• Building a Strong Brand Strategy: The Key to Business Success

    Building a Strong Brand Strategy: The Key to Business Success

    A well-defined brand strategy is more than just a nice-to-have—it’s a fundamental element for everything your brand does. It communicates your brand’s mission, what makes it different, and why your buyers should care. We take brand strategy very seriously, using a research-heavy approach to uncover key insights and determine exactly what your customers are looking for or what is currently missing from the market to drive winning brand positioning strategies. Let’s dive into the seven critical components of a robust brand strategy and explore how each element contributes to your brand’s overall success.

     .1 Understanding Your Brand Identity

    The first step in building a brand strategy is determining who you are and want to be as a company. What purpose does your business serve? What are your values? These are the questions you need to determine to build the foundation of your brand strategy.

    Core Brand Purpose

    Your brand’s core purpose is its reason for existence beyond making a profit. It’s the driving force that inspires your team and resonates with your customers. By clearly defining this purpose and aligning it with your customers’ needs, you lay the foundation for a brand that truly matters. When your purpose speaks directly to what your audience cares about, it fosters a deep, emotional connection.

    Brand Values

    Your brand values are the guiding principles that define your brand’s character and decision-making. These values should reflect your brand’s personality and be evident in everything you do. Whether it’s integrity, innovation, or sustainability, your core values should resonate with your audience, building trust and loyalty over time.

    Brand Personality

    A distinct brand personality is crucial for creating a unique identity in the marketplace. This personality is the human side of your brand—how you “speak” and “behave” as an entity. By developing a brand character that your audience can relate to, you strengthen the bond between a customer and your brand. Having a distinct personality has become especially important in the digital age of artificial intelligence and automation.

    Brand Voice

    Your brand voice is how you communicate with your audience. It’s essential to establish a consistent tone and style that reflects your brand’s personality across all platforms. Whether your brand is formal and authoritative or casual and playful, maintaining consistency in your brand voice ensures that your communication always feels authentic and on-brand.

    2. Defining Your Target Audience

    Understanding who your audience is and what they are looking for is imperative to constructing a thoughtful brand strategy that will resonate with them. That is why leveraging insights provided directly from your key target audiences through surveys and real-time testing is key to determining if your messaging is the best fit.

    Deep Audience Understanding

    Understanding your target audience is a non-negotiable step in crafting an effective brand strategy. Conducting thorough qualitative and quantitative market research on your brand, competitive landscape, and buyer profiles allows you to get inside the minds of your customers. This deep understanding enables you to tailor your messaging and offerings to meet their specific needs, desires, and pain points.

    Building Empathy

    Empathy is key to creating emotional connections with your audience. By genuinely understanding your customers’ challenges and aspirations, you can position your brand as a trusted ally in their journey. This connection is what turns one-time buyers into loyal, repeat customers.

    Ensuring Relevance

    To stay relevant, your brand must evolve alongside your customers’ expectations. Tailoring your brand messaging and offerings to address current customer needs and emerging trends ensures that your brand remains top-of-mind in a crowded market.

    3. Crafting Your Brand Positioning

    When crafting your brand positioning, it is important to combine qualitative and quantitative research to uncover what differentiates your brand from what is already out there. It is important to conduct a thorough analysis of your competitors, determine where there is whitespace in the industry and craft meaningful, unique brand positioning and messaging strategies.

    Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

    Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what sets your brand apart from the competition. It’s the distinct value that only your brand offers. By clearly identifying and communicating your USP, you give customers a compelling reason to choose your brand over others.

    Value Proposition

    Your value proposition goes hand-in-hand with your USP. It clearly articulates the benefits your customers receive by choosing your brand. A strong value proposition shows how your brand solves problems or improves your customers’ lives, making your offering irresistible.

    Competitive Analysis

    Understanding your competitive landscape  is crucial for effective brand positioning. By analyzing your competitors, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your brand. This differentiation is what will make your brand stand out in a saturated market.

    4. Developing Effective Brand Messaging

    It can be tough to stand out in a crowded marketplace, and turning your brand positioning into a captivating story can be even tougher. The key is to develop creative messaging that addresses your strategic insights while also bringing your brand position to life.

    Clear and Consistent Messaging

    Consistency is key when it comes to brand messaging. Your key messages should align with your brand identity and be consistently communicated across all channels. This consistency helps reinforce your brand’s value in the minds of your customers.

