Instagram for brand communications

Webstagram is an Instagram Web Viewer.While Launched in Apple’s App Store in October 2010, Instagram is a photo sharing application famous for its easy to apply filters that magically improve the pictures we share with friends and followers.

Everybody-iphone users- is an instantaneous creative 

slide your iphone on, take a photo and use Instagram to turn your average snapshots into artistic image to share.

Brands using Instagram well — like Starbucks, Burberry, GE — are those who have also invested in a range of social platforms such as Tumblr and Pinterest. They understand these tools link together and have an up-skilled community management team needed to feed in daily content.

Starbucks are suffering from slower foot traffic and lower profits.

Those who can capture a sense of community and offer consumers a compelling experience will win in the long run, said Michelle Barry, senior vice president of the market-research firm Hartman Group in Bellevue.

"It's not about nostalgia per se, but more about telling a story and reappropriating some things from the past and re-imagining them in a new environment," she said.

Time of change

The ubiquitous coffee-shop giant is dropping the household name from its 15th Avenue East store on Capitol Hill, a shop that was slated to close at one point last year but is being remodeled in Starbucks' new rustic, eco-friendly style.

It will open next week, the first of at least three remodeled Seattle-area stores that will bear the names of their neighborhoods rather than the 16,000-store chain to which they belong.

Names and locations for the other two shops have not been finalized. If the pilot goes well in Seattle, it could move to other markets.

The new names are meant to give the stores "a community personality," said Tim Pfeiffer, senior vice president of global design. Starbucks' logo will be absent, with bags of the company's coffee and other products rebranded with the 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea name.

In the spirit of a traditional coffeehouse, it will serve wine and beer, host live music and poetry readings and sell espresso from a manual machine rather than the automated type found in most Starbucks stores.

The changes come at a time when retailers, including Starbucks, are suffering from slower foot traffic and lower profits.

Free Starbucks ice cream for Facebook users

Facebook users can already send each other real flowers, candy and drinks. Now they can add ice cream to that list as well—free, no less—thanks to a new promotion from Starbucks and Unilever.

Beginning this week and extending through July 19, Starbucks and partner Unilever are giving away coupons for more than 800 free pints of the newly launched Starbucks Ice Cream on Facebook every hour. US-based users of the social networking site need only visit the special promotion page on Facebook at the beginning of any hour and be ready to click quickly before that hour's set of coupons is gone. If they succeed in claiming one, they can choose to send it to any friend on or off Facebook, or they can elect instead to treat themselves. Either way, the coupon can then be redeemed for the Starbucks Ice Cream flavour of the recipient's choice: Caramel Macchiato, Mocha Frappuccino, Java Chip Frappuccino or Coffee. There is a limit of one coupon per household; those who fail at first to get one can keep trying, as a total of some 20,000 free coupons will be given away each day before the contest's end.

One part Facebook perk and one part tryvertising, the wisely targeted Starbucks Ice Cream promotion is sure to win many a fan for the new ice cream, particularly since there's almost certainly a significant overlap among devotees of the two brands. Pick the right audience, give away ice cream in July, and it's hard to go wrong! ;-) (Related: Food blogger turned purveyor & intermediary.)

