Experience Manifesto

Cape Cod Bound

Sydney & I are taking a daddy & daughter trip to Cape Cod for a long weekend! Of course, my wife also gets a long weekend free from us too! We're spending the weekend with four other families and all four guys have been friends since the 6th grade, so we really look forward to it.

Next week, we'll be blogging live from SIGGRAPH, so look for those updates starting on Wednesday. I'll also be making a presentation at the Experience Design program at Harvard on Friday and I'll be blogging from there as well.

Hope that you're all enjoying the weekend!

StorefrontBacktalk - Self-Checkout Killing Impulse Items

Interesting new report on one negative impact of self-service checkout stations. And I certainly agree that you do spend more time concentrating on the actual checkout process, at least I know that I do. I wonder what impact this will have on self-service roll out.

In what's been called the self-checkout diet plan, retailers are learning the unintended consequences of self-checkout systems, as they see sales of candy, Hollywood tabloids, batteries and other checkout lane impulse items plummet.A very small part of the answer for this phenomena is that retailers are typically opting to not put such impulse items next to self-checkout systems, said Greg Buzek, president of the IHL retail consulting firm, which has just completed a self-checkout study. The core of the problem is simply the way consumers interact with self-checkout systems. Typically, they have to pay much more attention to choosing a lane and to watching their products and scanning them, thereby leaving almost no time for browsing magazines or otherwise being tempted.

Link: StorefrontBacktalk - Self-Checkout Killing Impulse Items.

Subway Podcasts

Heading to the subway to go home and this catches my eye. Podcasts about the NYC subway system! You can find out about service announcements, construction schedules and my favorite, passenger etiquette! Sure, our actual subway system is still using parts from like the 1930's and we seem to have a problem keeping the electricity running, but damn, we're podcasting passenger etiquette! I just wonder if they used the same sound system they use in the subways so that everything sounds like the teacher from the old, Charlie Brown cartoons!

RED HERRING | Massive Drives Interactive Ads

Once again, smart companies are using new technology to deliver the same old stuff!

Moving to grab a bigger part of the in-game ad market, Microsoft’s Massive unit introduced its latest offering Monday—interactive ads.  

The majority of in-game advertisements have, until this point, mirrored static real-world approaches like billboards, vending machines, or even product placement.
 
Interactive ads are the latest move by advertisers interested in finding ways to make a stronger connection with target audiences. Video game players are rapidly becoming a lucrative market.
 
The first advertiser to use the new interactive ad is automotive giant Toyota, whose 2007 Yaris sedan will be featured in the massively multiplayer game Anarchy Online, published by Funcom.
 
According to Massive spokesperson Amy Janzen, gamers can click on billboards featuring the Yaris. As they do so, the ads reveal more information about the car. (Emphasis mine)

Now, not only does it seem like a lame use of technology when they could be doing something way cool, but here's a description of the game from the Anarchy Online web site:

Step almost 30,000 years into the future, to an age where common surgical implants and microscopic nano-bots can relieve most forms of human suffering... or transform even a child into a weapon of destructive force.

On the planet of Rubi-Ka, a battle rages between the haves and have-nots in a time when the clans seek liberation from the all-powerful Omni-Tek corporation in the name of justice, voluntarily if possible; from the barrel of a gun if necessary. The leaders of both sides are desperately seeking a solution that can stop the violence ravaging the planet, against a backdrop of betrayal, military raids and conniving political games, cyborg assassins and modified humans.

You are 30.000 years into the future. You're in the age... of Anarchy Online.

So, you're on this planet trying to stop an evil corporation...you're involved in intrigue, political battles and, oh yea, a full scale war. And I'm going to stop to see an ad for Toyota??? An ad, BTW, that doesn't give me anything helpful to the game I'm playing!

You know, use the billboard to give me something that helps in the game. A secret getaway car after I've shot someone (I may be an assassin, after all!) or some secret Omni-Tek information. Just bring me something that has value to the experience I'm having! Don't just deliver your advertising message.

