Procter & Gamble own brands including Max Factor, CoverGirl, Wella & SKII and have just recently launched a new website - Style United.

Style United is "where beauty meets fashion" and contains a number of features such as Style 360 where you can receive personalized style recommendations, one on one  live beauty consultations via webcam and the "Inner Circle" where you can invite your friends to give and share advice.

This is a step-up in terms of consumer interaction from the Australian P&G initiative that is Rouge Magazine, with expert advice, how-to's and online shop functionality.

On a recent post I spoke about bloggers driving consumers away from the beauty counters, yet perhaps the blame lies with the brands themselves. Will brands really thrive from this form of interaction or will consumers avoid using brand websites to network with each other?

Right now it really is anyone's guess, though I look forward to monitoring the progress and success of the new initiatives these brands are taking.

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With 85 beauty bloggers converging on Sydney for the inaugural Australian Beauty Bloggers Weekend  and more than 500 expected for the follow-up in 2012, it’s a good time to ask “What can they do for my brand?”

The answer is: A lot!

Online searches for editorial and blogger mentions are invaluable to a brand. However, a google search for any given month limited to an Australian only beauty brand can land you with over 30,000 hits. Specialised knowledge and bespoke analysis is now vital to filter through the clutter, to separate what is valuable from what’s not.

With more and more specialised beauty bloggers setting up sites each week in Australia alone, they are becoming as powerful as the beauty counters of the fashion world. No longer do buyers rely on the trained staff found in major department stores, they just google it.

One in four women surveyed by BlogHer (a community of female bloggers) preferred buying cosmetics online. Those surveyed were 2.5 times more likely to be inspired to purchase a product because of a favourable review from a trusted blogger rather than one from a magazine or a beauty website.

While word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising, with bloggers out there posting about dozens of products a week, the question is: How do you make your product stand out?

Free gifts may get you a review and a few extra followers but digging deeper is the key to real success. If you analyse a blog’s statistics (hits, bounce rates, etc.) to check their reach and then engage the blogger and their followers in an event, launch or innovation the exposure has a much better chance of winning over large numbers of potential customers to your brand.

Illamasqua recently launched their Theatre of the Nameless collection with global blogger events from Brisbane to Soho, inundating blog readers with image upon image of the collection and the event (which featured some very colourful styling!)

This launch definitely caught my attention. When you are scrolling through countless lipstick swatches or different nail colours, the type of content Illamasqua generated stood out as interesting, engaging and memorable – made all the more successful by their effective use of beauty bloggers.

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From Waterloo to Desert Storm, command and control has been the key element in achieving victory on the battlefield. The same is true of public issue battlefields.

With superior intelligence, the Iron Duke knew his out of sight Prussian allies were about the enter the battlefield at a crucial stage in the British-French face off. The rest is history. Norman Schwarzkopf’s awesome satellite view of the Iraqi battlefield meant his hugely out numbered troops defeated their opponents in less than a 100 hours.

Media analytics seek out and identify voices that cut through arguments in the daily news cycle, providing media manager ‘generals’ key intelligence on where to direct their communications thrusts and which strategies to follow to win the message war.

A vital ‘command and control’ element in public issues management, Mediascape’s Epx© system delivers key metrics online to the media battlefront. Case-hardened in major issue confrontations, the system quickly sorts out the messages that are winning, who is saying them and who they are impacting on for the generals at HQ. On the media front line Epx© delivers tactical intelligence to forward troops with iPads and smartphones, helping them acquire media targets and select the appropriate weaponry to successfully gain public policy impacts.

Without media analytics to guide it, a press statement is an aimless shot with negligible impact. With Epx©, a media release can be a precisely targeted cruise missile with devastating media impact.

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In a time of declining print readership, and the rise of online fashion content the Glossys have maintained their edge. But what do marketing managers really get for their money?

We have produced unique analysis to measure the Bang for your Buck across individual titles - comparing advertising spend to editorial placement of your brand, as well as your competitors.  With increasing multi-platform content and magazines fighting to retain their advertising pages, this research gives an insight into which titles are benefiting public relations and advertising managers most.

