Insights2013 full

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

TABLEOFCONTENTS
5 WELCOME TO INSIGHTS 2013
Alan Herrick
7 IN-STORE DIGITAL RETAIL:
THE QUEST FOR OMNICHANNEL
Hilding Anderson, Rachel Zinser
with Rebecca Prettyman, Lauren Egge
21 2012 DIGITAL IQ EXCERPT
L2 Think Tank
25 TRENDS: FOUR TRENDS SHAPING
MARKETING PRIORITIES
Hilding Anderson, Todd Cherkasky,
Donald Chestnut
TREND 1
Real-Time Control: New Consumer-
Oriented Devices and Data
29 FUTURE OF TV
David Hewitt, Lucy Devassy
35 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS ON THE MOVE
Nigel Vaz
39 MOBILE PAYMENTS:
THE FUTURE OF MONEY
Perry Chan
45 THE ECONOMY OF ONE:
THE CONSUMER AS PRODUCER,
INFLUENCER AND PURCHASER
Dan Israel, Perry Chan
47 HOW SENSORS ARE CONNECTING
THE WORLD AND THE IMPLICATIONS
FOR EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Benno Schmidt
52 INVISIBLE BRAND INTERFACES
Daniel Harvey
56 IS THERE A TERMINAL VELOCITY FOR
YOUTH AND DIGITAL?
Omaid Hiwaizi
61 RESPONSIVE DESIGN 101:
OPTIMIZING FOR MULTIPLE SCREENS
Dan Israel, Mayur Gupta
TREND 2
Predicting Desire: Building the Infrastructure
to Anticipate Consumer Needs in Real Time
69 PREDICTING DESIRABILITY—
LESSONS FROM A TEEN GENIUS
Sheldon Monteiro
75 THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS INSIGHT
Lee Woodard, Chris Handley
81 THE “BIG DATA” ERA:
LEARNING TO ACT IN REAL TIME
James Buchanan
86 DIGITAL LUXURY 101: HOW TO ENHANCE
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Hazel Reed
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91 GAMIFICATION AS A DIGITAL STRATEGY
Mohammed Iqbal, Syed A. Suffiyan
96 MEDIA-SAPIENS: USING SOCIAL INSTINCTS
TO EXPLAIN, PREDICT AND INFLUENCE
DESIRABILITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Melissa Read
101 REBUILDING TRUST: HOW BANKS CAN
RECONNECT WITH CONSUMERS
Chris Baker, James Buchanan, Omaid Hiwaizi
TREND 3
Continuous Experiences: How Companies
Are Blurring the Online and Offline World
109 STORYSCAPING: BUILDING WORLDS, NOT ADS
Gaston Legorburu
113 BRAND AS CHANNEL:
TODAY’S “ALWAYS-ON” MESSAGING
Alan Schulman
119 ADAPTING TO A FRAGMENTED
MEDIA ENVIRONMENT
David D’Alleva, Peter Colapietro
124 THE FUTURE OF CONTENT EXPERIENCE
AND HOW TO DESIGN FOR IT
Kevin Nichols
130 I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW ...
ACROSS THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE:
THE ANALYTICS MATURITY MODEL
Jennifer Patterson, Dave Kane
136 VALUING FANATICAL ENGAGEMENT
Scott Petry
142 MEASURING GERMAN MULTI-CHANNEL:
APPROACHES AND IMPLICATIONS
Uwe Tueben
149 THE CMO TOOLKIT: WHAT EVERY
MARKETER SHOULD KNOW
Gary Shannon, Omaid Hiwaizi
156 RETAIL GOES ROGUE: HOW DIGITAL
CONVERGENCE WILL REVITALIZE THE
IN-STORE EXPERIENCE
Charlie Sayers, Rob Milstead
TREND 4
Globalization: The Global Marketer
and the Rise of the Global Consumer
165 UNDERSTANDING ECOMMERCE IN CHINA
Robert Wang
171 FUTURE OF COMMERCE: LIFESTYLE SOCIAL
COMMERCE GOES BEYOND PINNING
Jeff Blais, Sushobhan Mukherjee
175 CHASING THE GLOBAL CHINESE LUXURY
CONSUMER: A CONNECTOLOGY APPROACH
David Thorpe, Jake Wheeler
181 GLOCALISATION AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY
OF GLOBAL MARKETING
Megan Bannon
187 FIVE CHALLENGES TO TOMORROW’S
GLOBAL MARKETING LEADERS
Hilding Anderson, Freddie Laker
190 INTERNATIONAL ECOMMERCE EXPANSION
Don Shields
194 INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
US
UK
Germany
Russia
India
Singapore
Japan
China
Australia
217 NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
Hilding Anderson
Lauren Nguyen Cohen
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OE O.E. represents exclusive content which
is only available in the online version.

When history looks back on this
season of robust innovation and
progress, I think it is likely to
remember it as one of the most
significant paradigm shifts in, not
only daily life, but in the business
of relevance in daily life. We are
perpetually challenged to connect
the dots between our brands and
the daily lives of our consumers in
meaningful ways.
As stewards of brands and purveyors
of ideas, we are both humbled
and exhilarated by the impact of
technological innovation on how we
think about creativity and what can
happen to a compelling idea when it’s
amplified by the scale of technology
and personalized by the intimacy of
human interaction.
To that end, we believe that a brand’s
ability to innovate is not just about
technology. It’s about combining
technology with powerful ideas and
insightful perspectives on human
moments to create highly relevant
ways to connect.
Who would have anticipated that one
of the most esteemed luxury car
brands in the world would create a
mobile app that allows consumers
to virtually build their entire car—
from the very first bolt to the last
drop of paint?
Or that a 125-year-old British sports
gaming company would be the one to
pioneer a combination of analytics,
social media and mobile technology
to drive a record surge in betting?
WELCOME TO
INSIGHTS 2013
Written by Alan Herrick, President and CEO, Sapient Corporation
Our thinking is stretched daily to
help bring brand stories to life in
relevant ways across the consumer
ecosystem.

“It is the function of creative
man to perceive and to connect
the seemingly unconnected.”
–William Plomer
Or that a ski resort would be one
of the first to introduce RFID
technology as a way to enhance their
guest experience on the slopes and
way beyond? We had the honor of
helping Vail Resorts innovate a way
to connect skiers to RFID tagging to
social media so that they can track
and share their Vail stories across
their personal networks. The result
was more than 100,000 social photos
shared, yielding approximately 12
million social impressions for photos
alone, and that’s in just the first
season. Vail Resorts empowered
150,000 people living the Vail Resorts
story to tell the Vail Resorts story to
an audience of 12 million? What once
might have begun as an ad for a ski
vacation has become a panorama of
experience that lives in perpetuity.
It has been our privilege to
participate in these and many
other breakthrough changes that
reinvent the definition of “idea” and
unfetter the boundaries of creativity
for new pathways of connection.
Our thinking is stretched daily to
help bring brand stories to life in
relevant ways across the consumer
ecosystem. As consumer, retail and
communications landscapes continue
to stretch and evolve, we will continue
to wake up in the morning propelled
by the challenge.
In this edition of Insights,
SapientNitro thought leaders offer
you approaches and tools that help
navigate this completely digitized,
borderless world—to be used as a
flashlight of sorts. It offers research,
observations and compelling points
of view from subject matter experts
to students of life, to help us all see
the path we’re on a bit clearer, so the
next step feels a bit more confident.
Thank you for your interest and
support of SapientNitro, and with
continued resolve, we invite the
challenges of our time, walking
alongside partners connecting in new
and creative ways to their consumers.

Over the past decade, retailers of all
sizes have been driven by disruptive
technologies and the changing
consumer to make major investments
in digital channels, particularly
ecommerce and mobile platforms.
But now, more retailers are starting to
embed sophisticated interactive tools—
from digital displays to interactive
exhibits—into the store layout itself.
Ecommerce investments used to be
focused on simply complementing
the traditional retail store footprint.
In that world, shoppers would browse
online, compare prices through their
PC and ultimately end up in the store to
purchase. It was a linear journey.
But increasingly, new ecommerce tools
are able to directly influence the in-store
shopping experience. This is reshaping
the traditional role of the store: What
used to be a key step on the path is now
optional on the way to the purchase
through a digital platform.
Smartphones have reinforced this
transient behavior. Now, search and
price comparison is happening in the
store aisles, and a new behavior of
test-and-buy-elsewhere are becoming
much more common.1
In response, retailers are increasingly
embedding digital experiences into their
physical locations, and applying connected
thinking to enable consumers throughout
their journey with the brand. Examples
include mobile apps with built-in scanners
to discourage showrooming, inventory
visibility and tools to enable cross-channel
shopping (e.g., wish list management).
Retailers such as Walmart are also
exploring in-store self-checkout with
smartphones.
To measure the degree to which
retailers are successfully building links
between their digital and physical stores,
SapientNitro independently conducted a
four-month audit of specialty retailers.
We evaluated the physical locations of 71
retailers across 7 key criteria, gathering
over 500 points of data (See Methodology
& Approach).
In the end, what we found was
surprising. Of the 71 retailers, only
4 emerged with “baseline” scores.
Effectively, in-store digital experiences
today are only weakly integrated with
in-store goals and activities: The
content and functionality (if it exists at
all) of these experiences struggle to
support in-store goals and activities.
In most stores, digital has a limited
effect on the visit—mobile, kiosk or
tablet-based ecommerce and digital
display screens could be removed
entirely from the shopping process
and there would be little change. Yet
despite the sad state overall, there were
interesting examples that were doing
one category very well. For example,
Nordstrom, Coach and Crate & Barrel
earned high scores in inventory visibility
and fulfillment, UNIQLO had fantastic in-
store digital displays and merchandising
and Bloomingdale’s had great digital
brand and merchandising examples in
the cosmetics section. JCPenney and
Macy’s also offered distinct Levi’s digital
touchpoints (the Denim Bar and Levi’s
kiosk respectively) and sales associates
were enabled with iPads.
Written by Hilding Anderson, Sr. Manager Research + Insights, Washington, DC & Rachel Zinser, Sr. Associate
Research + Insights, Chicago, with Rebecca Prettyman, Associate Research + Insights, Chicago
& Lauren Egge, Associate Government Services, Washington, DC
IN-STOREDIGITALRETAIL:
THE QUEST FOR OMNICHANNEL
“Of the 71 retailers,
only 4 emerged with
‘baseline’ scores.
Effectively, in-store
digital experiences
today are only weakly
integrated with in-store
goals and activities.”
The Nike Store, while not formally evaluated
as part of the research, offered some of the
most immersive digital experiences.
1
59% of smartphone owners report having used their phone to find a better price while in-store. InsightExpress, Q1 2012, “Digital Consumer Portrait.” Jan 25, 2012

The goal of this research was to
evaluate the digitization of physical
spaces. Our hypothesis was that
most retailers—particularly in their
marquee New York City Fifth Avenue
stores—would have made substantial
investments, and the investments
would have been made here prior
to other cities.
We discovered that simply “adding
digital” is not the answer for retailers—
yet that was an approach too often
taken. As you’ll note in the scores,
brands that simply bolted on a screen
or added a tablet did not score well. In
our view, the retail store must focus on
tools that help sell in-store and extend
the visibility of both the customer and
the sales associate into the digital space:
product reviews, near-infinite inventory
and a much broader product assortment.
Just as ecommerce spurred the
evolution of a new type of shopping
experience, in-store retail is poised to
undergo the same type of disruptive
evolution—transforming itself into
something so different it requires
a new name: Connected Retail. A
Connected Retail experience2
is a
fully integrated, digitally enhanced
experience that engages the customer
in both the virtual and the physical
worlds. It enables stores to exploit
and extend their unique advantages
into the digital realm.
To understand the implications of
the research, we focused on several
questions we expect retailers to ask
and developed six key findings based
on them.
KEY FINDING 1:
DIGITAL IN-STORE DISPLAYS ARE POWERFUL
TOOLS—BUT TOO OFTEN POORLY EXECUTED
KEY THEMES
When done well, in-store digital
branding added tremendous energy
and engagement to the retail shopping
experience. Unfortunately, most digital
experiences suffered from major
shortcomings, if they existed at all—
40 of the 71 retailersevaluated had no
visible digital displays. Interestingly,
many of the best in-store experiences—
Chanel’s sleek runway video and
Clinique’s iPad skin evaluation—
appeared to be created in positive
partnerships between vendors or
suppliers and retailers.
More troubling is that few retailers
embraced the interactive element
of digital. Screens are great, but our
expectation is that in-store digital must
move beyond glorified wall hangings
and deliver content and functionality
that supports2
users in the shopping
process. Many of the screens focused
solely on branded content; while this
can enhance the experience, it lacks
interactivity. We saw little content
focused on product information and
utility, and even fewer interactive
experiences designed around user
goals and actions.
What worked: UNIQLO’s in-wall
screens were tightly integrated with the
physical design of the store and visually
compelling. In larger stores, consistent
usage of digital display as part of
the brand experience was essential
in creating the desired impact. For
example, Bloomingdale’s had screens
throughout the store, which was
in stark comparison to other large
retailers that often had a single, and
sometimes difficult-to-find, screen for
an entire floor. Digital entertainment
for kids is an interesting concept; both
Abercrombie and PS from Aéropostale
featured digital displays at kids’
heights, which offered a distraction for
The Adidas store, not part of our formal
evaluation, included a display obviously
added onto the in-store experience.
One example of well-integrated digital
merchandising was the Bloomingdale’s
in-store in-wall displays. Not interactive,
they still were well-executed and supported
the brand goals in the store.
LEGO’s in-store augmented reality experience
has received considerable buzz in the digital
space. But like many experiences in our audit,
lack of support (in this case, the display was not
operating) hampers the use of these devices.
The LEGO store was not part of our formally
evaluated retailers.
2
For more information on Connected Retail, see “Retail Goes Rogue: How Digital Convergence Will Revitalize the In-Store Experience” in the Trend 3 section of this report.

METHODOLOGY
& APPROACH
To measure the degree to which retailers
are successfully building links between their
digital and physical stores, SapientNitro
independently conducted a four-month audit of
specialty retailers.
Our research approach consisted of
in-person visits to the physical properties of
71 retailers, focusing on flagship and other
prominent locations in New York City.3
Researchers assessed each store’s digital
offering(s) while equipped with Android and
iOS smartphones.
Retailers’ physical stores were evaluated
across seven criteria: Visibility, Content,
Functionality, Brand Translation, Social
Sharing Integration, Mobile Experience
In-Store and Cross-Channel Inventory
& Fulfillment (See Methodology Chart).
And ultimately, each retailer received an
Omnichannel Score based on its composite
score (See Omnichannel Scorecard).
Methodology
Store Experience 70%
Visibility 15%
Content 20%
Functionality 20%
Brand Translation 15%
Social Sharing Integration 10%
Mobile Experience
In-Store 10%
Cross-Channel
Inventory & Fulfillment 10%
Each retailer was scored in each
category from 0 (not present) to 5
(best). The scores were weighted to
create a composite index, and then
multiplied by 15 to achieve an easy-to-
read overall score from 0 to 75. See the
Omnichannel Scorecard for the results.
DEFINITION OF CATEGORIES
Visibility: To what degree are digital elements
clearly visible in the store? Is digital integrated
throughout the shopper’s path?
Top Scores: UNIQLO received a five in this
category—the highest possible rating—for its
dynamic, visually stunning store experience.
Content: Is the content relevant to the brand
and its products and services? How well is the
content tailored to the in-store experience?
Top Scores: No brand received a five, but
Ethan Allen and Sephora secured a four by
offering product information and exploration
to support the in-store shopping experience.
Functionality: Are digital tools interactive?
To what degree are the functions relevant to
shoppers’ goals and the in-store experience?
Top Scores: No experience garnered a five,
but Sephora’s digital touchpoints, including
the Scentsa fragrance finder, netted the
retailer a four.
Brand Translation: Is digital well integrated
into the physical space? Do digital
touchpoints enhance the brand image
and store experience?
Top Scores: Bloomingdale’s, especially its
cosmetics experience, and UNIQLO’s spaces
were clearly designed with digital in mind,
earning each a five.
Social Sharing Integration: How well is
cross-channel or social sharing (e.g., email,
Facebook, Twitter) enabled?
Top Scores: Sephora earned a four because
many of its touchpoints supported easy email
sharing, and there was some social integration
though it was not seamless. Overall, a category
average of 1.4 out of 5—which excluded the
40 retailers that received a 0 score—indicates
significant room for improvement across
all retailers.
Mobile Experience In-Store: Does the retailer
have a native mobile app with functionality
relevant to the in-store experience (e.g., push
notifications, barcode scanner)?
Top Scores: No mobile experience warranted
a five. Most apps were singular in function if
they worked at all. However, Bloomingdale’s
did earn a four; in addition to the product
scanner provided by its Big Brown Bag app,
the “Bloomingdale’s @ 59th & Lex” app offered
interactive floor maps for its flagship store.
Cross-Channel Inventory & Fulfillment: Does
the retailer provide store inventory visibility in
other channels? How well does the retailer
support cross-channel shopping and fulfillment?
Top Scores: Coach, Crate & Barrel and
Nordstrom allowed shoppers to easily check
in-store availability via the website and mobile
site and offered an option for in-store pickup,
which plays up a physical retailer’s advantage of
immediate fulfillment and no shipping costs.
60+ Excellent
50-59 Good
40-49 Average
30-39 Fair
29 and Weak
below
3
71 retailers were audited. Of those, we evaluated one or more locations in New York City for
68 retailers and locations in Chicago for three retailers with limited or no presence in New York City.

weary parents and kept kids engrossed.
The Levi’s Denim Bar at JCPenney
was well designed and reasonably well
integrated. Converse—not on our list—
offered digital tools to allow consumers
to customize their shoes in-store and
walk out with one of many designs
printed on their sneakers. This is a
strong example of a tool that adds value
to the in-store shopping experience, is
relevant to in-store purchasing and can’t
be replicated at home.
What didn’t: In smaller stores, such
as Lindt and Bath & Body Works, large
screens behind the checkout displayed
video footage, but didn’t add to the visit.
Over and over, we saw stores that
had clearly not thought through the
digital, omnichannel environment. We
encountered many examples of poor
placement including a digital display
tucked under stairs and another hidden
behind a rack of clothes. One store had
seven-foot-high kiosks, which were
both broken and awkwardly placed at
an exit and in the middle of a crowded
clothes section. Another beauty and
skincare store mounted a touchscreen
computer to the wall, but left the outlet
and cables clearly exposed.
KEY FINDING 2:
POORLY PLANNED DIGITAL IS WORSE
THAN NO DIGITAL AT ALL
Digital is a key component of the
shopping journey, but retailers that
rush to extend digital to the physical
store experience won’t win the race.
Retailers must plan for the long-term;
this includes technology support and
sales associate training in how to use the
tools and in the value they provide. Staff
shouldn’t be surprised when shoppers
use smartphones to scan a barcode or
interact with a touchscreen. Floor plans
have to be redesigned for digital displays
and interactive elements.
What worked: UNIQLO is a prime
example of a store designed with digital
in mind, but even stores like Saks Fifth
Avenue and Ralph Lauren that had fewer
displays with little to no interaction
executed what they did have well—
displays were integrated and smooth.
What didn’t: JCPenney had great
experiences at the Levi’s Denim
Bar and had iPad-equipped sales
associates, but the overall experience
was hampered by broken price-check
kiosks and two broken “findmore”
touchscreen kiosks. Display errors
on Guess’ touchscreen overshadowed
any value the content could provide.
Several retailers integrated scanning
capabilities into their mobile apps,
but few worked seamlessly and
consistently. Guess’ sales associates
intercepted us as we tried the style
selector, and in American Eagle
Outfitters, the sales associate wasn’t
aware of the mobile app’s barcode
scanner. Even several Sephora
employees provided misinformation
about the Beauty Studio tool.
KEY FINDING 3:
IT ISN’T JUST THE HARDWARE:
CONTENT AND SOFTWARE MATTER
“The content owners that will
thrive in this digital ecosystem
are the ones that understand
the need to deliver seamlessly
across every possible platform.”
–eMarketer
Companies that optimize their
mobile web content outperform
those that don’t by 80% in
year-over-year increases in
web traffic.4
80%
Retailers’ Digital
Assets (Content)
Grow More Critical
Great digital signage and interactive
digital elements require great material.
Nothing emphasized the gap between
the promise and the reality better than
the lack of software and content to
match the hardware. In our research,
we found many examples of large-scale
runway videos, but were left scratching
our heads about the lack of other
stories. Where were the stories about
Several retailers integrated scanning
capabilities into their mobile apps, but
our attempts to scan were mostly
unsuccessful. The scanning software
usually worked, but the mobile app was
unable to look up the barcode.
4
Aberdeen Group “The Business Value of Adapting Web Content For Mobile Devices,” 2011

how a great design came to life? Where
was the product information, or even
promotional material?
In fact, Sephora’s tools, Clinique’s
skin evaluation, Macy’s Levi’s kiosk,
JCPenney’s Levi’s Denim Bar and Ethan
Allen’s Express platform were some
of the only software implementations
focused on in-store tasks. In-store tools
need to offer more than something a
shopper can do at home.
There are hundreds of potential stories
for strong brands, and digital in-store
tools offer the opportunity to tell them.
The failure to highlight and feature these
stories is a key gap for many retailers.
Content needs to be integrated into
the development of digital in-store
experiences, and content is a powerful
tactic within a larger omnichannel
strategy. Content must tell a story
consistent with the brand.
What worked: Clinique’s iPad skin
evaluation has been out for
several years, but is a solid tool,
delivering personalized product
recommendations based on users’ skin
types and key concerns (e.g., acne,
redness). It is integrated with email—
which worked—and usually a printer,
and was a popular tool at Macy’s,
Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Saks
Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. While
most had the Clinique iPad propped
up in a very basic (likely standardized)
freestanding base, Bloomingdale’s
went a step further to integrate the
iPads into a custom counter.
What didn’t: Barneys had over a dozen
iPads placed consistently throughout
the multi-level store, but the content
was generic dot-com material (typically
linked to the blog “The Window”). ALDO
was even worse—they mounted tablets
next to the shoes, offered no content
targeted at consumers and even had
sales associates scold shoppers when
they attempted to scan the shoes
themselves.
KEY FINDING 4:
THE RIGHT TOOLS GENERATE POSITIVE ROI
“Based on
SapientNitro’s
work in the space,
we have found a
significant increase—
on the order
of 10% to 40% in
additional in-store
sales—relative
to other stores.”
One of the key questions to consider
prior to in-store digital investment
is ROI. The cost of installing and
supporting these tools is significant,
but the question of a positive return
is too often unknown. Based on
SapientNitro’s work in the space, we
have found a significant increase—on
the order of 10% to 40% in additional
in-store sales—relative to other stores.
These benefits are primarily due to
decreased lost sales, the ability to ship-
to-home, improved in-store shopping
by enabling co-browse with sales
associates, and brand contribution.
Retailers with a physical presence
need to play up the benefit of in-store
experiences. Quite simply, sales
conversion is much higher in the retail
store than anywhere else. It also offers
unique advantages: immersion, direct
support of sales associates, immediacy
and focus, social elements and the
opportunity for fun. It makes sense to
invest in the channel that represents
more than 90% of most retailers’
sales (even as ecommerce continues
to grow).
What worked and what didn’t:
Obviously, our audit of in-store
experiences couldn’t determine
the direct impact of each digital
experience. What we’ve found in our
work in the space is a significant ROI
increase in well-designed convergent
retail tools such as in-store kiosks
connected to the right technology on
the back end.
The Marks & Spencer Paris location
offered co-browsing for associates and
is a move towards the “endless aisle,”
particularly important in the most
profitable high-traffic, small
footprint stores.

We awarded three retailers a five in the
Cross-Channel Inventory & Fulfillment
category. This is the only category that
had more than two top-scoring retailer
and reflects, we believe, a growing
interest in this area and increased
retailer awareness of cross-channel
behaviors. This is the first of a series of
steps towards omnichannel thinking.
We assessed how well retailers are
facilitating cross-channel shopping
behaviors, specifically from the web
(and mobile web) to the physical
store. With the large number of
consumers that research online and
buy in-store, retailers have a significant
opportunity to support these cross-
channel purchasers. Across the seven
categories we evaluated, more retailers
were awarded top scores (4 and 5) in
Cross-Channel Inventory & Fulfillment
than in any other.
We also examined the flexibility of
cross-channel shipping. The ability
to check store inventory in multiple
channels is highly relevant to the
omnichannel shopper. Additionally,
three retailers pushed the bar higher
to support cross-channel fulfillment.
Coach, Crate & Barrel and Nordstrom
gave shoppers the option to purchase
an item online and then pick it up at
a nearby store that had the item in
stock. Though it does not offer the
“The highly targeted assortment
and short-term leases are a
low-risk way for Walmart to
reach new shoppers and capture
shopping occasions it may not
otherwise have access to.”
–Instoretrends.com, referring to Walmart’s
2011 Holiday Pop-Up Store Strategy
The increase in online sales
over 3 months after Tesco’s
South Korean commuter
campaign was 130%.
130%
New, Creative
Retailing Models
Are Proliferating
KEY FINDING 5:
RETAILERS SHOULD FOCUS ON
SUPPORTING USER TASKS
Well-designed, task-based tools
emerged as being few and far between
in our research. We found that the
leading examples included wedding
registry kiosks, mobile barcode scanners
and product explorations like the skin
evaluation and fragrance finder.
But much was left on the table. While
43% of brands had some sort of
functionality supporting in-store tasks,
the majority were digital displays. Even
fewer (22%) brands had interactive
tools, which support those user tasks.
And we saw none of the digital try-on
technologies that various publications
have lauded. Not only did we not see
virtual fitting rooms, but also some
of the experiences that the industry
raves about, like iPad kiosks, failed
to deliver. We also failed to find any
future-thinking examples similar to
Marks & Spencer’s touchscreen co-
browsing experience (see image to
the left) recently rolled out in Paris,
or examples such as LensCrafters’
Magic Mirror, which allows shoppers to
quickly try on many new glasses styles
while still being able to see the styles
properly wearing their own.
What worked: Crate & Barrel included
both a wedding registry kiosk and a
mobile app that allowed users to walk
the store and scan items to add to their
registries. Clinique’s iPad tool delivered
personalized product recommendations,
helping shoppers narrow down the
options at the point of sale. Macy’s
mobile app included a barcode scanner
that worked, although it returned a
higher price online than in-store.
What didn’t: Bath & Body Works’
mobile app included a scanner, but
every attempt to scan a product
resulted in an error—this issue was
common across retailer apps assessed.
Guess’ app also promised to look up
prices and customer reviews, but also
threw an error. And we already noted
ALDO’s “tablet trap.”
KEY FINDING 6:
THE OMNICHANNEL BATTLE HAS BEGUN

Scentsa’s design
invited shoppers to try it out.
In-store scanning
with the Sephora
app surfaced
helpful reviews.
Sephora offered
email through its
tools (see email
link in top-right
corner of image).
Beauty Studio iPads linked
shoppers to tutorials, social
content and available services.
level of immediacy that in-store pickup
provides, some retailers also offered
a ship-to-store service, which, when
offered for free, might appeal to the
large number of shipping fee-averse
shoppers.5
What worked: Crate & Barrel had
clear inventory visibility as well as the
option to see if larger furniture pieces
were on display at a nearby location.
They also provided in-store pickup
services as well as an option of free
shipping to a store. Nordstrom offered
innovative functionality on its mobile
site, allowing users to filter by the
usual specs like size or color, as well
as “nearby” through which users can
set a location and narrow products by
store availability.
What didn’t: Among the surprises were
H&M and UNIQLO, which did not have
ecommerce offerings in the U.S. and
provided no visibility into store inventory.
And while several large department
stores provided at least some level of
inventory visibility—including Macy’s,
JCPenney, Bloomingdale’s and
Saks—it was a surprise to see a few
exceptions, including Neiman Marcus
and Lord & Taylor.
While no brands achieved the
“Excellent” status in this inaugural
omnichannel index, Sephora did
emerge as a leader among its peers.
Sephora had a seemingly well thought
out strategy for digital in its physical
spaces, in addition to a relevant mobile
offering and cross-channel—both dot-
com and mobile—inventory visibility.
Inside the store itself, the Scentsa
touchscreen kiosk served as a
centerpiece in the fragrance space.
The best-in-class interactive display
let visitors explore fragrances through
multiple paths, such as by brand or
by fragrance note. The touchscreen
was responsive and easy to navigate,
and offered shoppers helpful product
information. When a shopper found
something of interest they could email
it or scan the QR code to pull up the
product on their phone. The screen
also prominently displayed Facebook
links, but didn’t follow through with
social sharing capabilities.
A second touchscreen kiosk, Sephora’s
Skincare IQ, offered a very similar
experience catered to skincare needs.
In addition, Beauty Studio iPads were
positioned along the vanity mirrors at
Sephora’s makeover stations.
The location made the touchpoint less
inviting to passersby if the station was
in use, but those that ventured to check
it out found how-to videos and tips, an
overview of available in-store services,
social content from Sephora’s networks
and more. Shoppers could also share
content via email or social networks,
though some speed and system issues
were encountered when we attempted
to do the latter.
Sephora’s mobile app also offered
shoppers a scan feature, providing
easy access to additional product info
and reviews, which could help with
purchase decisions.
Each touchpoint hit the mark across
several criteria, but the overall
experience still fell shy of “Excellent.”
On reflection, we felt Sephora missed
making the final strong connection
between shoppers’ in-store goals and
experience. Scentsa helped shoppers
wade through the overwhelming
number of fragrances, but after finding
the perfect scent on the screen, how
does it make its way to their cart?
There was no indication of whether
the fragrance was on the shelf at that
moment and no assistance locating it.
CASE STUDY: SEPHORA
5
When asked the main reasons they don’t make online purchases, 36% of consumers cited the shipping costs. That made shipping costs the second-most common
reason they balk at buying online, only slightly behind the 37% who prefer to see and touch an item in person before purchasing. (Internet Retailer 2012)

The Macy’s Levi’s
kiosk was visually striking.
The Levi’s kiosk
was easy to
use, but product
information was
limited.
The Macy’s
mobile app
included a
basic scanning
capability, as
well as the ability
to scan and
add items to a
registry.
Across nine floors and over two million
square feet of retail space, the Macy’s
flagship store in Herald Square had
more in-store touchpoints than any
other store evaluated. Yet it was clear
it was optimized for an analog world;
digital displays had limited functionality
and the visibility of the tools in such a
large store held the retailer back from
achieving a “Good” designation.
Top experiences included the Clinique
skin evaluation iPads—Macy’s most
ubiquitous (available on three separate
floors) and successful implementation,
although not unique to Macy’s. The
sleek display of the Levi’s touchscreen
kiosk in the kids’ department, while
tucked among the racks in the girls’
denim section, drew attention. Users
could browse very basic product
information related to kids’ denim
styles and snap a pic with the digital
photo booth. Finally, the Macy’s mobile
app was a strong point with a scanner
for price comparison (although it
returned a higher price than the
physical tag) and its “find in-store”
function.
Price-check kiosks were easy to find
and were used frequently by shoppers
during our audit. Though the five-
inch LCD screens were not a vision
of beauty, the kiosks provided basic
product specifications along with price,
in which shoppers clearly saw value.
There was a missed opportunity to
further engage, cross-sell and delight
customers at this already frequented
touchpoint.
Other areas of opportunity included the
digital branding and merchandising
displays throughout the store, which
weren’t as integrated as, for example,
Bloomingdale’s. In addition, the single
gift registry in the ninth floor luggage
department worked, but seemed
oddly placed. Users could search for a
registry, but the output was a several-
foot-long, receipt-style printout of
products.
As a whole, the Macy’s digital in-store
experience has established several key
pieces of a complete offering: cross-
channel inventory visibility, a mobile
scanner and the beginnings of in-store
digital content. Developing tools that
enhance the brand and truly support
shoppers’ in-store activities remain a
significant opportunity.
CASE STUDY: MACY’S
The Clinique skin evaluation in Macy’s
offered clear instructions and a clean
interface, but was also featured at most of
their competitors.

