MODERN MARKETING
Even in China, progressive marketers
like Reckitt Benckiser are embracing
Advocates led marketing and
enjoying high ROI. On Dettol,
one of its global power brands,
Reckitt Benckiser China has built a
community of over 30,000 moms
over a period of 12 months. These
moms are spreading the word
about Dettol offline and online.
Over 25,000 authentic consumer
reviews, comments and photos
now exist online about Dettol, a low
involvement antiseptic liquid. This
authentic user content optimized for
search engines is influencing and
converting other consumers 24/7.
Besides advocating Dettol within
their social circle, these consumers
have also helped the brand team
create and validate new messaging
and product ideas, in half the time
and cost of the traditional approach.
They are now pretty much like an
extended marketing team on Dettol.
See the case study below.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/
mFCgh6D-krw?
More importantly, the high ROI of
the Dettol Advocates community
has been conclusively proven by
TNS brand tracking. Over 3 waves
of tracking, the geographies with
the Advocates community far
outperformed other geographies
on all brand health indicators. In
Advocate geographies, recall of
Dettol’s key message reached
almost 50%, with no TV advertising.
In the past, to achieve this level of
message recall Dettol had spent 1012 times more.
WOM recommendations are a
powerful purchase driver, more so
in emerging markets with high trust
deficit like China. To efficiently and
effectively generate such authentic
recommendations, brands need to
build a community of advocates and
engage with them in a sustained
and authentic manner. This requires
a mindset change and new skills. It
is high time we said goodbye to the
1950s model of brand marketing
pioneered by P&G, which relies on
brand content around a big idea.
Community, Collaboration and
Conversation need to be the focus
from now on. Authentic Advocacy
that drives growth at a fraction of
traditional media cost will be the
prized outcome, of this new focus.
Asit Gupta is co-founder of Advocacy,
Asia’s leading WOM marketing company,
head quartered in Shanghai with
operations in China and India. He is one
of the few marketers who have worked
in 3 out of 4 BRIC countries, having
worked with Procter & Gamble, British
American Tobacco and DDB advertising
across India, Russia, UK and China.
July 2016
ModernBusiness
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