The Official Fluid Blog

In the holiday season when hope reigns and we all want to believe, consumers came up with a “campaign” that was (in my opinion) one of the best in 2011.

Read about it here. Agencies (including Fluid) take note.

It started in Michigan when a woman anonymously paid off three Kmart layaway accounts. From there it went viral. It spread across social networks in a way that makes those of us who create social strategies salivate. And to top it off, the content was user generated.

Let me clarify. The story spread, so did the giving. And in a time where social updates define status, the majority of those who donated did so anonymously.

Sure there are naysayers who called it “Kmarketing,” saying Kmart was exaggerating a few instances and plugging them into their PR machine. But whether that’s the case or not, I don’t care.

The bottom line: People had an idea about being good to others and it caught fire. It was one of those ideas that I, at an agency, wish I had thought of first. It told an irresistible story, hit the social goals we usually set for our clients and felt good.

Are consumers eligible for a Clio? Could they win at the One Show? If they tweaked this to pay lists off via digital, perhaps a Cyber Lion?

I love the look of the new competition.

Happy New Year,
Amy

2011 was a big year for digital commerce. At Fluid we saw leading brands fight back to own the innovation that start-ups owned in 2010. We saw digital shopping finally and fully break beyond the boundaries of ecommerce sites. And we saw brand and commerce mix and mingle in matches that were incredibly exciting – products told stories and stories sold products.

At years end, Fluid celebrates ten digital retailers that took bold action in 2011 – some are our clients, some are not. The order is purposeful. We count down to the brand actions we see as boldest. The gauntlet for 2012 has officially been thrown. Fun.

Think there’s a bold action that should to be on this list? Send it on.

Happy Holidays,
Amy

Bold Action #10 NetFlix: Facilitate visual navigation just for kids
In November Netflix revised their Wii app to include a “Just for Kids” section, navigitable by cartoon and kid characters. The under-12s will never be computer-centric – design is changing accordingly. In fact independent of age, design for tablets and touch-screens began to heavily drive web design in 2011, instead of vice versa.

Bold Action #9 AmEx: Bolster small businesses with their own Saturday
AmEx isn’t a digital retailer but in a year of bold moves by payment systems (Paypal’s Facebook app, Square’s rise, etc.) they sparked digital commerce success. Lodged between Black Friday and CyberMonday, Small Business Saturday drove social traction, offline sales and fueled Davids over Goliaths. Another brand focused on small business buying, Etsy, saw 80% YOY CyberMonday sales growth.

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Cyber appears to be the new big framed glasses, trucker hat wearing, PBR drinking, bowling alley going, retro, call-it-a-comeback term.

Add the term Cyber to Monday and it deserves its own victory lap – with 22% YOY CyberMonday sales growth for 2011.

Fun fact: Shop.org coined the term CyberMonday for the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2005.

Today the Washington Post declared that CyberMonday has evolved into CyberWeek, with ecommerce sales tallying up three days straight of record breaking numbers exceeding $1 billion dollars. Monday ($1.25 billion), Tuesday ($1.12 billion) and Wednesday ($1.03 billion).

Bim. Bam. Boom.

Like a great birthday celebration, CyberMonday can no longer be contained in one day. Early holiday shopping results have online shining.

In fact, ComScore reports that retail ecommerce spending for the first 28 days of the Nov – Dec holiday season is up 15% YOY at $15 billion.

The ComScore report is worth reading.

Some may say it was the pepper spray incidents that drove people online. Or free shipping. But remember the above data is not relative to in-store. Seeing online spend as a portion of overall spend will tell us if online is scaling according to the economy in general or bringing it big within online itself.

As we eagerly watch the results come in, we congratulate our clients. The numbers so far are great. Fluid is proud to play a part in driving their digital commerce success.

If you’re still shopping (it is only the 5th), our clients have fantastic gifts. A sampling of a few places to start (or finish) your list:

CLAD
The North Face
Diapers.com
Craftsman
Elie Tahari

Cheers,
Amy

Facebook has updated Insights. Some of you may have had a sneak peek, especially if you’re a brand with a Facebook relationship. Now though, it’s rolled out and here’s what you need to know.

First and foremost, read this from Facebook. It’s a great description of the changes.

Or if you learn by doing, log-in to Facebook, go to Insights and use the question mark roll-overs as your guide.

The highlights as we see them:

- A heavy shift to engagement: Brands are shifting to quantity and quality on Facebook (vs. just quantity). The new metrics of “People Talking About This” and “Reach” directly coincide with this shift. They hit at what people are doing with your content and give you a sense of the potential reach you could achieve.

- Page posts get prioritized: Which content is working? This will tell you. And it broadens the range of what working means based on your objective. Reach + Engaged Users drive at awareness; Talking About This and Virality drive at conversation.

- Infusion of ad data: Reach is a term media buyers understand and we see the terminology of Stories enter the picture here. With Reach we can now see how people were reached – via Organic, Paid or Viral. Viral may be a lower percent of the whole than expected for some brands. Paid may also bootstrap Organic and Viral.

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The trend we’re seeing (and driving): Shifting Facebook focus from the pursuit of Fan volume to Fan engagement. I’m convinced there’s a reason Facebook doesn’t include repeat visits in their Insights metrics – the majority of Fans likely don’t come back after they fan a brand.

That said, Fluid and our clients have been experimenting with ways to change that. Especially amongst core customers who are likely to be big brand advocates.

