Polinchock's Ponderings

My Belief: I believe in cherishing the things you love

Yea, I'm a proud father! This is an essay my daughter Sydney (who just turned 12) wrote this week and I just had to share her writing and her message -- Cherish the things you love!

My brother died at a young age, only 12. Well, actually, he died when he was 84. Confused yet? Ok, I lied. I'm an only child. The brother I talked about, his name was Dublin and he is a real person. Well, kind of. As you might have guessed by now, my brother is not human. So what? Just because he's a German Shepard/Beagle mix doesn't mean he isn't my brother; he's just a different kind of brother, a very special one.

I grew up with dogs. Having fur in my cereal is considered normal in my house. I have always had 2 dogs. While other people might think it's weird to say my dogs are my siblings and my puppy is my son, I take pride in letting people know just how much I love my dogs, and what a big part of my family they are. That's why my heart ripped in two and i nearly died from sadness when I found out Dublin had cancer. We had gone to get our dogs blessed with my friend when my parents told me. By the time we had discovered the cancer, it had already spread through his body and there was nothing we could do.

It was almost Thanksgiving and Dublin started getting much much worse. We had to hand feed him and he hardly ever got up. He could barely walk and was so thin you could see his ribs sticking out of his dulled coat. I cried non stop. We went into the city to see my Grandma for Thanksgiving. My parents told me we were going to take Dublin to the vet the next day to see if they could do anything for him. I was so happy, thinking the vet would do something to help Dublin get better and make his last days less painful. I was right. The vet did do something to help, but it didn't make him better.

After I watched the light fade from Dublin's loving brown eyes, the day was a blur. My mind was a jumble of pictures and sounds that did't make sense. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that I would never hear the familiar, and annoying squeaks Dublin would made for everything. I would never be able to throw a ball and have it brought back to me(our other dog doesn't understand the 'retrieve' part yet. It's been 13 years so I've stopped trying to teach her.)

After that day, I vowed to never pass up a moment to be with the people and animals I love. I haven't always kept that promise, but I have tried. I cherish every moment I have with Kinsale, my sister, who is now 13. I know everything dies. Everyone knows that. It just never occurred to me that someone I knew could die. In my mind, my family was immortal; they would never grow old or pass away, they would always be there with me. After Dublin's death, that image was shattered. I now realize how fortunate I am that I have dogs, that I have a Mom and a Dad because some people don't have anyone.

We're Returning to SXSW with Show & Smell 2!

Back by popular demand! Building on last year’s packed Show & Smell showcase combining inspiring emerging technologies and sensory marketing, this hands-on crowd experience of leading edge technologies, continues to define the key factors of how to make new technology work in a promotional marketing program or experiential states.

With live demonstrations of technologies you won’t see every day—technologies bringing together the physical and digital to harness your sight, smell, touch and taste including Twitter-driven robots, crowd-controlled gaming, and a host of emerging technologies even WE haven't seen yet.

You can go here to see what we presented last year, we had a number of pretty cool things there, including the Twitter gumball machine! So if you're going to be in Austin this weekend, come see us!

Presenters

• David Polinchock, Dir, Media Lab, AT&T AdWorks
• Kurt Karlenzig, SVP Global Digital Strategy, The Marketing Store Worldwide
• Warren Kronberger, Dir of Research & Dev, The Marketing Store Worldwide

Show&Smell 2: Marketing Experiences Beyond Visual

Walmart exec: The biggest asset in mobile are bricks-and-mortar stores - Strategy - Mobile Commerce Daily

As I wrote in Shouldn't We Make Place Special, retailers have spent billions of dollars to create physical environments that today they all too often ignore. It's hard to find merchandise, pricing and usually even staff. In todays economy, can you afford to have hundreds of thousands (or millions) of square feet of retail space and all of the expenses that go with it, and just have it act like windows for people to do online shopping -- and they may not even shop online at your store! Can you continue to support online social media efforts while creating physical spaces that are almost anti-social?

Are you treating your stores as an asset or a liability? Is the physical plant of your store up to current standards of both practicality and design? Do you treat your employees as an important part of the retail experience or simply one more line item on your P&L?

