Life of Kylie

The other day, I was watching Kylie Jenner's new show, Life of Kylie (no judgement please). Obviously, the whole Kardashian/Jenner clan is brilliant at marketing themselves, with each member of the family branching out and creating their own unique brands and products. Love them or hate them, the Kardashians have created an empire with their brands and crash the internet with almost every product release. One of the Kardashian/Jenner's most successful brands is Kylie Jenner's new makeup line, Kylie Cosmetics.

Kylie turned a controversy into a fortune with her new makeup line. It all began when Kylie was accused of getting lip injections when she was as young as 15. After attempting to shut down the rumors, Kylie eventually embraced her key attribute and began manufacturing lip kits for her loyal fans. These lip kits include a lip gloss and lip liner, where consumers can overdraw their lips to achieve a look similar to Kylie's. Kylie became such an icon after these lip kits sold out in literally seconds that E! created a show just about Kylie. A key focus of this show is obviously about Kylie's lip line, since that is her personal claim to fame. On one episode, Kylie takes a tour of the factory where her lip kits are made. In addition to going behind the scenes on the show, Kylie snapchats and Instagrams almost every second of her life. A large part of these posts are also focused on her lip kits. On the factory tour featured on the show, Kylie also posted videos to her Snapchat and Instagram to show fans how their lip kits are made. Additionally, she posts videos whenever she comes out with a new lip color and showing how it looks on different skin tones.

Because her lip kits are so popular, Kylie Cosmetics knock offs are being sold. One episode features Kylie and her best friend attempting to buy a knock off and asking questions to the vendors, only to be shut down and told that they were not allowed to buy since they had cameras. The goal was to show Kylie's fans and customers how dangerous knock off lip kits are and how hard it is to spot the difference between a fake and the real thing.

Kylie has mastered her social media, allowing fans and customers to feel like they are a part of the lip kit process, from manufacturing to purchase. Her social media presence also shows fans that Kylie cares about their wellbeing by addressing the fact that fake lip kits were being sold and that they are not safe to use. By engaging her audience, Kylie has created loyal fans and customers, who will gladly wait in line for hours or sell out a supply in seconds for what is no more than a common lip gloss. Kylie has made a distinct brand, differentiating herself from her famous sisters and creating her own successful empire.

One for the Brooks

Thursday night in Atlanta, Garth Brooks performed the inagural concert in the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The new stadium was completely sold out, with over 80,000 fans in attendance to see the 6 time ACM Entertainer of the Year on his world tour. Between the infamous performer and the fact that Brooks was opening up Mercedes-Benz Stadium for concerts, there was understandably a lot of hype for this enormous event.

However, when the opener for Brooks began to play, Mercedes-Benz Stadium began receiving complaints that the sound was unclear and the acoustics were off, perhaps due to the metal stadium and closed metal roof. MBS responded to these complaints with a tweet saying, "Audio engineers are working through the sound issues with the artists. Garth Brooks will take the stage soon." When Brooks took the stage, the sound problem got even worse due to the fact that Brooks' band and vocals were louder than the opener's. Especially in the upper levels of the stadium, the sound quality was so poor that fans left only a few songs into Brooks' set, even after spending hundreds of dollars on tickets. Fans with floor seats were able to hear the songs more clearly, however they still reported a poor sound quality.

The only public statement that Mercedes-Benz Stadium made about the sound issues was the tweet before Brooks took the stage, but no mention of the sound during or after Brooks' set. After the concert, an email survey was sent to ticket holders to rate their concert experience. Many of these questions seemed to be leading fans to blame the sound problem on Brooks, although it was clearly a stadium problem. From most of the online reviews, fans seem to acknowledge the facts that it was not Brooks' fault for the poor sound, and that a world renowned performer would certainly have all of his equipment in check and working. Although there have been numerous national articles written about this concert in a negative light, Mercedes-Benz Stadium has not officially addressed the complaints and is not offering blanket refunds for tickets.

Especially with it being the first ever concert in the new stadium, Mercedes-Benz Stadium should make a public statement acknowledging the issues with the new stadium and offer some sort of refund or credit to attendees, no matter how small. At the very least, Mercedes-Benz should inform fans that they are working to fix the sound issues in the future, to ease future ticket holders' concerns about upcoming concerts, and reduce the risk of impacting ticket sales because of the negative publicity. Because it is a new stadium, optics for Mercedes-Benz Stadium are more important than ever, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium has done a very poor job of easing fans' minds and making fans feel like they are heard, something that could easily be done with social media in today's world.

Fans Brave the New Stadium

While at SparkSouth this past Friday, I sat in on the keynote speech about the social media marketing that went into the opening of SunTrust Park, the new home of the Atlanta Braves. The marketing team did a great job of promoting the new stadium and addressing concerns that fans had about the new stadium. Being from Atlanta, I was very aware of all of the concerns and complaints that came along with the move from Turner Field to SunTrust Park, and I was pleasantly surprised with how well the Braves' marketing team handled all of these issues.

One of the examples shown in the keynote speech about how they addressed fan concerns was a video about the parking matter. Fans were rightfully worried about where to park when attending a Braves game, especially since Cobb County seems to have less parking than downtown Atlanta. The Braves released a video poking fun at how fans were focused on parking more than they were on baseball. The video featured Allen Iverson at a press conference fielding questions about parking at the new stadium to which he responded, "Parking? The best franchise in all of baseball and we're in here talking about parking?", showing that the Braves had of course considered that issue and had already solved it before it became a problem. This video was posted on the Braves' Facebook page and was shared by fans, making the promotion of this video completely free. People also loved the humor of the video, prompting it to get liked and shared even more, which both promoted the Braves and shared information about the new stadium.

SunTrust Park has over 14,000 parking spots in addition to an Uber lot that is just for dropping off and picking up fans. In order to park at SunTrust Park, fans must purchase a parking pass for a specific lot before arriving to the game, unlike at Turner Field where you could just show up and pay a parking attendant to park in a lot. This has made parking easier and more efficient, especially with the fact that parking has now been streamlined and is linked to your phone with a digital parking pass.

The Braves' marketing team anticipated the concerns of fans, listened to new concerns, and addressed these concerns before the doors of SunTrust Park even opened. This made the opening of SunTrust Park more enjoyable for fans, since they knew all of their worries had been considered. Fans were able to focus on the game instead of worrying about parking and other issues that usually come with a new stadium. Through the promotion of the parking video, the Braves were able to address concerns, share the answers to frequently asked questions, and also promote the Braves and the new stadium. All of this cost the Braves very little, but the return was immense, prompting happy customers who will continue to return to SunTrust Park.