“King of terror shall come from the sky. He will bring to life the King of Mongols.”

For many of you these thoughts are in the back of your minds. 2012 is not far away at all. Will Nostradamus have truth in the words he spoke so many years ago. For those of you only recently exposed to the verses of Nostradamus I would like to not scare, but simply reveal to you some of the believed truths behind his words. A psychic of sorts, Nostradamus was often labeled a rambler by the townsfolk. In fact there may actually have been truth behind his rambling rhymes, which are subject to interpretation.

We, the world are hurting as yet another tragedy has struck our fragile Earth. January 2011: The Queensland floods covered 75% of the state. An unconfirmed number of lives were lost in the flash flooding that devastated Australia. Further down South fought mighty fires too soon after the Black Saturday tragedy. Then Rio suffered similar flash flooding  with mudslides which absolutely devastated Brazil, more than 500 lives were lost. Cyclone Yasi was threatening the worst too soon after the Queensland floods, but the beast drew empty threats. Towns were destroyed but most lives were spared. Then the Earth threw a 6.3 magnitude spanner at Christchurch and not long enough after, an 8.9 at Japan.

What does this have to do with Nostradamus? well maybe not much just yet, however Nostradamus has predicted that in the year 2012 a comet (wormwood) will come close to or actually make contact with Earth causing massive destruction in many forms. Apparently the Jupiter sized comet will cause the plates and oceans to gravitate towards the comet causing earthquakes, flash floods and abnormal high tides. Also according to the Mayan calendar during the ‘winter solstice the date 21st December, 2012 AD would mark the end of this Cycle – which would repeat itself, and not the end of the world as it is widely believed.

Nostradamus predictions that came true:

The London Fires – “The blood of the just will be demanded of London,
Burnt by the fire in the year 66” (Century 2; Quatrain 51)

The French Revolution – “From the enslaved people, songs, chants and demands,
The princes and lords are held captive in prisons:
In the future by such headless idiots
These will be taken as divine utterances.”

Before the war comes,
The great wall will fall,
The King will be executed, his death coming too soon will be lamented.
(The guards) will swim in blood,
Near the River Seine the soil will be bloodied.“

Hitler and the Second World War – “The two greatest ones of Asia and of Africa,
From the Rhine and Lower Danube they will be said to have come,
Cries, tears at Malta and the Ligurian side.“

“From the depths of the West of Europe,
A young child will be born of poor people,
He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop;
His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.” (Century 3, Quatrain 35)

Some say that Nostradamus had misspelled Hitler’s name here. If we look into the Dictator’s past, he was born to poor parents and his powerful speeches, had moved many and also his alliance with Japan proved his fame will increase towards the east to be true.

“Beasts ferocious from hunger will swim across rivers:
The greater one will cause it to be dragged in an iron cage
When the Germany child will observe nothing.“
Death of the Kennedy Brothers – “The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt,
An evil deed foretold by the bearer of a petition.
Another falls at night time.
Conflict at Reins, London and a pestilence in Tuscany.” (Century 1, Quatrain 27)

Death of Princess Diana – “The penultimate of the surname of Prophet
Will take Diana [Thursday] for his day and rest:
He will wander because of a frantic head,
And delivering a great people from subjection.” (Century 2, Quatrain 28)

Some Other Predictions that Came True

• 9/11 attacks in New York
• The Challenger Space Shuttle, destroyed on take off in 1986
• Death of Mother Teresa
• Louis Pasteur for pasteurization and discovery of microscopic germs
• Hurricane Katrina
• The Iraq War
• The Nuclear attacks in Hiroshima Nagasaki
• Barrack Obama as the President of United States

So what does all this mean? Well not to worry, as there are predictions there are also discussions about misinterpreted predictions, hoax debates and scientific evidence which negates these ideas of world annihilation. Like we did in the year Y2k (2000) when we believed the world would fall into darkness I believe that we should live life to it’s fullest, not be afraid of tomorrow and make sure you tell everyone of your friends and family that you love them, all the time. It will cause a chain reaction of the world telling their favourites they love them and hopefully we can avoid this ‘world war iii’ saga that the ‘crazy rambler’ has predicted for our future.

