Of course every end is a chance for reflection, so here it goes: What could we have done different? Probably many things that I will discuss in some future posts. Before I do that, let me introduce you to my team and our project.

We are a group of six international students studying Marketing Science at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. My team is not particularly Internet savvy and online marketing is a topic we preach, yet seldom practice. Don’t get me wrong, we think it is a great tool, but there is also a difference between theory and practice. I am the only person running a blog, and apparently seem to be the designated Internet geek of the group because I have a Facebook, Twitter, Hyves, DeviantArt and Slideshare profile and know about SEO, page ranks, and analytics.

Thus, learning how to use AdWords was for most a real challenge. I am not saying it was easy for me either. I had to refer to the many presentations available on the Challenge’s website to familiarize myself with the application and its functionality. Before developing the strategy, my good friend, Andreea, spent about four days trying to understand how we should structure the campaign, use keywords, define ad groups and so on. And even then we were still unsure if it would all work out for the best.

Our company was Kwestievanlef, a local concept store based in Nijmegen that focuses on producing cool designs for t-shirts, hoodies, sweaters for men and women, as well as kids and even babies. The company was founded just in 2008 and has been constantly growing. Although the website has a fresh look to it, we soon realized that the AdWords campaign for this type of company will be rather difficult as the competition for the keywords describing the main products is rather fierce, and the expected CTR per keywords was usually at just .30%.

The challenge was not just a matter of learning how to use AdWords, but also learning how to constantly improve our campaigns, understanding when we were doing something wrong and why. The competition weeks were filled with challenges: from finding relevant (yet uncompetitive keywords) to improving our landing page quality or creating relevant ads. I will try to share with you our little adventure in the hope that you might find it useful. If you have also went through something similar, feel free to share. It would feel great to know we are not alone.

The GOMC is a nice way of promoting Google’s own services by getting university students to find a business that they are interested in and promoting it via AdWords with a set $200 budget during a 3-week campaign. Who gets what out of it? Google gets some insight into how its customers can use AdWords to maximize a company’s ROI and proves that great results can be achieved even with a small budget. Students get to learn essential online marketing skills that they can include in their resumes and maybe even use in their future careers. The teachers get a nice project for their students that requires them to act not just plan, and requires minimal involvement from the academia side. As for the selected business, it gets a university marketing team to devote its time and efforts into finding ways of promoting its website in the course of a month. Sounds like a win-win for all parties involved.

My team consists of 6 international students (Germany, Romania, Spain) excited about working on something new and challenging. Some of them are learning things about the web they did not even know were possible, others are mesmerized by how much Google can learn about you even through a simple search and others are a bit outraged that it is so simple for companies to find you, even without knowing too much about you. As for me, I am just excited to learn what lies ahead and if AdWords really is everything it promises to be.

Once we receive our voucher from Google, I will make sure to keep you up-to-date with what is going on in our campaign.

PS: A warm thanks to JT designs for this lovely infographic.

I started this week with my first guest post for startupSQUARE, a small, dedicated group of entrepreneurs and coders who are in the process of building a web app to help entrepreneurs find co-founders for their projects. They’re interested in solving problems and having a positive impact on the startup community, and I am delighted to be able to help them out with what I can.

The blog entry started from the revelation that the number of start ups does not radically change over the years, despite favorable or unfavorable economic circumstances. The only aspect of these start ups that changes is their increasing success rate, giving us companies such as Wrigley, IBM, General Motors, Walt Disney Company, Zippo , Hewlett-Packard, Toys “R” Us, Microsoft, Symantec, or Wikipedia (for a full list, please see Inc.com’s report).

What makes these companies more likely to succeed? It turns out there are many factors which can influence the success of such startups. You can read the result on startupSQUARE’s blog. Enjoy the read and don’t shy away from leaving us a comment and don’t forget to get your startup started!

Joint branding is quite popular, at an average of 40% growth per year (1994 data), but of course rather complex to manage and, if not implemented correctly, can have dire negative consequences, such as brand dilution or failure of the parent brand.

Back in 1998, Simonin & Ruth asked some very basic questions about the effects of these brand alliances: how do they affect the individual brands? How are customers evaluating the alliances? Do their perceptions of the individual brands change?

