Category Archives: Uncategorized

Who is fun, quirky, bubbly, and always excited? LUSH!

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A consistant and effective brand personality on social media platforms is important for companies of any size. Sometimes if responsibilities between the content creation of different platforms are assigned to different people on the team, it is hard to align the voice of the brand. One company that has done a fantastic job creating a brand personality and aligning them throughout the multiple platforms is Lush Cosmetics.

“Lushies” who have interacted with Lush on any of the social media platforms would call them fun, quirky, down to earth, bubbly, and always excited. Here’s an example of a tweet that they posted just 4 hours ago.

Not only do they create content with such fun personalities, one of the great things about Lush is that they make the effort to reply and interact with all the tweets that are made about the brand.

In this example, not only is Lush acknowledging positive feedback from a customer, they also make the customer feel like their feedback will actually get across to the specific branch/person as well.

When a bad comment or complaint hits, they are prompt in their response and address or apologize for the issue. For example, Lush had a technical difficulty with their phone system today and many ‘lushies’ tweeted their dissatisfaction. Lush replied all the negative comments with an apologetic tone and recommendations to visit their website or email them instead. In addition to that, the Lush team made constant updates on their Facebook and Twitter about the situation to keep customers well informed.

Companies whether big or small should create guidelines including the type of personality and voice that they want to represent on social media.  Sharing this information with all employees on the team can help to align all the platforms representing a better brand presence of your company.

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show brings ‘social’ to their sexy workout routines

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Sparkles, diamonds, smiles, 6-inch heels, big bouncy hair, elaborate wings, and a lot of lingerie. There really is no other than the upcoming 2012 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. With over 11.5 million viewers in 2011 of “essentially an hour-long commercial” , called analyst Erika Maschmeyer, the Victoria’s Secret marketing team really knows how to get their fans excited. This year, without a doubt, they have stepped it up even further with some creative and smart social media marketing techniques.

Photo from style.time.com

Just over a year ago, the brand has launched their new VSX by Victoria’s Secret sports wear line.  To promote their new launch in collaboration with this year’s fashion show, Victoria’s Secret created a Facebook app called “Train like an Angel” where they brought ‘social’ to your workout. On the app, girls can watch workout videos with their favourite ‘Angels’ and their expert fitness instructors, download workout tips, listen to their tailored workout playlist, share their experience and stories through #TrainLikeanAngel on Twitter, and even watch fitness and fashion editors from Fitsugar, Fashionista, and Shape magazine train along with the angels

This is a social media marketer’s big BEAUTIFUL mess. Yes, there’s a lot going on at once, but everything just fits together so perfectly.  Every year, girls complain on Twitter and blogs about how they want to look just like those angels after the show. This year, Victoria’s Secret offers the opportunity to train just like them, as they all count down to the actual show.  The integration of the Twitter hashtag encourages the girls to motivate each other rather than complain about themselves. The excellent choice of bloggers and editors whom are invited are influentials in the health and fashion industry who will further promote the event on their own website and magazine.

My only question is, why did they decide not to post those workout videos on their Youtube channel? I’m sure those videos will get much more exposure if shared on that platform. Perhaps they think that the videos can be better tracked through the Facebook app only? They must have had a good reason for it.

What do you think?

 

Can Melotweet, Evian’s musical Twitter campaign, persuade you to buy water?

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Recently there’s all this buzz about Evian’s new Twitter campaign called Melotweet. Basically, in one small blurb, it is an app designed for Ipads and Android tablets where you can turn your Twitter timeline into a musical experience. Your incoming tweets turn into droplets that drop down your screen in random areas.  You can customize the screen with different obstacles in which the droplets will hit onto and create soothing musical notes to create a musical piece.

“What if Twitter ceased to be a tool to become a toy?”, Melotweet asks.

 

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Some may ask, how does a musical app like this got anything to do with water? Well, Evian is apparently trying use this as a symbol for their “Live Young” brand. Possibly relating the feeling of creating a fresh new perspective (like young people would) to the Twitter platform.

