My Favourite Cover Band – Against The Current

Today’s blog I want to introduce my favourite cover band  & How they promote the band’s covers via social media.

Youtube is one of the best social media for people to discover some interesting videos and it is also the way for people to share their videos to the world. Against the current is a band from New York, which produce their covers of music on Youtube video. It is a three-member brand from which including Chrissy Costanza – Lead Vocals, Dan Gow – Vocals & Guitar, Will Ferri – Drums. I knew this brand through browsing and watching music video on the Youtube. It is a young group but it has received around 645,041 subscribers and more than 37,000,000 views since the band started to its post on Youtube in 2011.

The band first uploaded their covers of the popular songs such as ‘Beauty And A Beat’, ‘She Looks So perfect’, ‘All Too Well and so on’. These covers were received more than 1,000,000 views. The Lead Vocal –  Chrissy Costanza has good voice and her band work hard to play instrutments and the music post-producion. After the successful exposure of the band’s covers, the band also releases some covers with their friends such as Alex Goot, who is also a famous song cover musician and have his own albums.

Besides, Chrissy’s band also start to make and produce their original songs on Youtube video and give concerts in the worldwide. All these information of the new songs releases, concerts can be found on the Facebook page, Twitter page, Google+ and iTunes store. These social network platforms are the most effective social media tools for musicians to promote their songs and communicate to the fans of the band. The band updates the posts that relevant to the band constantly so that engage people to discuss and communicate their new covers or new original songs. To promote the music of bands or cover bands, it seems that social media plays the most important role  to the exposure of the music. The audiences certainly would like to go into the Youtube channel to listen to your new songs so you may receive more and more subscribers. However, to increase the numbers of subscribers, social network will be extraordinary significant because it would provide benefits to engage more people to become fans of the band. It is going to increase people’s awareness of the band as well as have interactions with existing fans. Based on my research, the strategies of promoting a band are including

• The band should have clear contents and provide reasons for people to watch their video and listen to their covers. Youtube channel would be the best tool for cover bands to promote their newest songs. The songs that have been released and achieved such a great success, which have proven that Against The Current have implemented this strategy effectively.
• It provides strengths for musicians to have covers on some popular or well-known songs because people would search their favourite or the recently popular songs. Meanwhile, the covers will be easily to be shown in the results. Against The Current have put lots efforts on the covers and gain more and more fans because of their covers.
• The band can also have a video-log while they have tour so that to capture and excite fans since people would love to watch musicians out of their elements. Against The Current usually have some posts to discuss their tours on its Facebook page, which receive lots of comments for the posts.
• The band ought to have some video posts to introduce the band and encourage people to leave comments, and Against The Current have done very well on this. It is because at the end of all their video, they will have a brief introduction of themselves.
• Live shows should be given and posted on Youtube video as the return of loyal fans’ support as well as getting more new ears. Against The Current also work hard on giving some mini concerts and write some original songs for giving their fans best show.

Source from

http://www.band-brand.com/how-to/5-ways-to-promote-your-band-on-youtube/

Pin Your interests!! – Pinterest

Do you have Pinterest?? What do you use it for??

Pinterest  is an image-centric social media, which is a visual discovery tool for people to find ideas for their projects and interests. Once people have an account of Pinterest, they will have a webpage as a pin board for them to save or collect the images that relevant to their interests or projects. Pinterest users can post and share pictures that created by themselves on the website as well as save their favourite images that from other users as their collections by simply clicking ‘Pin it’ on the pictures. If you want to know why Pinterest works. Watch the video below. XD

How to Pin it?!

Facebook or Twitter page are not the only social media for companies to promote their products or services. Pinterest is now becoming an effective tool for business to release their products visually. For instance, H&M on Pinterest releases its new series of products for attracting customers to walk in stores or shop online to purchase the stunning outfits on the photos. Photos that have a gorgeous or famous model could easily appeal people to stop and zoom in the pictures. It is most straightforward visual communications to customers, who are the customers want to have the same perfect-matching outfits as the models in the pictures. They will simply pin it in their collection of pictures or purchase the products soon. With only 1,942 pins, H&M have had 59,030 followers. People can pin the latest fashion and must-have pieces as well as get inspiration of their outfits with the ‘pins’. It is also a consultant to assist people in selecting and picking the best outfits for them.

