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case D-19 AOI Marketing: Using Facebook to Launch Bitter Girls®
“Today’s successful women often march to their own
unique drums, are highly motivated, and are very concerned
about the greater good for society,” says Jennifer Katz, president of AOI Marketing, Inc., a new media marketing firm.
THE CONCEPT: EMPOWERING
TEENAGE GIRLS
“This same dark-humor positioning partly underlies the
success of the TV classic The Simpsons,” says Amanda
Axvig, the firm’s vice president of marketing. She goes
on, “This revised positioning strategy is reflected in how
AOI Marketing ultimately defined Bitter Girls in its marketing plan,” which is:
Bitter Girls are smart, motivated, creative, authentic girls
making a difference in the world. Based on real-life people,
the Bitter Girls represent girls who grew up to become doctors, architects, human rights activists, writers, and more.
A start-up team at AOI Marketing was charged with developing a concept that can be used to license and to market a variety of products to the
“tween and teen” female market. The
team observed that many of today’s
successful women don’t fit into the
most-popular-girl-in-their-highschool-class model. “So we developed the concept of communicating
a message that is uplifting and empowering for girls,” says Katz.
POSITIONING THE
BITTER GIRLS CONCEPT
FOR ITS TARGET MARKET
The team’s initial idea was to cast Bitter Girls® in a
happy, upbeat position. Through trial-and-error promotions and research, the marketing positioning changed
180 degrees from the original to today’s concept:
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●
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Original concept. The product started as “My Better
Self”—a blog to give ideas to teenage girls to improve
their self-confidence and ability to take on the world
they will be facing soon. The problem: The goodiegoodie tone to the blog couldn’t attract the attention and
interest of these girls.
Today’s concept. The original concept was turned on its
head to use irony and sometimes dark humor to help provide the same positive self-image for the girls.
Note the deliberate disconnect between the Bitter Girls name and the
positive nature of the girls in the description of them. However, feedback from females in the target
market who like the brand on Facebook indicate there is more interest
in keeping Bitter Girls dark, sullen,
and “edgy.”
PRODUCT INTEGRITY
AND COMPETITION
With brand awareness growing, the team wrote precise
development guidelines to ensure the product’s integrity, look, and feel in order to meet the needs of the licensee. The AOI team worked with graphic artists
Alexandra Amrami and Clay Williams to develop the
logo and initial characters. Note the level of detail in the
examples below:
●
Logo and font. The official logo of the Bitter Girls®
(above) should always appear as a specific font with
the bow on the letter B and the heart on the letter I, followed by the Registered Trademark symbol, ®, after
the brand name or logo. The only allowable typefaces
on the main product are the handwritten logotype or
the Harrowprint font by Stephen Doonan.
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●
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Identifying names. Each girl in the collection has a
name, such as Jenny, Ariel, Kari, and so on. The identifying name and career aspirations of Bitter Girls must
also be written in Harrowprint font, as shown opposite.
Quotes and phrases. On the Facebook Page, people
who like Bitter Girls can suggest new “quotes and
phrases” or rate existing ones. Some examples:
1.
2.
3.
4.
If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.
Bitter is the new black.
Just put on your big girl pants and get it done.
If you were just a little smarter, I could teach you to
fetch.
5. It’s not me, it’s definitely you.
A number of competitors in the “tween and teen” female market promote individualism, girl power, and selfesteem. For example, in 1993, artist Rob Reger created
“Emily the Strange” for a black cat–loving 13-year-old
girl who tells the world to “Get Lost.” In 1994, Lela Lee
created her first “Angry Little Girls” that now appear in a
variety of products and books.
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The AOI team first had to create awareness in the target
market that the Bitter Girls brand exists. Looking at strategies of competitors and with a limited marketing budget,
the AOI team decided that its own website and Facebook
were the best low-cost ways to acquire a “seed” following.
This process involved “creating an official Facebook Page,
developing a story line, and running highly targeted Facebook ads,” says Stuckey. The ads appear on the right-hand
side of Facebook Pages targeting fans of complementary
brands such as Seventeen Magazine and Justin Bieber.
Innovation never stops at AOI Marketing. As the Bitter
Girls brand continues moving forward, the AOI Marketing
team is developing a new brand targeting the same tween
and teen female audience. Following a business model
similar to Bitter Girls, the new Brighter Girls® brand empowers young girls to be confident and inspiring. The goal
is to help them successfully address issues that impact
them most, such as body image and relationships.
Use your knowledge of websites, social media, and
Facebook in answering the questions below.
USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO CREATE
BRAND AWARENESS
The goal in launching the business is to popularize the
logo and cartoon drawings of Bitter Girls. “That makes it
possible to license the concept to manufacturers and
retailers selling products like apparel or mobile phone
cases bought by tween and teen girls,” says Brian Stuckey,
vice president of operations for AOI Marketing.
Studying competitors that use social media is of great
value to Bitter Girls because actions such as “people like
this,” “comments,” and “likes” are transparent on Facebook
Pages. This gives Bitter Girls real-time insight as to what is
grabbing the attention of the market segments it is targeting.
1 (a) What is the image you first have when you hear
the brand name “Bitter Girls”? What are both (b) the
strengths and (c) the weaknesses in linking this brand
name to the concept of empowering tweens and teens?
2 How can social media be used to drive traffic to the
Bitter Girls website?
3 How can Bitter Girls (a) bring people from its website
to its Facebook Page and (b) increase their involvement
and participation on its Facebook Page? (c) Why are these
important goals?
4 (a) How can Bitter Girls find new likes? (b) On what
other Facebook Pages should Bitter Girls advertise?
5 (a) What products besides apparel and mobile phone
cases might Bitter Girls license? (b) How can Bitter Girls
promote its products through Facebook?
Alternate Cases
Questions
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