 December 23, 2008
I'm addicted to Twitter. There, I said it. I feel better. With the help of Tweetdeck, I follow about 900 people. A little over 1100 follow me. I'm amazed at this 140 character beauty and the information I can gain (and distribute) through it. I've enjoy studying businesses and celebrities (both real and faux) that have jumped on the twitter bandwagon (with varied results). I warn friends and clients alike that "Twitter isn't for everybody" I tell them that the vast majority of the users are kinda like me...students and aficionados of social media, hunters of the next big thing and, of course, Robert Scoble. Despite all my warnings (I must not have been yelling loud enough), I was surprised to see a new follower show up in my Twitter alerts last week: Now...there is a great delicatessen in downtown Columbus called Katzinger's. My mouth began to water at the mere sight of the word. But, Katzingers, on Twitter? Doubtful. I clicked the link to their Twitter profile. The avatar was a shot of an "everything" bagel. It was them. But why? As I dug a bit deeper...it became clear that something special was going on here. Mrs. Katzingers was following a decent size collection of Columbus' most prolific Twitterers. She was watching what they were saying and subtly interjecting herself (and her brand) into their conversations, observations and online lives with witty, well written tweets like: @OSUFanMike You don't write, you don't call. I'm here slaving over a hot stove 7 days a week. Come to Mama on your day off. I'm...too sexy for these lox....too sexy for these lox -- whaddya think about that? @racarpenter May your day improve. May you also smell corned beef Omigosh. Is it lunch time already? No line yet. (Smarties arrive at 11:37 a.m. Early bird gets the knish.) There was no way to get mad at her (and no way feel a bit hungrier). And that is the point. I have no idea if there is a real Mrs. Katzingers, typing away at an old laptop tucked behind the ever busy meat slicer or if this is the work of a slick local PR agency. And, you know what? I don't want to know. But, next time I'm in line waiting for my #16...I just might take a peek behind the counter. Happy Holidays. December 15, 2008
This past Sunday, with holiday shopping in full swing, the MySpace home page featured two notable retailers: Target and Walmart. Walmart sponsored the Guide to the Holidays and Target is the sponsor of the Impact Awards. It’s no surprise that these two retailers have ramped up advertising and sponsorship so close to the holidays. But social media advertising may come as more of a surprise. We believe sponsorship of applications and pages can be a great strategy for brands wishing to get involved in social media. But brands entering this space will do well to keep in mind that even sponsorships can be optimized for maximum impact. By way of example, I used our O.P.E.N. experience framework to evaluate how well both retailers are adapting digital experiences to the unique attributes and opportunities available on the social web. ON-DEMAND A brand can’t get much more on-demand than the MySpace home page, which at times garners more traffic than Walmart.com and Target.com combined. While the path to purchase is a bit cumbersome, both Target and Walmart eventually direct consumers to their sites to make a purchase. Target takes the user directly to the Gifts for a Cause Page while Wal-mart has two paths: the home page and Walmart’s Guide to Blu-Ray. PERSONAL Walmart sponsors My Wish List, enabling consumers to create lists using any items found any place on the web (a very OPEN philosophy) and publically declare their desire for their favorite products. Universal wish lists are inherently personal but there’s no indication that Walmart is using this database of intentions to create a more privileged, personal relationship with the brand. The Target sponsorship doesn’t optimize the personal experience – one of customization, dialogue, self-expression and privilege, in any way. ENGAGING My Wish List invites participation through list building and fun personalization. As a sponsor, Walmart gets a featured store pre-populated with items which can be added to consumer’s list. I applaud Walmart’s focus here. The entire section is devoted to Blu-Ray Movies and players, which inspired me to get more information about a technology I knew little about, just as my current DVD player stopped working. Merry