Fashion houses have been especially quick to jump on board the Instagram bandwagon, such as the Art of the Trench project from Burberry. The brand encouraged fans to don their trench coats and submit photos via Instagram, which were featured at artofthetrench.com alongside professional “trench coat portraits” by The Sartorialist’s Scott Schuman. Those promiscuous folks at Sartorialist also teamed up with Tiffany & Co. to encourage fashionable couples in New York and Paris to document their True Love In Pictures via Instagram, as shown in the image to the right. But to really pull the whole thing together, the pair offered a special Instagram photo filter that users could apply to their lovely images.

Instagram’s aforementioned Seamlessness also makes it an ideal platform for promotions and sweepstakes, as entering can involve little more than a photo and a quick tag. Levi’s is using the service to find new faces for their 2012 brand campaign by asking folks to tag images of themselves with #iamlevis. The early results seem to be attracting quite the spectrum of participants, ranging from American Apparel-y hipsters to shirtless muscle-bound jocks. Oh, and this guy. We hope he wins.

GE is similarly tapping Instagrammers to find a “social media photographer,” a position that would require the winner to take behind-the-scenes photos at GE’s jet engine facility for sharing on sites like Instagram and Tumblr. Entrants are tasked with bringing one of GE’s four foci to life (Moving, Curing, Powering and Building) and tagging their images with #GEInspiredMe. (You can see some of the selections below). Regardless of who wins the contest, we find it particularly interesting that a brand as complicated and amorphous as GE could use this promotion to clearly and simply communicate their core areas of expertise. Moreover, like the Levi’s campaign mentioned earlier, the brand is leveraging the Collective Curation of their fans to compile a large collection of compelling images of their products and processes. These assets can subsequently be used in all kinds of smart ways in the future, even if the respective marketers don’t know exactly what that’ll be just yet. But along the way, these Instagramming brands have already developed (pun intended) a deeper engagement with their most expressive consumers.

Click the image below for the full-size infographic!

In January, 2011, Starbucks launched its Mobile Card payment program available on most smartphones. SMART. No doubt you’re already on your phone at 8:30 in the morning while ordering a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte, so it’s easy to flash your “Touch to Pay” barcode and be on your way. The app replaces your reloadable Starbucks card (while keeping your rewards intact), and you can preload it from your bank account within the same screen.

With the release of Google Wallet, users can now pay with a simple tap at Mastercard paypass terminals. For now, this is advancement only for those with Google phones…and a Citi Mastercard. But, with this technological groundbreaking device, users are also able to receive offers and store loyalty points via the app.  We’re attached to our phones, so what better way to reach us directly when we’re making a transaction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shopkick offers rewards for simply stepping inside a store and scoping out merchandise. It displays deals and discounts close in proximity to your location. The more you peruse, the more points are earned for redemptions ranging from clothes to electronics.

While cashless-ness becomes the norm, we can only assume that consumers will rely less on the benjamins, but let’s not forget about Future Fear. A lot of emphasis is placed on convenience and practicality when we look at technological enhancements. It’s our job to find the perfect balance between convenience and trust.

What we can gather from our own shopping habits is that we rely heavily on the convenience factor, no doubt about it. We’ve become increasingly comfortable with everything being accessible through our phones. We can purchase a Groupon, find our way to Alaska and back, and even count the steps we take around the office with our smartphones.

“What? I can’t just show you the e-mail, I have to print it out?!”

As marketers, we should reach our consumers as soon as they walk into the store, making it harder not to refuse a great deal on the very same phone used to swipe and pay. It has been reported that 20% of smartphone users have compared prices while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. Additionally, 15% of smartphone users have redeemed a mobile coupon (ladies more so than gentlemen). Let’s take advantage of these time-saving, less paper-wasting social platforms that deliver instantaneous results without hassle. Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, so creating more convenient methods of in-store redemption and offers will put us ahead of the game—and the checkout line.

What will it take for YOU to go CASH-LESS?

