Recently in the UK, fish and chip shop chain Harry Ramsden’s partnered with Uber Eats to run a promotion around the new Call of Duty: Black Ops video game.
Customers who bought a fish and chips meal from one of three participating outlets would receive a free copy of the game. With Call of Duty: Black Ops being one of the most anticipated games of the year, this seemed like an offer too good to be true. And it was.
In this week’s episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at gimmicky marketing, and how offers that seem great at the ideation stage turn out to be a marketing nightmare in execution.
Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.
If you prefer to listen on the go, the audio version of this week’s episode can be listened to below.
Subscribe on YouTube for each new episode: https://goo.gl/GVGT2W
Prefer podcasts? Subscribe below:
– Apple Podcasts: https://goo.gl/F7Tcfq
– Google Podcasts: https://goo.gl/kV3zpY
– Spotify: https://goo.gl/3osGCG
– Stitcher: https://goo.gl/gEXL6v
– Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/BuRy
– Radio Public: https://goo.gl/KdjQ6L
– Anchor: https://goo.gl/Fu1jZQ
– Breaker: https://goo.gl/9cgqqw
– CastBox: https://goo.gl/uawi1D
– Overcast: https://goo.gl/nrKmLo
+++
Transcription:
Intro: Welcome to Marketing on Tap. A weekly podcast in which marketing pros and authors, Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown serve up the latest marketing hot topics, campaigns and trends all wash down with a great craft beer. Join in for the fun as they debate the pros and cons of the topic of the week. While featuring popular or up and coming micro breweries. Topics include influence marketing, brand campaign successes and misses, customer advocacy programs, and marketing challenges facing businesses and agencies. It’s the marketing podcast to listen to you for CMOs, senior sales executives, and key decision makers at mid to enterprise level organizations. And with their good natured bashing of each other, each episode promises to entertain and educate in equal measure. Welcome to Marketing on Tap.
Sam Fiorella: All right everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Marketing on Tap of vlog and podcast. This is my mate Danny Brown. My name is Sam Fiorella. Today Danny we want to talk about COD.
Danny Brown: COD?
Sam Fiorella: COD. Yeah, or more specifically an article. So what’s in the news this week in terms of marketing and Uber Eats, over in the UK had an interesting idea. They partnered with a chain of fish and chips shops there of course it’s the UK. What else do they have there but fish and chips? They came for the contest where they would give away a free COD with every Cod offer that leaves their stores. Now COD for those of you that aren’t gamers out there is Call of Duty. So the basic premise here is that they were going to be giving away a copy of Call of Duty, very popular in demand game.
Danny Brown: So, the latest one as well, the Black Ops?
Sam Fiorella: The Black Ops, yes. So, that’s kind of appropriate. Black Ops and so with everyone, and of course this went horribly wrong, which we love to talk about examples that go horribly wrong and how we would’ve done it differently potentially.
Sam Fiorella: So, let’s talk about that, but before that, as always, Danny’s pouring something interesting.
Danny Brown: I do, and it’s a nice dark ale there.
Danny Brown: It’s called Waterloo Dark. Waterloo brewing company up in the Kitchener area of Ontario.
Sam Fiorella: It’s one of our, one of the bigger suburbs of Toronto, I guess. Is that a suburb?
Danny Brown: Is it a suburb?
Sam Fiorella: They probably don’t want to be known as a suburb of Toronto. Sorry, Waterloo.
Danny Brown: Probably not, but this is one of the originals like, one of their brand regional beers. It’s a core beer all year round, very dark yellow as you can see. It’ pretty light IBU at 14, so there’s no bitterness there.
Sam Fiorella: We’re not going to get drunk.
Danny Brown: No. Not like last week of the…
Sam Fiorella: Oh my God, guys. I stumbled out of here last week, like literally stumbled after one glass of that stuff.
Danny Brown: It was good. But yeah, this has got a nice mix of Canadian malted barley, some specialty malts, imported hops and pure culture.
Sam Fiorella: Say that five times fast, without a Scottish accent.
