– Why –

Very little research had been done on how models — depending their size, age and race — influence purchasing decisions. Was there a business case to support a more diversified approach?

– How –

With the research funded by the Ogilvy Foundation, Barry surveyed and facilitated focus groups with more than 2,500 women, ranging in age from 14 – 65 and with dresses sizes from 0 – 18.

In the first phase:   “I conducted experiments to test women’s purchase intentions when they viewed models who had similar and dissimilar sizes, ages and races to themselves. Each woman was randomly shown two of eight possible ads where the models might have reflected some of their traits, all of their traits or none of their traits. To avoid biasing their opinions, I didn’t reveal the true aims of my study to them.”

In the second phase:   “I facilitated focus groups with different women to help identify reasons for particular purchase intentions. I found that Canadian and American women increased purchase intentions for fashion products advertised by models who reflected their own demographics: age, size and—for non-Caucasians—race.”

– Preliminary Insights –

“Models are the bridge between the consumer and the brands.”

“(Models) not only demonstrate how clothes fit and flatter the human body but also convey a brand’s image and identity.”

“When Dove launched its ads with “real women” in the United States, sales increased by 600 percent in two months. You’d think that such success would stir industry-wide change en masse; it didn’t.”

– Results –

Model: Helen - Photo: Lily & Lilac

SIZE

• The study found that women increased their purchase intentions by more than 200 percent when the models in the mock ads were their size.
• In the subgroup over size 6, women increased their purchase intentions by a dramatic 300 percent when they saw curvier models.
• Conversely, when women saw models who didn’t reflect their size, they decreased their purchase intentions by 60 percent, and women over size 6 dropped their purchase intentions by 76 percent.

AGE + RACE

• Consumers increased their purchase intentions by over 175 percent when they saw models who reflected their age; in particular, women over the age of 35 increased their purchase intentions by 200 percent when they saw older models.
• When models didn’t reflect their age, consumers decreased their purchase intentions by 64 percent. Furthermore, black consumers were 1.5 times more likely to purchase a product advertised by a black model.

Why did women increase purchase intentions when models looked like them?
In the focus groups, women explained that they could better picture themselves in the dress advertised by similar models. They could imagine how the dress would flatter their shape, how the aesthetic would suit their age and how the colors would complement their complexion. One woman, on viewing a similar-looking model, put it this way:

“I’d buy the dress in an instant because [the model] looks like me. I can see how this dress will hug my curves in all the right spots.”

1) See Real People

“To make the service feel less abstract and more trustworthy, women needed to see photos of actual job-doers. When photos were posted, sign-ups doubled almost immediately

No photos of job-doers and the oh-so-stressful Post-it note!

2) Focus On Solutions

“The Post-it Notes stressed out women who were already stretched thing.’We realized we were basically yelling in people’s faces–you have laundry to do.’ So we made it more serene.”

Added photos of real job-doers, but turned of men by using flourished handwriting font

3) Test Your Changes

“The site added flourished handwriting to appeal to women, but found it turned off guys. ‘We skewed too fun and fluffy,’ so we quickly pulled back.”

4) Speak In Color

“The switch from dark cork to light sunburst aimed to communicate hope and optimism. It was an emotional cue for women, but not directed that it would turn off men.”

Switched out the dark cork, took away the frilly handwriting font and featured pictures of real job-doers

What are Premium ads?

These ads originate from a brand Page and won’t be your typical ad. Often they’ll consist of a status update or a new video upload rather than a standard banner.

How can I utilize this new format?

1) Creative Versatile Video Content

When viewing a premium ad with video, users can watch the clip in its entirety straight from the ad, or click through to the page to learn more. The variety of options means more interactions are possible, which is great news for an ad because it can be doubly effective!

Above, McDonald’s and Tide turn video posts into premium ad units. McDonald’s adds in a second user interaction: a hyperlink to the local farmer campaign on an outside domain. In this way, users can land in one of two different places: the outside website or the fan page itself. They can also just watch the video without leaving their news feed at all.

