Razorfish recently released their invaluable FEED report, you can download it here.

Below are some quotes I’ll keep in mind for 2010 – for those who don’t have time to read it:
- Digital brand experiences create customers and in today’s increasingly digital world, the experience is the message.
- 65% of consumers report having had a digital experience that either positively or negatively changed their opinion about a brand.
- Brands that use digital to drive awareness also drive sales: 64% of consumers report making a first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience.
- 40% of consumers reported having “friended” a brand on Facebook and/or MySpace and 26% have followed a brand on Twitter

- But consumers don’t want a conversation with brands—they want deals. Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, 44% say access to exclusive deals is the main reason. The same holds true for those who “friended” a brand on Facebook or MySpace, where 37% cite access to exclusive deals or offers as their main reason.
33% of consumers who “friend” a brand on Facebook or MySpace report doing so because they are a current customer, as do 24% on Twitter.

- Forrester’s 2009 North American Technographics Benchmark Survey, consumers spend 34% of their total media time online and 35% watching television

- Advertising isn’t failing— it’s adapting. Beyond just social media, consumers are deeply
engaged with brands across the entire digital channel—and it’s by choice.
- Clearly these interactions are more than casual encounters with a brand—they’re uniquely digital.
- Digital enabling the behavior of a deeply engaged consumer whose actions more closely resemble those of a “fan.”
- Consumer preference isn’t formed in reaction to a message, but through a series of experiences over time.

As Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, has been known to say: “Your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does.”

1 commentlatest by CUT HERE, Nov 25th at 17H30

Everyday we work and shape strategies based on our very own objectives and perceptions. How much do we spend in understanding our environment? We cannot ignore it, our brands live online in tons of environment, most of them are user-generated.Think about Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, product reviews, blog postings, Tweets, Wikipedia pages… On top of that there’s all the online presence we’re igniting: online banners, facebook fan pages, paid search, email marketing, online promotions, contests, eCommerce site, online retailers….

But… think about it twice. Isn’t the same message that should circulate? Shouldn’t you try to convey seamless messages to get heard?

We believe, your digital branding strategy shouldn’t remain in isolation, we shouldn’t target at serving only people visiting your website. Because the online purchase process goes far beyond the communications you ignite. It probably starts from a search engine or a social networking site where you are mentioned, where your product are rated. Obviously we cannot control the messages out here but listening to it might help you save some time and money. By leveraging existing assets you can craft a better online reputation and stronger messaging.

Why not engaging people where they are instead of investing money in trying to make them shift towards your website. When ultimately the sale might happen in-store anyway. Online is part of an overall communication-branding strategy it shouldn’t be perceived as a media only and a sub-line in your budget.

Managing and investing on the web as an overall touch point with your customers can help better understanding of your brand values/message/uniqueness. Because it’s a media where people look for you, where they want to listen to you, it’s the interactive media.

No comments

I’m wondering how important and/or useful it is to stick to a brand’s advertising “category”.  For the sake of this discussion, let’s use shampoo as an example.  It’s fair to say that there is a “standard” for shampoo ads: nice young woman having a shower and washing her shiny healthy hair in slow motion.  This formula became the standard because most shampoo brands employ it.  It’s easy to see why:  it’s efficient; the consumer immediately recognizes the product category and understands the pitch thus the impact on awareness is immediate. But on the other hand, can this injure a brand by standardizing the way its story is expressed; its message?

Can you trigger a strong reaction when you’re simply one of many and not the one that stands out?

I believe, for example, that it’s  really risky to create an ad for a car without actually showing the car in question. But perhaps, if the message is strong enough, the consumer will retain the message just as well.  In this noisy world, maybe the car itself isn’t that important.

Maybe thinking outside the category box is what gets you noticed?

No comments

Last years, we got clarity on what we can do for our clients and why we should do it this way. We took the decision to push for a digital focused vision of the brand where the web is the center piece of a mass media driven campaign. A use of media that is made and built around problems solving. A structure where we as an agency help our clients find the real problem. Our best successes were cases where we sat down with clients defining a key issue to solve through a digital-driven campaign.

Now, great news is that we’re not alone to go into that direction! How happy I was to start reading Razorfish’s Digital Outlook 2009 report (digitaloutlook.razorfish.com/), and came along those lines from Clark Kokich, their Chief Executive Officer “What’s not so apparent is the impact this change is having on the role that advertising (more…)

1 commentlatest by JS, Mar 19th at 7H17