Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 291

What's More Important To A Consumer: The Price Or The Brand?

Before you go spouting off the answer to this question...

Please read this article from The New York Times titled, E-Commerce Companies Bypass the Middlemen. If you think that branding and retail have become complicated because of stuff like showrooming and attribution, you need to take a pause and try to figure out the myriad of complexities that e-commerce has created in the retail chain when laid out in this article. We tend to look at brands like Warby Parker and wonder how they had such a stellar ascent. We also look to traditional retailers and wonder how they will keep pace against Amazon. For many, the argument is that the lowest price wins. That retailers have no chance against e-commerce plays when they're not dealing with the traditional supply chain and logistic problems. We praise companies like Walmart (#client) for their perfection of this channel and how that efficiency drives towards savings for the consumer. We see these big box stores as a way for the vast majority to access adequate products at reasonable prices. In short, e-commerce beats retail because of lowest price and efficiency, and big box/massive retailer beats out the smaller/local players because they have inventory at better prices.

What if that isn't always the case?

What if - along with price - that branding has a major impact on success or failure, no matter how much cheaper your products are to a competitor? There are many startups like Warby Parker who are providing consumers with competitive pricing by going directly to the manufacturer and cutting out several layers of middlemen to create both efficiencies of scale and significantly reduced pricing (while still managing to eek out a hefty profit). It's not that big of an innovation as the bigger retailers have been doing something similar for decades in the world of private labels. From the article: "Start-ups have traditionally struggled to match those efforts. They do not have as much brand recognition as big retailers, and persuading consumers to take a chance on, say, Warby Parker eyeglasses instead of Prada's can be difficult. 'The challenge is, if you've never heard of the brand, you wonder, 'Should I buy it when it's 20 percent cheaper?' ' said Raj Kumar, a supply chain consultant at A. T. Kearney. 'Or should I buy a brand I trust?'  What is empowering the upstarts now is the Web's ability to reach lots of consumers without the costs of operating physical stores as well as a change in manufacturers' willingness to work with small brands. The founders of Deal Décor, whose model was to sell furniture directly to customers, worked at Target and Home Depot Direct before starting their company. They said they saw an opening after the recession hit."

At what price trust?

The obvious answer to the question is that when given the option, consumers will always choose the cheaper product. By the sounds of this article, these new startups - who are coming out with products that are often produced in the exact same factory as their big-brand competitors - they are having trouble getting sales because they lack a trusted brand. Non-marketing professionals tend to diminish the economic value of branding. It's sad. This article re-illuminates, something that marketers have to constantly reinforce to our peers: the brand matters.

The trusted Warby Parker.

Whether Warby Parker is a trusted brand as some of the iconic ones that are listed on Interbrand's Best Global Brands is not the point. What is most interesting is how all of these smaller e-commerce startups quickly realized how important a compelling brand narrative is... even if your product is the cheapest and people are talking about it. Scale of business happens only when the brand kicks in. We see this all of the time. Consumers can be a very finicky bunch. Over time, even the cheaper price will fail if a new competitor creates a more compelling brand story. True, the prices can't be night and day, but slight premiums do creep in when there is a strong brand play and definitive value exchange that consumers feel. It seems like cheap pricing and great branding is a killer combination.

In the end, it still seems like the brand does win.

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retail. showrooming

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the new york times

traditional retailer

walmart

warby parker

Did You See That?

How valuable are stunts to a brand?

Before answering that question, we have to go back in time (just a little bit) and remember that in a field of limited media choices and outlets, getting someone at these media outlets to pay attention was somewhat easier. Either they wanted the exclusive over their competitor or they wanted access so that their competitors would not have the exclusive. Fast forward to today, and the challenges in not only pulling off a stunt but making it memorable is super-tough on the best of days.

Who did it?

Remember the sunglasses that were given to the trapped miners? Remember that car that was stuck in a massive sinkhole? What about the author who opened a book store in NYC that only sold his book? What was the name of the company that put a million dollars in cash behind a glass wall of a public bus stop to prove how resilient their product is? Can you name the brands? Do you even remember the stunts? Pushing that idea forward, as a marketing professional, keep in mind that it's your job to be aware of these campaigns... but what about the average consumer? We have created stunts beyond the world of saturation. The signal to noise is even harder to break through.

