A comparison of Instagram Stories and Snapchat

This week, Instagram introduced Instagram Stories, a new feature which allows users to share ‘in the moment’ content on the social media platform.

Instagram Stories allows users to share multiple moments of their day through images and video that will only be visible for 24 hours before they disappear forever. Sound familiar? You wouldn’t be mistaken; the new feature no doubt owes a great deal to Snapchat’s hugely successful ‘Stories’ feature.

Introducing Instagram Stories from Instagram on Vimeo.

 

Instagram is well known for being a place for perfectly polished imagery which is a heavily edited version of real-life, but this new feature merges the authentic nature of Snapchat with their already hugely successful platform.

How does Instagram Stories work?

You can start to create a story by clicking on the + icon in the top left-hand corner of your feed or swiping left. Once you have taken a photo or video you can bring your stories to life with filters, text, drawing tools and emojis.

 

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After you’ve posted your ‘story’, users can access it by tapping the circular avatars at the top of their feed, or clicking a user’s avatar on their Instagram page. According to Instagram, you’ll be shown your favourite accounts first thanks to their algorithm. When there is a new story to see, the account’s profile picture will have a colourful ring around it.

TechCrunch has useful guide on how to use the new features here.

Snapchat or Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories has already been described as ‘Snapchat for adults’ due to the fact it’s much more user-friendly and doesn’t require you learn to use a new platform. Snapchat’s problem, which may well be intentional, is that the user experience has always been slightly clunky and tricky to navigate. At least for anyone over the age of 25. Instagram has taken that confusing interface and made it work seamlessly within their platform.

Untitled design (1)

The other issue with Snapchat is that it lacks a sense of community – it’s impossible to find new people or discover interesting content without knowing a user’s exact username. It also doesn’t allow users to link to products and web content without verbally having to direct followers to another platform, making it tricky for influencers and brands to drive sales from the platform.

For this reason, Instagram Stories is more brand friendly and allows brands and influencers to access ad functionality, audience data, analytics, and an API.

With over 400 million active daily users on Instagram, compared to Snapchat’s 150 million daily users, we expect many Instagrammers to start to use this new feature rather than direct users to another platform where their followings are likely to be smaller.

The appeal of Snapchat

But have Instagram missed the point slightly? The main reason that the under 25 demographic is so enamored with Snapchat is its intimate nature.

Sure, Stories are public, but only to people following you, and you can only follow someone if you know their exact username, have their number on your phone, or are standing right next to them. You don’t have to be found unless you want to be, meaning that you can choose to keep the pool of people you communicate with very small. In a world where the pressure to get followers and likes can make teenagers anxious, Snapchat offers a welcome safe space where no one knows how many people are following you and no one can like anything.

Instagram, on the other hand, is massively popular amongst this demographic because of the superior quality of its imagery. Snapchat (and other private apps, like Whatsapp) are where teenagers go to communicate; Instagram is where they go to create and consume art. By trying to win ground back from Snapchat, Instagram could be diluting the essence of what made it popular in the first place rather than enhancing and celebrating its position as a distinct digital space.

Brandstagram

There’s no doubt, however, that this is a massive opportunity for brands. Snapchat has troubled marketers for a long time as its difficult to attract new followers, very difficult to advertise, and almost impossible to measure impact. Instagram, on the other hand, now offers all the functionality of Snapchat, enabling brands to put together fun, lively, real-time streams of content, combined with the advertising and targeting power of Facebook. It’s the Snapchat marketers have always dreamed of.

Creative brands with a young target market will surely want to experiment with this new format and see how it supports their engagement across the platform. Time will tell whether Instagram users embrace the new format or whether Snapchat continues to be the app of choice for turning yourself into a unicorn!

 

Leapfrogg speaking SheerB2B Ecommerce Conference 2016

On 8th & 9th June 2016, Leapfrogg are proud to be sponsoring and speaking at the SheerB2B Conference.

B2C online magazine SheerLuxe hosts an annual two-day eCommerce conference marked to the 100s of online and multi-channel retailers they have relationships with from working together on SheerLuxe.

On Wednesday 8th June, Leapfrogg’s Managing Director, Rosie Freshwater, will be speaking about how retailers can deliver a perfect personalised customer experience. Rosie will explore the core elements of personalisation and how retailers can prioritise and deliver them through effective customer data and insight.

On the second day of the conference, our Insight & Strategy Director, Lucy Freeborn, will be speaking about our newly launched Customer Intelligence Index and what the results so have told us far about the level of customer intelligence within premium retail.

