Kelly Mooney's blog about the online shopping experience from the customer's point of view -- MooneyThinks.com

Great Details from GoodReads

While the huge impact of the social networking (site) phenomenon is impressive, what I find the most interesting these days are the properties that target niche audiences around passionate topics.

Category giants like MySpace and Facebook have more focused origins, but today their ubiquity is overwhelming. Nothing wrong with wide appeal, but it makes destinations like GoodReads stand out.

I love how GoodReads has captured book lovers' passion for books. And frankly, it's a lot about the little details. When someone friends me on Facebook I get an email from "Facebook" with the subject line that So-and-So has added me as a friend on Facebook. It never bothered me, in fact, it's nice and straightforward. But then I saw the ones from GoodReads (I'm not a member but one shared this with me). The email comes from your friend and the subject line reads, "Let's compare books". Same process, just slightly different approach.

I also saw the site's monthly newsletter and I love its take on personalization. More than the "Dear (insert name)" approach, and not so far as to give me that Big Brother feeling, GoodReads personalizes its email with the recipient's name, a reminder of the book that person last said they were reading and the question, "Do you have any new books to share with your friends?" How smart. Because if you're a book lover you know the next best thing to reading a great book is sharing it with someone else--anyone else.

O.P.E.N. Watch—Retail Edition

As part of our tireless quest to find O.P.E.N. experiences, and as a continuation of our long-standing (11 years!) holiday assessment of the e-retail space, our retail team spent the holiday shopping season online, studying the intersection of social media and e-commerce. I'm excited to share their findings, O.P.E.N. Watch -- Retail Edition, which we just published on our site. (And in the spirit of "open," free for  you to download, share, or email me yours comments!).

For those of you who like your information in smaller bits, check back here because I'll be featuring some of the great examples they found.

One of my favorites was Home Depot's Light Up the Neighborhood contest, where people could upload images of their house all decked out in holiday lights and vote on their favorites. It hits on the P (personal), E (engaging) and N (networked) experiences of the O.P.E.N. framework. Plus I love that Home Depot created an experience that tapped into an existing activity (holiday decorating) and encouraged a positive behavior fueled by an existing mindset--one-upping one's neighbor.

What was your favorite? Find one you like from the study, or share an O.P.E.N. experience you've found on your own.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

A powerful question, not just for kids but for also for businesses. See what my brilliant business partner and Resource Interactive founder Nancy Kramer has to say about looking to the future in Advertising Age's Small Agency Diary.

Kramer's sharp mind and spectacular laugh have guided us for more than 26 years. Now you can learn from her too.

Kodak's Marketing Apprentice

I am not an Apprentice aficionado, fan or even viewer (okay, full disclosure -- i did watch every episode of the first season!). I do, however, often pay attention to Kodak (hey, it's research!), so when I got an email last week from Kodak telling me to tune into The Celebrity Apprentice that night, I actually did. (Just for a few minutes, mind you.)

Get past all the pseudo-drama and it was a one-hour Kodak commercial--with Gene Simmons chanting "It's a Kodak world" over and over again.

Anyway, I wanted to call attention to the micro experience Kodak put together. So in addition to the email telling people to go watch the show, they also created some smart marketing to go along with it.

In addition to fan content like a contest, downloads and a poll, Kodak offers up behind-the-scenes scoop from the show. It's not terribly sexy, but what's great is that it's contained within Kodak's A Thousand Words blog. So while you're getting your Apprentice fix, you also learn that Kodak has lots of other good stuff. Of course there is also info about their printers, but I'll spare my friends at HP the trouble and leave it at that.

All in all, I was pretty impressed with how Kodak leveraged its Prime Time cameo.

Hungry Girl Bites Back

Diet-tip guru Hungry Girl may indeed know all there is to know about out-smarting the scale, but unfortunately she seems to need some "Tips & Tricks" in the don't-send-your-customers-condescending-passive-aggressive-emails department. Sigh.

A colleague who is a Hungry Girl follower forwarded an email string she had with Lisa, the Hungry Girl herself. The email was about email. The short of it is, my colleague signed up for the site's daily blast, and in addition to receiving the Hungry Girl ad-supported newsletter each day--as described on the site--she also receives 2-3 additional emails every day, emails that are pure advertisements.

So our disappointed and email-overloaded Resourcian shot a note of feedback to Lisa, who describes herself on her site as "not only hungry, but very nice." She expressed her disappointment that Hungry Girl is sending her paid advertisements without her permission and that she can't opt-out of them.

Through the back-and-forth of emails, Lisa gave my friend several there's-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch lessons, with a closing line on one note that still has my mouth hanging open...

Losing email subscribers is not a concern of mine.

Thank you!!!
Lisa :)

Perhaps she is that good at dieting advice -- I just lost my appetite.

