Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Stakeholder

Fancy Takes Pinterest Business Model One Step Further for Brands

fancySocial discovery meets e-commerce with open arms in Fancy, a startup with one million users and growing by 10,000 users per day. It’s like Pinterest but instead of simply pinning images, video, and text on virtual bulletin boards (i.e., visual bookmarking), Fancy wants people to “fancy” products and directly buy those products that they fancied.

The Fancy iPhone app that launched earlier this month has the e-commerce utility built right into it, making it even easier for consumers to purchase products they find through the products they fancy or other users’ fancied products.

The Fancy leaders are welcoming brands with open arms, particularly high-end brands. According to AdWeek, Fancy Founder Joe Einhorn wants Fancy, “to be the Amazon of everything cool that you didn’t know about.” In other words, luxury brands are the top guests at the Fancy party. Einhorn reports that Fancy plans to launch a new feature through its app that will enable users to take a photo of products anywhere and anytime that will instantly be identified using Fancy’s image recognition technology. Not only can users find the image on Fancy but also they can buy it immediately.

Clearly, this type of immediate purchase capability will be something that brands and consumers will love. While Fancy is targeting high-end brands today, Einhorn expects it to extend to mass market brands in the future as well. The question remains whether the Fancy audience is the type that will actually purchase the high-end products currently being shared. Furthermore, when Fancy expands to lower-end brands and products, will the Fancy brand promise become confusing?

We’ll have to wait and see how the future of Fancy shakes out, but one thing is for sure, the marriage of offline and online commerce through mobile devices and social discovery is here. Calling all brands — keep your eyes on Fancy and similar sites and tools that are sure to launch in the next few years. These sites must be on your radar, and you need to be considering them as part of your overall marketing plan. In other words, if you’re ignoring them, you might find down the road that your brand missed a huge opportunity.

Top Ad Publishers Announce Plan to Fight Bad Ads

StopBadware logoGoogle, AOL, Facebook, Twitter, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have joined together to form the Ads Integrity Alliance with a mission fight bad ads. Those bad ads are the ones that promote malware (such as viruses, malicious downloads, and phishing sites), illegal goods and counterfeit goods, or try to scam people in any way.

Of course, the reason for the new alliance is partially self-serving. Bad ads could ultimately hurt the lucrative online advertising businesses that Google, Facebook, AOL, and Twitter depend on. As reported in AdWeek, online advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2012 increased by 15% over the prior year and reached a record high of $8.4 billion.

The new Ads Integrity Alliance will partner with StopBadware, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting bad ads online, to police online ads and reduce bad ads. In a post on the Google Public Policy Blog, Google Global Public Policy Director Eric Davis explains that the partnership represents the next phase of Google’s own policing efforts against bad ads. He explains that in 2011 Google disabled more than 130 million ads and 800,000 advertisers that violated Google’s policies.

According to Davis’ article, the Ads Integrity Alliance will work together to:

  1. Develop and share definitions, industry policy recommendations, and best practices.
  2. Serve as a platform for sharing information about bad actors.
  3. Share relevant trends with policymakers and law enforcement agencies.

Bottom-line, bad ads reduce consumers’ trust in online advertising and damage the online advertising ecosystem for all parties involved — good advertisers, consumers, and ad publishers. Let’s hope that the Ads Integrity Alliance can make a difference in the future of online advertising.

Image: StopBadware

Only 1 out of 4 B2B Companies Track and Follow up on Consumer Social Media Comments

The good news is that B2C companies are catching on to the importance of tracking and following up on consumer conversations about their brands across the social web. The bad news is that not enough of them are doing it yet. The worse news is that the numbers are even lower for B2B companies.

In a recent survey of 1,000 B2B and B2C companies, eMarketer reports that Satmetrix learned 17% of B2C companies don’t track what consumers say about their brands on the social web, nor do they follow up on that feedback. Of B2B companies, 47% do not track or follow up on social media comments about their brands.

Following are some specific statistics from the study:

  • Track and follow up: B2C = 53%; B2B = 27%
  • Track only: B2C = 25%; B2B = 22%
  • Follow up only: B2C = 4%; B2B = 5%
  • None: B2C = 17%; B2B = 47%

Of companies that do track and follow up on social media content and conversations about their brands, nearly 1 out of 2 have dedicated teams in place to monitor and follow up on that feedback.

Overall, companies in the United States are tracking and following up on social media content more frequently than companies in other parts of the world. Just 31% of U.S.-based companies do not track or follow up on social media feedback from consumers. According to the study, U.K.-based companies are least likely to track or follow up on social media feedback with 38% indicating that they do neither.

Specific results by geographic region follow:

  • North America = 31% of companies do not track or follow up on social media
  • Asia = 36% of companies do not track or follow up on social media
  • Latin America = 36% of companies do not track or follow up on social media
  • Europe, Middle East, Africa = 37% do not track or follow up on social media

Given that study after study reports consumers are actively discussing brands online (both positively and negatively) and those conversations influence consumer purchasing decisions, it’s surprising that so many companies aren’t tracking and following up on social media content and conversations. Processes should already be in place, but as the Satmetrix study reveals, those processes aren’t in place yet — particularly not in B2B companies.

Are you surprised by these statistics? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: jainapoory

Interactive Surfaces and the Corporate Website

If only I’d realised, 100 years ago in a former existence, when I was handed HCI 101 to study (HCI=Human Computer Interface), that it could be so interesting.

I went to the final Brunch Bytes session for this season, to hear John Hardy, from HighWire at Lancaster University, talking about interactive surfaces. Yes: being able to use tables, walls, floors…any handy surface, to interact with computers, rather than the typical screen/mouse/keyboard trio of today. And maybe not just 2D flat surfaces, but the surfaces of 3D things in the future.

