 July 2, 2009
While at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami, I gazed upon the future of...vending machines and automats. Yes, automats (which Wikipedia teaches us tried for a final comeback in New York’s East Village in 2006.) Mondrian’s automat is essentially an art installation that trounces our coffee or candy bar dispensing expectations, and its allure comes from the patent leather-slick packets of luxury—or access to luxury—a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for rent, Kiki de Montparnasse’s 24-karat gold handcuffs—none of which fit in the conventional vending category and most of which don’t literally fit in the automat-like wall. This is conceptual art for the boutique hotel guest, an entire fantasy world compartmentalized, fetishized, set aglow, and, with a card swipe, there for the taking.
To the extent that Americans think of the lowly vending machine at all these days (devout collectors of vintage versions notwithstanding), we think of them in finite terms, always just out of dollar bills or your beverage or purveying a stale selection of warring sodas and their new age spawn. (Cultural apex for soda vending, indubitably: Cindy Crawford tossing back her mane and her Pepsi in front of one--standing sentry on a dusty stretch of Route 66?--for the erstwhile prime time spot audience. The Eighties Die Hard.) Some countries, it seems, solve this problem of predictable or short merchandise supply by piling on the machines—check out this vending bumper crop in Brazil:
The Mondrian’s “Semi-Automatic,” as it’s called, has put luxury and vending in the same sentence and this is in itself innovative. Perhaps more essentially, though, it has created the impression of an expertly curated collection of amenities and fantasies (I like to imagine the Marquise de Sade and Simon Doonan as querulous guides), thereby converting the vending machine liability—a small set of options—into an asset. This curatorial attribute has the potential to spark an unlikely comeback of the low tech box for a high tech century. Enter U*tique. A vending machine that recently debuted at Fred Segal in Santa Monica, it provides convenience—“because time is a luxury” is the company’s strapline—and video-based edification about the utmost in (principally) beauty products like Aira Mink eyelashes, with some Vosges chocolates thrown in. The LED-lit bubble windows make for a great retro space-age aesthetic (Ah! Remember the head helmets in The Andromeda Strain?...requisite movie reference), acknowledging the nostalgic appeal of these machines, no matter how complex their GUI’s. For me, they’ll always be associated unconsciously with World's Fair Tomorrow-Land-like appliances or goofy mechanical conveniences like a sushi conveyor belt. A curated and rotating collection is half the of these visionary vending machines' comeback strategy; the other half is location. Just think of all the downtime, waiting-in-line, airport dead zone opportunities for these machines. Real estate with captive audiences, in other words. Rollasole, a deliriously fun footwear concept from Bristol, Avon, UK, is setting up their rollable, shimmery, après-dancing shoe vending machines in nightclubs across the UK and Oceana. Talk about being at the right place at the right time.
Visionary vending is a trend that could overhaul the CPG sample industry: what about a machine with nothing but your products? It could also provide some humor, solace and wit to the unromantic business of ziplock travel as well. Picture your products, and only your products, pristine and right-sized, here:
June 17, 2009
Even as new technologies and movements take root, we continue to find new ways to leverage the Open Brand framework to transform marketing and branding. And to go along with the global reach of our icitizenry who are leading this transformation, we've just published The Open Brand in Russian. If I knew any Russian, I'd tag on some sort of clever quip, but instead, I'll just say, check out the cover shot above. I think that's my name and my co-author's in the upper right hand corner. I think...kinda cool. (Jen, if you're reading, can you ask your Russian boyfriend to translate for me?!) ; ) June 17, 2009
We were thrilled to work with the Gain brand and partner agencies on a contest and promotion that celebrates first sniff stories. Consumers shared their stories on the Gain site and then a winner was chosen--Stephanie from Chicago (yes, that's her on stage singing with Mandy). Her prize was a free, intimate concert with Mandy Moore (another passionate Gain user) in her town--at the new Lasalle Power Company. So in addition to the 300+ fans who enjoyed the concert in person last night, we aired it live on Ilovegain.com, where we could engage Gain fans across the country with an entertaining, inspiring experience. In addition to singing songs off her new album, Amanda Leigh, she spoke at length about her own personal, genuine LOVE for Gain. (Check out the fist sniff stories across the country!) June 10, 2009
 Dior's Lady Noire Leaves A Tweet Trail of IntrigueTagged as: engaging, luxury, networked, retail, trendsPosted by: Nita Rollins
