A look at The Year In Digital (social media, online commerce, mobile, content sharing) as well as the 2011 luxury brand digital "geniuses" from a year's worth of L2's Digital IQ Index® research.
L2, a think tank for Digital Innovation, has selected what they are referring to as the Eight Most Innovative Digital Programs in Prestige/Luxury and 2011′s Geniuses. Brands that understand how Americans interact and engage with social media, spending more time on social sites than they do on portal sites (with 95% of that social networking time spent now spent on Facebook)
These brands have figured out how to make meaning in the fire hose of daily tweets and video uploads. They understand the implications of a world where e-commerce volume will reach $197 billion by year end (Amazon is 1/3 of that number), 85 percent of the population is blanketed with a commercial wireless signal, and Facebook hosts tens times more photos than the Library of Congress.
L2 states that "The taste for luxury goods will always endure, but the digital world moves quickly. Today’s giants have created tremendous opportunity for themselves in the marketplace, but on the web there’s always room for the rise of the unexpected, the meme, and the new, next, next thing."
And here are their picks for the The Eight Most Innovative Digital Programs in Prestige:
#1 Burberry
#2 Lancome
#3 Oscar de la Renta
#4 Estee Lauder
#5 Dior
#6 Sephora
#7 Benefit Cosmetics
#8 Kate Spade
Consumers are hungry and today digital represents the greatest opportunity for brands to punch above their weight class. As their benchmarking tracks into 2012 it looks like there are quite a few brands bulking up and throwing punches.
Here are their picks for the 2011 Digital Geniuses
Facebook: BMW, Audi, Belvedere Vodka, Bare Escentuals, Infiniti, Clinique, Ferrari, Bobbi Brown, Lexus, Tory Burch, Lancome, Johnny Walker
Travel: Airlines – Southwest, Delta, Continental Airlines, American Airlines; Hotels – Westin, W Hotels, Hilton
L2 looks at the state of digital (social media, online commerce, mobile, content sharing) as well as luxury and prestige brand digital "geniuses" from a year's worth of our Digital IQ Index® research.
Be sure to check out their informative library of individual videos of the ways brands are using digital here on Vimeo.
Al Gore, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize, stayed on his marketing theme.
Consumer behavior as a route to effective marketing was a central focus of the largest gathering ever of an influential trade organization.
The 1,200 people who attended the 97th annual conference of the Association of National Advertisers, held here from Thursday through yesterday, heard speaker after speaker address the growing popularity of what is known as behavioral targeting, as opposed to basing pitches on consumer attitudes, opinions or perceptions.
The ability of new media to monitor what consumers are doing — like keeping track of which Web sites they visit — is fueling the interest in behavioral targeting. Several speakers also described how they were using traditional media to more precisely aim advertising at consumers based on behavior, through steps like tailored television commercials.
The Microsoft Corporation is investing in “well-targeted advertising,” said Steven A. Ballmer, chief executive, “as aggressively as we’ve ever invested in anything.” Its acquisitions include the $6 billion purchase in August of aQuantive, a leader in online advertising.
“What’s the joke about the egg and bacon breakfast, ‘Who’s more committed, the pig or the chicken?’” he added. “We’re the pig at the breakfast; we’re committed to the future of digital advertising.”
Rather than fearing the arrival of technology companies like Microsoft into the ad business, Mr. Ballmer said, marketers ought to realize “there’s an exciting future for all of us.”
“The more we know about customer behavior, the more every ad is relevant,” he added, and relevance improves the chances that a consumer will pay attention to an ad.
For example, as more TV sets are “fed with intelligent signals that come over the Internet,” Mr. Ballmer said, advertisers will be able to deliver personalized marketing messages based on online searches. The fact that his wife has been searching online for tile for their beach house could lead to a commercial for Italian tile turning up amid the beer and car spots as they watch TV sports together on a Sunday afternoon, he said.
A commercial like that would not typically be expected during a Seahawks game, he added, “but it’s in context — not in the context of the show, but in the context of her behavior.”
Roger W. Adams, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Home Depot, described how his company regarded its Web site as “a learning laboratory” as it spent more time and money “on understanding our customer better.”
One finding was that “the underlying component of the emotional connection to the brand is the power of ‘I did it,’” he added, “as the ownership of your home becomes very personal because you created something” after buying materials for do-it-yourself projects at a Home Depot store.
“We’re experimenting with a lot of behavioral targeting, online and offline,” Mr. Adams said in an interview after his speech, in moving away from a “one size fits all” approach using ads in mass media like TV and print.
As a retailer, he added, Home Depot has the advantage of access to “individual customer purchase history” as it seeks to customize ads.
“There are different messages in different media for different consumers,” Mr. Adams said. “It’s incredibly complex, but that’s the way it is.”
For instance, he said, Home Depot has achieved positive returns by segmenting its campaigns for the Hispanic market, creating ads for “acculturated Hispanics” — those who are second- or third-generation Americans — that differ from ads for consumers who almost always speak Spanish.
Robert C. Lachky, executive vice president for global industry development and chief creative officer at Anheuser-Busch, discussed in an interview how his company, like Home Depot, is segmenting its customers.
Anheuser-Busch is taking “a bit of a deeper dive,” he added, going beyond factors like age, gender and ethnicity to aim at customers through “use occasions.”
