Monitoring AFS-USA: A First Look

About AFS-USA

AFS-USA is the independent U.S. division of AFS Intercultural Programs, a 60-year old nonprofit that provides international exchange programs to high school and gap-year students for a year, semester, or summer. AFS-USA is a top leader in the United States’ high school intercultural exchange program industry. According to the AFS-USA website, the organization's mission is to work “toward a more just and peaceful world by providing international and intercultural learning experiences to individuals, families, schools, and communities through a global volunteer partnership.” To do this, AFS-USA finds host families and provides orientations and support to students visiting from different countries, recruits and sends students from the U.S. to other countries, and provides orientation and support for returnees to the United States. The organization is primarily run by volunteers in local chapters and backed by professional staff located at four main offices throughout the country. According to a presentation by Esra Kucukciftci, the Vice Chair of AFS-USA's National Council, about 13,000 students choose to study abroad with AFS Intercultural Programs. Of that number, AFS-USA hosts about 2,500 international students and sends around 1,000 American students abroad. AFS-USA is focused on reinvigorating its volunteer and alumni base. 

AFS-USA’s Target Audiences

One obvious target audience for AFS-USA is the high-school and gap-year age demographic (about 15-19 years old), which is the eligible age group for AFS’ programs. In addition to recruiting participants, however, AFS-USA’s audiences extend to the parents of potential participants, current and future AFS-USA volunteers, and AFS-USA returnees.

According to the AFS-USA website, over 370,000 people have studied abroad with AFS, and at least 100,000 of them live in the United States. This means that AFS’s audience is incredibly diverse in age, nationality, and gender.

In 2010, AFS-USA started the Returnee Initiative Task Force to focus on engaging with AFS returnees in order to refresh the AFS-USA volunteer base and broaden AFS-USA’s network. Though AFS-USA returnees are all ages, the main target demographics for the returnee initiative taskforce are the college-age and young professional returnees.

My Involvement with AFS-USA

I studied abroad with AFS for the year program in Argentina my junior year of high school (2005-2006). Recently, AFS-USA hired me as the Returnee Initiative Communications Intern. Part of my job is to reach out to returnees using social media, so understanding where the brand currently stands, especially with returnees, is very important to my success in this internship and for the success of the returnee initiative.

Initial Observations of AFS-USA in the Groundswell

AFS-USA’s main social media venues are its Facebook page and group (Study Abroad with AFS USA and Ask an AFSer!), its Twitter account (AFSUSA), its Flickr account (AFS-USA Intercultural Programs' Photostream), its YouTube channel (AFStv), and its blog aggregator located at http://www.afsblog.org/. Most of the engagement with these social media venues comes from future and current AFS participants. Very little engagement seems to come from returnees (essentially, AFS alumni). This could be that most of AFS-USA’s social media venues are targeted at future and/or current program participants.

The most recent video posted on AFStv

Searches on socialmention.com, addictomatic.com, twitalyzer.com, Google Insights, and compete.com revealed that overall AFS-USA has a positive, yet not very pervasive, reputation in the social media realm.

According to Google Insights, in the last year, worldwide searches for AFS USA peaked between March 21-27, May 2-8, and September 12-18. There were fewer searches in the fall and winter than in the spring, and there were the least between mid-December and early January. Regionally, searches came only from within the United States. Google Insights did not have enough information to provide more in-depth results.

A comparison on Compete.com revealed that traffic from unique visitors to the Rotary International website, AFS-USA's main competitor, is much higher than on the AFS-USA website.



According to Socialmention.com, in mid-February, the AFSUSA brand had a positive, yet not very well-distributed brand in social media. Overall, social mention

gave AFSUSA 1% in strength, 56:00 in sentiment, 57% in passion, and 16% in reach.



In mid-March, The AFSUSA brand mentions changed slightly, but not very significantly.



According to the listed sources on socialmention.com, AFS-USA’s content appears on many different kinds of social networking sites. The majority of original AFS-USA-related social media content comes from or is aggregated by AFS-USA in the venues listed earlier. Still, the content of blog and Flickr posts often does not directly reference the AFS-USA brand and instead consists of personal accounts of study abroad experiences that may mention the AFS-USA website. These personal accounts that are associated with but not generated by AFS-USA are beneficial for future and current AFS students, but they do not target the returnee population.

In this blog description from the AFS blog aggregator, for example, the author provides an enthusiastic description of what she is blogging about and references AFSUSA, but her actual blog posts are more specific accounts of her time in France.

One qualitative example of the AFS-USA brand appearing in the groundswell without the organization’s facilitation is the following exchange on Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers user Maggie O asks, “Can anyone suggest a reliable travel abroad program for high school students? I was thinking about spending a high school semester in France, and am having trouble finding programs. Can anyone suggest a program, and give me the link to their website? Thank you!”

Both users recommended AFS-USA, which is a positive reflection on the AFS-USA’s brand. While hurricane mentioned Rotary, one of AFS’ main competitors, she did not suggest one over the other.

The photos associated with AFS-USA on Flickr that I discovered through addictomatic.com are all positive and portray either smiling groups of diverse people or scenery-shots. These are consistent with AFS-USA’s brand strategy.

AFS Group, 2008-09 Year Program

Posted by AFS-USA Intercultural Programs on the AFS-USA Flickr

Though AFS-USA has an overall positive brand, because its strength is weak in the social media sphere, one displeased social networker can have a significant effect on AFS-USA’s social media brand presence. 

What? Tampons in the Groundswell?

Chapters 9 and 10 of Groundswell focus on embracing the groundswell for innovation and how the groundswell can transform companies, respectively.

