I have been writing for almost 4 years now about the power of social media. With Linkedin’s success on their IPO – shares closed at Thursday’s closing price of $94, it’s trading at 36 times its 2010 revenue; Google trades at five times.

This legitimizes the power and success of social media and re-enforces for all businesses – it is time to get into the game. It also points to many other big companies, Canada’s major retailer The Bay is rumored to be looking at an IPO for the fall. But how are these retailers leveraging the power of social media – as they step into the future in their marketing and continue to engage  their customers? Read the rest of this entry »

I tweeted the other day Digitally creative, innovative, design savvy, experiential , savvy to the user experience, agile, hungry = creative tech agency – So what does this mean and or refer to?

I was thinking about our small boutique agency. As we continue to grow and create successful campaigns for our clients, we work to carve out a space for those companies who greatly desire our skill, expertise, creative tech skills & bandwidth -while meeting and exceeding their objectives. Yes and keeping the money in their pockets with low cost innovation and implementation and high returns. Some believe the more “likers” and followers you have the better success you will be – yet they forget that it is quality not quantity you want via information and engagement. There is today no accident that your neighbor, former high school teacher, doctor, dentist and boss former & current are all on Facebook. (Yes we may all want to take an extra minute to review our privacy settings) It means that all the brands you can think of, businesses, products and services know we are all there too and they are looking for new marcom partners and business advisers to help them reach all of us. Both online and offline. It will be those such as ourselves with a wealth of award winning traditional talent and  savvy experiential technical talent – who clearly understand and can translate that user experience – on an array of platforms, that will help you knock it out of the park- in reaching that customer in the place you desire to have them go. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Canada tweeted this week that there are 2 million business in Canada and 1 million of those businesses are not currently online. Many of the responses to those tweets resulted in how agencies like ours will be very busy – we all hope for that. But more importantly is providing businesses with an understanding of the power -on how to leverage the online tools that include social media, mobile, email, search, linking, video etc. – while not having to drop their current offline communications marketing practices -that these said business feel are successful. Total communications means using the offline marketing initiatives, print, pop, television, radio etc. as tools to leverage your online communications and vise versa. Bridging that gap because both worlds still matter. Read the rest of this entry »

I first came across this video last week posted by my friend @alexasamuels and variations of this theme have been roaming on Twitter in the last couple of days. The discussion revolves around the success of social media. P&G made a huge declaration -“The nation’s largest advertiser said it would forgo further involvement with daytime television serials (called “soap operas” because P&G used them to sell soap, dish washing liquid and laundry detergent) in favor of a hefty investment in social media.” I say that is certainly putting a stake in the sand!

As we work to gear up with new campaigns for our clients in 2011 – using a digitally ahead- total communications outlook – leveraging tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube do and can work - not only for consumer engagement but to increase sales too! In a great article posted on Brandchannel.com – Going Social: Brands Large and Small Must Adapt to Social Media in 2011, Author Barry Silverstein says” Going social will demand a whole new level of consumer responsiveness from brand marketers – and a whole new way of looking at lead generation and qualifications process. Those who rise to that challenge will have the distinct advantage over their competitors in 2011. Click here to read more of this article.

For us the proof is always in the case studies and examples of success to show how powerful something can become. Everyone by now is familiar with the Old Spice campaign. That campaign garnered 140 million views on Twitter, an increase of Facebook fans of 2700% and 1.2 million Facebook fans. Sales rose 107%, according to Neilsen Data. You can’t get better than that. Here’s a link to a video from CREATIVITY that provides a case study for you to see how it worked so well.

The famed agency Weiden Kennedy knocked it out of the park with this one. What are you gonna do?

Best Nicole

Since we began this blog we have been writing continuously about brand ambassadors and the power behind the people that love and support your brand. In creating an online community – it can be great to find someone with a following and profile related to your product and service – that you can leverage. Someone that can lend some passion, credibility through their following and knowledge of your products or services – that can share with the community you want to build. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I attended an event hosted by IBM. The topic of the half day conference was The Future of Interactive Technologies. I decided to title today’s post as The Future of Interactive Technologies is NOW. Why? As I sat beside many businesses – both retailers and suppliers such as myself – many of these business on the retail side or B-C sector, are just starting to implement their social media strategy. For me the future is now. Every business needs to be involved in finding ways to engage and build their tribe/community – as so aptly written – by one of my marketing guru’s Seth Godin. There were some great stats about the trends of social media, the emergence and importance of mobile and of course the value and power that is now wielded by your customer. Over the last 3 years we have written about all of these topics. The power of the brand ambassador, the idea that they are talking about you whether you are there or not, understanding how your target market wants to communicate and then focusing on those digital tools to engage them and featuring businesses that have been doing social media right. Read the rest of this entry »

In the last month I have had several large potential and current clients come to us and say that they want to grow their email lists and need innovative ways to do that. With the comfort and now current use of social media – leveraging social media tools is a great way to do this. Social media tools allow for a  more targeted, relevant and successful email campaign – that encourages the recipient to get involved and better yet SHARE! Read the rest of this entry »

One of the ways that companies can be successful with a  ROI via onine initiatives – is through search. Search defined as Search Engine Marketing is defined as “a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.” in Wikipedia.  One of the regular questions we receive from our clients both current and new is what is the next thing? Read the rest of this entry »

These days in marketing – many are looking to mobile and the ipad and how to create apps and mobile campaigns to leverage their social media and marcom campaigns. As a communications company that continues to expand – as one of the few truly global leaders in Canada – we are interested in the power of mobile – not just how we use it here in our day to day life – but how the world is using mobile and the power it has on the global stage. Read the rest of this entry »

It is October already and I am going to try to keep up once again with our blog posts. I start out with a new month writing about something that is of interest to most of us – marketing green.  For most businesses this is an agenda and sustainability is not just a discussion point but rather a line item for budget and one of the way many businesses – are trying to show that their brand is making a commitment to being a committed corporate citizen. Read the rest of this entry »