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Janine Shea

How Patagonia Makes More Money By Trying To Make Less | Co.Exist: World changing ideas ... - 0 views

  • Thus, Patagonia’s audience trusts the brand, admires its values, and aspires to live by the same principles. Very few brands can compete on quality and price alone. Your brand doesn’t necessarily need to invest in the environment or take such risky maneuvers. However, it can’t be built exclusively through great products and great advertisements. That model is antiquated. Consumers have too much information and too few dollars. They want to invest in brands that have similar values to their own. Perhaps that simply means your product has more advanced engineering, is more user-friendly, or has better customer service. Those are all viable brand elements that create a powerfully rational connection with consumers. Ideally, your brand would also embody behaviors that elicit an emotional connection, such as investing in social, educational, or environmental responsibility. Building a brand platform like Patagonia’s is difficult, expensive, and somewhat risky. But, when brands reduce the amount they spend on paid media, they can invest in building a brand which will help their paid media work significantly better, and more importantly, create brand evangelists.
Janine Shea

Buick Underwrites MSN Travel Show 'Re - Discover' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • While it resembles conventional travel shows, the series turns out to be a vehicle for, appropriately enough, a vehicle. “Re: Discover” is underwritten by Buick
  • Some New York episodes, for example, feature Karen Washington, a community activist who has been instrumental in the urban farming effort to turn empty lots into community gardens.
  • senior brand strategist
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  • ensuring the cars were in the storytelling
  • the series is aiming for something more subtle: instilling in viewers an affinity for Buick.
  • “Buick is enabling the entire experience
  • Russ Axelrod
  • Buick models, particularly the Regal, appear only incidentally in the videos, as in product placement deals in television shows or movies. Specifically, participants drive from one establishment or attraction to another in Buicks, but never mention the brand.
  • “If I’m a consumer coming to the site, the underlying message is that Buick gets me, that they understand what I like on a content basis, and if they understand what I like on a content basis maybe they’ll understand me on a vehicle basis.”
  • It is no coincidence that the brand is, through the series, encouraging a fresh look at cities at the same time its ads encourage a fresh look at its cars.
  • “Buick is sort of trying to reinvent itself in the eyes of the consumer,”
  • Cities are reinvigorating themselves and being discovered in a new way, whether it’s Miami or L.A. or New York, and that’s what Buick is trying to get across as well.”
  • Buick has been the company’s fastest growing brand
  • “We talked about Detroit, and we love Detroit, but it’s not in the original batch of cities because we do quite well there as it is,” said Mr. Casmon of Buick. “Los Angeles, Miami, New York — in some of those markets we don’t have as strong a position, and we’re hoping to reintroduce the Buick brand to that audience, especially those who drive imports who are not familiar with Buick right now.”
Janine Shea

Recent Blog Posts > Beyond the mindless pursuit of fans and followers - 0 views

  • the brand’s fan page “serves as a small, tight-knit community for our very loyal, rabid fans.”
  • If they are not solely interested in freebies and giveaways, then what fans really want is content that is personally relevant on one hand and a sense of being part of a larger community on the other.
  • The former requires the brand to post content that is varied and useful to their fan base, while the latter requires the brand to find ways to encourage interaction between fans.
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  • They conclude that the number of content likes, shares and comments (as opposed to likes of the brand page) were strongly correlated with organic reach. Frequency of posting had a far lower although still positive correlation.
Janine Shea

5 Ideas for Pinterest Boards That Can Help Build Your Brand | Entrepreneur.com - 0 views

  • Pinterest recently launched business accounts, allowing users to define their accounts as businesses or brands
  • video? You could pin the image of that content with a live link to download the paper or play the video on your website.
  • Try a virtual focus group by creating a Pinterest board that allows you to test what your target market thinks. Brand managers can post and pay attention to what is getting liked, repinned and commented on, then pivot as needed. Beyond seeking feedback on products and services, you could ask for opinions on a particular aspect of your business.
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  • Events
  • Makeovers
  • Company culture. Generate greater customer engagement by giving your clients an inside peek at your business through a board or boards that offer a feel for your company's style, ideas, projects and commitments.
Janine Shea