    Compelling Storytelling

    Storytelling is a powerful tool for engaging your audience. By developing brand narratives that resonate with your audience’s experiences and emotions, you can create a deeper connection. Stories make your brand relatable and memorable.

    Visual Identity

    Your brand’s visual identity—logos, color schemes, typography, and imagery—plays a significant role in brand recognition. A strong visual identity  enhances your brand’s visibility and ensures that your brand is easily recognizable across all platforms.

    5. Delivering Exceptional Brand Experiences

    Once your brand’s story is brought to life, it is important to determine how and where you will share the message with your target audience and ensure it is consistent throughout every interaction your user has with your brand.

    Mapping the Customer Journey

    Understanding your customers’ interactions with your brand from start to finish is essential for delivering exceptional brand experiences. By mapping out how you wish for your customers to interact with your brand whether it be email, your social accounts, etc. and identifying key touchpoints, you can ensure that every interaction reflects your brand’s values and meets customer expectations.

    Ensuring Consistency

    Consistency in your brand experience is crucial for building trust and loyalty. From the first interaction to post-purchase support, every touchpoint should deliver a seamless and positive experience that reinforces your brand’s promises.

    Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction

    Customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of any brand strategy. By prioritizing customer feedback and continuously improving your offerings, you can build a loyal customer base that advocates for your brand.

    6. Measuring and Adapting Your Brand Strategy

    We believe the proof is in the data, so we constantly evaluate, re-evaluate and optimize to improve our KPIs and ensure our brand strategy is leading to better results.

    Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

    Tracking the right KPIs is vital for measuring the effectiveness of your brand strategy. Whether it’s brand awareness, customer engagement, or conversion rates, these metrics provide valuable insights into your brand’s performance.

    Market Analysis

    Staying updated on industry trends and emerging opportunities allows your brand to remain agile. Advanced market research tools allow brands to analyze millions of websites and assess brand sentiment, emerging industry trends, and more to inform data-driven content, media, and messaging strategies. Regular market analysis helps you identify areas for improvement and ensures that your brand evolves with changing market conditions.

    Brand Agility

    Continuously adapting your brand strategy to align with new challenges and opportunities ensures that your brand stays relevant and competitive.

    7. Additional Considerations for Brand Success

    Below are some other areas to consider when launching a new brand strategy. It is important to craft brand narratives that will drive future campaign concepts, ensure your internal team is up to speed and in support of your brand strategy, and that it filters down to all of your digital assets and campaigns.

    Brand Storytelling

    Leveraging storytelling to build relationships is a powerful way to humanize your brand. Engaging brand narratives can make your brand more relatable, helping you connect with your audience on a deeper level.

    Employee Advocacy

    Your employees are your brand’s most significant ambassadors. Empowering them to live and breathe your brand values fosters a strong internal culture and amplifies your brand message externally.

    Digital Strategy

    In the digital age, a robust online presence is non-negotiable. Effectively utilizing digital channels ensures that your brand reaches its target audience and remains top-of-mind in a competitive landscape.

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    A well-defined brand strategy is the cornerstone of business success. By understanding and integrating the various elements—from brand identity to customer experience—you create a cohesive and compelling brand that resonates with your audience. Implementing these strategies will elevate your brand, ensuring long-term success and growth.

    Interested in Brand Strategy Services? Matter’s strategy department specializes in ideating impactful campaigns based on data-driven insights. Learn more about our Brand Strategy services.

    Matter

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  • 4 Reasons Why Digital Video Will Win The Decade

    4 Reasons Why Digital Video Will Win The Decade

    Last week at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, Robert Kyncl, Chief Business Officer at YouTube, presented the keynote on why digital video will win the decade – and video and content marketers should take note.

    But before diving in, let’s refer back to 2012 when Kyncl made some bold predictions. He said that by 2020, “90% of all internet traffic was going to be video traffic,” and “75% of all video people watched in the US was going to be transmitted through the internet.” Fast forward to the CES 2016 Keynote, Kyncl justified his predictions by educating the crowd:

    • “Cisco predicts that video will actually reach around 90% of global internet traffic by 2019 – so a full year ahead of schedule.”
    • “By 2020…digital video will only reach about 60% of the total pie, not 75, as predicted.”

    However, Kyncl is standing by his latter prediction because he doesn’t think digital video will grow linearly – currently at 25% a year – but exponentially. “So, this being Vegas, I’m doubling down. I believe digital video will overtake TV to become the single largest way people spend free time before the end of the decade,” states Kyncl.

