It's in everything that I write and all my presentations. Oneline. And most times, I get people telling me that I have a typo and I have an extra 'e' and it should be online. But no, it's really oneline.
Online + Offline = ONELINE.
While we may occasionally decide to be offline, most of the time, we move from online to offline fluidly. I'm out having dinner with my daughter, she asks a question, I go to my phone to find the answer. I'm in a store and want to check the prices, I use the bar code reader in my phone to get the info I need.
Today, brands need to expand the Experience Continuum by thinking oneline. Online + offline. You'll see, in a few years, everyone will be talking oneline.
If you've followed me from my earlier blog (Experience Manifesto) and read me here, you know that I believe that we're missing a great opportunity -- place. We spend lots of money & 2 months asking you to come to our store and then as soon as you walk through the door, we act surprised that you're there. As I was talking to my buddy Dave about this, he asked why people don't "fish in a barrel." After all, if that's where people are buying things, then why aren't we putting more resources into the physical space?
For example, watching the Oscars the other night made me think about this as it relates to the cinema. The reason 3D is so big right now is because is creates a point of differentiation from watching movies at home. Well, the night of the Oscars, we rented Inglourious Basterds. We hadn't seen it & thought we should before the Oscars. Well, watching it at home is not at all the same experience as watching it in the theater.
To begin with, we had to pause the movie because Sydney needed something. We lost where we were and edned up missing the end of the 1st chapter. Well, if you've seen the movie, you know that's a critical set-up for the rest of the movie. Plus, the whole time we were watching the movie, we were doing other things. Checking e-mail, going to IMDB to read the trivia or find out more about a cast member. Watching at home, we weren't engaged.
Here's a video of the first in-cinema installation we did back in the day. See how engaged that audience is? That's creating a unique cinema event. That's using the value of place to create an engaging experience.
When it comes to retail, most brands are completely unaware of the importance of place. They don't know how to control the experience that's delivered unless it's their store. And even then, they mostly act like they have no control. Brand managers turn over the retail experience to HR or OPS and hope that it all works out.
But if you've spent millions of dollars and lots of time convincing me to come to your store, what are you doing to show me that you care that I've made that journey? I say all the time, what's the value of being a fan on Facebook if you don't treat me like a fan when I'm actually engaging with your brand? How do you recognize me in real life, not online.
As Dave & I were talking about this idea, we started talking about IN-N-OUT Burger. For years, they've had in-store fans, people who knew about their secret menus, people who loved everything about the In-N-Out experience. Dave told me how we actually takes clients to the In-N-Out Burger in Vegas, brings bottles of wines and gives those clients a special picnic there. He didn't need Facebook to be a fan of In-N-Out Burger, he was a fan where it counted, where he spent his money.
It's not that you shouldn't have Facebook fans or Twitter followers, but you need to know how to also engage your fans where it counts. We all like to talk about metrics & ROI, but as Dave would say, there's one, very simple metric to measure. Did it convince me to buy. Not everything has to be a direct line to purchase, but if at the end of the day you haven't moved people to make a purchase, what have you accomplished?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Time to look ahead into 2010 and think about what's going to make an impact this year:
Authenticity continues to be a critical. For 10+ years, I've been talking about the need to create authentic, compelling and relevant brand experiences. Today, I continue to stress authenticity as the number one issue facing brands. The sad thing is that it should be a challenge for brands at all. I mean, shouldn't being you be pretty easy? A few years back, here's what Joe Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage had to say:
Our view is that in the Experience Economy authenticity is becoming the new consumer sensibility -- the buying criteria by which people choose what to buy and who to buy from. Increasingly, they no longer accept the fake from the phony but want the real from the genuine. Therefore, businesses must render their offerings to be perceived as authentic.
As I've said in the past, authenticity is a tricky thing to define. So I go back to Shakespeare. To thine own self be true. So take some stock of who you are and what you stand for, everyone else is.
As SM grows, people will demand much more from brands. The truth is, we've always shared stories about our experiences with brands, right? We go to a store, have a good or bad experience, go out to have drinks and tell our friends about our experience. The difference is that today, it's in real time and it could hit thousands at one time. And worse then that, we have a much faster expectation of when you're going to respond. It used to be OK to get back to people in weeks, now we want immediate replies. Now when I tweet about a problem, I expect some kind of immediate response. And if you're going to respond at all, it needs to be something that's helpful and authentic. Don't offer to help if you're not willing to do the follow-up. Recently, I reached out to The Territory Ahead to see if they still sold a shirt that I apparently left behind on a trip. It isn't made any more, but here's what they said to me:
If you would like, you may contact one of our representatives at 1-800-686-8212 and have them fill out a No Longer Available request form for you. With this, your billing information is taken down and if the item happens to come back into stock, it is shipped directly to you.
