Monthly Archives: September 2014

Cute, short and effective

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With so much media noise, companies have it harder than ever to send their message. Effective communications are now earned, not rented or bought. Instead of pitching information and values you want to get through, you must go one step further, engage, innovate and interest your audience. If you deliver credible information, there is a higher likelihood that the consumer will reward you with loyalty. As a result, companies try to achieve impacting, original campaigns in hope of going viral, being a trending topic and the talk of all.

KLM is the latest star in content marketing.

The Dutch airline has managed to create this viral video with relevant and valuable content which consumers want to watch and listen. This is not only cute, it has a purpose and it evokes various messages:

  • Superficial: “Doing whatever it takes to return your lost items”. The KLM team and Sherlock will find whatever passengers loose.
  • Intrinsic: KLM cares about its customers, has outstanding service and will make your flight the best experience possible.

The aim of this video is to leverage brand associations and to strengthen the meaning of KLM to consumers. It´s pushing through “taking care of customers”, strongly correlated with its mission, vision and customer focus statements.Through branding, differentiation is achieved with the purpose of attaining sustainable competitive advantage, key for a business operating in a highly competitive, low profit margin and high fixed costs industry.

Marketing and advertising stunt? Lost and found team member or KLM´s new mascot? I will let you be the judge of that to avoid disappointment. However, if Sherlock does find one of your lost items, please take a picture and share it with us!

#QuantityAndQuality #Of #Hashtags

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Do you follow a friend, colleague, blogger or celebrity that simply can´t get enough of hashtags and uses an insane amount every time they write something? If the answer is yes, that makes two of us.

Originally created by Twitter for categorization on social media, hashtags have expanded to other social networks such as Facebook and are now a feature your business (or you) must be using for your tweets/posts/comments to be truly effective and searchable. But we must ask, is there a certain amount we should be using? Does it impact our engagement?

I´m not saying no to hashtags, I´m just questioning the quantity and quality of them. Yes fine, our friends who are just trying to be funny are excused from this, but what about the others? Those who are (trying to) make a living out of the internet and just won´t stop with those hashtags? Well… as the graph below shows, overall less is more.

graph

Whilst research on Twitter suggest that there is a 17% drop in engagement for those that tweet with more than two hashtags , in Instagram, the more the better.  Completely different to Facebook as the posts with no hashtags are the ones that perform the best.

So how do we know what to use where? A couple of suggestions:

  • Look at your influencers, what are they doing? What are they using?
  • Search around, are there any non-related hashtags you should be using?
  • Analyze your data! What hashtags are attracting the most volume? What posts/tweets/comments are receiving the most engagement?
  • Don´t put too many words in your hashtags #canyouevenreadthishashtag
  • Don´t put too many hashtags. Visually it just looks awful!

In conclusion, try to optimize your hashtags, think rationally about what you post and just don´t overdo it! #ExcessLeadsToNoSuccess

Twitter and Burberry

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Considered to be ahead of the game in social marketing, it comes to no surprise that Burberry is one of the companies participating with Twitter to test drive the new Twitter “buy” button. It´s not the first time that the British fashion house uses social media in an innovative way to excite fans, for example, Burberry was the first to launch a live catwalk show, a 3D fashion show and in 2011 the brand already partnered with Twitter to create “tweeetwalk” where Burberry shared looks before they appeared on the runway.

burberry

The new Twitter feature is trying to target consumers with impulsive buying habits that will react to flash sales, limited edition items and discounts (amongst others). However, as this platform is currently been tested, the Twitter “buy” button is only available to a small number of users in the US . These lucky consumers are given the opportunity to purchase in-Tweet. After their 2015 spring/summer collection show, the British fashion house made available a limited number of nail polish colors that appeared on the runway, on later dates, the new “MyBurberry” perfume will be offered.

Twitter is the social media platform were Burberry holds more followers  However, is this way of purchasing suitable for the Burberry consumer? Purchasing in this form might work for some smaller products such as cosmetics, but what about clothes? Are impulsive consumers really that eager to buy a $1000+ coat from Burberry via twitter?

This new fast purchasing platform is a good idea, but I have to question if it’s the suitable purchasing channel for luxury products. It feels as if the charm of buying something premium is lost in the process. If Burberry is to continue with Twitters “buy” button, the fashion house must be cautious with the products it offers.