Having provided web content management solutions for major brands over ten years, Agility is now launching a new, cloud-based Magazine Publishing Suite that is optimized for online magazines and blogs.
CEO Michael Assad said in a statement that the Suite “follows the success we’ve had with our CMS platform in the media and publishing space,” and that it “saves months of setup time and tens of thousands of dollars over traditional web publishing systems.” He added that the Magazine Publishing Suite is intended to help publishers who are “struggling to find their footing online” make the transition to digital versions of their properties.
Media-Heavy Sites
The Toronto-based company said its Suite was developed over five years, and has been built on its experience of working with large media companies and serving millions of page views.
The system is oriented toward media-heavy sites that offer frequent updates of images and video, as well as text, and the company said it was the only online publishing suite specifically intended for media sites (we'd argue with that, pointing out Atex as another example). The company’s customers currently include Glow Magazine, Canadian Bride, Clean Eating, Oxygen, Oprah Winfrey Network and W Network.
The Suite is designed around nine areas that target website performance — layout and navigation, advertising and ad placement, search engine optimization, content merchandizing, social media integration, content syndication, mobile, community and performance.
Subscription Integration
The magazine-specific features include the ability to integrate the system with major magazine subscription systems, and a built-in module for showcasing magazine issues. The CMS is also oriented toward continuous content updates, has support for articles, blog posts, galleries and videos, and can import content from the publisher’s current Web CMS.
There are also such functions as Latest Articles, including an automatic update to the most recently published items, Popular Articles, Polls and Contributor Workflow to channel writers’ submission into the editing/publishing process.
Using the CMS, Agility said that a new site can be ready for business in as little as five weeks.
The delivery process, which is covered by a $1000 setup fee, involves consultation with Agility’s experts, design of a site skin, content deployment from a current site and training. The system is priced at $300/month, with additional charges for tech support by phone, support for external contributors and other add-ons.
InPowered, a service that helps brands with digital marketing, has launched its Earned Advertising Platform, a platform which allows users to create ad campaigns by themselves without having to work with InPowered professionals.
Inpowered was introduced last December as part of NetShelter, an advertising network. At that time, the cloud based InPowered platform was designed to make advertising easier for companies by curating and promoting favorable content from websites and blogs. It collected this information for the company and showed them how well their product and how well their competitors products were being received. In turn, marketers could use this information to tailor their ads appropriately to help influence consumer response.
What is Earned Advertising?
In a video promoting the product, President and Founder Pirouz Nilforoush said the company’s goal is to: help marketers leverage the trust of earned media in order to influence a broader sense of consumers.”
In using InPowered, companies will have be able to promote the positive aspects and most favorable reviews of their products. Companies will be able to create ads that don’t look like ads, but rather links to articles. They can then pick out what stories they think are the most favorable for a particular product and promote it over a social medium, such as Twitter or Facebook or through the NetShelter network.
This "earned advertising" allows businesses to positively promote their products and allows consumers to see what experts and industry professionals are saying about it — instead of merely relying on what the company’s marketing department is telling them. With the Inpowered system, users are then able to see charts and statistics on how this ‘earned advertising’ has influenced consumers.
Earned media is really a unique beast; it’s really the holy grail of marketing said Jeremiah Owyang, Partner and Industry Strategist for Altimeter Group “because earned media is the most trusted source of information people have between each other and therefore it resonates the most.”
Along with the launch of the Earned Advertising platform, it’s been also announced that NetShelter will re-brand themselves with a focus on Inpowered and what it offers users. They will now be called Inpowered Inc., but NetShelter isn't disappearing. It's being incorporated into the Inpowered Inc. parent company to be used along side the Inpowered platform.
Remember TiVo and Listerine breath strips? Products like these dispel the myth of long-term “first-mover” advantage in marketing brands--ultimately, it is the companies able to adapt that thrive.
Why is it that some brands launch like meteors, captivating our imaginations and our wallets, only to fall spectacularly into marketing oblivion? And perhaps more importantly for marketers today: How can this fate be avoided? The answer lies in the difference between what is required to generate initial trial of a new product, versus building a relevant equity that stimulates ongoing interest and repeat business.
Looking backwards from today’s vantage point, it might be easy to dismiss brands like Listerine Pocketpaks or TiVo, but at the pinnacle of their success they had a Jeremy Lin-like, out-of-nowhere stardom that had consumers all atwitter, brought riches to their corporate owners, and had competitors searching for answers. What is it about these brands that relegated them to eventual irrelevance, while other brands with meteoric success remain on top? And what does the future hold for today’s meteoric brands like UGG boots or Keurig coffee?
