Brand Advocacy Promotion

Advocacy is easier to come by in some industries than it is in others. It’s easier for a lifestyle or hobby brand to generate advocates for example than it is for a bank or a government department. The aforementioned simply have to harness the passion their customers bring with them to their product or service (they already love photography or water skiing) while brands with a less positive image or exciting product set have to work a bit harder.

It can be tempting then to try and manufacture advocacy,  to basically force your audience into promoting you – “Tell us in 25 words or less why you love us for a chance at $100K”. You’ll get a response and you might be able to leverage some of it but your audience is savvy and it generally won’t ring true for them.

But for the right brands or the right products, a competition can work as more of an enabler than a cynical exercise in coercion. Toyota Australia discovered it is such a brand after it rolled out a user-generated content campaign that encouraged Toyota Corolla owners (past and present) to share their favourite memories in the vehicle.

What made this a cut above your usual UGC competition was the richness of the stories shared and the genuine affection for the vehicle and brand that was on display. Corollas went everywhere and did everything, they saved lives, sparked marriages, and were handed down as treasured items from generation to generation. It was clear the participants weren’t in it for the prize, they’d been looking for an outlet to share their love for the vehicle and the competition web platform proved the perfect stage.

The campaign was also clever in that it managed to straddle two lifecycle marketing phases simultaneously:

• Advocate – it amplifies positive product reviews and brand sentiment.

• Acquire – it reconnects long-lapsed customers and their contact details with the brand.