Both chapters reminded me of Kimberly-Clark's (makers of Kotex pads and tampons) most recent product line, advertising campaign, and interactive website - U by Kotex. Like Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, which was profiled in chapter 10, U by Kotex takes a risk by challenging traditional norms for feminine care advertising and releases some control over its brand by creating content for the groundswell to interact with. The campaign also fits within the topics of chapter 9, because it uses groundswell forces to solicit direct and indirect feedback about its products directly from its customers.

According to the New York Times article, "Rebelling Against the Commonly Evasive Feminine Care Ad," U by Kotex was introduced in March 2010 and comprises an entire line of feminine care products, including pads, tampons, and pantiliners. It is targeted to teenagers and young women between 14 and 21 years old - a prime demographic for groundswell engagement. The products are small, sleek and come in a black box, individually-wrapped in a variety of neon colors.

U by Kotex Products  - Try a Free Sample HERE

In addition to the line’s inventive packaging, the U by Kotex’s advertising campaign has caused a stir for its innovative, frank, and satirical nature. The U by Kotex campaign, which includes television, print, and digital advertisements, directly references and mocks previous Kotex advertising campaigns. Watch the campaign's most famous advertisement, "Reality Check," below.

Other advertisements in the series include a candid camera-style video of a woman trying to convince men to buy her tampons, a man administering a fake Rorschach test with every ink blot resembling a penis or vagina, and a print advertisement with large text that says, “I tied a tampon to my key ring to make sure my brother wouldn’t take my car. It worked.”

All the campaign's advertisements, as well as its other forms of rich media, can be found on the U by Kotex YouTube channel, which has 890 subscribers as of today.


Though the advertisements are humorous, the campaign focuses also on the serious aspects of education and awareness in relation to menstruation. The website has multiple interactive venues for girls and women to post their personal stories, read articles, view videos, take quizzes, and ask questions about menstrual health, and sign a declaration to “break the cycle."

Sounds a lot like Tampax's beinggirl.com, doesn't it?

In Mass Marketing Retailers' article, "Kimberly-Clark gives Kotex brand new slant," Andrew Meurer, the vice president of Kimberly-Clark's North American group brands was quoted saying, "For the past 50 years, advertisers – Kotex included – have been perpetuating a cultural stigma by emphasizing that the best menstrual period is one that is ignored...We are changing our brand equity to stand for truth, transparency and progressive vagina care," he says. "Moving forward, the tone of the Kotex brand's marketing will adhere to its new tagline--'Break the Cycle.'" The tagline, he explains, comes from a 2009 study of the same name, which showed that while 70% of girls and women ages 14 to 35 feel it is time for society to change how it talks about vaginal health, only 45% of them feel they have the power to make a difference.

The entire U by Kotex campaign is a perfect example of a company embracing the groundswell and using it to energize its brand. Notice how Meurer noted a focus on transparency? There may be an altruistic side to Kimberly-Clark's transparent approach to menstrual product marketing, but my guess is they've recognized that transparency is key to success in the groundswell.

The U by Kotex campaign begs its target market to give it feedback and engage with its products. The website immediately greets all visitors with a prompt for feedback, and throughout the site, there are countless additional opportunities to chime in about the products, the campaign, and the movement.

A Snapshot of a Forum about U by Kotex Tampons

U by Kotex Prompts the Groundswell for Feedback

In addition to its YouTube account, U by Kotex manages Facebook and Twitter accounts, and according to the running tally at the bottom of the U by Kotex website, the brand has engaged 2,333,827girls in its cause. 


Cause or no cause, all that engagement with the groundswell is sure to improve U by Kotex's brand presence and encourage innovation in its products and its market approach, don't you think?

Groundswell Doesn't Come from the Ground

After reading the first half of Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, I have not been able to get the social media movement - or the "groundswell" - out of my mind. While I have been aware of social media since I first made a MySpace in 2003, I am now more attuned to its powerful influence on society and marketing strategy.

Before reading Groundswell and taking the time to really contemplate social media marketing, when I thought "social media marketing," I thought, "That's right, old people, you'd better make a Facebook and Twitter in order to catch up with what us young'uns are up to." I would explain to my dad how to "friend" someone on Facebook or post on a "wall," and I would feel like an expert. Well, ladies and gentlemen, in case you were wondering,  I was not an expert.

Now I realize that, unfortunately for us young'uns, social media marketing is much more strategic than just knowing how to use basic functions on Facebook and Twitter. It is complex, risky, technical, largely unpredictable, and requires an innovative mind. At least it's not boring.

Some of the main concepts reiterated in the first six chapters of Groundswell were that social media is interconnected, that the content and brands projected into social media technologies belong to the network users and not their creators, and that there is no single social media networking strategy that works for every situation.

Take, for example, the infographic I found on Digital Buzz Blog. A user creates content and, if it's good enough, it tailspins into a maze of non-linear social media connections until, maybe, it develops enough buzz to appear on a reputable news site.



Whether or not content follows a trajectory similar to that shown in the above graphic depends on the creator - the marketer.


Groundswell has taught me thus far that success in social media marketing is about positioning. Marketers need to understand what social media technologies (if any) their target market uses and in what ways. They have to listen to the areas of the groundswell they hope to influence, and eventually, they have to strategically engage with them. The form of engagement marketers should choose is relative to their target market, the technology, and the marketer's creative ability. Knowing the important elements of a marketing strategy - the who, what, where, when, and why - then allows marketers to innovate. If they're lucky, they'll create an entirely new way of engaging with the groundswell.

In an industry that changes constantly and rapidly, "new" is a necessity.