At the beginning of 2011, I realised how the growing phenomenon of the online environment has caused the term social media expert to be loosely thrown around with no real established meaning. Thus, causing problems for marketers as consumers start to reject and want proof that the online environments of brands are worthy. This unit has enhanced this view in the conclusion that marketers have much to prove in their online strategies.

A seamless interactive brand leads to strengthening the overall consumers’ experience and is the central concern for brand management (Chernatony and Riley, 1997). In order for a business to create seamless online and offline activity, a process of a horizontal mechanism is described by Daft (2007) whereby, all the companies’ products featured in a range of sectors are compatible with each other for example, brands such as, Apple, Starbucks and Coca-Cola radiate their brand messages through everything they are involved in.

photo credit: Starbucks                                                                                      photo credit: Tops

Brand experience is vague and hard to pin point but yet it is important to marketers. Does it mean creating associations?...Or…a move to become closer personally with consumers?..Or..a bombardment of messages?

Knemeyer believes that ‘the essence of a brand lies in each of our unique, subjective and interpretations in the understanding of a brand’. This view shows that through each individual experience starting with searching for a product, to shopping, receiving a service and consuming the final product, that the consumer’s brand experience is reflective of their cultural context encounters. This is why Oliver and Reicheld believe brand experiences can be short-lived while others last longer stored in the consumers ‘memory through the creation of emotional and sensory triggers'.

The brand pyramid (below) shows how the brand essence is prioritised and over-shadows other brand elements. Thus, showing marketers that they need to focus on the important brand attributes being the core meaning and values, which are connected through a seamless online presence. Briggs and Stone believe marketers should firstly take time and effort to provide customers with emotional brand experiences, before secondly addressing the physical product. This view means that a brand-centred approach is taken and to achieve brand execution there needs to be a combination of intangible symbolic brand meanings, customer’s behaviour, thoughts and feelings, as well as using this ‘customer experiences to be aligned with the employees’ experiences in a seamless way’ (Ellwood, 2009 cited Clifton, 2009, p.73). All of these factors are the soul to a successful brand experience that is engaging and distinctive. 

photo credit: pdma the source

The online environment is a sophisticated strategy involving precise execution, where marketers need to meet the needs of individual connections making sure products correlate with customers’ desires in every interaction possible or ‘touch points’ ie. website, social network platforms, emails and online error messages. So, building a stronger connection and loyalty to the brand. The company TicketSolve ensures their consumers see familiar designs and layouts featured in their emails, letter heads and website, which they use to build their customers’ relationships aiming to encourage repeat purchase in the future. This shows the importance of a seamless brand in securing a customer’s loyalty, and how it can be assumed that a successful online presence that flows will create an ‘enjoyable state of mind resulting in a seamless online experience’. However, Ind (2007) believes that it is not just the online virtual environment that needs to be seamless it is the employees that need to understand what the brand stands for, and delivering this value and experience to meet customers’ expectations. Therefore, many factors need to be considered by marketers to create the overall brand experience.

After looking at many businesses’ seamless online activity, it is apparent that there is a main area in which many companies’ brand consistency breaks down, especially within the e-commerce industry during the act of a transaction where companies such as, PayPal, Sage Pay and Google Checkout are used as a third party to handle the sale transactions. This is the pivotal point where the brand bubble bursts for the consumer, as the seamless experience is broken. The process of directing consumers to a third party website causes the consumers to become less assured that the site is legitimate and trustworthy. However, marketers can try to restrict the seamless breakage through using logos and seals letting the consumer know about the security measures, enabling them to feel more secure, or  they can make the transaction process fully branded.  

Marketers can create seamless brand experiences, so does this mean it is an act by a social media expert?

Digitally creating a seamless brand experience allows for customers to pick and choose their own consumption levels. Before the internet, the company GLG technology believes that consumers could only experience a one-way relationship with brands, whereas due to the wide range of online platforms allowing access to two-way relationships consumers can virtually communicate and interact with a brand. Therefore, marketers have an opportunity of many online touch points in order to engage with consumers.

