In response to the tough economic times in the UK, John Lewis department store are scrapping their 28 day refund in favour of a never-ending one. A spokesman says ‘“We are not doing is so people can clear out their wardrobes, we are doing it to underline to people in economically difficult times that there is one shop you can buy from where you will not end up regretting it.”
Is 2011 the year of the tablet?
This move illustrates how the CRM market is increasingly integrating social channels instead of treating them as a separate entity, Sales Force has been using Radian6 within their software for a while now but the move to actually purchase them outright is a telling one…
Google is introducing a new Social Feature whereby users are able to mark their approval of a website, product or online property with a +1 mark within search results. The roll out is currently planned just for search but will soon be on normal websites/pages etc.
This is Google’s first attempt at dethroning the Facebook ‘like’ button so it’s worth paying very close attention to. The 1+ for websites would raise a site’s PageRank with every click, creating a very strong SEO incentive for integration. Facebook might no longer be the only web service with a strong cross-web presence.
I’ve signed up to test it in beta so I’ll let you know how I get on with it.
Air New Zealand are on a winning streak at the moment notching up millions of views of their Youtube channel videos. First off was their puppet spokesman ‘Rico’ whose story is being told across episodic content, which focuses on lots of different scenarios, most recently Rico & Snoop Dogg collaborated on a rap song.
However the real over night success has come in the form of their in-flight safety video, which has been sought out & viewed by 1.3million so far since its release 4 days ago. Featuring campy U.S. fitness legend Richard Simmons, it’s a new spin on the usually boring & universally ignored safety content played on most flights.
We are still in the midst of a massive change in dynamic within the recording industry & how people are finding, consuming & sharing music. Many of the record labels have been shopping around new funding models such as partnering with advertisers to give away music tracks as campaign incentives, but you have to question now whether people attach the same value to music as they did previously & how that then impacts on the attractiveness of ‘free downloads’ for consumers…
A great idea from Granata dog food in Germany, in an effort to encourage people to ‘check in’ to billboard advertising (thereby sharing the ad via social networks for free), they offered free dog food to anyone who made the effort. Certain billboards were equipped with food bowls, which dispensed dog biscuits every time a check in was recorded.
Nick Parish, Contagious Magazines North American editor, explores the ever-increasing power & influence Facebook has over both consumers & brands. He argues that steering all communications to go social via the platform could do more harm than good.
As the platform matures, major questions arise. How big will it get? What data should brands be feeding it about their customers? How is it helping brands? At what point does it stop helping? Reactions from marketers and publishers partly mirror consumer reaction; each realising that Facebook's monetisation of information they formerly controlled is the social network's ultimate goal.
A highly recommended read.
Are you sick of merely tolerating some of your so-called Facebook friends? Altoids - the curiously strong mints with a reputation for bizarre advertising - have taken matters into their own hands launching a video, above, which playfully mocks some of the worst Facebook offenders. It made me smile!