At the time, they knew that it is very likely that brand alliances have an effect on the individual partnering brands, but did not have a clear interaction pattern. Moreover, the gurus of academic research in the area of brand extensions, Aaker & Keller, had already noticed twenty years ago that we are more likely to favorably evaluate brand extensions if we like the brands and perceive them as having a high quality.

Like it or not, when we are presented with such a product, we tend to resort to the knowledge attitudes and feeling we already have of the brands and apply them to the new product. When evaluating brands, the context of the brand also seems to be highly significant, because our brain interprets stimulus in context, and not individually. This explains the phenomenon of grouping highly familiar brands together on the supermarket shelves, so that they can borrow from each other’s associations.

There are three main criteria to which we evaluate alliances, namely:

… pre-existing attitudes towards each of the brands

…. how well the products fit together

… how well the brands fit together

Simonin & Ruth tried to incorporate these assumptions into a study aimed at gaining a better understanding of how brand alliances are evaluated, and came across some interesting findings. Their study was based on a microprocessor and car brand pairing, and was conducted mostly using university students as test subjects, a practice quite common in the academic world. Here is what they found out:

1. brand alliances do affect partnering brands
2. brand alliances can add to or alter a brand’s existing associations in the mind of the consumer
3. alliances might exist in the mind of the consumer even when managers do not necessarily plan for them

What does this mean for brand managers out there? Well, as a start, keep in mind when partnering with other brands that you should pick one that combines with yours and results in favorable perceptions of both product and brand fit, and not just a well-known brand. Also, brands should make sure to do extensive research on their partner in order to identify any possible risk that the partnership holds (probably partnering up with banking brands is no longer seen as the safe idea it used to be years ago).

Secondly, the distribution channel of your choice will affect your brand in the mind of the consumer, so choose one that portrays your values; at the same time, pick one whose assortment fits your brand characteristics (a luxury brand surrounded by Kmart brands will lose its shine and glamor and be rated poorly by its targeted consumers).

Moreover, highly familiar brands will add more to an alliance, so the questions one must ask is what is the added value of your partner? If they are not highly familiar, do they contribute with expertise (e.g. PUMA AG initially chose to partner up with Dobotex because of its knowledge of legwear, and not its notoriety). If your partner has little added value, you should probably refrain from creating a brand alliance, as the dangers of doing so outweigh the benefits.

If you have a new brand on the market and would like to gain some notoriety, then partnering up with a well-known brand is the safest way for you to do so. The free rider effect holds little disadvantages for the unfamiliar brand, as there are little associations in the mind of the consumer that can be negatively altered if the partnership does not succeed; the benefits of such a partnership definitely outweigh its possible risks.

On the other hand, for big brands, a partnership with unknown or new brands is only recommendable if both the product fit and the attitudes towards the alliance are positive. Thus, one should not enter into such an alliance without a previous market study on how consumers would evaluate the brand alliance.

What if you partner up two highly familiar brands? Simonin & Ruth prove that there is a limit to how aware consumers can be of a brand. This ceiling effect shows that although you can associate two highly familiar brands to become even more famous, the alliance will probably have a very small effect on the consumer’s awareness of the two brands.

All in all, brand alliances should be seen as possibly risky, and managers should only engage in such a practice if the benefits of the association outweigh its disadvantages and inherent risk levels. I just hope this blog entry and the attached presentation will help managers make an informed decision about brand alliances.

“For your final project, you need to pick a well-known brand you like and design a marketing campaign targeting a different market segment than its current one”.. what is your natural choice? After a brief brainstorming session with my team (Andreea Dicu & Raquel Gonzales Martin) discussing cosmetics for men, Red Bull for kids (evil, I know), and green fast food, we came up with the perfect idea: what if we designed a new Zara clothing line for curvy women?

And perfect it was. Zara stands for fashionable clothes, trendy colors, and feminine cuts, promising to deliver fashion for a moderate price, adapting runway trends for the streets, while maintaining a customer-focused business. We started by looking at the current Zara values, at everything that makes it unique: their customer philosophy, design and production approach, the logistics that drive Zara, its store design and employee values. With a total brand value of $8,609 M, 1,530 stores in 2008, it is one of the strongest retail brands out there.

