i [love] marketing.

FreshMoves.org is a bus with fresh food, coming to your neighborhood

Think grocery store in a bus, and you'd be imagining FreshMoves.org. It's a mobile fresh produce market, that comes to the neighborhoods without fresh food option. Unlike other mobile stores like Starbucks Train or Burberry Gifts or Meat Subway, Fresh Moves isn't a matter of luxury and convenience.It's about necessity and education of consumers who have been raised on fast food and haven't had a green produce as an option before. Most of these customers don't have access to fresh food, mostly because grocery stores are too far to get to without a car (which most of these people don't have) and carrying tons of groceries on the bus or two isn't exactly the activity of choice for most people. Fresh Moves aims to overcome this obstacle by making greens easily accessible even to the most impoverished and cut-off neighborhoods. Its targets are community centers, schools and other busy locations. Kudos.

Operation Santa: Success

One additional thing from the successful holiday promotions department: my favorite online retailer, Zady.com, partnered with Vespa to deliver the very last minute gifts on Tuesday and Wednesday. This super-important operation was enabled by messengers dressed-up as Santas, and it delivered gifts all the way to the Christmas evening.

A very smart idea that combines superior customer service with the push for promotion and awareness (the effort was promoted on Zady.com, and their Instagram, Twitter and Facebook feeds). This initiative joins Zady's La Guardia holiday pop-up store, and is another example of an online-first retailer gone offline.

Insight leads to strategy leads to market share ...

Chinese rarely drink coffee. 

This fact makes it strange to think that Starbucks wants to make China its second-largest market. There are, of course, secondary goodies and localized products that can attract customers, but without a strong caffeine addition, Starbucks value proposition becomes shaky, at best.

This is why Starbucks' primary value prop in China isn't coffee. It is space. 

Some 25 years or so ago, Starbucks helped invent the concept of the "third space" - a place that's not a home and it's not work either, but it's in between, offering ability to do work within comforts alike those at home. Now this brand is brining the same premise to crowded Chinese metropoles.

Starbucks is keeping the steady flow of traffic to its bars with the promise of a well-lit, comfortable, pleasant-yet-not-intimidating space where one can hang out with friends, do some work, read a book or have a meeting. The latter is increasingly common among Chinese fast-growing class of business people, who prefer meeting in Starbucks instead of their cramped offices.

A comfortable setting can be a powerful habit-forming situation. While the primary reason to visit Starbucks for Chinese right now is not coffee, the entire setting of Starbucks may nudge them into coffee-drinking direction. Something like: meeting a need you didn't know you had. 

#BurberryGifts

 

 

Angela Ahrendts on its helm or not, Burberry is great at digital. The latest is Burberry Gifts initiative, spread wide and far across social media by both Burberry and its fans. 

 

The promotional campaign started on December 2nd, when Burberry Twitter fans in London were invited to enter to win a Burberry gift from the London Exclusives collection. This call to action ended on December 13th, and that's where the real fun started. 

 

The real fun started in the form of the Festive Van that's still roaming the streets of London. The lucky-to-be-winners are copiously following its traces, all along posting the sightings of the van on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Burberry is keeping fans abreast of van's whereabouts via its social media channels, too, in combination with brand content, and the number of replies and RTs is insane. 

 

The van looks truly festive, and it's great that the campaign features such a great element of surprise, in combination with content strategy and social media. That's the holiday spirit (and some very smart promo strategy).

Walmart does crowdsource

First, Google got into same-day delivery service, and now Walmart is using its own customers for speedy online shipments. Apparently, the new delivery program from Walmart enlists shoppers in Walmart's physical stores to deliver goodies ordered by Walmart's online shoppers. 

This sounds super-weird, but in fact isn't much different from TaskRabbit or Relay Rides or any other crowdsourcing-based model, for that matter. It's about creating a new marketplace by connecting supply and demand in a simple, cost-effective way.

Walmart's always been a big saver, so it probably figured that it can cut its transportation and delivery costs by employing its own customers. Second, economically disadvantaged customers will probably show up at stores more often for the prospect of earning a discount. For everyone else, the result may be increased brand affinity due to sustainability and efficiency factors of this solution.

Besides, retailers big and small have started a race of the fastest possible delivery to customers, as they understand that, in the midst of product commoditization, this can be the source of their competitive advantage.

I'd love to enjoy this idea for a bit more now, before starting to think about everything that can go wrong with it (tardiness, fraud, regulations, insurance).