First step = edge rank. This is the algorithm Facebook uses to prioritize what makes it to Walls and which friends or Fans see it. This article from econsultancy gives a good overview.

Show and tell: Here are four posts that yielded great response rates as a percentage of their Fan bases in the last week.

1. Sears Footwear Fashion First
Key point: Albums get showcased beautifully in Facebook’s new photo layout. Sassy red shoes and anything affiliated with the Kardashians (Sears has a Kardashian Kollection for shoes) spark interactions.

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Hi all,

Fluid got to take the stage at eTail East’s Social Commerce Summit last week. So fun. We share our presentation with you here:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Fluid is excited to see you at eTail East in Boston this upcoming week (Aug 8-11). On the agenda:

- Booth #52: Our product and agency teams will be showcasing how Fluid can have a positive impact on your digital commerce plan. Stop by with hard questions or just to say hello. We’re looking forward to meeting you in person.

- Aug. 8th 2:25pm session: Fluid presents “Social Commerce: 5 Strategies that Work.” I’ve 20 minutes to show you cutting edge industry examples of what is working in social commerce and to put a stake in the ground about what two trends will hit next.

My end goal: Get your minds racing with ideas for your social commerce plan. And arm you with examples (ideally a few you’ve never seen) to make the case for action in this area.

Contact Isaac Newton to set up an in-person meeting. (How can you resist meeting Isaac Newton?) Safe travels!

Cheers,
Amy

Google+ is on the brink of 10M users. After I received the coveted, Willy Wonka golden ticket, access to Google+ it’s 10M + 1. I’m in.

I dragged and dropped colleagues (we digital geeks are in Google+ in full force) and friends into circles. I hung out in Hangouts (my favorite feature) and scrolled through Sparks. I floated like I was in a neighborhood without the grounding of profile houses.

Then I watched logged out and watched my Facebook wall scroll with Google+ opinions.

What is Google+? David Pogue of the New York Times explains it well.

The top seven things that strike me:

1. Exclusive invites: Google excels at invitation-only. Gmail invitees forgot to care that their emails were being used for ad targeting. We still don’t mind. The club with the red rope is enticing. Even if we don’t know what’s inside.

2. The “not yet public” launch: Google has downplayed this launch. The NYT blogger above stated “it’s unfair to mention bugs because the service isn’t even public yet.” Really? Put a product launch behind a invitation wall, say it’s just a part of a bigger whole and people will concede on criticism. Brilliant.

3. Aimed at Facebooks’ achilles: Circles within Google+ strike Facebook where it’s weak – filtering and content distribution to specific friend networks. Within 3 minutes I could see streams of content coming only from my work connections. It’s easy.

Plus drag and drop is fun. Remember when digital driving what happened offline was exciting? Now we’ve moved on to Smart Phone and tablets changing the way people interact with computers. Polyvore caught on early. Now it’s everywhere.

If they want to issue a double blow, Google+ needs to kick in search. Hard. Facebook is notoriously lacking in search. (Does anyone else love that the Google+ name can be rough in search because the + can be a command or a proper noun?)

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This week I was inspired. By the power of digital to take a seed of an idea and turn it into a beanstalk as big as the one from fairy tales. And by the fact that great ideas make digital a back up singer to the people who are participating.

I was inspired by: The power of collective action. Open sourcing of ideas. And unabashed sharing that explodes out of the dreams that used to be held in locked diaries.

We talk about these things a lot at Fluid. These examples will fuel our thinking. Here’s what I saw:

1. Inside Out Project: JR won the TED prize in 2011. If you haven’t seen his work this video will move you. It is Banksy with local awareness and impact. It is work that volunteers in the community vs. dropping you in the gift shop. The new addition? A call to action. This week they made it participatory.

2. Open IDEO: The premise: People design better together. It’s an open casting call for ideas that answer socially responsible challenges. The ideas are submitted based on phase of the design process. IDEO is enough to compel a lot of folks to participate.

3. The Internet Wishlist: This one teeters on the edge of a debate over proprietary ideas. That’s why I find it fascinating. A wishlist of ideas for the Internet. Not all ideas should be free. It also matters who’s asking for the ideas (GapLogo anyone?). Who wouldn’t though like the idea of a FourSquare cab-sharing app for when you’re waiting in the cab line at JFK?

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In late January Facebook launched Sponsored Stories. Here’s our initial POV…

What are Sponsored Stories? A great name for ads created from brand relevant content that is produced by Facebook user actions. Important: These ads are only seen within a users friend network.

The included actions: Likes, check-ins, actions within custom applications and Page posts. User postings on brand walls can also be used.

Best case description: Brands are highlighting relevant content that a user may have missed in the steady stream of their Walls.

Worst case description: User actions are unwittingly being turned into brand endorsements without any kick back.

This is not unlike what Gmail does by selling ads based on keywords within emails, although these Facebook ads are more overt with the identification of the user and their action. Twitter Promoted Tweets are also similar – although Twitter’s solution is more closely aligned with search ranking or a Digg model. It is also based on aggregated, anonymous data.

Why are Sponsored Stories important:

- They are a new ad format for Facebook. They dip a toe in the old Beacon pool but don’t dive in fully. I think this is the major reason why they’re launching with lots of non-profit partners – which is smart. Users are going to be a lot more amenable to, and potentially lenient towards, non-profits than to for-profit brands.

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