Customers and brands are not on the same page about tech

“The Sci-Fi Shopper: How to Future-Proof Your Brand for the New Consumer” is the title of the ebook they published on the subject. Darin Archer, Elastic Path’s Chief Strategy Officer, spoke to me about the difference between assumptions about the appeal of technology and how it actually can be useful in building better relationships between brands and consumers.

Their initial premise was that the “Jetsons” style tech that can be done today is what consumers want. But as it turns out, consumers don’t care about the wow factor of experiencing “sci-fi” style technology. What they really care most about is convenience.

The advanced tech that they found attractive was not “the super flashy,” Archer said, but “what makes my life easier.” As the report tells marketers, today’s consumer “expects streamlined, easy and frictionless” purchase processes. The brands that will win customers are the ones that will deliver it to them.

That means that brands should look into anything that can make it easier for customers to finalize the purchase. That’s where voice activation can be helpful. But as for the tricks of AR and VR, customers, they’re only of interest if they are perceived to be useful. Archer observed that they found that 56 percent of shoppers said VR was over-hyped, but only 38 percent said that of AR.

He suggested that this could be due to the fact that at present there are more practical use cases for AR than for VR. He offered examples like showing what a kitchen appliance would actually look like, in its place in your kitchen, or how a rug not just fills your living room but how it looks under your furniture.

Brands and customers not on the same page

What’s really interesting is how the brands are so far off in identifying the primary concerns of their customers. For example, the top item on a customer’s wishlist (67 percent) is checkout-less payment options.

Only 18 percent of brand representatives identified that as what their customers would like to have. They failed to perceive that customers really wish “to solve pain points like long lines,” Archer pointed out. 

The second technological convenience customers would like is smart devices. More than half (58 percent) identified that, but only a quarter of brand representatives understood that to be desirable for customers. There was a similar gap for voice-enabled commerce, which 57 percent of customers said they wanted, and only 23 percent of brand representatives anticipated that.

Read more in Convenience Drives Consumers’ Tech Demands

Related: When doing business with humans

Mary Poppins' Guide to Gamified Marketing

“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and - SNAP - the job's a game.”

Those words of wisdom from Mary Poppins are backed by science that finds that when people are interested and engaged in a subject, they enjoy a shot of dopamine to the brain. Marketers can capitalize on that effect when utilizing gamification to engage customers and deliver a fun experience that associates warm and fuzzy feelings with a brand.

Home decor and shopping get gamified

 Design Home: House Renovation  is the name of the game. That offers an irresistible combination of video games and shopping.

Some of the pieces can be purchased virtually for the game alone. But the real big money would come through buying actual sofas, rugs, tables, etc. for one’s real life home. And that would be quite the payoff for the affiliated sellers and brands.

This is marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing because it draws the shopper in through active play. To get players even more motivated, it offers“Daily Design Challenges.” There is also a social aspect to it with  voting on rooms and the possibility of borrowing from friends through the Facebook connection.

FOMO or an addictive component is also baked in with the possibility of advancing levels, gaining access to unlocked rewards, and the  promise of discovery of “brands and trends,” as well as the “new pieces added every day.” 

Generating excitement for new offerings

Building on brand loyalty is fundamental for sustained business. When you add in a crossover with another brand associated with play, you can add some fun to that fundamental strategy.  

Adidas did that in partnering with LEGO for a range of products. 

This past spring, when it introduced its  Adidas Ultraboost DNA X Lego Plates shoes, priced at $200. While the collaboration alone generated buzz, LEGO pushed for even more engagement by sharing ideas for customizing the shoes on the “adults welcome” section of its site. 

See 6 incredible ways to customize your LEGO® adidas Originals Superstar for ways sneaker collectors, designers, and just creative people who wish to share their passions on their feet found to use the shoes as a medium for imaginative arrangements. The idea is to inspire others to follow suit, engage more with the shoes and the possibilities inherent in connecting LEGO bricks.

