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Interactive Beauty App Builds Brand Loyalty For Lancôme

This is a great casestudy of mobile ans social media working hard for a large brand, specifically a line beauty products. The kicker is that the iPhone app is translated into Chinese and English.
Read the article here.

itunes player from Graffiti, NYC

Daffy's site relaunch

Daffy's has relaunched their site and I must say that it, in short, rocks. Whether it increases sales, awareness, consumer participation, brand awareness, etc. remains to be seen. What I like is the interface. It intuitive and easy to zip around. Even the screen loader is cool. A tracking application follows the GPS signals of the delivery trucks around and you can set up alerts so that you are the first to know when new, gotta have it, fashion comes in to your local Daffy's.

Jack Daniel's whiskey brand adds mobile to marketing mix

Nice mobile campaign from Jack Daniels in Europe. A bit of a swiss army knife solution that expands consumer engagement beyond an existing experiential program. In all, the download numbers are good. Close to 200,000 downloads across all the major platforms speakes to ubiquity of the adaptation of this mobile tool. Read the article here.

Loupe for iPhone

"With Loupe you can capture your color inspirations so you don't have to try and guess what that shade was when you are back at your computer." Looks cool. Gonna give it a try.

New mix for July 2009

Sherwin-Williams taps mobile to reach younger demographic

Nice little iPhone app. from Sherwin-Williams and partners. Clean and intuitive navigation. The color matching tool works well enough but does it adjust for light source, ie natural vs. florescent? A fun app that delivers on User engagement. Read the review here.

2 not 20

Having worked on an awareness and advocacy program recently for Trojan I am well versed in engaging a younger audience with content: curated, DIY, celebrity-endorsements, etc. A recent government outreach program in England about safe sex went after the same audience via the mobile channel and the results were uh, well limp. Good intentions, right channel, interesting mobisode content play. What killed the program was the fact that each mobisode was 20+ minutes long! In doing our research for Trojan, we arrived at a medium unit of content size at 2min for a variety of reasons. Read about the whole mess here.

OMG! Teens Slash Clothing Spending

Like a totally cool article about trends in teen apparel spending habits. The long and short is that while clothe spending is down, shoe spending is up. Like, duh!

While the comparable-store sales declines of leading teen retailers have been telling a mostly dismal tale for months now, Piper Jaffray's new "Taking Stock With Teens" survey pretty much confirms it: Among the 8,100 teens surveyed, with a median age of 16.7 years, spending on clothes is down 19%.

A bigger surprise, however, is that they are actually spending more on shoes -- a 9% increase, according to the 17th semiannual survey, and 8% more on accessories. In fact, shoes are hot: "Footwear posted the strongest year-over-year and sequential results at a 4% and 21% gain respectively," the Minneapolis-based brokerage firms says in its report -- "an indication that the strong footwear cycle, particularly relative to the weakness in apparel, continues for the youth demographic."

Link to the article

Smartphones driving mobile shopping: PriceGrabber

Yeah, I know its not that sexy. But if you read into the article, the numbers build a solid case. The kicker is that the base numbers will just get bigger, wider, hit more demographics: teens, boomers, Moms, etc. While its important to focus on the, "right now," it also very important to focus on the, "whats next."

According to PriceGrabber.com’s Mobile Shopping Behavior Survey, 58 percent of U.S. online consumers already own a Web-enabled mobile phone. Furthermore, of those consumers that own a Web-enabled mobile phone, one in 10 has bought products or services with their device.

link to article

Toshiba tests phone-controlled billboard game

To promote its laptops and showcase digital signage technology capable of utilizing real-time data over the Internet, electronics giant Toshiba tested an interactive digital billboard in Tokyo last weekend that allowed YouTube users and pedestrians with mobile phones to play video games against each other.

Really? That's all you got?

Can someone wake this guy up? Search is not the end all, be all. To quote http://twitter.com/storyspring, "A search marketer trashing social media marketing is an umbrella salesman trashing sunblock..." To concure with Storyspring, it is anoying when this occurs, especially in front of the tender ears at OMMA Global Hollywood.

Facebook flashmob shuts down station

As reported in CNN, the genius of a flash mob to seize control of a moment. This has nice implications for event based marketing efforts. Reminds me of that great scene in the Fisher King, where Robin Williams is in Grand Central and suddenly has the vision that everyone in the station is waltzing.

Guinness mobile campaign lets you rate your pint

A nice mobile campaign from Guinness. Mobile Card Cast powered the Guinness program. The program asks participans to rate their pint and get a chance to win a trip to Dublin. Ok, its a sweeps program, or is it? This program is about brand loyalty and customer loyalty. As an extension the program asks users to rate their drinking establishment for quality of pour, etc. In what might be called a 'pub loyalty index,' the favorites were rewarded with plaques and such. Read about the program here.

Will Arnett and R/GA deliver the goods for the Superbowl

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BMW, Gaming and Branding, Oh my

This is a nice, brand passive iPhone game for BMW Mini. Jumping on the iPhone bandwagon with this free game is a clear way for Mini to increase consumer engagement with the brand. It also makes complete sense because Apple and Mini have a strong overlap of demographics. BMW Mini's financial arm has launched "Mini Liquid Assets," a mobile game available for download at no charge from the iTunes App store.

Pharma Companies and Social Media Marketing

Nice article about approaching Pharma marketing from the Social Media Marketing angle.

"Over 80% of Internet consumers search online for health information, trusting peer-generated social media content more than pharma company websites and what their physicians say. It has become commonplace to use online support groups to discuss medications or treatments with other patients."

Cadillac dealership leverages mobile marketing at auto show

Cadillac's CTS

San Diego-based Cadillac dealership Marvin K. Brown Auto Center used mobile to generate buzz around the new CTS car and drive people to its location.

The dealer tapped Ping Mobile to create a campaign with a call to action on the Cox Media network, asking local viewers to text CTS to 269411 to receive a free gas card. The campaign was designed around the 2009 San Diego Auto Show, where the dealer had a booth set up.

"The strategy for this client’s campaign was to engage visitors to the 2009 San Diego Auto Show and make their booth stand out as much as possible, and not just fade into the background like white noise,” said Shira Simmonds, president of Ping Mobile, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Martha Stewart Weddings fully mobilizes print ads in latest issue

Martha is getting involved. I like the notion of twining mobile marketing with a traditional marketing channel, aka magazine special issue publishing. Will this additional engagement channel take root, catch fire, ladder-up to conversion for the advertisers? Activate the la-z-boy leg rest and watch.

The Winter 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings is enabling marketers to provide interactive advertisements in the publication.

Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s are examples of some of the advertisers in the issue. The Winter 2009 issue of the wedding magazine was fully mobilized using SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get. technology which lets readers take a picture of an ad to receive additional information.

“Virtually every ad in the issue was activated with a tip, including some of the top bridal fashion, jewelry, travel and retail brands in the country,” said Amy Wilkins, senior vice president and publisher of Martha Stewart Weddings, New York.

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