If there are any morning brew newsletter readers around, then you may have read about Natural Light’s revolutionary marketing idea the other day. If not, no worries, we got you covered: long story short is that Natural Light, the beer die brand of choice, was looking for ways to market their college debt relief program (which is another story itself). What they decided to do is create an art sculpture called the “Da Vinci of Debt”– the world’s most expensive piece of art in NYC’s Grand Central Station.
The sculpture is made up of 2,600 real college diplomas (in which they paid $100 for each diploma to help drive campaign engagement) from graduates across the country, the value of the “Da Vinci of Debt” is derived from the average cost of a four year college education– $180,000. If you do the math, the exhibition value is valued at $468 million!
So why did they do it? We could argue a few different reasons, but aside from illustrating how college graduates acquire debt in order to further their education, grow a network, and enter a professional career, we believe Natural Light’s progressive marketing strategy targets the traditional face to face exhibitions, or better known as “expos” or “shows”, and brings them virtual.
Obviously this revolutionary marketing campaign has a lot to do with how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we network, market, and promote in an already saturated e-commerce world. But how did they ensure that this campaign would reach their standards of success?
First and foremost, the best kind of marketing is the one that drives user engagement and get’s people spreading positive word of mouth. Just as many restaurants in NYC had to adapt to the pandemic restrictions through outdoor dining structures, experiential marketing has found similar workarounds. Natural Light accomplished their campaign by focusing on two things: Driving digital interest and creating an abundance of user generated content (UGC). With the resources Natural Light had on deck, they were able to do just that.
More specifically, according to a 2020 Stackla survey cited by HubSpot in June found that consumers find UGC 9.8 times more impactful than influencer content, and 79% of people say UGC “highly impacts their purchasing decisions.” By focusing marketing campaigns on the objective to create user generated content in return could potentially be game-changing for your organization. Not only does sourcing user-generated content (UCG) drive interest among its participants and their respective networks, but could also sit well with the average viewer. Besides, old school influencer marketing can be expensive, right?!
Our takeaway. As we are in the awkward time as the pandemic reigns and the vaccines roll out, we still cannot go back to how things used to be. In fact, we might not ever go back to the exact way things were before. Innovation and adaptation has been placed on everyone's priority list this year. However, we should expect more face to face marketing venues to trickle back into the conversation slowly and carefully over time. While we’re all still doing our best to physically distance and follow CDC protocols, the virtual components those exhibitions or events launch feel more important.
If you missed our last blog, we talked about creating an omni channel marketing strategy for your organization and its importance. This is the kind of umbrella that allows you to deploy strategies to gain user generated content. Remember the ice bucket challenge and the water bottle flipping craze? Both of those went viral and spurred a ton of user generated content to bring awareness to the organization’s social cause.
Oak Street has the expertise to help your organization strategically develop marketing campaigns that will drive engagement, boost conversions, and most importantly, drive user generated content. We encourage you to reach out today for a free consultation. We are running a few specials on services this month, so take advantage of the deals while they're around!