In our regular Monday article, SAY Media analyses the week in a Venn diagram.This week, the SAY Media discuss how we can use xoJane, the online home for independent, opinionated, and passionate women, as a model for how to build a successful modern media brand.
“Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.”
PostSecret
They say time flies when you’re having fun which must be true, since it’s hard to believe we’re already celebrating the first anniversary of one of our media properties: xoJane. A lot has happened since the launch of Jane Pratt’s online home for independent, opinionated, and passionate women, but one of the many things we’re excited about is the way in which xoJane fostered a loyal community of engaged readers in such a short amount of time. It’s a model for how to build a successful modern media brand.
xoJane set out to be unlike anything else online or in print. The goal was to appeal to advertisers, who are connecting with this audience in new and innovative ways, but also to give women a place where they can be themselves. Jane tapped talented writers with strong, authentic voices. SAY brought the site a sleek, user-friendly design and great technology to manage the site. Finally, all that was left was for the editors to start creating riveting content.
“It’s the most interesting hybrid of media that I’ve done before,” says Jane. She carefully hired a group of women (and a few token males) that she refers to as “a cast of characters.” Much like a reality show, these characters represent angles and personalities to whom the readers relate, but who also evoke strong emotions and reactions, which, of course, was Jane’s goal all along. “I like sparking people. From day one, I wanted to have stuff that people would really love, really hate, and really want to comment on.” She pauses and smiles. “That’s passion.”
Jane and SAY are counting on that passion from editors and readers to make the upcoming xoJane UK a huge hit when it launches this summer. What’s next? Jane wants to get readers even more involved than they already are. Though they already spend an average of five minutes on the site, “We’re working on developing ways to make it easier for the community to contribute their own content,” she says.
It was an amazing first year. A huge hit in the U.S, xoJane has as many as 700,000 unique users and 3.5 million page views a month, and was named one the “Top 10 Women’s Lifestyle Sites” by Forbes.com just two months after its launch. It’s going to be hard to top all of that in its second year, but if anyone can do it, Jane can.
SAY Media are The Marketing Society’s Digital Partner. To find out more about The Marketing Society’s Digital Network and how to get involved, please contact Stuart.
Joss Davidge, Business Director of brand experience agency BEcause, continues his weekly search for innovative marketing ideas that get people talking. This week we lower the tone with Dog poo wifi in Mexico and toilet time gaming in Amsterdam.
Dog Poo Wifi
A make-you-look-twice campaign, created by Mexico based internet provider Terra, has started to get noticed online. The frankly named “Poo Wifi” campaign encourages dog walkers to clean-up after their pooches by offering free wifi access when dog do-do is deposited in a special bin. Yes, you did read that right! Actually, with the rise of mobile web devices this is a rather neat way for Terra to communicate its wifi presence and stay on the side of the community by cleaning up the park. Beyond the novelty, this is apparently not a one off stunt, the dog-dependent wifi devices are supposedly being trialled at 10 parks across Mexico City. Read the rest of this entry »
This week’s Challenger Project by Georgia Craib, discusses the importance of every person within a company understanding that a brand identity is more than an image, it acts as a filter for decision making.
Cranium of Cranium inc. was a ‘game’ changer in the board game category (tee hee). They flipped every convention; distribution, audience, Christmas… the list is never ending.
It really was wonderful- so much so that I got excited reading a story about it 14 years on (although for different reasons that i liked it back then, I was a pre-teen so mainly just enjoyed the purple dough).
Cranium Inc.’s mandate and every employee’s mantra was the acronym CHIFF= “clever high quality, innovative, friendly, funny.” From every innovation, through to every small piece of comms, to what kind of chairs were in the office, every decision had to go through -
In our weekly extract from EffectiveBrands book The Global Brand CEO, Rob Malcolm, President Global Marketing, Sales and Innovation, Diageo (1999-2008) discusses the importance of thinking local but acting global.
“Thinking local, acting global. Competitive advantage lies in figuring out how to do this global-local thing better than anyone else. When people inside the company actually get how to fit the pieces together, it unleashes alignment, speed, trust and constructive challenge.”
Leading Marketers’ quotes – The Global Brand CEO, by the founders of EffectiveBrands Ref p58.
In our regular Monday article, SAY Media analyses the week in a Venn diagram. This week, the SAY Media discuss what we, as marketers, can learn from Kickstarter, the online platform which lets creators crowdfund support for a project, from the public.
“People don’t just wear our shoes – they tell our story”.