You can follow the event via the hashtag #SheerB2B and we will be sharing insights and our talks from the conference on our blog.

Find out more about SheerB2B here.

sheerb2b-promo-image

Which health & beauty brands are delivering a personalised experience?

It’s clear the modern shopper is increasingly seeking a personalised experience from brands and retailers. As consumers, we have come to expect retailers to fully understand what we want, when we want it and how we want to buy it and to use this information to engage and interact with us in a seamless and unobtrusive way.

According to Drapers 2016 Personalisation Report, 92% of retail executives say consumers are increasingly demanding a personalised approach to shopping online and in-store and a recent survey to our Premium Panel back this up further and found that 53% of consumers feel it is important that brands offer them a personalised shopping experience.

With personalisation so key, we wanted to investigate levels of personalisation retailers deliver during and after purchase across relevant digital touchpoints.

We’ve started by analysing the health & beauty sector which offers ample opportunities for personalisation given every customer will be interested in different products based on their age, skin type and concerns, hair type and brand preference. In addition, a Google Digital Beauty Study found that 43% of online shoppers go to five or more beauty websites before making a decision, and ultimately, one in four beauty shoppers make purchases online. Therefore, providing an exceptional experience is vital to these beauty brands.

We analysed 10 of the UK’s leading online health & beauty retailers over the period of one month and looked at the data they collected about their customers and how they used it to offer a personalised experience across all digital touchpoints. We analysed the following retailers:

  1. Feel Unique
  2. SpaceNK
  3. Look Fantastic
  4. Cult Beauty
  5. Beauty Bay
  6. Escentual
  7. Blow Ltd
  8. Beauty Expert
  9. Urban Retreat Beautique
  10. Bath & Unwind

Two studies were carried out concurrently by two researchers. One researcher made a purchase for each site at the beginning of the study and one followed exactly the same path through the site but did not make the final purchase.

Each researcher then followed a pre-agreed set of interactions with the retailers over the following 4 weeks and recorded all communications and visuals.

We looked at the following elements of personalisation:

1. Personal data collected pre-purchase (name, gender, age, skin type etc)
2. Personal data collected during purchase
3. Personal data collected post-purchase
4. Personalisation of online communication
5. Personalised packaging communication
6. Trigger emails based on onsite behaviour
7. Personalised retargeting or display ads based on products viewed or purchased
8. Personalised offers during period
9. Personalised content by site behaviour

The results showed that there is currently a real lack of personalisation across the retailers that we analysed. Minimal data and preferences were being collected and we saw little evidence of tailored content or offers with most retailers taking a general approach to communication across multiple channels.

Here are some insights from our analysis:

  • Only 30% of retailers studied collected the gender of their customers when signing up to emails
  • 30% collected hair, skin and beauty preferences from its customers
  • 30% addressed email communications by their first name
  • 20% personalised email communications by purchase
  • 20% sent trigger emails by on-site behaviour
  • 40% showed users personalised retargeting or display ads based on products viewed or purchased
  • 50% gave the user personalised content on site by showing recently viewed or recommended products

The retailers that provided the most personalised experience were Beauty Expert and Look Fantastic. Both websites are owned by The Hut Group who are renowned for their data-driven approach to ecommerce.

Despite not collecting any personal information, bar email addresses, both websites sent emails that were related to the products viewed or purchased and suitable for sensitive skin and also sent special offers related to products viewed.

beauty expert

An example of an email we received from Beauty Expert based on products viewed.

lookfantastic

Look Fantastic ran remarketing ads on Facebook related to the product and brand viewed.

Escentual, Feel Unique and SpaceNK were the only retailers who collected the gender of the user as well as email address when they signed up for emails. The emails which were consequently sent through were all very female-focused. Collecting the gender and age of your customers is a great way to start personalising their experience as men will most probably have very different needs to women.

Gender email

Escentual collected their customers’ gender when signing up for emails.

cult beauty

Beauty preferences were collected by Cult Beauty but we couldn’t see any indication of how this data was being used.

From our study, we were surprised to see how little data the retailers were collecting from their customers and potential customers. We recommend these retailers try and collect at least gender and date of birth as well as email addresses as a starting point to help them communicate more effectively with their customers. The main elements of personalisation we spotted were very product focused and we would have liked to have seen evidence of more personalised content relating to customer preferences.

