ROOFTOP banter

Will 2011 be the year of location-aware applications?

Posted By: 

Nik Brown

Date: 

April 15th, 2011 /// Marketing Trends

All the keys have been in place for a while: Mobile data, GPS and high-resolution screens. Services like Foursquare and Google Goggles have popularized the use of the GPS in today’s smartphones, but we’ve only just scratched the surface.

Last month the world’s first location-aware music album was released. Created by D.C.-based band Bluebrain and released as an iPhone app, “The National Mall” features tracks that mutate based on your location.

2011 is set to finally become the year of location-aware applications. Smartphone penetration is only increasing and the latest figures show that we are finally breaking the 25% mark here in the U.S. In fact, in 2011 global smartphone sales are expected to grow 49% (source).

So what does all this mean for the advertising industry?

As we narrow down our general audience to a very specific target audience through tools such as contextual advertising and location data, we gain incredible power as advertisers. We gain the ability to talk directly to a person in the palm of their hand (or in their ear), about a product RIGHT NEXT TO THEM!

Consumers have always had a love/hate relationship with advertising, but that is mostly due to relevancy issues. The reason people hate popup ads so much is because it interrupts their interaction with content by force-feeding a message that isn’t necessarily relative to them. If we can target a message about a nearby restaurant as they are looking for dinner ideas, that would be a completely different matter.

Will we abuse the power that location-based information affords us, and alienate the very people we are seeking to convert? Or will we create smart, effective advertising that serves both the customer and advertiser? That is up to us…

Go be creative, effective, and most important, RELATIVE!

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Will The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Sell Us Out?

Posted By: 

Brandi Hensler

Date: 

March 31st, 2011 /// Industry Insight, Inspiration, Marketing Trends, Uncategorized

“So what I want to do is make a film about product placement, marketing and advertising where the entire film is funded by product placement, marketing and advertising.”

From Morgan Spurlock, the director of Super Size Me, comes a documentary that plans to reveal all the dirty details of the true world of advertising. I would guess that many in our industry are responding with a deep sigh or an “uh oh.” People are going to see who we really are. What we really do to make them want what we have. All with complete transparency.

This girl? Not worried. Excited, actually.

Advertisers today aren’t necessarily the same malicious manipulators that I grew up hearing ranked right next to lawyers on the Scale of Evilness. Today, if you’re smart, you know better.

The gap between social media and PR is closing everyday. Information sharing is increasing exponentially. Consumers trust word-of-mouth 60% more than traditional advertising. With all this, brands are being forced to be more transparent and honest… or else (cue the Nestle palm oil push back).

There’s no hiding who you really are anymore, and I don’t have a problem with that. It’s only pushing us all to do what the best of the industry have done all along – find the truth about your product and communicate it to those who will take interest. Work harder. Be more creative. This documentary may be perfect inspiration to take it even further.

In any case, the film and related aftermath promise to be wildly entertaining. So stock up on name-brand munchies and update your Fandango app. This is an extravaganza we won’t want to miss.

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Bread Pudding Makes Everything Better (sort of)

Posted By: 

tonya

Date: 

March 1st, 2011 /// Marketing Trends

How do you turn a disgruntled customer into a brand advocate? It’s a question brands deal with every day. Thanks to social media, it’s becoming more important than ever. But the formula is fairly simple. No matter how badly a brand messes up, relationships are mostly salvageable. It’s about taking an extra step to make sure that the customer knows that a company is willing to do whatever it takes to get them back. This is just one example.

Looking for a different dining option in early December, the hubby and I (with three-year-old daughter in-tow) decided on an English pub that we’ve never tried before. The décor was sweet and the menu looked good, so it seemed like a good choice.

The experience was less than desirable. It started with us being ushered out to the patio (yes, the patio – in December), escalated to mediocre food and crappy service, and was capped off with coffee that didn’t arrive until ten minutes after we were done with desert. To be fair, the desert – bread pudding – was delicious.

When I got home that night, I posted on their Facebook page about the service.

The following Monday, I received a FB message from the marketing/PR rep asking for my contact info. The manager called me the next morning. He apologized and offered to comp us a meal. I assured him it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted and promised that he would send out a gift card so we could give them another chance.

Two weeks later, I still hadn’t received the gift card. I sent a FB message to the marketing/PR person who contacted me initially that essentially said, “While I should be surprised at the lack of follow-through…” I really wasn’t.

Within 15 minutes I received a phone call from the PR person. She apologized profusely, said that there was a mix-up, it was her fault, and that she would send out a gift card immediately.

The next evening the manager from the pub appeared on my doorstep with a takeout of bread pudding and $100 gift card. Talk about going the extra mile to make sure the customer is happy!

This could’ve ended differently – I could’ve shared my experience and they could’ve ignored it. It wouldn’t have been any skin off their back, and I just never would’ve returned. But by making a concerted effort to ensure that I knew they wanted me as a customer, they also got me back in the doors with the gift certificate. With that added touch of the bread pudding, they turned me into a brand advocate.

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Logo Wars

Posted By: 

2 Cents

Date: 

February 4th, 2011 /// Industry Insight, Marketing Trends

Uh-oh, Starbucks simplified their logo. Will the consumer be able to handle rush hour? Aren’t folks’ Monday mornings hard enough? It’s rough out there for those fond of “their brands;” from the new Pepsi “smiles” and the Gap logo revamp fiasco to Starbucks bringing its little mermaid to the forefront. As we grow old and change, so do the products and services all around us. Even I remember a dark day in ‘03 when I saw that UPS was retiring Paul Rand’s “box tie” logo.

People tend to not agree with what they are not familiar, and may get p.o.’d when a brand they’re close to changes its appearance. And, as with most things in life, change can be great or it can bite you in the butt. Companies will continue to look into the mirror from time-to-time with or without the consumers blessing… but watch-out: social media has created an immediate response-vehicle from the masses.

My personal opinion matters not in response to these recent identity face lifts; for the most part I look upon others’ creative with a “glass half full” eye and I do like when companies throw a curve ball to shock the system. But I’ll end by saying as far as mega-corporations logos go, there have been the bad & good, but I sit here and think the last really clever rebrands seem as long ago as ‘94 (FedEx) and ’98 (Citi).

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bit.ly Embraces QR Codes

Posted By: 

Nik Brown

Date: 

October 13th, 2010 /// Marketing Trends

There are many people out there who have no idea what a QR code is, but they would probably recognize them. Most of them look something like this:

Over the past few years, QR codes have migrated from a purely Japanese phenomenon to one that is making headway into mainstream worldwide advertising.

QR codes are most commonly used to put URLs into physical advertising media such as magazines, signs, business cards, busses, etc. Mobile users with a camera-equipped smart phone are able to scan a QR code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone’s browser.

So why is it cool that bit.ly is offering them now?

One of the great features about bit.ly is it allows registered users to quickly create links that generate trackable user metrics.

Now those same features are available on QR codes. Just take any bit.ly URL, such as http://bit.ly/keathley and append a “.qr” on the end of it like this: http://bit.ly/keathley.qr.

Presto, instant trackable QR code! Advertisers can quickly get all sorts of useful statistics on campaigns, even if they’re linked to places where you don’t have direct access to the analytics data.

Pretty cool and easy!

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