Six weeks ago, UK style blogger Michelle posted her tale of footwear brand’s, Simple, marketing initiatives. Michelle and Marie thought they’d be getting a product for review for their blog, Kingdom of Style, but apparently, the company’s goals for their marketing initiatives weren’t that simple.

An International Shoe Scavenger Hunt – Kingdom of Style Account of The Simple Marketing Campaign

For as long as I have known her Queen Marie has been a huge fan of the footwear brand Simple. She has written about them on here and she wears her Simple sneakers until they fall apart. Simple emailed us asking us if they could send us some Simple footwear. Not my cup of tea so I said no thank you, but Queen Marie was most excited, imagining lovely new Simple shoes to write about.

Here’s how we expected it to play out: Simple send shoes, Queen Marie takes photos of herself wearing shoes frolicking in the woods, Queen Marie posts about shoes and you read post. Simple, right? Wrong. What actually happened is that Simple send her a shoe. That’s correct. One shoe. If you want to get really technical, they send her one shoe…and a shoe belonging to another blogger. Do two odd shoes constitute a pair?

There is a note which accompanies this ‘pair’ which, from what I can understand from my phone call to Queen Marie, instructs her to Tweet about having a shoe belonging to someone else, and hopefully the person who fits the shoe will read the Tweet and presumably say “oooh that’s my shoe!”. Apparently this is all designed to encourage the bloggers to meet up, have coffee…and swap shoes. We have a problem – we don’t tweet. We don’t read tweets. Tweeting is of zero interest to us. Second problem, we live in Glasgow – what are the chances of the other blogger also living in Glasgow? Zero. You couldn’t make this up!

So let’s just make this Simple shall we? Style High Club, you have Queen Marie’s shoe, could you please email her and send her her shoe, and she will endevour to find out who’s shoe she has and will post it to them? I even have someone’s bloody shoe and I didn’t even want them! So I have some poor sod’s shoe – Pinwheel Black Size 5, so if this is your shoe let us know and I’ll post it. If you are the owner of the Bison size 5 (my shoe apparently), let me know and you can even have my other shoe, thus scooping two pairs for yourself.

Queen Marie is slightly overwhelmed by this and actually truly loves Simple and wants her shoes and wants everybody else to have their shoes. I just hate convoluted marketing ploys.

Queen Michelle

Edit: Style High Club, a kind person in the comments tells me that you have a Pinwheel shoe too! Well, I have the other, so email me your address and I’ll send you it.

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Not All Style Bloggers Tweet

While the girls’ article is lively and makes me laugh, it’s an example of what not to do in blogger marketing.

The targeted bloggers weren’t researched; if Twitter was involved in the strategy, then shouldn’t the bloggers actually tweet? Just because a blogger writes on a blog doesn’t mean they actively use other social networks. Certain fashion lovers write simply because they love blogging as an expressive medium.

It’s important to read a blogger’s articles and posts, and not just one post every three months.  Add them to your Google Reader list and follow your bloggers closely. Keep the PR and marketing strategies relevant to them and their audience. It is a crucial part of building positive relationships.

Geographic Location + Limitations

While the strategy was supposed to be very social and progressive, its success was limited because of the high barriers set for making it happen.

First, most bloggers aren’t jet setters, and they aren’t going to fly to another country to stage a “tweetup” and exchange shoes. Most of them don’t have the financial resources to do that. It would be cool if they did, though – wow, what an event!

Second, if the goal of the strategy was to stage a tweet-up and product swap, then Simple should have identified a region with a strong number of bloggers (such as New York City) within a certain number of miles of each other. A tweetup would be have been more likely to happen if coordinated properly.

Measurement of Success, e.g. ROI

Simple shouldn’t have left bloggers to figure out the details and to just “find” each other. Simple needed to provide hints and lead the shoe hunt via Twitter, tracking the progress with #hashtags.

Rachel Nasvik conducted a successful handbag hunt in June of 2009. Its social success on Twitter was also impressive. The participants in the Rachel Nasvik hunt really got involved, which equated to online to offline engagement.

Though It Wasn’t Simple, It Was A Match Made In Heaven

The concept of Simple’s strategy is “cool” in theory, but it was very poorly executed. What I find most refreshing and impressive is that Marie did find the mate to her shoe. Even if Simple did not execute their idea well, they did successfully identify a loyal customer and online evangelist!

Making Things Right + Agencies Learning To LISTEN

Moving forward, the agency facilitating the campaign did contact Michelle and Marie and offer their apologies for making things so difficult. They responded quickly and tried to facilitate the bloggers in getting their shoes, which was awesome and the right move to make.

But [we are social], the agency behind the campaign, missed a few points.

Point #1: Marie, not Michelle, wanted to take part in the campaign. Michelle didn’t want the shoes, Marie did. They girls stated that while they blogged, they were not necessarily socially savvy online.

Point #2: They didn’t understand Send Social or the offer.

If we want bloggers and customers of brands we represent to engage in our ideas, we have to read and listen!

The girls said – “Keep It SIMPLE.” To them, keeping things simple equates to better social engagement.

Hi Queen Michelle

We’re sorry that you don’t like what we’ve done with the Simple campaign. We apologise for any misunderstanding.

We thought we could do something a bit different, and help connect people who might not have known each other beforehand. We tried to make the experience as hassle-free as possible (by using Send Social and offering to facilitate swapping the shoes).

We were really delighted that you wished to receive a pair of Simple shoes, but we totally understand that you don’t wish to take part. We really value your feedback and have taken on board everything that you’ve said. We’ll be in touch via email to try and makes things better.

Regards,

Seb [Account Director, we are social]