Experience Manifesto

reveries - marketing insights and ideas

Best Buy's Boutiques. "We are in the process of reinventing what Best Buy means to its customers and finding new ways to serve diverse customer groups," says Bradbury H. Anderson, Best Buy's ceo, in a Wall Street Journal article by Gary McWilliams and Steven Grey. Translation: Best Buy is targeting women and young men with smaller, more intimate stores that are intended to create a sense of community and turn shoppers into advocates. For women, Best Buy's Studio D stores feature "warm lighting and cozy nooks" resembling "a women's boutique." For young men, Best Buy's Escape stores are all "glass-and-metal" inside, with "the feel of a nightclub."

Both stores were created by ESI Design, esidesign.com, a firm best "known for its work in interactive museums." ESI president Edwin Schlossberg says the idea was to create an environment where "you could expect to bump into friends rather than a place with every single variety of digital camera." Best Buy vp James Damian meanwhile terms the big idea as "community-centric" retailing, or the notion of "neighborhood stores that are closely tied to the interests and activities of area residents. He comments: "If we could build a network where our customers become evangelists, or become our sales force, what could that mean in terms of loyalty? We think that's absolutely huge." Studio D also emphasizes "how-to" classes on things like digital scrapbooking and special services, "such as printing large-format photos ... or creating a family calendar ... It also charges $40 for individual consultations.

Such activities can lead to customers inviting friends into the store to attend classes together, view a neighbor's photo exhibit or settle a debate on technology." Escape, meanwhile, "has a hulking Lincoln Navigator that can ferry customers to or from Wrigley Field ... and to clubs and parties." So far, the boutiques are less profitable than big-boxes, but ceo Anderson says right now the emphasis is on learning -- and some of that "has already helped shape marketing to women and young men at Best Buy stores." Best Buy's new boutiques would seem be the flipside of the retailer's controversial strategy of "shunning the 20 percent of customers who cost it money." That strategy also seems to be working: "In the quarter ended Feb. 26, sales at stores embracing the new strategy rose 8.4 percent compared with a gain of just 2.3 percent at existing stores."

Link: reveries - marketing insights and ideas.

When Good Brands go Bad

So, a few months back, we left Chase Manhattan to become customers of Commerce Bank, America's most convenient bank. We do love that they're open 7 days/week. It's really nice to have the phones answered by a real person, rather then the usual voicemail hell. We've enjoyed them a great deal, as banks go!

So, today, I went in to make a deposit and, as usual, I didn't have my account number with me. So, I kinda' filled out the deposit slip and took it up to the teller, a very nice woman named Cindy. I gave her my bank card and told her that I didn't know my account number. I figured they would just punch in the number on my card to find my account number like they always do. No such luck. Thanks to a new system that they have, since I opened the account in another zone, they could no longer look up my account info.

No, I had to go wait in line to have a CSR (customer service rep, I'm guessing) look up my account info. Since it seemed to be a pretty long wait, I decided to call my wife and see if she had my account number. She's really good at this sort of thing! She didn't, but she went online and was able to get the account info. So, I was able to call my wife, have her go online and get the account info, but the teller couldn't do that for me?

Wasn't a very convenient experience, if you ask me!

Entertainment Technology Center Final Presentations

Had a chance to visit the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU with my four year old daughter to see their final projects last week. They really do some very cool work down there! One of the most interesting was an online game called Rumor Mill, where you play a teenaged girl trying to achieve the right status in high school. They also created a robot named Quasi, who is going to be the mascot for the upcoming Kid's Worlds Fair in Orlando.

The best thing about the ETC program is that they really do an excellent job at bringing technologists and storytellers together. Here's a little description from the ETC web site:

The phrase "entertainment technology" refers to a very real world of entertainment experiences made possible by the advent of primarily computer-mediated digital technologies. The term requires an elastic and fluid definition, required in large part by advances in technology that are making ever-new entertainment experiences and venues possible. What was meant by the phrase entertainment technology as recently as a year ago requires re-definition in light of recent developments on both technology and entertainment fronts.

True to its vanguard and visionary nature, Carnegie Mellon University is the only university in the country to offer a Masters of Entertainment Technology degree (MET).

This is not a Master of Science nor a Master of Arts or Fine Arts degree—rather a unique, specialized degree program in the interdisciplinary field of entertainment technology. Your diploma will say; Master of Entertainment Technology. The MET is considered a professional, terminal degree. It is the academic pinnacle of studies in this field, thus having greater significance than the M.A. or M.S., and the equivalent academic weight of the M.F.A. and/or M.B.A. degree.

