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The Blog has moved to http://www.shopbabbles.com
Posted by: shopbabbles on: July 23, 2009
Hey everyone,
I’m very happy to tell you that the blog has moved to a new domain and is now available under http://www.shopbabbles.com. It’s also gotten a new and fresh design..:)
Please have a look and make sure you don’t forget to post your comments on the new design:)
Looking forward to seeing you on the new site!
Christine
Get your “Drinkspiration”
Posted by: shopbabbles on: July 16, 2009
Absolut Vodka has recently launched an iPhone Application that is able to recommend cocktails to individuals based on parameters like your mood, the time of day, wthe weather, the liquor type or the drink color. Of course the application also houses the recipes for all the cocktails in the catalog. Needless to say that of course all of the cocktails contain the magic ingredient: Absolut Vodka:)
The App is brilliant. It really responds to the individual consumer and it entertains him.
Do you remember the time when mood rings were a trend and everybody was wearing them? The respective colour of the ring changed all the time according to one’s mood. The iPhone app really makes me think of this mood ring. But in this case it is a cocktail trat reflects the mood and the character of the person.
I personally really like to do things that suit my personality. Great Idea!
Let’s ask some experts!
Posted by: shopbabbles on: July 3, 2009
Thanks to the case studies, we already have quite a good impression about how brands have been using the potential of social media within the last few months. I was recently wondering what experts would have to say about this phenomenon that is currently overrunning everything and everyone. Consequently I’ve asked some social media experts on their opinion on the topic.
Today I would like to present to you the point of view of my first interviewee; Joseph Webb:
That’s Joseph:
Joe’s passion for all things online first manifested itself in 2005 with the development of an internet research business model and an application for £85,000 seed funding. Following a break-up in the management team, Joe moved to TNS, the world’s largest supplier of custom research. Since then he has focussed exclusively on the Technology and Media spaces, working with many of the big names of the New Media era, whilst designing and launching an innovation and knowledge sharing portal as an aside. His particular expertise lies with brand interactions on social media, a subject in which he has been published in both research and marketing trade press.
That’s what Joseph has to say:
1. What do you think, how is social media changing the way people interact with brands?
Social media are a new form of communication channel so this question is a little bit like asking, how did the invention of the telephone or the Television change the way people saw brands? The key differentiating factor in comparison to earlier forms of media, of course, is that social media does allow for interaction, it is not simply one-to-many but many-to-many and it allows brands to offer individuals rich communicative experiences in a way that can also be very cost effective. Whilst in the physical world brand-consumer interactions are limited to a few expensive experiences (such as Disneyland), online they can be provided cheaply and freely. Nike+ is a great example of this as it combines excellent functional capacities (such as run mapping, racing and a community of a common interest) alongside strong emotional ties to the Nike brand itself, people can really live what the brand stands for. Other, less high profile and high maintenance examples include MySpace or Bebo branded skins/wallpapers as well as brand profiles and fan groups, based either on the brand itself, or a representational avatar (see Vodafone’s Zoozoos in India for an excellent example).
2. What key trends are emerging that are changing the rules of the game? The brand behaviours mentioned above can be loosely classified into the following:
Brand acting as media channel and offering rich experiences
Brand acting as social network user and seeking to befriend other users
Brand acting as ‘add-on’ to the profile of others
All these actions share common characteristics; they all rely on individuals ‘opting-in’ – actively choosing to spend their time with a brand, as opposed to the ‘interruptive’ techniques better suited to TV, radio or print media (see Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing for more) and they all rely on brands being better content providers as a result. Social network users will only engage with brands on social networks if they have a good reason to do so (not just because the message has been put in front of them) and that is a massive shift for brands, and the people who work in branding to understand.
3. What are the specific challenges that brands & retailers face in order to fully embrace these new trends?
The ‘good reason’ mentioned above is a good starting point. These same SN users brands want to impress have a choice of 1000s of other websites they could be on, potentially 100s of other TV channels too, competition for eyeballs has never been so fierce! At the same time social networks are very public arenas, many individuals are very careful about the persona they choose to project online and even those who aren’t are unlikely to want to associate with a brand, avatar, or message that will leave their friends unimpressed. Brands have to therefore impress both individual users and the wider peer group in order to ensure a successful campaign.
