Courtesy of Tab Juice (via Brian Solis)
Thanks to a recent post by social media guru Brian Solis, I chanced upon this brilliant infographic on the psychology of social commerce.
According to the post, there are six heuristics or pillars in social commerce: social proof; authority; scarcity; like; consistency; and reciprocity.
Let me go through each of these in turn and give my layman’s take on what it means for us.
Thanks to June, Tiffany and Laura of the Coca-Cola Singapore team, I was invited to the cosy 126th birthday party for Coca-Cola held at the Dallas Restaurant and Bar at Boat Quay. As a marketer and a publicist, I’ve always admired how the world’s largest beverage company continually reinvented its flagship Coca-Cola brand despite having such a long heritage. It was fascinating to see how the brand associates itself with values such as fun, happiness and enjoyment through activities that resonate with its customers.
At the thematic party adorned with Coca-Cola’s unmistakeable reds and whites, I learned how the company continually innovated its marketing and PR efforts. Other than traditional advertising on mainstream channels, Coke experimented successfully with guerrilla marketing, emotional marketing, buzz and viral marketing, co-branding, sponsorship (Coke has sponsored the Olympics movement for 84 years in total!) as well as immersive experience rich events and showcases (such as the party itself). The company further embraced its role as a corporate citizen by sponsoring and encouraging sustainable and civic-minded practices such as recycling and caring for the less fortunate.
Courtesy of Royal Caribbean International
Launching its maiden voyage from the new Marina Bay Cruise Centre Singapore, Royal Caribbean International’s Voyager of the Seas weighs 137,276 tons and can carry a staggering 3,840 guests at full capacity. At 1,020 feet long with 14 passenger decks, the colossal vessel is Asia’s largest luxury cruise ship, serviced by an international crew of some 1,176 staff.
Debunking conventional wisdom that human beings are rational and logical beings, Predictably Irrational by behavioural economist Dan Ariely provides an entertaining and enlightening read in the market-tested tradition of authors like Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics series), Malcolm Gladwell, and Ori and Ron Brafman (Sway). Using the results of empirical research conducted at MIT and other university campuses, Ariely explains why we do the things we do despite their contrary effects on our health, wealth and long-term success.
Written in a light-hearted, jargon-free prose, Predictably Irrational takes us through several themes. They include the fallacy of supply and demand (ie why pricing can be so arbitrary in certain markets), the overwhelming power of FREE, the danger of turning social norms into market norms (or why you shouldn’t pay your mother-in-law for cooking a delicious family dinner), the effects of expectations (what you visualise is what you get), and two chapters on honesty and dishonesty in humans, among others.
Keeping a regularly updated blog can be one of the best things you can do for your career. Trust me, its the reason why I can do what I do now.
However, it does require a certain amount of discipline, determination and grit to keep blogging and journalling. Especially when your work starts overtaking the rest of your waking hours.
What is the secret of enduring business success? The answer, according to Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, is to develop repeatable business models. This is described in Bain’s website on Repeatability and highlighted in a recently published book by the authors.
Source of image
In this podcast on HBR Ideacast, Chris shares that businesses which keep changing courses and introduce unnecessary complexity in their systems are actually killing themselves. To cope with a fast changing, highly complex and unpredictable world, businesses shouldn’t introduce increasingly convoluted systems that add layers of bureaucratic layers that slow down work processes unnecessarily.
Leading investor and serial entrepreneur J. Christopher Burch has more than 30 years of experience in various technology and luxury brands, including Aliph (Jawbone), NextJump, and Tory Burch. At a talk given at the Asia Fashion Summit recently, he shared about his experience with C. Wonder – a fast growing apparel, accessories and home décor retailer, and how he built a strong retail brand focused heavily on delighting customers and meeting their lifestyle needs.
Predicated on the concept of the customer being “our girl”, the customer experience in C. Wonder stores are predicated on “service credos” such as the following:
The platforms are free but the time and effort producing them isn’t (courtesy of zenfolio)
Let’s face it. We are swamped by content.
What used to be physical has now invaded our virtual and mobile spaces. With a gazillion blogs, videos, photos, podcasts, slide presentations, and so on, consumers are literally “consumed” by data.
What are some of the big issues facing the consumer of tomorrow? How should retailers, lifestyle businesses and fashion brands equip themselves to reach these customers?
Speaking at the recent Asia Fashion Summit, Ruth Marshall-Johnson, Senior Editor of Think Tank at WGSN, highlighted that consumer businesses need to consider five key trends and suggested how these should be addressed as follows:
What does this ad tell you? (source of image)
What is the relationship between signs and marketing communications? Why do certain symbols and icons work more effectively as advertisements in reaching consumers than others?
A brand of cultural anthropology which looks at the use of signs and symbols as a means of communicating and conveying meaning, semiotics is a vital discipline in the science of marketing communications, advertising and branding.