That's a great response. They could've just said sorry, not made any more, wish we could help. And they may never make this shirt again. But the fact that they have a mechanism in place to handle such issues shows me that they understand how people feel about their products. Are you prepared like that?
Brands must learn thatthey start the conversation, people amplify it. As I wrote here, brands need to understand that they have a lot more control over the conversation then they think they do. The problem is that they have to work pretty hard to take the control that's needed. What's radically changing today is that we don't have control over how the conversation is distributed. People may not be looking for information about brands through the traditional channels, but we're still looking for information. And every interaction you have with the consumer is you starting the conversation. When I walk into a store and it's grossly understaffed, that sends a message to me about how much you care about my business. When your staff can't tell me about your products, that starts a conversation with me. Retail brands in particular are wasting huge opportunities to start great conversations. Get in the game. Start great conversations. Win business.
If you don't give me information, I'll go to someone who will. This past Christmas, I looked into taking some dance classes with my wife as a present to the both of us. So I went to the web site of a major dance class studio here in town and could not get a single piece of useful information. I couldn't find a class schedule or how much lessons costs. All I got were messages to call them for more information. The result, my wife got lots of great baking tools and this studio didn't get our business.
I still find company web sites where I can't find basic contact information, like a phone number. And when I can't find the information I need from you, I'll go to someone else who can give me the information I need. It's 2010 folks, it's time to stop playing the "hide my information so you have to call me" game. New tools like QR codes and bar code readers will let consumers get information even if you try to control it. If you want my business, you need to provide me with the right information when I need it.
We need to expand the Experience Continuum. As a theme park employee at Disney, I was first introduced to the concept of pre-show, show and post show, something they do very well in the theme parks. Thanks to social media and other online tools, brands should be thinking about how to expand the brand experience. Think pre-show, show, post-show. Think about how you should be speaking with your audience across the entire process of interacting with your brand. But remember, you need to think about it authentically.
To expand the Experience Continuum, we need to start creating Oneline experiences. We don't live online or offline any more, we move seamlessly between the two. If we're out having dinner and Sydney asks me a question, we go right to the web for research. We rarely talk about being offline or online. Today, especially thanks to cell phone technology, we can be "online" anywhere. Through tools like Wikitude and Layar and others, we're starting to see the melding into oneline experiences. I still hear agency people talk about location based services in terms of advertising, as in "it'll be great when you can get a coupon from the store as you walk past it" and really, who wants that? What we want is information that's available everywhere and whenever I want it.
We'll start to understand the importance of Location Based Branding. As more and more of us move our shopping activities online and as we have so many more channels to communicate, location based branding will increase in importance. We're seeing more and more brands creating pop-up environments to speak directly with their audience. Wired does a store every holiday season in NYC to bring the pages of the magazine to life. Of course, one of my favorite pop-up experiences is the Charmin Restrooms, also in NYC. According to their web site, almost 400,000 people visited the Charmin restroom in about a month. And having visited the Charmin bathroom, I can tell you, that people were having a pretty good time there too. Yea, they needed the practicality of a clean bathroom in Times Square, but they were more engaged then that. They were taking pictures and sending texts and telling people where they were.
Given how crowded the retail world is today, and given the number of brands reaching out to consumers, the ability to touch and engage consumers in a place where you control the entire message has incredible value. Instead of viewing your retail presence as a necessary evil, you should be using it to create a better connection with your audience.
AR & QR codes will become mainstream. Take a look at this post to see Google's recent move into combining physical place with QR codes and you can start to see where QR codes can take us. Mashable put together 10 Awesome Uses of Augmented Reality Marketing and we're just beginning to see how AR can be used to engage. These are just two of the technologies that will become mainstream this year. With the changes happening in mobile technology, these technologies will only grow. Add in the rumored Apple iTablet and its (rumored) capabilities and you've got some real game changers coming online in 2010. These technologies allow for "just-in-time" advertising, where the consumer is controlling how & when messages come to them. It allows the consumer to gather information from "official" sources as well as seeing what other consumers are saying. Imagine me walking through your store and using my phone to get real time information about your products and what people are saying about them. Could they stand up to that?