A social media expert will know the tricks of the trade, and what to do in order to leverage the best opportunity. McLuhan’s research showed that marketers all have different ideas about how to build the best brand experience. The research points out difficulties when creating a successful online presence due to consumers being more active, too many tools available, there are time restraints to become specialised and familiar with the online tools and so it is harder to distinguish a level of seamlessness when evaluating brands.

In conclusion, in order to make a brand seamless it involves a consistent learning experience, where each touch point needs to be carefully integrated so they are aligned with the brand values.  The digital environment has opened up the brand experience, allowing marketers to be connected with consumers every step of the way. Consumers no longer interact with just one medium they have advanced to using multiple platforms at one time. Therefore, marketers need to ensure they meet consumer’s individual requirements, keep their employees knowledgeable on the brand values and selecting the right platforms to create touch points ensuring maximum connectivity with the target audience. Marketers have to prove their worthiness online and creating a seamless brand means users will start trusting the brand, and accepting them as ‘social media experts’ amongst the vast amount of competition all competing for consumer’s online attention. 

Word Count: 1,092 

References

Clifton, R., 2009. Brands and Branding. Second Edition. Economist: London.

Daft, R.L., 2007. Organization theory and design. Ninth Edition. Thomson South-Western: Minneapolis. 

Ind, N., 2007.Living the Brand: how to transform every member of your organisation into a brand champion. Third Edition. Kogan Page: London. 

For the final blog post I will be referring back to a blog written by myself last summer, when I was working for the company White Hat Media (the blog is published on the corporate website). For the purpose of marking my blogs, I have uploaded the blog below, so I can use this as a starting point for my final blog post.

How do you define a social media expert?

Coming from a marketing degree and now interning at White Hat Media, it becomes apparent that marketing industries are in a constant battle trying to define and prove their status as ‘social media experts’ against the online world throwing the term around so loosely.

As social media grows, more people are calling themselves a social media expert without any real knowledge.  In 2009, 15,740 users on Twitter claimed to be social media experts. As social media is growing so quickly and with no social media expert certification, it can be difficult to build a name for yourself along with being taken seriously as an “expert”.

It comes down to what defines a social media expert? Definitions of a social media expert will constantly be modified in a modern society, due to the industry forever changing.

1) Jargon – Is it the specific language used in creating ideas or in discussion between team members, making social mediums sound ‘hip’ and knowledgeable? Would jargon words; crowdsourcing, vlog or syndication mind boggle you. Anyone can claim to be a social media expert by learning jargon from a social media dictionary. So therefore, is it fair to say jargon is a key indicator of a social media expert? 

photo credit: The Trouble with Normal

2) Status – Does an authoritative figure have a social media expert opinion because they are well known experts in other fields? Users will follow authoritative figures on to social platforms, because they are distinguished within the public domain. Having a high expert status and accomplishments will allow others to think you are an expert in every field. So qualifications and achievements will raise your status as an expert. However, these authoritative figures are only being followed due to their status and popularity within online society, not necessarily their expertise in social media.

photo credit: Photo Dictionary

3) Sales – Will a focused selling approach make a social media expert? Some social media salesmen are totally focused on profit generating and not participating in the social aspect. This allows them to be more interested on a product that will drive sales, and not what is best for the consumers. The sale driven self-called ‘experts’ will be constantly hassling consumers. Can this be called a social media expert when the interests are not benefiting the consumers? If social media becomes more practical the fake smokescreen will eventually reveal the legitimate salesman. 

photo credit: Downtime Town

4) Value – Providing value to an audience though social platforms will allow the audience to become interested, making the audience more open to a business. If a company provides value then does this mean they are social media experts? Judging value can present many different opinions. If consumers feel valued then are you looked at as a social media expert?

photo credit: The Ben Lomond Free Press

Everyone will eventually be exposed to a source of social media. As this happens the title, social media expert will start to lose the value of its meaning because of the popularity social media has received. People will either begin to reject the term or want proof that the candidate is worthy.

photo credit: Brennan PR

The digital communication strategies unit, has shown how there are many more factors which contribute to being a successful social networking expert, such as/ using analytical tools, being seamless, interactivity and using mobile communications. Therefore, my final blog post will debated whether by using one of these factors gives the title of a social media expert. Is it important for marketers to establish themselves as a social network expert in order for consumers to trust their online movements.

