Nice Uniqlo site running on from the the Parka site they ran in February, found myself using it and losing all sense of time.

Dell recently posted on their blog how to build a business plan for small businesses, a really nice use of social media as they’re providing something of real use to their target audience and demonstrating their credentials in this sphere, something a potential customer wants to know when investing in a product.

There are far too many brands using social media to push their products rather than harnessing this conversational medium, adding to the user experience and showcasing their knowledge e.g. Nike offering hourly advice on nutrition when training for a long distance run through Twitter. This could extend to a full hourly training schedule for the user, bolstered with the inclusion of followers tweeting with their recommendations. A community that offers real value, is essential to the individual in training and the opportunity for Nike to promote products in a less cynical environment e.g. Today’s weather in London is wet check out Nike’s microfibre running suite to keep dry

Nike’s knowledge of athletics is undisputed, so maybe this isn’t a great example, but this social media strategy identifies the brand as having an unrivalled knowledge of long distance running and therefore becoming a credible choice when the user is deciding to invest in a new pair of running shoes.

Maybe a better example would be for a high ticket item, something like a Bianchi road bike, which priced at £700+ is a much more consider purchase. By offering advice on training and bike maintenance the customer’s confidence in the brand is increased, as Bianchi demonstrate their wealth of knowledge. Creating a relationship and dialogue with potential and existing customers, as mentioned earlier, also offers the opportunity to up sell, as the user becomes more dependent on the brand to achieve their goal e.g. the Bianchi medium distance training schedule offers kit for the maintenance of bikes that are regularly being put through their paces at these distances.

And obviously this strategy offers brand loyalty, as the user feels that they have been well looked after and have become dependent on the brands social media offering to complete the task that they have bought the product to achieve.

eMarketer predicts by 2011, user-generated content sites will attract 101 million people in the U.S, that’s a pretty big figure when you consider that the US online audience is just over 300 million.

With this in mind you can understand the numerous blogger outreach programmes that are launching, making a good little penny from providing access to these influential environments. As this offering sits somewhere between display, PR and in some respects SEO enhancement it’s interesting that there aren’t more sector specific blog networks. I would presume that this would not be cost efficient? Just concentrating on one sector probably won’t hit revenues conducive to a company staying afloat, however when you consider that these blogger outreach programmes have to build up relationships with the bloggers and then make sure that the advertisers they use don’t devalue the blogs it makes sense for them to be sector specific.

With this in mind I believe that publishers and sector specific media agencies have the opportunity to fill this niche, due to their contextual relevance and a business model that does not just rely on social media outreach. Publishers generally have an existing relationship with bloggers, where bloggers reference and support their posts with a publisher’s content, relying on the publisher’s heritage and standing within its verticle. With this trust established and the list of publisher’s advertisers suiting the audience and context of the blog, this makes for a great business model. The relationship is mutually beneficial, with the publisher extending their commercial offering and the blogger benefitting from exclusives from the publisher, invites to events, mentions of the blog on the publishers site and commission/cash money!

With sector specific agencies offering access to the right brands, this relationship makes sense for sector specific blogs, as the agency work as a PR company providing relevant exclusives and stories for the blog and its audience. Include to this social media work the fact the agency will also look after the clients, SEO, SEM and display activity, a completely cohesive digital strategy is established, where all elements of the digital communication mutually enhance, providing the most efficient use of the clients budget.

It will be interesting to see if this is an area that publishers move into, as ad revenues drop and competition is upped from these blog networks, which generally trade on very low CPMs, will the big publishers and niche publsihers look at their most influential verticles and concentrate on building blog networks to that specific interest?

Nice little driving game by VW. I like the fact that you are educated on the heritage of the GTI and technological advances of the new model, in a not too tedious manner, before you get the chance to get behind the wheel.

The games itself is a little different, as you’d expect from VW, it is styled very nicely. The only real criticism I would have of the game is that it doesn’t really give a true indication of the car’s ability, although in saying that I haven’t driven the new Golf GTI so potentially it might?

Still having problems uploading images, so here’s the link:
http://www.gtiproject.com/

Now usually we’d question the use of an intro within an e-commerce environment, but it would seem that Hermes can’t do much wrong on their site and this is no exception.

The intro isn’t an intro for intro sake; it educates as to the process of three of their scents and has made me consider the brand when I’m next in the market for a new cologne.

I’ve been trying to upload the image of the site all morning, but for some reason I can’t, so best if you check it out yourself, it’s definitely worth it:

Hermes.com

“A sophisticated micro-payments service” will launch this autumn said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

So it would seem that plunging ad generated revenue has forced the hand of one of the big players in publishing, to a paid for subs model. Interestingly it would seem that they are looking to adopt a model of  micro-payments for individual articles and premium subscriptions to WSJ.com, after years in publishing I would hope this isn’t translated as “all news based content free of charge, with all channel specific content and that deemed as high value paid for”. As the only attractive environments for advertisers within news sites being channel specific and premium content, this model doesn’t make for a great bed follow with an advertising business model as well.

It makes sense that news and topical editorial is free, as a driver for topical relevancy in search, but paying for the ‘good stuff’ or the ‘unique stuff’ limits the opportunity to generate revenue from advertising, as these environments are where advertisers want to be and not next to news stories highlighting topics such as economical doubt.

Anyway this is pretty much conjecture on my part, but will be interesting to see what the plan is when it comes into full effect

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Hermes have just realised their revenue figures for quarter 1 and have shown a growth predominately driven by silk scarves, fashion accessories and their saddlery division.

Other sectors such as perfumes (30% drop due to exchange rates), watches and tableware dropped, where wholesale turnover was affected by distributors cutting down their inventory, reflecting the benefit of brands that sell through actual stores rather than concessions.

LVMH’s fashion and leather goods sales rose by 4%, with watches and jewellery dropping by 41%.

Gucci saw growth in leather goods by 2%, however overall they saw a drop by 3.4%.

Comscore have just released stats that show ad clutter to be down, 10% less display ads per page than a year ago.

Wonder if that will have an effect on CPMs? Or as I touched on yesterday will publishers start to consider a paid for subscription model again?

“Who started this rumor that all information should be free and why didn’t we challenge this when it first came out? I say this in college classrooms and they start to throw their shoes at me.” Ann Moore CEO of Time Inc, with quotes like that it looks like publishers are back tracking already. Guess if publishers are considering this model, then it might create an environment for YouTube to start making some money through paid for subscriptions?

Was looking into the old Freemium model this morning used by the WSJ and seemed like quite an interesting model for retailers and fashion brands. Succinctly the model offers ’social media mavens’ free content that they can blog about or socially tag, maintaining a decent SEO strategy alongside a paid for subscription model – a partnership that is not always thought of as compatible.

As more and more fashion and luxury brands are creating sites that are not just e-commerce focused and actually offer valuable and educational content, it would be possible to identify a brands social media brand advocate (social media maven) and offer a reward based scheme for covering content from within the brands site, on their blog or by social media tagging. This doesn’t necessarily have to be redeemable points in store but maybes access to exclusive events or one off pieces, to really entrench the blogger in the brand.