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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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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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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“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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Now let me ask you a question. Are you from the camp that thinks social media is only about socializing? Now don’t be afraid to raise your hand because you are not the only one. In fact, if you thought this was the case you would in fact be in the majority.

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