Danny Brown: Yeah, so, cheers! Cheers guys, cheers Robert.
Sam Fiorella: I like that.
Danny Brown: I do, I have a love hate relationship with Waterloo Brewing. Some of the beers I can’t really get into at all. Some like this I really like.
Danny Brown: So, it’s one of these funny brewers that, you know…
Sam Fiorella: I always have a hard time with dark myself because when you see a dark beer, I’m thinking Guinness and I’m expecting the creaminess and the thickness and you know, the goodness that’s Guinness. But this drinks like an Ale.
Danny Brown: Yeah, like an English ale basically.
Sam Fiorella: You know what I mean? So, which is not that bad because I like English ale, but you know, it says cognitive dissonance. I’m looking at it and I’m expecting one thing and I’m drinking something different, but the flavor is quite good.
Danny Brown: Yeah, it’s nice and malty.
Sam Fiorella: Oh, thank you. Cheers everybody.
Danny Brown: Cheers guys.
Sam Fiorella: I will enjoy this one and not stumble out of here afterwards. Although, we can potentially do that by going to a pub afterwards. We can do that.
Sam Fiorella: Anyway,so we want to talk about this campaign. So Danny, what went wrong?
Danny Brown: Okay. So, I mean first the game, Call of Duty Black Ops, one of the most anticipated games a season.
Sam Fiorella: You’re a Gamer.
Danny Brown: I’m a Gamer, got my Xbox One X at home. I don’t play the Call of Duty Black Ops games, but I do play the Call of Duty core games.
Danny Brown: So, I know-
Sam Fiorella: Is that that because you’re not good enough to play that game?
Danny Brown: No, I’m not geeky enough to play, maybe I’m too geeky for that one, that’s a specialty geek.
Sam Fiorella: Okay.
Danny Brown: I don’t know. But, yeah, so a highly anticipated game. So, the fact that you could buy , or get a free copy for the essentially spending 10 bucks on fish and chips and again, retail is 80 bucks and upwards.
Sam Fiorella: Wow.
Danny Brown: Right. So there’s a huge disconnect there right away.
Danny Brown: So the fact that it was a highly popular game, they must have known there’s going to be like a big, big hit. And it was just crafted, you know, incorrectly. Like, the optics behind it, the amount of gave the stores-
Sam Fiorella: Well, let’s, let’s explain to the audience what went wrong. I’ll skip right to the end. They didn’t have enough games. So they made this big promotion and this is a popular chain of fish and chips.
Sam Fiorella: So when they promoted it, everybody wanted it. And so, everybody started ordering fish and chips you know or, cod and chips specifically, cod and chips, to get the copy of COD. And uh, then there was not enough games to go around. So almost immediately, they sold out and they tried to make it right and so they, I’m just reading the article here, they said that, the, the, the fish and chip company, which is Harry Ramsden, said the anticipation and enthusiasm for the new COD game were demonstrated in the speed at which this promotion sold out at our London and Manchester stores, very specific about the stores, due to and unfortunately timed technical issue in our Birmingham outlet.
Sam Fiorella: A small number of game enthusiasts were initially left disappointed. As soon as we were made aware of this issue, the matter was shared with the team at Uber Eats and swiftly resolved.
Sam Fiorella: So, this is what they posted on Twitter and Instagram and fine, they apologize. They said some people were left disappointed, meaning that they’re put on a wait list. They’re not getting it that day, but it will come-
Danny Brown: It has been resolved
Sam Fiorella: And it’s been resolved. Basically, they said, they actually said, as of now, this is a resolve the issue.
Sam Fiorella: Well, of course that wasn’t the end of the story. As it turns out, there was only 40 games purchased and made available for the entire chain. One of the most highly anticipated games, $80 game you get for buying $10, fish and chips that they’re going to buy anyway.
Danny Brown: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: And so of course, this is now, you know, talk about evergreen content. This is not going to go away.
Danny Brown: Oh, no.
Sam Fiorella: You know what I mean? Like, a year from now when we’re talking about failed marketing gimmicks, we’re going to be coming back and referring to this, just like the old Pepsi Kendall Jenner fiasco that we keep coming back to. You know what I mean? Like, this is going to haunt this company for a while.