Navigation that "Gets Me"

I love to shop for furniture, even if I'm not buying. I especially like to seek out new stores in my travels where I can be inspired by floor sets, see the the proportion of side tables to chairs, sit on a sofa, touch the fabrics, examine the connection details of a pendant light fixture, study the wood joints of a table. You get the idea (fortunately, my husband tolerates all of this and has even begun to enjoy it himself!). But, it's all terribly inconvenient for me to go store shopping. It's rare that I can spend the time when weekends are filled with running to various kids' games. But more than once a week, I stay up surfing all the sites that sell home goods. What surprises me is how few sites are really organized to leverage the uniqueness of digital media -- instead limiting navigation paths that presume I want to browse the way they (the retailer) wants me to.

Here's where www.AllModernLighting.com is different. The navigation assumes I have many nuanced criteria, some aesthetics-based, some size-based, price, etc. Now, while the graphic design is weak at best, I LOVE the fact that I can shop for a ceiling pendant, for example, and choose by room, style, material, shade, length of drop (love this!), etc...What makes me crazy is that this doesn't translate at Crate and Barrel, Room and Board, DWR, and others. Take shopping for a rug. You typically have to click in to every design to see how big it is. My guess is that many people shopping for a rug are governed first by size -- 8-x10 or 3x5, etc..They want to know what the options are in the size they need FIRST instead of being tormented by all the sizes and fabulous designs that won't fit their space.

Further, few of these sites help demonstrate proportion -- how tall is the end table when it's placed next to the sofa? What does the face plate look like that attaches the pendant to the ceiling? Is it thin and cheap or thick and well-made? Inquiring minds need to know.

Pantene Wants to Know: What Will You Wish For?

Find yourself wishing for shinier hair? A healthier body? A park in your community? Maybe a home of your own?

No matter what I dream about (primarily, more sleep!), what I find most important is actually making the wish, putting it out into the universe--it's the first step toward making it come true. And now we've got just the place to do it.

Check out Pantene Beautiful Wishes, a site we launched this week (and for those interested, it's a Flex application with streaming video). This is the place to go to make all sorts of wishes--and help make others' come true. See, for every wish you make on the site, Pantene will donate $1 to its Beautiful Lengths program, which provides real-hair wigs to women with cancer. And you have a chance of winning too. Submit your wish by February 15, 2008 and you can enter a contest to have Pantene help make your wish come true.

Get started now--don't waste a wish!

Free People Accidentally Celebrates Everyone's Birthdays

While even the brands I want to hear from tend to abuse their privileges with my email address, it's good to see a few out there who notice the right opportunities and seize (or, blast) them.

A colleague forwarded an email she received from Free People last week. Apparently the company recently sent out a Happy-Birthday-here's-a-discount-coupon email--but not just to customers who were celebrating their birthdays. Not sure if this went to the whole database, but my colleague got one and she's not blowing out candles any time soon. The email she received last week was an apology about the company's goof.

Two reasons to love Free People's response:

1) It confessed their mistake up front, and did it in an authentic, human way.

2) It encouraged the recipient to use the discount anyway, and assured them they'd still get one on their actual birthday.

For a brand that just got caught doing something that was the opposite of personal, I call this a rewarding recovery.

Marketers Trying to Help Us Keep Resolutions, Not Just Make Them

Before the New Year is old news and annual resolutions are trounced by daily responsibilities, I want to call attention to a few noteworthy examples that hit my inbox.

It's pretty straightforward, but I like how Circuit City put its products behind consumers' goals. For each of 6 resolutions that you've either thought about or resolved to do at some point or another (Get In Shape, Get Organized, you get the idea), it lists 3 product categories that could help you keep your promise to yourself. Simple, yes, but creative and, yes, even inspirational. (Screenshot is down below since it's so big.) Gap had a similar approach, but it was a little on the more-clever-than-constructive side.

Beyond basic emails though, Nike jumped out big and bold with its Join the Resolution campaign. They've created an experience designed to make resolutions "more social, more sharable and more fun, which also means that they'll also be that much easier to keep!"

The landing page shows a live tally of how many people have made their (running) resolutions on the site, and, of course, features those of different runners. (In its recent efforts, Nike is proving itself to be a poster child for open brands.) Nike makes making a resolution easier than breaking one (well, almost!).

So by next month--or next week--you may be back to your old habits and routines, but it's great to see some marketers actually trying to get all of us off to a strong start.

 

 

 

The Open Brand e-book - now available!

Happy New Year! I hope you had at least a little time over the holidays (as I thankfully did!) to pause from the chaos and reflect on everything you did and experienced last year. I know those moments of (near) quiet allowed me to clean out the clutter, get organized, forget about email for 10 days or so (now, that's a vacation!).

Approaching the first full week back, it's time to kick it in to gear. Not sure where to begin? Start with getting your arms around the social web, or the web-made world, as we like to call it at RI. My 2007 project that consumed too many late nights to count and involvement from over 40 colleagues, The Open Brand, is now available as an e-book! (Printed book available in March in case you're interested.) Check it out and feel good about your investment as ALL of our proceeds will go to One Laptop Per Child Project.

Here's to opening your brand in 2008!