If you're putting more effort into turning your stores into a web site, rather then capitalizing on what makes place unique, you might want to start looking for a great real estate broker to help you sell off your stores.

AUSTIN, TX – A Walmart executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that although the brand initially focused its mobile strategy around optimizing its dot-com experience, the company is now eyeing the in-store service as the best way to take advantage of the medium. “Our biggest asset is the 4,000 stores that we have across the nation." Wendy Bergh, senior director of mobile and digital strategy at Walmart.

Walmart exec: The biggest asset in mobile are bricks-and-mortar stores

Polinchock's Ponderings: Socialization of Place

Polinchock's Ponderings: Role of Experience

Unlock the 007 In You

Just love this promotion program for the new James Bond movie Skyfall. It has everything a great promotion should have,. It's fun, it's place-based (you know how I feel about that!) and it's pretty darn engaging. Kudos to Coke Zero for putting it together. They really use the space well and the placement of people telling you how much time you have left adds to the excitement. Plus, it's great for spectators, as you watch people try to complete the mission. Sadly, liability issues here in the States would probably prevent something like this from happening here. Check out the video to see how they did it.

The Great Good Places - 11 Years After

I originally wrote this piece just a few weeks after 9-11 for a trade publication in the amusement industry. They were looking for an article that would come out during the annual IAAPA conference and I usually covered topics like experience design and the importance of authenticity. But that week, I didn't know what to write. Sydney was just six months old at the time and I spent a great deal of time being grateful that she was too young for me to have to try to explain what happened and why.

I'm still excited when I look at Sydney and her friends and I see hope for the future. They question why we have to have the kind of hatred that exists in the world. And maybe, just maybe, as they get older and have a voice in the world, they'll use that voice to make the changes needed to make our planet a great.

So, on this 11th anniversary of 9-11, I again express my condolences to everyone who lost family and friends on that day. Watching the memorial services and all of the specials today have reminded me of just what an impact 9-11 had on us that beautiful morning, all those years ago. While we remember, lets also make sure that it never happens again. Let's make sure that we all live in a great good place.

Great, Good Places.

As I write this, it’s been just three weeks since the tragic events here in New York. I have had a difficult time getting back into my normal swing of things. Thankfully I have not suffered any direct losses as a result of the World Trade Center attack, although I live in a place just outside of New York that lost many members of its community. In the weeks after the attacks, I spoke to many colleagues in the entertainment marketing field who all asked the same question: How do we go back to our business in the face of such a tragedy? What we do seems so trivial in the face of such tragedy…so unimportant. I, too, asked the same questions and wondered how I would get back to "business as usual" after these events.

At the same time, I’ve also had many conversations about Ray Oldenburg and his book The Great Good Place. I’ve talked to many friends and colleagues about what makes a community and what makes a 3rd place—the place Oldenburg talks about that is not home, not the workplace, but a place where informal social interaction happens. Places we know that we can always head to when we want to connect with someone.

During the dot-com explosion, it was clear that the 3rd place seem to be driving how offices were created—lots of recreational activities, lots of places to mix and mingle. The work place and the 3rd place had become one place. Part of this was driven by the fact that all of us seemed to be putting in more hours than ever before, with less time to spend outside of the office or home, but part of it also stemmed from the fact that those 3rd places seemed to be disappearing in the redevelopment of the American landscape.

Tragedies like the World Trade Center attack make us remember what really makes a community. People rushing to give aid without thought to their own safety, as evidenced through the almost 400 firemen and policemen who died at the World Trade Center. So many people offering to give blood and make other donations, that in New York, they actually asked people to stop donating! Even online communities came to life in this crisis. My parents were stuck in Fairbanks and one posting generated almost a dozen responses of people to help, or put my folks up or do whatever they could. People I didn’t know, in a place thousands of miles away, becoming a community in a time of crisis.

This past weekend, as I was driving into the city to have dinner with friends, I was thinking about everything and especially, what would I write about for Entertainment Management. After all, this fun stuff seemed so unimportant in the face of so much loss. But then it started to dawn on me. The 3rd Place, community and fun.