In society, a marketer or communicator needs to have the right tools to ……. evaluate, assess, implement, measure, report, modify, assess, implement, measure, report……which goes around in a never ending circle. This circle is vital in order to gain success, through having knowledge and a clear understanding of metrics and the key performance indicators (KPI).

The KPI analysis tool is an important tool for marketers to use as it identifies opportunities and problems, determines priorities, takes action into improving, makes decisions to re-allocate resources, changes or adjusts a strategy, provides feedback to change user behaviour and recognises and rewards accomplishments. Neely (1998) has a chart showing valuable reasons for measuring performance in relation to four categories:

1)     Checking Position of the businesses current status over time period when compared to benchmarks.

2)     Communication Position using annual reports and statistics required from the customers or employees.

3)     Confirm Priorities mainly performance data giving insight into weaknesses and restructuring priorities.

4)     Compel Progress focusing on business specific issues, changes or improvements aiding performance. 

photo credit: Benchmarking: An International Journal

In order to use this tool the collection of data is vital as a starting point, as it helps create a platform for formulating and testing ideas, which progresses into improving the KPIs of a campaign. Gathering data can also improve the decision making processes recognising problems and areas for change.

The KPI Measurement, Monitoring and Analysis Guide helps give a detailed plan of data collection and the questions that marketers need to ask in order to collect the relevant information.

1) There needs to be a purpose for collecting data, ie. has the campaign brought more users to the following website? Asking this question helps draw on specific characteristics of the success and improvements of a campaign.

2) The ‘where’ questions indicates what platform needs to be measured. Finding the right location will determine what type of data is collected.

3) The people involved in the physical collection of the data, will be the people that are closest to the location where the data can be found ie. online, as when measuring traffic on a website the people monitoring the website will be the most suitable to gather the information.

4) To ensure the data collection is correct the amount and frequency needs to be worked out, along with the cost of obtaining data, availability of data and the possible consequences of future decisions to be made based around the data’s results ie. An online campaign lasting for 1 year can mean the marketers can decided that every 4 months data can be gathered.

The best data collection measurement tool to monitor an online campaign would be an events driven management system, measuring data at certain time periods during an event. During the monitoring process data is recorded and statistics can be analysed. For a marketer this would be the best measurement tool as an online campaign will probably have a long life cycle, where metrics can be set and analysed from the numbers of users at a beginning and at an end of a campaign, the interactivity of the users, what the users are doing online or how long they spend on the campaign’s website.

When running an online campaign using an event driven management system, data can be detected and recorded by an agent software package. The software packaging is designed to collect data underlying the website, and is able to track user movement. The use of a computer package means that the data collection process is made easier for marketers to analyse and draw conclusions.

It is recommended that an event driven management system is the right tool for the job when measuring an online campaign. It allows measurements to be taken for more than one KPI in the same analysis, over a certain time period measuring success and also tracking performance against the business goal. Also, it is a tool aimed at gathering relevant and reliable business information.

Here is an analytic toolbox  which shows many analytical tools that are available to monitor and analysing website traffic. 

Entrepreneurs need to tap into learning on how best to utilise their social media platforms, in order to meet consumer’s needs. For a business, "social networking sites should be viewed as complementary to an online presence. Think of it as a nice-to-have, not a must-have, and when used properly it is something that can gain a business attention. However, it shouldn't be seen as a replacement to traditional online presence!” (Peter Delgrosso, 2008).  