Many hotels are already offering experience-based rewards in their loyalty programs and enhanced concierge services to assist guests with discovering the world outside of the hotel. Instead of stockpiling points for a free night’s stay, members of these programs can earn cultural activities, like going backstage before a performance at the Peking Opera or spending the day with a professional bullfighter. Some loyalty programs even offer express experiences specifically designed for business travelers who may only have an hour or two to spare but who still want to go home with at least one memorable insight into the destination they visited.

Additionally, several startups have recently emerged to meet the wanderlusty needs of travelers by offering trip curation tools, local knowledge and a much-needed dose of personalization to the online trip planning process.

Launched in April, Vayable connects travelers with tour guides offering unique and intimate local experiences, like scouting Montmartre street art in Paris or visiting sample sales in NYC with a fashion insider. By allowing these independent guides to sell their local knowledge, Vayable is redefining the tour and activity segment of the travel market.

And then there’s Fortnighter, also launched this year, which provides (for a fee) made-to-order itineraries from professional travel writers based on the user’s dates of travel, interests and budget. Fortnighter brings currency, personalization and expert knowledge to the travel planning table and allows users to steer clear of the unreliability of algorithms and user reviews.

A slew of other services have also cropped up recently. All of this suggests that the travel experience marketplace is heating up, and there appears to be room for more. When looking across the dreaming, researching, booking, experiencing and sharing travel cycle, what kind of product or service can you offer that will assist travelers with collecting those sought-after experiences? How do you evoke the moments that inspire us when we travel? How do you help deliver more authentic travel experiences?

Here’s their exact copy for the search:

Think you are the Next BIG Thing?

Calling curvy ladies everywhere! Our best-selling Disco Pant (and around 10 other sexy styles) are now available in size XL, for those of us who need a little extra wiggle room where it counts. We’re looking for fresh faces (and curvaceous bods) to fill these babies out. If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the next XLent model, send us photos of you and your junk to back it up.

Just send us two recent photographs of yourself, one that clearly shows your face and one of your body. We’ll select a winner to be flown out to our Los Angeles headquarters to star in your own bootylicious photoshoot. Runners up will win an enviable assortment of our favorite new styles in XL!

Show us what you’re workin’ with!

As a copywriter and as a woman, there are just so many things wrong with the wording of this campaign, including but not limited to the fact that not once do they use a positive or real adjective to describe plus-sized women. As one irate blogger says, it’s just “jokey, made up words like ‘junk’ and ‘XLent.’ Nothing that denotes attractiveness without a crude reference to size.”

Essentially, it was hard for me to take this campaign seriously, and apparently, I’m not the only one.

To Nancy Upton, a Dallas-based blogger, the contest was one big fat insult. “The puns, the insulting, giggly tones, and the over-used euphemisms for fat that were scattered throughout the campaign’s solicitation began to crystallize an opinion in my mind. How offensive the campaign was,” Upton wrote in a post on the Daily Beast. To Upton, “The company was co-opting the mantra of plus-size empowerment and glazing it with its unmistakable brand of female objectification.”

And not only did her words strike a chord with American Apparel’s Creative Director, Iris Alonza, so did the spoof photos she submitted to the contest. Upton teamed up with friend Shannon Skloss to take modeling pictures of her devouring fried chicken in a pool, soaking in a bath of ranch dressing, smearing an entire pie on her face and body, and other satirical situations.

Photo credit: Shannon Skloss

See Upton’s full submission here.

The irony here is that Nancy Upton won the contest, at least in popularity, but she won’t be modeling for the company anytime soon. The brand hasn’t announced their official winner, but in a scathing response to Upton, Alonza wrote:

“Oh—and regarding winning the contest, while you were clearly the popular choice, we have decided to award the prizes to other contestants that we feel truly exemplify the idea of beauty inside and out, and whom we will be proud to have representing our company.”

What she meant to say was, “We decided to pick a winner who already likes our brand in hopes that she will just sit there on her ‘full-sized fanny’ and look pretty, er…I mean, XLent.”