I don't get how with all of the creative power of Microsoft available to them, this is the best they could do. Aren't they reading anything about the changes in the advertising industry. You know, the whole two-way communication thing. The whole bring value to your audience, don't just deliver you message thing. Come on folks, let's try to do better for our audience!

Link: RED HERRING | Massive Drives Interactive Ads.

Are Social Sites this Centuries Penny Press?

I decided to take the plunge this weekend and spend a great deal of time at Youtube.com. The NY Post recently wrote how youtube could now be worth $1 billion, finally making it worthy of a plan by Dr. Evil.

So, I've spent more hours then I probably should watching videos on the site. I've looked at the professional, the amateur and, well, the less then amateur. I've had some occasional laughs and even a guffaw or two; I've been occasionally titillated and I even listened to the recording of the Howard Stern Show on 9-11.

But mainly, I saw a lot of boring stuff that I would barely watch again and probably wouldn't have watched in the first place if I weren’t trying to learn more about youtube. I mean, my life can be pretty boring on its own and I wouldn't want to put any more time into watching snippets of other people's boring lives.

There was a lot of good commercial quality content on the site and, as I said, some of it can be very entertaining. And one thing is very cool about sites like this. It does take distribution control away from a small group of media companies. Now anyone has a place to showcase his or her talents. That's way cool for the really talented folks out there stuck without a way to show them. And I have a theatre degree, so I know how hard it is to make a living in that field. But it is good to remember that not everyone has talent!

And, since everything old is new again, the whole youtube phenomenon reminds me of the stories from the early days of the printing press and the Penny Press here in the US 100+ years ago.

As was the case today, before the printing press, content was controlled by a very small group of people. People could only read what was given to them to read and these edits were made to help people understand the complex narratives -- to help people keep under control.

Then Gutenberg created the printing press and all of that changed. Now content could be distributed by a larger group of people and that meant new content could find an audience. As we've written about in the past (Experience Manifesto: Lloyds of London ne Lloyds Coffee House), the coffee houses in London in the 1600 and 1700's all used to print their own newsletter, directed to its specific audience. So a coffeehouse that served doctors would print a newsletter about the medical field. In fact, Lloyd's of London, the large insurance company, was started at Lloyd's coffeehouse because that's where many people in the shipping industry went for coffee.

When the Penny Press hit the US in the 1800's, there were 500+ being printed in their heyday. They were fast & cheap to print and people printed a lot of them. According to Historic Pages history of newspaper:

By 1814 there were 346 newspapers. The 1850 census catalogued 2,526 titles. An astounding 11,314 different papers were recorded in the 1880 census.

And, if I had to make a guess, there were some good things being printed, but there were also some mediocre things printed and I would even guess there were lots of bad things printed. And I'm not talking bad like you didn't agree with their POV; I mean bad like just poorly written.

And, over time, the bad ones died off and we were once again back to a relatively small group who distributed the content for us.

The same thing happened with blogs. There are just so many out there and many of them are either mundane or poorly written and there's a lot that are both. And eventually we find a small group that we like and that's what we read.

It seems like there's a cycle that always occurs. It's like your freshman year away. You go from a restricted world to one with (seemingly) complete freedom and you just do way more Jell-O shots then you know you should. Eventually, you calm down, (although it's still OK to have Jell-O shots every now & then) and settle into a routine.

And that's the cycle the all of the sites like youtube and myspace will go through. At first, lots of people will spend lots of time on these sites. And eventually, they'll slow down. It's the circle of life!

The key for the advertising and media companies to not pretend these new channels don't exist. But it's also to understand that they're not your saviors either. Sure, I had fun watching clips of Howard Stern, but it didn't make me want to buy his on demand show.

We say a lot here that it's much easier to get people to watch this new content then it is to engage people and certainly both need to happen.

But before you jump in and declare these sites as your salvation, make sure you look at the cycle and understand how to play the cycle we’re in. And don’t bet the farm on this being your future. It’ll change again before you know it.

As always, I welcome your comments and thoughts! I also posted portions of this on Soflow and you can follow the conversation there as well.

