The Secret Handshake
As the “Global Village” grows, consumers cluster around common interests. Getting a few coupons in the bargain doesn’t hurt.
Rosie O’Donnell can draw crowds without breaking a sweat. Well, sometimes.
When the doyenne of daytime TV invited groups to join the Chub Club (whose motto is “Eat Less…Move More”) last February, more than 320,000 did. Folks signed up so fast that Rosie’s producers and their agency, Source Marketing of Westport, CT, had to burn calories sending out enrollment packets.
The Club stopped accepting new members in March, but would-be Chubs set up their own unofficialclubs, many of them via Internet chat boards. Official members – teams of four or more who cheer each other on to healthier lifestyles – get a home page on Rosie’s site, monthly newsletters, and offers from corporate sponsor Nestle for its Lean Cuisine and Sweet Success brands. The show aired a “Rosie O Games” in December, and club members sometimes appear on-air.
The Chubs aren’t alone in their pursuit of community support. People of all shapes and sizes are joining clubs virtually via TV and the Internet, forming communities that defy geography. That opens new avenues for marketers to target self-selected consumer groups.
The coziness of Internet “villages” has helped create an atmosphere conducive to special-interest clubs, which most consumers join either for information or simple camaraderie. Any promotional perqs they get are icing on the cake. (Loyalty programs, on the other hand, are all about the perqs, and are a classic retention tool.) That makes special-interest clubs a great venue through which to acquire new users.
Online villages foster the growth of clubs for two reasons. Consumers are more comfortable connecting with others online, and new sites need to build loyalty fast to survive.
An explosion of online villages, or clubs, is expected this year as the zillions of new “dotcoms” follow up their estimated $2 billion burst of image advertising in ’99.
Ads may bring visitors to a site once, but it’ll take loyalty marketing to bring them back. “How many new dotcoms have you heard on the radio today?” posits Deborah Pine, principal of PreVision Marketing, Lincoln, MA. “The more innovative marketers are figuring out how to make theirs a preferred site” among consumers, and handling customer relationships more strategically.
“The whole science of customer relationship management hasn’t been introduced yet on the Net, because dotcoms have relied on Internet pros, not loyalty marketing pros, to set up their sites,” says PreVision principal Dierdre Girard. “In the next wave, marketers will tie the Internet into their CRM strategies.”
The audience that’s online now is very different from the techies-only traffic the Internet had five years ago. The first wave of surfers cursed anything overtly commercial and offered their allegiance to obscure, service-minded operations (and that’s how Amazon.com was born). However, “As average people start going online, they’ll rely on familiar brands,” Girard forecasts. “Traditional bricks-and-mortar folks will have a real advantage with consumers.”
At the same time, consumers could quickly get “clubbed out,” sick of too many loyalty programs, Girard adds.
Club hopping
Marketers can give their internal programs a twist, piggyback a popular property, or affiliate with a special-interest club like Chub Club, ClubMom, Sport & Social Clubs of the U.S., or the Southern California Soccer Consortium.
The latter, begun in ’96 by Hispanic promotion agency Luna Bacardi, Santa Monica, CA, has grown to 145,000 members, all avid soccer players in and around Los Angeles. Keebler is lead sponsor, and Luna Bacardi is talking with other potential partners. Consortium members hear from Keebler at monthly league meetings, weekly team meetings, and via Luna Bacardi’s direct-mail newsletter eight times a year.
The consortium publishes a catalog of gear that members “buy” with Keebler UPCs. Quarterly account-specific promos award members triple points for shopping at participating stores. (Grocers get more traffic, Keebler gets end-aisle displays.) This year, the catalog adds clinics taught by Major League Soccer players, and Keebler hosted a Copa Keebler invitational tourney awarding $1,500 to the best of 24 teams.
Keebler got involved “to further our exposure and involvement with the Hispanic community on a grassroots level,” says Ron Tallia, regional marketing manager-Western division. Hispanics like marketers “who speak to their interests, [and] not just with a dub of an English-language TV spot.”
