Posts by John Eckhouse
Morton's The Steakhouse Serves up Lots of Social Media
Morton’s The Steakhouse uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to spread the word about the restaurant chain and its events and to keep communicating and conversing with its customers. In a wide-ranging interview that appeared in Chain Leader, Roger Drake, the restaurant chain’s senior vice president of marketing and communications, talked about some of its social media efforts. …more…
The NHL's New Twitter Feeds
A real-time Twitter feed on the National Hockey League’s site is increasing interaction with fans. In December, the NHL became the first in a handful of companies to launch a white-label platform from TweetMixx that aggregates tweets from Twitter on websites and blogs.
The NHL has three Twitter feeds labeled Insiders, Chatter and Links. While all provide interesting information, the one with the greatest influence comes from the Insiders’ Tab, where tweets stream from influential North American hockey writers. In Canada and the United States, the NHL-related stream on Twitter appeared in the top 10 trending topics. Those tweets feed through the TweetMixx Channel and …more…
Social Media Aids the Brand of Toyota
Toyota’s aggressive social media efforts are helping it to avoid losing the public’s trust in its product. Toyota actually has grown its Facebook fan base more than 10% since late January, around the time of the marketer’s Jan. 21 recall announcement and its Jan. 26 stop-sale date. Toyota’s secret weapon: using one of the most important tools in a crisis-communications handbook: social media.
The marketer has been faulted for communicating too little and too late in traditional media, but it’s gone all out when it comes to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social-media channels. Prior to the recall, Toyota didn’t have a reputation as an aggressive social-media adopter, yet it’s managed to increase the number of fans on its main …more…
Del Taco's Integrated Facebook, TV Promos Pay Off
Del Taco, a Mexican chain, grew its Facebook fan base from 20,000+ to 43,000+ in just five weeks after launching its entertainment webisodes platform, “The Del Taco Super Special Show,”on Facebook. The humorous webisodes are aimed at the chain’s core audience of men 18-39).
The chain’s TV spots now feature a clip from the webisode show at its start, and a shout-out for the Facebook page/show at its conclusion. Placements of online and social media ads for the show, as well as the creative and offers featured, are being tweaked daily based on impressions, click-throughs and other metrics. Tweets that promote the show and special offers are also ongoing. …more…
Appeal of Social Media Grows for Lunch Meat Makers
The New York Times‘ Stuart Elliott has a good look at a couple of social media campaigns that, as he says tongue-in-cheek, could be called “meatups.” The brands, Land O’Frost and Sara Lee Deli, both sell salami, bologna and other lunch meats.
For Land O’Frost, the campaign represents its first foray into the social media. There is a web community called Land O’Moms, where visitors can exchange recipes and parenting advice, download coupons, read articles from women’s magazines and communicate with popular mommy bloggers. Land O’Frost and the campaign also have …more…
JetBlue Marketer to Agencies: Find Me on Twitter
One basic way agencies can demonstrate digital chops to a potential client? Find him or her on Twitter. That’s the lesson to be learned from JetBlue’s senior VP-marketing and commercial, Marty St. George (who will be speaking on June 14 at TWTRCON NY), who decided to test agencies currently vying for the airline’s marketing account with this tweet: “We’re pitching our advertising AOR. Curious on digital savvy … first test is how many of the agencies will find me on Twitter.” …more…
Southwest Airlines Bumps the Wrong Passenger, DiscoversTwitter PR Mess
On Saturday, the crew of a Southwest Airlines flight between the California cities of Oakland and Burbank asked a passenger to leave the plane before takeoff because it deemed him too overweight to fly. Unfortunately, that passenger happened to be Clerks and Chasing Amy director Kevin Smith, who has more than 1.5 million Twitter followers and was willing to make sure that they all heard all about it.
“Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?” Smith asked in a heavily quoted tweet on Saturday evening. Smith eventually posted dozens of tweets about the …more…
Reaching Millions With Twitter: The Whole Foods Story
Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods Market, was instrumental in creating Whole Foods’ acclaimed social media program and the results have been phenomenal! For example, in the first year, Wholefoods gained a million Twitter followers. It has now surpassed 1.75 million people with its 150 different Twitter accounts (some are devoted to products, such as cheese or wine, for example).
Whole Foods uses Twitter primarily as a customer service tool. Erwin says Whole Foods does promote its blog content and may …more…
Dyn Inc. to its Followers: "Tweet Nerdy to Me"
The business of managed DNS (Internet Infrastructure as a Service) is anything but sexy, but the Dyn Inc. team has a group of 2,000+ passionate users following them on Twitter. The Dyn Inc. story began the same way a number of tech start-ups did — as a big idea out of a college dorm room. Since then, Dyn has thrived, in great part by leveraging social media as a springboard. …more…
How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation
IBM doesn’t have a corporate Twitter ID because “we want the IBMers in aggregate to be the corporate blog and the corporate Twitter ID,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation. “We represent our brand online the way it always has been, which is employees first. Our brand is largely shaped by the interactions that they have with customers.”
Thousands of IBMers are the voice of the company. As it turns out, its decentralized social media approach is another milestone in the company’s history—driving unprecedented collaboration and innovation. IBM lets employees talk—to each other and the public—without intervention. With a culture as diverse and distributed as IBM’s, getting employees to collaborate and share makes good business sense. …more…
