28 Apr 08

The Connector
Maria Mandel
Executive Director of Digital Innovation
OgilvyInteractive
New York,

The best mobile campaigns take advantage of the personal and interactive nature of the device. Ideally, you want the mobile consumer to be in control of the experience. For DHL, we did a Tetris-style game where the boxes were labeled with DHL. Ten percent of users forwarded the game to their friends -- unheard of in traditional ad landscapes. For Motorola, we allowed travelers at the Hong Kong airport to upload good-bye messages to Motorola-sponsored digital displays throughout the airport. When we talked to users afterward, some took offense that we were calling the campaign 'advertising.' They said it was an 'experience.'"

The Toe Dipper
Stacy Doren
Director of Customer Marketing
Signature by Levi Strauss & Co.
San Francisco, California

Stacy Doren, 35, oversaw the Signature brand's venture into mobile advertising when it became one of the first companies to sign on to Virgin Mobile's Sugar Mama, an ad-supported cell-phone service in which consumers earn free minutes by watching advertisements.

"Last year, Virgin approached us to sponsor some content on its Sugar Mama service. Instead of just pushing ads at users, we had the chance to draw people in with a 'pull model.' Consumers had to answer questions after watching an ad, so we knew they were engaging with our brand. And I loved that we could reward them with free phone minutes. Ultimately, we decided this type of mobile advertising was a better fit for a younger target market than ours. Signature is more for 'gatekeeper moms,' who share a phone with their kids to keep them occupied in the car. Mobile advertising will eventually catch up to those moms, but not yet."
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Still in 'Vogue'
after all these years

17 Feb 08

This is particularly true when it comes to the world's top fashion photographers. "Mario Testino, Craig McDean, Nick Knight, Bruce Weber, I can go on. The other magazines don't have the access to them. There isn't anybody on any of the other magazines who Mario wants to style with. There are only certain people on this magazine he wants to work with."

Shulman's response is to "man the barricades". The front of the magazine has been divided into three new sections: Focus, purist pages devoted to trends and designers – this month featuring the return of the trophy jacket and a debate on whether spindly or clumpy heels are best; Shops, a more practical buying guide; and Spy – a name from the magazine's archive into which Shulman has breathed new life.

"When I came to the magazine, Spy was all the front pages. Then I shrunk it down to a page and it was just about new designers. Now I've bought the name back again to be a section about how real people wear clothes," says Shulman. The new back page has also revived a name from the Vogue of the 1960s, "A Certain Style", a feature in which one woman shows off her favourite fashion items and is given suggestions. "If you've got good names, it's nice to use them, and although these are little things, if you put the wrong tag on something, it just doesn't look like Vogue."

At 50, the editor of Vogue is more relaxed than her US counterpart Anna Wintour is reputed to be. Her dress is fashionable but understated, and her long hair worn loose makes her look younger than her years. "I continue to be surprised at observations people might make about how I look and what I wear, because I really do feel like I'm 50 and I have a really nice life and I do a really good job and I wear the clothes I like to wear and I look very deliberately the way that I look, which is somebody that doesn't have any kind of cosmetic intervention and, as you can see, who has not been to the hairdresser today."

As a woman, Shulman would like people to be judged on other criteria than their appearance, but as editor of Vogue, she accepts the rules of the fashion industry. "I think we have a very unhealthy relationship with how people really look and I have to marry my personal feelings about it, which is that people should relax a bit and concentrate a bit more on other aspects of themselves, with the fact that I edit Vogue, which is a magazine which is all about creating that idealised image for people."

The pressure on young women to look a certain way is a major issue for the fashion industry. When booking models for the magazine, Shulman avoids girls with eating disorders, but it is not always so simple. "I try very hard to make sure that the girls that we use do look healthy, but I'm not out there on the shoot. There have been times when we've booked a girl, it's four months since I last saw her, she's lost a stack load of weight and I've only realised it once the pictures have come in."

