Both in marketing, and in corporate communications, it is important to respect your audience. The first example I am going to introduce in this section comes from the major US home appliance retailer Best Buy, which in 2009 launched the TWELPFORCE campaign.

The “Twelp” of “Twelp Force” is a coinage created by combining “Twitter” and “Help”. Adding the word “Force” gives us a name which means “an army of people ready to help you on Twitter”. When a new academic term starts, many people may have concerns about buying personal computers and other equipment. The best way to describe “Twelp Force” is to say that it was launched to help people in that position. More than 2000 Best Buy employees, including the CEO, went on Twitter to answer all kinds of enquiries from customers about Best Buy’s electrical appliances, allowing the company to significantly reduce its call center expenses while providing a 24-hour a day service that could also answer technical questions.

Customers generally have problems with products when they are not anticipating them. It causes extreme difficulty for many people when they are faced with problems at unexpected times, such as during the night or when the shop that sold them the equipment is closed. The “Twelp Force” addresses this problem by providing responses 24 hours a day. As a result, the service naturally increases customer engagement.

Even more remarkable is the “Twelp Force” policy to also answer questions from people who were not even Best Buy customers. Perhaps because this generous, open, attitude struck a chord with customers, Best Buy’s laptop sales soon jumped by 40%. By taking on board and respecting customers’ need to solve problems immediately and doing all they could to provide a solution, Best Buy’s marketing strategy succeeded. While this may seem a direct and simple approach, it is without doubt an example of a company that has found the correct answer.

Of course, this is also, to a degree, an example of “easier said than done”. If we think about recent labor environment issues, we may raise questions over the practice of having employees ready to answer questions 24 hours a day. However, the campaign also reportedly succeeded in generating a sense of pride among employees over the useful service they were providing to their customers, resulting in improved employee engagement. If the experience of listening to customers with respect, working to improve their levels of satisfaction, and having feelings of self-approval and pride also provides motivational benefits within the company, we can say that the company has killed two birds with one stone.

I also heard about a campaign that actually encouraged fans of a brand to complain about a new version of one of its products. Let me introduce you to an extremely skillful campaign that did not simply encourage people to complain, it cleverly incorporated triggers that reminded passionate fans how much they love the item concerned. The 2011 campaign, from the Romanian chocolate brand ROM, was called American Rom.

Since it was launched in 1964, Rom chocolate bars have featured a design that incorporates the Romanian national flag. However, emphasizing tradition and history can sometimes end up highlighting a product as old-fashioned. Recently, Rom’s image is that of a product preferred by seniors. In other words, while chocolate is a product category that manufacturers hope to sell continually to the young, the patriotic image of the product had been driving young people away. In fact, younger people in Romania felt a stronger pull from the “cool” American brands like Snickers than they did from Rom, which stressed its ties to the Romanian as a nation.

In these circumstances, Rome decided to launch a daring campaign to attract the attention of younger people and spark debate over Romanian values. They decided to switch the Romanian national flag on their packaging for the stars and stripes, announcing the new design in the media. This resulted in an explosion of social media posts on the “US takes over Rom, the quintessentially Romanian chocolate”, provoking a huge debate. The manufacturer was criticized for “giving up on their nation”, and they became the subject of focused online attacks. With one eye on the furor, the company, just seven days after changing the packaging, ran a commercial to say that it would change back to its original Romanian flag design.

In fact, the manufacturer knew from the start that Romanian people actually loved Rom. Large numbers of people responded to the surprise announcement with calls welcoming the change back to the familiar packaging. While it originally appears that the customers were complaining, the campaign was actually designed to produce a “boomerang effect”, whereby the complainers ended up reaffirming their love for the product. In the final analysis, the campaign reached 67% of all people in Romania, sparking a debate not only about Rom chocolate, but also bout patriotism more widely. Rom was able to strengthen its position as a symbol of that patriotism. The most notable effect of the campaign was that it resulted in Rom outselling Snickers.

Sometimes, people may spend their time idly, unsure of what they want. After time passes, they may turn around and wonder why they did not notice certain emotions earlier. Sophisticated marketing can inspire people to action by awaking desires that are sleeping deep within their unconscious. In the case of newly sprouted emotions, that have never previously existed, making predictions about attitudes and behavior might be difficult. However, what about in the case of emotions that were held in the past? If people have previously expressed their emotions openly about a particular topic at a particular time, then reproducing those emotions is a definite possibility. It may take an extraordinarily large amount of time to continually seek the discovery of new things, focusing on igniting new interests. However, previously experienced emotions are, from a certain perspective, easier to imagine. At the very least, we may presume that people who have shared time together in the same environment may experience similar feelings. In this chapter I have stressed the importance, in contemporary communication, of taking action that considers the feelings of the target of the communication, and one way of finding a starting point for building new connections may be to take on the challenge of finding commonalities with your target audience by imagining how they have previously spent their time.

