Disney's "Up" house created in real life

In spired by the Disney Pixar movie 'Up' tried to re-enact the memorable moment of the flying house!

The National Geographic Channel, engineers constructed a basic house structure and lifted it into the air for more than an hour by 300 weather balloons. Truely inspirational!

The viral video effectively creates interest and excitement in the ucoming programme on the National Geogrpahic channel entitled "How Hard Can It Be?" and has already become a popular video on twitter in the last 24 hours according to the Viral Video Chart.

It is also some PR for the Walt Disney company as people who not yet seen the fim may go and buy the DVD or other related consumer products.

TO EXPRESS OR NOT TO EXPRESS?

An analysis of an email marketing message from Pizza Express

I regularly receive many email marketing messages from numerous restaurants especially Pizza Express and ASK, but what is it that always makes me open them? Am I just curious that they may have had a flow of creativity in their marketing department to deliver me a promotion that is not the standard BOGOF. Or is it simply that I my personality and that I am always on the lookout for a bargain – a side effect of being a student.

I must admit that I sporadically open these messages and it is generally due to a result of knowing that I am going out for dinner that day, so I will check to see if I have been sent any vouchers from my favourite restaurants. If I have no plans to visit in the near future then I just leave the message unread, hence why I have 1764 unread messages.

As you can see from the image of the message above, there is no personalisation of the message; a huge mistake for the company as personalising the message is what makes a customer feel as if they belong to a group, and that they are valued by the company. The message content on the other hand is quite amusing in some ways and the template is unique to the company as the branding is consistent and you instantly know from first glance that this is indeed a promotion for Pizza Express.

There is a call to action ‘Get Your Code’ to which when clicked on takes you to another page where you need to fill in your title and name. This then reveals a voucher code to use which can either be printed out or shown on your phone.

In the first image there is the opportunity to share the voucher, tweet or send to a friend, which does nothing to help you feel that you are a valued customer of Pizza Express. However, it turns you into a brand ambassador for the company doing the free promotion for them (if you decide to do one of these).

In my personal opinion I think there is more that companies like Pizza Express could be doing to try and improve the customer experience of these messages and their loyalty. There could easily be more personalisation as every time you try to redeem your voucher you have to put in your name and title. More research could be done to look into ways to make the promotional offer unique and different to other Italian restaurants offering the same promotion on the high street. For example, they could be advertising the special events that they have in some of their restaurants such as the live music events, in conjunction with the offer such as dine for two meal deal.

What do you think? 

C xo

Steve Lomax, Driving business online: email innovation across leading brands

Is it necessary to personalise your email marketing campaigns?

It has been proven by many practitioners and academics that if you receive an email that has your name on it you feel more valued by the sender than if it is just a generic email. If potential customers feel as if they are part of a group (a factor of the loyalty ladder for retailers) then they are most likely to view an email marketing campaign in positive light and hence take the time to read the message.


Boden (case study) www.boden.co.uk

Boden is a UK base retailer which was founded in 1991 and. It has over 800 and was originally a mail order catalogue store, however now over 75% of its sales are made online. It now sells across the UK and US and ships over 5500 orders every day.

The problem was that Boden had many data challenges. Boden however now tailors its offers and content which changes based on the customer due to efficient segmentation of the market. Now they have effectively drilled down into their 1.2 million subscribers through integrating on and offline data to drive targeted email campaigns and create dynamic content.

Some other examples of personalisation/segmentation and the level of customisation that sophisticated email marketing can allow are:

1. Allowing user comments/reviews - consumers have a high level of trust in what other users think about products as they are viewed as impartial to the companies’ views. This is done by Bath & Body works effectively, Steve Lomax suggests.

2. HMV change their plain text 'order confirmation' emails into transactional messages as an opportunity to up sell other related products or products that the consumer may also be interested in. Why don’t you buy something and see what they think you would also be interested in?

3. Sharing offers to friends via social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example Pizza Express and ASK do this in their email marketing campaigns to subscribers. Another use of social networking is through getting customers to ‘like’ products.

If a company uses personalisation correctly then there is improved chance of a company being able to augment their relationships with customers and sustain them for a longer period of time. Therefore, there is the potential possibility of a customer being able to form an emotional connection to the brand (the highest goal for any brand manager).  However, it must be kept in mind by marketers that it is important to ensure that personalisation is done correctly there is a risk of losing a potential customer forever if it is used inappropriately. Therefore before companies personalise their campaigns they must understand personalisation to make sure they get it right.

There is one concern with personalisation however. This is that if the customer experience becomes too customised and personalised for the individual it will mean that customers will only see products that they knew they wanted already, therefore leading to a decreased opportunity for impulse purchases.

Source:

Presenter: Steve Lomax

http://www.seminarstreams.com/seminars/seminar-player.aspx?sid=IKFm9Ag7PLI%3d 

eWOM can it sway your views?

Review Centre discussion of Kettle Chips- Balsamic Vinegar



 

The reviews here are all relevant to someone who was making the great decision in whether or not to try these crisps. It is also clear to a prospective buyer that the reviews are made by end users that have tried the product so they are viewed as credible due to this and that there is no obvious ties to the Kettle Chips company. 

There seems to be however some very mixed opinions from end users of this product. One review that particularly stood out to me was made by a consumer that was obviously not pleased with their purchase as they refereed to the crisps to result in a burning sensation:

'I loved them for a while until I finally figured out that they were burning the inside of my mouth. Love the product hate the by product'.

 If i was a consumer who had not tried this product before then I think that this review would definitely have an impact on me to not buy these crisps as to wanting to avoid this negative side effect. 

On the other hand following this negative review there are many positive ones such as:

'Oh My God. These are the best crisps in the WORLD!!!!
Try the crinkle cut ones too. The flavour gets stuck in the crinkles
They have so much flavour on them and are very addictive.
I think they are worth the money. My hangover days are not the same without these.
Kettle Chips Sea Salt & Balsamic Vinegar are the best. The Sweet Chilli ones are also nice.
def recommend!!'

and

'I love all Kettle chip flavours but the salt & vinegar is just SO addictive! I also like the fact they are made by hand, and taste so crunchy...'

So after reading the positive reviews and also the average rating of 4.4 out of 5 I would be more inclined to try the product.  However as I have purchased these before I would say that negative eWOM of these crisps have not swayed my view and I will continue to be an avid purchaser.

Daniel et al (2001) Towards a map of marketing information systems: an inductive study

The following text will analyse the academic research by Daniel et al (2001) to uncover some of the strengths and weaknesses of the study.

Strengths

The Map of the of the Marketing Domain that she proposed is particularly useful and can be applied in context in the real world, as she has taken into consideration that marketing is in fact an ongoing cycle which this diagram clearly represents.


Weakness 

One clear weakness from the research is that it does not look at a broad variety of industries in the UK. For example the manufacturing industry has a very heavy weighting in the report however it makes up little of the UK's economy. to improve the study she should have included the retail industry, finance and banking to create a more realistic and applicable model for the UK. This article is additionally now starting to become out of date, and does not make reference to the Internet however in 2001 dot com businesses were a big topic of discussion.