She blames designers for "a lot of the rot", because they make such small sample sizes and prefer angular girls who will show off their clothes to best advantage. Vogue is quite strict that if an established model has been booked for a shoot and the samples do not fit her, then the clothes will not get in the magazine – they would never bring in a thinner girl. Last year, Naomi Campbell hit out at British Vogue for not putting her on the cover. In fact, Campbell has appeared on the front of Vogue at least six times. Shulman dismisses the comments as "a PR thing" – "she was just trying to get publicity for the event she was doing". But she adds: "What I think is an absolutely valid criticism is there aren't enough black people in all areas of successful life."

Putting black models on the cover of Vogue will not in itself make them successful, she insists. "I have to be realistic about these things. If you look at the black population in this country and you look at the amount of black women featured in the magazine throughout, we're absolutely on a par with the whole population, but what we're not doing is overcompensating.

"I happen to think she [Naomi] really likes being one of the few really successful black models, because it gives her a huge advantage and she's had an incredibly long career."

Although she inhabits a world of high fashion, Shulman sees herself first and foremost as a journalist. Both her parents were journalists and, after graduating in social anthropology from Sussex University, she started work on Over 21 magazine, before joining Tatler, where she had impressed the then editor Tina Brown with a freelance article. At Tatler she rose to become features editor, before joining The Sunday Telegraph in 1987.

The following year, she returned to Condé Nast, first as features editor on Vogue and then as editor of the men's magazine GQ, which she oversaw for two years.

I ask her whether there is any job she would rather do, expecting her to answer 'no, this is the best job in the world'. Instead, she replies: "To me it would be hugely exciting to spend some time writing at home and to get up and walk out into the park at three o'clock in the afternoon, having sat at a typewriter all morning. That's a lot of freelancers' everyday lives and for me that seems rather an appealing option."

But she is not ready to throw in the Prada towel just yet. "I ping-pong, some days I think I'm the luckiest person in the world, I have the most amazing job and a wonderful life. And then I'll wake up on a bad day when I've got to get on an airplane, because that's the thing I most hate in the world, and I just wish I was a potato farmer."

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But she is not ready to throw in the Prada towel just yet. "I ping-pong, some days I think I'm the luckiest person in the world, I have the most amazing job and a wonderful life. And then I'll wake up on a bad day when I've got to get on an airplane, because that's the thing I most hate in the world, and I just wish I was a potato farmer."

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Bravo Lauren!
Mini-profile from Fast Company's 'Fast Talk'

14 Nov 07

Lauren Zalaznick - President, Bravo
Lauren Zalaznick, 43, combines reality shows such as Project Runway and Top Chef with deep tie-in Web sites to keep viewers glued to Bravo on screens both big and small.

"Project Runway marked the beginning of our online strategy and our transformation from Bravo TV to Bravo Media. When we launched the show in December 2004, it failed pretty miserably its first three episodes. But we believed in it. We built a whole site about the fashion, the people, the cast, and the experience. The more we put online, the more fans came. Easy formula. Since then, we not only support all of our new shows this way but we've also expanded to do more. We support the bloggers who want to deliver what we want to deliver: more knowledge and more connection opportunities for people who already care enough to check out the show."

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Anya Hindmarch
She is the MD of the Hot accessories brand, a mother of 5 and she commands an empire of 35 shops. Not forgetting of course, she is also the woman behind the 'I'm not a plastic bag' ethical shopper phenomenon.
It all began in a shop on Walton Street for Anya in 1993 and her self-belief and determination have fuelled her huge success.

Anya believes that mentoring is vital for anyone wanting to make it in fashion. 'You need someone who is objective and can guide you. I would love to be able to do that for people.'

Kate Bostock
This is the lady credited for M&S' new-found fashion credibility, revamping Next and boosting sales for George @ Asda. Amazing achievements, we're sure you'll agree.

She spends her weekends checking out the competition, keeping a note of shops and visiting them on rotation- a very dedicated lady no question. She says 'The people who do the best jobs never switch off. I am 100% obsessed with what I do, but I don't find it hard. It's a fabulous job and I love it.'

Natalie Massenet
Natalie is the founder of the fantastic Net-a-Porter.com, which gets 1m hits per month and sells to 170 countries. She started as fashion editor at WWD before moving on to Tatler.

Natalie is a very confident lady and says 'You will achieve the plans you make for yourself. It just so happens that the goals we have are very ambitious.'