Christmas, DH (that’s dear husband for those of you who don’t participate regularly in iVillage forums)! Target, for its part, features a small video unit with a 15 second commercial to promote Gifts for a Cause. The only way to participate or support the cause is to purchase a gift item. We know that many millennials are skeptical about corporate causes and unfortunately, Target has done little here to engage the shared passion or disarm skepticism. What a missed opportunity. NETWORKED Neither retailer did much to optimize the networked experience – which is what MySpace is all about, isn’t it? The wish list is highly sharable – but there is little reason or incentive to share the Walmart products or the Guide to Blu-Ray. Target’s commercial features a “share on MySpace” link, but there’s no motivation for a consumer to share this commercial on behalf of Target. Target missed an opportunity to communicate the meaningful change the Gift for a Cause program, if supported by the MySpace community, could enable. December 12, 2008
 Digital Millennials - Active Participants in Charitable GivingTagged as: digital millennials, engagingPosted by: Mila Goodman Ask a Digital Millennial if they donate to charity and chances are you'll receive one of four responses. Our recent research extension on the Millennials explored their attitudes and behaviors toward charitable giving. So, what are the four responses? Well, it depends what group your Millennial falls into. Group 1 are the Spirit Givers. Their response would be "I am most likely to give to charities when I am moved to do so". Millennials that fall into this group are the occasional donors - typically motivated by circumstance (Holidays) or by a personal connection. Group 2 are the Not There Yets. These Millenials are rare donors because their finances are earmarked for daily living and/or a major life event (Wedding). They donate time or items in lieu of money but are waiting for the right opportunity to move into a different group. The Not There Yets are an important group to understand because they are the most skeptical group - they question a brand's intention when it comes to cause marketing. Group 3 are the Consistent Givers. These Millennials are driven by their conscience and thus are routine donors. Their response would be "I make an effort to donate to my favorite charities on a regular basis". Group 4 are the Uber Givers. The Millennials in this group are committed to giving and are the most frequent donors. Their cadence usually includes religious tithing or automatic paycheck deductions. There are 2 key unifying demands of all Millennials with regards to charitable giving. 1. Tell me how my contribution matters- This is key for Millennials and can be a key to retention and future donations. Millennials demand that charity organizations communicate the impact of their donation. 2. Provide reason beyond marketing- Most Millennials (not just the Not There Yets) are skeptical of corporate brands and question the intent of the sponsoring brand. If a brand can communicate more meaning beyond a campaign (if it exists), this will help ease the Millennials' instinctive mistrust of brands. If you're wondering how to use this information, below are some ways to apply our learnings to your campaigns: 1. Align these Millennial groups to your customer segment to get an instant understanding of their attitudes towards charitable giving and cause marketing. 2. Develop meaningful partnerships which demonstrate a commitment to aiding and contributing to a particular organization. 3. Include a way to communicate how your customers' donations are contributing to a campaign. To see our entire presentation, click here. November 25, 2008
Amazon's Universal Wishlist - an appetizer for the OPEN CartTagged as: O.P.E.N., retailPosted by: Mila Goodman Amazon's recent launch of their Universal wishlist signals a movement that all Retailers should follow -OPENing their brand to deliver customer focused services. The universal wishlist is part of the next generation of online shopping - supporting the customer micro-experience of adding items to a wish list across retailer sites. This holiday, Amazon can be top of mind for all online consumers compiling their list of items they want their friends and family to purchase for them. Amazon is extending its brand presence beyond that of the ecommerce destination and acting as a service provider to customers this holiday.
