Clorox: Rewiring The Brand Experience With Social Media

I spoke recently with Mary O’Connell of Clorox about the company’s efforts to make digital and social media part of its brands’ success. O’Connell referred to creating a new vision of digital marketing that is “rewiring and re-imagining our entire brand experience. Read on:

eMarketer: What role does digital marketing—and media and social media, in particular—play for Clorox brands?

Mary O’Connell: We’ve been looking at social media intensely in the past 18 months or more. We’ve made great strides as a company in incorporating digital marketing and media into almost all of our marketing communications plans, so we made a conscious move into social media. My group is creating a new vision of digital marketing, which is we are rewiring and re-imagining our entire brand experience.

eMarketer: Green Works is a relatively new brand in the Clorox portfolio. How is it using social media and digital marketing to enhance brand awareness?

Ms. O’Connell: When we launched Green Works, we made certain that we went where our consumers are. This was a very conscious decision and the Green Works consumer is highly evolved in the digital space.

We have a blog site called the Shades of Green Journal and a program called 30 Days to Natural. With Green Works, we were very transparent about the ingredients in the products. At the beginning of this year, we began providing full ingredient disclosure about all of our cleaning products on our corporate Website and the Green Works site.

The Shades of Green Journal is a blog where we share relevant news and developments at Green Works and the natural category. 30 Days to Natural is a very lightly branded way of engaging consumers and providing tips on the things they can do to lead a more natural lifestyle. We also have a ratings and review function on our Green Works site. Consumers post and tell us what they think about the products, which we think is hugely important.

eMarketer: Has Green Works sponsored any online content on green or natural products/living sites and blogs?

Ms. O’Connell: We were the platinum sponsor of the BlogHer conference this year. We also had a conference of aggregated Twitter and blog content with live feeds offering information based on Green Works microsites. We also have a relationship with the Sundance Channel for paid media. Brita had a program called “Show Us Your Green Room Contest” that targeted college students and was tied in with Facebook.

Fresh Step cat litter has a Facebook presence and a cause marketing relationship with the ASPCA. Clorox has its own Facebook page aimed at the issues mothers and families face with respect to the health and wellness of their family.

Just before the Labor Day holiday this year, Clorox offered free disinfecting wipes to teachers. So, in the midst of concerns about the H1N1 virus, we teamed with the National Education Association and offered wipes to every teacher in the country. Teachers went to CloroxClassrooms.com to register for and download a free coupon for Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. In a four-day period, more than 100,000 teachers redeemed coupons—that was a program launched through social media in real time.

eMarketer: How was the site promoted?

Ms. O’Connell: Teachers knew to go to the site through promotion by the NEA. We did some traditional media, but most of the promotion was done through bloggers who cover teachers, health, education and schools, and on Twitter. Even bloggers who just write about free things wrote to us and asked for the link to the program.
We’re also very active on Twitter. The Twitter homepage lists the top 10 trending topics and Labor Day weekend, CloroxClassrooms.com was among the top 10 topics of the day. We knew the word would be spread through teacher blogs and mom blogs. It really demonstrated the power of social media in a situation like this.

It’s critical for us to offer something of value to consumers. Earlier this year Clorox was recognized by the Marketing to Moms Coalition for excellence in how we outreach to bloggers. Bloggers gave us a high rating in terms of offering the mom bloggers valuable information that they could share with their readers. We want to offer useful information and have an ongoing dialogue with this audience.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access subscribers only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.