V

“When fear takes over, intelligence and common sense take off”

Nasty Gal: From Ebay to Ecommerce Success
An Entirely Digital Campaign

Ebay was once an easy way to auction off pre-loved or even brand new items. There was always someone willing to bid money for it whatever it may be. Sophia Amoruso, a stylist and photographer from Los Angeles created an online ebay store to sell her growing collection of vintage clothing and join the bidding war. The high-end quality of the vintage garments was Sophia’s first step to the penetration of a successful online market. The second was her glamorous & professional photography style. Sophia’s ebay store became quite successful so Sophia expanded to her own site nastygal.com. From there she soon began to sell not only vintage, but also other recognizable and often sought after labels, including several trendy Australian labels.

Nasty Gal (NG) offers quick, easy purchase options, and she even ships internationally. The small online company soon realized the growth potential and launched deeper into the world of ecommerce. NG requested the services of Computer Generated Solutions to implement an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution to manage the inventory and purchase order side of the business. This enabled NG to deliver easier, and faster transactions for both themselves and the consumers. Moving away from manual processes to more systematic ones signifies a step in the right direction for NG. With only a few clicks your purchase will be straight in the mail & on it’s way directly to your wardrobe. This online shopping experience provides a clear yet minimalistic navigation through the pages on the site.

 

 

Nasty Gal Landing Page

The main navigation headings are Shop Vintage, Shop New, Lookbook and Blog, however there are two smaller navigation bars up the top with all the consumer-necessary information. Although this main navigation bar does not apply to Millers Law I think it works effectively with the small doses of necessary information in the navigation bar and the main links below the hero image linking back to the home page, therefore technically applying to Millers Law in an unconventional way. The font is recognizable as the brand and is used as the key element of brand recognition, or logo. The main hero images are always strong & feminine communicating a consistent message about the brand. It is quite clear from the imagery and typeface that the target demographic is the fashion conscious mid teens to early thirties. The style of clothing is similar to that of Australia’s General Pants Co, and actually stocks several of the same brands.

I recently noticed the NG banner ads frequently showing up across sites I had been visiting. As I was already familiar with the brand, this made me wonder about the size of the brand that I once thought was just a small online store in the US. If they could afford to advertise across countless websites then it must be at some point of success. So I tried to see where a keyword search would land me in the Google search engine. When first searching for ‘Vintage Clothing’ Google displays mostly results from Australia, with a few American paid advertisements down the right hand side.

'Vintage Clothing' Search in Google

The search engine is filtering my results by my current location, known as geotargeting. It is not until I continue to add to my search words and add ‘online gal vintage emeryville’ does NG show up in my results. Without directly typing ‘Nasty Gal’ into the search bar my results are minimal. Perhaps if I was located in Emeryville the store may have appeared first from my filtered search. Upon your first visit to the site www.nastygal.com a friendly pop-up appears asking if you would like to be informed of news, updates and information regarding the brand. There are several options to cancel out, or say ‘No thanks’ to the option, so you are not ‘roped’ into subscribing. Or you could simply add your email address and click submit. What harm could it do? I did the first time and have been pleasantly surprised once a week or fortnight with my NG newsletter informing me about the arrival of new stock. The email is full of links leading you directly to the NG landing page.

NG uses an external company named Constant Contact to control their creative email marketing. The company gives marketing advice on creative keywords, SEO, campaign newsletters, database management and they also provide detailed reports to view and measure the campaigns success.

Another noticeable digital channel is one that I myself had long forgotten about? Myspace. The NG Myspace page has photo’s, website links, events, video’s and even options to embed the banner advertisements code into your own blog or web page. NG Myspace even has fashion videos. These videos can also be accessed through Myspace, youtube and also vimeo.