Sam Fiorella: So, clearly they did not plan properly. So what would they have done differently here? Like what was rule number one that they broke?
Danny Brown: Rule number one is the fact that they obviously knew the only had limited amounts and to put it as a big national offer, even though there was only three of the chains involved. London and Manchester , pretty big chains, right?
Sam Fiorella: Right. Exactly.
Danny Brown: So, yeah, I mean they clearly knew they never had enough or they should have just been upfront, “We only have x amount of games.” You know? Make sure you’re registered by… You know, we talked about today about a client project, about planning and preparing the audience, right?
Sam Fiorella: That’s right.
Danny Brown: And making sure the message is correct. So, they needed to make sure the audience knew, there was very, very limited supplies. You know? And clearly, they didn’t do this, they just wanted sales of the fish and chips.
Sam Fiorella: So, that’s actually two of the golden rules.
Sam Fiorella: Number one, understand your supply demand issue. You know what I mean? Before you try and launch into anything like this.
Sam Fiorella: And number two, be very clear in your terms and conditions that there is only so many available.
Danny Brown: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: Make that clear so that you know, the people that get it are thrilled and the people that don’t are not going to be complaining of the way that they are online.They can complain, “Oh, I didn’t get it. I waited in line. I’m so disappointed.” That’s fine. But,that doesn’t look as negative on the brand because it was clearly stated up front.
Danny Brown: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: You know, the problem here is clearly this was just not a well thought out campaign. I suspect, we don’t know this company, we don’t know who their marketing agency is, but I’m going to suspect that this is probably something they came up with on their own.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: And not vetted through a proper client. And if it was, God help them. Fire that marketing agency.
Sam Fiorella: You know, they could have turned this around. What I’m thinking of like, if this was me and I knew that I only had so many, I would make a big deal out of it, I would say, “You know what? Yeah, there’s only a limited number or 15 or 20 available at each location”.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: Have people line up like they do for concerts?
Danny Brown: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: Like when the Apple Phone comes out, the next Apple Phone comes out, people are lined up around the block. They don’t know if they’re going to get it. It might be sold out by the time they get there.
Danny Brown: Exactly.
Sam Fiorella: But that anticipation they’re building for that.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: That’s going to get all kinds of additional viral buzz and you know, everybody taking Instagram photos of themselves while they’re waiting in line trying to get the game. That would have been another way to handle a limited quantity.
Danny Brown: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: Right? Instead of this. The other thing-
Danny Brown: They may potentially have, not a coupon as such but some kind of voucher that says, “Okay, if you don’t get one of the games that we’ve got, you’ll get discounted games.” You know?
Sam Fiorella: Yeah. Work on something with the company. If you can meet up with the manufacturer. Sure. You know, something like that. Or maybe decide to host a tournament with everybody, like who didn’t get it? You know what I mean? Hosting kind of a trend of everybody can come and play for some other prize.
Danny Brown: Yep.
Sam Fiorella: You know, like do something that maybe gives it a second or the third way.
Danny Brown: You can play the game that they didn’t get. Just to piss them off even more.
Sam Fiorella: These guys I think would have been really into having, getting involved in some kind of a, tournament where there’s a chance to win something else.
Danny Brown: Yeah, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: So it’s a consolation prize, but, you know, anyway, those are just some ideas that something could’ve been done differently.
Sam Fiorella: But, this is not the only fiasco.
Danny Brown: No.
Sam Fiorella: That poor planning has given us. So, here’s one that is just, it’s one of those like scratching your head who thought this was a good idea, your radio station, and this was, was this in the UK or in the US?
Danny Brown: It’s the US.
Sam Fiorella: This is in the US?
Danny Brown: Yeah, California.
Sam Fiorella: Oh, of course. Because there’s a lawsuit involved. It has to be in the US.
Sam Fiorella: So, KDND 1079 in California, there it is, created a contest also to promote to gamers. They were giving away a Wii.