    Per Kyncl, here are four reasons why digital video will win the decade:

    1. It’s inherently mobile

    Bigger, brighter and sharper screens, longer battery life, stronger and faster data speeds, and better sound quality are all trends producing devices constantly improving on the mobile video viewing experience. “And app makers and publishers, from Snapchat to The New York Times, are all investing in making video a core part of their experiences, accelerating mobile video consumption,” adds Kyncl. “And on YouTube, the average time people spend watching video on their mobile device is forty minutes, a gain of 50% year-on-year.”

    2. It’s endlessly diverse

    With digital video, not only can audiences share and search, but choose to consume at their leisure. The mobility is “successfully changing the way we consume video into the way we consume books – you can find one on whatever interests you and consume it whenever and wherever you want,” explains Kyncl. “That openness has led to incredible content diversity. Not only do we have videos on every topic imaginable, entirely new genres of video have been born on YouTube.”

    3. It’s never been more important to music

    Aside from sleeping and working, watching video is the #1 way people spend their time. What’s #2? Listening to music – at just over four hours a day. “And YouTube is a major source of that music,” Kyncl reports, “More than half of all teenagers use [YouTube] as their main way to find and listen to new artists, in large part because we have the biggest and best music library available. If an artist has a live performance, a remix, an acoustic version or an out of print track, chances are you can find it on YouTube. But the best thing about music on YouTube is that music videos can become massive phenomena, whether they’re from established or emerging artists.”

    4. It’s immersive in a way TV can never be

    CES 2016 product and technology trends in Virtual Reality and 360 video are at the forefront of this statement, and leading content creators around the world are using this technology to tell richer, immersive, and interactive stories.

    “Already on Android and soon in iOS, you’ll be able to watch any video on YouTube in VR…making VR truly democratic and primed to grow exponentially,” concludes Kyncl.

    These four reasons and trends all point to digital video’s success during the decade.

    To watch Robert Kyncl’s Keynote in its entirety with compelling cameos from Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects, Nick Woodman, CEO of GoPro, and Chris Milk, CEO of Vrse, carve out an hour for the video below:

    Fill out the form below to schedule a free strategy call with our team.



    Tim Bradley

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  • 3 Video Trends for 2016

    2015 was a great year for online video – just check out the excellently crafted and entertaining #YouTubeRewind video. And there’s no signs of the momentum slowing as we enter 2016. From a communication professional’s perspective, I’d like to offer-up three trends that will likely have the greatest impact on how video will influence the industry in 2016.

    1. Mobile Video

    50% of video views will be via mobile in 2016. And more specifically, the biggest video platform of them all and the one that reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S., YouTube, supports that more than half of their video views come from mobile devices. Adults in the U.S. spend an average of 5.5 hours watching video each day, with 1 hour and 16 minutes of that on digital devices. Mobile video should be the biggest consideration for online communicators, especially in public relations and content marketing.

    2. Attention Spans and Viewing Habits

    Mobile devices and their connected counterparts (aka TVs) will continue to contribute to video viewing behaviors and ultimately increased attention spans. 81% of consumers watch videos longer than 10 minutes, and 65% watch videos longer than 30 minutes. Holistically, the number of hours people spend watching videos on YouTube has increased by 60% year-over-year. For mobile YouTube audiences, the average viewing session is now greater than 40 minutes. One interesting tidbit to note is that the weather can actually impact viewing habits; viewers watch 29% longer in cold weather while consumers watch 6x more video content on mobile devices during warm weather.

    3. Demand and Advertising

    According to Cisco’s staggering numbers, video traffic will be 69% of all consumer internet traffic in 2017 and could reach 80% by 2019. Fortunately, video converts better than any other medium according to approximately 70% of marketing professionals, likely due to the fact that the average click-through-rate for video advertisement is higher than any other digital advertisement.

    1+1=$

    YouTube’s mobile revenue has doubled year over year, and according to an eMarketer study, mobile ad spend will top $100 billion which accounts for more than 50% of the digital market. Despite all this, there’s still a huge opportunity for digital content marketers and advertisers in 2016, as only 24% of brands are using online video to market to consumers.

    Ultimately, video will have a remarkable role in how audiences engage online, as well as greatly influence content marketing and advertising budgets in 2016. Research shows 60% of companies who have a documented content marketing strategy rate themselves highly in terms of effectiveness, so it’s very important to have a documented video strategy for – and proceeding into – 2016.

