It’s easy enough to use GPS to get from your house to a supermarket, but how about a GPS that can locate the products you want once you’re in that supermarket?
Today, midwest supermarket chain Meijer launched a mobile application called “Find-It,” which helps shoppers navigate the shelves of four of it’s biggest Michigan stores. The program includes a database of 100,000 products and also directs consumers to the supermarket’s most enticing promotional offers and sale items.
The app runs on the iPhone, iPhone Touch, and Android devices, and was built by Point Inside– a company that until now built its business on apps mapping interiors of large airports and malls throughout the country. Point Inside’s maps utilize interactive touch screens, and typically help consumers find specific stores, as well as rest rooms, escalators, and various interior points of interest. Read More »
Marketing companies are experimenting with a new wave of digital technologies to pitch to consumers while they shop: interactive dressing-room mirrors, kiosks with virtual customer-service representatives, and shopping carts and digital scanners that offer personalized discounts.
These futuristic technologies are among the interactive tools on display at Interpublic Group of Cos.’ new retail center at the advertising company’s Media Lab in Los Angeles.
There, Interpublic is testing innovative ways for marketers to connect with customers as part of an effort to better understand what makes consumers buy and to encourage companies to rethink their approaches to the role of the retail store.
Read the full story on wsj.com and see the WSJ video below.
As a former Google employee, I always took the “Don’t Be Evil” mantra as a sincere gesture to be taken with a grain of salt. The slogan was a reminder of the company’s humble and idealistic beginnings, but not an iron-clad indication of its post-IPO mindset. After all, a corporation open to accommodating censorship in China is willing to put practical limits on principles that hit the bottom line too hard.
Many long-time Google advocates were surprised and disappointed with last week’s Google/Verizon net neutrality proposal, and I was among them. While the company defends the move as a necessary practical decision given political realities, it in many ways marks the completion of Google’s gradual transition from wunderkind start-up to new-millennium corporate superpower. Read More »
Historically, ads have been closed systems. The information contained in the ad itself is fixed. Most of the interactivity in digital ads to date has been limited to the ability to link somewhere or to engage with content elements that were included in the unit at the time it was trafficked. But anyone who has ever looked at billboard that had a clock or thermometer knows the power of real time information to capture attention.
There is a new generation of rich media providers who now enable advertisers to pipe up-to-the-moment content into digital display ads. The number of data sources available by API is growing every day – weather, traffic conditions, UV index, Tweets, Facebook updates, you name it! The next generation rich media companies are working hard to make it easy for advertisers to incorporate these feeds while assuring the ads never break. Read More »
Nielsen released new statistics this week on Americans’ online behavior that confirms the growing dominance of social networking while illuminating strong differences in computer and mobile activity. This data gives powerful insight into patterns in consumer behavior and how advertisers fit into that equation.
According to the report, social networking now accounts for 22.7% of total U.S. Internet time, an impressive growth from its 15.8% share in 2009. Online gaming also moved into the number two spot at 10.2%, overtaking E-mail which had the steepest decline in share– retreating from 11.5% to 8.3%. Other emerging categories include Videos/Movies, while those like Portals and Entertainment seem to be waning.
In stark contrast, Nielsen’s survey indicates that E-Mail is still the dominant online activity for mobile, accounting for over 40% of time. Portals came in second for, followed by social networking at a close third. The biggest mobile growth sectors are Music and Videos/Movies (20% growth each year over year), while News/Current Events and Sports each dropped precipitously. Read More »
Want to override your iPhone’s system controls? Now there’s an app for that. Thanks to Monday’s Library of Congress ruling allowing the “jailbreaking” of iPhones, users can now legally override Apple’s operating system to allow third party applications. In weighing certain exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the LOC gave four basic “fair use” arguments for siding with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and against Apple:
1. Jailbreakers are modifying a device they own for private, noncommercial purposes
2. Operating systems customarily enable third party programs and doing so on the iPhone doesn’t infringe on exclusive Apple copyrights
3. The amount of recoding performed during a jailbreak is negligible– 50 bytes of code out of a total of over 8 million
4. Jailbreaking doesn’t devalue Apple’s firmware or iPhones in the marketplace and might even help it by allowing users a wider variety of app choices
The Library of Congress’ explanations confirm what is apparent to most– that Apple’s real reason for exerting absolute control over it’s iPhones and App Store is to strengthen it’s bottom line without regard for what consumers want. Despite a respectful tone, the LOC’s message to Apple is clear: there is no legal basis for this kind of exclusivity, and we won’t do your dirty work by agreeing to this logic. Read More »
Recently, the Chinese government renewed Google’s license to operate its search engine business in China. Although uncertainties over Google’s future prospects in the Chinese internet market still remain, Google has expanded its presence in the emerging Chinese mobile internet market by ambitiously pushing its Android mobile operating system in the past half year. China, the world’s largest online market and also one of the fastest-growing mobile web markets, is becoming a competitive arena for Google and many other foreign companies who have set their eyes on the tantalizing growth of the mobile Internet around the world.
Early birds in the Chinese mobile web space, like Google and Apple, have faced challenges from a unique cultural market and have adapted their businesses to the local environment accordingly. And despite some early stumbles, they have also secured some small victories worth noting. In fact, these experiences can serve as useful lessons for marketers looking to tap into new opportunities to extend their branding efforts in China. Read More »
For those who want to take Internet privacy matters into their own hands, there is a new service called Bynamite that aggregates information advertisers have collected about you in an easily managed personal profile. In addition, the site allows you to delete or add interests and send updated preferences back to ad networks and opt out of networks that don’t provide users with control of their interests. Bynamite purports to represent the consumer without profiting from information sent back to ad networks, and it operates via a program you download that automatically attaches to your browser.
What sets Bynamite apart from many privacy watchdogs is that the service generally embraces hyper-targeted advertising and has no qualms with sites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon that collect a wealth of information on its users. Rather Bynamite seeks to educate consumers on how advertisers view them and empower users to tap into the potential monetary value of their personal information. Read More »
Few things are as unnerving as an organization publicly improvising a PR strategy in the face of unexpected calamity. With BP, it took weeks to strike a sincere apologetic tone and admit wrongdoing. During the 2008 election when the Bristol Palin pregnancy story broke, it took the McCain camp a few days to refine the story of how the vetting process unfolded.
By most standards the Apple Gripgate saga that has Silicon Valley buzzing since the iPhone 4 launch is a mild calamity, but it looks to be getting worse. Consumer Reports unleashed an in-depth scientific test this week indicating the iPhone 4’s antenna is flawed in a way no other previous iPhone antenna has been, and is prone to dropping calls when the phone is gripped in the lower left corner. The reviewer would not recommend the phone and openly calls for Apple to provide consumers with free phone coverings (which does fix the problem) or some alternate solution.
Perhaps most alarmingly, the report calls Apple’s credibility and honesty into question. Read More »
After 48 days of courting teens with a device built for social networking, Microsoft killed the Kin mobile phone this week due to poor sales. The product included an innovative feature which aggregates content from various social networks in one hub, but received complaints from some users for lacking instant messaging, easy access to apps, or the ability to upload photo and video to Twitter.
Although the online and television campaigns for the Kin captured the youthful energy of the demographic it pursued, there were bumps along the road. Microsoft got flack from conservatives for a lighthearted scene in one of its Kin commercials, a clip of a male teen taking a photo under his shirt and sending it to a female who laughs when she receives it. Although seemingly benign, the scene was deemed by some as an endorsement of teen sexting. Read More »
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It’s easy enough to use GPS to get from your house to a supermarket, but how about a GPS that can locate the products you want once you’re in that supermarket?
