Advanced Marketing Strategy Case Study on Innovative Use of Social Media

Authors: Matthias Gradischnig, Peter Lewin, Thalita Marinho, Pulkit Agrawal & Paul Isaac

Executive Summary Movember has clearly been one of the most successful organisations worldwide in leveraging social media to achieve its strategic goals. From an informal charitable movement formed in 2003, Movember has grown to become a large international charity that has raised over 100M for prostate cancer and mens health, and raised awareness among tens of millions worldwide. All of this has been achieved with extremely limited financial resources, but with a powerful marketing strategy enabled by social media. In this paper we explore the innovative ways in which Movember uses social media, its key success factors, and key lessons that can be learned by other companies considering social media to market their products and services. As a part of this study we interviewed Adam Garone, the CEO of Movember, and discovered that the key success factors werent always what we predicted. But first of all we provide some background on Movember and its brief history. About Movember1 2 Movember is a campaign to raise money for mens health initiatives, including prostate cancer research. On the first of November each year participants shave their faces clean, and ask friends and family to sponsor them to grow a moustache until the end of the month. Money raised is donated to Movembers local beneficiary partners, which vary from country to country. However, its not just about the money, the parties and the one month a year fashion statement. The movement also aims to raise awareness and educate men about mens health issues, and in the case of cancer, increase the chances of early detection, diagnosis and effective treatment. Movember first started in 2003, when a group of 30 men in their late 20s and early 30s in Melbourne, Australia, decided to grow a moustache for one month just for fun. The men were surprised about how strong a reaction it provoked from their friends and family and how much conversation it started. In 2004, they launched a basic website and decided to start raising money for mens health, having been encouraged by their female colleagues who had been raising money for breast cancer and other womens health issues. 2005 was the wow year in terms of growth with over A$1.3 million raised, and 9,315 participants. The founders, who were managing Movember after hours and on weekends, realised the tremendous potential for the movement and began to focus on it full-time. By 2006, they were starting to get interest from countries outside Australia, including a group of men who asked them to formally establish a presence in New Zealand. They launched in New Zealand that year rather than in larger markets such as the US so they could refine their market entry strategy and related business processes. In 2007 one of the founders (current CEO Adam Garone) relocated to the US to launch the campaign for the US and Canada, whilst another founder moved to the UK to set up operations there. From 20072009 the Australian movement grew extremely quickly, but in the US, Canada and the UK momentum was proving to be much more difficult to build. By 2010, however, Movember had reached a point of inflexion and began to grow strongly in these countries under its own momentum. Today, more than 1.8 million Mo Bros participate in formal campaigns in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, the UK, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa and Ireland. Furthermore, more countries are joining each time November rolls around. Russia, Brazil, China and India, for example, all have recently started their own, albeit small,

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Interview with Adam Garone, CEO of Movember. Interviewed by LBS team in March 2012. Movember 2010 annual report and website accessed Feb 2012

campaigns. As a result of this phenomenal growth, in 2010 alone the campaign had close to 450,000 participants, who worked hard with the charity to raise a staggering A$72 million.
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Growth in funds raised and global registration

Raising awareness for mens health Its important to emphasise that Movember is not only about raising money for cancer research. The sudden prevalence of moustaches in November is enough to clearly encourage dialogue about the charity and the issue of mens health (which men tend to
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Movember 2010 Annual Report

