Deluxe Entertainment, a progressive Social Media Marketer

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships.^[1][2] The American Marketing Association has defined marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Marketing is used to create, keep and satisfy the customer. As such, all commercial enterprises generally employ specific marketing strategies to assist in the management and growth of their business activities. There are numerous marketing orientations for a given organization to follow, focus upon the product, or the sales, or look to customer demand as the catalyst for any strategy. Marketing itself may become a driver for the whole enterprise itself, or an ancillary component to the business.

How has social media (SM) affected the “Mad Men” world of marketing practices?

What are the benefits an organization can achieve through social media marketing?

We are studying the Deluxe Entertainment organization which provides “Services allied to motion pictures”.  Its mandate is transform creative content for fulfillment to delivery endpoints. This descriptor doesn’t sound very sexy here, but the Deluxe motion picture service to Hollywood, Netflix and other broadcasters, and every conceivable high end creative organization and individual film maker is actually very exciting. Deluxe seems a good place to examine SM because Deluxe is very much immersed in the SM process.

Content is defined as  “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Is Deluxe creating and sharing online content that is valuable to its potential customers and so building continuing product reputation or is Deluxe simply promoting their service?

Progressive SM theory proposes that good social media content is shared by others and contributes to a continuing social media conversation.

The best content stimulates discussion that enables people who are interested in you to see what others think about you and how you respond to them. Good content marketing isn’t just about creating content — it is also about using the content to create customer and stakeholder engagement.

Here is the company profile.

The Deluxe company SM profile   describes Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc. as a global leader in digital services and technology solutions for content creation and delivery. There has been a long relationship with Hollywood studios, independent filmmakers, TV networks, online content producers, brands, and anyone looking to bring stories and experiences to audiences. Deluxe’s brand is relational, technological and qualitative.

It has been quite an evolution. The original Toronto post-production company I personally encountered in the early 90s has  evolved from a very large specialized print and post-production house that made records and huge profit by producing the 5,000 or so “Titanic” prints in 1997, into a huge meta data organization spanning across 4 continents, offering the motion picture and television community an array of production, post-production and advanced media services, from digital distribution to global asset management.

Deluxe’s client list reads like the who’s who in entertainment. And the company is actively engaged in employing social media to market its diverse activities. Relationships have always appeared to be the key to Deluxe’s success. But who they are trying to reach, a very group of communities, is the key to the SM formula they are employing today.  Deluxe links to entertainment influencers like Variety.

Social Media marketing, unlike direct marketing strategies, finds its effectiveness less in directly promoting product and more in creating an interactive environment where relationships, authenticity and trust among stakeholders will ultimately drive customer loyalty and product sales.

After studying Deluxe’s social media activity on-line in some detail, I spoke directly with Michelle Ewing, Social Media Coordinator for Deluxe Post-Production located in Toronto, Canada. Although her specific brief is Toronto and Canada, she confirmed the overall social media approach.

Deluxe Entertainment is the parent company to a multiplicity of localized, national companies as well as a number of subsidiaries  with their own strong independent brands, which they individually promote with great vigor.

Given the complexity of the many Deluxe groups, social media structure and management hierarchy is presently more localized than centralized. The parent however conducts a continuing discourse to its teams in order to ensure the overall Deluxe brand is continually enhanced and promoted. There is no doubt that the “local” benefits tremendously from the Hollywood image.

The Deluxe organization a big and complicated group speaking to a broad array of interests, offering a broad array of advanced services to its client base. How it employs social media in this activity is very interesting.

If positive SM content creation emphasizes creating online content that is valuable to customers which also contributes to social media conversation, it is critical that you identify exactly who you are speaking to. So who is Deluxe speaking to?

Deluxe’s social media blanket is quite diverse.

Deluxe Social Media is constantly promoting and sharing customer product, linking great motion picture works to its own strong brand.  King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a prime example of this approach. So is Handmaid’s Tale.   So while it speaks to the motion picture consumer of course, the primary SM focus is its association with its lead customers, the Hollywood studios, broadcaster giants including Netflix, from large distribution entities to small independent production houses and individuals.

