The marketers and agency at Eurostar just got it right with a simple idea. The launch of Eurostar’s new platform, Eurostar Live brings social media commentary by the public about Eurostar’s destinations to 363 public display screens across London.
The campaign highlights hidden gems in Eurostar’s destinations, starting with Amsterdam. I love that they tie in to existing social behaviors we all do when traveling. Engage at: http://europe.eurostar.com/eurostarlive/
"Without service there are only buyers, not customers" - Lester Wunderman 2009
Southwest Airlines has assembled a team of digitally savvy apologists to reach out to customers they disappointed. Their main task is following up after all sorts of crummy customer experiences like misplaced baggage, flight delays, and even stuff out of their control like bad weather. [via WOMMA]
Like TwelpForce and Comcast, Southwest Airlines knows that great customer service leads to loyalty. This is the type of proactive customer care that builds brands. People are accepting of mistakes when a brand representative acknowledges the mistake and proactively tries to fix it.
All the cool kids say so... social media is bullshit. Diesel hosted an "analog" party to engage people in Germany with the brand. They encouraged people to get off the computer (and stop reading blogs like this) and go out to meet instead of tweet.
Who says banner ads don't work? UNIQLO proves we may be doing it wrong!
Uniqlo developed a banner ad campaign so compelling, unique and interesting that bloggers and viewers actually took ownership of the campaign and made it a viral success – in terms of both brand impressions and sales.
The banners are actually blog badges or widgets, that work like instant-win lottery tickets. Clicking the ’switch’ turned the images on any site - including other retail sites - into Uniqlo instant win tickets, with losing tickets remaining as banner ads.
The campaign ultimately generated almost 3 Million clicks, with over 4,00 blog badges installed, and a retail sales increase of 120%. This in contrast to the usually low click-through rates associated with traditional banner ads.
A large part of experience design is designing for the we know the user will do and then taking it a step further in designing for what we know they can do. Error pages are often neglected by designers because they are rarely seen, or at least that’s the plan. But we all know things happen. A visitor may incorrectly enter a url, or try to find something on your site that just isn’t there. These are times when the 404 page will receive a few visits, but visiting an error page isn’t necessarily part of a pleasant user experience. In this post I have rounded up a few of my favorites.
While walking in Times Square I was caught off-guard by Forever21's massive augmented reality billboard. The augmented reality billboard uses video of a model dressed in Forever 21 clothes and takes virtual photo of the crowd, then she occasionally selects people from the crown below, picking them up and throwing them into a Forever 21 bag.
As many of you have
been following in the mainstream and tech media, in late April, Facebook [FB]
announced and launched a number of new and updated products for developers. This set of products is centered on the
Open Graph platform that allows the sites,
brands and apps to share information about users in order to tailor offers,
features and services. FB’s
approach will lead to a truly social semantic experience across the web.
Why do you want to integrate your
website or blog with Facebook?
Context. FB has amassed more than 400 million users, 100 million mobile Users, 100 millionFacebook Connect users
and 25 billion items shared each month on FB. While integrating
with FB may not be right for all businesses and situations, it will likely be a
valuable tool to create rich connections between marketers and their audiences.
What does that
mean for your brand today? Lets start with the social plug
ins. Imagine a person coming to your website
and knowing what their friends thought about the content of your site. FB has developed a set of portable social
plug-ins that will make it easy for users to see information from or about
their FB friends, share things with their friends or even log in to FB all
without leaving your site.
You may have recently noticed that the
fan page you were a “fan” of has become more of a community, company or brand
page that allows you to “like” it. When you “like” a brand or product page, their
content will appear in your personal news feed.The FB feed is the femoral artery of the FB and social
experience.If you are a brand who
wants prime real estate on the social web, the “like” button is the permission
you need to deilver your content into people’s daily lives.Under this new release the “like”
button is much more powerful and now more portable. You now can implement the “like” button,
with a line of code on to your website.
TheActivity Feed exposesthe actions your friends on any website. When you're logged
into FB and visit CNN.com, you will instantly see articles & topics your friends’
sharing, recommending & commenting on via Activity Feed.
The Recommendations Social Plug In helps make sites more relevant to you by highlighting content
based on top "Likes" across a site. Think of it as a people-powered
"most popular" list. For e.g., if logged into FB, a user can visit
your brand web page and instantly see articles, product summaries and features
that people are liking & sharing with their friends most often, in real
time.
The
portable FB Log In now lets you increase sign up rates at your site. This feature has the potential to
catapult the power of the social CRM space. The Log in with Faces plugin displays
your friend’s profile pictures that have already signed up for your site in
addition to a login button.
We cannot
forget the FB Social Bar. This nifty toolbar can be
added to the bottom of your site. The Social Bar includes a like
button, friends who like the site,
as well as Facebook chat. I expect to see chat addition groups pop up across the web.
What does this mean for consumers on sites in the FB ecosystem?
Tonight
when I visited Pandora,
using FB’s new
open graph protocol, I was able to see
that it picked up my FB music interests and recommended Bebel Gilberto’s latest and recommended that I create a Pandora
station because of it. Now
that what I call personalization.
The new FB platform
has jump-started the semantic web so that a users experience is
incredibly personal and social with easy and simplicity.
If you have not had a chance to check out this video of the f8 conference key note address, I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to connect their brands to consumers in a relevant way.
It starts with 40 postcodes across London each with a ‘Grid’ phone box. Participants play for their postcodes by running between boxes, dialing in at each location code and score points that earn badges (for speed, endurance and stamina). This is experience planning at it's best.