“We targeted people looking for studio flats, as well as one-/two-bedroom apartments by placing our tiny stores in the real estate section of community websites,” explains the brand.

To help consumers work out how they can help, the agency has developed an online WeFeedBack calculator where users can enter the name of their favourite food and its price to see immediately how many kids that would feed. Anyone one making a donation will see that sum doubled by Havas.

Opportunistic Adventurers have impulsive social shopping tendencies and demand timely and relevant deals. To connect with Opportunistic Adventurers, brands should invest in tailored deals that are “too good to pass up.

Quality Devotees use social media to shape purchasing decisions, validate choice and to feel empowered when shopping. No matter the time or research involved, Quality Devotees will find the best available product. Brands should help them build knowledge through in-depth reviews and expert opinions via blogs, forums, review sites and YouTube.

Strategic Savers use social media to comparison shop and dig for their favourite brands. And brands should validate their choices by offering custom shopping tips and ways to save money by tapping into blogs, forums and review sites.

Efficient Sprinters use social media to select the most popular items to simplify their shopping process. To connect with Efficient Sprinters brands should provide a curated list of top-selling products on their social channels and retailer websites.

The Dollar Defaulter has a single social shopping goal: find the cheapest alternative. Brands need to broadcast special deals on retailer websites… and provide the ability to share those deals with friends.

“Our new study illuminates what brands need to do to reach shoppers in their own social worlds,” says Nick Jones, head of retail Marketing for Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide. “Understanding how and why people are using social media to shop is the first and most important step to designing a successful social media programme.”

The town is now awash with types of QR codes, including ceramic or metal plaques for places exposed to the elements, labels for use inside buildings and glass stickers in shop windows. These QRpedia codes will take users straight to relevant Wikipedia articles via their smartphones.

The project is jointly funded by Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK, and the council aims to install free town-wide Wi-Fi as part of the initiative.

“Before brands put serious money towards a new social network, they need to be able to measure and monitor their brand engagement,” said Apu Gupta, Curalate’s CEO. “Today’s launch, and the 150+ brands and agencies we’ve signed up, show just how important it is for brands to make sense of and benefit from today’s socially curated sites.”

Companies using Curalate include Bonobos, Kraft Foods, Neiman Marcus, Real Simple, Edelman Digital and Banyan Branch.

“The mobile has become the gatekeeper for further action and engagement with e-mails,” says Andy Hinder, Steel CEO. “With better targeted marketing e-mails, and the growth in mobile commerce, it is essential for brands to look at how they further adapt their e-mail marketing strategies for mobile.”

The agency finds a large degree of consumer dissatisfaction with reading e-mails on mobiles. With ‘too much scrolling’ cited by 42% of all respondents, spiking to 89% of consumers aged 55-plus. E-mails having the ‘wrong layout for mobiles’ are the next strongest area of dissatisfaction, cited by 29% of all consumers, and jumping to 45% of 18-to-34 year olds.

“Marketers must also bear in mind when and where the consumer is receiving their communication,” says Hinder. “This has massive implications for how they create the right messages for a highly personal device, and how they want consumers to react to, and interact with those messages.”

On its Russia-dedicated Facebook page the brand has more than 11,000 fans and also a strong local following on leading social network VKontakte. L2 says Android and iPhone apps available in Russian complement a robust Russian-language e-commerce and mobile site in the market.

Localisation is a key issue. Among those brands that have tailored sites, just a fraction of them (5–10% depending on the BRI market) have invested in local website content, while only 11% have developed local content on their social media pages. L’Occitane is one of very few brands to offer local news, contests and promotions on each of its local sites in Brazil, Russia, and India.

And social media does confer unprecedented power to organise, promote and punish, argues Euro RSCG. “The latest social media ‘crusade’ is against Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and a self-proclaimed spokesperson of God. The world watches to see how long he’ll be able to evade the thunderbolts from the new ‘on high’.”

Plus for those whose misdeeds eat away at them, social networks can to serve as a place of confession and public contrition. In fact, there are websites – Confessions4U.com, Noteful.com, Unburdened.net – devoted solely to that purpose.

“It can be argued that social media already is playing a quasi-religious role – offering a place to seek truths, to join with like-minded others, to invite judgment of one’s perspectives and behaviors, and to find solutions to life’s myriad challenges,” says the report. “Judging by escalating usage numbers, it certainly could be characterised as an ‘opiate for the masses’. And it’s one medium in which marketers would be smart to unleash their most persuasive brand evangelists.”