So we've come to the end. Today I will be posting my final blog.
I would like to thank you all for reading my blog, so let's start with the last one.
Today, I will be talking about 3 trends that will be very important for the rest of
2013.

The first one is channel convergence. The marketing world is flooded with channels.
With all these channels, opportunities to engage with customers and prospects have
increased. Marketers use communication channels, marketing channels, advertising
channels, and more. The experts say that this will continue to grow and evolve. So it's
important for marketers to align their strategy with the different channels and listen to
their customers for feedback.

Second trend is customer experience. According to the marketing expert Sweetwoord,
the customer is always going to be a trend. There will never be a year where
something about the customers and marketing isn't important. But experts see a shift
in marketing, marketers start focusing on customer experience. When using this
trend, it's important to look at all the points of the customers experiences. Important
questions to ask yourself are: How do they react? How do they exchange information?
When do they engage?

The last trend that I will be discussing is the analytics.
In the other two trends we needed to look at the customers behaviour, but how do
you get an answer to all your question? Well simply by using analytics. The use
and importance of analytics as a part of the marketing strategy is a growing trend.
Analytics can empower organisations to understand the customer’s behaviours,
interpret engagement strategies, improve customer experiences, with the ultimate
goal: better results for the organisation.

So these were the most important trends for the rest of this year.
I hope you liked it!

Bye Lisa

Hi everyone!

Today I have an amazing website for the creative readers! It’s called kickstarter.com. 
It’s a website that gives creative people the opportunity to fund their dream project.

So kickstarter.com is a platform for filmmakers, game designers and musicians, people that are into art, design and technology. It’s full of projects that are fund by the direct support of people like you and me.

The website leaves the creator with complete responsibility for his or her project. It’s a platform and a resource; they aren’t involved with the development of the projects themselves.

So how does it work?
If you have a creative idea, you post it on the website of Kickstarter. You set yourself a goal and deadline. If people like your project, they can donate their money to your project.

But there is a catch! It’s all or nothing… Your project needs to be totally funded by the deadline; otherwise you’ll get nothing. Overall 44% of the projects have reached their funding goals.

An important aspect is that the creators keep 100% ownership over their work. People that support a project just help the idea come to life. They don’t profit from it financially. But creators sometimes give the big donors some advantages. Big donors of a film project for example might get into the premier or get a private screening.

Kickstarter is a for-profit organization and they are based in The Lower East Side of New York City. They get the money to work with from the successfully funded projects. If a project was totally funded, they get 5% fee to the funds collected.

And I would like to end my blog with some interesting facts:
-       10% of the movies at Sundance were Kickstarter-funded.
-       Stanford teaches Kickstarter for class credit.
-       Thanks to Kickstarter some Kentucky sixth graders send a camera to space.
-       In 2012 a total of $ 274,391,721 was collected.

So www.kickstarter.com is definitely worth a visit!

See you next week!

Lisa

Hi everyone!

Today I wanted to talk about something else than a marketing trend. About a movie I saw, and I can hear you all think why does she post a movie review on a marketing blog?

Well, the movie I saw is called ‘The Greatest Movie Ever Sold!’ it’s a documentary about product placement. But the moviemaker Morgan Spurlock – who you probably know from his near-fatal fastfood diet ‘Super Size Me’- made his documentary fully sponsored by product placement.

The film’s slogan is “He’s not selling out, he’s buying in”. So the documentary shows you the work Spurlock putted into the finding of sponsors and him giving pitches to them.

The most companies he contacted immediately turned him down. Big companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola are only interested in sponsoring the big movies like Iron Man, because millions of people see that movie. They’re not interested in sponsoring small documentaries because the investment is too big. Spurlock than focused on the smaller brands for example Sheetz. They are a chain of gas stations and convenience stores, so Spurlock promised only to do interviews with people in the bar of Sheetz of at the petrol pump.

Another big investor was POM, it’s a pomegranate jus. So after the deal Spurlock was only allowed to drink POM-jus in the documentary. What stands out in the movie are the contracts that the companies give to Spurlock. They are about fifty pages long and they held a lot of rules that Spurlock was supposed to follow. But he decided only to give them a slight idea about the way they were going to be portrayed in the movie.

In the end the whole movie was sponsored and Spurlock got about $1,5 million from the companies featured in the movie.

I think that this movie is definitely a must for anyone who’s interested in product placement and the way the industry works. It’s very interesting to see how companies influence the movies made nowadays.

So this was it for this week… See you next time!

Lisa

After the IMac, IPod, IPad, IPhone and Itunes, Apple has now come up with a new way to advertise, the IAds.

So what is IAd? It’s a mobile advertising platform for the Ipad, Iphone, Ipod Touch line of mobile devices. It allows third-party developers to immediately embed advertisements into their applications.

One of the advantages for companies is that they can reach millions of IPhone, IPad and Ipod Touch users around the world, when those are using their favorite apps. Apple gives companies some facts to convince them of the IAds.
First of all the IAudience has installed over 15 billion applications and purchased over 315 million iOS devices. So obviously you can reach a big audience.
Apple makes sure that the IAds are only shown to an audience that the company wants to reach. And they only show the IAds on the apps that their customers love and use the most.

IAd can captivate the audience of a company cause it combines the storytelling of TV with the engagement and utility of digital. Companies can create IAds that are shown to customers, wherever they are. Apple uses the IAd logo as a quality sign; this way customers know that the brand meets certain expectations.

By using iOS, the IAds can incorporate a variety of interactive experiences in the advertisements.  For example by using the location settings, companies can show the closest store to customers, they can use social media, give digital coupons and so on.

