This blog post comes to you live from the 2008 Forrester Marketing Forum, held April 8-9, 2008, in Los Angeles. The purpose of the event is to take a snapshot of the state of the art in successful marketing. The theme of the 2008 event is building great brands through effective engagement — or experiences that captivate your audience.
In an afternoon session April 8, Forrester Senior Analyst Mary Beth Kemp asks, What does engagement really look like? How do you measure engagement?
Patrice Varni, vice president, eCommerce, for Levi’s®, discusses work her company did with my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish, to create the 501® Design Challenge community site. The purpose of the Design Challenge, which ran over a five-week period in 2008, was to build engagement with a female demographic aged 18-34. Levi’s® announced the launch of the challenge on an episode of “Project Runway.” On the community site, anyone could submit an original fashion design using Levi’s® products for an online community to judge throughout the course of the campaign. The first-place winner, selected in late February, will have a design produced and sold on levi.com. According to Patrice, enthusiasts provided more than 2,000 design submissions, and the community saw more than 134,000 unique visitors and 19,000 registrants, two thirds of which were women in the 18-34 age range. The site generated scores of blogs, each of which generated more brand awareness.