Leuke actie van Ikea voor de opening van de eerste winkel in New York: door de hele stad doken ineens grote kartonnen dozen op waarin hele Ikea interieurs te zien waren. Kartonnen appartementen dus. Hier zie je er een op Cadman Plaza.
Verder werden enorme sculpturen geplaatst in de vorm van typisch New Yorkse dingen zoals het Empire State Building of Brooklyn Bridge, ook al van karton. Voor sommige daarvan waren meer dan 1000 kartonnen dozen nodig.
Op internet reageren de meeste mensen heel positief op de actie, maar uiteraard zitten er ook weer de nodige kritische commentaren tussen. Bijvoorbeeld deze: ” Ikea’s great and all, but it’s frustrating to shop in a store where bedspreads are called “Dahlbrugg” and bookshelves “Lenkii” or some such thing, instead of being labelled what they are.”
Maar ook serieuzere klachten als zorgen over weekendfiles in de buurt van de winkel. Dit geeft maar weer eens aan dat je als adverteerder niet kunt verwachten dat mensen zich in hun discussie uitsluitend beperken tot die leuke campagne die jij net hebt georganiseerd. Consumenten, en met name vrouwen, hebben een soort holistische kijk op de zaak en nemen alle dingen die ze ooit over een merk hebben gehoord mee in de discussie. Voor merken betekent dat een heel andere houding ten opzichte van consumenten: niet alleen maar leuk zijn aan de marketing kant en vervolgens die klant maar vervelend vinden als hij of zij ineens service vraagt.
Justien Marseille zei hier vorige week iets interessants over tijdens het minicongres van de VEA What women want. Haar lezing ging over de feminisering van de wereld en daarin past volgens haar ook een andere houding van bedrijven. Tot nu toe gaat het bedrijven alleen maar om het moment van de verkoop, maar het zou veel meer moeten gaan om het aangaan van een relatie met een consument. Dat is typisch iets dat bij vrouwen goed aanslaat.
Het oude paradigma van ‘hard selling’ is inderdaad heel erg verouderd. Eigenlijk is het heel vreemd toch, al die bedrijven die zo hard hun best doen om je binnen te krijgen als klant, om je dan vervolgens te behandelen als een soort vervelend insect. Helaas is dat nog wel dagelijkse praktijk. En dat is niet de meest succesvolle aanpak als je vrouwen wilt bereiken.
Marianne van Leeuwen on June 19th 2008 in Cases, Digital media
Nice idea on the Adage 3 min news: people could upload their photo’s and greetings for mothers day to www.kinemo.com for free, and they were then displayed for 5 seconds on a huge interactive billboard on Times Square. And, very clever: you could then create your personal postcard with a picture from your Times Square billboard, although this costs $69, a bit too much for a postcard…
Marianne van Leeuwen on May 27th 2008 in Digital media
Great idea from 3Iying to ask girls to upload their ‘flip an ad’ on Youtube. Check the flipped print ads on their Flickr photostream. This makes so much sense - doesn’t everyone know that most ads are really stupid and don’t connect to your life at all. Just check the girl’s comments in the slideshow and see how many advertising ideas just don’t land with girls.
Today was the first day of the M2W (marketing to women) conference in Chicago with more or less everyone working in the field present; that is a lot of American agencies and brands and 3 people from Europe, all from Amsterdam (2 from Bosley and me)… This shows again that the topic of female marketing is not on the European agenda yet.
What struck me was the fact that virtually all lectures where about the changes in the media landscape and the importance of digital media for female marketing. An important insight is that women are now digitally empowered. They are no longer overwhelmed by the amount of content on offer. They no longer need the big internet portals to help them lead the way on the internet, instead they visit hundreds of websites, including many niche sites. They are online for about 13 hours a week, which is really a lot compared to the 3 hours they reserve for magazines (according to Glam Media, an online publishing network targeting women with 64 million unique visitors). So women have shifted from the analog to the digital world, hurray! As a result, they can now decide what’s important to them, on her time and on her terms and brands can do no more than align themselves to that.
By now no one can have missed out on the importance of Word of Mouth and of course the internet is THE medium to facilitate this. But the full potential of word of mouth on the internet is uncovered by women. Word of mouth is something that literally comes naturally to women - women use more words than men - an average of 20.000 a day against 7.000 for men, and that’s just the words they speak out loud.
So women are better at word of mouth than men. 84% of women tell others when they’ve had a great brand experience.
That’s something you have to tap into as a brand. Brands that facilitate conversations grow 4 times faster than other brands.
It’s no surprise that in the US, a service has been developed to help brands to organize word of mouth on the internet. Shespeaks has a network of over 50.000 women in the US who can try out products.
At the marketing to women conference I heard a case about nail polish brand OPI (I love them, I have tons of crazy colors from them) who were really successful using product sampling, discussions and coupons online.
They sampled their Nicsticks, a new easy to use nail polish to the members of Shespeak and 96% of the users discussed the item, 73% indicated they intended to purchase the product and there was a 220% increase in sales. Besides that, 80% of the coupons were passed on to other people. I liked the way OPI approached the program. Next month they will test the effectiveness by comparing results of an ad in Glamour to the results of the panel. They also mentioned that results from this way of testing are less distorted than results of focus groups, as you always get 2 or 3 people who dominate such a group, whereas online everyone has the same voice. That was a new insight to me, but it makes a lot of sense!
Marianne van Leeuwen on May 9th 2008 in Cases, Digital media, Female marketing
Really interesting stuff, this study” about women and digital media (mainly Internet) and how the interaction impacts their lives.
Yahoo was one of the commissioners, probably as part of the development of their new and already much criticized women’s platform Shine
Some key findings:
- internet is now the leading medium for women; with 3.3 hours a day it’s more important than television (2,9 hours) and still growing fast
- the content sought online is not found in typical women’s magazines (news, weather, games, finance)
- women go online during the entire day and easily mix work and personal activities
- women are shopping online more then ever before
Looking at the main navigation of Shine:
Fashion + Beauty
Healthy Living
Entertainment
Parenting
Love + Sex
Work + Money
Food
At Home
Astrology
I’m not sure if Yahoo has read it’s own report very closely?
Some remarks from the report: “The sites that were most frequently mentioned by women were not what could be found in typical women’s magazines: news, weather, shopping, games and finance topped the list. It turns out, a higher percentage of women visit sports sites than astrology sites”. Still, Shine opted for astrology instead of sports. Their main navigation reminds me a lot about all the zillions of typical women’s portals.
There’s an interesting discussion about the merits of portals aimed at women commenting to ablogpost from Holly Buchanan.
Marianne van Leeuwen on May 5th 2008 in Digital media, Female marketing
