Experience Manifesto

IndieCade - International Festivals of Independent Games

I'm looking for a few final sponsors for the upcoming IndieCade festival coming up in October in Culver City. There's general information here, as well as the links to the IndieCade web site and a pdf of the sponsorship packages. Of course, we're happy to help create a specific package if there's something else you'd like. Please feel free to pass this along to other people that you think would be interested in reaching this audience and helping to grow this really great event.

Mission: IndieCade supports independent game development and organizes a series of international events showcasing the future of independent games. It encourages, publicizes, and cultivates innovation and artistry in interactive media, helping to create a public perception of games as rich, diverse, artistic, and culturally significant. IndieCade's events and related production and publication programs are designed to bring visibility to and facilitate the production of new works within the emerging independent game movement. Like the independent videogame developer community itself, IndieCade's focus is global and includes producers in Asia, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and anywhere else independent games are made and played. IndieCade was formed by Creative Media Collaborative, an alliance of industry producers and leaders founded in 2005.

What is IndieCade?

• The premiere gatherings for independent gamemakers from around the globe
• Global crossroads for trend-setting game fans who will be the first to see and play new offerings from the independent game community
• A vital marketplace of ideas and projects
• A place to meet collaborators, as well as investors
• A preview of top games by the important innovators working outside the mainstream game industry
• The catalyst for an overdue creative renewal in the game industry.

Independent gamemakers, like their counterparts in film, build games that take tremendous passion, the inspiration of innumerable collaborators, and very often a life savings to complete and distribute. Like independent filmmakers, they compete for publicity, support, and distribution against established producers and productions with budgets measured in the millions. But when it comes time to find an audience, the parallel ends.

An independent work that breaks through can have a powerful creative impact on its industry. But the rapidly maturing game industry, unlike cinema, has no comprehensive, public venue to introduce, explore, and celebrate groundbreaking independent work. Worthy independent games, prospective funders, and players looking for new experiences rarely find one another.

Imagine a series of global showcases and festivals serving developers as well as the general public – collectively forming an international marketplace and a traveling celebration of this community’s new voices and their trailblazing work. Imagine thousands of independent creators, developers, thinkers, players, and fans from across the world, sharing this sense of community and the work at its heart with the rest of the world. That’s IndieCade.

IndieCade - International Festivals of Independent Games.

Download the IndieCade Sponsorship Package

Getting to 'Wow': Consumers Describe What Makes a Great Shopping Experience - Knowledge@Wharton

Good report out of Jay H Baker Retailing Initiative about what makes consumers feel they've gotten a "wow" experience. I was actually pretty surprised to see that 35% of the people surveyed felt like they've gotten a great experience in the past six months. I think the most important, but obvious, part of the report is that it's the combination of everything that you do that impacts on how people feel about your brand. It's a huge help that an organization like Wharton is telling brands that it's all about the total experience. Some highlights below and you can click on the link to see more from the report.

A report based on the research, titled "Discovering 'WOW' -- A Study of Great Retail Shopping Experiences in North America,"points to five major areas that contribute to a great shopping experience:

• Engagement: being polite, genuinely caring and interested in helping, acknowledging and listening.
• Executional excellence: patiently explaining and advising, checking stock, helping to find products, having product knowledge and providing unexpected product quality.
• Brand Experience: exciting store design and atmosphere, consistently great product quality, making customers feel they're special and that they always get a deal.
• Expediting: being sensitive to customers' time on long check-out lines, being proactive in helping speed the shopping process.
• Problem Recovery: helping resolve and compensate for problems, upgrading quality and ensuring complete satisfaction.

In all, respondents mentioned 28 elements of a great experience, such as salespeople who "immediately acknowledged you" or "could easily explain a product to you" or "seemed genuine."

Retailers can focus on creating a "bedrock," or platform, based on the five major pillars of retail satisfaction to increase the probability of creating a wow experience. According to the research, four in five shoppers will tell an average of three other people about a wow experience.