The blurring of lines across online and
offline are not just impacting retailers.
We work with multiple industries that
are addressing the same challenges
to their businesses. From travel and
hospitality to telecom, most consumer-
facing industries are, to some extent,
facing similar challenges. However,
few have pushed as hard or as fast
as NASCAR.
NASCAR is one of the premium
professional sports businesses, with
massive reach—hosting 17 of the 20
most attended sport events—while
delivering significant results to
sponsors’ products and services. With
over 70 million fans worldwide, it is the
second most-viewed broadcast sport,
and has the longest sustained season
of any sport.
Yet their digital channels have
traditionally been under-emphasized—
with no YouTube channel (until
recently), substantial conversation
drop-off in the off-season and a fifth
place in online conversation after the
NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB.
In addition, their customer base
is evolving. Their biggest fans are
increasingly connected consumers
who expect to be able to interact with
their favorite brands, drivers and teams
through digital channels.
The solution is to reinvent and
recognize the strategic opportunity
to evolve to a more connected fan
experience that extends before, during
and after events.
Extending the In-Venue Experience
Analogous to the in-store experience,
attending races used to be dominated
by the cars and a basic scoreboard
with positions. Yet today, NASCAR is
seeing fans arrive with smartphones
who expect a platform to extend their
experience. The opportunity—to be
fair, as yet unrealized—is to surface
great analysis and social conversation,
and to see aspects of the event they
may have missed—without diluting the
intensity of the real-world experience.
For example, they are considering
leveraging digital signage, Jumbotron
integration, in-venue kiosks and
even mobile ticketing to make the
experience richer.
Connecting Digitally at Home
Similarly, while watching at home,
second screen viewing can extend and
increase the richness for consumers.
Personalized experiences similar to
ecommerce platforms in retail can
allow fans to connect with existing
media broadcasts (e.g., follow their
favorite driver’s audio or watch pit
row videos), live data feeds (e.g., tire
state, fuel state, speed) and education
and analysis (e.g., history of the track,
live analysis), or even enable social
conversation (e.g., Twitter, Facebook)
on NASCAR’s own platform.
Building the Brand
NASCAR fans are some of the most
passionate in the world. Part of the
opportunity of digital is to deepen
that connection by bringing great
content about the history of the teams,
sponsors, cars and drivers. There is
incredible richness in the stories, which
can be told through these platforms.
And off-season, digital channels offer
the opportunity to flatten seasonality
and shape engagement.
In summary, just as retail stores
have started to consider in-store,
NASCAR has started to think about
in-stadium and at-home digital
experiences. Integration with live
television programming allows deeper
engagement—and more opportunities
for lifting the lifetime value of fans.
NASCAR
RACES
TOWARDSOMNICHANNEL

iPads at the Levi’s Denim Bar were easy
to navigate.
The “findmore” kiosk had a fairly clean
look but was not functioning correctly
during our multiple visits.
JCPenney has the opportunity to be
among the leaders in relevant digital
in-store experience, with several strong
experiences. But in practice not only
did a majority of digital touchpoints fail
to impress, too many were inoperative
or unsupported.
The first touchpoint encountered was
the price-check, a staple in many
department stores. Similar to other
retailers, the design did nothing to
boost the brand image, but the real
issue was that the price-check was
non-functioning. The kiosk display
indicated that the “Price check
system is unavailable. Please see an
associate.” This message appeared
at seven of the eight kiosks we visited
throughout the store location.
JCPenney’s “findmore” kiosk offered
a strong visual impression, although
the content and functionality struggled.
The kiosk essentially brought shoppers
to the retailer’s website without
specifically tailoring the experience to
in-store goals. In terms of functionality,
the touchscreen interface on the
first kiosk was largely unusable—the
navigation would rarely respond to
touch—and the second kiosk tested
was entirely unresponsive. The
promotional material promised
media-rich content and social sharing
options, but we saw little of note.
A more recent effort—the Levi’s Denim
Bar—hit the mark across several
criteria. Relative to the kiosks, visibility
was improved, with in-store marketing
messages of “a new way to shop
for jeans” and a prominent location
adjacent to an aisle. The Denim
Bar—which was only in the men’s
department of the location visited—was
well designed, with the feel of a store-
within-a-store. iPads were mounted on
the Denim Bar, and the interface was
smooth and provided shoppers access
to basic information such as available
styles and washes, as well as video and
images highlighting the fit.
Beyond in-store offerings, JCPenney
provided inventory visibility through
both its dot-com and mobile site, which
supports the omnichannel shopper.
And though the Levi’s experience
and inventory visibility resulted in
a slight lift in scoring, it was still
overshadowed by inoperative kiosks
and price-checkers.
CASE STUDY: JCPENNEY

CONCLUSION
Our research teams visited over 70
retailers across New York City. What we
found were major gaps in the in-store
digital experience. Substantial pressure
is on retailers to meet the connected
consumer’s push for a seamless
omnichannel experience, and while it
is inspiring retailers to consider new
ways to extend aisles, create adaptive
environments and deliver augmented
packaging experiences, the reality is
humbling.
That only two stores—Sephora and
Bloomingdale’s—achieved a “Good”
rating in SapientNitro’s Omnichannel
Index reflects the substantial
challenges that remain in developing
a strategy for in-store experiences. In
the end, no retailer received the top
“Excellent” rating because too few have
overcome the underlying challenges of
execution: organizational alignment,
clear strategy and an actionable
roadmap with quick wins.
We did find compelling experiences.
From UNIQLO to the Bloomingdale’s
cosmetics section to Sephora’s
Scentsa, it was clear that some
retailers have made the necessary
conceptual and material investment.
But too often, we also found major
problems: broken devices, bolted-on
displays and disconnected experiences.
Achieving an omnichannel digital
vision has challenges. Our study found
that much work remains for retailers
to achieve their vision—but this also
means that we are even earlier in this
process than in ecommerce or pure
digital experiences and that, as
a result, more opportunities remain.
And the retailer who cracks this nut
will receive a disproportionate share
of the reward.

OMNICHANNEL SCORECARD
Rank Retailer Category Class Descriptions
1
2
3
4
5
6
6
8
9
10
10
12
13
13
15
15
15
18
18
20
Sephora
Bloomingdale’s
Macy’s
Crate & Barrel
American Eagle Outfitters
Nordstrom
Saks Fifth Avenue
UNIQLO
Lord & Taylor
Ethan Allen
ZARA
Guess
JCPenney
Lacoste
Barneys New York
Diesel
Tourneau
Steve Madden
Williams-Sonoma
Aéropostale
Beauty & Skincare
Department Store
Department Store
Home & Gift
Apparel
Department Store
Department Store
Apparel
Department Store
Home & Gift
Apparel
Apparel
Department Store
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Watches & Jewelry
Accessories & Shoes
Home & Gift
Apparel
59
52
46
44
43
40
40
36
33
32
32
31
29
29
27
27
27
26
26
25
Good
Good
Average
Average
Average
Average
Average
Fair
Fair
Fair
Fair
Fair
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Omnichannel
Score6
Our #1 for having a variety of useful interactive
tools that enhance the store experience, but
there’s still room to push the envelope
Exemplary use of video screens, delightful 59th @
Lex app for use in the flagship store and seamless
execution of Clinique iPads
On the right track with a diverse range of digital
touchpoints, but visibility and functionality
need a boost
Competent implementation of gift registry, but
only cross-channel inventory & fulfillment goes
above and beyond
Kids’ section features fun, digital entertainment,
plus displays and mobile investment
Cosmetics department screens, mobile app and
inventory visibility shine but the rest fall flat
A minimalist approach: branded video screens
complement the fine-art feel of the store
Branded video screens around every corner enhance
the store’s high-tech feel but none offer interactivity
A sleek cosmetics department bolsters
an otherwise mediocre digital experience
Touchscreen kiosk is a strong step in the right
direction, but location and in-store role need
attention
Handful of well-placed digital video screens
and a smooth mobile scanner, but no visibility into
store inventory
Solid endeavor with its touchscreen denim finder,
but system errors bring it down a notch
Valiant effort, but maintaining tools
is a must
No mobile integration, but bonus points for good
design and appealing digital video content
Mounted ipads look sleek, but deliver only website
content that shoppers can browse at-home
iPads and video screens compliment the brand,
but none blew us away
Unimpressive screens, but online shoppers can
schedule in-store appointments for an item of
interest
Digital video experience is well-branded though
underwhelming
A basic gift registry kiosk with a print option sums
up the digital offering
Digital photo booth in kids’ PS store is a fun
diversion, but limited in functionality and offers no
sharing capability
6
A retailer’s maximum score is 75. See Methodology & Approach for more detail.
60+ Excellent
50-59 Good
40-49 Average
30-39 Fair
29 and Weak
below

Rank Retailer Category Class Descriptions
20
20
20
24
24
24
27
27
27
27
31
32
33
34
35
35
35
35
35
40
40
42
42
Bath & Body Works
French Connection
Ralph Lauren
Ann Taylor
BCBG
H&M
Brooks Brothers
Lindt
Neiman Marcus
Stuart Weitzman
Gymboree
bebe
Coach
Talbots
A|X Armani Exchange
American Apparel
Banana Republic
Express
Urban Outfitters
Gap
Victoria’s Secret
Chico’s
White House | Black Market
Beauty & Skincare
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Home & Gift
Department Store
Accessories & Shoes
Apparel
Apparel
Accessories & Shoes
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
25
25
25
23
23
23
20
20
20
20
14
9
8
6
5
5
5
5
5
3
3
2
2
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Weak
Omnichannel
Score
Digital falls flat: uninspired marketing video
and a mobile scanner that returns only errors
Single video screen behind the cashwrap is
integrated and branded well
Classic but minimal: on-brand video and
well-designed displays, just not many of them
One poorly mounted screen tucked away
in the fitting room that serves up the
dot-com leaves much to be desired
Room for growth: runway videos looped on a
couple of screens
Floor-to-ceiling projector screen makes a
statement, but still has no ecommerce in the U.S.
No digital to be had except for shoppers seeking
a round of virtual golf practice
Single screen mounted behind the cashwrap
doesn’t grab shoppers’ attentions
Meager: Nothing beyond the Chanel runway
video screen
Branding video facing the street may catch the
attention of passers-by, but not of the in-store
shoppers
The small TV encapsulated in protective
plastic may keep the kids entertained,
but fails to impress
Mobile scanner and inventory check are the
only pluses
Online shoppers can easily check nearby stores’
inventory, but won’t find any digital content when
they arrive
The website and mobile site highlight
in-store availability, but the digital offering
ends there
Great dot-com inventory check for
in-store pick up, but fails everywhere else
Can check inventory via dot-com, but lacks digital
in-store and mobile relevance
Mobile scanner is the lone bright spot
Mobile app has a scanner, but it is
disappointingly glitchy
No in-store touchpoints and does only
dot-com inventory check well
A frustrating mobile scanner is the extent of the
in-store digital experience
App with scanner claimed exclusive offers, videos
and info, but never delivered
The in-store experience is void of digital and the
online offering to ‘find a store’ is riddled with errors
Store inventory supposedly visible via mobile and
dot-com, but worked not once when evaluated

Retailer Category
ALDO
Cole Haan
Nine West
Tumi
7 For All Mankind
Abercrombie & Fitch
Anthropologie
Club Monaco
Intermix
J.Crew
Juicy Couture
Lucky Brand
lululemon athletica
Rugby
L’OCCITANE en Provence
LUSH
The Body Shop
Bergdorf Goodman
Dean & Deluca
Godiva Chocolatier
Pottery Barn
Restoration Hardware
West Elm
Cartier
Swarovski
Swatch
Tiffany & Co.
Zales
Harry & David
Blue Nile
Bluefly
Net-A-Porter
Shopbop
Accessories & Shoes
Accessories & Shoes
Accessories & Shoes
Accessories & Shoes
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Apparel
Beauty & Skincare
Beauty & Skincare
Beauty & Skincare
Department Store
Home & Gift
Home & Gift
Home & Gift
Home & Gift
Home & Gift
Watches & Jewelry
Watches & Jewelry
Watches & Jewelry
Watches & Jewelry
Watches & Jewelry
Home & Gift
e-tailer
e-tailer
e-tailer
e-tailer
The following retailers received an overall score of 0
as all three components evaluated were absent:
• No digital touchpoints were visible in the store location visited
• No native mobile app with relevant in-store functionality
• No store inventory visibility on the retailer’s website or mobile site
The following retailers were not evaluated due to limited locations in
the geographies visited or lack of physical retail presence:

The brave new world of social media has simmered as it appears that (thus
far) hype has trumped impact. Meanwhile, 15+ years on, e-commerce has
become the disruptive force first envisioned in the late 1990s. In the first
quarter of 2012, online retail spending in the United States reached $44.3
billion, up 17 percent YoY.1
E-commerce is expected to grow at a 13.3 percent
CAGR, reaching $361 billion in the U.S. by 2016.2
With brick and mortar retail
flat or declining, the percentage of sales (and growth) traditional retailers
register online could become the arbiter, sorting winners from losers. Many
traditional retailers now register more than a quarter of their sales online.
Size Matters
Scale is beginning to translate online.
For the first time, there is a significant
relationship between the size of a
retailer’s business and Digital IQ.
The relationship strengthens when
looking at the size of retailers’
online businesses.
Department Stores: Rumors of Their
Deaths Are Greatly Exaggerated
Department stores have found
sanctuary in the digital domain.
Building on the successes from 2011
for the first time, the average Digital
IQ for the category outpaced children
of the medium, the e-tailers. The top
two spots in the 2012 Digital IQ Index®
:
Specialty Retail were (decisively)
captured by Macy’s and Nordstrom,
respectively.
Amazon.com: The Great
White Shark of Retail
A peerless e-commerce experience
coupled with a 37 percent share of U.S.
m-commerce3
make Amazon.com
the force reshaping retail. The most
recent victims are other e-tailers who
can’t compete. Amazon now has brick
and mortar peers squarely in its cross
hairs. As Amazon reinvests cheap
capital in a supply chain marching to
same day delivery, it eats away at one
of the few remaining advantages of
terrestrial retail—immediacy. Amazon
is the retail ocean’s lone Great White
Shark, broadening its prey from slow
fat seals to … everything that swims.
Mobile: “I Can’t Believe
How Much You’ve Grown!”
What was supposed to take ten
years took three. Everyone, including
Facebook, has been caught flat-footed
by the adoption rate of smartphones,
which has reached 165 million users
in the U.S. alone.4
M-commerce is
now the fastest growing retail channel
in history, and mobile devices are
likely influencing more on- and offline
purchases than traditional broadcast,
let alone an in-store salesperson.
E-commerce is now m-commerce.
Social media is now consumed via
mobile app. Digital marketing is
now centered on mobile search and
mobile-optimized email.
Digital IQ = Shareholder Value
The L2 study attempts to quantify the
digital competence of 76 global retail
brands. Our aim is to provide a robust
tool to diagnose digital strengths
and weaknesses and help brands
achieve greater return on incremental
investment. We have modified our
methodology, increasing the weighting
of a brand’s site from 30 percent to 40
percent and decreasing the weighting
of social media from 20 percent to
10 percent. In addition, we measured
each retailer’s order and return
fundamentals, and purchasing and
tracking from three distinct locations.
WHAT’SOLDISNEWAGAIN
Methodology
L2 is a think tank for digital
innovation. SapientNitro has
partnered with L2 to deliver the
highlights from their 2012 Digital IQ
Index®
: Specialty Retail study. The
Index measures brands against their
peers on over 675 quantitative and
qualitative data points, diagnosing
their strengths and weaknesses
across four dimensions:
1. Site: effectiveness of brand site and
e-commerce operations
2. Digital Marketing: search, display,
and email marketing efforts
3. Social Media: brand presence,
community size, content, and
engagement on leading platforms
4. Mobile: compatibility, optimization,
and marketing on smartphones,
tablets, and other mobile devices
This year’s Index ranked the digital
efforts of 76 retail brands. Based on
their overall performance, brands
were classified as either: Genius,
Gifted, Average, Challenged, or
Feeble. More information on the
ranking and methodology can be
found in the full report.
Written by Scott Galloway, Clinical Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern, Founder, L2
EXCERPTfrom the 2012 Digital IQ Index®
: Specialty Retail
To access the full report, contact membership@L2ThinkTank.com

“Straight e-commerce sites serve a purpose, but to compete in a digital
space a brand’s web presence needs to be more than pictures and a
shopping cart. To compete in today’s retail world, the brand needs to create
that personalized, one-of-a-kind, unique online experience, presenting consumers with
options they didn’t know they had.” – BILL KANARICK, WORLDWIDE CMO, SAPIENTNITRO
Site Feature Adoption
% of Sites with the Following Tools
July 2010–2012
2011 n=64 2012 n=762010 n=84
26%
31%
23%28%
44%56%
37%
48%
65%
User Reviews Live ChatProduct Facebook “Like”
Brand sites continue to be the primary
revenue-generation engine online,
however significant low-hanging fruit
remains. Only 50 percent of brands
incorporate conversion-enhancing
user reviews. Similarly, the Facebook
“Like” API, a valuable source of
incremental traffic, is employed by
only 65 percent of retailers. Most
notably, adoption of live chat fell to
26 percent, bucking the nationwide
trend5
and suggesting that prestige
retail brands are not seeing ROI on
the technology. However, brands are
investing more on their sites than
in mobile or social platforms.6
Site investments appear to pay off—
Genius brands keep users on their
sites two and a half minutes longer
than Feeble brands do.
KEY FINDINGS The Return of E-commerce
4
“Smartphone Adoption Rate Fastest in Tech History,” Stephanie Miot, PC Magazine, August 27, 2012.
5
“Live Chat Effectiveness- A Survey of Internet Shoppers 2012,” Bold Chat Research Report.
6
“Website investment still key for online retailers despite the rise of social and mobile,” Maria Wasing,
Econsultancy, September 3, 2012.
1
“comScore Reports $44.3 Billion in Q1 2012 U.S. Retail E-Commerce Spending,
Up 17 Percent vs. Year Ago,” comScore Press. Release, May 9, 2012.
2
“Apparel Drives US Retail Ecommerce Sales Growth,” eMarketer Press Release, April 5, 2012.
3
“Amazon To Book $2 Billion In M-Commerce This Year,” Steve Smith, Media Post, September 29, 2011.
Where Retailers Are Investing6
% of Retail Executives Prioritizing Investments
in the Following Media n=100
Site Social NetworksMobile
22%35%59%

Referral and Destination Sites for Specialty Retail Sites
Upstream and Downstream Traffic to and from the Following Sources
July 2012
While Facebook’s stock price may be
down, the platform is not necessarily
losing importance. Once again,
Facebook is a key traffic driver of
users to retailer sites, representing
10 percent of upstream traffic.
Conversely, Twitter does not represent
any reportable upstream traffic,
suggesting the medium is not a major
e-commerce driver. Pinterest has
emerged as a notable source of both
upstream and downstream traffic.
Analysis of traffic to and from
Amazon.com and other third party
e-commerce sites reveals higher
rates of downstream traffic than
upstream, reinforcing the threat of
the e-tailer. Facebook and Amazon
together is an even bigger challenge
to retailers. Last year, 14.5 percent of
Amazon.com’s 22.3 million hits7
on Black Friday came from social
sites, up from 9 percent in 20108
—
a powerful force. Overall traffic to
retailers fell 7.1 percent year over year
while Amazon.com’s already massive
traffic rose 13 percent, suggesting
it feasts on the traffic cookie while
everyone else fights over increasingly
small crumbs.
KEY FINDINGS Red Light, Green Light
Competitors
3%
Competitors
3%
Facebook
Pinterest
Other E-commerce
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Other E-commerce
Twitter
10%
Google
53%
Google
Amazon
2%
1.6%
0.8%
0%
14%
49%
Amazon
3%
2%
2%
0.05%
Average % of traffic to
brand sites from the
following sources:
BRAND SITE
7
“Retail traffic on Black Friday up 2%,” Experian Hitwise Blog, November 26, 2011.
8
“Social media helps big retailers drive traffic during the holidays,” internet Retailer, January 30, 2012.
% of Upstream Traffic % of Downstream Traffic
Average % of traffic from
brand sites forwarding to
the following destinations:

Smartphone penetration is almost
40 percent,9
and tablet adoption
skyrocketed from zero to 25 percent
in only two years.10
Sixty-nine percent
of mobile users have used their device
to get product information, and 82
percent of smartphone owners use
devices to help with shopping in-
store.11
All signs point to a future built
around mobile. Seventy-eight percent
of brands in the 2012 index have a
mobile-optimized site, up from a
quarter two years ago.
Brands are building apps for iOS and
Android, however iPad app adoption
dropped from 39 percent in 2011 to
29 percent this year. Many retailers
demonstrate higher conversion from
their site on the tablet and likely
don’t want to obfuscate sales by
having an app in the equation.
Nine brands removed their 2011
iPad applications: Abercrombie &
Fitch, Banana Republic, Bath & Body
Works, bebe, Bergdorf Goodman,
Bluefly, Diesel, Tiffany & Co.,
& Williams-Sonoma.
KEY FINDINGS Movin’ On Up
iPhone iPad Android
Mobile Application Platform Adoption Rates
2010–2012
PercentofRetailers
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
28%
45%
51%
29%
21%
39%
6%
6%
3%
Mobile Site Features
% of Mobile Sites with the Following Features
July 2012, n=59
Product Social
Sharing
Mobile Site
Search
Customer Service M-Commerce
44%
56%
41%
59%
25%
75%
5%
95%
9
“Smartphone penetration in the U.S. from 2010 to 2016,” Statista, 2012.
10
“Tablet Shopping Growing, but Retailers Must Keep Up,” eMarketer, June 15, 2012.
11
“The Retailers Definitive Guide to m-Commerce Success,”
Cheryl Sansonetti, 5th Finger, May 2012.
2010 (n=81) 2011 (n=64) 2012 (n=76)
Download the full EXCERPT of the
2012 Digital IQ INDEX®
: Specialty Retail Study
http://www.l2thinktank.com/research/specialty-retail-2012/

We are witnessing fundamental changes at the intersection of
technology, business and customer experience. The collective
impact of “disruptive technologies” on the human experience
is causing chaos for companies. Old business models are
failing. Communication and commerce are converging—in
the home, on-the-go and at the store.
FOUR TRENDS SHAPING MARKETING PRIORITIES
TRENDS
Written by Hilding Anderson, Sr. Manager Research + Insights, Washington, DC,
Todd Cherkasky, VP Research + Insights, Chicago
& Donald Chestnut, Chief Experience Officer, New York

OVERVIEWOFTRENDSWe call this “experience-led business transformation.” Brands are increasingly defined by the
experience—by the sum of the interactions and value exchanged. Today, experience is the brand.
As we collected the materials for this section of the report, we identified four major trends that
define our space today and shape the future.
The four trends are areas where experience is being re-conceptualized. From the consumer’s
embrace of new devices and real-time control to the increasing global nature of marketing,
these trends will be driving marketing priorities over the next three to five years.
TREND 1:
Real-Time Control: New
Consumer-Oriented Devices and Data
As the world of experience evolves, one of the
most critical trends is consumer demand for
real-time control of their data, their lives and
the world around them.
While not always met, this expectation, and
how brands are striving to meet it, is driving
some of the most interesting developments in
marketing today.
The future of television, the growth of
smartphones, the rise of alternative methods
of payment and the development of new ways
to deliver content: Our authors have explored
each of these ideas in detail.
TREND 2:
Predicting Desire: Building
the Infrastructure to Anticipate
Consumer Needs in Real Time
The second major trend we’re seeing is that
companies are predicting—and even shaping—
desire among their target customers.
A combination of new technology, customer changes
and business viability is making this possible.
The rise of data warehouses and analytics, the
future of mobile data, real-time analysis, the
use of social networks to monitor and influence
desirability, and ways banks can rebuild trust
were all topics our authors chose to explore in
this category.
TREND 3:
Continuous Experiences: How Companies
Are Blurring the Online and Offline World
The third trend in the evolution of great
experiences is the blurring of the online and
offline worlds into one continuous spectrum.
Great brands are increasingly using all their
assets to reach their customers in the right
time, place and with the right tools to shape
the purchase decision.
A new conception of the story, the role of
brand, new strategies for content and new
retail models are all topics our authors
chose to address in this section.
TREND 4:
Globalization: The Global Marketer
and the Rise of the Global Consumer
The final trend in the future of experience
is the increasing globalization of the
marketing environment.
No longer are marketing assets, brands and
messages restricted within a single country’s
borders. Information travels farther and faster
today than in the past.
To adapt to this world, marketers must
rethink how they operate. Few regions
represent the magnitude of the challenge
—and the opportunity—as China.
In this section, we posit a new CMO mindset
necessary to operate in the new marketing
environment. In addition, our authors focused
on ecommerce and the luxury consumer in
Southeast Asia.

REAL-TIME
CONTROL
As the world of experience evolves, one of the most critical
trends is consumer demand for real-time control of their
data, their lives and the world around them.
While not always met, this expectation, and how brands are
striving to meet it, is driving some of the most interesting
developments in marketing today.
The future of television, the growth of smartphones, the rise
of alternative methods of payment and the development of
new ways to deliver content: Our authors have explored each
of these ideas in detail.
1
TREND

Is There a
Terminal Velocity for
Youth and Digital?
56
Mobile Payments:
The Future of Money
39
Customer Experience
Is on the Move
35
29
Future of TV
How Sensors Are
Connecting the World
and the Implications for
Experience Design
47
Invisible Brand
Interfaces
52
45
The Economy of One:
The Consumer as
Producer, Influencer
and Purchaser
61
Responsive Design
101: Optimizing for
Multiple Screens
OE
OE
OE
OE
OE

FUTURE OF TV
Written by David Hewitt,
Vice President, Mobile and Multi-Channel Experiences, Atlanta
& Lucy Devassy, Sr. Manager, Global Shared Services, Atlanta

American teenagers spend an
average of 100 hours per month
watching TV—and that doesn’t
include computers, phones or
tablets—proving there is something
still special about the in-home TV
experience. But that archetype is
about to undergo a massive change.
In the last few years, there has been
a substantial wave of new products,
startups and ventures all circling
the TV ecosystem. Changes in social
TV, cable companies and satellite
companies are a direct reflection of the
crossover between the traditional big
screen and the growing integration of
smart devices. However, the majority
of innovation has been relegated to
individual silos with limited success,
even though the technology is here
and consumers are showing record
engagement with emerging devices.
So why is the living room taking so
long to evolve? Let’s take a look at
some underlying dynamics of both the
industry and consumer behavior and
their implications.
THE TELEVISION IS SET TO CHANGE
The New, In-Control Consumer
Consumer behavior has already
changed to a channel-agnostic,
anywhere, anytime multi-channel
mentality. No longer are consumers
only watching programs on the TV,
tweeting on their iPhones or checking
scores on an iPad. The second screen
needs to help blur the lines instead
of relegating specific tasks to siloed
touchpoints.
Providing content across screens is
the new expectation—and consumers
won’t have it any other way. Take
Netflix. In June of 2011, the company
announced price hikes on existing
subscriptions, followed by plans to
split their streaming and mail order
services into separate brands just two
months later. The customer backlash
was instantaneous and Netflix was
forced to backtrack. Today streaming
and mail order still remain under the
Netflix brand.
We know that people long to watch
and share TV experiences on their
schedule and in a social way. And it’s
clear that the one-to-one, on-demand,
online environment will continue to
take over.
Evolving Consumption
Habits and Industry Trends
Expect to see other big changes—very
soon. Some shifts that are affecting
consumer consumption habits are:
Product and purchasing lifecycles
Prices for displays are down and
quality of content is up, hence
consumers are replacing their TV sets
more often. This churn will allow the
latest technology to enter the market
at a faster rate and opens up next
generation experiences to a larger
consumer base. The newer sets also
REAL-TIME CONTROL
30
We know that people long to watch and
share TV experiences on their schedule
and in a social way.
1
TREND
ESPN media found that
the average consumer spent
just 7 hours a week watching
TV, but when a second screen
was used, time spent rose to
13 hours. With a third, time
spent rose to 24 hours—just
by bringing more content
touchpoints to the experience.

boast a higher resolution, giving
way for a wider variety of content
and applications.
Connected devices
In the past, the set-top box was king
and “the web” was confined to a
desktop PC or laptop. That notion is
disappearing as broadband penetration
has reached maturity and as emerging
devices are highlighting the power of a
“connected everything.” Even gaming
consoles are standing in as set-top
boxes for the convenient pairing of
on-demand and entertainment. In
addition, smartphones and tablets
continue to evolve as remotes,
schedulers and social input
devices, while an ecosystem of
passive sensors will better predict
our viewing desires and shape an
advertiser’s media spend.
Measurement
Smartphones can identify us by a
phone number, check-in or log-in.
On a PC, visits are cookied and often
bookmarked. At the end of the day,
most digital channels know who is
interacting with what content and
brand. This is all in stark contrast
to the living room’s methods of
measurement. Expect brands to
continue to look for ROI and relevant
targeting with predictable outcomes.
Emerging interfaces
Traditional IPTV access points are
failing the consumer against a bevy
of content options and consumer
behaviors. Clunky remote controls
and program guides are not keeping
up with our 130+ TV channels or on-
demand content. Voice and gesture
tools will replace the remote, resulting
in an improved experience. The
mobile application paradigm has
already made its way onto the set via
Samsung, Xbox and Apple TV. Even
with mixed results, it’s clear that
the simplicity and focus of the small
screen’s user interface is influencing
how big screen content gets traversed.
Perhaps the greatest innovation
potential is already brewing on
leading smartphones. When Apple
transformed the phone into an intuitive
communication device and handheld
computer, they solved more problems
through detection and fuzzy logic (e.g.,
the proximity sensor that turns off the
phone’s keyboard once next to an ear).
Samsung has built upon this human
pattern-based logic. Their new Galaxy
III phone’s Direct Call feature allows a
user to initiate a call by just holding the
phone up to his ear and the Smart Stay
feature leverages its camera to ensure
that the screen won’t turn off when
being viewed.
Now put this construct in the living
room. Instead of miniature predictive
moments of a smartphone user
interface, we now have a collection of
input devices, sensors and displays
that can work together. TVs could
switch to power-saving modes when a
person leaves the room or falls asleep.
When a baby cries, the TV could let
the broadcast network know to serve
diaper ads instead of dating ads.
Social media
Social interaction and the viewing
experience will be inseparable. Each
user can decide how he or she will
socialize, and with whom. It will also
offer the ability to share content around
favorite shows, make predictions
1
TREND
31

and take polls. Critical to advertisers,
the fanfare buzz and bragging that
surrounds the content often hits
before and after the event; what brand
wouldn’t want to extend their name
in those conversations? And the
second a fan posts a tweet about
their favorite show character, that
device will ping the cloud and let the
advertiser and producer know who
or what type of consumer is watching
their sponsored content.
Format changes
Bite-sized content continues to
dominate the user-generated content
universe. Those libraries contain both
premium and standard broadcast
content by way of streaming boxes
and services like Apple TV and smart
TV sets. Amazon and Google are
investing in production capabilities
to drive longer-form engagement
media. Along with those on-demand
and streaming services, linear
programming will continue to diminish
and primetime events will get a boost.
As engagement options continue
to build, trusted, curated content
from peers and providers will play
a more important role. In addition,
the mobile app store phenomenon is
shaping a more purposeful mentality
to proactively dive directly into
specialized content and features.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE EXPERIENCE
Second Screen Takes the Stage
The businesses and brands that
best figure out how to dominate the
second screen experience will be
the ones who capture the greater
consumer mindshare.
Those investing in second screen
include TV networks, cable companies,
social media players and media
publishers, just to name a few.
Web 2.0 giants like Google, cable
company behemoths like Comcast
and electronics manufacturers from
Samsung to Sony are all making
strides to bring interactive to digital.
And the more screens consumers
use, the more time they spend with
the content. According to Patrick
Stiegman of ESPN, 85 million
Americans consume TV and the web
simultaneously. ESPN media found
that the average consumer spent
just 7 hours a week watching TV, but
when a second screen was used, time
spent rose to 13 hours. With a third,
time spent rose to 24 hours—just by
bringing more content touchpoints to
the experience.
The traditional publisher is also
going after the second screen to
expand media dollars and consumer
engagement. Traditional players like
The New York Times are starting to
position their staff writers to pick up
where passive TV is trailing off. During
the last Oscars, the staff writers crafted
complementary stories on tablets
that shared supplemental information
where the program left off. In another
example, The Huffington Post expanded
from being a news site to a streaming
TV network. Soon, many content
producers and content-rich brands will
become networks themselves in an
attempt to capture the magic only the
big screen can deliver.
Second screen is perhaps most
effective with real-time content like
Ask yourself:
• Does the experience drive
participation? What we do often
stays with us longer than what
we see. The most impactful
experiences will bring something
more than passive content and
leave the consumer with a reason
to share and come back.
• Does the second screen
experience sync? While there are
many hurdles, those that provide
a differentiated and connected
real-time experience have a
big advantage.
• Does the experience gracefully
adapt? The experience should be
ready for the Android tablet market
and be optimized for leading
smartphone platforms.
• Does the experience support
an ad model that brands can
participate in? Brands realize
there is power in messaging
across multiple touchpoints, so ad
platforms and media buys need to
support a connected, consistent
brand experience.
How can brands and
industry players best
prepare for second
screen experiences?
REAL-TIME CONTROL
32

sports or awards shows; there was
a huge spike in second screen use
during the 2012 Olympic Games. NBC
showed more than 3,600 hours of
Olympic coverage—a stark contrast to
the 2008 Olympic Games when NBC
was hesitant to live stream anything.
This gave viewers in the U.S. a more
enjoyable viewing experience with
a front row seat through at least
one channel.
Another example is the IntoNow app
from Yahoo!, which identifies what
a consumer is watching, and then
looks beyond that content, giving
her related information she may find
interesting as well. Yahoo! has also
announced responsive design capability
with upcoming advertising products,
ensuring optimization across multiple
screens and form factors.
The Shift From Smart to Dumb
As devices and screens become more
intelligent, the cloud will mature—
unifying everything from storage to
streaming to personalization. And once
the cloud crosses a threshold
of intelligence and ubiquity,
it will put pressure back on
devices to become dumb again.
Why is this? When multiple
devices try too hard to
“accomplish everything” for the
consumer, the bigger benefits
get lost through the limited
perspective of any one device.
However, when an orchestrated
set of devices feed a centralized
brain, the devices can work
together to feed inputs and
deliver on commands—
not much different than a
quarterback who syncs with his team
and coordinates with coaches to
execute the best plays on field.
This new cloud-centered world will not
only ensure the right content reaches
the right device at the right time and
place, but will also provide the right
analytics to allow brands to spend their
media dollars in an effective, more
profitable way.
UNDERLYING FACTORS
The TV Advertising Model
The advertising model for both TV
and mobile is broken. While TV is well
monetized, it isn’t well measured.
Conversely, consumers are spending
significant time on mobile, but
advertisers haven’t figured out how to
best meet them there. This conundrum
is reflective of an advertising model
that would need to work on a small
screen for a time-conscious, place-
sensitive and task-driven consumer.
Quite simply, an effective model has not
yet emerged; Facebook is the poster
33
TV
Internet
Radio
Newspapers
Magazines
Mobile
42.5%
42.2%
25.9%
21.9%
14.6%
10.9%
10.1%
0.9%
4.0%
15.0%
2.8%
0.7%
Share of Average Time
Spent Per Day With Select
Media by U.S. Adults vs. U.S.
Ad Spending Share, 2011
% of total
Time spent share
Ad spending share
Content in the Cloud
In the past, we watched snail mail
turn into email. We all had one
computer and email account. Now
we expect to read our email wherever
and whenever. Traditional TV is on
the same path—it has to be delivered
to every device while being optimized
for device form factors and consumer
preferences.
While Google has largely failed with
Google TV thus far, it understands
the importance of the cloud whereby
multiple channels, social tools, user
accounts and viewing habits get
aggregated into one universe—to
the benefit of both the consumer
and advertiser.
Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are
all making heavy investments and
realizing that the less the content
is tied to any one device, the more
scalable it becomes. In addition, the
more the consumer personalizes the
experience, the more it pays off and
the less likely they are to move to a
competing provider.
1
TREND

child for this challenge as so many of its
users are migrating to mobile without a
complementary ad experience.
So why talk about TV and mobile
advertising together? Each has
something to offer the other, especially
as 41% of smartphone and tablet
owners are using their devices while
watching TV. Through fingerprinting
technologies, mobile can enhance
TV’s measurement capabilities while
some of TV’s premium media dollars
can start to bleed into mobile screens
as advertisers look to drive more
participation and extend before and
after the moment. Samsung’s newest
sets have cameras built in and soon
advertisers will be able to target based
on age, sex and number of people in
the room—all capabilities of today’s
facial recognition technology. Seem
invasive? Don’t forget the millions of
Facebook users who publically post
their most personal information.
The Fight for Control
Telcos and cable companies—
among others—are vying to own
the viewer experience as the
business model changes.
Today, cable companies have more
leverage over content companies
than telcos because many own cable
stations (e.g., Comcast owns NBC) and
have been in the entertainment space
decades longer. But telcos have more
sophisticated IPTV and opportunities
to dovetail with mobile devices. With
emerging technology companies and
complementary dispositions, don’t be
surprised to see more partnerships as
players realize the power of combined
strength—even the love–hate kind.
Both cable companies and telcos
are vulnerable to nascent customer
experiences. The future of TV will
reinvigorate the relationship between
brands and consumers into an à la carte
model that caters to a viewer’s taste
instead of programming bundles that
substitute quantity for quality. Brands
will continue to increase their power and
influence while cable companies and
telcos struggle to maintain power.
Considerations and Challenges
for Brand Advertisers
With all the promise the future of TV
has to offer, there are still some bugs.
Besides the fight for control, multiple
screens increase the touchpoints that
have to be managed. And, fragmentation
between devices, platforms and
networks, as well as a broken model
for media planning, buying and
analytics are adding to the complexity.
For brands considering a new
experience for multiple screens,
there are additional risks. For one,
is the experience complementary,
redundant or cannibalizing? Also, how
does a multitude of available second
screen experiences (one from the
cable company, network provider and
content publisher) get reconciled for the
consumer? How do broadcast rights
apply to second screen experiences?
What is the optimal staffing required to
support new experiences? And, when it
comes to measuring ROI, is it worth the
investment?
REAL-TIME CONTROL
34
Conclusion
The future of TV remains difficult
to cast. But the changing
consumer, shifting technology
and the breakdown of traditional
business models are all resulting
in an environment where existing
players are threatened and
new opportunities exist. The
underlying themes of connectivity,
participation, personalization and
prediction sit below many of the
emerging trends we see and are
bound to change TV forever.
41% of smartphone and tablet owners
are using their devices while watching TV.

CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE
IS ON THE MOVE
Written by Nigel Vaz, SVP and Managing Director, London

Just a few years ago, the idea of
mobile taking the lead in customer
experience would have seemed
ridiculous.
But in 2011, sales of smartphones
and tablets outpaced those of PCs for
the first time ever; in the final quarter
leading up to Christmas, Apple sold
more iPads than any single computer
manufacturer sold PCs. Mobile is
now significantly more important to
most brands, and has become an
integral part of their multi-channel
experiences.
Within three years, mobile web usage
will outstrip desktop Internet use,
and brands must adapt accordingly.
The brand is the experience and the
experience is the brand. In the near
future, mobile will be pivotal to the
quality of that experience. Brands
will have to create great customer
experiences, and with this comes
challenges and questions that must
be addressed.
Is Mobile Working?
To understand how far mobile can go,
it is important to understand how far
it has come. Mobile ownership is now
nearly ubiquitous. The phenomenal
uptake of tablets and smartphones
is driving huge change, and the need
for change, in the ways brands meet
consumers.
Until recently, we were at a stage
where technology was producing
new products and consumers were
playing catch-up. We’ve tipped over
into a space where consumers are
familiar with the technology and now
have a greater expectation than ever
of what is, and should be, possible.
While phone and text still dominate
usage, interactive usage has grown
significantly in two major areas of
mobile—Internet and native apps.
People now spend on average 32
minutes a day using mobile Internet
services, and more than 18 billion
apps have been downloaded from the
iTunes App Store alone. Customers
are also increasingly comfortable
transacting on mobile, which has led
to impressive revenue figures. Online
retailer ASOS brings in more than
£1 million a month through mobile
transactions, Amazon brought in
$1 billion from 2009 to 2010 and
eBay sold $2 billion worth of
products last year.
The influence of mobile reaches far
beyond just direct sales. Brands are
using mobile to build awareness
through advertising and create
affinity through customer care and
loyalty programmes, and consumers
are using mobile to research products
both at home and in-store. Because
mobile devices are carried with the
consumer constantly, they become
powerful tools for creating multi-
channel brand ecosystems that
can deliver real value.
The enablement and freedom
of connection that tablets and smart-
36
1
TREND
REAL-TIME CONTROL
To understand how far mobile can go,
it is important to understand how far
it has come.

phones have afforded is changing
our expectations. Whether in a store,
airport or hotel, people are more
used to having mobilised members of
staff engage with them to complete a
transaction without having to queue
at a fixed location. The ways in which
people expect to be able to transact
online, without journeys being
broken, on mobile or tablet devices,
is far greater. We can see evidence
of that in the 20 percent of online
sales over Christmas that were
mobile-enabled.
On the other hand, some mobile
services and experiences are far
from perfect: 90 percent of apps are
deleted after 30 days and 38 percent
of people are not satisfied with their
favourite brand’s app. The mobile web
does not fare much better: 25 percent
of people would not revisit a retailer’s
mobile site after a bad experience and
75 percent of the UK top 100 retailers
do not have mobile-optimised versions
of their website, even though people
spend three-and-a-half times longer
and look at three-and-a-half times
as many pages on optimised sites,
compared with non-optimised.
Will Mobile Continue Its Rapid Ascent?
The demand for mobile services
and their commercial importance
will only increase—and quickly.
SapientNitro has identified four areas
that have influenced mobile growth,
and will continue to do so.
Rise of the smartphone and tablet.
Mobile has been propelled by the
explosive sales of smartphones and
tablets that give people a far richer
experience. Sales of smartphones in
the UK jumped 74 percent between
2010 and 2011. Worldwide tablet sales
in 2010 exceeded 17 million units,
rising to a forecast 60 million-plus for
2011 and 99 million in 2012.
Availability of cheap, fast data. The
availability of cheap data bundles, the
rollout of 3G across the UK and the
launch of LTE/4G in 2014 will mean
greater mobile broadband speeds
and even more mobile growth.
Awareness of mobile services. Many
mobile solutions fall at the first
hurdle because firms fail to pay
proper attention to launching their
services. One example? There are
over 500,000 apps in the Apple App
Store alone. To compete with the
saturation, smart brands are looking
at how to best tag apps, categorise
and drive participation.
Better technology. In the past few
years, a range of improved technologies
such as cloud-enabled, NFC-enabled
and location-based services have
started to deliver more complex
experiences. Over the next few years,
technology will continue to improve.
Can You Meet the Challenges?
Just because the screen is smaller
doesn’t mean the obstacles are any
less. There are key challenges to
keep in mind.
Match your offering with your
audience. Understanding your
audience is the first step. This
is particularly important in mobile
as audiences are fragmented by
form factor and usage, which are
also heavily influenced by culture
and geography.
37
1
TREND

Mobile behaviours should also be
considered. This includes filling
spare time, performing small jobs
that are ideally done on-the-go and
offering a third screen at home. Then,
the real value comes from detailed
understanding of your audience and
unveiling key insights.
Craft the right experience. The range
of front-end technology is broad and
is changing by the day. They include
native apps, hybrid apps, NFC, 3D and
good old SMS, to name a few. From
the business point of view, a deep
understanding of the technology is
not necessary. What is important is
choosing the right technology. These
decisions have a direct impact on the
consumer. For example, typing in a
URL is very different than downloading
an app. The end solution may
accomplish the same goals, however
the consumer expectations can be
wildly different.
See what the customer doesn’t.
Richer mobile experiences frequently
require access to back-end systems
such as product catalogues,
ecommerce systems and account
information. Too often, companies
do not consider their back-end
architecture sufficiently. As a result,
mobile experiences that rely on good
access to back-end systems are often
delayed or never come to life at all.
Think strategically. When creating
consistently great mobile experiences
that deliver customer and business
value, strategy matters. The time for
one-off mobile experiments has
now passed.
The first step is to have a clearly
defined mobile strategy in place that
includes a roadmap. This needs to
be supported by a conviction that
warrants the growing investment
required. Many analysts will suggest
that there is no such thing as a “mobile
strategy”—only a multi-channel
strategy. While this is true, mobile
often carries the load for innovation
and business transformation.
Could Mobile Lead
Your Customer Experience?
The simple answer is yes. And even
if it does not lead, it will without
doubt play a critical role because
mobile is the primary channel to
create and fulfill demand in real
time. There are a a series of
mountains to climb, but
consumers are demanding it
and the opportunities are huge,
so the time to act in a serious
fashion is now.
Originally published in Figaro Digital
The Takeaway
REAL-TIME CONTROL

MOBILE PAYMENTS:
THE FUTURE OF MONEY
Written by Perry Chan, Creative Director, Experience Innovation, New York

There’s a major transformation
happening between people and
their relationships to their money,
a transformation enabled by
the arrival of mobile payments
(mPayments). The magnitude of this
change—and the disruption—will
greatly impact consumers, banks,
retailers, merchants and wireless
carriers, among others, and will be
felt across the globe. The mPayment
landscape is rapidly evolving, with
many different players, technologies
and alliances all fighting to assert their
relevance and control between the
consumer and the future of money.
From entertainment and electronics
to train tickets and travel services,
there are virtually no limits to what
consumers are using their phones to
purchase. In fact, in Japan, it’s already
a way of life: 7.6 million consumers
have made a mobile purchase in a
retail or convenience store, 3.2 million
have made a purchase from a vending
machine, 2.7 million have paid for
public transport, 2.6 million have
made a purchase in a grocery store
and 1.5 million have paid a restaurant
bill—all using their mobile phone
instead of cash, card or check. And
47 million Japanese have adopted
tap-and-go phones in the last three
years. East Asians will continue to
lead this market.1
It’s becoming clear that mPayments
will radically change the way
consumers spend. And in this new
age of mPayments, retailers, financial
institutions, technology companies
and wireless providers will have the
power to deliver it. Across the globe
we will see different applications and
implications of mPayment that will
reflect regional needs. Below are 10
implications to be aware of.
1. mPayment solutions will
fundamentally transform consumer
relationships with money. The notion
of making a deposit at a branch bank
used to give people a sense that their
money was being held in a physical
place and a specific destination.
But with the advent of mPayments
and mobile wallets, as well as
the emergence of unconventional
banks like PayPal and Amazon, the
perception of money, what it is and
where it lives has changed from
money at a physical location to money
that can live anywhere, anytime,
and is received, delivered and
transacted through multiple venues,
mechanisms and devices.
There will be a paradigm shift in how
money works, and how it’s perceived
and used, and that will lead to the end
of physical currency as we know it.
Since the 1930s, the U.S. began a
worldwide effort to end tying currency
to gold. At that point in time, the
notion of money became abstract.
This shift continues today with the
use of debit cards, credit cards, ATMs
and pre-paid mPayment services
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REAL-TIME CONTROL
Today, there are approximately 30 million
NFC-enabled phones. By 2016, this number is
expected to reach a staggering 700 million.2
1
IDTechEX (R&M), Feb 2011
2
Berg Insight (BGR) - http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/26/shipments-of-nfc-enabled-handsets-reached-30-million-units-in-2011/

that let consumers access money
anytime, anywhere. Peoples’
perception of money is directly
connected to trust—and trust is
fundamental to peoples’ relationships
with money and with whom they
choose to do business with.
2. The meaning of credit cards,
and the way they’re used, will be
redefined. As the model of credit
extension, acquisition and receiving
changes, so does the role of credit
card services. Consumers, in general,
are sometimes ignorant on how to
best use and manage credit. Credit
cards, for many consumers, have just
become another form of payment.
mPayments and smartphones have
the ability to educate customers on
method of payment choices at the
point-of-sale to select the right way
to pay.
For banks, mPayments and
smartphones provide the ability to
influence payment method choice
at the point-of-sale versus trying to
create brand recognition, loyalty,
affinity, then “hope and pray” at
the moment of truth. Retailers and
banks may have to compete for
customers’ payment options for
every individual purchase. A smart
delivery mechanism with a screen at
the point-of-sale changes the game
dramatically for both banks and
customers.
The emergence of credit card models
will empower businesses and
consumers more than ever before.
With companies like Stripe and
Square leapfrogging credit cards by
making one-click payment available
from our mobile devices, will this
mean the end of credit cards? How
will this impact card service brands?
How will they redefine themselves
and their connection to consumers?
Payment terms will be completely
redefined as financial institutions
will have the power to personalize
individual terms for every single
purchase, for every single customer,
in real time. And with the absence of
credit cards, credit card marketing
will have to evolve.
3. The customer’s relationship to
money and commerce will move
from singular moments to an
“always-on” relationship. Paying for
an item used to be simple: Add an
item to your cart and pay at checkout.
It used be clear: The role of a store
was to put product in the hands of the
consumer. It used to be easy: Drive
store traffic, stock the shelves and
accept payment.
But digital experiences have
created a new age of connected
consumerism. When does “shopping”
happen? When does “purchasing”
happen? Consumers are buying
products online but picking them up
at the store. Or purchasing an item
at a store but paying for it two days
later with multiple payment methods,
and with unconventional modes like
PayPal credit or Bitcoin, or with
micro-lending or “layaway plans.”
4. mPayments will cause a
fundamental change in the
retail store experience. Today
and tomorrow, they will enable
the “checkout” process to occur
anywhere, whether in-aisle or at
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home. As a result, mPayments
will challenge, and redefine, long
standing assumptions of how stores
are designed with emphasis on
product interaction. They will also
drive retailers to learn new ways
to connect brands with consumers
through connected experiences like
geo-fencing, mobile wayfinding, mobile
checkout, augmented reality, endless
aisle shopping and virtual try-on.
Breakthrough innovations in
mPayment services (and the digital
wallet) will exploit the unique
advantages of the retail store:
• Environments that inspire, adapt,
curate and evolve in real time,
• Associates supported with tablet
and mobile-based collaborative tools,
• Intuitive account information and
expert product information,
• Products with interactively enhanced
merchandising, augmented
packaging and universal SKU and
inventory access, and
• Customers who are seamlessly
connected with virtual and in-store
data that can be mashed,
customized and shared through
personal, wired devices—while still
shopping in the store.
5. The arrival of mPayments will
enable a new generation of real-
time, insight-driven shopping and
financial tools. mPayments will
end the days of the uninformed and
passive shopper before, during and
after the point-of-sale, giving way
to the “empowered” consumer. And
a fundamental shift in consumer
interaction will occur where each
offering will be an experiential
element that satisfies a desire for
greater convenience and control.
Additionally, it will give consumers
unprecedented control of their
finances, in relationship to their
purchases, through real-time
and integrated personal financial
management. Imagine a customer
purchasing a television set, and upon
finalizing their payment method,
sees a notification that says, “You’ve
exceeded your vacation budget by
$400. You may want to consider
applying $200 towards loyalty points
and $200 towards Facebook Credits.”
Brands will also be able to individually
deliver promotions, discounts and
incentives customized and contextual
to each individual customer.
6. There are a variety of hurdles
for mPayment success, with user
adoption being paramount. The
ability to pay by phone will not
guarantee success. Overcoming
user adoption will require better
inter-operability of systems and
“There is nothing more imaginary than a monetary
system. The idea that we solemnly hand around
printed slips of paper in exchange for food and
water shows just how trusting and fond of patterned
behavior we human beings are. So why not take
the next step? Of course we’ll move to even more
abstract representations of value.”
–Susan Crawford, Harvard Professor, from the Pew Report on the Future of Money, April 17, 2012
REAL-TIME CONTROL
42

platforms, privacy and security,
and government regulations. More
over, there are approximately 2.5
billion un-banked adults globally,
17 million alone in the U.S. Also,
not everyone has a mobile phone
or a credit card. Other concerns
include the potential susceptibility of
NFC (near field communication) to
hackers and market fragmentation.
Lastly, mPayments must be as—if not
more—convenient and secure than
using cash and credit cards.
7. mPayments will enable a whole
new class of merchants and
services. From a fisherwoman in
Kenya to the kid selling lemonade
from his lemonade stand to the
services industry, mPayments will
make it possible for more people to
participate in the economy-of-one,
empowered by increased access to
content, data and services anytime,
anywhere and on their own terms.
The days of mass pricing, terms and
incentives are numbered. Increasingly,
payment terms and services will be
driven and dictated by independent
merchants and individuals, either
creating, delivering or demanding
personalized messaging, pricing and
other incentives.
8. The mPayment landscape is
diverse, and success may come
from a wide variety of players. For
the moment, the players leading the
charge are from the supply side.
Companies like Google, V.me from
Visa and PayPal, as well as joint
ventures like ISIS, and the Merchant
Customer Exchange (MCX), are all
trying to vie for the lion’s share of
this emerging opportunity. Based
on some formidable challenges,
the mobile payment market is
likely to evolve along four different
trajectories:
Wait and see: Experimenting with
limited services in specific markets.
Fly solo: A visionary player with
significant market power makes
the required investment.
Joint venture: Various businesses
come together to provide payment
solutions, share risks and rewards
and develop harmonized and
defined business models.
Open federation: Players (financial
services, carriers, merchants,
handset makers, chip makers,
application providers, trusted service
providers and others) come together
to form one standardized, altruistic
platform to provide a portfolio of
mobile payment services.
It’s likely that no one player will
emerge as the sole owner of the
digital payment ecosystem. Instead,
there will be several players, some
emerging from joint ventures,
technology companies, merchants,
card services, remittance companies,
traditional FS, government, carriers
and others.
9. NFC technology will fuel
mPayment growth, but mPayment
success is not dependent on it.
mPayment adoption is not about any
specific technology. It’s about the
experience of frictionless, cloud- and
consumer-empowered commerce, in
ways that make it more convenient,
secure and productive than cash and
credit cards are today.
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According to a source from the Pew
Report on the Future of Money on
April 17, 2012, “The consumer cannot
drive the move to NFC payments.
The cost to build the infrastructure to
support NFC is too large. Additionally,
the security issues related to passing
data using NFC outweigh the benefit
of adopting this new technology. If
NFC was able to be used by 85% of
the population, and could displace a
more costly form of payment it may
have a chance to succeed, but the
reality is that cash will always be in
the economy, and bank-issued cards
(debit and credit) provide too much
profit from them to be displaced.”
10. mPayments will open up access
to money transactions for the under-
served—those without bank accounts,
access to branches, smartphones
and financial institutions. Already,
payment services are underway for the
un-banked and under-served in Africa,
Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Middle
East and other regions. Services like
M-Pesa, launched in 2007 in Kenya,
reports having 9.5 million subscribers
using the service and made more
than 405 billion Kenyan shillings
worth of person-to-person transfers
as of March 2010.3
It remains to
be seen how the approximately 17
million un-banked adults in the U.S.
will be addressed and served.4
With opportunities abound, significant
hurdles such as trust, security,
ingrained behaviors, addressing
predator targeting and lending, and
creating great experience design will
be critical to success. And what about
the cash customers? The pre-payers?
The non-smartphone users? How will
they be accounted for?
And without checkout counters,
cashiers or tellers, what happens
to actual store and bank spaces?
With no need for cash, will ATMs
even exist? And what about your
competitors? You may discover they
are whom you least expect and where
you least expect them.
Are you ready for the revolution?
3
2011 KPMG Mobile Payments Outlook
4
FDIC National Survey of Un-banked and
Under-banked Households, December 2009
REAL-TIME CONTROL

THE ECONOMY OF ONE:THE CONSUMER AS PRODUCER, INFLUENCER AND PURCHASER
Written by Dan Israel, Strategy Lead, Mobile Center of Excellence, Atlanta
& Perry Chan, Creative Director, Experience Innovation, New York
45
In the past, businesses centrally controlled the
brand message and the customer experience.
But a transformation is now taking place in the
marketplace driven by four major trends: transparency,
synchronization, optimization and the rise of digital
platforms. These result in, we believe, a new type of
economy: The Economy of One. This new economy
operates by very different rules — an increasingly active,
enabled consumer, and a higher level of expectation in
the role of brands and the tools they provide.
Trend 1:
Radical Transparency of Data
The ability for consumers
to discover, combine
and recombine data with
or without the brand’s
consent has resulted in
transparent access to
data. This is leading to
disruptive innovation across
industries; entire value
chains are being revealed
and rearranged.
Example: The music industry
struggles as consumers
discover and share music
socially and in “bite-sized,”
single tracks. Transparency
is enabling bands and venues
to set pricing and availability
directly.
Trend 2:
Real-time Synchronization
Consumer behavior has
changed. Customers
now conduct “bite-sized”
engagements that start on
one touchpoint, continue
on another and may end
somewhere else. Implicit
in this customer journey is
the need for all data to be
synchronized in real time.
Brands that create cloud-
based solutions for these
new customer journeys
will have an advantage over
others.
Example: The Amazon
Kindle uses cloud-based
data, allowing users to switch
between mobile, tablet and
PC platforms, while being
updated in real time to the
current page or author
highlights.
Trend 3:
Responsive Optimization
Along with real-time
synchronization comes an
expectation for data to be
rendered appropriately on
any and every touchpoint
where interaction
occurs. But delivering
this experience is quite
challenging; thousands
of content elements must
be optimized for context,
screen size and device type.
Example: Many media firms
leverage responsive design
techniques and built-in apps
to deliver richer experiences
on different touchpoints.
ABC News, The Wall Street
Journal, The New York Times
and many others optimize
their tablet experiences to
include video, while their
smartphone experiences
remain more text focused.
Trend 4:
Digital Platforms
Digital platforms are
everywhere. And with
social tools, analytics, low
cost and a high degree
of scalability, these
platforms now drive new
consumer behavior—
competition through social
reputation, disruption
and disintermediation
of traditional players,
and simple tools to find,
evaluate and sell products.
Example: eBay’s storefront,
Etsy and Airbnb are all
leading this trend. Airbnb is
particularly strong, based
on their passionate user
base and quality of the user
experience. Their platform
offers a breadth of services: a
personalized calendar, social
platform, massive scale and
full financial integration.
Responsive
Optimization
Real-time
Synchronization
Radical
Transparency
of Data
Digital
Platforms
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

46
Implications
• Consider rolling out products and services that provide
new transparency and access between customers,
as well as to customers
• Implement cloud-based storage and synchronization
of data across touchpoints
• Reshape your product or services to accommodate
“bite-sized” engagements through multiple touchpoints
• Consider partnering and amplifying the voices of
your best customers (e.g., Vail’s EpicMix)
• Leverage responsive design or other techniques to
offer your products through all your customers’
preferred touchpoints
Introducing the Economy of One
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CONTRIBUTE
Let me contribute more than just reviews
and comments
• Let me analyze, organize and manipulate
information about me, your brand, your
product, your service and more
• Help me understand who is my most
important customer
SHARE
Enhance our networks together
• Make me look smart and make
me look relevant to my networks
• Make me feel included
EXTEND
Nurture our relationship beyond
selling to me
• Let me engage on my terms
• Let me pick up the experience where
I left off, be it on a PC, mobile device,
tablet or other emerging device
• Enable me to communicate with my
best customers
• Help me connect with other influencers
DISCOVER
Make my life easier, better and simpler
• Anticipate what I want
• Provide tools to let other people discover my content
• Enable me to (re)combine existing products
• Let me share my content to accelerate discovery
CONSIDER
Shape the experience around me, not you
• Acknowledge and act on the feedback of
me and my network
• Let me influence those considering my products
• Deliver a relevant experience and information at
the right time in the right context
• Empower associates so they can better assist me
PURCHASE
Offer me everything I am entitled to—the best
prices, terms and points
• Make it easy for me to buy, re-order and ship
• Integrate my financial life and be cognizant of my
purchasing ability
• Let me sell my stuff without massive fees
and expenses
• Let me optimize the purchase through any device
for my customers
Characteristics of the Economy of One:
•It refers to the consumer who is empowered as a producer, influencer and a purchaser.
• Customers operate in a multi-touchpoint world, often beginning with the smartphone. The consumer has a greater impact on a
brand than just the initial action of buying a product or service.
•Never before have consumers been able to generate a “network effect” as they can today - now, consumers can reach a huge
audience with lightening-like speed and impact brands, either positively or negatively.
•Consumer behavior has shifted to “bite-sized” engagements on multiple touchpoints. These touchpoints often become the
primary mechanism of interaction in the long-term relationship with the brand..
The
Economy
of One
Customer
Journey
Responsive
Optimization
Radical
Transparency
of Data
Digital
Platforms
Real-time
Synchronization

HOW SENSORS ARE
CONNECTING THE WORLD
Benno Schmidt, Manager of Experience Design, Washington, DC
AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR EXPERIENCE DESIGN
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Here’s the thing. We are
surrounded by sensors.
Your car knows if the car behind it is
too close and warns you. Your office
knows when you have walked in,
and turns on the lights. Your phone
knows where you are and tells your
friends. With the explosive sales of
smartphones, we are all carrying
sensors with us everyday. More
importantly, we are acclimating
ourselves to sharing personal
information with these devices.
We use geofencing to trigger iOS
reminders that we get when we
arrive at the office, or return home.
We use geolocation to check in on
Foursquare, or geotagging to add
location data to a photo on Instagram.
As end users, we are at the center of
our digital lives, and every day we are
attaching sensors to ourselves.
For experience designers,
incorporating sensors into a digital
product or online service can give
end users the ability to measure
and analyze themselves in ways
that were previously impossible.
The intersection of earlier trends
in data collection—ubiquitous
computing, pervasive computing
and the quantified self—has given
everyday consumers new, inexpensive
ways of capturing information about
themselves. We are increasingly
wrapped in data—our own
information about ourselves.
Sensors
Worn on a belt or embedded
inside a phone, compact, powerful,
personal sensors are more and more
commonplace. These sensors are so
small, or so deeply implanted in the
context of a familiar device that they
become invisible, silently collecting
information.
There are a variety of sensors
available to designers: audio, heat,
input button, light, motion, pressure,
proximity and image.
Obviously, smartphones are the
most common consumer device:
camera, accelerometer, GPS,
proximity and magnetometer (digital
compass) are typical. The Android
platform supports three sensor
categories. Motion sensors include
accelerometers, gravity sensors,
gyroscopes and rotational vector
sensors. Environmental sensors
include barometers, photometers
and thermometers. Position sensors
include orientation sensors and
magnetometers. The diversity of the
Android ecosystem is mirrored in the
types of sensors it offers, which are
included on the phones. Most handset
devices and tablets include an
accelerometer and a magnetometer,
while fewer devices (e.g., the Galaxy
Nexus) include a barometer or, more
rarely, an external thermometer.
But increasingly, however,
non-smartphone sensors are
proliferating. Activity monitors like
the Fitbit, NikeFuel and Jawbone Up
provide another source of personal
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REAL-TIME CONTROL
With the explosive sales of smartphones,
we are all carrying sensors with us everyday.
Motion Sensors
Accelerometers
Gravity Sensors
Gyroscopes
Rotational Vector Sensors
Environmental Sensors
Barometers
Photometers
Thermometers
Position Sensors
Orientation Sensors
Magnetometers
Medical Sensors
Blood Pressure
Glucose Measurement
Heart Rate Monitors
Scales
Network Sensors
Bluetooth
Wi-Fi
Cellular
Sensors Are Proliferating

data collection, often available
through an API to third parties.
Even more powerful, medical
devices (frequently connected to
smartphones) include blood pressure,
glucose measurement, heart rate
monitors and Bluetooth-enabled
scales that allow the collection of
sensitive and personal information at
home. Most also permit the data to
be uploaded to the cloud.
Bluetooth itself is actually adapting
to the needs of these new devices.
The Bluetooth 4.0 standard is
gradually rolling out specifications
for a new generation of health-
monitoring wireless devices based
on its low-energy capabilities.
Even more interesting, this
technology is being integrated directly
into our daily lives. Smart clothing,
with sensors knitted into the fabric,
is already available; for example, UA
E39, a compression shirt fitted with
electronic sensors made by Under
Armour, tracks the body motion and
biometric signals sent to a device
at the front of the shirt. Breathing
rate, heart rate, horsepower and
g-force generated by an athlete are
all tracked.
Another example, Riddell’s Head
Impact Telemetry System (HITS) and
Sideline Response System (SRS)
allow sideline monitoring of on-field
head impacts. Sensors built into the
helmet automatically record impacts
and this data can be downloaded
wirelessly to a computer or collected
in real time.
Implications
These technologies raise major
challenges for experience designers
and product designers as they
attempt to take advantage of
the design opportunities, while
acknowledging the significant
privacy implications.
Healthcare is leading the charge. Few
industries have more experience with
personal information, or have moved
so deeply into digital collection, as
healthcare. The ubiquity of these
sensors is a new opportunity for
healthcare experience design (HCXD)
to help patients and caregivers
collect information about themselves,
or the people they care for, and then
share it with clinical care teams.
These applications, coming out of
a focus on user-centered design,
point to both opportunities and risks
in device design using these new
sensors.
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The new opportunities also face
challenges, most notably the
regulation and legislation of
personally identifiable information
(PII) and personal medical
information (PMI). While designing
with sensors in HCXD may seem like
a casual, even trivial, data collection
problem (e.g., number of steps
climbed), this data can very quickly
cross over into personal information
(e.g., weight loss, mood changes)
that must follow a very different set
of, often legal, constraints. As these
designs begin to collect PII and PMI,
design teams must be aware of the
legal and regulatory restrictions that
impact their work.
A weight-loss coaching app that
prompts the end user to add their
name, age, height, weight and
location, for instance, could be
considered collecting PII. As the
weight loss app is enhanced and a
feature to collect blood sugar levels
is added, the design team for this
app is now responsible for meeting
the requirements of HIPAA, the
Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996. If the app
connects to a glucose meter, then
the design team may find themselves
subject to the recently announced
FDA oversight for mobile medical
applications.
But the success of initiatives like
the U.S. government’s Blue Button
implementation show that patients
and caregivers want more control
over their personal data.
New Design Challenges
For experience designers—both in
healthcare and in other industries—
these sensors represent major
new challenges in the storage,
manipulation and consumption
of data.
Tracking time-series data
HCXD teams are creating new
interaction patterns for users to
review, understand and share this
data. Great design, information
dashboards and graphics, data feed
processing and validation become
important elements in allowing
big data to be easily interpreted by
consumers.
Multiple vendors and ecosystems
Carriers, device manufacturers and
software developers all are factors in
choosing the best delivery platform
for your customers. Designers and
product developers must decide
which smartphones or stand-alone
devices to support, and need to
understand the technical implications
of those choices.
Cognitive overload
Designers must simplify. The more
data end users capture about
themselves, the greater the risk
that they will be overwhelmed. Is the
user’s connection to their data
REAL-TIME CONTROL
50
Head impact telemetry was used by the NFL to
monitor head impacts during the 2011 season.
Major new healthcare applications for these
sensors include tailored reminders for medications,
real-time appointment management and
notification and prescription conflict resolution.

