Brand Monitoring Project: Final report

Excellent social media strategies contribute to Forever 21's success by reaching out to its young customers and building online communities. This fast-growing fashion empire continues to create buzz and engages its customers by collaborating with designers, or brands. Their collaborations are brilliant as it combines the popularity of Forever 21 and the designer, namely “Rocy Beca” and “Petro Zillia” in the past 2 months. By collaborating with designers, not only does Forever 21 wisely tap into the designer’s fans, but also at the same time, those fans are likely Forever 21’s target demographic. Besides, collaborations would catch attention of many fashion bloggers and encourage them to spread the news throughout the bloggers world. 

“100% for Japan, Shop for a cause” 

-Cares about situations in Japan

-Long term brand image

-Personality
-Timely event to respond to
-Do not want to miss a chance to create even more buzz

Target Audience:

(Source: Quantcast.com )
Trends:

-Success
-Petro Zillia (Late Feb, Early March)
-Time and duration issues

Participates in:
Facebook

 By constantly updating their status with photo shoots of their new merchandise, Forever 21 attracts their fans to notice new collections, and triggers their desire to skim through more photo shoots that are available at Forever21.com.  The page had 4,109,806 likes on March 16^th, and now has 4,187,276 likes after 2 weeks. The online community is growing steadily.

Twitter

140,000 followers on March 16^th to 145,000 followers in two weeks time.  The twitter feeds are very similar to the ones on Facebook, because the brand uses HootSuite to cross posts, but the fan base is smaller and less active. Twitter serves as a tool that allows customers to share individual experiences with the products. 

"The skinny"

Music Playlist
Love Tweets

It is very groundswell-oriented, clever and resourceful. At first sight, it is noticeable that “The skinny” is not packed with Forever21 products, but offers fashion news from Paris and New York. There are columns dedicated to celebrity style, fashion off the runway, and finally Forever 21 features. Instead of filling the blog with Forever 21 style ideas, the brand’s pieces are featured along with the current fashion style trends. It is a one-stop shop to inquire knowledge about the latest fashions and then purchase them. The blog also includes a playlists of songs that is available for free downloads. It creates a fun atmosphere that is beyond what Forever 21 products have to offer physically.

Tone, Message, Engagement

Topic: Fashion, video, coat, clothes, outerwear, Japan, relief, efforts, earthquake, tsunami, , sales, shoes, flats.

Tone: positive, fun, friendly, concise, and usually includes links to the official blog or website

 Engagement: around 300 likes and 50 comments per Facebook post. It seems that they are reaching their target audiences. Twitter is less about getting re-tweets, but to have customers discuss about the products or the brands. Most people would post tweets about their recent purchase or recent trip to Forever 21, as well as their passion for a particular piece or collection.

Recommendations

1) Increase Strength

Sentiment: (deserves mor positive tweet?)

Lowest in strength, which measures the likelihood that the brand is being discussed in social media. Even though the official site has a lot more traffic and unique visitors, as well as people who are referring to the brand more frequently, it is still not likely that the brand is discussed in social media.

 Why is the strength low? Fast Fashion, lack of originality, industry specific problem.

2) More interesting Tweets

identical message on Facebook and Twitter

3) Sustain the engagement and passion

The goal of Forever 21 is to maintain the high level of buzz by encouraging its customers to discuss about the collections after they have purchased it. One way to encourage customers to extend passion to hold competitions that allows customers to post photos of their outfit and show creativity that they have exemplified through wearing pieces of the collection.


4) Get on Groupon and geo-location applications
Groupon: 15-20% discount/ free special t-shirt, Attract new customers, low cost, create buzz, keep fans excited
Geo-location: “First 50 check-ins would receive a free sweater”

The role of Social Media in Egypt, Original post #1

The recent unrest in Egypt has caught attention of the international community. Latest updates on daily protests in Egypt are reported on all major news channels, newspapers, and articles. Protests last month have brought the 29-year regime of Hosni Mubarak to a precipice. Hundreds and thousands of people gathered to demand the president to step down. In response, Mubarak quickly ordered his government to resign but did not agree to step down. With the freedom granted by the Internet today, young people in Egypt were able to use social media to report and publish first-hand images and videos.

Read more about the situation on New York Times

Twitter and other social media platform have been flooded with images, information and videos about the current situation in Egypt. Egypt-related tweets showed the intensity and urgency of the ongoing political crisis. Through social media, people around the world were able to get immediate information, well before the official news statement and broadcast. Over the past few days, thousands and millions of families who have friends or family members in Egypt were digging through the Internet, trying to find bits and pieces of what was happening there. This is a Youtube video shot by a local. 

