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

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.

Bold Action #8 Coach: Kick the purchase funnel to the curb
Rich, bold imagery conveys the sensory elements of Coach products in the magazine style format of their ecommerce site. It gets most interesting though (to us) when you go to buy. Gone are the traditional .pdp pages – product details and Add to Cart are treated in a quick view. And checking out is no longer a purchase funnel, it’s done all on one page.

Bold Action #7 JCPenney: Incubate companies to target market opportunity

JCPenney had proof of market opportunity in two areas: 1. Men’s style and 2. Gifts. Recognizing the strengths (and constraints) of the JCPenney brand they served as their own VC funder and incubated two new digital only ventures. Partnering with Hearst Magazines, CLAD and Gifting Grace were welcomed into the world this Fall.

Bold Action #6 ASOS: Trust a marketplace will amplify – not compete
ASOS is the UK’s largest independent online fashion retailer, offering over 850 brands and their own ASOS label. This year ASOS opened Marketplace which allows anyone, anywhere to sell fashion to anyone, anywhere. Indie labels, emerging designers, vintage boutiques and clothes hounds are encouraged to apply for a boutique. ASOS positions themselves as celebrators of fashion and takes a percent of sales.

Bold Action #5 Reebok: Showcase custom shoes for on-demand inventory

Customers love custom shoes. Reebok saw success grow and decided to give custom shoes their own shop. In 2011 it excelled. It’s fueled by attribution to the custom creators, design voyeurism and social sharing – social that also serves as ratings and reviews. Custom options permeate their traditional inventory for a persuasive cross-sell.

Bold Action #4 eBay: Declare ecommerce is dead and buried

John Donohue, CEO of EBay, declared the concept of ecommerce dead and buried. Consumers think shopping, not device. “Over the next 12-24 months we’re going to see an explosion of experimentation, and no one knows what’s going to take off and what’s not.” Right now it’s mobile – U.S. eBay mobile shoppers spent 2.5x more on CyberMonday than in 2010. PayPal Mobile saw a 552% YOY increase in global mobile payment volume for the same day.

Bold Action #3 Apple: Overtly and publicly celebrate the life of Steve Jobs On Oct. 4th Apple launched the iPhone 4S, on Oct. 5th Apple announced that Steve Jobs had died. Defying the speculation for years that Apple stock would drop upon his death, Apple owned the celebration of his life outright. The homepage of the Apple store honored him for days and Apple stores became pilgrimage sites of emotional expression. Consumers responded with an unprecedented outpouring.

Bold Action #2 Patagonia: Declare “Don’t Buy” on the years’ biggest shopping day

Retailers wait all year for Thanksgiving weekend and this year Black Friday and CyberMonday did not disappoint. In the flurry of price drops, limited editions and 4am store openings, Patagonia took a bold stand. A full page ad in the NYTimes and their home page declared “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” A stand for their Common Threads Initiative, the buzz was widespread and polarized.

Bold Action #1 Amazon: Reward consumers for price comparing

Yes people research online and buy in-store. Amazon is aggressively encouraging people to research in-store and buy online. This shift in behavior is significant for digital (and is happening independent of Amazon). Amazon’s advantages? Prices that benefit from large inventory and the lack of online sales tax. The controversy around their Dec. 10th promotion is likely to bootstrap mobile buying – and expedite the sales tax conversation.

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

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.

- The reality of daily Page views: If any brand ever questioned the value of Facebook’s edgerank algorithm this data is here to humble many of us. We at Fluid have been hoping Facebook would add repeat visitor data for a long time, the addition of Page Views and Unique Visitors gets us closer. And I think many brands will be surprised at these daily numbers. Bottom line for the majority of brands: The Wall is where it’s at.

- Who’s talking the talk and walking the walk: Demographics of your fans remain in Insights. What gets interesting is when you compare the demographics of your fans to the demographics of who’s Talking About This. Any discrepancies are a big opportunity.

Bring on more data. We dig it.

Cheers,
Amy

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.

