This Week’s Trends in Social Media Marketing
By: Western Daughter
Tags: Digital Marketing, Retail, Marketing, Social Media, Ecommerce

+Elizabeth Arden’s ‘From The Desk Of #LizArden’ wins Best in Show at the first Glossy Awards

“Elizabeth Arden won Best in Show at the first Glossy Awards tonight, for its multi-platform digital campaign, “From the Desk of #LizArden.” With the campaign, the 107-year-old beauty brand updated its image for the modern customer: For starters, it ditched the “Elizabeth Arden” moniker entirely and added a hashtag. The spot introducing the campaign featured comedienne Chelsea Handler and a bevy of influencers, including fashion icon Iris Apfel, DJ Mia Moretti and style blogger Gabi Gregg, aka Gabifresh.” — Via Glossy

+What Instagram’s New Sponsored Post Tool Means for Fashion and Beauty Brands

“The days of tagging #spon and #ad on Instagram posts may soon be a practice of the past.

Instagram is rolling out a new tool that will allow influencers and brands to denote sponsored content within the infrastructure of the app. The disclosure will operate as a visible tag on the post that says “Paid partnership with,” along with the brand name. It will be listed immediately under the account name, replacing the geotag feature for these photos. The platform announced the tag on Wednesday, in a bid for transparency. It was largely influenced by ongoing complaints from the Federal Trade Commission (the governmental agency that oversees commerce) about improper labeling of paid content on social media.” — Via Glossy

+Dove Celebrates “Men Who Care” with Sponsored Youtube Content

“Dove released a 30-second spot on YouTube titled “Celebrate Men Who Are There to Care This Father’s Day” that reflects parent company Unilever’s shifting approach to marketing to men following the results of its own research showing that only 7% of men relate to depictions of masculinity in today’s media, per a Google post and Ipsos research .

Dove’s YouTube content includes highlighting ways that care makes men stronger along with the product benefits messaging, said Adam Domian, senior brand manager of Dove Men+Care, in the Google post.

The brand’s shifting media buying and creative approach is also based on Ipsos research that uncovered 91% of dads watch YouTube monthly and also found that 80% of millennial dads watch YouTube for parenting content, a higher portion than moms for the same content at 71%.” — Via MarketingDive.com

+Moda Operandi is Driving Instagram Traffic Through Amazon Pay

As Moda Operandi’s traffic from social was increasing at a clip of 140 percent year over year, the company turned to Instagram to figure out how it could turn that interest into actual purchases.

The retailer, which is a platform for pre-ordering items from designers’ runway collections online, as well as an in-season e-commerce boutique, had been using Curalate’s Like2Buy platform in order to make it easier to shop Instagram, the social platform that drives the most revenue for Moda Operandi. When Curalate launched an integration with Amazon Pay that put a one-step checkout button directly on the Like2Buy platform, cutting out a jump to the retailer’s product page from the purchasing process, Moda Operandi was the first brand to try it.

Moda Operandi’s Instagram Integration with Curalate and Amazon Pay

“With the nature of high fashion, Instagram is a big driver of traffic,” said Keiron McCammon, Moda Operandi’s chief technology officer. “Getting people to directly purchase on these social platforms is a high priority for us in pushing the boundaries of luxury and how it’s sold online.”

With the new integration, users on Moda Operandi’s Instagram feed, which has close to 1 million followers, can shop and pre-order newly launched collections through the Like2Buy link, which lives in Moda Operandi’s account bio. Amazon Pay lets Like2Buy incorporate a selection process, like size and color, and shoppers can populate their Amazon account information to check out by hitting just one button. Their shipping and billing information will be filled in automatically, and there’ll have no need to visit the retailer’s product page to finish the purchase. The order will then be managed through the retailer’s site. While Moda Operandi is the first brand to enable the integration, any brand or retailer that has Amazon Pay incorporated at checkout can tie it to Like2Buy to offer the same experience. — Via Digiday

+Facebook Boosts Creative Hub with Mobile Video Optimization, Streamlined Workflow

Facebook is adding two new features to its mobile ad tool, Creative Hub, per a news announcement, including a group of testing tools that allow marketers to test mobile ad creative and should be available soon. The first tool in the set will give marketers a snapshot of video results that can used to optimize video creative based on metrics.

