loan funded by Mash, to buy livestock and assorted merchandise like soft drinks, footwear and jackets. She tells us that sometimes she sells second hand clothing. Her son helps her in the business. Her dream is to have a little house and general store in Puno or Pomata.

What she likes about working with Kiva is the chats because she says the women are good at improving in business and she also likes the guarantee and mutual collaboration the members provide for each other.

We are delighted to be helping Alicia achieve her goals.

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Making Data Relevant: The New Metrics for Social Marketing

January 12th, 2011 By greg Filed Under: Interesting, Weird and Wonderful

Prashant Suryakumar is a Social Media Engagement Manager at Mu Sigma and is currently focused on social media analytics. This post was co-authored by Dhiraj Rajaram, the founder and CEO of Mu Sigma.

Social media has come of age. Marketers now have the ability to augment their traditional marketing approaches with rich behavioral and activity-based targeting that should increase marketing ROI significantly.

However, businesses are facing an uncomfortable truth: There are no “best practices” for measuring a successful social media campaign. Crowd behavior is dynamic and context-specific, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to build a “one size fits all” solution.

A structured approach to capturing, measuring, analyzing and refining marketing strategies in near real time is essential to executing a successful social campaign. Initially, however, companies need to invest in infrastructure to make such a learning cycle possible.

Invest in Data

Measuring the impact of social media campaigns is systemically different from that of traditional marketing campaigns. Since the medium touches all the aspects of the customer purchase cycle, a holistic measurement of awareness, transactions and brand impact is essential.

Additionally, social media is a two-way communication medium and businesses need to invest in listening capabilities that capture the activities of their existing or potential customers online. Several paid and “freemium” tools that monitor online chatter can be found online.

While data is abundant, it is by nature unstructured. Integrating listening data with internal web behavior metrics captured by JavaScript tags, customer care logs, brand surveys and transactional data can enable a business to get a 360 degree view of the activities of customers across all of the purchase touchpoints.

Real-Time Monitoring

A typical online conversation has a life span of about one to two days. As a result, it is imperative for companies to respond to conversations in nearly real time. During this short window, they not only need to understand the context and content of the conversation, but also create an effective response mechanism. All of this underscores the need for real-time monitoring and analysis.

Companies like Dell and Best Buy are adopting different strategies for listening to Internet chatter. These investments help keep a finger on the pulse of every conversation active on the networks.

Sentiment Analysis

Text mining and sentiment analysis are the flavor of the season for social media analytics and a common complaint is that the current tools are not able to classify a high percentage of the comments about your brand.

Step back and think about a conversation you had in the last 30 minutes. How many statements in that conversation were unambiguously positive or negative. Not many, right? Getting a 20% sentiment mapping for individual comments is a very high number.

On the other hand, think about the same conversation; Was the overall sentiment of the conversation positive or negative? That is far easier to cognitively classify. If businesses shift their focus to a conversation-based, rather than a comment-based sentiment analysis, they will be able to get a far better read on the aggregate sentiment of online chatter.

The need for improvisation and identification of new metrics is high. Currently, three categories of metrics need to be developed to enhance our understanding of social activities.

Metrics that help understand conversations and engagement (e.g. aggregate sentiment, conversation heatmaps),

Metrics to spot influencers in a community (e.g. influencer score, Klout score), and

Metrics that help in measuring holistic impact of social media activities on the business.

The Interplay Between Buzz, Branding and Sales

Measuring the impact of increased chatter for your brand might not always translate to more revenue for the business. Measuring cause and effect between buzz, branding and sales might show different dynamics for different product groups. For example, the Old Spice social media campaign saw an 800% increase in Facebook interaction and a 107% increase in sales. The numbers are related, but not necessarily 1:1.

Testing Mechanisms

Social media is a fertile testing ground, and businesses need to appreciate the importance of a robust testing protocol for social media-based actions. Having a mechanism to measure the effectiveness of comments will ensure that businesses can learn quickly and adapt to the social dynamics.

A key point to remember is that the instance and context of the test is as important as the test itself due to the temporal nature of conversations.