2. Craftsman
Key point: Mystery makes people want to show off their knowledge – even if 40 people have already posted the same answer. The Monday Mystery Car for Craftsman also fuels conversation amongst the community.

3. Ride NSS
Key point: What Fans talk about in social mirrors what they talk about socially. Skateboarders want to give you their opinion on tricks – just like they would at the skate park. Ask for opinions.

4. Protege
Key point: Keep it simple with either / or options. They’re easy to answer, they fuel the fire behind people taking a side and they encourage voyeurism to see which option wins.

Cheers,
Amy

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

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

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?)

4. Competition as key publicity: The earliest stories about Google+? Mark Zuckerberg is the most popular person on it. No it’s not surprising he’s on it. But it didn’t hurt Google+ that the media gobbled this up and ran with it. He’s since activated his privacy settings – which has sparked a whole other set of stories.

5. Brands as different entities: Brands and Facebook took a while to get their footing. Google has decided to treat brands differently than regular users. Now brands are chomping at the bit to get in. Ah the intrigue.

6. Sparks to shift traffic: Here I can pick topics sorted by categories of interest. It’s the social network version of the “I’m feeling lucky” button. It’s also a smart way to circulate traffic around to all sorts of destinations. I see it as a twist on search.

7. Alluring hangouts: Video chat across Circles of friends – or however you label your Circles. Up to 10 at a time. Consider it a tame version of Chat Roulette. Or a collaboration tool with colleagues. It’s addicting.

The core issue for me? Definition.

- Facebook is my constantly updating database of everyone I’ve ever known.
- Twitter is my stream of cutting edge digital examples and conversation.
- LinkedIn is my source for new candidates and where, out of intrigue, I sneak a peek at who’s viewed me.

Google+ right now is about what it can do vs. what people are actually doing with it. It’s full of tire kickers. And people thinking hard about the product vs. its purpose.

When the story shifts to what people are doing with Google+ I’ll be logging in more frequently. Google+ needs to become a means to an end or ends.

To me Google+ is like sitting in a theater watching a movie that is getting rave reviews and trying to figure out the big deal. But better. Because this is a make your own adventure movie. And since it’s social no one person can define it alone. It’s going to take the masses – and some time. Which is likely why Google released it “early” anyway.

With this many digeratis in the mix I predict the definition(s) won’t take long.

It’s purpose won’t be to voyeur pictures of old prom dates or to see how life has treated people from grade school. Facebook (thankfully) has that covered.

Plus with Google+ I’m choosing my circles carefully.

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?

4. It Gets Better: You’ve likely seen this before. Which is fantastic. It is a 24/7 advocacy movement and support group that was sparked by the desire to reach out to LGBT teens. The message: Life gets better. It is grassroots connection that started from a heartfelt, gut reaction.

I’m aware that none of these are brand led. I actually think that’s a lesson. In my opinion community for brands needs to do at least one of three things:

1. Be grounded in an issue or cause. Think method’s People Against Dirty or Pepsi Refresh.

2. Give participants a stake in the action. Think Threadless or Wal-Mart’s Eleven Moms.

3. Be fun. Think Skittles Mob the Rainbow or Miracle Whip.

What have I missed? Bring on any discussion or debate…

Cheers,
Amy

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.

- These Stories reveal what many users don’t fully understand when they take Facebook actions. Their actions are public. And so is the data affiliated with each action they take. Other than Etsy’s holiday gift finder, there have been very few uses of this data. Sponsored Stories are at the forefront of what could be a personalization frenzy. We’re all watching for the consumer reaction.

- The success of the responses may override any risks brands see as affiliated with these Stories. Facebook has seen great results. Brands are hungry for great results – especially given the average CPC and click-thru rates they are likely seeing.

- Users cannot opt out of this functionality. Let the PR work and product positioning begin.

Sponsored Stories are currently available for testing via the self-admin platform (which Fluid is doing right now). Strong opinions can be found, as always, in the blogosphere.

Cheers,
Amy