2) Use Promotions to Track ROI and Ad Performance

Soon, Facebook advertisers will be able to segment the demographic coverage of their varied ad campaigns by propensity to buy, click, or share (or any other activity). For the time being, however, brands like Starbucks and Schick can track the ROI of their premium advertising placements by tracking mention of the $2 Petites deal in Starbucks stores, and by tracking entry rates to the XTreme3 Eco remake contest by using custom referral links for the promotion.

3) Showcase New Product Lines

Since Premium ads make use of the content a brand posts to its own page, it can be challenging to think of posts that will both organically attract user attention but also serve as compelling advertisements. Consider showcasing individual items by pointing to their trendiness, or showing off a unique set of products from a new product line. These are both good ways for users to view your ad from their fan page.

4) Post Interactive Content

Posting content that specifically instructs users to take action, and pairing that call-to-action with an example image, is a great way to influence engagement. Iams is a good example of this.

We’re looking forward to utilizing the new Premium Ad content! How will you use it for your brand?

For starters, 100% of users looked at a brand’s cover photo first, while as little at 65% looked at the profile picture. Don’t have any branding in your cover photo? You’re missing you.

Here are the key findings from the study (via Mashable)

1) Ads on Facebook Timeline are less visible than ads on Facebook Brand Pages. While 30%-40% of study participants looked at ads on brand Timeline pages, 80% looked at them on Brand Pages.

2) Cover Photos Rule. Not only do viewers always looked at the cover photo first, they also spent a longer time looking at it than at Timeline content.

3) Everyone will notice your cover photo. 100% of users looked at a cover photo, while only 65% – 92% of users noticed profile photos on Brand Pages.

The red areas indicate the places where users looked the longest. Notice how much attention was put on the tabs and the faces of those in the cover photo.

4) Cover photos with faces attract the most attention. Tarte found this fact awhile ago, and we apologize for not having the source, BUT according to a study we read at some point “A close-up of a human face generates a 20% increase in appeal over a photo of a crowd of people, with appeal rising even further if the human fame is smiling a genuine and real smile, as opposed to a purely social one.”

5) Viewers see Timeline content last. In every case, viewers looked at either the left or right column of Timeline content last — after ads, navigation buttons and brand logos.

Percentage Seen: Notice in the old Facebook layout that 88% of users saw the wall content? With the new Timeline format, only 40% see your content.

6) Information that was invisible is now a focal point. Facebook moved the number of Likes, events and apps to prime top-and-center territory. It now gets more attention than when it was listen on the left-hand side of the page.

Percentage Who Used Site in Last Week:

Women 18-34 and Women 35+ use Facebook in the same frequency (92%)

Women of all ages are less likely to use YouTube, with women 35+ having the lowest showing (37%)

Women 18-34 use Twitter with the second highest frequency (24%), behind Men 18-34 (34%)

Yelp is for the young folks: Men 18-34 used it the most (15%), Women 18-34 were second (11%), while both Men 35+ and Women 35+ were under 4%.

The average number of Facebook Friends by Age/Gender.

*We’re a bit surprised that Men 35+ on average had more friends than Women 35+

Allocation of Social Media Time by Age/Gender

Younger women spend the least amount of time (among the four age groups) using social media to find information (16%).

Average Time Per Weekday Spent on Social Media:

Here is some interesting data that we found from mShopper, an mobile shopping network with over 50 retailers:

• 75 percent to 95 percent of all visits to mShopper’s mobile stores arrive at product or category-specific pages directly from product searches on mobile web browsers.
• 81 percent of the network’s mobile shoppers who start the checkout process have never shopped with that merchant, and as a result, create a new account via their mobile device.
• The top 5 product categories with the largest percentage of mobile phone visits to their website, in order of popularity, are: Baby, Eyewear, Sporting Goods, Watches and Toys.
• The top 5 product categories with the highest mobile phone conversion rates, in order, are: Toys, Home Furnishings, apparel, Beauty and Eyewear.

