Furniture retailer Habitat has come under fire after it spammed Twitter users through the use of hash tags.

The retailer had been using hash tags, which help users track conversations on the microblogging site, to promote marketing messages that had no relevance to the topics used.

The company’s Twitter feed, HabitatUK, was putting out marketing messages such as 'Our totally desirable Spring collection now has 20% off!' on Friday, using tags such as #mms, #Apple, #iPhone and even used an Iranian election hashtag #Mousavi.

The brand pulled all the messages the next day and replaced them with standard marketing and sales tweets, but many members of Twitter had already seen the messages and publicly spoke of their annoyance.

A spokeswoman at Habitat said, "This was a mistake which we’re looking into. What's important to us is that we always listen, take on board observations and welcome constructive criticism. We will do our utmost to ensure any mistakes are never repeated."

Rhys Willians, managing partner at Agenda21, said it was another example of a big brand poorly executing a social media idea.

"In its response it has also gone for corporate behaviour, which doesn't really work," he said. "It made a mistake. There's a general acceptance from Twitter users that it won't operate for free and that there are going to be ads, but brands need to know what they're doing and execute it correctly."

Antony Mayfield, head of social media at digital agency iCrossing, said brands need to understand social networks before using them for marketing.

"You need to understand your networks and Habitat understood on a technical level but not on a social level," he said. "Brands also have to understand that just because it happened on a social network doesn't mean people outside it won't know about it too."

Source: NMA

Labels: branding, brands, Habitat

A friend asked me a couple of days ago what I thought of this. Advertising in the 1990s and 2000s are marked in part by brand owners appropriating, or rather attempting to appropriate, cultural meanings around particular people and objects in order to help generate, maintain and reinforce meanings brand owners construct for their brands. This is one of the themes in Naomi Klein's No Logo. The most obvious example is probably Nike, about which I have blogged on this issue before.

This cultural appropriation supposes a dominantly uni-directional relationship, that is to say, that viewers/listeners etc will translate onto the brand some of those meanings given to the person, say Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. Using famous golfers, basketball players and other athletes to sell Nike sports' equipment makes sense because the scenario is credible: premium athletes on the one hand, and a premium sport brand on the other.

Some recent commercials demonstrate how brand owners' intentions don't always work out as they intend (which is part of a broader point, that designers and so on can only configure particular readings, and not determine them). Iggy Pop currently appears in a commerical for a company that sells car insurance, and Alice Cooper appears in a commercial for Aviva (formerly Norwich Union - another company that sells insurance. As the BBC piece demonstrates, there is a disjuncture between these persons and whom they are promoting, in the minds of significant proportion of viewers of these commericials. Meanings given to the endorsers on the one hand, and the brands on the other as so different as to make them not work in the minds of consumers. More problematically is that rather than the brands appropriating some of the meanings given to the endorsers, meanings given to the latter are weakened because of the association between the two. An unforseen consequence of these commericals is that they say less about the brands (aren't they cool!) and more about the endorsers (they've sold out).

Labels: adverts, appropriation, aviva, brands, commericals, naomi klein, no logo, swiftcover

Supermarkets set me thinking about the internet, which surprised me too. The internet seems to me to be slowly becoming less and less about sites (I'm blogging this from my phone) and more about applications, open source, linking, embedding, readers and so on, which are both indicative of and constitutive of a postmodern / late modern way of being identifiable by stitching things together, customisation, optimising, picking and choosing to one's own ends. This is double edged, for although it is undoubtedly an aid to individual agency and a kind of 'playfulness', it can lead to uncertainty, doubt and an absence of a 'knowable' object.

So what does this have to do with Supermarkets?

Brands. Increasingly brand owners set their brands up as providers of structure that both enable and make sense of 'do it yourself' identity, society and culture, viz Google and err, Google. So perhaps it isn't much of a leap to say that I'm not surprised at people becoming more likely to shop around at different supermarkets. Supermarkets are so successful partly because they (appear) to provide so much choice and so many possibilities for identity and ways to be. But, when one of the choices - in this case low prices for particular products - is not on offer at one supermarket but is at another, and when that choice is in demand, then people flit.

Labels: brands, internet, postmodernity, shopping, supermarkets

I was searching for a friend yesterday, who I managed to find over here. And in doing so, I felt compelled to resurrect this blog.

So, there was an article in the Times yesterday, reporting on how the economic downturn is coinciding with two behavioural phenomena. Firstly, people buying the kinds of exotic foods they would otherwise have eaten at restaurants. Secondly, people sourcing the cheapest basics e.g. pasta, flour and so on from the cheaper alternatives.

This suggests, that it isn't the supermarkets that will lose out, but restuarants. On the contrary, they will do quite nicely thank you very much, which is another blow for the independents.

It's also problematic in terms of brand loyalty. It's quite interesting that people are still shopping at Waitrose but then going onto Sainsbury's.

But I can't imagine them visiting Lidl.

Labels: brands, shopping, supermarkets

I happened to be wandering down Piccadilly a couple of days ago when I happened upon an Audi car showroom. Now, this area is probably one of the most expensive in London (The Ritz is just across the road), so I was quite surprised to see something that one normally sees out of town. I guess this is because car showrooms tend to take up a lot of space, they leave a lot of space empty, and space is at a premium round here. But you need space to walk slowly around, to view from all angles, to appreciate the lines, reflections, chrome, extravagance. I think advertisers to want us to experience some cars as pieces of cool art or sculpture, to coolly view them from a distance.


But then, in the background I saw some objects I really hadn't ever expected to see. Coats, rucksacks, trousers and a few other items of apparel. So, is it a car showroom? Is Audi a car manufacturer? I think so, but Peugeot designs and sell what are, apparently, very good salt and pepper mills. Porsche just sells cars? You can buy Porsche LCD screens and even kettles and toasters. So, perhaps these are less car manufactuers, and more brands. Brands allow brand owners to extend products beyond what they are typically known for, whilst often, at the same time, those new products reinforce brands in terms of projects for which they are already known. They are a way of categorising objects and attributing to those objects meanings constructed for those brands. Of course, this is open to interpretation - those objects have to credibly reflect the brand. I can imagine an Audi shoulder bag, refrigerator, or juicer. I can't imagine a packet of Audi chewing gum.

Labels: Audi, brands, Piccadilly