Posts Tagged: branding

Presentations — 3 Comments
14
Nov 07

The 4 New P’s of Marketing

This is just a quick presentation I did on the The 4 New p’s of Marketing. It is quite an interesting and in depth topic. It is a topic I will be dedicating much more time towards researching and discussing with people.

The new 4Ps don’t replace the old, traditional 4Ps. The new 4Ps, for me, serve as insight and guidance for crafting Social Media strategies. It’s certainly not my only guideline, however it touches on so many aspects of the social web if one starts exploring and going into depth on each point. Some information for you, use it, don’t use it. It’s up to you.

If you cannot see the presentation, click here (or secondly, here). You can also download the PDF over here.

Marketing — 1 Comment
17
Oct 07

The Brand Gap – Distance Between Strategy & Creativity

Update: After going through the presentation I kind of had a few random thoughts that I needed to put down, please excuse me if my ramblings don’t make sense.

The part of this presentation that really stood out for me was collaboration. The presentation illustrates three methods of collaboration:

  1. One Stop Shop
  2. The Brand Agency
  3. Intergrated Marketing Team

I have no idea which is the best one to use, all I know is that neither of them control the ownership of you brand. Your customers own your brand. Like the presentation says, “..brands are defined by individuals, not companies, markets, or publics”. So here is where Social Media comes into play. How about individuals building your brand?

It’s already happening, those who are brand enthusiasts will talk about a brand all the time. Blogs are one of the many mediums that brand enthusiasts use to talk about brands they love. A company that has millions of bloggers talking about it world wide is Apple. They hardly needed to advertise the iPhone online because thousands upon thousands of bloggers did it for them.

So whats the best way to build a great brand? Build a truly great product and listen to your customers. The rest will take care of itself.

Uncategorized — 6 Comments
12
Sep 07

Brands Getting It Right On Facebook

Over the last few months we have seen a bunch of brands jumping onto the Facebook bandwagon. Trying to take advantage of the trend and engage the youngsters on Facebook (demographics are becoming more diverse on Facebook now). The most recent to see it backfire was Walmart.

My opinion on why Walmart failed at it, besides all of the other obvious reasons, is that they aren’t a brand that appeals to the youth. It’s like trying to market Pick ‘n Pay or Pep to the youth. They aren’t at the stage in their lives where they need to be bombarded with messages to buy household goods. Sure the campaign might help with brand awareness but why would a youngster want to interact with a brand that has no relevance to him (her) at this point in time.

So then who is getting it right? Apple and Skittles. Lets take a look at why it’s working for them.

Apple
Apple created a sponsored Facebook group called Apple Students. Common sense will tell you the group is aimed at students. What a perfect way to build brand awareness and brand loyalty, as they are present and potential future customers.

  • Student Discounts
    In the group, Apple advertises products on the right hand side. What makes these adverts so interesting is that they offer student discounts. Students save between $79 and $249 on selected Apple items.
  • Student Content
    There is a feature within the group page which allows users to view original content “Made on a Mac” by students. Which is great for students to show case their work as students can submit their work and get featured. There are also tutorials offered to get you started.
  • The Result
    Over 425 000 thousand people have joined the Apple Students group. On the discussion board within the group, there are over 12 000 discussion topics. I think that is pretty impressive. Talk about interaction around the Apple brand.

Skittles
Rodney pointed this out this morning, Skittles sponsored gifts on Facebook. They created a limited edition Skittles Gum gift and best of all it’s free to send to your friends. To support it the created a sponsored group, Skittles. Talk about increasing brand awareness for the new Skittles Gum.

  • Skittles Game
    Skittles have included a flash based game on the group page allowing user to be entertained and interact with the brand. It’s a really simple game, not the kind that will keep people coming back all the time, but it’s still fun the first time round.
  • Consumer Opinion
    Skittles believe that your opinion matters. They ask you to take a short survey to let them know what matters most to you. They also have a quick poll on the left hand side of the group page. Nothing like some great consumer feedback.
  • The Result
    Just over 5 300 users have joined the group, submitted 23 photos, over 200 wall posts on the group page. There are also 15 discussion topics. I am not 100% sure on how long ago Skittles started the group, so I am assuming it is recently. The results aren’t too bad so far. In fact, more impressive than a lot of other sponsored groups and campaigns currently on Facebook.

If you’re thinking of marketing on Facebook, know how to engage the youth. With so many users in one place, there is some great potential to foster brand enthusiasts and spread viral content which is relevant and appealing (or hilariously funny).

Uncategorized — 4 Comments
11
Sep 07

Youth Marketing – Engage The Youth

The youth of today, the most connected generation these days. They consume more information on a daily basis than any other generation, they communicate and interact in multiple ways and at a rapid rate. They speak a totally different language and also prefer to be approached in a totally different way.

So how does one go about engaging the youth? Interacting with the youth? There are many ways to do so, both online and offline. Why is it even important to interact with the youth? The youth have grown up with advertising all around them, they have adapted to their environment and are able to block out the messages they do not wish to receive.

Traditional advertising is no longer as effective on the youth as it used to be in the past. Engaging the youth is essential for brand awareness, brand longevity and brand loyalty. The youth are your current or future customers.

Engaging The Youth:

  • Quick, Easy and Cheap
    If you plan on interacting with the youth, make sure that they can interact with you quickly, easily and cost effectively. The youth generally hate going out of their way to do things. They also have so many things on the go at any one time, it is important that the interaction be quick and easy. The youth might have a lot of influence to how money gets spent but it is their parents money, they don’t want to spend all their money on interacting with your brand. Make sure the process is cost effective.
  • Be A Friend
    Don’t try and sell them something immediately. Let them experience your product or service, let them see how other people are using your product or service. Allow them to decide whether they want to be apart of it or not. Most importantly though, build a relationship. If you build a relationship with youngsters you are far more likely to achieve brand loyalty.
  • Engage On Multiple Levels
    If you are going to engage the youth, do so on multiple levels. The youth are very versatile, they access information through different mediums and methods. Make sure they are able to engage or interact with your brand via the internet, via their mobile and the different environment in which they are most active in.
  • They’re Smart, Not Arrogant
    The youth aren’t stupid at all. You can’t fool them by putting a brand label on cheap material. They want quality, they want the best and are willing to come up with the money for it. However, don’t rule out substitutes. If the substitute is decent enough and affordable the youth will not be scared to switch over. Don’t try and trick or deceive the youth, they’re quick to catch on.
Miscellaneous — 1 Comment
31
Aug 07

Brands Convention – Great Success

Yesterday, Mike and I did our joint presentation at The Brands Convention in Melrose Arch. It was Mike’s 120th presentation, so he’s what you would call seasoned at this type of thing. It was my 1st presentation and I really enjoyed it. The response we received was awesome. We had so much fun presenting and I can’t wait to do it again. You can view our presentation below or download it here. I have excluded the videos as they are rather large to download, if you would like them please contact me.

The amount of people I met and spoke to was incredible, all of whom showed great interest in social media. I have never seen so many people keen on starting their own blogs. In fact, Costa, someone I met on the first day has started his own blog already. Check out The Rise of Imagine’s.

The Brands Convention was really a well organised event and I would like to thank everyone at Top Company for putting it all together. I will be attending the next one without a doubt. For those who are interested, seeing as though YouTube and Facebook where spoken about a lot, I have created a group on Facebook for us to all connect.

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