Kenmore is diving deeper into the Internet video production world, creating a new reality show, "So You Wanna Be a Designer," that depicts budding designers trying to gain a foothold in the fashion industry. Through the six-week show, which will be produced out of the brand's Kenmore Live Studio in downtown Chicago, the contestants will learn how to create and launch a fashion brand, how to price, present and promote their designs, while also gaining exposure to top designers, stylists and photographers. Episodes of the series will run on the brand's Facebook page. "We're trying to emphasize to a new generation of cooks, fashionistas, moms, dads, couples and homeowners that the Kenmore brand is no longer what you saw in your grandmother's laundry room. It's a modern brand with designer touches and features that put it head and shoulders above the competition while staying true to the brand's tradition of reliability and quality," Richard Goldsmith, Kenmore's social media manager, tells Marketing Daily in response to emailed questions. "This show gives us a platform to do that while providing great entertainment value and rewarding some amazing talent with a chance to shine." Hosted by Chicago designer Debbie Yagel, the show's contestants will be presented with challenges (such as field trips, meetings and appearances) every Tuesday, with their completed designs to be showcased during the live Thursday night episodes (which begin at 7 PM CT). During the time between the challenge and presentation, the contestants will be required to spend two hours at the Studio interacting with Yagel and each other. Those two hours will be live-streamed. The winner will receive $20,000 and a set of Kenmore Elite laundry appliances. Though the company has been producing video content out of its Kenmore Live Studio consistently for the past year, "So You Wanna Be a Designer" is the brand's first stab at an episodic show, Goldsmith says. "It has been a lot of fun seeing what our audience reacts to the most, and even more fun demonstrating the dramatic changes that our products have gone through via these shows," he says. "We're drawing in a new generation of Kenmore fans that are some of the most savvy consumers in history. These shows allow us to reach them in a more genuine way -- entertaining and getting our message out there for all to see."
J.D. Power & Associates' President Finbarr O'Neill was in New York last week to give a talk at a meeting of the Conference Board. His talk was in an area that he -- and J.D. Power -- know all too well: customer service. But the firm is, like everyone else, figuring out how to use social media platforms to gauge customer service, as well as product impact, design and just about everything else consumers talk about when they discuss brands online. O'Neill's company has been in the thick of it since 2008 when it acquired Boulder, Colo.-based metrics firm Umbria to develop tools for clients to tap into and interpret Web buzz. That's a big shift for the firm, whose bread and butter has been purely survey-based methods that are necessarily retrospective. He talks to Marketing Daily about customer service and social media. Q: What is the value of social media in customer service research? A: It's great because you can hear what people are saying -- unbidden -- about your brand, and that gives you a real insight as to how that brand is translating and how they define for themselves the core essence of the brand. Q: Sometime after J.D. Power acquired Umbria, you said it added "listening" to JDP's box of research tools that had been traditionally focused on "asking" and "watching," (via the Power Information Network) and also added a predictive rather than just retrospective function to your research. What is the status of that? A: Our social media product [for the automotive sector], the Automotive Industry Monitor, is about going beyond just buzz or volume and really understanding what people are saying around key concepts. But you just can't boil the ocean. The question is, how do you distill this data? So we have a partner, (social media consumer research firm) NetBase, and we are working closely with them and with Honda to refine the product and make it something relevant not only to our traditional clients around customer satisfaction, but also product designers and marketing departments. Q: So this is in beta?A: It's sort of at 1.0 now and we are looking to bring it to 2.0, a more sophisticated product. Ultimately, we would like to apply it to any industry -- telecom, for example -- where customers are having online conversations about products and experience. Since [people engaging in social media] are not constrained by a survey, we can see what they are really saying and try to distill that. The problem is there is so much out there, how do you digest it? That's what these monitors, hopefully, will be doing in a variety of industries. Q: There must be 10,000 other companies doing this, or purporting to ... A: There are a lot of products out there that measure customer sentiment and do it very well and are very inexpensive -- so we are not trying to duplicate that, we are trying to go deeper. For instance, we have a hierarchy -- topic, feature and attribute -- and without getting technical -- what that does is give much more dimension and depth to the information than just superficially grading their emotion about your product. Q: What about the benefit of synergy with J.D. Power's traditional data from sources like the Power Information Network? A: The monitors have to be supplemented. The challenge is taking social media data, which is qualitative, and tying it to quantitative data you have through more traditional research around the consumer. Our challenge is, we were traditionally quantitative: we ask 220 questions about quality, and slice and dice that data. Here, you don't even have the questions, you're just listening to what they are saying. And yet you have to judge it in some way. Once you discover the [issues] on customer satisfaction or product ideas people are discussing, then it's about tying that back to other information. But it's also a big challenge to OEMs because they get lots of data pouring in from a variety of sources and consolidating that into an action plan is a big challenge. Q: So if OEMs have this data, why do they need you? A: I think one of the lessons is that the internal market research departments can't do everything and coming out of the latest recession they have eviscerated a number of functions. Q: How about the cultural challenge within J.D. Power of getting social media people to talk to the survey people doing things like initial quality, durability, and customer service studies?A: Yes, J.D. Power has had its silos and one challenge is to break those down and share information not just within people who look at the auto industry, but across industries. That was a theme at the Conference Board [Thursday morning]: one of the themes was the relevance of looking at other industries. There were people from Mercedes and Jaguar -- and they were there to hear about Ritz Carlton, for instance, who has something to say about how you manage and contribute to the customer experience. Q: Doesn't the automotive sector have a special challenge in this regard, since the OEMs only have so much control over dealerships who are really the ones who define customer service for most people? A: Yes. We have a particular client struggling with that right now. They have great product, but they can't get the dealers to do what they need to do [to participate in gauging customer service]. Except pay them. And I know another brand that has tried to compensate dealers, as generally speaking, dealers want a system that will maximize reward. They are doing things like coaching their customers to give the right answers. There are always going to be disputes about methodologies in the retail experience if you are tracking your own retail service to improve the customer experience.