Amateur leagues petition to join the consortium and “must show what value they bring to the organization,” says Luna Bacardi president Gregorio Bennett. Membership is up from 100,000 players in ’98.
Sport & Social Clubs of the U.S. has 400,000 participants in 20 markets, 21- to 34-year-olds who pay to play in a program that’s sort of a post-graduate fraternity. Sponsors like Toyota, Anheuser-Busch, New Balance, and Jack Daniel’s sample and display products. Toyota gave away an Echo at beach volleyball finals this summer, and will offer a Celica at football finals next month. “Marketers can spend their money on other media and reach more people, but they want an emotional involvement,” says president Sandy Thomas Johnson. “We help them get out on a grassroots level.”
The 10-year-old Chicago-based company began a membership program two years after start-up. Members pay $40 a year and get discounts on activity fees, along with a free CD and magazine subscription (from sponsors). Twenty thousand have joined so far. “Our goal is to turn all participants into members,” Johnson says.
Calling all soccer moms
Women are more likely than men to join special-interest clubs because “they’re relationship-builders, and they want immediate gratification,” Girard says. “Men like the challenge of points programs, but women see them as work. It’s best to offer a choice of benefits to touch every consumer in some respect.”
New York City-based ClubMom launched this fall, recruiting charter members via the Minnesota Youth Soccer Association. ClubMom paid for print and direct-mail ads for MYSA’s November Soccer Fair in exchange for mailings to 42,000 MYSA households and exhibit space at the show.
Moms join via clubmom.com or a toll-free number to get discounts, rebates, free e-mail, software, and lifestyle info. Charter members who register by Jan. 31 get a Valentine’s Day package of samples and coupons. Celeb spokespersons Andrew Shue (Melrose Place) and Carla Overbeck (Women’s World Cup soccer) appear on the site and at Soccer Fair.
ClubMom’s goal is to “help moms as a team benefit economically and personally,” the site says. Events and retail partnerships will help members save money and give them tools to “maximize your Momhood.”
ClubMom may launch nationally as soon as February. Editor-in-chief Nicola Godfrey declined to discuss rollout plans, and it’s unclear whether ClubMom has signed any corporate sponsors yet.
A caveat about online clubs: Some clubs pilot sites to sign members, then approach marketers for funding, showing initial member lists as proof that the site can deliver consumers. Such sites are unlikely to generate real consumer loyalty, and won’t last long. “That’s what scares me about the Internet. There are all these storefronts,” says Ann Raider, senior vp of Customer Card Marketing Inc., Braintree, MA. “It’s too easy to look real.”
Marketers should form their own online clubs, suggests Girard. “Marketers overestimate the complexity and funding of Internet start-ups. If you already own your customers, don’t give them away. Set up your own channel.”
That’s what Ty, Inc. did in ’98. Chairman Ty Warner invested $10 million in Cyrk Inc., Gloucester, MA, and partnered with the promotion marketing company to launch The Beanie Babies Official Club. The club has since signed millions of members who pay $10 to $20 for a membership kit with an exclusive Beanie Baby. Members chat via message boards on ty.com and beaniebabyofficialclub.com. The club likely will morph – Ty stopped making the current Babies at year’s end – but fans undoubtedly will follow whatever new direction Warner takes. The club introduced Beanie Buddies (a bigger version of Babies) in ’99, as well as calendars, trading cards, and other collectibles.
Modem operandi
Women will drive the growth of online clubs, too. They already rely on the Internet for product information. Seventy three percent go online for product and service info – more than any other kind of information, reports Women.com, San Mateo, CA. The company teamed with Procter & Gamble and Harris Interactive for a study profiling women online. The November study defines sixclusters based on how women use the Web. For example, “movers” buy the most online, while “explorers” browse for interesting experiences.
“P&G is more likely to sponsor content than clubs,” says Jon Mamela, digital research manager, Procter & Gamble Interactive Marketing. “Sponsored clubs need more careful balance” so consumers see a brand’s authority on a subject, not a sales pitch.
Whether online or at a Chub Club workout, consumers are eager to make new friends. Some of them might as well be brand marketers.