Rom succeeded in generating attention through the unusual combination of a product that represents Romanian history and the United States national flag. As a communication strategy, this is certainly a worthy reference. Unusual combinations that defy people’s expectations create an awkwardness that may drive people to post about the topic on social media.

Both marketing and corporate communications, it is important to respect your audience and give them your full attention. Respect for others starts with being humble. In 2022, the candy Skittles launched the “Apologize to Rainbow” campaign, which showcased a humorous and unusual take on humility designed to win back prior fans of the brand who had not engaged with it for some time. This campaign distills the advantages of the case introduced above while updating it for the modern era.

Skittles, a soft candy with a fruity taste and gummy texture, is manufactured by the Wrigley Company (Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company), which is a subsidiary of Mars, Incorporated. Its slogan is “Taste the Rainbow”. While “rainbow” can also be used to mean “diversity”, here it refers to the mixture of different flavors that people can try. Skittles are covered in a sugarcoating, and stamped with a letter S. Each candy is in a different color, and each color has its own flavor. One of the colors is green, and the green skittle was originally lime flavored. However a brand renewal in 2013 saw the company change the green skittle from lime flavor to a green apple flavor. While this might feel like a minor change, it was a major incident for fans of the brand, who reacted extremely badly, leading to the failure of the brand update. The change, which was made for the company’s own internal reasons, upset a large number of long-standing fans, particularly those who loved the lime flavor. For the next nine years, fans of the lime flavor fought a long-standing campaign for it to be brought back. You could say this shows an incredible love of the product. It also shows an incredible nerve on the part of Wrigley's that they kept quiet in the face of these complaints for a whole nine years.

Then, in 2022, Skittles finally decided to resurrect the lime flavor, and apologized to the 130,880 people who had petitioned for the return of the lime skittle. That’s right, recognizing the length of the nine year gap, Wrigley's decided to take the ridiculously polite approach of issuing an individual apology to every one of the customers who had called for the return of the lime flavor. They not only apologized through channels including a live session on Twitch, posts on Twitter (now X), and with a billboard in Times Square, New York, they also gathered the media for an apology press conference. The press conference was also unique, with one of the company’s managers reading angry posts from Twitter and other social media, individually apologizing after each one. When the monitor started to malfunction midway through the press conference, they brought in an overhead projector from the side of the conference room to project printed copies of the screenshotted tweets, continuing to apologize after each one. Perhaps it is spoiling things to let you know that this was a parody press conference designed to spark laughter, but it was also effective as a means of symbolizing the seriousness with which the company took each individual complaint.

In Japan, companies and celebrities often hold an apology press conference following a scandal, but these events frequently come in response to demands from the public or the media, resulting in something that feels superficial, formulaic, and lacking in sincerity. In the US, unlike Japan, companies don’t frequently hold apology press conferences in the first place. Apologizing means admitting fault, and this can place companies at a severe disadvantage during any subsequent legal action. Given that cultural background in the United States, the decision to hold a parody version of an apology press conference to garner further attention was understood as a humorous display of humility from a company that had kept quiet on the issue for nine years, and as a result the company’s intention was broadly understood and appreciated. It is worth noting that apologizing to each individual tweet took 10 hours. In addition, when reintroducing the lime flavor, Wrigley's did not simply apologize to the upset fans, they also sent them a free sample of the lime Skittles, skillfully linking the apology to their marketing.

While the Skittles campaign is humorous, at the same time as deliberately being rather absurd, apologizing for a past mistake did put the company’s humility front and center, showing their desire to win back customers who enjoyed the lime flavor. After getting the public on side, Wrigley's successfully recorded historically high sales of Skittles. Reversing course to take on board and respect the opinions of the lime flavor fans who had previously been ignored was an extremely successful marketing strategy, with the company not only bringing ex-fans back into the fold, but also increasing engagement with current fans, who supported the company’s stance. These factors combined to drive the highest ever sales revenue in Skittles history. My only concern here is that fans of the discontinued green apple flavor may eventually express their deep dissatisfaction, perhaps forcing the company to once again hold an apology event.

I think we can agree that changing the flavor of a company’s major product requires considerable courage. While there will undoubtedly be fans of previous, traditional flavors, the public’s tastes continue to change year on year. Some products have successfully maintained strong sales over the long term by gradually reflecting modern preferences through subtle changes to the flavor, rather than a publicly announced brand refresh. While this is not the case in the previous Skittles example, there are countless cases of companies who have sought to generate media coverage by boldly announcing that they have updated their products to meet modern flavor preferences, but instead have wound up simply alienating many of the existing customers.

There are also examples of companies taking it upon themselves to worry about the health of consumers and altering their product to, for example, reduce the volume of salt while maintaining the previous taste. This is done as a secret strategy, without making a public announcement at the time, with the company at a later date surprising consumers with an announcement that they have “helped them to become healthier”.