Physical retail needs to adapt or face the consequences. Retail was up slightly thanks to a big push into online retailing. But overall, theanecdotal experiencethat I'm having and most of the people I know are having, is that the retail experience is getting worse and worse. Employees who don't know about the products and seem to have no interest in helping. Stores that are a mess. No cashiers available so even if you want to buy something, brands make it tough as hell. You can get great information online but when you get into the store, you can't any information at all. Retailers need to look for ways to e-tail their retail.
There needs to be a much better connection between the in-store experience and the information that's available online. It still makes me crazy that when I go into stores, information that's available on their web site isn't available in-store. I can't tell you the number of times I have to use my phone to pull up the store web site to get information about a product. And thanks to the bar code readers or Google Goggles on my cell phone, I can now find out all kinds of information about a product, including who has the best price. With those tools, I do a lot more window shopping and buying somewhere else.
Now, there are a few things that I wish I could say are predictions, but since I don't think they'll ever happen, I can't put them on my predictions list. Let's just call these wishes and I'll keep my fingers crossed that maybe, just maybe, we'll make some headway on these items!
We stop the old vs. new arguments. A few days back, someone posted a link on Twitter asking the question SM or e-mail, what's better? Well really, that's like asking what's better, a spoon or a knife? Spoons are great if you're having soup, but not so hot on cutting meat. Knives are great for that task, but I wouldn't want to use a knife to eat soup. It's time we stop arguing old vs. new and start asking what's the best tool to accomplish the job.
Brands will grow a set. Sorry for the crudeness, but I'm still amazed at how quickly brands respond & react to every complaint. Enough already. If you believe in something, believe in it. Don't just believe in it as long as you're not challenged. If you think you've created the right campaign, don't just pull it when someone complains. Tell us why it's right for you. Tell us what made you decide to create and run the campaign. We're in the persuasion business folks, if you can't persuade us, you should get out!
That's my starting point. The world is changing like crazy these days. We've got new cell phone technologies, the Apple iTablet, 3D TV, pico projectors and whatever else comes out of CES this week. We'll continue to change our ability to connect with consumers every where they go. Of course, the more we create ways to reach the consumers, the more they find ways to disconnect from us. In the end, it's all about creating compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences. No matter what changes take place; no matter what new technologies come down the pike, that need won't change.
Going through some old files today and found the first newsletter I wrote for Location Based Branding, my previous company, back in July of 2001. If you don't mind me giving myself a little credit, I was saying the same things in 2001 that I'm saying today. How's that for a consistent message.
Maybe this economy will get us back to basics of creating great products, that people really want and wrapping it in a great experience. That's my holiday wish for brands!
From that first newsletter:
In today's economy, the biggest risk that companies face is having their products or services turned into commodities, with consumers using price as their only criteria for selection. The internet and other emerging technologies can make this situation even worse, by allowing consumers to shop across multiple stores at once and to compare prices for the same product before purchasing.
However, we've seen over and over again, that companies who compete strictly on price are rarely the survivors. And think about your own buying experiences. Sure, sometimes price is the only thing that you are concerned about. But aren't there other times that you're more concerned about the total experience you are receiving and price becomes a secondary consideration?
The Internet has always been about 'interactive,' and while we discuss these issues as if they are new, the Confucius quote that we use on all of our materials and is below in my e-mail, really sums up what needs to be done to make these mediums successful -- involvement. And involvement is something more then opt in e-mails, cookies that track your online movements and data mining to predict future behavior. It has to do with creating authentic experiences that provide real value to the user. You shouldn't be asking your audience for permission marketing, they should be begging for you to market to them!
Having started in the interactive advertising space in 1991, developing fully immersive, marketing programs using virtual reality, I've seen all the latest and greatest in emerging technologies. Unfortunately, even today, I still hear people speak more about the technology then about the fundamental need to create compelling stories and experiences! I always like to ask the question, "When was the last time someone recommended a book to read by telling you about how the ink was put on the paper?"
The battle cry today is that online advertising will work when broadband and rich media are ubiquitous. Wrong! We see ads touting the ability to watch commercials on our computer. Bull! That's not what this industry is all about. Nor, should it be about simply porting existing experiences and dropping them online.
In our work with clients, we focus on several issues:
Brand Storytelling. It's not about the technology; it's about the story you tell. As long as you are true to who you are and what you stand for, you can build a compelling story and/or experience to reach your audience. One of the exercises that I use is to have people describe their company as if it was a blind date. What would they like? Where would they want me to take them? What kind of people would they hang out with? This really helps people focus on who their company is.
