Marketing on Tap

With the news that CrossFit are deleting their accounts on Facebook and Instagram, the multi-national brand is just the latest in a growing number of brands pulling, or deleting, their social media accounts.

British restaurant chain Wetherspoons, cosmetics firm Lush, and now CrossFit - are these brands leaving social media just a one-off, or is this the start of a growing trend?

In this week's show, we look at what this chain of events means for social media, and Facebook in particular, and what marketers need to be doing now to both monitor this trend, and stay ahead of it.

Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

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When it comes to the customer lifecycle, a lot of marketers and businesses are still only thinking in the linear - find an audience, look to attract them, sell a product/service, and done. But this misses a far bigger picture in the journey.

While getting leads and conversions is important, it's just one facet of the complete journey from interest, research, intent, etc. By remaining linear in their thinking, marketers are losing out not only on customers, but potential advocates and ambassadors as well.

In this week's show, we look at why you need to bend the customer lifecycle journey, and how you can use advances in technology and AI when it comes to determining what steps you need to take in the early part of the customer lifecycle, as well as the latter part once converted.

Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

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When it comes to loyalty and/or affinity programs, many businesses and brands are still missing the mark. Too many go for short-term thinking, and offer discount after discount to get customers into their stores, and this can hurt them in the long term.

With new programs from Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons, updated programs from Starbucks, and new lifestyle programs from Barneys in the U.S. all offering different takes, should businesses be concentrating on affinity or loyalty?

In a stunning about turn, Mark Zuckerberg published a privacy manifesto that essentially changes Facebook as we know it. By moving to end-to-end encrypted messaging, the public newsfeed that everyone has been using for the last 10+ years has basically been side-stepped.

As both Nike and Gillette have shown in recent months, cause marketing is becoming an increasingly core part of a brand's marketing strategy. From societal and political issues and more, businesses aren't afraid to take a definitive stand when it comes to potentially controversial topics.

But does this have an impact on the brand's perception with consumers and, more importantly, sales and revenue? Does cause marketing attract consumers, or turn them off?

With Disney's streaming service about to launch, and other platforms either already in the streaming game or about to enter it, how much of a threat is this to Netflix, and what does it means for users of online streaming services?

Will the likes of the video game crash of the 80's, and the music wars that saw Napster disappear under the onslaught of Apple, Spotify, and more be repeated with online video streaming? Or is there enough room for everyone at the table?

Fast food chain Wendy's is facing major backlash on social media at the moment, due to their refusal to join the Fair Food Program, that offers human rights and protection from abuse for farm workers in the fast food supply chain.

In today's mobile first world, you might think outdoor ads and billboards are yesterday's news. But someone forgot to tell DOOH, or digital out of home advertising.

When Lululemon announced they had launched a loyalty program, they became the latest brand to shift focus from their core business to take a new direction. As the likes of Staples and Apple have shown, this services-over-product approach can be key to moving forward and adapting to the new behaviours of today's consumers. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how brands are pivoting away from what first made them successful, and whether this model can be used in other industries. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

When Dolce and Gabbana released a racist Chinese ad, it was just the latest in a long line of marketing gone wrong when it comes to the fashion world. From LuluLemon saying their customers were too big for their products, to Topman describing their customers as football hooligans and criminals, it seems the fashion world is a leader in poor marketing. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how brands can completely miss the message when it comes to their buyers, and how they often make it worse when coming out with an apology. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

When it comes to disrupting an industry with innovative products and marketing, the ice cream industry may not be high up on your list of usual suspects. Yet that's exactly what's happened as giants like Häagen-Dazs found out when small, agile newcomers started eating into their profits with lifestyle-themed ice cream. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how the little ice cream guys took on the giants at their own game, forcing the bigger corporations to start thinking like disruptor startups. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

In a recent Facebook discussion between marketers, the question was asked if social media influencers are just the equivalent of traditional media buying. The point being made was, with all the paid influencer programs being used to shill product, has the role of the influencer been reduced to a simple ad platform? In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how paid influence programs are impacting both influencers and brands that use them, and what your business should do to get real and tangible results from your influence marketing campaigns. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