First, we need to dispel the myth that there is any long-term “first-mover” advantage in marketing brands. This may be true at the start, but ultimately it is the companies able to adapt to changing conditions that thrive. That is to say, survival of the fittest brands, not the first brands, drives the market. Neither Google, nor Amazon, nor even Gillette was the first brand in its respective category that it now leads. So while some “boom, splat” brands were the first to popularize innovative benefits--such as digital video recording--this distinction alone is insufficient to defend against encroaching competition and a restless consumer.
In 2001, Pfizer’s Listerine brand, then famously known for its antiseptic mouthwash, launched Listerine Pocketpaks breath strips. The product not only helped the brand extend into a new category, but also created awareness, relevance, and reinvigorated the parent brand’s equity in fresh breath. Everyone needed to try the distinctive strip format and unique sensory experience. A true innovation blockbuster, brand awareness and trial were off the charts and year one sales exceeded $175 million, quickly establishing it as the number-one brand in the category. But by 2003, brand sales were already off by 40%-50%, fueled by intense competition with copycat products and a consumer seeking more exciting offerings from strong brands like Altoids, Tic Tac, and Ice Breakers. Today under new ownership, Listerine Pocketpaks remains a viable business, generating about $25 million in annual sales, but is a shell of its initial success.
One contributing factor to the brand’s fall may be the polarizing product experience. However, even if some consumers were ultimately not wowed by the product and did not repeat purchase, the brand still managed to engage enough consumers to drive it to category leadership, so the answer may lie more with the brand than the product. Listerine Pocketpaks were so closely associated with a product form, rather than a brand equity, that it lacked the authority to sustain a category leadership position. The brand may have been more successful had it pinned its brand proposition on, say, Listerine freshness to-go or intimate togetherness or anything other than the product form itself, which was quickly copied.
Listerine effectively did not leverage a strong point-of-difference compared to its new competitive set (i.e., mints), beyond a hot new product form. Once the form novelty wore off, the brand did not find a way to win versus other brands doing an equally good job offering a minty fresh experience. The breath-mint consumer was then free to switch to a competitive breath strip, or align with a conventional format mint brand with strong appeal on both a functional and emotional level, such as Altoids.
Listerine is not the only “boom, splat” brand to soar behind the short-term functional difference of a unique product format. In other categories, Motorola’s ultra-thin Razr phone or Pert’s 2-in-1 shampoo both come to mind. In these cases, too, there was no meaningful second act following the initial success of the brand launch. Loyal consumers seeking the next level of involvement were left with nowhere to go but the competition offering newer, shinier objects for sale.
So, which brands are doing these things well? Like their style or hate them, UGG Australia has successfully kept its brand fresh and strong for years. Many predicted that UGG boots would be a passing fashion fad. But a decade after gaining must-have status, the brand keeps marching on, achieving a record $1.2 billion in global sales last year. UGG is more than a fashion icon; the brand solves an unmet consumer need of stylish footwear that doesn’t involve painfully high heels. Worn by countless celebrities, the UGG brand was established as a genuine article, not to be copied by a competitive imitation. And now that it seems every fashionable closet has a pair, the brand has pushed into slippers, gloves, hats, and other accessories where stylish comfort plays a role. At this stage, there is no "boom, splat" forecasted for UGG.
One brand that will be interesting to watch in the coming year or so is Keurig, the single-serve coffee brand that has grown tremendously (their parent company Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced 2011 revenue of $2.65 billion, up 95% from 2010). The brand has helped usher in a new wave of premium, at-home coffee options with strong partners like Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, and Newman’s Own, succeeding in a crowded space where some first-movers have failed. However, they will need to stay fresh and relevant, continue to innovate and think broadly about their business once the single-serve coffee market is saturated, by them or Nespresso or someone else, and consumers begin to wonder what’s next.
So what can we learn from all this? I see three important lessons: first, having a brilliant innovation ahead of competition is a great thing. But there is danger in letting the technical innovation be the news itself, because inevitably competitors will copy or leapfrog you. It’s always best to build equity that elevates the conversation to emotional benefits, values, and beliefs, rather than a purely functional one. That’s much harder to copy. Second, ensure your product experience is outstanding, creating ongoing repeat from happy consumers. And finally, have a second act. Keep it fresh and give your loyal user base something to trade up to once they’ve committed to the brand; don’t leave them hanging on wondering what is the next level of involvement. Doing these things may not ensure meteoric success, but it will help you avoid the dreaded sound of “boom, splat!”