How to Tell Your Company's Story | Entrepreneur.com - 0 views

  • Establish common language.
    • Janine Shea
       
      HUGE for us to nail down
  • Ask a handful of people in various ranks and roles to share five adjectives they'd use to describe the company and two aspects of the business that are unique or valuable. Look for themes or especially strong responses, and synthesize them into a clearly defined description
  • That clarity leads to a real and relatable persona that helps you build a loyal customer base. "The brands that have been most successful in the social space have humanized their business"
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  • choose the type of person that could best deliver that message. "You’re creating a persona," Ardakani says. Is it feminine or masculine? Mainstream or quirky? Opinionated or open-minded? If your business was a human being, who would it be and what would it care about?
  • Founder Azita Ardakani redefined Foodily's core value, saying it gives you the opportunity to spend more time eating at home with family and friends. On social media, she asked consumers to share their favorite dinner table memories and what it means to them to eat at home. "We saw a natural conversation erupting," she says.
  • What made Ardakani’s interpretation of Foodily's core value so much more successful was that it created an opportunity for human connection.
  • Your real value is about what you believe in, what you’re trying to do in the world, and how you make others’ lives better.
  • You might ask: How is your product being created? What is your office culture? You're looking for the thing that your organization truly cares about -- an aspect of your business that makes you unique and valuable to the world around you.
Janine Shea

Is Crowdsourcing The Right Choice For Your Business? | Fast Company - 0 views

  • “Crowdsourcing is the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of a specialized few.” And a lot more will change, very quickly.
  • In Europe, equity-based crowdfunding allows people buy an ownership stake in your business. That practice is illegal in the U.S., but will likely gain steam in a global marketplace where individuals can use platforms like Symbid to help propel an interesting new business into the marketplace. Social lending sites like LendingClub or Prosper permit you to legally crowdfund your for-profit startup in the U.S., but you’ll have to start paying it back immediately, and you could be left liable for the loan if the business fails.
  • Crowdsourcing will only grow, and it’s up to you to weigh the risks and benefits of using it to extend your enterprise. It may serve a single, specific purpose, or support a key component of your operating blueprint across your organization, or it may not be the right choice--at least not yet.
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  • Harnessing the power of crowdsourcing, viral branding, and service outreach
  • "extended enterprise"
  • the necessities to extend collaborative relationships between internal and external organizations.
  • BMW is crowdsourcing designs for a 2025 version of the BMW and MINI.
  • the global giant knows the public offers direct insight into what consumers want.
  • Participants made suggestions in a structured multimedia environment, where they could view, evaluate and build upon proposals made by other participants.
  • Remember it’s intelligence you’re interested in, not just information.
  • Face it, Facebook isn’t for everyone and it’s certainly not right for every business.
  • get a pulse of the quickly evolving consumer base.
Janine Shea

10 Tips for Small Business Social Media Success | Lendio - 0 views

  • As a rule of thumb, a couple of posts before noon and another couple of posts in the afternoon is a good place to start. If you only update your Facebook (or any social media status) every week or two, people will lose interest and nobody will follow you. Give your customers a reason to keep in touch with you by providing information that they will find interesting, will be helpful, or is fun.
  • Lendio online marketing via pay-per-click drives a lot more leads than this blog, our social media, or any of our content marketing, but it’s an important part of what we do everyday to share information and build relationships with our customers and future customers.
Janine Shea

Top 20 Great Facebook Fan Pages for Business - 0 views

  • The Facebook fan page of this company offers visitors a virtual tour that interactively explains how to use their product.
  • Specialized in calls to action, the company has adorned its Facebook fan page with mini games and a web TV program.
  • Through a clever photo contest, the company gets fans involved in the making of its Facebook fan page.
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  • trivia games, and stimulating discussions around coffee on its fan page.
  • weekly specials!
  • chic designs and great pictures
Janine Shea