Several years ago, I was working for a dot-com looking to create a portal for the out-of-home entertainment market. As I went from meeting to meeting, I used to talk about how what we did was one of the very few things that people did that had to involve other people. It was always a social experience. How many times have we gone to a theme park or FEC by ourselves? How many people do you see waiting online for a roller coaster alone? And even when you do, you always know that the very loose social structure of the line will open itself up to embrace those alone.

As I thought more about it, the need for fun is a global experience. We may have fun in different ways, but we all like to have fun. Fun is one of the greatest tools we have to create a world of understanding and -- potentially -- peace. Hate can’t thrive in an atmosphere of fun.

So, as we gather for IAAPA and wonder what we can do and how to get our sense of fun back, remember how important what we do really is. What we do is not unimportant or trivial—it is critical. Let’s ask how can we create experiences that bring people together to share a common, joyous activity. What we need today is more ways for people to come together and share joy—and that’s what we do. So celebrate the joy that you create. Publicize it, share it and shout it out. Not since WWII have we as a country needed or deserved the distraction of joyous and fun entertainment more than today. Let us become the Great, Good Places where people gather, share and become a community. For it is only when we are a community that we can stop the hatred that creates such tragedies in the first place.

Download Great Good Places

Everything Old is New Again, or The Real Privacy Issue

[NOTE - This was originally writtwen in 2001 and focused just on the online space. Think it's still valuable as we continue to explore the relationship between brands, consumers & privacy.]

Online privacy. It's in our headlines every day. We talk about it at trade shows; over lunch and even the government is getting involved. How can it controlled? Who can use your information? Whose information can you use? The Child Privacy Act has gone into effect and it will have a major impact on how we collect information online. The recent outcry over Doubleclick's collection and use of user information is a testament to how we feel about our information and what people do with it on the net. All of this activity being built around the information that we can gather about what people do; like; click and buy. We know all about them and they seem to be sending us a message that they don't like that.

But is that the message? Are we are looking for answers to a question that might not be being asked. Is privacy the real issue? Are consumers really upset that we gather information about them?

A few years back, well maybe more then a few years, one of the most popular shows on TV was set in a bar "where everyone knows your name." Each time Norm walked through the door, the whole bar yelled "Norm!" and Sam or Woody poured a beer and got it ready at his stool. In fact, Sam knew everything about the people in that bar. He knew their likes and dislikes and used it to serve his customers well.

Another TV icon from even further back, and one that represents at least the myth of how we viewed America in an earlier time, was Sam Drucker. He always knew what the residents of Hooterville liked and ordered. His hello was usually something to the effect of "Got those lemon drops you like so much." Everyone in Hooterville appreciated that Sam knew what they liked and had it ready for them.

TV shows might not be the best examples of this phenomenon, but how many places to you know like this? My wife & I used to visit a small Italian restaurant in the Village where the food was great and the service and attention was even better. The first time we ate there, after I asked for butter for the bread, the chef/owner gave me a long lecture about how bad butter was for me and then brought me out some olive oil. Not only did we not get upset about his invasion of my privacy, his interest in us was the central reason that we went back time after time. And each time we ate there, he always prepared something for us that wasn't on the menu, but was based on what he knew we liked.

Who doesn't like to go to a store or restaurant where "everyone knows your name." In fact, how many times have you paid more for something or driven further to get it, just because a particular place gives you better service because that store "invaded your privacy." Don't you consider this a positive experience in the offline world? In fact, we get such a warm feeling from the invasion of privacy, that we usually make sure that we take our friends there, just so they can be impressed when the bartender or store clerk knows our name!

See, I think we're dealing with the wrong question. While we certainly need to protect privacy online, I think that we should be focusing our efforts on how can we bring a value to the consumer that translates into a better online experience? What will make the consumer feel as though everyone just called their name when they walked in? How can we create an experience where the owner comes out to greet each visitor and thanks them for being there, while pointing out that they know what the consumer likes?

Right now, we all know that the focus of gathering information from the consumer online is for our value, not theirs'. Sure, we pretend it's for them, but everyone knows better. Is it really a consumer value proposition that we can give them targeted ads? Is getting unsolicited e-mails about products that are similar to something they've purchased a value proposition for the consumer? No, of course not. It's a value proposition for us. If you look at how we generate revenue online, how much of it comes from the gathering, use and sale of consumer information?

