Archives for posts with tag: perception

Advertising Innovation continues to speed up

July 23, 2012 //

Here’s a great example – From Digiday:

“TNT gave a dream brief to Breakfast, a tech-hacker marketing boutique of sorts, to help promote its new psychological crime show “Perception“: make something cool in a storefront space in New York City’s Herald Square.

Breakfast hatched what it’s calling a “real-time electromagnetic dot display,” an updated version of old signs in train stations with letters and numbers that flip over as they change. The twist: The display changes based on motions of those in front of it. When walking by, the sign displays mirror images of the people in front of it, reacting immediately to their movements. You wave, your dot-matrix doppelganger waves back. The movements knock away words, revealing clues to anagrams that the star of “Perception” uses to solve crimes. The idea is to physically involve participants in experiencing the plot of the show.”

A well-executed creative idea that’s perfectly aligned with changing consumer demands.

Goertz, a former client, reinvented the shoe buying experience. According to digitalbuzz: “How does a German online shoe store grab some attention in the real world? Well, a virtual shoe fitting installation makes sense right? Yep, here it is, the Virtual Shoe Fitting Store from Goertz, an Augmented Reality, Microsoft Kinect powered installation that is plugged into a giant screen, then rolled out as virtual shoe stores at central stations and shopping centres across Germany.

Using 3x Microsoft Kinects, a beefy computer and giant screen, this virtual shoe fitting station is basically an Augmented Reality Shoe Store, tracking 3D versions of their entire range of online shoes to your feet, allowing you to choose your favourite brands, flip through colours, sizes and then post to Facebook for feedback before buying on your mobile via a dynamic QR code that is displayed on screen.”

A good example how retailers can leave their static stores and create immersive product experiences.

Creativity says: “According to McCann Vice Chairman/Global Deputy Chief Creative Officer Andreas Dahlqvist, a key goal was to extend the life of the catalog in consumers’ homes. Its average lifespan is about two weeks, but with the digital offerings, content can be added and updated on a regular basis, making the catalog relevant year-round.

The print pages tease the additional materials with a smartphone icon that encourages shoppers to scan to see more. The app uses image recognition software from Metaio, and not QR codes, which makes it convenient to add further content to other pages in the future. With those, viewers may be alerted to new content via billboard callouts, for example, said McCann Associate Creative Director Koen Malfait.”

I’m dubious about that execution. In the age of ADD, it doesn’t seem likely people will engage with the catalog as envisioned. Personally, I would have left the catalog mostly alone. It’s a coffee table book, something you engage with as a still product. Aren’t we asking too much from people to pull out their phone constantly to engage with us?

Data will give us the answer. No matter, the advertising innovation train continues to speed up. Hold on tight, it will only get faster.

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Do or Die

October 27, 2011 //

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One of the highlights of ad:tech Tokyo was the keynote of Clark Kokich, Chairman of Razorfish. He introduced the audience to his soon to be released book “Do or Die: A complete rethinking of how brands create and sustain customer relationships.” Interestingly, the book will be released as an iPad app, not a printed book. (The preview site is still a work in progress and not live, and the publishing date of the book wasn’t clear to me, definitely early enough to be a stocking stuffer.)

Advertising used to be about changing perception. Now it’s about changing reality.

That was one of Kokich’s most dramatic paradigm shifts the advertising industry has to deal with in the future. While Einstein might not agree with him, (He famously said: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”) but I believe Kokich understood and distilled a very important insight advertisers have to deal with for a long time to come.

Things aren’t always what they seem. Marketers relied on this fact to make us see things- the way they want us to see them. But wandering through life, letting others create our perceptions, can make a very unfulfilling life. The declining power of mass advertising and the increasing control of customers leads people to desire to be in charge of their own perception of reality. As marketers, changing perceptions is just not that effective anymore. You need to change reality.

Redefine the definition of a big idea

Vail Resorts Epic Mix app redefined the big idea: It was not a huge campaign, it was not some big initiative, it was an app that changed the skiing experience. It was based on the insight that skiing as a solitary experience needs to be complemented by a social experience to enjoy a fulfilling vacation you want to share with your friends. Vail Resorts stayed away from telling people how enjoyable it was to vacation at their properties. Instead, they worked hard to make the actual experience more fun.

Reverse the process: From “Channel up” to “Channel down”

Sure, the commercial is memorable but the real meat of the campaign was a grassroots campaign that allowed fans around the world to write their own future through a unique experience on NikeFootball.com and their Facebook page that gave fans the power to create personalized videos, photos and information that put them on center stage at the World Cup 2010. Fans were then able to take their customized content to build their own Facebook campaign in an attempt to get noticed and selected for “The Chance” which is an elite Nike Academy football camp.

Master the art of collaborative creativity

The “Write the future” campaign from Nike was developed through a collaboration between AKQA, Razorfish, Mindshare and Wieden & Kennedy under the leadership of Nike. None of us is as good as all of us. This can be very effective if the collaboration is organized properly.

Don’t get up in the morning and think ‘What can we we say about the brand today’. Instead, get up in the morning and do something in the spirit of the brand, based on its core beliefs.

Kokich’s closing thought.

I’m looking forward reading his book.


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Design communicates your perception of your customer

August 30, 2011 //

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The purpose of design is not to showcase your brand in the best light possible.

The purpose of design is about communicating your perception of the customer.

Develop a micro site with numerous ‘Buy now’ and ‘Purchase here’ buttons, and you tell everybody that you consider your customers as pure consumers.

Create a micro site with endless opportunities to collect data, and you tell everybody that customers are just data you want to collect.

A Facebook page with constant promotional posts and no interaction: We don’t care about you, we just care about our marketing goals.

When your forms are too long, you communicate: ‘My time is more valuable than yours.’

When your site is too complex to navigate, you say: ‘I care more about my metrics than achieving your goals.’

Branding has become a complex minefield of human interactions.

All of us try to maneuver that minefield without getting hurt (losing time, filling out forms we don’t want to fill out, etc.).

Bad design will try to create as many traps as possible.

Good design will help the customer to steer towards their goal.

Do you perceive your customers as sheep?

Or as valuable partners?

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