My opinion on this campaign? I’m neutral (leaning on the dislike side).  The app is fun and interesting, but it’s not really practical at all.  On the consumer end, I don’t really see why I would use this app more than once (if at all). But then again, this campaign did receive a lot of buzz in many blogs and news articles. Funny thing is, even with all the media attention, their official promotion video still only has 2700 views.  For many, it’s a new concept by incorporating a musical element to Twitter, but it’s been done before. Have you seen the Twitter campaign hosted by Metropole Orchestra called Tweetphony? Now that’s an amazing musical Twitter campaign.  I just don’t see a strong tie between Melotweet and Evian’s brand.

What do you think? Does Melotweet make you want to buy more Evian water?

When personalization gets tricky in the social world

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As I was browsing on Facebook the other day, I realized my friend got an official VIB (Very Important Beauty Insider) welcome kit including a VIB member card in the mail from Sephora. VIB STATUS MEMBER CARD?!?!? (I thought), how come I don’t have one? So I went on the website, logged in and did some research. Apparently anyone who is a Beauty Insider (a free reward program they offer) who spends more than $350 a year automatically gets upgraded to VIB status. Taking a closer look at my emails, I realized that I was in fact an official VIB member as well. This is the email I got:

After I realized I was actually a member, I felt kind of offended that I didn’t receive the VIB loyalty card as well. So I went on the Beauty Talk (Sephora’s online forum) and found a thread of conversations with people who came across the same situation.  Here a few clips of what people had to say:

 

After reading this, I completely understand the situation (correct me if I’m wrong). Sephora’s digital marketing team decided that personalization was the way to go with their loyalty cards.  With all their customer’s past purchases tracked, they can generate an algorithm that determines which discounts, coupons, gifts, and advertisements would be most effective to the individual customer. Don’t get me wrong, Sephora has amazing marketing in the social world, but what confuses me is personalization all the way from deciding who gets the VIB loyalty card?

As you can see, personalization is great.  You can target different customers with different promotions and earn greater conversions. However, things could get sticky when fans are able to talk and share with each other on a global scale. Some may realize they are not offered the particular promotion that they want (as you can see from some of the clips), and some may decide to share their dissatisfaction to the world (me).

But then again, I love Sephora, so if they decide to send me a (late) VIB loyalty card now, I”ll accept it and forget about the past —- loyal advocate.

BodyForm’s response to negative viral comment on their Facebook page

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Well played Bodyform.

On October 6, 2012 Richard Neill decided to post this witty comment on Bodyform’s Facebook page, a British company that sells feminin hygiene products:

This comment shortly went viral and attracted 40,000 likes within 20 hours.  Instead of completely ignoring it (like some companies would), Bodyform decided to come up with this smart little Youtube video along with a Facebook comment 10 days later:

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What I liked about this video:

  1.  Responding back through the same channel. Some companies have made the mistake by responding to negative commentary on social media through their corporate websites.  If you want the same people who saw the comment to see your response, you have to respond back at the same place!
  2. Fast reponse. That’s the beauty of Youtube videos. Fast, Cheap, and Targeted.
  3.  Classy humour.  I loved that this video was so ridiculously funny and classy at the same time. I think it makes it even more humorous that they directly referred to Richard by his actual name and the exact things he said in the comment – “You forgot horse-riding Richard”.
  4.  Playful burn: *farts* “Oh Sorry Richard, you do know that we do that too. Did you?”
  5.  And finally “The blood coursing from our uteri like a crimson landslide”
BUT WAIT. I’m not done.  What if this whole thing was a marketing ploy itself. I mean the whole thing, including Richard Neill himself.

Either way, brilliant. Well done Bodyform.

What do you think? Is Richard Neill hired by Bodyform?

Building consumer evangelists with Lush Forum Parties

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Consumer evangelists are those who become voluntary advocates of the company; spreading their positive experience and love for the particular brand.  Every business aims high for this, and those who do it best save a lot in their marketing budgets.  When it comes to engaging their advocates and giving them special treatment, those who live the Lush life know it best.

The people who work at Lush truly know how to treat their customers – or Lushies- right.  From the first moment you step into that store and are welcomed by many friendly smiles to the generous free samples that they include with your purchases, the company definitely differentiates themselves through exceptional customer experience.

If you think treating you well in person isn’t nice enough, Lush also created an online community forum for those who are more then just the casual customer.  How is it just for the advocates? This community forum monitored by Lush admins is not promoted anywhere on their official website; only found by those who are passionate enough to.  Or if it is, it is definitely in a very discreet location.