Danny Brown: The Nintendo Wii.
Sam Fiorella: A Nintendo Wii. Which is W-I-I, and on their campaign was “Hold your wee for a Wii.” Right? And so the idea here was, they were going to give away one box to the contestant who came into the studio and could drink the most water and hold it in before they basically peed themselves.
Danny Brown: Yeah, nah.
Sam Fiorella: And so, they had a number of people that did this and somebody won. So, there was one person that just couldn’t hold it anymore and some people said, “I’m out.” And just walked away. Other people probably just pissed themselves right then and there. But one person, won. But the problem was not with the person who won, the problem is with the runner up.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: The runner up, this poor woman started complaining about headaches and she bowed out of the competition. But then she subsequently died because she had a water intoxication.
Sam Fiorella: So, you can die from water intoxication apparently, which is too much water-
Danny Brown: Too much water, too soon or without releasing because-
Sam Fiorella: Without releasing. And I don’t know. Yeah, well, I guess because you just got your percentage of water in your body has gone up or something. I don’t know the science behind this, so forgive me, but basically, it’s a thing and this person died and 16 people at the radio station were fired. And, the husband and rightly so, I guess, won a lawsuit for 16.5 million dollars against the Station.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: I mean, so that was like some cookie DJs or producer’s idea and look at how it went wrong.
Sam Fiorella: So again, I don’t know that this is one that you can plan for other than just don’t do stupid shit.
Danny Brown: I think if you’re doing something like that, that involves the body, you have to check medical side effects, right? There’s got to be something where you’re thinking, “Okay, what can possibly go wrong here?” Apart from peeing yourself or whatever, but what can possibly, really go wrong?
Danny Brown: And obviously, they didn’t do that because then I’m guessing, without checking right now, but I’m guessing that if you check out what happens if you drink too much water and hold it.
Sam Fiorella: I almost don’t want to know.
Danny Brown: Yeah,exactly.
Sam Fiorella: What happens if you drink too much beer and hold it?
Danny Brown: You just get drunk.
Sam Fiorella: Drunk faster?
Danny Brown: Yeah, drunk faster. But yeah, I just think there’s liability alone, you know, I mean, she already got 16 and a half million dollar law suit.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: You know, whose thinking is behind that? You know?
Sam Fiorella: I mean really guys, is it this hard? Think!
Sam Fiorella: This really should not be rocket science in some of these cases, but I think it’s a really good point. If there is something that could potentially cause some kind of bodily harm, even if you’re not sure, get some medical advice, add that into your waiver that everybody has to sign whatever it is.
Sam Fiorella: But obviously, if there’s this kind of a risk, don’t do it.
Danny Brown: No, exactly.
Sam Fiorella: It’s just not worth the brand. And the issue, and this is actually, I’m going to call up a well, fun fact actually, before I talk about that, I was a New Orleans last year with a client and I did, of course, a drinking tour of New Orleans and one of the bars that we went to was an old bar that was brought over from the UK.
Sam Fiorella: And forgive me, I don’t remember the name of the bar now. I’m sure somebody will add it to the comments or send me an email. But they had holes at the bottom-
Danny Brown: So you can just stay at the bar and pee?
Sam Fiorella: Yeah, so talking about holding your beer. This just hit me. Yeah, basically what people would do is you would drink and if you had to pee, you would relieve yourself in the hole right at the bottom of your feet between your feet so that you wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, you could stay at the bar.
Danny Brown: That’s got to stink.
Sam Fiorella: You know what? Yeah, I mean obviously that wasn’t working there. Nobody was doing it there, so I don’t know if it stinks or not but, you know what? I’m actually kind of thinking how do we make that modernized so that I don’t have to get up and go to the washroom every five minutes when we’re at a pub drinking? I’m old. I got a small bladder, I’m constantly running to the bathroom when we drink beer.
Sam Fiorella: So, let’s take a look at speaking of beer and beer marketing. Let’s talk about another-
Danny Brown: Canadian beer market as well.
