Category Archives: Mobile

Marc-eting 101: User-Generated Content

marc-eting blog
We sat down with our CEO Marc Sampogna to talk about the latest trends in marketing and branding. This month we asked him the following questions, “Recently, we’ve noticed a lot of brands sharing user-generated content across their digital channels. What is the most effective example of this that you’ve seen? What do you think are the benefits of having consumers create and share content for brands that they love?”

There’s no doubt that user-generated content is extremely effective for brands to market their products or services. It provides content to populate the brands digital platforms and allows them to build brand loyalty by fostering unique experiences for their customers, both digitally and in real life.
DoritosGoat
We all remember the Doritos activation, “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, which yielded thousands of submissions, all culminating with the winner’s spot airing during the big game.  While that’s certainly a very effective and memorable one, there are others that I believe have a longer tail.

JonesSoda
Take Jones Soda — they literally place consumer photos and stories on their labels to celebrate the quirky nature of the brand and those who enjoy it. They’ve been doing this for years, and others have followed in different shapes and forms. Such as Twisted Tea, and even Coke for that matter, taking it to another level with their custom shareable cans campaign. And who can forget Mt Dew’s Democracy, where they asked consumers to design the packaging for their latest flavor or Starbucks’ MyStarbucksIdea.com, where consumers share and vote on the coolest idea that they think Starbucks should integrate into their stores. My favorite was coffee flavored ice cubes — avoids the watering down of your ice coffee with regular ice cubes. Simple, yet genius.

No matter how you slice it, brands will always benefit from empowering their consumers to participate in their story. Whether it’s designing it, naming it, or sharing how you enjoy it, we just want to be a part of it. This results in broader exposure for the brand, as well as newfound perspective on exactly how they’re audiences experience their products and engage their brand. So, I certainly believe that brands will continue to embrace the “power to the people” approach, and find new and unique ways to do so.

A Lamp For The Digital Age

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Philips has released the newest addition to their Hue professional wireless lighting collection, Hue Go. It is a portable color-changing lamp, and you guessed it, connects right to your smartphone. You can control Hue Go wirelessly to set timers, controls, notifications, or alarms. Hue Go provides you to get creative with your space and play with light in a new way.

The lamp has seven preset light settings, or allows you to pick your favorite color. It also has 5 patented natural dynamic effects: Cozy Candle, Sunday Coffee, Meditation, Enchanted Forest, and Night Adventure.

The Hue Go has the ability to wake you up in the morning to the glow of simulated sunlight. It also provides lighting that syncs to your music. 

What Sparks Our Fire: The ability to set the mood-lighting from our devices

 

Leave Your Selfie Sticks At Home

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Following in the footsteps of some of the world’s most popular museums, music festivals are beginning to ban the ubiquitous selfie stick from their events. Earlier this week Coachella posted a list of banned items to its website, including “selfie sticks/narcissists.” Lollapalooza similarly announced that it would not allow selfie sticks into Grant Park, where the Chicago-based music festival will take place this summer. Both of these announcements arrive on the heels of last weekend’s Ultra Music Festival, where selfie sticks were also banned.

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These decisions have sparked a lot of controversy online and prompted strong reactions all around. Some have been upset with the festivals’ decisions to ban what they see as a useful tool to engage with the environment and event, while others have rejoiced at the idea of one less distraction from the music.

From the festivals’ perspectives, there are many risks involved with allowing selfie sticks. Aside from the fact that they can potentially be used as weapons, they can also cause physical risks simply due to their size and functionality. Dropping, walking into, or tripping over selfie sticks are very real risks that music festivals have a duty to curb, due to their large audiences.

But it’s also interesting to consider some of the business implications that these festivals might face by allowing selfie sticks. If selfie sticks were allowed into the concert spaces, users would be able to capture unobstructed high quality videos from their devices to share content or even stream live.  Though this is not cited by any festival as a reason for the ban, we suspect that any threat to the festivals profit margins, or legal agreements with their artists adds yet another reason why selfie sticks won’t be making an appearance at this year’s hottest music festivals.

What Sparks Our Fire: An interesting debate on how technology can impact our real life experiences.

Changing The Mobile Advertising Landscape Bits By Bits

Telefonica Stores And HQ

Brands are always vying for creative ways to engage consumers and capture their attention. With the shift from desktop to mobile, however, one of the largest considerations brands face is the data usage that consumers must use to view and engage with their advertisements. While a wildly creative ad placed before a YouTube video might work well on a desktop, on mobile, users must consider how much data it will take to view that video in it’s entirety, and might choose to skip it after the required 5 seconds– regardless of how cool they find it.

The Spanish telecom Telefónica announced at the Mobile World Congress that it will begin testing a new program where customers can engage with brands in exchange for more data. This interesting new program will hypothetically be a win-win situation for everyone involved: brands will get the engagement they desire from willing participants, and consumers will be able to interact with their favorite brands without worrying about expensive data overages. If this program is successful, it could end up entirely changing the mobile advertising landscape.

What Sparks Our Fire: Innovative new mobile advertising ideas that give big benefits to brands and customers

The New Age Of the Millennial

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 10.24.11 AMOver the past few years, brands have made huge investments to target the tech-saavy, authenticity craving, youthful millennial audience.  But what’s up next for one of our favorite target audiences?

A new study published by Google and Millward Brown Digital brings to light the changing nature of Business to Business marketing. By mirroring a study published in 2012, this study (which was conducted in 2014) was able to capture the B2B decision making landscape two years later.

One of the most notable changes captured in the study is the demographic shift of decision makers and influencers. Almost half of those researching and making decisions are now between 18 and 34 years old. With an astounding 81% of non C-suiters now having a say in the decision making process, millennials’ influence will only increase as their presence increases in the workplace.

The study also uncovered the changing process in which information is being found by purchasers. While online search continues to be the purchaser’s #1 resource, what the purchaser is searching for is changing. In 2014, 71% of purchasers searched with a generic query. Researchers and decision makers are now learning more about B2B products and services before learning about the associated brands. This poses new challenges for B2B brands, requiring them to market their products in new ways before the researcher even reaches their website.

Based on these trends, there are two important considerations that B2B brands should be making when marketing their products. First, millennials are driving the adoption of mobile as a space to search for their B2B needs. Brands must begin to consider their mobile presence and it’s appeal to the millennials who are increasingly conducting their research on mobile. The second consideration is the increasing value of video. According to the study, “seventy percent of B2B buyers and researchers are watching videos throughout their path to purchase.” With that many influencers watching videos, it’s important for B2B brands to understand the value that their videos bring to them.

Read the study here.

What Sparks Our Fire: The need to redefine marketing tactics and strategies to reach the maturing millennial audience.