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/

 

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