Spark Something – Like cohesive marketing strategies

Posted by Amrit Gill | Filed under SEO

I’m currently watching Arsenal spank Tottenham good and proper (2-0 at HT) and the latest Sony Ericsson TV advert came on for their new phone – Satio. The advert is catchy, typical of Sony with another colourful balls theme bouncing around the place, the advert ended with the ever-so fashionable “search for Spark Something online” call to action.

So with my trusty steed by my side I fired up google.co.uk and did a search for Spark Something and I was surprised by what i really saw.

Callum Adamson initially highlighted the LIAF at work but I just ignored it as a schoolboy error, but now seeing it in prime-time and expensive advertising spots I just can’t resist not to blog about the epic fail. The screen shot below shows at half-time during the Arsenal match the SERP for Spark Something and boy doesn’t Sony Ericsson look like idiots.

Spark Something SERPs

As you can see, the top three natural results are not Sony Ericsson property but a couple of blog posts about the campaign and an agency with an exact match for the query.

The PPC results are even more alarming, here Sony Ericsson have the ability to guarantee the highest position 100% of the time, just like Vodafone have for the query. So either way, natural or paid Sony Ericsson won’t be obtaining the traffic that the hip young gun slinger promised them when delivering the pitch that enticed the audience with search for Spark Something online.

I saw similar listings within bing.co.uk but yahoo shows Sony Ericsson site number one, though this could be a paid inclusion listing.

So where did they go wrong?

The biggest issue here is that there is a clear lack of consideration for the customer journey after the call-to-action. It could be down to a traditional marketing team and agency running the entire campaign, without getting the input of their online counterparts. Worse still, they gave the channel a very limited budget thinking they would be naturally found for the slightly obscure search query.

Communication can be deemed as another contributing factor to Sony Ericsson’s LIAF. Chances are they have a fantastic in-house Search Team with a supporting agency, but simply did not gain visibility of the campaign ran by the off line team.

Either way, it makes me wonder how much traffic they’re missing out from having visibility, if we look at Google trends and compare this to another well known campaign – compare the meerkats, we can see that Spark Something has gained momentum and will do so as the campaign rolls out, but at its peak – its not that far off from compare the meerkats.

Spark Something Trends

So if Spark Something was my baby

So with this lack of awareness and respect for online at Sony Ericsson and their lovely agencies, what can they do to repair the LIAF? What would I have done if this was my baby?

If the campaign utilises a call-to-action to an online asset, communicate with key online stakeholders from the very beginning. If there is no in-house online marketing team? HIRE ONE!
TV commercials are based on storyboards, so I would also storyboard the customers journey after the advert.
Set out the budget for all online activity as part as the initial campaign brief, and not as an afterthought.
Plan out clear objectives and goals for the online assets.
If using a trendy search term as a Call-To-Action, review the SERPs for competitiveness and propose a SEM plan to secure the SERPs. So I would make sure that #1 will be www.hopperinvasion.com #2 will be www.sonyericsson.com and #3 will be a PR from the agency behind the campaign. I would also make sure the commercials are available within universal search under the Hopper Invasion URL.
Chances are the lifetime of the campaign is relatively short, I would suggest building equity for the site with attitudes of shifting it across once the campaign is over.
I would make sure that all assets are optimised to help support the keyphrase call-to-action, www.hopperinvasion.com certainly isn’t.
I would set out an equity plan, chances are Sony Ericsson owns a dozen of micro / campaign sites that are inactive which could pass on lovely equity to support your call-to-action within the SERPs.
Create a series of optimised PR’s supporting the Call-To-Action keyphrase and syndicate not only through PR Web and the likes, but to all marketing outlets.
Place agreements with retailers and networks not to brand-bid on the keyphrase.

So to Fix the LIAF quickly?