Very soon, the information was out of the government’s control because everyone was able to broadcast his or her own stories. On Friday, the government shut down the Internet and was able to block most communicative messages by cutting off Internet and mobile services. 

Although majority of people in Egypt are not able to access the Internet, some journalists with satellite phones are able to report violent protests immediately. Social media intelligence in various countries tried alternative ways to help Egyptians connect online, so that they can continue to provide news, video clips, and images. Some offered a dial-up connection. Google has also launched a voice-to-Twitter service to assist Egyptian twitter users to journalize the crisis.

By searching for the key word “Egypt”, or “Yeman”, Twitter was able to analyze: 

With Web 2.0, the new school communication is through “Social Media”, they have become essential ingredients for democratic change. What is the role of the Media in political crisis like this one? According to the CNN, 

Some say Egypt is violating modern human rights by cutting access to the Internet and to mobile phone networks. Others say the fact that protests have continued despite these digital barricades reveals a massive hole in the argument that social media spawns modern revolutions.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told Al-Jazeera that internet access is a modern human right

Dave Pell, writing on the blog Tweetage Wasteland, says the internet isn't essential for revolution -- but it sure helps

At the blog TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis writes that Twitter is turning people into individual news networks

In The New Yorker,Nicholas Thompson, a social media expert, writes that the internet can benefit both sides of a conflict

Harvard's Jillian York writes the Tunisia protests would have happened with or without Twitter and Facebook -- but we might not have heard about it

Internet access is "fundamental" to the protests in Egypt, writes Khadija Sharife on the Huffington Post

Read details on what people think about the role of social media


Perhaps social media did not trigger people in Egypt to protest and fight for their freedom all of a sudden. However, it does provide a medium for people in different parts of the world to interact and share information immediately. With the situation in Egypt, people from the outside were interested in understanding the situation through personal stories by local people, and social media was able to help in such terms. As Jillian York suggested, "protests would have happened with or without Twitter and Facebook, but we might not have heard of it."

Moscow bombing on Social Media

Click here to watch =)
How social media broke the first pictures of the airport bombing aftermath.

Social Media Revolution Hits Saudi Arabia

Social Media is no doubt a big part of our social lives in this country. Instead of calling, texting, or e mailing, we may choose to share interesting things through twitter, Facebook, or youtube. It seems that people no longer communicate with each other directly, but through some sort of social media tools. Last semester, Clark had an event called the "Slow Day", when students and faculty were supposed to stay away from cell phones and internet in order to practice "slowing". Doing Yoga or Tai chi were ways to achieve. Surprisingly, most Clark students did not even know that it had happened, because it just didn't sound doable or relevant in this social era.

How about social media in other countries? As we know, most social media networking sites started in the US (CA and MA), namely Facebook, twitter, and Youtube. Soon enough, developed countries like Japan, Korea, Canada, UK, or other European countries followed the trend. Yet, today, it may appear to be a shocking news that Facebook and twitter are blocked by the government in China, that the general public in China are not able to access Facebook and Twitter, or even Youtube there. Does it imply that Chinese people are not as "connected" as we are? Definitely not, as smart as we know they are, there is a Chinese version of all three sites, they serve the exact same purpose, and they may even look very similar.

Today, I read on npr.org that "Social Media Revolution Hits Saudi Arabia". In the article, it was mentioned that "Ten million Saudis are online, 3 million belong to Facebook, and Twitter feeds are up more than 400 percent."The question was how come Saudi bloggers are receiving additional attention all of a sudden? The answer is simple, because they are presenting information that other internet users are interested in. With overflowing amount of information online, attention is limited and readers can only focus on what looks most interesting to them. With the unrest in Cairo, Saudi bloggers are able to post video clips or first hand experiences online, and share with their blog readers locally or overseas. Often times, these unofficial "news" make their appearance in the social world hours before than the official statement, and are less censored. With today's internet, information is out of control, everyone can reproduce and remix content that are globally accessible, generate and alter information through media outlets, and nothing can be "undone" on the internet. How can the authoritarian regime in Saudi Arabia deal with the freedom that internet has gifted everyone with? How can they block out international news, and continue to remove updates on Facebook, twitter or blogs? Or would they have to surrender to the mass opinion? Or would they have to produce alternative social media sites like the Chinese government and block Saudis from freedom granted by the internet? Is social media powerful enough to take down a government?

Read more here
and you may also listen to the news here, click listen to the story.