Lushies can unite here and talk about their favourite products, how they store their products, interesting ways to use them, and ask almost any question Lush related.  The forum even includes a section called ‘Poles, Surveys & Campaigns’, where site admin can ask questions like, “What is your favourite scent?” and get direct customer feedback in a quick and nearly costless way.  Users could even start their own topic on suggestions for improvement of the company.  Here’s a snippet of some of the conversations happening:



To keep those Lushies on the forum feeling special, Lush hosts events called Lush Forum Parties where limited edition products are offered exclusively to them.  These items could only be ordered by phone and are usually only offered during specific times. Sometimes they even bring back retired products, called Retro Lush, that were once loved by many.

Here’s the link to the Lush community forum.  shhhh…

Youtube Beauty Gurus = Marketing Gurus?

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Let’s get real.  I have to admit, I’m one of those million other girls who spend hours on Youtube a day watching so-called beauty gurus sit in their room at home applying make-up on their faces.  Something about these videos, the gurus, the products and the community that makes it all so engaging and addicting. A few of my favourites are AndreasChoice, NikkiPhillippi, Missglamorazzi, and RachhLoves.  If you also like to indulge yourself in these videos, –High Five- I completely understand why you just can’t stop!

If you own a business in the health and beauty industry and you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have got some homework to do. This is a community where influencers are born, and if those influencers are advocates of your brand, you have just effortlessly created a free walking, talking and video-making advertisement.

For those who have never understood why these videos are so important, you’re in luck because I’m about to explain to you the marketing side from a first-hand point of view.

First, let’s talk about why people watch these videos and what makes them keep coming back for more.  I remember the first time I ever watched a how-to beauty video on Youtube was three years ago on Michelle Phan’s channel . Honestly, I thought it was a joke and didn’t care too much about it. (Some of you may think the same now) One day I did a simple search on a mascara that I wanted to get reviews on before I bought it, and I was given links to people’s video reviews on Google. Out of laziness, I chose to give the video review a chance rather than to read it off a beauty forum or blog. After that, I never turned back again.  The information you get from some videos is so much more than just the text alone.  Being able to visually see the product, sometimes even shown how to use it in the video adds so much more to content.  These girls make you feel like they’ve done the hard work for you and have carefully picked through and chosen the best products to show you.  Since they represent ordinary girls with honest and genuine opinions, viewers feel like they could connect with them easily and hence rely on their advice.  Plus, each channel is like a mini community where fans can interact with the beauty guru and with other fans as well.  To sum it all up, it is the engagement factor that reels people and keeps them coming back.

Here’s an example video by Missglamorazzi showing you her fall makeup, hair, and outfit.

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The successful beauty gurus can truly be crowned marketing gurus in this social world. Businesses crave for the same attention in their marketing efforts.  They want people to be talking about them, sharing their tips from them and be excited and engaged in any information they release to their consumers.

Many companies have tried to enter this Youtube world and create content as well.  None have really broke through to the success level of these powerful beauty gurus though. The more successful gurus have on average 500,000 subscribers; some surpassing the millions.  However, looking through some of the most well-known beauty brands like Lancôme, Sephora, Urban Decay, Lush, and others, MAC Cosmetics seems to be in the lead with just over 88,000 subscribers.

Why is it so hard for brands to reach the engagement level of these top beauty gurus? Lancôme, for example, is working in collaboration with the most famous guru, Michelle Phan, and still only reaching 3900 subscribers. Is it because of the real and genuine feel of the personal accounts? Or perhaps that the personal accounts only ever feature one main person as opposed to different employees or having a brand attached to it? Also- how can a brand balance between trying to be personal yet professional at the same time? To be honest, I’ve seen many brands try to emulate the feel of a personal account, yet none of them seems to have been the perfect result yet.

A channel that I would recommend keeping an eye on, though, is ChannelNineNetwork presented by Nine West. In a short span of just 3 months, they already have 6700 subscribers and over a million video views on their channel.  Quite impressive I would say!  As an advocate of these beauty videos on Youtube though, they still haven’t managed to convince me to subscribe.  They are close though! They recently featured one of my favourite gurus, NikkiPhillippi, and –I have got to say- they are on the right track on making me a daily viewer!

