What happens when you hit the Google search button

Ever wondered what happens on the interwebs when you hit search on Google? They've put together a handy little infographic that explains the process.

Image from Mashable.

A Twitter campaign for the boys

Needs little introduction. Enjoy.

Target predicts a teen is pregnant before her father

Recently New York Times ran a story about Target's data mining efforts. By looking at the historical buying patterns of mothers who joined the Target baby registries they can predict pregnancy amongst current Target customers. 

Target started to put together baby coupons and catalogues and sent them to those they predicted were pregnant. Target sent one such catalogue to a household with a teen daughter. The father called to complain about this, only to realise a couple of days later that his daughter really was pregnant. 

Target is now having to make the baby content in catalogues look a bit more random, like placing nappies near lawn mowing equipment, so people are not spooked by the fact Target has predicted that they are pregnant. 

Isn't it strange that companies are now getting so good at predicting what we need that they have to play it down? It does present a great opportunity for brand and organisations to serve the needs of customer before they even know they need it…

Em

P.S.

More info on the data-mining from NYT:

"[Target statistician Andrew Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse largeenough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August."

Order Evian Home Delivery from a Fridge Magnet

Evian have created a digital object which enables customers to order deliveries to their home. It's a fridge magnet which connects to the internet via wifi. By placing it on the fridge Evian have come up with a practical way of keeping their brand front of mind and enabling customers to order more product at the moment of need.

Em

Interesting digital stuff

Hmmm not blogged for a while, and there's been some interesting digital work showcased recently and I wanted to at least share a few of them. Some of you may have seen these but always worth another look if you have. I like that two of these are heavily 'mobile led' as the more great mobile stuff we see, the easier it'll be to convince brands to invest there.


World's longest lasting click

I always like seeing new approaches to banner ads, as they often get met with a groan. This one from Stride gum really draws the user in, and keeps them there. One user interacted with this banner for 22 minutes, impressive!

Guinness QR

I get lots of questions about QR codes and on the whole I reply in the negative as consumers aren't seeing the value when they are used. Here's a rare cool example from Guinness that might change that. The code is in the glass but only works when it's filled with the black stuff. Clever. Read about it in full here.

Let's Dance

User content campaigns can easily bomb, particularly if you ask too much of your audience. This one for game 'let's dance 3' certainly didn't, recently picking up a Gold pencil at the one show. Great use of mobile, and some incredible social results.

Cheers
Nic

Facebook Offers

It’s safe to say that Facebook has had a busy few weeks. It purchased Instragram last week for $1 billion and now it’s finally launched Facebook Offers to a select few business pages. “Facebook has been rolling out Offers since fMC and it’s now available in Beta in Japan, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat.

The new feature allows business pages to post Groupon style offers into users news feeds, where they can “get the offer.” Once the user has selected to receive the offer, they are sent an email with the redemption details and they can either go in store with a printout or show the retailer the coupon on their smart phone.

So will Facebook Offers fair any better than the ill-fated Facebook Deals, which ended after only 4 months of testing? The process of seeing a deal from a company you already like, in your news feed feels like a relatively seamless way for the product to work, but if you’re not keen on seeing the offers you’ll have to hit the un-like button.

Offers come with some nice features for businesses though, including the ability to link an ad straight back to an offer and a pinning feature to allow you to pin the offer to the top of your page so new fans see it when they visit your page for the first time.

And for users, if you redeem an offer it will be shared with your friends on your timeline, so be sure to check your settings if you don’t want that information public.

Cheers,

Brighita 

Pinterest

Pinterest is now the third most visited social-networking site in the US according to a report released by Experian Marketing Services.

In Australia, according to Nielsen, the site’s audience members jumped from 140,000 in December to 360,000 in January. Even US President Barrack Obama has jumped on the bandwagon.

Despite some copyright issues, which prompted Pinterest to amend their T&C’s, the site is being embraced by users as well as brands throughout Australia.

Tourism Australia hit Pinterest last month and yesterday Kleenex Australia announced it was running a brand campaign on the social network which will end with the “world's fastest 'Pin to Make A Difference' pinning competition.”

So what do you need to know if you’re thinking about plunging into pinning?

• Make sure you familarise yourself with the T&C’s particularly the copyright and trademark conditions
• Know your audience. Who is using the site, who should you follow, who is likely to follow you and what do they want to see? 
• Categorise your boards correctly. This makes it easier for users to determine which boards they want to follow. Pinterest also recently changed the way the boards are displayed, allowing users to select the image that best represents the board.

• If you’re a website owner, make sure it’s pin-friendly. It’s not possible to pin images from flash site so if you think your target audience is using Pinterest consider switching to HTML. 
• And most importantly, determine if Pinterest is right for your brand and organization. Heather Sundell wraps it up perfectly when she asks “is your brand visual?” Without the right content, dedicating someone to manage another social networking site may be a waste of a valuable resource.