Besides, when you search ‘H&M’ as keyword on Pinterest search engine, there are plenty of people’s sharing of their own daily outfits with matching H&M clothes or shoes. It is also the other ways of brand exposure from the fans of H&M.

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A successful example of Pinterest marketing is from The Real Simple Magazine, which has had 542,028 followers. It is the magazine that launched by Time inc. in 2000 to provide creative, practical and inspiring solutions that help people to make life easier. For the coming Hollowed, the magazine released 292 pins on its board of Halloween to help people to celebrate the festival. To a magazine, it is actually some kind of reducing the sales of the printed magazine but it increase awareness and raise customers’ interests of the magazine. People may be attracted to purchase the magazines if they want to read more descriptions of the solutions, which are beyond the limited information with pictures on Real Simple on Pinterest.

Sources from

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228181

Search engine optimization (SEO) to Digital Marketing

Do you know SEO?

According to Eric Peterson, who is a JupiterResearch senior analyst, said that SEO was to attempt to modify some stuff on your company or organization webpage for improving the quality of your organic ranking at thee big search engine. In the other words, it is the tools to assist companies to push up its rankings while people search keywords that relevant to the specific companies. Companies can get approach to its target markets more easily through improving its rankings on search engine such as Google. It also could be services provided by the SEO consultant organizations, which will get paid for improving rankings of the website of certain organizations. These consultant organizations are now becoming more and more important to the companies’ online marketing since most of the companies have their online stores and social media page. They want to increase numbers of visitors and generate more sales online as well as offline. The SEO consultants can provide the professional opinions to companies to gaining a better ranking on research engine. Based on my research, there are some strategies for companies to consider for improving rankings, which are including

• Publish the relevant content on official sites ore Social network pages (such as Facebook page)
• Update the contents of products or campaigns regularly
• To know the importances of metadata when designing the websites, companies should have space between the ‘head’ tag on each webpage so that to insert metadata. It is the most significant information of the website design.
• Companies should also have a link-worthy site, which to create relevant links within the text instead of with click here. ‘Click here’ has no value to the search engine, which will not contribute to the improvement of searching rankings.
• Use alt tags for video or visual media could also strengthen the search of ‘ ‘keywords’ because the simple descriptions of the media could improve the chances of search from companies target markets.

Sources from

http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/web/seo/ http://www.techworld.com.au/article/146493/what_seo_/

Sportsgirl Digital Windows

As the largest local fashion retailer in Australia, Sportsgirl released a series of digital windows in its retail stores. It is an innovative marketing strategy which allows people to purchase clothes or make-up products by simply scanning the QR codes on the digital windows with specific items. People can purchase the items without going to retail stores.

QR code is one of the most useful tools for business to provide convenience to customers to self-service once they scan the codes. It can also induce people’s trails of products by the time they saw the QR codes. It is because people will be curiously to figure out what are those square boxes when they first time encountered QR codes. Sportsgirl actually get the strengths from the utilisation of QR codes because most of its target customers own smartphones, which can scan the codes easily. Besides, these target groups are usually Generation X and Y who are technical savvy to update the newest information of technical devices over time. They may also discover the functions of electronic device by themselves and use them appropriately.

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Also, Sportsgirl not only have this creative initiative to assist in improving people’s purchasing experiences, but also have some supplemented campaigns to promote its products, such as the ‘Style never sleeps’ campaign – the fashion films on store window showcases. Sportsgirl worked with The Jolly collection to create the films in the showcases and install in its retail stores. It is an innovative media platform to promote the products and attract people to go into stores. It looks like a TV commercial but conducted at field, which could be received the similar effect of stimulation of the purchases since people will get appealing with the models’ outfits on the films, especially the female customers. Also, male customers may be attracted to purchase clothes or ask girlfriends to walk into stores.

To utilize the most advanced digital initiatives, Sportsgirl provides customers an extremely convenient service to optimise their purchase experience as well as induce customers with its campaigns. Besides, Sportsgirl also have its online stores, app, social-networking for promote its campaigns and on sale products. All these social media tools are assisting the brand to boom its sales as well as become a famous brand to Australian people.

Source from

http://www.campaignbrief.com/2014/03/sportsgirl-launches-new-digita.html

http://www.powerretail.com.au/multichannel/sportsgirl-qr-code-feature/

Social Airline Seating: Meet and Seat Digital Marketing service

KLM Royal Duct Airlines is a historical airline, which was founded in 1919 to serve the Netherlands and its colonies. It is the oldest airline that still operating under its original name. It is an old brand but adopted innovative technological social media tools to align with its missions and strategies so that to be sustainable in the international competition.

