This week on my Drapers blog you can read my views on celebrity fashion brands analysing online conversations.

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1. You’re website’s been dropped by Google (BMW)
2. You’ve dropped in rankings (GoCompare)
3. A uncomplimentary website is bidding on paid search for your brand name
4. A competitor is bidding on paid search for your brand name
5. A bad news story ranks for your brand name (British Airways)
6. A porn site ranks for your brand name
7. A web page which damages your brand reputation ranks for your brand name (McDonalds)
8. Google crawled your website when it was down (Sainsbury’s)

9. A company with the same, or similar, name ranks for your brand name (British National Party/BNP Paribas)
10. Search engine usage is decreasing (although that’s never gonna happen, right?).

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Self styled commercially focused search engine marketing agency Maven Metrics was set up last year by Lucie Follet.

I caught up with Lucie to get her thoughts on the search marketing industry, why she has set up automotive parts websites and her plans for new bottled water company Sip’s online marketing campaign.

Maven Metrics is described as being commercially focused. How do you think this approach makes Maven Metrics different to other search marketing agencies?

The main difference with us is that we have worked in other, highly commercial and competitive environments – specifically non-marketing, ‘non meedja’ industries. In my own case, I worked in Investment Banking as a Japan equity sales/analyst until 2002 and also operate my own niche websites which I use as a test bed for hands-on work for any tips or advice I find in blogs and forums.

This combination of being commercial and hands-on is unusual and not always found in larger agencies. It’s not uncommon to find individuals working in SEO and especially web analytics who are so hung up on terms such as ‘conversion rate’ or ‘measuring engagement’ or the anthropological nature of blog networks that they have forgotten the commercial purpose to the website and how this relates to the bottom line – it has become totally abstract and a mere blip on an excel sheet.

I personally find this quite alarming.

Many search marketing agencies are becoming full service, or becoming part of media agencies. Do you think there will be demand for specialist search agencies? Where are you taking Maven Metrics?

Arguably, it could well be said that such large behemoths pose a very real threat to smaller, specialist search agencies as they have the name and client base to pull them through, regardless of the quality of their work and leave smaller agencies to mop up what little there is left.

For example, I am always suspicious when I hear of large, well known pr agencies launching ‘digital marketing arms’ yet when you cast an objective eye over their own websites, you often find all manner of things which make you wonder whether they can actually ‘walk the walk’, (absent or duplicate meta tags, non-search engine friendly flash etc.) There’s no doubt that they perceive online to be nothing more than a convenient money-spinner and they benefit from their clients’ ignorance in all things online.

Realistically, we can’t change that and have to work double-hard to get the business. We get most of our business through word of mouth referrals and, perhaps surprisingly, we do receive unsolicited approaches from companies who have found their experience with larger agencies to be unsatisfying, both in terms of lack of personal attention but also on value for money.

It has to be said, though, most companies are not this enlightened or have too many layers of internal politics to be able to make such a choice and will plump for what they consider to be the ‘safe’ option – which is not always the case.

Tell me more about your niche automotive websites.

I import car parts from Germany and operate several niche automotive sites including one for Volkswagen and Audi water pumps. This one in particular was set up as an arbitrage site to take advantage of perceived flaws in Original Equipment (OE) parts which are, on the whole, manufactured in China.

The obvious benefit to me in doing this – aside from an additional income stream – is to keep my hand well and truly on the commercial pulse.  For example, at present, my North American sales have dropped considerably on a YOY basis on account of the unfavourable exchange rate and as I am not importing huge quantities and cannot forward fix my rate, I am having to raise my prices. So I am more than sympathetic to those retailers who are trying to sell into the
US – it’s not easy in such price-sensitive times – and it means that you have to work extra hard to build up online coverage.

You’re doing the online marketing for Sip water. What are the advantages of marketing an up and coming brand online?

