Five by Five

We were asked to contribute to the latest in the IAB’s vertical handbook series: retail. With a focus on what makes a good online shopping basket experience, our top tips are below. You can download the handbook here.

Shopping basket drop-off can be avoided by learning from the benchmark leaders: Amazon, Carphone Warehouse and Figleaves. What they do is simply make it easy for you to buy, change your mind, save it for later and come back, and compile wish lists which others can buy for you. What makes a good shopping basket experience?

1. Clear product descriptions and price information so users are reassured that what they wanted to buy has magically found its way to their basket.

2. Images to re-enforce the product description because people think visually too, especially when it comes to color choices.

3. Easy removal, amendment or addition of items because they’re allowed to change their minds.

4. Clear navigation to proceed to purchase or back to similar products, back to home, or a new search as these are users’ typical next steps.

5. Clear labeling of the basket during the entire shopping experience so the user can see what’s in it at any time.

6. Ability to save.

Ask WKD’s Kev n’ Dave anything. Yes, anything. Right here on WKD.co.uk.

Recently launched, Kev n’ Dave bring the WKD brand personality to life as well as help drive sales across the product portfolio.

Featuring two cheeky characters who epitomise the brand’s essence, users are able to interact with Kev n’ Dave to obtain answers to any question posed, in true WKD style. A variety of changeable videos, backgrounds and content will ensure the campaign is adaptable to seasonal activity throughout the year.

The application will be supported by a dedicated blog, Facebook site and newsletter, all of which will be promoted via online advertising, database marketing, social media, and video seeding.

As well as featuring a compelling creative draw to the site, users can easily navigate around other key promotions and content available including competitions, money-off vouchers, local event listings and an online shop.

Debs Carter, Marketing Director for WKD:

The campaign represents everything WKD stands for and focuses on engaging with our target market of males aged 18-24. The team at Five by Five have done a fantastic job in creating an entertaining online application that will directly appeal to our key audience’s sense of humour.

Nick Gill, Digital Planner at Five by Five:

Kev ‘n’ Dave bring alive the WKD brand using digital to its potential by being interactive, engaging and entertaining through differentiated content. We’ve created a knowledge source where consumers can interact and engage with Kev ‘n’ Dave to get answers to everything and anything but of course the answers will be delivered in an unmistakably WKD way.

Anyone come across memetic media?

The term comes from a development of Richard Dawkins’ social/evolutionary philosophy of ‘cultural genes’ that he termed ‘memes’.

He believes just as the best (or most evolutionarily advantageous) genes survive and replicate, so good thoughts, ideas, philosophies etc replicate and out perform the weaker or less suitable ones. The weak ‘flat earth’ theory is now all but extinct except in remote places cut of from other evolutionary branches.

When applied to media, memes or memetic is used in a looser sense to mean viral stuff and ideas, but there is also the sense that exposing an idea/product/service to the cybershpere will sort out the men from the boys, - especially now we have a plethora of peer comment in web 2.0. 

Of course, in evolutionary terms, fittest doesn’t always mean best - this is referred to as the QWERTY phenomenon where something builds on what’s gone before rather than being re-invented from scratch. The QWERTY keyboard layout was invented so that typewriter keys don’t stick, but there are much better ways of laying out the letters from a usability point of view, - these have been tried but have never caught on because this would be revolution not evolution.

What does all this mean? Well for something like Twitter it’s almost like a random mutation of the web (like growing an extra thumb to use a biological example) it just appeared one day and know one knows what it’s for. If it proves to be useful it will stay, if it doesn’t it will become extinct, but the chances are that it will find all sorts of uses that it was never invented for, ie it will evolve.

Here’s some further reading….enjoy!  

http://memeticbrand.com/
http://knowyourmeme.com/ - Tracks internet memes
https://www.imediaconnection.com/printpage/printpage.aspx?id=22266 – Brands that harnessed the power of memes

Five by Five today launched the latest campaign site for fashion retailer New Look to support their Spring/Summer Most Wanted campaign at http://www.newlookmostwanted.co.uk/

The site brings New Look’s Most Wanted fashion magazine to life online using video and cat-walk imagery of the new range and links users through to shop online at http://www.newlook.co.uk/.

