QuickerFeet than you

Timing is everything whether you’re a marketer or a consumer. Let’s be honest, brands miss out on business just as often as their consumers miss the right deal, but only due to bad timing. Introducing Quickerfeet, a technology that finds consumers and promotes relevant offers when the time’s right and in the right location.

On 15 February this year, US company  Valuevine Inc. launched Valuevine Connect, a location analytics technology for retail chains, restaurants, franchises and multi-location businesses. The technology’s Australian licence will be carried by The Bendalls Group and will be launched some time in June. Available as an iPhone app, the benefit to consumers will lie in having the choice to receive marketing messages that are relevant to them at the right time.

In the US Valuevine’s technology works by pulling together online consumer content posted on review community sites such as Yelp, City Search, Facebook and check-in social media sites Foursquare and Gowalla. It then uses this information to provide marketers with reports showing consumer trends and activity.

Consumers should be celebrating the new-found channel of power that social media has enabled. It’s integration with commerce is one of the most intelligent and useful applications of market information the digital age has seen.

http://socialtimes.com/quicker-feet-iphone-app-promises-this-type-of-ad-50-off-if-you-come-to-our-store-within-5-minutes_b43546

Google shows that brand is a dirty word

Google graph showing key word search using 'brand' & 'design' in the US over the last 30 days.

Google is the most used search engine on the web, so referring to Google Trends is an interesting exercise to gauge interest in your business, regardless of industry. As Dezomo is a brand and design related Blog, it was interesting to see Google’s search results for the key words -  ‘brand’ and ‘design’. US results are above.

Searches for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States all reflect surprisingly less searches using the word ‘brand’ than they do using the word ‘design’. And possibly even more surprising is that the US graph reflects less internet searches using the word ‘design’ than both the UK and Australia.

Google graph for 'design' & 'brand' as keywords in the UK.

Google graph showing key word search using 'brand' & 'design' in Australia over the last 30 days.

Questions worth asking are – (1) What is the correlation for design buyers between brand and design? (2) What and how effectively are design companies and agencies which offer design services doing to communicate the role of design to clients? and (3) What is the graphic design and corporate communications sector doing to remain relevant to clients and are these business strategies working?

Twitter hears only 12% of top 50 brands

AdNews|30 March 2010|Danielle Long

BRISBANE: Only 12% of the top 50 Australian brands are listening and responding to their customers’ comments on Twitter, according to a social media study by advertising agency BCM.

BCM analysed nearly 8,000 relevant mentions for 81 brands or organisations on Twitter throughout two weeks in Q4 2009 to monitor how brands were responding to consumers’ negative and positive commentary.

The findings revealed only 54 of the top 81 brands had Twitter profiles and of these only six brands actively listened and engaged with customer comments, with the majority (72%) using Twitter as a one-way channel to publicise promotions and promote news updates.

Telstra was the most responsive company responding to 45% of negative and positive comments, but the brand also has one of the largest levels of commentary receiving more than 10 times as many negative comments as positive ones.

Flight Centre topped the unweighted brand response scores with an 80% response rate although the brand does not receive as much comments as other organisations.

Big Pond, Vodafone, Telstra, Australia Post and the Australian Taxation Office received the highest amount of negative commentary on Twitter.

Toyota, Target, Boost, Sony and Canon ranked highest in the study for positive consumer comments.

However, the survey was undertaken before Toyota’s global recalls which would impact differently on the brand’s social media commentary.

BCM partner Kevin Moreland said whether brands “like it or not, conversations about them are happening on a daily basis and brand or product mentions are becoming intertwined into social networking activities”.

Colman Rasic appoints digital head

AdNews|25 March 2010|Heather Jennings

SYDNEY: Colman Rasic has appointed Rob Reng as its head of digital following Nick Lee’s departure to the UK.

Reng, who was previously senior project leader at Fairfax Media, will start work at the agency on Monday (29 March).

In February, Colman Rasic Carrasco co-founder Rebecca Carrasco left the agency, with chief executive officer Ben Colman and executive creative director Dejan Rasic remaining at the helm.

http://www.adnews.com.au/adnews-news/colman-rasic-appoints-digital-head