Over the peak Christmas period, Mediascape recorded all PR and advertising placements of beauty products across three key titles over the crucial two months before Christmas. Some products did very well, others very poorly.

Which title best championed your product? And where did you rank?

Call or email me for a copy.

Lisa Stueckradt, Analyst Luxe Products

LisaS@mediascape-global.com

02 9960 5288

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Mediascape are excited to announce the first edition of our monthly Superannuation Online report, analysing online media perceptions of the Australian superannuation agenda.

Latest findings for January 2011 highlight a busy agenda in play, with the release of annual APRA performance figures, Roy Morgan court case and calls for the early release of superannuation following Queensland flooding topping news. Underlying trending also revealed:

• Increasingly crowded stakeholder marketplace battling to gain media share
• Absence of any social media utilisation by key stakeholders despite social media grabbing over 20% of the agenda
• Continued concern that the superannuation industry is not doing enough to better explain terminology

Mediascape is in the process of making Superannuation Online available as an extremely cost effective monthly subscription based service, offering on-going critical insight into how the media reports on issues that affect you. Superannuation Online aims to answer:

• What are the key issues affecting the industry?
• How is social media covering issues?
• Are you gaining media traction?
• How are your competitors trending?
• Which journalists are covering the issues?
• Which media titles are covering the debate?

If you are interested in receiving a free copy of the January edition and further information regarding the on-going service, don't hesitate to contact me.

benn@mediascape-global.com

(02) 9904 9444

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All it took was a well directed tweet.

A small town American supermarket placed a "Family Shield" over a magazine cover showing a photograph of Elton John holding his newly adopted baby to "protect" young shoppers from the image yesterday. However, after another customer took offence to the censorship and tweeted a photo of the obscured magazine cover to some prominent gay rights advocates, it caused an international twitter uproar and the situation was rectified immediately.

Power to the people!

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Financial issues - not discussion on values - continue to drive the on line property agenda in Australia.

Mediascape's end of year property industry survey showed discussion on stamp duty, banking reforms, interest rates and infrastructure charges lead the online agenda running into Christmas - and post Christmas looks the same.

Traditionally, online search and news references to property tend to peak over the holiday period. This holiday break shows no break in the property chatter trend.

While Brisbane flooding has merged with property as a discussion driver in the Sunshine state, online users are still looking for information on the financial triggers which will move the property market.

Mediascape's final quarter survey had stamp duty changes as the dominant social media issue in November 2010. The next Mediascape property survey - due for release late January - suggests Australian property buyers are in for a rollercoaster year. Interest rates, currency fluctuations, global weather and flood reconstruction are all intruding on the property agenda.

Contributing to the buzz are news makers as diverse as the Real Estate Institute, Infrastructure Australia, Master Builders Association, Aussie Home Loans and the RBA.

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“Automated sentiment analysis is less accurate than flipping a coin” – Buzz Numbers

“’Bespoke’ analysis is the key to understanding online content values” - Mediascape Chief Analyst Ben Nash.

Nash was commenting on BuzzNumbers’s response to a study by UK consultancy FreshMinds that tracked the accuracy of automated sentiment analysis – also known as positive/negative polarity - employed by seven major monitoring systems: Alterian, Biz360, Brandwatch, Nielsen, Radian6, Scoutlabs and Sysomos.

“We were shocked … not one tool achieved the 60-80% accuracy we saw at the aggregate level”, said FreshMinds

“To get real value from any social media monitoring tool, ongoing human refinement and interpretation is essential” said the UK group.

Mediascape Chief Analyst, Ben Nash said he wasn’t surprised, clients demand data with integrity to help them make policy and marketing decisions.

“These margins for error make automated sentiment analysis virtually useless.”

“’Bespoke’ - Mediascape’s customised human intervention analytics - massively increases data accuracy, as well as relevance to the client’s real needs”, said Nash.

http://www.research-live.com/news/analytics/automated-sentiment-analysis-gives-poor-showing-in-accuracy-test/4002844.article

http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2010/05/the-problem-with-automated-sentiment-analysis

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Conservative journalist Andrew Bolt has recently become the latest victim of a popular internet prank. Someone has (shock! horror!) been posting on Twitter using his name.

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