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C3: Seth Godin on appealing to the weirdos

As a marketer will you choose to industrialise or to make art?

Will you choose to appeal to the maximum amount of people as possible via the safest of methods or will you appeal to those on the fringes? The people who may not immediately drive huge traffic or revenue for you but will make your business stronger in the long-term.

This is a question posited by author Seth Godin, who delivered a keynote speech at C3 in New York last week.

Here are Seth Godin’s thoughts on ‘the fork in the road’ and the decision on which direction you may want to take. 

TheCHIVE and Philips: why mobile and video works

Video is the best marketing tool for inspiring trust and the smartphone is the device to achieve intimacy with the consumer.

Finally, social is the environment in which brands encounter the consumer.

These were the assertions of Russell Zack of Kaltura, speaking at a recent IAB event on digital transformation.

Here are some more tidbits from his presentation including two examples of brands that are doing video and mobile well right now.

How Clarins is using WeChat, Baidu and Tmall to expand in China

China represents both a huge challenge and a huge opportunity for brands looking to expand into new markets.

Julien Chiavassa is an expert on Chinese ecommerce having been living and working in the country since 2005. 

In 2011 he established Clarins’ first ecommerce store in China and has recently moved to Singapore to become head of digital and ecommerce in APAC.

I caught up with Chiavassa at Demandware’s Xchange ’14 conference to find out more about the challenges facing luxury cosmetics brands in China…

How Whistles is tailoring its ecommerce site to international markets

The internationalisation of ecommerce is one of the main priorities for established brands, with foreign markets providing huge potential for business growth.

But this obviously brings with it a new range of challenges in terms of localised content, currency options and different fulfilment methods.

Luxury clothing retailer Whistles is currently just starting a process of internationalising its online store, so head of ecommerce Louise Salt knows a lot about the challenges of expanding into new markets.

At Demandware’s Xchange ’14 event Salt described how the company was approaching the challenge of catering to international shoppers.

How 21 top US retailers handle social customer service

In a continuing series of investigations into how companies use social for customer care, last week I took to Twitter, posed as an innocent customer and asked some of the most popular US retailers the same query.

The query would also test each brand’s true multichannel capabilities: “can I return an item bought online to my nearest branch?”

With this investigation we’ll be testing their response times and ability to satisfyingly bring a resolution to the query.

Other matters taken into consideration are whether the reply was a personal, human response, whether the retailer either operated a separate customer service Twitter account from the main one or whether it stated that the main account was also there for customer enquiries and whether operating hours were clearly stated.

Let’s take a look at the results…

Facebook just changed mobile advertising. Here’s how…

This week, Facebook announced a new version of its ad platform, Atlas, which has the potential to increase, significantly, how much we advertise on mobile. 

This is no upgrade, it’s essentially a total rebuild ‘from the ground up‘ which intends to solve some of the biggest problems facing digital marketers. 

But, really, Facebook wants to solve ‘the mobile problem’. It’s all about mobile. 

You say Ello and I say goodbye (to Facebook?)

Ello is being billed as the ad-free Facebook, but cynicism abounds online.

Many have highlighted how social networks have reneged on their philosophies in the past (in the eyes of their users) and Ello’s terms and conditions don’t exactly rule out ads.

I’m not sure yet what I think about Ello (I’m waiting for my invite request to be approved) and I realise the headline of this blog is like one of those spicily titled but ultimately bland editorials in marketing publications. 

However, I thought I’d do a little run down of what Ello is, its USPs and where other social networks have held the same ground and ultimately decamped from it.

Nine of our favourite social campaigns from September

As a new month begins it’s time to look back and round up some of the most noteworthy social campaigns we’ve seen in the last 30 days or so.

This time it includes Burberry, Topshop, Peugeot, Paddy Power, Stonewall, Grant’s Whisky and new Instagram ads.

Paddy Power is among the brands that will be speaking at Econsultancy’s Festival of Marketing in November. The two-day celebration of the modern marketing industry also features speakers from LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more. 

Q&A: Selfridges’ Simon Forster on the brand’s multichannel retail strategy

Selfridges has just relaunched its website, part of a £40m investment over the next five years, which aims to future-proof the business. 

We paid a visit to Selfridges’ London offices for a preview of the new site, and a chat with the company’s Multichannel Director Simon Forster. 

Here, he explains the thinking behind the redesign, the growth of mobile shoppers, and the challenges of presenting a luxury user experience. 

How Zappos uses social media: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

The US online fashion retailer makes a rather bold statement in the about section of its website.

“Customer service isn’t just a department!” The entire organisation is built around one sole mission: to provide the best customer service possible.

A lot of brands may say that customer experience is at the core of their strategy, but how many follow through with this statement in practice?

Graham Charlton discussed what Zappos could teach us about staff and customer retention last month. It’s largely about making the working environment as happy as possible through plenty of staff recognition, trust, responsibility and plenty of perks.

For the customer it means ‘delivering a WOW philosophy’ through excellent service, customer focused metrics, surprising people through under-promising and over-delivering and remaining ever personal.

So Zappos delivers ‘happiness’ for its employees and for its website customers. How about its social channels? Given Zappos focus on customer service, does this extend to the channels where more and more consumers are expecting interaction from brands?

Panda 4.1: what’s it all about?

Panda 4.1, as it has been dubbed, was released by Google last week with the aim of identifying low quality content more easily. 

According to Google, it affects between 3% and 5% of search queries and will result ‘in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher’. 

I asked Marcus Tober, CTO and co-founder of SearchMetrics, about the new update. 

How conflicts between sub-domains can harm your search rankings

Brands have sub-domains for a variety of reasons – to separate their sites for different audiences, to split their offerings, and so on. 

However, this can lead to conflict between the main and sub-domains if this strategy is not applied properly. 

Before Google ended clustering in search results, this may well have worked well for brands, allowing them greater visibility in search results. 

In this post, I’ll show these sub-domain conflicts are affecting Ladbrokes, Coral, Oasis, ASOS and Barclay’s. 

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