May 2012 - The Castle Group

Pepsi Engages Tweeters Around Music

Pepsi has launched a simple but effective strategy to gather and engage (young) Twitter followers: Pepsi’s social media campaign “Live for Now Music,” rewards consumers who follow the brand on Twitter and use the hashtag #PepsiMusicNOW in their tweets with free MP3 downloads. Music videos and “pop-up concerts” are also part of the campaign. The “Now” in the campaign is being generated by Twitter. As part of the partnership between Pepsi and Twitter, once a week “Pepsi will analyze the music-related Twitter posts of its American users and will publish a video commentary (also on Twitter) about whatever music people are talking about most,” reports The New York Times. The campaign’s pop-up concerts will be featured on Twitter as well, live-streamed, and Pepsi’s followers will be able to request songs through tweeting. “Live for Now Music” is part of Pepsi’s global ad campaign “Live for Now,” which launched earlier this month. “Live for Now Music” obviously aims at reaching younger consumers, whose brand loyalty is precious for soft drinks.

4 Ways Europeans Do It Better

I recently returned from a trip to France with my husband and parents. When I decided to write about my experience, I wasn’t sure where to start. Should I talk about the crazy French television? Maybe the popularity of French rap? (Who knew that even existed?!) Or perhaps I should let everyone know that the stereotypes aren’t true – the French are actually extremely nice to American tourists! (At least they were to us!) In the end, I decided to ponder the ways the French lifestyle is healthier and, in my opinion, better. My thoughts…

Marketers march toward diversity

A recent ABC News story focused on the fact that marketers are moving toward embracing diversity – where JC Penney once turned away from Ellen DeGeneres when she came out on her sitcom, they have now hired her as spokesperson.

Win-win with incentives

I’m sure you have been asked for your customer review by Amazon.com and other vendors plenty of times. Did you immediately delete those requests from your inbox? Why? Because they lacked an incentive for submitting a review. If you invest precious time in actually writing a review on a product instead of just “liking” it (or not), there should be some sort of reward, right? Sears agrees. The retailer’s Facebook campaign “love.hate” – “Love it? Hate it? Sears wants your opinion” – compensates Sears customers for product reviews – and, at the same time, earns Sears PR-points for corporate philanthropy. For every product review they submit via the love.hate Facebook tab, Sears’ customers can cast a vote for one of currently four charities (WWF, World Vision, American Cancer Society, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital). Every other week, Sears will “award a donation to (and then eliminate!) the charity with the least number of votes.” The last charity standing receives the grand prize of $100,000. The love.hate campaign is a win-win on multiple levels: All charities get donations. Customers can easily support their cause without having to spend much time, or any money. Sears gets consumer insights and, if the reviews are positive, free consumer endorsement. Negative reviews provide valuable feedback as well, since the feedback can be used for PR and marketing efforts. And of course Sears also gets the before mentioned points for corporate philanthropy. Love it!

The Best Job

A colleague of mine shared the commercial below with our team last week, and in light of the recent Mother’s Day holiday, I thought I’d share it with all of you as well.

In its latest commercial, Procter & Gamble portrays motherhood as the best job in the world by showcasing Olympic athletes and what their mother’s did to help them get to where they are today.

Email Marketing: Don’t Let Your “From” Name Be an Ingredient for Spam

As promised in my last blog post, here’s another tip that I learned from a Constant Contact compliance representative that will help you obtain the best open rates, ensure your email is not tagged as spam and stay in good standing with ISP providers.

Fake it ‘Till You Make it

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico happened two years ago; if it happened this year, would there be a disaster app for it? The environmental group Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Milieudefensie is currently promoting a – fake – oil spill iPhone app as part of its campaign “

A Recipe for Spam

Email campaigns are key to many comprehensive communications programs and, as such, Castle often develops and manages them on our clients’ behalf. Recently, Castle’s Constant Contact account was compromised due to severely high number of bounces and spam reports that resulted from one (1) email that was blasted to a list provided to us by a client.

Will Social Media Dictate Our Presidential Elections?

Yesterday, Twitter saw an influx of President Barack Obama mentions after his historic declaration, “I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” in an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts. Nationally trending topics for the day included “Same-Sex Marriage Should,” “Mr. President,” “ABC’s Robin Roberts,” #MarriageEquality and “Log Cabin Republicans,” among others.

How the 2012 Summer Olympics Will Put Event Planning to the Test

The Summer Olympics are still a ways off, but already there is buzz, buzz, buzz…about athletes (Michael Phelps was on “60 Minutes” already this week!), sponsors (is it really sending the wrong message for McDonald’s to be sponsoring?), and favorite events (synchronized swimming, gymnastics, rowing, or basketball?) I’ll admit I’m looking forward to seeing the costumes the countries choose for the opening ceremonies. All exciting, newsworthy, even water-cooler-worthy topics.

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