Meet and seat is the service that provided by KLM for customers to find out interesting people who will be on board of your KLM flight. People can simply share their Facebook, Linkedin or Google+ profile details to check other participating passengers and where they will be sitting so that people can choose their seats. this service is beneficial to customers to sit beside the people who have same interest or attend the same business events. It reveals that the company is customer-focused with its service of provide business opportunities to passengers. It is one of the ways for customers to expand their social network in the air. More than 50,000 people have chosen to use this service by the time it was launched. It is the most popular service on routes to Brazil, which because there were more than 5 million KLM customers are Facebook users, and about 1 million of them were from Brazil and 62% of the services users connect with Facebook. With such a larger group of Facebook users, KLM could enhance consumers experiences of traveling by plane. It is an innovative tool to assist consumers to get chance to meet or do business with a new business parter. It is a creative strategy for the company to provide deluxe s service to their target market.

Source from 

http://www.klm.com/travel/au_en/prepare_for_travel/on_board/your_seat_on_board/meet_and_seat.htm

McDonald’s Monopoly Game, did you join in this campaign?

Monopoly is the world’s favourite family game board game, which usually played by people with their friends or family in leisure time. But now it is the theme of a successful promotional campaign to McDonald’s, which had been conducted in the US, UK and Austral. The campaigns received a great success to booming the sales of McDonald’s of designated food, and this campaign is brought back to McDonald’s Australia again in recent month. People can purchase the selected food in store to get the tickets that sticked on the packages of burgers, soft drinks or hush brown. Each game sticker will be printed on a message to see whether people are winners. Some of the tickets are named as the properties such as ‘Bond Street’ on the Monopoly gameboard or some of them may be instant win. To collect and complete the Monopoly property sets, people were given opportunities to gain the great prizes such as Jeep compass or patrlot or UK holiday trip. I like this campaign and it is an brilliant idea to appeal people to purchase the food in McDonald’s. One of my friend ate the food from McDonald’s in each of her meal so that she can collect more tickets. On the official website of McDonald’s, people can also register and get their collection of tickets in record so that they do not have to always keep the tickets in pocket. The website also provide the numbers of the prizes left for people to check the available chances to win a certain prize. It is actually a strategy to increase customers’ motivation to purchase the food in McDonald’s since they perceive that they still have chance to win the prizes while they saw there are still lots of prizes available.

The Facebook page of McDonalds’ reveals that almost 2,000,000 people visit the official Facebook page of the company and more than 1,000,000 of them ‘like’ this page, which means that these 1,081,431 people will receive the message of any campaigns that McDonald’s posted on its Facebook page. It is the most effective tools of message exposure to McDonald’s.

Also, there is a Facebook page (unofficial one) called ‘McDonalds Monopoly Millionaire – Australia’ for the people share, swap, or sell theirs tickets to other players. Although some rare tickets of the great prizes are difficult to collected and completed, people still will purchase the food and attempt to collect more tickets to win. Two posts on the Facebook are creative – People can share their photos with non-grown moustache to become a Monopoly Man, which is a lovely idea and people who love to take selfie would definitely enjoy to participate in. The other one is also a share event to share your wins of with #monopolyatmaccas# on Facebook so that you will be in the mosaic of Maccas. These posts would gain more shares and comments for the campaign so that more people will participate to the events.

What’s more, McDonald’s not only promoted the game one its website but also through Youtube Video. There are around 1700 clicks on the Youtube video below. One of the reasons is because more than 3000 fans of the brand subscribed ‘McDonald’s Australia‘ on its Youtube channel. It is one of the complemented social media tools to the Facebook page of Macca’s for early promotion of the campaign, which also increased people’s awareness of the campaign and induce their purchases.

Source

https://www.facebook.com/McDonaldsAU

https://www.facebook.com/McDonaldsMonopolySwapAustralia

Nespresso. What else?

You may walk into the store of Nespresso Boutique in Chadstone shopping centre because of the strong and fragrant smell of coffee. BUT do you know the story behind this brand and how did this brand promote the products through social media??

