Digital Influence Mapping Project

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In 2020, I launched a new digital consultancy, NextNow Digital. All of my new ideas and insights can be found at the new site. The Digital Influence Mapping Project has been a labor of love since I started it in 2005.  This blog may continue to live on in some form or another.

For now, visit NextNow Digital Insights & Ideas. You will find fresh POVs on digital marketing and transformation to help startups, small and mid-size businesses, as well as continued thoughts for enterprise marketers.

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Four Examples of Simple, Useful Content from Brands

When it comes to exceptional video from brands, most of the marketing trades or subject matter experts cite entertaining videos.   That’s likely what makes it to the top of the “view” charts. A great resource for top video lists is Visible Measures Charts and their Blog. They sell measurement solutions to brands and agencies and they also maintain a great resource of what to watch.

Still, their lists are dominated by the types of branded video meant to entertain. It’s the next generation advertisements and they can be exceptional and compelling.

Melissa Parrish (@MelissaRParrish) from Forrester put out a paper examining how brands can actually be useful to customers. This is very different than just coming up with the next disruptive creative idea featuring Jean Claude Van Damme and Toyota trucks. She summarizes her POV in a blog post:

“Instead, the opportunity is to demonstrate your brand promise — not just talk about it — by creating programs that are visibly and functionally useful from your customers' point of view. That's what we call utility marketing.”

She distinguishes between simple utility and transformative utility. The former is pretty much what you would expect – simple problem solving. The latter is bigger – “Programs that are so useful that they transform your experiences blur the lines between marketing, product, service, and customer experience and thus require digital maturity and strategic commitment.” Melissa cites the purchase by Staples of Runa and the promise of a new level of personal shopping as transformative.

I kind of buy the duality she is establishing. Many brands can think small and immediate to deliver something useful to their customers today while still exploring a bigger, more game-changing utility elsewhere in the building.

Four brands are delivering utility marketing today in interesting ways. I am certain each has their transformative play in the works. These examples reflect brands that are trying to become even more relevant to their customers and doing by being ‘of use’ to them.

 

Louis Vuitton Makes Packing Easier

I used to travel quite a lot more than I do now. Still, little tips and tricks are what make the traveler’s journey more bearable and even enjoyable. Louis Vuitton has created a series of videos on packing well. They are short and sweet. And they are useful. I will fold my jackets as per their diagram and roll my jeans.  The utility is small but it’s there. The video is a great format as it actually demonstrates how to treat each piece of wardrobe and then how to assemble into the two halves of a bag. I think of Louis Vuitton as an expert in travel – not simply because of these videos, but they do reinforce that perception.

 

GE Makes Science Fairs Simpler

Building on the success of Lowe’s 6-second Vine How-to’s, GE has created a series called 6-second Science. These clever, animated videos bring to life a core concept or experiment from the dreaded science fair. They illustrate a concept, demonstrate how to actually do something and by remaining bite-sized at 6 seconds, don’t aspire to being ‘paint-by-numbers’ of science experiments. They give you a bit to build on.

 

Toyota Brings Friends into the Shopping Experience

The Toyota Collaborator is a simple utility that lets you invite some friends or family into a Google+ Hangout to build a car online (aka use the Corolla car configurator found at all auto sites to customize your model). Melissa ranks this as ‘transformative utility.’ But I see this as a simple way to bring your friends and family along your buying journey. This is especially relevant as the buyer journey for cars has changed so much due to digital. People spend less time in dealerships and more time making their mind up online ahead of time.  Having a handful of friends show up online and all look at the same configurator as each shouts out, “make it red,”  “go for leather seats, you knucklehead,” or “get the 16”wheels, dude” – can be helpful on such a big purchase.

 

Home Depot Steps through Planting Trees

While Lowe’s gets a lot of marketing attention for Vine videos, Home Depot has grown a rich project and how-to collection of content. We have recently planted trees on our property and I wish I had referred to their guide before embarking. They have thought through what formats are important from short, instructional videos to printable step-by-steps. While their site is pretty busy, they actually have a sensible organization structure visible in the ‘related content’ column where they offer more under Project Guides, Buying Guides and their Blog.  

 

Simple utility and transformational utility are useful ways to think about how you can be helpful to customers even as you try to entertain them with high-reach videos. These approaches are not mutually exclusive and yet being useful to customers will strengthen your bond and demonstrate your authority in areas that are key to your business. 

Related articles

GE Wins With #6SecondScience Fair Vine Campaign

5 Minutes with Forrester's Melissa Parrish

Social Media Fatigue or Just Fatigue?