 

How design thinking inspired ColaLife

ColaLife is amazing idea that didn't come from Coke. It's result of a very smart hacking of Coke's gigantic distribution system. Simon Berry, an aid worker in Zambia, noticed that availability of Coca-Cola in very remote areas is greater than that medicines that can save life. This sparked an idea: why not use Coke's distribution system to deliver life-saving anti-dirrhoea kits? Coke's incredibly vast network of local distributors penetrates nearly every corner of Earth, and getting medicines to remote areas can be very costly and often frustratingly slow and irregular business.

The real insight, however, was not utilizing Coke's existing distribution system. It was creating a way to transport the medicine within it, as seamlessly as possible. The solution came in the form of an AidPod container that can be perfectly wedged between Coca-Cola bottles, so it can be distributed at no additional cost. 

Great example of creativity under constraints.

Your next same-day delivery shopping service is ... Google

 

Google's in the retail business again. This time around, it offers a very fashionable same-day delivery service in the Bay Area for retailers like Target, REI, Whole Foods, L'Occitane, Toys'R'Us and the like. Called Google Shopping Express, it launched just in time for the holiday madness and it sports a gigantic Google logo on the delivery truck.

My guess is that Google, once it figured out that it hasn't exactly figured out demands of the retail market (remember Google boutiques?) decided to get into retail delivery.  It's a great way to be first in the same-day delivery market and to create both customer- and retailer-lock in via its monumental data services. Once switching costs become too high, Google can monopolize the demand and expand its delivery market. It's not a bad idea, even if at the first sight it seems as an unlikely one for the Google brand.  

Why buy it when you can print it?

 

To promote its Cayman S model, Porsche gave car lovers access to its 3D printing data. The idea was that those 50 people who actually own a 3D printer can now print their own Porsche, customize it, color it, play with it and share it with their social graph.

The idea has a limited potential, if only because the consumer market penetration of 3D printers is so small today. But, once (and if) 3D printers become a commodity likely to be found in any home, this line of brand thinking can become major. 

Social objects, like 3D printed Porsche, are an amazing proxy to real thing to aspirational luxury consumers. What keychains, small leather goods, iPhone cases and the like do for luxury brands today, 3D printed objects can do for those same luxury brands in the future. Want a Balenciaga bag? Just print it, until you can afford the real thing. The ways brand affinity can grow just multiplied.

 

I want a sandwitchbike

 

Actually, I probably don't, knowing how  much pain it is to put an IKEA furniture together. Called "IKEA for bikes,"this two-wheeler gets to your door in a box and it's up to your engineering skills to put it together.

Truth to be told, there's nothing ordinary about this bike, in addition to its non-traditional distribution model. It's made of beeck plywood and its parts are made of cylinders, instead of welding. Once you accept the fact that you are about to drive the wooden bike, you can order it online and it arrives flat-packed with the assemly instructions. Orders begun in Europe on December 1st and about to being in January for the rest of the world. The bike price is $1,092.

 You can check out the whole thing here.

The next level of content and commerce integation

Is there a better shopping context for Leica camera than Instagram? Leica clearly thinks the answer is no. Instagram is place of budding photographers, photo enthusiasts, and just those in love with a good photo (among others). All of them can now purchase this camera right there on Instagram, without ever leaving their newsstream. 

Actually, it's not as simple as that, but smart people will probably find a way to make it better. As of now, purchasing is enabled by Arco (a tech startup) in combination with following Leica Brazil's Instagram account. After this, all it takes to become a proud owner of the LeicaC is to comment "purchase" on one of the account's photos. 

Fashion brands, jump on it!

And finally, paying with your talent is here

I doubt NYC landloards will buy into this idea, but it is nevertheless pretty amazing in its humanity. After all, didn't Michelangelo and Picasso and many a writer payed for their everyday existence with their art? 

The idea of The Merit Shop comes from Daniel Soares and Pedro Sampaio, and is based on exchanging one's talents for goodies. To win a Christmas Ball, for example, all you need to do is sing a song, draw something, or tell a joke and upload it en route of YouTube or Instagram.

I can see many a charity using this form of exchange for their donations. It's a more fun way of giving, anyway.

Can one have too much of a frictionless experience?

The ultimate goal of a good user experience design is to create as seamless and as frictionless way to fulfill a task as possible. The less pain points there are, and the less roadblocks, the better. The ideal scenario is when an action or a behavior can be served with a single click or a swipe. 

But what happens when a seamless, simple and easy design starts to enable too much of a behavior? In other words, what if some friction is good?

Think food. Seamless, true to its name, designed such an easy and simple food ordering system that in fact end up ordering more (orders become 15% more complex and 6% higher in calories), and paying more for it (21% more, to be exact). The study where those numbers came from links the "freedom to order" to anonymity that online ordering offers.