We go down several times per year, so please let me know if you ever want to join us for one of our visits!

Wired News: Podcasting Killed the Radio Star

Podcasting will soon break out of the "pod" and onto the public airwaves.

The world's first all-podcast radio station will be launched on May 16 by Infinity Broadcasting, the radio division of Viacom.

Infinity plans to convert San Francisco's 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio.

Link: Wired News: Podcasting Killed the Radio Star.

Popai North America | POPAI's Retail Marketing Industry Calendar

Just a reminder that we will be hosting an upcoming POPAI University here on May 5th. Not only will you get a chance to see our new offices, but you can join POPAI for a fun filled day at the Lab and take one of our great experience walking tours!

How are consumers choosing which products or services to use if they are all basically the same?

The answer lies in an individual’s perceived value of a product, which can be significantly impacted by creating compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences. On May 5, 2005, the Brand Experience Lab opens its doors to help retail marketers understand the impact a branded retail experience can have and discuss the tools to make it a reality in-store.

Link: Popai North America | POPAI's Retail Marketing Industry Calendar.

MiT4: the work of stories

Just ran across this upcoming event and it looks like a very cool agenda. I am going to try and get up for at least part of it!

The fourth Media in Transition conference will explore storytelling as a cultural practice, a social and political activity as well as an art form.

Some of the topics include:

Migratory Narratives: Why Some Stories Replicate Across Media, Cultures, Historical Eras

New Media Projects: Demos from the Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies

Children, Homes, Families

Troubadours in New Times: Youth De/Re/construct Stock Stories through Media

Stories of Surveillance: Las Vegas and the Interplay Between Society of Surveillance and Society of Spectacle

Locating Story

Memories through Multimedia: Documenting our Lives

Fandom@net: Changing Relationship between Media Consumers and Producers

Link: MiT4: the work of stories.

DenverPost.com - BUSINESS

Yet another example of a company using "experience" to create a point of differentiation in the marketplace. Check out our earlier post below about Whole Foods and how they have doubled the industry average for per square foot income.

Colorado's No. 2 grocer is aiming to attract more customers with a new store format aimed at playing up its produce, bakery and prepared-food offerings.

It's designed to appeal to consumers' time-stressed lifestyles and appetites for organic food.

After testing a handful of so-called "lifestyle stores," Safeway Denver division leaders plan to begin converting all 144 stores to the new model at a rate of 10 to 20 each year.

"No store is immune from becoming a lifestyle store," said Scott Grimmett, Safeway's Denver division president.

But some analysts say Safeway is late to catch an industrywide trend, and at least one questions whether the new format is the fix the company needs.

"They're a little late to the party," said George Whalin, president of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif. Other grocers such as Whole Foods have already mastered the concept as a way of fending off competition from discounters like Wal-Mart and Costco, who are eating away at their market share.

Nationally, Safeway is pumping $100 million into a brand repositioning campaign that touts the stores' new emphasis. Featuring the tag line "Ingredients for Life," the campaign debuted in newspaper advertising and in-store materials this week.

Lifestyle stores feature softer lighting, wood floors, expanded produce and floral sections, gourmet bakeries and ready-to-eat meal options that include an olive bar, sushi bar, European cheese table and a full-service meat counter. "It's almost like going back to the forties or fifties," Grimmett said of the meat-cutting counter. "We are starting to find folks prefer that."

The new stores sell 85 to 120 varieties of organic produce compared with 35 to 50 in traditional Safeway stores. Store displays are designed to prompt meal ideas, often featuring cookbooks, kitchen items and ingredients for a recipe, all on the same rack.

The new stores also bulk up their selection of prepared food and include a carving station that offers main courses and side dishes during the dinner hour.

"Food service is one of the biggest trends in the industry. Schedules are so busy, people need help with meal preparation," Grimmett said.

The question remains whether the company's focus on design will help it win more customers.

Safeway holds a 22 percent share of the Denver-area grocery market and a 20.7 percent share of the statewide market, according to research published in March by the Shelby Report of the Southwest. Market leader King Soopers had a 40.3 percent of the Denver market and 35.6 percent of the Colorado market.

Both chains saw their market shares dip slightly from the previous three-month period, while No. 3 player Wal-Mart increased its share by about 2 percentage points in Denver and statewide.

Grimmett said stores experience "a substantial increase in sales" following their conversion to lifestyle stores, although he declined to specify how large an increase.

One industry expert says the idea is uninspired and unfocused. "It's like they're emulating other companies, but they don't have a clear vision," said Kevin Coupe, founder and editor of MorningNewsBeat.com, a Darien, Conn.-based website for the food retailing and manufacturing business.

