Gen Y takes shopping seriously, spending a lot of online time researching, looking at flash-sale promos, checking out what celebrities are wearing and then imagining how they would look in similar outfits, using Pinterest to share items with family members, and keeping up with food and fashion blogs. In fact, when asked how many hours they sit online checking out retail-oriented sites, 83% said they spend up to two hours every single day, according to Urban Land Institute’s Generation Y: Shopping & Entertainment in the Digital Age report.
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Gen Y’s way of retail
Marketers need data nous
Thirty seven percent of UK and US marketing executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Lyris believe using analysis to extract predictive findings from Big Data is the most necessary marketing skill, up from just 17% five years ago. This change in the required skillset has created a challenge for marketers as 45% of executives now view marketers’ limited competency in data analysis as a major obstacle to implementing more effective strategies – second only to inadequate budgets for digital marketing and database management.
Beyond opening weekend
Google suggests that marketers look beyond a film’s opening weekend to determine how well it is going to perform. “Titles such as Identity Thief and Oz: The Great and Powerful have recently shown that there are plenty of box office dollars to capture after the first weekend,” the search giant says. “We found that the number of paid clicks a film garners during a Monday-Thursday period post-premiere, coupled with a few other film-related metrics, serve as strong indicators of how a film will fare in a post-opening weekend against new releases and other holdover films.”
Gimme Glass
Over half of UK students would like to try Google Glass and see what it can do, however, 61% would be self-conscious doing so and 48% would worry that other people might think they are being recorded, according to research from The Beans Group on new Google products, such as Glass, All Access, Now and Wallet.
Intel’s social music experiment
Intel is teaming up with music brand MTV Iggy for a follow-up on last year’s The Music Experiment with The Music Experiment 2.0, which will boast new social gaming challenges that enable fans to access secret shows in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Nashville. Each Music Experiment show will be immersive, themed and set in ‘elaborate and unusual secret venues’ with fans set to arrive in costume. The brands will hand over tickets to fans who engage with the music series through social media and embrace the festive-show themes.
You need to hear Philips and Vice
Philips has joined forces with Vice’s Noisey online music channel to launch a new offering, You Need To Hear This, aiming to explore creativity – and that means delivering original stories from music culture through videos, short films, documentaries and live events. With the new platform, Philips are Vice are promising ‘new music in ways you have never heard before’.
Artists sing for agit8
The ONE Campaign has joined forces with dozens of artists – among them Angelique Kidjo, U2, Will.i.am, Sting, Rokia Traoré, Elvis Costello, Green Day and Ed Sheeran – from to launch agit8, a call for action against extreme poverty ahead of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland. The musicians have added their voices to the campaign by recording new versions of great protest songs, available at ONE.org/protestsongs and on Spotify.
Branding those six Vine seconds
What can Vine do for brands? Well, Vine provides brands with the perfect platform to express their creativity, further validating the fact that social networks truly are becoming expression engines, says Unruly in its A Brand’s Guide to Twitter Vine Apps report.
Who is using it? General Electrics, Gap, Urban Outfitters, Dove and 20th Century Fox – to name but a few – have already capitalised on the platform by integrating it into their current marketing plans.