Link: Soflow - View Forum - Are Social Sites the New Penny Press? - Version 1.3.1.

Changing Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is trying very hard these days to reinvent themselves as something cool and hip. They're creating different kinds of stores and, like many other retailers, developing consumer-centric stores. According to DDI, those five different types include suburban affluent, rural, baby boomer, urban/multicultural and Hispanic. They seem to have the rural down right now, but it will sure be a very different road as they to develop concepts to the suburban affluent, baby boomer and urban audiences.

And they've been rolling out a variety of new store designs, including a new upscale store in Plano, TX. According to DDI, What you will find is large-format departmental wayfinding signage and graphics, faux wood flooring in the apparel and home departments, curved gondolas in the grocery section—even a full organic foods section and gourmet wine selection. It will be interesting to see if people will actually go to Wal-Mart for organic food and gourmet wine. I'm trying to picture my friends going there and it's not working for me. Of course, I'm not sure that people would have expected Costco to become a store where you could buy good wine and they've made it work.

Right now, one of their most talked about strategies has been their entrance into the online social space with Wal-Mart - The HUB (School Your Way). They want to become the next MySpace, but they seem to be a long way off. Right now, it seems that they have several thousand members, but many of the pages I looked at seemed empty. According to Wikipedia, MySpace currently has just over 95 million members and gets about 500,000 new members each week. And if you do a google search on Wal-Mart + myspace, you get lots of negative posts about this effort.

So, it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. According to a recent Wall Street Journal headline (as reported in an NRF brief), Wal-Mart Stores' push to rebrand itself as more of a lifestyle retailer and remodel 1,800 stores, or roughly half of its U.S. portfolio, by mid-2007, is dragging down its sales growth, say analysts. Will they rebound or will they just alienate their current audience while trying to become something they're really not -- hip & cool.

I remember when Wal-Mart used to be about "Buying American." Now I've read a great deal about that program that seems to suggest that they weren't really doing as much as they promoted they were doing, but it could be a great position if they really really did it. Bring back local manufacturers and build employment in the towns they serve.

But whatever they do, it needs to be authentic to who they are and relevant to their audience. Being shopping for cheap are not going to Wal-Mart for gourmet wines. And despite what Trader Joe's has been able to do with Two Buck Chuck, I don't they'll be able to make that transition for quite some time.

I've included links below to a variety of stories about Wal-Mart and what they're doing. I welcome your comments and thoughts about their efforts!

Link: Wal-Mart's new face

Link: Wal-Mart Opens Multilevel Store

Link: Wal-Mart to Tailor Store Design to Five Shopper Segments

Link: Advertising Age - Wal-Mart Tries to Be MySpace. Seriously

Link: Wal-Mart - The HUB (School Your Way)

On Advertising: Just for men - A dirty story - Business - International Herald Tribune

I'm not sure that this one will actually work, but I do admire their desire to experiment. They are right -- today it is about engaging the consumer -- but I'm not sure that this tactic will work for this audience. Based on the very brief description of the book in the article, I'm not sure guys will want to buy it, it certainly didn't strike me as being that interesting. Now if Bond, James Bond, started using Electrolux appliances, that might work!

Young men may hate housekeeping, but at least some of them might be persuaded to read. That is the hope behind an unusual new marketing initiative from Electrolux, the Swedish appliance maker. 

The company, which also owns brands like AEG, Zanussi, Eureka and Frigidaire, has a problem. More and more households are headed by single men. But forget what you might have heard about metrosexuals; apparently, few of these guys are excited by the prospect of shopping for dishwashers, vacuum cleaners or ovens. 

Many of them ignore television advertising, too. So, to try to connect with domestically challenged young men, Electrolux commissioned and published a novel - a pot-boiler, as it were, about cooking and cleaning. 

Those are the gripping themes of "Men in Aprons," the story of a twentysomething Londoner named Dan who is "the envy of his friends" but is lost when it comes to laundry. The 171-page book, written by Alex Mattis, a 30-year-old (female) journalist in London, went on sale last week on the Electrolux Web site in Britain. 