The Most Social Brands List Lacks Context

Content & Commerce Are Not Strange Bedfellows

Back when it snowed above my head and I walked to school three miles barefoot everyday, Web sites were Web sites. They were a special breed of communications. We even capitalized the word Web site. As Creative Director at Discovery.com, we had our content sites, our corporate sites and our store – all separate experiences. Does that still fly? Can Web sites be designed as destinations or are they a part of a more complex customer journey? 

The biggest names in ecommerce are Amazon, Zappos, Nordstroms, you know, stores. Meanwhile some of the most interesting brands are embracing stories as part of the value they deliver to their customers and advocates. Just compare Patagonia with Amazon. One weaves lifestyle content around the product and store experience. The other is seen as the ultimate in transaction design. Amazon does have content. It’s product reviews, book samples, and machine-generated utilities like “people who looked at this, bought this.”

Patagonia has actual stories. All are relevant to sport and the outdoors. Many feature people. Yet you could argue they divert people from transaction. Does that make for a better ecommerce experience or a diluted one? If the storefront is judged as an isolated destination one might argue that the content distracts. If you consider it as part of a journey, having expert content is a plus. 

 

Content Can Strengthen Commerce

No doubt, Amazon is the pinnacle of storefronts. They are held up as the gold standard for ecommerce. Still, they are like the final stop along the journey. When you know what you want, you go to Amazon. After we “showroom” (visit anyone’s terrestrial store), we go to Amazon to select the best rated, get a more transparent price and have the product delivered.

Amazon’s brand is all about easy selection and transaction. Patagonia is all about a rich, sports experience with mother nature. As more and more brands sell direct (even if they are also carried in the Amazon or Walmart superstores), blending content and story with commerce will be key to sustaining profitable, high-value relationships with their customers.

 

Patagonia’s front page sells stories as much as product.

 

 

Navigation takes you to content and product.

 

 

Experts recruited by Patagonia share their outdoor sport experience.

 

 

You are never far from the well-organized “racks” of actual product.

 

Other sites combining content and commerce:

Mr. Porter

Lauren Indvik from Mashable sums up, “Arriving at Mr Porter, a high-end men's retail site connected to online luxury retailer Net-a-Porter, feels more like opening a magazine spread than entering an online shopping destination. That's no accident. The site is edited by former British Esquire editor Jeremy Langmead, who works alongside other veterans in the magazine and retail industries.”

 

One Kings Lane, one of my new favorites as I try to outfit a new house, injects some magazine style into its flash sales.

Lauren again, “One Kings Lane launched in 2009 as a flash sales site for upscale home furnishings. At the beginning of the year, the company acquired design firm Helicopter, best known for launching Domino magazine.”

 

Adobe’s CMO.com delivers content outside their store. They want to deliver value earlier in the customer journey (marketing executives). As Shopify points out in its blog, “Adobe’s CMO.com curates content from all around the web – things that have been especially selected to help Chief Marketing Officers navigate the changing advertising world. Adobe selects content from over 150 top news sites and organizations, as well as creating their own. It also doesn’t pitch its software programs or web-based solutions to the audience.”

 

Birchbox became trendy as the source for monthly boxes of goodies, and now features a series of magazines for men and women to share lifestyle content. Here’s how they describe themselves, “Each month, you'll receive a selection of samples that we’ve tried (and retried) ourselves. We source our samples from both well-known brands and emerging gems. The women’s subscription includes everything from skincare to makeup, as well as fun non-beauty extras. The men’s subscription delivers top-tier grooming products in addition to lifestyle accessories ranging from hip socks to tech accessories.”

 

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Facebook, Amazon and Others Push Socially Enabled Gifts

My sister’s birthday is on December 27^th – every year. Since childhood, she has been shortchanged with relatives doubling up her holiday gifts as her birthday gifts. Sometimes people even forget in the post-holiday stupor. The net takeaway for all these years is clearly fewer gifts than for those of us with neatly spaced August birthdays.

This year, thanks to Facebook’s new gift-giving functionality, I made sure my sister got something nice and on time.

Facebook, Amazon and a few third party services like Giftivo, are connecting gift-buying and sending to social data in our graph to make it easier than ever to buy a terrestrial gift (or digital gift like music or books) and get it to those celebrating their birthday. All services leverage your Facebook friend database and are therefore built on a common premise.

Three Key Improvements

 Mail order gift-giving and even digital ordering of such have existed for years.  I have been reading about disruptive business innovations in this month’s HBR. I am not sure this new gift-giving functionality by itself has risen to ‘disruptive status’. But there are three qualities to it that make it compelling.

 

1. Managing the stream of birthdays:   I can barely track my family birthdays. Every year, remembering my mom or dad’s birthday becomes “a thing.” Forget about the next concentric ring of close friends. Now, Facebook alerts me on my page, sends me an email, and publishes those birthdays on my Mac calendar function. That last innovation – the connection to my core calendar has been a godsend. Diabolically, I am now emotionally tied to Facebook as I reap the benefits of being a good birthday-wisher.

