Central Perk

joi, 7 august 2014

Profiterol vision: how chocolatiers are making you buy online

Profiterol vision: how chocolatiers are making you buy online

Posted: 07 Aug 2014 01:42 AM PDT

We all know its easy to sell chocolates in a supermarket or corner shop to those shopping and influenced by their current state of hunger and desire for a sweet something. But is it more difficult to capture these customers online? Sure, you can still have those hunger pangs and need for a slab of chocolate when you sit in front of your computer, but does that translate to making an online purchase, or does it just make you head for the nearest vending machine?

In this blog post, I’ve looked at five boutique chocolate brands, who all have at least one high street shop in the UK, but also have transactional websites, to see how they are making consumers buy from them.

The brands:

Godiva – 10 stores in the UK
Hotel Chocolat – 73 stores in the UK
Rococo Chocolates – 4 stores in the UK
Artisan du Chocolat – 6 stores in the UK
Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier – 3 stores in the UK (all in Scotland)

Tis the season to sell chocolate?

Well, no in a word. Just take a look at the annual search trends around chocolate and chocolate terms below:

We buy chocolate in the winter months, for Christmas and for Valentines day, not when its hot outside. So how do our chocolate retailers cope from April to August when traditional demand is reduced? This blog post will discuss the tactics that luxury chocolate brands are attempting to use to draw in consumers over the summer months.

So what is the key to selling chocolate in the summer months?

Creating a need and providing a solution to the need

Consumers may not be looking for what you’re selling during the summer months, but that doesn’t mean they won’t buy. The cynical among us declare every February that Valentine’s Day was promoted by greetings card companies to profit from our feeling of obligation to buy a card for the occasion.

Of course this is a psychological trick as old as time but using this sentiment, chocolate retailers can promote an obligation towards events that occur in the summer, creating demand for their products in the same way as greetings card companies (may or may not) have done.

We can see in the image below that Hotel Chocolat has done just that on-site and in its email marketing campaign this July.

Hotel Chocolat responded to the lovely period of hot weather in the UK by convincing us that a bottle of cheap wine and a pack of Asda burgers buns is not a sufficient gift for your BBQ host these days!

Whilst browsing on HC’s site, you may also realise that you’ve forgotten to buy a card for your neighbour’s daughter, who’s just graduated from university. But oh! People buy nice chocolates for that these days do they? Oh okay, you’ll add one of those to your basket seeing as you’re already getting a gift for your BBQ hosts. Saves you going to the card shop!

So its fair to say that Hotel Chocolat has done a great job of creating the need for you to buy. Its summer promotions are timely and season-appropriate. Check out this email from 7th July for example:

Well timed, less than two weeks before most schools finish for summer, they’ve reminded you to buy gifts for your children’s teachers and they’ve used clever copy to remind you why teachers need rewarding. Plus a special offer for multi-buys. Winner!

Are the other brands doing this?

Well there are others who are creating a reason to buy, but they aren’t quite focusing on the ‘need’ bit enough in their promotions. Lets take a look:

Rococo – this is the email I received from Rococo on 18th July. While it did refer to ‘Summer Parties and Picnics’ it didn’t exactly draw me in with the product offering or copy. The best emails are those that do all the hard work for you and this one doesn’t. Fudge doesn’t exactly exude summer to me, so I’d need a little inspiration to link buying items from Rococo to a summer picnic or party.

Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier – This brand does a good job of serving up some seasonal promotions in its email marketing. See its email below from 10th July, which provides tips on how to use its products in a summer setting. Whilst the brand has highlighted the opportunity to buy a ‘Thank You’ gift for someone, perhaps it should have directly attributed this to buying a gift for a teacher – taking out the hard work for the email recipient. It’s also unfortunate that the website itself doesn’t address the summer season, as the site has what I’d call quite a festive colour scheme.

And what of the other two brands? Well I didn’t receive any emails from Godiva over the period I investigated so I couldn’t comment on that, but I did receive this one from Artisan du Chocolat on one of the hottest days of the summer:

Just…no.

Thank god Godiva have acknowledged it’s Summer on their Instagram feed:

This seems to serve mainly to encourage consumers to visit Godiva stores to buy iced and fresh summer treats, which isn’t a bad thing. Godiva does have a small ‘summer’ selection on-site, but its very well hidden and doesn’t seem to be under much promotion, which is a shame.