Our MD, Rosie Freshwater, says “With such a wide scope for personalising the customer experience in the health and beauty sector, whether that be by product, age, gender, or skin type, it is disappointing how little seems to be happening even amongst the larger players.

Retailers are missing out on the potential for upsell and repeat business by failing to show through content how much they recognise and understand their customers.”

Pinterest opens up Promoted Pins for UK advertisers

In the last couple of weeks, visual bookmarking site, Pinterest, has opened up advertising to UK brands for the first time as it looks to monetise its growing user base and prove it can help brands drive up sales.

Advertising will be open to all brands in the UK and Ads will be sold on a cost-per-click basis or a cost-per-engagement basis and can be targeted based on demographics, interests or keywords. Marketers will also get access to data including impressions, engagement, click-throughs to a website and activity.

Pinterest also offers what it calls a “conversion pixel” which can help you understand how your Promoted Pins are performing and get a clear idea of what they are doing for your business. For example, you can add conversion tags to track activity based on the objectives of a campaign such as how Pinterest encourages newsletter sign ups or measure sales information on what pages people visit, what they put in their basket and purchase.

On speaking of the development, our Paid Search Consultant, Matt, said “As a brand new advertising platform Pinterest offers a wealth of opportunity for brands. Get in early and your ads will stand out and make a greater impact on people are yet to discover your brand.

The product is also king on Pinterest, so making your products and offering visible lends itself perfectly to the platform. Promoted Pins are just about one of the most native forms of advertising you can find on the web meaning that the content looks natural and doesn’t jar for the user. It’s also an interesting platform as it can tap into users who are in ‘planning’ mode and looking for inspiration for future purchases.”

We’ve already spotted a couple of home décor retailers such as Trouva and Loaf utilising Promoted Pins. The platform is perfect for them as home décor is one of the biggest categories of pins.

Made Promoted Pin                pin3

If you would like to find out more about your Pinterest strategy, please do get in touch.

Instagram to ditch chronological timeline

On March 15th, Instagram announced that they are following the likes of Twitter and Facebook and implementing an algorithm that will mean that posts are no longer presented in chronological order.

In a blog post announcing the change, Instagram explained that “people miss on average 70% of their feeds because, as the platform grew it has become harder to keep up with everything posted.”

instagramTo help combat this, the algorithm will calculate the likelihood that we will be interested in something based on our past interactions with content, our relationship with the person posting it, and the timeliness of the post. For now, all the posts you would usually find in your feed will still be there, just in a different order.

Since this announcement, there have been lots of posts by brands asking people to turn on post notifications. This means whenever they post something new, users will receive a notification:

However, there has been a backlash against requests for turning on notifications given that your mobile is no doubt already buzzing and bleeping with hundreds of other notifications and it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

What you need to do

Firstly, Instagram isn’t immediately changing things. To reassure users, they tweeted the following this week:

On the changes to Instagram, our Social Media & Content Consultant, said “Brands need to accept that algorithms are beginning to dominate every major digital channel. The impact of Instagram’s algorithm is that brands are likely to see a drop in visibility and engagement – which will impact their web traffic and ultimately revenue.

While Instagram is still testing this new feature, we recommend you use this time to review your content and social media strategy. Gain insight into what content your audience likes and focus on improving engagement rates rather than just posting content on the platform.

We also recommend looking into running Instagram adverts to improve the reach of key posts e.g. those promoting a sale or new product launch.

Please do get in touch if you’d like advice on your Instagram strategy.

Facebook tests immersive mobile ads with the launch of Canvas

This week, we’ve been getting excited about the launch of Canvas – Facebook’s immersive ad feature that allows brands to tell “more compelling stories” and improve engagement with consumers.

Canvas allows marketers to create immersive, full-screen adverts in users’ timelines which combine images, video, text and call-to-action buttons in a single mobile ad experience. Although the ads display in full screen on desktop platforms, the new ad product launch shows Facebook’s commitment to enhancing their mobile experience. According to Marketing Week, “figures released by the company show that mobile advertising represented approximately 80% of its total advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015, up from 69% a year previously. Meanwhile, mobile daily active users were 934 million on average for December 2015, an increase of 25% year-on-year.”

Burberry ad using Canvas on Facebook from Digital Team on Vimeo.

Monika, our Paid Search Consultant, thinks this is a particularly interesting opportunity for premium and luxury brands and said “Facebook has been investing heavily in its ad products. The latest is Canvas, a full-screen ad experience that’s optimised for mobile. From a technical point of view, this is a welcome development. From load speed to user experience, mobile presents a variety of challenges to marketers – to some extent Canvas solves these problems by giving them a ready-made framework.

