We are so excited to announce that we have expanded into the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? And what does expansion mean? Ok, one thing at a time so let’s first get to why we chose the Netherlands.
Nicoline Maes, Director of Business Services (and most recently Director of Business Development/Netherlands as well), moved with her family from the Netherlands to the U.S. in 2006 and in 2007 came on board to Creative Concepts. At this time, Nicoline began working on developing our client reporting tools and then added working with David Borzo to the mix where the two became a very effective content management team. Together David and Nicoline have managed our writer assignments and schedules as well as having developed content topics while editing drafts of blog entries, Facebook updates and more. While Nicoline was helping to bring success to our clients she became a true believer in the power of social media as well as our other services: public relations, design and branding, events and video production. When the opportunity came for Nicoline and her family to go back to her homeland in the Netherlands, she happily made the move and took with her the goal of expanding Creative Concepts internationally.
So how is Nicoline expanding Creative Concepts into the Netherlands? We as a company feel like we have a very good grip on what does and doesn’t work for brands when promoting their business here in the States. We have had great success with our social media services (something we have been doing since 2005) in addition to our public relations, events, marketing, video production and newly added mobile marketing services. These achievements coupled with the fact that there are many small to large companies in the Netherlands who are eager to grow and expand into the United States means we have many potential partnerships ready to flourish with our help.
“At first I had mixed feelings about moving back to the Netherlands,” says Nicoline. “Although I was looking forward to being closer to family and friends again, I so loved working at Creative Concepts and couldn’t imagine not staying with the company. Since we were already virtual and fully accustomed to smoothly collaborating with colleagues all over the U.S., it only made sense to take Creative Concepts to the next level by expanding into the Netherlands. With my experience of living and working in the USA for 5 years, Dutch roots, and solid work experience, I and the Creative Concepts team are able to help Dutch companies expand and grow in the United States. Creative Concepts can already be considered a trusted partner because of their proven track record and now with a physical presence in both countries, there is no doubt that success for us and our potential clients is right around the corner.”
“In juli van dit jaar ben ik, na vijf jaar in Connecticut USA te hebben gewoond en gewerkt, terugverhuisd naar Nederland. Sinds 2007 ben ik werkzaam als Director of Business Services voor Creative Concepts USA. Ondergedompeld in de wondere wereldvan PR, marketing en social media, dicht betrokken bij onze klanten en succesvol virtueel samenwerkend met een breed team in de US, wilde ik niets liever dan mijn werk voor Creative Concepts voortzetten. Wetende dat we de expertise in huis hebben ombedrijven te ondersteunen met een breed scala aan diensten, ontstond het idee om dit ook voor Nederlandse bedrijven te gaan doen, die hun merk in de US willen lanceren (of al actief zijn op de Amerikaanse markt). Als Director of Business Development Netherlands ben ik uw Nederlandse aanspreekpunt, terwijl ons doorgewinterde team in de US klaar staat om voor uw bedrijf aan de slag te gaan. Door mijn lange verblijf in de USA begrijp ik de Amerikaanse cultuur en heb ik een goed inzicht in uw potentiële klant. De lijnen naar Creative Concepts USA zijn kort en we beschikken ook over veel locale contacten, deze mix zal uw merk zeer zeker ten goed komen.”
“I believe the only way to truly expand internationally is to have a trusted source on the other side of the ocean and for us that is Nicoline Maes,” says Valorie Luther, Founder of Creative Concepts. “She is passionate about what we do, loves working with clients, and is reliable and trustworthy…you can’t get better than that! We are not only thrilled for Nicoline as she reaches out to future customers but we are forever excited to help new clients find their next loyal customer both online and off. An opportunity both Nicoline and the Creative Concepts team always look forward to!”