I know, a long, long way from the corporate website of today. But here’s the thing…

What if?

One of the central themes of his presentation was about how the tools we use dictate not only process, but also group dynamics, and even the output.

He and his colleague Chris Bull set up an interactive desk for collaborative software development. Using this desk, each could see what the other was working on, and share code, since the project was represented/displayed on the table they were working on. For instance, they could ‘pull’ a piece of code from their colleague by literally reaching out and dragging the visual representation of that code across the table into their own workspace, also demarcated on the table. The other would be peripherally aware of this while continuing to work on their own code elements – and could instantly engage in discussion across the desk if necessary.

Setting up experimental tasks using different styles of working to test this collaborative tool, they found that:

  • visual representation of actions, architecture and project status improved communication between the group
  • people wrote better quality code, faster
  • people changed how they worked in order to use the collaborative features of the tool.

The point is that being able to perceive what others were doing as they were doing it—and understanding how that might affect your own work—made a significant difference to the quality of output.

It doesn’t matter that this project revolved around programming. It would work just as well for high-level design, or for determining information architecture… maybe even content development. Perhaps for any piece of work that involves individuals on a small team, developing modular items that are interdependent and need to fit together as an internally consistent and coherent whole.

Corporate website development, anyone?

The really interesting question is whether the processes and development cycles that such things go through could be enhanced by changing the tools we use. And, of course, whether the output would be better with a different tool. Are we hindered by the 2D mindset imposed by the tools we’ve used to date; or have they been so successful because they are best fit for our mental processing?

The related question of how corporate communication might be changed in a move away from 2D screen-based/paper-based communication templates is even more interesting – and a topic for another day.

2 in 5 Online Adults Recommend Brands They Like or Follow

socialogue ipsosAround the world, adults who spend time online are actively liking, following, talking about, and recommending brands. A study by Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange (Ipsos OTX) and Ipsos Global @dvisor puts some numbers to those activities.

According to the June 2012 Socialogue report from Ipsos, nearly two in five online adults worldwide (38%) have recommended a brand that they liked or followed on a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, and so on. In the United States, 35% of online adults have recommended a brand that they liked or followed on a social networking site.

These online recommendations are important to brands. The Ipsos study reports that nearly one in four people (22%) said that they have purchased a brand because a friend recommended or followed that brand online. Of course, consumers in different parts of the world are more likely to follow, like, and recommend brands online than others. Online adults in Latin America are the most likely to recommend a brand they like or follow on a social network. The Ipsos survey found the following percentages of online adults that have already recommended a brand they like or follow on a social network:

  1. Latin America = 53%
  2. Middle East and Africa = 49%
  3. BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) = 46%
  4. Asia-Pacific = 37%
  5. Europe = 32%
  6. North America = 31% (United States = 35% and Canada = 27%)

As you’d expect, not only does geography play a part in how likely people are to like, follow, and recommend brands on social networks but age, gender, and income level have an effect as well. Of the American online adult popultion, Ipsos found the following:

  • Gender: Women are more likely to recommend a brand that they like or follow online than men (41% vs. 29%).
  • Age: The younger online adult audience (35 years old and under) are more likely to make brand recommendations via social networks than the older online audience (both 36-49 year olds and 50-64 year olds). (48% vs. 37% vs. 20%)
  • Income: Online adults with higher incomes are  more likely to recommend brands they like or follow on social networks than people in lower income brackets (high income = 36% vs. medium income = 38% vs. low income = 20%).
  • Marital Status: Married people are more likely than unmarried people to recommend a brand they like or follow on a social network (38% vs. 32%).
  • Occupation: Senior decision-makers are more likely to recommend brands they like or follow on social networks than lower-level employees (44% vs. 34%).

Regardless of the industry a brand operates in or its target audience, there are people online around the world who are willing to like, follow, talk about, and recommend that brand. The key is to create content and conversations that lead to brand relationships and emotional involvement with consumers, which lead to recommendations and word-of-mouth marketing. The proof that people are willing to follow and recommend brands online is in the numbers above.

Image: Ipsos

Creative Brand Cross-Promotion – Toyota iQ and Google Street View

toyota iq google street viewGoogle Street View is a handy tool that lets you explore places around the world through 360-degree street-level imagery. But when Google Street View debuted in Belgium last year, there was a problem. Many streets in Belgium are too small for a car to navigate. Therefore, Google Street View had gaping holes of missing content in Belgium. Google needed to fill those gaps.

Toyota iQ is a tiny car as you can see in the above image. The Happiness Brussels agency saw an opportunity to promote the Toyota iQ while solving Google’s problem at the same time. Toyota iQs were fitted with 360-degree cameras and equipment to record the narrow streets that Google’s cars couldn’t.

A special iQ Street View website launched where consumers were asked to add streets that hadn’t been captured by Google Street View yet, and the Toyota iQ would go out and capture them. People could also view tagged streets on the iQ Street View site and sign up to test drive the Toyota iQ. The site also includes a video that shows the Google Street View and Toyota iQ story. You can watch it below.

But that’s not all. People who live on the narrow streets tagged on the iQ Street View website will be mailed special offers for the Toyota iQ. There is no doubt that the people who live on those streets are a perfectly targeted audience for the iQ.

This is a great example of out-of-the-box creative thinking that brings two strong brands together for a cross-promotional opportunity that benefits both of the participating brands and consumers. What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the Google Street View and Toyota iQ cross-promotion initiative.

Image: Toyota