Nespresso was established by Nestlé group almost three decades to sell its coffee machine and capsules globally. The story of Nespresso was stated on Facebook, which began with a simple idea to enable anyone to create the perfect cup of espresso office – as the coffee that made by skilled barista. The 3,642,247 likes on Nespresso Facebook page revealed that the brand is popular and well-known in the worldwide. It is likely that there are large numbers of fanatical fans support the brand and follow the updated products or upcoming events of the company.

      

Nespresso started to sell coffee machines in Switzerland and then expand the business in different countries. The official website of the brand provided the online services of selling products such as different favours of coffee in capsules, which compatible only with the innovatively designed coffee machines from Nespresso. People can simply order products online and also obtain the club services as the club members of Nespresso. However, it seems that the essentially reason of making Nespresso to become famous in crowd was not the convenience of online shopping. It is likely that the Facebook fans page brings great efforts to engage people to join in the discussion of the user experience, as well as encourage people to share their creations associate with Nespresso products as the picture below. It is the competition that provided by Nespresso which allow the brand to create connection with its fans via social network. People’s comments, message forwards, pictures sharing for joining into the competition assisted the brand to gain more exposures and also enhance people’s awareness of its products.

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• “Nespresso. what else” TV Campaign

Nespresso created a TV campaign with George Clooney who is a very famous American actor and filmmaker to promote its premium brand. The TV commercial above was smart and interesting to covey the message to people relevant to the taste of Nespresso coffee – intensive, rich, delicious, mystery etc. For the ending, George said “Nespresso, what else”, which implied that no other brand except Nespresso would offer such taste for customers.

Likewise, the later TV commercials of the campaign delivered different messages to customers, such as premium services for special guests in raining days. The most fantastic idea would be George went to heaven accidentally on the TV commercial produced in 2009. Even though George was offered to have an arrangement to go back to the  earth, which was giving up the Nespresso products, he did not accept the offer. It means that he could not live without Nespresso. The idea behind of the advertisements illustrated the importance of Nespresso to people’s life. The 2010 advertisement seems the sequel of the one in 2009, which showed that the God still covet the Nespresso capsules and required George to give all the products he purchased in stores.

Besides, another refreshing advertisement of Nespresso was released recently for promoting the latest coffee machine of Nespresso – Nespressp Inissia, which represented the wide range of colours for people to choose the colours of the machine. The slogan of the campaign – “Nespresso. What else?” by the end was throughout all the TV commercials, which have the same implication as we discussed above – Nespresso would be the only brand for providing the unique pleasure for customers. This campaign also indicated that the brand was positioned at premium level by comparing to its rivals through providing incredible coffee taste and experience to target consumers.

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Nespresso provided the “Nespresso moment” for club members who encountered the first advertising campaign including set up their hair, makeup, and also take photos. It is definitely one of the ways for the brand to build up the sustainable relationship with customers, which not just from social network or “push” promotional strategy but also share people’s sense, happiness after tasting Nesprsso coffee to the others all over the world.

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By the way, there are some more funny advertisements of these campaign, which I would not introduce one by one. If you want to read more, you can click here.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQA3DyKJ1yw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K63lLgJes3g

 

Source

https://www.facebook.com/Nespresso.AU

Ikea’s Showroom Campaign on Facebook

IKEA – Be the first one to tag it, and You can win it!!!

IKEA conducted a brillant campagin for promoting its new store in Malmo, Sweden by 2009. This campaign used the tagging tool on Facebook to promote the items in store. A Facebook page was created for store manager to post 12 photos of IKEA showrooms within two weeks promotional period. The person who first tagged the item in the showroom picture will win the specific item. Thoudsands of people tagged and shared the competition on their timeline once IKEA post the photos on the Facebook page. IKEA received a great success from the campaign by the time people share the competiton to their friends to spead the message to the crowd all over the world. People also give the comments to share their purchasing and using experiences of IKEA products. This campaign not only increase numbers of people’s tag and like but also booms the sales of those items. Even though people may not win the items, they still will be attracted by the showroom picture and go to purchase Ikea’s products in the new store.

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Another successful campaign from IKEA was pursued in the US via Facebook again. IKEA gave discounts and freebies to customers who go shopping with friends in IKEA stores. Similarly, a built-in feature of Facebook was used for promotion again in this campaign. People can participate the event through register and invit firends on Facebook to receive offers. These two campaigns were both pursued via Facebook built-in features without any costs to IKEA whereas they are effective and succesfully increased numbers of people shares and expousures of the business strategies.