Therefore, when devising a strategic social media plan the following points are important:

A target audience needs to be identified. This is firstly achieved through analysing the main businesses target audience. After distinguishing the target audience, companies have the ability to research what platforms are most used by the audience, which then helps to understand what platforms will attract the audience. The target market can also be further segmented by considering their level of participation, either being non-active, watchers, sharers, commenters, producers or curators?. When this information is gathered, it helps create a social networking community.

For example, Burger Kings ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ campaign distinguished the main target audience could be reached through the social networking site Facebook, and therefore choose this platform to launch their campaign. Burger King could assume that the target audience is of a younger age group participating in sharing information. If the target audience are regular Burger King visitors and already interested in the brand, then they will spread the campaign around Facebook.

photo credit: The Inspiration Room

Listening to a customer’s opinion is important, as the consumer does not want to feel overpowered by information. The video below shows how important it is to listen and engage online. Social media monitoring tools have a ‘peeping tom effect’, by keep a close eye on what is being said by consumers about a brand. Therefore, companies gather in-depth insight into consumer’s thoughts, which without the internet this data would be inaccessible. This is useful for marketing purposes and you can gain valuable feedback making changes to satisfy customers. 

Source: YouTube

Building a transparent relationship online is also thought to be important to marketers. However, Debra Ellis believes customers are interested in the service provided where promises are satisfied, not about the company’s transparency……‘A little secrecy can be a good thing. People like something left to the imagination’ (Debra Ellis, 2011).

For example, Burger King’s marketing strategy “Is asking the question of which love is bigger, your love for your friends or your love for the whopper” (Jeff Benjamin, 2010). The campaign aided consumers to interactive, getting them to delete 10 Facebook friends for a free burger. On the deletion of a friend, it is publicised to the news feed which spreads the campaigns publicity. The campaign really shows how social media is a huge communication platform, in which Facebook users find it an easy task of removing 10 friends, this shows how in social media it is not all about the number of contacts you have, but the quality of those connections for future endeavours.    

The Burger King campaign eventually became unfunctional due to Facebook feeling it violated user’s expectations of privacy, in which Facebook placed restrictions on the Burger King application Facebook regulations stated that Burger King could not send a notification to the removed friend saying they had been sacrificed, as it defied the point of Facebook. 

photo credit: Responsible Marketing

Using social media as a campaign tool means that there is a rapid expansion of consumer’s surveillance, and an easy access for marketers to gain information. Marketing has evolved businesses to creating an online presence having a place within the community. However, being involved in the community does not mean it gives business the ability to be pushy and invade privacy. Legislation is put into to place, meaning that in order to access individual’s data permission and engagement needs to be authorized. There are many bodies that set online marketing rules and regulations. The information directives look after the protection of user’s data, and when sharing information on social networking sites copyright laws ensure users posting data can all request for removal of infringing content.

For marketers other people’s ethical online behaviour impacts the authenticity of published work and aids lack of clarity, as if the work is from an open source, then the content can be re-published posing as it was created by another author. This takes away the respect and independence of a brand, and can lead to consumers feeling less trustworthy. It needs to be considered what types of copyright bounds are put into place on individuals work, being open or closed.

Social networking is a great way for businesses to raise awareness of campaigns and promote themselves when carried out correctly, in which if they following ethical codes it will lead to successful.

In relation to my past blog ‘To Rise or not to Rise’, which discusses how rising tuition fees along with the student protests have affected the running of socio-economics .This blog will venture further into this area by analysing the influential power of the online sphere in aiding activism.

It is commonplace to assert that public communication lies at the heart of the democratic process, in which the public sphere acts as a focal point for all to hear.  Being an inclusive platform with few entry barriers, makes digital activism very accessible and easy for public participation in acts of activism being organised, especially with a large mass of people facilitating discussion.   

The Meta-Activism Project is a project aimed in gaining further knowledge into the effects of the digital world and its influential social power. The project studies the virtual environment with the intention of achieving a more effective means of making digital activism more transparent, democratic and participatory with global society.