ignore, leading to late-phase diagnosis of critical diseases).4 In a sense, growing a sizable moustache is a perfect symbol for the campaign. Its something that clearly draws attention. Each member is a walking advertising billboard. Their presence alone will raise questions and spread the word about the topic of concern. To further investigate how the members of Movember are impacting the awareness of mens health, we can look towards research that is conducted each year by the Movember Foundation. A research project led by Professor Heath McDonald from Deakin University in Melbourne, assesses the impact of the movement in the campaigns 6 largest markets. The aim of this research is to develop a full understanding of why people are taking part in Movember, whether Movember is meeting expectations and to track behavioural change as a result of participation. The 2011 results for this research project has found that Movember is having a positive impact on the way that men are dealing with health issues. On average, 92% of participants spent time thinking about improving their general health. 72% of participants discussed mens health with their family, friends or colleagues during Movember and 58% of participants conducted their own research into mens health issues during Movember. Finally, 50% of participants cited prostate cancer as the first issue that comes to mind when thinking of mens health. Efficient use of funds In addition to raising huge sums of money, Movember has also been very successful at keeping its cost base low so that it can use these funds as efficiently as possible. This low cost base has been made possible through the use of technology, and the engagement of participants who raise money. Of the A$72 million raised in the 2010 campaign, the vast majority is given to mens health programs and charities affiliated with Movember, such as The Prostate Cancer Charity and The Institute of Cancer Research. Fund raising and operating expenses only consumed 8% of funds, well below the global average of 15-25% for other comparable charities. This is even more impressive considering that Movember has expanded to several new markets and grown extremely rapidly during this short time frame. Its safe to assume that Movembers efficient use of funds increases the appeal of the charity to donors who want to see their money put to the best use. In addition, Movember is working with cancer research bodies around the world to help them increase collaboration and efficiency by leveraging technology and social media tools.5 Movembers strategy Before introducing Movembers use of social media, it is important to provide context by assessing Movembers strategy. We do this by looking at Movembers valued customers, value proposition and value network, considering participants and donors to be the customers (something Movember would never do as will be explained). Valued customers Movember considers men in their late 20s and early 30s to be in their sweet spot, and use this segment to focus their brand and communications. This focus came about quite naturally as the founders initially launched Movember just for themselves and their friends.

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Movember website accessed Feb 2012 Interview with Adam Garone, CEO of Movember. Interviewed by LBS team in March 2012.

However, Movember does not have a defined target segment in terms of demographics, behaviours or preferences, but rather enjoys a broad appeal. Movember seeks to be inclusive, and tries to avoid strong association with specific customer segments. Movember thrives in universities, football clubs, worksites and offices. In each of these settings Movember can help build a stronger and more inclusive team environment, which is why Movember prefers a broad appeal. Value proposition Movembers value proposition is driven largely by its great concept, its brand and its use of technology. More specifically, the main elements of the value proposition are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Raising money for a worthy cause Simple, fun and sense of irreverence Opportunity to grow a moustache in a socially acceptable way Sense of team and community Extremely convenient Very high proportion of funds given to causes

Movembers value proposition is differentiated from most other charities on each of the last five elements, especially the element of fun. Many other charities base their campaigns on fear and emotion to get people to participate or donate, and have struggled to generate the same appeal. Value network6 A major reason Movember is able to provide this attractive and differentiated value proposition to its value customers is its use of technology and social media. Technology and social media provide increased convenience, a sense of team and community and radically reduce fundraising costs (lower advertising, communications, payment collection and administration costs) so that a very high proportion of funds go to causes. The focus on keeping Movember as simple as possible and careful attention to the brand ensures that element #2 above is maintained. Movembers brand is fun and irreverent, yet serious about mens health. Movember is heavily brand focused (especially for a charity) and it ensures that its brand is consistent across all types of interaction with participants and donors (website, newsletters, functions and other interactions). Movember is extremely careful about protecting its brand where it can. For instance, it will not do corporate partnerships with companies or products that are inconsistent with its brand or goal of improving mens health. For example, you will never see a moustache on a can of Coca-Cola due to the high sugar content and links with obesity and other illnesses. Movember prefers to take a slower, grass-roots approach to new markets, and will not actively seek out celebrities or sportsmen to promote its cause. Instead Movember views its participants as the stars and ambassadors. Many celebrities and sportsmen have become famous participants (e.g., Stephen Frye7 and Kevin Peterson8), but they were not approached by Movember and are not a part of Movembers promotional strategy. Instead, when entering a new market, Movember will approach non-celebrities at various local organisations. The benefit to this grass-roots approach is a far more genuine connection, including greater sense of ownership and engagement with the movement among its local participants.
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Interview with Adam Garone, CEO of Movember. Interviewed by LBS team in March 2012. Movember website accessed Feb 2012 8 http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/oddballs/846306-kevin-pietersen-shows-off-his-ashes-moustache-formovember

