This question has had us thinking.

Why the story? Over the past five years since Patricia and I founded A Couple of Chicks’, we have had the pleasure of not only traveling across Canada and the US, but also of really knowing the places and people we are working with – and more importantly – what makes them unique.

So why are these stories so important to the success of what we do? I guess we could just go back to the marketing 101 textbook, which among other things, teaches us to understand the customer. Yes, we have research for that (and lots of it), and while many businesses don’t have the time or resources to individually know every customer, Patricia and I have been lucky enough to be invited into communities, and to really know the people we work with and are speaking to in the workshops and presentations that we do.

In fact, the “stories” have become so ingrained into our methodology that I am not quite sure that our strategies would be as effective without them.

Yes the latest digital marketing trend is important and relevant, and yes we need to understand the latest shift in Google’s algorithms, the new rules on 301 redirects, and how to add a source code to paid search ads for proper measurement – but we also need the narrative behind each unique web strategy, and the people that are building them. How can we truly roll out a successful and engaging web marketing program without first understanding the nuances of the business and who the customers are?

I will quote a Blogger who recently attended one of our presentations (said Blogger happens to be the “techy” son of the owner/operator of a successful Inn in Eastern Canada, who tagged along with his dad to listen to what the Chicks’ were saying about this whole online marketing thing). (Note the “story” in this paragraph)

He writes, “If every prospective guest to the Carriage House could flip through the pages of the guest book sitting in the lobby, they wouldn’t even consider staying elsewhere. With Facebook and Twitter, this is now entirely possible to do online, and relatively easy to promote.”

I could not have said it better myself! So although the research, the training, efficient process and project management skills are all key to assisting businesses to be successful online – sometimes telling a story does it best.

Hey L.S – we think you are on to something btw. The technology driven “writer’s utopia” may just be in sight, but alas we must make sure it is profitable too. And yes I did just use “btw” in that sentence!

Niki Leondakis, COO of Kimpton also points out in the HNN article that integration of social tools such as Blogs into the main websites is planned for the coming year as well as a continued focus on encouraging “tweetups” and other ways for social communities to connect around Kimpton brands. This approach to integration instead of a web presence over here on facebook, one on Twitter – another on a Blog will be confusing to consumers as we grow more comfortable with true interaction and communication directly with brands.

My guess is that the successful hotel brand website as it is today will look very different in the very near future and will need to be the central gathering place for all brand points online – as well as the place for transaction.

Jim Zito, VP of interactive marketing for New York-based Morgans Hotel Group speaks more about going back to what works offline to assist in strategy for the new online media world. Zito is consulting with groups offline and online to really listen to how consumer behavior has changed in the new social online world. Smart. Not jumping in without understanding why first and making sure you are truly ‘hearing’ what your customers are responding to.

Then there is Fairmont Hotels and Resorts – a brand who has not been shy in adapting to this new marketing medium. David Doucette executive director of Internet marketing for Fairmont speaks about the brand’s use of exsisting social networks where consumers are already living and interacting (Tripadvisor), as well as the launch of a new social networking platform built around Fairmont brand stories for Fairmont brand loyalists.

Brilliant if I may say. Fairmont has a storied brand history, an consumer segment that is passionate about the brand, beautiful historic properties – and ’stories’ to tell which may just be why building a specific brand social media community will work for them. Fairmont’s www.everyonesanoriginal.com social media community has just recently launched.

fairmont's www.everyonesandoriginal.com social media community recently launches

What I like specifically about this article is that it focussed not on the “What” the big hotel brands are doing but “Why.” It is clear that Kimpton Hotels and Resorts, Morgan’s Hotel Group and Fairmont have clearly laid out strategy, deployed testing, feedback from their customers and have determined their key measurables for both Brand loyalty and ROI. This is clearly not a result of which chains have the largest budgets – and a good lesson to the industry as a whole.

Chris Breikss Super Fan Vancouver Olympics 2010

The newest chick in the coop has inspired me to get back to my Blogging roots as I have moved towards micro-blogging sound-bites on twitter instead of taking time to muse about all things online. Thanks Patti for a fantastic guest Blog entry this week and thanks for the kick in the butt to get blogging again!