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    Sources:
    https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html
    http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Ad-Spend-Top-100-Billion-Worldwide-2016-51-of-Digital-Market/1012299
    http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/white_paper_c11-481360.html
    http://www.codefuel.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics-for-2015-the-next-big-thing-is-here
    http://kantarmedia.us/insight-center/reports
    http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Adults-Spend-55-Hours-with-Video-Content-Each-Day/1012362
    http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/26719/2015-will-be-the-year-of-video-marketing
    http://www.reelseo.com/50-per-cent-video-views-mobile-2016/
    http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2016_B2C_Research_Final.pdf

    Tim Bradley

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  • How Doing Good in Online Video Can Help Your Brand Do Well

     

    I find all too often that companies are using online video as a means to hammer home their services, products, values, and messaging- and just that. We all know the stats about how video is an engaging way to showcase what your business can do, but unless you’re the creator of an exciting new consumer tech product or are offering a deal that’s almost too good to be true, who is going to share your visual message with their friends? In a digital world where social media is king, you need to be continuously thinking about the connection your video is making to basic human emotions. I believe that these philanthropic initiative videos have incredible shareability.

    There seems to be a trend we’ve been noticing here in the office where videos that showcase a brand’s effort to do good in its community are able to trigger that warm and fuzzy feeling to its audience. I think brands need to stop thinking of Facebook feeds as a place where it can just upload glorified TV commercials, with hopes that people will flock to its website and buy more stuff. Taking a stance on a social issue and contributing to a good cause is equally or maybe more powerful. Notice how in the Tim Horton’s video they never mention how inexpensive the coffee is, or how good the muffins taste? Sammy the Explorer never talks about how Hurley’s surfboards are going to help you ride out that wave that is 10 feet overhead. They just want you to see that they’re making an effort to brighten an unsuspecting person’s day, or make the world a better place.

    I think a company should first think about who are its consumers, and what they care about. Do they care about the environment? Poverty? Then, create a video that showcases how your initiative affects people; how it makes them feel. It is crucial to focus on the emotions of the people in the video, without littering it with your company’s logo and branding. Even at the end, directing the audience to a microsite where they can learn more about your cause seems to be the way to go. Just don’t try and sell them anything just yet.

    My main takeaway from these volunteering/philanthropic brand videos is that it’s equally as effective to win people through their hearts, and not necessarily the lowest price point or clever slogan. Make viewers feel good on the inside, and they’ll be forever yours.

    Matter

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  • Animate Your Infographics to Maximize Your Reach

    In today’s media landscape, there’s no such thing as “too much content.”  The amount of platforms, outlets, and opportunities for getting your message seen and heard is enormous, and it’s crucial that brands take notice and stay ahead of the game.  

    As both the Boy Scouts of America and Scar from the Lion King advise, “Be Prepared.”  It’s best to always be ready with content (especially visual content) before it’s needed, because inevitably, it WILL be needed.

    Here at Matter, we’re big proponents of maximizing content and creating cross-platform campaigns.  It’s one of the many benefits of having a full suite of creative services under one roof, working with both the PR teams and each other to keep messaging and aesthetics consistent, regardless of what the “output” is.

    While larger projects (product launches, cause campaigns, etc) benefit most from utilizing the “Holy Trinity” of Creative Services – integrated Web Development, Design, and Video (more on that in another post), smaller initiatives can benefit immediately from simply going one step further with your content production than initially planned.

    With that, I give you The Animated Infographic – A cost-effective way to spread your message across as many platforms as possible, while maintaining a consistent design aesthetic.

    By developing both a static infographic AND an animated video based off of that infographic, you’re ready for almost any application.  Examples:

    -Post the infographic on your site (obvi…)

    -Add the video to your YouTube page (also obvi…)

    -Print out the infographic to use as collateral.  Clients have used our infographics at presentations, sales meetings, or even blown up and displayed as artwork on walls (we do that too)

    -Include either the infographic or video (or both!) in press releases and blog posts

    -Run the video on TV screens at trade shows or at your office.

    And the best part is, as your story gets pitched to media and spread on social channels, you can accommodate any content request.  Some websites may prefer to embed videos, while some may want the static infographic.  Print publications, obviously, would prefer the infographic if they plan to print it.  Double-up on Facebook and Twitter blasts by sharing both pieces of content separately.

    This way, you can be sure that you’ve got a consistent message and design aesthetic, and have maximized your opportunities for sharing across all possible outlets.

    Check out some examples we’ve produced here at Matter!