To learn more about Creative Concepts, please join us on our website, www.Creative-Conceptsllc.com or contact Nicoline Maes directly: Mobile NL +31.620088099, Skype CreativeConceptsNL
On a Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago, I happened to peruse a blog entry on Mashable about a site called StyleOwner. I read about a lot of new sites and apps and always investigate them as possibilities for Creative Concepts and/or our clients and this time was no different. As Mashable explained, you could create your own online boutique drawing from many established and up-and-coming designers the site has negotiated a relationship with and by selling your picks, you could earn 10% of sales. Instantly, I felt that this was a winner which was strictly instinct as I hadn’t even gone to the site yet. And this wouldn’t be for me because I don’t need another business…Creative Concepts and a new sister site being developed is quite enough thank you…but this might be fun as a mother/daughter project for the youngest entrepreneur in my family, Olivia. As a side note, when Olivia was in 2nd grade, she created a store in our family room selling her stuffed animals for hugs and when she decided to hire her older brother to play cello to bring in customers (us), I knew that marketing and doing business were a part of her being even at that young age.
So it didn’t take much to get Olivia on board:
Me: “So, Olivia, do you want to pick out some cool clothes and accessories, sell them to your friends, and make money?”
O: “Sure Mom and can I get an iPad to help grow the business?”
Me: “Oh boy!”
So despite the perceived need for new tech toys from Olivia, I emailed StyleOwner for an invite (they are still in Beta) and within ½ hour we got the OK to build our site and boy what a joy it was and is! Once we got our code, StyleOwner asked us to go through some very simple steps where we got to choose the name of our store and then we had the chance to design all the elements of the store from music that plays on our homepage, to the font and the background design where we had many options and styles to choose from. Some elements we were able to pull from our own archives like the profile picture and a bigger picture that sits on the homepage so the setup of our store ended up being a nice combination of personalized elements and their templates which totally worked for us!
Next step was up to Olivia. She built the store. Styleowner has merchandise from a range of 75 individual brands she could choose from to help create a fashionista’s online dream. From men’s and women’s clothes to categories like hats, scarves, jewelry and more, there was no doubt a store could be built that would provide a solution to everyone’s dressing needs. Olivia took two days to go through every item that the site had laid out perfectly for the “stylist.” While choosing an item to put into her store, she could click on an arrow to add to her store and she could click on a bubble to add a personal note about that item. Other options allowed Olivia to choose from designers, categories of items or items based on pricing…so easy even a 6th grader could set up a store if they have an eye for fashion and a heart for sales.
So here is where the site gets super fun with the social commerce side of the business. They have easy ways to share updates about your store on your Facebook and Twitter profiles (Olivia: “hey look Allie (a good friend), I found the perfect necklace for you!” which posts right to Olivia’s facebook and twitter profiles with a link to that necklace so Allie can see it). Olivia can also create recommendations for her friends and share with them once complete. Maybe Olivia’s sister needs some options for the prom so Olivia, with her “recommend” tool, could grab dresses, jewelry, and shoes so her big sis doesn’t have to go through Olivia’s whole store.
While Olivia was still in set up mode, I found a little something to buy because the item was cool (can’t say what it is because it’s a Christmas gift and others are reading this) and I wanted to test out the site as a shopper. Again super easy. I chose the item I wanted, added it to my shopping cart, bought it, got a confirmation email and within days received the item directly from the designer. We realized that Olivia and other storeowners don’t have to mess with ecommerce and shipping and handling themselves because it’s a built in feature. The ecommerce is managed by StyleOwner and the shipping is handled by the brands.
Other helpful tools provided for the “Stylist” is a forum to share your wishlist and problems (it is in Beta after all), incentives for selling like $25 gift cards after five sales which is big for a 6th grader, a blog for talking more about your fashion know-how, and amazing customer service which might be tested once they get more stores up and running but it works perfectly now. There are some much needed elements like SEO for each store and analytics so you know if anyone is visiting but I am hopeful that those goodies will be provided for down the road.