Give up on stunts.

That's what some might say. Throw in the towel. It's just more noise and it is increasingly difficult to do something with resonance. I would disagree. The challenge is simple, but the execution is harder: create stunts that latch on to the brand. Don't create stunts that make the brand not as recognizable as the stunt, but create stunts that can't be remembered without the brand. A prime example of this (and one that has been beaten to death by people like me) would be Red Bull Stratos. When people talk about this campaign, it's not just about the guy who jumped from space with a parachute, it's about how Red Bull got this guy to jump from space with nothing but a parachute. All day and night, we watch brands try to do something - at a specific moment in time - that will garner a reaction from those witnessing it and that will generate earned media from those talking about it. All too often, they fall on deaf ears. There's no doubt that many of them lack anything truly remarkable for people to share, but so few of them realize how loosely connected the brand is to the actual stunt.

So many industries get this wrong.

Look no further than the automotive and hotel industries as prime examples of this. Both offer up all kinds of unique events and stunts in launching a new product line. If you took all of these stunts over the timeframe of a year, removed the brands, tossed them all up in the air and then randomly added another brand on to the stunt or event, odds are most people would not notice the difference. Sure, there are exceptions (there always are), but consumers have become so inundated with something happening on every corner or every other YouTube video, that the ability for a brand to pull the stunt off and get the true value and recognition out of it has never been more challenging.

Pushing a stunt forward.

Stunts still create a splash. It's a moment in time where something happens that rises above the other stuff that is happening. I love these digital channels (and, when I say "digital channels" I mean Web, mobile, social, etc...) because they can add a depth and power to stunts unlike anything we have known before. If the stunt is the splash, digital can augment it by adding the ripples that can grow and resonate before, during and after. Think pre-stunt and how you can leverage all of these magical channels to uncover your heavy users and those who may be interested in the brand. Think of how digital can help support the stunt as it takes place in terms of publishing and sharing the information - in text, images, audio and video - in real time. Now, for the most important part: think about how a stunt can be supported after the event takes place. Think about the measurement, feedback, loyalty and pulse and what you can learn and iterate on.

Stunts are not easy.

For years brands have tried to figure out how to create an impact, how to make something viral or how to get the whole world to pay attention to them - even for a brief moment. There is no doubt that awareness is still a key factor in any brand's marketing success and longevity. All of that can't ride on stunts alone. Content, advertising and everything else that we publish has a much shorter half-life than most of us would care to admit. If a tweet doesn't last more than a couple of minutes and a blog post doesn't linger for much longer, how can we expect a big stunt in one city and one moment in time to resonate? Marketing is getting tougher as metrics become more real and true return on investment can be aligned across all activity. Tossing marketing budget against a stunt for a stunt's sake alone feel like a very antiquated and non-effective tactic in this day and age.

Doesn't it?

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CTRL ALT Delete Book Reviews And Media

In trying to figure out a place to keep reviews and media organized for my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete, I settled on this page.

If you're interested in reviews, media and that sort of stuff about the business book, here it is (and it will be updated on a regular basis). But, this is more for archival purposes than self-promotion. Also, please note that the book only comes out on May 21st, 2013, but some reviews of the galley copies are starting to make their way online. If you would like to pre-order the book, please visit this link: CTRL ALT Delete - buy the book.

Advance praise for CTRL ALT Delete:

"To put it mildly... this is a fantastic book.  Regardless of your position, point in your career and whether you are involved directly in the technology or marketing businesses... this is one book that you MUST read.  It will challenge the way you think about your business, your world and your place in it... I believe [it] will go down as one of the best business books of 2013." - Jim Buckley.

"This book is brimming with actionable ideas, examples and suggestions... His narrative is bracing, deep, with insights accompanied by practical recommendations...One of the best books I've read recently - am recommending it to many." - L.M. Keefer.

"Once again Mitch Joel takes his years of experience, mixes it with a healthy dose of future gazing and delivers a first class book that any business professional must read to be prepared for the world we live in today." - C.C. Chapman.