Deluxe also links its activities and its talented workforce to significant entertainment influencers. We observe that this social media activity promoted on both a global product scale as well as the local level .

But the dialogue here is more than product or service promotion. Deluxe is also speaking to its broad (supply chain) stakeholder community, which includes the extremely important art world crowdculture community who create the product that Deluxe offers its services to, meaning actors, or organizations that promote the health of the industry, the art and craft form. Local community contact is very important and Deluxe TO’s recent move across town was important to the client base it serves and the community it supports.

This social media activity is further enhanced by investment in the community through social media links and shares on its numerous sites as well as direct financial donations in the community which Deluxe provides on an on-going altruistic and strategic basis.

Deluxe purposefully speaks to the specialized technical community that they both engage and employ, an important technical community that they are intrinsically connected with. An example of this includes partnerships with technology and research groups partnerships.

They note internal employee discourse again because the conversation is the key, notwithstanding individual criticism leveled at the company from time to time. All par for the course in a world of engagement. Yet we also see Deluxe employees as real contributors to the corporate plan, speaking proudly about individual and group achievement. This is all good and more than mitigates “poor pension” talk that surfaces from time to time.

Deluxe’s social media management is a professional, enlightened and inclusive approach that can only enhance the reputation and brand of this progressive organization.

Deluxe Social Media Detail

Deluxe operates its social media on the following platforms, in addition to many subsidiaries not listed below.

Corporate Website   http://www.bydeluxe.com/creative

Facebook  Global https://www.facebook.com/Deluxe1915/

Facebook  Local   https://www.facebook.com/DeluxePostProductionToronto/photos/a.336302669782317.78994.335354576543793/1217530464992862/?type=1&theater

Blogs  Industry at large http://www.bydeluxe.com/news/avoid-hidden-risks-in-the-content-aggregation-fulfillment-process

Twitter: Employee interactions  https://twitter.com/DeluxeToronto?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bydeluxetoronto.com%2F

Twitter: Promoting Customer Product and association to Deluxe:  https://twitter.com/HandmaidsOnHulu?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Tumblr:  Canadian Screen Awards – Arts crowd http://greatpeopleworkhere.tumblr.com/post/158395557945/2017-canadian-screen-week-grand-finale-the-csa

Linkedin: Corporate and Investor

• D-TO https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/8407664/
• D- Entertainment https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/12690/
• D- Media Inc. https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/12689/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/12690/

Lessons for Others

There are any range of ways any organization might use social media for marketing. Some summary questions posit the following summation points.

Is Deluxe using Social Media to talk about new market and new products or services?

Is Deluxe social media protecting their present market?

Does Deluxe integrate its SM operations throughout its broad supply chain?

Does Deluxe integrate this SM marketing with their product development  … in post-production, inventory and data asset management to animated visual design and creation to complex, global delivery systems?

Marketing that focuses primarily upon product or service promotion is thought to be less effective than Social Media Marketing, which emphasizes broader stakeholder engagement goals. This may be especially true with respect to the dominant industry character, the arts crowd culture, a nimble culture of entrepreneurs in their own right, who thrive in such a social media universe. Not to be taken lightly. Not to be treated as a shelf consumer of services or product.

Taking the inspiration and lead from your client is always considered a progressive approach and here Deluxe wears this approach as a virtual badge of honor.

There is perhaps no clearer example of the integration of social media marketing and supply chain awareness and activities than the Deluxe model. The practice of sharing information between marketing and service development, technological design and community interests is critical here.

Deluxe’s cross-pollination of service, of brand, community celebration, employee success and the growing technological community among all of its social media sites is very effective for the company’s status as a leading player in its field. The effect. Engagement becomes circular because of this inclusiveness.

Structure and management of Deluxe social media links overall service, relationships and the corporate brand, but very importantly allows for independent decision making at the local community level, thereby personalizing and lending to the authenticity of the interactive effort.

JDx

 

 

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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