Undoubtledly, social factors play a role. But the more interesting problem here may be one of design. What if experience design made it harder for us, and not easier, to fulfull our food cravings, unhealthy diet choices and instant gratification? 

The challenge here clearly is that a service that is less seamless is going to lose in the competition against those that fulfill our needs better, faster and easier. Simply put, consumers won't use it. Solving this problem ironically requiers a seamless design of friction (or obstacles) into behavior that, if facilitated, is detrimental to our health. 

That's a pretty new tought. I'd love to see Seamless that fosters healthy choices, doesn't respond to our food cravings, offers postponed gratification and still stays in business. It's a pretty neat design problem.

 

Goodreads heading over to Amazon

Something's broken with Amazon recommendation system. To fix it, at least for book lovers, Amazon purchased GoodReads, a community of people passionate about books. Book lovers also discover books, recommend them and discuss them in book clubs, creating a lot of very useful data in the process. In one swift move, Amazon got itself a rich repository of information that comes very handy with tailored book recos. Expect some very, very good suggestions from your Amazon account soon.

Starbucks ... train?

This is a pretty great example of solving an unserved need or. Best design solutions recognize pain points in people's experience journeys and offer solutions in the form of their products or services precisely at those moments. 

Starbucks, already present at every urban corner (just to make sure to be there should a need arises) now ventured into transportation department. In Switzerland, Starbucks repurposed a double-decker car of a train servicing Geneva Airport. The challenge was not just to put a Starbucks counter in the train and call it a day; Starbucks in fact designed the entire car, together with the sound-proof floors, comfy seats, and a wooden bar.It's a pretty great idea for commuters in need for coffee, which is practically everyone on the train.

Hope Acela is next.

 

Katz Deli Pop-Up

Pop-up stores - digital or physical - are all the rage. After all, who doesn't like a little surprise, exclusivity and curation? Katz Deli, another thing that's all the rage, partnered with The Hundreds to celebrate its 125 anniversary via future memorabilia: t-shirts, beanies, an apron and a turtleneck, all Katz Deli branded and designed by streetwear legends. The pop-up (at Katz Deli) will be live  December 17 - January 5th 2014.

Coke, meet Banksy.

Uber got it right last night

Last night, Uber charged 8 times its regular price for its car service. Controversy ensued.

The popular argument was that a brand, especially an emerging, sharing economy-based brand, could sour its customer base by a move that can easily be viewed as predatory. After all, sharing economy emerged to fill in a void created by the tight grip that predatory corporations hold on supply, which allows them to charge premium for access. Last night, some may say, Uber uncannily looked like a corporation it was created to overturn.

And yet. Think again. Last night, lovely snow storm gave way to slushy, wet streets filled with brawling Santas (yes, NYC had a priviledge to host yet another SantaCon). If you were an Uber driver, you were faced with the following situation: 1) damage your car by driving in snow/slush or 2) damage it by a puking Santa. Unsurprisingly, most Uber drivers hung their car keys and decided to stay at home.

Now Uber was in a tricky situation. How to provide supply that matches Saturday night demand? It found the solution in creating an incentive to drivers to go out. "Every man has his price," the saying goes, and Uber discovered that that price is exactly 8 times the usual. Sure enough, there were more Uber cars on the roads, the reward overrun the risk, and Santas got home safely. 

The question here isn't one of corporate behavior, but of human psychology. And Uber got it right.

The image above is from the now notorious Santacon Brawl Video.

 

it's all about how you feel

Excerpt from the new book on Jony Ive: “When we are at these early stages in design, when we’re trying to establish some of the primary goals—often we’ll talk about the story for the product—we’re talking about perception. We’re talking about how you feel about the product, not in a physical sense, but in a perceptual sense.”

Person as an interface or, when your shirt becomes hardware

"As our worlds become smarter, and get to know us better and better, it becomes harder and harder to say where the world stops and the person begins," said the famous Andy Clark.

And indeed, the ultimate act of disappearing interface is when it becomes a person. Andy Clark spent a lot of his time doing research on cognitive hybridization, and concluded that it's only natural that we are able to mix neural, bodily and tech ploys. Mindware is just as integral part of problem-solving that makes for human intelligence as are the brain cells. In other words, our brain is only part of our mind.

If we got mindware covered, why are we lagging behind with bodyware? Road to our body is currently paved with ugly wristbands, clunky heart-rate monitors and chips that never seem to work. It should be paved with fashionable clothing, instead.

It's time for fashion brands to wisen up and realize that very soon, they will find themselves in the hardware business. Some of them are getting there. Under Armour recently bought MapMyFitness to capitalize on popularity of biometric measurement. Nike sneakers track how high you jump. Sony designed vibrating wig.  Athos equipped their entire sportsgear collection with sensors. Bike riding will become the safest thing around thanks to gadgets made for every part of cyclist's body.