Other digital activism tools:

Networking Tools

The power of the online sphere opens possibilities to a large growth with a huge number of followers in a small space of time. This is achieved by people spreading their ideas over multiple platforms such as, networking, forums or blogs.

Social networking is one the most influential forms being essentially quick and efficient when promoting a message. Therefore, it is no surprise that this tool is being used for activism to help organise, communicate and ultimately initiate civil-disobedience campaigns and street actions in the hope to influence other people.

The media uses this networking access to track activism events and locations of the protests through YouTube channels and Facebook events, in which all platforms allow for free expression. A Bangkok blogger ‘Richard Barrow’ devised a Google map to share news updates and inform the public on the protest zones. When protestors organise meeting locations, it is now amplified on a larger scale due to the rising trend of smartphones allowing for large groups of people to be constantly connected to the internet.  

photo credit: CNN

Being that social networking has such influential power over consumers creates an advantage to marketers, as they can use their online presence to promoting campaigns reaching large numbers of people.

#Hashtag Power#

‘Hashtags allows multiple users to instantly follow a specific term they are interested in. Hashtags commonly rise and decline quickly due to popularity’

photo credit: Google

Twitter uses hashtags surrounding a certain topics bringing people together sharing ideas and opinions. The hashtag #ukuncut included 25,214 online followers all drawing in debating and involving all types of people that have never meet before. Although, hashtags can cause problems when organising protests being part of cyber-activism evolving online into offline activities. This is shown recently by the student protests, as the original hashtag #demo2010 was stopped by Twitter from becoming a trend, in which the protestors started using other hashtags to talk about the protests. This also happened in the recent activist movements in Egypt, as protestors started using encrypting data so it was unable to be monitored by the government seeking to control the information. By discussing protests in a public sphere means the information is available to everyone. Therefore, allowing the government and police to monitor people’s involvement.

The hashtag power effects marketing in the fact that marketers can see what is being written and said about a brand. The online sphere has no controlling system when monitoring what positive or negative comments that have been said. Although this does help marketers create an understanding of how the brand is perceived or how successful a campaign is. The public have a voice and viewing there voice on such a public sphere ensures vital feedback for marketers.  

The video below helps summarise the overall effects social media has on activism.

Source: YouTube

Digital activism is reaching people with niche tastes, and this being one of social technology greatest strength as it connects users in unique ways, allowing access to multiple conversations giving wider availability for more people to contribute and participate. Thus, bringing everyone closer together giving people more empowering rights.

I found an article on Mashable about the on and off relationship between Facebook and privacy. I thought it would complement my pervious blog 'Are you being watched by Ikea's online campaign?'  because it draws in on the problem with consumers not trusting companies keeping their data safe. 

photo credit: Mashable

Ikea’s online campaign partnered with Facebook to prompt the opening of a new Ikea store, in order for maximum consumer interaction and easily accessible to a wide audience.

The campaign created a Facebook profile page for the new Ikea store, where pictures were uploaded of showrooms. Ikea utilized Facebook’s online photo ‘tagging’ tool, where Facebook users had to be the first to tag their name on any item in the uploaded showroom photos in order to win the tagged item. This was a unique campaign and created an online buzz.

The video clip gives a deeper insight into the campaign. 

Source: YouTube

The campaign was clever in connecting with large numbers of users following Ikea, in which they gained free promotion through word of mouth. The online power played a big role in the campaign, as it relied on other networking sites such as, twitter and micro blogging which spread and shared the word of the campaign through the newsfeed function. Alongside this campaign customers gladly signed up to the Ikea catalogue, giving their details enabling Ikea to use these in a database for marketing related purposes. 