The global market share of private label food products is expected to double, from its current 25% to 50%, by 2025, according to a new report from the Food and Agri Research division of Rabobank, an international financial services provider. The report, however, also concludes that top or "A" brands are expected to retain their market shares. It's the smaller, often local, "B" brands that will face mounting downward pressure on volumes, as retailers stop carrying them in favor of using their shelf space for their own private label brands. Rabobank outlines 11 drivers behind the projected private label growth. One of the most critical is that regardless of economic conditions, consolidation among retailers in developed markets, including the U.S., Western Europe and Australia, will continue. That consolidation will remove the main factor that has been holding back full-scale growth of private label: the economies of scale required for cost-effective production levels. While recent statistics have pointed to a halt in the rapid growth of private label that was seen during the worst of the recession, and brands overall will recoup some of the share lost to private label, the historical trends show that they never totally recoup those losses, according to the report. The lingering effects of the recession on consumers will drive private label expansion across the globe for years to come, say the analysts. Those effects include consumers' raised awareness of private label (aided by the introduction of "premium" private label brands), which has in turn spurred expansion of "hard discount" retail formats (warehouse clubs, dollar stores, "everyday low price" mass merchants and supermarkets) and increased competitive pressure on service-oriented supermarkets for lower price points and non-price differentiators from discount food retailers. In addition, the private label supply chain is becoming increasingly professional, which is likely to lead to higher-quality private label products at lower prices. A major driver is the growth of private label supplier specialists -- suppliers that are increasingly achieving volume by serving both B brands and private labels -- a strategy that often accelerates the deterioration of the B brands, according to Rabobank. On the other hand, top brands' roles vis à vis private labels are expected to actually gain importance. Rabobank expects their market shares to at least hold, if not increase, versus private label. Private labels, in addition to yielding higher margins for retailers, give them important leverage in negotiating with brands. But at the same time, retailers very much need A brands. Consumers value in-store competition and want brands to benchmark the price competitiveness of their supermarkets, and food retailers need top brands as their price/quality anchors within each product category, the report points out. If retailers compete too aggressively on price against top brands with their private label brands, they will end up lowering the retail prices on their private labels, as well as reducing their own overall profitability within product categories, creating a downward price/quality spiral. The effects of private label on A brands over the past five years have been limited, Rabobank's statistical analysis shows. Strong brands have been able to outpace market growth in more than half of the food/beverage categories. Furthermore, while growth potential in developed countries within mature categories such as beer, margarine and frozen pizza is limited, strong brands have major opportunities in gaining share in less developed regions. In recent years, large multinational food/beverage manufacturers have been "actively targeting the top three positions in selected product categories" in developing countries, in part by acquiring "local hero" brands or non-core brands of other multinationals, the report notes. "Our research shows that private label and A-brands are an inseparable combination," sums up Sebastiaan Schreijen, associate director, processed food and retail at Rabobank. "But whereas two's company, three's a crowd, this report is an early warning to B-brand suppliers to adapt their strategies to survive."
Korea Tourism Organization is launching a global online campaign with the goal of introducing Korean food culture with the help of a Hollywood star and famous YouTube musicians. At the center of the global online campaign is a Web site, www.buzz-korea.com, which targets English, Chinese and Japanese-speaking countries by highlighting different aspects of Korea. The Web site encourages user interaction, including the posting of stories about Korean food and culture. Users are encouraged to repost the Web site's address on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Ameba and QQ. "We would like to see the wide-spreading of the Korean culture and food to the American audience through this global campaign," says Lee Charm, the CEO of the Korea Tourism Organization, in a statement. The effort includes a Korean cooking contest, "Korean Food, Top Chef Challenge," hosted by Cathlyn Choi. Choi is the producer of "Cathlyn's Korean Kitchen," the only Korean TV Cooking Show in English. In the show, she follows the six best American chefs who are challenged to present Korean food. The show will air through KOCE/OC channels of PBS on April 7. Included are teams from San Diego, Orange County, Calif. and Mexico. One of the show's judges is James Kyson Lee, a Korean-American actor known for his role as Ando Masahashi in NBC's "Heroes." During his exclusive interview with PBS, Lee talks about his affection toward Korean food and its possibilities to be enjoyed by the citizens of the world. The interview and behind-the-scenes footage from the show also will be posted on Buzz Korea's website. The general public can vote online for their favorite chef until March 30. Voters will eligible to win prizes including an iPad2, iTunes gift cards or "Heroes" season 1 DVDs autographed by Lee. Another feature on the website is a three-minute long omnibus mini-drama starring Clara C. and Jennifer Chung, rising stars of YouTube who are proud of their Korean heritage. The video footage is scheduled to be released simultaneously through YouTube and Buzz Korea's campaign site.