As an up an coming business person, Olivia couldn’t have it better with this site (she has already made her first commission…ok, it did come from me but still…). She has to be in tune with her potential customer, keep an eye out for new designs provided by Styleowner.com that appeal to her clients and she has to continually market the site to preteens (her group), teens (her sister’s peers) and to the mom’s watching over their kids’ shoulders (do I have to say this is my peer group?).
With high quality products, responsive support on the backend for the store owner, and lots of room for personal expression and style from Olivia, the store owner, I am thinking she might just be paying off the mortgage soon with all that she can earn selling from her store, Liv2Shop. Check it out and let us know what you think!
If you’re at all active in social and digital media, you’ve by now heard that there’s a new game in town: Google+. And if you’re not active, you haven’t heard – and you’re probably not going to jump on the bandwagon for a little while. Sure, there are more than 20 million users in Google+ already, but they’re mostly early adopters, techies and communications professionals. The masses of grandparent and college students, and your high school sweetheart, probably have not yet made the leap from Facebook.
However, Google+ is clearly shaping up to be an important platform for marketers. Most brands already have a strong Google presence – think about all those listings you work so hard to generate in their search engine, and many of you probably also have a YouTube presence. Some may even have a Google local listing, and maybe you also pay for ads. It’s not going to come as a shock to you that Google will almost certainly give brands with Google Plus presences a well-placed listing in relevant search results.
But not just yet. Google+ has been actively discouraging (and even deleting) accounts from brands. They say there’s an official brand type of page coming, so they’re not letting companies have presences just yet. So you’ll have to wait a while before you can get really excited about it.
In the meantime, here are a few likely plusses to consider about Google+; mind you, this is based on current info about the consumer pages, and I’m speculating that these things will carry through to brand pages as well.
Google+ is, in its default setting, public. That means that all that good content you create will likely be available to all your customers, not just those on Google+. So it’s a bit like Twitter in that way, and that’s going to be good for your search engine visibility, too (if you do it well).
There are easy-to-use options to share your posts more privately with different groups of people (though it remains to be seen if this feature carries through, and how it can be easily managed, for company pages).
Google+ posts allow for much longer form than Twitter, and longer than Facebook – in fact, there’s no limit to the length of a G+ post. So you can treat it as a mini-blog for your brand. (But don’t go overboard!)
Threaded conversations, like those on Facebook, allow for more interaction and engagement.
You can choose to turn comments on or off for a post, which might be great for important company news, recall information, etc. – but could be a slippery slope, because social media is, well, social, and people have come to expect engagement.
It’s easy to integrate a Picasa account for photos and YouTube for video. (This might be a problem for some brands, though, who already use Flickr as a primary photo platform.)
It’ll be exciting to see what Google+ does for brands and how they roll out their company pages. For brands who already do content well, Google+ could be a huge boon. For those who are not yet in the content creation and curation game, they may very well have to get started once they have access to Google+, otherwise they may lose valuable search engine slots to companies who are on Google+ and doing it well.
There’s nothing like a sweepstakes or contest to get people talking about your brand! When you offer a prize through Facebook, Twitter or blog, you not only increase your fan base but often times these new followers ramp up the conversation as we have seen with client Bigelow Tea on their Facebook page and client Ecover who showcased a fantastic contest called 30 under 30 which garnered hundreds of mentions on all channels.
A successful contest in today’s social media landscape not only helps draw new fans, but it also solidifies a brand’s core values so please help support The Children’s Aid Society and enter your recipe today!
Sometimes it takes more than the written word to really get the consumer excited about your brand. In today’s culture of You Tube and reality TV, people are used to getting up close and personal with everyone from celebrities and socialites to the girl next door.
Video presents a unique opportunity for brands to showcase their products in a way that’s not possible through print or the in-store experience. At Creative Concepts, we partner with brands to help them create engaging and informative videos that tell a story and draw the viewer in.