So in terms of creating a need and selling a solution, Iain Burnett and Hotel Chocolat are doing the best this summer. It often comes as little surprise that the largest brand does things a lot better, but it seems that Hotel Chocolat are well and truly leaving the rest behind in this area. Do you know of any other chocolate brands who are doing well in digital promotion over the summer months?

In my next blog post, I’ll look at how these brands are engaging with consumers and how they are increasing average order values using some interesting on-site techniques.

The post Profiterol vision: how chocolatiers are making you buy online appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : Simple, guaranteed, easy and free

Simple, guaranteed, easy and free

That's the perfect advice, and the advice that spreads, the advice we seek.

Of course, advice that's simple, guaranteed, easy and free isn't worth very much, because if it worked, we would have done it already.

No, the advice worth seeking out is really difficult to execute. It costs time or money (or both), and it just might not work.

Hey, if it's worth asking for advice, it's worth doing the hard stuff once we get it, right?

• Email to a friend •

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miercuri, 6 august 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Italy "Unexpectedly" Slips Back Into Recession

Posted: 06 Aug 2014 11:26 PM PDT

The optimism of mainstream economists is rather curious. Economics appears to be right up there with faith-healing as the most optimistic profession on the planet.

Here is a case in point: Bloomberg reports Italy Unexpectedly Returns to Recession.

Italy unexpectedly returned to recession and German factory orders dropped the most since 2011 as slowing global growth and rising tensions with Russia over Ukraine threaten the euro area's recovery.

Italy's economy shrank 0.2 percent in the second quarter after contracting 0.1 percent in the previous three months. German orders slid 3.2 percent in June from May. Both reports were worse than forecast by economists in separate Bloomberg News surveys.

The renewed recession in Italy, the euro area's third-biggest economy, will weigh on the region's second-quarter gross domestic product figures. The currency bloc's economy expanded 0.2 percent in the three months through March, and the ECB predicts growth of 1 percent this year.

Today Italy, then France, then Germany. All will be "unexpected". Bad news is seldom if ever expected.

But what the heck. Let's increase sanctions on Russia, and pray to God Russia does not retaliate.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

US Dependent on Russia for NASA Launches; Well, Guess What? Russia Fires Back With More Sanctions: NASA, Pepsi, McDonald's, Autos in Spotlight

Posted: 06 Aug 2014 11:50 AM PDT

Not many people realize the US is dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry astronauts to the international space station.

Former former NASA administrator Michael Griffin told ABC News "We're in a hostage situation. Russia can decide that no more U.S. astronauts will launch to the International Space Station and that's not a position that I want our nation to be in."

That bit of news came out late July, and is under review by Russia today.

Chicken, Cheese, McDonald's in Spotlight

On July 31, Slate reported Russian Response to New Sanctions Could Devastate McDonald's McChicken with Cheese Market.

Bloomberg reported, Russia Eyes Banning U.S. Chicken

Facing tougher sanctions over Ukraine, Russia said yesterday it may ban imports of chicken from the U.S. and fruit from Europe and is investigating McDonald's Corp. (MCD) cheese for safety.

"It's a troubling continuation/expansion of trade as a geopolitical tool," Gary Blumenthal, president of World Perspectives Inc., a Washington-based agricultural consulting firm, said in a phone interview.

Gary Blumenthal made a sensible comment, ignored universally, as are most sensible ideas.

NASA, Pepsi, Autos in Spotlight

Ealier today, the Russian Itar-Tass news agency reported Russia's retaliation to foreign sanctions may be heavy.

Russia can and must respond to foreign sanctions in a balanced way, but at the same time the retaliation must be strong enough to let the countries that imposed the restrictions feel its effects, says the director of the Globalization Problems Institute Mikhail Delyagin, in the past an aide to Russia's prime minister.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday asked the government to consider retaliatory measures in response to western sanctions against Russia, but in a way that would not harm the interests of domestic manufacturers and consumers. The government is now in the process of discussing the possibility of banning European air carriers from flying to Asia and back through Russian air space. The measure was proposed after Russia's lowcoster Dobrolyot declared it was cancelling all flights due to sanctions - its contracts for leasing Boeing liners of US manufacture had been annulled. Earlier, Vladimir Putin warned that the authorities might take a closer look at who was operating in the Russian energy market and in what way.

