Pinterest has finally answered the question: “What do women want?” (psst… it’s diamonds for Valentine’s Day)

Spence Diamonds on Pinterest

The hottest social media tool of 2012, Pinterest, has finally answered the question: “What do women want?”

By now you have most certainly hear about Pinterest, the social media site, that is described as an online pinboard that allows you to “organize and share things you love.” According to Pinterest, 70% of users are female and Hitwise, ranks Pinterest #7 in the top 10 most visited social media websites. At the offices of 6S Marketing, where 70% of our staff is female, I would estimate that Pinterest usage is at 100% of the females and 50% of males. (DISCLAIMER: this is not a scientific study)

People in our office are going Pinterest crazy and the debate about it’s popularity and relevance is raging on on our internal social media network (Salesforce.com’s Chatter). The general consensus is that Pinterest is awesome and that it’s going to change the landscape on how we share pictures, and products. People are sharing “things” that they love on Pinterest and retailers are beginning to realize that there is an opportunity to run Pinterest marketing campaigns and are setting up Pinterest accounts to show off their products.

Spence Diamonds is making it easy for men to find Valentine’s Day gifts by encouraging women to share jewelry they love on Pinterest. Along with having a branded Pinterest account, Spence has installed a widget on their website that makes it easy for visitors to add Spence products to their pinboards.

They have just launched a Valentine’s Day ‘Pin it to Win it’ contest where they are giving away a diamond necklace. Check out the Spence Diamonds Pinterest account at http://pinterest.com/spencediamonds or go straight to the contest Pin http://pinterest.com/pin/224265256414055419/ to enter.

For more information and case studies on Pinterest for brands, also check out Mashable’s “Pinterest for Brands: 5 Hot Tips.”

Three New Analytics Reports You Should Check Out – Part 1

Google Analytics has rolled out numerous new features in the past half a year or so, including Real Time, Multi-Channel Funnels, and Flow Analysis, just to name a few. This all seems like a lot to absorb, so we wanted to help highlight a few reports to get you started on processing all the new information. This is Part 1, so stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 in the up coming months!

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“The Art Of” Event Dates – Toronto and Vancouver

The Art Of Productions is Canada’s preeminent owner and producer of educational conferences for professionals including The Art of Sales, The Art of Management, The Art of Leadership, and The Art of Marketing. The program attracts over 10,000 senior decision makders annually who learn from leading edge authors and experts sucha s Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and Michael Eisner.  Read More

What should marketers and brands do about Google+?

What brands and marketers should do about Google+

Get involved!

Google+ is not a shiny new tool or an innovative beta social media platform anymore. 6S Marketing has been telling the world for a few months to get involved with Google+. Chris Breikss insisted during his presentation during the social media week way back in September that Google+ was going to play a big role in the social media and search results world and said that brands and marketers should jump on board as soon as possible. We told you that Google+ business pages should not be ignored, and we gave you tips and tricks on how to use Google+.

In this blog post, I am not going to try and convince you to get a Google+ page by giving the top 10 or top 20 reasons why you should get one. I believe the following two should be enough: Read More

Custom Snippets and Titles in SERP’s

A while back, you may have noticed that meta descriptions shown in the SERP’s changed a bit – compared to what is actually written in the meta tag. Google began to allow advertisers to go beyond the standard character limits and would then customize the meta description result to best match the users query.

Matt Cutts has been talking about these types of adjustments to snippets and titles since 2009 however, this is the first time I’ve witnessed the customization of a title tag specifically. I noticed this change while looking at rankings for one of my clients – they were ranking on the first page for a keyword but the title tag was only 3 words long. I immediately thought to myself “well there’s no way I would have left the homepage title tag at 3 words long”… so I investigated. What I found, was that Google had actually taken the tail end of my title tag (which was over the character limit) to better match the users search. Read More

The Most Influential Brands in Canada 2011

Our first Ad Week Toronto event on Tuesday, January 24th was the Ipsos Most Influential Brands in Canada presentation by Ipsos Reid President Market Research Canada East Steve Levy.

** Please excuse the graphic, I took a photo of the list with my iPhone and have not been able to find the complete list online… **

To determine the most influential brands in Canada, Ipsos developed an influence index where brands could obtain points ranging from 14 to a total of 427, the latter being the most influential.
The presentation did not go into detail as to how they polled Canadians, or the type of survey used but did say that it was completed November 23rd – 30th, 2011 by 1013 Canadians.

The 1013 respondents were polled and asked to identify the brands that they identified with in the following ways (known as the 6 dimensions of influence): relevance to the consumer, the brand is leading edge, shows corporate citizenship, has a presence, is engaging and trustworthy. The 100 brands in the survey were based on their advertising spend.

Levy stated that in order to determine the influence the top 100 brands held over each Canadian consumer “needed to make the consumer aware of something new, change their life in someway in their everyday life, make their life more interesting, offer something  really important in the world today, or be fundamental to the consumers life, or changed the way the consumer shops”.

The Top 10 Most Influential Brands in Canada Are: Read More

Advertising Week Toronto Opening Breakfast

200 of Canada’s most creative and talented advertising professionals gathered at the Toronto Reference Library this morning for the Advertising Week Toronto opening breakfast. To kick things off an amazing breakfast was prepared by Top Chef Canada’s Mark McEwan. A pretty wonderful and delicious way to start off the week! His creation was eggs benny, served on toasted brioche and paired with caramelized onion potatoes.  It was simply amazing. Read More

North Shore Search & Rescue Honored by the Vancouver Police Department

When someone needs help finding a missing person, they turn to the Vancouver Police (VPD). When the VPD needs help finding a missing person, they turn to the North Shore Search and Rescue Team (NSR).  On Thursday, January 19th, our Managing Director and co-founder of 6S Marketing, John Blown, attended an awards ceremony with his fellow NSR volunteers where NSR was honored by the VPD for its dedication to community service. Read More

Offer Extensions: How To Guide for AdWords Setup

Last week, we introduced Google’s new Offer Extensions, what it is, and how you can use it. Today, we will talk about the business implications of this new type of extension and how it will impact brands, businesses and marketers online. This blog post also provides a thorough walk-through on how to properly set up Offer Extensions in your Adwords account. Read More

Advertising Week 2012: Events To Look Forward To

Advertising Week 2012 is taking place in Toronto this month from the 23^rd – 27^th. The annual event is Canada’s largest ad industry gathering and brings together many of the ad-world’s top thought leaders.  The week is full of workshops, speakers, award galas and of course wouldn’t be complete without some parties – all of which are to recognize the accomplishments of the Canadian communications industry.  

Top Industry Speakers

Facebook – Jordan Banks

If you’re familiar with 6S Marketing you know we love all-things Facebook. The opening lunch for Ad Week on the 23rd features Jordan Banks as the keynote speaker – the Managing Director of Facebook Canada. It’s always exciting to hear from top industry experts like Jordan to gain valuable insights and stats directly from “the horse’s mouth”. In April 2011 we had the privilege of having Alfredo Tan, the National Director of Facebook Canada, come into the 6S office where he offered some mind blowing Canadian Facebook usage statistics which we were then able to illustrate in an infographic for our readers. I’m hoping to be able to come out of Ad Week with some more stats and knowledge about the all-mighty Facebook and more specifically a more in-depth understanding of how Canadian businesses are using the social network. Read More