Barcode Marketing in Lebanon!

For the first time in Lebanon, barcode marketing gets adopted.

Granted, Lebanon is not the typical location where you would walk down the streets and get access to outdoor advertising, as is the case in the European metro stations where barcode marketing was most witnessed.

Yet, Captain and Captain found it adequate to use it on the "opening soon" poster on their new retail shop in City Mall- to be inaugurated on December 1st, 2010. "Scan barcodes with your mobile phone to find out more!" Linking to their Facebook and Twitter Accounts.

Save your Christmas shopping list, you are about to be dazzled!

Google Search Insights: "Marketing" in Lebanon, VS "Marketing" Worldwide

Google has an interesting little tool, called Google Insights for Search. Aside from allowing Googlers to spot Google Search trends, it sorts keywords out by location, category and time.
Being obsessed with Marketing, I thought why not spot the trends... "Marketing" was my keyword, and here were my findings:

Google Search Term: "Marketing"
Filter: Worldwide, 2004-present


Google Search Term: "Marketing"
Filter: Lebanon, 2004-present

Why am I posting this? I thought the difference was staggering.
Worldwide, "Internet Marketing" and "Marketing Online" were common searches. In Lebanon? Not quite so... There were no sign of the digital marketing era in our top 10 searches.
Moreover, the fact that people were looking up "Marketing Mix" showed a basic knowledge of marketing on the global front. What about Lebanon? Well, the "what is Marketing" search is certainly not reassuring.
Yet, I am glad to see "marketing in Lebanon" is in number 7...

Nivea "You WOW" Internet Marketing

Following the Crest White Pearl's internet campaign "My Crest Smile", Nivea launches yet another digital marketing campaign in Lebanon "You Wow" (more of a Middle-East campaign actually) targeting the superficial layer of the society.
Using the Middle East Nivea Facebook fan page, people are encouraged to upload pictures of themselves in order to be the new model for a Nivea promotion: Angel Star. The competition has 2 stages: the first, where a panel of judges picks 5 finalists, and the second where a voting among the finalists takes place.


This time, the implementation leaves me pondering.

First, the ads appear in Arabic on Facebook, which in Lebanon is often linked to the lower market segments. Not a smart choice, given that Facebook users in Lebanon are by default using the English interface and are rarely part of that segment.
Second, the campaign only relies on voting in the second part of the competition, not so bright. It looses the edge of word-of-mouth, social and viral marketing that the web 2.0 marketing campaigns tend to rely on. Moreover, no comments are enabled on the website, and there's very low interactivity.

All in all, "You WOW" might be a good casting tool, but quite a weak marketing one! ...I can guarantee that it is not operating with its full potential.

Garnier PureActive Internet Marketing

Garnier recently initiated a digital marketing campaign in Lebanon... And as the competition draws to an end, I am lead to congratulate Garnier for executing a successful, highly interactive internet marketing campaign in Lebanon. As Garnier adopts the Facebook social interface to promote the launching of their PureActive line of products in Lebanon, more than 6,000 fans join in...


Description: Using a Facebook Fan page, Garnier chooses themes for people to upload pictures, and thus, become candidates. Voting takes place on Garnier's Facebook Application. The candidate with the highest number of votes wins.
Target: teenagers in Lebanon
Promotion: internet ads
Execution: Facebook Application (voting interface)
Rewards: Mac & iPod
The beauty of it all is the high interaction taking place between the moderator of the group and the fans.
It is great to witness that brands are becoming so easily accessible to their customers...

Lebanon: Internet Censorship?

Is Lebanon's internet subject to censorship practices? "The Middle East and North Africa is one of the most heavily censored regions in the world" states a report conducted by the OpenNet Initiative report on the MENA region.
What about Lebanon? Well, "Lebanon is one of very few countries in the Middle East where ONI found no evidence of technical filtering" - OpenNet's Lebanon Profile.
Opennet.net also provides maps that display the countries censoring each of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Orkut and Youtube. Interesting stuff, check it out: Filtering Maps

"My Crest Smile" Internet Marketing

www.mycrestsmile.com hits a home run. As Crest and Oral-B in partnership with Femme, manage to"place a finger" into the wound of our Lebanese society, shallowness caves in ...and ALTHOUGH what I feel like doing is mourn our superficial society, I am driven to congratulate them for understanding the population and conducting a great marketing campaign.

The internet marketing campaign relies on content generated by its visitors and their votes. It has gained monumental popularity by piggybacking on the power of Facebook (the number one website in Lebanon, according to Alexa). Thumbs-up to e-comLebanon for a phenomenal success.

"Become a Star", "get ready to be on the July cover of Femme" are what the website states to encourage female visitors to upload their pictures and ask their friends to vote for them.

While, the voting mechanism seems hard to hack, the terms and conditions of the contest only give voting the power to affect 40% of the results... Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't it make the votes kind of worthless?

Lucky for them, Lebanese tend to dive in without reading instructions.