Source

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/online/ikea_facebook_showroom

http://www.morevisibility.com/blogs/social-media/increase-exposure-with-facebook-tagging.html

Coca-Cola’s Sharing Campaigns

Today, I asked my friends some questions.

“Do you like COKE? Which one do you prefer, Coca-Cola or Pepsi?”

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Q: What makes you Coca-Cola better????

A: The sharing-themed Campaigns

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• ‘Share A Coke’ Campaign

In 2011, a campaign called ‘Share A Coke’ was launched by Coca Cola in Australia and it became extremely successful campaign as it was very innovative. Although the campaign was developed in Australia, it caused major sensation both in the local and oversea markets. The idea of the campaign was simply putting on 150 Australian most popular names in the front of millions of Coca-Cola bottles. The campaign was surprised and as a result, it motivated a large number of Australians to buy cokes and share them with friends. You may share a coke with ‘Kate’, ‘John’ or ‘Sophie’, which are your best friends’ names. The reason of pursuing the campaign was because 50% of teens and young adults had not tasted ‘coke’, which needed Coca Cola to reconnect to Australian customers. Thus, such campaign of personalised coke was intended to reconnect Australian with product, in hope to raise the number of product trials.

Coca-Cola used numerous channels to spread its message – from social media (Facebook and Twitter) to out of home advertising (billboards). Such strategy ultimately helped company to reach out, by encouraging people to perform what they were told.  With such a distinctive campaign feature (customisable bottles), Coca-Cola may have won many Australian hearts for good this time –  ‘Australia has fallen in love with Coca Cola’, which revealed that people was affected by the social media.

Australian were entitled to vote for the name they most wanted to share the coke with. Indeed, Coca-Cola accommodated this activity through an official campaign page on Facebook during the promotional period. 65, 000 people participated and finally, 50 new names were chosen to be released. Through such proactive approach, the brand successfully created an advanced and refreshing experience for its current and future customers, anticipating major retention due to the incredible outcome depicted below:

• 7% increase in young adult consumption of Coca-Cola,
• 5% more people were drinking ‘coke’,
• sales transactions grew by 3%,
• volume increased by 4%
• 87% increase in Facebook traffic
• 12,020,000 eaned media impressions
• 76,000 virtural ‘coke’ can shared
• 378,000 extra ‘coke’ cans printed at Kiosks

The increasing number of the social media exposure of Coca-Cola made the personalised coke immersed in the Australian culture. From here, it was revealed that social media significantly influenced the Coca-Cola campaign.

I personally think the idea of this campaign is brilliant, in a way that drew people’s attenion very easily. when I saw the ad of ‘share a coke with May’, it immediately remind me of my friend May. I believe that aside from being customisable, this campaign also created a sense of belonging and intimacy not only to the bottle, but it would go further to the brand. The campaign provided pleasure for consumers in the forms of nnedss fulfilment and at the same time, extensively increased consumers value towards the brand.

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• Coca-Cola Friendly Twist Campaign

The ‘Share A Coke’ campaign reminds me Coca Cola pursued another innovative campaign called ‘Coca-Cola Friendly Twist’, which was an interesting campaign that has been unveiled in Colombia. It is a new idea of sharing with advanced design of a bottle cap, which allow a Coke plastic bottle could be opened with another bottle only. It was a project that developed for inspiring communication between freshmen on the first day of college.  The refresh bottle cap design boosted the sales of coke due to two bottles had to purchased at the same time to open each other. Meanwhile, the way of getting the bottles open assist students in making friends to each other. The video from youtube shows that Coca-Cola made great efforts to the design of the product so that to create customer value of sharing and satisfaction as well as increase its sales. Youtube videos is another way for Coca-Cola to create and develop a sustainable relationship with customers, because people who subscribe Coca-Cola are usually loyal customers or followers of the brand. Videos would be beneficial to the brand to show to the audiences that the company put in efforts to offer the most innovative, great and fantastic products and services to its customers.

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• Coca-Cola Share Can Campaign

Another example of Coca-Cola’s sharing project is the share-can campaign, which was another friendship-inspriation from the brand. It needs to spilt one can into two tiny cans by simply twisting the can.  It is unlikely that coke in can could be shared to your friend but Coca-Cola make it become true. Similarly, the happiness of friendship sharing that provided by Coca-Cola to customers was exposed through Youtube. The social media exposure of the sharing campaigns was extraordinary smart and they are effective and efficient ways to achieve the long-term sustainability of the brand.