51
clear and immediate? Can the end
user see themselves in the data and
how the collected data helps them
with their needs and goals? Or are
they overwhelmed to the point where
they simply abandon the process
of collecting data, like a digital
shopping cart full of purchases gets
abandoned? End users will reward
designs that prioritize the most
important functions and eliminate or
simplify the rest.
Network management
Connection to the network becomes
critical as sensors have very
little data storage, or depend on
centralized data shared with a
community. Don’t assume robust
access to the network. An application
that mines the data collected by a
sensor, and guides the end user
to relevant video information on
YouTube will fail if the videos
cannot load.
Data management
Looking closely at the lessons
learned in developing applications
and services in the financial sector,
product and service providers must
be able to show their customers
data accuracy, data security, data
availability and data portability if they
want to build a trusted relationship
with them.
Narrative
The end user’s story must be
reflected in the design. With so
much information being captured,
it’s critical that end users see
themselves in the design. Device
context, content placement and
how personal information is imaged
all contribute to the narrative of
the design.
Task
Design solutions that target specific
healthcare tasks must be ruthlessly
simple and surprisingly pleasant.
Designers can take advantage of the
way games have introduced patients
to sensor data. Understandably,
game consoles like the Nintendo Wii
or the Microsoft Kinect use sensors
to enhance or create new forms of
game play that can serve as models
for healthcare tasks.
Conclusion
Increasingly, we are connected by
a network of sensors that have the
potential to track our health, location,
behavior and preferences.
Yet this enormous breadth of
data and connectivity raises real
challenges—both in terms of
regulatory issues and in terms of
design challenges, not least of which
is making the enormous quantity of
information available and meaningful
for consumers. Hundreds of different
smartphones—each with their own
sensor suite—and consumers with a
wide range of technical ability result
in demands on designers to make
simple, yet powerful, interfaces to
allow access to these systems.
Experience design with sensors offers
an opportunity to build personal
relationships with customers and
end users, assisting them with their
short-term needs and their long-
term goals, both in healthcare and
other industries.
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INVISIBLE BRAND
INTERFACES
Written by Daniel Harvey, Experience Design Director, London
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Brands are more important than ever.
But the traditional brand interface is
changing as products and services are
evolving to take advantage of touch,
voice and gestural inputs.
Advertising and marketing have
historically been invested in the
30-second spot because it dominated
your primary attention. But now we
encounter brands increasingly as
interfaces.
The ever-increasing presence of
screens in our lives—in our hands,
strapped to our wrists, resting on our
laps, against our living room walls and
gently glowing on our coffee tables—
have turned primary attention into a
battlefield.
As a result, there is a new focus on
secondary attention. Savvy creative
types of all stripes have realised that
this demands tailored experiences to
reach consumers who are only half-
watching and half-listening, when the
glance is worth more than gaze and the
morsel is worth more than the meal.
When we’re multi-tasking and splitting
our focus, designers are forced to
deliver surprise and delight in the
corner of our eyes, just out of earshot.
They’re trying to make things that are
ephemeral and useful—experiences
that reward attention, not demand it.
The leaders in this field of ephemeral
and invisible brand interfaces include
so-called second-screen experiences.
Some forerunners are striking a
delicate balance between these more
active and passive experiences.
Keeping Television Relevant
One successful example is IntoNow (a
free iOS and Android app from Yahoo!)
that, with a tap of a button, takes a
“sound print” of what a consumer
is watching on TV and then provides
complementary information such as
expanded stats for sports broadcasts
or articles from other news sources.
The app also affords quick in-app social
chatter so the consumer doesn’t have
to worry about toggling over to Twitter
or Facebook to get into the conversation
with friends and peers.
TalkingTV by Starling is another audio
app that lets users talk to people who
are watching the same TV show. The
creators refer to it as “a one earpiece
experience,” allowing consumers to
keep one ear primed for the show
and the other for friends. They can
also record audio messages for the
rest of the audience. It seeks to
replicate watercooler conversations
amongst friends in real time while the
show is airing. Think of it as a social
version of the long-lost laugh track,
an important comparison since the
laugh track was initially created to
make viewers at home feel as if they
were part of something more.
Both experiences are designed to
keep the audience engaged with
programming, even when the
programming is away for a commercial
break. That helps defeat the impulse
to switch channels, check email or
become distracted, thereby losing
valuable eyeballs. Networks like
MTV, USA and IFC have entered into
relationships with pioneers in the space
and have created their own stand-alone
experiences. They are trying to better
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understand and measure new insights
into engagement and are providing big,
old, slow TV with a real-time feedback
loop for the first time in its existence.
Marketing as a Service
Outside of the second screen and social
TV space are other examples of this
phenomenon. Nike+ GPS is a great
example of an app that follows that
pattern in a number of ways. After
announcing a run via Facebook,
whenever someone replies to your
status, you’re awarded with cheers and
applause. When you break a personal
record, you receive props from a
celebrity in Nike’s stable. Turning social
data into sensory encouragement that
further motivates you to go harder,
go faster and “just do it” is exactly the
sort of behaviour that makes sense
for a brand that is all about providing
“inspiration and innovation to every
athlete in the world.”
Engagement is the thing.
Staying plugged in even when it doesn’t
feel like it. Habituating on the
experience thanks in no small part to
these intangible, seductive hooks. And
it works. Nike+ athletes use various
experiences in the ecosystem an
average of three times a week.
Designing for Secondary Attention
When you move beyond current
experiences, and start to look at
new or upcoming products that are
designed with secondary attention in
mind, things get really interesting. Siri
is obviously the tip of the iceberg with
this phenomenon, its evolution in the
coming year even more so. Within the
next few months, several automotive
manufacturers including BMW,
Mercedes, GM and Chrysler will be
releasing models with “Eyes Free” Siri
integration.
How will it work? Simple. Mount your
iPhone, tap the voice control button
on your steering wheel and voila—Siri
works for you, answering phone calls,
posting tweets, sending texts, getting
sports scores and more—without even
triggering the iPhone’s screen, which
stays dormant out of obvious necessity.
Your primary attention and your eyes
and hands get to stay focused on the
road and the wheel where they belong.
Your secondary attention, however, can
leverage your hearing and speech to
help you resolve all those last minute
details you need to address before you
get to where you’re going.
This interaction model has more to do
with call and response music than the
typical app experience. The experience
isn’t reliant on launching the application
from a screen tap (rather, a button
press in the case of Siri) or clicking or
swiping through menus and sequences
as you do in most other applications.
It’s not about all the choices inherent
in those kinds of paradigms. Instead,
REAL-TIME CONTROL
“It’s not the nature of the screen that’s
important, it’s the nature of the attention.”
–Russell Davies
54

turn Siri on, put the right sounds in,
and the right sounds come out. It’s just
that simple.
While the Siri microphone is a clear
piece of brand visual identity, the real
substantive brand element is the voice
behind the app (which, in the case of
UK Siri, is also the voice of GPS service
TomTom) itself.
The voice controls for the Kinect for
the Xbox work in a similar pattern:
You address the product (“Xbox”), tell
it what you want (“Apps”) and then
what to do (“Play Netflix”). The brand
experience in the Xbox is even more
scaled back and reduced. With it, there
is no obvious persona, gender or voice
for the device. Rather, your actions are
simply acknowledged by a pleasing
“ping.” Here, Microsoft missed an
opportunity to reinforce an invisible
brand interface.
As APIs open and other applications
become more integrated, a host of
questions about brand hierarchy will
need to be addressed. Imagine the
opportunities and challenges when
Foursquare or Facebook are given
access to tools like Siri within their
own experiences. Will you be asking
Foursquare for help or will Siri still
be the preferable choice? What is the
experience when brands are layered
into one another? Which brand
dominates?
These broad considerations aren’t
just the domain of big tech or media
companies, but retailers as well.
Walmart’s iPhone app lets you add
items to your shopping cart by voice,
ETRONIKA allows you to use Xbox
Kinect to bank online and Pillsbury
recently launched an interactive TV
campaign with Shazam that allows for
second screen integration.
Earphone Bully is another example of a
campaign-oriented experience, wholly
designed for secondary attention to deal
with an important social issue. By using
3D sound technology and roleplay, it
prepares kids and parents for bullies
and gives them ways to speak up about
the issue. All you need is the URL and
speakers or headphones. After clicking
play, the experience is totally aural.
Conclusion
Creating these kinds of experiences
requires clients, technologists,
strategists, animators, writers
and musicians, as well as visual,
interaction and experience designers,
to think about brands in a way that
isn’t locked into the same default
thinking that has plagued more
traditional branding agencies for the
last few decades.
A brand is more than just your logo,
colour palette or tagline lockup.
Those elements were critical in an
era when the visual spectacle was
what you had to stand out in, and the
gaze was your goal. In an era when
the glance or echo is every bit as
important, you need to consider other
triggers and interfaces and stimuli to
provide a robust brand experience.
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“You might as well pay attention because
you can’t afford free speech.” –George Clinton

IS THERE A TERMINAL
VELOCITY FOR
YOUTH AND DIGITAL?
Written by Omaid Hiwaizi, Planning Director, London
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Social media’s impact on the young
has long been a cause for discussion.
For example, at a recent talk about
the effects of social media on children
at a Steiner Waldorf school, a teacher
remarked that he believed the
onslaught of digital was creating a
burnt-out generation—strung out,
dead-eyed kids without a real sense of
themselves or the world.
The school has a very limited approach
towards exposing youth to technology.
It teaches a system where reading and
writing are not taught until age 7 and
computers are not introduced until
age 14. The curriculum emphasises
emotional development and claims to
result in more well-rounded individuals.
While this may seem extreme, we
should consider how ubiquitous
digital technology has influenced the
development of the young, and what
digital agencies can do to create
enriching and rewarding digital
experiences.
But what if there is a terminal velocity
where youth and digital can go no
faster, instead heating up and burning
out? Are there ways we can keep pace
with our changing environment? Or
could there be an evolutionary leap in
response?
Technology Has Always Shaped Society
Technology in the broadest sense has
caused societal change throughout
history—from soot markings on cave
walls to motorised transport to the
printing press to television. Naysayers
theorised about how and when this
world would end.
In every case, the culture and the pace
of life adapted and life carried on.
The Brain Is a “Muscle” —Use It or
Lose It
Various studies have shown that
medical students, mathematicians,
jugglers, multi-linguists and musicians
all increase the volumes of specific
parts of their brains as they practice
their particular skills. A famous
University College London (UCL) study
also showed this is true for London taxi
drivers, whose posterior hippocampi,
the part of the brain they use to recall a
mental map and calculate the shortest
route from A to B, grow in proportion
to the time they spend on “The
Knowledge”—the 2 to 4 year process
where they learn 320 routes and 25,000
London streets.
Interestingly, the same brain change
does not take place amongst London
bus drivers, who learn a handful
of routes and repeat them turn for
turn. There is also evidence that taxi
drivers who have taken The Knowledge
struggle more than others to adapt to
changes in the road network or drive in
unfamiliar cities. Dr. Katherine Woollett,
co-author of one study from UCL, said,
“The posterior hippocampus is at its full
capacity; it cannot incorporate any more
of this same type of knowledge because
it is full.”
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What if the continuing increase of speed and
intensity of modern life, driven by technology,
was somehow hitting a physiological or
psychological barrier?

Therefore, it appears that our brains
are like a muscle—the more we use a
particular part of the brain, the more
neural pathways are developed and
the better we become at a skill. We
can therefore rewire how our brains
operate by practicing particular actions
throughout our lives, though the effects
are most profound before the age of 30.
MRI scans of the brain ranging from
those ages 4 to 21 show clearly how the
frontal lobes, responsible for reasoning
and problem solving, are established.
The process appears to follow the
principle of “use it or lose it”—neural
connections that get exercised are
retained, while those that don’t are lost.1
The Effect of Digital on Youth
Don Tapscott, the author of “Grown
Up Digital,” asserts that by their 20s,
today’s youth will have spent more
than 20,000 hours online or playing
video games. This coincides with the
period when their brains are developing
most, and has the effect of changing
mental reflexes, habits and the way they
learn and absorb information. Playing
action video games, for example, helps
people process visual information more
quickly.2
And Internet users develop
new skills in scanning content faster,
as well as the ability to read in different
directions and an increased sensitivity
to visual information. This is particularly
profound, given Malcolm Gladwell’s
hypothesis that it takes 10,000 hours of
practice to be exceptional at something.
The powerful influence of digital is also
demonstrated by “The Google Effect,”
the shift away from retaining primary
facts towards a skill for knowing how
to search for them, documented by
Betsy Sparrow at Columbia University.
On the face of it, this is an example of
our profound adaptability, outsourcing
a skill we’re not brilliant at (e.g.,
remembering lots of facts). But are
we in danger of creating a society of
amnesiacs? And given that what we
know forms our framework for thinking,
could this have a negative impact on our
ability to conceptualise?
What Are the Impacts?
Oxford Neuroscientist Baroness Susan
Greenfield repeated expressions of
concern about the effect of technology
on youth, in particular the immersive
experience of gaming leading to a “yuck
and wow” mentality:
“… the environment in which that brain
is developing will be very much
influenced by the kind of features of
that environment. And if, for the first
time—and this is my reasoning—
REAL-TIME CONTROL
58
1
The National Institute of Mental Health and University of California Los Angeles
2
Nature, 2003
Brain Development in Our Youth
Neuroscientists have postulated that the
changing environment of youth in the developed world -
an environment with connections, gaming, and ubiquitous access
to data - must be having an impact on brain development. From “The Google Effect”
(the shift away from primary fact recollection) to the impact of 20,000 hours of videos
games, we may be approaching the limits of our adaptability.

that environment has changed in an
unprecedented way, if it’s bombarding
you with boom bang and bang images,
what I call the “yuck and wow” scenario
where every moment you’re having
something flash up in your face and
bombard your ears. All I’m suggesting is
that that might drive brain connections
and drive the configuration of your brain
cell circuitry into the kind of mindset
that mandates a short attention span.”
She also highlighted that the
lack of consequence in visceral
gaming environments could mean
a generation losing valuable
evaluation skills in real life.
Recent research on U.S. teenagers
by Common Sense Media adds some
detail to the picture: While 90% of teens
are online, and 75% have social media
profiles that they believe positively affect
their social and mental well being, the
majority said they preferred face-to-
face communication, a third desired
time off from the Internet and around
36% said they wished they “could go
back to a time when there
was no Facebook.”
Research does indeed show that heavy
use of digital communications also
has a measurably negative impact
on a tween’s social cognition: Their
ability to read subtle communication
clues gained from face-to-face
contact is diminished.3
Also, Robin
Dunbar (famous for having defined
Dunbar’s number) has measured
increased satisfaction from face-to-
face communication over other forms.
Interestingly, Skype conversation
scored higher than the telephone,
which scored higher than email, texting
and social networking. Even text-based
communication that used emoticons
scored higher than texts without. The
more human the communication is,
the more it makes us feel good.
However, getting the right balance
is key, as has been evidenced by a
University of Lausanne study. It shows
that teens who are heavy users of the
Internet (those who are online over
two hours per day) have considerably
more incidences of depressive
illnesses—perhaps due to a lack of
real-world experiences and deep
friendships. The study also indicates
that non-Internet users show a similar
increase—perhaps because of feelings
of exclusion, as social conversation,
content and experiences have
increasingly moved online. Moderate
Internet use appears to correlate with
better mental health. This is the new
model behaviour.
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59
3
The Dana Foundation
Under or Over Use of Internet Have Similar Negative Effects
Depressive
Scale
U-shaped association—none or heavy use of Internet
correlates with depressive illness.
Source: University of Lausanne
2
1.9
1.8
1.7
1.6
1.5
1.4
1.3
1.2
1.1
1
None Occasional Heavy
Boys
Girls

Some will try to wind back the clock
and pull the young out of the digital
torrent by limiting access, a solution
that the Steiner Waldorf teacher
would recommend.
We disagree, and think the data
also gives us a few clues about how
to productively move forwards,
ways to make the work we produce
for brands fulfilling and healthy
experiences for youth:
• Normal behaviour has moved
online, so digital should always
be part of the mix.
• People desire human and social
connection through channels
that are nuanced and create deep
ties with others—ideally real-world
friendships.
• People want valuable utility—useful
experiences embedded into the
world around them.
What We Can Do
Our Hypothesis
Research has shown that different
parts of the brain develop in response
to practicing specific skills, and young
brains become hard-wired towards
the age of 20. So, while youth become
expert at outsourcing memory (“The
Google Effect”), they also lose an aspect
of human identity and connection, the
symptoms of which include an increase
in depressive illnesses.
We have reached a terminal velocity—
many young brains cannot keep up
with the way that technology has sped
up life. Historically, as technology has
evolved, so too has the rate of human
cognition. But we may now be at a point
of inflexion where human limitations
can result in real challenges for
people, like a loss of connection with
friends, with the real world and with
themselves.
This isn’t to say that no youth can keep
up; not everyone is the same and some
are better suited to today’s technology-
driven life. We also know that crises
often precede huge shifts—we might be
on the cusp of an evolutionary leap, in
response to our changing environment,
where we develop a different
consciousness, one fully equipped to
deal with the new digital world.
The Digital Experience Connection
The research indicates that technology
is indeed outpacing the abilities of
human physiology. However, as much
as technology presents a challenge,
it also presents an opportunity—an
opportunity for clever brands to use
digital to help overcome the chasm
between technological possibilities and
human capabilities.
We have already seen some brands
begin to realise opportunities
to reconnect with customers in
meaningful ways. For example, in a
world where there is less physical
human contact, Unilever developed
the Share Happy iVend, an interactive,
smile-activated vending machine.
In a world where there’s more bad
news than good, Coca-Cola’s Longest
Celebration campaign extended
moments of the 2010 World Cup into
a global dance party. And in a world
where most people don’t venture off
the beaten track, Mammut used online
communities to create 150 teams, and
inspired them to scale 150 mountains,
all over the world.
These brands are starting to use digital
to overcome these limitations through
experiences that solve these emerging
challenges at the intersection between
life and technology, creating real and
enduring value.
REAL-TIME CONTROL
60

RESPONSIVE DESIGN 101:
OPTIMIZING FOR MULTIPLE SCREENS
Written by Dan Israel, Strategy Lead, Mobile Center of Excellence, Atlanta
& Mayur Gupta, Director, Technology and Marketing Services, Miami

62
REAL-TIME CONTROL
For most people in North America,
Western Europe and vast portions
of the Asia-Pacific, when they first
tried the Internet, they didn’t know
what to do with it. But just as previous
technologies before it—from the
telephone to the automobile—
the more it was used, the more
indispensable and intertwined it
became in their lives.
The benchmark experience—the
“large”-screened UNIX, Mac or
Windows workstation, PC or laptop—
defined the Internet since its inception
for most people in North America,
Europe and, debatably, the Asia-Pacific.
But that is no longer the case. With the
rapid growth of mobile, touchscreen
interfaces and the rise of the global
web, brands see a proliferation of
screen sizes, devices and user contexts.
As a result, massive new challenges
are being created for businesses.
How do you develop the best possible
experience for the widest possible set
of customers—particularly if those
customers are as diverse as a middle-
class Indian technology worker with
a smartphone, and a rural Eastern-
European farmer with a tablet?
One new tool is Responsive Design—
an emerging design philosophy that
will enable businesses to design
a fantastic, optimized Internet
experience regardless of the size of
the screen or the nature of the device.
With this method, one platform can
deliver the design and content to
smartphones, TVs, tablets or laptops.
Responsive Design lets you stretch
the content effectively and easily
across platforms, which is especially
important for content-heavy sites.
Also, if no needs exist for certain
mobile phone elements (such as
access to the camera), content can
easily be ported to a variety of mobile
devices. Additionally, Responsive
Design lets a brand maximize SEO.
Mobile Web Will
Surpass Desktop Web
A third of all people on Earth—
2.3 billion—access the Internet
and roughly 1.2 billion do so via
a mobile device.
As smartphones replace feature
phones, Internet access through
a mobile device will dramatically
increase. According to GO-Globe.com,
of the 5 billion mobile phones in the
world in 2012, about 1.08 billion are
smartphones. Owners of a smartphone
consume the Internet at a vastly
higher amount than feature phone
consumers—according to Nielsen,
82% of smartphone owners access
mobile browsers, compared to only
19% of feature phone owners. Sales
of mobile devices already eclipsed
sales of PCs in Q4 of 2010, and
Morgan Stanley projects that by
2014, mobile web surfing will
eclipse that of desktop web surfing.
Responsive Design is an emerging design
philosophy that will enable businesses
to design a fantastic, optimized Internet
experience regardless of the size of the
screen or the nature of the device.
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Marketers can now engage consumers
on their most intimate piece of
technology: their mobile device. But
what can be done to preserve the
reliability and consistency of the
Internet experience on devices that
aren’t the standard bearer? And then
there are other challenges companies
have to master.
How do you avoid creating multiple
versions of the same webpage for
different devices? Even if iPhone and
Android devices are all a brand cares
about, how do you prepare for new
devices that will sport Internet access,
such as readers, TVs and a host of
emerging products? Also, since screen
space is at a premium on a mobile
device, a company has to triage what
capabilities and experiences they will
“sacrifice” for the mobile web. Lastly,
how do you ensure that changes to
your “regular” Internet experience do
not negatively impact the mobile web
experience?
What Is Responsive Design
Ethan Marcotte first coined the term
“Responsive Design” in May 2010.
Simply put, Responsive Design enables
you to design your “regular” Internet
experience to fit into practically any
device with a full browser, be it a
smartphone, a tablet or a TV.
At its core, Responsive Design “snaps”
the regular website into the shape of
the browser on any device. Using a mix
of flexible grids, layouts, images and
intelligence built into the CSS media
queries, the website presented will
change “on the fly” to accommodate
for the resolution, image size and
other factors on the detected device.
Considered more a design philosophy
than a hard-and-fast set of rules,
the beauty of this system is that the
creator does not need to create a
different design for each medium. This
represents a fundamentally different
way of envisioning user experience
and web design—a mental shift from
thinking pixels to proportions that
requires connecting strategic, creative
and technology disciplines.
Let’s take a closer look at what
Responsive Design really looks like.
In the illustration on the left we see a
prototypical website on a smartphone,
PC and tablet. The orange, yellow and
red boxes represent the same content,
but are displayed or hidden depending
on where the content is being accessed
and how it impacts the user experience.
Responsive Design is a fundamentally
different way of envisioning user experience
and web design—a mental shift from thinking
pixels to proportions that requires connecting
strategic, creative and technology disciplines.
desktop
tablet
phone
320px 768px
1024px
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REAL-TIME CONTROL
When Responsive Design
May Make Sense
Brands must ensure that Responsive
Design truly fits business needs and
provides clear benefits. To help make
this determination, we will examine the
“Whens” (business considerations) and
“Whys” (benefits) for Responsive Design.
The “WHENs”
Traffic distribution and targeted
devices. If you want customers to have
consistent web experiences no matter
where they come from, and more than
10% of your web traffic comes from
non-PC devices, then Responsive
Design may make sense.
Content and marketing sites. If your
web experience and design objectives
lean toward content and marketing
and less on ecommerce or business
transactions, Responsive Design
may make sense. “Content” includes
product information, news, blogs and
marketing materials. Good examples
include Boston Globe, Sony and even
Starbucks.
Consistent behaviors. Consider
Responsive Design if your customers
—whether they access your site on
a PC, a mobile device or some other
touchpoint—consistently carry out
the same behavior and activities. In
other words, they do not expect to do
different things on different devices.
Skill matrix. This refers to human
resources. How easy is it for you to
find people with the relevant strategy,
creative and technology skills to
execute Responsive Design solutions?
The “WHYs”
Scalable adaptation. In an ever-
evolving digital device landscape,
which is hugely fragmented by varying
screen sizes, view ports, resolutions
and capabilities, it is almost impossible
to build an isolated experience for
each combination. Responsive Design
offers a scalable solution that can
adapt to these variations to create
a connected user experience; it is a
design approach based on proportions
as opposed to pixels.
Single source of content and code.
Responsive Design relies on a unique
feature of HTML5 called “media
queries,” which can apply selective
style-sheets to a page based on
the screen size and resolution. In
essence, only one set of code (e.g.,
HTML templates, HTML5/CSS3) is
required for all touchpoints, so there’s
no need to create and manage a
separate codebase for different web
experiences.
Device-agnostic URL. By having
one URL for mobile, tablet and
desktop, Responsive Design provides
simplified access and marketing
strategies, with efficiency gains
in development, QA and launch
management processes. In addition,
it removes the risks associated with
relying on a user agent to detect the
device and send the customer to the
right template on a server.
Traffic lift through improved SEO.
Responsive Design allows incoming
traffic across all touchpoints to
be directed to a single URL. This
consolidation enables higher link
equity that subsequently leads to
better ranking than separate desktop,
tablet and mobile webpages.

Reduced maintenance risks and
release cycle times. The more devices
and templates you have to support, the
higher the cost of regression testing
with each release. With Responsive
Design, the code base is identical
across all devices, making it easier for
developers to pinpoint what changes
they made and where a problem may
be lurking.
Experience optimization across
resolutions. Responsive Design also
enhances experiences for desktop
users with large or high-resolution
screens and eliminates the
conventional challenge of white space
and manual resolution adjustments.
When Responsive Design
May Not Make Sense
Unique mobile experiences are
preferred. Consistency is at the
heart of the Responsive Design value
proposition, but this doesn’t always
work for all brands. The more functions
and capabilities envisioned in a user
journey, the less adaptable and flexible
Responsive Design can be for the brand.
For instance, a brand may want
customers to access a camera on a
mobile device to scan a 2D bar code, but
not on a PC. A travel website for a desktop
and tablet may focus on search, pricing,
competitive analysis and bookings, while a
mobile interface may cater to completely
different user behaviors like check-ins
and status updates.
Higher cost, effort, time and risk.
Responsive Design is still in its infancy.
The design philosophy lacks advanced
frameworks, libraries, patterns and
standards, which forces some teams
to go through a steep learning curve.
As an approach, it requires a far more
collaborative and cohesive effort
across design, IA, strategy, content and
technology teams.
Performance impact.
Responsive Design relies on
content manipulation using
media queries and selective
style-sheets on the client
side. This is different from
web proxy solutions used by
other design approaches,
whereby the experience is
optimized on the server side.
What this means is that the
same amount of content, images, HTML
and CSS code delivered across desktops
(higher memory and processing power)
must be sent to a mobile device (limited
bandwidth capacity), leading to potential
performance bottlenecks.
Native or hybrid apps. Responsive
Design is not meant to replace the need
or capability of a native or hybrid app
installed on a device. It is a mobile
10 Considerations
for Responsive
Design Execution
1. Identify all viewports and breakpoints,
and select a progressive (mobile
first) versus downward (desktop
first) approach.
2. Define the navigation approach,
and decide what the overall navigation
structure should be for the different
breakpoints, which are typically driven
by functional and content relevance.
3. Define the approach for content
choreography—what content will be
hidden or displayed on mobile, tablets
and PCs.
4. Set guidelines and standards for
media queries.
5. Use fluid grids—think proportions
instead of pixels.
6. Come up with an image and video
handling strategy.
7. Account for display and banner ads.
8. Optimize for touch versus cursor
effects; design should be optimized
for both cursor-based (desktops) and
touchscreen usage (mobile, tablets).
9. Define a creative and performance
testing strategy.
10.Validate SEO.
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REAL-TIME CONTROL
web methodology that relies on
mobile browsers, while a native app
leverages native capabilities of a
smartphone device.
Browser compatibility. Older browsers
sometimes do not support HTML5
code. In turn, designers may have to
spend development effort to create
workarounds for these situations.
Approach to Responsive Design
As mentioned, Responsive Design
represents a relatively new design
philosophy. No industry standard
blueprint exists. To help you in your
assessment of Responsive Design, we
have developed a possible approach
(See 10 Considerations for Responsive
Design Execution).
Keep in mind that Responsive Design
represents a truly collaborative plan,
and an agile methodology to design.
As such, establish a team composed
of an information architect, creative
designer, content strategist and
site developer to define the overall
approach and methodology.
Conclusion
Responsive Design offers much
promise, and it is being used by
several brands with great success.
We end with two thoughts.
When considering Responsive Design,
brands should avoid the temptation to
“design to respond.” In this scenario,
a team decides to adopt Responsive
Design even before the idea is
conceptualized or desired customer
journeys are created. The decision
factor here tends to be based purely
on the number of devices, ignoring the
design and functional gulf that may
exist between the desktop and mobile
versions of a site. A better approach is
to “respond to a design.” This scenario
considers Responsive Design as one
option for consideration to create an
optimized and relevant user experience.
One thing is for certain—Responsive
Design is here to stay. And as more
standards and more devices emerge,
the need for Responsive Design will
only continue to grow.
Responsive
Design
Separate
Mobile SiteWhich solution is better for your mobile site?
KEY 1 POOR 2 FAIR 3 GOOD 4 BEST
RESPONSIVE DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
Lower cost, effort and complexity
Scalable and seamless adaptation across devices and screen sizes
Consistent experience across digital touchpoints and devices
Suited for ecommerce, transactional and highly interactive sites
Optimized for content driven and marketing sites
Higher search engine optimization
Low performance risks
Easier site maintenance and future release management
Availability of existing design patterns, frameworks and platforms
Skill and knowledge level required
3
2
4
2
3
2
2
2
3
3
2
3
2
4
2
3
4
4
2
1

The second major trend we’re seeing is that companies are
predicting—and even shaping—desire among their target customers.
A combination of new technology, customer changes and business
viability is making this possible.
The rise of data warehouses and analytics, the future of mobile
data, real-time analysis, the use of social networks to monitor and
influence desirability, and ways banks can rebuild trust were all
topics our authors chose to explore in this category.
PREDICTING
DESIRE
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Media-Sapiens:
Using Social Instincts
to Explain, Predict
and Influence Desirability
in the Digital Age
96
The “Big Data” Era:
Learning to Act in
Real Time
81
Predicting
Desirability—Lessons
From a Teen Genius
69
The Future of
Business Insight
75
Rebuilding Trust:
How Banks Can
Reconnect
With Consumers
101
Digital Luxury 101:
How to Enhance the
Customer Experience
86
Gamification as
a Digital Strategy
91
OE
OE

PREDICTING
DESIRABILITY
—LESSONSFROM
ATEENGENIUS
Written by Sheldon Monteiro, Chief Technology Officer, Chicago

On July 23, 2012, a Florida teenager
won the Google Science Fair grand
prize1
for creating an app that helps
doctors diagnose breast cancer
with a 99.11% success rate. Brittany
Wenger, 17, observed that the least
invasive diagnostic test for the
disease, called fine-needle aspirate,
is also the least certain one. Often, if
results aren’t clear, doctors order a
second biopsy with a bigger needle
or even surgery. Brittany wanted
to boost the less-invasive test’s
diagnostic accuracy rate.
She developed a computer program
called a “neural network,” which
mimics the human brain, and “trained”
the program with public data from 7.6
million trials. Leveraging mathematics
and statistics, she created program
code to convert inputs from the trial’s
data to binary 1s and 0s to simulate the
on and off firing of the brain’s neurons.
She deployed her program in the cloud
and made it freely accessible to any
doctor, anywhere in the world. Perhaps
the most powerful quality of her
program is that its prediction accuracy
trends towards 100% as more doctors
use it. Like the human brain, it gets
smarter as it learns new facts.
On the scale of large problems facing
humanity, predictive targeting hardly
compares with cancer diagnosis
and treatment, but within marketing
science, few problems are tougher
than understanding and predicting
customer behavior. Marketers
have leveraged many techniques—
statistical surveys, opinion polls,
focus groups, ethnographic research,
analysis of transaction, demographic
and psychographic data,
experimental design, multivariate
testing and sophisticated response
modeling using regression analysis
and discrete choice algorithms,
among others. However, prediction
science must advance from segment
understanding and marketing
mix models to provide real-time
intelligence to inform unique
experiences for segments of one. In
a world of radical price transparency,
showrooming and consumer
empowerment fueled by mobility,
search and social media, customers
demand a relevant, engaging and
coherent experience within and
across channels.
Brittany’s inspiring achievement
applies principles applicable across a
multitude of “predictive” problems:
1. Centralizing intelligence.
Learning systems build intelligence
as relevant data available to them
increases. Brittany encouraged
physician usage by deploying a
central, scalable database in the
cloud and making her application
available from any browser or
smartphone.
2. Connected thinking.
She applied mathematics, statistics,
medicine and computer science,
surpassing results that the individual
disciplines had achieved to that point.
HOW CAN WE APPLY HER
PRINCIPLES TO PREDICTIVE
MARKETING?
Centralizing Intelligence
Digital businesses like Amazon
have demonstrated that customer
knowledge is foundational to shaping
personalized experiences that help
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PREDICTING DESIRE
1
Google Science Fair Project Summary: Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer
http://goo.gl/z4gB1

each customer achieve her goals while
promoting the firm’s commerce goals.
However, a concept as basic as a
single view of the customer has
been well described, but has been
elusive to achieve. For instance,
basic contact information forms
the foundation for any customer
profiling strategy, but a recent
Experian survey reports that 92% of
businesses feel their contact data
is inaccurate in some way, and 66%
of respondents who have customer
loyalty programs believe their
programs were negatively affected in
the last year due to inaccurate data.
Against this backdrop, McKinsey
estimates that firms with more than
1,000 employees across nearly all
sectors in the U.S. economy have at
least 200 terabytes of stored data
(twice the size of Walmart’s data
warehouse in 1999). Many sectors
had more than 1 petabyte in mean
stored data per company. With so
much data, and such poor data
quality, being “data rich and insights
poor” is significant enough to
warrant its own acronym—DRIP.
Centralizing intelligence is easier in
theory than in practice, particularly
for non-digital customer touchpoints.
That’s changing quickly—nearly half
of all consumers in a retail store
carry around a portable computer
equipped with a host of sensors,
and will use the said computer if it
helps them achieve their goals, as
the “showrooming” phenomenon has
demonstrated. That computer—those
smartphones and tablets—make each
consumer addressable. Beyond retail,
Pew Research found that television’s
solitary screen is being supplemented
by multi-screen interactivity—half
of all adult cell owners (52%) have
used their phones recently for
engagement, diversion or interaction
with other people while watching
TV. Like showrooming, multi-screen
experiences enable the evolution
from one-way, mass segment reach
to immersive interactions where
individual customer behavior can be
studied and enriched in real time.
Today, leading organizations are
adopting two sets of capabilities that
build the foundation for centralized
intelligence:
a. Agile data. For decades, firms like
American Express and Target have
aggregated customer information
into data warehouses to out-market
their competitors with targeting. But
dig deeper and what most of these
leaders built their customer insight
on was past transaction information
combined with some external data
such as geo-demographics.
Today, we know more about our
customers. If we choose to look,
we can view social, reputational,
behavioral, transactional and local
information, among others. The
sources of this data, whether mobile
or online experiences, in-store
RFID, sensors and kiosks, Facebook
and Twitter, Klout and others, are
increasing daily.
What’s changed from the last decade
is the rate at which new data sources
are emerging, which drives the
variety, volume and velocity of data.
This trifecta, known as the 3Vs, is
commonly referred to as “the big
data challenge.” Existing enterprise
databases have room to scale and
address some of these changes, but
they are managed with elaborate
policy and rigid change controls.
Commonly, the speed with which
new data sources may be integrated
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cannot keep pace with changing
customer behavior or fast marketing
campaigns.
Leading organizations are assembling
the people, technology and processes
to prepare their organizations for the
onslaught of big data. For example, in
an aggressive capability play, Walmart
has invested more than $500 million to
create WalmartLabs—an independent,
agile organization with big data skills
that combines store data with social
media data. Walmart understands that
an agile data capability will enable
leadership in the next decade of
retail innovation.
An agile data capability requires
a strong partnership between
marketers and technologists.
Data architects, technologists and
marketers embrace agile processes,
with short, time-bound delivery
cycles, high communication, low
documentation and superb talent—
with the ultimate proof being the
early delivery of working software
yielding actionable customer insights.
b. Integrated platforms. Existing
structures for siloed brands and
broadcast media have exacerbated
the DRIP problem. With channel
proliferation, marketers commonly
hire specialist agencies to focus
on each channel. It’s not unusual
to see direct marketing campaigns
tracked in outsourced promotion
databases, web analytics in isolated
cloud databases, purchases in line
of business transaction databases,
social analytics in their own tools and
so on. Firms may pull some of these
information sources into a central
warehouse to seek insights, but
aggregation can seldom address the
data marketer’s Holy Grail: linking
each customer touch to a single
customer record in real-time.
What’s changed from the last decade is
the rate at which new data sources are
emerging, which drives the variety, volume
and velocity of data.
PREDICTING DESIRE

73
Hadoop: Hadoop is a platform for
data storage and processing that
is scalable, fault-tolerant and open
source. Every click, every friend
request on Facebook or action on
Yahoo! will land in a Hadoop cluster.
If you book travel online, there’s a
high probability that a Hadoop cluster
helped determine your flight or hotel
options. Hadoop is economical, scales
almost infinitely as volumes grow,
deals with a tremendous variety of data
and complements existing enterprise
database investments.
Graph databases: Compared with
traditional databases, graph databases
are often faster for associative
data sets, such as storing complex
relationships in a social network. They
scale well and can be better suited for
managing ad-hoc and changing data
with evolving schemas. Graph-like
questions, such as how many degrees
you are from another LinkedIn member
are answered with simple queries like
the shortest path between two nodes in
the graph.
Fast data: About a decade ago, Intel
introduced their first 64-bit processor,
doubling the bus width, which can (in
theory, though not yet in practice, for
memory and architecture cost reasons)
address about a trillion times more
memory than a 32-bit processor.
It’s taken a decade, but today, you
would be hard-pressed to buy a new
laptop without one. Combined with
falling memory prices and multiple
core processors, it is now feasible to
store entire databases in the main
memory of powerful servers. Accessing
data from main memory is orders of
magnitude faster than physical disk
drives. In-memory databases are not
new, but have been expensive at scale.
Today, the economics are viable for
larger deployments.
Agile development: Agile
encompasses a group of software
development methods based on
iterative and incremental development.
Requirements and solutions evolve
through structured collaboration
between cross-functional teams.
Agile promotes just-in-time planning,
evolutionary development and
encourages rapid and flexible response
to change. Agile is sometimes criticized
for only being applicable to projects
with a small number of developers and
low external dependencies, but leading
organizations have overcome these
challenges and scaled Agile to large
enterprise programs.
KEYTECHNOLOGY
BUILDINGBLOCKS
FORANAGILEDATA
COMPETENCY
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PREDICTING DESIRE
74
A global, multi-brand CPG firm with
dozens of brands has implemented
SapientNitro’s managed brand
platform. Deployed entirely in the
cloud, different brands and their
agencies create digital campaigns—
microsites, social, sweepstakes and
mobile—and deploy these to the
managed platform. The customer
database is centralized and captures
all data, behavioral and transactional,
and associates it with unique visitors.
Correlation with broadcast media activity
and search metrics are also integrated
into this database. Insight enables
targeted content and customization
across brands. Content processes,
shared brand assets, security and
scale are managed centrally, delivering
reliability and trimming costs. The
platform is more than technology—it
is supported by a customer-centric
insights team and account managers
who work with the brands, their
agencies and the development team to
maximize platform value.
Agile data and integrated platforms
together provide the centralized
intelligence foundation for delivering
relevant, engaging customer
experiences.
Connected Thinking
Brittany’s other ingredient builds on,
and complements, the centralized
intelligence foundation. Connected
thinking is looking around corners,
across silos and asking how techniques
and tools from one discipline can be
applied and multiplied by those in
another discipline.
For instance, Apple is exemplary
at using physics in the design of its
user interfaces. The fluid motion
characteristics of the iPhone interface
are inspired by the laws of inertia
and momentum.
Connected thinking, in theory, sounds
easy. But many firms struggle with
it, because the sub-disciplines
of marketing strategy, creative,
technology and analytics have
typically resided in organizational
silos. Marketers may lean towards
big ideas, or creative excellence,
and technology or analytics may
be viewed as commodity enablers.
Implicit or explicit favor of some
disciplines over others impedes
collaboration. After overcoming
discipline bias, two additional
ingredients—common language and
physical and virtual spaces for cross
discipline collaboration—must be in
place and widely adopted. For example,
SapientNitro’s social collaboration
platform—Vox—is so widely adopted
and used across the firm that the
technology has become invisible.
Like Google, Vox is more a verb than
a platform when a group of our Idea
Engineers works on anything.
In his popular book, Web Analytics
2.0, Avinash Kaushik, Analytics
Evangelist for Google says, “When
I walk into a supermarket, I don’t
expect the employees to recognize
me or rearrange the store for me. Yet
when I visit an online supermarket,
I am annoyed that on my third visit
they still don’t know I live in California
and they are not presenting me with
items for sale at my local store.”
Avinash observes that when people
shop online, they have a different set of
expectations.
As more consumer touchpoints
become digitally enabled, consumer
expectations will evolve, but the key to
rich contextual experiences will remain
consumer insight and the power
of prediction, built on centralizing
intelligence and connected thinking.
Thanks, Brittany. You inspire us.