Authenticity. Create authentic experience for your audience. Having cookies simply recording what people are doing online and then regurgitating that information back to them does not create a real experience. Look at the impact aspects of offline experiences and determine how you can reposition those elements in the online experience.
The Experience. Technology must enhance the brand experience from the customers' point of view, not the companies. We've all dealt with endless voicemail and voice recognition systems, only to never be allowed to speak to a person. New CRM technologies should be outlawed if it is only being used to lower costs and add to the bottom line. They should only be used to enhance what the human staff can do to help customers.
Technology. Our work with a number of topline facilities, most notably the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU, gives us a great look into the possible futures of interactive technologies, especially as they relate to brand storytelling. Knowing what is possible will help identify paths that clients should be taking. However, there is a big difference between telling your story with technology and substituting technology for the story. Understand how technology can speak for your brand and when it will speak against your brand as well.
Sociability. No matter what we in the industry think or what technology will be able to do, nothing will ever replace our need to have real social experiences. Just look at the Internet industry -- we have more cocktail parties then any other industry on the planet! Why, because we like to actually speak to people; shake their hands; see their reactions. That's not changing in the near future!
Our Human Nature. Despite all of the tremendous strides that technology has taken in the last few decades, human nature just doesn't change that fast. Stop thinking that the technologies that we are creating today will change people tomorrow. Yes, they will eventually make changes in human nature, but those changes take a long time. I'm not sure that I cam come up with any really massive changes in basic human nature that have been caused by the Internet.
Online Privacy and Consumer information. Who doesn't like to go to a store or restaurant where "everyone knows your name?" In fact, how many times have you paid more for something or driven further to get it, just because a particular place gives you better service by "invading your privacy?" Don't we consider this a positive experience in the offline world? In fact, we get such a warm feeling from the invasion of privacy, that we usually make sure that we take our friends there, just so they can be impressed when the bartender or store clerk knows our name!
We should be focusing our efforts on how can we bring a value to the consumer that translates into a better online experience? What will make the consumer feel as though everyone just called their name when they walked in? How can we create an experience where the 'owner' comes out to greet each visitor and thanks them for being there, while pointing out that they know what the consumer likes?
You see, all too frequently, branding is screaming and yelling "Hey, you gotta' use us, we're the best!" and all too infrequently on creating involving experiences that that make people really want to be with our brand. And more and more today, we¹re letting technology take the place of an engaging experience. The more we lose real touch with our consumers and replace it with "data mining," the more we risk losing the brand completely. After all, many items we consume today are commodities, only separated by the experiences that surround that product. If we homogenize the experience, we can't help but devalue the brand through that homogenization as well. (Note, this is a very frequent theme of mine and something I'm still saying today!)
Once you know who you are, then you can truly build involving, 'oneline' experiences, that will truly bring your brand to life, engage your audience and create the brand loyalty that is so frequently lost today.
If you read my previous blog at all, you know that I talk a great deal about what I call the socialization of place, a combination of the third place and emerging technologies like QR codes and augmented reality. I wrote about the socialization of place back in 2005 and every year since then, technologies have launched that have made it more possible. From that first post:
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 (Emphasis mine)."
I love the idea that we'll be looking for authentic human experiences and I also believe that brands can play a greater role in the facilitation of those experiences. You see, despite all of the conversations about being friends with brands, really people are much more interested in letting brands facilitate our friendships with other people. In a world of "social" places, brands win by being the connecting point, not the connection itself.
Now Google is launching a new technology that places barcodes on store fronts.
They've been doing this in Japan for years, so I'm glad it's finally coming to the States. I've heard advertising "futurists" talk about a world of mobile experiences where as you're walking down the streets, you can ads beamed to your phone. Frankly, no one I know wants that world. But this, this is cool! The best thing about technologies like this is that it is completely opt-in. Not interested in the store, don't take a picture of the barcode. But the ability to build 'oneline' experiences that move between the online and offline world.
Google plans on mailing around 100,000 window stickers to restaurants, hotels, bars, and other retail entities around the nation during the next two weeks. Each sticker will have a unique scannable barcode that is designed to work with numerous popular mobile phones and help local businesses target on-the-go consumers with promotions such as coupons.
When I first wrote about the socialization of place, I asked these questions:
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 think 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.
As companies like Google add things like this or Google Goggles, we're starting to see the beginning of 'oneline' brand experiences and the socialization of place.
