Filed under: Brands & Marketing, fashion, social media | Tags: Facebook, jeans, levis, likes
Declare your Likes with Levis
Staying ahead of the game, Levi’s announced their new ‘Friend Store’ a few days ago, integrating the social networking ‘like’ function onto their e-commerce site at www.levi.com. The Friend Store allows people who connect through Facebook to rate different garments, and also see what products their friends have liked, making it easy to share the shopping experience.
Personally I quite like this, and well done for the good timing with the Facebook ‘like’ evolution this past week. Although I’m not completely convinced that I want to know what jeans others like. In fact, I would probably want to make sure that I don’t get exactly the same pair of denims as any my closest friends have…
I just checked but none of my friends likes any jeans yet. What about yours?
Filed under: Blogroll, Industry news, New Technology, News | Tags: amazzzzzing, cat, Google, hosting, loading, neil
We personally hate slow loading sites – and now – so does Google. Since the 9th April 2010 Google has started taking site loading speed into account when deciding where to list your site in their search results. So why is this important? In short, it’s time to take a long hard look at your hosting.
Good hosting is a critical component to ensuring your site loads as quickly as possible. Far too often we hear something along the lines of “Why should we pay you that much for hosting? Company X will do it for half that price, plus give us all of these amazzzzing features and will even dry-clean my cat!”. Well – here’s why…
In general the number of sites hosted on a single server goes up as the cost of the hosting goes down. And more sites on a server means that when a user (and now Google) visits your site, there is a larger number of other sites all scrambling for the servers attention. This – inevitably – results in your site having to wait its turn before the page is finally delivered to the user. End result – an irritated user who will most likely take their precious browsing time elsewhere. In other words: #fail.
Stay tuned for other fascinating reasons why you should perhaps put just a little more thought into your hosting…
Filed under: Coffee Break | Tags: bad, barry, build network, epic, fail, LinkedIn, lol, recommendation, referral, sanders, social, tip
Avi tells it like it is... epic fail.
Sometimes people post them to their profile without reading them properly.
Check out Barry Sanders who tried to connect to me on LinkedIn. I don’t know him and chances are that we will never connect now thanks to a recommendation he posted on his own profile from a former supplier. A recommendation that announces him as a “thief” who you should never do business with. In the business we call this an ‘epic fail’. Did Avi ever get swindled by Barry? Who knows. Who cares. The important thing is that despite Barry’s best attempts to build his network, most people will look at this and blacklist him.
This may seem like an extreme case but the point is essentially the same across all social media profiles – for an individual or brand – that Moderation and relevant content is the most important part of building the network. If it’s relevant or good then people will come and join you.
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Events, fashion, Our team | Tags: beers, champers, darling, drinks, evening, event, Events, fashion, fridays, looking good, makeover, nibbles, part, style, stylist, topman, topshop
YouTube blogger Chris "Lomasca" made an appearance
After work on Friday last week the Neoco team headed up to Oxford Street and the re-launch of the TOPMAN Stylist Service. From now on TOPMAN will invite all style-hungry Londoners on the last Friday of each month for free style advice, live DJ, limited edition goody bags to grab, complimentary beer and some decent super brand discounts on offer.
We had a real good time browsing around the shop, drink-in-hand, mingling with the trendy people and checking out the S/S 10 collections. Sharps, the barbershop from New York located next to the Stylist Lounge on the 2nd floor, offered haircuts on the house, which seemed much appreciated by all involved.
If you missed it this time around, tune in on the 30th April when the next Fashion Friday is due, or for more info head over to www.topman.com/stylist
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Hot List Clients | Tags: bloggers, blogs, brands, Digital, examples, fashion, fave, key events, london fashion week, partnership, topman
Bloggers are now permanent features at key events, like the front rows at fashion catwalk shows 2010
We are facing an exciting year for the fashion industry. It seems that brands are (finally) fully embracing the digital sphere and online has become a vital ingredient in the marketing mix of most high street retailers. The most important driving force behind this is of course the behaviour of us, the consumers. It is no longer a competitive advantage for fashion brands to have a well established digital presence, but it is indeed a disadvantage not to. Social channels to tune in to, blogs for us to follow, online competitions, members areas with exclusive content and previews, these are all examples of what consumers expect from fashion brands of today. If they fail to deliver the fans will go elsewhere.
This development is further empowered by the new generation of fashion editors – the fashion bloggers. These people represent the self-exclaimed, international fashion elite currently picking up and sharing trends and industry news quicker than any other channels. They have not only become style icons with their own fashion tribes, but they are also considered to be reliable sources of information for trend and lifestyle advice, something which retailers ought to acknowledge and respond to.
