Case Analysis for Molson Canada.

1. Thompson Rivers University
Molson Canada:
Social Media
Marketing
Instructor: Eric Lien
Hau Suet Wang, T00062322
11-17-2015

2. Wang1
Molson Canada
1. What issues are involved in using social media for marketing? How is a social media
marketing campaign different from a traditional media campaign?
a. The possible issues that involved in using social media for marketing are as follows:
 Using the social media in an inefficient way
The social media can be used in a traditional way as a marketing tool
(Aichner & Jacob, 2015). For instance, just posting some advertisements or
news online could prevent the target consumers from reacting. Thus, two-way
communication could not be realized if the social media is used in an
inefficient way.
 Unpredictable impact on target consumers
Unlike the traditional media marketing, the brand awareness is built based
on the frequency of clicking. In another word, if the social media is used in a
traditional way, target consumers need to have certain knowledge, be curious
about the product or service, willing to search about it online, and it may lead
to a click on the hyperlink. Therefore, a social media marketing could either
be a great success or failure.
 Issue of ownership and control (losing focus on target consumers)
 As what has been mentioned in the case study, this issue mainly comes
from the “Mashups” (Qureshi, 2008, p3) which creates links around
the whole net working system. The existence of Mashups could be an
advantage of the social media, but at the same time, it could be a threat
for ownership of individuals or organizations. For example, if
someone combines a picture posted by a university student during the
Molson’s “Cold Shots” campaign with a slogan saying that “drinking
causes disease”, Molson will probably be putted into an embarrassed
situation.
 Another reason which leads to this issue could be focus being lost on
target consumers. Since internet is accessible to the whole world, so is
social media marketing. Promoting alcoholic products such as Molson
on the social media may cause impact on other group of people who
are under the legal age of drinking alcohols.
 Vulnerable IT security issue
This may include the risk of being attacked by hackers, if a promotion is
going to be done at a particular day, such as valentine’s day.
 Issues associated with democracy
Issues like verbal attacking from competitors or consumers could arise.
They may post anything they want to say about the brand to the blogs or other
channels, and they can not be accused for anything since they have the
freedom of speech.
 Questioned authenticity

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Since “anyone can be an expert, a poet, a musician, a photographer, a
publisher or a reporter” (Qureshi, 2008, p3), the authenticity of the comments
on social media could be questioned. Some individuals may present
themselves in the social media as professionals while offering some
misleading comments either to the business side or to the consumer side.
b. The difference between social media marketing campaigns and traditional media
campaigns, based on their advantages and disadvantages (see exhibit 1) are listed
below:
 One-way communication V.S. two-way communication
While both traditional media campaigns and social media marketing
campaigns have the common purpose such as increasing brand awareness, the
former tend to force the consumers to accept it, but is not involving all of the
audiences, or having conversation with them. Thus, causes one-way
communication only from the side of the business campaign. Whereas, social
media marketing campaigns could form a dialogue, as one of the
characteristics of social media (Qureshi, 2008, p11), between the business
campaign and consumers that have interest in the brands and are willing to
participate in the campaign.
 Predictable impact V.S. unpredictable impact
In traditional media campaigns, whether it can be penetrated into the
market depends on the content of campaigns, employment of channels, and
the type of product. For example, a TV campaign ensures a predictable
audience rating if the content and the products are favourable to most
audiences. However, when it comes to social media marketing campaigns, as
mentioned before herein, the success depends on the participation of target
consumers. In this case, they can decide whether they want to click on the
hyperlink or not. The campaign could lead to a huge positive or negative
impact on the brand awareness if the click through rate is high. Whereas, no
matter how the campaign is well designed, or no matter how the products are
attractive, the efforts will be useless if the no one clicks on it. Therefore, the
impact of traditional media campaigns is predictable, whereas it is
unpredictable for social media marketing campaigns.
 Higher cost V.S. lower cost
Nowadays, the effectiveness of advertisement cost for traditional media
campaigns is declining due to the emerging impact of the social media
advertisements. In addition to this, a social media marketing campaign has a
potential to catch attention from the mass market with a lower cost, for
instance, Facebook and blogs as marketing tools at the early stage can be
relatively cheap ((DeMers, 2014). However, a traditional media campaign
only could affect limited parts of the market with a higher cost.
 Dominant usage rate V.S. lower usage rate

