Live It Up

Selling The Experience Through Online Interaction 

            Being a part of ‘the experience’ is a marketing idea that sells! Selling the experience rather than the product can be so powerful! Social media has penetrated this concept of ‘experience’ at levels that are incomprehensive unless of course, we are a part of this social technological revolution…, which we are! Facebook or Ebay can be technically defined as a social experience online, but the experience I am referring too is momentous and special. Have you heard of interactive fashion shows or an interactive space jump? Well, let me introduce you to the social media experience using examples of these particular events and I personally am passionate about.

            Because of the declining economy, companies struggled to find strategic ways to save on expenses. Cost-saving strategies were planned in attempts to publicize the brand without degrading its reputation. High fashion brands were victims of the economy as well and like all other companies, they turned to social media. In the spring of 2011, Gucci launched its first ever interactive fashion show technology of its Milan show. Gucci spent 18 months renovating its online presence by redesigning its digital flagship store at Gucci.com. What makes Gucci Connect different from watching other fashion livestreams? Well, Gucci Connect users were invited as virtual guests and given a virtual seat assignment. Apparently, they were given the “same guest benefits as Milan event guestsattending the live runway presentation.”

             No need to fly to the destination of the show? No shoving other editors to get to your seat? No need to give the stick-eye to someone who is in your seat? No one to give you the ‘I dressed better than you’ look? This might just be the most ideal way for fashion editors, elite customers, fashion bloggers and regular customers to really experience fashion shows without hassles. For the first time, the masses were able to attend an event previously reserved for the elite. Gucci also integrated multiple digital platforms for further online socialization. Online guests were able to interactive with each other during the show through Webcam, Facebook, Twitter and a live chat on the site. There was event a Facebook challenge that if you downloaded a special app and created the largest group, you won “VIP” seating and your webcam was projected at the show. Gucci, along with other brands like Louis Vitton and Ralph Lauren are raising the bar for customer involvement whereby this is no longer just an industry insider experience.

            Shifting from fashion to energy drinks, Red Bull is launching a mission to the edge of space and they want everyone to be a part of this experience. The countdown is on! On October 8^th 2012, the Red Bull Stratos is sponsoring FelixBaumgartner’s record-setting freefall from the stratosphere. On redbullstratos.com, they are constantly updating its news, features, blogs etc. to really draw us audience members to join in on October 8^th. Using social media marketing, Red Bull is generating publicity for the live streaming of their biggest project yet. The experience itself is thrilling, adventurous and down-right dangerous and social media is going to capture all of it. I am definitely going to be a part of this experience, are you? 'Join' them on their biggest mission ever via Facebook! 

Social media marketing, if executed well, can be successful in reaching out to customers through an interactive experience. With social media, customers are able to view the event through an entirely different lens. Fashion fanatics, like myself, can experience fashion shows from all angles, as well as backstage. Red Bull is indirectly selling its energy drinks by getting us to participate in their mission to the edge of space. Taking advantage of ways the would otherwise be impossible, these companies demonstrate how their sell their brands by selling their interactive experience online. 

Survive and Thrive the Web 2.0 World

Don’t be afraid of the power of collaboration, know your objective

            The Internet has become a platform for us to show that in this digital era, we as the masses are in charge. Because of this ability for people to connect with each other, it has fuelled a revolution of powerful online communities that often dominate the offline world. Humans have always naturally been attracted to other humans through what they find they share in common. From tribes in South Asia to the Vikings in Scandinavia, these communities were brought together because of a natural instinct to form relationships. Relationships are what many of us are good at right?

In the book Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, describes the ‘groundswell’ as “a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from the traditional institutions like corporations”. Traditional businesses and nations succeeded only by defeating, destroying and dominating competition at all costs. If this description fits your company, you should continue to read this blog. I'm going to let you in on a multi-billion dollar marketing strategy: collaborative measures made possible with Web 2.0.

In 2005, Howard Rheingold said that a new story is beginning to emerge, “corporation, collective action, and complex interdependencies play a more important role, and the central but not all important role of competition and survival of the fittest, shrinks just a little bit to make room”. He continues to add that human communication and society have been evolving to collaborate, which later resulted in wealth. In the many-to-many era, every desktop is now a printing press, a broad casting station, a community and marketplace. You should learn how to best use social technologies in order to benefit you or your organization.

Ebay found its niche of creating a marketplace where people can easily be both the seller and the consumer. Wikipedia is a non-profit encyclopedia developed, updated and edited by anyone on the web. NGOs have put up their problems on Third World Countries on the Internet to be solved by university students all over the world. Yes, we are the all-powerful masses that threaten companies but at the same time, we are also necessary! They need our collaboration as much as we need theirs. Rheingold also mentions that these companies enrich others not because of altruism but because they are also enriching themselves. This is turning the Prisoner’s Dilemma game into an assurance game where neither side wants to trust the other but once proven trustworthy, they will cooperate.