The site features an exciting application that allows users to give themselves a makeover. By uploading a photo of themselves they can select a range of hairstyles and outfits from the new range, to create a ‘New Me’. They can then enter their ‘New Me’ into a prize draw to win a £500 shopping spree, haircut and colour at Toni and Guy as well as the chance to win film premiere tickets.

A content management system has also been developed to allow New Look to update product and prices in real time during the campaign, maximising sales opportunities for New Look.

New Look are delighted with the site. Raquel Cubillo of New Look says, “The new site is great….it has a fun and upbeat feel and is really engaging which is exactly what we were looking for. The competition is the perfect way for users to give themselves a makeover from our new Spring/Summer range and gives them all the information they need to buy online or in store.”  

Follow Five by Five

http://twitter.com/FbFdigital

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Badass Operations Director

Deep south-coast

We do things a little bit differently around here. When we’re not barbecuing squirrels, marrying our cousins and chasing off the big-city folk, we’re producing explosive, award-winning work for big names in film, video games, leisure, travel and tourism. And they’re not all on this side of the pond. We’re in the process of setting up an LA base to serve our Hollywood clients, which should just about underline the scale of our ambition and where we plan to take the agency over the next five years. You’re going to be integral to getting us there.

What we’re looking for is the kind of person who knows what needs doing and gets it done. Simple as that. And as this is a brand new role, you’ll be given plenty of freedom to do it. You’ll also bring a heavyweight understanding of the digital marketplace, proven know-how of handling big brands and when it comes to motivating and inspiring your people, you’ll be a natural. Above all, you’ll be a smooth operator, always in control and unflappable under pressure.

If you can bring all this, you’ll find yourself on the top table and shaping the future of an award-winning agency.

Want to know more, then call Lee Thompson on 023 8082 8565 or email your CV to leet@fivebyfivedigital.com

Five by Five has today launched a new website for drinks brand Ocean Spray, www.oceanspray.co.uk, to support the launch of their new TV campaign.

Ocean Spray wanted to engage with their target audience online and communicate the brand proposition, ‘helps protect you inside’.

As well as featuring the latest TV ads that follow Kate and Fiona on their quest for quirky beauty treatments, the site features: recipes, the online magazine, ‘The Insider’, competitions for data capture, health tips and product information.

www.oceanspray.co.uk

Follow Five by Five

http://twitter.com/FbFdigital

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiveby5/

Check out your copies of Marketing Week’s Interactive Seven supplement today, turn to pages 26 and 27 and you’ll find this fetching ad and the following article from Steve Sponder, our Chief Digital Officer, on the importance of online advertising.

You can download the supplement here - Interactive Seven

Interactive Brand Experiences

People don’t separate the message they receive from a brand based on where they see or hear it. The Internet Advertising Bureau states that the internet now accounts for 18.7% of the total UK advertising market, with press display at 19.3% and TV at 21.7%. What we do online either adds to or takes away from the overall brand experience.

The challenge for brand owners is two fold. Where do you put your message; and once you have the space, how do you get a smarter and more selective consumer to engage with your content?

Here in lies the opportunity. Digital production is ever-evolving and more accessible than ever before, so every brand has the option to create richer and deeper brand experiences online. Campaign ideas can be created and expressed seamlessly across a growing spectrum of media - perhaps for the first time, ideas can be boundaryless.

Online advertising provides different spaces to build a brand experience. What makes digital advertising different and exciting for both brand owner and consumer is that online ads aren’t static. Consumers can interact with the content, play games within the space, watch multiple video streams, buy stuff and even change the ad themselves.

In today’s digital age, concepts for online advertising are increasingly being put at the centre of the campaign rather than an after thought. Brand storytelling can happen in different spaces that are linked together, with digital providing the richest part of the story.

Online advertising is by far the most measurable, reactive and immersive advertising medium. Data and ROI are part and parcel of any digital offering. Better still, you don’t have to wait to the end of the campaign to find out how it went. Data is immediate, optimisation is in real-time. Technological versatility also allows for effective campaigns to be rolled out globally and easily personalised to the end audience.

Brand owners have always known that it takes great branded experiences to engage audiences. Embrace the opportunity to find new and innovative ways to do this through digital advertising and you will get great results.