Sip is a great company to be involved with, mainly for the fact that the founders are both incredibly open to the idea of using SEO and web analytics and are always hungry to learn more.

Not only is this attitude extremely refreshing, but it means that it is entirely possible to work in sync with the sip PR dept so that at all times, we can monitor just exactly how useful, say, a particular article in a particular magazine or event sponsorship has been in terms of visits to the site. This approach is ideal and is one I would highly recommend to others.

What is the online marketing focus for Sip? Is it driving brand conversation across the web or driving traffic to Sip’s website?

At present, the sip site is not selling online – yet.

This means that our task at this point is twofold – a/increasing awareness amongst potential distributors both UK and ex-UK and pushing them to the optimised, multilingual pages on the sip site and b/using the optimised blog to highlight offline press coverage we have achieved to get people to find out more about the brand. It is working – since the site’s launch in February, unique visitors to both the site and blog have increased on a month on month basis.

What exciting projects are on the horizon for Maven Metrics?

In addition to working with new clients, we are also building up our preparation to launch a new site which will act as a go-between for PR firms representing brands and consumers.

Our experience of working with PR firms, especially in the health, beauty and lifestyle sectors, has shown us that there is still very little knowledge and appetite within PR co’s for proactively targeting consumers online, other than to send out the, hopeful press release and sample to a relatively short list of ‘themed’ blogs.  Given the current economic outlook, this will become increasingly more important.

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Maven Metrics

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This week on my Drapers blog you can read my views on how Primark should communicate its ethical standards online.

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Last week I was forwarded an email with various “mashups” of Cadbury and Nestle brands.

Both Cadburys and Nestle are keen to reignite interest in their products and are relaunching some of their old brands (see my interview with branding expert Jonathan Gabay on this).

I am not at all suggesting that this viral was a contrived marketing effort, but it leads to the question of whether brands properly explore the option of marketing online with their competitors.

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In a previous study I named Cheryl Cole as the most talked about Girls Aloud singer on the internet.

But how does Cheryl square up to her new work colleague Dannii Minogue?

Like her sister, pop star Dannii has been around since the 1980’s and joined the X Factor panel in 2007.

Cheryl and her Girls Aloud crew may be Britain’s biggest girl band, but with less than six years of fame can she be more talked about online than Dannii?

Most blog mentions in last 24 hours
Cheryl Cole: 32
Dannii Minogue: 28
WINNER: Cheryl Cole

Most Google Search results
Cheryl Cole (Cheryl Tweedy): 1,039,000
Dannii Minogue (Danni Minogue): 2,479,000
WIINNER: Dannii Minogue

Most tagged YouTube videos
Cheryl Cole: 990
Dannii Minogue 1,090
WINNER: Dannii Minogue

Most DigitalSpy X Factor forum mentions
Cheryl Cole: 53
Dannii Minogue 191
WINNER: Dannii Minogue

Most Yahoo News mentions (June)
Cheryl Cole: 129
Dannii Minogue 154
WINNER: Dannii Minogue

Most Bebo Group mentions
Cheryl Cole: 61
Dannii Minogue 35
WINNER: Cheryl Cole

Most mentions on...
The Sun
Cheryl Cole: 967
Dannii Minogue 610
Daily Mail
Cheryl Cole: 27,854
Dannii Minogue 233
Holy Moly
Cheryl Cole: 461
Dannii Minogue 82
WINNER: Cheryl Cole

Cheryl may be the most famous Girls Aloud member, but Dannii is more famous online.

Having a famous sister has meant that Dannii’s name is often mentioned when Kylie’s is. This is the likely reason why Dannii has so many pages indexed in Google that mention her name.

A huge back catalogue of records means Dannii is tagged on over 1,000 videos on YouTube. Videos Cheryl features in are tagged Girls Aloud rather than Cheryl Cole.

Cheryl does do well on newspaper and gossip websites, due to her high profile marriage.