The truth is that the fashion industry is changing, with luxury becoming more accessible to us commoners (think of McQueen and PUMA, Stella and Adidas, or the countless H&M designer collaborations). Street trends are starting to dictate the fashion out there, with the Sartorialist, lookbook.nu, or Stil in Berlin influencing the runways. Plus size models are becoming more accepted in the world of fashion, especially after America’s Next Top Model (+size) edition, Mark Fast’s SS 10 show or V-magazine’s current ‘SIZE’ issue. Like always, if you want to stay hip and fresh in this industry, you need to recognize current trends and adapt them to your own style as soon as possible. Zara is usually great at this, but it seems to lag behind in embracing fuller body shapes. After all, UK studies proved that 1 in 3 women are unhappy with the way clothes fit them, and size 14 women were shown to be a lot more confident than any size 6 woman.

The psychology of the fashion consumer is rather basic: in order to influence a consumer’s behavior, you first need to generate interest in the product, by giving the consumer pleasure and enjoyment; fashion becomes a means of self-expression, saying more about you than you think. Your next step is to get the consumer involved by allowing them to attach meaning to clothes, by expressing and communicating the value of the fashion statement. Before influencing a consumer’s behavior, you need to appeal to his emotions: positive emotions towards a brand lead to shorter decision times, increased impulse shopping and even a desire to reward oneself, which can be easily achieved by simply using the stores to your advantage: comfortable colors, friendly personnel, uplifting music or anything else you can think of. Last but not least, in the retail world, you want consumers to shop a lot, and usually to shop for things they do not really need. I mean, an extra purse is good and all, but there is no real NEED for it, and the purchase of that bag is usually impulsive.

As we were researching what the plus size fashion consumer would like to see in a clothing line for them, we realized that they will probably just want the same as everyone else: clothes that fit them and emphasize their best features. So, normally, the clothes would need a cut fitting the curvier body shape, which in turn would make the women wearing them feel more attractive and thus increase their self-esteem.

Although it all sounded good in theory, we also wanted to have some rough data to support the belief that there is a need for such a line in the market, so we looked at some statistics and discovered that the plus size market is expected to grow to $100 M in the US alone by 2012, and Zara, although new in this segment, would probably enjoy success due to its high brand awareness, and customer loyalty. So, we set out to develop a consumer focused product line and marketing strategy.

When defining our strategic marketing objectives we decided we would not want to change much about Zara’s strategy, but simply focus more on the plus size consumer and increase their satisfaction with the brand, which in turn would lead to more frequent purchases, and thus more revenues for the brand.

We named the new line “Zara for every woman” and started segmenting our consumer group: our main segment would of course be the plus size, full shape woman, probably aged between 18 and 24, working in large cities around the world or pursuing a higher education. She would have a mid-range income and would be very interested in the latest fashion trends. She is conscious about her look, enjoys shopping and socializing but has a hectic, busy lifestyle. What is she looking for? Clothes that fit her body shape and makes her feel more beautiful in her own skin. For such a woman, Zara would no longer stand just for “high fashion at affordable prices”, but it would become “the only true fashion brand that thinks about her body shape, respects it and designs especially for it”.

Our product strategy revolved around 4 basic principles:

1. going back to the drawing board in order to be able to better design for a full body shape and to incorporate consumer feedback into the cuts
2. focus on product symbolism: Zara should make the consumer believe that it knows the consumer’s bodyshape and designs clothes that make her feel beautiful.
3. in terms of colors and materials, we all know that these contribute a lot to the perceived quality of the products, so we wanted to maintain the same high quality approach
4. moreover, the Zara label would by itself be a source of customer equity.

The most fun to design part was of course the promotion campaign. The goal was to inform consumers about the new line, to create positive emotions in connection to it and of course, to generate consumer interest and purchase intentions of the new products.

Although not a popular Zara practice, we decided to incorporate print advertising in our above-the-line campaign, while our below-the-line strategy would focus on brand communication, public relations, an elaborate Internet campaign, local events and media cooperations.

We then tried to incorporate the entire concept into a nice ad, which you can see in the attached presentation. I will not ruin it for you by revealing it too early.

Our ad message?

“Curvy is the new black.”

A bit cheesy, but hopefully effective.