For example, a beer drinker might order a domestic light beer while watching a baseball game at a sports bar and a full-flavor import while on a date at a nice restaurant.
Anheuser-Busch sought to tap into the power of the Internet this year with an ambitious online project that offered entertainment programming at a Web site named bud.tv. But visitor traffic fell far below initial predictions, and the content is being rethought.
The programming “had nothing to do with our brands,” Mr. Lachky said during his speech. “Branded content is what the consumer wants, and it’s what we’ll use that space for.”
For example, a video clip called “Swear Jar,” which was recently added to the Web site (and is shown below), shows how a company’s employees start to enthusiastically lace their conversations with obscenities after learning that the money being collected every time they curse will go to “buy something for the office, like a case of Bud Light.”
The previous highest turnout for the association’s annual conference was last year, when nearly 1,000 people attended. The sharp gains since 2002, when attendance bottomed out at around 250, followed a change in leadership at the association, which has 400 member companies, and the recruitment of widely known speakers from giant companies.
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This year, the roster also included Wendy Clark, senior vice president for advertising at AT&T; James R. Stengel, global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble; and Al Gore.
Mr. Gore spoke on Saturday, a day after he learned he would share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising awareness about climate change. But his speech was not about global warming, politics or the awards he has received, which include an Emmy and an Oscar.
Rather, Mr. Gore, who was greeted with a standing ovation, wore his hat as the chairman and co-founder, with Joel Hyatt, of Current TV, a cable network and Web sites (current.tv and current.com) that offer younger viewers the chance to create programming and commercials.
Mr. Gore played for the audience examples of Current TV programs and “V-Cams,” or viewer-created advertising messages, for sponsors like L’Oréal, Sony, T-Mobile and Toyota.
Mr. Gore was invited months ago to address the conference, which carried the theme “Transforming the Marketing Landscape.”
Still, said Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive of the association, it was Mr. Gore’s choice to stick with his speech, titled “Consumer-Generated Media: The New Marketing Paradigm,” rather than discuss global warming or the Nobel Prize. The four questions Mr. Gore answered after his remarks were also limited to marketing.
Below is part of an article from Trendwatching.com on what they've coined as Transparency Tyranny-the effect of online consumer reviews, habits and posts in regards to marketing and sales.
Really interesting. Read on....
Remember the promises of flawless matching of supply and demand, and limitless consumer power, when the web burst onto the scene a dozen years ago? While the last few years didn’t disappoint (consumers are already enjoying near-full transparency of prices and, in categories like travel and music, near-full transparency of opinions as well), 2007 could be the year in which TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY really starts scaring the shit out of non-performing brands. Why? For one, 1+ billion consumers are now online, and the majority of them have been online for years. They're skilled bargain seekers and ‘best of the best’ hunters, they're avid online networkers and they're opinionated reviewers and advisors (tripadvisor.com now boasts 5,000,000+ travel reviews).
1+ billion consumers are now online and the majority of them have been online for years. They're skilled bargain seekers and ‘best of the best’ hunters, they're avid online networkers and they're opinionated reviewers and advisors. And there will no shortage of future contributors and viewers, especially with younger generations weighing in heavily; those that are born to the web, to whom contributing online is a given. Simply put: there will be many more consumers posting reviews, and they will increasingly consider them an integral part of their relationships with brands and businesses.
The non-competitive and the downright incompetent have very few stones left to hide under: never before have consumers’ purchase decisions been so strongly influenced by all kinds of transparency. In fact, TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY now rules:
"Old economy fog is clearing: no longer can incompetence, below-par performance, ignored global standards, anti-social & anti-eco behavior, or opaque pricing be obscured. In its place has come a transparent, fully informed marketplace, where producers have no excuse left to underperform. TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY for some, TRANSPARENCY TRIUMPH for others."
TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY | Facts and figures
Some numbers to convince those execs in your organization who still don’t see the TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY deluge coming…
80% of online shopping time is spent researching products rather than buying them. (TechCrunch)
71% of online shoppers read reviews, making it the most widely read consumer-generated content. (Forrester)
In a test of product conversion with and without product ratings by customers. Conversion nearly doubled, going from .44% to 1.04% after the same product displayed its five-star rating. (Marketing Experiments Journal)
60 percent of online shoppers provide feedback about a shopping experience, and are more likely to give feedback about a positive experience than a negative one. (JupiterResearch)
User-generated ratings and reviews are the second most important site feature behind search. Retailers who adopt ratings and reviews as a differentiator and retention strategy will gain market share. (JupiterResearch)
In a study of 2,000 shoppers – 92% deemed customer reviews as “extremely” or “very” helpful and ~ 71% used keyword searches to find products. (eTailing Group)
59% of their users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews. (Bizrate)
Only 26% of the 137 top retailers surveyed offered customer ratings and reviews, but 96% of them ranked customer ratings and reviews as an effective or very effective tactic at driving conversion. (Forrester)
63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews. (CompUSA & iPerceptions study)
Conversion rates are higher on products with less than perfect reviews (less than 5 stars) than those without reviews at all, indicating that the customer feels that the product has been properly reviewed by other customers. (Burpee)
39 percent of those who bought from sites with reviews cite the reviews as the primary factor influencing the purchase decision. (Foresee Results Study, 2006)