Wondering if this applies to you yet? Check your web analytics to see what percentage of your traffic is coming from a mobile device. If it’s getting close to 10 percent or more, many would say you’re already running late.

Read more about this topic here.

Hip-ennials (29%) — “I can make the world a better place.”

Millennial Moms (22%) — “I love to work out, travel and pamper my baby.”

Anti-Millennials (16%) — “I’m too busy taking care of my business and my family to worry about much else.”

Gadget Gurus (13%) — “It’s a great day to be me.”

Clean and Green Millennials (10%) — “I take care of myself and the world around me.”

Old School Millennials (10%) — “Connecting on Facebook is too impersonal, let’s meet up for coffee instead!”

Image from Flickr: hallbadorn

The book was called “The Win Without Pitching Manifesto” by Blair Enns.

In the book (and Gass’ review), Enns calls on agencies to once again reclaim the high ground in client relationships. He lays out a clear path on how to do it through 12 proclamations of a win without pitching firm.  This is a guide that will transform your agency and the way that you go about doing new business.

We think the below 12 proclamations are crucial for not only us to know and believe, but for current and prospective clients to as well. We, and all agencies for that matter, sell our expertise and (mostly) digital products. Client’s cant wear our work, take it on vacation with them or fold it up in their briefcase. While it might be intangible, it’s valuable, and we couldn’t agree more with proclamations 8-12.

Here are Blair’s 12 Proclamations:

1. We Will Specialize: “We must simply choose to take control, first by specializing and shifting power back from the client toward us, and then we begin to shape our future.”
2. We Will Replace Presentations with Conversations: To be truly free of the pitch we must change the tone of these meetings with our prospective clients and move from the presenter/compiler role to that of the expert practitioner.
3. We Will Diagnose Before We Prescribe: From here forward we will view the act of prescription without diagnosis for what it is: malpractice.
4. We Will Rethink What It Means to Sale: We will seek out those that see a fit between their needs and our expertise and how are willing to let us lead the engagement.
5. We Will Do With Words What We Used to Do With Paper: Let us be clear to our clients and ourselves: we are not in the proposal writing business.
6. We Will Be Selective: When given a choice to operate from the position of power that comes with deep expertise or to pursue work outside that area for clients who will not allow him to lead, the expert will refuse.
7. We Will Build Expertise Rapidly: We will build a culture of continuous learning by hiring for skill, by developing it through training, by empowering our people to form their own professional development plans that we will approve and fund, by holding them accountable to these plans, and, most importantly, by leading with our own example.
8. We Will Not Solve Problems Before We Are Paid:  Our thinking is our highest value product; we will not part with it without appropriate compensation.
9. We Will Address Issues of Money Early: We will resist putting ourselves in a position where we have overestimated in the buying cycle only to find the client cannot afford to pay us what we are worth.
10. We Will Refuse to Work at a Loss: We will leave to our competition those clients that would neither bring us profit nor merit for charity.
11. We Will Charge More: We will invite the client to tell us that he would prefer to work with a more affordable firm. 
12. We Will Hold Our Heads High: We will seek respect above money, for only when we are respected as experts will we be paid the money we seek.

Their interactive HTML5 infographic is allowing Pinterest users to vote on which country is the world’s most beautiful.

When you explore the graphic, you can see the pins submitted for other country and learn why others voted for them as most beautiful. If you submit for the contest via Twitter, you are in the running to win an iPhone 4S. Enter via Pinterest and you could win a Nikon DSLR camera.

I entered (using Twitter) and voted for Ireland, as I’ve traveled there with my family and also for school.

Check out the static-version of the map below. To actually participate, click here

Conflict of Pinterest was created by First Choice – The Home of All Inclusive