FURNITURE, PUNS & WEDDINGS

You thought there were some things that just couldn’t be done online, like a wedding, for example? Well, you, my friend, along with probably millions of other people, are wrong.

Yesterday IKEA launched its newest service: Online weddings. No, this is not a joke, nor is this a drill. It is a real thing, dear readers. You can now plan your wedding, choose your virtual location and invite as many of your friends as you want, no matter where they are in the world. Formalities included (which means you are actually getting married on paper), and did I mention that it’s all for free?!

“Love at its simplest,” says the Online Wedding landing page. The explanation goes like this: “The best sort of love is easy and effortless. And promising one another eternal devotion at a wedding should be just as simple. That’s why we’ve created a new type of wedding that’s neither expensive nor complicated. Invite your friends – as many as you like and wherever they may be – and celebrate together via a video link. And if you’re not walking down the aisle (yet), we’ve got some inspiration and ideas for other parties for you. But if wedding bells do start to chime, then organizing a wedding is just a few clicks away for you and your partner.”

How is that for an innovative idea? Yes, there is this underlying love-hate relationship with IKEA that we all have (which is heavier on the “love” part for me, I must admit), but let’s be honest, they are always able to surprise us. Not only with home furnishings (and the amount of time they take to assemble), but with creative ideas like this one.

I must also add that I appreciate Ikea’s light-hearted approach when it comes to their advertising and appearances on social media. Take the Shelf Guru for example. After Groupon’s banana bunker viral hit on Facebook, Ikea was quick to come up with its own attempt to create a viral thread on their Facebook page. The Shelf Guru’s “pun intended” answers to customers’ questions were received well by the public and did in fact make it on to news sites.

Speaking about furniture that is time-consuming and sometimes very frustrating to assemble: IKEA wasn’t shy to own up to these facts and used it as a fun and quirky advertising piece. What better way to tell their customers about the assembly service they offer?

The idea came from the German agency Thjnk, who also came up with this genius out-of-home advertising campaign for the company in 2014:

In any case, some wit combined with lots of creativity keeps the Swedish furniture company fresh and top-of-mind year to year. Hats off to that (and the fact that they somehow managed to lure me into becoming an IKEA Family member, even though I’m not particularly fond of memberships)!

Oh, and in case you want to plan your online wedding tonight, you may do it here.

NEED A NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST?

Jay-Z doesn’t think so. Yesterday he announced his new music streaming service, Tidal, the first of its kind to be owned solely by musicians.

This comes during an on-going debate between musicians, record labels and freemium music streaming services about whether the latter is good for the industry or not. Artists are not pleased that the streaming services enjoy popularity while they barely get a return on their work. Some artists, such as Taylor Swift, have not been afraid to express their concerns. Swift went as far as saying “no” to Spotify, the freemium service that has about 20 million users worldwide, 15 million of which are paying customers.

Her words in her Wall Street Journal article couldn’t be clearer: “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.” If you wanted to hear Taylor Swift songs for free now or anytime in the future, you are sure out of luck.

Jay-Z and Co. certainly agrees with the quoted lady. Tidal is now live, and it is not free. Basic subscription costs $10/month, while the upgrade will pull $20 from your account on a monthly basis. What will you get for $20, you ask? High fidelity music quality, which in more simple terms means CD-audio quality, and high definition music video streaming. Basic subscription allows you to listen to music in its compressed format, a standard for digital streaming services.

Jay-Z’s plan of differentiation involves as many artists as he can get on board who will then provide exclusive content through the service, often for limited time. At the unveiling event in New York City on Monday Jay-Z was accompanied by his wife, Beyonce, Rihanna, Madonna, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Jason Aldean, Jack White, Daft Punk, Arcade Fire and Alicia Keys among others. All artists are said to be owners of Tidal.

As of now, it is unclear who will really benefit from this new venture. The musicians’ main goal is to draw more attention to the issue of artists not benefiting from the popularity of their work and the unfair economic model of current streaming services. At the news conference, participating artists signed a statement and expressed that they would like to “forever change the course of music history.”

