And What We Can Learn From It About Monitoring Your Brand's Health

Posted by Craig Daitch on 11.05.09 @ 08:43 AM

When it comes to social media, it's best to start with a solid listening strategy. And while you're fine-tuning the "what, where, when and how" as you're eavesdropping on conversations around the social web, remember that while analysis can be assisted through technology, it's by no means a fully automated process.

Take, for example, the recent press release announcing that Walmart has begun selling caskets online. A bit odd, but as it was introduced with Halloween around the corner, the news caught on and was aggregated across the social web.

As the casket story grew, it began to trend on social news sites such as Reddit, and because Walmart empowers its consumers with the ability to rate, comment and share product reviews, a few clever folks started writing fictitious (yet highly entertaining) comments about the products on Walmart.com. The hilarity of the reviews began to border on the absurd.

Now say I'm a brand manager at Walmart and I'm analyzing social-media chatter and sentiment. At first glance, I would be pleasantly surprised when free products such as social-analysis tool Social Mention determined positive sentiment around the "Lady de Guadalupe Steel Casket" that Walmart is selling. And, given the vast number of reviews on the infinite products in Walmart's inventory, it may not become apparent immediately that the sentiment is indeed fake and facetious -- sometimes the Long Tail can sometimes work against you.

The example, funny as it is, serves as a reminder that your approach to social media monitoring should follow a similar approach to what SEM/SEO experts do. Use filtering to your advantage. Leverage tag clouds to determine what words are the strongest within a web page of content. If something looks fishy, dive deeper in your analysis. Also, if positive reviews don't match the number of sales, that too should...

What's Behind Viral Success? Great Meme Marketing Plus, a Few Memes Just Waiting for a Marketer to Adopt Them

Posted by Eric Swayne on 10.13.09 @ 06:20 PM

Eric SwayneSome marketers have a real problem with social networks. They're almost offended when an audience takes their commercials, or ideas, and begin to pass them around without permission. Others are enamored of the power of network effects and have become obsessed with becoming YouTube stars, building and blasting microsites (with varying success) on what seems like a weekly basis. And still others try to cheat at the "game" of consumer conversation by inserting seemingly "natural" or "amateur" ideas into this ecosystem, tricking unwitting consumers into passing on an idea that has a hidden trap door: a dotted-line connection back to a brand or a purchase.

But what marketers today really need to do is take a step back to understand how these new communities of consumers share and select ideas. Viruses of any sort are built with one goal in mind: to reproduce. Every marketing campaign designed to "go viral" has to do the same things as your favorite illness and turn an ROI by connecting those people reached to a purchase. It's not impossible, but it's not nearly as accidental as it once was. In fact, the great work in this space isn't viral marketing, it's meme marketing.

Memes are the ideas, symbols or practices that naturally spread throughout a culture. These thoughts are the things that just seem to "catch on," whether it's coffee houses, doing "The Wave" at a sports event, or tight-rolling your jeans back in the '80s. The concept of measuring these "units of thought" is nothing new. The term "meme" was created in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene." The new opportunity marketers have now is to apply this study of memes (or, memetics) to how they create messages for their clients.

Visit idea2009.com to learn more.

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Estee Lauder Gets Women Ready for Their Social-Media Close-upsCosmetics Giant Offers Makeovers and Professional Photos to Use for Profile Pictures

ByJack Neff
Published:October 07, 2009

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- The venerable Estee Lauder cosmetics brand has found a seemingly natural way to connect with social media: offering free makeovers and photo shoots at its department-store cosmetics counters coast-to-coast to produce shots women can use for their online profiles.

The promotion kicks off at Bloomingdale's in New York on Oct. 16.

The promotion, which kicks off Oct. 16 at Bloomingdale's in New York and will extend initially to Macy's, Saks and other Bloomingdale's stores in Southern California, Miami and Chicago, also includes a giveaway of a 10-day supply of foundation.

Defying convention in a prestige cosmetics industry that has buried consumers under piles of makeup totes and other "gifts with purchase" for decades, no purchase is required for these gifts. The gift that the brand hopes will keep on giving is that the profile photos include the Estee Lauder logo in the background, which, assuming they aren't Photoshopped into oblivion, could give the brand lasting presence on Facebook beyond its own 27,000-member plus fan page. The promotion is being plugged on that page, as well as on Estee Lauder's website, and the company is also using PR to spread the word.

