Social Media for Taxing Situations
It's that time of year again. Spring is in the air. Bird chirp. Flowers bloom, and in the US, a great many of us miss part of it, because it is also tax time. It is also the only time of year when the words "H&R Block" readily come to mind for a great many people.
H&R Block is the world’s preeminent tax services provider, having served more than 400 million clients since 1955 and generating annual revenues of $4 billion last year--that's pre-tax of course. I don't know what percent of the US population uses their tax preparation services, but they can go in to any of 13,000 offices or use the company's TaxCut online and software service.
Add to this the fact that the company is based in Kansas City, and it makes H&R Block appear to be among the least likely candidates for coverage in the SA Global Survey on social media's impact on business and culture, but recently, and quite quickly, H&R Block seems to be active in a great number of social media spaces. In fact, I can find no consumer retail or services company that is as active in social media as is H&R Block.
The source of all this activity seems to be Paula W. Drum, Block's VP of marketing for digital tax solutions. She joined the company recently--in 2006 and has driven a mass effort to reposition the venerable tax preparation company as an overall tax expert and she has used some remarkably innovative social media programs to achieve that goal.
So, I postponed my own meeting this morning to prepare this report on my conversations with Paula:
1. You came to H&R Block in 2006. You immediately began driving what is among the most extensive business-to-consumer social media campaigns in history. Yet, I could find little in your background to indicate social media experience. How did you become aware of SM and why did you think it was the right course for Block?
I'm flattered that you characterize our activities as "the most extensive business-to-consumer social media campaigns in history." I've never thought of it that way. When I came to H&R Block my mandate was to grow our digital business. My background was in establishing the e-commerce and interactive marketing divisions for very well-known brands such as Alamo, Rent-A-Car and Days Inn. I've been in the online space since the beginning days of travel e-commerce when no one had much experience in e-commerce or interactive marketing. Those travel brands had flourished with a product that was perfectly suited to e-commerce and it was great fun innovating what was the first experience with the brand – making the reservation. Because the brands were well-known, consumers knew to seek us out directly online. I was helping to facilitate the overall brand experience. However, the challenge was very different at H&R Block.
H&R Block enjoys great brand awareness (99%) but that is awareness of H&R Block as a brick and mortar tax company. Consumers were not aware of H&R Block as a strong contender in digital tax. The market leader, TurboTax, was becoming ubiquitous with approximately 70% market share. To grow our digital business and continue to position the brand overall, we needed to drive awareness that H&R Block was more than the traditional corner tax office. In my past work, I observed the growing power of social networks and user generated content. My goal was to build awareness of H&R Block as an online brand as well as a brick and mortar brand.
2. What obstacles did you face at H&R Block in getting social media program implemented? How did you overcome them?
I was lucky. There was more support for testing and learning than absolute obstacles. In our first year I positioned most of our social media activities as "tests." They were not a substantial part of my overall media mix, so there was little perceived risk. Most senior executives did not believe that the YouTube contest was going to be as successful as it was. I also needed to convince some executives that SecondLife was a good venue for our brand as well. There were many negative articles about SecondLife before and after we launched our island, so I've had to continue to justify our activity there a few times. There were also some legal hurdles to overcome when we started blogging. Our legal department felt that a blog needed to uphold the same standards as a corporate sponsored advertisement so they did not want any executive expressing an opinion that could not be substantiated the same way that we substantiate our marketing claims. Yikes.
Fortunately, our "small tests" had some great successes and paved the way to develop a more extensive program in year two.
3. What was the thinking behind your "Super Sweet Refund" YouTube campaign? Can you tell me about the responses in terms of numbers? Tell me about a few of the best/worst contest submissions?
I was amazed by the quality and creativity of the submissions. There were some really great videos. A few of my personal favorites are "Death and Taxes" and "Possibilities." We have them highlighted on our new site Digits . I still watch them. It's hard to get them out of your head once you've seen them.