Onto yet another social media site called facebook, just in case you had not yet heard of it. The Nasty Gal Facebook page is consistently updated with current blogs, fashion news, recent photoshoots and happy customers. Friends of NG can tag themselves wearing one of their newly purchased garments, directly from the NG site. Nasty Gal even has a Twitter account filled with tweets from happy clients, and questions asking @thenastygal when certain popular items may be back in stock. The updates are several times daily and the number of followers is just shy of a thousand.

Twitter

NG has created a successful digital marketing campaign utilizing the most popular social networking and media sharing sites to their advantage, although I feel the focus towards some of the channels of late are in some parts feeble in comparison to the facebook & Twitter pages. As an example, the Myspace page is not current, whether or not it is better to shut it down or leave it there for extra brand exposure I am unsure. If a channel lays dormant for long periods of time the consumers may think of the brand as out of date, or even worse – discontinued.

Dedicating themselves to fill several platforms of the digital world has allowed NG to reach more consumers. One of the most important benefits of social media sites, websites & Google is that specific data reports can be generated instantaneously. This data is imperative to measuring the success of the campaigns, although the return on investment is not necessarily measurable from all channels.

Overall NG is running a fairly successful digital campaign that maintains a strong presence within it’s online marketplace. Because NG prefer the organic search filters as opposed to paying for advertisements through Google, the use of persistent banner ads could produce stronger brand awareness, or even maintain the current presence within the digital world. The most recent youtube video is a behind the scenes take which has images of clothing currently in stock and also a sneak peek around the styling warehouse full of trendy shoes, accessories and jewellery. Given enough thought about lead generation marketing these video’s have the potential to become a viral marketing campaign. Advantageously positioned within the online market NG has exponential growth potential. Considering I stumbled across the ebay site one day and have frequented the site many times over seems like proof that NG’s digital campaign, to some degree, has been effective. It is important that brands embrace new media channels constructively, and not just for the sake of being there. NG has hundreds of dedicated followers and Bloggers alike commenting, tagging, tweeting, updating and whatever else it is that I have may have forgotten to mention. It seems the only real form of tangible media from NastyGal.com is the post bag that my new outfit will be arriving in

With ten weeks left on my university calendar the days are flying past at a rate that is not very welcome.  Anxiety creeps into my mind first thing in the morning before the presence of sleep is noticeably gone. The crossroads that are fast approaching are beginning to look more like a ten pronged fork, and I am unsure if this is a good thing. I wish for once in my life I could concentrate on just one big thing, not several mini-campaign style projects. Beginning with an online vintage clothing store, a market stall, a media & design company & several other projects that at this stage are in the intellectual property stage. All while trying to finish my degree and land a really rad job. The problem with these attempts at success is that I may have bitten off more than I can chew, it is not until I realise that there is only one of me and I only have two hands do I begin to think realistically at my (often outrageous) ideas. The only way I will ever feel achievement is if I actually finish one or more of these projects, but will it ever happen. I would like to think that I have the motivation to edge away a little at a time to complete, or partially complete several of my projects. Hopefully this will happen soon, because at the moment I look at my life and all I have is half eaten apples that I have lost interest in at the first sign of hardship only to be shelved till I feel the itch for a little more. I have ten weeks, I want to complete something that in my eyes is success, but this can not merely stop once I have the ugly hat, the piece of paper and my debt (or possibly an asset). I want to feel the pay off in the form of a successful job, something I will be proud of achieving and until then I will hang in limbo of anxiety mixed with determination and passion hoping for that wonderful taste of freedom and sense of ‘Real’ achievement that comes with the first real day of my new career. Fingers crossed my dream will come true.

Fellows Follow

I have no promise to please, only entertain. My thoughts are ready for the sharing, lets see what happens….