Follow Five by Five

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiveby5/

Today Five by Five launched Kiwi Katapult- a power/ angle based Flash game where users have to launch New Zealand’s national mascot, across Europe to the CeBIT show in Hannover Germany.

The game was created as part of a campaign for New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, in association with Air New Zealand. The intention of the game is to raise awareness of New Zealand as a strong force in the ICT industry and to draw traffic to their stand at the CeBIT trade show for information and telecommunications technology. The secondary purpose of the campaign was to increase sign-ups to the Air New Zealand database, incentivised by a draw for a pair of Premium Economy tickets from Europe to New Zealand. Traffic is being driven to the site using some content targeted display advertising and paid search on the Google network planned by the media team.

The client is very pleased with the end result, and it is a credit to the agency being able to do a fantastic production and media job, on a tight budget.

Check it out: www.KiwiKatapult.com

After watching the Web 2.0 hyper-juggernaut scream into town a couple of years back it’s been interesting to see it delivering a big boxes of social media filled with shiny new tactics including a bunch of social networks, a corporate blog, a few micro-blogging platforms, a suite of widgets and a packet of chicklets.

It’s unfortunate that there was no mention of which department to deliver it to and no instructions. As a result the box was mistakenly handed to the marketing department. Interestingly enough a similar story happened 10 years ago when the Web 1.0 hyper-juggernaut incorrectly delivered the website boxes to the IT department instead of the marketing dept, remember the issues that caused?

So, and in lieu of any instruction manual the marketing guys have been busy blending social media into the marketing mix; resulting in social networks being added to the media planning process, playing with corporate blogs, producing widgets and starting a Facebook groups. But they are simply applying existing marketing principles to these new media, that’s not their fault that’s the natural thing for them to do.

The other thing missing from the social media box was the sticker ‘Interactive - Handle with Care”, this means social media opens up a feedback-loop, encouraging a response, a comment and sometimes conversation, something the marketing team have not been prepared for.

We’re now becoming aware the box should have been delivered to the CEO as we appreciate that the impact of social media is far, far broader than the marketing department; it touches every brand touch point, customer service, human resources and challenges the product development team to deliver the ultimate product.

The impending challenge for CEO’s to respond to this new world order, without the instruction manual, is huge; re-structuring and streamlining internal departments, processes and communication channels. So, if you’re in the marketing department and see a big box labelled social media please pop it up to the CEO’s office, thanks.

Steve Sponder | steve.sponder@fivebyfivedigital.com | @stevesponder | blog.stevesponder.com

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmak/

In this latest podcast I speak with Jane Gleadall of Biglight on e-commerce and the challenges faced both on the high street and in digital from the credit crunch and the current and future impact of social media on e-commerce.

You can listen to the podcast here. You’ll also be able to download it, subscribe via iTunes and all that plus download the transcript if you’d rather read than listen.

Here’s some nuggets:

On the economic impact affecting retailers and e-commerce:

I think that online sales whether its high street or online it will be a hard fought battle this year, I think that what we are going to see is that many of the consumers are raising their expectations and they want improved service at lower cost, I do think that online will be high on the agenda for many retailers this year, and I think that getting that share of business is going to be an essential part of their survival strategy. The principles of online to a large degree are no different to what you are seeing on the high street, it’s about improving margins, it’s about reducing your costs, it’s about improving your efficiencies.

On social media’s future impact on e-commerce:

I think social media in the retail context plays a slightly different role than as it’s used for the pure community context. In the pure community context people just want to talk to one another, want to share information but retail have got to see a bottom line improvement. I think that as I have said before retail tends to apply the philosophy of testing and if social media and what it brings to the table can improve conversion, can improve average order values, it will absolutely be used. What is becoming evident is that social media is becoming very important to purchase decisions

As usual, I’ve run the content through Wordle and it looks like this:

Catch up on previous podcasts:

Tomas Nihlen of Urban Lifestyle Report

Future of search with Love Digital

Kym Niblock, bbc.com

Content also shared in these spaces:

Five by Five blog on Brand Republic

Five by Five Podcasts

bluurb.wordpress.com

Who to heckle for this post:

Nicholas Gill, Planner | nick.gill@fivebyfivedigital.com | @nicholasgill | bluurb.wordpress.com

Get in touch:

fivebyfivedigital.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiveby5/
http://twitter.com/FbFdigital

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