The hashtag #TidalforAll became leader of the promotion by all artists on Twitter, while the news also received heavy criticism. Some predict failure as soon as 2016 comes, some hope that it will truly bring a change in people’s attitude towards the way the listen to music on a daily basis. Tidal received hot and cold, as you may see in this article by Uproxx. The goal is respectable, but do you think it is sustainable? In other words, would you pay $10 or $20 for your daily music streaming with so many more economical choices out there?

As Jay-Z told the New York Times: “I just want to be an alternative. They don’t have to lose for me to win.” Let’s see if Tidal can solve one of Jay-Z’s 99 problems.

Instagram’s Not-So-Secret Magical Ingredient

Instagram has become my favorite form of social media over the years, hands down. Ever since I joined early in the application’s lifetime, I have posted and witnessed my friends post thousands of different snapshots of their lives. They became tiny colorful squares on my feed, showing each person’s unique point of view of their surroundings.

What I’ve enjoyed from the beginning is looking for scenes and angles that would allow me to take a picture from a new point of view, at least one that’s new to me, and share it with the rest of the world. The filters and adjustments were fun to use in the beginning, but as I got more into it, I aimed to keep the photos as realistic as possible and turned away from ornate filters. Now I have two applications on my phone that I use to prepare my photos for Instagram, one to adjust colors and contrast, and one to adjust size or placement of the image within the square space.

The image is not all, though. Recently I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal about how the caption of photos is just as important, if not more important, than the image itself. I was instantly intrigued by the choice of topic for the article, because reading it made me realize how I’ve been gravitating towards different images and Instagram users lately. I’ve always enjoyed following great photographers of the “Instagram community” who share amazing photos of New York City or their travels around the world. What differentiates them from the rest, I came to realize, is that most of them also make an effort to complete these fantastic shots with engaging captions – whether that be a random thought, quote, or lyrics of a familiar song. Some even go to the extent of sharing short stories with their followers, some of which may have nothing to do with the image above them.

As the Wall Street Journal put it, “the right caption helps a picture rise above the digital clutter and gain likes, and, most of all, it adds an unexpected layer of meaning.” I must agree. I too have been drawn to images with thoughtful captions more than to those without meaningful words below them, or even worse, a cloud of hashtags suggesting desperate scrambling for new followers. Moreover, I must admit that I have put an image aside before to post later if I didn’t feel that I could come up with an appropriate caption for it.

Some brands are already doing great with amplifying their Instagram posts by adding inspirational quotes or simple statements that don’t necessarily have to do with the image. Although short captions dominate on this social media platform, a research conducted by Simply Measured suggests that there is “no significant correlation between text length and engagement rate,” a point also mentioned in Adweek’s list of 14 Instagram Data Findings That Every Marketer Needs to Know. Options are endless and they won’t set you back! Is this truly the way to stand out from the crowd of the picture-sharing community? Hard to say, but I think there is a strong element of storytelling here that has huge potential and is already explored by many users and brands.

A personal favorite – we all know the abundance of sunset photos on Instagram, but this one managed to stand out with the quote, giving the image a deeper meaning and a new interpretation.

Please do share your take on this topic. Do you give your captions on Instagram any special thought?

Power of the Women’s Market

One of the first topics we talked about in my Strategy class at NYU was the power of marketing to women. My professor asked the question, “if you are not marketing to women, who are you marketing to?” Before this class I did not fully apprehend the power that lies within our gender: women now account for 85 percent of total customer spending, as stated by the Center for Women’s Business Research in Washington, DC.

I have always been one to advocate for equality of the sexes and have enjoyed reading books about or by women in leading positions. The news talks about more and more female CEOs in all segments of business. Select companies openly support gender equality and strive to close the gap between women’s and men’s  salary. Celebrities voice their opinion at international conferences. No doubt that we are not living in an ideal world yet as far as this issue goes, but we are making small steps in the good direction.

Marketers, however, must be leading the pack in change. Not every marketer has to turn into a feminist all of a sudden, but we must all look at the numbers supported by recent studies. As mentioned earlier, not only do women account for the majority of consumer decisions in America, but they do so in every category including new cars, healthcare and electronics. Moreover, the same study by the Center for Women’s Business Research showed that 86% of women entrepreneurs say “they use the same products and services at home as they do in their business,” which is an important fact considering that 65% of business owners are women.