Despite this, Movember has still been very successful at generating free publicity, which further contributes to its low cost structure. However, instead of taking advantage of short term opportunities as discussed above, Movember focuses on creating a compelling story about the movement and/or local participants. Maintaining a brand with hundreds of thousands participants, each acting as a brand ambassador, and scattered across the globe, is a challenge. In this way, brand management for Movember is totally different from traditional brand management. Indeed, most organisations that use social media heavily will face similar challenges. In Movembers case, it has no choice but to trust its participants and rely on the Movember community to selfpolice and correct bad behaviour. Finally, in terms of its value network, Movember has also developed a strong network of beneficiary partners, corporate sponsors and business partners (businesses with many employees as participants). Movembers innovative use of social media Movember website and Mo Spaces 9 Movember provides an individual webpage, called a Mo Space, for each participant, which makes it extremely easy for participants to raise money. Registration for Movember and creation of the Mo Space is extremely simple, with just basic contact details required. When registering, participants can also elect to join or start a new team. Participants can upload photos of their moustache as it evolves throughout the month and write messages to people who visit their site. Visitors to the site can leave words of encouragement, donate money directly and securely to Movember and even rate the Mo Space page. Importantly, after making a donation, visitors have the option of leaving their name and a comment, which is visible to all other visitors to the site. The Mo Space also contains links for participants and visitors to learn more about Movember and its causes, which further raises awareness. The Mo Space also displays the participants ranking within their team (if they have joined one) and the ranking of their team within the local country. This intentionally drives competition within many teams, as the teams frontrunners vie to win, and laggards try to lift themselves from off the bottom. In the 2011 Movember campaign members of the London Business School team received many pleas from the team organisers to raise more money so that the team would finish in the top ten in the UK. In the end the team finished in 8th place, having raised 20,846, a feat that was celebrated in the school newsletter. Competition even drove some participants to offer to shave off their eyebrows and dye their moustache to generate more donations! 10 The Mo Space also acts as a form of commitment and social proof for the participant. After creating a Mo Space and joining a team it is not as easy to back out. The ability to see a team online that has already formed and those people already signed up encourages more people to participate. Use of online media channels including Facebook & Twitter With time Movember has adopted ever new and an increasing number of social media channels. Movember uses these channels not only to keep participants highly engaged, but also to spread its message to an ever wider audience.

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Movember website access Feb 2012 LBS Movember team participants

13M newsletter emails sent 110M reach via Twitter and 0.2M of its participants used Twitter 0.55M participants used Facebook reaching 1,900M people on Facebook 27M overall campaign website visits 0.11M Movember App downloads on phones 0.67M photos uploaded on Movember website 0.31M Movember videos watched during the 2011 campaign 11

Participants are provided with links to their Mo Space that they can send to friends and family via email, Facebook, Twitter and other electronic means. Facebook and Twitter buttons on the Mo Space make it easy for visitors to share the site with their own friends (perhaps soon after leaving a donation!). In 2011 Movember increased its level of integration with Facebook after a strategic partnership and custom development work performed by Facebook engineers. The changes allowed participants to transfer photos and updates from their Mo Space to their Facebook wall with a single click. As a result, during the 2011 campaign, 29% of traffic to the Movember site came from Facebook, and A$14M of donations. Although payment still occurred on Movembers site, this is believed to have been one of the most successful campaigns on Facebook ever in terms of the total amount of money transacted. 12 Also in 2011 was the launch of the Movember mobile app on Apple and Android. In the 2011 campaign the app was downloaded approximately 110,000 times. 13 Rewards14 Movember also creates competition by rewarding participants who raise a lot of money or have a highly ranked Mo Space. Rewards include publicity on the Movember website and invites to local Movember parties were participants can mingle and compete for awards such as best dressed and best moustache. Movember also has a video competition that encourages participants to create and share humorous videos featuring their moustache. The videos created drive further publicity and awareness of Movember and its causes. 15 It is important to note that rewards are experiential rather than financial, which are less expensive and more in line with the goals of the charity. Also, the rewards focused on creativity (rather than funds raised) which gives all participants a chance of winning based on ability, effort and personality. Applying key lessons learned to other social media campaigns Movembers incredible success leveraging technology and social media provide several valuable lessons for other organisations considering social media campaigns. One could argue that Movember has one key advantage compared to for-profit companies marketing their products and services the high willingness of participants to share information due to the charitable nature of the campaign. However, as discussed previously, this is just one of the many elements that led to Movembers success.

