How Shea Moisture Could’ve Utilized Eleven

Malik Reid | Jul 26 , 2017

How Shea Moisture Could’ve Utilized Eleven

Penetrating a new demographic can be tricky in today's climate. Making the wrong moves, especially as it pertains to attempting to reach certain audiences, can feel like a minefield. In this post, we’ll review Shea’s recent slip-up and how they could have avoided it on Eleven.



The Shea Moisture Incident 

As you may know, Shea Moisture and its new AOR VaynerMedia ran into trouble a few weeks ago when Black Twitter registered its disapproval of the first ad in the brand’s new campaign. Shea Moisture, a haircare line of products that has catered to AA women for many years, tried to market its products to a new, larger demo, and it backfired...terribly.  

The ad featured white women, which wasn’t the issue; the issue was that it was totally insensitive to the community to which it was catering. Needless to say, producing a commercial that doesn’t bode well with your core customer is complete a waste of money.

You cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT abandon one community for another, nor can you be insensitive to the daily realities and issues that your core consumers face. It would be unfair to say that Shea is oblivious to this, as the opposite is true.

This Breakfast Club interview with CEO Rich Dennis gives insight into the issue.


For Shea, this sucks on multiple levels, but the elephant in the room (at least from a marketer’s stance) is that they’re trapped. They’re seemingly landlocked into a demographic, and if this struggle continues, corporate interest will further whitewash Shea’s advertising until they end up losing their customer base altogether...or, they stick to the rivers and the lakes that they’re used to.

Both those options suck. The rivers and lakes are cool, but there’s a whole ocean out there. Learn from your core community and start to chase different rivers and lakes or a different community. This way, you can keep your head above water and know that every river flows into a larger body of water. Trust that the current will take you there.

 

 

"Eleven helps brands cater to their core audiences, while expanding their consumer bases with full on branded media plans, across a wide range of communities and cultures with entertainment."

 

A Full on Branded Media Plan

All of this could’ve been avoided on Eleven. Following the 5 C’s methodology, Shea Moisture would’ve properly reached their CORE demographic with no issue and would’ve been able to prospect that new demo without ruffling feathers.  

Eleven’s system plugs directly into traditional ad-tech, meaning Eleven would pull audiences directly from Shea Moisture’s DMP/CRM/sales data to accurately target their current customers via branded entertainment.

They would literally be able to see what channels their current/past customers are watching, and work with content creators that resonate with their core audience to produce entertainment they want to consume, from full-on series integrations to influencer campaigns. Reaching an audience (old and new) with entertainment, can be done with literally hundreds of different “combos” on Eleven, but let’s go with a jab, hook, and sonic boom.

 

Like Gary’s “Jab Jab Right Hook” method, you build up credibility (and value) before going in for the kill within your target audiences first. We do that by providing entertainment, and ours is more like “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Sonic Boom”. 

  • Jabs =  A short burst of coverage across small channels that reach a specific demographic. These can be comboed (Stacked) to basically pummel your way into a new market. This is best used for prospecting and growing a community.

 

  • Right hooks = Taking shots at your core community via the secondary entertainment outlets, like podcasts, or youtube channels, but only using the larger publisher channels on that medium to command widespread attention from your core. After you’ve jabbed a community, you can move into hooks.  

 

  • Sonic boom = This is the superpower, the big boy. This is an execution that reaches a wide range of audiences, like a series integration. This is the most visible media and the anchor of the strategy.

The beauty of Eleven is that they can go as big or small as the advertisers and creators can imagine, lending itself to some amazingly robust media planning capabilities. This can be used as an entire roadmap for a branded media rollout.

 

SPONSOR POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT (Sonic Boom)

Brands can achieve massive reach in both current and prospective audience segments by sponsoring entire series of content that reach an appropriate amount of both targets.


This essentially “casts a net” that would mainly attract their core consumers, while also reaching new audience segments that would be most interested in Shea Moisture. Think of it as retargeting your core audience segment and prospecting a new target based on “pivot points” of shared interest and habits.

To target a new market, they would simply need to tailor the exposure they allocate to the new target audience segment to achieve their penetration goals.  

SHEA MOISTURE COULD’VE SPONSORED A SERIES LIKE HBO’S INSECURE

They’ve already hit this community with jab and hooks...it's time for them to follow with a sonic boom

Imagine if Shea Moisture had asked Issa Rae to simply be the haircare sponsor for her series Insecure for the next season. Insecure is a show that’s getting more than its fair share of viewership within their core demographic – way more than that ad would ever see, no matter how much they spent on placing it across the web.