MORE NUMBERS

Women account for $7 trillion in US spending. Yes, $7 trillion, which is also over half of the US GDP. As women’s earning power increases, the average woman is expected to surpass the average male earnings by 2028. Over 50% of traditional male products are purchased by women. In the digital world, women account for  58% of all total online spending, along with the following numbers:

• 22% shop online at least once a day*
• 92% pass along information about deals or finds to others*
• 171: average number of contacts in their e-mail or mobile lists*
• 76% want to be part of a special or select panel*
• 58% would toss a TV if they had to get rid of one digital device (only 11% would ditch their laptops)*
•  51% are moms*

*Source: Mindshare/Ogilvy&Mather

These statistics are just the cream of the crop, if you would like to know more you can visit Women’s Business Exchange, She-conomy or Catalyst.

CHANGES

We have seen a handful of successful advertising campaigns that took the above numbers into consideration when creating their messaging. First one to come to mind is Old Spice and the famous shirtless guy on a white horse, convincing ladies that their man should at least use Old Spice if they can’t be him. This successful rebranding move by the company couldn’t have been more spot on: they realized women are the ones purchasing their partner’s deodorant stick most often.  Under Armour signed Misty Copeland for their “I Will What I Want” spot in celebration of the ballerina’s determination and many accomplishments. Verizon launched it’s “Inspire Her Mind” commercial in 2014 and these are just a few of the many brands who realized the great power that lies within marketing to women. In NYC, the agency called Womenkind specializes in reaching the women’s market, providing women’s consumer insight strategy to those working with them.

If you have any favorite ad campaigns targeting women that may have not been doing so beforehand, I would love to hear about them in the comments!

Sources: Women’s Business Exchange, She-conomy, Catalyst, Huffington Post

What Makes an Outstanding Marketing Analytics Expert?

This weekend I had the chance to attend NYU’s Digital Analytics Conference, the first ever of its kind. I was lucky to get a spot in the audience, as the event filled up very fast. After attending the first day I knew exactly why. NYU brought in wonderful speakers, all of whom were experts within the area of Marketing Analytics and were eager to share their wisdom with us budding students.

The most memorable session to me was the Panel Discussion titled Using Digital Analytics in Industry Verticals. Three professionals told us about  their perspective of the industry and shared tips and tricks they find useful in their work lives. The panelists all fulfill different roles at their respective companies:

• Leyda Hernandez, Director of Marketing at Priori Legal, a pioneering company combining technology and legal services
• Jessica Rifkind, Manager of Analytics and Customer Insights at L’Oréal Luxe where she oversees brands such as Lancome, Giorgio Armani, Urban Decay and Clarisonic among others
• Robb Hecht, VP, Integrated Account Moderator at FCB Global, a worldwide integrated marketing communications agency

As an aspiring Marketing Analytics professional, I was most interested in the panelists’ opinion about what makes an outstanding analytics expert. When asked this question, they had amazing advice I feel inclined to share with my fellow classmates with hopes  of breaking into the industry.

In my opinion, out of the three panelists, Jessica is most relevant to my concentration, as her day-to-day activities include a significant amount of  work in analytics. She shared with us that an analytics expert must have the willingness to dive into data, but he or she must know when to stop. It’s all about extracting the necessary information, without getting completely lost in Excel spreadsheets. Another important part of the to-do list is constant sanity checks, which is making sure every number aligns and makes sense. Failure to do so, she says, may result in someone else finding an error in your work, which is something you never want to happen. Analytics experts must be meticulous and precise, no excuses.

Leyda described someone who works within the area of marketing analytics as follows: he or she must be a data scientist, a psychologist and a creative mind all at once. Her explanation was down to the point. One must naturally be good friends with numbers but also have high emotional intelligence to know that customers are going to be different. Everyone has varying preferences and interests, and the beauty of being a marketing analytics expert lies within the ability to “break down the walls” of the customer’s brain and successfully predict what they will want next, with the help of data of course. Last, but not least, one must also possess a creative mind that helps with obtaining a worldly view of  how the data one is working on influences the overall marketing efforts of the company.