Canvas allows brands to tell stories as well as showcasing their products and it can be used for any objective – whether you want to promote certain products, or drive customer acquisition or brand awareness. It’s great to see brands such as Burberry roll out ads and we can’t wait to take this exciting innovation to our clients!”

This new platform opens up a wealth of new opportunities for marketers, but to really utilise them to their potential, they will need to display interactive, innovative ads that integrate consumer insights.

Leapfrogg’s Senior Social Media & Content Consultant, Hannah, said “At Leapfrogg, we’re very much looking forward to seeing what creative ideas brands come up with for Canvas. Content that tells a story performs very well on the platform – Canvas supports this type of content as it takes users on a journey. However, we predict that the most successful adverts will be the ones by brands that really understand their customers.

The most creative advert in the world is useless if served to people who have no interest in the brand or its products. By understanding customers, their interests, buying habits and how they like brands to interact with them, retailers can create adverts that not only look good but get the desired result.

 

Google removes right-hand side paid search ads on SERPs

The big development this week came from Google who removed all paid search ads from the right-hand side of the search engine results page (SERP).

Previously, paid search ads were always displayed in the same format – three ads above organic search results and a number of ads down the right-hand side of the page.

Google’s changes now mean there are now 2-4 paid search results at the top and bottom of the SERPs – so depending on the search query, the entire above the fold space could now be filled entirely with paid advertising.

Solar Centre SERP

This means that for visibility within the SERPs, it’s even more important to be in positions 1-3 and top-of-the-page paid search ads will become even more competitive and expensive. On a positive note, we expect that search relevance will increase over time as the ROI on not relevant ads will become unsustainable due to increased cost-per-clicks. Brands that have a smaller click budget will see limited returns from more generic, head term and prospecting keywords that would previously generally be aimed at lower ad positions.

Google has been doing significant testing around site links, positions and ad text and this development shows how they are becoming increasingly focused on mobile as mobile searches beginning to overtake desktop searches. This change makes for a similar user experience across both desktop and mobile.

How will this impact paid search campaigns?

According to our Senior Paid Search Consultant, Matt Martin, “Ads seem to drop out of search results in favour of organic after just a few unsuccessful searches. This could increase click-through-rate and increase the effectiveness of time-sensitive messages. We have also seen an instant drop in impressions and return for non-brand and generic keywords.

What this means going forward is that we may need to move to longer-tail, less competitive keywords as those with larger budgets change strategies – presumably looking to own the generic space.”

“It may be that those with smaller budgets or more stringent targets now need to pick their battles more carefully for non-brand terms and more focus should be placed on driving better quality advertising going forward. It seems that we are moving towards a state where appearing in the perfect place in Google and at the perfect time can bring substantial returns but the risks are higher if you get it wrong. Owning your Brand space and having user-centric copy, relevant landing pages and a well-structured account becomes ever more important.”

For retailers, Shopping will become a crucial part of most revenue generating strategies. Therefore having a working, correct and optimised feed is more important than ever before in order to allow greater ownership of the space above the fold.

We’re also interested to see how this change affects Bing, as they have a great opportunity to capitalise on this change. Bing is becoming increasingly viable for marketers with the launch of Shopping – they just need to get the search and ecommerce volumes!

Natural search impact

In terms of natural search, our Website Optimisation Manager, Suze, said “The main impact of the having four paid search ads at the top of the SERPs will push organic listings down further in the page. Both for desktop and mobile, organic listings will now likely fall below the fold of the page.

This means that it’s even more important to ensure you have very targeted, useful content on your site to try and maximise top organic positions. It is also becoming more important for sites take full advantage of other ways to get organic visibility, for example: local listings, html markup to encourage rich snippets or knowledge graph cards etc.

By providing useful user-centric content on your site will help your site appear for more conversational, long-tail question-based queries that are less likely to be occupied with aggressive paid search ads. Brand building is also more crucial in order to drive people to search for less competitive brand related terms.

Please do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about the impact of this change.

Twitter updates and highlights from Fashion Week 2016

Here at Leapfrogg, every week we have a meeting to share developments within the world of customer experience, digital and retail. Here are some of the things we discussed this week…

Twitter makes changes to timeline functionality

Twitter has just rolled out a new timeline feature that will display tweets out of chronological order and by relevancy to the user. The aim of this change is to stop Twitter users from missing out on updates from the people that they follow.