The consumer knows that they're not getting anything of value for the information we ask of them. They know that right now, we're the only ones who really benefit from the knowledge we gather. Don't you think my wife and I would have stopped going to that little Italian restaurant if the information that he gathered from us was for his sole benefit? If we had walked into a restaurant around the corner and found that he had sold our information to other restaurants, how would we have felt? The reason we didn't mind telling him what we liked and disliked was because it always gave us a better meal and a better experience. And that, in turn, created value for him as an owner.

I think that's what the consumer wants from their online experiences as well. They want to see value from the information they give up. They want to know that if they give us something, they'll get something back. They want a place "where everyone knows your name." We need to create that place and do it pretty quickly.

There are two ways for us to create a value for the consumer. I guess the simplest way would be to cut the consumer in on the value of the information they give to us. Giving them great strike prices on stock would certainly entice the consumers to share themselves with us.

Of course, the better way would be to figure out how to put Sam Malone or Sam Drucker into every web site. To make sure that the consumer is the one who benefits from the giving of information, not us. Our benefit should come from the experiences that we create for the consumer, not from a quick sale of their information.

Consumers all want their experiences to be authentic and that's why my wife & I liked our Italian restaurant. And that's why we wouldn't want to walk into another restaurant that had received information from ours and acted like we were old friends. It would not be an authentic experience! And neither is getting e-mails and ad-specific banners. We're all consumers ourselves, we should know better.

Now, we are the creative industry, so perhaps we could at least come up with some better terms! I mean, can't we make 'data mining' at least sound warm and fuzzy? At least that would buy us some time while we wait to see whether or not either of the Sam¹s is available for our sites!

The Real Privacy Issue

Come Out and Play 2012

Yes, it's that time of year, the annual Come Out & Play festival in NYC. Once again returning to Governor's Island on Saturday, this yera's events also adds a Friday evening program at the South Street Seaport. As always, there are lots of cool games for all ages and thanks to being at Governor's Island, I think there will be more families again. Sydney & I had lots of fun last year (sadly, she's away at camp this year) and I'm sure this year will be no different.

I'm particularly excited to have helped the AT&T Research team bring their GeoGames to Come out & Play this year.

In the simplest game, players move in the real world (RW) while leaving an ever growing tail of walls in the virtual world (VW). They must not crash into or cross the VW walls created either by themselves or others. The winner is the player who lasts the longest without crashing. Think the motocycle battle from Tron, but played for real and with you being the motorcycle!

There's a really full line up of games this year (it grows every year) and this year Come Out & Play will feature three main events, each with their own distintive games and flavor.

• On Friday July 13, Come Out & Play After Dark turns @Seaport and the surrounding streets into a twilight playground.
• Then on July 14, Come Out & Play Field Day returns to Governors Island for another day of wild new field games.
• Also on July 14, Come Out & Play Family Field Day brings fun and games for the whole family, with a mini-festival of family-friendly games organized by ESI Design, one of the world’s foremost experience design firms.

Hit the links below for additional information and make plans to Come Out & Play!

Come Out & Play

AT&T Research GeoGames

Come on, how do you not want to play games like these and many others! See you Friday or Saturday!

Hack Manhattan! has unleashed Brain Bats—a bigger, awesomer version of the classic pong video game on a giant 6 foot by 8 foot display, controlled by players’ minds. Participants interact with the installation through our NeuroSky MindWave headsets. These devices monitor brainwave activity, which we then channel to pit the players against our artificially intelligent Pong opponent.

An import-export business mogul has vanished and foul play is suspected. Take on the role of a cop, private investigator, or underworld hoodlum, and solve the mystery. Unreliable characters and confounding puzzles threaten to stump you at every turn. Do you work with other players to piece together what happened? Or do you frame things in your own best interest?

Grab your friends and dim the lights. Graveyard Snuggle will have you bending your bodies and entangling your limbs with ghoulish delight.