THE FUTURE
OF BUSINESS
INSIGHT
Written by Lee Woodard, Director, Client Services, SapientNitro London
and Chris Handley, Group Head of Mobile Analytics, Vodafone

As mobile phones continue to
grow in sophistication and power,
marketers are taking note. Yet many
are overlooking one of the most
significant implications of these new
mobile devices: the fundamental
shift that mobile data intelligence
will enable for businesses. Mobile
Analytics has the potential to change
the business intelligence landscape
as fundamentally as ecommerce has
for retail.
In this paper, we identify three
examples of how rich Mobile
Analytics can enable businesses
to make better decisions about
investments, and also discuss the
privacy and fraud challenges.
Our understanding of the Internet
and mobile is undergoing a
transformation that is nearly as
important as the invention of the
Internet itself. Digital is causing
fundamental shifts everywhere,
from marketing and advertising to
business models and organisation
structures. Through digital
transformation, brands have the
opportunity to redefine the way they
interact with their customers.
“Big data” has become a sub-set
of this transformation (and a handy
buzzword) in recent years—with
good reason. But the opportunity
is to extract meaning from these
technologies and extract the layers of
data to create products and insights
for different industries. The power
is how this data reveals new ways to
meet consumers’ needs.
Big Digital + Big Telco =
Big Opportunities
Digital and telco services offer
substantial opportunities for today’s
businesses. Through their very
existence, mobile phone companies
have data that is tremendously deep
and rich. It is a side effect of the
network that is the backbone of
their business.
Telcos have multiple sources of data
that, when combined and cross-
matched, become new assets. Through
a phone’s billing relationship with a
consumer, they know who she is, where
she lives, how fast she moves between
points and how long she lingers at those
places. They also have the ability to
know what she does on her phone: what
she browses, what kind of apps she
buys and more. And network operators
have large population samples, device
data and M2M (machine to machine)
sources, all generating huge amounts of
raw data.
But it’s what is done with all that data
that is most interesting. The enormous
opportunity is the ability to look at the
same layers of data and interpret them
to create products and insights for
different industries and outcomes.
PREDICTING DESIRE
76
Between the dawn of civilization and 2003,
the human race created 5 exabytes of data.
Now, we generate that every 2 days. By 2020,
some reports say nearly 20 billion devices
will be connected to the Internet.
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The real power is how each specific
use of that data reveals the base
foundation and therefore reveals new
ways to use the data at hand.
Taking Business to the Next Level
Vodafone, a long-standing client of
SapientNitro in the UK, is bringing
this vision to reality. Because they
have a greater than 20% share of
the market, they have a statistically
representative sample, one that can
be extrapolated to give an overview
of the entire population, and we
are working to create a customer
experience and roadmap that will
form the basis of their Mobile
Analytics offer.
Imagine the way today’s consumers
are thinking as a nuclear-powered
steam train. If they’re given
something too revolutionary, they will
not be able to match their current
experience to the sophisticated
experience being described. But
if they can relate their current
experience to improved, evolved ones,
they can see how their lives can be
made better.
To that end, Vodafone and
SapientNitro have chosen three
immediate opportunities that will
interest marketers and retailers.
All three are areas businesses
wrestle with. And though some data
sources are available, much of it is
old, inaccurate or just plain unusable,
and the real work is in taking those
sources and trying to decipher
the answer.
Retail footfall analytics. Imagine
you own a chain of coffee shops.
It’s a crowded marketplace, and
a competitive one where every
advantage counts. You are reviewing
your retail properties. As usual,
you have top-performing shops
and ones at the bottom in need of
improvement. There are some new
locations you’ve got your eye on, but
which locations will yield the highest
profits? Is one part of the street
better than another?
To find out, open up the web version
of Vodafone Mobile Analytics, choose
your location, upload any specific
data you want to cross-reference
(e.g., revenue per square foot of your
best-performing location) and choose
a timeframe.
Over the map of that location, the
roads glow red with the footfall of
customers. You know that dwell
times are different for customers
in different places. You know how
far customers have travelled, and
when the area is most popular. You
instantly compare three locations
and see one is influenced by a new
major office block. And you’ve got
your answer.
Outdoor media measurement. As
a busy CMO, you may love your new
outdoor campaign. It may even be
digital or up for a few awards. But
Mobile Analytics has the ability, for
the first time, to tell marketers how
their outdoor campaign is really
performing.
Imagine you are on your way to a
meeting with the CEO. You grab your
iPad and open the Vodafone Mobile
Analytics app. You had previously
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uploaded the campaign parameters,
including locations, dates active and
the target audience. By mapping
network cells to points of interest,
you know if specific locations will be
better for specific communications.
The data tells you how fast people
walked past your ads, what they
did on their phones immediately
afterwards and if they visited a
competitor. You can then tell the
CEO you are changing the campaign
at four digital locations and switching
spend to three different locations
that have better demographics and
dwell times.
Market share analytics. What if
you upped your prices 5% in a given
location? Would you gain revenues
or lose customers? Your bank might
tell you the former. The Vodafone
Mobile Analytics app can tell you if
those customers decided to go to the
coffee shop down the road instead
or whether you attracted a customer
demographic happy to pay a bit
more. Mobile Analytics allows you
to measure multiple locations at the
same time—near real-time market
share data.
More importantly, market share
analytics allow you to see what
share of the daily footfall traffic
you are receiving in comparison
to the competition. Vodafone can
simultaneously measure the footfall
levels for all the businesses within
the same vertical, and can then break
them down to expose the relative
performance levels each market
player is receiving. This can be
combined with other data, like pricing
or promotion data, to help establish
a price elasticity curve that is specific
to a time, a day or in relation to
other external events. It is highly
valuable for a business to know how
they are benchmarking against their
competition.
Other Applications
Mobile Analytics will offer the
opportunity to have a fundamentally
different interaction with customers,
not just more targeted mobile ads.
In fact, as soon as the customer
gets something that is irrelevant or
unwanted, they will have the power to
manage the permission that enabled
it to happen. They will have the ability
to take advantage of the data
value exchange.
This isn’t just mAdvertising; it’s
fundamentally more valuable than that.
These two applications can illustrate
the benefit to both society and the
individual in very powerful ways.
1. Civil planning analytics. When
your local hospital wants to assess
coverage in a given area to make
sure it’s the right size and shape,
and that expertise is on hand, Mobile
Analytics can help decide where the
hospital should extend its services for
maximum coverage and efficiency.
PREDICTING DESIRE
78
To paraphrase Nicholas Negroponte from
1995, “Everything that can be connected will be
connected,” and mostly, that means wireless.

2. Fraud prevention. Banks already
have systems in place for a person
not in the same location as his or her
credit card; if the card is swiped, the
card will be frozen and the purchase
will be cancelled. Mobile Analytics
helps with the “false positives.” You get
declined, but you are where your card
is—Mobile Analytics can ensure this
doesn’t happen.
Privacy Concerns
For all the potential new business
benefits, privacy concerns remain part
of the mix. While governments and
regulators are increasingly wary of
violations of privacy, network operators
realise that if they scare customers
away, they’ll also increase
customer churn.
The one thing that differentiates
telcos from the digital giants is direct
revenue. Unlike telcos, companies like
Google use data to earn advertising
revenues, which then fund services
and products that consumers use for
free. Meanwhile, a network operator
has millions of customers that pay
it regularly. Verizon in the U.S. has
approximately 100 million customers
and Vodafone has over 400 million
customers worldwide. No CEO wants
to upset that revenue by making
mistakes. Ultimately, this can be a real
benefit for customers and, therefore, a
very effective acquisition strategy.
Vodafone is very serious about
protecting data; they realise that
it is the customer’s data. They are
leading the industry in their approach
to this new data-led relationship.
They have created a clear and
transparent charter that lays out
the fundamental importance of
the customer’s permissions and
preferences. Even more importantly,
they are rolling out ways for
customers to access
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their permissions and preferences
easily, encouraging customers
to understand and interact with
Vodafone about their data.
Vodafone and all telcos will not
be able to give customers better
experiences, or create wider value,
unless they respect customer
permissions to use data.
The ability for customers to control
their personal data, and understand
that it has value, is becoming
more common. As the Millennial
Generation continue to get older,
their attitudes about sharing personal
information will change the business
landscape.
It won’t be long before customers will
expect and demand a value exchange;
the network operators will welcome
this. Those who do it well and are
transparent about the value exchange
will attract customers from networks
where that isn’t happening.
Excited Yet?
Your mind is probably racing with
ideas about how Mobile Analytics can
help your business. This isn’t some
future innovation. It exists today. Go
back to your office, tell your colleagues
about how to transform the company’s
business model, create revenue and
create success.
PREDICTING DESIRE
62

THE “BIG DATA” ERA:
LEARNING TO ACT IN REAL TIME
Written by James Buchanan, Senior Experience Strategist, London

The amount of customer data
available to marketers is exploding.
We have already seen data-smart
businesses disrupt the video rental,
newspaper and retail industries.
Marketers need to get on board now
or fall behind.
Ironically, the huge potential of data
may actually be holding marketers
back. The opportunity is so big and so
fundamental that they want to get it
right, but legacy systems and internal
politics make that almost impossible.
Every year, we hear from clients that
data is put in the “important” but “too
hard” box.
This is a mistake. Data does not
become valuable by being well
structured. It becomes valuable when
it is used to answer questions that
improve the business. The task for
marketers is to spot these questions
and work out how to answer them
before competitors do.
To step up, marketers need to stop
worrying about technology and big
analysis, and focus their attention
on softer skills like problem solving,
analysis and application, curiosity
and rigour: the human side of data
if you like.
Rather than being scary, we actually
think this makes big data the perfect
opportunity for businesses to sharpen
up the way they think. To do so, we
suggest making two big changes:
1. Switch from analysis to action.
Instead of producing reports, run
experiments and find out what works.
2. Think flexibly, and think about
the way you think. Balance different
perspectives and continually reflect
on any biases in the way you think.
Switch From Analysis to Action
The simplest way to think about
data is as feedback from customers.
They click on what they like and
ignore what they don’t. A smart
business acts on that data, just like
a smart person stops telling a joke if
no one laughs.
Businesses have one huge advantage
though. Instead of only trying out
one joke at a time, a large business
can have thousands of interactions
in one hour. This speed of learning
is important because it allows
businesses to adapt and respond
within a time scale that can make a
difference.
Examples:
A. The Huffington Post is one of many
online newspapers using real-time
data to test story headlines. For the
first hour of a story’s life, they run
two headlines. After one hour, they
check the figures and switch to the
headline that has received the most
attention. If the newspaper had to
wait a week for the report, the data
would be interesting but useless.
By getting real-time feedback, they
make a change while it still matters.
B. Dunkin Donuts shows that
real-time data can be used to sell
products in physical stores. Digital
screens display offers that vary
minute-to-minute depending on the
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PREDICTING DESIRE

time of day and stock availability. Till
receipts are used to run experiments
on offers and messaging to find
out what generates the strongest
response. Revenue is up and stock
wastage is down.
C. The pace and excitement of betting
makes Ladbrokes the perfect brand
to act in real time. Last year they
became the first betting brand to
include live odds in their TV ads.
While this does not make use of
data as feedback, the increase in
web and mobile traffic, as well as
in recall and attribution, shows that
real time is engaging in itself. Real-
time data is also used to engage
customers in social. TV and press ads
have encouraged customers to use
#GameOn in tweets about sports. This
has given Ladbrokes a Twitter stream
into which they can drop provocative
tweets and odds at just the right time.
As the results show, it’s working.
These examples all use the speed
of digital communication. It simply
wouldn’t be possible to make
adaptations as fast in printed media.
And unless data is used quickly, its
value is gone. In addition, none of them
involve complex analysis. Yes, analysis
has a role later in understanding the
activity and improving it, but, at the
time, analysis is quick and directly
drives an action.
The approach borrows significantly
from direct marketing. The difference,
though, is that the findings are being
applied to the core brand experience,
not mail packs or emails. The brand
cannot afford for the tactics to degrade
the brand.
If, for example, salacious headlines
are more popular with readers, then
in just a few cycles what once was
carefully curated content can end
up like dailymail.co.uk. The instant
response is tempting, but it will often
need to be resisted.
Marketers are increasingly considering
how to design experiments and then
how to respond to the results, while
simultaneously thinking about how
each small step contributes to the
overall goal. They need to be short-
and long-term at once.
The question is: How do you find
people who can accomplish that?
And is it a skill that can be taught?
Think Flexibly, and Think
About the Way You Think
The accepted view is that businesses
need to focus on one simple strategy
above all else. Indeed, in “Good
to Great,” Jim Collins argues that
businesses need to cultivate the
single-minded focus and simplicity
of the hedgehog rather than the
flexibility of the fox.
While this may be true in periods
of stability, in periods of disruption,
when consumer behaviour is
changing, it’s suicidal. Instead,
businesses need to embrace their
foxy characteristics and look at the
world from multiple perspectives.
Support for this view comes from
Philip Tetlock, a psychologist who
has conducted research into peoples’
abilities to predict the future. Not
a bad proxy for the development of
successful strategy. On average,
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the results have been disappointing.
It turns out that predictions, even
educated predictions, are little better
than guesswork.
However, Philip Tetlock and Dan
Gardner noted, “...what separated
those with modest but significant
predictive ability from the utterly
hopeless was their style of thinking.
Experts who had one big idea they
were certain would reveal what was
to come were handily beaten by those
who used diverse information and
analytical models, were comfortable
with complexity and uncertainty and
kept their confidence in check.”
To make good predictions, marketers
need to avoid those who keep trying
to explain everything with one over-
arching model. They’re not just going
to be impractically perfectionist about
data—they’re also a lot less likely to
be right.
We also want marketers to be
humble. Ideally, they need to
practice what Jonah Lehrer calls
“metacognition.” That is, reflecting on
the way they think, and understanding
any in-built biases that might affect
their judgement.
Most marketers know a bit about
cognitive biases, as, under the
heading of behavioural economics,
they’ve been a major topic of
discussion in the last five years.
The difference is that now, instead
of using the thinking to change
consumer behaviour, they should try
turning the spotlight on themselves
to see if they can improve the way
they think.
As an example, most people place
far higher value on things they own
than things they do not. A person who
wants to re-purchase an item she
once owned will typically only offer
half the price she originally paid.1
People also tend to put a high value
on things they are certain to get but
dramatically undervalue things they
might get in the future, even if they
are likely to get them.
This suggests that uncertainty itself
will make marketers value short-
term gains even more highly—a worry
for any brand trying to pursue a long-
term plan at the moment.
Alternatively, people are also much
more likely to believe something
when they hear others express that
opinion. As marketers spend more
time reading social media posts and
comments, they need to make sure
that they maintain some distance and
don’t unconsciously adopt the views
they read.
PREDICTING DESIRE
84
Marketers need to stop worrying about
technology and big analysis, and focus their
attention on softer skills like problem solving,
analysis and application, curiosity and rigour:
the human side of data if you like.
1
Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Chapter 7

These are just two examples among
many. The human mind is not
perfectly “rational” and struggles to
value outcomes. Any marketer who
wants to improve the quality of the
judgement should start by reflecting
on that.
Putting It Into Practice: Creating
a Culture of Smart Thinking
Perfect data is a distraction; it’s
what businesses think about and
do with it that counts. This should
be tremendously liberating. No one
has to fit the company’s strategy
into a top-down programme.
Instead, strategy is devolved to
front-line marketers who know their
businesses and can use data to make
a difference. Everyone has a mandate
and everyone will be rewarded if they
get it right.
But change won’t happen overnight,
and some businesses may struggle
to make the change at all. The
reason is that bottom-up change is,
by definition, difficult to organise.
If businesses want people to think
and act independently, they can’t
tell them what to do; they need
to learn how to recognise good
thinking themselves. At the same
time, independence must not lead
to anarchy, but for people to think
independently in a similar way by
fostering a culture.
To do that, just like any society or
culture, businesses need to reward
behaviour they value and punish
behaviour they reject, while leaving a
grey area for opportunity in between.
Strong cultures are founded on
things that everyone can agree on.
Get these things right and the details
and nuances will work themselves
out in the future.
This buck stops with the CMO. They
need to incentivise action and, if the
climate is too risk-averse, positively
encourage people to be comfortable
failing (sometimes). In terms of
practical steps this means:
• Have a formal objective to run a
test that generates empirical
results. Marketers should not get
through the year without learning
something empirical about
their customers.
• Discuss and share data-driven
improvements alongside monthly
sales figures. After all, the results
of these experiments drive the
sales figures of the future.
• Allocate a percentage of time to
data innovation. It can be in groups
or individually, but everyone must
show progress on their own
left-field projects.
• Invest in regular training sessions.
Run war games to test the ability
of key people to make the right call
in real time.
These are not aspirations—they
are rules. Each one requires a big
commitment and a real behaviour
change from everyone on the team.
It is hard to implement and it should
be. The question marketers have to
ask themselves is whether they want
to develop the culture first—or leave
it up to their competitors.
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DIGITAL LUXURY 101:
HOW TO ENHANCE THE
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Written by Hazel Reed, Brand Strategist, London
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

87
There has been a noticeable growth
in luxury brands’ usage of digital.
After many years of watching from
the sidelines while other brands
explored and reaped the benefits of
digital media and technologies, 2010
was the year when luxury marketers
appeared to wake up. The arrival
of the iPad, and its rapid adoption
among affluent individuals, was a
significant factor in convincing luxury
marketers that their customers were
also digital consumers.
For all their early digital
shortcomings, luxury marketers
have been more advanced than their
non-luxury counterparts in terms
of understanding the importance of
customer experience. Luxury brands
have always understood that, more
than just the product, their customers
are buying service, membership
of an exclusive club and a shared
philosophy.
Indeed, the focus on experience has
become even more crucial as Western
luxury consumers have moved away
from conspicuous consumption,
and their purchase motivations have
become more inner-directed. For
example, the process of learning
about an item’s provenance or design
ethos has become as much a part of
the value of luxury as the item itself.
In the offline world, luxury brands
are able to curate their customers’
experiences. However, three of the
most important values are potentially
compromised by digital—quality,
exclusivity and personal touch.
Quality
In the early evolution of digital, the
quality required by a luxury brand was
was difficult to deliver. The potential
for attention to detail and aesthetic
preeminence was insufficient to
capture the dream of the brand in
digital format. Furthermore, the
standardisation and utilitarian nature
of websites did not offer luxury brands
the scope they needed to distinguish
themselves from the ordinary. Quality
of delivery was also a problem, with
luxury brands unwilling to let the
success of their brand experience
be dependent on factors such as
connection speeds over which they
were powerless to control.
As digital quality has improved, and
connectivity and devices have taken
quantum leaps forward, luxury
brands are now able to create digital
experiences that match the fidelity of
their products, retail environments
and customer communications.
Luxury digital experiences need to be
rich and immersive, conjuring up the
dream of the brand and not allowing
the spell to be broken.
Brand films are a perfect showcase
for the exceptional quality of content
and experience that luxury brands can
now deliver through digital. Cartier’s
Luxury brands have always understood that,
more than just the product, their customers
are buying service, membership of an
exclusive club and a shared philosophy.
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short film L’Odyssee de Cartier is a
notable example. The richness of the
film reinforces Cartier’s history, using
cutting-edge special effects to create
a cinematic masterpiece and intense
emotive responses from viewers.
Luxury is all about emotion—there
is little rational about it—and luxury
brands can achieve a more powerful
impact by taking a cinematic, rather
than a print-inspired, approach—not
just to their video content, but also to
their fixed-web and app offerings.
Maintaining the illusion
It might be said that Cartier could
have made L’Odyssee an even
more compelling digital experience
by incorporating an element of
interactivity. However, this is a case in
point for where luxury should remain
cautious about following the popular
conventions of digital. Luxury brands
need to be very careful to preserve
the spell when creating interactive
experiences.
Gucci’s recent “shoppable” video is
a cautionary tale in this respect. It
is the perfect example of how new
technologies and digital functionalities
need intelligent application by luxury
brands. The execution of the interaction
is visually poor, with crude, over-
bearing logo hotspots. To compound
this, pop-up boxes fracture the
experience, disappointingly showing
only the item and its price. The main
issue here is that luxury should
never “sell.” A more sophisticated
use of interactivity would have been
to enhance the experience by taking
the customer on a seamless journey
of enticement, exploring the item’s
materials, design, styling inspiration
and lifestyle associations—reinforcing
its aspirational value, rather than laying
bare its transactional value.
Exclusivity
Exclusivity has significant implications
for the adoption of digital among
luxury professionals. In fact, the word
“luxury” derives from the Latin luxatio,
meaning distance. The democratic
nature of the Internet is often cited
as one of its defining features, and
seems at odds with the concept of
exclusivity and luxury. Indeed, luxury
brands have stayed away from TV
advertising because it is too populist
a medium, and risks making the
brand too ubiquitous. Luxury brands
were equally as nervous about digital.
Luxury brands feared that digital
would not allow them to curate
access to their brand in a way that is
necessary to maintain exclusivity.
Luxury brands are beginning to
realise that digital does not mean lost
exclusivity. Luxury brands need to
maintain levels of access, and digital
can help them achieve this in a way
that no other media can. While luxury
customers and fans may be equally
passionate about a brand, digital
experiences need to discriminate
between those few who can attain
the brand, and a much larger group
who desire it.
When it comes to these audiences,
brands need to make sure that
their customers and prospects feel
closest to the brand, and should be
reflected in the customer experience.
Customers are part of the brand’s
exclusive world, and they enjoy the
unique privileges that come with this
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PREDICTING DESIRABILITY
Cartier’s L’Odyssee short film delivers
the richness of Cartier’s history.
Gucci’s “shoppable” video is a cautionary tale that
many interactive tools still have some way to go to
be seamless and smoothly executed.

status. They get to hear news before
anyone else, they have insider access
to the people behind the brand and
they get to attend special events. Fan
support needs to be maintained and
encouraged, but maintaining some
mystique is vital, too; when things
seem unattainable, they become even
more attractive.
Audiences and access
Digital channels have an important
role to play in curating access to
luxury brands for different audiences.
This allows the brand to create a
personal experience for prospects
and customers with exclusive, tailored
content. Digital can also enhance the
in-store experience, perhaps using
tablets to facilitate access to exclusive
information and content, and to create
memorable event experiences.
British luxury brand Burberry
famously invited customers to 25 of
their flagship stores to watch a live
streaming of London Fashion Week,
where guests were able to purchase
selected garments via a bespoke
companion iPad app. Another British
brand, Dunhill, took a different
approach to using digital to make its
customers feel closer to the brand.
As part of a series of installations
enacted for a select local audience in
Shanghai, the brand created a live CGI
4D spectacular, which brought to life
London’s Trafalgar Square, featuring
a simulation of all four seasons over
the course of one day. The result was
a unique, multi-sensory experience,
which immersed customers literally
but lyrically in the brand culture.
Whereas customers and prospects
should be nurtured with personal
and invitation-only event experiences,
social media is the perfect media
for engaging non-buyers. But luxury
brands shouldn’t feel they have to
mirror the more casual register of
language that their fans might use,
or feel intimidated by the real-time
nature of social interaction. In the case
of brands such as Rolls-Royce and
Chanel, a handful of timeless stories
and myths have sustained brand
engagement over many decades.
Luxury brands should be reassured
that just because social engagement
may seem instant and reactive, much
of the engagement can be planned in
advance. Furthermore, luxury brands’
heritage and archive content provides
a fantastic source of fresh inspiration
for social fans.
In particular, Pinterest has real
potential for luxury brands, by
allowing them to connect their unique
lifestyle, aesthetic vision and values
with fans in a way that goes beyond
their manifestation in products. The
opportunity is there to invite fans
to create their own content that
represents their appreciation of the
89
Whereas customers and prospects should
be nurtured with personal and invitation-only
event experiences, social media is the perfect
media for engaging non-buyers.
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brand. Oscar de la Renta recently
turned to his fans to help inspire
his creativity, asking them to create
Pinterest boards. This is an excellent
example of how luxury brands can
create different levels of experience
for fans and customers: While
fans are given the opportunity to
indirectly influence the brand’s vision,
customers might get a call from a
person on Oscar’s team, telling them
about next season’s influential trends.
A Personal Touch
Personal touch, perhaps more
accurately expressed as the
“human touch,” continues to
cause the biggest headache for
luxury in its increased adoption of
digital channels and technologies.
The importance to luxury of the
human aspect is most immediately
evident in luxury products. “Made
by hand” and craftsmanship are
quintessential luxury attributes. The
value of an object increases when we
perceive that human skill, effort and
imagination have been invested in the
work. The same human quality should
also lie at the heart of the service and
experience that luxury brands offer
their clients.
It does seem here that an
insurmountable divide separates
luxury and digital, but it is impossible
to say what the future of digital may
hold in terms of answers to this
apparent impasse. Virtual meeting
technologies are developing at a rapid
pace, so perhaps there will come a
time when digital can facilitate a one-
to-one experience that brings the
brand representative and the world
of the brand to customers, without
them needing to come into the store.
It may be that, as luxury buyers are
decreasingly the traditional leisured
classes, and increasingly becoming
infinitely ambitious entrepreneurs,
that time, or lack of it, becomes a
more important factor in the luxury
experience than genuine human
interaction.
Conclusion
The evolution of digital has reached
a stage where previous limitations
no longer constrain luxury brands
seeking to build digital experiences.
Digital now offers exceptional fidelity
for luxury brands to convey their
prestige and quality. It enables such
brands to create powerful, emotional
connections with admirers and
customers alike.
However, luxury brands should
continue to approach new digital
innovation thoughtfully. They should
consider carefully how new digital
technologies correspond to their
brand values and the principles of
luxury. Luxury brands, and indeed
all brands, should think about how
they can apply digital intelligently,
and adapt it in a way that reinforces
the essential integrity of the brand
experience.
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Burberry invited customers to 25 flagship stores to watch
live streaming of London Fashion Week. They recently
revamped their stores to make this type of experience
even more immersive.

GAMIFICATION AS
A DIGITAL STRATEGY
Written by Mohammed Iqbal, Manager—Information Architect, Bangalore
& Syed A. Suffiyan, Information Architect, Bangalore
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

92
It was not until early 2010 that
gamification started catching up as a
mainstream digital strategy. In 2010,
corporations spent $100 million on
gamification, and this number is
expected to rise to $2.8 billion by the
end of 2016.
Tracking the trends in shifting digital
strategies will help to understand
the importance of gamification and
its relevance going forward. Between
1990 and 2004, marketers relied
heavily on one-way communication; it
was about making claims and telling
a story. Understanding markets
and audiences gained importance
while demographics started driving
marketing strategy. Acquisitions
and success metrics were taken
more seriously. There was too much
reliance on hard selling, resulting in
an overdose of online promotions and
banner blindness.
Today, digital marketing strategies
are based more on engagement and
connections. Customer experience
and persuasion have taken the
dominant position and social is now
a crucial part of marketing. Reviews,
“likes,” ratings and comments
have become an integral part of
information online and marketers
can now view trends in social
forums to identify user needs and
expectations. This has led to several
downsides, as social maturity has
caused information overload and
network fatigue, resulting in a passive
consumer audience. Between July
2009 and June 2011, there has been
a large level of decline in contribution
and active participation on Facebook.
This raises questions on the quality of
user data that often underpins huge
valuation figures. It also raises the
question of whether brands should
invest everything in Facebook pages.
To counteract this, marketers need
to diversify their digital marketing
activities.
Marketers now realize the need to
transform passive behavior into a
dynamic high-end user engagement
and involvement activity. Gamification
and its essential dynamics, coupled
with social networks, is a very
powerful tool to enable multiple
levels of engagement.
But why games? Games have
always been an integral part of our
community, culture and human
experience, be it dice, role-play or
board games. In fact, 1 out of 10
artifacts discovered in the ancient city
of Mohenjo-daro is related to games.
Board games have been discovered
in Iran, Iraq, Egypt and parts of Africa
dating back to 3000 BC.
Gamification =
(Mastery + De-Stress + Fun) x Social
Human behavior studies indicate
that people need to play. We love
the feeling of achieving mastery in
a game by overcoming obstacles,
learning, gaining skills and earning
rewards for our achievements. Games
also cater to our need to de-stress by
indulging in something pleasant and
engaging, and help in esteem-building
activities. Playing a game also has
aspects of entertainment and escape;
it allows us to role-play and be a part
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“Gamification” is defined as “the use of game
design techniques, game thinking and game
mechanics to enhance non-game contexts.”
of a story. The social aspect of playing
increases this fulfillment; social
provides competition, bonding and
multiplies the fun quotient by making it
much more real and engaging.
What is it that makes playing games
so engaging? Every game includes
gaming dynamics, some of which are
described below.
• Positive reinforcements. A reward
is a form of positive reinforcement
given or received in recompense
for actions performed or time
invested in the game. Rewards
for users come in the form of
points, badges and power-ups.
Some points can also be used to
buy merchandise and other game-
related items.
• Risk mitigation. Risk mitigation
is any reinforcement that requires
a minimum activity to avoid
negative occurrences (e.g.,
Farmville crops that die when a
user neglects to water them).
• The power of “free.” This dynamic
shows users that they can get
something free from someone
else’s actions (e.g., Groupon).
• Goals. A goal is a result or
achievement towards which effort
is directed. For gamers, goals
provide a reason to play and a way
to feel progression with a sense
of accomplishment.
• Avatars. Avatars allow gamers to
become immersed into the
storyline by embodying themselves
into a game character. They allow
users to assume a different
identity, even through personas
like super heroes or super villains.
An alter ego who can face
challenges and take risks is
limited only by imagination.
It is important to ask ourselves what
behaviors we want people enacting,
and choose and apply those dynamics
to make the gamification effective.
The Gamification Process
A behavioral engineering process can
be applied through three phases of
implementation:
The strategy phase focuses on
understanding business and
brand requirements, as well as
critical success factors. Detailed
user research enables a business
to understand its audience and
determine the behavior we want to
affect. Ethnographic and behavioral
research techniques are used to
identify audience behaviors, pain
points and motivators. This phase
results in identifying the founding rules
of the game, and defines the game
experience and underlying concepts.
In the design phase, the operational
rules are defined—the specific
gaming dynamics that define the
experience like onboarding and positive
reinforcements.
The implementation phase is an agile
process, which includes continuous
testing, analysis and iterations.
Gamification also offers many feedback
points from which to measure
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success like accomplishments,
game completion, winners, choices
made and rewards gained.
Gamification in Action
Now that we have seen the essential
mechanics that make a game, lets
look at some companies that are
already putting them to use in some
of their products.
Health and fitness. One of the most
recent and best-known examples
of how gamification is being used
in the health and fitness industry is
the example of the Nike+ FuelBand.
The FuelBand is strapped onto a
user’s wrist and uses LED lights
to form a progress meter—an
indicator of how active the user
has been throughout the day. This
visual representation of daily activity
hits the conscience of the user
and innately pushes him or her to
achieve a more active day, in turn
allowing the user the satisfaction
of having achieved the goal of “an
active and healthy day.”
Financial planning. Mint.com can
empower its users to take charge
of their financial lives and better
manage their money. It does this by
allowing its users to see their bank
accounts all in one place by culling
and organizing the information from
all those accounts. The goal of the
product is to help its users choose
how much they want to spend or
save for the future by allowing
the user to set definitive financial
spending rules.
Lifestyle. SuperBetter is one of
the best examples of gamification
through avatars. The target audience
is generally someone trying to achieve
health goals or suffering from an
illness or injury. The game helps these
users by allowing them to motivate
themselves by setting up tasks and
goals to achieve things that make
them truly happy. In order to do this,
users have to embody themselves
into avatars, write down the things
that make them happy and start doing
those things over a period of time.
Education. Khan Academy has
revolutionized the education
industry by allowing students to take
self-paced classes and evaluate
themselves by the number of
rewards they earn from each class.
A reward in the Khan Academy
is a token of achievement for
completing the given assignments
regularly and correctly. Teachers
can also monitor how students
have been performing—whether the
student is grasping the concepts by
focusing rewards on specific topics
or assignments.
Social spaces. Foursquare is a
popular social app that allows
users to virtually own a place. The
app allows users to check into the
places they regularly visit and post
it amidst their social contacts. When
a user checks in often enough, that
user becomes the location’s mayor.
If one of the user’s social contacts
is also a frequent visitor of the
place, that person can look at the
leaderboard to try and compete for
the position of mayor.
Food and beverage. Unilever’s
Share Happy iVend, the world’s

