With Thanksgiving weekend expected to be among the biggest online shopping times ever, several fashion- and shopping-related websites have been making headlines, blending online shopping with more interactive experiences. But Google Boutiques, which debuted in beta last week, isn’t getting the same rave reviews as Fashism. Fashism is a year-old start-up that is garnering a lot of buzz having raised $1 million from the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, angel investors and fashion mavens, and now has the funds to kick-start growth. New products from Google get buzz automatically; however, Fashism earns this buzz by providing social networking

Consumers, addicted to using social networks to connect with friends and business associates, want to interact with people while shopping online. And those people don’t even have to be their friends. According to a Carat and Microsoft Advertising report titled “New Shopper Journeys: How Touchpoints Lead to Purchase,” 14% of US internet users would ask for advice about shopping decisions from people online they don’t personally know.

Google’s Boutiques.com, on both its website and iPad app, allows users to take a style quiz, refine preferences and create a personalized boutique. The experience becomes social only when they begin following other boutiques created by celebrities, designers and friends. (Although users can receive recommendations based upon their tastes, these are site-generated, not user-generated.)

This recommendation feature is not incredibly useful for most shoppers, unless you’re obsessed with Mary-Kate Olsen’s style or plan to stick with the “edgy” look day in and day out. As for the user experience, it comes up short—functionality is limited and the site itself feels like a regular shopping site that’s trying too hard.

Fashism, which also has a website and mobile app, uses crowd sourcing to allow consumers to discuss possible purchases or outfit suggestions. By centering around feedback rather than the items themselves, Fashism is inherently more social, allowing users to get outside opinions on how to wear certain pieces and which accessories would work best with an outfit. Fashism users don’t actually need to know anyone else on the site in real life, and can simply upload a photo or email an iPhone picture to ask questions of the community. Additionally, they can earn points for being “helpful” and unlock discounts for being active on the site.

Many online buyers are looking to get involved with a retail community because they value information from like-minded consumers, an activity Fashism makes a central feature of its site and Boutiques.com ignores.

Ultimately, users will gravitate toward the sites that fit their needs. Boutiques hasn’t been able to identify those needs, at least not on a mass scale. It is just for women’s clothing for now, and doesn’t allow for as much peer-to-peer interaction. Marketers and retailers will pay attention because it’s Google-backed, but that won’t really matter because shoppers will lose interest quickly.

To listen and watch playback of the webinar, Tips for Reaching & Engaging the Elusive Millennial with eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.

Join eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey to find out about:

• The fluid ways these digital natives spend their media time
• What they really think about advertising
• Why their deep involvement with social media does not mean deep trust
  of social networks
• What brands need to know about the research and purchase habits of these
  device agnostics
• What are the marketing techniques that fail with millennials—and the
  ones that succeed

About Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Ramsey is one of the internet’s most exciting digital marketing visionaries. As CEO and co-founder of eMarketer, Geoff is on the cutting edge of new research statistics, trends and best practices, covering every aspect of marketing in the digital age. He is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, Bloomberg Businessweek and Advertising Age.

A highly regarded speaker with an engaging presentation style, Geoff speaks at major digital, media and corporate events around the globe, including the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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The ad:tech London conference rang several changes in 2010. For one thing, conference sessions were located in the same hall as exhibitors’ stalls and the seminars delivered by industry experts. This made for a buzzy gathering and more concentrated networking.

In another departure, a representative of the print publishing fraternity struck a positively optimistic note. According to Martin Morgan, CEO of the Daily Mail and General Trust, the DMGT now derives 30% of its revenue from digital. With 44 million unique users each month, the Daily Mail earns significant sums from advertisers. As a result, Morgan confidently predicted that the Mail site will remain free to access—and should pick up additional readers from news providers that move behind pay-walls.