"Men in Aprons" is only the latest example of a new approach to brand communications in which companies seek to embed their names or messages in the story lines of television shows, films, video games, music and now even books. Marketers see this as a way of reaching consumers who are increasingly blasé about traditional advertising, or who even prefer to skip it entirely. 

"You can't tell the consumer what to do anymore," said Ulrich Gartner, a spokesman for Electrolux, repeating an oft-sounded lament among brand owners. "It's all about engaging with them."

Link: On Advertising: Just for men - A dirty story - Business - International Herald Tribune.

U.S. Trendsetters Go On Strike | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

We used to be in the same building with The Onion, so try to still keep up with my Onion reading! And this article was really a hoot and definitely struck a chord. Had me laughing out loud on the subway, which at east made sure that I had my own seat. I’ve included some excerpts below, but you should really read the whole thing. And you can almost see it happening!

More than 11,000 trendsetters, tastemakers, movers, and shakers gathered in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood Monday to declare a strike against the broad segment of the American population that they say routinely copies their fashions, musical tastes, and sensibilities. Should the strike persist, experts said, it could bring the pop-cultural life of the nation to a standstill.

Until the public accepts their demands, the strikers vow to wear only gray or blue utilitarian sweatpants or flannel, and refuse to listen to any synthesized music, wear makeup, shop at thrift stores, bake cupcakes, "make the scene," or discuss any potential trends or up-and-coming drugs.

The strikers are calling for public acknowledgment of their contributions as well as a retroactive 10-cent royalty on every trendy item sold since October 1995. This fee, to be paid by consumers for each trend they adopt, would be applied to cultural phenomena as diverse as Japanese toy miniatures and so-called "Strokes" haircuts, the latter actually pioneered by Dayton, OH sandwich-shop employee and Whip-It junkie Jarvis McClung in 1997.

If a collective-bargaining agreement cannot be reached, trendsetters will likely be replaced with scabs. Indeed, some second-rate trends have already begun sprouting up, as aspiring tastemakers—often the same people maligned by the ultrahip as "poseurs"—cross picket lines and attempt to fill the void left by the strike. Many of their ideas, such as adopting chinchillas as pets, are largely recycled, and, while their original innovations, such as wearing top hats and paper shoes, walking with crutches, and referring to friends as "Frankenstein," may seem forced, they could potentially be the only trends available for some time.

"None of my friends know what to do anymore," said 17-year-old Kari Hartley, a Fayetteville, AR high-school student who relies on lower-tier stores like Hot Topic for fashion cues. Already feeling the strike's pinch, Hartley has been wearing the same Von Dutch hat, silk-screened hooded sweatshirt, and "Don't Mess With Texas" beltbuckle—the most recent trends available to her before the strike. While acknowledging that the look is "stale," Hartley said she has little choice. "If this thing doesn't end soon, I might not be able to wear anything."

Link: U.S. Trendsetters Go On Strike | The Onion - America's Finest News Source.

Travels with David -- The Empire State Building

I have family in town, so we decided to go to the Empire State Building. I don't think I've been here in years, so it was kinda' fun to play tourist again! As you might be able to make out in the pictures (yea, I left the real camera at home!), it's still an incredibly popular attraction in New York.

If ever a line needed a pre-show experience, this would be it. Unfortunately, the only pre-show they have seems to be hawking the other attractions in the building. This would be a great time to show people something about how the building was built or put up some video screens and let people e-mail their pictures of their visit to the top. Maybe an exhibit of all of the movies filmed here. They'd be lots of ways to entertain -- and educate -- folks while waiting in the line.

They, like many other attractions, have added an express ticket, that let's you by-pass the lines. Guess they can only sell so many of those tickets, otherwise the lines would still be bad. And you can buy an additional ticket to visit the 102nd story observatory, instead of just going to the 86th floor. That's probably not new, but it's the first time I've seen it.