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Currently, traditional media campaign is still a dominant marketing
method, due to the preference of the majorities. As what has been mentioned
in the case study, “in 2006, only 20 per cent of adults reported using social
networking sites” (Qureshi, 2008, p4), and Molson was also focusing on
applying traditional marketing tolls historically (Qureshi, 2008, p2).
2. Should the Molson executives have ended the “Cold Shots” campaign early? Why or
Why not?
a. Yes, they should have ended the “Cold Shots” campaign early.
b. There are two main reasons why Molson executives should end the campaign early.
 Respond correctly to social pressure.
 Reactive
According to the case study, Molson has responded to the social
pressure in a reactive way because they ended the campaign before the
end of its schedule, and has given some acceptable explanations
(Qureshi, 2008, p8-9). Therefore, they should and they have already
ended the campaign early because the pressure from the society was
intensive. However, they could have minimized or even avoided the
social pressure if they were more proactive.
 Proactive
To be proactive, Molson could have conducted some online
investigation to collect data associated with the attitude of the target
consumers and other stakeholders who are highly related (e.g.
educational institutions), towards the “Cold Shots” campaign. By
doing this, Molson could have anticipated the risk and impact of this
campaign, and therefore make some contingency plans to manage the
impact. In this case, contingency plans could have included changing
the content of the campaign without involving inappropriate picture
posted on the Facebook, or explaining the company’s initiative clearly
prior to the conduction of the campaign, in order to avoid it being
“misunderstood and misinterpreted as promoting irresponsible
drinking” (Qureshi, 2008, p9). Also, since social media marketing
campaign was new for the company, they could have implemented
traditional media campaign at the same time, to ascertain some success
in case of the failure of social media marketing campaign.
Molson was still on time to protect the existence of their brand, but it was way too late to
protect their reputation as a company encouraging responsible drinking, as the case study has
indicated, “this contest was run against the often cited Molson virtue that it encourages
responsible drinking” (Qureshi, 2008, p7). It was lucky for Molson that they did not choose to
take defensive actions, however, if they could not be proactive, they should have ended the
campaign even earlier and apologised for the impact they caused.
 Satisfy the needs of core stakeholders.

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Molson’s target consumers are university students aged between 19-24 years
old, they are the stakeholder who have high interest and high influence on the
company’s campaign, therefore they should be managed closely. However,
they are not as critical as authorities of academic institutions such as dean and
chairs of student affair, who are the main source of social pressure in this case.
As exhibit 2 indicates, they have the characteristics of
 Urgency
At the early stage of the campaign, they might only have had the
urgency as some students and authorities started to realize the issue of
this campaign, but they were not affecting the company directly due to
the lack of power and legitimacy. If the company could have realized
the issue and stopped this campaign before or at this stage, they would
be proactive to the social pressure. Even though they determined to
continue the campaign, they might have gained some time to create
some contingency plans in case of the failure.
 Power
After a while, there were many academic institutions in Canada “felt
that Molson’s ‘Cold Shot’ was giving their school’s image a bad
reputation” (Qureshi, 2008, p5), which leads to the power to threaten
the campaign of the company. However, at this stage, they were still
not “allowed” to require Molson to stop their campaign due to the lack
of someone with more legitimacy to support them. The issue of the
campaign could be very obvious at this stage, whereas, they would still
be regarded as proactive because the stakeholders have not required
Molson to stop the campaign.
 Legitimacy
At the last stage, the top of the authorities, Brenda Whiteside, as the
“chair of Ontario Committee on Student Affairs, the University of
Guelph” (Qureshi, 2008, p7), has became a part of the group who are
opposed to the campaign. This has finally made them core
stakeholders who can threat the campaign directly. After they had used
their power as core stakeholders, Molson responded to their
requirement, however, reactively.
In conclusion, Molson should have ended the campaign early because as a responsible
company, they should anticipate the social impact before starting the campaign. This does not
mean that they should have never started the campaign, but the campaign should have been
started in a different way. As mentioned herein, the company should have explained their
initiative clearly and also have traditional media campaign as a backup plan. However, now that
the impacts are already formed, the best thing they could have done is to end the campaign as
soon as possible, to be proactive, and in the worst case, reactive. Nevertheless, they should never
take defensive attitude against the social pressure.

