The Lonely Marketer

One aspect of social media that I truly enjoy is watching companies, who historically engage in traditional marketing mediums, adapt and change as their audience changes. More and more articles are popping up talking about companies who have jumped into social media in an attempt to meet up with an audience their trying to attract. A recent example I saw on AdvertisingAge focused on Febreze, a P&G brand, and their attempt to attract coeds with a new Facebook campaign.

The relatively young (Febreze’s family of products has been around less than a decade) but burgeoning $600 million brand has just kicked off “What Stinks,” the online and viral campaign for its fabric-refresher spray aimed at college students.

“There are 18 million college kids out there and we’ve never really targeted them,” said Martin Hettich, North American marketing director for Febreze. He said there have been pockets of students that over the years embraced the odor-fighting spray, typically priced between $3 and $7, despite the fact that there has been little in the way of dedicated advertising toward the group.

Citing the fact that “washing is not a convenient part of the lifestyle at college”, the Febreze execs probably took a sizable step outside of their marketing comfort zones and tried something new. With ROI being in such focus for marketers, that’s not an easy step to take, but I love the risk they’re taking and I think it will pay off. Let’s take a quick look at a couple elements of Febreze’s What Stinks campaign. Naturally, the first thing I did was see if they bought the domain. Yes, they did and here is the landing page:

You definitely get the feel for the graphical elements of the Febreze What Stinks campaign. The other aspect of this page that I like is there being one link on the page. So, there is only one way to go from the page and that is to the Facebook group. The page is obviously here for people like me that hear a campaign name and instantly type into my address bar of my browser.

Next, we visit the Facebook page dedicated to Febreze’s campaign:

I like the fact it carried over the graphical elements from the website. That consistency typically indicates a well thought out campaign. CO-ED Magazine picked up the Febreze story and also includes the main graphics so Febreze did a good job of branding the campaign.

Now, let’s check out what they did with the “I Tell Febreze What Stinks” Facebook page, which at last check had over 750 members:

Along with a comedy tour schedule, the page contains cartoons, some user generated photos, an intro video, and a potentially viral video game called The Dank Game. Other standard Facebook features such as a discussion board, member photos, and The Wall are also included on the page.

One last element I thought was creative was the Wheel-O-Stink:

This is Febreze’s subtle attempt to educate the college crowd about their various products and how they might be used. Very creative! Out of curiosity visitors will try this out and will get some exposure to the Febreze product line.

A potentially dangerous aspect of this campaign is the fact they’ve opened themselves up to potentially damaging Wall postings on animal testing and crude stories about smells that could diminish the brand. I noticed a few of those while on the page. The college crowd could easily jump on the wrong bandwagon with some of that.

One other quick note is search engine exposure for the campaign. I went to the major engines and Febreze does not rank in the top 3 or 4 results for the phrase “What Stinks” and they also are not running any paid search ads. People curious about this campaign might head to a search engine and search for details, but may not look far enough down to see the actual Febreze website. A PPC ad could help guide them to the campaign page.
Overall, I think Febreze did a great job with this campaign. They’re obviously taking major steps to make their brand recognizable by the college crowd and they’ve done that by going to where that crowd is hanging out. Am I curious about the results? Yes! Brand appeal will be tough to measure, but if their goal is the college crowd I think they’ve done it right.

What are your thoughts?