To launch the contest we created some seed videos to serve as contest examples. We promoted the contest on YouTube's home page with the seed video "Candy." In one day, "Candy" received over 1.7 million views and YouTube tells us that we still hold the record for the most views of a home page video. In all, the contest videos received over 4 million views.
Some of the biggest learnings for me were:
- How quickly our competition copied us with their TaxRap featuring Vanilla Ice.
- We should have leveraged the contest across multiple communities because people join more than one social network
- We should have made it clearer that the community selected contest winners, not us. The winning author did what it takes to win a popularity contest--She promoted herself, getting friends to vote. As a result we received a fair amount of negative feedback when her video was posted to the home page. People thought we had made the selection over other very creative contributions.
4. The name "HR Block Island" confused me because I have visited Block Island--off the Rhode Island Coast. But your "island" is on SecondLife. What was the strategic goal of building HR Block Island? Did you have many visitors who were below the tax-paying age? Got a colorful tale? Can you give me some numbers regarding visitors? What do you feel it has done for the HR Block brand?
HR Block Island in SecondLife started out as "Tango Island." In 2006, we were going to soft-launch a new online tax preparation product that I named "Tango," because it is a "partnership" between a tax professional and someone who wants to prepare their own taxes.
The new product was built on emotional-design principles and used new flash-based technology. We thought the SecondLife community would be a great place to get some initial learning about our new product from early adopters.
As we started building with Electric Sheep Company, I realized that this space could be much more than just a product showcase. We were looking at the island prototypes with a Welcome Area, an auditorium, a product pavilion, office space and a ballroom--dancing is popular in SecondLife, and afterall this was Tango Island. Then it hit me that this was the perfect forum to highlight our tax expertise and offer something of value to the SecondLife community, free professional tax advice in avatar format. So the goal evolved to additionally highlight our brand in new ways, demonstrate our technical side and provide value through free tax advice.
As a result,ComputerWorld named us among the top eight corporate sites in SecondLife. We were mentioned in numerous blog posts, held a conference with the SecondLife Business Communicators virtually at the island.
Now in it's second year, we've learned a lot. A few observations:
- People have an unbelievable ability to multi-task. They can simultaneously make avatars dance, ask tax advice questions and follow multiple thread conversations. That's just on the computer. Who knows what else is going on? They could also be watching TV. Their two-year-olds could be crawling around the floor as is true in my case.
- Virtual Reality is very different from chat. There is something visceral about being able to see your avatar talk with another avatar. Last year, a blogger called it "the future of customer service. I believe there something to it.
To your other point, all our island visitors were of "tax age." Some, however were international visitors, who were not our target audience. There are so many colorful tales that I can tell you about SecondLife and our experience.
Recently Stacy, a new member of my marketing team, has been coordinating our SecondLife activities. And as you know, people choose many different forms of avatars from people, to angels, vampires, panda bears, foxes, cartoon characters, etc. So, we are there on a tax advice night and Stacy sends me an IM saying "there is a vulture standing next to me." I responded "Yes, I know. That vulture is getting some tax advice from Hope (our tax pro in avatar form)." It is truly an environment of non-discrimination!
We also have received numerous comments from our field tax professionals. They are excited to see the brand "enter the 21st century" as one wrote me. It has been motivating for many of our 110,000 tax professionals to see the brand in new places and being progressive. We are even getting asked to host tax training in SecondLife.
5. Most readers know that I love hanging out on Twitter. But I find very few businesses flourishing there. H&R Block is prominent among them. When did you start it and why? What is the result so far?
Now we are getting into year 2 of our "the most extensive business-to-consumer social media campaigns in history." We took all the learnings from our blogging, YouTube, and SecondLife experiences as well as observations in the market place (i.e., The new role of citizen journalism and the power of the voice of one) and created a far reaching campaign this year.
This campaign included Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, a community site name Digits, Second Life and online outreach. I have a lot of my team dedicated to pulling together a more comprehensive and coordinated program.
Twitter is Amy Worley's baby, so I'll let her tell you about it.
