Here is an overview of last month’s digital news.
Google has opened its first physical store in London to introduce consumers to the new Google Chrome Book. The pop up shop called the ‘Chrome Zone’ which is situated at PC World on Tottenham Court Road is the company’s first bricks and mortar retail operation. Chrome Books have been built and optimised for the web, operating on Google’s own operating system (Chrome OS) which is a notebook optimised version of Android.
The amount that marketers are predicted to spend on digital video advertising looks set to increase by 25% over the next 12 months, with an estimated 23% of corporations total online spend being dedicated to the medium. Further research has indicated that video sharing sites and on demand content usage has increased three fold over the last 12 months.
YouTube is launching a ‘Merch’ store which will allow musicians to sell merchandise, digital downloads and tickets straight from their artist page. The Google owned site has announced partnerships with Top Spin which will help in merchandise sales, Songkick which will sell concert tickets and Amazon and iTunes will assist in music downloads from the site.
Sony has confirmed that it is to pay £920 million to take full control of its mobile handset joint venture Sony Ericsson. Sony has released a statement claiming that the move has been made to “integrate smartphones into its wider portfolio of consumer electronic devices”.
Every month at Navigate we like to highlight an interesting marketing campaign. This month we have focused on a loyalty based Facebook campaign from Heinz.
Heinz’s social media campaign focuses on offering discount vouchers for their new chili flavoured tomato ketchup. Users that are not currently brand advocates can ‘like’ the page before clicking through to receive a coupon. The user can then choose between immediately downloading the coupon or sharing it with their social connections, which doubles its value to 50p off.
At Navigate we are impressed that Heinz has used a simple loyalty mechanic to provide social advocates with a discount and then incentivise them to harness their social connections to promote a product. Too often brands attempt to gain the highest volume of ‘likes’ without taking full advantage of the massive direct marketing potential available through social media.
Look out for the next digital world update in early December.
Thanks
Matty