June 12, 2009 - by Kathryn Smolen

Talk of the Taco Truck

Twitter is riding its great wave of social networking momentum, and quite a few brands have already jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, including Levi’s as Lauren wrote about in her last post.

But with celebrities, publishers, and your best mates in the tweetosphere, brands have a lot of competition on the social networking site and thus need to offer consumers a valuable, unique experience to stand out.

Another great example of a brand that delivers a valuable experience is the Kogi Taco Truck (kogibbq), a Korean-Mexican fusion food van that roams the streets of Los Angeles in search of… or rather being searched by hungry customers; the two Kogi trucks that roam the streets tweeting their whereabouts to 30,304 followers have been met with a deluge of demand, with customers waiting up to two hours to grab a bite of their cheap, tasty goodness.

While no doubt location and product are integral to the brand’s success, they have also employed some effective communications tactics to propel momentum:

Communicating in the digital channel where their target audience is highly engaged and involved, and offering them a unique, rewarding challenge.
Word-of-mouth, which was first sparked by the owner enlisting friends and family to begin blogging, branding and Twittering on his behalf.
Language and tone (“upbeat, LOL-speak”) that fits both the brand and environment. The non-tech savvy owner has his sister-in-law tweeting on his behalf, which included the following post about the launch of their second Kogi truck:

“KOGIHEADQUARTERSIS TOTALLYPREGGERSAND ISGIVINGBIRTHTOANEW BABYTRUCK . . . So I’m leaving it to YOU, the peopLes to nominate names for our trucks, because at this rate, Roy’s gonna be caLLing Big Brah KoGi #1 and Mark’s gonna be caLLing the new one KoGi #2, which, frankLy, is way BORING.”

The taco truck news and updates could have easily gotten lost in the clutter of Twitter, but smart communications have fostered continued talk of the taco truck and made it the talk of the town.

This article is posted in BRAND EXPERIENCE / TRENDS / DIGITAL

Comments (1)

May 27, 2009 - by Lauren Cassar

iSpyLevis being VERY smart

So a group of us have just had the BEST brand experience thanks to Levis.

The brand has ”released hundreds of pairs of Levis on the streets of key cities across Australia & New Zealand. If you think you see someone wearing a pair ask them “Are they Levis?”. If you get it right, they’ll drop their pants & give them to you on the spot.”

This is such a smart strategy. It taps into our voeuyeristic nature and harnesses the power of follow on twitter (literally) in a fun and rewarding way.

I have been following @iSpyLevis for the last few days and have become totally addicted. When their profile started to show some life after lunch today I was determined to find the jeans on the street.

I tweeted with the guy and an hour later he was posting pics of his location right outside our office! Chris ran downstairs to meet him and 5 minutes later is the proud owner of a pair of GUYS 568® SKINNYS IN RESIN SEALED.

This concept would work well for many products and is allowing Levis to have very rich consumer interaction as well as promote their style range.

Here’s to me finding the female over the next few days!

This article is posted in BRANDS / BRAND EXPERIENCE / AGENCY

Comments (1)

May 25, 2009 - by Lauren Cassar

Primped on target

I love this concept from PRIMPED.

The smart girls over at ’the go-to in how-to in beauty’ website are turning the tried & tested ‘gift with purchase’ subscription driver into a very useful tool to;

Drive quality user-generated-content
Recruit new employees
Refresh their site with relevant opinions & perspectives without actually having to pay people to do it

Overall, they are empowering their most engaged users to contribute to their site over & above regular commentary. It is an appealing promotion for their current users but also a great opportunity for brands to road-test their products and get rich consumer feedback.

This concept has been in place for a long time, driven by agencies such as The Soup and T-Garage’s Vibe Village. The difference here is that audience are already engaged, they’re well defined and they are motivated to share their opinions because they know they’ll be heard (as the site is a source of beauty information not just an aggregator of opinions from panel based triallists).

If I represented a beauty client, I’d be on the phone to Ms Foster to strike a deal before my competitor beat me to it.

This article is posted in CREATIVITY / AGENCY / DIGITAL

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May 22, 2009 - by Lauren Cassar

An online brand that should know better.

I received this eDM yesterday which in itself is not unusual. What I do find interesting is that for a “bank” that has built itself online, their digital communication was somewhat lacking.

The purpose of the eDM was to recruit me to save more money, under the guise of extra rewards. This is all well and good but they didn’t make it very easy for me.

I had skimmed over the eDM (who actually reads ALL the words anymore - communication via 160 characters would have been more effective) then proceeded to click, and click, and click (you get it…) until I re-read the eDM and realised I had to copy & paste the URL into my browser.

Seriously, how old school is that? I would suggest that if the eDM allowed the recipient to click-thru, recruitment levels would have been greater and over and above this the consumer experience would have vastly improved.

Why do brands still make these errors? Surely an online brand like this has enough experience to know better? Or perhaps I’m just not privy to the reasons why you wouldn’t enable the eDM with click-thru technology…. Please enlighten me if you have an insight into this.

This article is posted in AGENCY

Comments (2)

May 18, 2009 - by Lauren Cassar

The medium as the message

Play Pictionary for Austism is a nice creative way to draw attention to a problem.

This execution is a great example of how the medium may be used as the message.

I love that the creators have truly understood the problems associated with Austism then challenged potential donors to experience the problem themselves (albeit it via a fun spin).