The second most important management function? When I gift, it pings my sister for her address which she then inputs to get the gift sent to her. Like birthdays, I cannot seem to track people’s terrestrial addresses. Yes, I could get my hands on it if push-came-to-shove, but it would entail awkward steps like writing the address down on a piece of paper to move it from one database to a web form. 

 

2. Amazon/Facebook-like simplicity: I always associated simple ecommerce functions with Amazon. They are the touchstone of all things wonderful in ecommerce. Now, Facebook is catching up in simplicity. Clearly their years of interface design, trial and error and commitment to a “facebook-standards” model where use cases are handled with common interface procedures is paying off. The whole transaction was short and painless. 

 

3. Amplification: While Facebook asked permission, I did choose to publish the fact that I got sis a gift via her wall. First off, she is notified immediately by whatever Facebook alerts she has enabled that I got her something. So, the mere fact that I bought her something is no spoiler. The post did not, of course, pull a “Beacon” and reveal what I bought her. But now, others in my family know that I acknowledged her birthday and perhaps they ought to get off their duffs and do the same.

Ideally, the system would ask her for her feedback on the gift and prompt her to post that mini-review on her wall. Once that functionality is there, brands will so love this part of the social commerce virtuous circle.

 

The Devil is in the Details

Social Commerce made the point of wondering why Facebook allows others like Amazon and Giftivo to deliver the same basic functionality. I suppose that it is possible that Facebook might shut them down from doing this but since apps have been using our Facebook friend lists for years, I am not sure how feasible this is.

The spoils may go to those who get it right or get it best. And while Amazon is a clear favorite, I got lost in their interface to make this happen. Here’s a few things anyone delivering this type of socially connected commerce ought to get right:

Simple interface and process – This is new territory. No one wants to wonder halfway through whether the gift they just bought will end up shipping to themselves vs. the recipient (That was my Amazon confusion).

Great gift selection – Facebook admittedly has a limited selection of typical giftees in their collection. Amazon has the power of the endless store (as long and wide as the Amazon) and they have the power of the Wish lists that members have established. That should give them a clear advantage.

Relevant gift selection – Giftivo sorts through a user’s Facebook interests to assemble a set of gift recommendations. It’s the right idea but all services suffer from a lack of transparency on what exactly is driving their recommendations. Until we get used to these systems, we could use all benefit from some better translation of what drive a recommendation. Pandora tells me why they are playing an artist by connecting the dots to one of my selected artists. Amazon tells you, generally, why they put certain recommendations forward.

Social feedback – Most times, I just want to know that whomever I got a gift for received it. I want to know they loved it but I know pushing for that type of outcome can be dangerous (because we might have blown it and gotten something they don’t want). Still, it only makes sense that this type of gift-oriented buying become more and more socially enabled. My sister should be able to post a quick ‘thanks for the gift’ or a product review or even add me to her list of future gift-recipients.

 

What’s in it for Brands

• Sponsoring holiday gift giving: Victoria’s Secret brings you Valentines Day (better than the amorphous MasterCard sponsorship of the current function)
• Special gift collections: The Godiva chocolate store for Mom’s Day
• Personalized stores: The John Bell Store from Amazon featuring the eclectic collection of independent films, Todd McFarlane-like action figures, classic punk and more…
• Targeted post/ads reminding individuals of upcoming birthdays (and the product prompts that match)
• Apply gift model to spontaneous, for-me buying: When Hugo Boss finally has teh black jeans I live in for sale, they should ping me and give the chance to stock up from wherever I am including Facebook 

Two Different Types of Mobile Businesses

Nothing appears more certain nor more elusive to marketers than how to fully leverage the biggest behavior change since the mass adoption of automobiles. Yes, I am talking mobile access to communications, data and our social graph.  

The explosion of mobile phone, smart phone and, now, tablet use has led to some interesting innovations. MPesa mobile currency, Flipboard content display, Instagram photography communities and personal GPS are just a few examples of how mobile changes how we do things. Just look at Mary Meekers Internet Trends 2012 presentation and many of the "reimagined" business examples include mobile as a key part.

Still, it seems as marketers we are still struggling to “go full mobile.” I would guess that some of that is due to the “Curse of the Channel Mindset” where, too often, we look at mobile as just another marcom channel to deliver messages through. I blame this ‘curse” on the advertising planning community and the powerful economic strength of media buying companies.

Meanwhile entrepreneurs unconstrained by that channel mentality and empowered with the innovators sideways manner of looking at things are making new interesting business or applications of mobile.

Two innovations should make us think differently. 

