The future of Shopper Marketing in India - Part 2

In my previous post on the Future of Shopper Marketing in India, I started with asking some questions. Some are random questions which came to my mind, some were questions from the observations I had, few from all the time I spent visiting stores, some from all the travel I did in the recent months and more questions about how as marketers and communication strategist we're tackling the moment of truth - when a shopper is inside the store to buy you?

Shopper marketing is a huge mash-up of engagement, experience, convenience, intelligence, insights, design, architecture, aisle browsing, visualization, technology, mobile apps, QR codes, shopping coupons, vouchers, loyalty program, bargains, and plenty of other things in between. So it becomes difficult to describe in few words. But if I had to explain shopper marketing to my mom, I would say its "the energy spent in giving you an experience to engage with brands inside the store that makes you browse, choose or buy things that was not in your shopping list." Ha, am sure mom will give an unconvincing nod and get back doing her stuff. Anyways.

If it is all about the experience to attract, engage and make a shopper buy, then trust me, technology has to be your biggest ally. What I mean by that is, you need to understand, tinker, experiment and play with different kinds of technologies to achieve your objective. And here's what I mean by that:

"la bulle": bar éphémère Coca-Cola (/W&Cie) from W & CIE on Vimeo.

Hell, we're now talking about 3D holographic boxes to seriously tamper with your realities. Via (Bit Rebels)

Well, I'm not even half through my research and I kid you not, its a bloody huge subject. Your mind is completely fucked at the end of it but you do emerge enlightened. Watch out for more. Cheers.

The Internet Wishlist

This is amazing. The Internet Wish List. It is the future of technology. Go ahead. Explore it. Make a wish. Make it happen.

Sony Ericsson's Product Strategy

The new Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson is another wonderful example of Sony Ericsson's product strategy that I mentioned here in 2007. Sony which realised long back that mobile or handheld devices will be the key driving force for all the gadgets in future, was quick to integrate it's sub-brands with its mobile phones. Walkman, Cybershot, Playstation, Viao, Bravia are all well-established brands from the house of Sony. However, in the mobile phone category, there was no strong differentiation for Sony when compared to Nokia's and Motorola's of the world. iPhone came much later if you remember. So why not integrate and leverage the brand equity created by the sub-brands and create a distinctive competitive advantage in the mobile phone category. Wonderful product differentiation strategy. We saw the birth of Walkman Phone followed by Cyber Shot Phone and now Xperia Play which is Xperia + Playstation.

With 4G in place, personal entertainment and watching video on the go is becoming even more popular, its not too far when we'll see a Bravia Phone soon. The Bravia Phone can even be Sony's answer to Tablets. Unlike iPad, the Bravia Tablet can strongly position itself as an On-the-go Entertainment device with all the goodness of Bravia TV inbuilt in it. Am dead sure as and when mobile computing becoomes mainstream, Viao Phone will be made available too. Anyways. Let Sony do what it does best. Build great brands.

Here's the new Xperia Play commercial.

Cheers.

21 things that will be obsolete in 2020

Here's an interesting article that predicts 21 things that will become obsolete by 2020. Scary but really interesting. Wonder what the kids of 2020 will become. They might just make us obsolete.

Our home in the future

Awesome. I want it in my house.

Get ready to face the challenges of future.

PHd Worldwide, the Future of Media Agency as they like to call themselves has put this video. It is indeed shocking for marketers and communication professionals. When computers become more intelligent than human beings and everything under the sun is interconnected, the consumers of future will indeed demand more. Not only will they demand but they will in fact guide brands, the way they want it to be. Tough times. Be ready to pull up your sleeves.

Change is always good. but its important to keep a tab on the pace of change and anticipate how it will change. Neuroplanning will become the most essential planning tool in a globally connected world. We hardly understand the functioning of Neuromarketing and Neuroplanning - things that will change the future of marketing. Solution will become easy when you can identify the changes about to take place. Here's an excellent speech from Dr. A. K. Pradeep (CEO - Neurofocus)

Be prepared. Cheers.

2045 - Man becomes immortal

Man becomes immortal, says Time. Yeeehaaa. Read it.

NOKIA N8 - Aiming to gain ground

The Mobile Category in India is going through lot of changes at the moment. 3G, MNP, Smart Phones, Mobile Internet, Mobile TV ... A series of trends, analysis, reports and meaningful changes that will affect the Mobile market in India. Watch this space, lots of interesting things coming up... Smart Phones and Mobile Internet will be the next big things in India. Nokia is not the market leader when it comes to Smartphones, will N8 be the cash cow?

Here's a review of NOKIA N8:

Discover the Nokia N8 - an amazing smartphone that lets you take stunning photos, capture true HD movies and play them all back on your HDTV! Nokia N8 is the first phone to have a large 12 Megapixel camera lens and Carl Zeiss Optics, for flawless photo quality. It also bosts a HD video recorder and HDMI out, so you can be the movie maker, and share movie time with family and friends on your HD TV. The brilliant touchscreen and sleek aluminium casing are just what you'd expect from such an impressive phone, and with apps, maps and more to delve into, the Nokia N8 is easily one of this year's most exciting phones.

The world's first Symbian^3 smartphone, Nokia N8 is full of exciting features, apps and innovations. It's incredibly easy to stay in touch, as the N8's Twitter™ and Facebook™ applications are connected all day long, keeping you up-to-date with all the latest happenings in each of your networks. You can stay signed in to multiple instant messenger and email accounts, have several IM chats at once, and see all your texts in conversations.

Nokia N8 is all about entertainment. You can browse the whole web and watch flash videos online, store your favourite HD movies on the 16GB internal memory or on a microSD card (up to 32GB), and even enjoy on-demand Web TV, on your mobile phone! The exclusively customised BBC iPlayer app lets you catch up on your favourite BBC shows, and you can access TV channels online, from CNN to Paramount, and never miss out on your favourite shows.