Brand experience and engagement are the strongest drivers of loyalty, according to the survey. The top response was related to engagement, with 63% of those reporting that during their great shopping experience, store employees were "very polite and courteous." Salespeople who were knowledgeable about the product in the store got the second-highest response at 55%. As for execution, about half of those experiencing a wow shopping trip stressed store employees' familiarity with products, their advice and the level of interest in the customers' needs as essential to a great shopping experience. Slightly fewer -- two in five -- pointed to surprisingly great product quality and store representatives who go out of their way to check stock as crucial elements of exceptional shopping.

Brand experience includes store design and atmosphere, consistently great product quality, making customers feel they're special and the sense that customers always get a deal. Hoch says this element is somewhat "fuzzy" because chain stores, which account for the majority of shopper visits, often provide trendy merchandise and stylish store environments, but also run the risk of projecting sameness. Earlier research by the Baker Center and Verde found that shoppers reported "mall malaise" -- boredom with the similarity of specialty chain stores. "Most chains are cookie-cutter," says Hoch. "Even if the stores themselves are different from each other, the same store is in every mall. It's probably a lot easier for a small merchant to provide this brand experience. Unfortunately, if people see the same look over and over again, they find it mundane."

Getting to 'Wow': Consumers Describe What Makes a Great Shopping Experience - Knowledge@Wharton.

Looking for Speaking Opportunities

I've decided that it's time to get out more and hit the speaking circuit more then I already do. I really enjoy the opportunity to get out, meet new people and engage in the conversation about the future. And I usually get very good feedback on my presentations as well.

Mort Goldstrom, from the Newspaper Association of America had this to say about my presentation:

These days, many of us are so focused on the day to day that we lose sight of the incredible need to focus on future possibilities. David Polinchock makes you see the world through a different set of lenses and imagine new ways to think and grow. The endless opportunities for business growth spew from this man’s incredible creative mind in unimaginable ways. He is a talent you simply have to experience.

And Marcia Tabler, RAMA Consultant, has these kind words:

David’s presentations engage the crowd whether they are playing an audience participation game on screen or hearing about new technologies that will help their business. He’s always on the cutting edge and he doesn’t just deliver a speech - he lives his message.

Generally, I speak about:

• Emerging trends, especially as they relate to technology
• Innovation
• The role of experience
• The future of advertising
• Emerging From a Recession with Emerging Media
• The Invisible Web and Ubiquitous Computing
• I've also frequently brought some examples of cool technologies with me, including a group game demo, interactive cell phone games and augmented reality.

I've also done a number of experience walking tours around Manhattan and other locations. With advance planning, I can custom design a walking tour for you and your location, just let me know what you need.

In the past, I have spoken on the future of marketing in South America, the World Summit of Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Oman and across the country at industry events including SXSW, Cannes Lions, the Experiential Marketing Summit in Sydney, PICNIC in Amsterdam, GlobalShop, Ad Age Digital, The Retail Advertising Conference, ARM Expo, PROMO Live, PMA, the Virginia Healthcare Marketing Association and many POPAI events. Clients who have engaged me have included Razorfish, Microsoft, msnbc.com, MTV Networks, the Newspaper Association of America, Nokia, GSK, Pepsi, Nike, Ogilvy and the Custom Content Conference.

I have also taught classes for FIT, NYU, Columbia and Montclair State University, among others.

If you're interested in having me speak at your event, drop me an e-mail and we can check dates, explore content and discuss fees. I would like to help you see the world through a different set of lenses and imagine new ways to think and grow.

Download David's Speaking Bio

David Polinchock: Brand Experience, Augmented Reality and Twitter

Here's an interview I did earlier this year in Utrecht with Jeroen Mirck after the MarketingLive conference. We covered a range of topics, like augmented reality and brand experiences during the conversation. Had a great time in Holland and I'm looking forward to being back in Amsterdam for Picnic in September.

