Polinchock's Ponderings

Augmented Reality T-Shirt

David Polinchock — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:32:37 -0500

Swedish magazine T-Post, distributed as a T-shirt (yes, check it out), has released an issue where the t-shirt itself becomes a "paper rock scissors" game to play against. A bit creepy, but also interesting as it keeps on unveiling new ways of interacting with physical products, as in the Adidas' sneakers augmented reality thing.

Adverblog: Paper, rock and scissors.

Some Random Thoughts on Sneakers

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:34:32 -0500

I was just watching the adidas/Star Wars video over at 2 Ads I Cannot Stop Watching - On The Ground Looking Up and thinking about sneaker brands in my life. It doesn't show now, but I was a distance runner in high school. Ran cross country and back when I was doing this, there weren't many cross country sneakers available at the average sporting goods stores. In fact, I can only remember seeing the adidas Country sneakers in the stores by me. They were solid sneakers and I feel like most of the people ran in them. Then in '76 or '77, a guy named Gary Muhrcke started selling new brands of sneakers literally from the back of his van as he visited high school tracks across the state. That's where I was introduced to brands like New Balance, Brooks and others that I had never heard of before. I tried a variety of brands and settled on New Balance, which I wore when I ran the NY Marathon back in '89.

To me, brands like adidas became less "real" sneakers and more fashion sneakers. Brands like New Balance and Brooks were the ones you chose to run in, adidas were the sneakers you were to hang out. That's not to say that's true, that's just become my impression these days.

My point is this. back in the late 70's, I decided that adidas weren't really good shoes for running and that impression has stayed with me for over 30 years. I don't think I've even tried on a pair of adidas sneakers since those high school days.

When brand associations are made, they're pretty hard to change.

A Look Forward, Some Predictions for 2010

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:29:10 -0500

I've gotten some excellent feedback on my 2010 predictions and thought that I would keep a brief excerpt up from here for a little while. You can find the full post by clicking on the link below and I’ve included the list here. Please let me know what you think.

Authenticity continues to be a critical.
As SM grows, people will demand much more from brands.
Brands must learn that they start the conversation, people amplify it.
If you don't give me information, I'll go to someone who will.
We need to expand the Experience Continuum.
To expand the Experience Continuum, we need to start creating Oneline experiences.
We'll start to understand the importance of Location Based Branding.
AR & QR codes will become mainstream.
Physical retail needs to adapt or face the consequences.

A Look Forward, Some Predictions for 2010 - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Displax film could turn nearly any surface into touchscreen, make your keyboard irate -- Engadget

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:21:56 -0500

Ever since I saw the Everywhere Display from IBM, I thought that that this was cool technology and just one part of our "Minority Report" future. Displax is also working in this field and doing some very interesting work in this field.

Light Blue Optics already blew our minds up with its touchscreen-creating projector, but it looks like Displax will be the one to really turn the touchpanel into a modern day commodity. The Portugal-based company is trumpeting a new polymer film that can be stuck onto or just under glass, plastic or wood in order to transform a vanilla surface into one that responds to touch and airflow. Furthermore, the tech can be overlayed on curved panels, and it also plays nice with opaque and transparent surfaces. As the story goes, an array of nanowires embedded in the film recognizes your digits or pointed breath, and it then passes the information along to a microcontroller and software suite that transforms the inputs into reactions on your system. In its current form, the solution can detect up to 16 touch points on a 50-inch screen, and if all goes well, the first Displax-enabled wares will start shipping this July. Huzzah!

Displax film could turn nearly any surface into touchscreen, make your keyboard irate -- Engadget.

An Augmented (Hyper)Reality

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:54:54 -0500

Thanks to Adfreak for posting this video showing the very scary side of an augmented reality future. Sadly, this is what happens when advertising gets ahold of something. The truth is, when ad agencies talk about 360 advertising, what they're picturing is you with a circular TV surrounding your head. But I know that Sydney, who's 8 now, will use AR every day when she gets to college, so it's a technology that won't be going away any time soon.

AdFreak: Have a glimpse at your sponsored future life.

