The Garden Planner is a tool that works on every platform and facilitates the meeting between expert and enthusiast. The customer can get advice, purchase tips and design the layout of their garden. Through an easy to use user experience the garden can be planned and the products needed is compiled on a purchase list – connected to Plantagens extensive range of offers and the design can be printed and taken home.

Morgenland handles the overall digital communications for this retailer and developed this specific tools from scratch. It is designed to provide a true benefit for consumers and being naturally easy for gardeners to use. We love it and everyone that has used it seem to think alike.

The game reflects the perils and patience in creating good a sourdough. With this virtual tamagotchi users can care, rest, use their knowledge and even steal other facebook users dough – on any device of their choosing. The game has to be played for a full week and the winner will be rewarded with a summer week in the Swedish archipelago and the strong pride of probably being the worlds best digital sourdough baker.  You can play it yourself here.

For companies that have a large in-house production this could very well be a good idea. Makes the same sense and has the same pros and cons as having an inhouse department for other medias. If you already integrate communications in all channels by yourself you might just need external consultancy for specific strategic or creative input. We are fine with that. If you think that this is not so important, can be handled by someone with relatively little marketing experience and not worth investing in, we generally tend to disagree.

For the majority of consumers today digital channels are being used as a primary way of getting information on companies, brands and products. Social media is one of the few ways of easily getting a personal contact with a brand of interest. It is also a place where brands have to engage with consumers on their own terms. One can argue that the community manager responsible for handling this interaction has to be very experienced and skilled in general communications. Interactions can handle many different aspects of the brand and occur in real time. In fact, the community manager will act very much as a marketing director in managing, co-ordinating, prioritizing both messages and production. Very few marketing directors do this themselves and successful ones tends to involve their staff and consultants to maximize the effect of their output.

We believe a good community Manager needs to fulfill several different roles:
Being an Advisor and a Manager (re-organize resources in order to get material on a real time basis, ensure communications support brand strategy, integrate and co-ordinate with other marketing activities. He/she must also take initiatives to steer the dialogue to strategic discussion topics wanted)

The community manager must also have Distributor skills (Knowing about how several platforms work, How publishing is performed and packaged, how consumers in their turn can help him seed and enrich material and how organic support and followers are built and kept.

Producer skills will also be needed (as creative ideas and material needs to ordered, created, adapted and initiated for digital channels, used with visual design that follows the rules of different platform. Being able to work with rich media to cut through the digital noise will also be a necessity).

The community manager also needs to be a first class Responder (filter through the feedback noise, provide satisfactory service and consumer contact and sometimes even proactively engage in discussions the brand is being mentioned.)

And finally he/she should also be an Analyst (ready to distributes consumer insight gained, evaluate and measure digital performance, understand the dynamics that aggregate impact and being able to optimize all that data available into more effect.

Yes, that are some pretty big roles to play. Of course this work will be a lot easier as more marketing functions naturally integrate their work and treat social media as a natural on-going representation of their brand and their own work. Then it will become closer to how you handle traditional marketing. Though, this is still constantly on-going, most often requires new digital skills and need to be carefully planned to make resources last.

So, back to the question – Should you do community management yourself ? Maybe, if you do your other marketing in the same manner and have great resources for this internally. Just don´t hire a community manager and expect them to be good at all these roles all alone. Then it might be a good idea to support surely a capable digital agency can help your community management do a lot better.

Wasa is one of Sweden’s most known brands with very strong core values. Our assignment includes strategy, monitoring, promoting and not the least engaging with this large community. By constantly listening to and talking with these consumers, we learn a lot. And we´re all getting healthier exploring all of Wasas delicious bread.

Heineken´s swedish team contacted Morgenland to assist in reaching out and connecting with the local design community. In order to get the message out and attractive the young designers of Sweden we designed their very own limited invitation kit, introduced the competition to design schools and generated PR to relevant business media around the competition. We also sent our Design Director on the road, to visit design schools and make ourselves available for questions, information and inspiration. If you think you can design a bottle for Heineken join in at http://morgenland.se/remix

The assignment included defining a main communications theme, tagline, copy writing guide lines, motion assets and a pre-launch web film. It also included recommendations on how to organically work with and introduce the service to different relevant target users, promoting early adopters and ambassadors.

Defining a communication platform for a digital service is always a challenge and a great responsibility since it guides the consumers first perception of an abstract service (in this case money transferring). It was also needed to differentiate the offering towards new emerging competitors.  The service and communciation based on the platform was launched in Dec 2012. Learn more about the service at https://www.getswish.se/

ARE YOU ON THE LIST?
The macro trend of recognizing loyal consumers and giving back is clear in several fashion marketing activities.

Aside from offering quality in products, many brands also create impact to the offerings. Instead of giving the VIP treatment to supermodels & celebrities, focus are on the actual shoppers. If you treat your fans well, the rest will follow. There are a clear trend in lots of brands that are offering exclusive access and limited edition for fans only, thus making them strong ambassadors.

Example: YSL Devoted to Fans. Net-a-porter secret sale – for facebook fans only

GOODBYE SUPERMODELS
The macro trend of using consumers as influencers are also becoming clear in the fashion industry as consumers are even making their way up on the runways. The term “Idolism” will soon be obsolete in describing someone’s once fanatic worship of hot shots celebrities. 
No longer she will be dominated nor intimidated, she is now her own fashion stylist, designer, and journalist. Fashion brands have to be aware to stay agile in their marketing strategies as trends is now under the stewardship of consumers. With easy access to social media platforms, everyone can be a model and fans have fans too.

Example: Choo247 shoes. Free People display consumers wearing items using Instagram API

SHOP IN, SHOP OUT
As physical and digital retail space converge the shopping experience finds more places. Now with the all-pervasive SCREEN CULTURE, everything from bus stops to TV programs can be an outlet, as consumers armed with smartphones or tablets embrace innovative new applications and technologies to browse your collection and shop from the subway and all the way home. Consumers browse, shop and share anywhere with everything from interactive displays, sharable mirrors, QR enhanced items helping them to a richer brand experience.

Example: Stella Mccartney/Selfridges interactive storefront with cameras.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
Brands need to understand the accelerating shift of power from brands to consumers. They have to keep up with the fast-changing technology options and constantly learn to cope with consumers’ fickle-minds changing-hearts.

THE RISE OF SHOPPERS EXPECTATION
Shoppers expect better service, and enjoy all-rounding shopping experience in both physical and digital space. They are utilizing technology that many fashion brands are slow to adapt to.

ACCESSIBILITY OF MULTIPLE DIGITAL CHANNELS
Digital retail has reached critical cost that interactive displays and mobile connected stores are now able to actualize at much lower cost. Mobile consumer screen displays like iPad has also bridged the threshold between consumers & businesses.

INTEGRATED MULTI-PLATFORM BRAND EXPERIENCE
As big and strong brands develop their online offerings, integration becomes intuitive and easier to access. Consumers are able to explore and select their shopping preferences, and decide how and where they want to put their money at.

For more information and inspiration on digital fashion retail, give us a call !

We do branding, digital strategy, communication concepts, TVCs, banners, social media applications, mobile applications and even some traditional printed units.