Critique of Social Media Marketing Campaign

Campaign: Eaton Corporation – Things Have Changed
Eaton Corporation is a leading global diversified power management company mostly known for providing electric components in the aerospace or hydraulics sector. In September 2011, Eaton decided to launch a marketing campaign called “Things Have Changed” to highlight Eaton’s expertise in information technology (IT) and data center solutions. The target audience of the marketing campaign was mainly the IT professionals. Eaton was trying to market its power management product offering to the IT professionals and create awareness through its website – switchon.Eaton.com, by means of different social media platforms along with other traditional means of advertising.
Promise: The main promise here was the power management product offerings to meet the demands of the IT professionals working long hours in office. Eaton wanted to drive audience to their site switchon.Eaton.com which was dedicated to the IT needs. Additionally the campaign encouraged the IT companies and professionals to visit their website by keeping the “Space Lift” competition in which one company could win Eaton power management product valued up to $10,000 and a work space makeover of additional $10,000. Prizes such as ergonomic chairs, touch screen, and other things that an IT savvy person would value were offered.
Overall, it was a good promise. All the things offered were relevant to the target audience. Moreover after visiting the website the visitors would learn about the product offering which could meet their needs.
Tool: Eaton Corporation launched this campaign at VMworld and supplemented it through Facebook and twitter. VMworld is conference held by VMware for the IT professionals focusing on virtual servers. This was a good idea as they could reach their target audience. They also created a Facebook page and used twitter to create awareness. The Facebook page for switch on Eaton has just 143 likes and the twitter account has about 100 followers. Eaton chose just Vmworld to create awareness. It could have chosen other conferences as not all IT professionals focus on virtual servers. Apart from using facebook and twitter they could have used other blogs which the tech savvy are known to frequent. Twitter is a good tool to create awareness. As a B2B firm Eaton had a smaller more targeted customer base. In order to reach out to large number of audience Eaton used twitter which was a good decision but it was not as successful. Eaton was trying to educate people about its expertise in IT and since not many IT professionals associate Eaton with IT, it would be unlikely that they would follow Eaton or for that matter go on the Eaton Facebook page. There should have been other tools used to direct the IT guys to the switchon.Eaton.com website.
Bargain: The people needed internet, a computer, laptop or a phone with internet access. They had to go on the website switchon.Eaton.com and watch a 10-15 slide presentation on Eaton products and then they could click on the link to enter the competition. It seems convenient an IT person who is on their computer all day to go on a website and click through a few slides to win a HDTV or something of that sort. But this can be seen as time consuming after 5 or clicks and the person can stop going through the presentation. Even if a person manages to click the next button through the presentation, there is no guarantee of that person being aware of Eaton’s products. They might have just clicked through the next button in haste to reach the last slide and enter the competition.
The other part of the bargain was the site switchon.Eaton.com had to be up and running. The link had to be active.
Overall, the promise was good. The content of the website was also good. The website did not create as much awareness in the IT field. Lot of IT professional are still not aware of Eaton as power management product provider in the IT domain. The tools to reach to the audience could have been more relevant. If a brand is trying to reposition itself, a more aggressive marketing campaign and the tools that are a right fit with the target audience should be used. Some of the things they could have considered are the blogs or websites which their target companies usually visit. Also, if the people rushed to the presentation to enroll in the competition unless the total time spent on the presentation was measured, Eaton would not be able to measure whether it was successful in educating the people who clicked through about their products or not.