[Amy] We started on Twitter in December. I went in thinking of it as an add-on, a free way to get our message out to a small, but influential, group of people.
One wrong assumption I made is that the time commitment would be inconsequential. Another was that this would be pretty much exclusively a way to push information OUT. Big mistake.
When people join Twitter, they often send an update out into the world and then go away. Nothing happens. So they don't get it. But once they move in to Twitterville, as you call it, and really listen and reply and become part of the community, they're addicted. There's nothing like it.
When it comes to truly connecting with customers, I'd say that Twitter has been the most valuable and most effective component of our social media efforts. I went back and looked at our update archive and I realized that more than half of our updates are "@ replies." Not only have we shared tax tips and advice that serve the general community, but on a one-to-one basis we've helped people get jobs and professional tax training.
We've helped others overcome the anxiety associated with doing their taxes on their own for the first time. We're having a blast participating in @zefrank's Colorwars (how could H&R Block resist a "veryGreenTeam"?). We've discovered and resolved customer support issues and we've met and thanked very happy customers. It sounds crazy, but I actually feel like H&R Block has made some friends on Twitter. We even had a customer call us out as part of @garyvee's Good People Day! We couldn't ask for more than that.
6. Have I left anything out? What other social media programs exist? What's in the planning stages? Five years from today, what do you think will have been the impact of social media on H&R Block's culture and technology?
As I mentioned earlier, we actually have a broader reaching campaign. We started this year with the goals of positioning ourselves as a tax expertise brand and a digital brand as well.
We created many different pieces of content that we are using across many different social networks. We didn't expect every single concept to be a home run. We want to learn and iterate on what works best. Here's a brief overview of some of the activities:
- Branded video content: AKA Truman Greene We don't try to hide the fact that Truman is manufactured. Our goal was to create an engaging and entertaining way to highlight the benefits of using our TaxCut Online. We characterize Truman as a brand evangelist and we put up a new clip or two weekly. Truman also has his own page on MySpace Our intent is to produce videos that can be used in multiple locations so we can go where the people are rather than build microsites where people have to come to us. We produce original content and even spoof other popular videos Truman has had over 560,000 views on YouTube and has 160 subscribers as of today. He has 3500 MySpace friends.
7. Are you so immersed in social media because H&R Block needs to attract
younger customers? What are the key goals of the social media programs? We do
want to reach younger audiences who may be doing their taxes for the first
time. We feel that our online products serve that demographic very
well. However, our goals are broader. We want to ensure
that when people think about H&R Block, they first think that we are the
experts in tax and that we have a relevant solution for their particular need –
whether they want to prepare their own taxes online or have a tax professional
prepare their taxes for them. 8. What advice do you have for other companies considering social media? What
warnings? I think any company should be exploring ways to engage with their customer and
prospects. The investment to learn is very small. However, newer
tactics are hard to measure in the same way that traditional online media such
as banner advertising and paid search is measured. It is also not about how loud you can
shout or how great your brand is versus finding ways to be relevant within the
community to allow real brand interactions. It is a community commitment
not just a quick marketing campaign. I think the other part to realize is
that while some activities are free – meaning there are no media costs – there is a human capital
cost. Finally, it is important to have a level of sincerity about the
community. Brands that are not sincere and transparent in their motives
are going to receive a negative reaction. 9. Tell me about measurement. What does H&R Block want to get from these programs
and how do you measure that? What tools do you use? There are
a lot of micro-measurements. How many visitors, how many friends, how
many video views, how many uses of an application, how many blog
mentions. However, the primary measure that we are using to evaluate
these programs is awareness that H&R Block has digital products. It
is a long-term brand approach for us. Not just a one-time marketing
program that we are going to continue if successful and scrap if it isn't. 10.Additional Comments? I
feel like we are still in the infancy stages of social media and how it will
impact the future of brands. I feel very fortunate that I'm able to work
with a great brand that can make a significant impact in this arena.