Never really thought about how having an attraction like this must impact the normal options of an office building. They actually seem to be doing a good job of it, although it wasn't as crowded today as I've seen it.

Just got off on the 80th floor, where we're back in another line waiting for the elevators to take us to the 86th floor. Even Disney didn't have lines this long! The a/c on this floor seems to be out, so it's a little warm up here.

And they have all of the blinds on this floor closed, so you can't see out. I mean, do they think that after already paying and waiting on line for as long as you have to get here, that you'd look out the windows here and not finish your visit to the observation deck??? Seems a tad cheesy, if you ask me.

And once again, we're in a big space with lots of empty walls. There's such a great story to be told here and they really could be doing a much better job and keeping us entertained!

Fun to watch people get off the elevators on this floor and then realize that they still have such a long wait.

All that said, it's still a damn impressive site when you first step out onto the observation deck. First thing Sydney said when she looked out was awesome! And it is. New York is some city from up here. It's quite amazing how big -- and at the same time small -- this city really is.

After doing the observation deck, it was time to get in line and head back down. We took the stairs from 86 to 80 and then waited on line before getting back do the street. More hawking here, this time to buy a picture that they take while you're waiting on line. It actually wasn't a bad picture, but we passed.

With just a few pressed pennies as souvenirs, we ended the visit. Sydney wasn't really that impressed with the visit to the top, I guess at 5 looking out at buildings that she doesn't know isn't really fun. She liked that we could see an airplane flying lower then us and that she could see New Jersey.

In the end, it is what it is. One of the best views of one of the greatest cities in the world. I just wish they told more of the story.

SIGGRAPH 2006

As we get ready for SIGGRAPH 2006, I thought that I would put some of the recap that Noah Keating, our Lab associate (currently getting his Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media at USC) wrote about last year's conference. Later this month, he's going to start previewing some of the experiences that we'll be having at SIGGRAPH '06.

Here at Brand Experience Lab, we’re always excited when Siggraph rolls around, most specifically because of the emerging technologies exhibition. It’s our chance each year to take stock of the most cutting-edge tech developments from research labs and institutions the world over, and it gets our brains working overtime on how to best utilize these in crafting compelling and unique brand stories. Some of these technologies might be world changing, some might be merely “interesting,” but it’s up to us to figure out which and why. Here I will take stock of some of our favorites from this year’s emerging technologies exhibition.

Color-Enhanced Emotion: This is a system that takes video input of someone’s face, uses an algorithm to detect the emotion that the person is expressing, and processes the video to better display that particular emotion on the subject’s face. Imagine walking through the candy bar aisle and seeing a picture of your own face expressing the satisfaction that a snicker’s bar might bring to you. You might consider the calorie hit a little more worth it at that point!

Straw-like User Interface: This ingenious device simulates the feeling of sucking various materials through a straw with the use of pressure differentials and vibrations. A user will place his or her mouth on the disposable straw applicator, choose a material to suck (beer, asparagus, beans, etc...) and pull on the straw until a sound, vibration and pressure release signify that the item has been pulled through. It really works! And quite well, at that – I could almost taste the asparagus as it popped through, or feel the beer suds in my mouth. This is a wonderful technology, and could definitely be used for the creation of some “sweet” multi-sensory experiences that haven’t yet been engaged.

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation aka Remote Control Human: I don’t necessarily think this device should be used by anybody, let alone retail marketers, but it is very interesting nonetheless. Apparently by applying small amounts of current to the bone of the inner ear, the sense of balance can be controlled and manipulated, causing people to lean in certain directions without consciously noticing or deciding to do so. It’s a little disconcerting, slightly nauseating and not altogether pleasant, but as an experiment it’s extremely fascinating.

The Interactive Fog Screen: This is a fantastic invention – a walkthrough touchscreen! A thick bank of fog presents itself as a projection surface, but the addition of ultrasonic and finger tracking open up many interaction possibilities, like drawing, playing games and music, or exploring products. It seems pretty robust, and especially well suited to the retail environment, so we hope to be working with this technology as soon as we can get our hands on it!