Our client Ecover recently hosted an Earth Day event in a jaw-dropping New York City penthouse, teaching guests how to make sustainable choices inside their homes. Attendees were taken on a tour of the penthouse and given tips on how to make healthy living choices for each room. Celebrity interior designer Robin Wilson along with Ecover’s Kipling Wagner brought the event to life on video for all to see.
When Ouidad threw a curly party, our cameras were there to record the effusive guests who were ecstatic about their gorgeous new hair styles. Their enthusiasm was contagious–something that definitely would not have come through had it been only in writing.
Video has the ability to turn something static into something dynamic. It brings the brand into the context of real life and helps people interact with the brand. The recipe for a successful video? Feature people who are passionate about the brand, add an expert who can teach the public something interesting about the brand, keep it exciting and easy to watch. Then put it on You Tube and get ready for the hits!
This year, to mark Earth Day, Creative Concepts‘ client Ecover hosted “Bringing Earth Day Home,” a chic yet homey cocktail event in New York City, designed to showcase the products and the brand with a larger overriding theme of showing how the attendees could live a sustainable and stylish lifestyle. Guests mixed and mingled with Ecover’s Kipling and with eco-celebrity interior designer and host of the event Robin Wilson while sipping organic wine and noshing on organic hors d’oeuvres and desserts and locally-sourced cheeses. Various experts shared tips on greening home life, and Ecover sent guests home with re-usable goody bags full of cleaning products.
Goody bags from the Ecover “Bringing Earth Day Home” event
Real-life meet-ups personalize a brand by putting a face and a voice with the product. Events like “Bringing Earth Day Home” are invaluable to brands; they allow consumers to see how products and services can be part of their everyday life. They also offer brands — or, more specifically, the people behind them — the opportunity to interact with their target audience in a genuine, spontaneous way. Forging that real-life, face-to-face connection is key to building brand recognition. Social media offers brands an invaluable way to connect with consumers outside of a brick-and-mortar store — in their own homes, in fact, or in the car or wherever they are connecting with their networks. Ultimately, though, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting with customers and clients.
Ecover Products featured at the “Bringing Earth Day Home” event
“We so believe in the power of social media,” says Valorie Luther, founder of Creative Concepts. “Our clients get to reach out to their customers and make a difference whether they are sharing expert information or answering questions. But we also believe in meeting customers face to face, which our clients are doing with interesting intimate events that build off of what has been established online. The event we just produced for Ecover was all about sharing sustainable and stylish tips with the guests (which included great food and wine). Attendees walked away with full size Ecover products in their goody bags which we know from experience makes an impact. When you combine the online efforts with offline meetings, a brand has made a difference!”
Taking the time to meet face-to-face with clients and consumers is key to building a successful brand. Creative Concepts is committed to the idea that social media allows companies to connect with consumers on a daily basis, but we also believe that going the extra mile and hosting an in-person event is the final step in connecting with the very consumer who has helped you build your business. It’s a thank you….and the perfect way to say how much you appreciate their support.
Have any event stories to share? We want to hear from you so please share you thoughts via the comments.
Smartphones are changing the way moms think about everything, from shopping to parenting. In a recent survey conducted by BabyCenter, 51% of moms admitted to being “addicted” to their smartphones. What does this mean? Simply that this generation of mothers is plugged into the culture in ways their own mothers were not.
Smartphones have taken the place of the coffee klatch — instead of dropping the kids at the bus stop and sitting down in the kitchen to catch up on neighborhood gossip, moms are turning to their phones to network. 96% of the moms surveyed by BabyCenter have some type of Facebook app on their phones; these same moms are 284% more likely to text a friend than they are to call them.
But these women aren’t just playing games and reading celebrity gossip on their phones; they’re transacting family business. 53% of the women in the survey said their smartphone purchase “was directly related to becoming a Mom.” The most important features on Mom’s phone are the camera and video camera, followed closely by her apps — a quarter of which are specifically for the kids.