The feature, which launched Wednesday, is currently optional (you need to manually activate the option), but Twitter plans to roll it out as a default in the next few weeks but give users the ability to opt-out.

The new timeline feature seems aimed at solving one of Twitter’s biggest problems – the fact that casual users can be overwhelmed by the service’s noise, making it difficult for them to quickly find content that’s useful and relevant.

Our Senior Social Media and Content Consultant says “The introduction of an algorithm is both a challenge and an opportunity for retailers. If Twitter follows a similar path to Facebook, the new algorithm will become more complex over time, resulting in more time being needed to understand, monitor and adapt to these changes. Retailers could also end up being pushed towards advertising in order to compensate for loss of visibility on the platform.

However, there is an upside, particularly from a user perspective. Low quality and repetitive content will no longer cut it. Although this will mean more effort will be required from brands when they craft their content, the overall experience of using Twitter will be greatly improved.”

Twitter aims to improve customer service interactions

In more Twitter news, in response to the amount of customer service interactions that take place on the social media platform, Twitter has just added new a single ‘direct message’ button which can be added to a tweet, which aims to make the customer service interactions easier for both customers and brands.

Meanwhile Twitter is also planning the roll out, initially with selected brands, of a new survey feature called Customer Feedback. It claims this will make it easier for brands to ask customers about their thoughts against use two industry standard question formats: Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction. Read more here.

London Fashion Week 2016

London Fashion Week kicks off today and this year will see The British Fashion Council screen shows and exclusive footage from 60 out of home sites on Ocean Outdoor and signature digital screens.

Content will include live streams from six catwalk shows and will air in four locations in London, as well as in Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

This new venture brings London Fashion Week allows designers and brands to reach significantly wider audiences than ever before.

Lyst at New York Fashion Week

Over in New York, we spotted our client Lyst launch a campaign to ensure they are noticed during the busy period – which can typically be a struggle for ecommerce to engage with.

Through their ‘I’ve Got Clothes In Different Area Codes’ #FindNYFW campaign – Lyst teamed up with Uber to provide users with the opportunity to ‘style packs’ filled with designer items depending on what is trending in their neighbourhood (via data on the Lyst site).

All users have to do is open the app in Manhattan and Brooklyn and enter the promo code FINDNYFW to unlock the special stylepack option.

Instagram more popular than Twitter at London Fashion Week

This week, we were also interested to find out that Instagram has overtaken Twitter to become the go-to platform for London Fashion Week news. According to Greenlight, there were 5,602 Instagram posts using #LFW2016 in the month leading up to London Fashion Week 2016, compared with just 1,178 Twitter mentions over the same timeframe.

In 2015 things looked were quite different, with more than 6,000 Twitter mentions using the #LFW2015 hashtag leading up to the event.

What we’ve been reading this week:

New parents are Facebook’s mobile power-users

How to embrace creativity in the programmatic age

13 reasons your organic traffic is in decline…it’s not a penalty

How premium retailers are trying to win hearts for Valentine’s Day

Despite more than half of consumers feeling that Valentine’s Day is a waste of money, it has clearly not stopped Britain spending. Last year saw £313m spent on food and drink, £518m spent on gifts, and £135m spent on seasonal non-food items such as cards and wrap and this year, it’s estimated that Britain will spend £980m*.

In response to this, brands have been really pushing their Valentine’s campaigns this year with everything from emojis to fishing. Here we’ve rounded up some of the marketing highlights from premium retailers we have seen so far.

Ted Baker

Ted Baker is well known for their creative and engaging campaigns. To celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, the retailer rolled out a quirky microsite featuring a fishing game that invites consumers to ‘hook their Sole Mate’ in order to win prizes.

Users get three plays per day, before being invited to share the campaign on social media and return the next day to try again. The campaign also adorns Ted Baker store windows in the period running up to Valentine’s Day. Check it out here.

Ted Baker Sole Mate

House of Fraser

You can’t have missed House of Fraser’s not-so-subtle #emojinal takeover which was all over their social channels last week. The brand which is usually more known for their luxury-focused image hijacked trending topics such as Harry Styles’ birthday and Gigi Hadid’s night out by sharing a flurry of slightly cringe-worthy tweets and photoshopped images of celebrities filled with emojis.

While a lot of people have been slating House of Fraser’s #Emojinal campaign because it was such a stark contrast to their traditional branding, it certainly captured people’s attention.