95
first smile-activated vending
machine, offers a unique brand
experience. The vending machine
makes the experience of eating
ice cream immersive by using an
attractor screen and an interface
that challenges the user to smile.
The smile-o-meter encourages
users to smile more and then allows
them to select a free ice cream as
a reward. Ultimately, it encourages
people to share life’s small moments
of happiness.
In addition, Sprite’s #crickwit
campaign brought a unique game of
“tweet cricket” to the Indian Premiere
League (IPL) in 2011, where every
re-tweet counted as a run and was
rewarded with a weekly cash prize or
the ultimate award of an LED TV. It
extended Sprite’s philosophy of fresh
thinking to people and rewarded
consumers who had a novel take
on cricket.
Implications for Gamification
Gamification is great if done
correctly; otherwise, it has its own
pitfalls. For example, it’s motivational
and interesting to get a badge for
completing the user profile, but when
the whole point of the experience
is framed around the positive
reinforcement of earning badges, it
can get boring. Gamification should
be an added layer as a meaningful
motivator around existing content.
A game can become shallow when
there’s not good content to bolster it.
Using gamification as a quick and
tactile solution can lead to poor
engagement and can result in low
ROI. When positive reinforcements
like badges and rewards are used,
when and how they happen are
elements that need to be carefully
considered and well integrated
into the site. Gamification solutions
should be tested continuously
with end users, feedback should
be analyzed and designs should
be iterated. It is also important to
innovate new techniques; solutions
that lack originality will have a
difficult time.
Conclusion
Gamification, when coupled with
social, has tremendous potential
in dynamically engaging users,
and is a strategy marketers can
use to diversify their offerings
in the future. However, it is very
important to understand the process
of gamification and behavioral
engineering to make this endeavor
a success.
2
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MEDIA-SAPIENS:
USING SOCIAL INSTINCTS
TO EXPLAIN, PREDICT AND
INFLUENCE DESIRABILITY
IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Written by Melissa Read, Ph.D.
Director of Marketing Strategy and Analysis, Atlanta

97
“Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on
Monday, rather than spend the rest
of the week debugging Monday’s
code.”1
That’s not something we
heard a lot growing up, but digital
changed things. Life is interactive
from the time we are born.
Our first computers are our toys and
we usually get them before we can
talk. Technology is an extension of
ourselves. When we forget our cell
phones, we feel lost—sometimes
scared, too. And our focus has shifted.
Just because we’re in the same room
with another person doesn’t mean
we’ll talk to them. We are often so
digitally immersed that we don’t even
notice they are there. We engage in
“media snacking”—consuming
bite-sized pieces of media throughout
the day. We engage in “media
multitasking”—consuming several
bites of media at once.
Some marketers think their targets
look so different from anything they’ve
seen before that they gave them a new
name—“media-sapiens.” They don’t
recognize us. We’re like nothing their
textbooks have described under the
previous name homo-sapiens. We’re
in our own category—unfamiliar,
strange, frightening.
We are a threat to the bottom
line—a risk to their targets, to their
budgets, to their livelihoods. But are
we unpredictable? Perhaps not. Our
behavior has drastically changed with
the evolution of digital media, but our
instincts have remained the same. We
thrive in communities. We have a tribal
culture. We are collaborative decision-
makers. We are expressive and enjoy
sharing our unique points of view.
When marketers come to understand
the basic instincts that have guided
human social behavior for thousands
of years, they see that today’s strange
digital interactions are not really new.
They can anticipate the shape of things
to come and pull the levers in our digital
world to drive desirability and influence
change. It’s the knowledge of human
instincts that inspires the most
successful brands to act as catalysts for
communities, drive social commerce
and amplify the consumer voice.
Ancient Walls
The first wall dates back long before
Facebook, MySpace and Friendster.
The oldest known wall is El Castillo
cave. Over 40,000 years ago, people
drew crimson stencils of their hands on
it. There has been great debate about
the meaning of these stencils and
many theories. Perhaps the simplest
is that these paintings are ancient
check-ins that say, “I was here.”
Our first drawings were simplistic,
but over time we drew bison, reindeer,
elk and people chasing them. The
simplest interpretation of these scenes
is, “Here’s me on my big hunt.”
The most fascinating ancient social
network is perhaps the Nämforsen
rock art in Sweden, showing animals,
people, rivers and hunting. Many
saw these drawings, adding layers
of information to them while gaining
intelligence from the original authors.
There are repeated acts of carving,
showing interaction and revisions
between authors—not unlike
comments on Facebook statuses or
the collaboration of a “Wiki” article.
Some of these drawings were more
helpful than others, with the most
Neanderthal crimson hand stencils
in El Castillo cave2
around 38,000
BC, perhaps representing some of
the earliest “check-ins” ever.
Ancient Walls
1
http://naich.soup.io/post/223460989/Top-50-Programming-Quotes-of-All-Time50
2
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120614-neanderthal-cave-paintings-spain-science-pike/
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98
PREDICTING DESIRE
helpful receiving primitive versions
of “likes.” Some drawings were so
desirable that they “went mobile” as
they were chiseled off the rocks and
incorporated into ancient tools, like
knife handles.
Thousands of years ago, cave walls
and rocks were a powerful kind of
media. With them, we could say
something about our status to those
who weren’t there at the time. We
could check in to say we were OK,
share intelligence that made our
community smarter, learn to avoid
danger, find food and even gain
inspiration. Thousands of years ago,
we used rocks and walls to share
culture across time and space. We
read “timelines” that connected us to
our ancestors and built upon them to
connect with generations to come.
Walls and rocks were just one of many
forms of social media that allowed
humans to connect over time and
across distances. Telecommunication—
like fires, beacons and smoke signals
—came next, and were followed by
drums, horns and pigeon post.
Modern Cave Walls
Today, digital has brought a drastic
change in media inputs and outputs
—but past, present and future
communication drivers have stayed
the same. Be it on a cave or Facebook
wall, we use communication for the
same reasons.
At first glance, Facebook status
updates might seem like pointless
communications that are much
different from the hand paintings we
see on cave walls. Looking closer
though, they demonstrate something
critical about human instinct: Over
thousands of years, we have been
using social media for the same basic
fitness consequences—survival and
reproduction. These guide what we say
and do. Deconstructing the seemingly
pointless social communications we
see in social networks can help us
understand this. Here are a few
examples of status updates we’ve seen
online and what they really mean:
“Sitting in a sketchy cab.”
This sounds like someone with a little
too much time, but it may serve as
an alarm signal made in the presence
of a potential threat. It tells us the
approximate location of this person
as well as their comfort level. This
status is like a white-tailed deer
flicking up its tail. It increases the
chances of getting help and of
survival. From this message, we also
know that we should avoid joining this
person for our own wellbeing. Here,
the fitness consequence for both the
communicator and recipient is survival.
“If you drink enough, your brain
starts photoshopping people.”
This sounds like someone who’s just
being cute, but this may serve as a
mating signal to attract a partner. Here,
the person uses humor, something
others may find attractive. While this
comment alone may not be enough
to win a mate, the culmination of
comments like these over time may
be enough to attract a partner one
day. This is similar to a peacock
fanning its tail. There’s nothing
evolutionarily advantageous about it,
but it does attract attention. Here, the
fitness consequence is reproduction.
Status update:
“Facebook allows me to see what
my life would look like if I had
married my college girlfriend.
Dodged a bullet there.”
Meaning:
This is how I feel.
Status update:
“You need only two tools. WD-40
and duct tape. If it doesn’t move
and it should, use WD-40. If it
moves and shouldn’t, use
the tape.”
Meaning:
I have important insights to share.
Status update:
“I’m surprised people still ask me
if I want to hold their baby given
the number of times I’ve dropped
my phone.”
Meaning:
Here’s something you should
know about me.
Status update:
“If they made a movie about
Morgan Freeman, who would
narrate it?”
Meaning:
I want to know about what
you think.
Other
Examples
Include:

“All girls are DEVIL but my wife
is QUEEN ……… Of all of them :)”
This sounds like someone who’s
being sarcastic, but it may serve as
an ownership signal used to claim
or defend a mate. This is similar to
the low grunts of an elephant, which
travel for miles to lure mates and
establish dominance. While the
fitness consequence is reproduction,
this status also serves as an anti-
mating signal for every other woman,
which could threaten reproduction.
This kind of social Darwinism shows
that people can weed themselves out of
the gene pool for what they do and say.
Dorks Unite
The social instincts that drive us
have persisted for thousands of
years, across multiple media forms.
We have lived in networks through
these media forms—with strong
influencers, basic communicators
and a higher volume of message
recipients. The digital age is only
different because new media drives
a difference in who plays each of
these roles and who has the
greatest influence.
On cave walls, an influencer was
likely the one who had the best cave
access, could paint the best and had
the best painting materials. In the
skies, the best smoke signals likely
came from the one who had the best
understanding of wind direction and
the best control of fire. Through
spoken media, the one with the
greatest influence is typically the
most eloquent and educated speaker,
the most visually appealing, tallest,
loudest and most senior. Through
digital, the influencers are often the
most knowledgeable about the topic,
the most socially adept in writing, the
fastest typers and best spellers. In
digital, your physical characteristics
have little impact on your influence—
as long as they don’t limit your
typing speed.
Despite these changes, marketers can
continue to drive relevance if they ground
their strategies in connecting people.
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PREDICTING DESIRE
Because of the vast variability of
influence across media, someone can
be an influencer in one media form
but not another. This means that
even if you’re soft spoken and not
influential offline, you may live a
totally different life online. The cool
kids look a lot different these days,
because looks matter less.
Actionable Instincts
Marketing media will only continue
to evolve with technology. As
this happens, our targets will look
and feel different. Despite these
changes, marketers can continue to
drive relevance if they ground their
strategies in connecting people.
Knowing that survival and reproductive
instincts drive human behavior today,
just as they did thousands of years
ago, gives us tremendous leverage
because these things determine what
people say, think, feel, do and buy.
Being relevant in digital marketing
means amplifying and extending the
natural instincts that drive people and
not creating obstacles that stand in the
way. Here’s how:
• Be a catalyst for communities.
Communities and their connections
are critical to human survival and
reproduction, online and off. In ancient
times, people who chose to stay with
their tribes survived. Those who didn’t
perished. Community behavior is so
ingrained in us that it is critical for
marketers to drive and sustain it.
• Drive social commerce. Humans
are collaborative decision-makers.
They have long relied on the wisdom
of crowds. Medieval villagers used
crowdsourcing to learn about
treatments for the plague. Today,
we continue to use crowdsourcing to
solve medical problems online,
as well as a host of other things like
purchase choice. Marketers who
foster a collaborative environment
understand that people need social
commerce to spend, because
antisocial commerce is not natural.
• Amplify consumer voices. Basic
social expression can feel deeply
fulfilling. When people share, they
contribute to the intelligence of the
community and experience strong
human connection. They protect
themselves from predators and
connect with potential partners
too. When marketers foster self-
expression, they not only fulfill a
basic human need in their targets
but also gain critical insight about
where their targets are coming from.
This intelligence can be used to
drive relevance.
Past, present and future marketers
who understand human instinct
will be able to explain, predict and
influence digital desirability and
deeply connect with their targets to
drive action. The best marketers will
never define themselves as B2B or
B2C. They will understand that we are
all just B2P—Business to People.
100

REBUILDING TRUST:
HOW BANKS CAN RECONNECT
WITH CONSUMERS
Written by Chris Baker, Senior Marketing Strategist, London,
James Buchanan, Senior Experience Strategist, London
& Omaid Hiwaizi, Planning Director, London

Who’d Be a Bank?
On top of their daily kicking from
newspapers and government, it
seems that their customers don’t
like them either. Banks are, rightly
or wrongly,1
repeatedly and widely
blamed for the economic situation
that much of the world finds itself in
and are constantly bearing the brunt
of protest movements.
It is fair to say that banks are far from
popular, despite delivering services
that their customers really could not
live without, and would be paying
for in any other industry.
Trust Is at an All-Time Low,
and Apathy Is Lifting
Trust in banks is in free-fall; two-
thirds of UK consumers say their
trust in banks has fallen2
and six
out of ten people in the UK fear that
their bank or building society could
collapse in the next year.3
The same
is true across the Atlantic; while 65%
of Americans trusted their banks in
2007, now only 35% do.4
As a result of this lack of trust
and transparency, any mistake or
scandal, such as those suffered by
NatWest, HSBC and Barclays recently
in the UK, is leapt on enthusiastically
by all and sundry. It has gotten so bad
that the apathy that banks have relied
on for so long to keep customers
is showing signs of lifting; 52% of
U.S. bank customers would leave
their current financial institution
for one that offered better money-
management capabilities5
and the
number of people who have actually
switched banks in the past 12 months
has leapt by 25% since 2010.6
Time For a Fresh Start
The time has come for banks and
their customers to start afresh;
surely the “anti-consumer” economic
model of retail banking that makes
money by punishing customers for
making mistakes, charging them
for basic access to their money
and getting them to spend above
their means, is on borrowed time
in today’s world. Instead, banks
need to offer services that their
customers genuinely value. In return,
customers are going to pay for what
they get and they will even go as far
as to recommend their bank to their
friends. This may seem a world away
from where we are now and its not
going to be an easy journey, but by
making some significant changes
it is possible.
However, now is not the time for
banks to feel sorry for themselves—
they will be hard pressed to find any
sympathy in the current climate.
It’s also not the time to continuously
look to cross-sell and up-sell
every customer they come into
contact with. This sort of behaviour
is only going to antagonize the
customer even further and sour the
relationship. And now is absolutely
not the time to invest millions in ill-
founded advertising campaigns that
attempt to sell the idea of service
and a relationship that has long
since expired.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Now is the time to “do,” not “say.”
Banks won’t regain trust by standing
up and shouting from the rooftops
that they’ve changed. This will, at
102
1
Thankfully, apportioning blame is not the purpose of this article.
2
YouGov – July 2012
3
Harris Interactive – July 2012
4
FT.com – January 2012
5
Intuit.com – June 2012
6
ConsumerReports.org – February 2012
PREDICTING DESIRE
2
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best, fall on deaf ears or, at worst,
further irritate a disillusioned
audience.
Trust is rebuilt from the bottom up,
one customer at a time, by doing the
right thing and genuinely being a
positive force in someone’s life.
Now is the time for action, to go
back to basics and look at the new
tools that are at a bank’s disposal.
The world and the banking industry
has changed fundamentally and by
actively embracing these changes,
it is possible for banks to help
customers navigate through their
lives, even in tough economic times.
By becoming useful again, banks can
rediscover relevance and actually add
value to a relationship that has been
one-way for too long. Let’s explore
five ways banks can become useful
and trustworthy to their customers
again:
1. Easy peer-to-peer lending
Alternative lending models are
gathering steam as consumers look
to avoid the murky dealings of the big
banks. Zopa is long established in the
UK, and France’s first P2P lending
site, Pret d’Union was launched by
two former bank employees who
were shocked at the rates charged
by banks for short-term loans. The
site attracted 20,000 borrowers and
1,000 lenders in its first 12 weeks of
operation.7
A colourful example is Burnley
Savings and Loans, the independent
small bank founded by David
Fishwick, which trades as “Bank on
Dave!” They act as a channel between
savers and borrowers and take a
commission, with Dave personally
underwriting all loans because they
don’t have a banking license.
With this model gaining traction, it
is clear that it’s here to stay. P2P
lending should not be seen as the
enemy as there is an opportunity to
bring them into the conversation.
Ultra-cautious consumers are
increasingly taking the advice of
banks with a pinch of salt, looking
elsewhere for the best plan
of attack.
Existing P2P models are a hassle;
instead of a one-stop shop,
consumers must manage a number
of relationships—and there is the
inherent uncertainty of the model to
contend with. A traditional bank can
bring weight to the table and simplify
the process.
103
7
Capital.fr – May 2012
2
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PREDICTING DESIRE
By investing in this service, a bank
would ensure a cut of a growing pie
and it would go some way to bringing
customers back on its side.
2. Crowdfunding
If banks are being blamed for the
downfall of the world economy, then
the best way to turn around public
opinion is to do something to right
those perceived wrongs.
Taking P2P a step further,
crowdfunding via sites such as
Kickstarter have taken off and are
financing creative and business
projects that have the potential to
get the economy moving again.
If a bank took the lead on this, both
in terms of an initial investment and
building the platform, they would add
structure and credibility to the process.
In addition, it would give entrepreneurs
a voice and the opportunity to gain the
investment required to get projects off
the ground, creating jobs and value.
3. Use data for good
Banks find themselves in an extremely
privileged position in a customer’s
life; they can see absolutely everything
that a customer is spending their
hard-earned cash on. But even though
they sit in this lofty seat, they use this
information to facilitate cross-sell
and up-sell rather than to improve the
overall financial position of each of
their customers.
It’s time to put those insights to work
for the greater good. Are they spending
more than average on utilities in the
area? Is their mobile bill more than
double the average monthly spend?
Are they spending more than 50%
of their income on restaurants and
booze? If so, they could benefit from

receiving information on utility
switching, better deals on mobile
phones and insurance and advice
about vouchers and promotions that
they could be taking advantage of to
bring down their spend.
All of this, if done sensitively, would
be well received as an attempt to help
the modern household manage costs
(and could allow the bank to set up a
handy affiliate revenue stream). Bank
of America recently conducted a trial
of a Groupon-like service based on
their previous spending activity and
it will be interesting to see what
further developments we will see
in this space.
4. International relations
As the world has become more
connected, banking has not kept
up. More customers than ever
before need to manage financial
transactions across borders. This
includes students studying abroad
(the number of international
students increased from 2.1 million
in 2002 to 3.4 million in 2009)8
and
relatives sending money back home
(international remittances doubled
between 2004 and 2008).
The costs of using bank accounts
for international transfers drive
many customers to use alternative
providers, such as Western Union
and TransferWise. This is a lose-
lose situation: Consumers get
frustrated and banks encourage their
customers to shop around for other
products in the future.
5. Butler banking
Life is complicated and is getting
more so. As a result of hours at
work, childcare and increasingly
ambitious leisure time, more and
more consumers are outsourcing
some of the practical tasks in
their lives.
At the same time, thanks to books
like Nudge, consumers are learning
that it’s very difficult to balance their
day-to-day financial decisions with
the need to save and contribute to
a pension.
These two trends are combining to
create a group of consumers who will
pay a small amount to be encouraged
to do the right thing. If it works over
the long term, they know it will be
worth it.
The butler bank acts as your
financial conscience. Based on your
circumstances, it thinks ahead, works
out a budget for you and sets those
decisions as defaults. Every time you
try to change the defaults, or spend
more than you planned, it offers up
better suggestions. You’re still in
control, but you’re being persuaded
to do the right thing.
This is a service that’s picking up
steam outside of banks. Mint.com
has over 8 million users and Money
Dashboard has launched a similar
product in the UK. Consumers are
increasingly looking elsewhere for
help with their finances when, in
reality, banks should be the first
port of call.
105
8
http://www.wes.org/ewenr/12feb/feature.htm
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80
PREDICTING DESIRE
The Lloyds TSB Money Manager and
Standard Chartered’s Breeze Wishlist
are merely scratching the surface
when it comes to the potential of
these tools. While there are internal
challenges in implementation, by
delivering a truly useful service to
their customers, banks can go a long
way to rebuilding the trust that has
ebbed away.
The Road Ahead
We have shared five examples of how
banks can go about rebuilding trust
through actions rather than words,
refocusing on their reason for being
and putting customer needs at the
core of how they reconnect with their
customers.
While not an easy journey, it is
achievable and potentially very
profitable for whichever bank succeeds
in reinventing itself with trust at its
core. As we have seen, trust has moved
beyond being simply a hygiene factor
to being the ultimate differentiator
to address the cautious and cynical
mindset that is all too common today.

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CONTINUOUS
EXPERIENCES
The third trend in the evolution of great experiences is the blurring of
the online and offline worlds into one continuous spectrum.
Great brands are increasingly using all their assets to reach their
customers at the right time, place and with the right tools to shape
the purchase decision.
A new conception of the story, the role of brand, new strategies for
content and new retail models are all topics our authors chose to
address in this section.

The Future of Content
Experience and How to
Design For It
124
Valuing
Fanatical
Engagement
136
Storyscaping:
Building Worlds,
Not Ads
109
Adapting to a
Fragmented Media
Environment
119
Brand as Channel:
Today’s “Always-On”
Messaging
113
I Can See Clearly
Now ... Across the
Entire Experience:
The Analytics
Maturity Model
130 Measuring German
Multi-Channel:
Approaches and
Implications
142
The CMO Toolkit:
What Every Marketer
Should Know
149
Retail Goes Rogue:
How Digital Convergence
Will Revitalize the In-Store
Experience
156
OE
OE
OE
OE

STORYSCAPING:
BUILDING WORLDS,
NOT ADS
Written by Gaston Legorburu, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, Miami

Once upon a time, there was a story.
That story was read to a child before
bed, sent through an email, told
through a movie or spoken over the
phone. It’s no surprise that stories are
all around us and are a meaningful,
critical part of our lives.
However, it can be a struggle to
create stories in the digital space.
Next-generation storytelling has
evolved. Today, “storyscaping”
takes the foundation of the tradition
of storytelling to the next level by
focusing on the experiences, patterns
and structures behind them.
But storyscaping isn’t just a
philosophy—it’s an approach. We are
the authors of story experiences, and
by leveraging stories as catalysts,
we can ultimately drive and shape
consumer behaviors.
The Same Story
The definition of storytelling has
remained the same for centuries.
Webster defines it as the sharing of
events with words, images, sounds
and experiences, sometimes with
improvisation or embellishment. Even
in its earliest definitions, “experience”
has always been a part of the
description. While the words and the
pictures are what make up a physical
aspect of a story, in reality it’s a bigger
idea—and always has been.
But regardless of the story being told,
it’s often the same story—one that
connects on an emotional level with a
plot, characters and a narrative point
of view, just as songs always have a
chorus and a melody.
Stories are patterns we use to make
sense of the world. And these patterns
help us make connections with
each other and develop a common
understanding.
There’s a real discipline and craft
around storytelling, which often starts
with the seven basic plots: comedy,
tragedy, overcoming the monster,
the voyage and return, the quest,
rags to riches and rebirth. But if you
think about storytelling today, part
of the storytelling solution involves
making decisions about what plot
type will best serve the medium. For
example, “overcoming the monster”
or “the quest” may be best served in
a video game while the “tragedy” role
may have a social element to it. Start
with one basic plot type that everyone
recognizes and relates to, and then
find the place that story belongs to in
the new consumer ecoysystem.
It’s All in the Mind
Stories are hard-wired into the human
brain. Because of this, stories can
create a bond and then drive the
behaviors we want. We can use stories
to convince consumers to purchase
things they weren’t previously thinking
about buying, and then tell their
friends to buy them too. Stories can fill
that role, using emotions as the pivot
point to do so.
To create a story, we sometimes ride
on the backs of others. Remember the
viral Volkswagen commercial during
the 2011 Super Bowl? That ad would
not have been possible if Star Wars
didn’t already exist in peoples’ heads
or if those patterns hadn’t already
been cemented in our culture.
The desire to be taken seriously
The desire for “my place”
The desire for something to believe in
The desire to connect
The desire to be useful
The desire to belong
The desire for more
The desire for control
The desire for something to happen
The desire to find love
Ten Emotional Desires
CONTINUOUS EXPERIENCES
110
Sometimes, stories are built on
top of other stories, such as this
Volkswagen ad, which first ran
during the 2011 Super Bowl.1
1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0
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But more often, we are the creators of
the story. And it’s crucial to do more of
this as we move forward in the industry.
Ask yourself: What is the purpose-
driven story for this brand and how
should it best manifest itself?
The Five New Experience Dimensions
Consumers already have patterns of
behavior, and that’s not something we
should try to change. The smartest
companies recognize this and look for
the missing pieces that consumers
don’t yet have—and may not even
know they’re missing. The new story
experiences should be based on that.
To create a storyscape, you need to
consider five new experience dimensions:
1. Understand the experience space.
The experience space is that vast space
between the brand and consumer—it’s
what ultimately connects them to each
other whether that’s word of mouth, a
viral video or a call center.
All too often, storytelling in advertising
is just story yelling—brands are just
trying to break through. But those
brands are missing a critical lesson that
the experience space can teach them:
Consumers will learn much more from
experiences than they will from a story.
It’s the difference between watching
a story and being immersed in that
story. It’s the strength of engagement
through interaction. The story becomes
much more powerful if done right,
and once you recognize that, you can
build worlds, not just ads. For instance,
telling a story about your first kiss is not
as powerful as that kiss itself. If you can
feel an experience, and find yourself
caught up in it, it’s an entirely different
level of interaction.
The experience space is not about
today’s “new and improved” app,
website or company. Next week,
everything will be new once again. But
the story, when done right, will always
remain the same. At the end of the
day, brands shouldn’t have a digital
strategy and a traditional strategy or
any other strategy contingency. There’s
just one plan, one experience—a
communication strategy—that can
transcend any campaign.
2. Find an “organizing idea,”
not just a big idea.
Today, real is virtual and online
is offline. The consumer sees no
distinction and the lines are merging
and blurring. While this can sound
confusing, it’s really an opportunity
to give brands and businesses a
framework for an approach for how we
arrive at a solution—one that takes a
philosophy and develops an approach to
drive it in a real way.
An organizing idea transcends a
campaign. It can be as large as
a superstore or as small as 140
characters, but it will always provide
a consumer the same experience,
and that experience must serve the
overarching story.
An organizing idea offers consistency.
As the experiences we create today
become more and more complex, the
story experience we provide should
become proportionately simple. This
will allow for a message that is truly
purpose driven, one that doesn’t need
to be diluted to fit into the constraints
of social media, in-store advertising,
ecommerce or mobile experiences.
When you have a great organizing idea,
everything falls into place, making it
In the past,
marketers have
used five experience
dimensions, or lenses,
to create stories:
1. Access.
The ability to reach other people,
activities, services, information or
places.
2. Control.
The degree to which a user can
manipulate their experiences.
3. Fit.
The match between a person and
their surroundings.
4. Vitality.
The tapping of human powers like
functions and emotions.
5. Sense.
The ability to know identity and place,
and where or when one occurs.
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easy to make sense of the storyscape
you’ve created.
3. Think outside the storyline.
It’s impossible to design a workable
linear experience anymore. Today,
consumers can drop into any portion
of a brand’s experience at any time
or level of engagement, so it can’t be
scripted from point A to point Z.
An example of this is the Bible. Very
few people read it cover to cover. But
a person can open it to any page and
get value from what they read. Even
though the Bible contains many pages,
with multiple sections, authors, writing
styles and time periods, it still serves
the bigger story—the story system—and
all works together.
Harry Potter is another example of a
great non-linear brand experience that
is working. It’s clear that this company
that has been incredibly successful
at building worlds, not just ads. This
billion-dollar franchise has created an
immersive environment that consists
of books, movies, merchandise and
games—even a theme park. Because
Harry Potter uses a well-thought-out
storyscape, it doesn’t matter where a
consumer enters the brand; it’s still
that core story. And no matter the level
of immersion, whether it’s bite- or
super-size, the consumer will always
experience the brand as it was meant
to be experienced, over an entire
spectrum of engagement possibilities.
4. Apply “systems thinking”
to connect the story.
Systems thinking has the ability to
help us understand how individual
items influence each other within the
whole structure, and is an approach
to problem solving that uses a
framework—or a foundation—to arrive
at the best possible solution.
When a construction company builds
a home, a school or a retail store,
the foundation is arguably the most
crucial part—and the same applies
to storyscapes. Without a strong
foundation, a story’s architecture has
nothing solid to stand on. Storyscapes
take the foundational concept of
storytelling to the next level.
Another way to think about good
systems thinking is a spider’s web. It’s
imperative to weave a web in order to
connect every good story’s individual
pieces into a cohesive, immersive
experience. To create successful
marketing and advertising solutions,
businesses must think in a very
real way about how to best use
their dollars to give consumers the
experiences they crave.
5. Never use a period, always a comma.
Remember to close the loop. With a
storyscape experience, everything’s
connected.
There should be no loose threads, no
dead ends and no pieces that don’t fit
the puzzle. If a consumer begins their
experience with a brand on Facebook
or on a website or via a digital display,
it should always lead back into the
experience as a whole. By thinking in
a circular, cyclical way, the consumer
will become “lost” in a brand’s story
and experience so much more than
words and images.
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We have the opportunity to be
the new storytellers—the new
storyscapers—of our products and
services, which can propel brands
into another dimension.
Storyscaping is an evolution, not
a revolution. Instead of thinking
in entirely new ways, by using the
familiar patterns and emotions of
stories, we can truly embrace and
appreciate today’s craft of marketing,
advertising and storytelling.
The bottom line is that storyscaping
will solve any business or brand
need, and it will do so by building
on the foundations of storytelling to
develop an approach that will create
an experience that will appeal to its
consumers. Storyscaping allows
businesses and brands to turn a
philosophy into a plan—to take the
resources they have and focus their
energy on the right choices for a
connected consumer experience.
Conclusion
The language can become part of the story,
such as in John G. Rives’ TED talk. In it, he used
typography to tell a fairy tale which is “short and
bittersweet.”2
2
http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emoticons.html

BRAND AS CHANNEL:
Written by Alan Schulman, Vice President, Regional Chief Creative Officer, New York City
TODAY’S “ALWAYS-ON” MESSAGING

Quick. There goes your brand
message. Did anyone notice? If they
noticed, did they remember it? Did
they remember the story, but not your
brand? Was it compelling enough to
go viral? Will it have enough cultural
currency to be passed on, remixed,
personalized and picked up by the
press? And if so, what do you do
for an encore? Can you sustain the
momentum?
Welcome to brand communication
at the speed of culture—where
the criteria and key performance
indicators (KPIs) for brands in today’s
connected and time-constrained world
have increased exponentially. ROI
may remain the ultimate metric, but
the task of preparing for sustainable,
memorable brand communications
requires much more than a joke at
the end of your TV spot or a traditional
“campaign pool” of annual television
and print executions driving to your
Facebook page—with some
incremental digital media spending
to support it.
Today’s most progressive brand
marketers have realized that
to remain top-of-mind in this
environment requires brand
messaging from a much more
persistent and powerful platform
than a traditional ad campaign—
without interruption. This messaging
is sometimes referred to as “Brand
as Channel,” a big, broad, idea-based
platform or interface through
which brand content, services and
multi-channel digital and physical
experiences are continually
programmed and served.
From the technology side, it’s the
same as what we call an API or
Application Programming
Interface—a back-end mechanism
for distributing content persistently
through an application.
Think of it as “always-on” messaging
like a news network.
Think Programming, Not Publishing
If you’re like most marketers, you’ve
probably already become a pro at
optimizing your web destinations—
starting with your brand website and
bolting on additional presences on
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,
all linked with the myriad Web 2.0
sharing applications. Perhaps you’ve
even optimized the pursuit of the
publishing model of the 3 Cs—
Content, Community and Commerce—
across your sites and partner sites. All
of this is essential to the table stakes
of a digital ecosystem in today’s user-
centric world. But to take the next step
towards “Brand as Channel” requires
the need to back up your brand platform
and umbrella-selling proposition with a
fundamental question:
Which does your brand have? A
campaign tagline written to synopsize
the proposition of an ad campaign? Or,
is it a Big Brand Platform idea? One
that’s wide enough and big enough to
connect with consumers, understand
their human behaviors and adapt to all
the devices and channels they use over
the long term.
How do you know?
Stress test it. Is the idea big enough
that you could iterate or expand on it in
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“Today’s environment
requires persistent and
powerful brand messaging
—sometimes referred to as
“Brand as Channel”—a big,
broad, long-lasting, idea-
based platform or interface.”

any channel, to multiple segments,
with any kind of content? In the world
of paid, earned and owned media
opportunities, can it be remixed,
crowdsourced, socialized, mashed
up and made whole again? Or is it
just a slogan?
Unfortunately, these are questions
that many traditional, above-the-line
agency partners fail to address when
distracted by the largesse and allure
of the traditional television campaign.
It’s often left downstream for the
digital agency partner to try to make
as expansive as possible within the
context of a campaign, rather than
originating it as a content platform.
The general rule is: You know you
have a Big Idea when it writes itself.
What to look for is the opportunity
to go beyond the written word and
answer the question, “If this idea
were a cable television channel, could
we program it 24/7/365?” To go even
further, do the brand’s core values
and permissions truly resonate with
this idea? Or is it an inelegant stretch
just to accommodate your desire to
draft off of high-traffic consumer
content categories like music, movies
and games?
Take the Liberty Mutual Insurance
platform: “Responsibility. What’s your
Policy?” (Shown on next page.) This is
anything but an advertising campaign.
It’s a great big idea-based content
platform that features dozens of
consumer, cause and community-
centric ideals and ethics built around
doing the responsible thing.
The beauty is that the product—
insurance—offers the central brand
permission to reveal, in very human
stories, the many ways one can,
should and does do the responsible
thing. It features numerous additional
categories of persistently provided
and refreshed multi-channel content
across all things text, audio and video—
including everything from relationships
and ethics to pets and animals, sports,
education and many others.
Creating, curating and programming
this Brand Channel is no small task
and no small investment. Yet, the
opportunity for continuous cultural
currency that connects back to the
brand is both resonant and evergreen.
It’s not a campaign that begins and
ends, but a regularly scheduled
persistent platform that is discovered in
progress.
Multiple Products Require
a Moving Platform
For marketers with portfolio products
in multiple categories, this approach
becomes even more essential.
The alternative ad campaign-based
approach often yields different brand
campaigns from different divisions, all
with different selling propositions
competing for the consumer’s attention.
For a global brand like SONY, whose
business units and brand architecture
span multiple categories and
consumer target audiences
(consumer electronics, gaming, filmed
entertainment and music), divisions
iterate around one big entertainment-
centric content platform: “Make.
Believe.” Consider how this SONY
brand platform idea makes itself so
extensible for content creation.
In certain verticals, like consumer-
Above, SONY illustrates the action
and spirit of its brand platform and
defines it as “uniting imagination
and reality, designers and engineers,
hardware and software, electronics
and entertainment, Sony and its
consumers. The dot that links make
and believe is the place where
imagination and reality collide. It’s
this point of ignition that transcends
reality. The dot is the role of Sony.”
Given the power of a platform this
broad and extensible, imagine
the channel-programming
opportunities to iterate around it.
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packaged goods, adopting the “Brand
as Channel” approach is even more
challenging as low-traffic, owned
brand sites have given way to
Facebook pages, applications and a
paid-media propensity to push price
promotions to drive case shipments.
Digital ecosystems here take on a
different shape as functional benefits
and product utility often overwhelm
brand platform possibilities.
But this needn’t be the case if
marketers and their agencies are
able to pivot toward a more service-
oriented content creation mindset
around the brand’s functional
category, rather than relying on
impression-based campaigns that
focus too heavily on traditional brand
awareness, recall and health measures.
Connected Thinking
With Corporate Messaging
At a corporate marketing level, the
“Brand as Channel” approach has
become an imperative in the digital
age. No one seems to know it or
execute it as well as General Electric
and their “Imagination at Work”
content channel platform. From
the outset of the effort, GE appears
to have committed tremendous
resources, both human and capital,
to storytelling through this Big Brand
Platform. At the organizational level,
GE staff includes a Head of Content
Programming whose remit transcends
mere website-based content. In
categories ranging from Innovation
and Ecomagination to Data
Visualization and Healthy
Imagination, literally dozens of hours
of content are ready to connect to a
variety of audience segments from
the investor, the enterprise, the
customer and the consumer in the GE
Imagination at Work storyscape. This
content is made available through
multi-channel distribution—not just
Creating, curating and programming this
Brand Channel is no small task and no
small investment. Yet, the opportunity for
continuous cultural currency that connects back
to the brand is both resonant and evergreen.
Building a big idea: You know you
have a big idea when it writes itself

117
the corporate site—and provides
deep dives into the diversity of GE’s
divisional engagements. Importantly,
the content isn’t presented like
commercial messaging, but rather as
unique news and documentaries that
function as edutainment.
The “Brand as Channel” Media
Approach: Intrigue, Involve, Persuade
In the “Brand as Channel” approach,
once the Big Brand Platform idea is
stress-tested to accommodate both
real-time relevance and evergreen
extensibility, the challenge turns to
overlaying this content-centric
ecosystem for success around
pre-determined and defined KPIs
in the paid, owned and earned
channel media.
First, “paid” media has a critical role
to play—right along with tactical social
platforms like YouTube. Marketers
who leverage their paid media to focus
on intriguing the target audience by
pulling them into the story in a
disruptive yet alluring manner will
out-clickthrough impression-based
banners that try to tell the whole
brand story and typically support
traditional mass reach media
(consider how successfully Hollywood
studios do this in their teaser trailers).
The secret is to employ both teaser
tactics and unbranded headlines that
pull the target in without giving away
the brand. This takes courage for
marketers who live by effective
frequency measures that ladder
purely to brand awareness KPIs. For
business case proof, one need only
look to the pre-launch programming
efforts of HBO to discover the power
of pure intrigue as a message focus
to drive interest.
On the “owned” side of the
equation, the goal becomes more
about consumer involvement and
persuasion. This means providing
plenty of brand-centric short- and
long-form storytelling content
opportunities that will populate your
site, and native application-based
channels that you commission and
program. When appropriately linked
to click-to-download PDF, RFI,
coupon, sample or even purchase
functionality, the continuum between
brand communications, data capture
and commerce is closed.
The GE Show
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And “earned” media within social
platforms is actively partnering,
curating and crowdsourcing variations
on a theme by the consumer—while
being mindful of adequate backend
filtering and appropriate age criteria for
consumer-generated content. These
“create, customize, share” interactive
content offerings and applications are
as essential to provide as your library of
“owned and commissioned” storytelling
content. They should reside in places
other than your brand website (e.g.,
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)—where
the social conversations and creations
are actually happening.
The combination of these offerings
is “storyscaping”—the deliberate
and measured effort to move from
traditional fixed-term, campaign-based
thinking to a big brand, content-centric
platform idea that serves as a multi-
channel value proposition for your brand.
For “now showing,” persistent brand
communications at the speed of
culture and evergreen extensibility,
there’s only one question that remains:
Can your ad campaign do this?