While Americans are more than willing to forgive a company with a less-than-perfect environmental track record, 71% say they will stop buying a product if they feel they've been misled about its environmental impact, according to the latest Green Gap Trend Tracker from Cone. And 37% say they are so ticked off by the practice that it's grounds for completely boycotting the company and all its products. Cone, a Boston-based cause-related marketing firm, says there is also a growing perception that it's tough for a company to get it right every time, with 75% saying it is okay if a given brand isn't environmentally perfect, as long as it's honest and forthcoming about its efforts. But consumers continue to give marketers poor marks on those communication efforts, with 79% wishing there was more detail on packaging, 75% longing for companies to explain the environmental terms they use, and 59% believing that marketers shouldn't use such claims at all unless they back them up with more details and explanations. Cone also reports that consumers continue to misunderstand the most common marketing buzzwords, such as "green" or "environmentally friendly." While 97% think they know what those phrases mean (up from 90% in Cone's 2008 survey), 41% believe these terms mean a product actually has a good or beneficial impact on the environment. Only 29% get that those phrases words mean less harmful than competing products. Consumers are also suspicious: 57% mistrust green claims. The survey, which included 1,035 adults, also tested three separate marketing methods, asking customers to "purchase" brands that either bore a mock certification, a vague "made with natural ingredients" claim, or an even vaguer "made with ... imagery" claim. The certification was by far the most popular, chosen by 51% of respondents, with 51% of all respondents believing the claim was then reviewed and verified by a credible third party. The study also shows that green concerns survived the recession. Some 39% say they think about the environmental impact of their shopping at least sometimes -- up from 36% in 2008 -- and 23% say they do so regularly (up from 21%. Only 11% say they never think about it, down from 15%. Only 8% say it's on their mind every time they shop (down from 9%.)
There's been a significant up-tick in the number of well-known recording artists -- among them Lady Gaga, the Ting Tings and Lou Reed -- lending their names, music and public persona to brand-name designers' promotional campaigns. And while the strategy can be lucrative and beneficial for both parties, such a match requires mutual respect for and understanding of the value each brings to the relationship. Beyond the traditional concept of celebrity endorsement or paid-spokesperson status, today's musical marketing marriages bring a much deeper level of creative influence to the message and the campaign. What's driving the trend? Not long ago, musicians made the lion's share of their revenue from record sales and tours, with little worry about generating additional streams of income. At the time, partnering with a brand might get an artist or band labeled a "sell out." But, the advent of MP3 downloads and a peer-to-peer sharing networks has changed the game for many musicians, forcing them to look at alternative business models. Meanwhile, most artists have awakened to the reality that every product they use and location they frequent becomes "endorsed" by them by default in the eyes of their fans. Today, such partnerships manifest in musicians crafting an original soundtrack to support a brand launch or multimedia campaign. For example, Lady Gaga's "The Fame" provided the soundtrack for Michael Kors' Very Hollywood fragrance launch before she became an international sensation and Lou Reed's "The Power of the Heart" was conceived for Cartier's Love collection. These arrangements, if carefully negotiated with mutual respect from both parties, can offer significant mutual benefit. For marketers, it provides an opportunity to create an overall brand lifestyle experience for their target audience that captures their attention, cuts through the clutter and garners an emotional connection that permeates the consumer psyche beyond the "buy now" response. The integrated brand story becomes as much a part of the attraction as does the quality of the product. For musicians, partnerships with luxury brands can help raise artists' profiles and expose them to an entirely new audience demographic than they may have otherwise been able to reach (the same is true for the brand, as well). It also provides much-needed support for cultural and creative development with brand partners in essence becoming the benefactors to finance the creative process. As with any good marriage, the musician-brand relationship requires an appropriate pairing. This involves not only careful consideration of the DNA of both parties and a comparison of shared values, but also a mutual respect for and understanding of the flavor each brings to the mix. Often, brands must relinquish control of the creative process and allow the artist the freedom to give tangible life to the shared vision -- a notion that can be difficult to accept for typical creative officers and agency types. To be true, it can be a risky proposition given the public's fascination with celebrity scandal. However, the results can be magnificent. The right pairing can be an immensely effective blending of two very different worlds to achieve common goals. When expertly matched and negotiated by an experienced mediator well-entrenched on both sides of the aisle, a match made in heaven can be transformed into a lasting, satisfying relationship.