Month: March 2016

The “Date Rape” Bloomingdale’s Ad That Caused A Mass Outrage Online

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The resplendent, high-end luxury store, whose Brown Bag used to be a customary symbol of my birthday present each year was caught in a terrible controversy on November 11 last year. The mass outrage was caused due to its questionable print ad that stated an uber-creepy tagline “Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking.”

Attired in clothing by Rebecca Minkoff, a male model (described by Jezebel writer Stassa Edwards as “some creep, who looks a little too much like Robin Thicke”) gazes at his friend as she looks away laughing.

The ad drew ire from Twitter users for appearing to encourage date rape, which of course everyone found blatantly offensive.

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Bloomingdale’s apologized in a statement to Tech Insider stating, “In reflection of recent feedback, the copy we used in our recent catalog was inappropriate and in poor taste. Bloomingdales’ sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment,” a Bloomingdale’s representative told Tech Insider. As the ad began to draw more and more outrage online, Bloomingdale’s apologized on its Twitter page. Here is the link to the thread of comments on the apology: https://twitter.com/Bloomingdales/status/664216552544165888

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I wasn’t happy with the way Bloomingdale’s handled the stir it had caused. The department store has a strong cultural heritage and goodwill to live up to and a mere tweet cannot bandage the offensively glaring mistake it made. For the kind of outrage it caused during the jubilant holiday season, it should’ve taken a more concrete, impactful step – donating towards a rape victim charity or even publishing another ad that doesn’t demean sex and portrays it as a beautiful expression of love.

Avoiding this fiasco was a no brainer – the content just had to be read! This is probably why the company gave no explanations or reasons whatsoever. The activists, persons in the media and the general public wondered how this was even possible because every ad copy follows a proper protocol of approvals.

I firmly believe that such incidences are not just under the scope of public relations. The marketing team as a whole has to come up with creative, meaningful and effective ways to curb the outcry of the public. Nothing is more dissatisfying than seeing one of your favorite companies being snooty and apathetic towards an outcry. I believe starting from the customer representative at the store, dealing with clients on a one-on-one basis to the CEO, who strategizes the business as a whole, must be proactively involved in healing the wounds in the hearts of their customers.

The tagline still lurks in my head as I walk into the store, only to make me nauseous and upset with the way Bloomingdale’s handled the crisis, because to me, mistakes are human, but what you do with them, is what matters the most.

Bestie Bloomingdale’s Brown Birthday Bag … Not anymore.

Gamification And The Customer Decision Process

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Intrigued by the new Starbucks Rewards Policy and how it has baffled other coffee connoisseurs like me, I was certain to take the 10-meter deep Olympic dive into the topic of gamification and how it affects consumer decision-making. Perusing through several articles pertaining to customer path, the article titled ‘Do Gamification Features Influence Purchasing Decisions?’ (Source:http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Do-Gamification-Features-Influence-Purchasing-Decisions/1013659) caught my complete attention. The article, published by eMarketer, categorically states that 10% of the respondents said they find the awarding of badges annoying. In addition, only 17% of the 3500 surveyed internet users said they are more likely to buy products from the company and that the gamification features have captured their attention.

I found these statistics rather puzzling. However, being a marketer, and realizing that more than 64% of online purchases take place on the mobile phone, I take majority of the bar graphs as an opportunity to make the customer path more interactive and engaging with the help of these game mechanics. Super Mario provides the perfect parallelism, where each point earned provided a competitive edge and instant gratification. The scores help unlock the next game and incentivize the player to continue playing and maintain the high adrenaline rush. This is exactly what many apps such as Foursquare, Starucks, Nike, FitBit, Mint.com and the alike are using – providing stickers/points/awards with purchases or check-ins, which provide badges/statuses/rewards that can be shared (via social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook).

