Influential Marketing Blog

I Like You, But Not That Way: How Retailers Lose & Win Back Customers

"3D Catalog" is a phrase you will see in a few articles about the retail industry these days. Unfortunately, it's not a cool new interactive augmented reality thing. This is a term that describes the fears of many real life retailers who are afraid of becoming a place where consumers just go to touch and feel products that they will eventually buy from Amazon or another discounted online store. There are plenty of reasons why this is an understandable fear.

Right now the most viewed and popular blog post on Forbes.com is titled "Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business, Gradually." In it, author Larry Downes argues that Best Buy is managing to deliver on none of the things like knowledgeable staff or better showrooms which could make them a destination worth visiting. Instead, he argues, it is a retailer of last resort or a place where you just go to see products that you will eventually buy elsewhere.

Borders Books went into bankruptcy over the past year, and one of the contributing factors was they had more browsers than buyers walking through their stores. This past Black Friday retail season, online sales were a higher overall percentage of consumer spending than ever before - and this has been the trend for the last several years.

The whole situation might remind you of a mismatched relationship, where one person just wants to be friends while the other wants more than that.  Those situations never end well. Best Buy wants to marry your wallet, but instead they are getting dumped after a one night stand. It is a sad story, with some fairly clear reasons for why it happens over and over:

1. There is better interactive product information online - with all of the online product demos, 3D product shots and direct information from manufacturers - you can often get the best information about particular products and the ability to comparison shop online.
2. Online reviews are highly influential - there is a reason that more than 80% of all consumers read online reviews before making purchase decisions. We trust in the opinions of others, even if we don't know them personally - and these online reviews are a huge factor in closing a sale, or losing a customer.
3. Retailers can't match lower prices available online - the most logical and common argument is that you can just get any product for cheaper online because the online retailers have much lower overhead to cover because of not having a physical store.

So how can retailers survive this pressure and avoid becoming nothing more than a real life catalogs fueling the sales of their online rivals? It comes down to understanding the three areas where a real life presence still matters, and trying to sit at the intersection of all three. When I think about the real life stores that I have gone to in order to buy a product that I could have purchased online, it was for one of three reasons:

1. Ease - the store was close to me, or the product was large (like a snow blower) and therefore the online channel was too risky or inconvenient and I went to my local store instead.
2. Relationship - I had a personal relationship with a person at my local store and therefore had built up trust in them and the experience that they offered me.  As a result, I continued to go there despite having other options to purchase online.
3. Expertise - In some cases, you just need to speak to someone who knows what they are talking about. Earlier this year when I went to buy a new tent and sleeping bag for a camping trip with my son, I went into the local store to speak to someone who knew our area and could provide useful advice on what to get.

Until retailers are able to find the right way to focus on combining these three together into an experience worth having and sharing, they will continue to lose out to the speedier and always available retailers online.

2012 Edition: 15 Marketing and Business Trends That Matter

Let me tell you a little secret.  I look forward to putting together an annual trend report the same way that some people look forward to having Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I realize that may sound a bit strange, but ever since I did my first trend recap last year I was hooked.  This year, the process of collecting the trends took all year.  I have a folder on my desk labelled "Trends 2012" and throughout the year I would rip out articles from magazines or printout webpages to save. Last November I started actually writing my trend presentation and finally released it on Slideshare yesterday. 

 

A few things surprised me about the trends this year. Here are a few of the most unexpected things:

1. Only 2 out of 15 trends are based on innovative technology (Trends #10 and #13). Given the prominence of technology in our lives and more and more digital tools, I expected that more of the trends for 2012 would be based entirely on technology innovation. That ended up not being the case as most of the trends focused more on either behaviours or the use of sites and technology that already exist and don't really require much innovation in order to keep growing.
2. Creativity and design are more important than ever. While it would have been too obvious to point this out as a trend on its own, many of the trends that were included in the presentation were highly dependent on encouraging more creativity and delivering great design. Measuring Life, for example, has taken off in part thanks to great product and interface designs. Pointillist Filmmaking or Social Artivism are clearly based on creativity and design. Even Retail Theater, Tagging Reality and Charitable Engagement are all trends that require creative thinking and  strong ability to use design to engage people.
3. People actively seek opportunities to participate, collaborate or experience something. Doing something together came up as a big motivator for many of the trends this year, as Social Loneliness led people to look for more opportunities to have great experiences or be part of something worthwhile. Pointillist Filmmaking, Civic Engagement 2.0 and Retail Theater are all examples where people are seeking the chance to participate in something. Charitable Engagement ChangeSourcing and Co-Curation are other trends where people offer their time and passions to collaborate together on something.