The second feature is the ability to deliver mocked-up ads directly from Creative Hub in real time and is currently available. The feature improves workflow between media and creative groups by allowing creative teams to bypass the step of sending ad mock-ups via email or zipped files by keeping the entire process within Creative Hub.

Facebook first announced Creative Hub at Cannes Lions last year before formally launching it in November 2016, and is using this year’s festival to announce the latest updates to the mobile creative tool. To learn more about Facebook’s Creative Hub, visit their site here. — Via MobileMarketer

+The Implications of Amazon Prime Wardrobe’s Launch

“Amazon continues to encroach on fashion’s e-commerce space with today’s announcement that it’s launching Prime Wardrobe, a “try before you buy” service allowing customers to test out various personally selected items and keep those they like most.

Available only to Prime members, shoppers will be able to choose from a slew of apparel brands already on Amazon Fashion — including Levi’s and Calvin Klein — across the women’s, men’s and kids’ categories, and will be treated to free shipping and returns, which can be left for pick-up on their doorstep. A 10 percent discount will be given to those customers who end up keeping three to four items, and a 20 percent discount to those holding on to five or more. (Customers can select and purchase up to 15 styles at a time.)

Brian Lee, the associate director of luxury retail at L2, is doubtful it will have a significant effect on the upper tiers of the fashion industry. “Many companies have boxes at the moment, and several have failed,” he said. “This will probably have a bigger impact on the mid-to-low market than the luxury market, which hasn’t really accepted Amazon and which Amazon doesn’t seem to be targeting, either.”

If successful, however, he wouldn’t be surprised to see competitors like Walmart and Target imitate the program.

To court those customers who are fashion savvy, Amazon may have to prove more forward-thinking when it comes to its offerings, which still largely consist of basics and tame styles from trendier brands like Tibi and Calvin Klein.

One of the reasons people like Stitch Fix is that they send you things you wouldn’t normally try on or buy,” said Seth Garske, the director of marketing science at HackerAgency. “It will be interesting to see if Amazon can leverage their data not just to send people the right items based on their personal tastes, but also as a means for staying ahead of the trends.”

They will also need to solve for the fact that — unlike services such as Trunk Club and Stitch Fix, which have fairly focused audience targets — Amazon is used by a huge and varied demographic. “Selection is going to be paramount,” said Stefan Weitz, the vice president of technology services at Radial. “They’ll need enough diversity of products to cater to the breadth of people who use Amazon today and to whom this might be appealing.” — Via Glossy

+Fashion Brands Are Increasing Digital Spending

“Fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci are shifting marketing dollars from print ads to digital channels such as social media and online advertising, per The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reported fashion brands increased digital ad spending 63% last year compared to 2013, according to Zenith Media. Magazine spending dropped 8% over the same period. Overall print spending well outpaced digital at $2.6 billion last year compared to $1.01 billion for online ads.

The trend clearly favors online marketing with François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of luxury conglomerate Kering Co., telling the Journal, “If we were to launch a brand today, all the communication to start would be online.” He also said the company has shifted its communication budget to up to 40% digital compared to up to 20% 18 months ago.” — Via Marketing Dive

+Facebook Offers Value Optimization Ads and Lookalike Audiences

“Facebook wants to help marketers get more juice for their squeeze according to an announcement from Facebook Business this week.

Facebook ads have a couple new options for us — specifically, a new value optimization tool and an updated value-based lookalike audiences tool. Both features draw on the capabilities of Facebook’s pixel, which mines data about audience behavior and interactions to help businesses understand and optimize their targeting ads. This update is aimed towards helping eCommerce and B2C businesses improve their ad performance and improve ROI from Facebook ads.

With this new update, Facebook uses their data to identify which users are likely to make a purchase or download information from a particular company and thus determine which audience holds the highest value for the campaign. Value optimization is the mechanism by which marketers can tailor their ad buys to these “valuable users”.

Meanwhile, the value-based ‘lookalike audiences’ tool is receiving a global rollout after its introduction four years ago.The functional purpose here is to provide marketers with a smarter way to grow their potential consumer base by targeting users whose online usage history mirrors that of preexisting, high-value consumers. Now marketers will find a new ‘value’ column for entire customer lists that will help make their target audience, or “valuable users”, see your ad.” —Via SocialMediaToday.com