ADAPTING TO A
FRAGMENTED MEDIA
ENVIRONMENT
Written by David D’Alleva, Media Director, Boston
& Peter Colapietro, Sr. Manager, Media, New York

Over the past few years, a digitally
driven revolution has permeated
everything we connect with,
resulting in many changes. And
while the media allocation pie
itself continues to shift—from one
dominated by traditional to one
more balanced by digital—so does
consumer consumption. This digital
era of connected and continuous
experiences is evolving humans into
a race of “digital social beings.”
Shifting consumer habits, powered
by technology, has helped shape a
new digital landscape across four
screens—computers, smartphones,
tablets and televisions. Whether it’s
sharing, commenting, submitting
response videos or creating original
content, the ability for frequent
interaction on multiple devices is
fueling organic experiences, and
brands are trying to tap into them to
meet their goals. And as the old phrase
“the only constant is change” continues
to ring true, humans continue to be
both enablers and contributors in
this digitally driven media revolution
evoking one key question:
Does the ability to weave content and
experiences across newer platforms
generate new ways to think about
connecting brands and customers?
The Rise of “Platform Shifting”
Today, the digital space often applies
an approach to solving problems that
is irrespective of medium or channel.
But finding the perfect media mix is
still a question that needs answering—
and one size doesn’t fit all.
It has nothing to do with merely
shifting traditional to digital dollars.
It has to do with the particular
audiences being targeted, and the
methods used to connect with those
audiences. As these audiences
continue to mature technologically—
as has been the case with the growth
and expansion of Millennials—the
shifting is not so much just about
“time shifting” but rather “platform
shifting,” particularly as it relates to
video consumption.
For businesses and brands that want
to explore the digital channel further
and attract the Millennial customer, a
two-prong approach is often the best
way to accomplish that: Build a plan
with an adaptive media mix measured
against goals and use both brand and
direct response messages to create
a continuous, trackable experience
from the top down.
For example, TV and radio spots often
have trackable URLs that connect to
a central landing page. Conversely,
digital video can be used as a mass-
reach vehicle in markets that can’t
afford TV. These digital videos can
then lead to the same central
landing page.
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“The only constant is change, continuing
change, inevitable change, that is the
dominant factor in society today. No sensible
decision can be made any longer without
taking into account not only the world as it is,
but the world as it will be.” –Isaac Asimov
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It’s fairly common to pair brand
awareness with traditional media,
while digital media gets aligned
with direct response because of its
inherent interactivity and trackability.
However, these lines can and should
be blurred to prevent any medium
from ever being pigeonholed.
Regardless, businesses must build
multiple entry points to a single
trackable sales funnel while giving
customers reasons to purchase
along the way no matter where they
enter the conversation. This takes
the emphasis off the need for a
conventional “media mix” and shifts
it to building communications that
connect from start to finish.
Not “Creative and Media,” but
“Creative Through Media”
The complexity of communication
tactics available (whether digital or
traditional) requires a purposeful and
diverse set of creative assets to drive
the conversation to the next logical
checkpoint. Repurposing creative
from one channel into another
just doesn’t work. It’s wasteful to
deliver an out-of-place message to a
potential customer that doesn’t tap
into their current state-of-mind or
match the environment it’s displayed
within. Always match the creative
content and message to the context
it’s delivered within and the content
it’s surrounded by.
There are three pillars of practice to
consider in order to mature at the
rate of digital change:
1. Cross skill sets. This requires
a fundamental change in how
creative specialists work with media
specialists. Both, in essence, need
to become well acquainted with
the limitations and capabilities
of the other. For instance, media
strategists need to become familiar
with the level of effort and production
timelines required for different types
of assets in order to prevent building
an impossible plan. And creatives
should be aware of the target
audience, the sites and content that
audience will see and the context of
the environment in order to closely
match message and call-to-action.
Whether the cross-over of skill sets
is deep or not, creative directors and
media strategists should be involved
at the onset of the planning cycle to
trade knowledge while brainstorming
plan design. This may not sound
like a new concept, but with the
rapid fragmentation of the media
landscape, it becomes even clearer
to the end user when this process is
undervalued.
The benefits to this process are
seen with Foot Locker’s back-to-
school campaign that employed their
overarching campaign message used
in television spots within a co-op
content creation sponsorship with
YouTube “super-users”—those with
a YouTube channel and significant
following. The “super-users”
were selected using inputs from
SapientNitro’s media and creative
teams based on their ability to hit the
target audience and how well their
channel content matched the creative
tone of the campaign itself. The
media team provided the guardrails
for the program, giving the creative
team the ability to construct a
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cohesive creative brief for the “super-
user” during production and editing.
The video episodes that were
created were pushed out through
paid YouTube video placements in
conjunction with a significant amount
of earned views coming from the
subscribers of the two “super-users”
chosen. The video content was
connected to other paid placements
outside of YouTube and released over
the duration of the campaign.
The resulting cost-per-view
on YouTube was very low and
complemented Foot Locker’s
television impressions in a big
way. Through paid YouTube video
placements, embedded YouTube
videos and earned views, the co-op
video content netted over 1.5 million
views, over 42,000 comments and
nearly 6,000 participants in a six-
week campaign flight. Through close
collaboration between media and
creative from the beginning, the
brand’s TV spots were augmented
with significant views and exposure
within digital video online at efficient
costs. Seeing a positive effect on
sales during this campaign period
proved that produced, branded TV
spots mixed with guided, partner-
produced digital content can be a
formula for success.
2. Pull customers in with strong
content, then retarget them. The
Internet enables instant, widespread
sharing of an enormous quantity
of content, so a good amount of
ammo is needed to make a lasting
impression.
Video, for one, is exploding in a big
way with evolving technology and
faster Internet speeds, enabling a
wide array of video-based placements
and inventory. Much of it doesn’t
have the time constraints (i.e., 15- or
30-second limits) used exclusively
in pre-roll. The sweet spot now
hovers around 1 to 2 minutes,
giving advertisers the opening to
become content creators in a more
substantial way and then capitalize on
the response.
Building out a launch plan, which
considers teasers on television that
drive to long-form installments
or continuations of video online,
creates a strong interest platform
for retargeting. By using a
continuous message through
mediums, marketers can steer
potential consumers to connect
digitally in order to pull them in and
then retarget them with another
message. Mass-reach vehicles such
as television, radio and print should
always have a primary call-to-action
that entices customers to connect
digitally. Whether it’s visiting a
“pixeled” website or signing up for
an email, all media should drive to
a connected retargeting platform.
Done properly, a pool of potential
customers are acquired, primed and
ready to be exposed to discounts,
exclusive offers or other relevant
messaging.
3. Create balance between
advertising and experience. Whether
it’s the publisher or advertiser,
balancing advertising and experience
should be a required consideration for
any launch strategy. With cost-per-
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engagement and cost-per-view
becoming more prevalent and
scalable, its use should be the center
of any media spend. Not only does it
mean you are paying for the people
who want to see your ad or content,
but it also means you’re not inhibiting
or tarnishing the experience either.
YouTube’s TrueView product is one
very good example of how this is
done right. Advertisers can purchase
inventory against a desired audience
geographically and will only pay
for a video view if the user doesn’t
choose to skip their ad in the first 29
seconds. If they do skip it, that free
partial impression didn’t impede their
experience. It’s all about creating
valuable content and then letting the
user self-select the content they want
to see.
Harness the New Frontier
The strategy of weaving content and
sponsorship experiences across
video platforms to generate new ways
to connect brands with customers
works, but it isn’t a new consumer
DNA—the need for speed and
information has always been there.
The Pony Express riders began their
“speedy” delivery service in 1860, only
to be rendered obsolete a year later
by the telegraph.
In the end, it is vital that businesses
and brands place less focus on
the channels themselves and
more on the pathway of content
communication tied to desired
outcomes. For many advertisers,
agencies and publishers, these types
of changes might require a bit of
restructuring—not only in how teams
are set up, but also how business
problems are approached to begin
with. Content is the new frontier
that’s already here. Harnessing
its potential and connecting all
the way through the funnel is a
fundamental requirement for any
strategy built alongside a media mix
that is designed to adapt to change.
Whatever the medium or message,
the matrix of communications
should be simple and specific. If it’s
not tracked, retargeted or saying
something of value then get back in
the room and finish road-mapping.
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THE FUTURE OF
CONTENT EXPERIENCE:
AND HOW TO DESIGN FOR IT
Written by Kevin Nichols, Director and Practice Lead, Content Strategy, Boston

125
Someday very soon, shopping for
your daughter’s birthday present will
look like this:
You are at an electronics store
looking for a tablet. You see one model
you like, pick up the box and scan
its bar code with your phone. Your
phone immediately retrieves product
information based on what it knows
you prefer to see; in this case,
comparative products and prices.
You quickly compare other tablets
by swiping your phone against other
models—never touching the screen—
and decide one model and brand is
perfect. You take a picture of the
tablet with your glasses, send it to your
phone with a simple voice command
and text the image to your daughter
with a “happy birthday” message.
While you scan your phone over
a checkout counter to finalize the
purchase, you ask your cell whether
you left the lights on at home—some-
thing you just remembered. Your phone
assures you that the lights are off.
Most people assume that incredible
technologies work together in this
birthday-shopping scene, but it’s
actually content that connects all
the elements to create the overall
experience. Several different business
units in several different companies
have, somewhere along the line,
decided to invest in robust and compel-
ling content processes and strategies.
So… What Is This
“Content Experience”?
Content includes any material that
you publish on your organization’s
website or mobile site, and via any
type of physical communication
(internal or external to your business)
within your brand, company or
communication ecosystem. This
includes communication at every
customer touchpoint, as well as the
data captured about those customers.
In many ways, content is the
manifestation of a brand that isn’t
that brand’s actual products or
services. Think about that for a minute:
In addition to its products and services,
a brand is actually its content.
Content creates a customer’s
experience with brand. As such,
you need that experience to be
successful—it’s a brand asset that
requires much effort to grow, evolve
and produce value. When used
properly, content can become a
major part of a brand’s life force. And
it makes a customer’s connection to
your brand seamless and engaging.
The Future of Content
With over 10 billion indexed
webpages, 1 million mobile apps
and seemingly endless amounts
of user-generated content, we’re
drowning in information. Many
organizations have little insight into
how much content they possess, what
to do with it or, most importantly,
how to meet their customers’ content
consumption needs.
Over the next five years, we can
expect these challenges to grow
significantly. People will be over-
loaded with content and, although
their consumption patterns may
evolve, their need to get what they
want when they want it won’t change.
First, let’s be specific about what
we mean by “content.”
Ask 10 different people to define
content, and you’ll end up with 10
different perspectives. Usually the
definitions involve the many types
of content—audio, text, video and
images—what is read to a customer
from a support call center
representative or what a car
dealer picks up from their auto
manufacturer to share with
customers (or mechanics). But
this approach merely defines
content by format; it is much more
than that. So let’s try a broader,
more useful definition that can
encompass them all:
In the digital landscape, content is:
• created by someone to
communicate an idea,
• recorded and stored
electronically, and
• consumed by or shared
with others.
Defining Content
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Businesses will encounter even greater
challenges to get consumers relevant,
meaningful and timely content.
Consumer expectations will drive
intelligent content solutions; they
want real-time information delivered
at a variety of different moments and
events. Personalization will be a
critical component—like automatic
traffic alerts as a customer drives
into a city. For example, a woman
researches a product at home, then
goes to the store and swipes her phone
at a kiosk. She’s greeted by name and
the customer representative has all of
her relevant information. So her
in-store experience is personally
connected to her needs, regardless
of platform. Later, on her birthday,
she receives an offer and, after that,
updates about the product warranty.
In the next few years, many types of
advancements will evolve the format,
medium and consumption of content.
Wearable technology (eyewear that
captures video, for example), mobile
as a universal remote and wallet,
and voice command technology will
all be integrated into our everyday
lives. As the virtual reality of gaming
goes mainstream, consumer demand
for immersive content (like 3D and
360-degree video) will spill into other
parts of their lives and continue to
advance. 3D printing will be just
another feature on a printer. Semantic
technology will evolve given the sheer
amount of data businesses have on
consumers’ behaviors, creating a
whole new market around technology
that can predict specific consumer
behavior and respond to it.
For instance, a search engine will
automatically filter through 10,000
search results to give you what it
knows you want to see.
More and more regulations over the
use, collection and sale of consumer
data will unfold. Last year, the
Privacy, Technology and the Law
Senate Judiciary Committee was
formed, which monitors data mining,
ensures consumer information
transparency and suggests new
laws to protect consumer privacy.
Issues like cyber-bullying and
increases in plagiarism and misuse
of intellectual property will further
focus on questions of technology and
ethics. All of these factors will impact
what businesses can and cannot
do with consumer information and
will create new companies in social
media, search and other venues that
promise “mining-free” and “cookie-
free” experiences.
New players in social media will
emerge as “degrees of separation”
technology increases. Already
companies such as Hachi are helping
introduce folks to people they think
they should know. Social media will
leverage semantic technology to
create even more sophisticated
networking opportunities.
Knowledge-sharing sites will
continue to emerge, such as Quora,
which allows users to ask any
question and receive accurate, clear
answers from authoritative sources.
Social shopping will become a
reality for mainstream consumers
as customers automatically share
purchases with friends and solicit
their feedback. Finally, peer-to-peer,
Content Experience
as a Brand Asset
Trust
With
Brand
Customer
ContentProduct or
Service
1
www.havasmedia.com/2011/11/meaningful-brands-havas-media-launches-global-results/
Are businesses getting the right
content experiences to their
customers? A Havas Media report
surveyed 14 countries and 50,000
consumers in November 2011 and
found that “70% of people would
not care if brands ceased to exist.”1
Though many variables contribute
to consumers’ perceptions of
brands, content experience
plays a large role. And consumer
cynicism presents a huge
opportunity for businesses
to differentiate themselves
through honest, constructive and
consequential content.
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127
user-generated content sites for
brand and product evaluation will
create more ways to authenticate
customer reviews and increase the
integrity of responses.
Success in the Future
These present and future challenges
offer unique opportunities.
Understanding holistic content
strategy—connecting timely, relevant
content to the right user at the right
time—will only get businesses so
far. Content strategists understand
the types of content experiences
consumers need, and then determine
operational and governance processes
to create and maintain those
experiences. Businesses must act
upon what content strategy requires
and make an investment of time,
money and resources in what we
outline below.
The first rule of thumb is that
businesses that deliver successful
content experiences in the future
will do so because they recognize
content as a strategic brand and
business asset. Content has a
tangibly measured value; an effective
content experience translates into
higher conversion rates, stronger
customer loyalty and a more
consistent brand experience across
all brand channels, from a product
package to a customer call center,
from Facebook to a mobile app to
the company website. This reality
may seem like a no-brainer, but even
today after all of the “content is king”
talk, many businesses don’t put their
money behind this concept.
Timely, meaningful and relevant
content creates a successful
customer experience and as such,
requires investment to empower
its full potential. To engender this
practice, a business must measure
and evaluate all areas where content
lives—internally and externally—
extending well beyond just web
analytics. A strong metrics and
measurement strategy will help
future evolution. It also facilitates
another important principle: Just as an
organization cares for its institutional
financial portfolio, content requires
constant “seeding and feeding.”
The second rule of thumb is that
businesses must understand that
investing in content strategy is only
useful if they also invest in creating
the content itself. Why develop a
beautiful website or mobile experience
sans a robust new content experience
to support it and a publication model to
ensure continued relevance? Content
is not inexpensive, so figuring out the
type of content experiences you should
create must be directed by a long-term
roadmap and strategy.
Though many variables contribute to consumers’
perception of brands, content experience plays
a large role. And consumer cynicism presents a
huge opportunity for businesses to differentiate
themselves through honest, constructive
and consequential content.
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Just as brands make significant
investments in marketing collateral
and campaigns, they should
reprioritize content that serves
customer needs: support content,
white papers, thought leadership and
decision tools to assist the customer
in finding the right product, just to
name a few. If Forrester’s annual
reports on customer experience make
one point clear, it’s that customer
experience embodies the entire
customer engagement with a brand.
High quality content at each point of
exchange has a direct impact on the
customer’s brand perception. An
investment in the continuous creation
and renewal of meaningful content will
competitively differentiate a business
and position it as a superior brand.
The third rule of thumb is that the
development of a closed-loop content
strategy will position a business for
future success. This model, pictured
on the following page, drives
sustainability. As a business creates
content, it continuously evaluates its
efficacy and then optimizes or
archives it. This process is repeatable,
extensible and agile. These steps
are predicated on a solid metrics
strategy, defining success criteria for
content, creating KPIs to measure it,
rolling results up into dashboards
and reviewing it semi-annually—
on a program level—to set future
priorities.
The fourth rule of thumb is that
transparency about what customer
data is collected yields customer
trust. This practice will not only
increase customer loyalty to the brand,
but will also position businesses to
respond to future regulations and
prevent potential litigation.
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129
A/B testing and multivariate testing,
consumer surveys and the like are all
proven mechanisms to measure the
efficacy of content solutions and
can help businesses glean much
information on consumer behavior
to guide future content decisions in
a non-invasive manner.
The final two rules of thumb are
interconnected: Content experience
is no longer a one-way conversation,
and customers weigh in on a brand
through their own content and
word-of-mouth experiences. Obviously,
consumers are your most important
mouthpieces. Simultaneously,
consumers want more control over the
content with which they interact. Make
content as portable as possible, so
that users can consume, share and
post information on a variety of
different formats. Always think about
the channels on which content will
be consumed and create content for
those experiences, but don’t limit it
to that—provide options. You may not
want to immediately serve up long
articles on a mobile device, but that
does not mean that a man on his
way to work doesn’t want to consume
a white paper on his mobile phone.
Content should be agile so that it
can be shared, repurposed and
easily consumed in many
different environments.
Conclusion
To quote punk rock goddess Nina
Hagen, “the future is now,” and
businesses should appreciate this
fact. No matter where the future
takes us, we have the tools to meet
its demands. Customer needs should
drive content experience, investment
in respective content and the
operational model to support its
creation, delivery and governance.
This will keep any business at the
forefront of modernized content,
regardless of how technology may
evolve, and will enable businesses to
meet the future without overreaction
or afterthought, thereby positioning
them for differentiated success.
Step 1:
Assess
Define
Governance
Model
Step 2:
Plan
Step 3:
Design
Step 4:
Create
Step 5:
Maintain &
Optimize
Closed-Loop Content
Strategy Model
Step 1: Assess
• Audit content
• Conduct shareholder interviews/surveys
as needed
• Analyze and validate content ecosystems
(sites, channels, social, partners)
• Analyze competitors’ content experiences
Step 2: Plan
• Set objectives with global stakeholders
• Define measurement plan
• Determine accountability
• Create content recommendations
• Define governance strategy
Step 3: Design
• Plan experience and content
• Define new workflows including loop
• Prepare staffing recommendations
• Prepare metadata strategy
• Develop taxonomies
• Develop editiorial guidelines
• Develop content model
• Develop content production/migration
• Draft editorial calendar
Step 4: Create
• Create assets and copy
• Input into CMS
• Localize as necessary
• Review and test
• Implement governance model
and workflows
• Finalize editorial calendar
Step 5: Maintain & Optimize
• Deploy content and application changes
• Use analytics to determine areas
of success and failure
• Plan periodic audits
• Adhere to editorial calendar
• Optimize as necessary
• Archive unnecessary content
Closed-Loop Content
Strategy Model
3
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ICANSEECLEARLYNOW…
ACROSSTHEENTIREEXPERIENCE:
Written by Jennifer Patterson, Sr. Manager Marketing Strategy and Analysis, Birmingham, MI
& Dave Kane, Manager Interactive Strategy and Analytics, Chrysler Group LLC, Auburn Hills, MI
THE ANALYTICS MATURITY MODEL
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Imagine being the CEO, CMO or head
of sales of a major manufacturing
company with these insights: If
your daily website conversion rate
declined even half a percentage
point, you could accurately predict
millions in revenue would be at risk.
Conversely, if it increased, there
could be a corresponding increase in
your monthly sales.
Imagine if you could predict the
number of key marketing activities
needed to drive marketing campaigns
to meet your sales goals, or
knowing which strategies, channels
and tactics should be tweaked
mid-campaign to meet success
targets. Do you understand those
exact marketing initiatives that
are impacting your sales, whether
offline, online or across multiple
channels? Do you know what is and
is not working, and where the user
experience must be optimized? We
have the honor of working with many
organizations that have analytic
insight and use it to make key
marketing decisions.
The Data-Driven Approach
Many organizations claim that
they are data driven, but to what
extent are they really using data
to make decisions to improve
the cross-channel continuous
experience? Usually, when we hear
an organization claim that they
are “data driven,” it means they
determine success by looking at a
few metrics for a specific marketing
channel or even just straight up
sales. With the rise of cross-channel
experiences, the ability to understand
user behavior and how channels
work together via analytics across the
entire experience is a
must in order to optimize and
positively impact the bottom line.
There are many common challenges
along the path to becoming an
organization that uses data to drive
meaningful cross-channel experiences.
This data-driven approach can
definitely be disruptive. It changes the
way we do business, and it does not
happen overnight. By expanding the
view of data to span across multiple
channels and brands, agencies can
understand how marketing initiatives
are working together, and that
information can be used to improve
the consumer’s continual experience.
This is achievable with stakeholder
commitment, a champion to drive
it and by following the Analytics
Maturity Model roadmap. It is
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Website Social
SalesOnline
Advertising
TV Search
Consolidated
View/
Campaign
Analysis
Analytics Must Pull in Data From
Across the Entire Experience
3
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The benefits of
cross-channel marketing
analysis include:
important to understand that there
is no cookie cutter checklist to
follow that will get you from Phase
I to Phase V (see page 133); rather,
it is an organizational change to be
embraced by your teams and
embedded in your projects. Once this
happens, there will be benefits that
begin to pay off quickly.
The Analytics Maturity Model
This all sounds great, but how do you
really begin to use data and insights
to change how your organization
executes marketing strategies and
move towards the next level of cross-
channel continuous experiences?
Start out by gaining acceptance and
striving towards advanced usage of
the Analytics Maturity Model. This
requires three things:
1. Understand that this is going
to cause disruption. Disruption
sounds scary. No one really wants
to be disruptive. Be transparent
and let your teams know what you
are going to start doing. Give them
some time to hear about it, digest it
and understand that this can benefit
them. There may be some chaos
starting down this path; accept it,
embrace it and plan for it. You are
changing the accountability of a team.
You must emphasize that by working
together with the same strategies,
the results will be markedly more
beneficial for the consumer and the
organization.
2. Partner with a champion to take
ownership. The “analytics champion”
is one of the most important people
needed to create change within an
organization. The champion roots for
analytics and takes the initiative to
share insights and recommendations
for improvements with all the teams.
Finding a champion can be tricky;
this individual may cause the most
disruption at first. In many cases,
the person that embraces and
evangelizes analytics is one of the
savviest because they know the power
of data and how to use it.
You may recognize your champion
because when you interact with
them—when you talk about data,
insights and testing—their eyes
light up. You’ll notice the champion
leaning forward and you can see them
thinking about how to use the insights
provided. The champion should have
influence in the organization and
others should gravitate toward him or
her for expert opinions. Sometimes,
this person is already charged with
owning analytics; other times, this
person might be part of a different
team. To be most effective, this person
must knock down walls and influence
changes in marketing strategies and
tactics driven by data and insights.
3. Leverage the Analytics Maturity
Model. Now that the teams have been
forewarned that their world is about
to be disrupted and that an analytics
champion has been identified, the
organization must figure out where it
stands within the Analytics Maturity
Model so that the right tools can be
utilized to progress through all of the
stages. Our Analytics Maturity Model
is a phased approach for building the
foundation and putting into practice a
best-in-class marketing optimization
organization, based on data-driven
• Faster decision-making,
benchmarks and goals utilizing
consistent success metrics per
channel or campaign
• Flexible implementation with
reduced time to shift media spend
dollars and tweak marketing
initiatives mid-campaign—with 360˚
views of consumers and insights
throughout each stage of the
customer journey
• Organizational alignment around
the power of analytics, ensuring
best practices lay the foundation
for future marketing initiatives
• Focus on continual improvement
of return on optimization (ROO)
and return on investment (ROI)
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1
Forrester. “Organizing For Site Optimization,” August 2012
decisions. The following phases are
some of the milestones that are key
turning points.
Phase I—Reporting
This stage is critical. It sets the
foundation for the rest of the
model and roadmap. Here, we
generate simple reports to show
that data can be leveraged to make
decisions rather than just being
used to interject numbers into a
Powerpoint. The champion must
set the groundwork. Progress can
be made by getting relevant data
to each audience by identifying
and reporting on a few basic key
performance indicators. We typically
start this phase by building out a
regular weekly or monthly report to
be monitored in order to understand
baselines and look for areas to dive
into deeper. The first report can be
extremely eye opening.
As an example, SapientNitro
implemented a monthly report for
Chrysler and immediately identified
that the landing pages for the banner
ads driving traffic to the website
needed to be optimized to increase the
rate at which users ventured deeper
into the site for more information.
Phase II—Analysis
In this phase, we begin to analyze
reports and encourage recipients
to ask questions. We look at
recent launches and campaigns to
review performance. We dive into
user behavior to see if there are
opportunities for improvement. We
introduce analysis to the marketers
and the creative teams to discuss
opportunities found in the data.
People may still be a little resistant
in this stage, but they will also be
curious. We have gotten past this
hurdle across many clients by
simply gathering stakeholders and
internal team members regularly
to talk about data and insights.
The outcome of these discussions
includes getting the teams engaged
with the analytics teams and
identifying areas for improvement
and additional investigation.
Phase III—Execution
This is one of the most exciting
phases and is usually a turning point.
Execution is where the teams get to
start experimenting and testing across
channels to identify how they work
together. The champion and your
marketing teams (especially creative)
can use this data to drive experiences
and design. Best practices on how
to execute tactics are identified and
shared. Analytics start to be invited
to the table as objectives are being
devised. Recently, SapientNitro
redesigned websites for Chrysler.
Since analytics was starting to be
accepted within the organization,
we were able to join the project at
the beginning and pull many ad-hoc
reports aimed to answer questions
about users’ current website
behaviors and interactions.
The results were analyzed and
leveraged by the creative teams as an
input into their designs, hence data-
driven insights. The success of the
project was not solely based on the
analytics by any means, but this data
was a contributing factor towards the
objective success of the redesigned
websites.
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In this phase, we also start up an A/B
and multi-variate testing program.
We use the term program because
when fully launched, the experience
will be continually optimizing via
testing across channels by developing
a testing queue, building tests right
into projects from the brief and
launching major changes via testing.
Only 26% of organizations use testing
on their websites1
and the number is
much smaller for those companies
testing across channels. This is a
great opportunity to be a leader
to anticipate user behavior, tweak
experiences based on test results and
identify quick wins.
Phase IV—Strategic
The fourth phase is strategic data
use. We can start tapping into the big
data space by compiling data across
channels and looking at trends and
correlations to see what activities
influence each other. Data modeling
and predictive analysis are leveraged
to start creating ROI models and
targets. Marketing initiatives are
identified that can be tweaked
to deliver successful outcomes.
SapientNitro conducted an analysis
for Chrysler that identified the “mid-
level content” that people utilized,
which was directly correlated to
buying indicators for demand. Once
we identified those metrics, via
statistical correlation, we were able
to recommend that those pieces of
content be served up in online ad
units and surfaced to users on the
website in the proper context during
the information-gathering steps of
their journeys.
Another phase IV stand-out
experience was participating
in a SWAT team for a cross-
channel marketing campaign. The
campaign kicked off via television
commercial during a major sporting
event. Imagine, from an analytics
perspective, being brought into the
conversations when tactics, across
the many channels from television,
newspaper, social, search, banner
ads, email, website, store and sales,
were still being developed. Because
Chrysler was advanced within the
Analytics Maturity Model, we were
able to bring in best practices from
previous and similar campaigns.
We described how each channel
impacted another, and pulled in data
around specific channel interactions
to help shape the execution of the
tactics. We also had the ability to
develop objectives and baselines for
each channel individually and as a
whole, as well as targets for success.
During the campaign, if we were
not meeting targets, we could dial
channels up or down to stay on track
and perpetuate a positive consumer
experience throughout the multiple
channels for the duration of the
campaign. Teams involved rallied
around the initiative—they were
aligned from the beginning and were
dedicated to the user experience as
well as measuring success across all
the channels.
Phase V—Analytics Competitor
This is where analytics are embraced
and utilized throughout the
organization. Once an organization
reaches this phase, key executives
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1
Forrester. “Organizing For Site Optimization,” August 2012

invite analytics to the table beyond
marketing initiatives. This maturity
level means that case studies and
ROI stories are shared outside of the
marketing organization. Very few
organizations are truly at this level.
Conclusion
The five phases of the Analytics
Maturity Model may sound
overwhelming. Accepting the power
of analytics and leveraging the model
requires organizational support,
executive visibility and commitment
across all teams. But ultimately, this
approach allows us to understand
consumers across channels so that
we can better shape and optimize
their experiences throughout
their journeys with tactics such as
anticipating demand or creating
personalized experiences. It will
help change the way we market to
consumers across the experience,
setting the stage for breakthrough
performance, as well as improved
ROI and an improved consumer
experience. So who is going to be the
champion driving this change within
your organization?
Ask yourself the following questions.
If the answer is unclear, you may be
further behind in data-driven user ex-
periences than you thought:
• What is each group’s goal?
• Where do these goals overlap?
• Are you setting objectives and
key performance measures that
extend beyond the original ask?
• Do you understand how your online
media is driving sales?
• Do you understand how your paid
search and natural search are
working together?
• Do you understand how your local
store event is driving an increase in
your social media buzz?
• Do you know how all of your
channels are working together
to impact the bottom line?
Take this quiz:
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3
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Valuing Fanatical
Engagement
Written by Scott Petry, Vice President, Technology, Atlanta

