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Icon nation

August 28, 2012 Leave a Comment

#Yourpurchases. Don’t know about you, but we’re seeing incredible influence over consumer and business buying from Facebook and Twitter. Those little icons pack a big-bucks punch when it comes to brand influence and driving preference.

A recent study from the University of Miami and consumer research firms Empirica [link: empirica.com] and StyleCaster [link: stylecaster.com] seems to confirm all this. Shopping sites such as Amazon.com feature the icons as you check out and urge you to “Share” whatever you’re shopping for with your friends.

The study team asked 187 men and women between the ages of 18 and 40 to look at online products and to rate their likelihood of making a purchase. The product pages were designed specifically for the study; some included small social media icons while others did not.

The researchers found that if the product was something people would be proud to show off—like a new watch or expensive cologne—the presence of social media icons increased the likelihood of purchase by 25 percent. If the product was something unflattering—say, acne cream—the likelihood of purchase dropped roughly 25 percent when social media icons were present, the study says.

Not a huge surprise. We wouldn’t want to share stuff like that, either. Nor are we jazzed enough about mundane service providers to “like” them on Facebook. (That’s what Angie’s List [link: angieslist.com] is for.)

Moral of the story: it’s not enough just to show the icons on your website. In the age of social influence, the smart marketer invites more engagement and a firmer stake in the ground with consumers by the command to “share” certain purchase choices. It’s the old “friend get a friend” tactic on steroids.

Are there no more secrets? Is this a brag, as in “I just bought a Rolex online, yay me!” Is this the ultimate, “I shop, therefore I am?”

Potentially. But it’s here, and it’s powerful. Like lemmings jumping off a cliff, a certain segment of consumers seems to be motivated to buy simply by the fact that a friend has. It’s like tweens at the mall, catching buying fever from each other like a case of measles.

#Areyousharing?

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Direct Choice Inc. is a full-service direct marketing agency that has worked with national and regional brands in a wide variety of vertical markets. In addition to this blog, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

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Take. Risks. Or. Die.

August 14, 2012 Leave a Comment

Like with politics, the pressure to play it safe in marketing is a huge temptation. In DM, we get to eat based on our results. And our results are usually grounded in data from past performance.

How many times have we developed creative concepts labeled something like “Tried and true” or “Sure to win,” along with “More of a risk” and “Potentially more breakthrough” but then watched clients go with “Tried and true”? You can’t really blame them for wanting to manage risk, especially when it’s their budget dollars on the line.

In uncertain economic times—and in a political year to boot—being “safe” has its undeniable appeal. The appearance of control, the ability to predict

revenues, the (mythological) certainty of retaining one’s job…all good stuff.

Truth is, it’s death in slow-mo. In today’s streamlined retail and services space, the third-and-fourth-tier folks are in a scary position. Unless you’re first to be second, you face extinction.

When you come down to it, all the big marketing success stories have had one thing in common. Each has disrupted their category. Doing it differently. Writing their own rules. Setting a standard. Instead of small incremental gains (“We beat the control by 0.8%!!!!”) these brands have created a boffo marketing strategy aligned with their brand strategy of distinction and Unique Selling Proposition. And they’ve set out with a risk-tolerant strategic and creative approach designed to get them noticed and remembered.

Whether it’s Progressive’s Flo-centric TV awareness and direct mail campaigns (which seemed retro-goofy when they first started out), Apple’s category-defining simplicity or Capital One’s smorgasbord of Vikings, Visigoths, Huns, snarky David Spade and pain-in-the-butt Alec Baldwin, one brand point is clear: we stand alone because we look, sound and act as if we do.

The risk-averse should take note: post-election, when Wall Street settles down and management gets back to business, the big winners will be the Turks who can deliver not just small improvements, but monumental gains over time. And the big wins don’t happen for the shy.

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How Your Kid Talks: Listen to the Marketing Future

July 17, 2012 Leave a Comment

With an incredible number of today’s tweens and teens armed with smartphones, you gotta wonder just how smart even the smartest of them is. Their communications are an interesting peek into what marketers of tomorrow will be saying and how/where they’ll be saying it.

A few things that stand out:

The end of the subtle play on words. This generation tends toward more linear, obvious and less introspective use of vocabulary. Gone will be the double entendres, puns and other clever associative headlines in marketing and advertising copy.
Less. Bored with length, raised on texting, the future looks brief interms of communications’ length and detail.
Visual interactivity. We’re already getting there, what with Augmented Reality and rich text, but expect much more of it when our kids are the ones making marketing decisions.
Brand, brand, brand. This is the crowd weaned on the specificity of particular brand relationships. By age eight, many of them have already developed highly sensitive brand preferences, be it Coke vs. Pepsi, Droid vs. iPhone, Hollister vs. Abercrombie.
The end of marketing as we know it? Many do not read mail, check email, or crack a newspaper. Marketing channels of the future will have to interrupt the growing consumer passivity and resistance to “attraction” media to get their messages across.
Teleservices redux. Phone marketing will need a re-think, as a large percent of “young people” (as many of our mothers used to call us) avoid the “commitment” of lengthy phone time, preferring the efficiency of texting.
Fleet of foot. Products and services will need marketing teams who are fast on the prowl for the next hot gathering place, whether it’s digital, virtual or physical. Facebook has been co-opted by moms and corporate brands, so expect the next generations of secret, cool online clustering to re-invent themselves with increasing frequency.