Promoting products via virtual games

  Speaking of LEGO and gamification, the brand aims to engage kids with a section of its site showcasing LLEGO® video games available for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch™ and other consoles.. Those are searchable by theme, which also leads to all related products.

For example, the  Star Wars will direct you to the Rise of Skywalker game, where you could choose to be on the light or dark side. It also leads you to a view of the many LEGO characters and sets within the Star Wars universe. The same holds true for other themes for which there are many sets available. 

LEGO also offers a range of apps, some of which are specifically designed to bridge the virtual game and the physical world. Among these offerings is what is called “EGO Hidden Side,” which promises live participation in a ghost story that can involve  a number of players.. 

Playing the game of FOMO

For its 25th anniversary, Pokémon collaborated with OREO to Issue a limited-edition collectible cookie that generates FOMO.  The 16 distinctive Pokémon designs are promoted as collectible, motivating customers to buy multiple packages to be sure they get them all. 

The OREO site  warned fans of the cookie or the game that only some the limited edition packages will have  all 16 version inside. And to truly complete their collections, they will have to buy enough to even obtain the “super rare Mythical Pokémon.”  

I Infusing new life into an old product 

Mary Poppins using a magic snap to clean up the room

Gamification elements like AR can also be used to revitalize interest in a product that is usually not front-and-center of a person’s cooking experience. Table salt is a good example of that.

Nearly all of us use some in cooking and baking but don’t think all that much about the brand involved.  Morton Salt wanted to get their attention, particularly as more people were taking up cooking at home when not eating out during the pandemic.

 

To that end, the brand introduced an integrated marketing campaign across all channels combined with QR codes on labels to activate an AR experience. That idea was to give customers  “several fun and educational ways” to engage with the brand. 

You can see the short video about it here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1091572674646934

For a warning about how just jumping on the gaming bandwagon can backfire --as it did for Coke -- see Major Marketing Missteps from Adidas, M&M's, and Coke

Related: 

Don't just aim for different
Visualizing the customer journey

What makes content marketing effective
What the Little Prince teaches us about marketing

Visit WriteWayPro.weebly.com  Like and follow on Facebook and on LinkedIn

Snapchat offers a dozen examples of AR creativity

 

Snapchat has rolled out AR tools for its platform that it showcases in its selection of 12 campaigns. Find out how they used AR by  reading Snapchat Presents the Most Inspiring AR Campaigns of 2020

AR Marketing on the Package

ye-catching packaging helps products get noticed. Now they can go beyond attractive shapes and colors. Thanks to technology, they are also now capable of creating interactive experiences with sound and animation to engage consumers.

The Yili Industry Group in China produces Yili Weikezi, individually portioned flavored milk drinks. Han Lu, a popular singer, promotes the product in ads, as you can see in the video below:

Drawing his connection directly to store shelves, shoppers armed with a smartphone app can hear Han Lu talking to them from each package. When they scan his voiceprint, they can hear his audio greetings customized for each one of the four flavors. While that would get some attention, it wouldn't draw active engagement beyond the scanning.

The app then launches an AR game. One see a galaxy of planets in AR that offers a choice of activities and customizations. The person who launches it can arrange the planets, hear the sounds assigned to the planets by tapping them, make their own planets, or record their own voiceprints. As with most apps activities, one can share the results of these activities with one's connections.

Read more in Milking AR for Marketing

Tech Takes Your Through Child's War Experience

Even before the invention of photography, artists sought to recreate the horrors of war in pictures. Now technology makes it possible to take that rendering a step further, immersing the viewer directly in the experience with the use of AR. 

Read more in AR for Empathy: The Devastation of War

IFTF's Forecast for 2030

Key changes to result from the rise of machines in the workplace that we can anticipate over the next 13 years include:

• Cloud computing would become the norm.
• While some jobs will be handled by machines, new jobs that don't exist yet will make up the majority of positions in 2030.
• The machine and human interaction will yield greater efficiency in finding talent, managing teams, delivering products and services.
• Workers will learn what they need to do 'in-the-moment,' while on the job to keep up with the skills in demand for the rise of machines in the workplace.