Let me know what you think about these trends with a comment here or on Facebook, or feel free to send me an email at influentialmarketing@gmail.com.  Next week I'll be starting my trend folder to gather stories for 2013 ...

If you would like to get a downloadable version of this presentation, you can find it on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rohitmarketingauthor.

Survive The Modern Believability Crisis: Be Meaningful

Last year when I spoke at a TEDx conference on reinventing marketing, I asked what I thought at the time was a relatively innocent question: "how many people in the audience feel that marketing is adding something positive to the world around them?" Of the few hands that went up, the majority came from people in marketing ... underscoring a gulf that has exponentially multipled in the 16 months since that talk. Today people around the world are launching full occupying demonstrations against big corporate brands and new research points to the US as the only country to see trust in all institutions decline from 2010 to 2011.  The bottom line is we are fully into a modern believability crisis.

And it is not just a crisis for marketing people either. When we live in a world where people become skeptical of everything around them and wary of any type of manipulation, we all lose. Society itself becomes a tougher place to interact with others and survive in. People only consume news they agree with, compromise is seen as surrender and the bickering of politicians becomes just a precursor to a similar toxic dissent which may start to invade the rest of our lives and interactions. 

If this seems like a doomsday scenario, the good news is that this week signs of hope emerged from some very unexpected places:

Though certainly colored by politics, Bill Clinton's new book Back To Work was profiled in yesterday's New York Times. In the review, reporter Michiko Kakutani says that Clinton "serves up a succinct common-sense argument for why America needs a strong national government, why both spending cuts and increased tax revenues are necessary for addressing the debt problem."

Also this week, communications agency Havas Media released a global study which showed that "only 20% of brands have a notable positive impact on our sense of wellbeing and quality of life." In the research which polled 50,000 people in 14 countries, they found that "most people would not care if 70% of brands ceased to exist (and in the US alone this number goes up to 82%)."

In a related point, they found that "nearly 85% of consumers worldwide expect companies to become actively involved in solving these issues (an increase of 15% from 2010)." The underlying message of the research is that companies must find a way to stand for more than just the products they make.  The impact they have on the world around them is becoming increasingly important to increasing customer loyalty.

Today I am speaking and participating in BrandsConf, a conference all about how brands can rediscover their humanity. More than two dozen speakers will share their thoughts in short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes each on how to add more humanity to the way that large organizations communicate. It could not have come at a better time. This idea of more human brands is closely related to why companies matter more to people.  Yes, a big part of it is how you choose to do business in the world and whether it is sustainable and responsible.  The other important piece, however, is the people who represent your brand and the human connection they can offer.

The real battle today isn't one of perception ... but one of meaning. In a sense, this is the big problem I am writing a book about how to solve (Likeonomics) - and one that the many speakers today will likely cover. Ultimately solving it will require a new level of organizational vulnerability and commitment for them to be more human and more honest. Honesty creates trust, and trust leads to us changing the culture of business and our culture itself.

I saw this first hand last week at the Opportunity Nation Summit as well, where business, religious, political and media leaders came together to talk about the importance for all of us to create a nation of opportunity for everyone. For too long, as the summit shared, the zip code you are born in determines our future. That shouldn't be the case.  Business has an important role to play in this revolution ... and it isn't to sit back and let the attacks fly.

In a skeptical world where honesty has become the most unexpected thing of all ... making your brand meaningful to your consumer's life comes first from finding a way to tell the truth when you answer the question of whether you are offering anything positive to the world. Being meaningful is the new secret to creating long term brand value.

Audubon Society Promotes Happy Bird Watching, Not Angry Bird Tossing

Imagine you're the marketing team at the Audubon Society, a group that has been around for nearly a century and your mission for that time has been to promote better man-bird relations -- how would you respond to a internationally addictive game which has been downloaded more than 400 million times that portrays your heroes as "angry" and encourages people to toss them into stuff for prizes?

The question probably isn't a fair one, as I imagine the Audubon Society probably hasn't lost much sleep over how the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game has portrayed birds ... but it does bring birds and the pasttime of "birding" some long overdue attention.

