Unme Jeans: Branding in Web 2.0
THOMAS STEENBURGH JILL AVERY
UnME Jeans: Branding in Web 2.0
Anyone . . . trying to make sense of the evolving Internet, might thus want to tread carefully. The Web trend you hop on early may be the next big thing. Or you may wake up one day to find yourself wearing the Internet equivalent of bell-bottoms and paisley shirts. — Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal1 Brand manager of UnME Jeans, Margaret Foley, left the meeting with her advertising agency. Her head was filled with the new lingo of Web 2.0: P2P, blogs, wikis, Twitter, avatars, tag clouds, widgets, RSS, podcasts, mashups, long tails, and convergence. It was enough to make her head spin! Since her trip to the up-fronts—the kick-off event of the advertising buying season during which billions of television advertising media were sold—Foley had been struggling to justify the money she was spending to advertise her brand in traditional media outlets. Foley was amazed to hear that the prices to purchase television advertising were increasing year over year, despite declining television audiences, increased advertising clutter, and consumers’ desire and ability to skip or delete television ads. As a result of her trip, Foley had asked her advertising agency to investigate some of the emerging Web 2.0 social media options to explore if they could better help her achieve her advertising objectives. The agency had come back with a smorgasbord of social media options for her to consider. Foley knew her biggest challenge would be cutting through all of the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and analyzing its potential for her brand from a media perspective. Were any of these emerging social media channels appropriate for her brand and what were the benefits and risks of each? How could they substitute for or complement her existing media plan? What kind of results could she expect from Web 2.0? Communicating her brand story was certainly getting much more complicated in the ever-changing media environment.
UnME Jeans
UnME
UnME Jeans: Branding in Web 2.0
Anyone . . . trying to make sense of the evolving Internet, might thus want to tread carefully. The Web trend you hop on early may be the next big thing. Or you may wake up one day to find yourself wearing the Internet equivalent of bell-bottoms and paisley shirts. — Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal1 Brand manager of UnME Jeans, Margaret Foley, left the meeting with her advertising agency. Her head was filled with the new lingo of Web 2.0: P2P, blogs, wikis, Twitter, avatars, tag clouds, widgets, RSS, podcasts, mashups, long tails, and convergence. It was enough to make her head spin! Since her trip to the up-fronts—the kick-off event of the advertising buying season during which billions of television advertising media were sold—Foley had been struggling to justify the money she was spending to advertise her brand in traditional media outlets. Foley was amazed to hear that the prices to purchase television advertising were increasing year over year, despite declining television audiences, increased advertising clutter, and consumers’ desire and ability to skip or delete television ads. As a result of her trip, Foley had asked her advertising agency to investigate some of the emerging Web 2.0 social media options to explore if they could better help her achieve her advertising objectives. The agency had come back with a smorgasbord of social media options for her to consider. Foley knew her biggest challenge would be cutting through all of the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and analyzing its potential for her brand from a media perspective. Were any of these emerging social media channels appropriate for her brand and what were the benefits and risks of each? How could they substitute for or complement her existing media plan? What kind of results could she expect from Web 2.0? Communicating her brand story was certainly getting much more complicated in the ever-changing media environment.
UnME Jeans
UnME
Links: Gomes, “Some Traditional Sites Aiming to Be Hip, End Up the Opposite,” Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2007, p. B1. 2 3 4 1 Scott Davis, “Don’t Be Afraid to Plunge into Emerging Media,” Advertising Age, August 6, 2007, p Nilofer Merchant, “Rethink Your Web Strategy or Fail,” Advertising Age, July 9, 2007, p. 15. Elana Anderson and Shar VanBoskirk, “Topic Overview: Interactive Marketing,” Forrester Research, Inc., December 26, 2006. 5 6 7 8 Jon Fine, “Don’t Touch That Dial,” Business Week, June 2, 2008, p Alison Leigh Cowan, “Ad Clutter: Even in Restrooms Now,” New York Times, February 18, 1988. David Goetzl, “Product Placement Fueling TV Clutter, Brands Now Present More Than Half the Time,” MediaPost Publications, June 1, 2006. 9 10 11 12 Matthew Creamer, “Caught in the Clutter Crossfire: Your Brand,” Advertising Age, April 2, 2007, p Josh Quittner and Jessi Hempel, “The Battle for Your Social Circle,” Fortune, November 26, 2007, p. 29. Catherine Holahan, “So Many Ads, So Few Clicks,” Business Week, November 12, 2007, p. 38. 13 Matthew Creamer, “Think Different: Maybe the Web’s Not a Place to Stick Your Ads,” Advertising Age, March 17, 2008. 14 15 16 Carlos Grande, “Spending on Pop-up Adverts Online Declines,” Financial Times, October 4, 2006, p Aline Van Duyn, “Whose Space? Financial Times, May 24, 2006, p. 17. 17 Jessica E. Vascellaro and Emily Steel, “Application Companies Join the Ad Case: Firms to Compete with Social Sites That Host Them,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2008, p. B6. Tim O’Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software,” O’Reilly, September 30, 2005. Beth Snyder Bulik, “Trying to Define Web 2.0,” Advertising Age, July 10, 2006, p. 6. 22 23 21 Stephen Baker and Heather Green, “Beyond Blogs,” Business Week, June 2, 2008, p 24 Daniel Henninger, “Wonder Land: What’s YouTube? After $1.65 Billion, It’s Time to Learn,” Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2006, p. A12. Emily Steel, “Nielsen Online Takes a Look at How People Use Web Video,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2008, p. B7. Steve Hamm, “Children of the Web: How the Second-Generation Internet Is Spawning a Global Youth Culture, and What Business Can Do to Cash In,” Business Week, July 2, 2007, p. 50. B1. Juan Ferrer-Vidal, “New Media--Back to the Future?” The New Media Landscape, Marketing Science Institute Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 2008. 36 37 38 39 35 Maria Bartiromo, “Chris Dewolfe on MySpace’s Widening Web of Users,” Business Week, June 2, 2008, p 40 Emily Steel, “Giving Advertisers Avenues to Attract Fickle Young Crowd,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2007, p. B3A. 41 42 43 Emily Steel, “Young Surfers Spurn Banner Ads, Embrace ‘Widgets,’” Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2007, p