As the perfect last piece of advice, Robb suggested that data is the new creative. His statement relied upon the simple fact that data specialists and creatives of a company make each other look good, therefore they must  be best friends and perform at their best for everybody’s good.

I hope some of you fellow students hungry to learn will find these pieces of advice just as helpful as I did!

My Point of View: Super Bowl Ad Favorites

Hello Dear Readers!

This is the first post of what is hopefully going to shape up as my marketing blog. Credit goes to my Digital Marketing professor at NYU, who encouraged us to start a blog and create entries every week, reviewing anything marketing related. I am looking forward to this new challenge, as I must admit that writing lengthy paragraphs has not been my strength thus far, even though blogging isn’t unfamiliar to me. This is also a great place to let you know that I am now in my second semester of my Integrated Marketing program at NYU pursuing a Master of Science degree. Hopefully my humble fashionista side will marry well with the marketing guru I am destined to be! I am very excited about this new journey and even more excited that I get to share some of it with you through this outlet. Here we go!

Since this first assignment came about right after Super Bowl weekend, I must give in and write about all those unimaginably expensive advertisements that have been spoken about for more than two weeks now. Some of them appeared before the day of the Super Bowl, which allowed the world to see them and start shaping thoughts about them. Some got pulled, some never lost popularity, some had fun pre-campaigns leading up to the big day on different forms of social media.

Here I must insert a disclaimer and explain why I decided to include “My Point of View” in the title of this post. As a Hungarian who spent her first eighteen years in Hungary, there are many parts of the American culture that I did not experience first-hand. As a result I may not be knowledgeable about some TV shows, artists or movies that shaped America’s culture in the last century. The list goes on and on, but as a student eager to learn as much as possible about my environment, I try my best to read and ask so I understand more as I go. The cultural difference also comes with a somewhat different sense of humor, this is harder for me to explain but I am sure it has to do with upbringing as well. For these reasons some of the Super Bowl ads never made an impression on me and some others were memorable, so much so that I joined the conversation online.

With all that said, here are my Super Bowl 49 favorites, grouped into categories I thought were most characteristic of this year’s ads.

HUMOROUS

BMW i3

This ad became an instant favorite, even though the news anchors are not familiar to me. BMW got the message through loud and clear: the i3 is a big idea, even if it seems a bit odd for now. Which is probably what most of the people think when looking at the funky electric car at first. And second.

Kia

Kia played it smooth by casting Pierce Brosnan for this advertisement. Money well spent, both on the smart storyline that plays on the character as well as the execution of the extravagant imagery.

Mercedes

The first few seconds of this ad did not seem promising to me but the funny twist to the story landed it on my favorite list. Way to update an old fable with beautiful machinery and have the turtle fall into place at the end.

FAMILY VALUES

McDonald’s

Even though I doubt that this ad will make me visit a McDonald’s in the next two weeks, it warmed my heart and put a smile on my face.  I was also impressed to see the updated restaurants in the ad and would love to see that cleanliness in person one day.

Dove Men #RealStrength

Dove was the one “Dad and me” ad that stood out to me from a bouquet of not-so-impressive car advertisements with the same topic. Overplayed in some other clips, this ad seemed to be honest and heart-warming. If only they found a better voiceover for the last few seconds.

HEART-WRENCHING

Budweiser “Lost Dog”

Yes, this puppy ad had to make it on my list. Just like the majority of the viewers, I find it adorable. What I like about it even more is the buzz Budweiser managed to create in a smart and not-so-pushy way. About a week before the Super Bowl, I started noticing the familiar puppy on my Instagram feed and I do not follow Budweiser. Instead, random Instagrammers I follow posted pictures saying they found the lost puppy somewhere in their neighborhood. At first I did not realize that the coincidence wasn’t such a coincidence. Well played, Budweiser!

FEEL GOOD

Always  #LikeAGirl

Overplayed or not, this ad was relevant, fun and put smiles on girls’ faces around me. It was the only ad that convinced me to join the conversation online. The hashtag topped Twitter for the night. Check, check and check!