Mark Whitmore,
CEO,
iKontakt
Smirnoff
Smirnoff’s use of social media is interesting in that it uses it to market offline events – bringing communities together around the brand both in the real and the online worlds. Much of its social media activity centres around the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange parties, which creates events to showcase the nightlife of different cities around the world. In some ways, this is the ultimate in 'social' media – campaigns that bring people together around a specific theme that is relevant to the brand, but that doesn’t have an overly pushy marketing feel to it. Social media mentions peaked around the time of the Nightlife Exchange event in November, and have tailed off a bit since.
Its reach is surprisingly low, however. This might be a deliberate strategy to control where the brand is marketed on social media. The Smirnoff Ice brand, which still generates more coverage on Facebook than any other Smirnoff brand, suffered reputationally after scandals of under-age binge drinking and 'icing' hit last year. Smirnoff managed this well, and seems to have upped its responsible drinking message as a result.
Despite that, it is a hugely well recognised brand, and the high satisfaction score reflects that. But given the amount it spends on advertising – which all drives traffic to its Facebook pages - its social media activity comes across as a bit fragmented. There is an opportunity to do more to interact with consumers through social media in a more sustained way, rather than just relying on the peaks of activity around events.
NMA Opinion
Smirnoff is all about the experience, and of late it has been very successful by holding international offline events. It has been using Facebook as the main channel to promote this, and for the most part has been doing it well (apart from the TV ad that gave out a URL that didn’t exist). There just isn’t a sense of investment – in either planning or spend – in social media activity from the brand, which is a shame as there’s so much potential to do something really special.