Lulu Kennedy
Lulu is the director of Fashion east, founded in 2000. It is a non-profit organisation which takes 3 unknown designers each season, picked by Lulu's panel of experts. They are then given a show at London's fashion week.

Lulu gained her production experience organising raves in Italy and is now one of the most respected names in the business.

Samantha Cameron
Samantha was desperate to be a fashion designer as a teenager and is now Creative Director of luxury-goods firm Smythson, which she joined 10 years ago.

Her mum once owned a jewellery shop and is now running furniture company Oka- proof that design runs in the family. Samantha's husband is the leader of the Conservative party, she has 3 children under the age of 6, one of whom has cerebal palsy.

Samantha believes that Rules and order are important in the job 'I think that sometimes the best designs come out of a certain amount of constraint,' she explains. 'A blank page can often be more difficult to design out of than a box you can bounce ideas off. Design is about solving problems and working with a brief.'

Alannah Weston
Alannah is the Creative Director at Selfridges, her family bought the chain back in 2003 and she delivers what is now seen as the hippest department store in the capital.

Alannah knows that retail is the place to be right now and acknowledges that there is now 5 or 6 seasons as opposed to 2.
She is organised and artistic and if you're looking for a job with her? 'You've got to like pace. I like to hire people who have been waitresses or something like that-they're quick. And have intelligence-being able to read a newspaper or a magazine and just get it. That's what I look for when I hire young people. And good spelling.'

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New DIY diva
Giving B&Q a makeover

24 Sep 07
Great article on Brand republic…Jo Kenrick is adding the 'feminine touch' to a brand previously known for it's 'masculine pride'.

Kenrick is by no means a shrinking violet and is used to a bit of gender imbalance; before entering the world of marketing she made history by
becoming one of the first women to join the RAF. There were 93,000 men and just 70 women, so it is unlikely that a male-dominated board holds
much fear for the gutsy 40-year-old.

Unconventionality is one of Kenrick's trademarks. She lives near Buckingham with her husband at weekends, but home during the week is a
flat in Winchester, which is nearer to the B&Q offices. She chooses this lifestyle because she hates the idea of a one-and-half-hour commute,
something at which other a senior businesspeople wouldn't bat an eyelid.

Years spent working 'down South' may have softened her Newcastle accent, but Kendrick is a Geordie through and through and is always up for
partying into the early hours. That she came into marketing at all is largely down to the fact that at
the time she was in the RAF it did not allow women to become pilots. 'It was difficult to move into marketing in as much as there was a whole
lifestyle with the RAF that I had to walk away from,' she says. She does admit, however, that she would probably have ended up rebelling because
'all that discipline stuff would've driven me nuts'.

Kendrick's marketing career also has an unconventional air to it, having jumped from sector to sector after starting out at Mars. In each of her
roles she has immersed herself in the brand: while at George, she wore only George clothing; and as head of regional marketing at Asda, she didn't shop anywhere else. Now, at B&Q, she can indulge her love of home improvement, which she claims was a passion of hers even before arriving at the retailer last year.

'I'm very fortunate in that I'm married to someone who's a very good DIYer. I come up with interesting and slightly outlandish ideas on what we might do around the house and my husband has to try to make them happen,' she says.

In many ways, Kenrick is typical of the type of consumer that B&Q is trying to attract through its female-friendly positioning and upcoming
TV ads by JWT, which introduce the strapline 'Let's do it' and highlight B&Q own-brand Colours. Previously limited to paints, Colours now
encompasses everything that goes into creating the look of a room, from wallpaper to soft furnishings.

Home improvement, says Kenrick, can no longer be just about DIY - DFY (Do it for you) has come into the equation. DFYers are consumers, mostly
women, who are passionate about sprucing up their homes, but not interested in hard graft.

'B&Q is transforming itself into being about home improvement as a whole and what goes along with that is a bit of feminisation of the business - just a bit of rebalancing,' she says. 'It's not that we're walking away from the masculine, we're just bringing in a feminine side to complement it.'

The stores are changing to reflect this shift, and by the end of the year a third will have been converted to a 'shop within a shop' format, with 12 'shops' in each store selling everything from plaster and cement to lighting and tiles.