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The News of the World has just published news that Heather Mills is dating a “toyboy hunk” called Jamie Walker.

It’s less than an hour after the story was published online and there are currently 47 results in Google for a search on “Heather Mills” “Jamie Walker”, and only the News of the World piece refers to a story on the couple.

I wonder how long it will be before there are millions of web pages mentioning Heather and Jamie.

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Whether you’re using your family name to gain notoriety (Paris Hilton) or riding on the coattails of a world famous sibling (Jamie Lynn Spears), today’s fame is family sized.

Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan are two celebs with fame embracing relatives. Both sets of families have appeared on reality TV shows.

With the Kardashians being talk of the town, and the Lohan’s new series Living Lohan currently airing, I thought it would be good to judge which Beverly Hills family is the most talked about online, the Kardashians or the Lohans?

Most Wikipedia entries
Lohan: 5 (Lindsay Lohan, Aliana Lohan, Dina Lohan, Living Lohan, Michael Lohan)
Kardashian: 9 (Robert Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Rob Kardashian Jnr, Kris Jener, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Bruce Jenner, Brody Jenner)
Winner: Kardashian

Most reader comments left on latest TMZ post
Lohan: 125 (see here)
Kardashian: 178 (see here)
Winner: Kardashian

Most blog mentions in 24 hours
Lohan: 371
Kardashian: 169
Winner: Lohan

Most Google search results
Lindsay Lohan: 33,600,000
Kim Kardashian: 8,190,000
Winner: Lohan

Most YouTube videos
Living Lohan: 84
Keeping up with the Kardashians: 124
Winner: Kardashian

Most links to official website (according to Yahoo)
www.lindsaylohanmusic.com: 1,102
www.officialkimkardashian.com: 4,299
Winner: Kardashian

Most Google News entries (past month)
Lohan: 4,272
Kardashian: 471
Winner: Lohan

Most del.ico.us posts
Lindsay Lohan: 2,033
Kim Kardashian: 775
Winner: Lohan

Most E! Online discussions
Living Lohan: 57
Keeping up with the Kardashians: 186
Winner: Kardashian

and the MOST TALKED ABOUT ONLINE is... the Kardashians

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If you’ve not yet seen the Amy Winehouse video, where she appears to have turned one of the world’s most innocent songs into a race filled chant, click here.

Below is the Google search results for her name on the day the video first appeared on the News of the World website.

The only mention of the controversial video is within the News Results at the top of the page.

I’ll be monitoring this to see if any of the main listings are taken over by the hundereds of websites and blogs that will no doubt be commenting on it.

It will be interesting to see if this story has more of a viral effect than Amy caught smoking crack on film.

What will cause more online conversation, racism or drugs?

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Author of 12 books and an expert on everything to do with branding, Jonathan Gabay is one of the most respected names in the world of marketing.

When he’s not writing influential books Jonathan travels the world spreading his knowledge on marketing, branding and communications.

This week I spoke to Jonathan about the re-launching of our favourite chocolate brands, how internet only players can compete with established names online and managing online reputation.

What do you think of Mars, Nestle and Cadbury’s bringing back old confectionery brands such as Marathon, Wispa and Opal Fruits?
The ancient Greeks had a term:  νόστος = nostos = returning home, and άλγος = algos = pain/longing .

The power of nostalgia in branding is one never to be underestimated.  However, FMCG companies have to be careful of the time between relaunching brands.  You can’t reintroduce a chocolate bar for nostalgia’s sake if it was only off the market for a question of a few years.

Snickers is renaming to Marathon for a limited period. Do you think there is a risk of confusing a generation of young people not familiar with Marathon, or is the logo and branding on the packet stronger than the name?
The trouble with reverting to an old brand name and then going back to a new one is that it shows a lack of confidence in a brand:  My opinion? Stay in for the long race not just a quick Marathon.

