So I’ve moved my blog to http://www.themarketingbackpack.com

I’ve still got some things to fix up, but I’ll be posting content there from now on.

See you around!

Hi all!  I’ve just bought my own domain and I’ll be moving my blog to a new URL soon.  I will keep you posted here.

Here’s a social marketing case study on Levi Jean’s Project 501 by Alex Nesbitt.

Levi’s launched a marketing campaign to promote awareness about their brand by allowing fans participate in a contest to design a new pair of jeans (great idea for brand awareness/advocacy). They used a branded entertainment segment on Bravo’s Project Runway and complemented it with an online campaign. The results were a big success.

They got 3,000 design submissions to the contest for designing a new Levi’s product. Over 2000 of the submissions complied with the rules. The campaign got 134,000 unique visitors and almost 19,000 registered users. Two-thirds of those were women in target age group of 18 to 25 years old. They had 122,000 design ratings. They also got 924 social networking/blog badges with over 30,000 views.
Interestingly word of mouth marketing on social media like blogs and social networks turned out to be a major driver of awareness about the campaign. Social media drove 38% of the awareness about the campaign as compared to 30% of awareness coming from TV and low single digit for everything else. (Alex Nesbitt)

The project manager said they encountered some problems with some of the design losers posting negative comments on the site, creating some bad brand image. But rather than interfering or removing the comments, Levi’s let it play out. They couldn’t have made a better choice. The negative comments were countered with other comments from Levi fans who stuck up for the brand - what could be better than your own customers talking about how great your brand is?

I think this is an example of how powerful online and social media marketing can be. Not only does it bring awareness to your product or service, increasing traffic and sales, but it also creates brand advocates who will love your brand and become a mini-advertiser for you for free. This keeps customers loyal for longer and they will be much more convincing to their friends than any ad or marketing campaign can be. If one of their friends wants to buy a new pair of jeans, you can be sure the brand advocate will recommend the Levi’s store.

Do you think this project was a success? Do you think they could have done better? Have you ever experienced something like this (either participated in the campaign as a brand advocate or launched the campaign for a brand)?

BlogIt is a Facebook application that allows users to update their blogs, twitter, etc from the comfort of their Facebook profile. I think this is fantastic because it is another step towards giving people a comprehensive on-line identity. Not to mention, it gives Facebook a terrifically useful application that will bring users to the community but also keep the old ones there and coming back. If I can update all my on-line media from one source, it makes my life easier. Plus I like the idea that my blog is tied to my Facebook identity.  Readers of my blog can get to know me much better.

Here is also an article about BlogIt.

Have you tried BlogIt?  Would you try it?  What other uses do you think it may have?  Do you think it’s useful or just another annoying application?

I’ve posted a few new links recently. They are great resources, so check ‘em out!

Here’s one in particular: Everything you need to know about Web 2.0

What’s the idea? By Steve Poppe

His company Fifth Generation Systems, has developed a social computing product called Zude. Their mission is to give everyone in the world a website, by making them easy to create and free.

Savage Minds A group blog on Anthropology

I found his blog after watching this video that he made.

Both have some interesting things to share - check ‘em out!

Gotta run to work soon, but here’s some more links I found:

TwitLinks
Feedburner

So, keeping true to the mission of this blog, I wanted to talk about some of the tools that I’ve been using and how they can be used to market a neat idea or product. When I first used some of them, I wasn’t sure what value they had. One of the less obvious ones was Twitter. When I first signed up, I found it kind of useless to post what I was doing at the moment - who really cared? But after following a few people on Twitter I began to see the cool uses it had.

Twitter: Basically you have 140 characters to describe what you are doing. Most people will use this like the status option in Facebook or MySpace, to tell their friends what they are up to or how cool they are etc. But after following people like Robert Scoble, AmericanCliche, and TheLaughingSquid I saw the “marketing power” of twitter. You can use it like a mini press release feed. Read an interesting article? Write a small comment about it and then paste the link. Attend an interesting event? Post the link or website. Updating your blog? Tell your followers about it. Twitter is really great if you have a lot of followers and if you do really interesting things that people will love to hear about.

Friendfeed: A sort of aggregator of what you are doing on the web (with some limitations). Say you post some photos to Flickr, or write a Tweet on Twitter; Friendfeed will post an update about what you did and where you did it.

Here’s an example:

Just found Brent and his blog of links that he finds on a periodic basis.  I will add his blog to my blogroll here, but I think it would be a great place to learn about and discover more useful tools in Web 2.0.

Just a thought.  The BBC article discussed the fact that the Internet Service Provider for Nintendo Wii and the BBC are disputing over who should foot the bill to connect to the internet and use the iPlayer.  Now, I know Nintendo had internet connect before this who iPlayer deal, and I’m not sure who paid for it (most likely the customer of Wii, provided they already had internet at their residence).  Why not do what World of Warcraft does and pay a subscription to use the iPlayer stuff?  Sure it may make consumers less likely to try something new that they have to pay for, but give them rewards for using it.  For example, maybe something like Nintendo points that can be used to download new Wii games off the net, or maybe to uncover bonus material in games, or maybe even use the points as a currency to convert into real dollars for specified vendors.  I’m not expert, but this seems like a simple problem to solve.