A beer slogan of  “Witness the chickness!” clearly has  one market in mind: Women who like beer.

The “only American beer created just for women” packaging features pink and black color scheme, a cardboard holder that looks like  a purse, and a bottle that has like a black cocktail dress.

The beer targeted towards women is appropriately named Chick Beer. Chick Beer is a standard light American lager — not really a surprise for a beer that boasts it has only 97 calories and 3.5 carbs per bottle. The drink is only available in a few select states, including Maryland (where it was originated), Idaho, and Indiana in convenience stores and specialty beer shops.

As we have already stated, this beer is clearly marketed to women as seen in the packaging, and the company has no problem letting you know. The press materials make it very clear about the stance that Chick Beer has taken. The website states that Chick Beer is “a new beer created by women, exclusively for women” who are “fun loving, smart and independent.”

Although the company has received some flack for their marketing choices in choosing to only market towards women with packaging and online, company founder Shazz Lewis wraps up the firms philosophy:

“Why wasn’t there a beer that shouted out to me? I’m a woman who enjoys drinking beer,” Lewis said in a statement. “I’m a wife, daughter, sister and mother of five daughters. Why wasn’t there a beer that celebrates, or even acknowledges my, well, ‘chickness’?”

Although some have brought up the word ‘sexist’ and ‘demeaning’ to describe the marketing by Chick Beer, the company’s website sticks to their ground and responds saying:

“We probably are, in that we are clearly not designed for men.  Sorry guys, but you have hundreds of choices that are made for you.

What we think is sexist is that the beer industry has totally ignored the female beer drinking market, which drinks 25% of all the beer consumed in the United States – over 700 million cases every year!”

Chick Beer is being marketed by a Southwest Idaho company, Mann (no typo, no joke!) Distributing Inc, which concentrates mostly on small Oregon craft breweries. Mann beer manager, Tyler Bell, said him and his staff felt that Chick Beer would fill a niche and would be new and interesting venture for them. When Bell asked Lewis how women were reacting to the marketing, Lewis told him,

“They told us there were (some) women offended by the black dress or bottle colors, but there were also a lot of women who thought it was cute and that the beer itself was good and different,” Bell said.

Source: The Idaho Statesman, Chick Beer

In 2011, the use of social media platforms for business-to-business companies became more important in the marketing mix than it has in previous years. For many B2B companies, social media can seem to be a daunting endeavor, but with knowledge of how to enter the world of social media,  social media can bring success. In this past year, many B2B companies have started to engage in social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and have found that these sites are generating success for their companies.

“Leveraging social media for branding and awareness-building can help humanize B2B companies, establish them as thought leaders, and offer new touchpoints for connecting with customers and prospects,” said Kimberly Maul, eMarketer writer/analyst and author of the new report, “B2B Social Media: A Growing Focus for Marketers.”

Knowing which social media sites to use and which ones will bring more success for your company can be understood by knowing who you want to reach via social media. Social networking site, LinkedIn, is used more as a professional networking site for B2B companies and is seen as a way to generate more effective leads and other sites Twitter and Facebook are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are helping B2B firms reach customers in new ways. In a web survey conducted by iTracks, survey respondents often site Linked In as the top social media site for B2B marketers while putting Facebok and Twitter above as the business minded social network. According to Sagefrog Marketing Group, by the summer of 2011, 58% of US B2B marketers that were engaging in social media used LinkedIn, compared to 50% for Facebook and 43% for Twitter.

There is no doubt that social media is an effective tool for any B2B company and that the use and understanding of social networking sites will remain important for B2B companies in their marketing mix in 2012.

Source: eMarketer.com

Packaging has been the focus in recent years for the wine and spirits industry. The increasing popularity amongst a younger demographic (especially wine) has led to more competition. Thus, packaging that stands out on the shelves is a major advantage. Packaging designers are striving to do things a little less conventional while making the packaging memorable and creating a positive perception for the consumer.

In the case of wine packaging, it started with the label on the bottle itself. Over the past decade, wine’s popularity has increased quite a bit and wine enthusiasts are becoming younger and younger. So it’s only fitting that the wine labels are going to be designed to appeal to its target market. While wine packaging has increasingly become more colorful, fun, and vibrant, designers have been taking it a step further using unconventional methods to etch their packaging and experience into the consumer’s memory. Below are a few examples of wine and spirits packaging that are doing just that.

The recent announcement of Google+ brand pages has marketers asking the obvious question, “Should I bother with another social media channel?” Most companies by now have some sort of presence on Facebook and Twitter. It’s working well for some and not so well with others. It’s safe to say at this point that a lot of time and resources are required to reap the benefits of social media marketing. So why Google+? Well, here are a few unique points:

Google+ has a smaller user base (40 million compared to Facebook’s 800 million). Fewer users can be a positive as there is less clutter and more focus on content itself. Facebook is packed full of updates with all of the integration that is taking place. Google+ is driven more towards professional and industry specific content. Companies may find an easier path to connect with a relevant audience.

Google+ offers unique functionality that Facebook or Twitter do not have available. “Hangouts”, or live audio/video chats, provide a direct opportunity to engage in discussions to get feedback or present exclusive content. Some companies such as Dell are looking into using “Hangouts” as a place for customer support and sales so the customers aren’t required to call on the phone.

Google+ will integrate with other Google offerings. Moving forward, Google will continue to unify its products with Google+. We’ve already seen the integration in its beginning stages with the +1 buttons. Deeper integration with Google Place and Maps, web and image search, and YouTube will come next. The integration will increase a company’s visibility on social media and with organic searches.

According to research from Accenture, almost two-thirds of B2B marketing executives view social media as an important marketing channel. However, only 7% felt that they were leveraging social media very heavily while 9% were not using social media at all. Business-to-business marketers have been acknowledging the value of social media yet have been slower to adopt social media strategies compared to business-to-consumer marketers.