Why persuade your boss to use social media marketing

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Social media can be an intimidating subject to talk about and implement for some managers and CEOs.  They hear the news about how companies have lost market share due to negative commentary or how a viral hoax had spread as quick as the company’s brand loyalty dropped.  These can all be major risks involved with social media, however; simply negating it may hurt the company in the near future.

Whether you are the manager, or the employee trying to advocate going social, here are a few imperative reasons for businesses in the beauty industry to consider social media marketing.

Even in traditional marketing, each consumer goes through a process with different touch points for every purchase with the brand. Now that consumers are more inclined to seek information themselves, also known as ‘Pull marketing’, the touch points are slightly different. A basic consumer process goes like this:

  1. Consideration: at this preliminary stage, the customer is recalling the set of brands that call to mind or are available
  2. Evaluation: the customer proceeds to evaluating the different brands with certain criteria (price, size, etc)
  3. Decision: the customer will ultimately make a purchase decision
  4. Impression: the consumer will make a positive or negative impression on the overall experience of the purchase
  5. Advocate: if the consumer is satisfied with the purchase, they may share their experience and promote the brand by will   OR    Remonstrate: if the consumer is dissatisfied with the purchase, they may choose to antagonize the brand and sound complaints

At these different points of a consumer’s purchase journey, brands could use social media to influence the purchases at the right time and place.

The first and foremost action to take in social media is monitoring.  Listen to what your customers are saying about you, your products, and competitors. Monitoring is necessary in all touch-points of the consumer’s journey.  If your company has just launched a new hair-care product and wants to know the response of the launch, Twitter, Youtube, and community forums are a great location to listen to the conversation.  Perhaps purchasers love the content of the product but find the packaging inconvenient; this would pose as an opportunity of improvement.

After finding a lead through listening- trust me- your company will need to join the conversation and respond back on the same channels. For example, referencing back to the issue of negative complaints going viral, the ‘remonstrate’ stage is a critical stage.  Let’s pretend that one of your organic skin care products start to naturally change colour after 3 months of use. Sally, who bought this product may not be aware that this natural colour change is safe and complain on her own personal social media sites.  Soon enough, one friend will tell another about the faults of this product and so on. Now multiply this by the amount of Sallys in this world.  If your company can respond back ensuring the quality of the product, you could turn things around and have yourself a happy customer.

Now let’s say that you have many loyal fans of your cosmetic company.  Your customers come up to you in the store and tell you much they love your products and how they always recommend your brand to their friends. OPPORTUNITY! Through social media, your business can facilitate engagement and conversation with all your fans.  Your potential customers want to hear those genuine reviews from those customers in the ‘advocate’ stage as much you do.  Solution? Create a community blog or forum. Check out Sephora’s BeautyTalk forum for reference.

Finally, social media can simplify the purchase decision and complete the purchase.  Whether it is using some sort of promotional code on social media sites or discounts for targeted groups of people, the ‘evaluation’ and ‘decision’ stage is primarily where the money is at.  You want your customers to feel like there is no competition and that there is no need to further extend the search. However, if you didn’t even exist on the online search, good luck trying to stay on their consideration set.  Check out my article about How to SEO in the beauty industry if you want to improve on that.

Next time your company decides to re-allocate the marketing budget, you should strongly consider these points when questioning about going social.

Social Films: A social media campaign that has yet to be exhausted

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We all know that social media, or web 2.0, is an important or even essential ingredient to marketers of the business world today. What makes social media so different from traditional advertisement though?  SOCIAL of course! The interaction between the business and the fans through casual conversations, pictures and videos.  It’s a chance to listen and monitor what your customers are saying and even better- to influence them in the right direction.

Recently, Intel and Toshiba partnered to create a campaign that included almost every

aspect of social media. In July of 2011, they worked with D.J. Caruso, the director of Disturbia, and created a social film on Youtube, consisting of 8 episodes, called Inside.

 

They set up a story of a girl called Christina, played by Emmy Rossum, who wakes up trapped in a room with her laptop. What was her only choice of escape? Through the help and support of the fans on the Internet.  Everyone could participate in influencing the plot of the story through Facebook posts and tweets. One lucky audience even had the chance to star alongside Emmy by Youtube auditions.

On Facebook, each character of the movie had their own scripted Facebook pages where the fans could interact with them on a personal level.  Here is a clip of a fan’s posts:

The film actually took the advice of this post in the next episode; an example of how the audience’s Facebook posts could ultimately change the storyline.

