Ikea is always able to generate world of mouth through its original Facebook campaigns.

IKEA’S FACEBOOK SHOWROOM FOR IT’S MALMO  NEW STORE

To promote the new store, Ikea set up a Facebook account for its manager Gordon Gustavsson that started uploading photos of different showrooms. He uploaded 12 pictures of showrooms to his photo album in a 2 weeks period. Anyone who tagged his/her name on a product in the photo first, won the product!

Let’s have a look a this video to see how it worked more in detail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYy_3786bo

How did this campaign become Viral?

As soon as Ikea’s store manager started uploading showrooms photos the demand for ikea products grow. Moreover, anyone who is familiar with Facebook knows that if you tag yourself in a photo it will show up in your news feed where all your friends can see it. The pictures spread all over social media, blogs, links and the campaign became viral.

Ikea got its customers promote the brand and their catalogue just by using Facebook!

IKEA “SLEEP LIKE A PRINCESS” COMPETITION

Ikea launched a Facebook competition in the UK  in which it was possible to win a bed up to £1500. To join the competition you had to be an Ikea Family card member and to win you simply had to upload a photo of a friend while taking a nap. The photo with more likes would be the winner!

http://vimeo.com/47802351

The campaign made Ikea achieve 44000 Youtube views, 13650 Facebook visitors and almost 4000 new fans. 

UK STORE SLEEPOVER

Ikea hosted a sleepover in one of its store’s in the UK in response of the popularity of a Facebook group called “I wanna have a sleepover at Ikea”. 100 lucky members of the group had the chance to attend the sleepover!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMJD53fxihU

Some other hilarious campaigns:

https://econsultancy.com/blog/63221-six-awesome-examples-of-facebook-campaigns-by-ikea#i.1ofzax9wdtedvq

 

 

 

While i was writing my previous post about how Victoria’s secret’s generated negative buzz from its “The perfect body” campaign, I immediately started thinking about a campaign based on completely different ideas: the famous “Real Beauty”  campaign launched by Dove some years ago.

Dove’s campaign’s aim was to celebrate women’s natural beauty and to make women comfortable with their natural bodies. The campaign was developed in 2004 as a result of a study showing that 2% of women were satisfied with their bodies and considered themselves beautiful.

 

The campaign was one of the most successful marketing campaigns. It started from printed ads and spread to television and videos.

Its first expression was represented by Tick boxes that were launched in Canada.

 

People that saw the ad could text the answer and 1.5 million responses were gathered that were showed in the billaboards. The success of the campaign was clear from the very start.

It followed a billboard campaign with “real” women in their underwear.

A fund was also created in 2004 to discuss about online bullying and start photography projects capturing real beauty. Dove created some videos to support the fund and the campaign.

Dove’s videos became immediately viral:

1) DOVE EVOLUTION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

2) DOVE REAL BEAUTY SKETCHES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

Dove’s campaign was  criticized because there were doubts on the extent to which emphasizing woman’s real beauty could actually increase sales. However, although Dove was not showing its sales figures, the campaign boost sales apparently.

Why was this campaign so successful? 

Dove was able to foster brand loyalty by addressing themes on which women were sensitive. “We believe that conversation leads to brand love, and brand love leads to brand loyalty,” Jennifer Bremner, brand director of skin cleansing at Unilever.

Read more at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940.html

 

 

 

In one of my previous posts i have praised Victoria’s secret for its successful campaigns. However, not all of its campaigns have proved to meet this requirement. Last month’s Victoria’s Secret’s campaign featuring the ad “The perfect body” came under fire!

 

The campaign which advertised bras form the “Body” lingerie line, was launched in the form of printed media and on the company’s website in the UK. The campaign generated an extremely negative response from UK shoppers.

The negative buzz which spread to social media in the form of a petition asking Victoria’s Secret to apologize and terminate its campaign. The petition stated “the campaign does perpetuate low self-esteem among women who are made to feel that their bodies are inadequate and unattractive because they do not fit into a narrow standard of beauty”.

The petition was accompanied by the #iamperfect hashtag which spread all over social media and gathered around 29000 signatures for the petition.

Some examples of the posts that spread all over the web with the #iamperfect hashtag:

http://www.today.com/health/perfect-body-petition-twitter-users-slam-victorias-secret-campaign-1D80253890

The company has not yet apologized but has changed the ad to “A body for every body”.

 

The change showed that Victoria’s Secret is listening to its customers. However, they didn’t really have the option to ignore the petition given the huge negative buzz the campaign generated on social media.

Although the ad displayed on the website has changed, the ones displayed in the stores are still the original ones.

