Social Media Driven Sales Gives Dominos and Old Spice an Advantage

We understand how to measure the performance of most social media-based programs. We can tell whether one particular program is more effective at creating preference for a product or, even, driving lead generation in B2B. Still, at the end of the day, everyone wants to know how it can measurably drive sales and revenue. There's nothing like a longitudinal study to show correlation. And those that have that data will have a clear advantage over competitors. They will literally be able to vault forward with aggressive social media programs as their budgets become unlocked by senior leadership newly confident of the potential behind social mdia to do something appreciable for their business.  

Longitudinal studies map a particular marcom activity against sales. If we dial up only our social media program in "market X" do sales follow? Pretty straightforward yet costly. Every brand should do this for themselves even if only done as a sample in a few markets. Let's face it - the biggest hurdle to greater adoption within the enterprise isn't old fashioned marcom staff. It's a credible measurement model that senior leadership endorses. 

Two Brands With Sales Correlation

Both P&G via their Old Spice brand in NA and Dominos Pizza in the UK have run significant social media programs and tracked sales lift correlating back to that activity. I guarantee that both organizations will now have a spike in use of social media as internal marcom teams use these cases as a key to unlocking budget funds in 2011 and even discretionary budgets in the remainder of 2010. 

Dominos in the UK

The Pizza brand has been using Facebook and FourSquare to promote the brand and drive in-store sales but also to drive ecommerce. 

"Moore (CEO Chris Moore) reports that when it comes to the web, “Our main Facebook site now has in excess of 36,000 fans … In addition, we have led the way with social media initiatives such as affiliate marketing, our superfans programme and the development of a link up with Foursquare."

They are attributing a 29% increase in pre-tax profit in the UK at least in part to their social media efforts. Of keen interest is their use of FourSquare which remains a brand and agency darling in the US and sits in that weird limbo where some marketers are jumping on board while many of their colleagues question the business impact of such an new platform (

Mashable summarizes the program: "...the Foursquare promotion rewards mayors of UK stores with free pizza; other patrons who check-in receive a free side dish. The promotion was initially piloted in select locations but later rolled out nationwide after the program proved to successful"

Old Spice

Much of the English-language Web followed along with the Old Spice video effort around “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” You can get caught up here. Many marcom skeptics questioned whether all the apparent market awareness created by the live video jam actually had an impact on sales. It didn't help any that some data from WARC seemed to confirm that sales were down for the year some 7%. Well since then Nielsen data released confirmed what many of us felt would be the case - the brand actually saw a doubly of sales correlated to the video program. 

As AdWeek reported: "According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent."

Both are doing longitudinal correlation studies. Both brands now have solid evidence to unlock budget dollars for future programs. Clearly these two case studies are ones to watch for on the marketing conference circuit this Fall. 

Comments

[Stephen Denny]

Upon further review...

The key data point on Old Spice turns out not to be the social media, but the avalanche of 'buy one get one free' coupons - and when viewed against other brands in the category, Old Spice didn't fare as well as many of its peers.

Correlation doesn't mean causality. As the data trickles out, it looks very uncertain as to whether we can chalk this up as a positive social media case study or a debunking.