REPLY TO THIS DISCUSSION POST

Read another student's post and comment as you see fit. In your reply, you must offer recommendations or alternate points of view regarding goals, objectives, KPIs, and comments pertaining to implementation as appropriate. If you find additional information relevant to the social media campaign under discussion, please also include it. You must include references.

Discussion Response Guidelines:

- "One-liners" and "I agree" statements that aren't supported with an explanation are useless and won't be accepted. 

- Your replies should indicate that you have critically considered the merits of the original post, and offer commentary and critical evaluation of the post in a "substantive" fashion. 

- Substantive replies: 

- Critically evaluate the original post made by a peer and cite alternate examples and information from sources that may contradict OR support a point made in the original post; 

- Relate aspects of that post to text readings or supplemental readings or videos when relevant and not addressed in the original post; 

- Add or relate additional information from outside sources to the situation discussed by the peer, and or 

- Offer and justify additional recommendations. 

- It is important that you demonstrate respect for the diverse opinions of others.

- Minimum 500 words or more in your response

Textbook: Ferrell, O. C., & Hartline, M. D. (2017). Marketing Strategy (7th ed.). South-Western Cengage Learning.

Student's Original Post:

"Question 1

I chose to research the Exploding Kittens social media campaign.  The company's primary marketing goal was to generate resources necessary to begin the product introduction phase.  Their objective was made public through a Kickstarter campaign aiming to generate $10,000, but they instead managed to raise an astounding $8.7 million (Takahashi, 2015).  The company had more of a concept than a product when the campaign was initiated.  The campaign was highly successful and far exceeded the company's expectations (Takahashi, 2015).

A secondary marketing goal may also have been to bring awareness and generate interest to the game.  Kickstarter campaigns are primarily used to generate cash to fund a company or idea to provide the necessary resources for the product to come to fruition.  It also has the added benefit of spreading awareness, even to the people that decide not to donate their money.  Their objective tied to this goal may have been to receive 25,000 views on the Kickstarter webpage.  They obviously outperformed their expectations on views based on the amount of money they collected, so 25,000 views are probably in the ballpark of their original expectations.

Since Exploding Kittens decided to market their product through a social media campaign, they also should have instituted a KPI for the change in number of tweets and followers they had experienced after the start of the campaign.  With the campaign lasting a month, they would have benefited from tracking the changes either daily or weekly.  The likelihood of generating the targeted funding amount increases along with the number of followers and tweets for the company.  As the campaign progressed, Exploding Kittens could then measure their success and make adjustments as necessary.

Question 2

Exploding Kittens utilized a method of marketing popular with their target market.  The game was aimed at younger generations, such as Millennials, which happen to use social media the most often.  Out of the 339,133 Kickstarter campaigns started, roughly five percent have raised at least $10,000 (Kickstarter, 2017).  This provided the company with decent odds of acquiring the funds they required, but they far out performed their expectations due to perfect use of other social media platforms.  The company's owners utilized their social media accounts from other well-known products to spread to word about Exploding Kittens.  This strategy allowed them to reach their $10,000 objective within 10 minutes of the campaign launch (Fontein, 2015).  I do not believe any other marketing strategy would have been as successful in this timespan.

The only suggestion I can make to Exploding Kittens regarding their implementation strategy is to better educate the target market on the product.  Their campaign focused on engaging with potential customers by asking customers to post pictures of cats on social media.  While this did generate interest and conversation surrounding the products theme, the company did little to explain more about the card game.  Additional explanation about the game may have drawn interest from other market segments

Question 3

Mountain Dew Kickstart: Freak Chain - (Mountain Dew, 2016).

Mountain Dew's Freak Chain commercial is part of promotion campaign designed to bring attention and interest to their Kickstart energy drink.  The company's goal is to increase product awareness within their target market, while increasing sales as a result.  The commercial highlights the products ability to provide a boost of energy to the consumer in a comedic fashion (Mountain Dew, 2016).

The company may have had a KPI to reach 100,000 views within the first two weeks upon launch.  Other KPI's may have been to increase their YouTube subscriptions by five percent within three months, and to receive 95% positive feedback.  Both of these KPI's can be easily monitored through YouTube's video metrics available to the uploader of the content.  The real-time metrics can perform the duties of a marketing audit to ensure the commercial is meeting its objectives.  These KPI's allow Mountain Dew to measure the success of the commercial in terms of viewers, and provides them a mechanism to measure how well the commercial was received by the market.  The commercial can be promoted through social media, if they are falling short, and view comments and feedback can be used to adjust future commercial content.

Mountain Dew also may have included a KPI to increase Kickstart sales by five percent within three months of the commercial's release.  This KPI measures the company's ultimate goal of increasing revenue, but is more difficult to measure.  Assuming this is the only promotion running at the time, the company can assume increases in sales are associated with this commercial.  If multiple commercials are running on various media outlets, Mountain Dew can survey consumers to determine the reasons for buying the product.  This provides a method for the company to audit its performance against the sales KPI."

References

Fontein, D. (2015, September 02). The Best Kickstarter Campaigns' Secret Weapon Is Social Media. Retrieved February 15, 2017, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/the-best-kickstarter-campaigns-secret-weapon-is-social-media/

Kickstarter. (2017, February 15). Retrieved February 15, 2017, from https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

Mountain Dew. (2016, April 27). Mtn Dew Kickstart: Freak Chain. Retrieved February 15, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXV54IwG6bk

Takahashi, D. (2015, February 27). Exploring the lessons of the Exploding Kittens $8M crowdfunding campaign. Retrieved February 13, 2017, from http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/27/exploring-the-lessons-of-the-exploding-kittens-8m-crowdfunding-campaign/