The best ideas, especially when it comes to retail are often the most simple.  Retailer Urban Outfitters has made the Facebook ‘Like’ button central to the way the company is marketing its products online. Visitors to the Urban Outfitters web site are now greeted by a large thumbs up asking them to “See our most Liked items.” It’s  a slightly less advanced version of  Apple’s genius button on i-tunes but nonetheless the effect is the same.

The company has already installed the Like button by its products on the company web site and this new feature is essentially a grouping of the most Liked items into one place.

So far more than 313,000 Like Urban Outfitters on Facebook, where the company does promote its company web site. Exclusive offers for Facebook fans are also offered and the company shares new merchandise with photos often with fans as well.

Inside Facebook

P&G are developing quite a taste for f-commerce – selling on Facebook.  In the UK, with their Amazon-powered Facebook store for the makeup of makeup artists brand Max Factor, and in the US, now a Facebook Campaign Store to support and capitalize (literally) on their heavily promoted and much talked about Old Spice Man campaign.

From the Facebook storefront, Old Spice aficionados – yes they now exist – can buy branded merchandise from the Super-Bowl-to-Real-Time-Social-Media ‘Old Spice Man’ campaign featuring shirtless baritone and ex-NFL player Isaiah Mustafa, replete with washboard ads and comedic timing.

As with the UK store, P&G has outsourced all the heavy lifting with the Old Spice Man Campaign Store – the Facebook store is simply a storefront linking through to an external e-store managed by a e-commerce partner in Massachusetts that looks after fulfillment and customer service.

So one of our predictions we make when speaking about the future of social commerce is no longer a prediction – the emergence of Facebook campaign stores to support and monetize marketing campaigns – pop-up f-stores – see the ad; engage with the promotion; buy the merchandise.  The P&G Campaign store is elementary, and no doubt could be improved, but all the elements are there.  And it’s there. Welcome to the world of Facebook Campaign Stores.

Why do we think pop-up (temporary) Facebook Campaign Stores are the future of f-commerce?  They’re quick, cheap and easy to set up, they help monetize campaigns, and ultimately, because they may help solve the century-plus old problem encapsulated in the famous quote of disputed origin Lord Leverhulme) origin “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.

Whilst much advertising, including the digital variety, is and should be focused on building lifetime customer value (AKA ‘Brand building) rather than producing sales bumps, any integrated campaign that creates a digital trace between advertising and buyer behavior can only be a good thing.

So if you manage a brand, why not take a leaf from the book of the biggest advertiser in the world, and throw up a Facebook store for your next campaign?  And if you are an agency, why not consider teaming up with the burgeoning number of f-commerce solution providers out there and start proposing campaigns with real ROI?

Post courtesy of Social Media Today

The following is a quick presentation done by Syzygy Group on three ways the luxury sector is using social commerce – selling with social media – to drive sales for premium upscale brands, but without discounts and deals and whilst retaining an image of exclusivity.

Post courtesy of Social Commerce Today

 Here is the latest YouTube promotional component for the launch of the film The Expendables. It is a YouTube takeover that features an interrupted interview with Sylvester Stallone. Oh, and don’t forget to share…

To experience it yourself follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/expendables

Here is a great recap and analysis of the Old Spice ‘The man your man could smell like’ campaign which was well documented here on Shopbabbles and seemingly everywhere else.

Forsman & Bodenfors are known for some great creative work, and they recently devised a Facebook campaign for a new Ikea store in Malmo, Sweden. When small budgets and big briefs clash, the out come only ever heads in a single direction these days…  to Facebook!

Some of the best campaign strategies are simple, and none simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition.
Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms.

People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!

Post courtesy of Digital Buzz Blog

Social media has unquestionably revolutionized communication. How big is the revolution you ask? Check out the videos below to see some of the staggering statistics. The first video was done by Social Media Energy this year and the second was done by Eric Qualman from Socialnomics last year.

Some info garnered that is particularly Shopbabbles-relavent are the following:

• 34% of bloggers (out of over 200 million) post opinions about products & brands
• 83% of all companies use Facebook
• Successful companies in social media listen first and sell second
• Consultants and marketing professionals are the most active users of social media
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 90% of people that can TiVo ads do

There are many more interesting facts about the global social revolution below.

Diesel’s “Be Stupid” campaign platform continues to drive innovative work. This time they’ve said that Digital is smart. Analog is stupid. And with that, Diesel has created a social event called Facepark, a live event where thousands turned up to create an analog version of Facebook, simulating pretty much everything you can do on Facebook in a physical format, starting with every guest receiving a profile cut-out on arrival that would become your analog wall for the day! Very very cool!

post thanks to Digitalbuzzblog.com

The news of Facebook’s new game application, Retail Therapy (app, site), fits perfectly on Shopbabbles. It combines social networking, big brands, and shopping (albeit virtual and pretend) all in one. 

If you ever wanted to set up a fashion store selling top labels such as Diane Von Furstenberg, Gap, Barneys New York, Juicy Couture, Banana Republic, Tory Burch and TopShop.  Now you can.

The Sugar Inc. blog network (ShopStyle, PopSugar, FabSugar, BellaSugar) targeting 18-40 women, has just partnered with leading fashion brands to launch a Facebook-based game app, pitched as the ‘FarmVille of shopping’, called Retail Therapy where you set up and manage your own virtual store (a bit like the Fashion World and Mall World Facebook apps, but with heels).

The idea is simple and familiar; manage inventory from in-season fashion items, and build your clientele.  Upgrade your retail store with Facebook Credits that you win, earn or pay for – and build the best store in Facebook.

What’s different about Retail Therapy are the brand partnerships, which effectively transform the Facebook game into a vehicle for in-game advertising, and a Facebook promotional platfrom for exclusives, scoops and promotions for brand fans.  What would be really interesting is if the game evolved to include a social affiliate program – whereby visitors to friends stores could actually purchase items for sale – and the store owner receive an affiliate commission.

Virtual social commerce is an interesting twist on social commerce – with many marketing opportunities, and if you are a fashion brand, it’s perhaps worth investigating.  And for non-fashion retail brands too, there’s the opportunity to set up your own Facebook game for in-game advertising and promotions – perhaps a virtual social commerce game for your category…

Now excuse me, please, I have a delivery of Banana Republic Cotton Military Jackets to see to.

Retail Therapy promotional video

Tech Crunch interview with Brian Sugar

Research from PSFK Consulting on the Future of Retail  recently concluded that whether physically or through connected technologies, shopping is still best experienced socially.

A relavent but not brand new example of social shopping online is found at MattelShop.com  which debuted in 2009 and features an innovative tool called ShopTogether, a social shopping platform from DecisionStep that allows anyone to browse the site together with family and friends regardless of whether they are across town or around the world. Find out the details by clicking the ShopTogether link above.

There is a plethora of other social shopping sites such as Select2Gether and others which have been reported here on Shopbabbles. Shoppers have always requested the second, third or even fourth opinion when deciding on purchases together with friends or shop clerks. Now, online companies are accommodating this desire and are more accutely recreating the in-store shopping experience.

This video explains more about the ShopTogether tool by Decision Step and its favorable ROI.