The 15 Best Facebook Pages You've Ever Seen - 0 views

  • Threadless also carries over important functionality from its core website, allowing users to vote for t-shirt designs and enter design contests. Threadless does a great job of creating a fantastic user experience that doesn't require the user to leave Facebook
  • The company also shares a ton of great images on its wall that generate a huge amount of engagement.
  • Zappos has an amazing like gate that sits next to a featured photo submitted by one of its fans. Users can also easily join the company's VIP program from the page.
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  • They have a like gate with a very compelling call-to-action. They also have a customer photo generator application that allows users to customize their Facebook profile picture with their favorite NHL team.
  • It uses social proof and data from Facebook to actually show why people like the Bing page
  • Beyond an awesome gift card app, Starbucks uses its page to run contests for seasonal products and also offers a slick store locator application.
  • The Burt's Bees Facebook Page uses a customer tab to aggregate the global online word-of-mouth buzz about its products in an interesting and unique way.
  • Sometimes the best way to build a community is through a shared cause.
  • interesting and engaging content. It shares a TON of great videos that are both educational and entertaining.
Janine Shea

So You Call This CSR? Or One of Its Many Other Names? - Forbes - 0 views

  • Sustainability, on the other hand, is the more widely term used in Europe and is also my more favored term. And it’s not my favorite one simply because I regularly take “mental vacations” and imagine myself nibbling Parisian croissants by the Seine. Rather, sustainability connotes that a company is truly incorporating social and environmental issues into its business model. CSR or CR tends to be a collection of programs that address social and environmental concerns. Sustainability, however, makes these issues a part of the company’s DNA.  And ultimately, that is what my profession is striving toward: making sustainability “business as usual.”
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    Preferred term: Sustainability (vs. social responsibility, citizenship, etc.)
Janine Shea

Ed Norton's Crowdrise Brings Fundraising (And Fun) To The Masses | Co.Exist: World chan... - 0 views

    • Janine Shea
       
      "GroundUp is a personal narrative platform where you anchor your local life." Envision a future where folks are as closely identified with their 'local community personas' as they are with their broader 'second lives' on Facebook and Twitter
  • There’s a new era of social networking that’s taking shape around charitable giving. Younger people are rapidly adopting these new tools, and learning to use them in more and more substantive ways, to go beyond mere socializing and make these tools extremely productive. We’re seeing the sphere of social networking mature in a way that’s very exciting. People who continue to dismiss these social platforms as "a waste of time" or "just social chatter" are missing the boat. This is how people interact with each other and get things done. They share their personal and professional lives online. It should be no different when it comes to their philanthropic lives. More and more, we’re seeing the Crowdrise community share their charitable efforts with their social networks, both as a way to highlight their own commitment to a cause and as a very efficient way to turn their friends and family into new supporters.
  • They say “time is money,” but time is also an irreplaceable and personal connection to a cause.
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  • that time binds you to the mission of an organization in a way money cannot.
  • I like to give my time because it feels good to connect personally with a cause. If you’re someone who is fortunate enough to be able to commit both time and money to a cause you care about, well that’s double the happiness.
  • I realized there needed to be a way for people, including myself, to give and fundraise money for causes in an easy and fun way.
  • I think generosity can take many forms … financial, effort, emotional … but at its core it’s rooted in the realization that you get a good feeling from seeing happiness bloom in someone else
  • healthy environment
  • All the young people I see using Crowdrise every day, putting their creativity and effort into making a positive impact on the world. 
  • United Airlines committed to match every dollar up to $100,000
  • ountless Crowdrise users have started their own campaigns to support relief efforts in affected communities.
  • hat tends to be through peer-to-peer fundraising, and Crowdrise enables people to get the word out quickly to their networks and raise as much money as possible in a short period of time.
  • It’s a platform to allow anyone to fundraise for a cause, and it does it with a laid-back and funny attitude that undermines the self-seriousness of a lot of philanthropy.
  • I think people like our voice because it’s authentic. We believe giving should be easy and fun. People like engaging with something that is real, not some generic text.
  • Crowdrise is based on an idea of "sponsored volunteerism."
  • cultivated a new generation of young activists who manage not to take themselves too seriously in the process.
  • Why does the Crowdrise brand of irreverence and humor work?
  • We’ve found the more off the wall the incentives, the higher the engagement
  • there’s truth to our saying
  • “If you don’t give, no one will like you.”
  • You have called Crowdrise a “personal narrative platform where you anchor your activist life." Do you envision a future where folks are as closely identified with their "giving back personas" as they are with their “second lives” on Facebook and Twitter?
Janine Shea

