Branding during a crisis is all about the appropriate response. In the case of healthcare providers and payers, in times of stress and uncertainty, responding by focusing on the customer experience is key.
How do you know when you’re “ready” for a rebrand? For Citizens Bank, it was when their customer data told them so. We take a look at how “Made Ready” targets a new kind of customer journey and builds emotional affinity for the brand.
Tara Coomans’ article in Business2Community about buying Facebook likers offers an important cautionary tale about social media. She warns that marketers should not convince brands that fans are leads and that brands should not believe that fans will equal sales. She reminds us that relationships grown organically are the ones of lasting value. But when Tara cautions, “Buying fans is a waste of money and probably a threat to your brand,” I am reminded about a social media (and universal) rule – few things are true absolutely. After all, there is “buying likers,” and then there is “buying likers.”
Cost Plus World Market, a retail and online marketplace for international gifts, home accents and foods launched its Facebook presence in November and already boasts more than 258,000 fans. In an environment where 9 out of 10 companies feel that they are doing a poor job using social media, what has World Market tapped into that others may be missing? Here’s our analysis.
During a recent competitive audit for a big investment client, we discovered that now is the time for financial service institution to add social and mobile integration to their in-branch experiences.
I turn to Dwell for inspiration, for new ideas to populate my dreamscape. So maybe the context made me more “prepared” to see deeply into this recent article in the magazine. On one level, it is a pretty prosaic story about the gadgets and software that connect the online and real world. But somehow, the idea that architecture and portable communication technologies are allowing us to interact with space and with each other in new ways struck me as profound.
I admit it, I am a smart phone newbie. According to my teenager, my old phone was from somewhere in the Neolithic age – you know 3 taps to get the letter “o” in a text. So I joined the millennium with some trepidation – as I experimented with geo-location applications. My first experience was the new “Facebook Places” mobile application. Similar to Foursquare and Gowalla, users ‘check in’ on their phone when they arrive at a destination to let their friends know where they are, as well as take advantage of special deals the location may be offering. The Gap was one of the first major retailers to experiment with FB Places, offering free jeans to 10,000 customers to check into their store using the app on Nov. 5th. After so much bad press, I was rooting for a win for the beleaguered brand. I like Gap merchandise, and now I was armed with a smart phone, and hey – we all need pants.