Read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-perfect-body-campaign-2014-11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/06/victorias-secret-perfect-body-campaign_n_6115728.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29958907

Has ever happened to you to go shopping with a certain idea of what you would like to buy but you don’t find what you were looking for? You want that specific pair of shoes that could match your brand new bag but nothing you see is like what you have in mind.

Several brands offer you the solution: Design your own shoes!

Customizable shoes are just one of the several advantages that online shopping offers to customers and is becoming everyday more popular. When you shop online you can do it at any time during the day with no “opening hours” constraint, there is always enough available stock on the website compared to the actual shop and most of the times you can find cheaper alternatives.  

Brands are aware of this increasing trend and are trying to provide online customers with additional services such as personal design and customization.

Havaianas

Havaianas give you the option to customize your own flip flops! All you need to do is go on their website and got to “Make your own”. Ina few steps you will be able to choose size, style, colour, and add any pins! Once you are done, you have the option of sharing your design on social media. This strategy is very likely to make customers come back to visit your website and to icnrease overall engagement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1sH-YvxO7Y

Stuart Weitzman

Stuart Weitzman is offering customazible options for its more popular alternatives. The company teamed up with Neiman Marcus for a permanent, online custom shop where you can add as many details as you wish to some of his most popular styles.

The past summer, the most popular alternatives were Stuart Weitzman wedges and gladiator sandals. You could have chosen among different materials, colours, sizes and patterns for your self designed shoes.

Manolo Blahnik

Also Manolo Blahnic has teamed up with Neiman Marcus and let you customize your own Manolo’s.

You can choose from a range of heels’ height as well as different materials, colours and patterns.

These strategies are very likely to increase brand awareness and customer’s loyalty and liking of the brand, as well as online shopping.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2012/06/14/design-your-own-flip-flops/

Read more at: http://www.fashiontrendsdaily.com/fashion-accessories/play-designer-and-customize-your-summer-shoes-with-stuart-weitzman-manolo-blahnik-and-havaianas

The famous lingerie company Victoria’s secret is one of the most successful brands in the lingerie industry. They showed extremely positive sales for the last 3 years, they have more than 25 millions of followers on Facebook, and their Fashion show has become an American tradition with 9.71 million viewers last year.

What’s Victoria’s Secrets secret for success?

Strong social media presence

Their Facebook page has over 26 million followers and their Pink live over 14 million. They are extremely successful in leveraging their brand through social media by addressing their customers needs’ perfectly.

What makes them a successful brand is that they know who their target audience is. Their posts’ content is mainly focused on targeting its audience,mainly women, interests. They rank second in 2013 among retailers on Facebook because they know what their fans want. (http://www.rankingthebrands.com/Brand-detail.aspx?brandID=571)

Efficient Network

Their website and social media networks are interrelated. Both Victoria’s secret and its Pink line have direct links to their Facebook fan page which will result in increased engagement since it is very unlikely that consumers go look for the page themselves, they usually stumble upon a page through a friend.

More on: http://mashable.com/2009/03/30/successful-facebook-fan-page/

Successful campaigns 

Victoria secret’s constantly creates social media campaigns to increase customer engagement and brand awareness.  A famous successful campaign was the Pinktruck campaign where VSPink visited for the spring break several US colleges. Each day they tweeted where they were going with the hashtag #Pinktruck and they hided stuffed dogs and those who were able to find them won a prize. The level of engagement they derived from this campaigns was incredibly high.

Read more : http://synthesio.com/corporate/en/2014/uncategorized/5-tips-from-the-top-fashion-brands-on-social-media/#

Promotions and discounts
Victoria’s secret is able to increase its brand awareness by constantly supplying its customers with exclusive promotions and discounts. There are always discounts on shipping or free coupons for a limited amount of time which increase engagement by VS lovers. Victoria’s secret usually announces its limited discounts and its gifts give away a few hours in advance on its social media grab its customers’ attention. They will not leave their laptop if there is a discount coming up in the next hour. 

This strategy inevitably strengthens customer loyalty because the customers perceives she is receiving a special treatment.

Listens and involves its customers

Victoria’s secret cares about its customers and it demonstrates so by replying to any question and by running designs contest in its Facebook page.

Fashions show

With over 9,7 million followers last year, Victoria’s secret fashion show is a must watch. In 1995, Victoria’s Secret spent $120,000 on the show. Last year’s fashion show costed approximately $ 13 million.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-is-the-top-brand-2013-1#ixzz3I9ziYKZs

 

More on: http://contently.com/strategist/2012/05/21/victorias-secret/

 

ore on:

Most beauty brands invest heavily on traditional advertising, as you can tell by opening any women’s magazine. You will probably find several make up and fragrances printed ads in most magazines. However, the same beauty brands recognize that Facebook is now playing an important role in advertising and more generally in e-commerce.

