Davis ThinkingThe results of Latitude Research and Shareable Magazine's The New Sharing Economy study released today indicate that online sharing does indeed seem to encourage people to share offline resources such as cars and bikes, largely because they are learning to trust each other online. And they're not just sharing to save money - an equal number of people say they share to make the world a better place.
As we get more engrossed in the idea and practice of digital experiences, are we missing out on the opportunity to build better physical experiences with brands? There's a huge opportunity here to fuse the world's of design and art with technology and create something new. As way of inspiration, I think it's good to look at the work of artist Olafur Eliasson- who's spent a lot of time trying to understand how we "see", manage, react to and interact with space.
I will try to demonstrate here the manner in which social acts and communication result in mediated social realities. And suggest that the relational connections and value-added associations which are the byproduct of social media use create a marketplace of content whose highest value, individually motivated subjective choices, we are only beginning to capture and mine.
Long gone are the days when 'online' was synonymous with social isolation and loneliness. In fact, we're now witnessing the exact opposite: technology is driving people to connect and meet up en masse with others, in the 'real world'. It makes for an interesting, easily-digested trend, begging to be turned into new services for your customers.
If your marketing department has invested in any technology since the early 1960s, chances are you probably have something called a "dashboard" running on a PC near you, maybe even on yours. The idea is that your various technology systems -- tracking things like digital ad performance, conversational media results, and online sales -- can feed into a spot wherefrom you can "drive" your marketing. No you can't.
Online retail is set to grow but marketers won't keep up if they don't figure out how to integrate online with offline efforts, per a study from Boston-based Forrester Research. The firm says the U.S. and Europe will both see double-digit growth in Web retail over the next five years, with U.S. online retail growing at a 10% compound annual growth rate during that five-year period to reach nearly $249 billion.
Niche social networking sites aren't new. We've written about plenty of them, covering a diverse range of people and interests including travellers, property owners, office workers, restaurateurs, people with disabilities, baby boomers and even dogs. So, who is the newest kid on the social networking block? FaceChipz, a safe, age-appropriate online networking site for "tweens" where friendship links can only be made as the result of face-to-face exchanges in the real world.
With another holiday season behind us, retailers are busy crunching sales data to measure success and year over year revenue. However, this is also a good time to assess your company’s brand experience. And if yours needs improvement, integrating offline and online marketing can help.
While the holidays are already ancient history to most marketers, the art of interpreting consumer spending patterns is just beginning, and a new study indicates that the relationship between online and in-store shopping is more closely connected than many retailers realize. While people want to buy online, they still want to shop in person, reports marketing agency Allen & Gerritsen, which polled 400 consumers during the week after Christmas. "Despite the increased usage of online retail sites during the holiday season, most people are still visiting actual stores for inspiration," Catherine Kolodij, VP/Audience Intelligence for A&G, tells tells Marketing Daily.
As part of the marketing to promote the launch of the Droid Smartphone, Verizon Wireless took to the streets, taking over four vacant storefronts in three cities to create a one-of-kind interactive experience for pedestrians. Through Dec. 27, pedestrians in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles are invited to play the Droid Game, a videogame at street level.
As more and more brands are moving all of their ad spend online, defining how influence affects their return on investment is necessary and must be done as soon as possible. While some are making inroads to define these calculations many are overlooking the fact that influence affects everything. Without factoring in the real issue of different types of influence you run into a number of problems, for instance focusing on one group of influencers over another or getting broad sweeping numbers instead of knowing exactly how effective your time and money has been spent on the proper target. One thing that usually doesn’t sync up here is that these online influencers with large followings are not the offline influencers.
Why doesn’t a consumer electronics store work this way, in the age of the Internet? You walk into the digital photography section. On a slanted shelf sit 15 different cameras, each tied to its stanchion for security. But there’s a big screen behind the row of compact devices. And a keyboard in front.
For all the work marketers do reaching out to bloggers, social networks and other online outlets where they might get some word-of-mouth buzz, consumers are still looking to trusted friends and relatives for product or service recommendations.
Social media conversation is not only a subset of total word of mouth (WOM); it also differs substantially in content, according to research conducted by WOM research and consulting firm Keller Fay Group.
Audiences don’t live above or below-the-line, and it has taken our industry too long to truly embrace a through-the-line approach. But with the explosive growth of the Internet and the need for a specialized craft, we were quick to draw another line to differentiate on- and off-line advertising. But today’s audiences don’t live in an on- or off-line world either – they live in a “nonline” world.
There's nothing like the convenience of shopping online; then again, there's also nothing like the instant gratification of bringing home a purchase from the store. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Sears is dabbling with some experiments to combine the best of both worlds.
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