4. Which are the categories that provide the biggest opportunities for social media?
Many brands have a heritage that is rich in social capital and this can be mobilised to tremendous effect on social networks. Any brand considered ‘cool’, that people wish to be associated with already has that vital ‘good reason’ in its armoury. Nike have already been mentioned as one example whilst Coca Cola has the second most popular Facebook page (after Barack Obama). Those brands that aren’t considered cool or worthy of association have to work much harder (although, again, the Zoozoos are a great example of an avatar doing the job instead).
5. How do you think social media is changing the way people shop and how they make their shopping decisions? I think this is your area of expertise rather than mine (!) but those brands who have impressed on social networks can expect to find themselves much further up the awareness/consideration/purchase funnel when those same users are offline. Online, social networks are excellent sources of information, an always available second opinion, and a great way to show off if you’ve just purchased an expensive car, item of clothing or holiday!
Thanks a lot, Joseph, for taking the time to answer these questions and sharing your point of view with us!
BACARDI RAZZ – OR: The ingredients for a perfect party..
Posted by: shopbabbles on: June 30, 2009
Facebook has recently gained a lot of importance in terms of search-engine Marketing, thanks to the fact that brands (and private users) now have the possibility to include their brand name in the facebook URL address. Now that facebook pages are finally even visible on Google, many brands really want to join in the events. This just as a background fact…
Now it’s interesting to see if and how brands use this new potential facebook is offering them. Well,why not having a look at the campaign of the German brand BACARDI RAZZ?
What’s that one all about? BACARDI RAZZ is currently recruiting in total 4 Party testers. The 4 of them will start their mission at the beginning of July. From then on they will be going to a number of private parties in allover Germany for a period of 12 weeks. With the help of some fancy tests and surveys they will try to find out what the conditions are for “THE perfect party”. Of course the party testers will always report their adventures in pictures and text. Now guess where? Yes,they have their own campaign website.
Where else? Yes, as well in social communities – more precisely on Myspace and facebook.
To make sure the campaign delivers the desired results, the creators have worked with a checklist.This checklist contains all the six core points that – the creators believe - lead to a campaign positive results on facebook. Eh voilà, in the following you’ll find the recipe for success:
Rule number 1.Regularly deliver actual and interesting content!
It is extremely important that fans of a facebook site find interesting content on a regular basis (if possible on a daily basis). Of course fans have to be involved into the events. BACARDI RAZZ resolves this by delivering the latest application procedures for the election of the party testers. They introduce new applicants or ask their fans to vote for some of them. Next to tipps and recommendations about how to become the perfect party tester, fans are asked general questions about the product and the campaign
Rule number 2. Allow your fans to deliver content
Even the very succesful campaigns of Starbucks or Vitaminwater do not allow fans to directly publish content on the Wall. However, the creators of the RAZZ campaign are convinced that having their fans publish content is the one and only way to achieve a direct exchange with the fans of the own brand. To them the facebook fanpage is not to be seen as a classical marketing instrument, but is supposed to enable fans to express their feelings about a brand without facing large barriers. In the RAZZ campaign its the fans who steer the topics that appear on the wall.
To put it differently: The one who decides to communicate his brand on facebook, has to leave the whole brand highness behind him!
This addproach definitely asks for attentive monitoring. It is in this case extremely important that brands react very quickly to their fans questions and concerns. It is not done by just listening.
Rule number 3. Offer your fans incentives
As soon as a fan expresses his sympathy towards a brand, he expects a special treatment. Those who profit from a brand’s incentives thanks to their fan-ship, will be happy to tell their friends about this. Why is that? Well, they see themselves as multiplicators of the brand. Of course this only happens if the brand manages to convince the shopper. BACARDI RAZZes incentive is the lottery of the “Wildcard” to a Casting in Hamburg. All fans of the company’s facebook site can participate by sending a short application for the dream job as a party tester. The best and most creative application are invited to the Casting, and the 4 Casting winners are awarded the prize ( including €5.oo0 per month, € 5.000 for travelling expenses and 12 weeks of fun with 2 parties per weekend).