Find out more about the Novemebr 19th event here.

With a target age of 35 to 55, Estee Lauder consumers aren't necessarily prototypical social-media mavens. But the promotion has a dual strategy, said spokeswoman Tara Eisenberg: helping contemporize the brand for younger women while recognizing that somewhat older women have rapidly embraced social media, too.

The initial flight of a half-dozen such events is something of a test that, if successful, could be extended to more stores and cities, Ms. Eisenberg said. "It's not something you can do every day,...

Cross-Sell, upsell, really - what’s the diff?  Generally…

• An upsell is to get the customer to spend more money - buy a more expensive model of the same type of product, or add features / warranties that relate to the product in question.

• A cross-sell is to get the customer to spend more money buy adding more products from other categories than the product being viewed or purchased.

The terms cross-sell and upsell are often used interchangeably because, let’s face it, this gets confusing.  Say the customer is viewing a 4GB iPod Nano for $169.

8 GB iPod Nano, $229 -> Upsell, same product family, more expensive
8 GB iPod Touch, $299 -> Upsell, same product family, more expensive
16 GP iPod Touch, $399 -> Upsell, same product family, more expensive
Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic , $79 -> Cross-sell
Skull Candy headphones, $69, -> Cross-sell
$25 iTunes card -> Cross-sell
8 GB Microsoft Zune, $249 -> Upsell, more expensive, same category
4 GB Creative Zen mp3 player, $159 -> Neither cross-sell or upsell, rather an “alternative product suggestion”
Portable DVD player, $299 -> Cross-sell. Cool gadget, customer “may also like” but not related to mp3 player.
Griffin FM transmitter for car, $79 -> Cross-sell

Really, there should be a third category - “alternative products” which are really a navigation aid rather than something that truly boosts the cart value or items per sale.  Consider the following example from Harry and David:

The label “Go Deluxe” suggests an upsell.  One suggestion is to double up on the chocolate truffles and get 2 for $44.85, a true upsell.  The other takes a product from another category (that is of higher $ value) which would be considered a cross-sell if suggested in addition to, rather than instead of the product being viewed.  In this case, the popcorn is an alternative product suggestion rather than a true upsell of the truffles.

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Over the last few months, Franco and I have been thinking about what makes a project – a design or service design project, for instance -  fall into the camp of social and ethical design. From that we ended up thinking that those categories needed to be enriched further to consider the actual outcome of the thing that is being designed and launched on the world.

Franco met up with the Kashklash crew at Lift09 and a jolly conversation started about how the ideas we were playing with could interact with Kashklash. At the core of the conversation was the nature of value co-creation, both in social enterprise and in a world beyond a monetary economy. During our discussions we found that new ideas of value and relationship are the starting point for defining a shared perspective on how society could evolve through initiatives and action outside of established institutions.

To invite further discussion, we are posting below the initial thinking we have done on a set of principles and guidelines to support the formation of ethical / sustainable social enterprise services. (With contributions from Heather, Irene and Mark..thanks!)

1. Does the initiative help people use time to their best advantage?
2. Does it strengthen relationships between people?
3. Does it have a clear socially* beneficial mission (or in the absence of clarity, a positive trajectory in a socially beneficial direction)?
4. Does it produce more for a community/society/environment ...

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Digital Marketing: The Golden Rules of the Web A Few Lessons to Live by in 2009

Posted by Faris Yakob on 03.12.09 @ 10:40 AM

Aphorisms, or proverbs, are the oldest class of successful ideas in the world.

The oldest, and most successful, is the Golden Rule, or the principle of reciprocity, which underlies all major world religions in almost exactly the same form: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

These nuggets of wisdom transcend centuries and cultures. Versions of the proverb "where there's smoke there's fire" have appeared in more than 55 different languages.

These expressions are complex ideas that can guide behavior. So here we offer nine aphorisms for digital communication this year. While they may not stay with you as long as the Golden Rule, you might still remember a couple in a month or two.

Attention is like friendship: It can't be bought, only earned.
There's nothing new in the idea of branded utility, I hear you cry -- and that's true. But it's only going to get more important and, frankly, it hasn't really been done very well so far. Name one good example apart from Nike -- I dare you. Anyway, let's build on it. This year is all about being useful for where you are: geotility. Watch every brand build iPhone applications this year. But only some will actually be useful and, therefore, used.

Viral is dead; long live the spread.
Let's all agree to stop usin...