    Tyco Integrated Security:

    Anna Jaques Hospital:

    Madico Window Films:

    High Liner Foods:

    Matter

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  • Apathy Interrupted: How Smart Marketing Wins

    Once upon a time, a movie camera was invented. What would follow were silent movies, movies in black and white, movies in color, movies with sound, special effects and eventually even 3D movies. There would be cult classics, box office biggies, busts, rom coms and everything in-between, and there would be public relations efforts for each one. These days there seems to be a new multi-million dollar movie, hitting the box office every weekend. We see articles, reviews, advertisements, and blog posts discussing both the good and bad points to the movie.

    The novelty has worn off. What used to be so special has seemingly become mundane. Today, it seems like movies’ life cycles fly by at the speed of light, hitting the box office, making millions (or not), heading straight for DVD, and becoming quickly forgotten. So how can they stand out, is PR the answer?

    Innovative and creative PR – break the normal consumer experience. Disrupt the pattern. Use different methods than the overused techniques of: online, on TV, on Facebook and all of the places we expect to see them. Do something different, generate awareness in a unique way.

    Recently two movies have done just that. Carrie and The Book Thief have interrupted my world, with their witty and thoughtful integration from the big screen into real life.

     

    Carrie

    If you haven’t seen the viral video check it out here.

    The video brings the movie to life, literally embedding the movie into the lives of those in the vicinity, in this case some seriously bewildered New Yorkers. Interacting with these people not only interrupted their typical consumer experience, but also completely shattered their sense of normality, and gained unique awareness for the movie. Watch the video and note the shocked and confused, startled and freaked out faces of those in the coffee shop. By directly involving those specific New Yorkers, and those watching the video later at home, Carrie was able to directly impact their reality by bringing the plot of the movie to life, and to create an unforgettable experience.

    As is often the case with these types of viral PR, the initial exposure is far amplified by traditional media, and social media sharing. The video has been seen by over 45 million people on Youtube, and the prank has been written about in publications from The LA Times, CBS News, and The Huffington Post, to Express in the UK and more.

     

    The Book Thief

    On Wednesday October 23rd the readers of The New York Times flipped a few pages and stared in disbelief. Blank. Pages. In the middle of section A. What in the world could be going on?

    Picture Courtesy of BuzzFeed

    The answer: The Book Thief.

    By leaving two pages of The New York Times blank, but including a URL for the movie’s website, The Book Thief interrupted the typical consumer experience. Not only did they use a non-typical channel for raising movie awareness, but they also did it in an innovative way that sparked curiosity, conversation, and created an experience. This is especially brilliant public relations because of the movie’s premise. The Book Thief is based on Markus Zusak’s novel of the same name, which follows a girl in Nazi Germany stealing books to share with others because of their scarcity. These two blank pages in The New York Times allowed the readers to experience the world inside The Book Thief.

    The blank pages immediately generated conversation. It was instantaneously discussed on BuzzFeed, Deadline New York, The Huffington Post, Business Insider and more. The Book Thief was a hot topic on Twitter, with readers of The New York Times, and those who had just heard about it, discussing what they thought about the blank pages.

    Imagine a world without books, imagine The New York Times without words – can’t do it? Then you didn’t read Wednesday’s paper. But I bet you have heard about it.

     

    Takeaway

    What can other brands learn from these examples? Doing something unusual is a great way to jumpstart coverage and awareness while giving you the opportunity to make your brand unique. Use innovative and creative PR to break the normal consumer experience.

    Here are five steps to help you find that perfect PR innovation

    1. Brainstorm – list ideas that do not follow your industry norms
    2. Use a different channel – think of where consumers see your brand, now put it somewhere different
    3. Create a unique experience for your brand – an experience that involves people immediately and that can be experienced by others after the fact
    4. Stay relevant – make sure that the experience you are creating is meaningfully connected to the brand
    5. Craft materials that are easily sharable – and that people will want to share. Ask yourself – Would I share this?

    Matter

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  • Is All Press Still Good Press?

    Who would have thought that adding a handful of french fries to a hamburger would spark such a controversial conversation online? Burger King launched the $1 “French Fry Burger” because apparently, that is what their customers wanted. It seems like such a simple strategy, listen to your customers and then implement their idea, just like Burger King did. But is the outcome always going to be a positive one?