Mobile Grilled Cheese 

The Melt is a grilled cheese restaurant designed around mobile payment. Founded by Jonathan Kaplan who brought us the Flip Video Camera (now a collectors item), the Melt is getting ready to deliver a restaurant experience where users can order via device and use simple QR codes to jump through the fast lane and pick up their warm, melted goodness of a gourmand grilled cheese.

Instead of just adding mobile payments as a cash register alternate on top of cash, credit, debit, chip-card or whatever, they are designing the transaction experience around the mobile user. How you pick up a food is as much a part of the experience as the food, itself. Now, I don't know if their innovation will add up to a smash success. So far, they only have stores in the SF and Silicon Valley areas. But when you consider that service is the number one reason for return visits to restaurants and that service innovations that cut down on process (make things simpler) tend to be the drivers of loyalty, I give these guys a better than even chance of getting somewhere. (Thanks to Social Commerce Today for the heads up on The melt)

I love grilled cheese. I love great service. If it were in DC, I would buy.  

Mobile Close-Ties Network 

We practice “mobile first” design within our team (actually “SoMo First” – but that’s a different post). That means that we design a user experience first for the mobile display (often the smartphone and tablet, simultaneously). Once that is great, we design the desktop experience.

Path is a recent entrant into the social network space and is only available as a mobile experience. (see a good explanation from Satish Dharmaraj, managing director at Redpoint Ventures LLC (investors))The service is designed to connect each of us with only our closest ties.  Not thousands of friends. It tops out at 150 friends. Think you and your wife (or whomever), your closest friends and some family. 

Whether or not this dedicated channel of intimacy works for you, pay attention that it was designed as mobile –only. The founders felt that the close-ties relationships it is trying to support favors the intimate, always-connected utility of mobile.  More businesses will be doing this going into the future. They will consider how their business can serve new behaviors and needs developing out of our mobile and connected lives.

 Two very different examples how mobile is interpreted as a core part of the experience not an additional channel or touchpoint. Two good examples of disruptive design that could easily lead to big, long lasting innovations. 

Social Shopping: Make My Philly Design Store, Please

Who really cares about fCommerce anyway? Social Shopping, sure. eCommerce, in general, of course. But all I am hearing about are storefronts that maybe connect to our social networks. Most ecommerce offerings have sharing functions or even Facebook open graph to allow buyers to broadcast their purchases or browsed products to their friends. I want something more.

There are some cool innovations. Even some innovative business models like Warby Parker’s disruptive approach to eyeglasses. But I was in Philly for the weekend and I wanted to buy local designers t-shirts, jewelry, messenger bags, unusual flotsam and/or prints. I love designers. Always have. When I travel, I like to find small design-focused businesses. I like to buy local and support the economy (great, high-minded view of shopping, don’t you think?)

So why don’t I have an app that collects designers in local markets wherever I travel? I am on to Vevey, Switzerland on business this week. I would love to just punch a button like I do on my weather app and collect a listing of local designers ready to connect with a sympathetic buyer. Why do I have to work so hard browsing dozens of Web sites to try and find my unknown friends out there? 

Make it Authentic

With Love from Brooklyn (thanks Springwise!)  kinda does it. While they curate mostly food products developed in Brooklyn, it is all for sale online. If I am in Brooklyn visiting, there is no storefront where I can go to stock up on Brooklyn authenticity. I guess I could go visit the various businesses individually but as you saw, food isn’t my thing. Philly has a few neighborhoods like any city but designers don’t clump up so nicely. So even though I can view all of these businesses in Old City on one web site, it’s about the neighborhood not about designers.  

I would have hoped that Design Philadelphia would have filled much of the role. Sadly, that remains more of an event website that gets relevant once a year and then goes stale (see all the content about the Design Week last October). Kind of a missed opportunity there. Etsy could also do this although it wouldn’t support their business model. They would need to adopt an affiliate marketing model if they started to give me my Philly Design map to let me visit artisans directly when I hit town. They could do it. They just won’t cause it’s not an important revenue stream for them. 

I have a set of persistent interests. Amazon knows this in a way. The recommendations I get fed are robotic suggestions derived from my shopping behavior. Clearly, they are not going to point me to storefronts in Philly even if they did sell what I am after in design. 

Reverse the Marketplace

I want a reverse marketplace model. I have some enduring interests - in this case local designer-made goods. I am a digital omnivore so, I want access on my mobile phone as I walk the streets, via my tablet as I sit on the couch and plot my trip and via my laptop as I take a “shopping mindful moment” at work. I should be able to express my interests (imagine me clicking on 20-30 Pinterest “pins” to teach my shopping agent what I like).  I need all ways to buy – online and when I am on the ground. I need every advocacy utility to post on Facebook, Twitter , FourSquare, etc… And I want to connect with designers who are keen to meet a potentially enthusiastic fan. 

Too much to ask? Perhaps, but its time to innovate.