It takes guts and deep cash reserves to launch a four-part short film series that stars…a handbag. Not a BMW or a Jaguar, which one can drive, after all, and so can serve and have served as a plot device or protagonist in the vein of other such automotive big screen stars—from Christine to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, in flicks from Bullitt to Crash. The eight BMW short films, you might recall, ran (well, streamed and were viewed) from 2001-2005 and were so festooned with Hollywood talent and awards that they seem to have stopped the short advertising film (or cinematic ads, as they are also called) dead in their high-performance tracks for a while. Who dared follow in the wake of The Hire’s 100 million film views, or risk not earning a permanent place in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)? Even BMW waited four long years before it announced its second act, a Hire series in partnership with Dark Horse Comics, picking up “where our enigmatic hero…left off,” the automaker’s web site says. This is a clever way to extend the brand equity of the series while departing from it enough to avoid being derivative. The original films ranged in tone from the slightly sado-slapstick (Guy Ritchie directing his then-wife Madonna in “Star”) to the wrenchingly elegiac (in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s documentary-like “Powder Keg”). In the upcoming series, BMW might again be demonstrating some sharp cultural antennae: comic book heroes, which we’ve highlighted in recent trends briefings, are looming large in the collective imagination, as the man-cession wears on—82% of jobs lost were in male-dominated professions. We need superpowered male characters when disappearing manufacturing and construction jobs continue to wipe from our daily existence the blue collar version of masculinity. (Check out Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.) But back to that handbag. Behind it is LVMH, a company with both guts and deep cash reserves, and an uncanny gift for brand-generated content that can induce the consumer swoon (ecstatic elimination of all practical and trifling considerations such as cost) that is requisite for luxury consumption. To promote Dior’s iconic handbag—which needs a little dusting off to reposition it, demure rose that it is amidst today’s tropically-sized totes, French actress Marion Cotillard (Oscar winner for her turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose) plays Lady Noire, a John Galliano-dressed film noir heroine trying to save her man while various toughs search for clues, all of which, it seems, they imagine are in her designer handbag. To make a handbag a film star, you can either go the MacGuffin route (Alfred Hitchcock’s term for the object used as sometimes thin excuse for the intrigue), or you can have your heroine clutch it intensely and show you its secretive feminine contents, which, in this case—quelle surprise!—are mainly Dior accessories, a lot of gleaming hardware. The Lady Noire attempts both, and though not by any stretch The Maltese Falcon (remembering another black coveted object as centerpiece), for fashionistas, this is heady stuff. It’s enough that the handbag leads to…more cinematic ads of the dangerously stylish or stylishly dangerous! So much to swoon over, from the music to the “pre-roll” credits to the Hôtel de Crillon setting to the laced platforms fetishistically crossing the lobby to the sheer fact of the cinematic ad’s film noir referencing. The vintage cannage (French for ‘caning’) stitch, featured on the bag and the accessories, is formally echoed in the girders of the Eiffel Tower, during a Vertigo-inspired ascent. The luxury market is particularly committed to brand storylines and will go to some lengths to purvey them. Audrey Tatou and Nicole Kidman have done cinematic ads for Chanel, by way of same-genre example. Nevertheless, there are a couple of important lessons for all marketers here: 1. Cinematic ads, the longest, most elaborate form of online advertising, should have a short and sweet counterpart as part of a fully integrated campaign. Twitter’s 140 characters can go a long way to deepen empathy and intrigue, as those Mad Men tweets taught us. These cinematic shorts should constitute the consummate Engaging and Networked experience, in other words. On www.ladydior.com, at the film’s end, you have options to circulate and share, which has begun in the fashion blogosphere (though YouTube views are still trifling compared to BMW’s—about 25,000 so far.) The storyline and serialization are your best bets for much-vaunted virality, as are all the accompanying films about behind-the-scenes production, etc. But why not make for effortless networking? 2. The storyline doesn’t have to be squarely about the brand. An obvious point, perhaps, but it's always worth remembering in our content-is-king moment that brand equity can grow laterally, obliquely. (What, after all, does war photojournalism have to do with a BMW? Well, someone had to ferry the famous correspondent across the border and ideally in a serious car. And that's sufficient for narrative relevance.) Let's also recall that in our era of participatory branding, all the old marketing tricks are part of an exceedingly self-reflexive culture, where branding is appreciated either for its authenticity (increasingly the domain of consumer-generated content) or for the opposite—its elaborate artifice and cultural referencing! 3. There should be some, well, deeper meaning, which seems to run contrary to #2. But by deeper I mean latent, symbolic. What does The Lady Noire mean at this subtextual level? Ah, you’ll have to stay tuned for my next post and tweet...
June 5, 2009
Early this spring, Dunkin' Donuts ran a contest to Create Dunkin's Next Donut. For about three weeks you could go to the site and design, name and share your own creation. The company narrowed the 130,000 submissions down to a dozen. Those 12 creators got a trip to the Donut Bake-Off at Dunkin' Donuts University. And everyone else got to vote on the 12 creations. Today they announced the winner: Toffee for your Coffee. It's a ring-shaped glazed sour cream donut with chopped Heath® bar topping. Almost as interesting as the winning donut itself (I'm partial to anything with Heath® bars as an essential ingredient) is the story of the winner, who talks about the positive role the brand has in his life. Donut creator Jeff, from Alabama, may not be Dunkin's next spokesperson, but they sure have a great new advocate for the brand. His story rings with passion and authenticity...it might even make you want to forego the granola or fruit smoothie for a day. May 26, 2009
According to the site, the name urtak is Icelandic for "sample." And that's what the site does, it takes samples of public opinion--or the opinion of anyone showing up there. The concept is beautifully simple. You can answer general interest questions or, if you sign up (it's free), you can ask them.
As soon as you click your answer -- "yes," "no" or "I don't care" -- you can see how everyone else responded to the question. And if you want to toss your own questions out there, you can watch the community's responses to them. The urtak site calls this a revolution in public opinion, which I think it might be. I think it's one of many. Google's top searches today, Barnes & Noble's top-selling books this hour, videos being watched now on YouTube, trending topics on Twitter...It goes on and on. There are so many places for marketers--or just curious people in general--to look to check the pulse of what's on people's minds, what they're thinking and wondering. We've still got focus groups to study. We've still got neighbors to ask. But now we have more ways to see what other people think. May 22, 2009
Are you an early adopter? I typically rely on the early adopters in our company to vet the newest, coolest device, app, whatever, and then take their recommendations. It saves me time, money (wasted on bad choices) and aggravation. I consider myself lucky to work with so many tech enthusiasts and gurus. There were mixed reviews on the first Kindle so I waited on the sidelines, even though I sometimes felt an occasional pang of of desire sitting next to someone using one on a plane. Admittedly, while I routinely devour online news and articles like everyone else in our industry, I still love...actually, cherish... holding the New York Times or Dwell or Saveur and other fav publications....just sitting on the sofa, feet propped up with a glass of wine. I'm attached. I admit it. So, is my husband. It's just part of our routine. Yes, I know the newspaper industry is in a tailspin and it's likely that many publications will cease to exist long term. The new Kindle DX display is huge... appears to be the next best thing to paper. Love that I can email docs to the Kindle and that the font can be increased so I don't have to wear my deplorable readers. Now THAT is a value proposition that just might make me take the leap (oh, and all the subscriptions that are available, the low price of books, and more). I'm ready to give it a whirl. Here goes..! May 22, 2009
For all the things we love about e-commerce, the reality is occasionally it doesn't work out the way we (consumers) want it to. And you can't just run to the store and make an exchange when it's a purchase from, oh, say, a boutique on the other side of the country. So how do we get our problems fixed so we're happy consumers? (And how to brands recover from little mishaps?) A fellow Resourcian shared a story with me about an online purchase gone bad. She'd ordered a coffee table book for her mom's birthday. It arrived all wrapped up (so nice, she was tempted to give it to her mom like that). A few hours before she was about to give it to her, she decided to re-wrap it and found the book damaged. She called the toll-free number. Got a machine. So here's Twitter providing value to a customer - cheap, easy and fast. In this on-demand world, consumers need to be able to reach the brands they're doing business with--for good reasons or bad. And brands who want to stay on our short lists should be listening when we have something to Tweet about. Do you have someone assigned (and empowered) to manage this for your brand? May 14, 2009
