On July 13, 2006, Unilever launched their Sunsilk hair care brand in the U.S. with a twist – it’s using three gay men to sell the idea of “Hairapy” (three hair products that act as therapy) to women in a $200 million marketing campaign. According to AdWeek, as much as 15 percent or $30 million of the ad budget is going to non-traditional media, such as mall displays with audio, a MySpace profile and 3-D displays in bars.

Unilever is no stranger to out-of-the-box thinking, its Dove brand “Real Beauty” campaign generated buzz in June 2006 with ads featuring “real” women instead of traditional models. What’s interesting is that the Real Beauty campaign is getting more media attention today, a year later, than the Sunsilk launch.

Media Coverage (% of Marketplace)
7/1/2006-8/23/2006

NOTE: This chart shows media coverage for Dove’s Real Beauty campaign (total = 48), Sunsilk (total = 42) and specific mentions of “Hairapy” (total = 10) from July 1, 2006 through August 23, 2006. The coverage is shown as a percentage of overall coverage for Dove, Pantene and Sunsilk combined and does not include mentions of the Sunsilk launch in recent Unilever earnings coverage.

Is the implication here that using real women to sell products to women gets a bigger reaction than using gay men? Not necessarily. The Dove press release is much more explicit about its approach than the Hairapy press release, which doesn’t outright say the spokesmen are gay (it uses phrases like “coming out party” to make the suggestion). In fact, words like “gay,” “queer” and “homosexual” appear in less than 20 percent of Sunsilk’s launch coverage, which suggests an equal amount of reluctance on the part of the media to state the obvious.

Sunsilk’s messaging was slightly different on its MySpace profile created for the launch – “Three gay guy girlfriends who give it to you straight.” Did Sunsilk lack the conviction to give it to the media “straight”? Maybe, but leaving the message open to interpretation for the broader media on a potentially hot-button issue, some of whom might disagree with the tactic, and delivering the overt message directly to your target audience through MySpace might just be smart marketing.

The MySpace crowd seems to agree. GetHairapy had 5,569 friends when I checked today. There’s also a higher percentage of discussion about Sunsilk among bloggers.

Blog Coverage (% of Marketplace)
7/1/2006-8/23/2006

NOTE: This chart shows blog posts for Sunsilk (total = 781), Dove’s Real Beauty campaign (total = 160) and specific mentions of “Hairapy” (total = 57) from July 1, 2006 through August 23, 2006. The posts are shown as a percentage of overall posts for Dove, Pantene and Sunsilk combined and does not include mentions of the Sunsilk launch in Unilever earnings discussions.

The branding of “Hairapy” on the other hand still needs a little work, but the message is clear - tailor your message to your audience. And then take that message directly to them.

Forrester analyst Peter Kim offered this update today on the Forrester Brand Monitoring Wave being published in September. Biz360 is one of a handful of vendors being evaluated in what will likely be the most in-depth review of our space to date. I can’t say much about this while the review is still in progress, but I’m confident the attention from Forrester will help marketers understand 1) the importance of monitoring brands across new and traditional media channels and 2) the differences between the service offerings available.

Setting the stage for this Forrester Wave, Peter recently published his views on Reinventing the Marketing Organization (July 13, 2006). One premise of his piece is that large media buys are becoming, and will continue to become, less effective for generating brand loyalty and revenue. He recommends starting to move those dollars toward technology investments that help marketers 1) understand customer preferences better and 2) create more meaningful experiences for customers.

Note the movement of money bags in the chart above from large media buys –> customer-centric technologies, including brand monitoring. Who knew corporate vaults still had Scrooge McDuck-style money bags?

Source of graphic: Forrester’s Reinventing the Marketing Organization by Peter Kim, published on July 13, 2006. To purchase the full report, click here.

We’re launching MarketIQ today to fill a gap we’ve been seeing in marketing blogs. We find plenty of surveys, stats and commentary on the changing media landscape and its impact on marketers. What we see less often are data-driven examples of the changes taking place.

We’ll contribute to the conversation primarily through market analysis on current events, work that we’ve done with our clients, and other interesting examples we run across. From these discussions, we hope that strategies for leveraging social media and new perspectives on age-old marketing issues will emerge.

That said, we won’t be able to resist sharing interesting research, our own commentary or the occasional update on our company, so expect some of those posts as well.

As our founder, You Mon Tsang, always says – we’re helping marketers balance the art with science. We’ll supply the science and our perspective. We’re hoping you’ll bring the art. After all, it’s how you interpret and use intelligence that makes all the difference (just look at the ongoing political debate over U.S. intelligence for a great example of this subjectivity).

A little bit about me… my name is Brian Glover and I’ve been with Biz360 for four years (which is at least 12 in start-up years). I’ve worn many hats, from PR to product marketing, and have been focused most recently on our blog analysis offering. Before I came to Biz360, I worked in the PR department at Documentum (now part of EMC) where I was a Biz360 client. Before that, I spent two months making pizza and cinnamon buns on Whistler Mountain in Canada while living as a victim of the dot com bust (a story for another time).

In the spirit of openness, I’d like to start off addressing a question we’re sure to get – why are we just now launching our blog? I’d like to say we’ve been too busy researching blogs, building great blog analysis technology and developing services to show our clients the impact of new and traditional media on their business (that wouldn’t be completely far-fetched), but the reality is there isn’t a good enough reason for not starting sooner. As a new participant, we look forward to your feedback along the way.