I can’t help as a proud Canadian to reflect on Vancouver’s achievement in producing an amazing Winter Olympic Games. We were truly watching the first ever Digital Olympics with this one – and I am happy to say that I think that Canada was well prepared for all of the media channels that were watching this country for the 14 days of the games. It will be interesting to hear now how the traditional media outlets faired.

Although millions were glued to televisions as Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal for Canada in overtime against the US hockey team (could not help but mention that one – that would have been so un-Canadian) – I wonder how many millions also watched events via live streaming video, or through a twitter stream of Olympic athletes tweeting updates live from events, ceremonies and from the general festivities that surrounded the games.

It will be interesting to see also how many downloads there were of the Olympics iPhone Apps, and how many Flickr streams there will be posted by athletes and athletes families from inside the Olympics Village and other “behind the scenes” places.

I must say that viewing photos live from a hockey game such as this one of “a young russian hockey fan” posted by my friend and colleague Chris Breikss after Russia lost to team Canada. Chris enjoyed many an Olympic moment on behalf of 900 of his Facebook friends- and I enjoyed seeing updates live on my mobile facebook app from friends as they experienced some of the winning Olympics moments live.   It allowed me to feel like a participant in the stories like no television broadcast has ever been able to do.

Kudos to the organizers, to the city of Vancouver British Columbia, to the Canadian Tourism Commission, to the media and bloggers, the athletes – and to all of the fans who tweeted, posted, blogged and text messaged your experiences of the games…the first digital Olympics was a great success!

Can I write anything of relevance using more than 140 characters? (I’m a seasoned Twitter-er.) What if no one reads this?  What if everyone reads this?  Do I have anything important to say?  What if there is criticism, and I‘m attacked by the grammar-hammers?  And, more importantly, what if The Chicks think I suck???  Lot’s of what-if angst…

[insert deep breath here]

In Chick-dom we refer to “The Social Butterfly” as most commonly found between the age range of 15-25 and being big influencers on buying decisions.  Social butterflies “fly” or “flit” from site to site based on popularity or what’s cool amongst their peers – wherever the nectar is the sweetest.

Butterflies are sharing their experiences through sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.  This group has grown up online and is comfortable sharing personal information and interacting with other online users.  I know this from personal experience with having a 15 (going on 25) year-old; as I’m constantly amazed at how they can chat, text, take photo’s and video’s, and put together a Christmas list (with links to the products and their websites) – all at the same time (yet the simple task of cleaning her bedroom is simply overwhelming!).  This is the same kid who put together a Powerpoint presentation at the age of 12 on why she should be allowed to go to a bon-fire party with no parents.

My point being that butterflies are multi-taskers and have a zero-tolerance attention span.  They do their research online and value the opinions of those within their online community through ‘word of mouse‘.  As marketers to said butterflies, we need to go where they are.  Must-haves include the capability for uploading media, personalizing their space and being able to invite their friends to visit; we need to accommodate the thirst and inherent need to socialize.

In January 2010 a Facebook Fan Page for “If you remember the L’OrealKids FISH SHAPED SHAMPOO BOTTLE” was created and to date there are almost 1.2 million fans.  Fans have uploaded pictures of L’Oreal products, and pictures of themselves holding L’Oreal products.

The page does not look like an official L’Oreal page, and the page creator goes by the name “Tanner Be”.  Tanner Be might be just a highly creative teenager with a lot of time on his hands, or he/she might just be a cleverly-disguised digital marketer (hey…we do what we have to) for L’Oreal.

This is a perfect example of a brand “being social”, whether intentional on the brand’s behalf or not.  This also illustrates the glaring fact that you need to brand yourself, or someone else will most certainly do it for you.

Get your butterfly nets out, and remember to have fun along the way!

2009 saw Facebook take a page from Twitter with live feeds of content replacing the display of content listed by friends most frequented – much to the initial resistance from many a Facebook user. Now we have to work to stalk our ‘friends’ because if they are not updating what they are doing by the minute, we are going have to dig deep to see what they are making for dinner.

