A Good Example of a Bad Approach

Milwaukee’s Best is the latest company to make use of YouTube and its potential for viral marketing. The company recently put together a video of their Beer Cannon, which fires cans and bottles of Milwaukee’s Best Light at tea sets, plants, bags of chips and televisions. The videos are akin to something David Letterman would have done on his show back when he was on NBC, and entertaining. Unfortunately for Milwaukee’s Best, the videos haven’t worked. Sure, they’ve been watched often enough, but the page views generated have not translated into more people buying Milwaukee’s Best Light.

According to a recent article in AdvertisingAge Magazine, their sales actually declined faster than other beers in their competitive range. (Their sector is actually referred to as "subpremium-beer." Ouch!) This does make for a fine example of why our approach to a client campaign is different. Our philosophy is to know a client’s current situation first. Only once we know that can we develop a plan to fix that client's problem. While our plan may or may not involve using one of the latest marketing trends – such as a keen YouTube video of stuff being obliterated – that decision will be based on whether it is appropriate and constructive. It is easy to point to success stories on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, or any of the new outlets for potential viral marketing. It is important to remember that these sites and services are merely tools, not cure alls. Analysis must be performed to point out exactly what needs to be fixed, and then the proper tool can be employed. In the case of Milwaukee’s Best, they were in need of a brand and image overhaul. What they got was high visibility for a poor brand.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)