Brands

Our own Phil Rubin is a strong advocate for Amazon as evidenced by his numerous mentions and posts. His passion for this brand sparked an interest in Chris Fischer, our VP of Strategy and a new Amazon customer.

We all struggle with relationships, so it’s no wonder that brands struggle with relationship marketing. There are self-help books by the millions for individuals and for marketers, too. Despite this, it’s still hard for all of us to get the basics right. Stepping back from the marketing strategy, let’s look at everyday life for clues on how to avoid those bad relationships.

Too much of a seemingly “good thing” reduces the impact of promotional offers when everyone is fighting for your customers’ attention. Having an offer strategy that takes into account different segments’ characteristics, preferences and/or purchase history will boost the response rate and yield truly incremental sales.

Preserving prestige is what sets brands such as Burberry and Hermes apart from Gap and H&M, but that same elitism has previously kept certain luxury brands from engaging in the digital space/social media — one of the most powerful forms of marketing at the moment. Despite the initial industry-wide hesitations, we have seen a recent increase in digital marketing initiatives from select premium brands; with Burberry leading the way.

Given the increasing saturation of the “deals” market, Microsoft has made a much talked about and speculated move here. Consumers do not want to sort through the 6-10 different emails they are receiving daily from all of the deals sites they’ve signed up for, so Microsoft has come up with a convenient solution for these users. Bing says, “Instead of building another program, we're harnessing deals from major providers and retailers, including Groupon, LivingSocial, Nordstrom, Target and many others, to help you cut through the clutter and find the best deals in one central location.

Personalization is often confused for relevance. While both are important, smart marketers distinguish the two and how they can use them to improve marketing response.

With all the hoopla (always fun to use that word) surrounding Gap’s new/now old logo a few weeks ago – which we wrote about on RetailWire – here’s something that Gap did which shouldn’t hurt them at all: Gap Give and Get.