Invisible Homeless

Euro RSCG Duesseldorf put together this experience for the 2008 holiday season that's pretty powerful. Don't know why I never saw it until a few days ago, but hey, better late then never, eh?

CBS to run video ad on chip in magazine - Crave at CNET UK

Just saw this on Twitter and thought that it was a pretty cool idea. Although I do wonder a little bit if we, folks in the industry, are more excited then the target audience. I'm curious as to how they're going to do any tracking on this to determine success. But kudos to CBS for experimenting!

US broadcast network CBS -- which owns CNET UK -- will be advertising its autumn TV season with a video-chip ad embedded in an issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

The 18 September issue of the Time-owned magazine will feature the first video ad to appear in print, CBS marketing president George Schweitzer said on Wednesday at a press conference at the company's headquarters in New York. It's been getting a lot of press every where and I wonder if "regular" folks will be as interested in this experiment as us industry folks are. I also wonder how, if at all, they're planning on tracking effectiveness. I know that when

The ad will be launched in partnership with Pepsi to promote Pepsi Max and the TV network's Monday prime-time lineup. Not everyone will be seeing it: the ad will appear in a magazine insert sent to subscribers in the New York and Los Angeles metro areas -- an edition without the video chip will be sent to subscribers elsewhere and show up on newsstands.

CBS to run video ad on chip in magazine - Crave at CNET UK.

Esquire E-Ink Cover Video - Esquire's 75th Anniversary Issue - Esquire.

Esquire’s E Ink Cover A 21st Century Flop | Epicenter | Wired.com.

6 Awesome Apps Begging to Be Developed

ReadWriteWeb had a list of six awesome apps, three of which I thought were particularly cool. And they certainly show the power of what can happen when the internet leaves computers and enters our every day lives, as we're starting to see with things like iPhone apps. Of course, when you think about things like MIT's Sixth Sense, and you can only imagine what will be possible in the future.

So, if you could have someone develop an application just for you, what would it be? What are the pressing needs you'd like fixed? Or what would you like to see happen that would just be cool? If I get some good ideas, I'll post them here and see if we can get someone to make them happen.

3. Multiplayer Augmented Reality Social Gaming A few months ago, we found out what Crash Corp was up to, and that bee has been in our bonnet ever since. Augmented reality mobile gaming is definitely the frontier of its space. It's a gamble getting gamers away from their hotly-defended consoles, their PCs laden with expensive video cards, and all the games and ways of game playing they know. That would be, shall we say, a game changer. Ha ha. But we feel the coolest, most hardcore application of AR gaming can be achieved through multiplayer, socially enhanced, RPG-type games as opposed to the kind of casual games that isolate rather than connect users and don't tend to induce hours of Mountain-Dew fueled play. Something like foursquare is the embryonic, interface-free, back-end concept for what mobile gaming will become. We predict that in five years, all gamer geeks will have farmer's tans. Also, the addition of semi-virtual currency in marketing promotions that are location- and proximity-based make AR mobile a brand's most fantastic dream.

4. Real-Time Social Streams as Gesture-Responsive, Dimensional Displays It's 2009. We don't have any flying cars. We don't have a moon colony. We've waited this long, and we want SOMETHING, damn it. Give us our Minority Report-esque gesture-controlled holographic displays, or at least a BumpTop-like 3D app that can handle concepts such as relative size and weight of discussions, apps, and other users. With existing apps such as Seesmic Desktop and its ilk becoming real-time and constantly present, we see our entire social graph's firehose glutting the data stream with absolutely too much information until it truly becomes the time-waster the mainstream claimed it was all along. We now need an app that can imaginatively and radically simplify statuses and microblogging and how we receive and parse them, and we're talking TED-level imagination. Why anyone that brilliant would want to work on social media projects is anyone's guess, but hey, it's our wishlist.

