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Tag: Brand Awareness

  • 5 Brands That Used Influencer Marketing to Raise Their Profile

    5 Brands That Used Influencer Marketing to Raise Their Profile

    Influencer marketing is more than just a marketing buzzword these days. More companies are utilizing this marketing method to boost sales and grow their brands.

    For those still confused about what influencer marketing is, it’s simply the act of promoting or selling products or services via influencers, or people who have the ability to affect a brand. Where the main influencers before were celebrities and industry leaders, today’s influencers are more varied. Nowadays, top brands are seeking out bloggers, food critics, makeup mavens and celebrities who rose to fame on platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

    Brands that Benefited from Influencer Marketing

    Influencer marketing provides a lot of benefits. Brands can reach the relevant demographic and enjoy high levels of engagement. It’s also affordable and can help retain a brand’s authenticity. Numerous companies have already successfully leveraged these people to give their brand a boost.

    Clinique for Men

    Clinique is renowned for its hypoallergenic skincare for women. When the iconic cosmetic company launched a men’s line, they raised product awareness by partnering with a disparate group of male influencers from various professions. These influencers consisted of filmmakers, outdoorsmen, stylists, and lifestyle bloggers, each representing a group of men who would be interested in using Clinique for Men. Every post used in the campaign was unique and defined the influencer. For instance, surfer Mikey de Temple posted a photo of himself wearing his surf gear, with his surfboard in the background, along with a Clinique product.

    Clinique’s campaign was golden for several reasons. One, the company’s choice of influencers were so diverse that it expanded the product’s reach. Also, the posts integrated the product smoothly into a setting that was so natural to the influencer. This helped create a more organic interest in Clinique’s men’s line.

    Fashion Nova

    One brand that has truly embraced influencer marketing is Fashion Nova. According to the company’s founder and CEO, Richard Saghian, Fashion Nova is a viral store that works with 3,000 to 5,000 influencers. Its aggressive marketing efforts rely on lots of model and celebrity influencers, like Kylie Jenner and beauty vlogger Blissful Brii. The former has 93.8 million followers on Instagram while the latter has 93 thousand subscribers on YouTube. These two influencers alone have garnered millions of engagements, likes, and comments for the company.

    While other brands go for low-key but very relatable influencers, Fashion Nova went for the celebrities. While this will obviously net a company high-levels of engagement, it can also be costly. But as Fashion Nova has proven, it’s a worthwhile investment.

    Lagavulin’s Whiskey Yule Log

    This is a magnificent example of how an influencer marketing campaign made a product culturally relevant to a generation. Young people might not have a taste for single malt whiskey, but Lagavulin’s 2016 campaign featuring Nick Offerman changed that. Offerman’s iconic Parks and Rec character, Ron Swanson, is known for his love of whisky. Lagavulin’s 45-minute video took inspiration from YouTube’s yule log videos and simply showed Offerman quietly sipping and enjoying his whiskey next to a fireplace.

    The campaign was a success because Lagavulin found the perfect influencer for its brand. Offerman’s character proved to be a critical match for the target audience. As a matter of fact, the campaign was so good that it won an award for Best Influencer & Celebrity Campaign.

    Zafferano

    Zafferano does not have the same name recall as Nobu or other famous restaurants. But this Singapore-based establishment is a prime example of how social media can be used to boost audience engagement. The company tapped 11 Instagram influencers who are popular in the lifestyle and food category. They invited them to the restaurant for a special meal and in turn, they shared photos of the dishes on Instagram. The influencers also described the dishes and their dining experience. Details like price and availability were also included.

    Zafferano’s campaign is notable because of the experience it created for the influencers. This, in turn, helped them come up with authentic and sincere reviews. Since the campaign had such a genuine feel, it encouraged followers to interact and engage with the posts.

    Zara

    Clothing powerhouse Zara was one of the most profitable companies in 2015, and that’s partly because of its successful influencer marketing campaign. The company’s social media marketing campaign got some help from several top fashion-forward Instagrammers. The Instagram posts shared by these popular influencers showcased Zara’s clothing lines and their followers used these photos to get ideas on what’s currently trending as well as tips on how to work a particular style.

    Related image

    Zara’s campaign was a success because the company handed the control over to the fashion influencers, the people that customers looked to for fashion advice. The content that was used in the campaign was subtle and useful, which made it even more valuable to the influencers’ thousands of followers.

    [Featured image via YouTube]

  • Marketing With Video: Recommendations Make A Huge Difference

    Unruly Media put out a new report looking at the impact of social video recommendations on traditional brand metrics such as brand recall, brand favorability, purchase intent and brand association.

    Keep in mind that this is the firm behind such viral hits as Evian Roller Babies and Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (not to mention the campaign that got Chrome’s PageRank penalized):

    “Notably, it was found that 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,” an Unruly spokesperson tells WebProNews.

    The firm points out the following highlights from the research:

    • Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had been recommended the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing;
    • 73 percent of respondents who viewed a peer-recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;
    • There was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing;
    • People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video

    Here’s a closer look at the enjoyment comparison between recommended vs. non-recommended videos:

    Video enjoyment

    As Unruly notes in its report, the enjoyment level is important because it has a direct impact on key brand metrics:

    Enjoyment affects metrics

    The entire report is available in white paper format.

    Need some pointers on what makes a video go viral? Here are some good points made by Robert Knorpp at the BlogWorld and New Media Expo in November.

  • How Century 21 Utilizes Social Media to Connect with Consumers

    It’s always interesting to hear how brands, especially very traditional brands, utilize social media. Century 21 is one company that has embraced it extensively because, according to Matt Gentile, the Director of Public Relations and Social Media for the company, it is vital for businesses to embrace social and mobile platforms.

    For Century 21, a lot of first-time homebuyers are between the ages of 25-34, which is a group that is known for its social media activity. Gentile told us that Century 21 must follow these “digital natives” and reach them in the medium in which they spend most of their time – the social Web.

    “I think, for brands, it’s essential that you learn how to communicate effectively in those channels to reach the consumer,” he said.

    Gentile admits that, although social is significant in this day and age, it can be challenging for brands. He compared it to when brands first began to pull their advertising campaigns from print outlets and started advertising online. The challenging part for Century 21 is keeping the system members informed on the reasons for its decisions. However, Gentile believes that communication helps to overcome this challenge.

    Many brands also struggle with finding ROI in social media. Gentile told us that Century 21 has been able to turn many “likes into leads” by attaching a custom Bit.ly link to every piece of content it puts out in the social space. By doing this, it can track a lead from wherever it originated, be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., and see what the pattern of the consumer is.

    Century 21 also recently released a new Facebook application that allows brokers to optimize their offices’ Facebook business page to better engage with consumers. Through the app, brokers can incorporate home listing info, Twitter feeds, blog posts, and more.

    Gentile told us that Century 21 would continue to embrace social media in order to improve connections with not only its more than 112,000 sales agents, but also consumers.