Another creative way to get more viewers was with the power of the ‘Like’.  On one of the episodes, Christine showed her viewers a note written by her kidnapper.

This steered lots of new viewers on board and pushed the current fans to spread the word.  Smart eh?

Here’s a video of all the audience interactions that took place during the campaign if you’re interested:

It is incredible to see so many different types of people from all around the world work together on this one project.  This is what social media is all about.  Connecting people who never would have had the chance to before and bonding them with similarities and interests

Now how much BUZZ did this create?

  • It was watched over 50 millions times and counting
  • There were 4 million interactions with the main character on Facebook
  • Hundreds of stories on the press including comments from Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Washington Post and Good Morning America

And how does this all bring back to Intel and Toshiba?

The Toshiba laptop that Christina uses is one of the main characters of the film.  It was the reliable and technologically advanced device that saved the character in the end.

Now my question to you is: Why haven’t I seen this kind of campaign in the health and beauty industry yet? It may not have to be as grand as this social film, but I have seen other smaller campaigns like “Away we happened” sponsored by AT&T. This size of campaign is absolutely feasible for companies like Lush and Lululemon. I’m interested to see what the future of social films would bring us when more companies decide to adopt this brilliant idea. It’s a happy family connecting the business and its fans through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and a whole lot of conversations.

Here is the full ‘Inside’ movie:

What is SEO? / How to SEO in the beauty industry?

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You have a great business model set up for your natural soaps, vegan eye shadows, or whatever fancy schmancy beauty product you have. A simple website built.  Social media set up. Now as you try to Google search ‘How to increase views on my website’, you come across this recurring term—search engine optimization (SEO).

What is SEO exactly?

SEO is the process of increasing traffic to a website through organic or un-paid search.  Most search engines determine a website’s ranking of visibility through a computed algorithm.  I will begin my discussion on this algorithm with a short 3 minute video from Search Engine Land.

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For those who have more than 3 minutes, here are my additional insights into these stated five factors.  As the video said, the first factor is that ‘Words matter’. Every trackable word on your website is analyzed by Google to determine what it is all about.  It is high quality content that search engines crave, so make sure that your material is useful content that aims to give the best user experience.   When I say trackable, I mean websites with HTML text that can be read by crawler-based search engines. For example, if your website was completely flash-based, the search engine simply sees everything as pictures and wouldn’t be able to use any of your text for search.

Second, ‘Titles matter’. Let’s give you an influential example. In 2011, Kate Smith wrote on her blog that Lush began using SEO on their new website.  She explained how Lush has recently retitled their most popular product ‘bath bombs’, or <title>Bath Bombs</title> in HTML code, rather than what they had always titled bath ballistics, <title>Bath Ballistics</title>.  Reason? Most people call them ‘bath bombs’ rather than ‘bath ballistics’.  Be cautious of what your company titles things and what your customer actually prefers calling them.

Third, ‘Links matter’. Like the video said, the number of incoming links to your site is recognized by Google as good referrals.  Obviously, the more the better. How do you increase the numbers? The major thing is to look back at factor number one-words matter.  Good content will always attract others’ conversation.  You can also think about adding your site’s URL to your signature when posting on other beauty forums and/or submitting your site to different directories.

Fourth, ‘words in links matter’. The video suggested that if other websites linked your site with the word ‘make-up’, then you will score a better ranking when people search for make-up. However, if you’re a start-up and not a lot of people know about you yet, I would suggest start linking different parts of your website together.  For example, if you were writing an article about ‘how to use hairspray’ and you wanted to direct people to your previous article about recommended hairspray brands, I would suggest publishing, ‘there are a few hair spray recommendations that I have suggested’ as opposed to ‘click here  to see my recommended hair spray brands’. (Underlined words represent links)

Finally, the last point in the video is just a summarization of doing well in all the above factors. Basically, if you provide good quality and recent content with clear titles and links, you’re on your way to SEO savy-ness.

ONE LAST TIP! Tags or keywords do not improve SEO on google search.  It may help with other search engines, but because of over-abuse by many websites owners previously, Google no longer accounts for tags/keywords in the ranking of websites.

And just to clarify, SEO is only for un-paid or organic search improvement.  If you want to pay for better search options, that will be covered in a later post.