--Bruce Levinson is vice president, brand strategy at the New York office of Anthem Worldwide, part of the strategic design division of Schawk, Inc. His previous positions include director-level marketing roles at Unilever in the U.S. and U.K., and as an advertising account executive.
Remember TiVo and Listerine breath strips? Products like these dispel the myth of long-term “first-mover” advantage in marketing brands--ultimately, it is the companies able to adapt that thrive.
Why is it that some brands launch like meteors, captivating our imaginations and our wallets, only to fall spectacularly into marketing oblivion? And perhaps more importantly for marketers today: how can this fate be avoided? The answer lies in the difference between what is required to generate initial trial of a new product, versus building a relevant equity that stimulates ongoing interest and repeat business.
Looking backwards from today’s vantage point, it might be easy to dismiss brands like Listerine Pocketpaks or TiVo, but at the pinnacle of their success they had a Jeremy Lin-like, out-of-nowhere stardom that had consumers all atwitter, brought riches to their corporate owners, and had competitors searching for answers. What is it about these brands that relegated them to eventual irrelevance, while other brands with meteoric success remain on top? And what does the future hold for today’s meteoric brands like UGG boots or Keurig coffee?
First, we need to dispel the myth that there is any long-term “first-mover” advantage in marketing brands. This may be true at the start, but ultimately it is the companies able to adapt to changing conditions that thrive. That is to say, survival of the fittest brands, not the first brands, drives the market. Neither Google, nor Amazon, nor even Gillette was the first brand in its respective category that it now leads. So while some “boom, splat” brands were the first to popularize innovative benefits--such as digital video recording--this distinction alone is insufficient to defend against encroaching competition and a restless consumer.
In 2001, Pfizer’s Listerine brand, then famously known for its antiseptic mouthwash, launched Listerine Pocketpaks breath strips. The product not only helped the brand extend into a new category, but also created awareness, relevance, and reinvigorated the parent brand’s equity in fresh breath. Everyone needed to try the distinctive strip format and unique sensory experience. A true innovation blockbuster, brand awareness and trial were off the charts and year one sales exceeded $175 million, quickly establishing it as the number-one brand in the category. But by 2003, brand sales were already off by 40%-50%, fueled by intense competition with copycat products and a consumer seeking more exciting offerings from strong brands like Altoids, Tic Tac, and Ice Breakers. Today under new ownership, Listerine Pocketpaks remains a viable business, generating about $25 million in annual sales, but is a shell of its initial success.
One contributing factor to the brand’s fall may be the polarizing product experience. However, even if some consumers were ultimately not wowed by the product and did not repeat purchase, the brand still managed to engage enough consumers to drive it to category leadership, so the answer may lie more with the brand than the product. Listerine Pocketpaks were so closely associated with a product form, rather than a brand equity, that it lacked the authority to sustain a category leadership position. The brand may have been more successful had it pinned its brand proposition on, say, Listerine freshness to-go or intimate togetherness or anything other than the product form itself, which was quickly copied.
Listerine effectively did not leverage a strong point-of-difference compared to its new competitive set (i.e., mints), beyond a hot new product form. Once the form novelty wore off, the brand did not find a way to win versus other brands doing an equally good job offering a minty fresh experience. The breath-mint consumer was then free to switch to a competitive breath strip, or align with a conventional format mint brand with strong appeal on both a functional and emotional level, such as Altoids.
Listerine is not the only “boom, splat” brand to soar behind the short-term functional difference of a unique product format. In other categories, Motorola’s ultra-thin Razr phone or Pert’s 2-in-1 shampoo both come to mind. In these cases, too, there was no meaningful second act following the initial success of the brand launch. Loyal consumers seeking the next level of involvement were left with nowhere to go but the competition offering newer, shinier objects for sale.
So, which brands are doing these things well? Like their style or hate them, UGG Australia has successfully kept its brand fresh and strong for years. Many predicted that UGG boots would be a passing fashion fad. But a decade after gaining must-have status, the brand keeps marching on, achieving a record $1.2 billion in global sales last year. UGG is more than a fashion icon; the brand solves an unmet consumer need of stylish footwear that doesn’t involve painfully high heels. Worn by countless celebrities, the UGG brand was established as a genuine article, not to be copied by a competitive imitation. And now that it seems every fashionable closet has a pair, the brand has pushed into slippers, gloves, hats and other accessories where stylish comfort plays a role. At this stage, there is no "boom, splat" forecasted for UGG.