Sam Fiorella: Canadian beer marketing. So a Molson partying campaign. So, Molson Canadian, which I probably shouldn’t be saying, we’re not that big of a fan of it in terms of the beer and stuff.
Danny Brown: Nah, we’re not.
Sam Fiorella: Okay, no use in pretending. We’re not. But anyway, so when Molson Coors Brewing Company in Canada started a contest aimed at university students.
Sam Fiorella: So think about this, university students in Canada, the drinking age is 19 and even then they probably shouldn’t be drinking but, there’s 17 and 18 year olds in university. So, there’s a lot of younger aged kids. So they basically did a campaign that encouraged kids to post pictures of their wildest party. Right? So think about this.
Sam Fiorella: First of all, you could imagine there’s already all kinds of wild parties. So post the pictures and so what they’re doing basically, is trying to give an award away to the school that has the craziest parties.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Right? So of course they’re encouraging everybody to drink.
Sam Fiorella: Well, this didn’t go too far because they did launch it and they started getting some, crazy pictures of kids getting drunk and drinking, obviously all holding the and Molson Canadian bottles and the backlash from parents and from the schools was just nuts and of course they had to stop the campaign but not before a bunch of students got drunk and wrecked. You know, so again, very, very bad example of gimmicky marketing.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: All right? Which is kind of what this all is.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: This is all gimmicks of some kind that just, you know, trying to get that quick viral hit and I’m just, as we’re talking, I’m trying to determine like what motivates brands to do this kind of stuff? To go so like, is it that difficult to cut through the clutter today that we have to push the limits like this to get attention?
Danny Brown: Yeah, I mean, I think maybe it is. Especially, when you’re trying to get attention online, you know, we talked about experiential offline events that we can do. But online, you know, we know ourselves so that the amount of content that’s online, it’s hard to see.
Danny Brown: So, yeah clearly, I mean this is Molson, they’re not small market agency, you know, they’ve got multiple agencies working for them. So, clearly something, someone at the top signed off on it, this is going to be a great idea and get a bunch of kids drinking our beer and throwing parties and upsetting our core customers, whose the parents. Because basically it’s the parents that drink Molson Coors, right?
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: So, I don’t know.
Danny Brown: I think it’s got to the stage now where you’re almost like click bait marketing. Right?
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: Gimmick marketing to me is click bait marketing. You’re trying to enforce an action or reaction isn’t necessarily there and to heck with the results or whatever, you know?
Sam Fiorella: I think we said this in one of our earlier podcasts. What happened to the old fashion focus group?
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: I mean, I guess maybe again, this whole idea of speed to market, getting something done fast, maybe we’re giving or the budgets just aren’t being made available to these brands. I’m not quite sure what it is, but ask the questions.
Sam Fiorella: You know what? Robert here, internally is always telling us test, test, test, test, test.
Danny Brown: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: Right? He’s always pushing us to test everything. So one of the ideas of course is, take a small sample group. All right?
Sam Fiorella: If you’re from Molson Canadian, you’re going to do this, well run it by a small group of students, parents and faculty members and see what the reaction is.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: I mean they would have probably told you right away, this is what’s going to happen and you’re going to step back and not getting yourself into a PR nightmare. Which just makes complete sense. Like, think about it a little bit in advance, do that focus group, you know what I mean?
Sam Fiorella: Is there one that’s gone right? What about the nail polish one?
Danny Brown: Yeah, yeah.
Danny Brown: So, two years ago, I think it was, 2016. KFC over in, I think it was Japan.
Sam Fiorella: Japan
Danny Brown: Japan. They were trying to get a foothold in Japanese market.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: So they came up with a fun, you know, edible, nail Polish in the original KFC recipe and then hot and spicy.
Danny Brown: And basically, you can put the nail Polish on your nails and sort of chew your nails. You’ve already at the KFC effect-
Sam Fiorella: Flavor.
Danny Brown: Yeah. I have no idea-
Sam Fiorella: It’s good for the vegans and vegetarians out there.
Danny Brown: Exactly. So, I’ve no idea what the results were. But, that was an example to me, of a fun one that’s a little bit different, it gets attention, but there’s no, apart from the fact that you’re eating KFC, there’s no health issues.