For all those who wants to pick up a new smartphone, check out the new NOKIA N8.

Mobile Behaviour

Very interesting article. Insightful too. For all those who works on a Telecom account :)

Enjoy.

How clients are going mobile

I wrote about the future potential of Mobile Advertising in India. The beautiful Mansi Trivedi send me some brilliant examples, which I think you should know about. Thanks Mansi.

The Regeneration from Virgin Mobile in partnership with Youthnoise. They created a text message based episode - a story of a football player called Ghost. Something really unique - a mini mobile text sitcom kind of stuff.

Then there's Northwest Airlines experimenting with QR codes in Japan. Well, techno-savvy Japanese have special readers in their mobile phones which might take few more years to hit the Indian market. But the point here is clients like Northwest Airlines are experimenting. It's interesting to find out how clients have started giving importance to interactive channels. In this case Billboard and Mobile integrated together to create a communication platform.

Finally, to know more about mobile marketing and effective use of the mobile medium for greater benefits of your client and agency, frequently visit - Mobile Magazine.

Remember we are talking something beyond SMS campaigns.

We Feel Fine

A hectic week. Suddenly the agency is buzzing, papers flying, servicing guys screaming at production, creative throwing tantrums over brief, endless call from client, office boys running twenty times to publication for delivery of material. Madness of the festive season. But let me tell you, this is what brings you back every morning.

In between all these chaos, I managed to find "We Feel Fine." This web site offers the exploration of human emotions in six different movements. Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics and Mounds. We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from large number of blogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). All of this information is saved. The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions.

If you're not aware 'I feel' :-) you should explore this. This is really amazing and am sure the site will keep you glued for quiet sometime. Wondering if this is the future of communication? Different technologies joining hands to form new ideas and ways of interaction.

Wish you all a very happy, lightening and a cracking Diwali.

Issue of the Week

Do you think "Planned Obsolesce" is great strategic tool for electronics & white good manufacturers to increase consumer demand for increased functionality? Is it a part of their long term game plan to ensure repeat purchase? Is it the main reason why you keep changing your mobile phone every six months or change all your household durables every five years to keep abreasted with the latest technology or replace your laptop every twenty four months? Do you think consumer are getting increasingly clever to understand this 'planned obsolesce' strategy of companies?

Do write back with your feedback and comments. It will only help all of us understand how consumers will deal with future consumer technologies.

don't buy button

Neuroscientist's have identified a "Don't Buy Button in the Brain." Now, these are the latest researches by Neuroscientists Marcel Brass from Ghent University and Patrick Haggard of University College London have found an area, the dorsal fronto-medial cortex located just above the eyes, which appears to be responsible for stopping impulsive behavior.

Read the full article here.

Another screen in your life

Increasingly screens of different shape and size are invading our lives. TV Screen, Laptop Screen, ATM Kiosk Screen, Mobile Phone Screen and it goes on and on. So, ladies and gentlemen, here's one of them coming soon to invade your life - Interactive Window Shopping Touch Screen, installed at the Ralph Lauren store in London. Read the full story here.

'Retail Media' in India will witness a sea change in the coming years. Retail giants like Walmart, Future Group, M&S and whoever comes to India would want to enjoy that share of the pie. Media agencies or the advertising agencies can't do much about it. Technology will play a major role and they will reap all the benefits of their investments. Manish did discuss about Last Mile Connection in one of his earlier posts. And let me assure you, it will be the retailers that might just play a bigger role when it comes to advertising in the future.

Do share some more examples if you come across any.

Minority Media

I completely agree with what Prabhakar Mundkur said in this article. The entire OOH business will change in few years from now. This clip explains what OOH will be in the future.



It will be the technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco etc. that will drive these growth and not the big media companies (probably Viacom will buy the technology for their use). And this is how OOH will grow.



With 3G network becoming a reality in India, Bluejacking is the new tool many retailers have started using. So watch out for OOH medium. Transformation of life ahead.

Innovative changes in our lives

IBM recently unveiled its new study called "IBM Next Five in Five" - Five innovations that have the potential of changing the way people work, live and play over the next five years. So what are they:

• Remote healthcare access system from anywhere in the world: Now this is a big innovation. Imagine a Doctor keeping an eye on you 24/7/365 from somewhere in the world. WOW.
  
• Mobile Phones will start reading your mind: Intelligent phones which will adapt to the user. Termed as "presence" technology. Which means it will do things as per your preference. Well, do remember that features will vary based on price.
  
• Real-time speech translation: This is already happening in Japan and Korea. For example when you travel from Delhi to Rameshwaram and you don't know how to speak Tamil, don't worry. Your hand-held device will translate real time Tamil into English as you speak to the person for direction.
• There will be 3D internet: Hmmm, that means from now on I can walk the retail aisles in Ebay or Amazon. An assistant or an expert will be ready to help me out. Makes sense in a techno-ambivalent nation like India.
  
• Nano-technology will address environmental issues: Nano-technology has the ability to manipulate which I always knew. But now it will be able to manipulate the environment. Get you fresh drinking water, help grow more trees, etc. etc.
  

Out of the 'Big Five' I like only one - Remote Healthcare. I'd love to have a doctor attending me all the time. Though it might be pain in arse after sometime, but doctors are good people. In this case, I guess it will be a 'supercomdoc' monitoring me. I also think real time speech translation and mobile mind readers will become standard features like we have 2.0 megapixel cam, FM radio. Go ahead read the entire article here.

Start thinking digital, baby, but do remember not to become a humanoid.