Some of the tests that can be conducted are:

Who are the right “influencers” to target for a particular product or service?

What is the right time to message these influencers?

What is the impact of competition activity on our buzz?

What is the impact of traditional marketing on social media and vice versa?

What are the type of comments that work for selling a product?

What are the type of comments that work for selling a service?

What are the right pricing strategies?

How should the business tap into current affairs?

Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral targeting dramatically changed with online advertising, and now social media can take this effectiveness to new heights. Activity-based segmentation is far different from traditional demographic segmentation, and this is typically driven by a difference between the purchasers and the consumers of a product. Businesses can draw parallels from traditional marketing (targeting kids so that they can influence their parents) and build a unique social targeting mechanism.

Crowd Behavior

Businesses have tried to artificially stimulate a conversation by mettling in their own communities or creating artificial hype. This approach usually fails miserably. They need to understand that social networks emulate real-world interactions, and excessive policing of user generated content can be detrimental to the natural growth patterns of a network.

Math, business technology and behavioral sciences are the key ingredients for good decision making. Understanding organizational dynamics, flock behavior and complex adaptive systems are all directly applicable to social media. Integrating analytics with a deep understanding of how humans interact in a sociographic and psychographic sense can help a business stimulate a conversation within a community, or trigger flock behavior amongst customers.

Integration Into Existing Business Models

Once companies understand the impact of lead indicators, like buzz, on transactional metrics, like revenue, they can include such metrics into their forecasting models and predict short-term revenue with greater accuracy. Additionally, since a good social media campaign will improve the brand health, the long-term impact of these campaigns can be assessed.

While every business wants to understand the impact of its social media spend, it might not be so easy to integrate that into a media mix model. A good social media campaign might manifest itself in increased brand scores or customer loyalty and will impact the lifetime value of the customers more than the immediate transactional metrics. Including indirect metrics like buzz or sentiment might be one way to capture social behavior.

Product Design

Social media can be a direct line of communication with the end user of your products. Businesses can leverage this very effectively in product design by soliciting input from the end user on what features they prefer in the product. Getting feature specific intelligence from the customer can help in building a product that caters to most of the population and also helps in building a sense of loyalty among the user base. Good examples of this include Ideastorm, Vitamin Water and Fiat.

Conclusion

The framework above is the first step in helping companies understand the who, what, when and where of social targeting. The obvious next step is to integrate all this knowledge into traditional marketing and CRM.

Source: www.mashable.com

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How to conduct qualitative market research

October 26th, 2010 By sboksh Filed Under: Industry Thoughts, Interesting, Weird and Wonderful, Uncategorized

As seen in Mad Men, fifty years ago, research was collected by having a one-way mirror installed and adverting guys would be on the receiving end. The homemaker would host the meeting with a group of women who would talk about soap or some other consumer product.

Visualize. Just as you head off to work you get a text message asking if you’ve had a cup of coffee. You reply “no.” About 20 minutes later you receive another text asking “did you have your coffee yet?” You reply “yes” this time. Now you receive a series of texts about when and where did you buy the coffee—a corner store Starbucks or company cafeteria. What brand or flavor did you choose—regular or Hazelnut? Why did you choose it? How do you feel now that you’ve had that first cup? Will you have had a second or third cup come lunchtime? Later in the week when you’re at the local grocer, you take out your cell phone to take a picture of the one pound of ground French Roast coffee you just purchased so you can post it online.

Welcome to the brave new world of qualitative research where companies can catch or capture their customers’ behaviors in the moment using modern technology. It could be a single person doing online journaling or a video log about a product or issue, a moderator directing conversations in an online chat room, or webcam gathering of people in Hollywood Squares game show-like fashion.

It’s a different spin on the traditional focus group. Social media is playing a bigger role. ‘We are even monitoring whole online communities; we have a targeted representative find out what selected individuals are saying in their social networks,’ says Peg Moulton-Abbott, a certified professional research consultant and principal of Newfound Insights, a Virginia Beach-based market research firm. Such tech-oriented research is generally skewed towards a younger twenty-something demographic. But more importantly it speaks to how market researchers are sprouting new methods of qualitative study as an outgrowth of old techniques.

