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August 20, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

GAP gets face-to-Facebook with fashion.

GAP used to be the king of cool on television commercials with lively music tracks and slick choreography against clean white backgrounds. In a recent effort to convince folks that GAP is cool again, The GAP has released a new ad campaign titled “Born to fit” . But long gone are the dancing hipsters on white backgrounds. Print, theater and outdoor ads all drive consumers to a Born To Fit Facebook page. Facebook likes this because it may get folks who aren’t Facebook members to sign up. Gap likes this because they can trace how effective their ad campaign is by who is interacting with the site. I went ahead and clicked through their Facebook page and clicked on a tiny box that played a video of what I presumed was a GAP fashion designer who was sitting on a stool facing the camera. After sitting through the piece I discovered that the designer, Patrick Robinson, is “interested in things” and was “born to explore” .Â OK, I get that testimonials are good way to sell products, but what I didn’t understand was what the (insert expletive here) does that have to do with dungarees? I felt un-entertained. That is, until I scrolled down to read some of the comments posted by visitors to the branded Facebook page. They read as follows:

1. Gap Sucks.

2. Gap love you!!!!!!!!!!!!

3. Gay.

4. Very empowering.

5. I thought this was Todd Bridges.

I chuckled at number 5, so at least it wasn’t a complete waste of time. But maybe I’m not the target market for the brand. Perhaps they are targeting younger, willing-to-sit-through serious YouTube-like vids of people who want to wax on about life, or a person who likes to wear GAP jeans. It all seems so cerebral. I just want a pair of jeans that look good. Damn, I miss the dancing people on the white backgrounds throwing each other up in the air.

August 17, 2009 By splatter 1 Comment

Brandcasting. How social networking can increase your brand image. (Part 6 of 7).

When social networking first came on the scene with sites like Myspace, many people viewed it as technology meant for younger, tech savvy users who want to have a common digital space where they can chat, exchange music, share information and do just like teens do in Europe in their local town squares. This was an ideal solution for towns across America that didn’t have a town square; a digital piazza was the perfect solution. As time went on, it was clear that something more powerful was forming on the horizon. Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin have soon become “virtual piazzas” for much broader ranges of users that include adults, professionals and now, businesses. As I have written about in a previous micro blogging post, businesses now have the power to broadcast deals and offers to loyal customers via micro-blogging. Think of how Kmart used “blue light specials” in their stores to create a loyal following of shoppers. Now businesses can do the same without the corny spinning blue light and they can reach far beyond the confines of their brick and mortar store space. But don’t think that just because you are tweeting deals to your audience that the dollars will start rolling in. You have to have a strategy. To get started, Twitter does a nice job of explaining how the power of micro blogging can help businesses of all sizes. For the novice, I have written a post detailing how to get started with Twitter here. The subject of using social networking is a huge one, so we will just scratch the surface by offering up a few tips for the novice micro blogger.

Micro Blogging Tips

1. Keep “˜em coming back for more. Offering incentives and special deals on an ongoing basis will keep your audience engaged and willing to follow your micro blog. Also, give-aways and promotions work well in growing your audience and keeping your loyalists happy.

2.Â Manage your online reputation. Because micro blogging is a social medium, anyone can have a voice. That means that you may receive negative feedback from your customers in a public format. Always address negative comments and if you can, look for ways to turn those negative comments around in your favor by offering a solution or a “make-good” for that customer. While many will agree that there is no such thing as bad PR, there is such a thing as a bad brand reputation and anything you can do to snub negativity can help in the long run and may even turn a sour situation into a sweet marketing win.

3. Bond with your fans. Social media allows you to have back and forth conversations with your most loyal customers in a public format. Always invite your fans to have a platform and create a healthy exchange with your brand. Who knows, you may discover your version of Subway Jared, Subway’s spokesperson who was one of its most loyal fans.

Again, we are just scratching the surface here. Micro blogging can be time consuming yet rewarding if you do it right. It’s up to you to do research for the best micro blogging techniques that fits your marketing strategy for your business. For a better handle on micro blogging, I recommend looking to other businesses that are similar to yours, how-to books and online resources like Twitter. Be sure to check back for tomorrow’s post, the final part of a seven part series. As they say in the local piazza, ciao.