It’s clear that House of Fraser was trying to capture a younger audience, but the campaign was criticised for alienating their existing audience as they jumped on trending topics without any real meaning or context. Interesting, as we get closer to the big day, there is no sign of the campaign on House of Fraser’s social channels.

Pandora

Valentine’s Day is a key date for jewellery brands, and so it’s no surprise to see many brands upping their game before the big day.

Pandora launched their #GesturesofLove campaign by visiting three stations to surprise people with gestures of love jewellery and a morning coffees.

They have also rolled out the campaign to their social channels to drive user-generated content asked their followers to share what simple gestures make them feel loved over on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Tiffany & Co

Tiffany & Co has asked its followers the age-old question, “What is love?” Their dedicated site features video interviews, a gift guide and a love generator that presents consumers with a sharable GIF to express their personal answer to the frequently pondered question. However, while the Generate Your Love GIFs initially grab your attention, they do get quite repetitive and it would have been nice to see more user-generated content seeded throughout the campaign

Tiffany & Co Love Is

One tip from our MD, Rosie Freshwater, is to make sure you are not alienating some of your customer base by blanket sending Valentine’s content or only speaking about valentines on your social, as half of them could be single and really not want to be reminded of it this time of year!

*stats via Retail Gazette.

Facebook reactions and brands jump on the emoji bandwagon

Here at Leapfrogg, every week we have a meeting to share developments within the world of customer experience, digital and retail. Here are some of the things we discussed this week…

Facebook rolls out reactions globally

Facebook reactions were first announced in November 2015, after many requests for a ‘dislike’ button from users. Now after a period of testing in various markets across the world, Facebook has announced they are ready to roll this feature out to all users in the coming weeks.

Facebook reactions

Facebook is rolling out an initial five Reactions: ‘angry, sad, wow, haha and love’. Although, this update may seem quite trivial, we’re interested to see how brands and retailers can start to use this feature to gain even more insight and data into the customer experience. Now is the time for marketers to develop a plan to process this new stream of customer data so they can take advantage of it at launch.

 

Our Senior Account Manager, James Bradbury said “Rather than the simple ‘like’ and much clamoured for ‘dislike’ button, users will be able to attach emotion to brand messaging. This is going to mean that brands are going to have to be even more intelligent when it comes to brands and retailers communicating through Social Media.”

House of Fraser’s #Emojinal campaign provokes mixed reactions

If you follow @HouseofFraser, you won’t have missed their very out of character #emojinal takeover which was shared across their social channels on Monday.

 

The brand, usually more known for their luxury-focused image, hijacked trending topics such as Pep Guardiola’s move to Manchester City and Harry Styles’ birthday by sharing a flurry of slightly cringe-worthy tweets and photoshopped images of celebrities filled with emojis.

A quick scan of the #emojinal hashtag on Twitter shows mixed reactions from House of Fraser’s followers with many expressing surprise and dismay at the drastic shift in tone from the retailer and questioning whether the account had actually been hacked. The campaign appears to follow on from their more ‘edgy’ Christmas advert back in December as House of Fraser continues to evolve its image and reach a new audience.

 

On analysing the campaign Rosie, Leapfrogg’s Managing Director, said “Unless House of Fraser is tricking us all and has a brilliant next stage of their #emojinal campaign I think this is a classic case of jumping on a trend for the sake of it rather than thinking about what would really resonate with their customers. House of Fraser may be trying to attract a new younger audience but completely changing your brand tone and identity on a platform where many of your core customers engage with you is not a clever move. I would recommend House of Fraser revisit their customer profiles and find a way to attract the right type of customer for the products they sell.”

Diptyque launches new scent with packaging and emojis

Following on from the above, our favourite fragrance brand Diptyque has also jumped on the emoji bandwagon.

 

To coincide with the launch of their new Rosaviola scent, Diptyque has recruited fashion designer Olympia Le-Tan to create embroidered versions of the brand’s iconic packaging. In addition, the full range of designs have been digitised as an emoji keyboard which includes lollipops, typewriters, lipsticks and a version of Diptyque’s recognisable shopping carrier.

 

#diptyque #emoji #collaboration #olympialetan (link in bio)

A photo posted by @diptyque on

 

Unfortunately, the icons cannot be used like traditional emojis but are more like ‘Facebook stickers’ where the user has to paste them into messages which we found a little disappointing.

 

It’s interesting to see how a luxury brand such as Dipthque has jumped on the growing trend of emoji marketing but put their own luxury spin on them in order to meet reach out to a younger, tech-savvy audience.