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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

Filed under General Marketing Tagged with blue cross marketing, compliance marketing, CRM marketing, database marketing, direct choice, direct choice inc, direct mail, direct mail advertising agencies, direct mail advertising companies, direct mail campaign, direct mail fulfillment, direct mail response, direct mail strategies, direct marketing advertising companies, direct marketing consultant, full service advertising agency, Philadelphia direct marketing

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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Healthcare Re-Branding: Not Your Same Old Health Insurance

July 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

All is not status quo in the healthcare marketing sector. Seemingly a coincidence, many of the insurance biggies and several Blues have introduced fresh, spanking new brand tweaks in the wake of the Supreme court’s recent Obamacare decision. Prescient, anticipatory brand architecture redos appear to have been on advertising agendas coast to coast.

Aetna is a great example. The old “Aetna, glad I met ya” days are long gone. The logo alone is a tectonic shift in brand identification. In place of the old blue (of course) wordtype is a new approach in lowercase, which is, well, friendlier. Most revolutionary is the use of color. There is no guideline. No limit, virtually. Whatever color you want to use as a designer, to match the piece you’re crafting, you can use. This would appear to be saying, “This brand is all about you. Instead of our color—all about us—there are as many Aetnas as there are members. We can adapt to your flexible needs. We no longer need a capital ‘A’ in our name because it’s You with a capital ‘Y’ that concerns us most.”

Why—or Y—now? Why is Aetna, along with myriad others, moving like lemmings toward the kinder-gentler brand cliff?

Research indicates that many Americans—both individuals and small and large groups—are not feeling the warm and fuzzy toward the companies to which they pay increasingly higher and higher premiums and co-pays. The most satisfied members, not shockingly, are those who are regular claim-filers who “get something” for their premium dollars. Those with the greatest brand resentment are the crowd who are relatively healthy and regularly envision what else they could be doing with those several hundred dollars a month per person. (A new hybrid, perhaps?)

The response by these brands is a proactive attempt to change and influence consumer attitudes and spending in what will become a healthcare provider Olympics. That is, a Darwinistic fight to the finish over the healthy among us. It has already started, with positioning designed to appeal to the lifestyle-focused, gym-going, supplement-taking, good-cholesterol-carrying, ideal-weight non-smokers of the populace.

Let the branding begin.

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