I tweaked the use of the universal wishlist to better fit my needs of creating a universal get list by creating a new list and setting it to private. As I surf sites and find possible gift options, I can easily aggregate them all in one place, annotating gift recipients and other shopping notes. This is a killer holiday app – creating a list of both wishes and gets - from a retailer that extends its brand beyond its own url and into potential competitor sites. Check it out here. My hope is that other retailers follow suit and OPEN their brands by providing services and experiences that are designed to satisfy customers. My vision for 2009 is an OPEN cart – a portable shopping cart that is attached to my OPEN ID account, allowing me to shop seamlessly across all retailer websites. November 24, 2008
"We need to be on Facebook!" I hear it all the time. "We need a blog!" I hear that a lot too. Maybe you do and maybe you don't. Perhaps a different approach would work better? It's kind of like Thanksgiving dinner. It all looks good. Where do you start? Blogger Peter Kim has put together an excellent menu of 22 social media tools complete with examples from the brands who use them. The list represents a great overview of the current social media landscape: 1. Blogs (Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines) My advice? Start small. Pick an approach that maps well to your business goals, products, customer demographics, budget, and go from there. If you pace yourself, you might find you have room for seconds. Happy Thanksgiving! (I encourage you to read Peter's entire post on Mashable. Also, here is his list of 313 social media marketing examples.) November 24, 2008
I had the good fortune of meeting Gino Goossens, a journalist, during my recent travel abroad and we sat down for a chat about The Open Brand. We covered a variety of topics but mainly focused on opportunities (and obstacles) regarding the rise of e-commerce and social media. Here's the video link ...don't mind my bloodshot eyes...hey, it was Amsterdam! ; ) November 21, 2008
As a futurist envisioning digital things to come based on analogous developments in other mediums, and—just to come clean—as a cinéaste (by training and in temperament) interloping in the digital space, I’m patiently awaiting the aural web. I’m waiting for Garbo to talk, and I don’t mean in a podcast. I mean in a moment that signifies a sea-change. I’m waiting for the web’s Jazz Singer hour (the 1929 version obviously), when we create a wholly different human experience with digital sound, music and voice—for the mainstream customer, not just the gamer, not just the MySpace indie band fan. Sound online is overdue, delayed perhaps by early experimentation that left the cube farm-dwelling populace apologizing to workmates for sudden unsolicited rock concerts on their pc’s. By now, there’s sensitivity to the context of the listener, and a new playfulness, even artfulness to sounds that are, strictly speaking, functionally unnecessary. What would our experience of the iPhone’s accelerometer be without that great clickety, clickety? You can set your alarm but you can’t come up with straight jackpot cherries, figuratively speaking, without it. There’s a new, already wildly popular Mac app called the Poladroid that is a visual tool for retrofitting your digital images with Day-Glo surreality and the occasional midday poltergeist (and can make you channel Woodstock, if you look at an image long enough). You can even add the clean white border of a Polaroid to your digital pix, always so unceremoniously unframed. Some of the nostalgic irresistibility apparent in the Poladroid demo for me derives from the exact duplication of the film paper’s distinctive auditory dispatch from the camera. (There are other reasons the demo is so delightful; for instance, it makes you wait just as long as you have to with a real Polaroid for life forms to emerge from the brown murk. And the picture is shaken, as if by an impatient hand trying to accelerate the development.) But ocular time travelling aside, Poladroid had me at the clackety-click…whoosh. Google results are paltry for the “aural web” but buried among them is a prescient post on oreilly.com from 2006 that describes our prolonged ‘silent era’. O’Reilly pops up again with his Where 2.0 2007 conference, where we can find not only a strong argument for “soundscapes” for digital maps (putting the there in the where, as the copy says) but an intersection of two of my favorite trends, aural branding and cartocracy. Here is the question few brands are prepared to ask, let alone answer: what do you sound like? What is your aural identity? Many brick and mortar retailers have brand–reinforcing soundtracks for their shoppers but by and large leave them listening to sounds of silence online. There are notable exceptions, and many are found in the luxury category. (I believe that the luxury value proposition online is, frankly, untenable without sound/music/voice in the