When they’re not shooting video of the kids, moms are using their smartphones to shop. 62% of moms surveyed use their smartphones to compare prices, while 46% say they have followed up on an ad they saw on their smartphone. 46% say the best time to receive information about products is while they are in the store. Apps that show local or nearby deals and allow barcode scanning are popular with these phone-savvy moms as well.
What does all this mean for marketers? Simple: Moms are looking for ways to keep in touch and stay informed, all while streamlining their responsibilities, and they are frequently turning to their smartphones to help them out. Reaching these plugged-in moms is a matter of getting into their phones, via social networking outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.
What is your brand doing to reach these savvy mobile ready moms?
It’s no secret that social media isn’t free. There’s been much discussion about looking past surface indicators like free-of-charge accounts and unlimited data usage to look at the heart of the matter: success in social media takes tools, personnel resources, and time.
The complexities don’t end at evaluating the sticker price of those three components. If your company truly wants to draw a hard line between activity and results, you need to look at these subsets too.
What does social media cost your business?
Social media tool sets
Are you using the right tools for the job? Tweetdeck is pretty mainstream and your in-house team may be comfortable with it from their own personal use. But if they’re also managing a community on Facebook, there may be some loss of efficiency switching between the two. This approach also presents potential “time sucks” in that it’s easy for an administrator to get drawn into their own tweet stream or news stream, inadvertently squandering valuable time (even errant minutes add up). An alternative approach might be to use Time.ly or (which auto-optimizes tweets to maximize exposure to followers) or Argyle Social (which allows for updates for multiple platforms and provides performance analytics). The wrong tools may cost you additional administration time or weaken your reach.
Personnel to manage social media
Fact is, if responsibilities like social media strategy and management aren’t a specific part of a job description, they won’t be given the attention necessary for proper planning and thoughtful execution and analysis. Anytime work is added to someone’s plate without an accompanying outline of expectations, metrics, and deliverables, it’ll eventually fall into the camp of fuzzy marketing stuff your company tried and abandoned (this is a big reason why our clients called Creative Concepts in the first place because we can support the daily social media action items).
As demonstrated with the recent Chrysler debacle, having the wrong person run point on your company’s social media accounts can spell disaster. But don’t forget your responsibility in the matter: equip team members with brand standards guidelines, run mock scenario drills, and closely supervise messaging until you’re confident that good judgment will prevail.
Social media time and attention
Maintaining a real presence means someone’s covering the metaphorical social media phones almost 24/7. Whether your team rotates through scheduled time slots or just a couple of people are “always on,” you have to consistently show up for the party in order to gain followers and earn trust. Never let a tweet go unanswered.
Time-to-payoff is one of those factors management needs to consider heavily before jumping into the social media waters. Determining milestones to evaluate success metrics is an important part of plotting a strategy. Make sure your organization sets the program up for success with probable, realistic goals steeped in research.
What other elements would you add under the big umbrellas of Tools, Personnel, and Time? What are some other costs of social media?
Fast forward just six short weeks. A series of social media missteps has tangled the skirts of a few prominent fashion brands, and it may take some time for them, and the industry, to figure out how to better manage the new norm of transparency and authenticity in a traditionally closed, secretive world.
Kenneth Cole Cairo Explosion
In early February (actually before Fashion Week), just as Egypt was exploding, shoe and clothing designer Kenneth Cole waded into deep Twitter muck with an ill-conceived tweet suggesting that the Cairo uprisings were somehow related to the release of his Spring collection. Within minutes the Twittersphere was all abuzz, with outraged bloggers and influencers taking to their tweetstreams to put Mr. Cole in his place. A parody Twitter account, @KennethColePR, even popped up to take advantage of the situation, ensuring that the gaffe got maximum attention for the better part of the month.
The CEO of Marc Jacobs, Robert Duffy, had been at the helm (inexplicably) of their Twitter account for some time. In mid-February, they advertised for a new Twitterer – applications via Twitter only, of course. While they were looking, they installed an intern in the job. Um, not so smart. On March 25, said intern melted down via the company’s Twitter account, letting out a series of tweets berating the boss and firmly sinking any chance of him ever working in fashion again.