One brand that will be interesting to watch in the coming year or so is Keurig, the single-serve coffee brand that has grown tremendously (their parent company Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced 2011 revenue of $2.65 billion, up 95% from 2010.) The brand has helped usher in a new wave of premium, at-home coffee options with strong partners like Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and Newman’s Own, succeeding in a crowded space where some first-movers have failed. However, they will need to stay fresh and relevant, continue to innovate and think broadly about their business once the single-serve coffee market is saturated, by them or Nespresso or someone else, and consumers begin to wonder what’s next.
So what can we learn from all this? I see three important lessons: first, having a brilliant innovation ahead of competition is a great thing. But there is danger in letting the technical innovation be the news itself, because inevitably competitors will copy or leapfrog you. It’s always best to build equity that elevates the conversation to emotional benefits, values and beliefs, rather than a purely functional one. That’s much harder to copy. Second, ensure your product experience is outstanding, creating ongoing repeat from happy consumers. And finally, have a second act. Keep it fresh and give your loyal user base something to trade up to once they’ve committed to the brand; don’t leave them hanging on wondering what is the next level of involvement. Doing these things may not ensure meteoric success, but it will help you avoid the dreaded sound of “boom, splat!”
--Bruce Levinson is vice president, brand strategy at the New York office of Anthem Worldwide, part of the strategic design division of Schawk, Inc. His previous positions include director-level marketing roles at Unilever in the U.S. and U.K., and as an advertising account executive.
In recent years, an increasing number of startups and big-name companies have looked to celebrity backers to boost their brands and street cred. Here, four questions to ask your celebrity investor before taking the plunge.
Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, 50 Cent, Ashton Kutcher: A-list celebs, sure. But they're also members of a Who's Who of new-age venture capitalists and product developers. That is, at least according to public perception.
In recent years, an increasing number of startups and big-name companies have looked to celebrity backers to boost their brands and street cred: investors in Airbnb and Spotify include Hollywood stars and chart-topping artists; Beats Electronics has created headphones for Diddy, David Guetta, and Lebron James; and Justin Bieber recently graced the cover of Forbes under the the headline, "Venture Capitalist." But what they get depends on how much these celebrities are actually involved in their investments. What makes celebrity investment better than a traditional celeb endorsement of, say, McDonald's or Pepsi?
For a number of reasons--the generally sensitive nature of investments, sharp-elbowed celebrity publicists, and so forth--rarely does the public get insight into this area. But certainly the perception, at least in the press, is that certain celebrities have an innate business sense. Speaking with a range of entrepreneurs in the space, we look to see whether this reputation is warranted, or whether it's just Hollywood marketing 2.0. Below, a cheat sheet for you to tell the difference.
For most entrepreneurs, it all comes to what celebrities represent the right fit for their startups, and whether they are authentically interested in the products themselves. Sure, popular celebrities can bring much attention to a startup, but they have to engage with a startup's products in order for the relationship to be effective. For one entrepreneur, with backing from several A-list celebrities, it's incredibly important that a celebrity actually believe in a product before investing in it. For example, the entrepreneur says, the celebrities interacting with the product, whether on TV or elsewhere in the media, brings an attention that is unrivaled so long as it's genuine. "There's kind of an intangible value to that," the entrepreneur says. "That's something you almost can't put a price on."
Robert Brunner of design firm Ammunition LLC, which has notably developed the Beats by Dre headphones, agrees that authentic involvement is crucial, though acknowledges it varies from celebrity to celebrity. "It always works best when the celebrity is involved for reasons other than economics--where there's an actual passion there. With Dr. Dre, he's been fairly involved with the physical design, and really gets involved in the tuning and the sound. This is personal to Dre; it's a reflection of him," Brunner says. "Some other [celebrities] though, well, I've never met, and only get feedback through three levels of channels."
One startup founder, who has myriad celebrity investors, argues that a celebrity's involvement must be mutually beneficial to both brands. "You don't want someone making an investment just like they're selling some new bottled water," the founder says. "It's not like signing a deal with Pepsi where you have to do three events and a commercial. Are they really emotionally invested--and not just financially invested--in the product?"
