Posts Tagged ‘New York Times’

I was interested to read an article that appeared yesterday in the New York Times discussing Gap’s new marketing push. According the NYT, in recent years Gap has been struggling to attract shoppers, even before the recession, with unappealing merchandise being cited as the major issue.

Gap’s solution to this decline in interest has been a major refocus onto the company’s core product – jeans. They have developed a multi-layered ‘Born to fit’ campaign, which includes a Facebook page, video clips, an online fashion show and an iPhone application all aimed at drawing attention to the newly named Premium Jeans line. Also in the works are ads that will appear in movie theatres, magazines and outdoors. TV ads, on the other hand,  are only a possibility.

I find this decision a little surprising. When sales fell TV ads were one of the first things to go. Personally speaking however I absolutely loved the Gap adverts from the 90’s such as the mellow yellow advert. Great tune, good looking/famous people in gap clothes = ads that get noticed and remembered. Is this formula too simple now? Do we really have to always be going bigger, better and more complex in a bid to grab people’s attention? If the current surge in nostalgic adverts are anything to go by then the answer would be no…

The morning routine: Come into the office, grab some cereal, sit down in front of the computer, log on and check your…..Email? Facebook? Twitter? Netvibes? The list goes on…..
 
Only a couple of years ago that would have been a stupid question with the obvious answer being email but nowadays the choice is much less clear. With internet users now having so many different accounts which do they check first? And more importantly which should they check first?
 
According to an article published last week in the New York Times, Nielsen’s latest study into internet use reports that ‘time spent on social networks surpassed that for e-mail for the first time in February, signalling a paradigm shift in consumer engagement with the Internet’. Of the social networks Facebook accounted for 12.7% of the share of total internet time last month – a staggering one in every eight minutes, making it the most used web brand in the UK. [link]
 
Ruder Finn is working with many of our clients at the moment to grow their online presence and increase the number of online channels they are utilising. As we continue to stress to them the importance of fully utilising all the opportunities online it is good to see statistics like this backing us up.