"Russia's response to Western sanctions may vary from country to country. In relations with the United States Russia may raise the question of banning US fast food outlets, which treat their customers to products harmful to health. The same applies to the marketing of PepsiCo products and genetically modified goods from the US," the expert said.

"Also, Russia may stop letting NASA use its rockets as a means of delivering cargoes to the International Space Station, a service the United States is so much interested in. Or, if asked to go ahead with space cooperation, Moscow may address Washington with its own conditions," Delyagin said.

"As far as Germany as Russia's main economic partner in the European Union is concerned, the two countries have strong bonds in power engineering and the automobile industry. But Russia may as well import high precision machine tools from advanced countries in the Asia-Pacific Region, which will surely result in direct losses for German manufacturers," the analyst said.

"Most countries in the European Union may find rather sensitive the possibility of banning Asia-bound flights over Russian territory. The government is considering such an option at the moment. In my opinion it would be a far more elegant move to keep the air space open, but to considerably raise transit fees European air carriers pay for flying over Siberia and to used the extra revenues to improve Russia's air traffic control service on the ground," Delyagin said.

"The United States and the European Union have no intention of confining themselves to the sanctions that have been introduced already. For that reason Russia may eventually declare its walkout from the World Trade Organization and within a six-month deadline to cancel its obligations to foreign partners in view of force majeure circumstances," the analyst pointed out.

Russia Bites Back With Still More Food Bans

The Financial Times reports Russia Bites Back With More Food Bans

Russia has hit back at western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis with import bans on agricultural produce and food products from the US and EU in a wide-ranging retaliatory step designed to hurt foreign farmers.

In theory, the order allows Moscow to ban all agricultural and food products from the US, the EU, Canada, Japan and Australia – a scenario economists say could do significant damage to agricultural-exporting nations.

Russia imports more than 40 per cent of its food and the country's retailers say a quick switch to domestic sources is impossible. The central bank and the parts of the government in charge of economic policy have also argued that broad food import bans could drive up inflation, which stood at 7.9 per cent in the first half of the year.

The Russian cabinet is expected to approve details of the ban on Thursday. The Kremlin said the government would prevent a spike in food prices and would start "real-time monitoring" of commodity markets.

The decree will allow Moscow to vastly expand its curbs on agricultural imports, a measure it has often used to show its displeasure with trading partners.

Over the past two weeks alone, the Russian government's veterinary and phytosanitary regulator and its consumer rights watchdog have banned imports of Romanian beef, Polish fruit and vegetables, Latvian pork, Ukrainian dairy products, cereals and juice, and plant products from Moldova. On top of that, individual shipments of Latvian milk powder and fish, Ukrainian cheese and American frozen shrimp have been turned back.

Who's Winning?

Clearly, no one is. Punishing Russia is tantamount to punishing oneself, and vice versa. Yet, Russia felt forced to retaliate. Otherwise, Russia ran the risk of never-ending sanction escalation from the West.

If Russia was smart, it would threaten to double natural gas rates immediately unless all parties involved would agree to sit down at the table to discuss things. By all parties I mean Russia, rebels, Ukraine, EU.

The problem for Russia is that it needs natural gas revenues. Thus, a threat to raise rates would be more credible than a threat to shut supplies.

The US really has no business in this fight, although it does have the biggest cheerleaders in McCain and Obama.

This is largely a crisis of US and EU making. The US also stirred the pot in the first place, and that led to the overthrow of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

The primary role of the US now is head cheerleader. I propose we stop the cheering, the fighting, and the sanctions, and instead start talking.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

"Hey, how you doing?"

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

"Hey, how you doing?"

President Obama traveled to Kansas City, Missouri last week -- where he grabbed some BBQ with Americans who had written him letters, and delivered a speech about how he's working to get things done for hardworking Americans even as Congress chooses not to act to move this country forward.

And before he left, the President took a walk down Main Street (literally), spending time with store owners, touring an antique watch shop, and chatting with customers at a local coffee shop.

We got it all on video, and we think you'll want to see it -- watch, then pass it on: