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

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

On Tuesday, Amazon.com took a step toward making the shopping experience on its Web site more social.

For many people, shopping is as much about socializing as it is about buying something — a chance to run into neighbors at the farmers’ market or spend time with a friend at the mall. And people who go shopping with a friend inevitably ask advice before buying. But it’s hard to do that when online shopping.

Now, Amazon shoppers who connect their Amazon and Facebook accounts transport their Facebook friends to Amazon — and can get recommendations from those friends on what to buy.

Amazon was an early leader in offering recommendations based on previous purchases and product searches, and in posting customer reviews on the site. But it has been slow to incorporate social features, while start-ups like Go Try It On, Polyvore and Swipely have been experimenting with ways to make online shopping more interactive.

Amazon’s new feature is the company’s small first step toward tapping into the world of social shopping.

When shoppers connect their Amazon and Facebook accounts, they see their Facebook profile photo on Amazon’s site. They also see which of their Facebook friends have upcoming birthdays, and receive gift suggestions based on the music, books and movies those friends have said they like on Facebook and on their Amazon wish lists. At the same time, they see recommendations on what to buy for themselves, based on what their friends like.

Mary Osako, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company was hoping to improve customers’ shopping experiences and help them find friends with shared interests while shopping.

Shopping activity on Amazon will not be shared with Facebook, Amazon said. That means that shoppers’ purchase history and account information will never appear on Facebook. And this will be a relief to people who remember the Beacon blunder, when Facebook shared Christmas gift purchases with users’ friends.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/an-amazon-facebook-alliance-to-make-shopping-more-social/

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

Head over to paywithatweet.com, and you’ll find an intriguing new social commerce model – where you can buy digital goods (music, software, ebooks, videos etc) and pay for them simply by tweeting them. It works like this; you simply click on the ‘Pay with a Tweet’ button, are asked to login to Twitter (or Facebook), edit the proposed tweet/wall message – and click the download button – whilst your message is syndicated across your social graph. Simple.

Pay with a Tweet is billed as a ‘social payments system’ designed to create viral buzz for content creators and marketers alike who want to promote themselves, their brand, product or service.

It’s an interesting model, and one that is set up and run out of Hamburg/New York by the creative duo at Innovative Thunder (@innothunder) - Leif Abraham and Christian Behrendt, of BestBuy’s much lauded Twitter-based Twelpforce fame (Pay with a Tweet app developer is John Tubert).

To launch the service, French electro pop band ‘The Teenagers‘ (breakthrough track “Homecoming” – a French tongue-in-cheek take on American sexuality), have released their new single “Made of” from their upcoming album exclusively with Pay with a Tweet (video below of the band wooing tweets).

And if electropop is not your thing - you can buy Innovative Thunder’s ebook on digital business for a Tweet (16,000 downloads on the first day).

The logic behind Pay with a Tweet is compelling; the same logic that has spawned a successful sub-industry in PR where editors, reviewers, celebrities and journalists are sent swag bags for free in return for (hopefully) positive words. Sometimes word of mouth – particularly at product launch – is worth more that the product itself.

Pay with a Tweet is free and simple to use; vendors create a Pay with a Tweet button using a simple form on the app’s site, entering their Twitter account, desired message to be re-tweeted, and the link to a digital download. Then just copy and paste the button code to the web, push the button – and let viral tweeting take over.

Pay with a Tweet is barebones, and feels like a beta version of something much bigger – we think this or a similar social payments model could evolve in to a powerful word of mouth marketing platform for brands, bands and content producers.  For example, Pay with a Tweet could be used to download not only promotional content, but also links/codes/coupons to exclusive promotions/previews/or even live events such as fashion shows.

Similarly, by auto-embedding the Pay with a Tweet buy button in a Google/Facebook ad – you could create a truly viral promotion. Another option would be to flip the process, so people do pay for digital downloads,  but are then reimbursed for a Wall/Twitter review that reaches x number of people.  (A simple mechanism could be added to the platform so if the review is negative it gets shuttled privately back to the sponsoring brand for ‘insight’ rather than shouted out on Twitter).  Likewise, by teaming up with a sampling company – Pay with a Tweet could offer a viral sampling service; Tweet and get the sample delivered to your door.

As Pay With a Tweet evolves, we think it’ll have to be beefed up to host digital downloads (with virus scanning) onsite, offer a decent analytics dashboard, and propose a premium paid-for service (perhaps where the promoted tweet can’t be edited so tweets go out ‘on-brand’).  Expect a Facebook ‘Pay with a Like’ service to appear soon (the service already the retired but not quite dead Facebook Connect).

In the meantime, Innovative Thunder suggest their fledgling social payments platform can be used by;

• DJ’s: Sell your latest mix for a Tweet to promote your next show or just to bring more people to your website.
• Other music artists: Sell your new single or music video for a Tweet in order to promote your new album or tour.
• Journalists and Publishers: Sell your leading article for a Tweet to promote your magazine, newspaper or charged online service.
• Authors: Sell a teaser version of your book with a Tweet to boost your sales.
• Consumer Brands: Sell your latest commercial for a Tweet and make it go viral.
• Creatives: Sell the access to your portfolio for a Tweet and increase your degree of popularity.
• Business Professionals and Scientists: Sell your master thesis, study, paper or presentation for a Tweet and increase your popularity in your special field.
• Service Provider: Sell a basic version of your service for a Tweet and bring more people to your website where they can learn about the benefits of your charged premium service.
• Film Directors and Entertainment Companies: Sell the trailer for your upcoming movie for a Tweet and maximize the viral momentum of your marketing campaign.

We like.

The Teenagers Promoting their ‘Buy with a Tweet’ Track on YouTube

Post courtesy of Social Commerce Today