So what can we learn from all this not-so-XLent publicity that the “Next BIG Thing” campaign has garnered for American Apparel? To put it simply, tone is everything. And for a company who’s built their brand with what some have labeled as misogynist advertising, they probably should have steered clear of their “Hey, girl, we get you!” tone, especially for a target that’s been purposely excluded up until now.

*Made-up statistic pulled out of thin air to add some color to this post
**American Apparel (AA) threatened to file bankruptcy this year. With the belts of so many Americans loosening, maybe AA decided it was time to expand…literally.

The invitation-only site has taken the creative world by storm. It’s given users access to a seemingly endless world of “pins” that can be saved on their own categorized pinboards and titled however they see fit. See a recipe on a blog that you want to make for dinner next weekend? Pin it to your “foodie” board. When you click on it later you’ll be taken back to the original recipe. Planning a wedding and trying to find the perfect bouquet inspiration? Do a search for flowers and pin photos of gorgeous bouquets to your little heart’s desire on your “tie the knot” board. See a quotation that makes you laugh, cry or think of a friend? Pin it!

Silbermann and his co-founders took the visual bookmarking to another level. Users may “follow” friends (and strangers), and comment on each other’s posts, much like on other social networking sites. Facebook users may also recognize the “like” button on Pinterest, while Twitterers can use their beloved hashtags in their pin captions. A recently updated iPhone app and brand-new mobile capabilities for other smartphones make for easy pinning on the go. In other words, the idea that inspiration is all around us has been “pinned” down, and you can quite literally take it with you wherever you go.

As Pinterest continues to grow, brands are taking note and jumping on the pinningwagon too. The popular home goods retailer West Elm uses the site to pin not only their own catalog of products, but other inspirational images as well. From there, followers can click on or repin images that link to the West Elm website where visitors can easily purchase. It’s that simple!

Go ahead. Request an invitation here. And start pinning!

Pros. The high demand created exponential word of mouth for the promotion. Created new news for the brand. Most likely, brought in new consumers that might not already shop there. And, sold out in record time. All great for a return on investment.

Cons. Frustrated shoppers that didn’t get the offer or product. Loss of other (non-promotion) sales during the downtime. Possible negative brand image impact.

In these two promotions (Missoni at Target and Whole Foods on LivingSocial), I’m convinced the pros outweighed the cons. The offers were compelling. They created high consumer demand and the site overloads made consumers want it even more. The offers alone gave consumers a reason to care about it, and more importantly, a reason to share it with others (Facebook posts were flooded with people bragging what they scored). Ultimately, it built equity for both the Target and Living Social brands. And, most importantly, doing what promotions do best—motivate behavior.

Social media is hyperactive word of mouth, only there are so many mouths talking you need a way to know how your brand is influencing and who it is reaching. It’s not new news that brands want to connect with consumers. What is new to the speed at which they can track and affect their influence digitally. This media channel is a main conduit for brands to express their voice, promote new products and even tell a larger brand story. It’s not hard to see why and how social media efforts have become the most valuable back-channel way to communicate and build a following. (If your brand isn’t into it, work on that.)

So how do you track all your social media efforts? Who’s talking? How do we keep them talking? With Klout, the current leader in the “social analytics” provider, it all boils down to engagement based on click-throughs, comments, likes, retweets or how often your message is passed along. The number of services they track for you is growing (it now includes the top 10 digital forums, with 3 more coming soon).

Recently celebrities have been using Klout for PR pushes and testing. Brands are also reaching into the system to understand how their audience is listening or if they’re listening at all. They’re taking notes on what topics resonate and using that information to build a stronger brand presence and gaining followers as well as traction in the marketplace as a resource, leader or otherwise. Klout’s easy-to-digest “social analytics” has potential to build smarter partnerships, promotions and more believable categories of influence. Plus, you’ve got to love the dynamic nature of the data. In my opinion, “instant” is the new “ASAP.”