Brands make mistakes and brands recover from mistakes….and fashion is no exception. But, based on these gaffes, there will unquestionably be a “new norm” in the future for formerly freewheeling designers and fashion personalities when it comes to their social media presences.
A decade ago, the idea of a green industry seemed like a pipe dream. Environmentalism was still an “outsider” idea, and the smart money was on more (big, irresponsible) business as usual.
But in our post-9/11, post-Hurricane Katrina, post-An Inconvenient Truth society, something changed. Suddenly, people were concerned about the environment, and about energy, and about the impact their daily actions might have on the planet’s future.
In the aftermath of this green awakening, people needed a way to ask questions, share suggestions, pitch policy reforms and raise environmental concerns. Thus, from blogs to YouTube to Facebook to Twitter, social media became the hub for a wide array of environmental discussions — and today their collective conversation is louder than it’s ever been.
Blogs: The Spark for Green Journalism
Before the mainstream news media embraced the green movement, impassioned individuals were using blogs to bring attention to the environmental issues they were personally concerned about. These grassroots movements flowered, and today some of the most trusted (and highly-trafficked) sources for green news are blogs like Grist, Sustainablog and TreeHugger. In turn, larger news organizations like the New York Times and the Huffington Post now have blog channels dedicated to green content, further validating the environment as a mainstream subject.
Green News Travels Fast
A simple search of Twitter hashtags like #sustainable, #green and #EcoMonday reveal that hundreds of green conversations take place on Twitter every day. Equally impressive is how often brands and corporations enter those conversations to share related tips (and to promote their related products and services). This real-time information exchange helps brands monitor topics of interest to their customers, but it also means that breaking news like the BP gulf oil spill quickly becomes common knowledge (and stays in the public eye for months), making it harder for companies to manage the spin.
Common Bonds Create Communities
As young mothers become increasingly aware of the ingredients they’re introducing into their children’s lives, “green mommies” have become a swiftly-growing subset of the “mommy blogger” community, championing a renewed emphasis on natural and organic foods, fibers and cleaning products (like those made by our client, Ecover).
This same unifying “green” thread can be found in other eco-responsible communities, including designers, chefs, fashionistas and anyone seeking a little lifestyle improvement. This provides consumers with universal access to information, support and resources, and it provides ecological brands with unified audiences to poll, connect with, learn from and sell to.
Greenpeace vs. Nestle: When Facebook Becomes a Battlefield
Sometimes, brands who use social media for sales and marketing find themselves trapped in a PR conundrum because they forget a basic online truth: they don’t control the conversations that happen on their channels. For example, when Greenpeace activists hijacked the conversation on Nestle’s Facebook page, Nestle was slow to respond (and clumsy when they did), which caused the company to seem both evasive and dismissive. News of their snafu spread like wildfire, causing Nestle a lengthy and time-consuming PR headache — and, ultimately, led to Nestle agreeing to meet Greenpeace’s demands.
It’s hard to imagine that kind of outcome occurring a decade ago, before social media provided the green industry with a collective voice. And it’s fascinating to wonder where such a hyper-connected green future might lead both a green-obsessed world and the ecological companies that serve their needs.
closer to family and friends again, I so loved working at Creative Concepts and couldn’t imagine not staying with the company. Since we were already virtual and fully accustomed to smoothly collaborating with colleagues all over the U.S., it only made sense to take Creative Concepts to the next level by expanding into the Netherlands. With my experience of living and working in the USA for 5 years, Dutch roots, and solid work experience, I and the Creative Concepts team are able to help Dutch companies expand and grow in the United States. Creative Concepts can already be considered a trusted partner because of their proven track record and now with a physical presence in both countries, there is no doubt that success for us and our potential clients is right around the corner.”