Danny Brown: But, yeah, it’s just that, that was a fun one.
Sam Fiorella: I mean it’s a fun one with , I mean, unless there’s any kind of like, lead poisoning or something you get from sucking on your nails, but I mean, it’s funny.
Sam Fiorella: I think in Japan they can probably get away with a lot crazier stuff. Have you seen the game shows over there?
Danny Brown: Yeah, yeah.
Sam Fiorella: They’re like just off the wall and I think they can probably get away with some crazier stuff than what we might be able to get away with here.
Sam Fiorella: But anyway, we’re getting the bell guys.
Sam Fiorella: Thank you for our bell Steven.
Sam Fiorella: Final thoughts on gimmicky marketing. Do it, don’t do it. And if you’re doing it, how?
Danny Brown: Yeah, I mean, by all means do it. But know, you know, what you’re, what you’re wanting to get from and who your audience is. Are they receptive to gimmicky marketing? [inaudible 00:19:20] and one of our friends over and the Toby [inaudible 00:19:22], they’re doing one at the moment where you can, you know, they’re asking their fans to which [inaudible 00:19:28] beer character would you get tattooed on yourself.
Sam Fiorella: Oh, yeah.
Danny Brown: And the winner, you know, I’m guessing to get like a, a year supply beer or something, I’m not sure. But this has been going for a few years now and every time this comes out people are jumping on it with all the wacky designs that they want to get, etc.
Danny Brown: So, it can work as long as your audience is ready for that and the market is right for the kind of gimmick. So-
Sam Fiorella: And you’re not and you’re not threatening to kill anybody.
Danny Brown: Right, exactly. Yeah.
Danny Brown: I mean, I guess you could get ink poisoning from tattoos but, that’s the risk you take. You know, what you’re getting with a tattoo right?
Sam Fiorella: Yeah, exactly.
Danny Brown: You’ve got tattoos.
Danny Brown: So yeah, I think there’s a place for gimmicky marketing but, it has to be done really, really well and you have to look at all angles including liability angles.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah, I agree that today you doneed to do something off the wall. You do need to push the boundaries a little bit and you do need to cut through the clutter because there is just so much noise out there with Internet and with all the devices that we have and all the opportunities to watch various programs streaming Netflix and Prime now has got their shows and everything.
Sam Fiorella: So you do need to cut through the clutter, but don’t let the speed at which things happen on the Internet, change the way you plan a proper marketing campaign. Consider the focus group, consider the test, understand what are all the implications and run it through a series of a vetting of some kind. Whatever is appropriate for your business. For me, that’s got to be number one. It’s not just have some fun with it, but make sure that you’ve got those proper tests and controls in place before you go live with it.
Sam Fiorella: Anyway, so I hope we gave you a little bit of a laugh today with some of these cookie, crazy campaigns that are out there. Nobody, by the way, we do not encourage you to drink beer and hold your pee. That is not a smart idea. Do not do this at home folks.
Sam Fiorella: And by the way, Danny we’re getting to pot down here next time we do one of these things just to make it easy.
Danny Brown: No.
Sam Fiorella: Alright guys, thank you very much for joining our episode of Marketing on Tap.
Danny Brown: And obviously if you’re watching this on youtube, don’t forget to like, subscribe on had the little notifications. Leave a comment, you know, with your thoughts. Share examples of examples. Share examples of examples, of gimmicky marketing stuff-
Sam Fiorella: You’re cut off. You’re cut off.
Danny Brown: I’m cut off. Yeah.
Danny Brown: And by all means, subscribe to our podcast.
Sam Fiorella: Thank you everybody. Cheers. Till next time.
Sam Fiorella: Cheers mate. Cheers Robert.
Outro: You’ve been listening to Marketing on Tap with Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one and please feel free to leave a show review. That’s always worth a cheers.
The post Marketing on Tap Episode 17: Uber Eats, Free COD, and Holding Your Pee appeared first on Sensei Marketing.