However, generally speaking, when we think about the respective relationships between companies and the customers, this is not the right way to do things. The way to find the correct approach is to gather information on the customer’s environments and attitudes, and constantly maintain good customer relations. Companies that can do this will naturally find out what customers want. Campaigns that provide a model answer on how to engage with loyal customers are always a good reference point.

In today’s world, where diversity is considered increasingly important, more companies are boosting brand engagement by ensuring that they respect and appreciate everyone, whoever they might be. Let me introduce some examples focusing on that concept.

2022 saw the launch of “The Breakaway: The first ecycling team for prisoners”, a campaign which, as the name implies, was unusual in that it focused on incarcerated individuals. The campaign harnessed technology to overcome the inherent difficulty of engaging with prisoners, while also aiming to make a major contribution to their mental and physical health. Generally speaking, no one objects to respecting various types of diversity including diversity of race, gender, disability, age, or religion. It seems obvious for everyone to agree with and support these efforts. However, prisoners’ rights is one area that is left out of current diversity efforts, also appearing difficult to tackle.

If it is important for us to respect and engage with all kinds of people, then even in the case of prisoners, who have committed a crime, we surely have a duty to respect and engage with them as human beings. However, as prisoners are physically incarcerated, and their contact with the outside world is under strict control, dialogue through face-to-face interaction is extremely difficult. Even so, by having a purpose and helping them maintain a connection with people, we can help prisoners smooth their future return to society. The above is the philosophy behind the following campaign by the French sports brand Decathlon.

The Breakaway campaign was based on the Zwift ecycling platform. Through the campaign, six prisoners in a Belgian prison competed and interacted virtually with members of the public through esports, with the aim of helping the prisoners feel more human and more motivated to try and rejoin society. The campaign is consistent with Decathlon’s goals as a company, which are to promote involvement in sport in line with its corporate mission of “sustainably bringing the power of sport to everyone, everywhere” (even if it might at first seem impossible).

Sports provide not only physical benefits, but also benefits for emotional and mental health. In 2020 and 2021, when many people in Europe were unable to go outside due to the frequent lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, many people felt like prisoners in their own homes. Part of the Breakaway campaign’s message was to encourage people, through sports, to break away from that feeling of entrapment. Decathlon in Belgium actually began these activities in the spring of 2021, focusing their marketing on the theme of freedom.

Prisoners who took part in the esports team were all selected from Oudenarde Prison, one of the highest security prisons in Belgium. Decathlon supplied them with the required cycling gear, as well as a cycling trainer. When the teams took part in races, the fact that they were prisoners was hidden from the other members of the public taking part. The prisoner’s training and actual races were all filmed in detail for a podcast to show, at a later date, how the prisoners’ lives were changed through the process of training for a race with members of the general public, setting a goal, and then doing all they could to work together as a team, highlighting the beneficial effects of sport.

One of the other teams participating in the race was a “legal team”, which included lawyers, security people, judges, and even the country’s Minister of Justice. While, in the courthouse, these two sides would be adversaries, the opportunity to compete on an equal footing through the separate arena of sport, no doubt helped to relieve the prisoner’s stress. In English, breakaway means to “go on the run”, although of course ‘break away’ is not being used here to mean escaping from prison. Rather, it represents the way that the campaign takes the prisoner’s mindset outside the walls of the prison, albeit virtually.

The race involving the prisoners’ team and the legal team was broadcast live on the Decathlon Facebook channel and reported on by major Belgian media. Specialist cycling media from other countries also reported on the event, reaching 15 million people. The Decathlon campaign succeeded in widely disseminating the narrative that the prisoners, who were shut into an enclosed space and feeling weak mentally, were able to feel a connection with other people through virtual sports and improved physical and mental health. This effort gained widespread acceptance for the brand’s campaign vision.

Interestingly, following the original advertisement for this event, which was released in March 2021, races other than those organized by Decathlon also began to launch similar initiatives. In May of the same year, John McAvoy, a former armed robber, launched a social ecycling event for hundreds of prisoners. McAvoy was himself formerly a prisoner serving a life sentence, but following his early release he became a triathlete, and he now has a contract with Nike, making him an extremely good example of how sport can help prisoners get their lives back on track. He also appears as a speaker at schools and juvenile reform institutions, and works through a foundation that he established to help young people struggling with problems or poverty.

In Belgium and various other European countries, a number of projects have already attempted to use information technology to support prisoners’ returns to society, including projects that provide incarcerated people with Internet access. With these projects as a foundation, Decathlon’s organization of races on the virtual cycling service Zwift was followed by an announcement by Belgium’s Minister of Justice that all prisons in Belgium would over the next few years be equipped with ecycling facilities. The initiative spread throughout the country, showing how a single project can strike a chord with many people who may then try to expand the idea further, eventually creating a movement. Skillfully connecting like-minded projects in various places and creating a motivating story can lead to a wider web of common purpose.