Strand’s advertising flop shows that things can go wrong in your business. You can have the best product and devise the best marketing communication strategy ahead of your big day but things might not go well. In this Slide, I provide proof to show that despite all the negative, your brand can STILL benefit from a Social Media Campaign.

1. Can We Really Trust Social Media? 5 Things You Should Know
Allegedly the biggest UK advertising flop ever, I once came across the
infamous story of “strand cigarettes” in which advertisers back then
learnt a harsh lesson in how NOT to portray a brand.
When the strand advertising campaign was launched in 1959, the video
featured a manin a hat and trench coat who had been stood up for a date.
Realising his fate, he started walking along a dark, cold and completely
deserted street. For comfort he lit up a Strand cigarette and then a voice
over said; "You're never alone with a Strand".
The intention was simple; whatever you’re doing or wherever you may be,
Strand Cigaretteswould not let you down; a cigarette you could always rely
on; even if you’re ditched at the last minute by your girl.
But it didn’t go down well with its intended audiences. They JUST didn’t
trust that lonely soul ‘lurking’ in the darkness.

2. They thought that with strand; they would not have any friends and
consigned to a lonely existence.
The effect was so bad that the company withdrew the brand entirely from
the market.
Key Lessons
Strand’s advertising flop shows that things can go wrong in your business
too. You can have the best product and devise the best marketing
communicationstrategyahead ofyour big day but thingsmight not go well.
Murphy’s Law: “If it can go wrong, it will”.
Strand learnt thislesson the hard way. That’sexactlyis what I don’t want to
happenin your marketing campaigns. ‘If it can go wrong, it probably will’.
As a SocialMedia Marketer, Idon’t advocate that your business marketing
strategy should solely be about social media for it to be successful.
You can however trust social media as a marketing strategy trust to work
for your brand.
5 Things to know about Social Media
-Make every move on social networks part of a larger social media
marketing strategy.

3. -Establish a clear goals and objectives you want to achieve. These
objectives allow you to react to campaigns that are not meeting
expectations.
-Create an editorial calendar which gets you an overview of all your
contentsto be shared across all platforms. Remember to ensure a good mix
of contents that ultimately helps in achieving an effective brand
positioning.
-Get inspiration from your competitors when it comes to what content
types get the most social media engagement. Distinguish yourself from
competitorsand appealtoconsumersthey might be missing through social
media listening
-After you’ve figured out who your mainaudienceis, what your main goals
are, and what your competitors are doing, you’ll then have enough
information to decide what platforms to maximize for your social media
campaign.
Conclusion
Don’t be left alone like the cigarette man, (in a dark alley) in your industry
without making socialmedia part ofyour mainmarketing communications
strategy.
Or else your hard earned investments in building your brand would go
down the drain like happened to Strand cigarette many decades ago.
Social media as a brand repositioning tool

4. What isone thing that you can do todaythat you have learnt from thispost?
It’s the time to go all in on developing a sustainable presence for your
brand.
You can send me an email at jerry@jerryaduasare.com
We can also connect on Twitter @JerryAduAsare and my
Facebook fan page at Jerry Adu-Asare.
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