Sephora's new retail stores will take cues from YouTube

Sephora will be one of the first beauty departments to successfully bridge the online/in-store experience. In its new San Francisco store, Sephora created stations called the "Beauty Workshop" where customers can watch video tutorials, take a class with a Sephora team member and share content online.

The new store will also feature the Digital Beauty Board, a shoppable screen that plays user-generated content coinciding with current trends.

These additions will offer relevant content to consumers in-store, which was previously relegated to only online. Sephora will be tapping into the latest digital beauty trends and bringing them in-store - thus bridging the gap between side-line interest and active engagement, which will lead to increased purchases.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months as its the first beauty store of its kind. The beauty industry does a great job of creating a truly omnichannel experience and hopefully other brands outside of this industry will take note!

http://digiday.com/brands/look-inside-sephoras-digitally-driven-next-generation-store/

Big Box Stores Employ Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is the biggest trend in digital these days and a few retailers have been able to put the technology to good use.

Many consumers either don't like to purchase products online because they are unable to try on the product or visualize it in their home.

Well IKEA and Lowe's have solved the latter probably quite effectively, with virtual reality.

Lowe's recently launched "Holoroom" in 19 stores - an iPad app designed to provide consumers with the experience of seeing a finished home improvement project in their own home.

IKEA has also launched a mobile app that provides a virtual preview of how a specific item will look in a room.

These retailers are able to increase likelihood of purchase as they have eliminated a potential barrier to entry.

It will be interesting to see how other brands can utilize this technology to increase purchase intent - as we discussed in class on Monday many consumers miss this in-store experience - as there is immense opportunity to merge the in-store and online experience with this technology.



http://www.l2inc.com/big-box-stores-employ-virtual-reality/2015/blog?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=the-daily&utm_campaign=email

New Web Platform Links Brands With Bloggers

Over the last few years bloggers have become huge influencers - some have even attained a level of fame previously only associated with a celebrity.  As a result, many brands partner with influential bloggers to develop relevant content for their consumer and to tap into the blogger's already existing fan base. A new platform aims to simplify this partnership between blogger and  brand, specifically in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle space. An online resource, Shopping Links, will help facilitate collaborations, by providing a platform for brands to find relevant bloggers (removes huge grunt work) and for bloggers to use this as a one-stop shop to include numbers associated with reach and metrics.

A great tool for creating a more seamless process -- no longer will publicists and brand managers need to scour the internet searching for relevant and successful blogs and spend time ironing out the negotiation details.

http://www.cew.org/eweb/Dynamicpage.aspx?webcode=cbifullstory&r01Key=31318177-6A15-40B2-8F16-2731269C3114

Big Box Retailers Don’t Buy Into Social Commerce

Over the past year, social shopping has grown significantly (26% vs. year ago), and many platforms have added options for consumers to purchase directly from their social network of choice. However, despite this growth in popularity and the development of social network commerce buttons, many brands are not utilizing these options --"just over half of index brands active on Facebook utilize the platform's 'Shop Now' button, only a quarter have adopted Instagram's 'Like2Buy' feature."

Instagram is also exploring this space with its partnership with ShopStyle.It and LIKEtoKnow.it, platforms which allow consumers to purchase products through a third party. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Instagram isn't a one-click experience and requires more effort.

Given the popularity of these features, and the consumer's mobile usage and desire for convenience, it is interesting that many big brands have not signed on. Only time will tell the impact these social commerce features will have on early adopters.

Is 2015 The Best Year Yet For Hispanic Digital Marketing?

As we continue to look at a digital marketing, it is important to dig deeper into insights related to specific consumer groups. As the number of Hispanics increases in the United States along with their buying power, brands have started to put significant investment toward marketing to this group.

A few trends in Hispanic digital marketing for this year include:

1. Mobile usage among Hispanics skyrocketed
2. Hispanic e-commerce is surging
3. Hispanic influencer and content marketing is gaining steam
4. Facebook doubled down on digital Hispanics

It's time for brands to pay attention to these digital marketing trends in order to capitalize on this consumer group's growth.

Read More: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/262445/is-2015-the-best-year-yet-for-hispanic-digital-mar.html

Dish to Woo Digital Advertisers With Programmatic Exchange for Targeted TV Ads

Dish is bringing automated targeted TV buying to a new level!

This week the satellite company announced it will be testing automated programmatic exchange (moving away from the old way of sellin ads) to let advertisers buy commercial time during live and DVR-playback TV. The new offering automates linear ads to an addressable of almost 8 million across 210 DMAs. This will allow advertisers to specifically target consumers down to the household level and use real-time bidding. 

The real-time bidding allows advertisers find out about their winning bid in under a minute -- you could win an auction and your ad would air within a few hours or later that night.  

This new programmatic exchange allows targeting to move beyond age and gender, and instead allows advertisers to focus on lifestyle characteristics -- consumers who watch kids channels, sports, or own a certain car.

Ultimately, it is Dish's attempt to shift some dollars back from digital to tv -- whether it works is yet to be seen.