A lot of beauty brands are very active on Facebook because they identify it as a valuable source of engagement and community creation. Facebook is not a sales platform but rather a tool to engage with customers and a way to leverage the company’s branding and awareness.

Famous cosmetics companies that are really active on Facebook are MAC, with 8 million followers, Sephora with its 6 million followers, Lancome with 5 million followers and Nars cosmetics with more than 1 million followers.

NARS Cosmetics and Facebook

NARS took Facebook leveraging to another level! They understood Facebook potential in terms of engagement and decided to launch their NARS Andy Warhol collection exclusively through social media and not by traditional paid advertising..

They created a Facebook NARS profile make over App where its users could upload their facebook or desktop photos or take photos with the webcam and then edit them in Warhol style. NARS would then incentives its App users to set the Warhol style photo as either their Profile picture or cover photo or even both according to the user’s own preferences.

This very short video shows how the app worked.

NARS’s director of digital media’s decision to advertise its campaign exclusively through social media proved to be extremely successful! The App users were a limited number of individuals but the results in terms of engagement were huge. The users were spending on average 7 minutes on the App and 5300 images were created as a result of the campaign.

The campaign could have been even more successful if it had been integrated by Facebook paid ads which would have probably increased customer engagement even more.

Read more at:

http://mashable.com/2011/08/01/beauty-brands-facebook/

http://mashable.com/2012/11/13/nars-andy-warhol-facebook-app/

http://mashable.com/2013/01/31/nars-andy-warhol-facebook-app-results/

 

Nowadays, websites are brand’s business cards. Designing and keeping a website up to date is fundamental for a company’s success.

Sephora’s website makeover in 2012 is an example of  how the redesign process should be conducted.

Back in 2012 Sephora developed its new website to respond to the needs of its more digitized and social audience. The objective of the company was to make online shopping experience more pleasant for its global customers.

WHAT’S NEW?

1) Customized advanced search

Sephora introduced an advanced and more efficient search engine where each of its 15000 products is tagged with 25 search attributes such as price, colour, age, ingredients. The tags don’t just make the the shopping experience personal and customizable but also quicker and focused.

2) Commerce

Sephora.com is now characterized by stock availability for each of its products; you can check if the Sephora near you has the product you are looking for. You can also find your personal purchase history on the website so that you can use that information to make new purchases and find old products you loved.

3) Social networks integration

Sephora’s website was integrated with social networks with a special focus on Pinterest and Instagram. You will now be able to “pin” each item available on the online store and share it on Pinterest; and have a look at Sephora’s employees favourite products and their personal reviews. With instagram you get a “behind the scenes” look at how Sephora’s staff works and at the major trends of the moment.

4) New Content connected to Social media

The Sephora.com home page offers some new functions:

• Tutorial videos
• Products’ reviews
• Interaction with Experts
• The latest Beauty Trends
• BEAUTY TALK forum (Community enhancement)

Beauty talks is a forum where users can communicate, share their thoughts, receive advice and read reviews from other Sephora’s customers.

Let’s not forget Sephora’s Youtube Channel with over 10 million views!

4)Mobile 

The increase usage of mobile phones and ipads  made Sephora develop an App where most of Sephora.com functions are present.

How did the company advertise its new website?

“15 days of beauty thrills”campaign: shoppers where given each day a coupon for a free product and had the chance to win amazing prizes.

Read more at:

http://mashable.com/2012/04/09/sephora-makeover/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lydiadishman/2012/04/09/sephoras-smart-social-and-digital-makeover/

Social media is a global phenomenon that has changed radically changed communication between people.

10 years ago, who would have ever thought to be able to interact with famous celebrities?

Get in touch with one’s favorite singer or actor might have been a just dream for normal people. Today, .thanks to social media, it is possible. Most famous celebrities are engaged with social media: they have twitter, facebook and instagram accounts and most of them personally control their own accounts.

But, why is it so important for Celebrities to use social media?

Self promotion

Famous celebrities don’t have customers, they have FANS. They use social media to build their own brand by interacting and communicating with their fans. How do they do it?

They post daily status, photos of their daily life as well as videos to keep their followers updated. They share their activities, future projects and any information that their fans may be interested in. Moreover, Celebrities leverage the use of social media by promoting their interests such as their movies if they are actors of their tours if they are singers.

Katy Perry is very engaged in social media, particularly with twitter.  In fact, in her California Dreams tour in 2011, fans’ tweets were displayed  during her live concert performances to get the audience interacting with the show. Is there a better way to directly interact with your fans??