Moving into a time space compression culture, consumers have a ‘want it now’ attitude with instant gratification. Businesses have recognised this customer trend, and now many e-commerce websites meet these ‘want it now’ needs through introducing next day delivery. By Ikea using the platform Facebook means consumers are fully involved within the consumption process, and are meeting the instant requirements by allowing consumers to tag a room item which instantly becomes theirs. Marketers can use instant gratification to an advantage by sending out messages and being able to gain instant feedback and so judging success. Especially, when using social media tools as many people are constantly checking to see if they have responses, in which the need for ‘now’ responses, means businesses online presence need to be monitored and communicating constantly to achieve coherent instant gratification. Therefore, there is a challenge to be 24/7 connected.

Online privacy is an important issue affecting consumer interaction. Cookies are constantly used in tracing consumer behaviour, which I believe is an intrusion by 'spying' on where you are going and what you are doing. Although for marketing purposes cookies are useful tools in understand consumer behaviour. Companies need to ensure they have privacy statements to make consumers trust them and feel safe. Facebook recently automatically changed their privacy settings, this decision by Facebook lost many consumers as it violated the trust built exploiting personal data. The accessible nature of data is a concern for consumers. However, Ikea using the platform Facebook allows for them to easily collect important demographic data about their consumers. After accessing these details, they can be used to build profiles and target specific related marketing. Despite consumers wanting instant communication, consumers are more likely to give their personal details to companies that have built up long-term relationships. For marketers it is important to build trust, be open and transparent which is a key driver of reputation.  

photo credit: Marketing Week

Consumer consumption and online interaction is always growing with new needs to meet, meaning marketers need to keep up with consumers’ needs in order to remain successful and maintain a good reputation with the protection of consumer privacy. The table above shows how privacy is important for consumers when interacting online, as they feel it is highly important to be able to find companies data protection policy trust the brand and expect the company to ask before sharing personal details.

The virtual environment has grown so much it is no longer possible to avoid being tracked online. This is bad from a consumer point of view because nothing is private or unknown. However, from a marketing point of view, it allows windows of opportunities for more specific marketing of products and services to be used which directly target individual consumers.

photo credit: Journal of Diplomacy

Source: ASOS

I am going to look at the fashion e-commerce website ASOS and how best they can use Google Analytics.

Google Analytics gives ASOS real-time data on……………..

Visitors

1) Website traffic over periods of time.  These will allow ASOS to see trends in when their busiest months are and allow them to track if marketing campaigns or promotions are drawing more traffic into the website.

2) Average page views and time spent on website. Again the page views increasing or decreasing, can be related to recent marketing campaigns and ASOS can measure their effectiveness. By monitoring the visitors’ time spent on the website, helps ASOS improve their website with new features or increase the stock to see if the customers’ viewing time increases.  

3) Who the visitors are and their geographical location. This gives ASOS a demographic profile of their average customer. This helps when targeting their market to specific ages or gender and allows for their website to be tailored for visitors ie, different languages, currencies and sizes.

Using analytics, ASOS can monitor their geographical web traffic, which would look like the picture below. From this, they can analyse that over half of their customers are from the UK. However, there are other international regions which are popular. From this map, ASOS can then up the market strategies towards the countries with less visitors such as, Canada, Australia and Norway. Using this data will help ASOS have a wider global presence. 

Source: Markosweb

Content

1) What is the top content and best page on the website. Having data to show the popular pages allows ASOS to change their website to almost manipulate what they want they customer to see.

2) Landing pages and click patterns. How the customer landed on the ASOS website is important data as it shows where the most successful links have come from and how to link other sites better. The click patterns give an idea of the most popular products on their website and when it comes to constructing marketing plans, their magazine or promotional material, they can try and encourage people to visit less popular items. This information can be used to help move consumers around a path on links.

3) Existing pages. This data can help give ASOS hints of how to keep consumers longer on their website and keep them engaged with the pages. Keeping the customers on the website longer is likely to increase the number of sales.

Traffic Sources

1) What are the main sources directing the traffic. This indicates what sources are growing, what promotional links are effective through advertising or other referring websites and linking blogs.  All the source information can improve strategies in driving more traffic on to the ASOS website. 