Sobel Media: Augmented Reality: What is it and why should you care - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Coke Happiness Machine

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:16:25 -0500

I'm a little late getting this posted, but Coke certainly had fun creating this Happiness Machine. Nice example of a brand bringing their message to live.

The First Location Based Storytelling

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:44:13 -0500

The images above are from the Lascaux cave in France and are estimated to be about 16,000 years old. I've been playing around with some new images for business cards and thought of images like this when I began my search. Two me, they represent two of the most basic things that I talk about:

They're one of the first examples of storytelling. And if you've ever heard me speak, you know that above all, I believe that a great story is they key to success. It's not about how you use tactics, we've all seen movies laden with special effects and cool technologies that were just crappy movies. If you have children, think about the stories you tell them. We still share Aesops fables, Grimms fairy tales and variations of those stories and they're hundreds of years old. Remember, people want to hear a great story, people want to share a great story and people want to participate in a great story. Without a great story, you might get some attention, but you'll never get engagement.
They also represent one of the first times that people used place to help tell the story. During a recent panel at Social Media Week about Social Retail, it struck me that retail has always been social. The early markets in the town square were a place for the community to gather, share and enjoy each other. It was a social experience. When Ray Oldenburg talked about the third place, he believes they are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place (source: Wikipedia). While we gathered during Social Media Week to discuss the online tools that allow us to connect with one another, more then one person observed just how many cocktail parties there here to allow us to connect in the real world too.

Think of how much money brands spend on space -- rent, utilities, staffing, overhead, etc. -- and then think of how little effort most retailers put into their space. They invite us to become fans of their Facebook page, but they don't invite us to become a fan of their physical space.

For example, Best But usually high marks for their online experience. They have a good web site, for me at least, where it's easy to find information, get reviews, etc. They've been aggressive in using Twitter as a customer service and information tool. It seems to all work online. But, as much credit as Best Buy gets for creating a really good online experience, I really don't know anyone who likes shopping at Best Buy. You can't get information, there's no connection to all of the data available online and for the most part, it's just hard to shop there. When I'm shopping there, I usually end up using one of their computers to get online, log into my Consumer Reports account and then doing research on the products I'm looking at. Why isn't that information available right at the product? And why do I have to use my Consumer Reports account? Surely Best Buy could cut a deal to make that information available to its customers.

If you're not going to provide a compelling, authentic and relevant brand experience, you're going to end up competing on price alone. Thanks to tools like Google Goggles and cell-phone based bar code readers, stores that don't provide the right experience will simply become very expensive windows for online retailers like Amazon and Zappos.

Polinchock's Ponderings: Socialization of Place.

Lascaux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Lascaux.

More Thoughts on the Value of Place

David Polinchock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:28:34 -0500

A few years back, Greg Beck related about asking a 13 year old when was the last time she went into a record store. She said she never goes to a record store, she buys her music online. We asked the youngster of our office at the time, and she confirmed that. She doesn't go into music stores either.

Back then, I also ran across this post, Experience the Message: THE HUMAN TOUCH:

The Hollywood Reporter has a brief interview with Judith Regan, the publisher and media mogul, for the "future of entertainment" special. Surprisingly, the woman whom made millions with tawdry tell-all books, political muckraking and celebrity gossip, sees the future as a step away from the "pornoization" of American culture.
In doing so, she echoes experiential marketers' calls for a humanization of marketing, and of using real people to engage with other real people, instead of the mindless gloss of traditional marketing and advertising.
"The central problem in America is lonliness, which comes out of consuming all this pop culture and yet, not having human experiences. I call it the "pornoization" of the culture. If you look at where the culture is going, there is no love, there is no tenderness. The images my daughter sees are devoid of love. I actually see in the future that simulating love or some authentic human experience will become what people desire and what they want to pay for."

It made me think of how often we eat at Burger King just because they have an indoor playground. And it's not just about the actual playground. It's Sydney's desire to play with a group of other children her age and the social aspect of that experience. It's not about the food there (sorry Burger King!), it's about it being a Third Place for Sydney.

