With 28,275 active users on the first day and 100,000 questions asked in the first week, brands like Asda and Carphone Warehouse have been quick to experiment with the service.
Jelly can be summed up in three words: point, shoot, ask. You start by taking a picture of something which is puzzling you or selecting a picture from your phone’s library, before adding a question and sending it out into the ether.
Search-like targeting then poses the question to the users in your network which are most likely to know the answer, so that when they next open the app they can choose whether to answer that question or not.
Jelly’s founders have clearly thought long and hard about how brands and businesses might be able to use the app and what value it can add beyond existing visual marketing platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.
Limited functionality
While there are plenty of ways that brands can use Jelly, the full potential of the application is currently held back by its limited functionality. The one feature that Jelly is screaming out for is keyword search, to enable consumers and marketers alike to seek out the questions of interest. But then Rome wasn’t built in a day.
There are three key opportunities for brands to use Jelly:
1. Customer service/engagement
Your customers will be using the app to ask questions which in some cases brands will be in a brilliant position to answer, so by using Jelly to answer these queries marketers can showcase their brand expertise whilst also being helpful.
By connecting brand profiles on Twitter and Facebook, marketers are able to see questions from their existing online community or can actively seek to answer questions on topics in which they are an expert in.
2. Crowdsourcing feedback
By using the right picture combined with a carefully crafted question, Jelly can be used as a powerful tool for extracting highly-valuable targeted customer feedback. This can then be used to inform multiple business processes from the final design of a product to testing the reactions of a potential piece of advertising creative.
3. Product marketing – building the hype
By tapping into your pre-existing community of loyal brand advocates, Jelly can be used as a potent tool for building pre-launch buzz and anticipation for a new product or service by releasing ‘teaser’ pictures and questions ahead of release.
Asda – The Early Adopter
Asda is one of the brands which has been quick to start experimenting with Jelly and is already using the service to engage with its customers and drive awareness of its products.
The supermarket giant recently used Jelly to ask its community to name the tiger in the picture, which features in its bakery range. Asda received 20 responses which opened up opportunities for it to engage with these new audiences.
In addition, it also positions Asda as an early adopter and it is likely to benefit from the PR potential of being one of the first brands on board with this exciting new social media.