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3. Should Molson continue to seek opportunities to use social media in the company’s
marketing, and if so, how?
a. Yes, Molson should continue to seek opportunities to use social media in the
company’s marketing, because social media is an emerging trend that might
eventually replace traditional media marketing method, as a research indicates that
“Social media has increased the potential for social marketing campaigns with the
capacity and use of internet” (James, K., et.al., 2011).
b. The following shows how Molson should use social media as a marketing tool in the
future:
 Step1: generate ideas and goals
The first step Molson should take in terms of employing social media
marketing is to generate ideas and goals for the projects. As illustrated in the
case study, the main purpose for most marketing campaigns includes
“propagating an idea, creating brand awareness, increasing visibility,
encouraging brand feedback and dialogue” or selling products or services
(Qureshi, 2008, p4). In this stage, Molson should initiate an idea, for example,
target market and design of the campaign, and consider how to use them in
order to realize the goals.
 Step2: choose the channels
The next step should be choosing which channel to use. As we can know
from the exhibit 3 presented in the case study, the channels comprise blogs,
news aggregation, photo sharing, social networking sites, video sharing, etc.
(Qureshi, 2008, p12). The choice of the channels mainly depends on which
group of consumers they are targeting on. For example, they chose to use
social networking sites (Facebook) as their marketing channel because the age
of their target consumers were relatively young.
 Step3: build plans
Molson should create a plan formatted as a document for each social
media marketing project. The document should include:
 Objective, target consumers, competitors and employed channel
This part is a statement of the goal, target consumer, and channels that
were defined at the first two steps. The competitors should also be
identified, who are mostly the same ones as historical competitors.
 Stakeholder analysis
Identify the important stakeholders that have high interest and high
influence for the company, who should be engaged closely (see exhibit
3), and stakeholders who can potentially threat the company (see
exhibit 2).
 Risk analysis
The risks should be identified according to the nature of the business,
social media, and the stakeholder. Exhibit 3 shows the possible risk
and impact for Molson’s “Cold Shots” campaign. In the future
operation based on the social media, the risk can be identified based

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the internal weakness and external threats, such as disadvantages of
social media.
 Contingency plan
This is the most important part of the plan, because social media
marketing is till a new tool for the company, the company is not
familiar with how to tackle the issues that will occur unexpectedly.
Thus they have to anticipate as many contingencies as possible and
come up with applicable solutions for each of them.
 Step4: implement plans
After a thorough plan for the social media marketing, the company will
bring the plans to implementation.
 Step5: observe the reaction from the society and competitors
This step can be repeated after the implementation of the next step. In this
stage, the company monitors and observe the reaction from the stakeholders
and competitors defined in the plan. The observation should be conducted
both in the virtual and the real worlds.
 Step6: adjust the plans according to the reaction from the society and
competitors
This step could also be repeated several times after the fifth step. The
company should adjust and implement the plans made in the third step, in
response to the reactions made by the stakeholders and the competitors.

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Exhibits
Exhibit 1.
Advantages Disadvantages
Traditional media
campaigns
Predictable impact &
Dominant usage
(temporally)
One-way communication
&
Higher cost
Social media marketing
campaigns
Tow-way communication
&
Lower cost
Unpredictable impact &
Lower usage (temporally)
Exhibit 2.
Source: Olson David. (2013). Stakeholder Salience Diagram. BAwiki.

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Exhibit 3.
Source: Odi. (2009). Planning Tools: Stakeholder Analysis.
Exhibit 4.
Possibility
High
Low
High
Impact
Low participation of target
consumers
Pressure from academic
institutions
Misconducting behavior
by others using the name
of Molson
Website being hacked

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References
Aichner, T., & Jacob, F. (2015). Measuring the degree of corporate social media
use. International Journal of Market Research,57(2), 257-275. doi:10.2501/IJMR-2015-
018
DeMers Jayson. (2014). The Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing. Forbes. Retrieved from:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-
media-marketing/2/
James, K., Albrecht, J., Litchfield, R., Weishaar, C., Larvick, C., Schwarz, C., & ... Temple, J.
(2011). Social Marketing Campaigns: Comparison of Social and Traditional
Media. Journal Of The American Dietetic Association, 111(9), A50.
doi:10.1016/j.jada.2011.06.176
Odi. (2009). Planning Tools: Stakeholder Analysis. Retrieved from:
http://www.odi.org/publications/5257-stakeholder-analysis
Olson David. (2013). Stakeholder Salience Diagram. BAwiki. Retrieved from:
http://www.bawiki.com/wiki/techniques/stakeholder-salience-diagram/