Group items tagged

the Smart Body, Smart World paradigm — how sensor-laden devices like wearables give us access to new domains of information and what we can do with that information

The Smart Body, Smart World paradigm requires a different approach to marketing, an approach focused on delivering services and utility rather than just advertising

The Smart Body, Smart World paradigm accelerates transformations that are already occurring in marketing. In particular, sensor devices require marketers to: Shift their priorities from acquisition to engagement. Today, marketers spend the majority of their budgets on the early stages of the customer journey, especially reaching new customers through channels like TV advertising and in-store displays. Smart Body, Smart World technologies lend themselves more toward engaging customers you already have, building on trust you’ve already earned. This shift from acquisition to engagement requires marketers to rethink their priorities and redistribute their spending accordingly.

many execs say it's impossible to draw direct correlations between stunts and sales. Most clients seem satisfied with generating high levels of social sharing, with online views providing substantial savings compared to paid media. "From our perspective ... it will more than pay for itself in earned media and 'share of conversation.' That, in turn, translates into brand worth, which in turn drives sales," says Thomas Moradpour, vp, global marketing at Carlsberg. "We won’t be able to track a direct bump—too many variables—but we’ll measure the impact on brand health and equity through our brand trackers in all of our key international markets."

many execs say it's impossible to draw direct correlations between stunts and sales. Most clients seem satisfied with generating high levels of social sharing, with online views providing substantial savings compared to paid media. "From our perspective ... it will more than pay for itself in earned media and 'share of conversation.' That, in turn, translates into brand worth, which in turn drives sales," says Thomas Moradpour, vp, global marketing at Carlsberg. "We won’t be able to track a direct bump—too many variables—but we’ll measure the impact on brand health and equity through our brand trackers in all of our key international markets."

marketers are staging "pranks on steroids," upping the ante in almost every imaginable way and probing darker territory—with the sponsor's name attached. Scenarios that trade on fear, death and danger test the limits of personal privacy and social acceptability. The genre, he says, represents "the dark side of the constant drumbeat to enhance consumer engagement."

When our emotional desires begin to shift toward a prospective brand, we align our reasons to be consistent with that intention. Our critical mind is always looking for evidence to support our beliefs. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the belief, and the greater the tendency is to seek out supporting evidence. We are not rational. We are rationalizers.

people in survey research and focus groups seek out reasons to explain their feelings about new products, concepts, and ads. Self-reported research shines the spotlight on their logical interpretation of emotion, rather than the motivators of behavior, the emotions themselves. Respondents and subsequently marketers often end up inventing rationalizations instead of big ideas.

Dyson now advises: “Don’t do market research--it will either tell you what you already know or put you off altogether.”

Despite lip service paid to emotions, businesses routinely make multimillion-dollar marketing decisions on the false premise that respondents in survey research can consciously explain the unconscious origins of their actions. They fail to recognize that most of the business of life happens through our emotions, below the threshold of awareness.

neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor puts it, “We live in a world where we are taught from the start that we are thinking creatures that feel. The truth is, we are feeling creatures that think.”

When we ask respondents in traditional copy, tracking, and concept tests to report their emotional motivation to buy brands, we are asking their chatty, limited, linear mind to interpret the responses of their immensely more powerful, holistic, creative mind. Cognitive science experiments have shown that our left brain rationalizes stories in attempt to organize and categorize the sensory experiences of the right brain.

"‘Any PR is good PR’ has been replaced by ‘the end justifies the means.’ Was everyone in the airport in on it? If not, imagine strangers thinking you were wanted. Is that really worth it to the brand?"

And yet, the public's seemingly endless appetite for being part of the show enables stunt makers to push the limits of acceptability. "In this age of anonymity, many people probably feel a perverse sense of flattery for being singled out," says SJU’s Solomon. For some, just being part of these marketing campaigns becomes a fusion of flesh and pixels, the ultimate augmented reality.

Zappos, Trader Joe's, Amazon.com, Method, Red Bull, The Body Shop, Google, and SodaStream all built their brands without advertising. Their brand advocates are their marketing department. "We've built this entire business, and an entire category in fact, on the power of our brand advocates," says Kristin Harp, U.S. marketing manager at SodaStream, which turns tap water into sparkling water and soda.

the three most powerful social media companies--Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn--never spent a dime on advertising or paid people to recommend them. They didn't need to. Advocates used social media to recommend them to their friends.