Rule number 4. Ask your fans for their opinion
The categories “discussion” and “Polls” offer the brands and easy way to get honest feedback from their fans. The insights of the fans are extremely valuable for a company because fans are already used to exchanging opinions on facebook sites. The inhibition threshold to post a comment to a wall or to participate in a survey is therefore way lower than on a corporate blog. RAZZ has already started a number of surveys on the topic of which factors are important to fans of BACARDI RAZZ that make a party perfect for them. The results are always publshed on the BACARDI RAZZes wall and can of course be commented as well.
Rule number 5. Use adequate applications
There are already many facebook applications available thatcan be used by brands to upgrade their facebook pages. The social media blog Mashable has recently published 30 useful facebook applications for brands. A good example is the application “Networked blogs” which allows brands to get the RSS feed of the own corporate blog directly to their facebook page.
Rule number 6. Offer tools for word of mouth that can be used on facebook
facebook can be seen as the enlargement of the classical online campaign to the social web. A campaign site should therefore prominently announce that a campaign is available on facebook as well. It is important that the user is explained what his benefits are when he joins the facebook site as a fan. Possible incentives are product discounts, Insider news or special lotteries. All users who register themselves as Party testers on BACARDI RAZZes campaign sites receives a ballot paper and a banner to insert into his own blog or website. The ballet paper can be uploaded to one’s own wall as a profile picture. By this one can easily inform his friends about his participation in the campaign and can animate them to vote for him.
I think this is a very interesting check-list briefly summarizing a number of very important aspects. PLUS: It once again shows that succesful social media campaigns are all about involvement and engagement. I personally also like the fact that social media campaigns are slowly not only limited to America only. This campaign is the proof. Companies have started to involve and engage Europeans, too! Thumbs up!
Happy Jetting! – With a plane full of YouTubers
Posted by: shopbabbles on: June 23, 2009
The airline company JetBlue has adopted new routes from New York’s JFK and Boston’s Logan International to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) . JetBlue did not want to spend a lot of money for promoting the new destination, therefore it opted for a slightly different and more experimental approach.
Here is what they did:
Firstly JetBlue almost completely left out all classical media. They did only buy a limited number of outdoor and radio spots in Los Angeles and only published very few ads in the newspaper AMNewYork. For the main part, however, the airline counted on the cast of video bloggers on the plane.
On the plane???
YES! Customers travelling on JetBlue’s BetaBlue plane have free direct access to wireless internet. Consequently JetBlue just took its one plane with wireless internet access and packed the initial flight to Los Angeles international airport on June 17th with a bunch of YouTube stars. Among them were Kevin Nalts, Delphine Dijon, Justine Ezarik and Meghan Asha. Of course none of them had to pay for their tickets, the only thing JetBlue asked them for was to document the ride in real-time via YouTube and Twitter.
JetBlue hopes that the steady stream of Twitter updates and videos by the YouTubers in combination with professionally produced video quality material by Howcast is interesting enough to grab consumer’s attention. JetBlue recently contracted with Howcast to produce a number of “how-to” videos linked to air travel. First examples include ”How to Fly Coast to Coast” or ”Happy Jetting with Delphine” . The videos are distributed on Howcast’s network and on YouTube.
I agree that JetBlue’s in-flight media plan is quite experimental and extraordinary. However, this is today’s key to success. Social media campaigns can only win if they are like that. Nowadays ordinary stuff is just completely ignored by people. This is the reason why JetBlue’s campaign has such a great potential - It has that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’. A very creative and efficient idea! I really like it!
And now…Starbucks coffee!
Posted by: shopbabbles on: June 14, 2009
Everyone knows the American coffee chain Starbucks. It is also well-known among social media addicts as the brand also has a very strong presence in all kinds of communities. You want examples? OK, that’s easy…Starbucks has some 180,000 followers on Twitter and there are more than 1,5 million fans on the brand’s facebook page.
