Sunday, October 27, 2013

Khue Ngo Blog #6


My Take on Current Events: Facebook survey

I logged into Facebook today and saw this survey question beneath a promoted post for Tory Burch. It asked me about the commercial level of the story. Apparently they want to improve the News Feed function. I first thought it was a good way to get user feedback about how they feel about promoted posts.


However, the same survey question appeared beneath a post from one of my best friends, which is something that I found very confusing. I do not know exactly how they are going to use the feedback about the commercial level of personal posts, but I thought the fact that Facebook is asking for their users’ thoughts is quite interesting. I do not think that this has happened before. Normally, one logs into Facebook and all of the sudden the home page has a new feature, or the entire website is completely redesigned. Listening to user opinions might be a good start to counteracting the general dissatisfaction the crowd feels about the many unannounced changes the site is making. However, the relevance or insightfulness of the question asked is to be challenged.


My TTIY Project

The other day I was looking for some dresses online and also visited the American Eagle website. I found some very nice-looking dresses on sale that I wanted to buy. I am not a big fan of online shopping, which is why I decided to stop by the American Eagle store at Times Square. When I got there, I was very disappointed: They did not have the dresses in their inventory because it is quite cold in New York, and the dresses were meant for the stores in warmer regions. The only way for me to get them is to order them online. However, they told me that I could order them without paying and have them shipped to their New York store. Then I could go there to see if I really wanted these items before I really buy them. On the one hand, I think this is an acceptable solution. On the other hand, I think my disappointment could have been avoided if they tailored their website to locations based on IP addresses (I guess it should work!). This way, when I visit the online shop from New York, they could only show items that are available here and also appropriate for the current weather. All the items that are only available in warmer regions can for example be subsumed in an “online only” section. This way, I would still have access to everything on the website if I wanted to shop directly online, but I would not be disappointed when going to the store and not finding the items that I wanted to buy.


My Recap

I was really looking forward to our visit to Landor, as branding is one of the communications fields that I find very intriguing, yet I never fully grasped the concept of it. The image in my head that I had for branding that it was the same as advertising, except that they do the campaigns and communications for the brands and not for the products. From what we learned at Landor, though, it is much more about strategy than the actual execution. Nevertheless, I still find is highly interesting. One thing I loved was when Mimi said that branding sometimes goes into such detail as to pick the right type of paperclips for the office, which basically represents the notion of telling the story to perfection.

As to opportunities: There is always a battle between agencies about who is actually “owning” the brand because everybody wants to be the owner. With some clients Landor has the opportunity to really be “the owner”, which is something I find quite appealing. You get to be the ones that set the tone for everyone else. However, this can be a challenge at the same time, as one has to put some time and effort into fighting off other agencies that try to steal the ownership of the brand. Other challenges are that brand stories have to break through the clutter the same way as every other message has to these days. Also, Mimi mentioned that it is very hard to put good brand ideas and stories into practice and execute them right.


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