Turn on 100% visibility for Spark Something in PPC for both www.hopperinvasion.com and www.sonyericsson.com.
Optimise www.hopperinvasion.com for the keyphrase.
Place links from all Sony Ericsson assets with the keyphrase as the anchor text.
Optimise and syndicate PR’s based on the campaign and more importantly the keyphrase.
Set out clear objectives and goals for www.hopperinvasion.com and monitor closely.
Question your agency responsible for this royal fuckup.
Pull your socks up and start thinking seriously about online marketing within Sony Ericsson.

Who has done it right?

Whilst writing this blog post, I’ve come across another campaign where the Call-To-Action is a keyphrase for people to search online with. Hidden Killer, its a campaign ran by the government to raise awareness of asbestos. If you search for Hidden Killer online, the two natural results returned are property of the government agency behind the campaign, as seen in the image below. The nice touch is the youtube result with the correct URL.

Hidden Killer SERPs

Another advert that utilises a keyphrase for a Call-To-Action is from Betfair, at the bottom of their TV advert it prompts you to Search Betfair Football. The SERPs are dominated by betfair property, simply down to utilising their brand term within the search query.

Betfair Football SERPs

So hopefully Sony Ericsson or that young gun slinger at the high end agency comes across this post and fixes the LIAF.

Spark Something Now!

Amrit Gill

November 8th, 2009

7 Responses to “Spark Something – Like cohesive marketing strategies”

David Says:
November 10th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Amrit,

Great article nice example of how to fail when you launch a new product and your agency doesn’t care about search…

What makes this aspect interesting it is not an example of a brand being caught off guard since it was launch in late September.

This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about why you would build a brand, supported by a offline media campaign without owning at least one of the top 3 results.

The top 3 results still show clearly the failure of Sony to understand search.
1# is a online review site
2# Press release
3# Blog about how Sony failed
4# Youtube clips
5# Agency called “Spark Communication”

This shows they have failed and not just overlooked the issue, most research shows that consumers don’t usually remember the campaign url in tv/radio ads.

When Cadbury launched their Gorilla campaign some of the many terms new terms their campaign generated: cadbury gorilla, gorilla ad, cadbury ad

http://www.brandrepublic.com/InDepth/Features/773064/Cadbury-gorilla-wins-Campaign-Year/

Good point on BetFair which operates in a highly competitive industry but still does show how to dominate search results.
Daffyd K Jone Says:
November 14th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Arrived here after watching the ad during the England-Brazil football match – presumably an expensive spot. Searching for Spark Something led me to this site, and a bunch of other blogs discussing the campaign. Can’t find the “official” site anywhere in the first three pages of the google search – gave up after that. Only found the hopperinvasion.com url after reading your article.
Amrit Gill Says:
November 14th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
It really makes me wonder, Saatchi and Dare are big guns in the agency world, and they’re throwing away all of Sony Ericsson’s money. I guess its the whole traditional versus digital argument going off here, they should just stick to utilising their brand name when using search queries for call-to-actions. I hear they’re about to go ballistic on Yahoo’s network and getting people to design their own hoppers, more money wasted if they can’t fix this simple issue. I hope your enjoying the match bud, thanks for the comment.
ido ★ SEO » Blog Archive » How to do someone an SEO favour Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 11:47 am
[...] of mine a heads-up about the “Liaf” that was happening online with the Sony ”spark something” [...]
Weekly Search & Social News: 12/01/09 | Search Engine Journal Says:
December 1st, 2009 at 3:56 pm
[...] Spark Something; Like cohesive marketing strategies – hehe… nothing this ol war horse likes better than chewing up screw ups. Amrit did a good job of taking apart some serious FAIL work from the folks over at Erikson… Nice ride (be sure to ‘mount up’). [...]
Weekly Search & Social News: 12/01/09 | Technoinspire Blog Says:
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
[...] [...]
SEO Scientist – Applying the scientific method to SEO » Blog Archive » Post2 Says:
September 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
[...] http://www.iamsearch.co.uk/seo/spark-something-like-cohesive-marketing-strategies/ [...]