SociaLight Media Blog

Here’s an article for the business owner. A couple weeks ago, The New York Times posted this article, To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click. It features a number of huge companies and has a great chart comparing Gap’s first quarter sales in stores and online.

A great example of outside influences of consumer behavior - the poor economy, the exorbitant price of gas. Consumers are shopping much more online this year rather than going to the gas pump then hitting the mall. What does that mean for businesses, large and small? The online customer experience is now more important than ever - from the ease of finding your website, to being able to see your products and services, to reading reviews of those products and services written by real people, to being able to swiftly make a purchase, or to receiving more information from you. Online customers need the same service treatment that they receive in-store. Your website has to exude your business - I like Anthropologie’s site, for example. Gives you a sense of their brick-and-mortar store, and is extremely simple; I can make a purchase in only four clicks from their homepage.

But back to the article - gas prices and online shoppers are causing a lot of big companies to take notice. Target, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and half a dozen other huge companies are offering limited-time free shipping online; both embracing the surge of online buyers and attempting to cushion the blow that the in-store sales have received.

These online customers aren’t just the computer-savvy either.

“I’m a computer illiterate person,” said one of the people interviewed in the article. “But I’m becoming much more literate as a result of gas prices.” Virtually everyone industry’s customers are opting to stay at home, research your product online, and make purchases from home. These customers need to be able to find you quickly and easily, or they’ll simply look elsewhere online for the product or service. The hard times of the economy and the high gas prices coupled with the ease of the internet and shopping online are making this environment extremely competitive.

Online sales are expected to surpass $200 billion this year, the article states, and all industries are taking note.

“To encourage the trend, retailers are investing in online operations and experimenting with new marketing techniques. Even retailers that are scaling back in their physical stores are expanding or enhancing online operations, which are by and large the fastest growing parts of their company. The shopping Web sites themselves are becoming speedier, easier to navigate and filled with more products.”

I’m really looking forward to this year because of all of this. More and more, people are beginning to see how important their business’s online image is, and as a web-ophile, that makes me smile. Read the article and tell me what you think!

I couldn’t believe it either. This article, Chew on This, in today’s Wall Street Journal blew my mind. Creative advertising at its best, from a company that’s 117 years old and for a product that’s 94 years old.

In the music world, hip-hop artist Chris Brown’s latest pop-single, Forever, has been on the Billboard Top 100 for a couple months, just peaking at number 4 this week. It’s been playing all over the radio, at parties, at clubs, everywhere; whether you’re tuned into today’s music or not, there’s a good chance you’ve heard this song. Anyone who has heard it can tell you that in the chorus is a reference to an old chewing gum slogan, “double your pleasure, double your fun” - Wrigley’s DoubleMint Gum. We all thought it was just a cute, and meaningless, reference in the pop song - and boy were we wrong. Turns out it’s a direct reference to Wrigley’s product. Better yet, Wrigley paid for the whole thing! Back in February, they flew Chris Brown out to record simply an updated jingle for DoubleMint Gum commercials, just announced to be aired this coming month. During the same recording session, they recorded a 4 and a half minute version of the jingle, Chris Brown called it “Forever,” and in April, they released it on to the radio, where it has become a huge hit.

Now that it’s cracked the top 5 on Billboard’s charts, Wrigley is stepping out from behind the curtain (apparently they are set to reveal it Tuesday) to say that the whole song is a commercial…essentially. I actually really like the song, and now every time I hear it, I’m going to think of DoubleMint Gum. Talk about breaking through the advertising clutter! And it doesn’t stop there. The campaign will also include the same kind of song-commercials from two other pop artists, Ne-Yo and Julianne Hough, for Big Red and Juicy Fruit, respectively.

The ad agency Interpublic Group, is responsible for the fresh idea. And it’s not their only one, either. Also announced today was a new campaign for Dr. Pepper, another company founded over one-hundred years ago, where well-known, but fictional, doctors are “prescribing” how to drink the classic soft drink. A recent - and real - study was conducted which showed that people who drank soda slower actually enjoyed the taste more. Whether it’s true or not, we’ll have to just take their word for it, but it’s made for a great (and creative!) ad campaign for another seemingly stagnant product type. Click the play button and take a look: