Tag: collaborative marketing

In preparing for the highly anticipated Missoni for Target launch, Target “hired” a rather curious brand advocate: “Marina,” a doll. Yes, you read that correctly. The blogger Marina describes herself as “a real doll [with] joints, hinges and all!” A blog -- ‘all the way up here’ -- written by Marina promotes the introduction of the Missoni brand at Target. The doll writes about her porcelain skin and hollowed body. However, it seems as though the savvy social media minds at Target are behind this fashionable “it” girl who promoted the September 13^th launch of Missoni at Target. The Tumblr account, which popped up in the blogosphere on April 5^th, is primarily devoted to sharing information about the Target- Missoni collaboration. However, Marina also blogs about her home country of Italy, her excitement in moving to the big city of New York and her favorite fashion trends (particularly stripes, the pattern which adorns a majority of the Missoni lines) --all seen from the eyes of a doll. These random “personal” blog posts, sprinkled throughout those promoting the new collection, are no accident. Rather, these fashionista- inspired, whimsical posts are a way for Target to promote and grow its desired image for the line.

You can glean a lot of valuable data from mechanically analyzing the social stream. You can listen in, engage and counterpunch with a comment or a tweet. If you’re aggressive and swift, you may even shift sentiment a degree or two. However, monitoring has so little value as anything but a starting point for a reactive marketing strategy, we have to ask why tools that do it seem to be the only ones that exist. Why is monitoring and reflexively reacting the priority?

Here at Media Logic, we’ve been busy working out social media for older adults… In our recent work with Healthways SilverSneakers Fitness Program, we’ve discovered that older adults are readily embracing social media – to share health, fitness and life goals –by increasing engagement among a mature audience by twenty-fold in just a few months.