Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

eMarketer newsletter brought fresh data on the relation of social media usage and shopping behavior - esp. among the so-called “Generation Y” demographic:

• 85% of Gen Y and 39.3% auf US “retail respondents” are social networkers
• The most relevant social networking sites (for the US) are, still, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
• Search engines, online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs are perceived as the most relevant sources for product information that influences purchase decisions. These media rank above company websites, even.

eMarketer: “Consumers’ use of social media is altering the way they make purchase decisions. To stay relevant, retailers must determine how to incorporate social media, such as social networks and blogs, into their marketing strategies.”

And that’s exactly the point: Companies must find ways to engage with people who have increasingly learnt to come to the internet for peer produced information. Simply advertising in social networks may be a start - at least there is reach. But the real challange is for brands to raise to peer-level in terms of trust, authenticity - and relevance.

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C. G. Jung used association tests to identify so called complexes, which are located in the unconscious of psyche. The brandtags site doesn’t necessarily get in touch with the unconscious areas of people’s minds, but it provides quite nice brand insights. Everyone can take part and type in own associations of prompted brands. What you get is a survey of all brand associations - ranked by frequency. Check out the results for brands you love, hate, or whatever… Or you can do the quiz by guessing to what brand the shown words are relating.

The bottom line is: This experiment doesn’t fulfill the quality criteria for empirical studies, of course. Anyway, one might possibly get some funky brand insights.

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Despite the season we invite you to a lovely outdoor experience. OK, it’s only a digital one, but www.welcomebackspring.com isn’t just interesting for someone who’s into gardening, but also for anyone who’s into great brand and user experiences. It provides joy of use by combining general information on gardening with concrete product offerings. The overall mood is very relaxed, what mirrors a real garden experience. The best part is that you can meet with some virtual hobby gardeners, what gives the site its personal touch.

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UK Agency Republic brings the car make smart with a promotional website online. It seems that smart got a handful of insights of non-smart-drivers about the misconceptions and customer prejudices of the small city runabout. So the user passes a journey through themes like comfort, safety, space and fuel consumption and smart’s features in a british humorous way.

The site demands interaction and decisions, shows other users’ behaviour and presents the answers of the putted questions in amusing experiments. Excellent implemented: sales support, possibility of direct contact and lead generation at the end of the experiment process - well done!

So, who would you call if your smart has a meeting with a wrecking ball? The ambulance or a mechanics? Decide by yourself!
http://www.truthaboutsmart.co.uk

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Pretty funny site for the new Subaru Forester: You can play director of the subaru photo shoot, turn angles and submit your shoots. It’s pretty fun, makes you wanna stay, and isn’t even that elaborate.

The best thing are the stereotypical comments of the irate Director (you), such as “Get me a slim latte, it’s not that hard, is it?”, etc..

Check it out…

http://www.sexysubaru.ca/index2.php?lang=en

(Thanks Philipp)

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