"When you pick up Ctrl Alt Delete by Mitch Joel, you are taking the 'red pill' so be ready to have your eyes opened and allow Mitch to take you deep down the rabbit hole. It truly is a rush... While reading this book I caught myself downloading apps Mitch mentions and looking up products, articles and videos he refers to. Nike needs to pay him royalties because I got a Nike Fuel band after reading about it in Ctrl Alt Delete." - Jonathan Chiriboga.

"Lively tips and practical advice pinned to a presentation of emerging digital technologies." - Kirkus Reviews.

"CTRL ALT DELETE from @mitchjoel by FAR the best Biz #book that I read in the last 5-10 years... completely changed my vision #wakeupcall!" - Dominic Sicotte.

Testimonials for CTRL ALT Delete:

"In CTRL ALT DELETE, Mitch Joel surveys the ways technology has transformed how brands and businesses create, connect, and adapt to a shifting new landscape. This book--and especially the five new movements he identifies that are forcing brands to reboot--is an indispensable read for a time when so much is in transition."- Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group.

"In his new book, Mitch Joel describes how you must strive to adapt, to learn, and to stay ahead of the curve online. This book will help prepare you for the future . . . now!" - Tony Hsieh, bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.

"Writing with his signature blend of warmth and intelligence, in CTRL ALT DELETE Mitch Joel delivers a crucial blueprint for running your business--with humane intention and razor-sharp results." - Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.

"Too many brands, in their frantic effort to fashion a new business strategy, fail to build meaningful relationships with the customers they serve. Even fewer understand the new business landscape as it is (not as it once was). They need to listen to Mitch Joel. CTRL ALT DELETE is a wise and practical road map that can help you navigate today's challenging economic, social, physical, and digital landscape." - Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of To Sell Is Human and Drive.

"The way we work and do business is changing faster than most of us understand or can comprehend. Fortunately Mitch Joel has given us CTRL ALT DELETE, a wonderful book full of his invaluable insight to help us navigate, adapt, and survive these fundamental changes." - Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and bestselling author of Predictably Irrational.

"In CTRL ALT DELETE, Mitch Joel shows us that in times of great uncertainty--like ours--flexibility, creativity, authenticity, and kindness are the keys to developing great businesses--and ourselves. His book is a wonderful guide through the new terrain." - Julie Burstein, bestselling author of Spark: How Creativity Works.

"In a world filled with broken promises, Mitch Joel is the real deal. He lives the work he talks about, and he does it with generosity and insight." - Seth Godin, bestselling author of The Icarus Deception.

Book Reviews:

Amazon - Customers Reviews. (please note: only members of Amazon Vine Program can post reviews at this point. All other customer reviews can only be posted after May 21st, 2013).

Digital Open Concept by Jonathan Chiriboga - Book Review: CTRL ALT Delete by Mitch Joel.

GoodReads by C.C. Chapman - Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.

The Intersection: Buckley on Technology by Jim Buckley - A must read - Ctrl Alt Delete: Rebooting your life & business - brilliance from @mitchjoel.

Kirkus Reviews - CTRL ALT Delete.

Media Coverage (Interviews, blog posts, podcasts, etc...):

360 Incentives - Interview With Mitch Joel "Sex With Data and A Digital First Posture".

The Human Business Way Podcast - Ep 36 The Future of Media with Mitch Joel.

If there are any missing, please let me know in the comment section below and I will add them (many thanks!).

(last updated: April 2nd, 2013).

Tags:

business book

ctrl alt delete

ctrl alt delete book reviews

ctrl alt delete media

Do Robots Make Better Marketers Than Humans?

It turns out that human beings are making advertising more complicated than ever before.

Opinions, ideas, creativity and more have become the battlegrounds in the war to figure out who is the better advertiser: human beings or robots? Think this is a scene out of some Mad Magazine parody that mixes The Terminator with Mad Men? It isn't. For years, marketing companies have existed that solve a very tactical and analytics-based problem: how does one create the best ad for Google's AdWords platforms? When you dig deep and uncover who the best advertisers are on Google, more often than not, what you discover is a lot of technology driving the solution, and very little creative effort that is being used to create these text-based ads. It is a complex system that melds keywords, geography, time of day, competitive terms, random terms that are highly-trafficked, bidding strategies, and other more obscure data points to widdle down to an ad that converts the best (and costs the least). The brand behind these ads care little about the creative direction and much more about how it is reacting in the live bidding environment. Google is not alone. Facebook served close to $4.5 billion of advertising in 2012 (can you believe it?). And, according to the Business Insider article, How Facebook Is Replacing Ad Agencies With Robots, a good chunk of that work is never touched by a creative director, an ad agency... or even a human being. From the article: "Never has there been such a gigantic volume of advertising displayed in which professional agency creative types have had so little involvement... In the agency business, those ads are largely regarded as replacements for the old classified ads that used to appear in newspapers."

Then there's the other side...

The popularity of social media over the past decade-plus has attempted to convince brands that the only way to capture attention and engagement in these highly disintermediated and media saturated environment is to make the brand as human and humane as possible. The seminal business book on this topic, The Cluetrain Manifesto (originally published in 1999) said that "markets are conversations." Through blogs, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and whatever channel you care to think of, brands could connect with consumers and engage them in these conversations and meaningful relationships. So, how is that working out? We're closing in on thirteen years of social media commercialization and some brands have done spectacularly well with it, while others are struggling to find the true return on investment. What we have learned is this: social media is not advertising, nor is it a replacement for advertising. There is a complexity in creating content as an engine of media, and in figuring out how it translates into an engine of direct response. The current iteration on social media marketing is now being dubbed "content marketing," while publishers - still trying to either stop the bleeding from their traditional ad revenue or the new digital-only entrants looking to gain revenue from brands - are turning to native advertising as a potential advertising windfall. Whether it is social media, content marketing and/or native advertising, all three of these venues require a lot of hand-holding for brands. They are not silver bullets with quick and easy wins. Any form of content strategy requires time, effort and ongoing maintenance that many brands never had to endure in the mass media advertising world of yore.

Three sides to this story.  

So, on one side, we have this newish form of performance-based advertising that is highly automated and driven by technology over creativity, where speed and real-time reactions play essential factors in the brand's performance. On the other side, we have content marketing and native advertising, which is driven by content, sharing, the social channels and more to create a reaction that would be similar to a blog post or a YouTube video going viral. Where does this leave the people who create the strategy, design the ads and figure out the best place to put an ad - in both the physical and digital spaces? We live in a world where marketing pundits will publish articles titled, Customers Don't Want Ads, They Want A Conversation, but these sweeping generalities may not be reflective of this new consumer. What is abundantly clear is that advertising - as we have known it to date - slides into the middle of the publicity channel. It is no longer the 800 pound gorilla in the marketing mix. This does not spell the end of the "big idea," nor does it mean that the current slew of award-winning advertising agencies will be boarding up their doors any time soon.

What advertising becomes. 

What we do know is that the truly effective advertising agencies of the day are having to up their game in relation to technology, performance, content creation and more. While it may be easy to rattle off those terms and put a checkmark against them in a credentials deck, being able to demonstrate expertise is going to be an entirely different story. We live in a world of retargeting and remarketing where brands can better understand the user's behavior as they are being tracked throughout their regular online visits and send them ads based on the content that they have consumed and the products they have seen. Again, the vast majority of retargeting efforts rely little on creativity and much more on data and automated services. Couple that with multivariate testing and suddenly, we're in a world where hip creative directors are being positioned against ad monitoring technology that is able to create and serve the best-performing ad... regardless of how lacking it may be of creativity and a big idea.

The trick to advertising's future is going to be in how well these three stories (automated marketing, content marketing and advertising agencies' offerings) tell a bigger and bolder brand narrative that drives economic value.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Huffington Post - Are Computers the Best Predictors of What People Want?

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google

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The Lean Analytics Model

Episode #351 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Every week (on Saturday), the blog hosts a link exchange between Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, Librivox, etc...), Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks, etc...), and me. It wasn't a random selection of people. I chose Hugh and Alistair because they come from diverse backgrounds and are people who - no matter what the occasion - keep me on my intellectual toes. In short, these two are too smart for their own good, and hanging out with them makes me want to learn more and do more and be smarter. Alistair has had a fascinating career. Most recently, he co-authored a book called, Lean Analytics - Use Data To Build A Better Startup Faster, with Ben Yoskovitz. In this episode, we debunk the whole "lean" model and discuss what data is useful and what data is clouding our judgment. I hope you learn as much as I did from this chat. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #351.

Tags:

advertising

advertising podcast

alistair croll

ben yoskovitz

bitcurrent

blog

blogging

brand

business book

complete web monitoring

david usher

digital marketing

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

itunes

lean analytics

librivox

managing bandwidth

marketing

marketing blogger

marketing podcast

online social network

podcast

podcasting

pressbooks

social media

solve for interesting

year one labs

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #145

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

How I became a password cracker - Ars Technica . "It's no secret that people have bad password hygiene, or that companies like Google are racing to replace single-factor passwords with something better (like, say, having your mobile phone near the place you're logging in from.) But I didn't realize just how easy it was to break into something. Fortunately, Ars Technica invested a day doing things a reasonably geeky home user might, and fairly quickly cracked an abundance of passwords. Here's their journal." (Alistair for Hugh).

SXSW, bikes, and the Zen of finding things out - Lean Analytics . "When we started this link thing, I told myself I wouldn't forward stuff I've written. It's the height of narcissism. But the original premise for this link-sharing stuff was to give one another the things we'd be furiously sharing over lunch. If we had lunch today, all I'd be talking about is my adventures with bikes, and what they taught me about life. So here's a somewhat lengthy, and hopefully funny, story about my first SXSW ." (Alistair for Mitch).

Pingbacks, another federated web technology, dying - Andraz Tori Blog . "The Web I 'grew up on' unlocked such power and promise: everyone could be a publisher of their own content, on their own platforms. This new possibility was driven by a few powerful technologies: easy free/open source blogging technology (mainly WordPress ), RSS - which enabled readers of blogs to get alerts when there was a new post, and outgoing links (from one blog to another), and 'pingbacks.' Pingbacks alerted bloggers when another blogger linked to them - allowing bloggers to find each other and build networks of interest, upon which a new attention economy emerged. The world has shifted since those wooly days of the past. While many still run their own blogs, mostly this is being replaced with networks managed by big companies: Facebook , Tumblr and Twitter . Consumer use of the RSS protocol - as the recent announced closure of Google Reader indicates - is no longer a growing phenomenon, replaced with the more organic discovery mechanisms of activity streams (again: Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook), and the links posted there within our social networks. This article talks about yet another fading technology: pingbacks - again replaced by the activity in closed social networks, Retweets and Likes in Facebook. Are the days of the independent, but federated Web coming to a close? I hope not, but that certainly looks to be the case." (Hugh for Alistair).

Smartphone link most important feature for U.S. car buyers, industry figure says - The Globe & Mail . "The future imagined 20 or 30 years ago involved virtual reality, time travel, jetpacks and teleportation. It turns out that what we have delivered to ourselves instead is... information. Lots and lots of information. And we cannot get enough of it. Instead of having visual virtual reality, we now informational virtual reality: we have access to just about all the (public) information in the universe, along with all of the private conversations we might want to have, all the time, and everywhere - through our smartphones. And this, it turns out, is the thing people want more than anything. According to this article, people are starting to buy cars not based on price or quality, but rather, on how well a car integrates with their smartphones." (Hugh for Mitch).

7 Lessons From the World's Most Captivating Presenters - HubSpot . "Giving presentations is not easy. Many try. Many claim to be professional speakers. TED showed the world that there are both ideas worth spreading in public speaking and that it is increasingly harder to make your mark. The reason it's harder to make that mark is because we all have online access to almost every speaker - at any given moment. We used to talk about death by PowerPoint , but it has become much more serious. With TED Talks and more everywhere, it's increasingly difficult to give a presentation and not be compared to some of the greats. I've written about my escapades as a public speakers and I've offered my share of advice. People like Nick Morgan , Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds are the types of people that probably forget more about the topic than I know. Still, this extensive piece is a great primer for anyone who is expected to get on stage and keep an audience interested." (Mitch for Alistair).

Amazon's Head of Mobile Interfaces - MIT Technology Review . " Amazon is a dangerous company. Just this week they announced the acquisition of Goodreads . And, that's the thing. Most people still think of Amazon as a book seller. Nothing could be further from reality. This article, provides additional depth into one of the most fascinating (and, somewhat, secretive) companies in the world. Amazon is a hardware company, an analytics company, a technology company, a retail company, a tablet company, a software company, a media company and much, much more. When people think of tech, they think of Google and Twitter and Facebook. When people think of retail, they think of Walmart and Target and more. While the world pays a lot of attention to Amazon, this piece makes me realize that we still need to pay more attention to them." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

andraz tori blog

ars technica

bitcurrent

book a futurists manifesto

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facebook

garr reynolds

gigaom

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google

google reader

hubspot

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

mit technology review

nancy duarte

nick morgan

powerpoint

pressbooks

rss

social media

solve for interesting

sxsw

target

ted

the globe and mail

tumblr

twitter

walmart

wordpress

year one labs

How To Curtail Showrooming: Charge Admission

What would you pay for an opportunity to browse a store?

There have been a couple on instances in the news this week that highlight the general challenge that retailers face in the age of showrooming. For those uninitiated, showrooming is when consumers go to the physical stores, wander the aisles and perform price comparison and/or complete the purchase on their mobile device. In short, they're getting the full, physical retail experience - which could even include some consultation by the sales associate - only to lose the sale to the online channel or another retailer who is offering a better price. Best Buy has been at the center of this mobile trend and his been fighting - with all guns blazing - by offering matching prices and more. Many retail pundits agree that physical stores need to offer more services and value if they are ever going to compete. Looking at platforms like the Genius Bar at Apple's retail experience points to a retail environment where physical goods are sold alongside of services and more experiences.

Would pay for the opportunity to wander the aisles.

At first blush, this sounds insane. Do we actually think that consumers would pay a fee to come into a store if they don't buy anything? It's already happening. In Brisbane, Australia a specialty food store got international attention this week for posting a sign on its door that read: "As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for 'just looking.' The $5 fee will be deducted when goods are purchased." The sign goes on to explain its reasoning: "There has been high volume of people who use this store as a reference and then purchase goods elsewhere. These people are unaware our prices are almost the same as the other stores plus we have products simply not available anywhere else. This policy is in line with many other clothing, show and electronic stores who are also facing the same issue."

They are not the only ones.

This type of "pay for admission" is a little bit more prevalent in the luxury goods space. It has been reported that a Vera Wang boutique in Shanghai charges consumers $3000 yuan (almost $500) for a ninety-minute appointment to try on dresses. Strange, how it seems somewhat viable for Vera Wang but completely misguided for the specialty food store. If the prices are the same and the retailer offers products that are not available anywhere else, they have a business model that could be augmented by services, loyalty programs and more that could easily counter the effects of those who are showrooming beyond reason. Local book stores (who are as challenged as others with showrooming as more and more consumers buy e-books), have extended their businesses into coffee shops, selling gifts, holding events, teaching courses and more. Does this offset showrooming or the digitization of their core products? It doesn't. But, it does force them to become hyper-competitive instead of the alternative.

There is no solution.

While there will never be a solution for retailers when it comes to offsetting those who are doing competitive price checking or ordering from their smartphones, there is still a vast majority of human beings who aren't looking for the cheapest price, but rather the best experience and help with their purchase. It is (usually) a misguided strategy to make everyone pay for the changes in an industry. An admission charge to walk into a store will only be a smart, strategic and effective move if there truly is a value in exchange for the fee. Could retailers charge a fee if there's something more than products to look at beyond the front doors? Absolutely. Could retailers charge a fee if they're simply worried about showrooming? Not a chance.

Would you pay to simply browse a store?

Tags:

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best buy

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browse a store

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matching prices

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online channel

price comparison

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Others

We don't celebrate our differences enough.

It's somewhat ironic, sad and true. If you look at the news, there is always somebody, somewhere doing their best to push their values and beliefs on others. We could be talking about race, religion, gender, sexual preference and more. It's a strange world we live in. These ideologies go back a long time. Long before most of us were born. Long before we had education systems, believed in equality and stopped being scared of people who didn't look or act like we do.

The only thing we have to fear...

As a marketing professional, my job can be defined in simplistic terms: take a brand that sells something similar to another company and position them to be unique. Unique can be in price, quality, experience and more. But, in the end, it is about making them unique. Making them stand out. As much as we say we want these unique things, when it comes to human beings, our neighbors and our communities, it turns out that there is a big segment of our global population that want everyone to be like they are. To act like them, to pray like them, to feel like them and believe what they believe in.

Why?

There are angels among us. Those who will adopt the children that nobody wants in other parts of the world. Those who will care for the elderly that they are not even related to. Those who will teach our children for the parents who have issues of their own. Those who will defend the rights of others even if they, themselves, are not those people. It amazes me that marketers spend the vast majority of their time creating messages for media outlets that are covering a world that seems to be increasingly marginalizing people, while trying to put messaging alongside of it that is unique and different.

Getting tired.

We need to rise above. We need to appreciate and respect the beliefs and customs of others. It may not be how we chose to live our own lives, but it doesn't make it wrong or immoral. No matter what a book or religion tells us. I'm no preacher. I'm no scholar. I'm just a human being - like you - that is trying to do the right thing. A person that is trying to instill in others a belief that we should encourage and better understand those who are not like us. Why? Because, in the end, we all wind up the same way...

Others.

Appreciate others. Understand others. Try to see how the others live. Because to those people, you are the others. And, in the end, if you are in business and if you are trying to take your professional development to another level, it will be how you define and demonstrate what makes you different, unique and special in a world where people still seem to think that it's better to have a whole lot of people who believe, act and all follow the exact same thing. That seems bland.

Embrace the others.

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Welcome To The Era Of Robot Bloggers, Journalists And Writers

Would you like this (or any) content less if a robot had written it?

The media is filled with news items abut how robots and algorithms are taking the work away from real, kind and personable human beings. That is one train of thought (personally, I'm offering a different perspective over on my We, Robots blog, which looks at augmentation over automation of all things robotics, 3D printing, telepresence and more). It's scary to think that one day, you may read an article in a magazine or newspaper or online that had no human intervention. No humanity, no personalized style and more. That future is here. Today. It's already happening.

What robot journalism and blogging looks like.

Los Angeles Times journalist, Ken Schwencke, woke up one morning, started brewing a cup of coffee, picked up the daily newspaper and saw an article with his byline on it that he never wrote. You see, Schwencke is spending some of his time writing articles, but he also spends a lot of his time writing algorithms and code. In the article, 'Robo-reporter' computer program raises questions about future of journalists, his story gets told: "Instead of personally composing the pieces, Schwencke developed a set of step-by-step instructions that can take a stream of data -- this particular algorithm works with earthquake statistics, since he lives in California -- compile the data into a pre-determined structure, then format it for publication. His fingers never have to touch a keyboard; he doesn't have to look at a computer screen. He can be sleeping soundly when the story writes itself."

It's easier than you think.

Schwencke surmises that most readers would never even pick up on the automation of content. It's a simple piece of journalism that can be constructed, much in the same way we used to play Mad Libs when we were kids. People not well-versed in media and how things work in journalism are often curious as to how these in-depth obituaries appear in a matter of minutes after someone famous passes. What they fail to realize is that a lot of that content was written long before the death and the exact details (date, time, cause, etc...) are simply filled in. This is done with concert reviews as well and the music journalist simply adds some additional color and commentary but has created a framework long before the lights go down on a show. If these algorithms get better, is too far-fetched to imagine a world where sentiment coupled with specific direction could create copious amounts of the text-based content we consume.

What about ethics?

The prevailing wisdom is this: if newspapers, magazines and online channels use robots or algorithms to create content they have to do so with honesty and transparency. Publishers will have to inform readers when the content is being written by a human or an algorithm, but is that enough? Where do we draw the line? Do you even care? Is it critical that human beings actually write up an article about earthquakes, an obituary or something related to the weather? Would we prefer that these highly-skilled journalists spend their time on pieces that require more than just regurgitating data? Would we not prefer that they spend their time helping the mass populous better understand the full breadth of perspective and discourse? It's somewhat amazing that we haven't arrived at this conclusion sooner.

The true power.

The true power in this is not how computers, algorithms and robots can now replace human writers. The true power is in how computers, algorithms and robots can now free up these human writers to do the more important work that our society requires of them.

