Marketing Hipster

This morning I was on YouTube when I saw an ad for Dove about a contest they are holding which allows users to create their own commercial and the winners’ commercial will be aired during the Academy Awards. Dove has had some great success recently with their Evolution video that I thought was very well done so I clicked on the banner to check out what they were up to now.

Dove along with AOL built a little application that allows users to create and edit their commercials online. They have also supplied videos, images and sound for the commercials. I thought this was a another great idea, they might of allowed users to use their own video, sound, etc, but I understand why they are supplying all the content. One step at a time.

Over the holidays, I was lucky enough to get a new digital camera and I have been playing around with some editing software so I thought this might be an interesting thing to try. Also, just for the record, I am a big Dove fan. If you went into my bathroom today, you would find both Dove soap as well as Dove shampoo. I began looking at the rules of the contest and downloading some of their files when something caught my eye in the contest rules. It said the following:

“ELIGIBILITY: Open only to women who are legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, 18 years of age or older and who are valid registered contestants.”

Screenshot:

I could not of read that correctly could I? Only women are eligible to enter this contest? May I ask why? Even though it is totally irrelevant, a man cannot enjoy Dove’s new cream oil body wash? Come on, I am very in touch with my feminine side, ask anyone. Who in their right mind decided that they could create a contest that only females are eligible to enter? Now I am no lawyer, but isn’t Dove and it’s corporate owner Unilever discriminating based on gender? I am just trying to get my head wrapped around this. So because I am a man, according to Dove, this product is not for me and I am not eligible to participate in your little contest. BUT, you still want me as a customer for many of your other products.

This is like the recent contest the NFL had asking people to create their own SuperBowl commercial. Now what would of happened if the NFL said that since the majority of their customers are men their contest is only eligible for men? There would of been huge backlash against the NFL. What makes this different? If this is legal and more importantly moral, what could we see next?

Dove, you have made a grave error with these contest rules. Let’s forget about the discrimination part of it, how about that you are running the risk of alienating 50% of the population, males, who happen to buy some of your products? Unilever are you willing to take that risk?

I would love other people’s opinions on this because this just does not make sense to me at all. Feel free to comment and let me know if I am seeing this the wrong way.

Technorati Tags: Dove, contest, Unilever, discriminating, discrimination

Unless you have been living in a cave the last couple of weeks, you have heard, seen, read or even tried the Nintendo Wii. They have, in my humble opinion, had a great TV campaign of those two Japanese guys driving around in a little car saying, “We want to play”. They had a great launch of this new console and many have been saying that the Wii is a better buy than the much more expensive Playstation 3. Unfortunately, with every good thing that happens, you have to expect some problems and problems is what has popped up for Nintendo. There has been a rash of postings about the innovative joystick the Wii has where you actually move to perform an action has been breaking because of all the movements people have to make.There have been blogs setup specifically on this issue, I happen to of stumbled on this one where they actually have video of the joystick breaking while a guy is playing it. This console has been out what, 3 weeks or something and there are already 2.2 million search results for the term “wii have a problem” in Google.

Even though at the moment it does not look like this is a wide spread issue, the reason why I bring this up is to discuss and look at how Nintendo handled this issue. If you look at incidents like this in the past, you can see prime examples of how companies absolutely shot themselves in the foot and then proceeded to put it right into their mouths by either their lack of action, lack of attention or just outright ignoring their customers. Think of companies like Microsoft with the power cord and disk drives on their first Xbox. Dell and Sony with their exploding batteries and finally, the best one, Sony and their rootkit installed on their music CD’s to stop piracy.

The way each one of these companies handled these incidences or in better terms, how poorly they handled them directly caused these problems or issues to multiply in size and scope. If they addressed these problems immediately and properly, these issues would never of gotten the kind of PR they received and more importantly, each one of these companies could of turned unhappy customers into true brand advocates.

Nintendo on the other hand has showed the exact right way to handle an issue of this sort. They immediately announced for all users who broke the joystick they would get a new strap, no fee, no shipping costs. Here is a quote from the blog I linked to earlier.

“After having my Wii Remote fly through the air and hit the ceiling while my brother-in-law played Wii Sports Bowling, I promptly called Nintendo and complained about this catastrophe. The customer service was very nice and professional, and quickly sent me a new Wii Remote, shipping paid for it to come to me, and for me to send the old one back. Little did I know that the Wii Remote I would soon get would have a stronger string connecting the wrist strap to the Wii Remote. Indeed, as I opened the UPS package, I discovered that it was much thicker and looked stronger than before.”

A prime example of if handled properly, a company can turn an unhappy customer of theirs into a brand advocate / evangelist which will pay far more dividends in the long run compared to the short term incremental charges it would cost to fix the problem.

Technorati Tags: Nintendo Wii, wii have a problem, brand advocates, evangelist