Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 innovation (editor = jérémy dumont, strategic planner, france)

How to develop an identity by using social media?

Here is a very good example including Obama's team. This is all about branding

Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source : Youtube

Why MLM Will Kill Twitter (Hint: because They Have a Business Model)

This post is the culmination of a long experiment with twitter and I have bad news for twitter, MLMs (multi level marketers) will kill it and so will anyone else with a business model that can extract value from exponentially growing network… so any blogger.

So I’ve built up quite a following on twitter, mainly due to my popular T-Shirt blog Tcritic.com and as of two days ago I had 1,800 followers on twitter. Now that’s a pretty respectable number but of course pales into comparison with people like Scoble who has 45,000 followers, and Garyvee with 25,000 followers, or Kevin Rose, founder of Digg with 77,000 followers. And forget about it when Twitter gets mainstream which it will as soon as kids realize Brittney is on there with 10,000 followers and sports fans realize Shaq is there with 18,000 followers . Anyway, the point is i’ve got a pretty small network compared to these guys.

So a couple of days ago I saw a tweet about a competition to win a gift certificate for KMART, all you needed to do to enter the contest is RT (retweet or rebroadcast) that message to your network of followers. Simple idea, so I tried it using $25 Threadless gift certificates (I get $3 to spend at threadless every time I send them business and I don’t need more T-shirts) and posted this (note that I included my name in the message so people would rebroadcast that:

@karllong is giving away 10 x $25 gift certificates for http://threadless.com - just RT this to enter, will tweet the winners

I then had another window open at search.twitter.com searching on my name and watched as people rebroadcast the message, again and again and again. In the end the message was rebroadcast by 500+ people to their networks. The first person to RT this message was CoryObrien who has 1,200 followers so I almost doubled my reach with the first step. From an impressions or click through standpoint I have no idea the actual conversion rate, I had included a link to threadless.com in my original tweet and chose to leave the url long so people could see what the link was.

Luckily I do usually shorten my url’s that I post to twitter using cli.gs because I get ongoing metrics on my links I share and my click through rate is well over 2% for just general FYI links I put out there.

by: Karl Long

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: FutureLab

Credit:  thesite

This post is the culmination of a long experiment with twitter and I have bad news for twitter, MLMs (multi level marketers) will kill it and so will anyone else with a business model that can extract value from exponentially growing network… so any blogger.

Show You Trust Your Customer

Want your customers to trust you? Demonstrate that you trust THEM! This may seem counterintuitive, but there’s sound neuromarketing reasoning behind it. The concept revolves around that seemingly magical neurochemical, oxytocin, which is a key factor in forming trust relationships. Paul J. Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University and unofficial oxytocin evangelist, relates a story about how in his younger days he was the victim of a small-scale swindle. He now concludes that a key factor in getting him to fall for the con was that the swindler demonstrated that he trusted Zak.

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable… the human brain makes us feel good when we help others–this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. “I need your help” is a potent stimulus for action. [From The Moral Molecule - How to Run a Con.]

by: Roger Dooley

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: FutureLab

Want your customers to trust you? Demonstrate that you trust THEM! This may seem counterintuitive, but there’s sound neuromarketing reasoning behind it. The concept revolves around that seemingly magical neurochemical, oxytocin, which is a key factor in forming trust relationships. Paul J. Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University and unofficial oxytocin evangelist, relates a story about how in his younger days he was the victim of a small-scale swindle. He now concludes that a key factor in getting him to fall for the con was that the swindler demonstrated that he trusted Zak.

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsbility - from Creating Customer Goodwill to Influencing Social Standards

CSR is still not a mainstream thing and there isn’t any standard definition. People still wonder the economic logic behind it, is there a positive correlation between economical performance and CSR or social standards can be a sustainable basis for the diffusion of the latter. But, very often, social standards have a positive impact on the profit only in the long term and only in a very diffuse way. For a wide range of social standards it is almost impossible to maintain that their implementation has a direct positive impact on the profit of large corporations.

Although it might be difficult to establish a clear correlation between the implementation of social standards and profit making, corporations could aim at raising their reputation by implementing social standards, in order to possibly gain profits - or at least not to make losses- from this reputation, at a later point in time.

Let’s be clear there are 2 types of CSR. CSR as marketing tool (BP) and CSR as part of a business strategy (Patagonia). BP’s marketing campaign, which is all about looking for alternative energy sources, makes the consuming public feel good about purchasing BP products. But if BP had redeployed billions of dollars into environmental investments that yielded no profits, and its stock plummeted, one would certainly expect investor to dump their stocks. And if they don't invest in alternative energy as they promised on the adv, they will lose credibility with the public, but does it hurt their profits? Is the credibility of a n oil company important?

by: Idris Mootee

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: FutureLab

CSR is still not a mainstream thing and there isn’t any standard definition. People still wonder the economic logic behind it, is there a positive correlation between economical performance and CSR or social standards can be a sustainable basis for the diffusion of the latter. But, very often, social standards have a positive impact on the profit only in the long term and only in a very diffuse way. For a wide range of social standards it is almost impossible to maintain that their implementation has a direct positive impact on the profit of large corporations.