Read more on Katy Perry social media strategy at: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/katy-perry-brings-the-twitter-jumbotron-to-her-concerts_b7372

Another famous singer that has been doing pretty well on social media is Lady gaga, also known as the social media monster. She is the first one to top up 10 million fans on facebook and twitter. She currently has more than 67 million of fans on facebook and .. on twitter. “For videos like “Telephone,” “Born This Way,” and “Judas,” fans anxiously waited in front of their computers until the videos were released on YouTube. By revealing on Twitter and Facebook the exact date and time that the video will be released, Gaga is able to get millions of views in a matter of hours“. (http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/become-social-media-monster-like-lady-gaga/).

Lady Gaga has embraced the social media revolution by creating her own social network called “Little Monsters.com (https://littlemonsters.com/).

This social network allows Lady gaga fans to create and share Lady Gaga content and to interact with other “Little Monsters”.

The social media business

Social media is not just sharing content and interacting with your fans, it’s a real business where you can earn money. Some famous celebrities get paid for each tweet or “sponsored” tweet they post.

The Kardashian’s sisters, as well as being famous for their reality show, have their one clothing store which they advertise on Twitter,Facebook and Instagram. Moreover, occasionally their posts make them earn a lot of money. Kim Kardashian does not disclose her price per tweet but speculations put her price tag at $20,000 per tweet. Her Sister, Khloe gets $13,000 per sponsored tweet.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/celebrity-sponsored-tweets_n_3360562.html

 

The New York and London fashion weeks have just come to an end and all the fashion crowd has now moved to Milan for the Milan fashion week. In my last blog post we saw how fashion bloggers have changed the rules in the fashion industry; today, I want to draw your attention to the role of Social media in one of the most popular and relevant events of the season: The fashion weeks.

Social media is not just changing fashion, is also changing Fashion week.  (http://mashable.com/2010/09/16/social-media-fashion-week/)

With the emergence of social media,what used to be an “exclusive” event where only privileged people had access to, is now a social media phenomenon. Today, thanks to the Fashion Bloggers’ posts and tweets we feel like we are attending the event and we are sitting in the front row with celebrities and designers.

Just by tweeting #nyfw, #lfw or #mfw you’ll see the highlights of the New York, London and Milan fashion weeks.

Talking about New Yorks’s fashion week, Micheal Kors is at the top of the ranking for fashion brands with the highest number of tweets, followed by Ralph Lauren, Alexander Wang, Marc Jacobs and Jeremy Scott.

“Once upon a time, Fashion Week was a mere trade show for a relatively short list of editors and buyers. Today, designers grapple with a global audience that’s exploding via social media, to varying results”. (For more read the source I have used: http://qz.com/265739/who-won-new-york-fashion-week-according-to-twitter/)

This is an incredible opportunity for both consumers and designers. Consumers can immediately have access to certain information, such as the new trends of the seasons and the most popular outfits, whereas designers have a way to reach quickly their consumers and receive their feedback.

How can brands leverage social media during Fahion Weeks?

http://sendible.com/insights/6-ways-new-york-fashion-week-leverages-social-media/

This article provides 6 ways:

1. Pinterest

2. Twitter

3. Instagram

4. Live streaming

5. Facebook

6. Tumblr

Some examples of public fashion blogs where you can receive real time reports on the various Fashion Weeks:

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog+new-york-fashion-week

 

 

 

Social media is affecting the fashion industry in different ways.The fashion industry has always been characterized by “exclusivity” whereas social media is all about “sharing” and making things public and available to everyone. So, how is it possible that these two very different sectors found a successful way to interact? Fashion bloggers are the answer.  Fashion bloggers represent the most influential form of  social media phenomenon in this industry.

The rules of this multimillionaire industry changed as soon as fashion bloggers made their appearance.

They don’t just wear designer clothes and take pictures, they attend the most popular fashion events,parties and share with everyone their impressions,thoughts and recommendations on the new trends of the season. Consumers are very interested in the comments and feedback of bloggers because they are people they can relate to and that they can trust.

The fashion industry is an example of how paid media or advertising alone is not enough for a company to be successful in advertising and selling its products. Nowadays, earned and owned media are fundamental to spread and expand brand messages. Fashion bloggers are a way to make earned media successful in the fashion industry since they are able to reach everyone, they are trusted and they influence consumers decisions. They interact directly with consumers and that’s why they are so valuable to most fashion brands.

 Given the extremely large audience that bloggers have, they constantly receive free products such as clothes, bags shoes and accessories by the most popular brands who ask them to wear and review them. Both the consumers and the fashion brands benefit from this strategy. Consumers have the possibility to access more information regarding the new trends of the coming  season and brands can use the fashion bloggers as a mean to advertise certain products and also experiment new ones.

This really interesting article focuses on the changes that social media is inducing in the fashion industry:

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2106921,00.html

A fashion blog I would advise to follow is Chiara Ferragni’s blog ( The blonde Salad). This Italian girl proved to be extremely successful at blogging and now has almost 3 million followers:

http://www.theblondesalad.com/