A lonely skeleton awaits, and he’s dying to play with you. Obey each of the skeleton’s commands by placing one of your bones on another player’s bone. But creep cautiously! Moving too suddenly would be a grave mistake.

The skeleton loves to put players in impossible situations, so use your imagination! You’ll know when you’re moving too quickly if you hear the skeleton’s bones shaking.

The battle is on! The kingdom's of Red and Blue have been annoying each other for years - and they've just declared war! The reason? I heard that a King of Red crashed the King of Blue's birthday party and stole his birthday cupcake! This means war! At the beginning of the game, players are dealt cards with numbers on them. Based on the card's color, red or blue, players are split into kingdoms. Some cards even give players special powers! Then, players must walk or jog to tag their opponents! Once tagged, on the count of three they show their cards, the higher numbered card wins the battle! Unless, of course, one of those players is a bomb! Do you have what it takes to defeat the opponent...and get back your king's cupcake?

The Vendor Relationships in Real Life

Came across this on my old blog from 2009 and it's still pretty funny. And sadly, still pretty true!

I'm Still Asking - Do we Really Want to be Friends with Brands?

Yep, I've been asking this question for a while and some recent posts/Twitter conversations stirred it up again for me. Do we really want to be friends with a brand?

Without a doubt, there are brands that we maintain more of a relationship then we do with others, but in most cases, here's what I think we want from brands:

• That they deliver. Tell me you're going to do something, I expect you to do it.
• That they listen when I have a problem. I don't want you to listen to me 24/7, but when I have a problem and reach out, I expect to hear from you within a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable depends, of course, on what my issue is, I don't actually think brands need to respond in real time to every comment someone makes. As a side note, I had some serious issues with United airlines a few weeks back and I'm still waiting to hear from their Twitter team.
• That they give me deals. My guess is that a vast majority of people who follow brands on Twitter or like them on FB do so mainly to get deals.

As I said some time ago, SM in business isn't really about friendship, it's about business. We wrap SM up in the language of friendship, but more often then not, it's about generating business. If you're following more then a few hundred people, do you really have a relationship with them? Or are these new tools just another distribution channel to get our information out? Look at how many companies still use Twitter or FB as a one-way communication tool, not And BTW, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's OK to conduct business, that's what businesses do.

But, if you're going to talk about relationships, then you need to talk about how relationships really get made. We need to really define what business friendship means. Autoresponders don't work in relationship. Hiring someone else to speak for you doesn't work in a relationship (except for Cyrano de Bergerac and that worked for the wrong person!). And honestly, you can't be friends with millions of people.

So, maybe it's time to put this entire social discussion to bed. There are lots of great companies, big and small, that people love and admire. And people liked them long before we had this whole social thing going on. They made great products. They delivered on their promises. They took care of me when I had a problem. They rewarded me for my loyalty. Companies doing that aren't social companies. They're smart companies.

Are We Overhyping this Whole Tribe Thing

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

My Social Media Blog Posts

How Lloyds Coffee House Became Lloyds of London

Another oldie from my original blog!

The internet is a great learning tool and you can really find some great information out there. I was reading through posts on the Re-Imagine discussion boards and came across one that was posted by a Paul Hanson:

The Economist had a wonderful article on the history of coffee shops a few weeks ago. In the 18th and 19th centuries they were amazing places. Many shops became known for the types of customers who visited. i.e. the subject of discussion was different in each shop. One shop was known for scientific arguments (in one case demonstrating dissections - not sure about health and safety here!) another become so well known for hosting insurance deals that it became Lloyds of London one of the largest insurance organizations in the world. In other words the coffee shops were the information hubs of the day the proprietors often published their own newsletters for customers - they were more than coffee shops. In fact the shop names (brands) were so well known that one newspaper named it's subject headings after the coffee shops that specialized in that subject.

I was completely fascinated by this posting and, as someone who talks about Starbuck's all the time, I hopped online, went to Vivisimo.com and decided to check out his posting. Sure enough, it's true. Lloyd of London really did start in a coffee shop.

I wonder what great businesses are being started in Starbuck's or other coffeehouses today? Are there other places that could become this kind of information hub? In today’s information overload world, think of how powerful it could be! Lloyds of London ne Lloyds Coffee House