July 2012

Technology has reshaped the way people shop in physical stores for quite some time. Sadly, many retailers have waited while technology impacted their offline sales instead of proactively making it work for them. But in a world where retail dynamics constantly shift, online-only retailers win solely on price, home delivery gets even faster, and physical stores close regularly, it’s high time for companies to rethink the way they use digital technology in their retail shops.

One way to rethink in-store digital is to recognize how it impacts retail space and the ways customers experience it. Broadly speaking, digital can be used to manipulate small spaces efficiently and create experiences that seem even larger than a traditionally sized and set store. So, when consumers visit a store, they’re able to immerse themselves in digital videos, photos, product specs or augmented reality experiences. [...] Read >

For the first time ever in Olympics history, every event will be streamed live. NBC is streaming all events across several channels: website, smartphone, and tablet. Access to the content requires a qualifying cable subscription, but overall this is a major step for mobile and consumers. While not a new idea or technology, access to this much content from a mobile device speaks to the growing influence of mobile. But NBC is failing to maximize consumer engagement by not delivering experiences optimized for each platform.

Mobile video is gaining traction with consumers, specifically on tablets. comScore reports that 53% of the tablet audience watches videos on their device at least once a month compared to only 20% for the smartphone audience. A healthy 9.5% of the tablet audience watches video on their device at least once a day compared to only 2.9% of the smartphone audience [...] Read >

For more than 100 years, marketers have accepted and applied a consumer journey model often referred to as AIDA—awareness, interest, desire and action. Of course there are many iterations of this model, and more recently some notable improvements from McKinsey and Forrester.

Since my design training in the mid-‘80s, I’ve been preoccupied with understanding consumers, how they make decisions and how technology is fundamentally changing our behaviors as people, and therefore, must impact our models as marketers. In 2008, our agency introduced some fresh thinking on this topic in the book I co-authored with Dr. Nita Rollins, The Open Brand. Our insight at the time was that the model was shifting from “funnel to fish”—meaning that our choices as consumers were expanding, not narrowing, as our journey took hold. Read >

“In this new wave of technology, you can’t do it all yourself; you have to form alliances.” – Carlos Slim Helú

In a recent post we mentioned the emergence of Consumer Intelligence as a powerful tool for bringing Responsive Experiences to life. But there are plenty of great technologies that can be applied to help you get closer to your customers by providing more personal context to the brand experiences you offer them. Resource has developed key partnerships with companies all across the digital spectrum to help put the best of these emerging technologies to work on your behalf. Here are a few examples of how we can help you reach your customers in some unique new ways [...] Read >

The world consumers live in is about the right now. It’s about immediate, integrated access to the things they want and need. And it’s about being able to share just as quickly and seamlessly as they accessed things for themselves. At the Google I/O developer conference, Google showed that it understands the consumer need for always-there, always-connected experiences and that it plans to satisfy that need.

The Google I/O presentation highlight was Google Glass, which the company introduced via skydivers, rooftop-jumping bicyclists and a rappeller. Their digitally enhanced glasses allowed the extreme athletes to stream video of the route they traveled to get to the conference stage. While consumers may or may not participate in such exciting activities, Glass will enable them to share the world they see and hear in real-time. Plus, the future of Glass may allow people to access a layer of digital data—such as the name and menu of restaurants in their field of view, current time and temperature, or their schedule for the day—all enhancing the world they’re seeing. [...] Read >

It’s a broken record every time we hear about smartphone penetration in the U.S. and how consumers’ lives are increasingly dependent on their devices for utility, shopping and just about everything across all age and income groups. Needless to say, brands and marketers are scrambling to get in front of the consumer on their cellphone screens, with mobile payments and the mobile wallet being the most recent and hottest battle ground. So what exactly is a mobile wallet? How is that different than mobile payments? [...] Read >