With live feeds of content from social media channels such as Twitter, and Facebook- integrated media consumption became the norm in 2009.  Google and CNN are no longer the only sources for breaking “news” stories, and live television now leads to online discussions and minute by minute commentary from millions of people in online communities discussing such important topics as which man the bachelorette should choose, and why the dude with the bad muscle shirt should be ousted from the list of hopefuls – if only for his poor choice in wardrobe.

Social networking online went to new levels in ‘09 with live content feeds on Facebook allowing us to capture everything from where we are, to how we are feeling, to what we look like in an instant, appearing to hundreds of our closest friends.

2009 was also the year that “gone viral” was actually something good – it meant people liked you! Even if your most embarrassing moment was being viewed by 15 million people – instant celebrity can now be achieved. Just ask the poor kid who was living out his fantasy of being a Jedi warrior (which was secretly captured on video and posted to YouTube). Not only did 15 million see this, but they also commented and created spoofs with special effects and music to further add to our experience. Ahhhh the new tools of virtual voyeurism.

And then there is the mobile phone. With the SMS – or text, a whole new language has emerged and has been adapted by multiple generations. Kids are texting hugs and kisses to their Grandma’s, wives are sending reminders to pick up the milk…some are even breaking up with a quick one-line SMS.

It is amazing how 5 letters appearing on our mobile screen can make us feel connected, happy, relieved and loved. When did ‘LOL’ and ‘TTYL’ become code for “you are so funny and I feel that I must validate your last message by telling you that or you might misconstrue my silence for lack of interest” and “I am thinking of you too and can’t wait to send you cryptic messages again later when I have more time to think about how to be smart, witty and and down with the new technology at the same time.”

If 2009 was the year of the Tweet, 2010 may be the year of the APP. Mobile browsers in phones such as the Blackberry and iPhone have enabled access to everything online at any time. Want to know the name of the song that is playing? Want help with your golf swing? Want to know what to make for dinner with what is in your fridge? There is an APP for that! Perhaps by 2011 we will rely on APPS to tell us it is time to have a nap or take out the garbage.

The capturing of the sound-bites of my life in Facebook status updates, in video and photo uploads, in daily tweets of conversation (with the 14,000 people that have chosen to listen to my rants) has ironically taught me to be in the moment, to enjoy the people I am sharing the moment with – as it is happening.

My final reflection for 2009? It looks like a pretty fun life on Facebook – take some time to enjoy it in reality too!

This article in Hotel News Now summarizes the discussion nicely – but I must also highlight the summary of points that Patricia gave me that nicely puts things into perspective.

The panel, which was titled, “Economy in Transition” with Panelists from Expedia, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Trust International Hotel Reservation Services, and Smith Travel Research, pointed out the following:

1. Watch the Buzz – but Buzz doesn’t always = Buy

2. Go back to basics with your value proposition, an easy booking process and good service. (seems logical)

3. Use Social Media to better understand your customer (Customer relationship management at it’s best – isn’t that a no brainer!? We can now see exactly what our customers are saying – all of the time.)

As Patricia stated “We’ve gone from going online to living online…Consumers, particularly in hospitality and travel, are looking for things relevant and authentic.”

So is Social Media affecting the electronic distribution channels for the travel industry? Sure it is…but we have been through this before and will be down this road again.

Perhaps as this panel pointed out we should get back to basics of listening to our customers (who are living online) and providing an excellent travel experience no matter how they found us.

Yes – my inner geek talking here. It is fun watching Google and Bing battle it out for who will be the first to incorporate Twitter and Facebook real-time results and garner the consumer adaption first (which is really the key here). This  is a great outline of the landscape in PC World – as of today anyway.

Let’s see where this Blog post ends up in new live results.

The verdict is still out on Twitter it seems. Although we have run across some great Twitter success stories over the past few months, there are also some very confused marketers who are wondering why they signed up and what they are supposed to be doing there.

Last week in Halifax, we met the tweeting “Hotel Dog” as an example (aka http://twitter.com/thehoteldog or @thehoteldog as she is known as in Twitterland) who is a chocolate lab at the Best Western Chocolate Lake Hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has been tweeting now for a few months to a loyal following and is even now featured on the home page of the hotel’s main website http://www.ChocolateLakeHotel.com .