"If Safeway really wants to capture any kind of retailing magic, they have to start thinking like marketers instead of like merchandisers and accountants," he said. "They have to have the courage to be really innovative instead of just emulating what they think other people have been successful doing."

Link: DenverPost.com - BUSINESS.

Link: Experience Manifesto: USATODAY.com - A whole new ballgame in grocery shopping.

Mass Loses its Appeal

Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal Television Group, did utter, "I don't know why Brian Williams isn't blogging right now," at Yahoo!'s New York Media Summit this week.

"I can fix that," quipped Lloyd Braun, former chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group, now chief of Yahoo! Media Group.

But Zucker didn't say Williams (or Katie Couric) would blog, or should blog, or might blog, as was widely reported. He said he'd check in with his news division. I know. I was there. And as a former TV marketing executive, I shudder at the notion of exorbitantly compensated news readers "blogging" by executive fiat (imagine the new job title: Ghost Blogger). Still, it's no surprise the mass media are becoming interested in the micro media.

I spent this week listening to a select handful of world-class advertisers, agencies, and executives from both online and television discuss how broadband is changing consumer habits and expectations and subsequently altering the nature of advertising. What I'm hearing couldn't be clearer: the big brand advertisers, almost as one, are shrugging off "mass" as antiquated, unattractive, untargeted, and immeasurable.

Or, as Daimler Chrysler's refreshingly blunt Director of Communications Julie Roehm put it, "TV tells you nothing about what you're doing for shareholder value."

Link: Mass Loses its Appeal.

CUSTOMER-MADE| An emerging consumer trend and related new business ideas

Some great examples from Trendwatching of the "Customer Made" trend that they have been tracking.

Marketing has finally become a conversation. Not, in most cases, as was intended, BETWEEN corporations and consumers (that would make too much sense), but rather a global conversation involving millions of consumers ABOUT corporations. On sites like Planetfeedback.com, thecomplaintstation.com, Epinions, About.com, on hundreds of thousands of blogs, community sites, forums, viral emails, bulletin boards, and what have you, consumers relentlessly exchange views, complaints, opinions and comments about products and services, about brands, about companies, about YOUR company.

Why now? Because they finally can. For decades, consumers have been saving up their insights and rants about the stuff they consume, simply because there were no adequate means to interact with companies, or with other consumers for that matter. No longer. These fickle, wired, empowered, informed, opinionated and experienced holders of a MC (Master in Consumerism) are getting used to 'having it their way', in ANY way imaginable, which includes wanting to have a direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them.

It certainly helps that these same consumers are also part of GENERATION C: they're creative and increasingly have access to professional hardware, software, and online distribution channels to show (and dictate) companies what it is they expect from them, using text, sound, picture and video in ever more powerful ways.

Sure, some companies ARE now engaging creative customers in new ways. Recently, brands like Coors Light and Mercedes Benz invited customers to co-create advertising campaigns, with Mercedes encouraging proud owners of a Benz to submit snapshots of themselves next to their automotive objects of desire. And Mazda and Conde Nast have just partnered to create a similar contest whereby contestants can submit photos representative of their interpretation of Mazda's "Zoom-Zoom" slogan. (Thanks, Adrants.com!)

These companies are clearly aware that tapping into the collective intellectual capital of their customers yields great creative and 'real' content. However, let's not make the mistake to think that in the end these conversations will all be about communications and branding: how about extending this cooperation with consumers to virtually everything a corporation does, by making the customer an integral part of ALL creative and creational processes?

TRENDWATCHING.COM has dubbed the latter "CUSTOMER-MADE": the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed. The CUSTOMER-MADE trend has been slowly building over the last five years, but with the current onslaught of consumer activism and the rapid rise of GENERATION C, it finally seems ready for its big moment in the limelight, where TRENDWATCHING.COM expects it to stay for many years to come. It doesn't hurt that Management Guru C.K. Prahalad recently published 'The Future of Competition' an insightful and highly recommended book on co-creation, which prompted us to move CUSTOMER-MADE to the top of our emerging trends list!

Mind you, CUSTOMER-MADE is NOT plain feedback, it's not Do-It-Yourself, it's not customization, it's not even personalization, as all of these happen after companies have decided what the basics are, which products and services and experiences they're willing to hand over to consumers, who can then (at best) modify certain elements, change a color, replace a cover. That's still pretty much a one-way conversation, business as usual.

So what DOES qualify as CUSTOMER-MADE? Check out the hands-on examples below; a random yet varied overview of CUSTOMER-MADE initiatives, both 'corporate' initiatives and grassroots movements, which should get you going.