Don’t forget the perks for having influence. Klout Perks are great place for brands to highlight and use those influential talkers directly. It’s kinda like a social media pat on the back from brands to their fans. I’m on board—are you?

As the Internet evolved, suddenly the dictionary was online, and while Prince was reminding us to Party like it was 1999, Urban Dictionary came onto the scene and allowed users to start writing their own dictionary—complete with definitions for terms such as “tooth sweater” (you know, that feeling you get after not brushing for a day and it feels like there’s little fuzzy sweaters on your teeth? Yeah, I don’t know the feeling either. Go brush your nasty teeth, and floss and rinse while you’re at it). Urban Dictionary gave users a freedom that isn’t unheard of now (what with sites like Wikipedia and their raging popularity), but the lack of real information in addition to user-provided data left something to be desired.

Enter Wordnik, a community-focused and -run word world that takes the idea of an online dictionary to a completely new level, largely based on the idea that words are best learned and understood when seen in real-life contexts. Wordnik pulls definitions on millions of words from several reputable dictionaries, as well as less typical sources such as news articles and Twitter—AND lets users add their own words, definitions, examples, visuals, comments and the like. Think online dictionary meets Wikipedia and has a love affair with a social networking site. Besides providing all of the typical dictionary-esque material like meanings and synonyms, Wordnik lets users “Love” a word, add it to a list of favorites, discuss it with others, tweet it, or add the Word of the Day widget directly to their own site. Basically—anything you’ve ever wanted to do with a word, Wordnik will let you do.

Just launched in 2009, it’s safe to assume the features and community with Wordnik will continue to grow as a popular tool for anyone looking for wordy inspiration. Why look up a word in the dictionary for a boring definition when you can instead look it up on Wordnik, see what others are saying about it and with it, read where it’s come up in the news or strike up a discussion forum about it?!

Who’s Talking?

Someone needs to spread the message. Called connectors, accelerators and influencers, they have deep and wide social networks and pass along information they care about to others. The key is to tap into the right people for your specific product or service. Here are three types of “go-to” people:

Enthusiast. The stereotypical brand advocate who serves as a passionate brand ambassador.
Local Expert. The know-all about a specific category—car or gadget nut, knows about new restaurants or TV shows.
Jack-of-All-Interest. An interesting know-a-lot vs. an annoying know-it-all.

What Are They Talking About?

First of all, forget everything you learned about traditional brand management. If this process starts by trying to convert a well-crafted brand statement into a word-of-mouth campaign, it won’t be successful. The product or service must be looked at through a different lens.

It’s not what you want to say about your product or service, but what consumers find talkable about it. Finding the relevance in a product or service is crucial. If it’s relevant, the more likely it will be deemed worth sharing. Once something is worth sharing, it has value. High-involvement categories tend to increase information value. The collision of talkability and relevancy becomes the social currency in the message.

Dig deep to understand the consumer. Think about what people like to talk about, why they like to talk, and how an actual conversation might transpire. Remember the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray? It’s quite appropriate when creating word-of-mouth messages.

When developing word-of-mouth messages directed toward men, think in terms of Guysmanship. Male word-of-mouth triggers tend to be competitive, fact-based and opinionated. Men talk to “show that they know” or “be first.” Look at ESPN or read the sports page—facts and opinions are expressed in sound bites.

For women, it’s all about Fempathy. Female triggers are more empathetic or deal with community building and emotional outreach. They talk “to help” and “to be heard.” And far from sound bites, their conversations are centered on shared experiences and expressed as complete stories. It’s Oprah and Lifetime and their stories of women facing their challenges, from the life-changing to the day-to-day.

So Get to It.

Find the right people to spread the word. Craft the right message that’s talkable and relevant. Activate it using the tactics most appropriate for the topic. There’s a world of technological options; be sure to find the tools that will best seed or spark the conversation. And remember, the true magic lies in the social currency of the idea—it’s what keeps the idea moving to others.