How do you turn social media haters into brand advocates? KFC did exactly that when they took a customer's negative tweet about their fries and turned it into a win for the brand nationally. It's a great example of brands that take social media haters at more than face value, and not only improve their services and products, but create brand advocates at the same time. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how KFC and others like them created this advocacy, and how you can take the lessons learned and apply to your business. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

Recently in the UK, fish and chip shop chain Harry Ramsden's partnered with Uber Eats to run a promotion around the new Call of Duty: Black Ops video game. Customers who bought a fish and chips meal from one of three participating outlets would receive a free copy of the game. With Call of Duty: Black Ops being one of the most anticipated games of the year, this seemed like an offer too good to be true. And it was. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at gimmicky marketing, and how offers that seem great at the ideation stage turn out to be a marketing nightmare in execution. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

In recent weeks, there's been a spate of YouTube influencers taking to their channels to say they're feeling burned out, and that their mental health is suffering. Much of the criticism from these influencers is that they're feeling the pressure to "always be on", regardless of how they feel and what's happening in their lives at the time. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we ask if the pressure to perform by these influencers is creating lasting damage, and what role brands play in the well-being of the influencers they use. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

This week saw the news that retail giant Sears had filed for bankruptcy protection, amongst falling sales and rising debt. Their Canadian division closed in January of this year, and it always felt the parent company wouldn't be far behind. Failure to adapt to the changing ways customers preferred to buy - online, mobile research, frictionless shopping - as well as the inability to attract a younger audience seems to have sounded the death knell for this once-unstoppable giant. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how Sears is just the latest in a long line of major retailers to fall to the online onslaught of Amazon and others, and ask what retailers need to do to stay relevant and profitable. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

Week after week, it seems we're bombarded with poor customer experience examples when it comes to airline companies. From dragging passengers off planes to charging to change the flight of a family whose 3 year old son's appendix burst, the horror stories are endless. But do these stories make any difference? With flights cheaper than ever, and companies charging for everything under the sun, are we encouraging bad behaviour due to apathy when it comes to spending our money elsewhere? In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how airline companies take various approaches to not only their customers, but employees, and ask if we've passed the point of no return for airlines and the customer experience. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

When brands want to stand apart from the competition, they often turn to edgy advertising to push the boundaries. This can work well, and the benefits can outweigh the risks. But when the message behind the campaign is shared without context, no amount of marketing or brand explanations can overcome the negativity. In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how recent examples of edgy messaging gone astray cost the brands involved the goodwill of consumers, and highlighted the dangers of this risky type of marketing. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

Customer experience and brand advocacy go hand in hand. Get the customer experience right, and your brand advocates will grow, both internally and externally. Yet as the ways brands interact with customers adapts and changes, and technology plays as big a part as the human interaction, how is customer experience evolving? Is it, or are brands living in the past? In this week's episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how changing customer behaviour is driving the experience, and how brands can offer a human business face, even when automation is driving the interactions. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

Long viewed as one of the most-loved stalwarts of the Canadian marketplace, coffee chain Tim Hortons has had a startling fall from grace when it comes to the trust they enjoy from consumers. Almost mirroring the fall that smartphone maker BlackBerry experienced, even the brand loyalty that Tim's almost exclusively enjoyed couldn't stop the drop in love for the chain. In this week's episode, we look at once-iconic brands and ask the question - is there even such a thing as a national brand anymore? Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

We've all seen them, and probably have a few favourites - evergreen marketing campaigns that seem to last across generations. But do they? Or do they eventually run out of steam? What happens when a message that once stood as the poster child for great marketing suddenly becomes stale and out of date? Or, even worse, alienates the very audience they were so in touch with originally? In this week's episode, we look at once-great marketing messages that have done just that, and what it means for the brands behind them. Can they win back their audience, or are apologies not enough? Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last two years, Colin Kaepernick and his stand against racial injustice in the U.S. has been at the forefront of both political and sports news. Now, with global sports brand Nike choosing Kaepernick as the face of their 30th anniversary "Just Do It" campaign, both Kaepernick and Nike have been thrust into the spotlight, negatively and positively. In this week’s Marketing on Tap podcast, we discuss the outrage from a section of Nike consumers, what it means for Nike, and the rise of brands willing to draw definitive lines when it comes to divisive topics. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