For brand communication, we wanted to start with a corporate social responsibility initiative, inviting fashion students from Central Saint Martin to participate in a competition aimed at designing for the curvy body shape. The winner (decided via an Internet poll) would then get the chance to design part of the new line in collaboration with Zara designers. We also considered a possible media cooperations with Project Runway in order to get our message to a more general audience with the goal of promoting inclusiveness and individualism.

In terms of public relations, we wanted to start with product placement and designing a nice lookbook that would make its way to the tables of every fashion editor out there. We wanted to focus on PR in order to be able to make a sincere proposition to the real women out there, by using fashion editors as expert sources, which in turn would help us build brand trust.

And because the Internet is taking a life of its own, we wanted to use Zara’s website as the main communication channel; the website would also feature the CSR innitiative, as well as viral videos of the campaign and tips on “how to dress for your body shape”. Last but not least, we wanted to build an online community of hip, young, tech savvy women that would exchange fashion advice and act as a source of feedback for the new line, helping us improve our offering in the future.

For the main launch, we wanted to organize 3 events in main stores in Europe: Madrid, Milan & London, all renowned for their fashion attitudes. The event theme would be celebrating diverse body shapes, and we would like to get our invitees the chance to experience the brand and what it stands for. We would also offer the media pre-launch access to the collection, so that they can get a direct feel of the new line.

You can see our presentation on slideshare.net. We really had fun working on this marketing strategy and hopefully, Zara will at some point in the near future develop such a line. Let us know if you like it or if you would do anything different.

PS: I cannot take full credit for this work, as it was the result of countless working hours put in by myself, my best friend and luxury fashion addict, Andreea Dicu, and Raquel Gonzales Martin, a true Zara fan. The slide design was a collaborative effort between Andreea and me, and like everything we work on together, it turned out to be quite lovely. We hope you enjoy it!!

Zara Campaign by Carmen Neghina, Andreea Dicu, Raquel Gonzalez Martin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License.
Based on a work at carmenneghina.com.

Every respectable Harley Davidson owner has participated or dreams of participating in a Posse ride. You might wonder why that is.

Well, to start with, the rides are excellent ways of discovering the USA. The long rides explore the country in depth and give participants the chance to explore various landscapes, hidden parts of the USA or legendary roads and broaden their horizons.

Moreover, what better way of interacting with people that share your love and passion for Harley Davidson than to be surrounded by them during a long, difficult ride? The rides offer customers the thrills and excitement associated with biking over long distances, with unpredictable weather conditions, changing sceneries, road mishaps and great road stories. Experiencing everything from burning deserts to snowy mountains, freezing temperatures to torrid rays, everything brings you closer to your companions.

The customers see these trips as big American adventures, a change from the daily routine and a way of experiencing complete freedom. And you even get a t-shirt to brag about it to your friends and family (and everyone else jealous of your Harley).

If you are looking for an unconventional holiday, what would be more suitable than man, bike and nature combined with the all-American spirit?

The HOG Posse brand community is very much customer-centered, as the community feeling is more important than the brand itself. A community cannot exist without its members and their strong connections with one another. They all share several similar characteristics: their passion for biking, their love for Harley Davidson and their fondness of travelling and exploring. All the members know that their passion makes them different from their car-driving friends, and they are not afraid of showing their uniqueness.

The role of HOG is to create and negotiate meaning: HOG members define the Harley Davidson brand and help it grow by facilitating members to share stories about their HD experiences, and enabling such events. Members usually participate annually, in the course of several days, but they spend the rest of their year reminiscing about the ride, wearing their Posse t-shirts and proudly telling their acquaintances about their past or future Harley adventures.

HOG members receive information about the Posse through the HOG magazine; only around 500 bikers can take part in the Posse, so the community is exclusive, since many HD riders want to be part of it. The Posse allows customers to affiliate themselves with the brand and its customers. What is most important, there seems to be an unspoken, connection among HOG members. On the road, a group ethos always develops, as friendships and the intimate road experiences create long-lasting friendships.

Posse participants develop their own community rituals and habits, such as the story nights or the Posse oath. They are clearly devoted to the brand and develop strong social attachments with one another during such events.

The notorious ride made it to the Harvard Business School Case folder. If you would like to read more about it, scroll down.

.. here are some of my favorites for December 09.

Designed by NarjisNaqvi from Pakistan.

Designed by mooti from Germany

Designed by Monica Corduneanu from Romania.

Designed by Corey Cassaw from USA.