THE ECONOMIST 2009 - FLIGHT TO VALUE

No-nonsense brands will prosper in 2009

On September 29th, when the United States Congress rejected the first bail-out plan for Wall Street, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index plunged and all of its constituents fell in value, except one: the Campbell Soup Company. Investors flocked to the iconic brand, which makes some of America’s favourite broths, such as chicken noodle and cream of mushroom, and its shares went up by 0.3%. That is a very good clue to the type of brands that will prosper in 2009: those that represent good quality, no-nonsense and excellent value for money.

To safeguard their own profits, advertising firms always insist that any brand can do well during hard times if owners continue to lavish money on marketing. But the reality is that consumers are likely to change their habits dramatically during a downturn. Fast-moving consumer goods have little to fear, but products priced for status are likely to suffer.

One victim will be organic products. Any brand built around do-gooding notions of organic, corporate social responsibility or caring for the environment may need to rethink, according to Interbrand, a marketing consultancy, as value for money rises up the consumers’ agenda.

Two early beneficiaries of consumers’ changing mood, on the other hand, have been Aldi and Lidl, big German hard-discount supermarket chains which are expanding across Europe and eating into the market share of established giants such as Tesco and Carrefour. It used to be shameful for middle-class families to shop at hard-discounters, but now their brands suggest intelligent buying. Aldi and Lidl and their imitators will gain more ground in 2009.

By: Tamzin Booth, PARIS

Source: The Economist World in 2009 - Print edition

Article from: scott goodson

Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

More Decoys: Compromise Marketing

Why a logical product lineup may not be the most profitable

When marketers plan a company’s product offerings, they usually try to do so in the most logical way possible. Several levels of product may be offered - a stripped-down, basic version, a more capable better version, and perhaps a “best” version. These would normally be priced at quite different levels, probably based in part on the relative manufacturing costs of the products.

In one of my most-read posts, Decoy Marketing, I described research that showed how a seemingly irrational pricing strategy, i.e., pricing an inferior product either the same or almost the same as a better one, could boost sales of the better product by making it look like a bargain. (In that case, the inferior product is the decoy.)

Now, let’s look at a different kind of decoy: a new high-end product that, even if it sells poorly, can boost sales of the next product in the lineup. Stanford Business describes how this can work:

Customers frequently don’t know the value of products and must rely on comparisons set up by the retailer to determine if an offer is “a good buy.” Williams-Sonoma, a San Francisco mail-order and retail business, used to offer one $275 home bread maker. Later, a second bread maker, which had similar features except for its larger size, was added. The new item was priced more than 50 percent higher than the original. Not many of the new, relatively overpriced items sold, but sales of the cheaper bread maker almost doubled. [From Stanford Business - The Limits of One-to-One Marketing by Barbara Buell.]

by: Roger Dooley

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: FutureLab

Why a logical product lineup may not be the most profitable

When marketers plan a company’s product offerings, they usually try to do so in the most logical way possible. Several levels of product may be offered - a stripped-down, basic version, a more capable better version, and perhaps a “best” version. These would normally be priced at quite different levels, probably based in part on the relative manufacturing costs of the products.

How to use Twitter as a tool

I may get more value out of Twitter than anyone else on the planet because I use Twitter as a tool—specifically as a marketing tool—for my website Alltop and my book, Reality Check. If the concept of using Twitter in a commercial manner interests you, keep reading. If it doesn’t, then you can continue to send and receive tweets about how cats are rolling over and the line at Starbucks.

1. Forget the “influentials.” You must buy into the theory that products and services reach critical mass because mere mortals spread the word for you. This defies the common wisdom that a handful of “influentials” shape what the rest of us try and what we adopt. In the online world, these influentials include Mike “I can go a week without Twitter” Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and to some extent me.

   Reliance on influentials is flawed because the Internet has flattened and democratized information. Influentials don’t have as much special access, special knowledge, and distribution as you might think because of the growth of websites, blogs, and, of course, Twitter.

   This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about influentials—if nothing else they can help you get to what some consider “nobodies.” But mark my words: (a) Nobodies are the new somebodies, and (b) it’s better to have army of committed nobodies and than a few drive-by somebodies. The most somebodies can usually do for you is a one day bump in traffic.