But the big stories were social and mobile. Since last year, social media services have consolidated their position in the limelight. Shiva Rajaraman, product manager at Twitter, kicked off the two-day program, sharing some statistics (the site attracted an average 90 million tweets per day in September 2010) and news that the company will soon allow advertisers to target Twitter users on the basis of who they follow and what they are looking for. 

Next up was Colm Long, Facebook’s director of online operations, EMEA. Impressive stats here, too: According to Long, the site now operates in 70 languages (translated within hours by about 300,000 volunteers around the world), and 150 million people access Facebook via mobile apps. In the UK alone, there were almost 28 million users at the start of September 2010—more than 45% of the population, and about 55% of web users. Over 60% of UK Facebook users log in daily, and 52% are female.

Other speakers reporting from the front line of the social frontier included Nicole Vanderbilt, CEO of furniture and interiors site mydeco, which currently boasts 1.2 million unique visitors per month. Advanced software enables users to plan rooms, decorate and furnish them virtually, and offers various sharing options too. Site visitors can comment on the room plans and reviews of other users. Mydeco also benefits from the 1 million monthly click-throughs to retail partners whose goods are shown on the site.

Meanwhile, luxury brand owner LVMH is pioneering the concept of “open luxury.” The key, said Kamel Ouadi, EVP, Digital for Louis Vuitton, was to recognize the complex emotions associated with luxury in consumers’ minds, and recreate those by digital means. LVMH has tapped top-flight writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, designers, actors and fashion figures to create exclusive high-end content for a new website, Nowness.  Launched in February 2010, the site aims to become “the essential reference point for luxury global lifestyle” and to disprove the notion that luxury and exclusivity sit oddly with social media. One new film or audio production from the stable of creative talents is uploaded each day. The site, said Ouadi, incorporates software “capable of assessing our users’ interests and tailoring our recommendations for stories to reflect their preferences as they browse the content archive.” The site now claims 200,000 unique monthly visitors.

Dell too is exploring the intersection of intimacy and scale, according to Manish Mehta, Vice President, Global Online for the computer giant. The goal, he said, was to take social media “beyond campaigns,” and ensure that Dell established an online “voice” that served as both foundation and expression of the brand. The company is also taking steps in social commerce—one project aims to create a tag cloud for aggregated product reviews, and post the results on Facebook.

Mobile business has also leapt ahead since 2009. Thankfully, the industry is well past the point of asking whether this is “the year of mobile”; recent statistics and projections speak for themselves. According to Ian Carrington, Google’s director of mobile advertising for the EMEA region, mobile search is growing at 400% per year, and spending in this area is set to climb from £500 million ($700 million) in 2009 to £2.8 billion ($3.9 billion) by 2013. Of course, not every proposition succeeds in this highly competitive marketplace. Carrington cited evidence that 90% of mobile apps are deleted within 30 days of download, as their novelty or usefulness wanes. But consumers’ willingness to engage and transact via mobile is good news for many retailers. Overall, said Carrington, Google has found conversions to purchase 43% higher on the mobile platform than on PCs.

Life isn’t always easy for exponents of the new mobile way of life, however—to judge by the recent adventures of Alexandre Mars, CEO of mobile communications agency PhoneValley and Head of Mobile for Publicis Groupe. Mars appeared on the ad:tech stage walking gingerly, and sporting a black eye. Apologizing for his appearance, he told the story: A few days earlier, he was attending meetings in New York City, where stocks of the iPhone 4 were low or nonexistent. Walking alone one evening, he was attacked and beaten by a gang of young people eager to get their hands on the coveted handset. The bruises, said Mars, were taking a while to heal. But he did manage to hang on to his iPhone.

Healthcare communications expert Bruce Grant testified about pharmaceutical marketers’ use of social media before the Food and Drug Administration in the fall of 2009. Grant has more than 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical promotion, medical education, digital media design and production. Prior to joining Digitas Health, he served as managing director of the pharmaceutical marketing consulting firm eStrategies and director of innovation at Frontier Media Group.

