More often than not, silence is never the best option when it comes to company gaffes.
A holding statement acknowledging an issue is good, it shows empathy and action. The next step is to establish the facts of the scenario and to make a further, timely response when these are established. Read More
Back in December Instagram changed its terms and conditions, angering users who were worried about their pictures being sold without their consent and contributing to a string of events that led to the site losing 20 million users.
Just days before the miscalculated T&Cs announcement, the Facebook-owned site had disabled its Twitter card integration, meaning it would no longer display images properly on Twitter. This, it claimed, was because it wanted users to view pictures on a new Instagram website, specifically built for the task. Read More
It’s that time of the year again when a third of the world’s population celebrates the biggest single event of the year, Chinese New Year (CNY) or Lunar New Year as it’s often called. You can’t go anywhere in Singapore without seeing the colour red (and that’s not just because they all support ManU and Liverpool although that does explain why Newcastle United are so poorly supported here….), lanterns, orange trees, snake symbols and general celebratory decorations in every condo, mall and F&B outlet are everywhere and put xmas decorations to shame.
How do you engage with consumers and build a business through social media? That is the sixty four million dollar question. The answer is actually quite simple, don’t sell, engage. Starbucks, much derided but actually way ahead of the game when it comes to building a relationship with customers on social media. Their objective is not sales it’s to build a relationhip. By doing this the sales will naturally grow. Simple. Except 99% of brands seemed to have missed this point.
The search for this year’s top brands in social media has begun as Social Brands 100 opens today for nominations in what will be the biggest year yet for the bench ranking report. Last year’s number one brand was food and smoothie drinks maker Innocent, which beat Starbucks, giffgaff and Cancer Research UK to take the top slot. The ranking also featured names from a wide range of industries including the British Red Cross Cadbury, ASOS, Manchester City Football Club, and KLM. Read More
While Starbucks wilts under the pressure of protest and public boycotts Google is showing no such qualms as its chairman, Eric Schmidt, says that he is “very proud” of the company’s tax structure and that efforts to lower its payments to governments like Britain are just “capitalism”.
It is an interesting communications approach to take. Brazen almost. It gives the impression that Google does not care what anyone thinks of it. As the Telegraph reports Schmidt’s certainly comments risk inflaming the row over the amount of tax multinationals pay, after it emerged that Google funnelled $9.8bn (£6.07bn) of revenues from international subsidiaries into Bermuda last year in order to halve its tax bill. Read More
As more and more brands have turned to social media in 2012 Twitter has taken a look at some of the most successful Promoted Product campaigns in a year where it made improvements to targeting and where advertisers were reporting strong results on mobile. The list serves as a good reminder of what brands tried during 2012 and will also hopefully provide ideas for others who are thinking about using more social media in their 2013 digital campaigns.
Twitter looked at a combination of datapoints that measured the reach and engagement of a campaign, including total engagements and impressions. Interesting to see that Starbucks is there in the top ten. It started the year so well with its free latte campaign to launch its two shot drink. The subsequent months have proved difficult for Starbucks, but social media and Twitter remain crucial to its communications. Read More
Twenty-three percent of the top 100 brands enable consumer outreach and engagement via mobile and social networks using phones, smartphones and tablets, according to a new report from Brand Keys.
Apple and Amazon dominate. You have to go to number 12 on the list before you are not dealing with a tech brand that has a natural fit into mobile.
The 16th annual loyalty leaders gives the loyalty rankings for the top 100 brands out of 598 brands assessed in 83 industry categories in the 2012 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index.
More on the soaring growth of Instagram today, following talk of its ‘Superstorm Sandy Citizen Journalism moment’, with research from Simply Measured that reveals more than half of the world’s top brands or 54% are using the photo sharing network to engage consumers.
Earlier this year it looked at how brands are adopting Instagram and now three months later that is paying off with sizable month-over-month growth.
Since August brands including Starbucks, Burberry, Nike, Gucci and Audi have gained over a million new followers. Add to that MTV which has become the first brand to hit the one million follower milestone. Read More
Headstream’s recent Social Brands 100 study highlighted the brands that have successfully become part of the ‘people’s media’. We’ve looked behind five brands that made the cut.
Whatever the size or complexity of a brand, no matter what its business model may be, a core marketing challenge remains how to use social in a compelling and authentic way.
Against such a constantly evolving terrain, though, how can brands know if their social media efforts are being effective? To that end, social brand agency Headstream set out to create a benchmark of social performance, and highlighted 100 companies that met its criteria Read More
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