A ll Posts

A New Spin On Location-Based Advertising

Location based advertising is rapidly becoming the “next big thing.” Having the ability to hit (figuratively) someone with an ad on their mobile device based on their location at any given moment in time is, well pretty darn exciting and most assuredly very promising in terms of success.

Back in April a headline on cnet.com read: Location information to make mobile ads more valuable. In the article the writer made reference to two interviews in which “the CEO of the mapping app Waze and ad executives Jason Spero from Google and Mollie Spilman of Millennial Media talked up the importance of users’ GPS location information to help tailor advertising.”

Seems the folks at Facebook are paying attention to the ever-growing popularity of location based advertising as witnessed in Parmy Olson’s Forbes column on May 9th in which she wrote of the fact that Facebook (is) In Talks To Buy Waze For $1 Billion.

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Why J.C. Penney’s Epic Mea Culpa Will Work

Back in June of last year as I became aware of what was going on inside J.C. Penney headquarters I penned JC Penney’s Epic Rebranding Fail. I heard from some in the marketing world who thought my use of the word “epic” was too harsh. My response to them at the time was along the lines of “perhaps, but we just don’t know yet, do we?”

DALY CITY, CA - FEBRUARY 28: People walk by a...
(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

And at that time I didn’t know if the rebrand campaign that ill-fated CEO Ron Johnson was undertaking would in fact be classified as epic when the dust settled.

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E-Commerce Success Depends on Power of Two

Customer demands for more rapid and cost effective e-commerce delivery seem to be increasing on a daily basis. In fact not a week goes by now without my speaking with retailers and etailers that since the dawn of e-commerce have successfully serviced Canada from one fulfillment operation for the country and are currently rethinking this model.

In most cases their national fulfillment operations are either positioned in Toronto or Montreal, as well as some in Vancouver, which up until now have been totally acceptable solutions. However, it definitely appears the days are numbered for a single e-commerce fulfillment operation being a viable customer delivery experience solution for all of Canada.

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Programmatic Advertising – My Curious Quest Continues

Back in March of this year I penned What Is Programmatic Advertising And Is It The Future? The opening sentence said it all: “I am by nature a very curious person especially when it comes to the world of marketing, advertising and branding.”

I prefaced my column that day because I am indeed a very curious person and in that particular context in that particular article I was referring to “programmatic advertising.”

In the piece I shared a conversation I had with Gurbaksh Chahal who is the Founder, Chairman & CEO of a company called RadiumOne. whose platform“is designed for today’s real-time,programmatic media landscape.” And while I had a great chat with Gurbaksh, my curiosity remained piqued, as it were.

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The most engaged brands on Twitter

Twitter for business

 

Nestivity, a social media startup developing community software tools for Twitter, released a list of the top twenty-five brands with the most engaged Twitter audiences. I have been made aware of Nestivity very recently, thanks to a post by Jure Klepic, Feathering Our Community With Nestivity.

According to the start-up, Nestivity turns your Twitter handle into a “Nest”, a place for you to connect with your followers in a more organized and structured way. It sounds promising and if it lives up to its promise, Nestivity would rank as one the solid solutions out there. I am trying it so I will be able to talk to it after I have given it a test drive.

It is only natural for a tool promoting its ability to help you organize, build and grow your Twitter community should have a privileged insight into the most engaged brands. In their recently issued list of the 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter, Nestivity has analyzed more than 739,000 Tweets found some pretty interesting data. 6 points worth looking into :

  1. Followers count do no count. We knew that but hearing it again will not hurt and might help shift the dialogue to more important aspects of community building.
  2. Frequency of tweet doesn’t matter, relevance to your community does. This is one of the most asked question out there and yet, it seems that whether you tweet every hour like the @NBA or every month, if your audience cares, they’ll engage with you. Show them some love with content they want to see
  3. However, it seems that Timing is everything. Find you sweet spot and leverage it.
  4. Quality over quantity. No surprise there but always good to remind brands that point 2 is even more important (ref : Frequency of tweet doesn’t matter )
  5. Multimedia is best. There again, studies have shown that people react more and better to images, videos and visuals, in general.

On a personal level, this list makes me ponder. Why did I ever waste my time trying to engage with @Starbucks (As you can see I may be hurt because on top of spending time tweeting them, I’ve spent insane amount of money at the cafes, I feel, in vain. Good, I quit coffee). @Disney never tweeted me back and that would have made a couple of little people in my house pretty happy. And I need to start to tweet @Chanel.

Check out Henry Min’s blog post over at Nestivity and the list of 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter (Click to enlarge)

Top 25 engaged brands on Twitter

So, what’s you take on the top 25 and the honorable mentions? Would love to hear your experience and thougts.

Karima-Catherine Goundiam is a Toronto-based consultant in digital and social media. She can be reached on Twitter,  LinkedIn or on her blog.

Initially published on www.3angelsmarketing.com
 

 

When It Comes To Integrated Marketing – The Defense Can Never Rest

I was wrong. I stand before you – well actually I am sitting as I write this, but regardless I am here before you to  beg forgiveness, to tell you I was wrong – dead wrong when it comes to integrated marketing or cross-channel marketing or omni-channel marketing or whatever other phrase you know it by.

Back in November of last year I scribed The Need For Marketing Integration – The Defense Rests. In that now ill-titled piece, I wrote of something I came across on MarketingCharts.com: Multichannel Retailers Struggle To Create A Seamless Brand Experience.

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When It Comes To Big Data Is Less More?

My oxymoronish title aside, two esteemed professors at an Ivy League school say that while those in the marketing world continue to struggle with how to handle all the data they are accumulating, they may in fact be wasting their time and more than likely need to go on what they refer to as a “data diet.”

The amount of data brands collect today from all the various channels: social media, email, mobile, and on and on is enormous.

Over the past year or so I’ve written three different articles about Big Data including one in January 2012 entitled Why CMOs Need To Get Real About The Policy Implications Of Big Data.

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Building Customer Relationships with Branded Story-Telling

Brand-story-300x169There are some new buzzwords in marketing going around, everything from “Collaborative Marketing” to “Relationship Marketing,” and even “Branded Content.” But what do those phrases really mean and how can today’s businesses take advantage of them?

Well, we all know that consumers are becoming more and more contemptuous of push advertising, which has traditional marketers scrambling to find a magic bullet to replace it. But with what? When social came along and marketers mistakenly tried to force push advertising messages there, the failures were huge.

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The Dim Light at the End of the Funnel


Over the years, businesses have developed sales, marketing and service strategies around the funnel. Awareness, interest, desire, action, to this day, describes the likely steps a customer may take in making a decision. Over the years, it was assumed that the liner path would also continue through a transaction to a state of loyalty and ultimately advocacy. The process of customer engagement to this day is designed to shepherd people along this delicate path. For at any moment, consumer attention, interest, and resulting action could fall astray without superintendence.

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Epicurious Uses The Boston Marathon Tragedy To Cross That Line

Two days ago. Just two days ago right here in these hallowed halls, as it were, I scribed a column entitled For Brands There’s A Fine Line Between Capitalism And Capitalization – At Least There Should Be. 

The article essentially spoke to the fact that some brands will do whatever it takes, regardless of such minor details as ethics and morals, to move their product, whatever said product may be. And that they will go right on doing what they’ve always done which is to essentially use any medium necessary – email, print, direct marketing, TV, radio, mobile and on and on to drive their message home to as many consumers they possibly can.

Seems I forgot to mention one medium: social media.

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