The change in strategy comes at a critical time for the retailer: its annual figures for the 12 months to February 2007, show that overall sales have declined by 1.7%, with like-for-like sales down 2.9%. Profits over the same period fell from £208.5m to £162.9m, reflecting the continuing softening of the DIY market.

Reversing these gloomy figures by targeting women will be no easy task but with Kenrick on the case, B&Q stands every chance of making this happen.

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Buzz word of mouth
emarketer interview with Aliza Freud,
CEO of market tester SheSpeaks

3 Sep 07
SheSpeaks CEO Aliza Freud is a former vice president of global marketing and brand management for American Express, where she handled marketing and product management for 10 years.

In February 2007, Ms. Freud started SheSpeaks, a market research firm with a 35,000-member all-female product-testing panel. The firm's clients include Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Oxygen Media, AOL and Jonathan Skin & Haircare. eMarketer spoke with her about how marketers use research and how word of mouth works online.

eMarketer: There are many market research firms nationwide, and most panels have women. What makes SheSpeaks different?

Ms. Freud: We combine product testing with word of mouth. Panel members can post to online discussion boards about the products they're trying, and can pass the word along to their friends if they like something. Panel members can also discuss other products or topics they like or hate, so the board becomes more of a community.

eMarketer: Do brands incorporate member feedback into their campaigns?

Participants pass along these promotions based on perceived value, not just dollar value. If it makes them feel in the know, they're more likely to pass it along.

Ms. Freud: We haven't had a problem so far except for people trying to use multiple screen names to get more product samples.

eMarketer: Bloggers can be merciless in their criticism of corporate-sponsored talk which isn't up front about its origins. How do SheSpeaks members make their relationships to brands clear when they're spreading the word?

Ms. Freud: They say up front that they learned about the product in a market study.

eMarketer: Since participants are into new products, do you have outside advertisers on your site?

Ms. Freud: We don't have advertising anywhere on the site. Participants are very likely to tell friends about the trials they're participating in precisely because they're not asked to — they feel they're spreading the word about something cutting-edge, rather than being saddled with an obligation by a marketer.

The lack of advertising helps with this. We're approached by advertisers all the time, but our clients get more benefit from an ad-free site.

Learn more about what gets consumers buzzing online. Please read eMarketer's Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Winning Friends and Influencing Customers report. 

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The Martha Stewart
of Punk Rock?

Tish and Snooky Bellomo helped put the East Village on the map with their punk rock boutique Manic Panic. It's now an international success

By Courtney Lee Adams, Business Week

16 Aug 07
Sisters Tish and Snooky Bellomo reveled in the New York City punk rock scene in the '70s.  

The notorious Bronx-born duo sang with numerous groups, including an early version of Blondie. But it was their retail gambit that made them famous.

Responding to audience members who, Tish says, "liked our style and asked us where we got our clothing," they opened a boutique in the Manhattan's East Village in 1977 with $250 from a sympathetic aunt and $250 in savings. Tish & Snooky's Manic Panic NYC quickly became central to the scene. "Everybody came in to hang out," says Tish, whose cropped bangs and long ponytail vibrate with a combination of fuschia, hot pink, and violet hair dye. "They went to CBGBs and they went to Manic Panic." Tish fondly recalls Tony Garnier (best known as Bob Dylan's bass player) bringing by a pot of gumbo at Christmas. "It wasn't just about business; it was about music, it was a whole lifestyle."

Thirty years later, punk merchandising is big business, and Tish and Snooky have turned their lifestyle into the backbone and brand-identity of a 13-employee wholesale business with $5 million in annual revenues—chiefly through the sale of hair dye in screaming colors with names like Deadly Nightshade and Atomic Turquoise. 
Scrambling to Keep Up
Consulting and market research firm Kline & Co. estimates hair dye is a $1.3 billion business in the U.S. For almost two decades, Manic Panic distributed a popular English brand of hair dye in the garish colors favored by punk rockers such as Cyndi Lauper, and Debbie Harry of Blondie. In 1996, when their English supplier became unreliable, Tish and Snooky set out on a mission to create their own customized colors, the first of which, Vampire Red, is still the company's best-selling hue.