For more: http://adage.com/article/media/dish-network-woo-digital-advertisers-programmatic-tv-exchange/301037/

Google's AMP Is Facebook's Instant Articles for the Mobile Web

Following Facebook's lead Google recently launched an open-source product called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). It will load pages from participating publishers when clicked on from Google search, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn - virtually anywhere on the mobile web.

Well, if you're wondering what this means for Facebook's Instant Articles - so am I! According to the announcement, customers don't have to be on Facebook to get information from participating publishers. Publishers don't have to host their content only on Google's servers or give Google any of the ad revenue from these articles. This is incredibly tempting for publishers who might not want to enter into a partnership with only one company, i.e. Google or Facebook.

It will be interesting what this launch of AMP will mean for Facebook and the web users' experince.

Example:




For more information: http://adage.com/article/media/google-s-amp-facebook-s-instant-articles-mobile-web/300814/

YouTube's Most Native Ad Yet Puts Shoppable Cards Into Organic Videos

With new native ads, YouTube has the potential to change the ad game completely. They have recently incorporated advertisements into actual organic videos i.e. how-to tutorials - no longer are ads regulated to the space between each video or seen as an interruption, but it instead it will become a more seamless and relevant integration. The videos will begin to feature shoppable cards (think Pop-Up Video) that are relevant for consumers who are watching i.e. beauty ads for products featured in a beauty blogger's tutorial.

This new "native" advertisement is incredibly impactful for the marketer - allowing their brand to become relevant and making the purchase much easier for the consumer.  

The one down-side to these shoppable cards, is that marketers may not be able to prevent whether or not their product ad appears in a negative or inappropriate video. However, YouTube claims its algorithms will prevent such a disaster - only time will tell when they roll out the program. 

http://adage.com/article/digital/youtube-shopping-ads-akin-google-search-ads-pre-rolls/300635/

Facebook To Combat Hate Speech in Germany - Should Social Media Sites Be More Proactive in Response to Racist Messages?

Germany has recently offered asylum to many Syrian refugees and in light of this Germany and Facebook have agreed to combat hate speech against immigrants posted on Facebook. Specifically, Facebook will work with the ministry of justice, internet service providers, and other social networks to form a task force that will flag and remove hateful content more quickly. This article brings up the role of social media in the discussion of controversial topics - Facebook is quoted as welcoming "political debate on [its] platform." 

For the most part, the social media platforms have remained partisan in political issues and have instead acted as areas for the public to display freedom of expression. These sites do provide some regulation without censoring their users - allowing users to "flag" content thought to be inappropriate for review and removal if necessary. However, the German government alleges Facebook is not effectively putting a stop to racist posts and comments, despite being flagged.

Should social media websites take a more proactive role in responding to racist and sexist comments/posts on their sites? And should individual government's work with Facebook to protect their citizens?

And if these sites do take on a more proactive role to eradicate hate speech, will many of its users begin to fear that they aren't able to express themselves freely?

Read more here: http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/15/facebook-agrees-to-do-more-to-help-combat-hate-speech-in-germany/

Mobile Chat App Kik Appeals to Brands

Kik, the Ontario, Canada-based messaging app uses usernames, not phone number, as the basis for the accounts. Recently, the platform has begun to increase the range of interactions available through the app, in an effort to appeal to brands.

Last year, Kik implemented promoted chats to allow users to opt-in and connect with brands in a more engaging way. Several brands including NBC News and MTV, have created accounts and post popular stories, quizzes and relevant for consumers who opted in. For NBC, Kik users will send a message with a relevant keyword like "politics," to receive news updates from the publisher (see example below).

Furthermore, Kik users can use promoted chats to identify brands that are currently running promotions, and strike up a conversation with the brand. Allowing for one-on-one marketing, Kik now allows brands to participate in chat-style dialogue with the consumer. Through these new updates, Kik's value is in the earned media produced when users share content - an engagement study shows that Kik messenger sees as much user engagement as Facebook.

Kik continues to create opportunities for brands to connect with consumers. Most recently, the company has ventured into the realm of QR Codes in the hopes of bringing WeChat's success in China, to the U.S. QR Codes hope to provide context for a relationship between the brand and consumer - providing relevant promotions, information 

Kik isn’t just focused on connecting brands — though that’s where most of the revenue potential lies. The company introduced music-themed communities last month, and Kik Codes will help users connect with other users in the same way that Snapchat, WeChat and other chat apps use QR codes to add friends.

Beyond just connecting, QR codes also provide context for a relationship — for example what kind of a code did that person scan, and what location did they scan it from. Using that context, a Kik bot operated by a brand can send the right response to a user. That could mean providing a pizza discount, directions to a store, exclusive tickets, or more. More importantly, it opens a dialogue for future opportunities, too.


Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/08/chat-app-kik-introduces-qr-codes-to-connect-users-and-brands/
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2403229/3-reasons-why-brands-are-flocking-to-chat-app-kik