Category Archives: social media

12 Feb 10

My top 3 Valentine promotions on UK online stores

It’s 12 February and I just received an e-mail from Screwfix with the subject line ‘Nothing says I love you more than a pink drill’. Once again I find myself wondering how many relationships might fail this weekend thanks to online marketing.
But it got me looking through my other e-mails to see what else I had been [...]

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05 Jan 10

TK Maxx Your Man – nice retail viral marketing idea

This made us laugh on a cold and miserable morning – TK Maxx have come up with a viral marketing idea, where women are encouraged to upload a photo of their husband or partner and see them come to life as a catwalk model.
We put it to the test using our very own Snow Valley action [...]

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15 Nov 09

How are retailers using online communities part 10 – Sainsbury’s

On this blog, I have previously looked at how Waitrose and ASDA are using social media to engage with their customers. Today, I decided to take a look around Sainsbury’s online community:
With nearly 67,000 members, it is clearly popular with their customers. And the site itself looks nice – it’s clean and simple, being built around three or four core features:

Discussion – at [...]

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09 Nov 09

How are retailers using online communities part 9 – Burberry

Burberry launched their new online community today. It’s called Art of the Trench and it is, according to Burberry, a ‘living document of the trench coat and people who wear it’.
It’s undoubtedly a lovely site, featuring loads of photographs of beautiful people wearing trench coats. And it is interactive – it’s basically powered by Facebook so you can do all [...]

Posted by Sarah C Also posted in how are retailers using online communities, user experience & design Comments (0)
17 Oct 09

Waitrose promotes online community with offline marketing

I received a nice letter through the post from Waitrose yesterday. I joined their MyWaitrose online community a few weeks ago and they’ve sent me a voucher for a free pizza. The idea is that I go and claim one of their luxury chicken and pesto pizzas and then I log on to MyWaitrose to give feedback and suggest [...]

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10 Sep 09

HMV pulls the plug on online community

I was quite surprised to receive an e-mail from HMV on Friday telling me that they were shutting down their online community, getcloser.com
Although it was only in beta, getcloser.com was a sophisticated community that must have taken a lot of time and investment. As I mentioned in my review, users could create a profile and [...]

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14 Aug 09

How retailers are using online communities part 8 – ASDA

YourAsda is the latest online community from a UK retailer. It’s not the most interactive community I’ve ever seen. At the moment it’s mainly blog-type posts on various subjects to do with ASDA, saving money, or “so just what does happen to the ugly carrots?”.
Users can comment on blog posts but there’s no forum – if [...]

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10 Aug 09

How retailers are using online communities part 7 – Waitrose

Waitrose.com was one of the first UK retail websites to add any online community elements, and so I was expecting to see good things on there when I set out to review it. However, I have to say that I found it confusing and difficult to use, especially when compared to some of the newer [...]

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23 Jul 09

How retailers are using online communities part 6 – Zappos

Zappos, the celebrated US online shoe retailer, is beta-ing its online community – My.Zappos.com. I thought I’d take a look and compare it to the other retail online communities that we’ve reviewed on this blog recently.
My.Zappos.com is made up of 4 sections:
My Closet – this acts as a kind of wishlist, where the community member [...]

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10 Jul 09

How retailers are using online communities part 5 – Very

Very – the new name for Littlewoods Direct - is running a beta of its online community, called Very Network.
On the plus side, they’ve clearly invested time and money in it. There are a number of sections and they make good use of rich media, user generated content, and social networks. The fashion areas are very good - Fearne Cotton’s profile [...]

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