After years of being priced out of one retail space after another, Manic Panic moved into a warehouse space on White Street in Manhattan that was big enough to enable them to significantly increase their inventory. They also branched out into new products such as vampy makeup, nail polish, and glittery false eyelashes. Through word of mouth and great press, sales boomed practically overnight, and the sisters found themselves scrambling to hire enough employees to handle the new orders. Without any background in business, the founders improvised their way to success. "Every day is a challenge, every day we're learning something new, it just never ends, 'cause our job changes constantly—everything is something we've never done before," says Tish "But it's not rocket science," chimes in Snooky from under her mane of Vampire Red and Electric Lava hair. "You just figure it out."

Getting the Bugs Out
That learning process has included developing cruelty-free products that reflect Tish and Snooky's love of animals. Gradually, they've moved as close to an all-vegan standard as possible. That has required them to substitute ingredients in some products that, unbeknownst to them, contained animal by-products. Others, such as a carmine dye made of red bugs, are harder to eliminate.

Business noticeably slowed after September 11, 2001. "People stopped going out or dying their hair and wanting to party," admits Snooky. The recovery took a couple of years. In 2003 Manic Panic expanded overseas when they made a licensing deal with a Japanese entrepreneur to open a chain of salons in Japan targeted at a distinctly upmarket crowd. The flagship store opened in Yokahama, and franchises followed in Tokyo (where the store sits on Tokyo's equivalent of Rodeo Drive) and Osaka, bringing in a cut of each franchise deal as well as a new market for their branded products.

Kudos From the Mayor
Their Japanese associate wanted to merge the two companies and go public, but the sisters declined. Although the two are not opposed to new investors, they don't relish the idea of having partners. "We fight enough over decisions," says Tish. Plus, they prefer to stick to the DIY, "quick and dirty" way of doing things that has brought them this far, and is, indeed, an integral part of the punk aesthetic. "You never know what the future will hold, but it's not our goal to become public," says Tish. They do have a small wish list. Snooky always wanted to have their business' anniversary, July 7, declared Manic Panic Day in NYC, and hoped the city would light up the Empire State Building with a Manic Panic color—Future Shock, maybe. Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent them a letter to celebrate their 30th anniversary, praising their contribution to New York City's economy and acknowledging them as pioneers of a punk rock scene with which the city is closely identified. They were tickled, but Tish notes that New York could "stop making it impossible for people to do business here." Snooky complains that rent has quadrupled or more every time they've had to renew a lease, leaving them, ironically, without a retail presence in the East Village neighborhood that they helped put on the map. No. 1 on their wish list for small businesses in New York City: commercial rent protection. Representatives for New York City's Small Business Services Dept. declined to comment.

A New Generation
Manic Panic now operates out of a 14,000-sq.-ft. loft in Long Island City, Queens, and for the first time in years has opened a thriving retail outlet; this one's in Venice Beach, Calif., where Gingerbread Court, Charlie Chaplin's former estate, has been turned into a funky retail district that Tish and Snooky say is reminiscent of the East Village's heyday. They plan to open their first U.S. salon there in late 2007.

Much of New York's punk scene is now more merchandising myth than reality. CBGB closed its doors forever this year, and there has been talk of a Las Vegas version of the seminal punk rock club. How do Tish and Snooky maintain their street cred? For one thing, their audience has spread beyond punk to include Goth kids, Halloween revelers, and the cyber club scene that's especially popular in Britain right now.

CyberDog, a popular British underground fashion retailer with outlets in international party capitals such as Ibiza and Sao Paolo, say they waited for Manic Panic to set up a deal with a British distributor rather than stock less-expensive, local products. "They're the best in their field," said CyberDog General Manager Tim Bell. He also says that 40% of his market is Goth kids, but the products are finding new popularity with "NU ravers," a revival of '80s rave fashion. Manic Panic says these techno kids love their day-glo colors because "they glow under black lights."

"There's always people that don't want to be mainstream, in whatever way, and so I think we'll always have a market," Snooky says. Tish and Snooky envision a branded line of housewares and clothing designed according to the Manic Panic aesthetic. "We want to be the alternative beauty and lifestyle brand," adds Snooky. "We want to be the Martha Stewart of alternative style."