Experience Manifesto

AR Fashion Show

Interesting video of a fashion show from the UK that used augmented reality (AR) as part of the fashion show and the fashion itself. Opens up some interesting ideas about using AR at life events, having guests wear clothing with AR tags and creating an event on top of the event. Lots of creativity opens up for event producers who can really think outside the box. Thanks to @ydreams for the tip.

Some Thoughts on Digital Signage

A few years back, I was invited to speak at a number of industry events about digital signage and it's role in the advertising biz. I took a different tack then most everyone else, especially since I thought too many people were using the same interruptive model that advertising has used for years. I've included a link to the full article below and have included some thought starters here.

With the information available today through your cell phone, what's the role of digital signage today? Is it destined to be just ambient, background noise or will it play a more vital role in creating a compelling brand experience?

If you’re currently working on an in-something digital network, ask yourself: Where does “create a better experience” fall on your list of reasons to install a digital network? My guess is that the top spots are occupied by “increase revenue” or “create opportunities to promote partners” and somewhere further down the line is create a better retail experience. And even when it’s on the list, my guess is that few people have actually defined how it will create a better experience for the consumer.

So, stop what you’re doing right now and look at your experience first. If it doesn’t create a truly better experience for your audience first, I don't think you’re doing it right.

You're Not a Media Company

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!

Don’t we understand that the reason brands are seeing a decline in the effectiveness of TV advertising is that we don’t like ads interrupting everything we do? If you’re involved in putting together one of these in-store networks, ask yourself: How many of your friends, not in the advertising business, have said to you—“Hey, can you put up lots of monitors in your store and run commercials on them?” My guess is not that many.

Advertising based on the fact that you can’t turn it off IS NOT A GOOD ADVERTISING MEDIUM. You don’t build a relationship with anyone when you start by talking about the fact that they can’t avoid you. You can’t think reach and frequency and relationship building at the same time. They usually, in fact, work against each other.

Download You're Not a Media Company

No Man Can Serve Two Masters

I was having a conversation with Marge Laney about the state of the retail and why everyone in the biz talks about how important creating the right experience is, yet they're all cutting budgets and letting people go and basically doing everything they can to make sure it's impossible for them do deliver a great experience.

And as we talked it dawned on me that:

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."

Of course, this is from Matthew 6:24 and the end of this quote talks about serving God & money. But in this conversation, it's about the two masters that companies have to serve, their customers and their shareholders.

And unfortunately, these two masters are diametrically opposed to one another. The biggest challenge comes from the fact that shareholders, as a rule, don't really care about anything other then very short term results. Need to make the numbers for the month, just cut expenses. Quarter looking soft, layoff a bunch of people. It's all short term for them. And their only concern is making money, nothing else matters.

But as was discussed in Brand Experience Matters: Circuit City cost cutting madness - Polinchock's Ponderings, the shareholders pushed Circuit City management to let go of all of their high paid staff to save money. Those cuts led directly to Circuit City closing down. So, the shareholders demand to save money cost them everything when the company closed. Short term gain, long-term loss.

But, this is how most companies think. Their C-level staff is trying to serve those two masters and, not surprisingly, they're devoted to the shareholders and the customer ends up being despised. Too often, the C-level staff doesn't even care what the brand is. Didn't a study show that the average tenure of a CMO was 18 months? Well, that means they're only working about 14 month, because they're spending the last 4 months looking for their new gig. And when the C-level staff doesn't really care about the brand, there's no way the frontline staff is going to care.

The question is, how can we possibly turn this around? Sure, there are all kinds of examples of companies that put the customers first, but most companies are not prepared to follow those examples.

So, that's my rant for the night. Wish it was a rant that had an answer, but not sure it does. But I'd be very happy to be proved wrong about this one.

Skinput & The Future of Computer Interface

For many years in my presentations, I have talked about the QWERTY keyboard and its relationship to modern computers. The QWERTY keyboard made a lot of sense when it was part of a mechanical device and they had to create a way to make sure the keys didn't stick when you were typing. But with a computer keyboard, this wasn't necessary at all. Yet here we are, 140 years after the invention of QWERTY and it's still probably used on 99% of keyboards.

But, we're starting to see some new paradigms for computer interface being developed right now, the most notable is the gesture interfaces used on many cell phones. But leave it to CMU and Microsoft to come up with the body as the input device. As we move away from the interface conventions of the past, we'll be seeing a lot more experiments in how we engage the computers in the future.

Related Post: MIT's Sixth Sense - Polinchock's Ponderings.