Make customizing as your positioning

As a customer, I feel that selling companies sometimes failed to match my needs with their products. Why? Because I never fell that I have deeply cared by the companies. But once I have this feeling, I would definitely buy something from that companies. Why, since I feel I connected with the brands, and the brand know me.

I am a big fan of Kiehl's for a long time. Because I feel the company always can solve all my skin problems, or I say I trust this brands so much.
With the launch of the new skin series, Kiehl's provide a customer selection part, to mostly energize customers,like me

In this part, it helps customers to choose products based on skin type, weather condition, and also customer's preference. 

After that the system would provide the customer with a skin plan based on Kiehl's products. Unlike telling the customers how good this plan is, The Kiehl's use word of mouth way to advertise their products, they would show a customer's photo who almost has the exactly same condition with you, and through her mouth, and a 3 months' before and after comparison, customers would buy their products without any doubt, because they solved all the questions in customer's mind. 

In Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, there are three essential steps for companies to make customers can feel that the company is customer centered, 1st, the companies should make the transformation from company centered to customer centerted step by step. 2nd, each steps leads in a natural progression to the next step. And the third, you have to have internal support.

In the case of the Kiehl's their website has a very good log relation, make customers feel very comfortable, they first put the post page of the new product, Rosa Arctica at the front page of the home page, make people aware the existence of the products, form the "Top Mind Awareness", by the click of the pictures, goes into the specific page of the rosa arctic, where first introduce the products, then give the true stories of the products, the bottom chart is the "Shop" choice, which is actually action Kiehl's want customers to do. But with the natural flow to the purchase, customer would feel that this company is not a company only look in my money, they really care about me, and want to perfect my skin.

The following video is the Coca's new machine. Companies like Coke Cola they are still trying a lot of ways to make their customers fell they care about the customers, they are always updating themselves. Since excitement, new things are the top mind awareness from customers to Coke Cola

In the chapter 12, the authors talking about energize the groundswell inside, which means make employees say yes first to your products, however, in my opinion, in this inside part, loyal customers should also be included, through them you can know what you need to change, and also some times they can represent the needs from customers, their customization sometimes for your company can be a matter.

Social Media Monitoring "Kiehl's 1851"

160 years ago, a small pharmacy in New York city opened, located in the intersection of Third Avenue and Thirteen street. From that moment a miracle was showing up, it is Kiehl's. Kiehl's is like a charming old lady, with her experience, telling story about the attitude of being beauty.
There are thousands of cosmetics brands in U.S.A, why I choose Kiehl's. There are four main reasons,
1st, Kiehl's works well. Kiehl's originate from pharmacy, and also they have good reputation on the dermatology solutions, which always can solve targeted skin problems, and also the reason why Kiehl's works out is not due to the combination of the harmful chemical elements, it is due to the combination of nature and human intelligence, the ingredients of Kiehl's are finest nature driven, no harm to human being and also no harm to animals.      
In the following video talks about how Kiehl's traveled around world to source the ingredients for the Aromatic Blends series.                                                                                                      

Second, because Kiehl's has a simple characters. This "simple" mans a lot but ordinary. Kiehl's use simple, efficient, and recyclable packages. They believe that good quality can speak itself loudly. The luxury of Kiehl's is not outside but inside.  Without thoses "chic" clothes, Kiehls uses 80% of annual marketing budget in free samples giving. They provide current customers with free samples, and trust their customers, by using words of mouth, they grow to this big.  Lynn Upshaw in Truth writes"The Kiehl's way of selling is not to sell at all. They believe the products will do what they do and no hype will change that." 

Third, Kiehl's has a real warm heart. In Kiehl's mission statement," making for better citizens, better firms and better communities." What they care is not only the attitude about beauty of appearance, but also about beauty in deep heart of every one.  Kiehl's has a very good philanthropy reputation. They pay attention to charity especially in the fields of: HIV/ AIDS education, prevention, and research; protecting and nurturing the environment; children's well-being.

