Interesting idea. Engaging use of sound and motion. Interesting way to sample music. Disappointing when it doesn't respond properly. When you touch the CD in the wall it is supposed to change tracks, and it doesn't do that quickly enough, look what happens.
- Contributed by Ian WhitneyParis recently hosted a Retail Marketing event called Point De Ventre. Ian Whitney from our Paris office went along, shot some video and made a quick presentation of some of the innovative technology that delivers meaningful shopper engagement.
Great sign-off Ian!
A number of recent articles, here is one, covered the announcement of Microsoft's partnership with MediaCart and Wakefern Foods (ShopRite) to deliver interactive shopping carts into ShopRite stores.
Working at a retail focused agency, it is always interesting to see investment in our arena by major media players, e.g. CBS buying SignStorey.
Along with the creation of Nielsen In-Store and P.R.I.S.M., these types of announcements bring increasing credibility to the industry and attention to the power of in-store marketing. Further, this represents a marrying of online technology (Atlas) and an in-store vehicle, which shows a very positive evolution of thinking.
However, all that excitement aside, I have a certain amount of skepticism about the success of this vehicle. I think for a select group of early adopters, it will be embraced. But for many shoppers, are they really ready for this?
Grocery shopping used to be simple; go to store, get cart, put stuff you need in it, sometimes there were signs that told you what was on-sale. Now, you can enter your shopping list online before you go, it'll download to your cart computer; and tell you about specials on a contextual basis when you hit the right aisle. As a marketer, again, think this is fantastic. Love the blend of technology and context to deliver truly targeted ads. However, I'm just not sure your average shopper will think they "need" all this, but that's just my opinion. Time will tell.
On a side note, (and I owe this to a colleague at another in-store company) what happens when carts are stolen? Your average shopping cart costs something like $150 (i looked it up). What happens $1,000 shopping carts start disappearing? How are retailers going to feel about losses in that arena on a daily basis? I mean this in all seriousness, and would love to hear how the deals are configured and if they account for loss like this.
Although this YouTube video is primarily focused on highlighting the paradigm shift in mass communications to 1-on-1 communication, the more important message here is about the opportunity to build a brand in a virtual, social environment.
Check it out:
Consistent with characteristics of a community, second life is made up of residents that create their world, their identity, and choose their friends. More importantly, they thrive on word of mouth recommendations. As viral communication thrives, Secondlife provides yet another platform for sharing.
Residents create avatars reflecting their personal identity in this virtual world. And many brands are already taking advantage of this. Avatars can visit the American Apparel virtual store to view the latest clothesline, buy Dell computers, and read news updates from Reuter.
And you thought is was all for online gamers, recently Secondlife became one of the cutting edge virtual classrooms for major colleges and universities including Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. Administrators host lectures, inform students of projects and chat live outside of the traditional classroom.
The future of the virtual platform is at its infancy. At a virtual world conference in October 2007, IBM and Linden Lab announced plans to develop open standards that will allow avatars to roam from one virtual community to the next. The goal is let a person create a digital alter-ego that can travel to many virtual worlds, keeping the same name, look and even digital currency. And Secondlife isn’t the only opportunity to get involved.
If you’re not sold yet, there are hundreds of ad, design and marketing agencies dedicated to creating destinations and opportunities on Secondlife. If hundreds of companies are being created to simply service this platform, it’s definitely not a fad.
With the increase of clean-store policies, companies must build their brands out of store to influence that purchase decision before they walk in the door. And with consumers spending less time with traditional media and more time online, companies must shift dollars to reach them. Promo Magazine Industry Trend Report for 2007 reported that marketers are spending 32% of their promotional dollars online (only higher medium was Direct Mail) to generate promotional support.
From tracking consumer “IM” relating to your product to testing a new product before it hits the shelf, Secondlife provides research capabilities as well. These residents are early adopters and will champion new products if you give them the opportunity. Building brand loyalty takes time and trust, and Secondlife provides a highly-targeted medium to reach current and future customers.
Afraid of jumping in and taking a risk? You should be more afraid of getting soaked on the sidelines from your competitors' cannonball. It’s just a matter of time before your competitors announces their presence. Andrew McGregor expressed this in the YouTube piece, but I agree. “In five years, the brands with the most social presence online, will also be the most competitive in the marketplace.”
- Contributed by Kelly Walz
An article on Adweek.com today covered a new Old Spice effort targeting young men, specifically gamers. As marketers we are always looking at new ways to reach and engage various demographics and more recently the importance of the authenticity/credibility of that engagement has come to the forefront. Old Spice, a 70 year old brand, is aiming to gain credibility with gamers through an online effort supporting the time honored spirit of friendly competition. Partnering with 360voice.com, a popular 
Xbox Live Gamerscore site (tracks online gaming achievements), Old Spice created the Old Spice Experience Challenge.
The program lets users dictate the terms of their own online gaming challenges and then invite their friends to participate. The more people users have in their challenge and the longer the duration, the better the prizing they have access to. Basically Old Spice is facilitating a more exciting and competitive gaming experience and supplying a prize pool.