August 7, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

Lifecasters do it with the lights on or off.

You think you spend a lot of time on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, your iphone, etc. You probably don’t hold a candle to a new breed of interneterati called “lifecasters” or “lifestreamers” . According to Wikipedia “lifecasting is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media.” Many lifecasters transmit web content 24 hours a day, whether they’re awake or not, through more than one medium. Live video is the preferred medium for most lifecasters, but an ever-increasing number of this group employ social networking like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and blogging, texting and emailing in conjunction with live video feeds. According to a news article in The Press of Atlantic City lifecasters come in all walks of life.Â “Experts say social-networking junkies — people consumed with e-mailing, texting, tweeting, blogging, podcasting and videoing — are everywhere. They’re college students, marketing professionals and journalists. They’re attention-seeking extroverts and anxiety-ridden introverts. They’re young; they’re old.” If this trend takes hold in the mainstream I wouldn’t be surprised if soon we’ll be able to follow the Burger King mascot on his daily routine via a live video stream. Although I’m not so sure I want to watch “The King” walk into a bathroom whilst I nibble on my whopper.Â For now, we’ll just have to settle on bk tweets from the crowned one.

July 20, 2009 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Social Marketing ads stick to eyeballs.

People have trained themselves to ignore ads appearing on the Internet, right? Not so according to a press release issued by Oneupweb, an Adweek Top 20 Search Marketing Agency who conducted an eye tracking study on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. The findings can be seen in all their glory in a downloadable white paper titled Seeing Search Go Social: An Eye Tracking Study on Social Networking Sites. According to the findings, 65% of the test subjects engaged with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search. Also, sponsored ads were often looked at before the third and fourth ranked listing. This means that people are acting differently with social media marketing than they do on a search engine, for example. But just because their eyeballs roam on to the ads doesn’t mean people are clicking on them thus creating an increase in web traffic flow. But maybe this will change as advertisers fine-tune their social media marketing to reflect this audience.

July 17, 2009 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Jump on the twitter bandwagon already. Or not.

According to a recent poll conducted by Ragan Communications and PollStream only one third of respondents were utilizing micro blogging sites like Twitter to further engage their audience in their brand.Â Also, about half of those polled believed that Twitter was a fad and was likely to plateau. Well no doubt. Maybe that’s because Twitter was intended for social media and not to sell people stuff they didn’t know they needed. That’s my take, anyway. Twitter has taken steps to protect themselves from becoming an ad whore by outsourcing ad formats to third party companies that want to use Twitter as a marketing tool. In a recent Adweek article sites like CinemaTweets and ExecTweets integrate branding and social networking via Twitter. The smart thing here is that if these marketing efforts fail, Twitter can easily shed these guys like a bad sunburn in the middle of July. If they are successful at it, guess who will get the credit. Regardless, you can’t blame marketers for being a bit skittish. But people who were intended to use social media (non-advertising budgeting humans) use it successfully. TakeÂ @davecarroll, the twitter guy who had a bad experience flying United Airlines and wrote a little ditty about it and posted a video on Youtube. I bet he doesn’t think Twitter is a fad. In fact, chances are he’ll be using Twitter to announce every United Airlines related song he writes.

July 2, 2009 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Moms drop traditional media for digital.

Women are among the most coveted audiences for magazine readership. However, new data suggests that moms are trending away from traditional print media and replacing their free hours once spent with pulp driven offerings with the digital sort. According to a recent report posted by MediaWeek, of 25,000 respondents, 49 percent of women said their magazine reading time went down after giving birth and 46 percent said the same about their newspapers. Of that same survey, 63 percent said they were active on digital social networks like mommy blogs, facebook and other sites that focus on families and child-rearing. The rise in digital popularity among the mommy set may be due to the fact that digital media allows for an effortless two-way conversation that encourages moms to interact with other moms, experts and even advertisers who specialize in products for kids and moms. This may be a wake-up call for magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman’s Day and Ladies Home Journal who are all in the top ten list for the category of largest magazine distribution in the US and good news for sites like Facebook, BabyCenter and mommy blogs.