2) Effectiveness of Keywords. ASOS will be able to tell what key words are working and what keywords are not. This allows them to use the most successful key words in the advertising. 

ASOS can use broad or long tail keywords in order to draw in target audiences through their search criteria and needs. Thus, drawing more customers to their website.

Broad keywords would be terms such as, Online Women’s Fashion, Cheap Women’s Clothing and Women’s Fashion.

Long Tail keywords would be terms such as, Denim Skinny Jeans, Black Maxi Dress and Polka-dot Knitted Scarf. 

Source: Content and Motion

The dinosaur diagram illustrates using broad keywords which are more generic and will bring in more searches and results. However, it will also mean that it will be very competitive to get the website ASOS to the top of Google, unless extensive SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has been used to beat competitors. ASOS uses broad words well as they are in the first pages of Google for ‘cheap women’s jeans, cheap evening dresses and cheap women’s clothing’. Using the Key word cheap could be an attempt to ride the economic downturn by targeting keywords associated with people looking for a bargain. The diagram also shows that long tail key words which are more specific will generate fewer results. However, if a user was to search a long tail keyword then the website ASOS will be easily seen. As ASOS is a fashion catalogue they rank well in Google for many long tail keywords.

For any business Google Analytics is an important tool, giving access to a huge amount of data which can help improve many aspects of the business from marketing, to improving the website and gaining more customers. 

I thought this video was interesting in showing the huge amount of impact social media has on consumers and businesses. 

Source: YouTube

Virtual reality incorporates a ‘dream like’ state where an individual has an online presence enhancing an imaginary world. However, online technology has allowed for the virtual reality to mix with real life.

Second Life is a place to…..

‘connect, shop, work, to love, explore, to be different, be yourself’

‘free yourself, free your mind, change your mind, change your look, love your look and love your life’

Second life is an online interactive world where your human persona is represented through an avatar. The virtual world allows users to connect with reality by being interactive with other avatars and building a ‘second life’, where you can be become the idealized person that you imagine.

The book Power, Madness and Immortality: The Future of Virtual Reality talks about 4 ways virtual reality impacts human interaction.

1) Virtual reality is becoming part of everyday life. This is happening through platforms such as Facebook, Second life and Kaneva, where human activities are being replaced and exchanged by virtual interactions.

2) The online techniques are influencing human behaviour, as it loses interpersonal interaction (face-to-face communication) and real social encounters. Making users be cognitive, this make humans become lazy and more of a passive audience. Thus, making it more difficult for marketers to communicate with the audience.

3) Spending more time on the internet and in a virtual space, will eventually result in long term effect that will make changes to the economics, worldwide views and culture.

4) Virtual reality can manipulate the way users think. For example in the video below, the user’s faces were morphed with those of the presidential candidate, in which case the users favoured that candidate. Having such a powerful tool over users to influence their mind set, is something which will impact marketing as it will become easier to target the audience.

Source: YouTube

For business to incorporate elements of virtual reality into their brand persona, will help create a seemless brand. As a brand is more than just a tangible factor, it is the lifestyle and experience. Therefore, online it is vital to create an interlinking virtual network carrying the same brand messages. For example, with Barbie, the generic codes of pink and a blond haired girl are represented throughout their website and their merchandising from DVDs to games and clothing. 

                         Source: ispace.ie                                          Source: ClothingHQ                             Source: ForparentsByparents

Source: Barbie

Having a brand create a seemless communication enhances the virtual reality in becoming more involved. As Barbie consumers can live their dream bringing their made up character of Barbie to life through wearing the Barbie clothes and using the makeup. A seamless brand is paying attention to the finer print and using the tiny details to make a stronger connection with consumers. Thus, leading the brand to become more profitable and successful.

The guest lecturer this week, Mike Crossman, EMC Consulting, talked about how seemless brands pay attention to the 404 messages incorporated into their websites. After seeing a recent article on Mashable about 404 messages being made brand specific, I thought it would be an interesting article to look at for those interested and it shows some great examples of 404 messages.