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Movember 2010 annual report Interview with Adam Garone, CEO of Movember. Interviewed by LBS team in March 2012. 13 Movember 2010 annual report 14 Movember website accessed Feb 2012 15 Movember website accessed Feb 2012

Regard your social media activities as an extension of your general brand/product strategy As discussed above in the case of Movember, a company or products social media strategy should support the company or product strategy. More specifically, it should align with the brand, target segment and value proposition. If it does not, the campaign is likely to appear inauthentic, become ineffective or even damage the brand and reputation of the company. Focus on a relevant and simple message Users of social media experience a constant overload of message-/content-flow. In October 2011 users were generating 250 million tweets per day on Twitter alone (the equivalent of a 10-million page book in tweets) not counting content shared via Facebook, Pinterest, blogs and other more classic online channels like newspapers. To increase the likelihood of being noticed your social media campaign needs to stand out with a simple message (users wont take the time to spend 5 minutes figuring it out!) and be relevant for your target group. Movembers message of grow a moustache for mens health is not only simple, but is also a source of information that is for many people genuine, personal and interesting to share with friends and family. Make it a fun and/or engaging experience for your target group A campaign only turns social if users somehow interact/participate. To achieve this, you need to give users a good reason to spend their time interacting with your campaign. Why should they take the time to do so? Furthermore you need to make it easy to participate and engage in. And, of course, the more novel the idea is, the better. Movember has done a great job in designing a fun campaign that people enjoy to engage in. Doing something good nearly always makes people feel better, so this is an easy win for Movember. Furthermore they give many participants a validation for something they may secretly enjoy, growing a moustache, while building on classic group dynamics (were doing this together). There are very low barriers to participate in Movember. Whether you simply promote the idea via Facebook/Twitter or actively decide to raise money, Movember provides a very straightforward way for you to do so. Each MoBro can create his personal Mo Space, link/post it to Facebook and start collecting money within minutes. There is very little that stands in the way of someone becoming involved in the campaign. Give your audience a reason to share your campaign When designing a consumer to consumer social media campaign you need to constantly ask yourself: why would anyone want to share your message? According to Jordan Kasteler, Online Marketing Strategist for PETA, there are seven major types of content sharing motives. Self expression people like to share when their beliefs or interests are related to the content Affinity people want to feel like they are a part of something / a group Validation approving/sharing something can make people feel important Status achievement individuals like to be recognized especially in public Altruism helping others / adding to a good cause makes people feel better

Self-serving interests people can be motivated to share content by rewarding them in various ways (e.g., status achievement, financial gains, free products/services) Prurience sharing obscene/lustful content passes the guilt of consuming it in the first place on to others and often makes people feel better

Movember successfully leverages one or more of these motives (not including prurience) in each of its participants. Conclusion Movember has been an extraordinary success in a very short period of time. One of the key reasons has been its ability to leverage technology and social media to drive adoption, publicity and create a winning value proposition. For-profit companies can learn from Movember by making their social media campaigns relevant and simple, fun and engaging, and by motivating users to share information. More importantly, however, is the importance of the social media strategy being aligned with the broader strategy of the company. The companys strategy should lead the social media strategy, and not the other way around.

Appendix: A Sample Movember Mo Space

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Movember website accessed March 2012

Appendix: Movember Participants at a Movember Event

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Movember 2010 annual report