Cadbury’s brought back Wispa in response to several online petitions. What do you think is the primary motivation for people to join Facebook groups such as ‘Bring Back Wispa’?
Fun, nostalgia and sense of the consumer having a say in a much-loved brand.

An online petition has brought a brand back but do you think the internet generation will ever create a FMCG product? Will we see online petitions like ‘the campaign for Banana flavour KitKat’?
A brand leader is like a conductor of an orchestra.  If he (or she) totally dismisses out of hand what the audience wants, they could end up conducting nothing more than a one-man Penny Flute.

YouTube is one of my favourite internet brands. The word ‘tube’, which itself has connotations to traditional TV sets, is appropriately enclosed in an TV shaped box, ‘You’ adds a sense of personalisation, and the tagline ‘broadcast yourself’ says it all in two words. What’s your favourite internet only brand and why?
Google.  It is useful, distinctive and even has the accolade of being a verb in the Oxford dictionary. I also like Leonbaileygreen.com.  Fun, informative and sharp why thank you!.

What can internet only brands do to compete with online offerings from established bricks and mortar competitors?
The question should be reversed.  Give it ten years and most of the high street will be on the Wi-Fi street.

Do you think big brands are actively doing enough to achieve positive first page results on Google for their brand names?
I hope so - I teach a lot of them how to achieve that aim!

With universal search Google now shows news results alongside some brand name searches, making online reputation management more important than ever. Is reading a bad news story on a brand, when you’ve searched for it, more damaging than coming across the bad news story in a newspaper, or is it the same?
Someone famously said that “all publicity is good publicity” That’s not necessarily true, especially on the web.  Brands receiving bad PR could always be consoled by the PR men saying “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping paper.” Pieces on the web linger much longer and because people read in short bursts on the web, they sometimes see the bad news headlines and just take it as read, rather than delve to find out more of the real truth behind the story.

And finally, what do you think is the next big trend in the world of branding?
More personalization and more permission based intrusion. That includes everything from the world of technology with customizable computers and interactive video ads on the go, to FMCG chocolate bars that come in banana flavours.

See more about Jonathan Gabay on the Brand Forensics website.

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Britain’s Got Talent may have beat I’d Do Anything in the Saturday night ratings battle, but which of the show’s star is being talked about most online?

I’ve analysed the online mentions of Jodie Prenger and George Sampson to see which of the two has the highest online profile.

Google Search Results
Jodie Prenger – 25,200
George Sampson – 73,000
WINNER: George Sampson

Google News
Jodie Prenger – 225
George Sampson – 274
WINNER: George Sampson

DigitalSpy forum threads
Jodie Prenger – 39
George Sampson – 105
WINNER: George Sampson

Blog mentions
Jodie Prenger – 215
George Sampson – 1,333
WINNER: George Sampson

Not only did he win the ratings battle but George Sampson is more famous than Jodie Prenger.

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If you search for something positive [smiling] you get positive results.

If you search for the negative [crime] you get negative results.

If you search for something that you consider to be positive [dunkin donuts], you realise that other people might consider it to be negative.

If you search for something that you consider to be negative, but you’re only presented with the positive, you’re either wrong or seeing the results of good reputation management (search results manipulation).

If at first the world doesn’t understand your request [paris], you make changes to the way you request what you want [paris hilton].

If after your search [paris hilton] you’re presented with related search options [one night in paris] you might – though unlikely – learn something new about what you were searching for.

Search exposes brands and people more than ever. Effort should be put into encouraging positive dialogue about brands, rather than silencing the negative – concentrate on that and you’ll only get more of it.

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In the fashion industry image is everything. And Kate Moss, one of the world’s most famous fashion models, benefits from newspaper and magazine column inches touting her as a style icon, to promote her Topshop clothing range.

Her celebrity status and public persona all help to create the sellable brand that is Kate Moss. But what could Kate be doing to market her brand on the internet? Here are five online marketing tips for Kate Moss…

1. An official website
Kate needs her own website which is themed the ‘career of a supermodel’. It should be a portal of Kate’s life and include a career timeline, a profile of the campaigns she appears in and her Topshop collection.