    It was once a public relations rule of thumb that all press was good press and that if a campaign or an announcement got people talking, then it was a success. While Burger King advocates and aficionados are thrilled, PR influencers and some fans may look at this creation as a brand running out of creative ideas. Daniel Gross from The Daily Beast stated, “I fretted that America – and American business, in particular – seemed to be running out of ideas.” On Burger King’s defense, James F. Thompson from Media Bistro says, “…the public will celebrate. Because this is what we want. And Burger King listened. Those geniuses. They get us.” Others are mocking the fast food chain, Venessa Wong from Bloomberg Business Week wrote an article, stating the most obvious fact, you can already have this amazing concoction any time you want, including right now. It’s not like the stores don’t always have fries.

    So, the news wasn’t all positive, and some of it was flat-out negative. But Burger King ultimately wins because people like me are talking about their latest product offering. That’s good PR.

    Burger King’s French Fry Burger

     

    Matter

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  • I see London, I see France … I see PR potential in see-through yoga pants!

    Lululemon’s popular athletic apparel line made headlines last week when the brand’s overly sheer fabric, known as Luon, bit them in the behind. Upon bending over, some of Lululemon’s loyalists realized they were baring it all. This led to a recall of nearly 17 percent of the brand’s beloved yoga pants, which is expected to cost the company about $60 million in lost revenue this year.

    An expensive mistake? Yes. Does it live up to the “scandal” headlines we’ve been seeing? I think not. Rather, I believe this as the start of a great, $60 million brand awareness campaign.

    I learned of this story on the TODAY show and was immediately distracted by some extremely flattering product imagery and b-roll. It closed with longtime Lululemon aficionado and dream besty Hoda Kotb stating: “I live in Lululemons. Nothing makes you look thinner than a pair of Lululemons.” Maybe I’m just a sucker for anything that’s marketed as slimming, but really, do brand endorsements get any better than that?

    For a retailer that just announced year-over-year ecommerce growth of more than 85 percent, and more than a billion in annual sales (again), I think they’ll swallow that $60 million pill just fine. Heck, this isn’t their first time at the crisis communications rodeo (see the 2007 stories about their supposed seaweed-lacking VitaSea line).

    Lululemon is addressing the issue head-on and leaning on the messaging and corporate mission that are the pillars of the brand’s financial health today. The company’s site has a page dedicated to its “quality stand” that states: “Quality is at the heart of everything we do, from the technical features we (sometimes literally) weave into our products, to the people we work with and relationships we build.” At the core of this initiative, they say, is the customer experience. I’ve only spent minutes with this brand, but I already believe it.

    Despite reports that customers have to don the yoga pants and strike the downward dog pose to prove the fabric faulty, Lululemon will dole out full refunds to all customers. They’ve placed a detailed FAQ about the fabric and expected product shortage on their site, and released statements like: “The ingredients, weight and longevity remain the same, but the coverage does not, resulting in a level of sheerness that falls short of our very high standards.” More importantly, they’re ignoring their supplier’s crazy retorts. Insert the obligatory transparency joke here. I think they’re handling this snafu quite well.

    So I ask myself, am I drinking the how-to-market-$100-yoga-pants Kool-Aid? I quickly surveyed 63 lady friends to ask if and how this see-through brouhaha has changed their perceptions of the Lululemon brand. Of the 46 respondents who were familiar with the story, 74 percent said it didn’t change their perceptions at all. In fact, 24 percent said they’re now more familiar with the brand. My guess is that there are many more consumers like us.

     

    (Click image to enlarge)

    No company wants this to happen to them, but if it does, they can only hope for this level of positive brand exposure. If I was a betting girl (which I’m not, because I’m not even willing to fork over $100 for pants that will mask my midnight Oreo sessions), I’d put money on the fact that – in the long (albeit sheer) run – Lululemon will benefit greatly from this exposure and the excellent way in which they’ve handled the news.

    Namaste, see-through pants. Bow to the PR gods.

     

    Tell us what you think. Did this news get your (yoga) pants in a bunch?

    Matter

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  • The Dramatic Impact of Social Video Recommendations on Brand Metrics – from REELSEO

    The Dramatic Impact of Social Video Recommendations on Brand Metrics – from REELSEO

    From REELSEO: According to new research, viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them by a peer. The survey, conducted by Decipher Research to measure the effectiveness of social video advertising, found that social video recommendations had a direct impact on traditional brand metrics and ad enjoyment. (more…)

    Tim Bradley

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  • Earned Attention

    Earned Attention

    Greg Verdino recently blogged about the apparent differences between “earned media” and “earned attention”. The former garners a great deal of coverage on the world wide web, including its own entry on Wikipedia. (more…)

    Matter

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