Let me first explain that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game theory coined to describe why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. With social technologies, it is in the best interest of both the company and their audience to collaborate to generate more wealth or awareness. Of course there are risks involved with bolding sharing information online. What business decisions do companies make that are risk-free? Hardly any. Making information ‘open source’ means that your product or details about it are posted for anyone and everyone to access and use. Before you start taking big risks, it is important to understand the objectives behind the use of social technologies. Li and Bernoff came up with 5 objectives that companies can pursue in the groundswell:

Listening: use the groundswell for research and to better understand your customers

Talking: use the groundswell to spread messages about your company, if ready to extend your current digital initiatives

Synergizing: find your most enthusiastic customers, use the groundswell to supercharge the power of their word of mouth

Supporting: set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other

Embracing: integrate your customers into the way your business works (using their help to design your products)

It is good to be selective about what objectives apply to your company. It is a matter of appropriating them strategically that will help your company reach the top! The objective to embrace is well exemplified with the Toronto-based gold mining company Goldcorp. Goldcorp had come to a halt with a staggering amount of debt, exceedingly high costs of production and a bad gold economy. Goldcorp’s in-house geologists concluded that their fifty-year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario was out of gold and that it was time to terminate all operations. CEO Rob McEwen did something unheard of in their industry: “He published his geological data on the Web for all to see and challenged the world to do the prospecting.The "Goldcorp Challenge" made a total of $575,000 in prize money available to participants who submitted the best methods and estimates.”

The Internet became a home to Goldcorp’s 400 megabytes of information on their 55,000 acre property. Their challenge integrated some 1,000 participants from 50 countries who got busy with Goldcorp’s data. It wasn’t long before submissions from all over the world were shared with the Goldcorp headquarters. It was like Christmas when Goldcorp began receiving copious amounts valuable information. McEwen said “We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry. When I saw the computer graphics, I almost fell out of my chair." Since the challenge, participants identified 110 targets and 8 million ounces of gold have been mined (worth $3 billion). WOW. It saved their company. Li and Bernoff also state, "people connect with other people and draw power from other people, especially the crowds. Internet allows people to draw strength from each other." Their objective was to embrace and they did this successfully! 
The application of the Web 2.0 theory of collaboration is not always possible with every company but it is important to identify your objective before pursuing the collaborative action of the masses online. Li and Bernoff's identifying objectives can be one  If you are a marketer for your company, be open to connecting, interacting and collaborating with your audience members online. You never know when you may need the power of the masses!

Why New Media? Why Web 2.0?

A student’s theoretical perspective

            The newest phase of the Internet, Web 2.0, is inherently all about constructing and developing relationships. Relationships, mediated by communication technologies, are the most important platform for companies, organizations and individuals to invest in. It is not the motivation of advancing technologies that drive the online consumer culture, but the motivation of networking people across the world. The idea of a boundary-less transnational world has proven itself possible online and everyone wants to be a part of it. I have chosen specifically to focus on New Media and the era of Web 2.0 technologies because these terms encompass important theories of the digital era, which I hope to address in this blog.

Defined by Wiki, ‘new media’ is defined as the “on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation, and community formation around the media content”. Web 2.0 is specific to the Internet and is used to define the network of collaboration among online communities. Marketing is no more just billboards, posters and 30 second television advertisements. The opportunities that are possible with new media presents a whole new dimension to the world of marketing. For the purpose of this blog, I will be specifically focusing on social media, one of the most prominent and successful new media technologies, and its capabilities to expand brand awareness and successfully reach a desired target audience.

Communication theorist Ronald E.Rice, characterizes new media as communication technologies that enable the interactivity between one user and another, as well as the interactivity between the user and content information. What has changed is the type of relationship, from the “one-to-many” model of traditional mass communication to the “many-to-many” model of contemporary mass communication. An example of new media with Web 2.0 technology is citizen journalism, like the Singaporean website “STOMP”. STOMP is recognized as Singapore’s number one social networking and leading citizen-journalism website with user-generated material. Social media networking has attributed to its success and popularity because it enables citizens to come together to interact and share information online and offline.

STOMP integrates the online and offline content to connect with Singaporeans. Just like any successful website, STOMP encourages its readers to connect with them through other social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. One section, titled “Singapore Seen”, is a wall where citizens can post random and interesting photos or videos of Singapore sights. The tagline of the section reads, “You generate the content. You write the reports. You take the photos. You shoot the videos.” Citizens can then view and comment on these pictorials, either agreeing or criticizing them. This is the democratization of new media online, where everyone can attain the role to create, publish, distribute and consume information. STOMP has dramatically changed the way public news is shared and exchanged.