In that sense, it doesn't matter how many followers a celebrity has on Twitter or how much engagement they could potentially create. If they're not the right fit for your startup--and your product--then it won't matter. In other words, microloan platform Kiva might not want Charlie Sheen as an investor. Inversely, Lindsay Lohan might not have been the right fit to have invested in enterprise social network Yammer before it was acquired. "[Celebrities] probably shouldn't go investing in productivity tools," the founder jokes.
Are you starstruck?
Talk to entrepreneurs about celebrity backers and you'll inevitably soon be talking about press attention. "If you look across TechCrunch once a day, you're likely to see at least five companies with big-name angel investors," the startup founder says. "But I don't feel it's all that useful to have a name--to just have a vanity investor. It's not just a matter of getting any celebrity X, Y, Z."
Brunner too contends that it works much better when "it's more than just a name play," when it's not just "hollow celebrity branding." He cites doing design reviews with Pharrell and Lady Gaga, who get involved with the product development to provide feedback and inspiration.
"Name recognition hasn't meant anything to us," says the entrepreneur with A-list backers--a celebrity endorsement can't mask a poor product. The product has to be able to stand on its own.
Having celebrity investors is beneficial beyond what headlines their names can generate, most argue. "They're involved in the product itself, the decisions we're making, giving us input on what they think we should be doing across the board," the entrepreneur says. The startup founder agrees, explaining that celebrities are also very "helpful with introductions, with campaign and promotional ideas."
Is Kim Kardashian really the New Reid Hoffman?
Still, as much as celebrities might boost engagement among fans, provide feedback and marketing prowess, as well as generate media buzz, the fact remains that celebrities are not exactly venture capitalists or product gurus, at least in the traditional sense. Sure, Bieber might be slated a new-age VC, but as the startup founder told me, "It's like he understands liquidation preferences or how to structure a term sheet."
So be warned: Don't expect Kim Kardashian to lead your Series B round. But also remember that celebrities entourage--for every Vincent Chase, you're likely going to get an Ari Gold. "They have smart managers, smart lawyers, and smart agents--they're looking to bet on companies and categories that are going to be winners," says the startup founder.
Have you considered the downsides?
One source deeply involved with the celebrity investment community describes the downsides of working with artists and actors: "The problem is most of the higher-level celebrities do not know or understand good design. They kind of know what they think is cool or looks cool, but it doesn't necessarily translate into good products. Another thing dealing with musicians is that in the music industry, you can change a recording until the last second it's published. You really can't do that on a product. So the problem I constantly run into is people wanting to go fuck around with this stuff late in the process which is just catastrophic on a development schedule."
Long home to a coterie of boutique breweries, Asheville is starting to attract bigger craft-beer brands that see their own (idealized) corporate image in the city's low-key outdoorsy culture.
A sizable craft brewery in search of a new home needs a couple of non-negotiable resources: space to build the kind of facility that can produce tens of thousands of barrels of beer a year, plus access to railways and roads for quickly shipping the stuff to discerning customers who expect to drink it while it’s fresh. Also, water. Water is a very big deal in the brewing business. Asheville, North Carolina, has fostered one of the fastest growing beer scenes on the East Coast since the mid-1990s in part thanks to the 20,000-acre protected watershed outside of town in the Great Smoky Mountains. Local development official Ben Teague swears that at some points during the winter, you can drink straight from streams there with a cup. (He also puts it this way for the more visually inclined: Those arena scenes in the Hunger Games movie? They were filmed in Asheville’s pristine watershed.)
But for all that beer-friendly infrastructure, the Asheville area recently lured to town the country’s second and third largest craft breweries--California’s Sierra Nevada and Colorado-based New Belgium--for reasons that were, first and foremost, much more intangible.
“We looked around, and we were so happy here in Fort Collins,” says Jenn Vervier, who led the site selection process for New Belgium’s new East Coast brewery. “We thought, what are the things that make us happy, that make our coworkers happy?“
Both New Belgium and Sierra Nevada--in fact, much of the craft brewing industry--have melded their brands with a laid-back but active outdoor vibe, cast in images of nature, mountain biking, kayaking, and campfires. Asheville conjures a similarly progressive, environmentally conscious outdoors identity. And this is really why both companies will expand into the East Coast through Asheville over the next couple of years.
New Belgium, which is most recognizable for the old-school red bike on its Fat Tire label, wanted to find a site where its employees could themselves bike to work. This criteria--bikability--is not on the typical checklist of most corporate site selectors.
“From our first contact with the New Belgium team,” says Clark Duncan, the director of marketing for Asheville and Buncombe County’s Economic Development Coalition, “it was pretty evident that this was a very different economic development project.”