Comparatively speaking, fifty years ago qualitative research was done in a big city like New York or Washington, DC with focus groups conducted inside women’s homes, notes Moulton-Abbott. A one-way mirror was installed and adverting guys would be on the receiving end, she explains. The homemaker would host the meeting with a group of women who would talk about soap or some other consumer product.

According to the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, qualitative research can help business owners identify customer needs, clarify marketing messages, generate ideas for improvements of a product, extend a line or brand, and/or gain perspective on how a product fits into a customer’s lifestyle.

Any size and type of business can benefit from qualitative market research, says Moulton-Abbott. However, ‘my job is not to make a sales pitch for your product; my job is to find out how people feel about your product and what you can do to improve it so that you wind up making more money selling it,’ she adds.

Qualitative research can help entrepreneurs to understand their customers’ or clients’ feelings, values, and perceptions of a particular product or service. Once you know the reason “why” people react a certain way or make certain decisions, you can use that feedback to help build your sales and marketing plan, says Moulton-Abbott.

The design and implementation of qualitative research will depend on your particular situation, says Robert E. Stake, PhD, author of Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work and director for the center of instructional research as the University of Illinois. “The means are different in different situations. It’s what you are interested in that defines qualitative research,” he adds. “It isn’t the style of data gathering, it is whether or not you are interested in the experiences of your customers or clients.”

Business owners won’t have to wrack their brains over how to conduct the nitty-gritty aspects of market research if a professional is hired. But here are some general guidelines and what to expect on how qualitative research is handled.

How to Conduct Qualitative Market Research: Determine What You Want to Study

Do you want to investigate a current or potential product, service or brand positioning? Do your want to identify strengths and weaknesses in products? Understand purchasing decisions? Study reactions to advertising or marketing campaigns? Assess the usability of a website or other interactive services? Understand perceptions about the company, brand and product? Explore reactions to packaging and design?

Qualitative (qual) research is usually contrasted against Quantitative (quat) research. Quat asks closed-ended questions that can be answered finitely by either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ true or false or multiple choice with an option for ‘other. It is used to collect numerical data, employing such techniques as surveys. Whereas, qual asks open-ended questions that are phrased in such a way that invite people to tell their stories in their own words. Methods used to collect data include field observations, personal interviews and group discussions.

The job of a qual researcher is to design and deliver data that drives results.

Dig Deeper: How to Define Your Target Market

How to Conduct Qualitative Market Research: Understand What Methodology will be Used

Typically qual researchers don’t use experimental methods such as field trials or test markets, Stake maintains. ‘Not many use really highly-developed psychometric (e.g., personality or psychological tests) or econometric (e.g., economic statistics) indicators.’ Qual researchers generally rely on methodologies rooted in ethnography (e.g. field or participant observation) and phenomenology (e.g., understanding life experiences using written or recorded narratives). Market researchers partner with professional recruiters to identify and screen qualifying customers or consumers who in turn receive an honorarium for their participation in the study.

You should rely on a market research firm to choose the best fit for you based on: what is it that you need to learn and who is your target audience demographically, where they are geographically, and what are their lifestyle behaviors or time constraints, says Kristin Schwitzer, president of Beacon Research, a qual firm that specializes in innovative online methods, based in Annapolis, Maryland.

Conducting qualitative research is about asking the right people the right questions in the right format, says Hannah Baker Hitzhusen, vice president of qualitative research at CMI, a market research firm in Atlanta. What qual researchers do is very much on the front end, it is discovery or exploratory work. ‘For a qual study, we generally do a discussion guide to make sure we cover certain topics or issues,’ says Hitzhusen. Qual is generally used for small sample groups, because, ‘you want to spend a lot of time with the participants, maybe 90 to 120 minutes. Quat usually uses a larger sample size of people and a smaller amount of time, 15 to 30 minutes (for someone to fill out a questionnaire),’ she explains.

