This Week in Relevance

Back to the Well on Old Spice
Given the viral success of the campaign we couldn’t resist going back to the Old Spice well especially since our Co-Founder is an original Old Spice man. There are a number of thought provoking articles this week about the lessons learned from this rocket ship. Our favorite is this post by Simon Mainwaring covering how to sprinkle some Old Spice into your ads. His final point really gets to the essence of why this campaign has resonated … “we marketers have talked about “brand personality” for years, so it’s time for brands to act like we had one.” Of course in all the excitement we couldn’t resist assessing how well Old Spice did tapping into search to build on the success of creating all of this curiosity. Let’s just say we would have expected more from the Old Spice guy. They have great ads on the brand terms but for search terms like “Old Spice Milano” and “Old Spice Perez” which spiked last week after the genius response campaign they missed an opportunity to real connect with the audience. The ads reinforce the overall branding effort but miss an opportunity to directly engage with the audience by fully leveraging the hilarious responses. Maybe that’s why early signs on the actual ROI of the campaign aren’t promising … Old Spice sales drop 7%.
Follow Simon Mainwaring on Twitter here:@simonmainwaring

CEOs Get Into Ad Testing
The Old Spice guy is a tough act to follow but you have to hand it to Mark Benioff for getting this interwebs thing. Alex Williams reports that the CEO of Salesforce is taking ad testing into his own billon dollar hands. Tapping into his large following on Facebook and Twitter, Benioff is asking for feedback on “new ideas for salesforce.com ads”. You know that relevance is important to a company when their CEO is asking for direct customer feedback on what matters to his target customers.
Follow Mark Benioff on Twitter here:@benioff
Follow Mark Alex Williams on Twitter here:@alexwilliams

Relevance is More Than Fun Videos
After all this viral video talk we couldn’t resist going to the opposite end of the relevance spectrum with a little search geekiness. And nothing says search geek more than semantic clustering. Haydn Shaughnessy and the Global Attitudes Project team have done some fascinating customer attitude research that highlights the potential of leveraging semantic clustering to make meaning out of the “half million attitudes and opinions … offered up, voluntarily, in blogs and comment forums” every day. And as if to underline the importance of semantic clustering Google just gobbled up Metaweb to turbo charge it’s search results via some semantic magic.

Facebook Fans Like You, They Really Like You
Understanding your customers’ motivation is paramount to being relevant. eMarketer brings to light the differences in motivation that arise based on where you are engaging with your customers. According to ExactTarget’s recent study 67% of subscribers to your email newsletters are primarily interested in deals. On the other hand, Morpace’s recent study shows that 41% of people who fan you on Facebook are looking to let their friends know that they are on your team. Both channels offer up highly engaged customers but make sure you get your story straight by marketing channel. Here’s a great Facebook primer on how to “create something that stands out and offers real value” from Matt Owen over at Econsultancy.
Follow Matt Owen on Twitter here: @Lexx2099
Follow eMarketer on Twitter here: @emarketer

Up and Comers in The World of Relevance
We recently came across a couple of companies that caught our eye by taking new and interesting approaches to relevance: Bynamite.com and Behance.net. Bynamite (gotta love the name) provides consumers greater control over the information advertisers have about them. Steve Lohr from the NY Times has a great write-up on the company and their approach: “You Want My Personal Data? Reward Me for It”. We’re big fans of anything that provides consumers with more control over driving relevance. Bynamite is definitely on to something. The other great relevance resource we came across this week is Behance who recently launched creative showcase app on LinkedIn . Behance aims to “bringing creative meritocracy to the design world”. How can you not rally around that mission?
Follow Steve Lohr on Twitter here: @stevelohr
Follow Bynamite on Twitter here: @bynamite
Follow Behance on Twitter here: @behance

Parting Words of Relevance Wisdom from Mark Twain & David Olgivy
Care of @KISSmetrics …
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” Mark Twain
“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.” David Ogilvy
Follow Mark Twain on Twitter here: @MarkTwain