Polinchock's Ponderings

How Lloyds Coffee House Became Lloyds of London

David Polinchock — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:56:21 -0500

Another oldie from my original blog!

The internet is a great learning tool and you can really find some great information out there. I was reading through posts on the Re-Imagine discussion boards and came across one that was posted by a Paul Hanson:

The Economist had a wonderful article on the history of coffee shops a few weeks ago. In the 18th and 19th centuries they were amazing places. Many shops became known for the types of customers who visited. i.e. the subject of discussion was different in each shop. One shop was known for scientific arguments (in one case demonstrating dissections - not sure about health and safety here!) another become so well known for hosting insurance deals that it became Lloyds of London one of the largest insurance organizations in the world. In other words the coffee shops were the information hubs of the day the proprietors often published their own newsletters for customers - they were more than coffee shops. In fact the shop names (brands) were so well known that one newspaper named it's subject headings after the coffee shops that specialized in that subject.

I was completely fascinated by this posting and, as someone who talks about Starbuck's all the time, I hopped online, went to Vivisimo.com and decided to check out his posting. Sure enough, it's true. Lloyd of London really did start in a coffee shop.

I wonder what great businesses are being started in Starbuck's or other coffeehouses today? Are there other places that could become this kind of information hub? In today’s information overload world, think of how powerful it could be! Lloyds of London ne Lloyds Coffee House

VR on Regis & Kathie Lee

David Polinchock — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:00:11 -0500

One of the great things about youtube is finding old clips like this. Back in March of '93, I brought a VR system to Live with Regis & Kathie Lee. I remember it being a lot of work to get set-up on time and then we only had a short segment to get it all done. We had lots of fun and it sure is nice to see myself without grey!

The Woodward Report Interview on Retail

David Polinchock — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:17:18 -0500

I did this interview last year in Denmark while I was there for NEXT and thought that I would share it. We covered a lot of ground, including retail trends; what's working in retail and what the future of retail might be. Probably the first time I spoke about the role of history and legacy in creating retail experiences, something I still continue to formulate. Have a watch and let me know what you think.

Forget Cannes: CES Is the Place to Be and Be Seen | Digital - Advertising Age

David Polinchock — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:51:08 -0500

I'll be heading out this weekend to CES, which as Ad Age points out below, is quickly becoming one of the go to events for the advertising industry. In addition to exploring the show floor myself, I will also be doing some tours with MediaLink and Shelly Palmer, something I'm very excited about!

In addition, Michael Kassan will be moderating the Brand Keynote, and this year's line up is pretty stellar! It includes AT&T's David Christopher, General Electric's (GE) Beth Comstock, Facebook's Carolyn Everson, Walmart's Stephen Quinn, Hyundai's Steve Shannon and Unilever's Keith Weed. It again shows how more and more advertisers are heading to shows like CES, to see first-hand the technologies that will be available in the coming year.

Understanding how these technologies are impacting consumers becomes more and more important each year. What happens when everything is connected? What is the privacy exchange in this connected future world? How will new mobile technologies impact our retail experience? I'm not sure I'll get answers or just more questions, but I'm looking forward to seeing what CES will be talking about this year.

If you're going to be out there, let me know. If not, I'll be blogging and video blogging from the show floor, so check back next week for updates.

Getting Michael Roth, John Wren, Maurice Levy and Martin Sorrell to the same event is rare and possibly unprecedented save for Cannes every June. But the CEOs of the world's four largest ad-holding companies will be bumping up against the estimated 2,700 exhibitors and 150,000 attendees making the pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, which has stealthily become one of the most important dates on the calendar for marketers.

via adage.com

The Great Good Places - 10 Years After

David Polinchock — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 09:12:00 -0400

I originally wrote this piece just a few weeks after 9-11 for a trade publication in the amusement industry. They were looking for an article that would come out during the annual IAAPA conference and I usually covered topics like experience design and the importance of authenticity. But that week, I didn't know what to write. Sydney was just six months old at the time and I spent a great deal of time being grateful that she was too young for me to have to try to explain what happened and why.

I'm still excited when I look at Sydney and her friends and I see hope for the future. They question why we have to have the kind of hatred that exists in the world. And maybe, just maybe, as they get older and have a voice in the world, they'll use that voice to make the changes needed to make our planet a great.

So, on this 10th anniversary of 9-11, I again express my condolences to everyone who lost family and friends on that day. Watching the memorial services and all of the specials today have reminded me of just what an impact 9-11 had on us that beautiful morning, ten years ago. While we remember, lets also make sure that it never happens again. Let's make sure that we all live in a great good place.