Source: Inc.com

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Mash make a difference in Kenya

September 8th, 2010 By sboksh Filed Under: Interesting, Weird and Wonderful

- ISMAT Medical School, Kisumu, Western Kenya -

ISMAT provides accessible, high quality, professional education to the deserving young, with continued emphasis on the under privileged and vulnerable. This school is one of only a handful nationwide to base admissions solely on merit, utilizing its parent body OGRA to support those in financial need.

2008
In 2008 MASH sponsored the building of 2 new classrooms at ISMAT – the OGRA funded International School of Medicine and Advanced Technology here in Kisumu.

One of the new rooms is used as a standard classroom, while the other is a computer room.
Shortly after the completion of the building, ISMAT applied to the Kenyan Clinical Offices Council (equivalent of UK GMC) to teach a diploma in clinical medicine (a 3 year course producing clinical officers). At the inspection, which involved the Minister of Health, the COC was so impressed with the resource centre that they offered ISMAT a license to teach a full medical programme.

This made ISMAT the fourth medical school in the entire country and the very first in Kisumu!

2009
In 2009 MASH sponsored the shipping of textbooks to ISMAT, with the idea of steadily building a library at the charity medical school. The books were donated by final year medical students and from medical libraries. Fate shone down again, this time the books arriving just in time for the Clinical Offices Council inspection of the ISMAT facilities. A glowing report followed, and Moi University, (the second largest University in Kenya, signed an agreement to allow ISMAT students to sit their exams with their pupils and issue a joint medical degree.
2010
This year, yet again, MASH stepped up to the plate, sponsoring the shipping of textbooks to Kenya, though in much greater numbers than before. A more coordinated effort than last year has seen a far more successful collection. Currently, sat proudly aboard an enormous hunk of floating metal, a small library is steadily making its way across the seas to Kenya. Hoping to avoid all Somali pirates and arrive in time for the new term!

Thanks to the efforts of all at MASH, a charity medical school in Kenya has been furnished with not only a new classroom and computer room – leading to its licensing as a medical teaching facility, but now a new library for its students, lecturers and researchers!

On behalf of the students and staff of ISMAT and OGRA I would like to thank all of you at MASH for your continued support of this great cause.
Dr Timothy Walker

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Russian Standard Vodka Girls

August 26th, 2010 By greg Filed Under: Uncategorized

Russian Standard Vodka is widely recognized in its homeland as a benchmark for excellence, therefore it is little surprise that their team turned to Mash Marketing to provide fantastic hostesses for their recent, exclusive members night.

Look out for the Mash girls at the upcoming Russian Standard Vodka Originals Film Festival, in collaboration with Empire Magazine – which sees truly classic films playing in luxuriously decadent cinemas right across the country – kicking off with a VIP launch night in London on 31st August at the Everyman Cinema in Belsize Park.

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Masher of the Month – July 2010

August 4th, 2010 By greg Filed Under: Masher of the Month

Hailing from Colombia and having just recently completed her 3rd year in the field for Mash…we’d like to say a massive well done and thanks for 3 years of dedication and professionalism to Monica Botero.

Monica has completed hundreds of projects for us and never lets us down and always prepares really diligently and thoroughly for every campaign. She is currently knee-deep in her dissertation for her Masters in Marketing – and is focusing her project on Experiential Marketing.

Mashing through the years has clearly inspired her to take her experience to the next level and is hoping to land a graduate role with a top agency soon…

In the meantime, she’s still holding out for that elusive “Salsa Dance” campaign…

Well done Monica from all at Mash Towers.

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Only the very best will do…

July 5th, 2010 By greg Filed Under: Brand Champions

Partnership underlines every element of the Mash Manifesto.

We are so highly thought of because of the emphasis we put on our relationship with our field staff, affectionately known as ‘Mashers’, and the resource we dedicate to ensuring that our community feels valued, supported and motivated to deliver the very best staffing solution in the UK.

We have built this business on a respect driven manifesto based on the following principles;
> Recruit only the best promotional staff in the market.
> Recruit based on charisma and personality rather than just looks.
> Train and support all staff.
> Reward excellence.
> Do not tolerate average.
> Open, honest communication at all times.
> Remain open and objective, listening to all perspectives.
> Performance manage from brand ambassadors through to event managers.
> Be open to constructive feedback.
> Assist in career development.

