2020 – BMKT 420 Integrated Online Marketing - Data Project PDF

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Integrated Online Marketing - Data Project....

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Data Project: “The Gnome Experiment”

Maxwell Sheehan

BMKT 420

11/07/2020

In the gnome experiment conducted by Kern, the brand was able to utilize all four zones of social media marketing. Tuten & Solomon (2015) explained the social community zone and stated, “Conversation and collaboration are the principal activities in this zone, though we often converse and collaborate around content, whether provided by brands, users, or others” (p. 140). Shugartt (2015) explained the company utilized community as a social media channel by engaging consumers through a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a website. Consumers were able to collaborate as a social community within these social media channels by highlighting their experiences and sharing it with others to participate in the conversation. Shugartt went on to explain how Kern focused on informing consumers about the difference of gravitational pull depending on location; while Kern’s scales were able to address this issue with calibration technology (p. 319). Kern utilized social publishing by encouraging consumers around the globe to post YouTube videos and photos of them weighing the gnome and sharing the story. Eventually, there were thousands of websites containing links to the gnome experiment website, and Kern became the first result showing up on Google’s search engine. “After 1 month, it became a Top News Story with 16,386 websites linking to www.gnomeexperiment.com. It paid off in terms of search engine optimization! The campaign pushed Kern from page 12 on Google search to page 1” (Shugartt, 2015, p. 319). Tuten & Solomon (2015) stated, “Social branded entertainment goes a step farther to encourage the audience to interact with the content and to share the content and their interactive experience with the content with their social graphs” (p. 203). Additionally, Tuten & Solomon continued with this topic and stated, “Individuals voluntarily choose to actively participate in entertainment media just as they may other enjoyable activities—they play! (p. 204). Kern utilized social entertainment by using the gnome as the main focus of the campaign and encouraging people to participate by continuously sending the gnome and scale kits to colleagues. The gnome added a sense of fun and play to the experiment which attracted people to participate. Tuten & Solomon (2015) explained social commerce and stated, “It uses social media applications to enable online shoppers to interact and collaborate during the shopping experience and to assist retailers and customers during the process” (p. 234). This same idea applies how Kern integrated social commerce because it used social media applications such as YouTube and Facebook to encourage consumers to collaborate about their experience with the gnome and scale kit. The purpose of the experiment was to allow consumers to interact with the gravity calibration feature on Kern’s scales. By encouraging consumers to share the experience, people were able to be aware of the product’s differentiating feature, and this led the company to benefit from a large sales increase and a return on investment. Shugartt (2015) explained hundreds of millions of people visited the website shortly after the launch of the experiment and sales increased by 21% while return on investment was recorded at 1,042% (p. 319). Although Kern came up with the brilliant idea of creating a scale that can bypass the issue of gravity’s influence on weight, the product originally had very little recognition. Shugartt (2015) said, “The product was a commodity with very little recognition regarding quality, reliability, or precision. As for social media? Well, no significant discussions on social media were occurring, despite a key unique selling proposition of calibrating scales for local gravity” (p. 318). Kern created an experience worthy of participation and by creating and sharing the gnome and scale kits with key consumers and requesting them to send it to others. “It sent kits to invited scientists, and existing Kern customers, and then asked them to send the kits on to colleagues” (Shugartt, 2015, p. 319). The kits featured gnomes which created a focal point of engagement and collaboration in a fun and unique way. Shugartt (2015) stated, “Gnomes are

famous for their love of traveling and this tied into the central idea for the campaign.” Shugartt added, “By developing a blog and website, www.gnomeexperiment.com, they were able to engage consumers and create a personality for the gnome” (p. 319). The campaign was targeted well because Kern sent the kits directly to the key target audience who would benefit from such a product. Shugartt (2015) described the key target audience as the millions of educational and science labs around the globe which include high schools, universities, and tens of thousands of other companies that use this type of equipment (pp. 318-319). By sending these kits directly to Kern’s applicable target audience and asking them to send them on to colleagues, this created a perfectly targeted campaign with a focus on word-of-mouth marketing. “Word-of-mouth communication is product information individuals transmit to other individuals. Because we get the word from people we know, WOM tends to be more reliable and trustworthy than messages from more formal marketing channels” (Tuten & Solomon, 2015, p. 117). By using word-of-mouth marketing in conjunction with the social entertainment factors from the gnome, Kern was able to market to their target audience in an interesting and effective manner. As a strategy to increase sales even faster, Kern could give participants of the experiment the option to purchase the scale right after they have conducted the experiment and posted about it on social media. After all, the product would be in the target audience’s hands, so why not give them the option to purchase it while it is in their possession? It might be thought this would take away from the effectiveness of the campaign since the kit wouldn’t be sent to the next colleague if it was purchased. However, if the company required purchasing participants to give Kern the contact information of a new recipient, then Kern could ship a new kit to a different participant and the kits would continue circulating. Not only would this provide participants with a convenient way to purchase, but it would likely boost sales and speed up transactions because there would be a more flexible purchasing opportunity in which customers can decide whether or not they want the product right away.

References Shugartt, S. (2015). Case: The Gnome Experiment. In T. L. Tuten & M. R. Solomon (Authors), Social media marketing (pp. 318-319). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing. Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2015). Social media marketing. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing....