Seamless Brands

This week’s lectures were delivered by a guest lecturer who spoke to us about seamless brands, and the most important thing to take from the lecture was that a brand is about the experience from beginning to end, and making it as easy and quick as possible for the consumer is what it is all about.

The smallest of things such as error message can have an impact on the consumer, and personalised/funny ones can make the experience much more amusing for the person surfing the internet, for example http://www.limpfish.com/notfound.html ^[1]. An error message can convey what the brand is about; it creates dialogue between the brand and the consumer. Another small details that makes the difference is things such as Wimbledon, with the branded serviettes, it all adds to the experience of being at Wimbledon.

With the digital world fast expanding brands must find more and more ways of becoming integrated into their customers everyday lives. The digital touchpoints must be recognised as “seamless engagement opportunities that can keep customers connected to a brand story throughout the day” (Martin and Todorov 2010 p61)[2]

The experience as mentioned above is an attitude of how information is conveyed – “information manipulation”. Even if an experience has not happened yet, there is a need to think in a holistic way.

The reading this week was on innovation and about creating aesthetically pleasing products. Alessi particularly interested me, in the fact that they work on the theory that people buy products and not meanings (Verganti 2009)[3], and they moved against the dominant aesthetic standards, and Verganti assumed that there must be an innovation process, however, once in a specialist company; he found that the innovation process did not exist. Alessi also work on the theory that people buy products that they have an emotional attachment to. Jawahar and Maheswari (2009) agree with this and state that there is a synergy between the loyalty of a brand, and having an emotional attachment[4].

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[1] Barton, D., 2010. Limpfish.com. US. Available from: http://www.limpfish.com/notfound.html. [Accessed 25 February 2011].

[2] Martin, K., and Todorov, I., 2010. How will digital platforms be harnessed in 2010, and how will they change the way people interact with brands? Journal of Interactive Advertising, 10 (2), 61 – 66.

[3] Verganti , R., 2009. Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovation What Things Mean. Harvard Business Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

[4] Jawahar, D., and Maheswari, R., 2009. Service Perception: Emotional Attachment As a Mediator of the Relationship Between Service Performance and Emotional Brand. ICFAI Journal of Marketing Management, 8 (2), 7-22.

Mobile Applications and Communication

Mobile communication has been around for years, with Japan being the innovators with mobile technology, they were sending and receiving emails via their mobile phones in the 1990s.

Now with smartphones, and apps taking over the mobile market, there is more opportunity than ever to be able to access people when and wherever you want. According to www.mobithinking.com there are over 200 million mobile users of Facebook[1], as the need to be in constant contact with others to find out what you may be missing out on over takes current reality, this can be described as the “culture of availability”.

However, with technology becoming more and more advanced, Mintel[2] is now expecting the tablet devices such as the BlackBerry PlayBook, or Apple’s iPad, to become big competition for the smartphone market. One application that has really taken off recently is Skype, and by mid-2011 Skype will be offering Skype-to-Skype calls via 4G smartphones[3].

Is there now the chance for applications to specifically target consumers, with their previous downloading history? Can this be tracked, as a way of direct marketing to the users of smartphones?

The article by Stump, Gong and Li (2008)[4] examined the basic links between the adoption of mobile phones and age, education and income, however this was written in 2008, before the big uptake of smartphones, and so this is currently out-dated.

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[1] dotMobi., 2011. Global mobile statistics 2011: all quality mobile marketing research, mobile Web stats, subscribers, ad revenue, usage, trends... USA. Available from: http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats [Accessed 18th February 2011].

[2] Mintel, 2011. Mobile Phones and Network Providers – UK, January 2011. London: Mintel International Group Ltd.

[3] Mintel, 2011. Mobile Phones and Network Providers – UK, January 2011. London: Mintel International Group Ltd.

[4] Stump, Gong and Zhan Li ,2008. Exploring the Digital Divide in Mobile-phone Adoption Levels across Countries, Journal of Macromarketing 28:397

Interactivity and Relationship Marketing

This week we are looking at the relationship between interactivity and relational marketing, and how important it is to engage the customers (existing or potential) into wanting to know more, and to get them to spread the word.