So again, I ask you, would you mind if a robot was creating the content you need to consume?

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Is Marketing About To Get Really Creepy Or Really Good?

Apple acquired a company last week. It's something to pay attention to.

There is still one slightly unchartered territory that will - without question - be the last mile in marketing. It is the ability for a brand to deliver contextual and highly targeted marketing at the local retail level. We may be inching ever-closer to this reality. On March 23rd, 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple acquired a company called WiFiSLAM for an estimated $20 million (not bad for a two year old company with just a handful of employees that includes some ex-Googlers). WiFiSLAM is billed, according to AngelList, as a technology that, "allow(s) your smartphone to pinpoint its location (and the location of your friends) in real-time to 2.5m accuracy using only ambient WiFi signals that are already present in buildings. We are building the next generation of location-based mobile apps that, for the first time, engage with users at the scale that personal interaction actually takes place. Applications range from step-by-step indoor navigation, to product-level retail customer engagement, to proximity-based social networking." If you can get beyond the marketing jargon, WiFiSLAM is, essentially, GPS for the indoors. It is able to triangulate the location of consumers, track their every move and deliver contextual marketing messages to them while capturing a tremendous amount of consumer data.

Does that creep you out?

It turns out that consumers are looking forward to more technologies at the physical retail level. In December of 2012, Internet Retailer ran the news item, Smartphone owners want more mobile information in stores, that reported: "80% of smartphone owners want more mobile-optimized product information while they're shopping in stores, finds 'The Shopping Experience in a Smartphone World,' a study conducted by ad agency Moosylvania. The agency surveyed 1,874 U.S. adult Smartphone owners. 97% of respondents have access to a personal computer and 43% have access to a tablet." While it's not a massive sample and the research was done by a digital marketing agency with a vested interest in these types of technologies creeping their way into the physical stores that ran the research, there is a high temperature to capture both the mapping of these physical retail spaces and connecting the consumers who are in them. In short, retailers want to capture this new, connected and highly untethered consumer.

This is more than a defensive move for Apple.

Pundits have a hard time grasping why Apple would make a move like this in a world where Google has made several dominating moves in the mapping space (hint: Apple stores!). Many see this as a defensive move for Apple to grab the mapping of the inside spaces while Google continues to map the oceans and the arctic. The truth is that Google is just as busy trying to capitalize on this idea of mapping the inside of spaces as well. But it's not just a game for Apple and Google. Amazon has been hard at work capturing tons of consumer information at the retail level. Look no further than their Price Check for iPhone app that enables consumers to scan a barcode, snap a picture of a product or use text/speech search to find out how much the product is on Amazon. This business of showrooming has become a contentious talking point in the retail sector, as more and more consumers are using their smartphones and tablets to find a better price at the physical location. These consumers are using the stores as a showroom, but completing their purchases on their mobile devices and having the products shipped to their homes. What we don't hear much about is the data and information that Amazon is capturing about consumers, how they walk through stores, what they're price checking, the price variances from store to store, trends in merchandising and more. All of this (and more) is being captured, each and every time a consumer uses the app to find a better price. While it's not real-time information like WiFiSLAM is offering, Amazon still has tremendous information about consumers and how they make their way through many different retail environments.

This is exciting times. This is just the beginning.

Having GPS capabilities inside businesses is still in its nascent stage. Whether it's WiFiSLAM or another startup with similar technology (look no further than Nomi as a close contender) that is going to partner with retailers to provide contextual marketing services within a physical location, this ability to understand the consumer in a aisle to aisle manner is going to change the retail landscape as we have seen it to date. This aisle by aisle, real-time ability to flip offers, while getting a better understanding of how foot traffic flows, where consumers stop and engage is going to impact everything from pricing to shelf space to how end-cap placements are sold. It looks like stores are going to become as dynamic and intelligent as their e-commerce counterparts. So long as retailers seeks permission from their consumers and use this technology to drive more value to the consumers, these types of technologies could well be the linchpin that secures the future of retail. So long as it doesn't get creepy.

What's your take? Is this marketing at its finest or another privacy concern for consumers? 

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Harvard Business Review . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Harvard Business Review - Apple's Latest Acquisition Puts Them Inside the Building .

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