Brands Move Down the Long Tail to Niche Nets

When Levi Strauss launches a new online campaign next week, its ads will be found in the usual portals such as MSN and Yahoo. But the ads will also find their way to some new environments with names not well-known outside fashionista circles, sites like Kaboodle, SheFinds and Zafu.

Levi's is relying on a niche ad network distributed by Glam Media for a campaign running on about 200 small fashion sites. >>Full Story

Thoughts// A good article from Adweek that talks about how companies are using the 'Long Tail' of the web (niche web sites) in their online marketing strategy. As the article explains, these long tail networks only make up a small portion of the overall marketing plan, however they offer the ability to reach out and communicate with the strongest (potential) brand audience. For example, a typical online marketing strategy may target users who are interested in traveling to Florida, but these same users could also be interested in traveling to California, Hawaii or Arizona. By placing a marketing message on these long tail sites, brands can speak directly to the people most passionate about the product...in theory creating trust and a grassroots feel to the campaign. And hopefully, creating a group of brand advocates who will express their passion for the product to friends and family.

Word of the Week - The Long Tail

The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. Typically used when referring to actual product sales from a retailer (such as Amazon), the idea argues that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough.

For example, the user-edited Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has many low-popularity articles that, collectively, create a higher quantity of demand than a limited number of mainstream articles found in a conventional encyclopedia such as the Encyclopedia Britannica.