I love children so much, children are the gifts from god. Kihel's pay a lot of their attention to children and think all the children deserve to have a fair shake.

And also Kiehl's is always updated itself. Kiehl's always provide customers new things to try, new techniques to play with. Like what they expect for customers' life, enjoy life, and refresh all the time.

I have monitored Kiehl's for several weeks. The social media monitoring tools I used are: Addict-O-Matic, Ice Rocket, Google Trends, Social Mention, Kurrently, and also Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Google and other search engine.

Target Audience:
Kiehl's Marketing segmentation is pretty clear, they are almost from "Young Cloud", the Kiehl's is not a women most fan Brands, the truth is that male consumers contains 45%-50% of the total customers.

And also Kiehl's do care about their male customers, in their web site, they made a particular most favorite products for male ranking. Due to male's characters they care more about numbers and rankings.

Global Official Website:

Kiehl's official website are designed based on different culture, like in Japan and United States, Kiehl's use different ways to effectively deliver message.
Cultural Dimension Japan     Cultural Dimension United States

Because Japan is a high context culture country, which means most of the information is part of the context in their communication system. In country like this, marketing needs different ways, people more care about what other's comments, peer recommendation is much more important than detail numbers and descriptions.

Kiehl's Japan

 In Kiehl's United States official website, with the launching of the new Rosa Arctic, straight picture, with the functions and price, everything is clear. Because United States has a different culture context with Japan. Thus the marketing way is also varied.

Kiehl's United States

New Technique in the website

In the campion of the new Kiehl's products Rosa Arctica, Kiehl's launched a new technology gadget to make customers enjoy their shopping experience, and also they used "electronic "word of mouth strategy, this would make the whole shopping process much more warm, and customers can feel the caring from Kiehl's. Click here to experienceFind Your Rosa.

Google Trends
From Google Trends graphics, it is clear to see when is the peak time of customer paying attention to Kiehl's, for Kiehl's enough stock, various and effective marking strategies can make a lot of different.


Social Mention
Social mention have several index to tell the popularity of you social media

Sentiment: ration between positive reviews and negative reviews ( Great )

Strength: is the likelihood the brand being discussed in social media.( Poor)

Passion: is the likely hood, person talk about the brand repeatedly  ( Great ) 

Reach: The influence of the brand. (Good)

Findings: 1. Social Media engagement is totally not enough, word of mouth is not enough

Social Mention of Apple

The following picture indicates the geographic location of the social media visitors, for Kiehl's this can be a matter, these visitors are interesting to the Kiehl's, so they can be current and potential customers. Based on this index, Kiehl's can pay more attention with the featured location, organize more effective interactions with groundswell in those area.

Current and Potential Customer Geographic Location

This is all I found in the past few weeks, in the coming weeks I will still monitor Kiehl's from diffent monitor channels, and figure out more detail reason about why the discussion of Kiehl's is not that lot, and also analyze how to improve these points.

Baby Stars

For me, the most interesting categories on the youtube is baby, all the babies are so cute. Not only me, there are a lot of adults love these interesting babies.
Why is that in adult world these cute babies could become so popular.

I doubt no body have no idea about Charlie and his brother, they got 488,551,989 viewers! What this means?  The population statistics based on 2011 Census Bureau, that the population of U.S was 311, 591,917. See? They may already have fans much more than U.S population. 

  The popularity of babies is not a sudden thing, it has a large connection with the whole society development. With more and more competition from work, adults want to have a pure happy environment, they want to leave all the disputes, camouflages, struggles alone. Actually, adult are pretty poor,  they try best to look pretty, to look strong, to look happy.  But the truth is that a lot of adult feel unsafe, unhappy and lack of belonging.  When the adults go back to the home after home, especially for young adults, they feel much more lonely, they may hang out with some friends, to drink, to dance,but are these real happy, ask a hundred men, no body would say, the bar happy is a true happy.  What they want desperately is pure happy, no body can have more pure happy than babies.  The happiness babies could bring to us is something we can never expected.

The boy in this video made every body laugh, why? Because he is so true, say anything in his mind, this is how children's mind are as precious as diamond.

