Consumers are shifting their holiday dollars from bricks to clicks, as retail spending rose by a mere 0.3 percent, to $10.69 billion, compared to a 16 percent sales spike for online stores, according to online shopping researcher Coremetrics. “The season’s off to a great start,” said John Squire, Coremetrics vice president of strategy to AP. “It really shows really strong consumer sentiment for buying and for going online.” The average online order rose 12 percent from $170.19 to $190.80 since last year. In fact, PayPal’s sales rose 27 percent in payment volume on Black Friday compared to last year. Continue reading
Build Trust and Respect as an Ethical Company
Walk into an Elevation Burger and you’ll notice it isn’t your typical burger joint. Posters line the walls touting its mission to locally sourced ingredients as much as possible. Their social mission makes Elevation Burger more than just a burger place, it is a place to support environmental sustainability. Therein, lies a relationship and trust.
Read more benefits of a social mission. Continue reading
So you’ve added some pictures of your logo and company, posted a couple of updates to let the Facebook world know you’re there. Now what? According to a DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research report, 2/3 of Facebook users “liked” a brand if they were asked to do so by an invitation or advertising from the brand they followed. The lesson here: reach out to your existing “fans” via e-mail, print, advertisement, etc to build your initial fan base. Novel idea.
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Gen Y is so oversaturated with ads that many billboards, pop-ups and Hulu ads have just become mundane wallpaper in their daily lives. In fact, according to the market research firm, Yankelovich, a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. How then, can a brand pierce through this seemingly impenetrable wall of advertising messages? We’ve refreshed Sparxoo’s Generation and Psychographic Reports with new Gen Y trends to help your brand survive and thrive.
Read more about marketing to Gen Y. Continue reading
As of the past two years, right-wing political commentators have high-jacked the political conversation. Glen Beck, Fox and Friends (Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson, etc) and Sarah Palin have almost single-handedly created the Tea Party Movement – which is on the brink of legitimizing itself as a political party.
Read more about how comedians are the sanest voice in the room. Continue reading
en Y often takes center stage when it comes to cutting edge web trends. Online users age 18-26 are at the forefront in various online realms, including social computing, banking, gaming and podcasts, according to a Forrester Research study. But Boomers are an emerging demographic not to be shoved under the mat. In fact, 54 percent of baby boomers said the advertising industry misrepresents and neglects them, especially online, where 72.5 percent of younger boomers and 83.2 percent of older boomers said online advertising focused on younger age groups, reports eMarketer.
Read more about Gen Y and Boomers. Continue reading
James Dean, Marlon Brando, Steve Jobs and even Barack Obama have sported Levis jeans. The famous denim is known for its durability and toughness. Levis, unlike your piece-of-junk dryer, is among many brands that Boomers can say, they make them just like they used to. It’s partly nostalgic, but mostly the search of quality. Levis, along with other quality brands, such as Volkswagen, should continue to be big hits with Boomers in the next five years.
According to a study by Focalyst, AARP and the Kantar Group, Boomers are more likely to be brand loyal to a service rather than product brand. Boomers want to “interact with brands that provide personalized service and seem to care about us and we’ll pay more to do it,” writes the blog Baby Boomer Insights. If, however, you are a product brand, it’s your task to make customer service better to create… Read more.
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Baby Boomers are often misunderstood by digital marketers. In fact, 54 percent of baby boomers said the advertising industry misrepresents and neglects them, especially online, where 72.5 percent of younger boomers and 83.2 percent of older boomers said online advertising focused on younger age groups, reports eMarketer. Here is a look at how brands can effectively target Boomers in the digital space:
Simple, Simple, Simple — Amazon had it right when they launched their one-click shopping experience. One-click and the object of your desire is yours. No wonder 23 percent of Amazon’s audience is over 50, according to Quantcast.com. Baby Boomers are not digital natives because they signed onto the web much later in life and are accordingly, not as savvy as their younger, digital… Read more. Continue reading
Develop a clear and concise overview – Slide four outlines, in plain terms, “what you’ll learn.” After reviewing The Brand Gap presentation, you will learn the modern definition of a brand and understand the five disciplines of brand building. Simple, concise and digestible.
Show, don’t just tell — Images offer tangible evidence of your points. Slide 20 is an image of dozens of cameras — illustrating the authors point about brand differentiation in the market.
Want more tips for creating great presentations? Read more. Continue reading
If Gen Yers are so multi-faceted, how can brands engage them? It is the billion dollar question marketers are just learning how to answer and while there is some wisdom in engaging specific generational segments, there are some overarching themes throughout the first digital generation. The Googles, Apples and Old Spices of the world have tapped into the Gen Y psyche and their successes can give us insight into how to engage Gen Yers in the digital space:
Speed, Speed Speed – For a generation that categorizes dial-up as an ancient technology from the Stone Age, fast devices and… Learn more about Gen Y and how your brand can effectively engage them. Continue reading
Facebook, and innovative developers have created a suite of new tools to deepen its relationships with voters, help undecideds explore politicians and be the hub of political news. Oh My Gov hosts polls to measure the voter sentiment on hot-button political issues – particularly as it relates to social media. One polls asks whether there should be a social network exclusively for government employees. (The majority of voters say such a network scares them.) And Facebook is branching out beyond polls and fan pages to become a hub of political information. The social network is streaming live reports from ABC News on election night from its Facebook HQ. And if you’re not sure who you should vote for, Facebook created an app to discover new politicians. Facebook Browser enables users to explore politicians, political parties and groups…
Read more about how Facebook is becoming a political juggernaut. Continue reading
Zillow has one of the most comprehensive real estate databases around, and they’ve brought that incredible resource to mobile devices with its mobile app. The mobile app is approaching a million app downloads and based on its app functionality, it’s not hard to imagine why. Zillow’s mobile app delivers the same information from its online database (including year built, size, configuraion and estimated current value), but the real value is built in its GPS capabilities to locate and follow users on a map to find real estate wherever you happen to be. And if you’re not sure if you want to check out the real estate in person, check out their street view features.
Learn about more local apps. Continue reading