All Issa would have to do is make sure they’re in the shots or story when she’s doing something with her hair or getting ready to go out. Simple.

Now, a portion of the production costs of the show has been covered by Shea Moisture to be integrated into the storyline of the show throughout the season, but that’s only for that industry vertica; the inventory is still open to other sponsors in non-competing industries. If Issa wanted to, she could “Stack” sponsors to cover the entire production costs.

This puts Issa in a position to tell the stories about issues an awkward black girl has with her hair as it relates to her personal life – in work, in relationships, and more. Think about that. That’s giving the power to the creator and a tremendous amount of creative freedom to interpret it via entertainment.

Being able to be a central fixture in how a community deals with real life issues, in a story told by one of the greatest writers of our generation is an honor that any brand should jump at.

Being able to be a central fixture in how a community deals with real life issues, in a story told by one of the greatest writers of our generation is an honor that any brand should jump at.

And the thing is, she’s been doing this for years: humor that is specific to that core community, is her specialty. This is a video from 2012. Before Insecure, there was Awkward Black Girl.

The top comments are about a joke she made that’s specifically tailored to her community; someone unfamiliar with the struggles of a perm wouldn't get the joke. But for Shea Moisture, this is the type of content you want your brand to be a part of.

Screenshot 2017-06-25 12.06.47.png

 

PROSPECTING AND RETARGETING VIA NICHE OUTLETS 

Shea Moisture could’ve sent shockwaves of entertainment through smaller, more targeted outlets. From there, Shea can just retarget those audience segments based hundreds of data points from locations to shared interests and media consumption behaviors with subsequent media exposures. They can even see all the same metrics they would for traditional media, like GRP, Reach, and Frequency.

Retargeting is simple.

Just find the channels on which your core is consuming content and hit that audience with jabs and hooks. 

Every episode of Insecure is followed by the Insecuritea podcast hosted by two of Insecure’s core audience’s biggest podcast personalities, Crissle and Hey Fran Hey. Shea Moisture could not only sponsor Insecuritea, but could use Eleven to send off a shockwave of sponsored content via the channels that their core and prospective customers consume.

Imagine if every podcast – big or small – that reached that community was sponsored by Shea Moisture during that season of Insecure. All of this can be scheduled from, executed, and tracked by both VaynerMedia and Shea Moisture in the Eleven platform.

Even behind-the-scenes inventory lends itself to integration.

Even behind the scenes inventory lends itself to integration 

Imagine if every major hair vlogger – black, white, brown, etc. – talked about last week's episode of Insecure while doing their videos on Snapchat, Instagram, Live.me, and using Shea Moisture products in their core programming, like YouTube reviews and tutorials. Not only are they exposing their audiences to Shea’s product line, but they’re also suggesting they watch Insecure by bringing it up, thus re-routing them to consume the main course: Insecure.

Think videos in a format similar to the video below, but spanning across 100's of creator channels whose audience matches the desired audience segments. If they want to diversify their audiences, they simply need to target those populations via those audience segments.

Prospecting a New Audience is Easy

Eleven allows them to prospect that new audience by simply switching their target audience on the platform and tailoring that content strategy for them specifically. The process is similar to creating a Facebook or Twitter ad, or better yet, like changing your opponent on Street Fighter and using combos that work best against that specific fighter’s style.

 

SHEA MOISTURE CAN (well, could've) KEEP THIS COMBO UP FOREVER.

It doesn’t have to stop there! Shea Moisture can use Eleven to integrate into communities all year round, throwing “jabs”, as Gary V would put it, to a community via other sponsorships.  

For example, Black Widow, a fantastic erotic drama, that would no doubt have some opportunities to discuss how Shea Moisture relates to the experience of that community in relationships. I, for one, know for a fact that for a lot of us, shea and cocoa butter are scents ranked closely to godliness, and a casual, sponsored namedrop in this context is something you should jump on now, not later. We’ll get into our views on brand safety later.

Actually, I believe Issa’s writing a movie with Lupita and Rihanna as super thieves; how awesome would it be if they had handy gadgets that looked like normal things any black woman might have in her bag – there’s tons of integration spaces in that concept. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

  

 Be sure to subscribe to the blog, and feel free to reach us online @Negamalireid, @ElevenApp