Our Senior Brand Champion Christiana Dobbie recently held a 3 day Recruitment Event at the Marriot Hotel in Central Birmingham and the results and quality of new ‘Mashers’ on board has been outstanding.

Whittling down 145 applications to 55 interview slots is hard enough but then ensuring that only the very best succeed and proceed to full Mash Registration is no easy challenge. We are delighted to welcome on board 40 new Mashers in the Midlands who all successfully completed a detailed application on Moogle and were then taken through a series of role plays, interactive learning sessions, fun quizzes, Q&A sessions and of course, the ‘Mash Manifesto’.

As well as all of this, our new Mashers have had to display passion, integrity, charisma and confidence as well as many more traits from the very first application right through interview and will now carry these key values into the field for Mash.

We deliberately don’t make it easy to get on to the Mash books as we want to ensure we add value to the process from the very first moment you engage with us via Moogle.

Look out for more interview days coming in an area near you soon and remember; “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression”.

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Masher of the Month – June 2010

July 1st, 2010 By greg Filed Under: Masher of the Month

If you want high-energy in your promotion, then you should look no further than Agata Madurowicz. Agata joined Mash in September 2009 and since then has contributed hugely to a number of key campaigns for Mash.

When Agata says she is an ‘energetic and proactive’ employee in her personal statement on Moogle – she really means it and we – along with our many partner brands – feel the benefit of it as her performances over the last 8 months have been outstanding.

Agata happily agrees that working on the Rayban Campaign at the Isle of Wight Festival in June was a Mashing highlight to date….you only need to look at her video on the Mash Fan Page on Facebook to see how much she enjoyed that.

Those are the kinds of jobs out there for top and consistent performing Mashers so get involved and give it your all!

Look out for July’s Masher of the Month coming soon!

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Masher of the Month – May 2010

July 1st, 2010 By greg Filed Under: Masher of the Month

We have decided that it isn’t enough to reward our Masher of the Month with the ‘celebrity status’ our blog and facebook give as well as the £100 shopping vouchers…..our new promise to our TOP Monthly Mashers is that they will be our FIRST PORT OF CALL FOR EVERY JOB in their area for a whole month. They obviously won’t always be free but we want to recognise their outstanding performance by giving them the first opportunity of work for a 1 month period.

First up to walk the Mashing walk of fame….

Rachel Walker joined Mash back in October 2007 and has gone on to deliver campaign after campaign with consummate professionalism and a wonderful smile on the face. Rachel always responds brilliantly to the huge variety of briefs thrown at her and has often accepted ‘last minute changes’ with complete flexibility and positivity.

Rachel is also one of our main ‘npower girls’ and has contributed to the ‘best team yet’ and we’re all looking forward to the remaining 4 Tests from the end of July.

It’s great to have you Mashing Rachel – Well done!

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Famous faces meet the Mash npower girls at Lords…

June 1st, 2010 By greg Filed Under: Mash in the Media

Lords Cricket Ground in London saw the beginning of the Summer 2010 Test Cricket Series last week and not only did England win but Mash Marketing’s npower girls kicked off another great Summer with a fantastic 5 days of activity.

npower are one the UK’s largest investors in sports sponsorship. npower’s unique relationship with the England & Wales Cricket Board ensures that they obtain maximum coverage both at the live game fixtures as well with the televised Test series.

Piers Morgan says hello to our cracking team of npower girls

An integral part of this branding and implementation is the team of ‘npower girls’ that provide a strong visual presence at all the live matches. MASH are the premium supplier of brand ambassadors for all of the npower fixtures and are proud to be in our 3rd year of a fantastic partnership.

npower have also recently announced that they will be taking over from Coca-Cola and sponsoring the Football League from August 2010 until June 2013 which is fantastic news for all concerned and we can’t wait to be supporting them in this exciting new chapter.

The fantastic npower team!

Keep your eyes open for the npower girls at the cricket across the country this Summer.

Please see the npower website for more details.

Mike Gatting has a tough day at the office...

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