Zeno Brings the #Waxonshirtoff Movement to Advertising Week

The 10th anniversary of Advertising Week took place in New York City this past week, where I had the pleasure of representing Zeno Group and Turtle Wax. I led a panel with Jack Patterson, Business Development lead at Wayin, discussing converged media, paid social strategy and the success of the Turtle Wax #Waxonshirtoff program. The event, the Brand Innovators MegaTrend Summit, was hosted at AOL HQ and featured 115 of the top brand marketers, CMO's, start-ups and agency representatives across the country. The Brand Innovators Summits provide brand marketers with best practices, case studies, and proof points, demonstrating how “best of breed” brands are leveraging electronic media.

Jack and I specifically discussed the growth and success of Turtle Wax's digital presence over the past year. In order to truly appreciate where the brand is, it's important to understand where they've been. We shared our three-pillar approach that gave Turtle Wax a shot in the arm, leading to a true brand renaissance. This included:

• Initiating a three-pillar approach in developing a unique social voice
• Driving fan acquisition with hyper-targeted ad units 
• Engaging, functional and humorous content strategy that positioned the brand as an approachable, witty trusted advisor in the car care space

We then discussed the #Waxonshirtoff program, and crafted the presentation as a best practice and example of the intersection of paid, owned and earned media. Here were the key takeaways from our session:

The Value of an Interactive Hub of Activity

By partnering with Wayin we were able to provide a one-stop, interactive microsite that showcased our best asset, fan entries, in a highly visual and engaging manner. The hub aggregated all entries featuring #Waxonshirtoff from Instagram and Twitter, while also featuring an ambush-style video from our spokesman, ESPN's Mike Golic, and an  "enter now" button functionality for Twitter. 

The Importance of Hyper-targeted Paid Support

This entire program was rooted in analytical data and driven by targeted paid media. With our limited budget, we had to be extremely nimble and targeted, while optimizing in real-time.  

• We initiated Facebook ads with the goal of acquiring new, qualified fans in our community. We set up seven different versions of copy/creative, and optimized towards the best performing ads. This research and quantifiable data led us to acquire 50,000 new fans at a cost of .8c per fan (industry average was $1 CPF) to ensure the #Waxonshirtoff program would have a bigger, engaged base.
• We worked closely with Twitter in developing Promoted Tweets within the Twitter suite of ad tools (which Twitter had launched only three weeks prior)
• Specific Twitter handles
• Keyword targeting
• Look-a-like targeting

The Power of Earned Media

The success of the program can be summed up by the following: Twitter was so impressed with the program and the innovative way by which we used their platform, paid support and the Wayin hub, that the Twitter team called us and asked if they could pitch the program on our behalf to top-tier trade media (AdWeek, Mashable, TechCrunch, etc.). AdWeek ran the story highlighting the success of the program with the headline: “Turtle Wax Winning the Social Media Race With New Campaign”

Additionally, once the AdWeek piece ran we began to field calls from sports agents, media companies and more. This led to multiple earned media placements, including NFL pro bowlers Devin and Jason McCourty sharing their shirtless #Waxonshirtoff pictures, and ESPN rockstar Adam Schefter calling out Mike Golic in a Facebook post that was shared with his community of 2.4MM Twitter followers and 300k Facebook fans.At the end of the day, our goal was to ensure Turtle Wax was top of mind once car care season finally started, and based on the incredible response and excitement from our community (and client) we achieved our objective.

At the end of the day, I was proud to represent our Zeno family and fearless mantra and thrilled to be part of such an awesome event.