It also made me ask the question, what is the value of real estate for retailers today? Does a record store really need to exist as it's been for the past 40+ years? Or banks, grocery stores, fashion retailers? If, thanks to the internet, people are much more comfortable getting their purchases sent to them, rather then getting them right away, do we need that much space dedicated to merchandise? So, if we can do away with the inventory portion of most retail spaces today, what else would you do with the space? How could you make it a much more social environment, rather then being a retail environment? After all, this is exactly why places like Starbuck's or the Apple stores have boomed -- they created a social space, rather then a retail space.

But, while people look at Starbuck's or the Apple stores and say "Yea, that's great for them, but it doesn't apply to me," I think that they're missing a huge opportunity today. I continue to think that there's a coming trend to socialize the retail environment instead of just merchandising the real estate space. And the more we try to use the space for our purposes rather then our guests, the more they'll stay away.

I'm doing some interesting research on this topic now, so stay tuned for updates.

Brand Experience Matters: Circuit City cost cutting madness

David Polinchock — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:21:42 -0500

I can't say it any better then Andrew Weir did here, so I'll just let him say it! Make sure you read his full piece by clicking on the link below.

They neglected the in-store brand experience.
In the Customer Experience article there is a quote from Jason Goldberg, VP marketing for MTI, who was on the team that designed the in-store experience for Circuit City in the 1990s:
“They made the dramatic step of cutting their most expensive salaries and in the process, eliminated what remained of their most loyal high quality sales staff," ..."They were left with a store that required great sales staff, and no experienced sales staff to support it."
In an age when brand experience is a key differentiator Circuit City’s decision was crazy.
If you don’t deliver a great brand experience when consumers are buying then they will either not buy or not come again. (Emphasis mine) On the other hand, if you deliver an experience that WOWs then they are much more likely to buy, buy again and may be even tell their friends. The power of word-of-mouth/advocacy is well understood.
Staff are the clearly the main drivers of a good in-store experience so cutting best staff is always likely to create a problem. (Emphasis mine)
This is an important lesson for any retailer considering cutting staff cost in these difficult times.

Brand Experience Matters: Circuit City cost cutting madness.

Think CRE -- Customer Relationship Experience, Not CRM

David Polinchock — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:38:11 -0500

As we're seeing a lot more conversation about SM as a tool for customer service, I think the underlying thoughts of this piece still have great value, even if the specific technologies don't (I wrote it in 2001). Click on the link to read the full article and my experiences back then with United, Hilton and AT&T. At the very least, I'm sure they'll give you a good chuckle!

I think that we still face a real challenge that companies continue to use these tools for their benefit, not the benefit of their customers. They like to hop onto the "cool, new thing" bandwagon, but they don't always truly believe in what they're doing. The constant push for immediate, trackable ROI doesn't help.

2010 should be an interesting year for the SM discussion. This will be the year that it moves from shiny new toy to either useful, real tool that companies use to create authentic connections with their audiences or the ad industry will move on to whatever shiny bauble comes next. Companies will need to move beyond lip service if they want SM to move from CRM to CRE.

Like many people, I have a Palm Pilot that keeps track of all of my important information: phone numbers, addresses, upcoming events, family/friend birthdays, anniversaries and the like. What it can’t do is actually mail out the card or make the calls. This illustrates the difference between CRM—Customer Relationship Manager—and what I call CRE—Customer Relationship Experience. Having the information in my Palm is CRM. Using the information to make sure that Mom gets her Mother’s Day card is creating the right CRE.
Right now, CRM is all the rage. Companies spend millions to create CRM software, data mining and voice recognition tools. They build immense databases to combine a person’s multiple experience (online/offline buying, surfing habits, etc.) into a single record. New wireless technologies will allow companies to track where you go and deliver location-based advertising to you in real time, while you’re there.
CRM is often used as a tool to help the company touch the customer. Unfortunately, customer service is all about the customer touching the company! Many companies implement CRM to add bottom-line savings or to provide better sales opportunities. If that’s the case, it should really be called PRM -- Profit Relationship Management. CRM has little to do with the customer, and even less to do with the relationship. In fact, it often stands in the way of customer relations.
Increased business value used to be a byproduct of good customer service. Today customer service is a byproduct of trying to increase the business value. Consumers are smart. If you want to look into a crystal ball for your company’s future, take a look at where you fall. If you’re closer to lip service than real service, get your resume out today. Your future doesn’t look very good!

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