Rebranding Abercrombie & Fitch

There has been a lot of buzz lately about Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries statements on the type of people he would like to attract to his stores. Jeffries has made statements such as, "In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he says. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."

In efforts to redefine the brand, Greg Karber is working to rebrand Abercrombie & Fitch. His goal is to make Abercrombie & Fitch "The World's Number One Brand of Homeless People." Karber has asked everyone to donate their Abercrombie & Fitch clothing to a local homeless shelter. He wants everyone to share their stories on Facebook and Twitter using #FitchTheHomeless. 

Greg Karber is trying to turn the negative publicity toward Abercrombie & Fitch and turn it into a positive social good, well at the same time creating a new target audience for the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing line. Karber is making a statement that it is wrong to discriminate and be exclusive toward the "cool kids." 

What do you think about Karber's action to rebrand the clothing line?

Good News for Twitter Advertisers

Within the past couple years, Twitter opened their advertising API to third parties, which has allowed companies to create more sophisticated advertising. When they launched this new program they were partnered with Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

On Tuesday Kevin Weil, Twitter's senior director of product for revenue at Twitter, made the announcement that advertising on Twitter will now be open to all U.S. users. The change from invite-only advertising to all U.S. users is due to all the feedback the company has received from businesses. Business owners gave suggestions and areas for improvements, which Twitter took in to consideration and have enhanced their advertising and expanded their targeting and reporting in the U.S.

This change will allow companies to expand their target audience and draw more users to their product or service. Social media has been growing since the big digital push and this will continue to help companies reach consumers. Another big step in the advertising world!

Facebook's Timeline is Changing....Again!

Can you handle all the changes in less than one week? Facebook has made yet another change to their website! They have created a new layout for your timeline. Originally, this design was being tested in New Zealand, but now has now expanded to affect all users.

Your timeline navigation will now be located in the top right corner. The "About Me" information will now have its own box below your profile picture. Your name will be placed next to your profile picture overlaying your cover photo. Also, there will be a new section added that allows your to add music, movies, books and TV shows that interest you in the form of apps, placing them right alongside your photos and your friends list.

Facebook said the new layout will allow more customization to your profile. Different apps, such as, Netflix or Goodreads will show what movies you've been watching or books you've been reading. This new look is expected to be in affect within the next couple of weeks. 

This means great news for advertisers! Because of the focus on images, businesses will have a better opportunity to grab the attention of their consumers. This also means that businesses pages will have a more attractive look to them. Along with consumers, business pages will be able to customize their profiles too, allowing them to give the consumers more of what they want.

Infographics: The Newest Way to Digest Data

Infographics have been popping up in social media everywhere recently and the buzz is all about how they educate viewers more quickly and efficiently than traditional posts.

Infographics visually express data via the use of small icons, bits of text and basic graphs; this seems to be the best formula to help viewers digest content faster. With info expressed visually and usually in within a moderate amount of space viewers are more likely to view an infographic as compared to a basic post. With the pressure from users for faster data and instant results, infographics seem to be the best way to grab attention.

 In the world of social-media and marketing expediting the relay of data is paramount and infographics are a great way to boost relevance and engage a target audience. To grab attention and engage your audiences experiment with infographics, but don’t rely on them as a primary means of advertising. Infographics should be supplemental to your marketing tactics!

Silly Social Media Mistakes

Making a mistake on social media can be seen by thousands, if not more, in the matter of seconds. Brands and businesses always need to be careful when monitoring and posting on these sites, such as Twitter. 

This infographic (created by MDG Advertising) shows examples of some social media screw-ups. To avoid these issues, always edit your tweets and make sure you know what's going on in the news and the world around you before you speak on it; or in the case of social media, "tweet on it". These types of mistakes are 100% avoidable when paying attention to social media etiquette. For now, check out these social media blunders for a good laugh, and hopefully to learn from others mistakes!

5 Hot Facebook Marketing Trends

Facebook has drastically changed in the past year, and marketing on it has changed as well. The image-heavy Facebook timeline has made many changes for how businesses market their products and services through the social media site.  There is an impressive amount of pressure on Facebook to be advertising friendly, and a lot of this comes from the fact that with its 133 million users, it can potentially have a bigger audience than the Super Bowl.

The first marketing trend the new Facebook has is the ability to post more and larger photos. Consumers are getting used to a more image filled web, so the new Facebook design features much bigger pictures than before. An analytics firm that measures brand performance, Simply Measured, confirmed a 65% jump for photos and videos combined that companies posted on their Facebook timelines. Sprinkles Cupcakes is a strong believer in the effectiveness of posting photos and videos to their Facebook page, especially with a call to action, seeing the number of likes and comments triple when one exists.

The second trend Facebook timeline has is tapping real-time data. Businesses now have the ability to immediately see the success of their campaign, while typically you have to measure the results at some point in order to see if the ads are working or not. This past April 17^th on Tax Day, TurboTax saw their Facebook post on “Most Common Tax Questions” doing well on Facebook’s “People Talking About This” page, so in turn they advertised on Facebook to increase the reach of the post.