This was seen in ‘Doctor Who and the convergence of culture’ (Perryman 2008)[1]; the cult viewers that watched the programme felt as though they were in the story. They were able to follow and create new scenarios for the characters and also suggest what the hidden and unexplained messages may mean.

Another platform, in which the BBC tried to engage their consumers, was to create “Tardisodes”; short one minute episodes downloaded onto the mobile or that can be watched online, this was a different way in which to connect with their consumers, however it wasn’t as well received as they would have liked, with only 40,000 mobile downloads over the series. I think that they were not advertised enough, as a Doctor Who watcher, I had never even heard of these “Tardisodes”.

Relationship marketing can be defined as “creating, maintaining, and enhancing long-term relationships with individual customers as well as other stakeholders for mutual benefit”[2]. (Belch and Belch 2009, p9).

T-Mobile established a relationship with their customers through the flash dance mob in Liverpool Street train station back in 2009. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM) It generated a huge amount of media interest, as well as the people that were there in the train station being able to video the dance on their phones and send it to others, and post it on social media sites such as Facebook. Virals are internet phenomenons with the T-Mobile dance clocking up over 26 million hits on its YouTube page.

The dance was such a success that they created another advert in which members of the public could get involved; this was a sing-off in Trafalgar Square London. This again was filmed on people’s phones, and got them to interact with the company, this video again went viral. Web 2.0 has had a huge influence on the amount of interactivity a company and its consumers has.

But, this marketing plan had the potential to go wrong, but this video shows the amount of work that was put into making the dance work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVFNM8f9WnI this is the making of the T-Mobile dance.

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[1] Perryman, N., 2008. Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in `Transmedia Storytelling' Convergence, the international Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14-21.

[2] Belch, G., and Belch, M., 2009. Advertising and Promotion An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. 8^th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.

Benefit Cosmetics and Social Media

Everyday we are surrounded by social media and no matter how hard we try we cannot escape it. Ever since the early 1990s, and the dotcom boom, internet usage has been increasing more and more, with “60% of UK households having internet access”[1].

Everyone is familiar with concept or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Our guest lecturer from Base One showed us their social media landscape, and this was incredibly interesting to see all the different social media outlets and how they can be used by a company to communicate. We can find out the latest information about a person or business and what they have been up to. MySpace was the trend before Facebook, but that has since largely disappeared, with it being used more for music releases,

and new bands promoting themselves. The new phenomenon is Twitter, launched in July 2006[2]; it has reached over 65 million tweets everyday. Many organisations have a twitter page, but are they really necessary?

Benefit Cosmetics is a high end make up brand. It has a Facebook page, Twitter account, blog, and regularly emails its’ customers with promotions and information on new products. Their website shows that they are a fun brand and do not wish to take themselves too seriously. Their mission statement includes words such as “pesky” and “wacky” clearly showing that the brand still reflects the people that first came up with the ideas. Benefit markets their products and services predominantly to women aged 18 – 35 and this is reflected in their pricing strategy (products are premium priced between £9.50 and £29.50).

Benefit also has a YouTube page, these videos show tutorials on how to get the most out of their products, and also behind the scenes footage. These many ways of having social media widely available means that anyone can watch these videos, and get the latest updates on products.

Benefit also have a LinkedIn page, this is here for the more professional approach, although it is not updated as much as their Twitter or Facebook page. LinkedIn is not as well-known as the other platforms of social media, but it is expanding at an alarming rate. It was launched in 2003, but has taken many years to expand to where it is today.

However, is a Facebook page really necessary, do Benefit really need to tweet everyday with their latest updates, and is the blog fundamental to keeping customers interested? The company would not necessarily fold if they chose not to, nonetheless is this essential to their marketing strategy, or are they just following the crowd?

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[1] McStay, A., 2010. Digital Advertising. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[2] Arington, M., 2006. Odeo Releases Twittr. 1st Edition. USA: TechCrunch. Available from: http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/ [Accessed 4 February 2011].