While the initial Experience Challenge earlier this year had terms dictated by the brand, they learned a better connection with more gamers could be achieved by putting the control in the hands of gamers themselves. While consumer control certainly isn't new and has been grabbing headlines for a few years, consumer control of the promotion itself is fairly creative. And, thus far, gamers are responding.
Only 8 days into the program, they have had 1,760 participants and over almost 500 challenges have been completed, are active or are pending. 
While these certainly aren't mind boggling numbers, these core gamers are a fairly niche group which are hard to reach and even harder to engage. These types of programs allow brand exposure on their terms which pays off in the long run.
As we look toward the future and at the brands we manage, its interesting to think about creating programs which help our target audiences better enjoy the activities that are their passions. How do we create branded tools for the betterment of their lives? Do we have credibility to do so or how do we gain it?
15,000 attendees turned out to the 2007 Cable Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, and more than a few must have been perplexed by this year's improbable show theme:
"Competition works. Consumers win."
For an industry many consider anti-competitive and consumer-unfriendly, the show theme seemed counter-intuitive, if not outrageous. Competition? Perhaps the idea was to pacify Day One's featured speaker: Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC.
The FCC under Chairman Martin has been publicly critical of the Big Cable. This chart, compiled by the New York Times, helps explain why. The cost of cable television in the United States has outpaced inflation by a significant margin. This fact seems to indicate that the cable industry - led by Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider - is taking advantage of a monopoly status to raise rates at will.
The cable industry strongly insists there is no monopoly. While Comcast is by far the largest provider of pay TV, they go head-to-head with other cable providers, like Time Warner, in many local markets. What's more, phone companies like Qwest offer the same bundled packages - phone, high-speed internet and pay TV (through satellite partners) nationwide. Comcast would point out that they lost 65,000 subscribers in the last quarter. There's plenty of competition, the cable industry contends. The cable industry has been deregulated since 1996 through an act of Congress, and that's just the way Big Cable likes it.
Chairman Martin has been pushing the other members of the five-member commission to invoke the "70/70" rule of the Cable Communications act: when 70% of U.S. households are cable-ready, and 70% of those households subscribe to cable, the government is empowered to regulate the industry in favor of lower prices and more diverse programming. In an agency meeting last week, the commission rejected the "70-70" finding, citing unreliable data, in a vote considered a blow to cable consumers in general and Chairman Martin in particular.
Despite this defeat, the FCC have recently affected other, smaller changes that benefit consumers and the competitive landscape. For example, as of last month, specific cable companies may no longer have exclusivity on apartment buildings; building managers must allow competition between rival cable companies and satellite TV.
But this represents only a minor victory for consumers. In the remaining 13 months of his appointment, Martin's goals are more ambitious:
Chairman Martin is drafting a revised proposal for a possible vote at the agency's next meeting, scheduled for December 18th. Consumer groups and cable proponents alike eagerly await the outcome. Is Big Cable too big? Does the pay-TV industry require government regulation? How will TV viewers benefit from greater competition? Stay tuned.
Leading up to the 1994 Winter Olympics, Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, tried to break competitor Nancy Kerrigan's knees, and the incident pitted the two against one another like Good vs. Evil: Nancy, tall and beautiful, dressed in white, vs. Tonya's thin-lipped trailer-trash demeanor. Nancy went on to win Silver that year and an all-American heroine was made. Then she stepped in it, insulting her $2MM sponsor Disney when she said, regarding a promotional appearance she was obligated to make, "This is dumb. I hate it. This is the most corniest thing I have ever done." America was shocked. Nancy retired from competition. David Letterman quipped, "what if it turned out that Nancy was the evil one after all?"
During the PC wars of the 80's and 90's, Microsoft and Apple were similarly pitted: Windows for PC black boxes, closed technology, apparently run by malicious, greedy men who wanted nothing less than to crush the competition and dominate the world; and Apple, brave, noble, enlightened, light-colored, toiling to free mankind from software bondage. To many Americans, the rivalry was on the level of Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker.
Fast forward to present. Bill Gates, alongside wife Melinda and Bono, TIME’s People of the Year. A visionary, a great man, the most generous philanthropist the world has ever known. Who could have predicted it? Things change quickly.
Google recently announced that its phone will be based on open-source technology, right down to the OS. Any programmer will be able to create applications, from social-networking applications to photo-share programs to multi-player games.
iPhone by contrast? Closed technology. Applications by Apple. Look at the thing: there's no apparent way to open the device short of smashing it. What happened to the Apple of 1984?
What if it turned out that Apple was the evil one after all?
Apple's reaction to Google's announcement remains to be seen. Will they break down the walls? Or will Open- vs. Closed-source be the key difference between these new competitors? Do the best programmers Apple has stand a chance against a worldwide legion of independent developers?
Whether Apple prevails or consumers choose an open-source platform like the Google Phone will be revealed early next year, at the cash register.
- Andrew Morse