                     

For adult, it is so hard to express the true feeling, since we all have different pressure, expectation from different aspects. We have to watch our behavior all the time, it is tired, but we have no choice.

In the following video, the laughing points are so much, first, we can see the genuine reaction when we lose something, for adult, this true feeling expressed has gone so far. And also some children act so much like an adult, looks so warm and funny

In the following video, why adults are so enthusiastic about babies eating lemon, does the lemon tastes different in babies mouth? No! Because babies act exactly what they feel without any other considerations. They are true so they are precious.

 Social media for a adult can mean a lot, from them they can get released from works, these babies truly are gifts from life, social media make these gifts world widely shareable.

Groundswell Helps You Fixing The Gap

Companies always wandering why is the customer review so important. For a seller, what I need to do is just  precisely describe my products, then left the choice to customers.

The truth is that customer reviews are as important as products descriptions. Why? Because, this two parts together complete the loop of customer purchasing. The first need, of course, is to know WHAT you are buying (description, images help), the next need is to know IF it is a good purchase and will suit your needs (reviews fill this needs). Both are essential to the shopping process.  For organizations what one need to do is providing chance for customers to do the word of mouth message transformation in many ways to express their enthusiasm toward the products. And also react, based on customers feeling, and your reaction would tell your customers you care about their opinions, this would very helpful for the future business. And in Groundswell , it calls " energizing groundswell"

From The chart in left, it is very clear to tell that how important the customers reviews is, because that is the place where business happens. Opinions of a friends or acquaintance, but it is hard to control, and not easily to acknowledge of. However, for the review and ratings of the product, it is something organizations have control and can act with.  There are a lot of ways to do so, but all in all, making your customers talking like own home. We all know that, people may act as different roles in different situation, if the company offer a warm, and free place to customers where is like a home, they would become soft and also more enthusiastic toward the products. The other side is , if the organization do not care about customers' opinion, and strictly about their opinions, the customers would arm up, and ready to fight, for a company this would be a nightmare.

This two pictures are the screenshots from L.L.Bean.
They used a lot of way to make the customer reviews useful, they use star ratings, content review,  chart, and also they give other customers to judge the usefulness of the comment. All these words, numbers make the single review page become a community. People would become more serious about their review, since other customers can judge it. For L.L Bean, this is really good, become their customer kind of self-monitoring each others.

In this video,we fell how and in what extent the groundswell can work for an organization.
Provide your customers with a community, let them talk, listen to them, act and provide feedback to them. Then the customers know that they are cared by you, not only now but also will be the same in the future. In this way the groundswell become your eternal friends.

Smart Is The New Sexy

What picture would you have in mind, when we talk about science, and scientist. Is that a world far beyond reach, are they talking some wired jargon we would never have any idea of ?
Look at the left picture, who do you think them are, no doubt, they are SCIENTISTS!  Who says that science must be boring and gray, who says scientists must be stubborn and wired.
 In 21st century, smart is the new sexy( The Big Bang Theory).


Science is a serious subject, a little mistake can result a huge difference. This feature makes people define science and scientist like stubborn, unsocialized, but with the development social media, we can not only aware that scientists are also common human being, but also we have chance to know, how colorful the science is.
There are a lot of interest ,even magical scientific research on the social media website, like Facebook, Youtube, etc. The interesting thing is that people did not say the science is boring, but interesting, and very magical.

In this video, I was "wow" instantly, when the magic happens. This video is not only interesting but also arise people's eager to learn, to figure out what's going on there. And they may also want to conduct their own research, after conduction, failure or success, they talk about it, analyze it, that is how learning can be effective.

In this video, you would feel so amazing how sexy the science is, the scientist looks much more charming than he was before he did the experiment. See, this is what says as Smart is the new sexy.
By the social media, this little magic can be reached  by all the watchers, all the people can have access to the science. just as professor Juliet Frechette says, now the gate is open to all the people.

And now, sexy is not that easy to pose, since smart is the new sexy.