Image courtesy of Burt’s Bees via Entrepreneur.com
Take a look at your calendar – odds are it’s already full of work meetings, appointments, social events, and your child’s extracurricular activities. Now imagine on top of your already busy schedule, an advertisement or two is thrown in, mimicking another appointment. Would the ad make you step back and take a breather or would it push you off the deep end?
Burt’s Bees is charting new digital marketing territory with the introduction of its eight-week calendar alert campaign, which is designed to promote its new line of brightening facial products. The campaign, aimed at existing 35-to-54-year old Burt’s Bees customers, is being promoted via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter, and includes a few quick tips to brighten women’s days and even fewer sales pitches.
Image courtesy of Burt’s Bees via NYTimes.com
The calendar promotion, which only constitutes a small portion of Burt’s Bees total ad spend, is believed to be “more intimate than social media” and provides a learning opportunity for the brand.
The challenge for brands to break through the clutter is greater than ever, especially on social media, but it’s hard to tell whether this latest form of digital marketing will be intrusive (although, it does require the consumer to opt-in first) or effective.
Should more brands consider a calendar alert campaign? Will it soon be a rising trend in the digital marketing realm?
Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Delightfully Digital 
Its so weird you wrote a blog post about this. Just this week, I downloaded a calendar app that my family can all access to see our ever-changing schedules. The app, though not sponsored by a brand like Burt’s Bees, adds events that they think apply to your family – National Play Day, etc. If you opt in to the other options, it will even add events in your area and opening days for family friendly movies. The app can look at what we are doing and come up with items that it things we like. Its just another way big data is attempting to add more to our lives. I think this is a unique way to reach families, and I do appreciate that I can opt out of the events being added if needed. We will see how much they add for now. I think its really a great marketing idea for Burt’s Bees to attempt an app like this and it seems to fit its target audience.
LikeLike
Should more brands consider a calendar alert campaign? Will it soon be a rising trend in the digital marketing realm?
This is an interesting idea, one I would never had considered. Initially, my thought was why on earth would I even allow a brand, much less a beauty brand to use my calendar. Obviously, I am not a loyal fan as is the targeted audience who is already a customer. This is an innovative twist to putting information where it is most applicable to audiences. I have one concern though, what about the people who are loyal customers who do not use their outlook, Google, or Yahoo calendar? How will they get them to use their calendar?
LikeLike
This is an interesting approach at reaching customers from Burt’s Bees. It may work since consumers and BB fans are option in to receive calendar notifications, but for consumers like me, it gives me anxiety even thinking about adding something else to my calendar. I used to have RueLaLa, the flash sale site, alert me every day at 11:00 am to get online and check out the newest brands on the site so that I didn’t miss something good, but I found that I was shopping almost every day! I’m not sure this that the BB campaign appeals to me.
LikeLike