Birding, as I once learned from one of my professors of English who was addicted to the activity, usually involves heading out to the forest and looking through binoculars and cameras with zoom lenses for different types of birds. Once seen, a bird is typically logged into a birding journal or documented via a photograph, and birders spend their time collecting long lists of exotic or rare birds that they have seen (the rarest of which are called "life birds") and compare lists with one another. 

Earlier this month, The Audubon Society launched what is quickly becoming another addictive bird-focused game online called "Birding The Net." Tying into the upcoming Hollywood movie release of The Big Year - an upcoming Hollywood film featuring Steve Martin and Jack Black where characters compete to see the most North American birds in one year - the game is built on Facebook and offers a virtual version of bird watching where participants are challenged to find birds spread across the Internet and collect the most in order to win prizes.  

As David Yarnold, President and CEO of Audubon describes, “birds are the best possible ambassadors for the environment, and this will help people see them in a whole new way. This is about fun – but it’s also about getting more people involved in taking action to protect birds and the planet we share with them. And with this unprecedented use of social media and the web, we’re also making it clear that this is not your grandmother’s Audubon.”

The game, which you can get a taste of on this blog for a week by clicking one of the birds above, will run through November 7th and I predict it will succeed brilliantly as a marketing strategy for Audubon Society. Spending some time looking, it offers at least five good lessons for marketers:

1. Timing/Hollywood Tie-in - With the link to the upcoming Hollywood film, the Audubon Society will get infinitely more eyeballs to this campaign and lots more funding and support. Chances are the beautiful visual design of this campaign was due in no small part to 20th Century Fox’s ability to fund the agency (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) behind this.
2. Recreates A Real Life Experience - The act of surfing online to various sites and hoping to see birds perfectly recreates what the experience of birding in real life is. You never know what you'll see, you are sometimes disappointed, but you get that flash of excitement when you do see a bird and it's one you haven't seen before.
3. Uses Behavioural Economics - When you first register, you have a clean slate of grayed out cards ... which you immediately want to start collecting. "Earning" the first several are easy - you get one just for starting and there are another 3 or 4 easily available on obvious sites like www.audubonguides.com, but then it gets tougher. Once you have started, though, you can't help wanting to collect more.
4. Engagement Through Design - Though this would be hard to prove, my bet is that they will get much higher engagement with this effort as a result of a very strong creative execution. Put simply, the app and individual bird cards are beautifully designed. Looking at them online, you almost wish they would produce them in print too just so you could hold them in your hands. 
5. Built-in Shareability - There is lots of great shareability built into this campaign, from the ability to embed your own birdhouse on your blog or website to leaderboards and sharing through Facebook. The campaign has a strong understanding of why and how people share at its heart and makes it easy to do so. 
6. Bird Personality - A visit to the Twitter account for one of the birds, the Rufous Hummingbird (@RufHummingbird) yields this bio: "Tireless traveler and flower enthusiast on a mission of nectar discovery." All the other bird Twitter accounts feature similar personality and a bit of good natured rivalry between them. It makes it fun to engage with the birds and adds an important element of, well, humanity to the campaign.
7. Curiosity and Discovery - Perhaps the most important element that makes this fun is the fact that you need to make new discoveries of where the birds are, and they have engaged your curiosity to see where they turn up next. It is an essential element of gaming, and one that Angry Birds (coincidentally) makes excellent use of. 

Ultimately, Birding The Net stands is one of the most original uses of social media and gaming I've seen lately to achieve the dual purpose of promoting an upcoming movie as well as reminding people that a pasttime which has been around for centuries can still offer a thrill not only in the virtual world ... but if you shut off the technology and head out into the real world as well. 

Video Introduction To Birding The Net:

What Steve Jobs Really Gave Us

A few weeks ago I was asked an interesting question about what inspires me.  As I thought about my answer, I realized that for me it isn't a person but rather an action that I find most inspirational.  The people around the world who have an idea and decide to do something about it deserve to be celebrated. Entrepreneurship itself is the thing that I find most inspirational. 