Another study that compares B2B and B2C social media involvement showed that 12% of B2B companies are not using social media compared to 2% of B2C companies. B2B marketers say that technology, tools, metrics, and collaboration could be useful to strengthen their social media programs. Uncertainty of social media is definitely a factor in holding back B2B marketers in getting serious with social media. The fact that it is still a relatively young marketing channel has B2B marketers taking the wait-and-see approach.

It boils down to the age old sales and marketing question, “How much has it contributed to our bottom line?” Like many other marketing efforts, the number is tricky to quantify with social media. Thus, marketers are apprehensive in putting too much time and effort into social media at this time.

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British artist Greg Burney has exploded on Twitter thanks to a very creative social media marketing strategy. Burney began with around 70 followers before he came up with his Twitter project called #drawmyfollowers. With the project, Greg Burney set out to do a sketch of every single new follower that followed him before November 14. He would then send the sketch to that follower. The message tweeted on October 31 read as such:

Not realizing the impact this was going to have on his Twitter profile, let alone his time, Burney had to ultimately had to tweak his promise. Within two days, he had 700 followers. Some media outlets picked up on it and the followers kept on coming. He then changed his November 14 deadline to promising to sketch his first 3,000 followers. If you’d like to get in on the action, it’s too late. I went to his page this morning and he now has over 5,000 followers. Brilliant!

By thinking outside of the box to use his craft and tie it into the social media platform he wanted to promote, it’s safe to say that it’s mission accomplished for this artist. We sure hope he enjoys sketching- he has his work cutout for him.

This isn’t a how-to guide for businesses to use Twitter. Rather, it’s the latest evidence and support that if you’re not using Twitter for your business, you should be!

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently announced that Twitter has more than 100 million active users, half of them are logging in daily. WOW! And right now 250 million tweets are posted each day, up from 100 million per day in January. That’s some serious growth.

But so what? It’s growing. Good for Twitter. What’s it to me and my business? Well, how about these five key facts from a recent study about the relationship of Twitter and consumer behavior:

1. 60% of brand followers are likely to recommend brands to a friend

2. 50% of brand followers are likely to buy products from that brand

3. Consumers follow brands for exclusive content, promotions, and to be in the know

4. 75% of consumers on Twitter have NEVER “un-followed” a brand

5. One-third of brand followers this year are interacting with brands compared to last year

And don’t expect the growth to slow down. With Apple’s recent release of iOS 5, Twitter sign-ups have tripled and been a big boost for the company.

Have you ever wondered which brands are most popular on Facebook? Famecount has a list the shows the most “liked” brands on Facebook worldwide. The keyword is “Like” here. Facebook “Likes” are supposed to have less value in the future as Facebook just launched a new metric called “Talking about”. Pages with a high “Talking about” rating are the ones with the most compelling content because the metric will measure user-initiated activity related to a page. Activities include wall postings, “Likes”, commenting, and sharing a page. Marketers have to focus on coming up with compelling content in order to get users to interact more with their pages to score higher “Talking about” ratings. So while it’s good for a brand to have a lot of “Likes”, it’s better to get consumers “Talking about” them.

Top 10 “Liked” Brands on Facebook:
1. Coca-Cola- 34,563,347
2. Starbucks- 25,490,292
3. Oreo- 23,117,266
4. Red Bull- 22,447,819
5. Converse All-Star- 20,795,216
6. Converse- 20,169,668
7. Skittles- 19,359,111
8. Playstation- 17,448,382
9. Pringles- 15,631,111
10. Victoria’s Secret- 15,365,940

Facebook has passed 800 million users (which Facebook measures as users that have logged in during the past 30 days). That means Facebook has added about 50 million users since July. For marketers, it’s becoming essential to have a presence on such a giant platform. But some recent changes are going to make it harder for marketers to get the visibility they want. In other words, they’re really going to have to work for it.

The recent list of changes announced by Facebook will put more pressure on advertisers to come up with compelling content and integrate themselves further into consumers’ lives. Going forward, the “Like” button will have a smaller role in marketing.

A big change is that Facebook has added a control in the top right of each story that users can check to unmark a top story. Facebook will use that information over time to automatically edit the feeds. Since users now have more control over their news feeds, brands with boring or irrelevant updates will have lower visibility.

Just getting people to ‘Like’ a brand is now a thing of the past. Now, it’s about getting people to take social actions enabled by that brand. Consumers will be creating a digital autobiography in which brands will have to integrate themselves.

The change will require new thinking from marketers. The Facebook marketing model of old tried to accumulate as many fans and “Likes” as possible which is little less relevant now. Marketers will have to work harder to earn their place in news feeds. Content will need to take a step up. This means marketers will actually have to deliver something of value to a customer rather than just spamming.

Online marketers need to brace themselves for a good holiday season. That’s according to a panel of digital marketing experts who predict online sales will grow 12% in 2011.  Holiday sales are considered to be sales that take place in the months of November and December. 12% growth would match the same growth online sales experienced last year. In fact, online sales have grown every year since 2005 with the exception of 2008 where it was down 4%.

Most news regarding the global economy is doom & gloom. So how can these experts expect growth in an unforgiving recession? A high share of online consumers are affluent. These consumers are apt to spending a good amount of discretionary income when the stock market is healthy. But even stocks have been lagging and inconsistent this year. All of the quotes tied to the experts who predict a 12% growth in online sales this season allude to these points. Nevertheless, they’re still convinced that it’s going to be busy for ecommerce this holiday season. It’s worth noting that the economy was definitely an issue last year when ecommerce growth was 12% as well. We will hope for the best and know soon enough.