Great, Good Places.

As I write this, it’s been just three weeks since the tragic events here in New York. I have had a difficult time getting back into my normal swing of things. Thankfully I have not suffered any direct losses as a result of the World Trade Center attack, although I live in a place just outside of New York that lost many members of its community. In the weeks after the attacks, I spoke to many colleagues in the entertainment marketing field who all asked the same question: How do we go back to our business in the face of such a tragedy? What we do seems so trivial in the face of such tragedy…so unimportant. I, too, asked the same questions and wondered how I would get back to "business as usual" after these events.

At the same time, I’ve also had many conversations about Ray Oldenburg and his book The Great Good Place. I’ve talked to many friends and colleagues about what makes a community and what makes a 3rd place—the place Oldenburg talks about that is not home, not the workplace, but a place where informal social interaction happens. Places we know that we can always head to when we want to connect with someone.

During the dot-com explosion, it was clear that the 3rd place seem to be driving how offices were created—lots of recreational activities, lots of places to mix and mingle. The work place and the 3rd place had become one place. Part of this was driven by the fact that all of us seemed to be putting in more hours than ever before, with less time to spend outside of the office or home, but part of it also stemmed from the fact that those 3rd places seemed to be disappearing in the redevelopment of the American landscape.

Tragedies like the World Trade Center attack make us remember what really makes a community. People rushing to give aid without thought to their own safety, as evidenced through the almost 400 firemen and policemen who died at the World Trade Center. So many people offering to give blood and make other donations, that in New York, they actually asked people to stop donating! Even online communities came to life in this crisis. My parents were stuck in Fairbanks and one posting generated almost a dozen responses of people to help, or put my folks up or do whatever they could. People I didn’t know, in a place thousands of miles away, becoming a community in a time of crisis.

This past weekend, as I was driving into the city to have dinner with friends, I was thinking about everything and especially, what would I write about for Entertainment Management. After all, this fun stuff seemed so unimportant in the face of so much loss. But then it started to dawn on me. The 3rd Place, community and fun.

Several years ago, I was working for a dot-com looking to create a portal for the out-of-home entertainment market. As I went from meeting to meeting, I used to talk about how what we did was one of the very few things that people did that had to involve other people. It was always a social experience. How many times have we gone to a theme park or FEC by ourselves? How many people do you see waiting online for a roller coaster alone? And even when you do, you always know that the very loose social structure of the line will open itself up to embrace those alone.

As I thought more about it, the need for fun is a global experience. We may have fun in different ways, but we all like to have fun. Fun is one of the greatest tools we have to create a world of understanding and -- potentially -- peace. Hate can’t thrive in an atmosphere of fun.

So, as we gather for IAAPA and wonder what we can do and how to get our sense of fun back, remember how important what we do really is. What we do is not unimportant or trivial—it is critical. Let’s ask how can we create experiences that bring people together to share a common, joyous activity. What we need today is more ways for people to come together and share joy—and that’s what we do. So celebrate the joy that you create. Publicize it, share it and shout it out. Not since WWII have we as a country needed or deserved the distraction of joyous and fun entertainment more than today. Let us become the Great, Good Places where people gather, share and become a community. For it is only when we are a community that we can stop the hatred that creates such tragedies in the first place.

Download Great Good Places

Weather (and Delta) Ruining Another Great Trip

David Polinchock — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:42:19 -0400

UPDATE: Well, it took about 4 hours of trying on the phone and on Twitter, but Delta was able to get Sydney & I on a new flight that, if all goes well, gets us in at the same time as originally planned. Of course, it means leaving at 7:30 tomorrow morning and basically spending the next 24 hours on planes, but at least we'll make it to the conference! More when we get there!

Yes, once again, weather seems to be thwarting another trip that I've been looking forward to for months. I get it. There's a hurricane. It's messing everything up and it's not anyone's fault. But Delta, there are things that are your fault and that you need to change:

They were announcing that NYC was going to be shut down by lunch time and yet when we called in the afternoon to change my flight, we were told that you couldn't do anything until my flight had been cancelled. Did you think that the hurricane was just going to go away and everything would be OK? Were you not sure that you would still be flying planes out of JFK when NYC starting to evacuate the city and impose a curfew for tomorrow night? So, thanks to the delay of having to wait for the flight to actually be cancelled, I'm now on hold for an hour+ with little chance that I will now be able to make my conference on Tuesday.
If I tell you that I want to speak to a representative, stop asking me questions and connect me with a representative. Stop asking me a "few more questions to help serve me better." When I've asked for a representative, what would help me better is actually connecting me with a representative.
You direct me to your website where I'll be able to make changes to my flight, but when I get there, it doesn't work at all. And yes, I've sent several messages to @deltaassist and aside from one response asking me for flight info, I haven't heard anything in over 2 hours.