To understand what a more typical economic development project looks like, Teague, the coalition’s executive director, put it this way about similar work he used to do in Mississippi: “We sold cheap land, cheap buildings. If someone came to me and said, ‘Ben, I want you to give me 100 acres of land and grade it flat, and, by the way, I want you to build me a building for a dollar and give it to me, and I will in turn give you 100 jobs,’ we would have said ‘where do I sign?’”
But Asheville, he says, has turned that model on its head. The city competed with dozens of other East Coast sites initially targeted by the two breweries (in the end, New Belgium came down to Asheville and Philadelphia). Asheville tries to sell its quality of life, its mountains, its culture. And then it comes in with the business assets. “But we’re not afraid to lead off the presentation with who we are,” Teague says.
This means that Asheville is likely to attract a certain kind of company, and both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium embody it. Vervier tells an almost identical story from New Belgium’s perspective. Part of the brewery’s mission, she says, is to be a model for sustainable business practices, and for the idea that a company can grow while remaining true to its values. “A piece of that story is helping communities understand a new model of economic development,” she says. “You have to have property, you have to be economically competitive. But here are the other intangibles.”
In this case, New Belgium was looking to remediate a brownfield site right in town, both as a solution to its bikability criteria, and as an answer to the company’s internal debates over how to expand sustainably. It will wind up taking over a 20-acre site on the bank of the French Broad River, in the heart of Asheville’s River Arts District. In its many previous lives, this site had been home to gas stations, stockyards, a landfill, and an auto mechanic. About a quarter of the property also sits on a flood plain.
Sierra Nevada, by contrast, chose a more rural setting outside of town but still in the Asheville metro area, in neighboring Henderson County. It bought 190 acres there, only about 18 of which it plans to develop, in a setting that will still mimic in nature and culture the company’s native Northern California. “We really feel that the culture here is just a really important part of how we make our beer, how we get inspired to do the things we’re going to do,” says Sierra Nevada communications manager Bill Manley. “It’s impossible to take what we do here and transplant it to a different part of the country that doesn’t have that kind of cultural influence and expect to be making the same kind of product.”
Both companies will be joining a community that already has nine smaller craft breweries, including Asheville’s original, Highland Brewing Company. Vervier refers to these businesses as New Belgium’s future “brewery brethren.” In this respect, these projects were also highly atypical economic development endeavors: Both New Belgium and Sierra Nevada wanted to meet all the existing brewers in town--the folks who in any other industry might be considered their competitors--to make sure they were welcome. “This is the thing we did not understand about this industry when they first came to town, and it completely caught us off guard,” Teague says. “In my mind, if this had been any other company, they would have said ‘I don’t care what they think, I’m going to do what I want to do.”
Sierra Nevada even had all the local Asheville Brewers out to Chico in June to brew some beer together there. This industry is different in part because craft brewers have always had a certain collegiality among themselves. But by clustering together in a community like this, they can also create a kind of collective beer mecca for out-of-town tourists. And, Vervier hopes, they can work together on issues like protecting the city’s watershed and developing the industry locally. The local community college, along with Appalachian State University and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center are already developing a fermentation science innovation center and curriculum that will work with and benefit all of the breweries.
For now, Sierra Nevada hopes to be brewing outside Asheville by next summer, with a tasting room open to visitors in 2014. New Belgium should come online the following year. And after that? “Will we be home to fourth and fifth next largest breweries in the U.S.?” Teague asks. “That’s probably not as likely as the fact that we will attract likeminded companies.”
Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #WhyHere.
Blog posts became Facebook updates and Tumblr posts, which shrunk to Tweets and finally to Instagram or Pinterest. Here's how smart brands are navigating the new visual social-media era.
Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have ushered in visual marketing as the breakout trend for 2012. When it comes to their products, businesses are learning to show, not tell, and visual content sites are fueling our desire for beautiful photography and sensational design. Two years ago, marketers were spreading the maxim that "content is king," but now, it seems, "a picture really is worth a thousand words."
"Blogs were one of the earliest forms of social networking where people were writing 1,000 words," says Dr. William J. Ward, Social Media professor at Syracuse University. "When we moved to status updates on Facebook, our posts became shorter. Then micro-blogs like Twitter came along and shortened our updates to 140 characters. Now we are even skipping words altogether and moving towards more visual communication with social-sharing sites like Pinterest."
This trend toward the visual is also influenced by the shifting habits of technology users. As more people engage with social media via smartphones, they're discovering that taking a picture "on the go" using a high-resolution phone is much less tedious than typing out a status update on a two-inch keyboard.