   One more point: if enough nobodies like what you do, the somebodies will have no choice but to write about you. In this way, the buzz of nobodies begets the attention of somebodies and not vice versa.

by: Guy Kawasaki

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: FutureLab

Credit: e-careers

I may get more value out of Twitter than anyone else on the planet because I use Twitter as a tool—specifically as a marketing tool—for my website Alltop and my book, Reality Check. If the concept of using Twitter in a commercial manner interests you, keep reading. If it doesn’t, then you can continue to send and receive tweets about how cats are rolling over and the line at Starbucks.

Half a dozen consumer trends to run with in 2009

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: Trendwatching

Social Media Old and New: Two Contrasting Networks

It's a year since I did a 'compare and contrast' blog post about two initiatives to build networking activity.

To recap briefly, the RSA is a 254-year-old membership organisation devoted to art, design, business and the environment, currently with around 28,000 'fellows', which launched a Networks initiative on 22 November 02007 (I didn't go).

The Social Media Café (a.k.a. Tuttle Club, named after Harry Tuttle), on the other hand, had its very first meeting on 21 November last year, and I did go. It aims to create spaces where people interested in social media can connect, socially and for business. So far, that has involved a series of weekly café sessions, which are 'prototypes' for something that may be more far-reaching. (The picture above shows, Lloyd Davis, Tuttle Club prime mover, making a brief announcement at the first birthday meeting nine days ago.) One year on, how are they each doing? Where do they converge and diverge?

Let me see if I can build up some dramatic tension here, to make it into a good story. Is the Tuttle Club the 21st century analogue of coffee house meetings that led to the formation of the RSA in 01754? Will the RSA be shown up as a lumbering beast of the 18th century, unable to move quickly or be flexible because of all its baggage, so that the Tuttlers can run rings round it? Or will the Tuttle Club turn out to be a typical Web 2.0 phenomenon, supported by an initial wave of enthusiasm and attention but zero revenue, and at risk from the capricious mood of its freelance participants, who will lose interest when stronger commitments are required of them, or when they (errr, we) finally have to resort to getting proper jobs?

David Jennings

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Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: Futurelab

Credit: chiefingredient

Pop-Up Reebok

Rev up the Delorian, Doc, it’s time to go back to the eighties with Reebok. The British sportswear company has opened its first ever pop-up store which captures the spirit of the 80s more than a Deely-Boppered roller skater sporting a Rara skirt and a batwing top.

Called Reebok Flash, the store is located in a 3,000 square-foot gallery space on the Bowery in New York. It features limited edition sneakers and exclusive apparel collections. The range includes the distinctive and colourful work of Rolland Berry, as well as input from design guru John Maeda.

Experiential agency Formavision developed the  store that takes its inspiration from Vorticsim, an English arts movement from the early twentieth century noted for its dynamic interpretation of Cubist and Futurist principles. www.formavision.info

Sebastien Agneessens, Formavision’s creative director and founder, comments: ‘We wanted to create a destination underground space that creates a buzz among fashion hipsters. We also want to attract partners so we can use the space as an epicentre for cultural events. For instance magazines like [interior design title] ID are using it to launch its ’40 under 40’ issue, and some indie record labels also plan to use it.’

Oh, and in amongst the packed cultural itinerary and visual references to Flash Dance and Thriller, there will also be a few pairs of shoes on display. Reebok Flash is re-launching several popular lines from the 1980s, including the Pump and Freestyle series.

Agneessens adds: ‘Our intent is make people feel they are stepping into a poster rather than a store.’ Formavision has a history of creating pop-up shops for the likes of Starbucks, DoCoMo and Sharp.

Pop-up shops have been used by a range of brands, often by those which already have a strong retail presence. The Gap Concept Store is a pop-up shop opposite one Gap’s flagship NY store on Fifth Avenue at 54th Street in Manhattan. As it wasn’t an orthodox Gap store, the apparel goliath partnered Collette in September, enabling the French designer lifestyle boutique to make its US debut. The cleaning brand method also used a pop up store in SoHo, New York, in May-June 2008 to swap traditional, chemical-based cleaning products for more colourful, sweeter smelling method ones. www.methodhome.com

If you happen to be in Soho in London anytime over the next few weeks, check out the Barnardo’s pop up shop on Broadwick Street. Selling vintage shoes donated by the likes of model Twiggy and actress Dame Helen Mirren, the shop’s proceeds go directly to the children’s charity. Find it at 69 Broadwick Street, London until 5 January 2009. www.barnardos.org.uk/shop/shoe_boutique.htm

And the tiny Marylebone-based pop-up shop for Monocle, a brand extension of the ‘global briefing’ magazine, is now selling high-end clothes and accessories, CDs and stationery. Find out more at www.monocle.com.

We say roll on the Contagious pop-up shop, but in the meantime visit our online store
www.contagiousmagazine.com/shop

Posted by: Loïc LAMY

Posted on: levidepoches.fr/contagiousideas

Source: Contagious

Credit: formatmag