The whole nature of individual careers is expected to change. "By 2030, expectations of work will reset and the landscape for organizations will be redrawn, as the process of finding work gets flipped on its head." The trend currently observed of people working in a "gig economy" is expected to grow to the extent that people would find that they are hired for tasks rather than permanent positions.

The report also envisions a future in which people would not be seeking jobs as much as the jobs will be looking for them: "Reputation engines, data visualization, and smart analytics will make individuals' skills and competencies searchable, and organizations will pursue the best talent for discrete work tasks." As organizations hire people exactly where and when they are needed, they will gain the advantage of becoming "leaner and more competitive," as well as "more agile and profitable," thanks to the reduction in "costs and overheads."

Workers would gain a kind of agility, as well as get trained "in-the-moment" for the tasks required by the organization. Maguire explained that thanks to immersive technologies like AR and VR, workers would not "have to leave the job to complete a curriculum" for retraining. Instead, they'd be able to apply "a digital layer over work stations" that could guide them in new skills and applications right in the workplace.

from 

Preparing for Our Future: The Human Partnership with Machines

Mixed Reality Marketing

Picture to illustrate app courtesy of Trigger

Mixed reality experiences began playing an important role in marketing a few years ago. Jason Yim, the CEO of Trigger, “The Mixed Reality Agency™,” explained what makes it so effective.  

“On the marketing side, there are two big things that mixed reality can do that others can't,” says Yim. “One is product visualization and the second is the sharing of user-generated social content.”

Read more in 

Why Marketing Through Mixed Reality Works

Mixed Reality to Become Mainstream

For all of its impressive effects, marketers have been holding back to some extent from applying mixed reality to their campaigns. That made sense in light of the fact that most people were not equipped to view it properly. But that's set to change by the end of this year.

At the end of August, Microsoft announced a lineup of mixed reality equipment for the holiday season that is expected to put it in the hands of a lot more people, thanks to the triple appeal of an affordable price, easy setup, and portability...

Google just released  a preview of its new software development kit (SDK) called ARCore for Android devices. Here's a video showing some Wizard of Oz inspired effects:

Popular characters also be adapted to marketing in a mixed reality environment, for example letting people interact with personae linked to brands, like Tony the Tiger, or Mr. Clean. That would mean that anyone could have the experience shown in cleaner's Super Bowl ad last year (except for getting the actual cleaning done, of course).

Read more in Mainstreaming Mixed Reality

AR gets real and social

“We're making the camera the first augmented reality platform,” declared Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference. That's where he showed off some of the AR effects the social media giant is making accessible to anyone on a mobile device. Whether you want to break the boredom of breakfast by setting some virtual sharks to swim around your bowl, see people's faces replaced by emojis, or turn a tabletop into the site of a video game, you'll be able to do it with just your smart phone. You can hear him and see the effect in this Cnet clip:

Read more in

AR Takes Off on Facebook

AR: Marketing’s Next Big Thing?

“That's really cool!” or “Wow!”  is the type of thing that people tend to say when they see augmented reality. But for marketers, the question is if it's something they should be using. For most, the answer has been “not yet.” But perhaps they should be reconsidering now.

According to one report, only 25% of marketers are interested in using augmented reality, and only 7% say they do use it. That's probably because, despite its impressive effects, it is somewhat limited at present.

But that should change when Apple comes out with an AR empowered device, something it is reportedly working on right now: “Hundreds of engineers are now devoted to the cause, including some on the iPhone camera team who are working on AR-related features for the iPhone."

Though people have achieve AR effects on an iPhone since the 2009 iPhone 3Gs, that was limited to a novelty feature that Yelp snuck in. In this video,  Jennifer Grove demonstrates how she launched Yelp's Monocle, which she characterizes as “kind of the coolest things I've ever seen on my iPhone.” 

Read more in

What Apple's AR Venture Means for Marketers