Last night as I was watching all the media coverage honoring Steve Jobs and his life, it got me thinking that perhaps his biggest impact on the world wasn't just the products that he helped create, but rather in showing the world just how much people can achieve when they are inspired. Inspiration itself can be like that - a lightning rod that takes an army of smart people and helps them create something real. To me, his power to inspire came down to three things:

1. Passion - By all reports of the people who worked with him, he lived and breathed the products that his company would work on. He would call engineers in the middle of the night, stress over a font or color choice and sometimes micromanage those small details. Still because of that passion and desire to be involved in the day to day work - not only could he make the products better, but he knew the products so well that when it came time to introduce them on stage to the world he wouldn't need to rely on bullet points prepared for him by product specialists. 
2. Purpose - With every new product release, you got the sense that Apple was focused on changing the world in some new way. The ecosystem that each of the products allowed, from new operating systems to iTunes to the billion dollar market for Apps were all poised to make a big impact on how each of us experiences the world. This was the higher purpose behind Apple, and you could see it through the products they released. 
3. Simplicity - When asked by biographers about what made Apple so powerful, one thing Steve Jobs always pointed to was the fact that Apple had always been a company which made less than 10 products. This extreme focus on simplicity carried through in his conversations with employees and how he would present products to the public. Simplicity can inspire because you strip away everything that is unimportant. What you are left with is a big idea which can move people. 

No doubt there will be countless books, articles and stories written about Steve Jobs and his impact over the coming years. For me, the biggest lesson I learned from watching and reading about Steve Jobs is the power of inspiration and how it can lead people to change the world. 

More posts about Apple on this blog:

• Steve Jobs And The 4 Counterintuitive Business Strategies Of Apple
• The Real Secret Of Apple's Success

Steve Jobs And The 4 Counterintuitive Business Strategies Of Apple

One of the most legendary stories about Zappo's famed culture of customer service above all else is their longstanding business practice of paying people to quit. It is a perfect example of the power of counterintuition - that offering an incentive to leave will actually help you get rid of employees who would have lacked commitment and likely developed into underperforming employees in the long term. Counterintuition is like that. It takes something that initially seems crazy and illogical and flips it into a business strategy for success.

Perhaps no other company in recent memory has been quite as good at applying counterintuition to running their business as Apple. It is simultaneously a source of frustration for their competitors and confusion for business analysts why Apple is able to do business in a way that would surely be toxic for many other brands if they were to adopt the same closed approach to ecosystem, partners and social media.

Over the last week, media has iconized Steve Jobs and his impact on Apple and even humankind. Among the daily individual tributes are stories people share from their moments of meeting Steve Jobs and how Apple under his watch has become a master brand at using counterintuition to become the exception to nearly every rule in business. I have written before about the "real secret of Apple's success" ... but this week I have been thinking about some of their most counterintuitive business practices and what we all might learn from them. Here are a few to consider:

1. Control the uncontrollable. If you had to name one thing that has helped Apple get to where they are today, it is that they control more aspects of their product development, distribution, sales, marketing, usage and service than any other technology manufacturer. They have their own stores, a locked down software platform and ecosystem, no open standards, integrated product service, and exacting brand standards for how their brand is to be mentioned in any context. They rarely offer media access into the company and are notoriously guarded about anything they allow to be shared about their products or company. Elements that many other brands would consider "uncontrollable" are meticulously micromanaged and centrally controlled by Apple. As a result, they can reduce any potential for a negative customer experience because they have more control over the entire journey.
2. Forget the low end. Apple could never be accused of acknowledging that there has been a global recession. Their products are consistently and unapologetically for the "high end" and they are widely admired for their discipline as a company in making sure they are not producing too many products or compromising on quality in any way. In one story, Nike CEO Mark Parker recalled advice Steve Jobs gave him about Nike: "Nike makes some of the best products in the world--products that you lust after, absolutely beautiful stunning products. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff, and focus on the good stuff." Apple has consistently done that, and charged a premium for it.
3. Use partnership as a last resort. Apple is well known for controlling their communications and dictating what their partners are (and are not) allowed to say publicly about working with Apple. More than that, Apple's first thought in most situations is how they can complete an element of their product or sales and distribution internally rather than having to partner with anyone. While some other organizations see partnership as an opportunity, Apple uses it as a last resort when they have no other options.
4. Obsess over the little things. Generally, if you ask most people in business they will describe micromanagement as a bad thing. No one wants a manager who is always looking at every little detail - yet most accounts of working with Steve Jobs describe him as the sort of leader who stresses about such trivialities as font kearning and slight shade variations of yellow. This unwavering attention to detail translates into unique well thought out products, and it offers yet another argument for why, as my fellow Ogilvy colleague Rory Sutherland suggests in his brilliant TEDx talk, every company should have a Chief Detail Officer focused on "sweating the small stuff."