In their latest experiment the brand now takes its social media marketing offline. One of their first activities was to motivate people to search for new Starbucks marketing posters in 6 major US cities on a specific day. The first one to post a photo of any them to Twitter was awarded a prize.
The outdoor ads limit Starbucks’ message down to headlines; some of them indirectly attack competitors:
“If your coffee isn’t perfect, we’ll make it over. If it’s still not perfect, you must not be in a Starbucks.”
The campaign was started in US newspapers and magazines in the month of May. The brand has other social media initiatives planned for this campaign. One is for example a contest for Starbucks store employees to submit headlines for future ads and YouTube videos with coffee experts talking about Starbucks coffee.
Starbucks says it believes its campaign will be helped by its 1.5 million fans on Facebook and its more than 18o,000 followers on Twitter. This already worked in an earlier initiative. On the Saturday before the presidential election in the USA, Starbucks sponsored a single 60-second television commercial on “Saturday Night Live” advertising a coffee giveaway on Election Day. Starbucks then posted the video to YouTube. By the following Tuesday, it was the fourth-most-viewed video on YouTube, and people were mentioning Starbucks on Twitter every eight seconds.
I’d say: Good job Starbucks!
Watch the commercial here:
Kebab on four wheels..
Posted by: shopbabbles on: June 4, 2009
In times of social media you have to come up with something that is surprising, entertaining or even shocking. No matter what it is, but it has to start a conversation. If you want people to notice and talk about you, you have to create something that is extraordinary and special.
This is the story of how the agency Saatchi & Saatchi X helped the kebab chain ”DoyDoy” to create their own special and disruptive event…
“DoyDoy” is one of Germany’s biggest döner kebab restaurant chains. However, in Germany there are as many kebab restaurants as there are stars in the universe. To set themselves apart from all the other restaurants and to promote a recently opened location, DoyDoy launched Germany’s biggest kebab – a cement mixing truck with a revolving compartment in the form of a giant kebab that rotated just like a real döner does while it cooks. Not only did the promotion generate lots of local press coverage, international media also picked up on it (on- and offline). A PR team handing out flyers offering 20% discount and a free drink with their meal supported the action.
The unexpected event of a giant kebab going up and down the streets really suprised the people. They wanted to share what they had just seen. As social media allow to share, people take the döner truck online to their blogs, to facebook, to Twitter or to YouTube. The news spread throughout the internet.
Lesson learned: If a campaign is interesting enough it makes its way from the offline- to the online world. Just by itself, without ever being intended to do so..
From 2727 B.C until today..The history of cannabis..
Posted by: shopbabbles on: May 27, 2009
TV is a classical medium. Classical media are out. Social media are in. If you have a TV channel, you are the loser of the social media revolution.
Not true at all!
This story proofs that even TV channels can successfully integrate social media into their concept. Check out this example by Showtime, an American TV channel.
To promote the premiere of the new season of the TV show “Weeds“, the US TV Channel Showtime has recently launched a 2-minute viral video telling the history of all different kinds of drugs (like ganja, cannabis, paca lolo, marijuana, snop,..)
The video was launched only a week ago, but it already started creating buzz around the show. On YouTube it attracted more than 260.000 viewers. There are already 1.315 comments. In addition to this there is a rating. So far 1.529 people have voted. The result: 5 stars (out of 5)!
Watch the video here..
I think this is a smart tactic. Users have started watching the video with enthusiasm. Due to the fact that they think it is cool, they rank it with five stars and recommend it to others. People of today listen to other people more than to media. This means, those who receive the recommendation from a friend are very likely to watch the video themselves. Some of the viewers will copy-paste it into their blogs/websites etc. This is how the buzz spreads. The fact that they like the video on YouTube might encourage the viewers to watch the TV show as well.
Of course Showtime also announces the the new season of “Weeds” on TV. However, I’m quite sure the YouTube method is more efficient This is because people choose to watch the video, they are not just confronted with it – as on TV (Nice side aspect: Uploading content on YouTube is for free)