My friend is an obsessive Foursquare user. The App has a feature called Swarm, this feature provides ranks among friends, incentivizes him by providing stickers and giving designations based on the responses achieved by his tips on places to eat and travel. This makes the whole process of sharing information of food and travel very exciting for him and hence the app evolves as a meaningful platform to share information. However, for a mystical person like me , this gamification feature may be a little too intrusive. Having said that, I am an ardent user of the Starbucks App, which helps me graduate to the next level with every purchase I make at the store, thereby offering me more discount and a couple of freebies. This app keeps me away from La Colombe or Stumptown, because of its gamification feature and makes me a loyal customer of Starbucks Coffee, even if I have to walk an extra mile.

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Stickers provided to the Foursquare users
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Ranks given to the Foursquare users

Hence, I believe, gamification is an excellent tool to encourage customer loyalty and can have a great influence on customer buying process provided the user is already embedded in the ecosystem of the brand and of course the App. The gaming feature cannot pull customers that lack interest or an inclination towards the brand , however, it can surely retain customer loyalty , which is an important subset of marketing.

Makeup Genius – L’Oréal Paris

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Pure genius. Blown-away. Amazed. Spellbound. L’oreal makeup genius just penetrated into the arteries of my heart and of course my soul! Launched in 2014, this is an app that took 10 years to create and uses the same technology that transformed Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which won Oscars for both makeup and visual effects.

I’ve always associated makeup to vanity and narcissism, which is why despite being a twenty-two year old woman with a perennially spotted face, I have never walked into a makeup store. Never. May be I’ve just always been shy, which is why this app just transformed the way I perceive my bland face in the mirror every morning. This app made me feel like I could look beautiful too! Not pretty. Beautiful!

I downloaded the app half-heartedly, worried about the 3.8 KB storage it would take and within a couple of seconds I had entered the magical world of makeup. The App first asked me to take a picture of myself, I was intrigued, so I went ahead and clicked the relaxed selfie it asked for. The app used my picture to superimpose the makeup I selected from the array of options available to choose from.

The app essentially has three categories:

Tap to try a product on: This is the category with which one can try different products and do several permutation and combinations on the scanned faces. I played around with several products and was surprised by my voluminous eyelashes, luscious lips and perfectly contoured skin. The app then provided an option to buy the make-up products through Amazon.The virtual makeup looks can even be saved and shared on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Tap to try the makeup look:  This category enables the users to try red carpet , Oscar looks by world-famous celebrities.

Scan: This category enables the app users to scan several L’Oreal products at the stores and applies it on the virtual face instantly.

These are some of the make-up selfies that the app created , only to add fervor and joy to my dull Friday afternoon.

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I found the app very playful , useful and interactive. It made me go beyond my comfort zone and that too, so effortlessly. I could choose between looks, products, tutorials, reviews of products, scan them for more information and even order them by simply clicking a button. The app just made the whole experience so much fun and exuberant. I fiddled with app with my roommates, saved and shared pictures and by the end of it all of us were baffled by our extravagant overspends on makeup. This is also one of the reasons that I found the app innovative. The use of its cutting edge technology combined with the essence of beauty, e-commerce and emotional marketing made me enjoy the mirror that my phone screen was created into. Underscoring the aspect of aesthetics, the colors, and the font in the app are youthful, zesty and lively – very appealing to its target audience. What I particularly liked about the app is that it combines the concept of brick and mortar to the digital experience, due to the scanning the barcode option. The app has truly revolutionized the whole make-up shopping experience and the results were astounding too. It held the no. 1 spot in App Store’s lifestyle category for four weeks after its launch and has been shared more than 495K times.

My only concern with the app is that it is not easily navigable. I kept getting lost as the app doesn’t have a home button or a discrete drop down menu. This to me was a profound hindrance that the app must look into.

The app however, is a life changer. It helped me overcome my preconceived notions of makeup and saved me from the embarrassment of trying makeup at a drugstore. I highly recommend everyone to download the app, not to buy makeup but to admire the sheer genius of digital marketing and how the brand caught the pulse of its target audience and created a platform that helped women overcome their fears, eventually driving traffic and increasing sales exponentially … because generating profit is always the sole objective of any business.

To download: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/makeup-genius/id871897775?mt=8