6. Personal Inventory and Shopping App We've seen several trade-and-barter apps lately, such as NeighborGoods and OurShelf, that allow users to catalog items they already own and request those they need. And there are a few good shopping applications, such as Alice, out there, both in terms of inventory control as well as social shopping. But coming back to the Internet of Things, what we want is more inclusive and integrated than anything we've seen yet. We would like someone to develop a way to manage multiple home shopping lists, including groceries, book/DVD wishlists, etc., that sync with retailer inventories and send mobile alerts. It would also require a mobile app that allows shopping to be completed and automatically updates web-based lists accordingly. Eventually, this is the kind of tech that could be used to create truly smart shopping carts, as well.

Y Combinator's getting pretty fancy with their very detailed Request for Startups idea, which was somewhat like their "Startups We'd Like to Fund" post of yesteryear. Basically, rather than suffer through the dissatisfaction of loving the apps they're with, the good folks at the aforementioned accelerator program decided to give developers a little insight on what their startup wishlist might look like.

Never ones to be outdone, we at ReadWriteWeb have labored intensely and discussed among ourselves to produce this app wishlist. We can't offer funding, but it would make us picky little Internet geeks terribly happy if someone developed any of the six apps listed below. You know, while we're waiting for the flying cars and food replicators.

6 Awesome Apps Begging to Be Developed.

Getting to Know Me...

I thought that you might enjoy reading through some of the articles I've written over the years. Some of them are pretty recent, others were written several years ago. I like to think the messages of these articles are just as valuable as they were when I wrote them! But, I'll let you be the judge. Take a read through and let me know what you think.

Are you Just Hunting, Event Marketer

It’s not just a cliché, it is a new world. The problem is, if you listen to the language of marketing, it sounds a lot like the language of a hunt. It’s about capturing the audience, capturing “eyeballs.” Capture audiences everywhere and claim that as success. I know it’s not a pretty image, but I keep seeing the pictures that were used years ago to protest seal hunts—except that now the marketing community is holding the clubs and the consumers are the seals.

Download Are You Just Hunting.pdf

The Brand As Experience, Marketing at Retail

When you look at the profound changes occurring in both the retail and media spaces it's only logical to explore how they are going to impact each other. The first place to look is the technology that it is driving much of the change on both fronts. And the key to success in harnessing technology for marketing or sales is to realize that technology has to be focused on creating a better experience for the consumer, not for the retailer.

Audiences have come to expect dynamic environments in everything that they do. They watch content when they want to. They receive information when they want it. The have bought into just-in-time marketing. When they are bored with our content, they make their own. So as you look at the technologies on the retail horizon, think about how you could use them to create something more unique for the consumer. Dan Pink, writing for Yahoo Finance, recently had this to say:

"Today, utility is abundant. We have more products and services than we can handle, and most function just fine. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, sellers must make a dramatic leap in utility-or stand out in some other way. They can try to compete on price, but that usually ends in a downward death spiral. So the alternative is to compete not on left-brain attributes like price and functionality, but on right-brain qualities such as emotion, meaning, and look and feel. Case in point: Target sells toilet brushes and vegetable scrubbers designed by superstar architect Michael Graves. Even the most mundane, utilitarian objects in our lives have been turned into objects of desire."

Continue reading The Brand as Experience

The New Face of Retail, Marketing at Retail

In many retailers today you'll have a hard lime finding staff that can tell you where things are. But recently I've been visiting stores in our SoHo neighborhood where the employees can not only tell you where things are, but they can also tell you where they came from, how they were made, and anything else you could think to ask. Is this the new face of retail?

Download New Face of Retail.pdf

Are You Telling a Great Story, Entertainment Management

Last December I was asked to make a presentation at the Brand Masters conference in Ft. Lauderdale—my first workshop on brand storytelling. Faced with an audience that would rather be by the pool, I asked if we could move my session outside to the pool bar. No surprise—no resistance.

Now I just had to worry about enthralling them with a 60-minute session on storytelling and how it relates to such current buzzwords as branding, brand experiences, CRM and the like.

