Joe Rospars, the co-founder and CEO of Blue State Digital, speaking to graduates at FIT.

The challenges of creating a successful media strategy are always the same, according to Joe Rospars, whether it’s for a political campaign or a fashion magazine – or a beauty brand.

Joe Rospars is the co-founder and CEO of Blue State Digital. He was the chief digital strategist for President Obama‘s two campaigns. His team manages Michelle Obama’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. He also counts Vogue magazine among his clients.

Rospars recently advised the2013 graduates of FIT’s master’s program in Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing Management, many of which are beauty executives, on how to engage consumers online. He was enlisted to give a keynote speech during the students’ graduation event, which was attended by over 700 industry members.

Since more beauty marketers have been working social media aspects into package designs, such as cues that direct a consumer to a brand’s twitter page, or labeling a package with a QR code that leads to a specially designed website, Rospar’s advice is timely – and invaluable.

So – once you have the consumer’s attention, by email, Facebook or Twitter – what do you say?

Conversations are Key, but Make it Social

Rospars advised how to build a brand’s online “voice,” whether you are communicating by email, through a newsletter, or on any social media site. “The reader has to feel like they have the complete attention of the brand, and that they are a part of it,” he says.

How? Start a conversation with your consumer – and then make it social.

But, “making it social” is the greatest challenge, according to Rospars. “When a consumer feels so connected to your brand that they have become a member of your online network, and they tell their friends – that’s when you have succeeded.”

Rospars explains that companies often make the mistake of having a notion of consumers as a group, without thinking about the individual person.

“Treat every online interaction as an intimate relationship with an individual – and your customers will pay attention,” he says, describing how he did this when working on Obama’s first presidential campaign. “We got votes town by town, door to door, person by person,” he says.

And before Obama’s second campaign, Rospar’s team developed a top-level strategy not unlike one that a beauty marketer would implement.

The team created an updated logo and visual identity, designed and implemented barackobama.com, and produced the campaign’s re-launch video. The digital technology, ‘Quick Donate’, made one-click fundraising possible in politics for the first time, while a targeted sharing tool transformed the way people shared political information with their friends on social networks.

Getting the Business Done

Rospars created a different type of online conversation with Vogue’s readers. But, he said it wasn’t about providing web exclusive content, or promoting the stories in an upcoming issue. “It was so much more,” he says.

Rospars asked Grace Coddington, Vogue’s creative director, to write about a personal experience. Coddington wrote an email about the first time she picked up an issue of Vogue, and how it made her feel.

When readers received this email, so many felt so personally connected to Coddington that she received thousands of phone calls. (Rospars team was elated, while the magazine’s receptionists probably didn’t have the same reaction.)

The team now also had thousands of personal stories – “amazing stories,” says Rospars, – that people from all walks of life shared online, about their own first experience with the magazine.
“They were describing their personal relationship with the brand,” Rospars adds – every marketer’s dream.

Even more important was how this strategy enabled Vogue to “get the business done,” as Rospars calls it. This meant using these stories to encourage readers to “give that same experience to someone special,” – by buying a subscription.

Rospars calls this strategy the digital equivalent to all those fly-away subscription cards – it’s definitely a smarter approach.

Final Words of Advice

Rospars concluded his speech at the event by emphasizing that launching a successful social media campaign isn’t about technical challenges, or how to adapt to the current platform of the moment – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter – or whatever will be popular in the future.

He posed this question in his closing remarks, “Essentially, the challenge is always this – how will your brand or organization engage people in a social way?”