Apple offers the users of IAd also other advantages. When we look at the metrics that they provide, the range is really brought. It goes far beyond the standard measurements of exposures and clicks. Companies get to see how much time the average customer spends on their IAd, how many times their IAd was viewed. But also the course of the campaign…

For larger campaigns it’s even possible to get insights into user engagement, performance and cetera on the overall network results.
So IAd, gives companies a whole new opportunity to advertise.

This was it for this week!

Lisa

This blog is all about new and creative ways to advertise. And today we have found an advertising strategy that shoots the ball out of the park.

Flogos will give a whole new meaning to the quote ‘Is it a bird, is it a plane?’

So what are Flogos? They are foamy logos made from a mixture of water, soap and air that are launched into the air. A Flogo machine can make a Flogo every 15 seconds. So in no time the air can be filled with your brand.

The good thing about Flogos is that they aren’t harmful to the environment. They can fly up to 48 kilometres. And can reach a height of 6 kilometres. The specialists of the Flogo-team make sure that the target group of your choice will see your brand.

The Flogo-concept is slowly making its way into the advertising world. It was already used by some important and big brands like EA, Apple, Walt Disney World, Nintendo,…

But here in the BENELUX it’s a rather unknown concept so there’s a big opportunity to amaze your customers.

And there is more! Flogos were always white but since no so long ago, they are also available in different colours, to make your logo pop even more in the air.

So this was my blog for this week,

Make sure to check out the pictures below!

Lisa

Hi everyone, this week I will be talking about city marketing!

Why? Well first of all, I believe that tourism in a city is a good thing.

In times like these, where the financial crisis has become a major part of people’s daily life, it’s hard for cities to attract tourists. But if they do, the local community can be reinforced and people can have social and financial advantages. Because tourism creates work.

So what is city marketing?
Briefly said: Selling the city. Not only to tourists, a city can be sold to a lot of other people as well.

First of all you have the tourists. You need to make them fall in love with your city. Make sure that they have a good experience and that they go back home with a satisfied feeling.
When they enjoy their trip, they will tell their friends and family about it, make pictures and post them on social media. This way your city will get more and more known by a wider variety of people.

Secondly the residents that already live in the city. City marketing needs to make them fall in love again with the city that they call, home. The residents need to feel that their city takes care of them.

When you ‘re a big city, you can attract businesses by using city marketing. If your city becomes popular with business owners, this is also good for your local economy. Unemployment rates will go down and the consummation rates hopefully will go up.
To attract businesses and tourists, it’s important that you have a good basic infrastructure so that people for instance can easily get to work by metro or train.

Have welcoming inhabitants is also a good tip; make sure that your inhabitants are on board with your city marketing strategies. And last but not least try to renovate and renew gloomy neighbourhoods, so that the overall look of your city is better.

That was it for this week!
Hope you liked reading my blog and feel free to comment down below.

Lisa 

I admit! I hate commercials on the television and still I want to be a marketer. Weird? I don’t think so, too me a marketer is someone that can think and act outside the box. That’s why I’m a big fan of the new marketing trend that’s called interactive advertising and more specific interactive billboards.

We all see many billboards while driving to work or going to school. But we almost never remember any of them when we reach our destination. Some clever marketers have a solution to this problem. They want to surprise passers-by and make them a part of their ad. This has a double effect. First of all customers are surprised and they will remember the billboard much longer. Secondly they will create a bound with the brand and will be more likely to buy it in the future.

A nice example of a marketing campaign that includes this is the IBM campaign. They have created a billboard that adapts itself to the colour of the clothes the viewer is wearing. With this billboard IBM wants to demonstrate that a smarter supply chain that can adapt itself better is important, e.g.: in the fashion industry. They want to give every customer a different experience.

Another amazing billboard is this one below of Cadbury Eggs. Everyone that uses the buss sometimes knows how annoying it is to wait. Cadbury wanted to change this bad experience into a fun time for the consumers. By creating a game in their billboard, people get entertained and get a better feeling towards the brand.

I hope that these billboards will be used sooner than later in Belgium. But for the moment, I’m still annoyed while waiting at the buss stop. So I hope that the Belgian brands get to this kind of advertising as soon as possible!

Lisa 

The newest concept in the marketing world is called ‘Virgin Consumers’. The non-stop flows of new products, services, apps and experiences as well as new brands ensure that almost everyone is now a ‘Virgin Consumer’. 

According to trendwatching.com we can see to parts of the ‘Virgin Consumers’.
First let’s explain the one side of the Virgin Consumers. They are Eager Virgins. The amount of consumers that is searching new brands and experiences in this world is booming. The time that brands could just use the word ‘new’ as a marketing trick is long gone. Instead new products and services of new companies are doing well. Why? Because they are more surprising, more convenient and just better than existing alternatives. All this leads to the fact that consumers are convinced that ‘new’ will help them to improve various aspects of their lives.

While Virgin Consumers may be new to a product, brand or sector, this doesn’t mean that they are naïve. Contrary, because they have been in the consumer society for so long, they are driven consumers that know what they are searching for. They can be seen as Experienced Virgins.

For brands that want to seduce the Virgin Consumers there are three main rules to follow:

1. Keep it simple
   

       Make a product that fits in to the current lifestyle of your consumer and don’t make yet another variant     
       on an already existing product.

2.    Explain your brand
       Make a marketing campaign that answers foundational questions: Who are you? What makes you   
       different? What does your brand say about consumers who choose it?

3.    Don’t ask for commitment
       The current consumers like to rent or lease a product rather than place a permanent order. You should      
       keep that in mind.

So this was my blog post for this week, hope you enjoyed it!
Lisa