Right now, these developments are significant more for their potential than for their reality, especially if we disregard gimmicks like dress changing its color for no particular reason or wearing a level of sexual arousal literally on one's sleeve. Garments turned into hardware is going to force retail companies to think and behave like tech companies (and to adapt their value chains accordingly). Consumer targeting will reach a completely new and unseen level (something like, if I know what you do, and how you do it, I will also know which products and services to offer you). And there is definitely be those who will claim that our clothes will become our autobiographers, and idea which can, stripped of its poetic halo, actually be useful in giving a more comprehensive picture of an individual.

Fashion is the future of bodyware. Equally true is that bodyware can be this industry's next big thing. Instead of owning the product, fashion brands can own the entire interface that is a person. And this person is connected to other people, devices and interfaces. Our experiences, that is at the very core of the fashion brands offering, can be augmented by what we wear enhancing things we love and automating things that bore us. Fashion pieces can be, thanks to technology, more tailored to us who are wearing them. They can fit our individual bodies better. They can solve a problem for a diabetic person by alerting them to take their shot. 

If the code for cognitive hybridization has been cracked, we should be able to figure out the fashion-body hybridization, too. Bodyware is just as integral part of presence in the world that makes for human experience as are our bodies. Our bodies are just one part of our physical presence.  

Wantful helps you choose

When it comes to personal recommendations tools online, they vary from boring through dreary to simply off. Wantful is the exception. It uses lifestyle data, combined with occasion and budget and spits out things that look like something I'd pick up myself for the person I know well. Check it out! 

Everyone wants to know how their neighbors are faring

Everyone wants to know how their neighbors are faring. And this provides an incredibly useful context to help people make better decisions. It narrows down the gap between decision and action. We recycle more if we have information on how much our neighboors recycle. Apparently we also eat better. In a recent experiment at Lowe's supermarket, researchers displayed information on the carts saying how much fresh produce the average customer buys. Apparently, there's a strong impulse to conform to the norm, and besides, who wants to fall behind the average? The result? 10% sales increase in produce in one week. 

 

Brands are cool, it's branding that sucks

What are brands good for? The most recent incarnation of this question comes from the startup world. In the event they are successful (and 3 out of 4 are not), startups excell in their products. But what about the story, or the narrative, around these products? That's where startups fall short, at least according to the popular opinion. 

And then, there's this. Most people around the world would not care if "more than 73% of brands disappeared tomorrow," says Havas Media study. In Europe and the US, the figure is even higher, at 92%. Only 20% of brands worldwide make "a significant, positive effect on people's well-being."  

So which one is it going to be? If startups invest their brainpower and money in building a brand around their products, will they reach a point where they get to struggle to remain meaningful?

This scenario is not every likely. The very core of being meaningful is baked in the startups' core. Their products either add value/make people's lives better or simply disappear from the public view. Design economy made sure of it. A startup brand is a simple answer to the question of how this company help people lead easier, more fulfilled, more sustainable lives. It's the "how" that is a startup's purpose and a reason to exist in the world. 

The 20th century brands lack this "how." Driven by science and tech innovation, and not by design, they had to invent their "how." They then poured marketing, communications and PR into making their invention believable. But, offering an actual, tangible proof that goes beyond accumulating profits is proven to be increasingly difficult (see above). If the meaning isn't already the core of a brand, people will see through it.

But. The real challenge here is not one of the brand, actually. It's the challenge of branding. Our branding manuals are out of date. Marketing, communication and PR are not the most productive way to tell the story about our products, to convey the purpose of our company, or to provide rational of what we bring to the world. Just look at what Uber is doing. Look what AirBnB is doing. Look at Net-a-Porter. Look at Amazon.

Brands are useful, no doubt. They provide focus, differentiation, and a filter for everything that comes out of a company, be it a product or a social media update.

It's just that branding sucks. 

 

Digital design is behavioral economics made tangible

Behavioral Economics is "about helping people to avoid making a decision that they themselves would consider a mistake" and "…the most interesting and innovative tools are those that make it easier for people to do what they already want to do — to realize their own good intentions."

Studying behavioral economics helps us understand the gap between intention and action. Our intention can be to eat more healthily, to exercise more, to save more money, to be nicer to people - and the learnings and tools of behavioral economics help us stick to this plan. It helps us stick to something, because it understands that we are highly influenced by context of our decision-making; and it helps us because it offers a model for this decision making that enriches economic models with human psychology.

And that's where digital products, from running trackers to commerce websites, fit in.

Have a look at this article about the misconceptions about behavioral economics.