I chatted with Grant about how pharmaceutical marketers can participate effectively in social media and potential scenarios for FDA regulation of social media.

eMarketer: Can you provide a brief synopsis of the testimony you offered to the FDA last fall?

Bruce Grant:

We reported on research results that applied to one of the questions the FDA asked, which was, should special considerations apply to pharmaceutical communications in social media or online banner ads? We had conducted research in the fourth quarter of 2009 on the treatment of risk information in banner ads and suggested that there was a case to be made for the so-called one-click rule that would place the full text of the risk information one click away from the ad.

eMarketer: Are the issues surrounding social media different than the online advertising issues facing pharmaceutical marketers?

Grant:

They’re totally different. Advertising is premised upon the assumption that marketers can tell people what to do and think and that if we tell them often enough and interrupt them in enough different venues, that they will do and think what we tell them to do. Social media is premised upon people turning to each other, not large institutions, to get the resources and the information that they need.

In many ways, social media are used by consumers as an antidote to a particular kind of interruption marketing that consumers, for the most part, find unhelpful. The FDA certainly looks at what kind of communications pharmaceutical manufacturers can make. Under FDA regulations, essentially everything promulgated by a pharmaceutical company that touches on its brands is considered to be either advertising or what it calls “labeling.” Ads are ads. Everything else is labeling and, essentially the same regulations apply to both of them.

If you’re a pharmaceutical manufacturer communicating about a prescription drug, your message has to be fairly balanced between information about the benefits and the risks associated with your brand. You cannot promote uses for your brand that are not on the label. You cannot overstate the benefits of your brand or minimize the risks associated with your brand.

eMarketer: Online hubs including PatientsLikeMe, HealthCentral and WebMD help facilitate a lot of conversations among consumers around symptoms and treatments. What do you make of them?

Grant:

Those are examples of large aggregators of patient communities. I think what’s important to note is that this is not a new phenomenon. The truth of the matter is going back even before consumers had any kind of widespread access to the Internet, there were dial-up services like America Online and CompuServe that offered communities, forums and chat. In some ways, these newer sites are simply carrying those ideas forward and are opportunities to commercialize or provide avenues for pharmaceutical marketers.

eMarketer: What do you think the FDA guidelines on social media will suggest?

Grant:

We believe that the FDA will issue one or more guidance documents probably by the fourth quarter of this year. It won’t provide channel-by-channel instructions for using Twitter and Facebook, but will clarify things for marketers about participating in social media.

In our view, the real barriers to the pharmaceutical industry participating in social media are the same ones we saw in other industries over the last three to five years. The industry needs to start from the premise that social media is about people getting what they need from one other rather than from large institutions.

The challenge is how do marketers relate to this? How do they exist in a world where there’s a big conversation that’s been going on before they arrived on the scene? How do they exist where the level of trust that people participating in the conversation have for each other, is higher than the level of trust they have for any marketer seeking to enter the conversation?

eMarketer: What can marketers do besides creating best practices for participating in social media while they wait for FDA guidance?

Grant:

Marketers haven’t yet fully learned how to listen. That’s the first thing you do. It’s a no-brainer if you think about real-world conversations. You listen to the conversation that was going on before you got there. Who are the participants in the conversation? Who has influence in the conversation? What are their concerns? What are the topics of conversation?

We recommend creating a structured program of listening as an ongoing process. After you’ve been listening for a period of time, and you’ve gotten a sense of the participants and their concerns, there comes a time when there’s an opportunity for you to say something. And in a real life conversation, the most important thing you can say is something that responds to the conversation that’s been going on.

Do you have something to offer? Can you point people to a resource that’s relevant to the needs and interests that have been expressed in the conversation? As you do that, then you pick up credibility. People come to know you. People come to trust you. And you can reach out into the conversation with an idea of your own. You can change the subject at that point because you’re known, because people trust you and because you offered something of value and relevance into the conversation, perhaps repeatedly up to that point.

Listen, respond, reach out. Sadly, there are people from social media properties who are out there just trying to sell ad space, sponsorships or other things.