Social Voting Marketing

Social Voting Marketing has taken off with websites like Digg and StumbleUpon and Reddit. However, Social Voting Marketing is not only about "link baiting" even Youtube with the 5 stars rating has a type of social voting established. The concept helps the visitors get worthy content, and gives them a say in the standing of the subject.

SVM might have started with bookmarking. Nonetheless, the digital marketing world has learnt a valuable lesson from this trend.

After the success of voting websites in driving traffic and getting visitors hooked to their "cause", the trend spread over the internet. One of the initial broad successes, the new 7 wonders of the world, stem traffic by capitalizing on the feeling of Patriotism.

It relied on its participants' marketing efforts in their respective countries, thanks to which, it got promoted in offline media around the world and its results were publicized on news-worthy channels. The success of their first campaign was so prominent that they soon introduced the new 7 wonders of nature allowing the visitors to nominate the participants first and go through the voting process next. Eventually, the concept evolved to a ridiculous "open source" contests, where the visitors contribute to the competition creation as well as the voting under "vote 7 campaigns".

Social CRM, the Future of CRM

Social CRM is the future.

Social media and CRM combined, social CRM has a lot to offer.

While most CRM tools work on cross-tabbing the CRM data the company introduces to generate new CRM insights, the future of CRM will come once social media will start contributing data: Once the CRM systems will automatically excavate the web 2.0 social profiles to find additional profile data about our customers.

I am thinking something like Google Buzz or Rapportive, a profile that combines all online information, to be automatically added to the MIS customer entries and matched to the company's CRM entries to generate new marketing synthesis.

Maybe in the future everyone will have a single internet web 2.0 CRM page where CRM data can be updated online to include all information from governmental to personal on the internet. The stored social CRM data could serve everything from VISA applications to user verification and save precious form-filling time. CRM privacy settings can be applied by type of visitor. Then all we would have to do is give a CRM reference code. The OpenID initiative is already a good step to a web identity creation.

...Just a globalized digital vision of the future.

Signage Evolution

Internet marketing is creating change in all aspects of marketing. Even retail signage evolved! 

I spotted a change in retail signage that to this date is not yet present in Lebanon: internet marketing through the signage.

Just got back from a trip to France and Belgium. Nothing better than a change of environment to get inspired!

Check out the web addresses on the signage of the retail stores.

I will let the pictures do the talking...

Keywords: Internet Marketing

" Internet marketing " are the words you have to type into Google to get both Google and Facebook online advertising messages under the adwords section.

Let's learn Search Engine Marketing (SEM) from the giants!

Keywords: Internet marketing

Global monthly searches: 2,740,000 (according to Google's Keyword Tool)

...and Google wins the bid! (their ad shows on top.)

What I thought was odd is actually Google's ad choice of language, although the words typed are in english, Google chose to show me the ad in French (?!)

I also find ridiculous that even Google has to rely on SEM, and were unable to rank in the first page through SEO in the organic search listings.

So we saw Facebook advertising in Google adwords. What's next? Google adwords advertised on Facebook?

The Konami Code Frenzy

Never a game code has gained such a popularity. A hype is being created on the digital scene as developers are adding a secret code to some sites, the konami code.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B and you're in for a surprise!

While this trick is spreading like wilde fire on facebook statuses, more famously recognized as the red circle trick, very few people are aware that it is not only restricted to facebook. While composing this code + enter creates interactive red circles coupled with lens flare effects, it has different results on different sites. While on netlog you get a meaningless fat dragon on your screen, on goolge reader, you get a slight change in the design of the left bar, and so on. the Konami Code site has a beautiful collection of websites where this magic code applies, and ironically, requires the code to be composed to view the list.

I think this movement ought to create a new rave in digital marketing soon, as it is attracting credible sites and an astounishing amount of visitors. Stay tuned!

Play God

All the hype around Web 2.0 and interactive marketing is making me wonder: How good is this in building goodwill? It might generate word-of-mouth, possibly brand awareness... but what happens to the brand name?

If you're already big in the industry then this could be a good solution for you; but can smaller or medium sized companies resort to this marketing means effectively? Contrary to what the experts are saying, I think not.

A brand needs to be seen as an unaccessible superior power of some sort. To create a brand name, you cannot go to the consumer on a one on one basis. You should not come up as "human". Humans make mistakes.

However what the web 2.0 can actually provide is an all-knowing and all-seeing omni-potent presence to the company, that was never there before. Companies can now monitor their environment closely. Knowledge... that's what this information era is all about.

The industry lacks experience with new technologies, and I am afraid that many have gone wrong. Spamming is one offensive and detrimental mean that has previously been used under pretext that it provides measurable results. Pop-ups is another. Those have already been proven to be ineffective.
However, the inclusion of forums on official websites, or the company web logs and personal involvement of the corporation in these are quite demeaning. the brands are being downsized. If such activities are not carefully done, great damage can be caused.

By getting involved, you're making your brand "human"... and thus subject to criticism.

The correct way to deal with interactive marketing is to use it for information gathering, customer monitoring, catering to consumer needs and responding to critics. In two words, play God. Be the good, knowledgeable, capable God who answers prayers not yet formulated.