Link: CUSTOMER-MADE| An emerging consumer trend and related new business ideas.

The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > Advertising: On Broadway, Ads Now Get to Play Cameo Roles

In 1966, when the Neil Simon musical "Sweet Charity" opened on Broadway, a waiter in one scene asked a customer, "A double Scotch, again, sir?" In the revival, soon to open at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, the waiter asks, "Gran Centenario, the tequila?"

Madison Avenue has come to Broadway.

Product placement and endorsement deals have long been staples in television shows, movies and radio programs and even, more recently, on video games. But they have been rare on Broadway. Now, advertisers, casting about for new ways to attract increasingly distracted consumers, have turned their attention to the theater world. And producers, always looking for extra cash to offset rising costs, are receptive."

Commerce and art always merge, unless it's some hermit who takes his creative ability into a cave," said Barry Weissler, who is producing the revival of "Sweet Charity" with his wife, Fran. "Picasso was a brilliant artist who was extremely commercial. He understood how to sell and market his work. And it kept his prices up.""

Are we so pure that we can't accept a commercial adjunct to what we create?" Mr. Weissler asked rhetorically. "I don't think so."

In addition to the deal that Gran Centenario has with "Sweet Charity," which is now in previews and is scheduled to open May 4, the Hormel Foods Corporation, which makes Spam canned meat, has endorsed the musical "Monty Python's Spamalot." "Spam hasn't gotten this much attention since World War II," said Nancy Coyne, chief executive at Serino Coyne, an ad agency in New York that worked on the "Spamalot" deals. Yahoo also has a deal with "Spamalot."

Hilton Hotels and Resorts is sponsoring the musical "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," playing, not coincidentally, at the Hilton Theater. Turtle Wax is endorsing the musical "Good Vibrations," which closes Sunday. And Visa sponsored the national tour of the musical "Movin' Out."

The deals are for amounts estimated to range from $500,000 to more than $1 million, depending on how long they last and how extensive they are. But just as there are critics of shows, there are critics of branding Broadway, who worry about blurring the line between art and commerce.

"It's sad to see Broadway become part of the marketing machinery, turning into another vehicle to help marketers bombard us with ads," said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Ore., that seeks to stem what its members consider the creeping commercialization of American culture.

Madison Avenue, needless to say, has a different perspective.

Broadway is "an uncluttered environment where you don't have to share the spotlight as on television or in the movies," said Ms. Coyne, whose agency, owned by the Omnicom Group, specializes in theatrical marketing."

And it's a more memorable experience because it's live," she added. "At 8 o'clock, the curtain goes up, and at 10:30, it goes down. And if you weren't there, you missed it."

Most of the details would not raise eyebrows, like the two drinks created by Gran Centenario to salute the show being sold in the Hirschfeld lobby and bars near the theater, and sponsorship of cast parties. In a dance number, crates bearing the brand logo appear onstage, and print ads call the brand, which has an angel in its logo, "Broadway's newest angel." In the theater world, of course, an angel is an investor.

The reference to Gran Centenario in the revised script is "elegant, organic, not forced," said Carlos Arana, managing director in New York for Jose Cuervo International, which makes Gran Centenario.

Mr. Arana and Mr. Weissler said that Mr. Simon, whose approval was necessary to rewrite the line, agreed to the change. A representative for Mr. Simon said yesterday that he could not be reached for comment.

Until now, advertisers have not often sought out Broadway for branded entertainment deals because the theater business is smaller than the entertainment industries they typically work with. And because theater is more entrepreneurial in nature, it is often harder to make deals there than with media conglomerates.

Previous Broadway deals were limited to traditional tactics, like placing products onstage in exchange for acknowledgements in tiny type under the "Credits" section in the back pages of Playbill. And if, say, Frank Loesser mentioned Vitalis and Barbasol in "Guys and Dolls," it was for purposes of verisimilitude, not because the makers paid their way into the song.

Elaborate branded entertainment deals were once rare on Broadway. One, in 1994, was a promotion by the producers of the revival of "Damn Yankees" and the maker of Topps baseball cards, which included adding to the script a scene featuring oversize cards bearing the likeness of the hero, Joe Hardy, and selling a line of "Damn Yankees" trading cards in the theater lobby. And the production of "La Boheme" that played on Broadway in 2002 featured brands like Piper-Heidsieck Champagne and Montblanc pens onstage.

Click on the link below to read the full article.

Link: The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > Advertising: On Broadway, Ads Now Get to Play Cameo Roles.