She should also create a dialogue with wannabe models and designers offering tips on how to get into the fashion industry,

2. Social networks
Fancy making friends with Kate? An official profile from which Kate has a dialogue with her fans would help her to connect with an online community.

She would then be able to leverage this community help her in various different ways. For instance, she could ask her online friends to put a Kate Moss for Topshop application on their personal profile.

3. Bury negative web pages

Search for Kate Moss in Google and you get the ‘Cocaine Kate’ story from the Daily Mirror on the first page.

One way Kate could try to bury negative web pages like this is by creating an official website which links to other positive fan websites (read my Tom Cruise example)

4. Viral competition
Kate should celebrate her successful foray into fashion design by offering someone the chance to design part of her collection.

Entrants can be asked to submit a design for a dress in the Topshop collection. Every entrant could then have to rate other entries.

5. Guest blogs
Fashion blogs are becoming increasingly influential. Bloggers are noticing and reporting on trends much quicker than newspapers and magazines.

Kate should guest blog on fashion blogs every few months adding her views and thoughts on what trends she thinks are coming in.

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Usher Raymond, mostly known as just Usher, is an American R&B singer who shot to fame in the UK with his song ‘You Make Me Wanna’.

The US star recently told Sky News that after selling 37 million albums he is concentrating on extending his personal brand as well as his new album Here I Stand.

Usher now has his own branded clothing and aftershave, but are people talking about his clothing line? Does his fragrance have good reviews?

Let’s take a look at how Usher’s extended brand is being perceived online and whether his website adequately promotes these brand extensions.

Usherworld.com
The first graphic on the website contains the motto ‘It is not how famous ur, it’s what ur famous for’. Obviously UR has a double meaning (you are and Usher Raymond). But this strong message on arrival of the website indicates that when you buy into Brand Usher you buy into fame, but fame for a purpose.

When you click to enter the website there’s a promo for Usher’s His & Hers fragrances.

Using his main website to promote the fragrances shows his commitment to his brand extension.

Separate website to promote the Here I Stand album

There is a New Music link on usherworld.com which you would assume would contain promo for his new album Here I Stand. Instead the page says coming soon, which is unusual as he has a standalone website for his music – why is this not linked to?

Usher fragrance perception online
The men’s fragrance gets a 5 star rating on Amazon.com and the women’s fragrance gets two 5 star ratings on the passion for perfume website.

Usher’s Wikipedia entry credits him as a singer and actor. His music and film credits throughout the years are all included, but there is no mention of his clothing or perfume line.

Although the brand extensions have been well received, Brand Usher has a way to go to cohesively tell a story which promotes the music and his foray into fashion and beauty online.

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This year’s Eurovision song contest has caused much controversy after Western European nations were again left out in the cold. X-Factor star Andy Abraham represented the UK and came last, whilst Russia triumphed with their star Dima Bilan.

Dima may have won the contest, but is he more talked about on the internet than our Andy Abraham? I’ve analysed both Eurovision stars to see which of them is most talked about online.

Search results in Yahoo!
Andy Abraham – 687,000
Dima Bilan – 4,000,000
WINNER: Dima Bilan

Stories on Google News
Andy Abraham – 340
Dima Bilan – 446
WINNER: Dima Bilan

YouTube videos
Andy Abraham - 188
Dima Bilan – 2,990
WINNER: Dima Bilan

MySpace friends
Andy Abraham – 2,724
Dima Bilan - 710
WINNER: Andy Abraham

Mentions on blogs
Andy Abraham – 3,964
Dima Bilan – 144,363
WINNER: Dima Bilan

So Dima Bilan is more famous online than Andy Abraham. Of course there is political voting going on but it looks as if Dima has built up a Europe wide online fan base.

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