 

A Promising Future For Branded Entertainment

If there is one sign of hope for the marketing industry as a whole, it is that no one really wants boring, one-way, shout-oriented interruptive marketing to survive. Social media is a natural ally in this fight, given its focus on fostering conversations and creating content, but what about the role of marketing as entertainment? It isn't necessarily the first word anyone might choose to describe effective marketing, but this week at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas it was the featured topic in a panel I moderated at an event focused on the intersection of broadcast, marketing, social media and entertainment.

What Is Branded Entertainment?

The focus on the panel was on branded entertainment through online video - though on several occasions it was raised that this content can increasingly find its way onto other platforms as well such as broadcast TV or mobile. There were three core models of branded entertainment being used by brands today that panelists shared:

1. Product Placement - The most simplistic form, some would argue that this barely qualifies to be called branded entertainment ... yet it is increasingly popular for brands to use as a way of inserting their brand or products into existing content.
2. Brand Sponsorship/Integration - This category had the most varying descriptions, incorporating everything from a brand simply adding a "sponsored by" slate to a video to inserting a pre-roll or post-roll ad.
3. Branded Content Creation - The "purest" form of branded entertainment, this area was clearly the focus of the panel. Included in this category were examples like Royal Carribean's recent Ocean Views campaign, as well as Lexus' popular LStudio online video channel that spawned the popular series Web Therapy with Lisa Kudrow which was recently picked up by Showtime as a pilot.

What Will The Future Of Branded Entertainment Look Like?

Ultimately, the premise behind branded entertainment is that great content will provide an entertainment value and there is a role of marketing to play in trying to create or support more of that type of content. The ongoing challenge will be one of setting the boundaries between what is reasonable underwriting or brand sponsorship of a message, and what is over the top. This is the real question at the heart of the growth of branded entertainment - and one that several filmmakers have recently tackled - including The Joneses (a film about a fictional family planted in the surburbs to create demand for new products by flaunting them to neighbors) and Morgan Spurlock's new documentary - "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" or as it is "officially" meant to be called "POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold."

Despite these cautionary notes, however, the powerful premise of branded entertainment is that brands need to get better at telling a story instead of merely hawking product benefits or service descriptions. People engage with entertainment, and they tend to share it if they like it. In a world where consumers have more ways to ignore and filter out brand messages than ever before, engagement is the new and necessary metric because it means more than empty measures of reach or frequency.

Branded entertainment today is still a strategy for marketers and organizations who are ahead of the curve. It won't be long, however, before the followers and later adopters in the mainstream start to join the party.  After all, no one wants to miss out on a good show.

What You Should Know About Google For NonProfits

This afternoon in front of a packed room of nearly 200 nonprofit communicators in Washington DC, Google announced their most innovative and ambitious set of tools to help nonprofit organizations to succeed yet. Promising to offer $10,000 in free keyword advertising credits, branded channels and other extended premium features, the announcement of the Google for Nonprofits program divided the ways that Google could help into three core areas; reaching more donors, improving operations and raising awareness.

There is a great description of the program available at www.google.com/nonprofits - including answers to all the basic questions anyone interested in the program is likely to have. If you are wondering how to apply, the specific services that Google offers, what types of organizations are eligible or what the specific terms are, please do check out the site.

Once you do, here are a few observations about the most interesting aspects of this program and how your nonprofit might best take advantage of it:

1. Get the right technical support. You may be tempted to think that Google making lots of technical resources freely available means you will be able to get by with internal less technical support ... actually, the opposite is true. To get the most out of many of Google's services, you need a smart and savvy technical person who can understand how to integrate all the free tools and really leverage them. If don't have a great technical person, do everything you can to find one.
2. Prioritize creating video. Whether or not your nonprofit is actively using video right now, Google's announcement should provide you with the motivation to start immediately. Extended features on YouTube that corporate brands pay tens of thousands of dollars for will be free for nonprofits - and taking advantage will be a great way to spread your message through a medium that people are more and more likely to engage with.
3. Move fast to become a case study. While Google's announcement is new, they will be looking for success stories to feature. As a result, the quicker you can move to be part of the program, the more likely you are to get featured. This is one of those situations where being an early adopter will almost certainly pay off.
4. Start with "citizen cartography." One of the best buzzwords to emerge out of the session at Google was the idea of "citizen cartography" - a slightly sexier way of describing the act of adding geographic information and context to Google Maps or Google Earth. Whether you use some of the newer digital cameras which include GPS tagging of images or input data about the locations that your nonprofit serves, there is a way to add your data to the global archive of geo-specific information that Google has which can be an easy way to start adding your mission and content to the global collective of data.
5. Visualize your data. One of the hottest trends of the year, creating a more visualized way to share your data should be high on your list of priorities because chances are you have data that is underleveraged simply because it is hard to tell a story around it.  Google's new "Fusion Tables" service will allow you to upload your data and turn it into a visual that can help to tell a more cohesive story. Grab your best spreadsheet, upload it and start to visualize your data now.

Overall, Google's announcement is exciting news and is bound to lead to more innovations and smart tools to help nonprofits. During the session, I asked the question of whether there would be more ways for nonprofits to collaborate with one another to help each other leverage the platforms and share both success stories and failures. The short answer was that there will be.

Ultimately, focusing on that may lead to Google tackling the biggest problem in the nonprofit world today ... duplication of resources. There are dozens of organizations all fighting to raise HIV awareness. Another dozen focused on homelessness. And the list goes on and on. It is inefficient. If anyone can enable collaboration on a global scale around the key issues, it is Google. Imagine the impact that a global network of nonprofits could achieve if they were able to efficiently work together to build on one another's successes.

Enabling that kind of collaboration really could change the world.

A Guide To Geolocation & Geosocial Marketing In 2011

One of the topics that has gotten a lot of attention from forward thinking marketers in the last year is the potential for geolocation and geosocial marketing. This year, there will be more devices with built in GPS and the ability to geotag content you create with the location where you created it than ever before. Location Based Services (LBS) like FourSquare and Gowalla are increasing their number of users who use the services to "check in" to locations like hotels and restaurants. Even the backend technology of the Internet is cooperating, as marketers have access to originating IP addresses and access points to understand where a web browser is sitting physically.

Whether this locational information is user contributed or automatically generated, the fact is that many feel 2011 will be the year that geolocation finally emerges as an opportunity that anyone in marketing won't be able to ignore. Whether you have already tried some marketing efforts in this space, or whether you are considering it in the near future - this post rounds up some of the biggest opportunities when it comes to geolocation and offers a few ideas for how you might get started.

1. Creating Geotagged Content Mashups
One of the biggest concerns with geolocation marketing is always around the privacy of consumers and the potential for brands to be seen as "cyber stalkers" for pushing messages that chase consumers around. The nice thing about geotagging, however, is that there are millions of pieces of content online right now which feature geolocation information attached to them. Images are tagged with the exact GPS coordinates of where they were taken. Video can be linked to specific dates and events based on the meta data uploaded. This is offering a great curation opportunity for brands who take this content and create interesting visualizations around it.

Example: Grey Canada's recently released "Global Mood Clock"

2. Offering Exclusive Experiences & Discounts Via Location Based Services
Foursquare and Gowalla are both actively courting businesses to advertise with them. Gowalla recently created a partnership with Disney Theme Parks and Foursquare had a highly debated large promotion with McDonald's as well as an interesting promotion in the UK with Domino's. Each were examples of these Location Based Services using their platforms to offer a layer for brands to buy into for the purpose of promoting special or exclusive offers to those customers who willingly broadcast their locations to their social networks. Moving forward, new services like SCVNGR which focus more on the gaming appeal of checking into locations are starting to offer another way for brands to reach niche audiences of LBS users.

Example: Foursquare with Domino's in the UK.



3. Serving IP-Based Location-Specific Content & Advertising
If there were an "old school" aspect to geolocation marketing, this would be it. For many years now, brands have had the ability to target people based on the location of the IP address from which they were accessing the Internet. Combined with user generated data such as users sharing their location on social networks or adding location details to their personal profiles, this is opening up opportunities for brands to share specific content and advertising messages with people based just on where they happen to be at any particular time.