Website: www.starbucksicecream.com — apps.facebook.com/starbucksicecream

Spotted by: Brandweek via Raymond Kollau

Why Brands Have an Eye on Facebook -

Why Brands Have an Eye on Facebook - Vivian Manning-Schaffel May 25, 2009 With more than 200 million active users and counting, Facebook has proven to be a powerful and convenient way to reach consumers where they already are. “Many consumers are already sharing information regularly on Facebook—this is just one more way to quickly share information in a place where they are already spending time,” says Michael Donnelly, director, worldwide interactive marketing at The Coca-Cola Company. Many brands are guilty of creating a Facebook presence, gathering “friends” to gauge awareness of the community...and the buck halts there. Adam Ostrow, editor in chief of online social media guide Mashable.com, says it’s because the initial path to maximum reach wasn’t clear. “Until recently, Facebook was a confusing platform for brands—it wasn’t clear if the best way to go about marketing on Facebook was through groups, pages, or even just a regular profile,” Ostrow says. “But with the most recent upgrade to pages—or “public profiles” as they’re sometimes called—it’s become clear that pages are where brands need to be. From there, it’s up to the brand to use traditional marketing tactics, like promotions and good communications to make those fans stick.” The folks at Facebook have assembled a marketing page to help brands find their way around the platform’s ever-expanding myriad of tools. “Features such as psychographic and demographic information allow advertisers to precisely target their audience, but still maintain user privacy,” says a Facebook spokesperson. “Additionally, up-to-the-hour impressions and click tracking let advertisers quickly fine-tune ad campaigns by updating bids and changing budgets whenever they please.” Donnelly, who spearheaded Coca-Cola’s successful Facebook initiative, says it’s much like having a ginormous focus group at your fingertips: “The ease of creating content makes it so that we get very high engagement, far beyond typical page views. It also gives us a great platform to listen to the feedback we receive from our consumers. Every time we post photos, videos or status updates from the page, our fans are quick to tell us what they think. Their feedback is shared with their network of Facebook friends, exposing them to our fan page,” Donnelly says. But creating a brand presence on Facebook can present challenges of a larger scope to the novice social marketeer, the first being the conversational element integral to its very structure. “Facebook helps marketers interact with people in the same way that people interact in real life. But it’s not enough to broadcast a message to the masses: As the web becomes more social, users will expect to interact and engage with brands in the same way they interact with each other,” the Facebook spokesperson says. Some brands, like Starbucks, have embraced the opportunity to reach consumers with messaging that reads more one-on-one than broadcast. “In many ways, the coffeehouse is the original social network, so social media is a natural extension of who we are as a company,” says Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategy for Starbucks. “Facebook helps us get a pulse on what is important to our customers. We can have a real dialog with them about the values and ideals that they share with us.” So how does a brand, particularly a brand with a considerable legacy, pare down the broadcast messaging that works for traditional online media to create the kind of singular voice where this kind of dialog might take place? Starbucks used Facebook to reach almost 1.5 million “friends” to raise awareness of their brand while raising money for AIDS. “We posted an event inviting customers into stores on World AIDS Day (12/1/08), where $.05 of every handcrafted beverage was contributed to the Global Fund. It became the most viral event in Facebook history. So not only were customers excited about the brand, but they came together on one day to do something good,” Wheeler says.
	Instead of tapping viral marketers experienced in social media to create that singular Facebook voice, Coca-Cola took a unique approach and hired two fans of the brand, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski, to create the Coca-Cola fan page in September of last year. “When Facebook asked us to administer our page, we saw it as an opportunity to maintain its fan club spirit. In the first several weeks the page experienced explosive growth, quickly making it the largest brand page on Facebook.” This team takes full advantage of Facebook’s tools to keep their viral audience engaged. “We are constantly working to highlight content created by our fans that will be interesting to other fans, sharing status updates, photos and videos. Recently, we’ve begun using status updates to invite fans to share their Coca-Cola experiences. From time to time, we update our fans through Facebook’s update features and they react differently to videos, photos and status updates. We continually learn great stories from them that we may not otherwise be aware of,” Donnelly says. In the quick-shift world of social marketing, Facebook promises a direct line to your target consumers. “The Internet has long promised two-way interactive marketing,” concludes the mysterious Facebook spokesperson. “We see the future of marketing as one where brands create an ongoing, two-way relationship with customers and prospects whether they are driving demand for new or existing products.” Just be sure to stay flexible about how your Facebook-geared initiatives are executed. “Facebook does make frequent changes to its product, so it’s hard to project if something you plan six months from now will really be applicable to the toolset that Facebook will be offering,” Ostrow advises. “Facebook is constantly improving, sometimes with little advance warning. This makes it important that we stay on top of these changes and are hypersensitive to how those improvements impact the page and our relationship with our fans,” seconds Donnelly. What about ROI? Does Facebook offer a measurable return? “It’s hard to say,” Ostrow says. “Certainly, the key metrics to pay attention to for the time being are how quickly you’re adding fans to your page, how often those fans are interacting with your brand, and how that page is ultimately influencing your business, by way of more leads or referral traffic to your website.” Ultimately, finding new and improved ways to make new “friends” on Facebook is worthy of a slice of your brand development budget. Just be sure to update your status frequently.

Starbucks :::Super-Premium Ice Cream Line

Starbucks Coffee Company and Unilever unveiled a new super-premium ice cream line inspired by some of consumers’ favorite Starbucks® beverages. Created by culinary experts and food developers from both companies, Starbucks® ice cream is made with high-quality, all-natural ingredients, including milk and cream supplied by farmers who pledge not to treat their cows with rBGH.*

The line is now rolling into grocers across the U.S., and will be widely available by early spring. Imaginative ingredient combinations are sure to satisfy every palate.
“Our new ice cream line is an artful adaptation of some of our most popular hand-crafted beverages,” said Mary Theisen, director, business development, Starbucks Global Consumer Products. “We’re pleased to offer consumers a delicious and indulgent ice cream experience that is unmistakably Starbucks.”

Consumers can easily recognize Starbucks® ice cream in the freezer aisle, thanks to a clean packaging design that mirrors the iconic white Starbucks® cup.

“Starbucks complex coffeehouse flavors are the perfect complement to the rich, high-quality ingredients we use in our super-premium ice cream,” said Andy Sztehlo, research & development director, Unilever Ice Cream North America. “We’re thrilled to introduce a fresh interpretation of a classic product.”