Less Is More For MSN.com

November 5, 2009 By Shar Van Boskirk Leave a Comment

Sharvanboskirk [Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

Last night Microsoft launched a new look and feel for msn.com to a limited number of consumers.  The new design will roll out to the mainstream in January.

Forrester got a sneak peak of the new-and-improved interface in October.

 MSN home page

Here is my take on the redesign.  It:

Limits clutter.  Perhaps the best thing about the new msn.com is that it is simply cleaner.  MS says it has 50% fewer links than the old msn.com.  As part of the clean up, MS removed the left hand navigation and turned the top nav links into five customizable tabs.

Integrates personal social experiences.  The idea of the new msn.com is to make it a "personal portal" where people can come to "infosnack" on their preferred news, communications and community fix.  I like the facebook and hotmail integration shown here, but I think all portals are facing a strategy challenge as consumer media behavior changes.  That is, consumers no longer *want* to come to a single source for news, communications and community.  We, in fact, want these syndicated to us across the multiple sites and devices we use.  So while I think integration of new types of content is imperative for MSN.com, I don't think it completes users' overall quest to have their online needs met.

Will increase content distribution relationships.  To the above point,   This means, MSN should increase the network of content providers, sites and devices it shares content with.  We hope MSN's rev after this one shares MSN proprietary content more universally across devices and sites (yes, esp iPhones and iTunes) and allows consumers to add in feeds for digital formats of books, video, music, or games into their customized msn.com.

Filed Under: Media, Microsoft, Online Advertising, Shar Van Boskirk, advertising

Using Social Media To Create And Amplify Offline Influence

September 30, 2009 By Nate Elliott Leave a Comment

Nate Elliott[Posted by Nate Elliott. Follow me on twitter.]

According to all the data I’ve collected in the past few years — no matter what age group or country you study, and no matter how actively people use social media — the huge majority of users influence each other face to face rather than through social online channels like blogs and social networks. And a huge body of research — most recently including Razorfish’s Fluent study — has proven that recommendations from offline friends are more influential than recommendations from online friends. So I decided to have a closer look at how interactive marketers can create offline influence in my new report The Analog Groundswell: Using Social Media To Create And Amplify Offline Influence.

I found marketers using a range of strategies to create offline influence, but there are two in particular that are most promising:

  1. Events. If you want to create a big splash for a new product or service, tweet-ups and house parties are a great strategy for reaching a lot of people quickly. For instance, the NHL worked with fans to run a series of 23 simulatenous tweet-ups to celebrate the opening of the 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs — and attracted more than a thousand attendees, generated a potential Twitter reach of more than 200,000, and garnered press coverage that reached millions. And right now, Microsoft is working with a company called House Party to plan in-home launch parties for its new Windows 7 operating system.
  2. Ambassador programs. If you want to build long-term relationships and ongoing influence, ambassador programs might be the right strategy for you. For instance, scissor maker Fiskars found a great way to turn members of its legendary Fisk-a-teers online community into offline ambassadors: they gave each member a special pair of scissors engraved with their member number. When the Fisk-a-teers go to crafting parties and pull out their special scissors, it invariably creates a conversation about the brand. Vendors like BzzAgent can drive offline sampling and evangelism for marketers. And even Facebook has used ambassador programs in some markets where it’s been slow to grow.

Clients can learn more — including lots more examples, and our best practices for offline influence programs — by reading the full research report. And I’ll also be speaking on this topic at both Forrester’s 2009 Consumer Forum (in Chicago, October 27 and 28) and our 2009 EMEA Marketing Forum (in London, November 17 and 18).  I just finished writing a case study on the NHL’s tweet-ups as well.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you: what are you favorite examples of brands driving offline word of mouth? Have you ever run an offline influence program – and if so, what vendors did you use and how did it work? Let me know in the comments below.

Filed Under: Consumer Marketing Forum EMEA, Nate Elliott, Word-of-mouth marketing, advertising

HEMA website

January 26, 2008 By bryanong Leave a Comment
You gotta have a look at this Holland departmental store's website. Interesting and innovative web marketing. Take a look at HEMA's product page. wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. Don't scroll... the page moves itself...

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands. HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.

This is a gimmicky promotional website and you probably be puzzle as to how you can view or buy their products. In fact, you can't do your shopping at this website. To do your shopping, you will have to go to its normal website at http://www.hema.nl/

Filed Under: advertising, website

Video Marketing via Video Sharing Sites

January 22, 2008 By bryanong Leave a Comment

Video sharing sites for example YouTube and Metacafe seems to be the biggest hits in town especially with the younger and modern generations. These video sharing sites have also become the next advertising medium for many marketers. Marketers have been producing commercial videos for the purpose of marketing and promoting their companies' brands and products/services. Google, Apple and many other small to large companies have ride on this wave of utilising this new form of advertising vehicle and most have found it to be an effective marketing tool as these video sharing sites have a phenomenal high traffic circulation. Internet Outsider reports that YouTube now accounts for 28% of total minutes spent on Google worldwide and an astounding 35% of global users; This is indeed an astounding level. The biggest success of video sites such as YouTube is because it 'empowers' users making them feel that they are content producers themselves. Below is a list of video sharing sites that are popular worldwide now.

Google Video
BrightCove
PhotoBucket
YouTube
DailyMotion
iFilm
Myspace
Vimeo
BuzzNet
Flixya
GoFish
Kwego
Lulu 6
MyHeavy
PutFile
StupidVideos
Vmix
ZippyVideos
CastPost
Dotv
Famster
MeraVideo
Porkolt
VideoWebTown
Vidmax
Metacafe
Blip.tv
Blinkx
GodTube
Ourmedia
Vimeo
Tudou.com (Chinese)
Filed Under: advertising, marketing

Advertising Frequency Part 2

October 19, 2007 By bryanong Leave a Comment
In my previous post, advertising frequency: how many times is it effective? I've discussed the number of times a user needs to see an ad before he/she will take action. In this case, the best action would be a purchase. 3 times, 7, 10 or 20 times? you debate. At marketing studies, they would argue/prove that consumers were, on the average, exposed to the ad creative 16.9 times (17) before making the purchase.

The study was for a 1 month period, which included advertising on 85+ web media and 50 different ad creatives. The campaign reach was 100,000+ internet users and standard IAB ad creative sizes were used (728x90px and 160x600px; static .jpg files).

In banner ad campaigns, it would take 17 times. What about search marketing campaigns?
Filed Under: advertising