A 2012 study by ROI Research found that when users engage with friends on social media sites, it's the pictures they took that are enjoyed the most. Forty-four percent of respondents are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures than any other media. Pictures have become one of our default modes of sorting and understanding the vast amounts of information we're exposed to every day.
Detavio Samuals is the EVP and Director of Client Services at GlobalHue, one of the nation's top market advertising agencies. He explains that pictures are a bit like movie trailers for written content--they provide a snippet of what an article, brand, site or other piece of content is about, so that you can quickly decide if it's what you wanted or not.
"Pictures have also become a short form way of communicating lots of information quickly and succinctly," says Samuals. "The need for publishers to get to the point quicker than ever came about as humans became more pressed for time and content became more infinite. For publishers, it was evolve or risk losing their audience, and the only thing shorter than a tweet or post is a picture."
So what does all this visual stimulation mean for brands?
Fashion designer Kahri-Anne Kerr uses visual social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook to market her Kahri collection. In the fashion world, visual fantasy sells product, as customers need to see the cut of a garment on a model and feel as though they could make that item work in their own wardrobe. "When I post pictures on Facebook, they get the most feedback of all my posts," says Kahri. Visual media is a great way to share more about what inspires the designs, as well as linking to your online store and straight product shots."
"I am just getting into Instagram, which I use to give a personal look at the person behind the label by taking shots around my studio and in my everyday life."
Designer paper/analog brand Moleskine has harnessed the power of visual media to create one of the world's most active, prolific, and creative online communities. Their visual content strategy focuses on user-generated content: They create large-scale projects that users participate in by posting their own images and videos.
A popular campaign called What's In Your Bag? had users update pictures of the contents of their bags into a Facebook album. The project generated thousands of likes and comments as readers looked at the contents of other bags (which included Moleskine notebooks, naturally), and shared photos with their friends.
Inspiring fans to create and spread images, customize their notebooks, organize online competitions, and otherwise engage with the brand on a creative level has set Moleskine apart in its highly specialized market.
Search engines now rank content based on social conversations and sharing, not just websites alone. Brands can use visual content on their social media to increase engagement and inspire sharing and viral marketing. The rise of platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, and Facebook's multimillion-dollar acquisition of the latter, shows how visual content is becoming an increasingly important force for communication online.
Brands that can rock visual media will find themselves market leaders.
--Ekaterina Walter is Intel's social media strategist. Follow her @ekaterina.
Brands and hot social media platforms can succeed--but only by working together.
Illustration by David Schwen
I was the first business guy at Foursquare, the social check-in service. Almost every major brand wanted to work with us. A bunch of brand folks would ask me something like, "Hey, let's create a mayonnaise badge on Foursquare. We're doing this campaign for sustainable farming, so wouldn't it be cool if people checked in at three farms, a retail location, and a bodega to unlock our mayonnaise badge?" They're willing to pay tons of money for that. We would say, "Well . . . that doesn't make any sense. Probably not for you, definitely not for our users."
Brands say they want to use social to engage with their customers. They say that because they have nothing else to measure against. My hope and goal has always been to change that. When faced with that kind of mayonnaise-badge proposal, I'd just keep asking them why until we've really narrowed it down and get to, "Hey, we want to do all this stuff so we can drive sales." From there, we can move toward a solution where we can help measure the effectiveness of any advertising and resulting sales.
Follow Fast Company's roadmap to social media: surefire rules, data, and expert wisdom guaranteed to show why this market is completely unpredictable.
In Silicon Valley, there's usually this product-is-everything, you-need-nothing-else mentality--and I don't believe that one bit. You need to understand how advertising can fit into your product and what you do well. At Foursquare, our big ethos was making things that make the world more interesting to explore. That helped us pick partners where integration would be more natural. The perfect example is our first major deal, which was with the Bravo TV network. It already had fantastic local content online, and we brought that onto the Foursquare platform. It encouraged people to get out and explore new things, based on shows like Real Housewives, which felt very much in line with the product but without a sales pitch. It benefited our users and us: Bravo puts us on its commercials, helping us reach a different demographic and a wider audience.
Results from Adobe’s recent 2012 Mobile Consumer Survey show that consumers are using their smartphones and tablet devices to connect with brands in a variety of ways. However, many companies aren’t yet providing optimized experiences that leverage these different devices. And while it seems fairly obvious that businesses should not approach their mobile strategy in an identical manner as the desktop, many still are.
