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1. Shrewd awakening. Sharp brand management by their business manager/mom, Kris Jenner, has helped put the brood at the top of Brand central. Like Kim’s alignment with E!, which puts her at the edge of entertainment and lifestyle. It enables her brand to encompass an array of products—everything from fitness videos to food to the ill-fated Kardashian credit card—while remaining relevant to her lifestyle image. You can bet that Mom’s brand management savvy saw this as key to the Kardashian empire.
2. Family tree. Kim has snagged opportunities everywhere you look to put her brand on and the whole Kardashian Klan has done likewise. For starters, there’s Kourtney and Khloe, with spin-offs and their own array of products. Even teenagers Kendall and Kylie are pushing their own brands with modeling and acting.
3. On messages. Kim Kardashian is simply ever-present. On TV. On Twitter (7 million followers). Even on mobile billboards brandishing her brand of perfume. One of the key successes of Kardashian brand is keeping Kim in the conversation. It lets her get a whopping $25,000 for one tweet for brand Armani (which brought in 40,000 site visitors in just one hour). While many brands don’t keep the center spotlight on themselves, the Kardashians are great at it.
4. Niche sisters. Brand Kardashian fills demographic niches with the various personalities. Kim is the beautiful but delicate one, who hated being single, which gives women ages 21-35 growing up after Sex and the City kinship. As a mother, Kourtney wins over mom bloggers. Meanwhile, Khloe is a symbol for weight-aware women everywhere.

Where will Brand Kardashian be in the long run? Only time will tell. You can be sure that they’ve got a plan, but it’ll be subject to the fickle nature of their fans. That said, there’s always those celebrity brand boosters—addiction and rehab—to keep them in the spotlight.

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Veteran journalist Sandy Close, with a career that spans decades helping to give voice to those who don’t often get heard from, speaks about the importance of connection to create a more cosmopolitan view of the world. Very timely topics, considering how often we talk about connection in social media.

Be sure to listen to the conversation at about 22:00 when they touch on social media. To paraphrase, she and Michael Krasny discuss that while it’s tough to get advertising in newspapers now, ethnic media has managed to get more, but there is “communications apartheid,” as Ms. Close calls it.

Social media campaigns are run by PR or advertising agencies, predominantly white, who have very little experience in these markets. They’ll say that they’re “doing the ethnic thing” by working with Univision, but that means they’re missing out on a huge variety of ethnic markets. There’s a great opportunity to reach many, many populations. The most promising thing in the field of advertising for ethnic media, which is primarily supported by small businesses, was the 2010 Census, which was the first time a government agency committed more than half its advertising budget to community and ethnic media.

Also, at about 11:00, she gives great insight into the rise of gratuitous violence in the 1980s, which came, as she says, from her generation turning its back on its youth, who responded by lashing out violently because they had no other voice, no other way to “make their mark.” The most powerful word for these people was ‘converse.’ They wanted to know that someone wanted to know what they had to say. She links it to the rise in themes in fiction such as Stephen King’s “The Shining,” where the hero is the young boy, and it’s his father who betrays him, not the sheriff or the corrupt institution, as in her day. It’s abandonment by intimates.

Again, the need to connect is fundamental.

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1. People love freebies. This is not news. Unless you’re a big-name brand, top celeb or a natural social networking guru, people will not  flock to you unless you give them treats. Said treats can be in the form of cash money, products, or just superb content, but it has to be of value. It has to be worth their time. We’re all fragmented and another amusing opportunity for something “free” is just a click away. Don’t get clicked away. Give good stuff.
2. Your freebies don’t have to break the bank. We got perfectly decent mileage from giving away a lot of lower-value gift cards as opposed to $500 worth of merchandise at Organic Beauty Now. For The Peanuts, we made excellent use of existing content to get fans engaged in a new way. Get creative.
3. Make your Facebook friends love you. Don’t be afraid to ask for your Facebook friends’ participation. We tested a campaign where we asked Organic Beauty Now Facebook friends to name the number one non-organic beauty product they wanted to switch to an organic version. Called The Big Organic Beauty Switch, it included a giveaway of five gift certificates to winners among the list of those who posted a comment about their wishlist switcheroo. First week, it seemed like a dud and we nearly pulled it, but then it grew, and grew, and grew. By the second week, we had the best level of interaction we’d ever had, 200 new Facebook likes, a huge opportunity to interact with them (as we gave personal recommendations to everyone, not just winners) and a lot of free consumer research. We’ve gotten similar results with campaigns that require our Facebook friends to dig into our website and name products they want to win. All of it is designed to deepen the interaction between your Facebook friends and your brand. It works.
4. Your Facebook friends will stab you in the back, in public. We had a customer service issue come to light on Facebook. Our CEO spent over an hour on the phone with the upset party, making everything right, smoothing her ruffled feathers, and ending the call with what seemed like a very satisfied customer. This same party went back to our Facebook page and flamed the heck out of us again. Why? Who knows. We did our best. The moral of the story is this: practice excellent customer service, and when, not if, mistakes happen, solve them, then watch the web for ongoing embers even when you think the flames have died. You cannot let your guard down. It’s just too easy for people to rethink and post something you don’t want out there, whether they’re a “friend” or not.
5. Be a celebrity. That’s my motto as Andy Warhol’s vision of everyone’s 15 minutes of fame comes to rampaging life now that we all have a worldwide podium. No, you don’t have to be Oprah or a Kim Kardashian (heaven forbid). I’m talking about being a persona in your own way, in your own market. We like bright, shiny, engaging people who we can follow with our hearts, minds and dollars. If you’re not the guy or gal in your company, find someone who is. That kooky guy who makes everyone laugh at the water cooler. A dedicated team of customer service people who are super enthusiastic. Or a hired spokesperson that you make a real part of your company, not just a talking head. Whatever it takes, be a person of note and people will follow you. Celebrities don’t become celebrities by staying on the margins and keeping quiet. Get out there, get known, and watch how it changes your business.

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“Brands spend inordinate amounts of money in ensuring that they are communicating with their consumers in the correct way, spreading the right message and encouraging those customers to think about the brand in a positive way and transacting with them.

Conversely, affiliates are not necessarily worried too much about what the consumer thinks of the brand, as long as they still buy something from them.

Brands wish to control the messaging that goes out and affiliates wish to adapt it to suit their own means.”

So, how to keep these two from working at cross purposes? Here’s what they conclude:

Brands should set guidelines but give affiliates latitude.

While they shouldn’t be allowed to lie about products or services, affiliates must be given flexibility to adapt the message, within reason, in order to produce sales. Brands should set a rough set of guidelines for affiliates to use and then allow them freedom.

Brands should create a plan to manage their image when working with certain types of affiliates.

Working with some affiliates, particularly those known for discounting, many brands fear that they lose control of discounting themselves and their messaging. Whatever positive image is created by the discount, the credit goes to the affiliate, not the brand. The danger in removing yourself is lost revenue and sales volume.

Like the author, I believe that the question should not be whether to appear with these affiliates, but how best to manage your appearance on these sites. Creating an affiliate strategy is at the heart of it.

So does affiliate marketing damage your brand? It can. But like all marketing and sales initiatives, the answer lies in actively managing your campaign, asserting your objectives and seeking to work in partnership.

Source: Latest Lead Generation content from Econsultancy

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A Top Team Is Key to Growth – Entrepreneurship.org
(tags: entrepreneurship management entrepreneur)

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