When you're a huge brand like Calvin Klein, you pretty much have your fingers on the pulse of your fans/customers. After all, you don't get to be an international success story by employing bad marketing ideas. However, a recent marketing campaign from Calvin Klein showed that even the biggest brands still get it wrong. When they used reality TV stars The Kardashians to promote their latest product, the pushback was swift and harsh. In this week’s Marketing on Tap podcast, we discuss the outcry from both Calvin Klein customers, and social media users, and what happens when your advertising/marketing targeting is completely off base. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

Sounds great, right? Pay just a buck a beer? After all, who wouldn’t want to enjoy a beer for less than it takes to buy a coffee? Well, that’s exactly what Ontario beer drinkers have been promised by the new Premier, Doug Ford, following a campaign promise he ran on. But is the offer as good as it seems? Not so fast. Following the announcement, craft brewers and craft beer drinkers alike swiftly pushed back on the notion, citing how much it costs to brew quality beer, along with employee costs, overheads, marketing, and more. In this week’s Marketing on Tap podcast, we discuss the buck a beer backlash, why it shows how key it is to build loyalty and brand advocacy, and why truth in marketing is so important in the long run when combating quick buck campaign ideas. Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

In episode six of the Marketing on Tap podcast, we ask the question - have social media influencers wore out their welcome? With recent examples of luxury resorts throwing up their arms in frustration at would-be social influencers asking for free stays worth thousands of dollars, to a "retired influencer", Josh Ostrovsky, telling wannabe influencers to "get a real job", is the sun setting on this industry? And if social influence/influence marketing is seeing its power wane, what does this mean for the brands and businesses that currently utilize this medium? Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

When a respected leader in the tech industry suggests maybe you should consider deleting your social media accounts - all of them - it's more than worth listening to. This is exactly what Jaron Lanier suggests in his new manifesto/book, "10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now", and is the topic of discussion in episode five of Marketing on Tap. Using the growth of social media, and its impact on the people who use it, Lanier paints an extremely negative picture of how social media is impacting mental health, fostering negativity, and how our natural responses to everyday issues are being skewed by algorithms set up to take us down a particular path. As users of the networks start to look at their own use, and more people take "digital vacations" where they switch off from social media for long periods of time, we discuss what this means for marketers and digital marketing, if the current desertion of social networks continues at its current pace.

In episode four of the Marketing on Tap podcast, we take a look at how the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal has left an indelible mark on how social networks gather data about their users. While Facebook may say it's taken steps to ensure it's going to do a lot better when it comes to its users, recent events would suggest otherwise, with the confirmation there's already attempted meddling in this year's U.S. mid-terms on the platform, and chief security officer Alex Stamos stepping down. With this background, what does it mean for marketers who use data from social networks to identify specific audiences? And what knock-on effect does that have for other networks and data sets when it comes to consumer trust? Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

In episode three of the Marketing on Tap podcast, we take a look at how a giant of consumer packaged goods fell from grace when it left the Canadian market and became entangled in what would be known as “ketchup wars”. When Heinz moved its production of its famous ketchup from Canada to the U.S. in 2014, it became a PR and financial nightmare as Canadian consumers pushed back, and switched their allegiance to French’s Ketchup instead. Now, with the U.S. – Canadian trade wars seeing Heinz take an even bigger hit to its pocket, the company has started a campaign to win back Canadian consumers. But can marketing and PR win in a political and cultural war? Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

In this week's episode of the Marketing on Tap podcast, Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown take a look at how backlashes can start quickly when brands looking to be socially responsible get it wrong. 

Elon Musk, and his attempts to help - some would say hinder - the rescue efforts to free the kids trapped in a cave in Thailand, is a perfect example of a "good deed" gone wrong. Can brands ever be truly good with their intentions, or does PR and an opportunity to promote get in the way? 

Settle back and enjoy this week's topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you've come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.

In this first episode of the Marketing on Tap podcast, Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown take a look at how influence marketing has changed since their acclaimed book on the topic came out five years ago. 

Is influence marketing in a better place than it was? Are brands using it better to gain actual business results? And how has influence marketing software changed since the days of Klout and social scoring? 

Settle back and enjoy this week's topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you've come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.