It's not that things don't go wrong and, in a case like this, it certainly didn't start as your fault. But how you handle things really speaks to how you feel about customers. I'm not feeling the love right now. And, unless you can get me there for Tuesday, the whole trip might just be cancelled. I wish you had taken care of the problem when we asked you to an not waited until it now seems too late to do anything about it. And for that Delta, I hold you responsible.

Next 2011 | Innovation Lab

David Polinchock — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:58:28 -0400

Very excited that Sydney & I are off to Denmark to participate in the Next Festival, produced by the iLab. They always produce an excellent program, with a pretty wide range of speakers and I'll be talking baout the future of retail. In addition, Sydney will be presenting with me at Lego on what it means to play and being a digital native. Plus, we'll get some time to explore Copenhagen! I'll be blogging and Tweeting from the event, so look for updates next week.

Concurrent with the renowned international cultural venue – Aarhus Festival – NEXT 2011 offers boosts for mind and matter. This eighth edition of our Nordic Exceptional Trendshop once again presents the very latest and the best proposals for what’s next in our lives and businesses. This year you can experience representatives and global leads within living architechture, publishing, design, car manufacturing and research. On brand-side of things the speakers represent the likes of Time Magazine, LUX, IDEO, HWKN and many more. Go to nextaarhus.com

via ilab.dk

Shopkick & The CW Strike Deal To Deliver Rewards for Watching TV Ads [VIDEO]

David Polinchock — Thu, 19 May 2011 17:07:22 -0400

I'm a big fan of this kind of activity and really do believe that it create more value for both the advertisers and the consumers. We tried to get people to think about things like this at the Brand Experience Lab, but I'm guessing we were juist a little ahead of our time.

With the network-startup team up, CW advertisers will be able to reward Shopkick users with offers intended to drive them to stores if they watch select ad spots.

Television viewers will be prompted to open the Shopkick application on their Android or iPhone devices before a commercial airs. The application, using the device’s microphone, will then be able to recognize an advertiser’s spot and deliver instant rewards to the viewer.

“Shopkick’s first network partnership with The CW is a revolution for advertisers,” Shopkick CEO and co-founder Cyriac Roeding says. “The cellphone is the only interactive medium that consumers have with them while they are watching television and while they are shopping in the store.”

The relationship, arranged to help advertisers close the loop between TV ad buys and in-store purchases, is similar to the one forged between IntoNow and Pepsi for a TV ad-tagging promotion started last month. Yahoo acquired IntoNow just five days after the promotion was announced.

via mashable.com

How The Web And Smart Phones Are Saving Offline Retailers - CIO Central - CIO Network - Forbes

David Polinchock — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:05:29 -0400

Nice piece from Forbes about how consumers are using mobile phones to create their own, "oneline" experiences. Some good thoughts here, click on the link below to see the entire article.

According to JiWire’s Q4 2010 Mobile Audience Insights Report, 20 percent of the on-the-go-audience has visited a physical store after seeing a location-specific ad (emphasis mine). Promotions, store proximity, and product availability are all significant factors driving mobile users of location-based services into stores. Similarly, many consumers who begin their shopping process with online research continue to go to a store to make their final purchase, citing lack of product information, a desire to touch and feel the product, and the ability to compare multiple products among other factors keeping them from purchasing online.

Brick and mortars aren’t going away. Rather, the rapid rise of mobile shopping and location-based services have set the stage for a new kind of shopping experience, one that blends online, in-store and mobile into a single, fluid system that finally allows consumers to get what they want, for the price they want, when they want it. Retailers that can successfully weave together these experiences have an opportunity to emerge from this period as the new giants – and increase the bottom line of all three channels.

Read the full article: blogs.forbes.com

Friday Quote - Leo Burnett

David Polinchock — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:16:49 -0500

What more can you say about a quote, probably written 50+ years ago. And I really love this part of the quote:

"Advertising so interrupting, so daring, so fresh, so engaging, so human, so believable and so well-focused as to themes and ideas that, at one and the same time, it builds a quality reputation for the long haul as it produces sales for the immediate present."

I think that often today, advertisers are all about being daring, but they're not well-focused. It's the combination that's critical!

(BTW, I've been trying to find the date, but haven't had any luck. Anyone know?)