Well, close to two hours later, I was still engaged in a lively dialogue about the importance of storytelling in the business world. And no, we didn’t go almost double the allotted time because I’m long winded; I asked at the right time if we should stop and the audience said no. How many times have you seen that happen at a conference?

Download Are you Telling a Great Story.pdf

Guest Feature, Ideations

It seemed a simple enough announcement:

P-O-P Times sat down with Evan Anthony, Kroger’s corporate vice president of marketing and advertising, to discuss roll-out plans for an ambitious, integrated network that will turn the nation’s largest supermarket chain into a “media company.” (Emphasis mine)

To be fair to Kroger, they are not the only retailer thinking this way. Steve Heyer, formally CMO at Coke, has been saying that Starwood Hotels are a media channel as well. This seems to be pretty standard thinking for retailers today—or anyone with a location that can now become a media dynasty!

Download ideations_dbp.pdf

Creating the Great, Good Places, Entertainment Management

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.

Download GreatGoodPlaces.PDF

New Beginnings

It's a time for new beginnings and new introductions. You may have known me as the founder and Chief Experience Officer of the Brand Experience Lab, which was called "A playroom for marketers and agencies" by Ad Age when it first opened.  Or, you may know me from my days writing Experience Manifesto, a blog I wrote for over 5 years. Or maybe you know me as LBBINC (my previous company was Location Based Branding) on Twitter. And this road I'm on began way back in the early 90's, when I was first introduced to virtual reality by Dave Peters of Absolute Amusements.  

In those many years, I've covered a lot of ground, but one thing has remained consistent:

It's about creating compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences.

In fact, it's even more critical to create the right experience in order to be successful in today's world of social media and brand commoditization. I also believe a great deal in the future of 'interaction' marketing, and the embedding of emerging technology into retail and marketing experiences.

Among my accomplishments over the years:

I created Experiential Advertising programs way back in 1991 and had one of the first companies in the US to work with fully immersive virtual reality. That company, CyberEvent Group, also produced many of the major national tours that used virtual reality. Work included the award winning Cutty Sark Virtual Voyage and our Immersive Animation Theatre for Cabletron Systems, which won a MARCOM Award for Best Trade Show Exhibit.

While at the Brand Experience Lab, I was very fortunate to have played a lead role in the launch of NewsBreaker Live, the first AudienceGames program, with SS+K and msnbc.com, which won a Gold Pencil. I subsequently worked with the Volvo team to bring AudienceGames to the UK, which was called "one of the best marketing ideas in the world" by Brandweek magazine last year and brought AudienceGames to theaters across Poland for Orange.

I have taught experience design for a variety of universities, including CMU, NYU, and the Fashion Institute of Technology.

I've been a key note speaker on emerging technology and brand experiences around the world.

I've been featured in two recent books about marketing, Experience the Message and Living Brands.

I've worked with major universities to market and commercialize their technologies in the entertainment, media and advertising fields.

So that's a quick trip down memory lane for me.  Now, what I am going to be doing moving forward? I will:

Continue to be your source for the emerging technologies that you can use to create brand experiences. This includes cutting-edge technology experiences like group games, augmented reality and ubiquitous computing.

Consult with brands & agencies on creating great, oneline brand experiences and help brands audit their experiences to see how they can be improved. This includes brand ideation and storytelling charettes.

Continue speaking engagements about emerging technologies or the importance of brand experiences. I will also continue doing experience walking tours in NYC. Of course, other experience tours can be developed to meet your needs.

Continue exploring the socialization of physical place and how offline interactivity can be used by brands as part of the experience strategy.

I have a backlog of posts ready to go, so look for the flurry of activity over the weekend. And let me know what you think of the new look. I'm kind of playing around with things and there's so much more that you can do today with blogs then you could do when I first starting writing in 2004.

It's going to be a great ride, so buckle up!