5 Secrets to Producing Better Webinars | Entrepreneur.com - 0 views

  • webinars can be a profitable platform
  • Those who are on the fence about producing webinars, ask yourself this, "Would my business benefit by educating prospects on the benefits and necessity of my product or service?" If the answer is yes, hosting webinars is a must. 
  • engage an audience and convert someone's interest into action
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  • Create a strong 'hook' statement.
  • focus on the benefits you're providing.
  • following up your hook statement with an engaging story
  • Also consider packaging your product with a bonus -- an exclusive incentive which they'll only get if they act now.
  • This allows your offer to become time-sensitive and inspires customers to take action.
Janine Shea

Creative class - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • It is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects, and also includes "people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content”
    • Janine Shea
       
      Customer segmentation variables
    • Janine Shea
       
      Demographic - Occupation, Education, Location, Income, Social class Psychographic (LIFESTYLE) - Activities, Interests, Opinions (AIO Survey), Values, Attitudes Behavioral (towards PRODUCTS) - Benefits sought, Usage rate, Brand loyalty, Readiness to buy
  • Employers see creativity as a channel for self-expression and job satisfaction in their employees. About 38.3 million Americans and 30 percent of the American workforce identify themselves with the Creative Class.
  • cities which attract and retain creative residents prosper, while those that do not stagnate. This research has gained traction in the business community, as well as among politicians and urban planners. Florida and other Creative Class theorists have been invited to meetings of the National Conference of Mayors and numerous economic development committees, such the Denver mayor's Task Force on Creative Spaces and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's Cool Cities Initiative.[1]
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  • members of the Creative Class value meritocracy, diversity and individuality, and look for these characteristics when they relocat
  • For a city to attract the Creative Class, he argues, it must possess "the three 'T's": Talent (a highly talented/educated/skilled population), Tolerance (a diverse community, which has a 'live and let live' ethos), and Technology (the technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture)
  • “the Creative Class share of the workforce; innovation, measured as patents per capita; high tech industry, using the Milken Institute's widely accepted Tech Pole Index…; and diversity, measured by the Gay Index, a reasonable proxy for an area’s openness"
  • Creative workers are looking for cultural, social, and technological climates in which they feel they can best "be themselves".
  • active participation in a variety of experiential activities.
  • Street Level Culture
  • hard to draw the line between participant and observer, or between creativity and its creators”
  • interest in being participants and not spectators
    • Janine Shea
       
      Don't be a tourist. Find the local in you.
  • 40 million workers—30 percent of the U.S. workforce
  • Super-Creative Core: This group comprises about 12 percent of all U.S. jobs. It includes a wide range of occupations (e.g. science, engineering, education, computer programming, research), with arts, design, and media workers forming a small subset. Florida considers those belonging to this group to “fully engage in the creative process” (2002, p. 69). The Super-Creative Core is considered innovative, creating commercial products and consumer goods. The primary job function of its members is to be creative and innovative. “Along with problem solving, their work may entail problem finding”
  • knowledge-based workers
  • Florida argues that the Creative Class is socially relevant because of its members' ability to spur regional economic growth through innovation (2002).
  • these usually require a high degree of formal education
Janine Shea

creative class struggle - 0 views

    • Janine Shea
       
      Serve the Creative Class and the cities looking to attract them, but through SUSTAINABLE development so you don't create these mutually exclusive, inequitable scenarios that are not only morally conflicting with our values & brand ideal but also potentially obstructive to our business goals
  • Creative People? Collaborative Spaces? Innovative Places? According to the event’s website – politicians, private consultants, architects, community development advocates, culture workers, and public space activists are meeting to plan the future of urban policy.
  • Hamilton Joins the Fight Against the Creative City!
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  • Check out the great new flyer from Hamiltonians Against Neighborhood Displacement (HAND) about how creative city policies are causing displacement in Hamilton, Ontario.  If you are interested in contacting them please let us know.
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