Vitaminwater Relinquishes Control

Breaking Ground
Vitaminwater is no longer in control of its marketing message and I think that’s brilliant.

For the first time that I’ve ever seen in a tv commercial, Vitaminwater is running ads that end by displaying its Faceboook fan page URL instead of a traditional website address.

The Future of Advertising?
Vitaminwater is combining elements of a variety of different types of marketing – social media, word of mouth, viral, etc. But there are two keys to this campaign:
  1. The brand is supporting these types of advertising with nation-wide tv spots being shown during CBS March Madness broadcasts.

  2. Vitaminwater is leveraging the genuineness of Facebook instead of using its own website. As consumers have grown more and more wary and immune to advertising messages, they have increasingly been turning to unbiased sources of information for product reviews. Vitaminwater could have opened up its own site to unfiltered user reviews, but that wouldn’t appear nearly as pure as it does when using Facebook.
Why is this Important?
The vast majority of companies build their online web presence around a corporate-run website. The company controls its online message through the site. It’s a one-way street of information. The company says something and the customer can only listen.

The one-way street communication model is boring and outdated, and Vitaminwater is pioneering the charge to change this model.

Vitaminwater is encouraging all of us to join the discussion about the brand – for better or worse. If successful, I think this campaign will serve as a turning point in the way that brands promote the use of social networks in their marketing mix. I imagine we’ll start seeing additional companies use mass media to point users toward their Facebook fan page in the very near future.

Add This to Your To-Do List
Let’s pay attention to this campaign and see how it performs. I predict that it will be very successful, and that many marketing strategists will follow Vitaminwater’s lead. We should all start preparing to implement the lessons that this campaign is about to teach us. This is an exciting time to be a marketer, and this campaign is quite intriguing.

There’s never a lack of ideas.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 23, 2009

    You should include an Embedded youTube video of the Vitamin Water commercial that displays this. Don't you think Facebook would steal away the focus of Vitamin Water though once a visitor navigated to their page?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMarch 23, 2009

    Very interesting idea Nick. It's also noteworthy that VW chose to promote their Revive flavor over some of the others for the tournament including their Energy flavor. Revive's label claims they are more for chasing away hangovers rather than having a sports benefit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 03, 2010

    I'm a bit skeptical about the facebook thing. But maybe it will work. I still think that the regular site they used to have was better to understand the product and all the different flavor and vitamin variants.

    ReplyDelete

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