Here is what's new on my iPhone: QuickVoice w/ Voice2Text Mail: A great little voice recorder app with an added twist. You can send your recording as an email and QuickVoice's Voice2Text server will convert it to text and forward the results to your desired recipients. It works pretty well! Ahh...the power of the cloud. Think about all the other great things we'll be able to do mobily as we unload more and more of the processing needs to servers in the sky. (well, not really in the sky, but wouldn't that be cool?) $0.99 SitOrSquat (sponsored by Charmin): With Charmin's recent sponsorship, SitOrSquat is positioned to be the gold standard in location based restroom finders (yes, there is competition). You see, SitOrSquat will soon represent one of the few location based experiences that is available on the web AND on every major high-end mobile platform (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, etc.) Crowdsourcing clean toilets. Who would have thought? FREE Howcast: Youtube is great, but it is a monster, (especially when you try to navigate it from a mobile device.) When I'm on the go, I prefer smaller, curated collections of media. I want the app to be my channel (see TED). That is why I like the idea behind Howcast, a collection of how to videos covering everything from "how to pick a lock" to "how to tell if your girlfriend is a psycho." All the videos are informative, but most are pretty funny as well. I'd love to see major brands put out some curated collections. Target, REI, you guys listening? Oh yea...you can shake the iPhone for a random video. FREE Zillow: As a homeowner, it is a hard time to enjoy an app like Zillow, but I had to try out their GPS "drive by" feature (current home values pop up on the map as I travel down the street.) It really demonstrates the potential of delivering multiple "layers" of information to a mobile mapping experience. Now I want to drive by restaurant and see the wait time for a table, how about a live feed of gas prices at upcoming service stations, or which stores have a product I want in stock? FREE Peggle: If you haven't played Peggle yet...don't. That's all I'm saying. $4.99 What's new on your iPhone? May 14, 2009
Scenic Search: The Unexpected Pleasures of Web 3.0Tagged as: networked, new consumer journey, semantic web, trendsPosted by: Nita Rollins Goliath Google brings out the David in many people and organizations these days, organizations like the w3c collective, for instance, committed to promoting standards of markup excellence, most importantly semantic markup, which they believe Google doesn’t care enough about and which they herald as the slingshot of other search engines such as Hakia and Sensebot. Semantic search can’t arrive soon enough for me because there are days when Google’s SERP’s (search engine results pages) resemble one giant Alice adventure, with rabbit holes as far as the cursor can click, and following them isn’t always the path to maximum productivity, to put it politely. (I found these wondrous images illustrating my point about Alice’s adventures in search, thanks, ironically, to Google integrating image and text results!) Then again, I get paid for discovering unexpected nodes of creativity and influence, often lying somewhat off the beaten digital path. The general search population, I suspect, would prefer to discover the shortest distance between their query and the most authoritative answer. The comScore 2008 Digital Year in Review reports that Google owned 90% of all growth in search volume. But the joke among those aforementioned Davids is that people do more searches (vs. just more people) on Google because they can’t really find what they’re looking for. Among visual search engines, Viewzi is a favorite because it feels like a search mode buffet, and I can’t resist going through the line a few times, trying ‘tag cloud’ search first, then ‘web screenshot’ for its fast-whirling pages. A search on fashion designer Marc Jacobs yielded this tag cloud (I want to say cumulous) configuration, though the static image hardly does justice to the image boxes ballet.
But wait until you get a load of Spezify, describing itself as an engine to help you “…get an overview or new ideas of a subject; find useful information; be inspired.” In beta now, the site promises more search results from sites and video and sound too, and I sense a quiet revolution here. Scenic search, let's call it, which embraces the epistemological benefits of a little free association. And it's democratic in its grab bag methodology--see how the assortment of material on Marc Jacobs living in the 7th arrondisement in Paris includes a thrillingly titled post, "Cocaine Socialism," by blogger petitebrigitte, and how a tweet about hydrangeas makes it into an imagistic collage that is just plain gorgeous. What brand wouldn't want to be a part of this?
SEO and SEM pros: time for a bigger crayon (metatada) box. OPEN brands focused on a better Networked experience and a more engrossing and comprehensive consumer journey to their products: time to create content with the new scenic route in mind. |
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Speculation continues to grow around the potential release of new iPhones in the late June - early July timeframe. Faster processors, more memory, better camera resolution and video capabilities are all rumors that are all flying around the blog and twitter spheres. In the meantime, developers (and in some cases brands) continue to push the existing platform in new and exciting directions. It is important to remember there has only been an App Store for 10 months!
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