4. Augmenting Live Events
This may be the most obvious yet clearly underutilized opportunity for geolocation marketing. Whether looking at a large scale sporting event in a big stadium, or a company sponsored customer conference, there are potential ways for geolocation marketing to be used at the event. This could include special offers for individuals who visit a trade show booth or promoting future events to current attendees based on the assumption that people who attend one event may be more likely to consider attending another. Add in the potential for people to connect with others in their social network who happen to be at the same event, and the benefits of encouraging people to create and share content from events to promote the event to those who are not in attendance and you begin to see the potential here.

Example: New Jersey Nets Gowalla Partnership



5. Organizing Change & Social Good
In the social realm, we have already seen the power of geolocation in revolutionary situations such as the recent events in Tunisia where citizens have used the power of geolocation to organize together to promote a shared point of view. Outside of politics, geolocation can be used to find green businesses through apps like Greenopia and also to join social movements and real events organized to promote specific causes. One service, CauseWorld, is creating an entire model based on geolocation for you to generate positive results based on socially motivated behaviours.

Example: CauseWorld



List Of Additional Useful Articles About Geolocation:

• 10 Ways Geolocation Is Changing The World -
• Geolocation Marketing For Small Businesses -
• The Rules Of Geolocation Marketing -
• The Future Of Geolocation Marketing -
• Early Proof That Geolocation Marketing Will Succeed
• The Dangers And Downside Of Geolocation

Small Business Saturday: Amex's Smartest Marketing Effort Yet

This morning as most Americans will wake up after the busiest "Black Friday" shopping day of the year, a weekend of buying and saving is likely to continue as people start to catch up on buying things they need and things they don't. This year, however, Black Friday will be followed by the newly named "Small Business Saturday." Heavily promoted by American Express* along with thousands of partnering small businesses, this is an integrated effort to get more Americans to choose to shop at smaller establishment on one day. Aside from being exactly the kind of promotion anyone should love to see from a big company like American Express, there are a few other points that make this a marketing effort that could easily be one of the most inspired from a company who has some of the best marketing and communications of any brand in any industry. Here are a few things I love about this concept (and lessons you can take away from it):

1. Put your money where your marketing is. Instead of just promoting this day as a feel good moment in time, Amex is also offering a $25 statement credit to anyone who registers for the promotion and then shops at a participating small business. In addition to the emotional incentive of helping a small business in your area, this credit demonstrates that Amex is willing to put some real money behind helping small businesses and giving back to those which use and accept American Express.
2. Integrate your promotion. Though I heard about Small Business Saturday quite some time ago, I also saw TV ads for it, full page print ads, Facebook advertising and heard about it on the radio. Of course, this is advice that any marketer would love to follow if they had the same budget as Amex has to spend on all these channels - but taking this type of integrated approach really helps to cement the idea in the minds of Americans and make sure as many people as possible know about Small Business Saturday.
3. Create a social hub. All the materials and information for Small Business Saturday exist on a Facebook page that gained well over a million fans in less than three weeks. From this page, you can not only learn about and register for the effort - but also download signs and banners for your business to use online or in real life to show that you are participating, and also get access to extended tools and information to help your small business (such as the Open Forum website which I am also a contributor to). In another effort to put their money behind this promotion, Amex also offered free Facebook advertising credits for small businesses as well.
4. Stand for something bigger. Perhaps the most important lesson from not only Small Business Saturday, but also all of Amex's efforts to connect with and support small businesses is that it allows a brand that could be just another credit card company using Vikings in TV ads to try and sell their latest credit card to stand for something bigger. Amex is the champion of small businesses, and small businesses are the "backbone of the US economy" (as the often repeated cliche in business goes).
5. Demonstrate real results. While Small Business Saturday is just happening today, the last piece that will complete this promotion will be Amex reporting back to the country and media on the impact that the entire effort made on the US economy. How many dollars people spent with small businesses, how many times their statement credit offer was redeemed, and how many small businesses participated. With this last piece of the puzzle, this campaign could turn out to not only be among the finest that Amex has ever done - but also be converted into a marketing case study that business school students will study in the future.

* American Express is a client of Ogilvy, my employer, and I have worked on marketing campaigns for Amex in the past as well as contribute to their Open Forum website. I did not work on the Small Business Saturday program, however, and this post was not solicited or paid for in any way.