Blake Mycoskie, CEO Toms Shoes
This week’s Challenger Project by Helen Redstone, discusses the eight stages involved in creating an experience “which is more than the sum of its parts”.
“We need things like a giant pineapple floating down the Thames”*
Last week I was lucky enough to attend the series of ‘Beauty in the Making’ talks from It’s Nice That (in conjunction with paper company GF Smith – many thanks for the amazing notebook). Friday’s talk was a double bill entitled ‘The Senses’ with Fabian Riggell of Future/Secret/Other Cinema (more to come on that one) and Sam Bompass, from Bompass & Parr.
Bompass & Parr are the duo behind such genius food installations as the Architectural Jelly Banquet, The World’s First Chocolate Based Climbing Wall, Alcoholic Architecture- a pop up bar which was in essence a ‘walk in breathable cocktail’ and the soon to be open Crazy Golf Course made of cake. Sam spoke of creating what can only be described by a brilliant German word - Gesamtkunstrek - meaning ‘a total work of art’, and how they achieve that through a combination of outrageous ambition and extreme innovation. Read the rest of this entry »
In The Marketing Society’s quarterly journal Market Leader, Jeremy Bullmore explains why for some brands, less is always more.
There’s a school of advertising that, if more widely adopted, would put most creative agencies out of business. It’s most apparent between mid-October and mid-December. Here are some of the names that favour the school – and have done so for decades, Chloé, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Dior, Armani, Prada, Versace, D&G, Calvin Klein, Chanel, Givenchy, Lanvin, Boss, Estée Lauder.
Their advertisements are unlike most other advertisements in several respects. No copywriters have been troubled: there are no headlines, no straplines and no body copy. The only word is the name of the brand. There is no attempt to differentiate through verbal embellishment. No consumer promise is overtly made and price is never mentioned. In print, the most common medium, photography is universal and the subjects are either cool women, moody men or a combination of the two. Their age range is about seven years: 18-25. Naturalism is out: they are models, behaving like models. Few even hint at a back story. Read the rest of this entry »
In our weekly extract from EffectiveBrands book The Global Brand CEO, Simon Clift, former Chief Marketing Officer, Unilever, discusses the responsibility marketers have regarding sustainability.
“When I think of the fact that our products touch the lives of over 2 billion people every day, I get excited about the opportunities that brings. Of course I don’t get grandiose, that’s not appropriate; but I do really wonder how we can make a difference. And often I wonder, for example specifically about sustainability, will my grandson look at me and say ‘Why didn’t you do more?’”
Leading Marketers’ quotes – The Global Brand CEO, by the founders of EffectiveBrands Ref p64.
In our regular Monday article, SAY Media analyses the week in a Venn diagram. This week, the SAY Media Lab discuss the ways they are starting to see digital publishing being recognised as an entirely new medium, making us rethink the relationship between content, editorial design and user experience.
“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative”.
Woody Allen
This is it: the golden moment when digital media can really come into its own. To create a new standard in quality digital publishing, we need to recognize it as an entirely new medium and rethink the relationship between content, editorial design and user experience. Sometimes that means borrowing from and improving on trusted old standards. At other times it means pushing into new frontiers. In the SAY Media Lab, here’s how we’re seeing this start to happen.
1. Web typography no longer sucks. The rapid adoption of new standards and technologies, as well as the launch of services such as Typekit (or even Google’s free alternative Web Fonts), has essentially fixed the Web’s typography problem and is ushering in a renaissance of editorial design.
2.There is no mobile Web. The separation of desktop and mobile devices is quickly becoming moot. We use our phones to browse the Web from the couch and we work from our laptops while sitting in the park. There’s only one Web. Your publication needs to exist everywhere it does. Read the rest of this entry »
As part of our partnership with Marketing magazine we spark debate amongst senior members of The Marketing Society. This week, as Gold medallist Denise Lewis has slammed athletes for tweets about brands ahead of the Olympics, we ask are athletes’ brand endorsements ‘a dangerous game’ ?
NO
Alison Brolls
Global head of marketing and planning, Nokia
Personal endorsements by the right people can be an effective and legitimate marketing tactic, but what are ‘day in the life of’ tweets and what is paid-for endorsement? Should it be spelled out?
Brands don’t set out to deceive consumers, and the ad-savvy public can easily spot sponsorships. As long as everyone follows the rules set out so far for other media, and makes it clear when a deal is in place, there is no issue.
The same rules have to apply to Olympic athletes. However, they may be less experienced than other celebrity endorsers, so the onus is on brand owners who have deals or place product with them. They need to hand-hold a bit more than they might be doing right now.
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