right places at the right times.) Nordstrom’s Designer Collections online plays the song “Madrid” by the French band Holden. (I had to check them out on last.fm.) The repetitive nature of the music, plus its worldly cred, is the right note to strike on the charmingly illustrated home page. Cartier has a MySpace Love collection profile with commissioned music by the likes of Lou Reed and Marion Cottilard. Talk about atmospherics; the brand’s signature scarlet background and the songs swallow you and your better judgment whole. RalphLauren.com features glamazons descending a chateau staircase to the strains of the Pierces’ “Bored”; colossally snooty fun. And LouisVuitton.com brings us downloadable MP3 soundwalks of Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai—essentially travelogues by three famous Chinese actresses serving as seductive narrators that further reinforce the love affair Asians (and the burgeoning Chinese middle class) have with this innovative luxury brand. Accessibility experts have studied sound as a form of non-visual navigation, and there’s something in this idea for everyone. Sounds can reward our decisions to move through a web site, unearthing auditory surprises as we go. Music can be a powerful brand differentiator, but so as to accommodate a brand’s every consumer segment, music should be made available as a highly curated selection. Sound not only has to be used creatively to reinforce the brand, it has to be used judiciously, and always with the on/off option and a fade in or fade out (lifted right from stage directions) once the choice to listen or not is made. Brand differentiation we know is essential to business survival, particularly because brand loyalty is, among certain demographics, on the wane. Sound and music are memory narcotics and to help a customer remember your brand in a certain way is the first step to putting your products invariably in the “consideration set.” Some day, we’ll have thousands of brands with Intel jingles and—to modify the title of Alex Cox’s Pulitzer Prize Finalist book on 20th century music—the rest will be noise. November 20, 2008
I'm wondering if the makers of Motrin are thinking about their tag line, "We feel your pain," in an all new way this week. In case you've blinked and missed this lightening-fast marketing fiasco (it's technically old news today, 3 days in), Motrin launched a new campaign that upset a lot of women. The crux of the idea is that moms who wear babies (carriers, slings and wraps) may experience various types of pain that Motrin can fight. But that wasn't really the message women heard. The primary offense was basically that women wear babies as a fashion accessory. My personal cringe line was the one that read, "It's a good pain, a worthy pain. And it totally makes me feel like an official mom..." Subject matter aside, as a marketer you need to look at the enormity of the response. And if you're one of those marketers still scratching your head over Twitter, listen up. How much damage can you do in 140 characters or less? Well, a lot if you're offended, and a lot more if you're networked. Twittermoms, a group of about 4,500 moms who twitter about kids, fashion, technology, politics, travel, unleashed a twitter-storm of feedback. Here's just a sampling, pulled together into a 9-minute video on YouTube by blogger Katja Presnal. By the time that it hit the ad mags and even USA Today, Motrin had already yanked the ad (that was running on its web site but can still be viewed on YouTube ) and issued an apology front and center on its home page. There's also a group on Facebook called, "Babywearing isn't painful. Boycott Motrin for saying it is." This group has more than 1,000 members and a topic on the discussion board titled, "Showing your disgust." Thank goodness Motrin was listening when thousands of consumers didn't just throw up their arms in disgust, but threw down their thoughts on the web. Maybe now they'll keep listening to their target audience, or better yet, sensing their pain.
November 20, 2008
Title Nine offers a compelling spin on the tried-and-true-but-a-little-bit-boring gift card. It's the Title Nine Gift Pack. (Don't cringe, it's not as generic as the name.) Choose from two options. For $89 you get:
Or, for $149 you get all that plus a larger gift card ($100) and an additional bag. Two great gift options for the "women on the move" in your life. While I love the convenience and flexibility of gift cards (especially when you're being so careful about where you're spending, and especially when you're shopping for as many sisters and nieces as I do), I dread their one-dimensional (literally and figuratively) nature. While my holiday email and catalog threshold are already being tested, I look forward to more retailers packaging up easy, can't miss gift package ideas. November 18, 2008
 Tylenol's Feel Better Should Work Harder OnlineTagged as: engaging, personalPosted by: Kelly Mooney
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