Look, in contrast, at what AstraZeneca is doing with its Twitter account AZhelps. The company is monitoring Twitter for any mention of the AstraZeneca brand, for people having problems getting the brands under their prescription plan, being able to afford AZ brands and problems with side effects. AstraZeneca is responding to patients with very brief, direct messages on Twitter. For example, “saw your tweet about the cost of Nexium. AstraZeneca may be able to help. Call 1-800” and so on.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access clients only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.

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On Wednesday Facebook announced its long-awaited location feature, Facebook Places. Places will let people share where they are, find friends in the same location and learn more about new places. For now, advertising isn’t part of the Places rollout. Facebook, smartly, is getting people used to the idea of checking in before introducing marketing into the equation. But sooner rather than later, Places will allow marketers to target people who check in with relevant advertising. In fact, there is already a FAQ page for advertisers interested in promoting their Facebook Place by using Facebook’s existing ad system.

Places represents another step toward what I believe is the future of marketing: delivering offers and information to consumers at the moment they need it, before they even think to look for a coupon or perform a search.

Why location is important to Facebook:
Facebook’s value as a business comes from all the bits of information it gleans about its users from their daily activities. Every single action people take—whether it’s writing a status update, posting a photo, commenting on a friend’s post, liking a marketer’s message or playing a game—becomes an object in Facebook’s database.

Location is a type of data that is very compelling because it provides additional context for the actions people take on Facebook. If I check in at a restaurant or business, I will be able to see which of my friends are there now, or have checked in in the past. And if they left any tips or advice, I can see those. It helps me make a more informed decision about the business, and at the same time it gives the business feedback about who is visiting and what they are saying.

Right now, checking in is a fairly niche activity. Places will introduce a lot more people to the concept. Facebook has already shown that it can drive big changes in people’s behavior—just look at the popularity of status updates. Checking in is another one of those behaviors that Facebook can easily push toward mass acceptance.

Why location services make sense for marketers:
Marketers want to reach consumers when they are close to making a purchase. Location services enable them to deliver a compelling offer or reward when consumers are at the point of decision. This is very powerful.

Location services are part of the future of marketing. Companies will be able to discern what consumers are interested in and deliver helpful advertising and compelling offers before consumers ever need to type a query in a search box.

Imagine escaping your office at noon on a Monday, and instead of trying to decide which sandwich spot to visit today, you instead receive an offer on your mobile phone from a restaurant just down the block. Or perhaps you’re trying on shoes at Macy’s in the local mall. You might someday receive a coupon from Nordstrom offering a 20% discount in their shoe department.

If ads can be pushed to people in the moment they are engaged with something, rather than waiting until they take action and start a search, the ads become very very powerful.

The Facebook Places ad opportunity:
Location will give Facebook a new way to target and sell advertising. Mobile hasn’t been a part of Facebook’s ad offerings until now, but that will change. By offering ways for marketers to target Facebook users not only on the online service but also when they are on the go and using Facebook on their mobile phones, it opens up all-new avenues for interaction. In particular, Places gives local businesses a great reason to advertise on Facebook. Many of them already have a Facebook Page; by creating a new Facebook Place (essentially a page where people can check in and see who else they know who has checked in), businesses can give customers “the power to tell their friends about your business,” as the Places advertising FAQ says.

Right now Facebook derives nearly all of its revenue from advertising on its Website. We forecast that marketers will spend $1.3 billion worldwide to advertise on Facebook in 2010, and $1.7 billion in 2011.

The 2010 figure does not include mobile advertising, and it’s hard to say at this point how much of the expected $1.7 billion in ad spending next year might come through the mobile channel. But because location gives advertisers yet another way to target consumers, I expect that marketers will be very interested in Facebook’s capabilities in this area. Marketers are already clamoring to work with foursquare, Shopkick and other startups that offer check-ins. The Facebook opportunity will be very compelling to explore.