Here’s a few of our fave fashion blogs:
http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
http://stylebubble.typepad.com/
http://00o00.blogspot.com/
http://kingdomofstyle.typepad.co.uk/
http://facehunter.blogspot.com/
http://thefashionisto.com/blog/
We work together with several key fashion brands in the UK, developing their digital presence and helping them to gather and engage with their own tribes. If you are curious to find out more about how we do this get in touch with Lexy, our Fashion Account Manager.
Filed under: Coffee Break, Hot List Clients, Our team | Tags: client, hyde park, park, photo, photoshoot, pictures
The Space-hoppers take a 5 min smokers break during the morning shoot.
Early this morning we headed out to Hyde Park for a photo shoot al fresco with our clients from charity organisation ‘See The Difference’. Together we created some great imagery for their new website, which is due to go live in April 2010.
As usual, it didn't take the team long before they started pulling...
Here are some behind the scenes snaps for you lucky blog readers. We could get used to spending Wednesday mornings in the park, playing ball games and jumping around on orange space hoppers!
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Hot List Clients, New Technology, research, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth, Technology | Tags: automated, client, graph, manual, measurement, media, option, positive, preference, rating, social, tool, win
the premise behind social media is nothing new
In a recent survey of our clients, one of the most highly rated tools in their marketing and PR arsenal was our Social Effectiveness rating system. This enables neoco clients to benchmark their activity, measure impact and online effectiveness of other channels (like Radio and TV) and importantly compare against their key competitors.
before and after wheel rating
Our system assess 7 key criteria, combining both automated and manual assessment. This gives a clear understanding of what has been effective during the activity.
compare against competition
OK, so the above graph looks a little confusing but that is because all layers are displayed. Individually it enables our clients to see how they measure up against the competition, where the growth is and who is making waves.
If you are interested in a social rating report on your brand then just get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.
the budget version of the BBC testcard was not liked by all
What’s this? The BBC coming to neoco? awesome. Following on from our other iPhone app project success, the BBC have asked neoco to take part in a new series that will involve iPhone development. Part of this involves filming the team at work from brainstorm and concept stage, through development and launch.
Filed under: Industry news, Mostly Mobile, New Technology | Tags: Apps, content, Design, ical, ipad, iPhone, iPod, issues, launch, live, missing, problems, resolution, scaling, touch, where are they, white space, Widgets
Presenting the iPad. Coming soon... keyboard, additional screen, mouse and desktop unit.
As the iPad nears it’s launch date, coverage is starting to focus on the content, or lack thereof. It seems that several apps are missing for reasons that seem obvious to professional app producers (like us) and perplexing to others.
The simple reason is space. The iPad can run iPhone apps in a scaled up version. The issue is that (forgetting the pixelation if there is not a HD version of the app) the original apps were designed for a screen substantially smaller. Increasing this proportionally will disporportionally increase white/ negative space in the app. And that is just going to look bad. Real bad. This is one of the reasosn why we are working with clients right now in parallel development of their iPhone and iPad apps.
So let’s put aside personal views on what the iPad means for consumers, Apple and web developers and focus on the facts that it will sell. As a branded app content owner, you (the client) need to make an informed decision regarding the ROI value (even if just PR) of developing an iPad specific version of the app because it is not going to be a straight copy of the iPhone app, though unfortunately, that’s what we can happening right now as people look to save money on a quick port.
Why not also read our developers viewpoint on the iPad.
EDIT***
John Gruber has touched on this same point on his blog.
Filed under: Industry news, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: conditions, Facebook, Family Guy, griffin, grinds my gears, new, peter, terms
Peter Griffin hates Facebook new Terms too.
Sometimes you just wish for the freedom of being a cartoon character – even if that is Peter Griffin from Family Guy. He’s an idiot but fans of the show will know and love the episode where he gets his own News section on things that wind him up. If he were working in digital marketing I’m sure he would of adapted his famous rant to “You know what really grinds my gears America? Facebook. F**k Facebook!” because Facebook have recently changed their Terms and Conditions.
They say it is to improve the service, reduce spam and unwanted news feed items. The problem was that they then froze several client pages for reasons known only to the technical team. The UK account team were zero help. We were actually working with them in advance of the new T&Cs yet it turns out that everything they told us became null and void 48 hours later. Grr. So let’s be clear, no competitions run on or from Facebook.
Their change to the wall publishing nullified the functionality in several iPhone apps and Flash widgets. Great.
The main issue here is not all the wasted development time in corecting the functionality or the tiny amount of consideration given to our clients. It’s the fact they are working the circuit really hard right now trying to promote Facebook as the ultimate channel for brands to spend their cash. This is a hard pill to swallow when in the last 72 hours we’ve had several client campaigns hampered by new terms that for the most part don’t make much sense.
Oh and they could do with improving their targted ad service too.
