Social-Media Mavens
Norman E. Snyder, Jr., B.S.’83
Connecting With Consumers
By Claudia Ricci, Ph.D.’96
Back in the late 1990s, Norman Snyder was leading the South Beach Beverage Company and promoting its highly successful “SoBe” beverages. The company initially relied on guerilla marketing, followed by traditional mass-marketing campaigns, to drive consumer awareness.
Twenty years later, as president and CEO of Avitae, USA, Snyder promotes beverages under the Avitae brand. But now, thanks to social media, marketing has taken on a dramatically new approach. Like so many other companies, Avitae wants “to interact directly with consumers,” Snyder says. “All of our advertising is built on social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinster.”
Recently, Avitae – which sells a line of caffeinated water without sugar – announced new flavors on its webpage, and placed pictures and descriptions of the products throughout social-media outlets. Particularly important to the campaign was Facebook, where Avitae purchased digital ad space to promote the new drinks to a broader audience. Instagram, a photo-based medium, was also key.
Social media, Snyder says, are “extremely cost effective.” He estimates that social-media advertising costs only about 25 percent as much as an old-fashioned ad campaign.
Not only are social media cheaper, they’re also faster: “You can decide one day to run a campaign, and that afternoon it’s going out.” With social media, Snyder observes, “you connect faster than you would otherwise, and you get feedback faster,
with a lot more specifics.”
