NFC taps IoT's potential for marketing

Once upon a time, retail stores tried to get our attention with special displays, signs and stickers, but now they can tap into the power of IoT to communicate a lot more than just “New!” or “Special!” The smartphones we carry can convey marketing messages built into the displays or even the product themselves with just a tap.

Thin Film Electronics ASA is a global leader in NFC (near field communication). It creates printed tags, labels, and systems that incorporate memory, sensors, and wireless communication to enable one-to-one digital marketing through just a tap of a smartphone.

Together with GlaxoSmithKline, it deploys Thinfilm's SpeedTap™ tags in interactive “smart” shelves featuring Flonase®  in stores in six Canadian provinces. Customers who tap their NFC-enabled smartphones to the shelves can get information about the product at the moment of decision.

Matt Bright, Senior Director of Product and Technical Marketing, Thinfilm, spoke with us about why the “smart” shelves are just the tip of the iceberg in IoT marketing. We're not only talking about delivering marketing messages, but being able to customize and adapt to them and pick up the trail of the customer journey even beyond the buying decision.

Read more in 

Tying the Physical and Digital in NFC

Holograms Enable 3D Marketing

With every brand vying for people's attention, messages on a screen no longer stand out. That's why some brands are turning to augmented reality, and the possibilities opened up by holograms of famous personalities. Augmented Reality hologram company, VNTANA, has been used by brands like Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and Pepsi to engage and collect data on potential customers.

We spoke with Ashley Crowder, VNTANA's CEO and Co-Founder about how brands make themselves stand out – literally – with holograms. It's effective for “any public face where brands trying to engage with consumers in the moment,” she said VNTANA partnered with multiple brands this year at Comic-Con 2017 to bring fans one-of-a-kind hologram experiences.

The holograms are so effective at drawing people in because they are “wowed” by the 3D images of familiar figures, Crowder explained. The interactivity it invites make it “seems like a game” or a “futuristic photo booth.” Those who use it don't perceive it as an advertisement or a way of collecting their data via facial recognition that picks up on age, gender, and emotions.

Read more in 

3D Marketing with Holograms

Automation Will Define Industry 4.0

pic from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Factory_Automation_Robotics_Palettizing_Bread.jpg

As the Industrial Internet revolutionizes manufacturing, the essential difference between the automation of the past and Industry 4.0 automation is scale.

The linking of the physical and digital in the Internet of Things has enabled manufacturing’s next evolution: the Industrial Internet, or Industry 4.0. Shawn Fitzgerald, vice president of marketing at Thomas, recently shared some insights on the effects of increasing automation and sensor integration.

Read more in 

The Future is Automated

Promoting sustainability built on data

 

 

 

The Rainforest Alliance deployed software that enabled it to advance data movement throughout its various applications, supply chain systems and data warehouse.

This year, the Rainforest Alliance celebrates 30 years of upholding standards for conservation and labor achieved through partnerships with farmers, wood harvesters and the businesses that incorporate those harvests into their products. With a presence in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, the alliance has an impact on the sustainable practices of more than 1.3 million farms in 78 nations.

The green frog logo that appears on the Rainforest Alliance's certified seal on a wide array of products lets consumers know which businesses are committing to these standards for their supply chains.

Read more in Integrating Data to Support a Sustainable Future

What Facebook's new standards mean for marketers

With nearly two billion active users and over five million advertisers on its platform, Facebook is major marketing medium. Many marketers appreciated its extended access, but what they didn't not care for was the lack of control over ad placement. Now Facebook is doing something to address that concern.  John Donahue, Chief Product & Marketing Officer at Sonobi spoke with me about the latest development.

On September 13, Facebook announced new “monetization eligibility standards“ to assure its millions of advertisers  that they can “feel confident and in control over where their ads appear.” The new guidelines offer greater “detail on the types of content that advertisers may find sensitive” so that they can decide if they want to prevent their ads from appearing on the pages that feature sensitive content.

Read more in Giving More Control to Advertisers on Facebook

Implementing ABM with all 3 varieties

I attended the ITSMA Account-Based Marketing Forum in  New York on  September 12.  The first session, delivered by Demandbase's Vice President ABM Strategy & Field Marketing, Jessica Fewless, and ITSMA's Senior Vice President, Rob Leavitt was “Optimizing ABM Investment: The Case for a Blended Approach.”

Based on the July 2017 ITSMA and ABM Leadership Alliance Account-Based Marketing Benchmarking Survey,  87% of marketers already agree that ABM is effective. The majority – 72% – also agree that the ABM approach has had an impact on “the way we do all our marketing today,” and 58% report that it makes the “entire company more customer-centric.” That jibes with what Scott Sobers, VP ABM, at Teradata said during his presentation: “Everything we do, we do with a lens around ABM.”

Read more in Keys to Optimizing ABM

Pulling together 11 colleges and 12 hospitals

Expansion is a sign of success, but it also brings new organizational challenges, particularly when that expansion is built on knitting together various organizations. That's the situation that Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health (TJU) were in as they sought to bring together what now amounts to 30,000 employees in 11 colleges, two universities and 12 hospitals.

Achieving a coherent vision for the newly expanded entity was built into the job description for Jeffrey Stevens. He said that he was hired as chief human resources officer to accomplish two key tasks. One was to establish HR locally. The second was to deploy an HR tech strategy that would "consolidate everyone onto a single core system."

Read more in 

University Adopts a Unifying Vision and Platform