You may spend millions of dollars on elaborate marketing campaigns. But there is nothing more powerful than a trusted recommendation from a brand advocate.

The most popular use of "360 campaign" is to define a marketing plan that is both online and offline, on social media, and more. It's a holistic promotion that truly covers all the bases

to be truly 360, a campaign would need to encompass everything — mobile, digital, television and social (until new mediums arrive, in which case the campaign would need to again expand).

"Box office is the result of a wide variety of well-aligned tactics and circumstances, and the goal of a stunt, such as our beauty shop scare, is often to earn attention versus buying attention with an audience. When it's successful, the attention you earn greatly exceeds the cost of buying an equal amount of exposure with that audience."

"We think that the industry had been focused in the wrong area, which was making a decision between Twitter and TV," said Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue. "That's not what we believe. Twitter is a bridge." The deal, structured as a partnership, comes as people increasingly visit social networking sites and use mobile devices while watching television. A recent Nielsen study confirmed a strong correlation between increases in Twitter volume and TV ratings.

This is the future. It's convergence."

While the spending marketers commit to Twitter remain a fraction of the $205bn they spend on television globally, budgets are shifting quickly. Twitter's global ad revenues are expected to almost double this year, reaching $582.8m in 2013 up from $288.3m in 2012, according to eMarketer

consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently that display ads, and 32% of respondents said they would share a native ad with a family member.

Does that mean those consumers will buy more of the products being advertised? The report claims an 18% lift in purchase intent for native advertising vs. banner ads. Cristina Heise, VP of ad agency gyro Cincinnati, says that ringing up a sale isn't necessarily the purpose of a native ad. "Most of marketing is about repeat exposure and conditioning associating an experience with a brand," she says.

Heise's view, native advertising "goes native" in the sense that it adjusts to its surroundings. That doesn't mean a BuzzFeed ad unit necessarily, though. Heise says a compelling fashion ad in Vogue could be considered native advertising.

Brands need to become curators of content—and conversation. We all know content is the buzzword of the week. But how do we curate the conversations that are happening around or brands?

The biggest question we must ask is: how do we become interesting to our consumer?

Big data leads to little decisions. Big data is all the rage, and rightfully so: with integrated data streams, you can know your customers as a whole. However, David argues that, when done right, it should be used to help consumers make personalized decisions.

when a user comes across your Twitter handle or Facebook feed, she doesn't suddenly transform into a "professional-only" mode that consumes, filters and reacts to content based 100% on her company and career. No, her professional persona may take center stage, but her entire thought process is also influenced by the less apparent parts of her personality: the fact that she's a parent, enjoys rock climbing, is coming off a rough week or lives in a city. As marketers, we need to embrace this fundamental nature of user behavior; namely, that people act, engage, and respond not solely as professionals, but as nuanced human beings.

If connection needs to take place at a human level, then our brands must also become human

Being a humanized brand means learning the art of authenticity. It means being genuine, being passionate about whatever it is your brand is and does. Just like in everyday life, people respond most to others who are perceptibly and consistently real. And that's why it's an art, not a formula. Authenticity, in the long run, can't be manufactured or faked.

Check out this demo of Wikitude, an augmented-reality travel guide, if you want to see what the future of mobile search looks like. By combining the camera on the phone with the built-in GPS and some fancy-schmancy programming, the Wikitude folks have come up with an application that gives you information about whatever you're pointing your phone at. In effect, your phone can become a virtual "window" on the world that merges the information about your location with the actual image of your location.

The applications for travel and tourism are obvious. You no longer have to blindly wander around a strange city wondering what you're looking at. Just point your phone at the monuments and buildings you see, and poof! There's all the historical information (and possibly even dates, times, and ticket prices) that you'd need. Analog and digital reality combined. Of course, the marketing applications for this are just as big. Systems like these (and I'm betting that they're going to be ubiquitous in new phones within a year or two) would allow marketers to place virtual "billboards" or information displays anywhere they want. Point your phone at a restaurant to get the times when it's open, a menu, and (with the touch of your finger on the display) make a reservation. Point your phone at a movie theater to get show times and buy your tickets with a tap of your finger. Look at a retail store and get a list of items on sale and even special "augmented-reality user only" coupons.