The third trend is to use your Timeline cover photo for marketing. With the cover photo being a giant picture at the top of the company’s Facebook page, brans are realizing this photo can be a banner ad. The huge image provides instant exposure to all of the brands Facebook fans. Other brands are using the cover photo as an interactive photo for their fans. With different call to actions, such as posting a question on the image, fans can now interact with the cover photo.

The fourth trend the Facebook timeline creates for marketing is the gamification of posts. Coca-cola is a very well-known brand on Facebook.  Coca-cola has been posting URL riddles to its millions of fans. Along with them, JetBlue has also been posting more interesting and interactive posts such as “Fill in the Blank” status updates. JetBlue received 182% more comments per most than other typical brands with their post gamification method.

The fifth and final trend on the new Facebook timeline is creatively saying ‘Thank You’. By coming up with creative ways to thank your fans, you can single out and give your fans praise while entertaining the rest of the fans, who normally would have been uninterested in the post. Kraft Mac & Cheese did this by posting a 7-minute video thanking 4,800 fans who had “liked” a post of theirs. The video consisted of a song which included each of their individual names. The 4,800 fans were individually thanked, and the rest of the fans were still entertained in the process.

General Motors Quits Facebook Advertising

General Motors is pulling ads from Facebook, calling them “ineffective”, according to a Wall Street Journal report. It was determined that their ads on the platform “had little impact on consumers,” according to the report. However, GM will continue to market via Facebook’s free brand pages.

The article quotes GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick as saying GM “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.” Ewanick’s use of “content” in this case refers to Facebook brand Pages.

GM spends about $40 million marketing on Facebook, but only about a quarter goes to advertising- the rest going to creating content for the site, according to the report. GM spends an estimated $1.8 billion worldwide on advertising per year.

A Forrester Research Analyst, Nate Elliott, wrote a blog post on Monday questioning the social network’s advertising. “Somehow Facebook still hasn’t stumbled upon a model that’s proven consistently successful for marketers, or that brings in the massive revenues to match the site’s massive user base,” wrote Elliott. “One global consumer goods company told us recently that Facebook was getting worse, rather than better, at helping marketers succeed. And companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they’re no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget – a shocking fact given the site’s dominance among users.”

Facebook posted revenues of $3.7 billion in 2011, the vast majority of which came from advertising. However, Facebook’s first-quarter revenues fell from the previous quarter and Facebook’s amended S-1 form, filed on May 10, cited the transition to mobile as a worrisome sign for ad revenues.

Marketers are making their way onto Pinterest

More and more research being released shows that social media is taking over and it’s a great way to help market and advertise brands. Pinterest is one of the newest social media outlets being utilized by marketers. Magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and marketers like Whole Foods have been quick to embrace Pinterest, the start-up firm that allows its users to share images by “pinning” them.

The site’s popularity among brands is noted as a prime example of the rise of visual web, along with Instagram and Facebook’s new time line feature, which like Pinterest, is heavily driven by images instead of text.

Andrew Lipsman is the vice president of industry analysis research firm comScore said, “Pinterest is creating sort of a meritocracy of what’s visually appealing. Brands are scrambling and trying to figure it out. They know it’s going to be big, but they don’t necessarily know the best way to use it.”

Better Homes and Gardens has 73 pin boards on Pinterest with a total of 47,854 people who follow them. Images from these boards were “re-pinned” (another feature of the site) on other boards 448,022 times in January alone. “To me, it’s an ideal platform for brands like ours that are really visually driven in many ways,” said Gayle Butler, the editor in chief of Better Homes and Gardens.

Another way that images make their way across the Web to Pinterest is through the “Pin It” button that is slowly making its way alongside the Facebook and Twitter share buttons that live near most digital material.

While the company does not provide any user data to publishers of brands, we do know that it is at the forefront of social media and that Pinterest is a great way to further build a brand.  

Gone Viral!

Happy Birthday, Twitter!

Six years ago today, Jack Dorsey tweeted the first ever tweet on Twitter and a communications revolution was born.

Now, 6 years later it has grown exponentially to over 500 million users, making it the largest one-to-many open communication platform on the web today.  After hearing those numbers you would never believe what humble beginnings this social network came from.

Twitter stemmed from an earlier company ran by ex-googler friends called Odeo, which was going to be a podcasting platform. But when Apple launched iTunes podcasting, it made their little startup company irrelevant. After enlisting the help of another buddy and much brainstorming, the team came up with “Twttr”, which would eventually become Twitter.

This social networking phenomenon allows its users to interact with their favorite celebs and follow the latest news s
tories. Many businesses use Twitter as a marketing tool to reach consumers. It has changed media, business and politics – even our President Barack Obama has an account!

With 11 Twitter accounts created every second, the company is projected to earn $259 million in Advertising Revenue this year. Not a bad birthday gift!