She gets fan tweets, fan mail, and has become an attraction unto herself at the hotel. Having a dog like Cocoa (her real life name) as a concierge also allows the hotel to engage with an audience of dog lovers who may also like to travel with their dogs. The Best Western Chocolate Lake is pet friendly of course. Now there is a great use of Tweeting in Tourism to engage a consumer audience!

I too keep hearing the research that reports that only 5% or less of North American’s are actually active on Twitter and that other social media channels like Facebook continue to expand to audiences that now include all demographics etc. etc. (It has now been confirmed though that my 82 year old Grandma Ivy is not the oldest Facebook user in Canada – but she is one active social networker!)

Interestingly I put a call out to my “tweeple” this afternoon asking the question (in 140 characters or less of course so please excuse the grammer)

Tweet: http://www.twitter.com/acoupleofchicks “Looking for feedback…Twitter working for B2C or just a great place for networking and B2B? thoughts?”

This is the beauty of Twitter – one can shout out to their peeps and get some great feedback fast. A second validation for Twitter to consumers came from the http://www.fairmont.com/empress“>Fairmont Empress Hotel Tweeter who responded with the following via Twitter:

www.twitter.com/FairmontEmpress “BOTH…success has to due with part instinct and part response. I get excited when I see RT of special offers & events posted.”
With more than 900 followers I think it is working for Victoria’s Fairmont Empress Hotel.

Specifically I was looking for some comments about measuring the ROI of Twitter for a business to consumer audience. When we are asked in our workshops whether or not someone should be Twittering, the answer is always “it depends.” I can definately attest to the power of the Tweet for building professional credability, business to business networking, and for me and many of my fellow tweeters – fun!

Then we come to the most recent news that Search Engines Google.com and Bing.com will index not only Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages and profiles, but also Tweets and updates in the very near future.

Wow – now there is a game changer!

The implications to this are too much to discuss in one Blog post, but it will definately shake things up in the future for businesses that rely on the web to reach their consumers (are there any that don’t anymore really?) Check out this “Marketing on the smart web” Blog post by Joe Buhler who discusses some of the implications in some more detail.

In summary – at this point I will stick to the mantra that you should not jump into any form of social networking intiative for business (or personal for that matter) without a full understanding of the channel and the people using it.

But I will say that the indexing of real-time results from status updates and tweets is reason enough to take a good look at all social networking vehicles as perhaps a necessary marketing and PR focus in the future.

]]> http://www.ideahatching.com/2009/10/22/twitter-for-tourism/feed/ 3 http://www.ideahatching.com/2009/09/20/a-couple-of-chicks-is-also-hot/ http://www.ideahatching.com/2009/09/20/a-couple-of-chicks-is-also-hot/#comments Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:51:40 +0000 awhalen http://www.ideahatching.com/?p=163 I loved the title of this article so much I could not resist!  The Chicks have recently received the honour (spelled right in Canada I promise!) of ranking as one of Canada’s “Hot 50″ Emerging Companies – according to Profit Magazine.

Both Patricia and I are thrilled to have been recognized in the Profit Hot 50 list and would like to take this opportunity to say thank-you to all of you who have been reading our articles, Blog posts, following our adventures on Facebook and Twitter and who have supported the plight that started four years ago to take on the Internet – “one title tag at at time!”

We also would like to recognize our incredible team who are virtually located around North America in Austin, Texas (We love you Texas Anne, even without an accent!), Ottawa (shout out



Canadian Online Marketing firm A Couple of Chicks

to our “Chiquette” yes that is really her last name – and we did not hire her for it), Toronto (snardi – always trying to keep the Chicks’ on time amongst a million other things), Halifax (Sandie- our grammer-hammer), Mississauga (Christy is the newest Chick in the coop), Niagara (Amy is the original artist behind all things chick, and Ray who keeps our shopping under control – hard to do).

Without all of you, our ‘peeps’ – and all of our partners, clients, friends and families, we could not have achieved this with our sanity intact. And I guess that is even questionable!

With that I will sign off this post and leave you with the article from the Mississauga Business Times who said “A Couple of Chicks is also Hot” – These Chicks are blushing!

]]> http://www.ideahatching.com/2009/09/20/a-couple-of-chicks-is-also-hot/feed/ 0