An Uneven Mobile Landscape
Adobe surveyed more than 1,200 mobile users in the United States in an effort to learn what mobile devices they use, how they interact with websites and applications, and what they want most out of their mobile experiences. What they found out highlights the inevitable rise of mobile devices, with smartphones becoming the preferred form of web access for consumers. However, the overall mobile landscape is not as well developed and hardly in tune to how, when and where consumers are using their mobile devices.
So what exactly did they find?
Mobile Usage
For consumers who own both a smartphone and tablet, the primary device is still the smartphone (88%).
Android devices lead the way in overall popularity at 51%, followed by iPhones at 38%.
The numbers for Android devices skewed even higher for the young age group at 58%.
Tablet users are more likely to be home-based (70%), while 24% use tablets on the go. Consumers devote a significant amount of time to their tablets, with 31% using them daily between 1 to 4 hours.
Tablets are more likely to be shared devices, with a majority of tablet users (56%) stating that they allow other members of the family, such as children, to use their tablet.
iPad users (62%) and Android tablet users (56%) reported spending more than $250 on consumer products via their devices over the past 12 months, compared to 58% of iPhone users and 53% of Android smartphone users.
User Experiences
Consumers who shop via mobile applications on Android tablets report the highest percentage levels of satisfaction at 88% versus iPad users at 71%, and Android smartphone users at 69% versus iPhone users at 66%.
When it comes to shopping for consumer products via mobile websites, iPad users reported the highest satisfaction levels at 75%, followed by Amazon Kindle at 73%, iPhone at 66%, Android tablet at 66%, and Android smartphone at 60%.
When asked why they prefer a regular website when shopping on your mobile device, a majority of respondents indicated convenience (39%), followed by access to more features (21%).
Social Media Engagement
Facebook is the dominant social network accessed by mobile (85%), followed by Twitter (35%), and then Google+ (21%).
While users’ most popular activity is to read status updates (85%), consumers are also using their mobile devices to view Facebook fan pages of their favorite brands.
While 53% of consumers who view a Facebook fan page receive an offer or promotion, one in five consumers report that they do not have a mobile-optimized experience when linking from Facebook to a brand’s site.
Location services are on the rise and are being driven by consumer incentives to check in. Younger demographics are more likely to check in (35%) versus senior at 18%.
Mobilize & Optimize
Put together, these results indicate that different devices deserve different experiences. Regardless of the device they use, consumers expect to visit optimized websites. As a result, brands are behooved to offer an engaging and dynamic mobile user experience design that corresponds with the experience users expect to receive. To do this, however, is more complicated. To help organization design better user experiences Adobe shares a few tips to incorporate into their mobile strategy:
Reduce touch events to conversion.
Design for mobile interactions.
Optimize for speed.
Make content “findability” easy.
Don’t launch mobile channels without analytics.
Plan and prioritize optimization efforts for tablet experiences that are unique and different from smartphones, given the larger screen size.
Don’t launch a social mobile presence that is not mobile optimized.
Don’t run mobile advertising campaigns that link to a desktop site.
They say knowing is half the battle. The more important part is putting that knowledge into action. As mobile devices continue to infiltrate the customer experience, companies must make a concerted effort to keep up or suffer the consequences.
An anonymous executive at a social media platform reveals why working with brands can be such a slog.
The world's biggest companies absolutely understand how important social is. Their CEOs now articulate their social media strategy. They track how they're doing against their rivals. But by the time they come to someone like me, whose job is to actually put their plans into action, they have no idea how to get what they want.
Here's why: We rarely have the right counterparts at these companies, which makes everything move slower. I'm working on a big project right now, and it's going to take a year to get the kind of version we want up and running. Why? Companies haven't empowered the right people, and they're not hiring or training or converting the right people for these jobs. To be a good social media person at a brand, you have to have a background not just in digital or marketing but also in your product.
Follow Fast Company's roadmap to social media: surefire rules, data, and expert wisdom guaranteed to show why this market is completely unpredictable.
There are so few people with that blend of experience. And it means that the brand people we're working with rarely have enough authority--or the right background--to have influence in their organization. People are always shoving social into marketing, or they're shoving it into digital. It's actually all this stuff: It's marketing, it's digital, it's creative. By thinking so narrowly, nobody reaches their full potential as fast as they should, given the opportunity that we have. [ Image: Flickr user Carson Monetti] Source : fastcompany[dot]com