The fan experience is changing.
No longer is it sufficient to focus on
discrete in-venue, broadcast and
digital experiences, with separate
revenue streams in each channel.
Disrupted by the connectedness
of fans, sports franchises from
NASCAR to the Football League (UK)
are taking a hard look at how they
engage fans, and how they value that
engagement.
To respond, these organizations
are rebuilding their engagement
model with digital at the core as a
way to remain connected with fans
continuously, and allow fans to
engage more deeply.
It all starts with the fans. Fans
by definition are fanatical. They
wear jerseys, paint their faces, buy
equipment, watch every game and
brag about their team when they win.
Fans have made sports into a $120
billion industry around the world. Yet
the opportunity is even greater for
sports, teams and athletes who can
connect with fans in deeper, more
engaging experiences.
The Engaged Fan
The engaged fan is not just a fan.
The engaged fan watches broadcasts,
goes to events, buys better
seats, subscribes to content and
participates in special promotions.
The engaged fan shows off that he
or she is a fan by wearing branded
merchandise, bragging about a
team and emulating favorite stars
by using sponsors’ products. The
engaged fan teaches other people
to be a fan by inviting them to watch
the broadcast, taking them to events,
explaining the rules of the game and
advocating for the sport or team in
social media. And, most importantly
to the industry, the engaged fan
spends time and money consuming
content and experiences by buying
tickets and filling seats in-venue,
driving TV ratings and broadcast
license revenue and generating ad
impressions across every
advertising medium.
The experience of the fan has become
continuous. Throughout the year,
fans show support for their team or
their favorite athlete. The fan wants
information throughout the offseason
leading up to the next season—about
trades and changes, new rules and
news and points of view. The fan
wants full coverage during each week
of the season—the build up to the
next event, the event itself from every
perspective and the recap and replay
of the event. They also want the mid-
week stories about the preparation
for the next event and information
about the personal lives of their
favorite players. The fan wants a
breakdown of the season at the end—
analysis, human-interest stories and
coaching changes. And then the cycle
starts all over again.
During an event, the fan might
be engaged while in-venue, while
watching the broadcast on TV or while
out and about on a mobile device
or tablet. The fan may be engaged
socially with other fans at an event or
at a party or on Twitter or Facebook.
The fan both consumes content and
creates content. There is no moment
when an avid fan is not engaged.
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Sports Revenue Models
The sports industry has to evolve
to engage this connected fan to
deliver experiences when and where
the fan is ready to engage. Today’s
sports revenue models rely heavily
on advertising, sponsorships and
broadcast licensing rights. The next
biggest revenue source is from direct
attendance at events through ticket
sales, concessions and merchandise.
A third, and significant, source
of revenue is advertising and
sponsorships in-venue and on digital
properties such as websites.
The most engaging experiences are
often in-venue, but they reach only a
small percentage of fans. Broadcast
reaches more fans, but doesn’t
engage them on the same level as live
experiences, and tends to blanket the
audience with generic advertising.
Beyond the venue
PRE-Event
Online activation and
engagement prior to event
POST-Event
Online activation and
engagement post event
Centralized Experiences
Microsite(s), Social
Aggregation & Enablement
Socially Enabled
Activities & Tools
Connect with the passionate,
engage the “regulars,” seed
excitement and buzz
Seed the places
where our fans play
Distributed Experiences
Social Network, Mobile,
Geo-Social, Media
Seed the places
where our fans play
Socially enabled
activities and tools
Socially Enabled
Activities & Tools
Reconnect with fans, enable
sharing, extend communication,
grow fan base
The Fan Engagement Lifecycle
Seed the places
where our fans play
Event
Extend event to local and
out of market fans
Onsite
experiences
3-hours pre
Onsite
experiences
3-hours post
Attributable Value of
Attracting New Fans
Broadcast Ad Revenue
Subscription Content
Revenue
Admissions Revenue
Fantasy &
Second Screen
Revenue
Digital Ad
Revenue
Non-Fan Casual Fan Avid Fan Time
The Value of a Fan
138

Understanding Fans
We’ve found that the best
opportunity to balance engagement
and monetization is actually in
digital channels, where the fan
can be immersed in an interactive
experience. Advertising can be
targeted to the interests of the
fan, and the channel is always
on, creating an opportunity for
continuous engagement.
The first step to engaging fans is
to understand them. Fans of the
largest sports brands cut across most
demographic segments: gender,
ethnicity, age, socio-economic status,
proximity to major metropolitan areas
and others.
Best Practices for
Cross-Channel Engagement
Observing fans is key to understanding
how different fans want to engage.
We need to figure out when and
where they are engaging, and what
they do. We need to understand what
content they are consuming and what
experiences they are engaging in. And
we need to understand what content
they create. We need to figure out
which fans are avid and which are
casual, and how their interests vary.
Rule number 1: Build a single,
cross-channel view of fan behavior.
Leverage research and expertise in the
sport to build a deep understanding
of relevant behavioral segments, and
establish the critical components of
fan behavior. However, we also need
to build a measurement framework
in our digital experiences to observe
and track fan behavior. This data will
help us truly understand our fans. A
North American motorsports client is
building a fan intelligence database in
their platform to help integrate data
from many sources with digital fan
behavior. The database will be used
to segment fans and drive marketing
and advertising rules.
The more we understand the fan,
the better we can engage them. In
addition to understanding whether a
fan is avid or casual, we also need to
learn whether they live near a venue,
whether they go to live events and
whether they have a favorite team or
athlete. In their digital behaviors, we
need to figure out if they are more
interested in live content, news,
blogs, technical content or video
replays, and whether they are willing
to produce content.
Rule number 2: Create personalized
experiences for fans.
Personalized experiences built on
what we have learned about fan
behavior need to be incorporated into
the engagement strategy. The same
motorsports client will offer more
detailed technical data to avid fans
without making them click through
links, but on the same pages they will
provide simplified information with
helpful explanations for casual fans.
In the same way, if they can identify
the fan’s favorite athlete, they will
offer more content and information
related to that athlete. They will also
leverage these attributes in the on-
site advertising the fans see as they
engage in the experience, creating a
more relevant, tailored experience.
To truly engage fans, we also must
139
We think about fans in
three categories:
1. Avid fans love the sport outright.
They want detailed statistics and
technical information about teams,
athletes and events.
2. Casual fans enjoy the sport but
only engage when it’s convenient.
They need educational content
and community support to build
their knowledge and help them
understand the sport.
3. Non-fans don’t engage at all.
They need a reason, a personal
connection to the sport, to engage
in the first place.
Three Categories of Fans
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consider where and how they are
engaging. If a fan is researching
tickets or parking information, they
may be planning to go to an event.
We may be able to identify if they are
already at an event, and even if they
are hungry or looking for a meeting
point. Or they may want to buy a
souvenir. We may be able to identify
if they are watching the event on
TV and get them to participate on a
second screen. They may be blogging
or tweeting, or just listening. They
could be tracking their fantasy team.
We also need to determine what type
of device they are using—whether
phone, tablet, PC or other.
Rule number 3: Engage the fan where
the fan plays, and make sure the
experiences align to the fan’s needs.
In one solution, for instance, we
designed a social smack talk
second-screen application for a
sports entertainment client to allow
fans to support their favorite athlete
during events. The ability to support
athletes and engage in a social
conversation about them drives
deeper engagement with the sport.
In another solution, we leveraged
Responsive Design (a technical
solution that allows the same
content to easily be delivered to
different devices) to support multiple
channels with the primary digital
experience, but also offered a second
screen and social TV application to
enhance broadcast viewing and drive
appointment viewing.
We know from research that creating
fan engagement, and making
fans avid, involves certain specific
behaviors. Attendance at an event
has a significant influence, as does
selection of a favorite team or athlete.
With that in mind, the experiences
we create need to emulate the best
aspects of in-venue experiences for
the fan, and they also need to drive
attendance and affinity to a team or
athlete, or a “favorite.”
Rule number 4: Encourage the fan
to attend events, not only through
advertising tickets, but also through
their sense of nostalgia and their
desire to experience the sport at
“game speed.”
Let fans feel the competition at every
point of engagement. Encourage
them to love one team or player. The
energy around favorites drives deeper
engagement and long-term love for
the sport.
For example, allow fans to declare
and share their passion points around
one team, and their dislike for others.
A visit to any digital experience
should provide an experience that is
designed to extend that “fanaticism”
through content and design.
Once the fan is hooked, benefits
include more increased fan
activations of sponsorships, and
improved targeting of advertising
impressions. Ultimately, a much
fuller understanding of each
segment—regardless of the channel
they prefer to engage with—is
revealed.
140

Rule number 5: Leverage fan
intelligence data to highly target
on-site advertising and sponsorships.
By using fan data to target advertising
and sponsorships, it’s possible
to drive the highest value for
impressions, rather than blanketing
the experience with less targeted
billboard advertising that reduces
fan engagement. For example, a
European sports league client is
leveraging an advertising engine
designed specifically to monetize
sponsorships and content in a way
that enhances fan engagement by
delivering highly targeted advertising
content in a visually appealing way.
Conclusion
Digital fan engagement represents
the early stages of a massive shift in
content ownership, distribution and
consumption—perhaps the biggest in
50 years.
As the distribution model in
broadcast is disrupted, sports
management teams will need to be
able to distribute content digitally,
in addition to working with multiple
broadcast partners—both traditional
and non-traditional. Monetization
of sports content is changing, and
it seems clear that an owned or
licensed digital platform may have a
role to play.
Fans are amazing consumers.
Their passion can be amplified and
broadcasted through digital channels,
stretching fan engagement far
beyond the venue and the broadcast.
Reaching the fan throughout the
lifecycle of the sport—before, during
and after the event, and across
multiple stages of “fandom”—is an
enormous opportunity. Improving
fan engagement will deliver deeper
engagement and also dramatically
increase the opportunity to derive
revenue from the same.
141
As the customer journeys through the viewing, following, playing, learning and advocating stages, each
channel should be leveraged to engage, educate and enrich the experience and their love of the brand.
Web
Social
Mobile
Second Screen
Broadcast
In-Venue
Viewing Following Playing Learning Advocating
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MEASURING GERMAN
MULTI-CHANNEL:
APPROACHES AND IMPLICATIONS
Written by Uwe Tueben, Head of Digital Commerce Continental Europe, Dusseldorf
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

What defines success in multi-
channel retailing and how can it be
measured?
Even for a very mature multi-channel
retailer, this question is difficult to
answer. Yet for much of Europe, the
commitment to digital channels—
much less multi-channel—remains a
work in progress.
In order to assess the importance
of an effective online customer
experience, SapientNitro partnered
with OC&C Strategy Consultants
to take a closer look at the leading
multi-channel retailers in Germany
and evaluate their multi-channel
performance.
First, we found that there was a
lot of untapped potential amid
German multi-channel retailers.
In our customer experience score,
the highest brand—OTTO—scored
just 640 points out of 1,000. We
believe this finding is true across
much of Europe, as older retailers
grapple with the changing business
landscape.
Second, we found that there was a
direct correlation between customer
experience and clickthough or sales
probability. We established that there
were direct financial benefits of
higher quality experiences.1
A Challenging Time
In our search, we noted that online
stores represented the largest piece of
the pie for most of the leading 25 multi-
channel retailers in Germany. Yet these
companies varied broadly in their use of
multi-channel marketing.
For some, such as established mail-
order companies, this has been a logical
and natural step as they shifted their
business from catalog, postcard and
call center to the Internet. For others,
the shift was less clear.
For example, traditional brick and
mortar retailers have made major
online expansion happen only
recently. And our list of the 25 retail
stores covers almost every category
from consumer electronics to apparel
to furniture to health and beauty.
We believe these retail businesses
and brands have to be leaders in
four areas to be true multi-channel
forerunners:
• The attraction of visitors
• The conversion of visitors
into customers
• The ability to convince customers
to recommend the shop to others
• The ability to motivate customers
to buy on different channels
In other words, they not only have to
connect with their customers, but they
have to inspire customers to connect
in multiple ways, and, where possible,
encourage social sharing as well.
Attraction: A home run for
mail-order giants
Based on our survey, we found that
mail-order giants—a group that
included OTTO, Neckermann and
Conrad—scored well at attracting
and driving visitors to their online
and offline properties. We believe
that this is a natural consequence
of their business shift from offline
to online, and goes hand-in-hand
143
1
We evaluated experience across 152 criteria.
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with high management attention and
significant marketing spend. Vertical
retailers like IKEA and H&M are still
doing well, while the brick and mortar
generalists tend to struggle to attract
online visitors.
Conversion: Where the rubber
hits the road
One of the most significant findings
from this survey is an accurate,
survey-based estimate of the sales
probability for major retailers. Most
retailers keep conversion rates a
secret, and even publications, such
as Internet Retailer, make their own
estimates. We wanted to do better
than that. Through our consumer
survey, we calculated the “sales
probability” for all our retailers’
digital shopping destinations.
It was also interesting to see that
OTTO, the retailer that scored best in
terms of customer experience, only
achieved a score of 640 on a scale
from 0 to 1,000. In terms of good
customer experience, there is clearly
a lot of potential left to be addressed.
Advocacy: True fans are hard to find
Two retailers that focus on customer
satisfaction and emotional shopping,
Ernsting’s Family and Douglas, lead
the pack in this category. The main
drivers for customers to recommend
a retailer’s online shopping site to
friends are data security and stock
availability. It surprised us to see that
the ability to return goods that have
been purchased online or in a store
was the least important factor.
144
We found that there was a direct
correlation between customer
experience and sales probability.
Higher customer experience scores correlate with a higher conversion/sales
probability, yet even the strongest retailers have room for improvement.
The Top 25 German Multi-Channel Retailers
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
BASIC ADVANCED INNOVATION POTENTIAL
OTTO
Bonprix
Conrad Electronic
Weltbild
Rossmann
Neckermann
Thalia
Douglas
s.Oliver
IKEA
OBI
Euronics
Hagebau
ZaraGortz
QVC
Schlecker
GALERIA
Kaufhof
ProMarkt
Karstadt
C&A
H&M
SportScheck
Ernsting’s Family
Strauss
Innovation
Salesprobability(%)

Multi-channel: Many roads can lead
to a purchase
An average of 87% of all online
customers also use other sales
channels operated by the evaluated
retailers. But we do not think this is
necessarily good news: We believe
that such high percentages of multi-
channel customers can be indicative
of the retailer’s lacking ability to
attract new, pure online customers.
Such online shops serve more as an
additional offer to existing customers.
With online’s share of the wallet
increasing in many categories, we
believe that it is not enough for multi-
channel retailers to defend their market
shares against Internet pure plays.
Established retailers should not be
satisfied if their online shops are just
there to serve their customer base.
Channel cannibalization is another
interesting phenomenon. Multi-
channel opponents claim that each
dollar (or euro) can only be spent
once, regardless of sales channel.
But our evaluation has shown that
for many multi-channel retailers,
frequent online shoppers often also
shop offline: For 11 out of the 25
evaluated retailers, at least 50% of
surveyed online shoppers said they
also shop offline at that respective
retailer.
Wrapping Up: Four Areas, One
Profile
Finally, we wanted to compare the 25
leading multi-channel retailers on
the basis of the four success areas:
attraction, conversion, advocacy and
multi-channel capabilities. We tried
to find a comprehensive formula
to compute an overall score and
ranking, but quickly realized that
such a one-dimensional comparison
would not have been appropriate
given the very diverse nature of the
competitive landscape.
We found that each organization
could be grouped into one of four
major strategic “profiles” (see page
147), each with a set of strengths
and weaknesses that represent their
strategic position in the
multi-channel marketplace.
Each profile has four success areas.
On each success area axis, we mark
the retailer’s relative score in the
respective area. The four coordinates
enclose a figure—the retailer’s
profile. Each leading multi-channel
retailer can be described with one
of these profiles:
Profile 1: Basic multi-channel
retailers. This profile includes
traditional brick and mortar
department stores, which have
typically made only small moves
into the multi-channel space. OBI
and Hagebau are DIY hardware
145
Multi-channel opponents claim that each dollar
(or euro) can only be spent once, regardless of
sales channel. But our evaluation has shown
that for many multi-channel retailers, frequent
online shoppers often also shop offline.
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(similar to Home Depot). Thalia is a
fairly traditional bookstore. All have
an online shop, but one that is not
sufficiently supported.
Few of these organizations have
a robust multi-channel strategy.
For example, GALERIA Kaufhof
launched a Hybris implementation
of their online store, but chose not
to support click-and-reserve to
pick up the ordered goods in the
store. These organizations need to
strategically determine the role of
their digital channels, and then act
on the strategy.
Low scores in attraction, conversion
and advocacy characterize this
profile. Only the multi-channel score
is average, leading to the conclusion
that these retailers mainly address
their existing customer base with
their online shop. We believe that
these retailers have yet to find out
how to adapt their business model to
the digital revolution.
Implication: The retailers have a
limited extension of the traditional
retail model online; the results are
lower customer experience scores
and poor conversion rates.
Profile 2: Demand fulfillers. In
this profile, relatively low-price
fashion retailers such as Bonprix
and OTTO have traditionally fought
it out. They target consumers who
desire something fashionable but not
expensive. Some are online only, such
as OTTO, while others are traditional
mail-order giants.
This profile received high scores in
attraction, conversion and multi-
channel, yet advocacy scores—
based on their lack of differentiated
product—tend to be lower. They need
to strengthen their relationships on
a social level, perhaps by becoming
more active on social platforms,
to connect more deeply with the
consumers. There is nothing special
about the offering—their products
tend to be commodities, and not
particularly distinctive.
These retailers satisfy their
customers through a broad
assortment of merchandise and
fair prices, but must find a way
to strengthen the emotional link
between themselves and their
customers to improve customer
loyalty. Two of the evaluated retailers
didn’t address this challenge
fast enough: Schlecker went out
of business in June 2012 and
Neckermann filed for bankruptcy.
Implication: Low advocacy companies
with an unfocused product selection
will struggle in a multi-channel
environment. The basic weaknesses
lie in the recommendation and
loyalty aspects. The opportunity for
ecommerce is in maximizing loyalty
and product recommendations for
their customers.
Profile 3: Fan clubs. Similar to
“passion brands,” these profiles tend
to deliver a differentiated shopping
and customer experience, and are
challenged in bringing that shopping
experience online—but they have to
do even more. They need to reach
146

not only people who like the brick
and mortar shopping experience,
but also people who don’t currently
shop online. We saw examples of
firms who struggled to bring their
experiences online. For example,
QVC has struggled to transport their
emotions from TV shopping into the
online world.
Top advocacy scores but only average
scores in attraction, conversion and
multi-channel categorize this profile.
The customer base is devoted to this
respective retailer, though they’re
often restricted in size. We believe
these online shops are often used
as digital display windows for the
brick and mortar channel. It’s not
surprising to find brands like H&M
and IKEA in this category.
Implication: High-loyalty retailers
need to find ways to extend their
customer base online, among other
things, through superior customer
experience.
Profile 4: Digital champions.
These firms have made considerable
investments in digital and online
elements. Attraction, conversion rate
and advocacy are strong, and the only
aspect that is not digital is multi-
channel usage. But they struggle—
relative to the other dimensions—in
the linking of other channels to
digital. These companies are
learning to compete with pure-play
electronic retailers. For example,
Conrad has competed effectively
with online pure-play electronic
retailers, but struggles in integrating
online and offline profiles.
Consistent high scores in attraction,
conversion and advocacy, but below
average scores in multi-channel,
characterize this profile. We don’t
interpret the comparatively low multi-
channel scores as a sign of weakness
because we believe that these
retailers have learned to compete
with the digital pure players in their
respective categories. Still, retailers
with this profile need to find ways to
motivate their customers to better
leverage the different existing sales
channels.
Implication: Outperformed by their
attraction, conversion and advocacy
scores, these organizations need
to invest more in multi-channel to
complete their offer to customers.
Conclusion
We evaluated 25 leading German
multi-channel retailers and evaluated
their performance across four
categories: attraction, conversion,
advocacy and multi-channel. We also
evaluated their customer experience
score on a scale from 0 to 1,000 and
mapped it to our own estimates of
conversion rates.
We also grouped these retailers into
four main groups, based on affinity
and in order to understand what
made each type of retailer effective.
What we found was that higher
quality online customer experiences
correlate to higher conversion rates.
We also identified four distinct
profiles, which reflect different
strategic modes of retailers.
147
“FAN CLUBS”
MULTICHANNEL-USAGE
ATTRACTION
SALESPROBABILITY
RECOMMENDATION
“BASIC MULTI-CHANNEL RETAILERS”
MULTICHANNEL-USAGE
ATTRACTION
SALESPROBABILITY
RECOMMENDATION
“DEMAND FULFILLERS”
MULTICHANNEL-USAGE
ATTRACTION
SALESPROBABILITY
RECOMMENDATION
“DIGITAL CHAMPIONS”
MULTICHANNEL-USAGE
ATTRACTION
SALESPROBABILITY
RECOMMENDATION
Ernsting’s Family
Douglas
H&M
IKEA
QVC
Rossmann
C&A
Euronics
GALERIA Kaufhof
Gortz
Hagebau
Karstadt
OBI
ProMarkt
s.Oliver
SportScheck
Strauss Innovation
Thalia
Zara
Bonprix
OTTO
Neckermann
Schlecker
Conrad Electronic
Weltbild
Source: OC&C/SapientNitro Online-Survey;
OC&C/SapientNitro-Analysis
Companies
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Top-scoring, high-performing
organizations such as OTTO and
Bonprix operate across all four
categories: attraction, conversion,
advocacy and multi-channel, and
offer an interesting path for slower-
moving retailers in other European or
international markets.
Methodology: “Customer experience” is
the sum of all experiences a consumer
gathers when he or she interacts with
a multi-channel retailer. Among other
things, we included the completeness of
payment and shipping options as well as
the availability of customer support over
phone or chat in our evaluation.
148
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Final Customer Experience Scores
Bonprix
C&A
ConradElectronic
Douglas
Ernsting’sFamily
Euronics
Gortz
H&M
Hagebau
IKEA
Karstadt
GALERIAKaufhof
Neckermann
OBI
OTTO
ProMarkt
QVC
Rossmann
s.Oliver
Schlecker
SportScheck
StraussInnovation
Thalia
Weltbild
Zara
Scoring Methodology:
The model evaluated the customer
experience in eight main categories:
Navigation
Main navigation
Filters and sorting
Search
Site map
Specific functions
Products
Text
Product details
Pictures and images
Cross-selling
Ordering
Consumer basket
Checkout
Shipment
Permissions
Payments
Merchandising
and Campaigns
Home page
Themes
Sales and specials
Newsletters
Social commerce
Miscellaneous marketing
Personalization
Closed loop
Activities
Loyalty program
Contact
Country information
Contact
FAQ
Layout and Design
Structure
Design
Creative expression
Emotion
Technical
Screen layout
Browser support
Load and wait time
20%
20%
15%
15%
10%
10%
5%
5%

THE CMO TOOLKIT:
WHAT EVERY MARKETER
SHOULD KNOW
Written by Gary Shannon, Group Account Director, London
& Omaid Hiwaizi, Planning Director, London
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Compared to a few years ago, a
CMO’s world doesn’t just look
different—it’s barely recognisable.
Commerce and communications
are coming together, data is driving
the multi-channel brand experience
and the opportunity for connected
experiences is growing. Marketers
must become more sophisticated
to be a driving force behind the
operations of a business and the
products it creates. The CMO is in
a better position than ever to take
a more central role in driving a
company’s revenue and success.
Marketing Has Changed
The once familiar linear path from
awareness to purchase to loyalty is a
thing of the past. It has evolved into a
multiple touchpoint journey. Potential
consumers can enter this ecosystem
at any point and take any route—from
selecting a product in a store and then
using a mobile device to price-check
and buy it, to learning about a product
and immediately purchasing it after
chatting with friends on Facebook.
It’s difficult to know how to create
and manage the huge range of
experiences required for these
multiple consumer touchpoints. It’s
also difficult to isolate and measure
the effect of an individual piece of
marketing. These changes present
two broad challenges to CMOs:
1. Complexity. With a growing number
of channels, consumer behaviour is
more fragmented. And processes,
organisational structures and required
skill sets are more complicated.
2. Rate of change. What is right today
is wrong tomorrow, making it difficult
to know which investment decisions
are future proof and which will be
redundant next year.
Underpinning this are some
fundamental shifts in the focus of
effective marketing. Communications
are changing from broadcast of
message to an always-on, two-
way approach. But even more
significant is the shift from creating
communications to creating
holistic experiences—a landscape
of experiences that encompass
communications, content, services
and products.
There’s a great comparison between
the evolution of marketing and the
entertainment business. Marketing
used to be like a Hollywood movie
production. It started with a pitch and
ended in an awards show, and this cycle
was repeated every 12 to 18 months.
“The changing marketing
lifecycle: what used to be
a monthly cycle is now a
daily one.”
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Today, it’s more like making a TV talk
show, starting with a show creation
and ending in ratings and viewer
mail—a process that is repeated daily.
THE HOLY TRINITY OF MARKETING
So how does this change the focus
of CMOs? In the past, CMOs had a
fairly singular focus; they knew what
marketing would look like from one
year to the next.
Today, we are seeing a requirement
for CMOs to maintain multiple
focuses. There are three keys silos
to consider separately and optimise
together. Let’s take a look at those
silos and some businesses and
brands that are doing it right.
Communications,
Experience and Commerce
Brands need to create consistency
of message and experience across
every touchpoint. Instead of creating
a story, marketers must create a
“storyscape” that allows people to
join the conversation at any point and
facilitates their engagement in any
direction they choose. When data is
endless and portable across channels
and platforms, the experiences and
actions taken at one touchpoint will
affect and change the experience at the
next. Not only will the brand recognise
a consumer, it will acknowledge his
part in changing that story.
Telling stories and creating connected
experiences in this way requires
distinct skills to come together.
Storytelling, experience design,
commerce, data and technology
need to work as one team.
Paddle Pop: Engagement
through entertainment
Ice cream is an impulse product that
competes with all snack foods, so
gaining loyalty is difficult. Paddle Pop
has developed a new entertainment
franchise built around the brand
mascot: Max, the Paddle Pop Lion.
At the core of the entertainment
package is an eight-episode film,
an online gaming portal, a TV show,
a movie road show and traditional
media support.
On Cartoon Network India, the Max
movie received higher ratings than
Harry Potter and an increase of
24.4% value growth in the Indian
market. Across Asian markets,
there was an increase of 14% in the
“Brand Consumed Most Often”
rating category.
Sneakerpedia: Collision of
community and commerce
Sneakerpedia, a global community
of “Sneakerheads” powered by Foot
Locker, provides an online meeting
place and drives offline connection.
It enables passionate Sneakerheads
to gain the social capital they thrive
on, generate insights for Foot
Locker and drive consideration and
retail sales: In the first year, 42%
of the Sneakerpedia community
151
Communications,
Experience
and Commerce
Products and
Services
Marketing
Technology
CMOs must maintain multiple areas of focus,
and optimise them together.
3
TREND

visited a retail store and 41% visited
an ecommerce website due to
Sneakerpedia, of which 39% bought from
Foot Locker.
Products and Services
Consumers have more and more
choice over what they see, hear,
read and experience. Brands have
to become useful or entertaining (or
both) and deliver real value to be an
important part of anyone’s life. This is
especially important if consumers are
expected to share their personal data
in a more meaningful way than just
entering a prize draw. And this is the
only way we can create storyscapes.
Brands that follow this principle to its
natural conclusion make marketing
that goes beyond content and
functionality and becomes part of the
core product. In effect, we are going
back to basic principles where the
marketer is creating products that sell
themselves to engaged audiences. The
principles of product development and
design are now skills no marketer can
do without.
Product development and marketing
need to work in parallel. This has a
massive effect on processes, skills
requirement, organisational shape and
budget allocation. More marketers
are trying to use marketing budgets
to fund innovation. Unfortunately, the
annual and quarterly marketing budget
planning cycle is often out of sync with
the development cycle of products and
operations, and ROI often has to be
measured over a much longer period
than marketing budgets can justify.
Vail Resorts: Digitising the mountains
The experience at the luxury ski
destination Vail Resorts is even
more exciting through the use of
RF-enabled technology to track runs,
reward points and produce league
tables. On-mountain photographers
capture special moments, and add
them to visitors’ digital profiles, so
they can re-live their day through
photos and stats, and share them with
friends. This is as much a part of the
service as building a new ski lift.
AutoTrader: Searching the way people
think
We developed a playful yet effective
method for searching for used cars
whilst on the go, a way of “searching
152

for a car the way you think about
a car”—effectively giving potential
customers the ability to buy a car
when they see one they like on the
street. The app leverages a phone’s
camera to capture an image of a car,
send this information to the DVLA
(Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency),
determine its make and model, then
process a search through Endeca for
matching cars in AutoTrader.
Marketing Technology
There are a plethora of brand
experiences that need to be delivered
across multiple channels and driven
by data. This can’t be done at scale
and with any consistency without
a digital marketing platform that
integrates with internal systems (e.g.,
CRM, supply chain) and third parties
(e.g., social platforms, retailers).
At a basic level, these are things
like infrastructure and security,
but also include analytics, content
management, asset management
and data management driving
multi-channel experience.
A digital marketing platform delivers
multiple benefits to the business,
not least of which is an enhanced
ability to measure the effectiveness
of marketing activity in real time. The
ability to set KPIs that are relevant to
the business (not just marketing) and
report on them accurately is what
allows CMOs to speak the language
of business.
Whether a digital marketing
platform is licensed or bespoke,
different organisations have different
requirements and the platform needs
to be configured accordingly.
Examples of different brand
scenarios that drive different platform
set-ups are:
1.Single identical global presence.
Identical messages, actions and
processes apply worldwide.
2.Globally identical presence
with localised content. Identical
messages, actions and processes
apply worldwide but local
differences such as currencies
and stock lists are needed.
3. Presence with common
experience, common components
and localised elements.
Consumers recognise the
brand but it does different things
in different places.
4.Presence with shared components,
different local experiences.
The same building blocks drive
different experiences.
5. Single geography, single brand
One that’s tailored to unique
requirements of brand, audience
and geography.
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Common principles that guide the
vast majority of marketing platforms
include, but are not limited to:
• Common views of data and CRM
across brands and territories
• Consistent process and security
at scale
• Creative and technical partners
to develop brand experiences
• Focus on customer experience
• Reduced cost and time to market
for each experience
• Reuse that saves time and money
and reduces technical risk
• Support of multiple experiences,
brands, geographies, languages
and devices
Football League Interactive:
90 websites produced and
governed from one platform
One platform hosts the websites
for 90 Football League clubs, all
with unique content across three
core templates. This includes pre-,
during- and post-match content,
second screen experiences during
live games and other unique content.
Aggregating the smaller pools of
traffic from multiple sites on a
single platform has enabled an ad
network of considerable scale and
monetisation opportunity.
Chrysler: Multiple brands,
experiences and partners
Chrysler’s powerful platform houses
multiple brands, experiences, regional
variations, time-based promotions
and the experience across the dealer
network. It also drives Uconnect, the
in-car media experience.
This has enabled Chrysler to expand
rapidly into new international
markets with high growth potential.
How to Deliver in a Converged World
Organising ideas—not big
ideas—define the approach to
brand experiences, product
development and technology.
An effective organising idea
bridges business vision and
brand ideas.
The CMO is uniquely placed
to deliver the organising
idea and therefore has the
opportunity to drive real
change at a business strategy
level, not just marketing strategy.
Traditionally, a CEO and CFO have set
the strategy that is then rolled
154
Communications,
Experience
& Commerce
Products &
Services
Process &
Technology
Organising
Idea
Corporate
Vision
Brand
Idea
Organising
Idea
An Organising Idea Enables
Convergent Thinking
An organising idea centers and defines three
key focus areas for CMOs, and (below) connects
the corporate vision with the brand idea.

out to marketing and IT through the
COO. The changes in the marketing
landscape allow the CMO to become
part of the team setting corporate
strategy, but to do so requires much
more operational and technology
knowledge than has ever been
required before.
Ladbrokes: Game On!
Looking at the drivers for gambling
shows a key opportunity in the space
of excitement. The Game On! ad
campaign is the organising idea that
now drives their approach to retail,
communications and the betting
experiences across all platforms—
and the technology platform that
delivers live odds in real time.
Conclusion
As we have shown, inspired CMOs in
innovative companies have embraced
the opportunities presented by the
convergence of commerce and
communications and data-driven,
multi-channel experiences. These
CMOs have taken a central role in
shaping not only the marketing of
their brands but also the strategy and
ultimate success of their businesses.
An effective CMO needs to do three
things to be successful in this
changing world:
1. Use organising ideas to align
multi-channel brand experiences,
data strategy, organisational change
and technology.
2. View marketing as part of the
company’s product—not just as
a way of talking about the products.
3. And finally, learn to embrace
operations and technology. Today’s
CMO is just as responsible for them
as for a television commercial or
print ad.
With thanks to: Dan Barnicle, Scott
Petry, Tony Terranova, Alyssa Altman,
Anil Garapati, Jillian Moore
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RETAIL GOES ROGUE:
HOW DIGITAL CONVERGENCE
WILL REVITALIZE THE
IN-STORE EXPERIENCE
Written by Charlie Sayers, Director, Atlanta
& Rob Milstead, Vice President, Atlanta

157
Before the big boom in online retail,
there was a place around the corner
we’d all visit to get the latest and
greatest products we’d heard and
read about. We called it a store.
Well, despite all the attention and
excitement around the meteoric
and seemingly limitless rise of
ecommerce, stores are poised to
make a comeback in a huge, digitally
convergent way.
The connected consumer’s push for
seamlessly integrated omnichannel
experiences is inspiring retailers to
go rogue by introducing new ways
to extend aisles, create adaptive
environments and deliver augmented
packaging experiences—all at the
point where digital and physical
converge.
It wasn’t that long ago when
an ecommerce site simply
complemented a retailer’s physical
store presence. Shoppers would
browse at their leisure, manually
compare prices and head out to the
store to examine the product and
make their purchase.
But as ecommerce technologies
advanced and new capabilities to
directly influence and control the
shopping experience emerged, brick-
and-mortar stores saw their role and
relevance shift from “the place to buy”
to “a stop along the purchase path.”
The rise of the smartphone and
ecommerce mobility further
compounded the challenge for
retailers. They began to watch a
new “see and search” approach to
shopping happen before their very
aisles—where showrooming and
test-and-buy-elsewhere became
the norm.
Shopping Habits Have Shifted
Shoppers no longer have to physically
visit a store for product information,
pricing or purchase. They can create
shopping lists on-the-fly, access
expert reviews and consumer reports
from any location, generate custom
price comparisons or snap a quick
product picture and share it with their
social community for collaborative
evaluation and opinion.
Today’s shopper has fully evolved
into an empowered “omnichanneler”
with the ability to access and combine
a wide variety of information—
from product-specific to socially
influenced—through any device,
anywhere, any time of the day
or night.
500%
400%
300%
200%
100%
0%
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Retail sales growth from 2000 to 2010 (Base: 2000)
Ecommerce
Total Retail
Excluding
Ecommerce
Source: Retail Indicators Branch, U.S. Census Bureau
While not at the same pace,
both online and in-store
sales are growing.
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Yet despite the continuing success
and growth of ecommerce,
mCommerce and social shopping,
the physical in-store retail experience
continues to command a significant
amount of a shopper’s interactive
attention. In fact, Forrester predicts
that brick-and-mortar stores will still
command more than 90% of all retail
purchases by 2016.
With an expected growth rate of
about 3% per year for the next four
years, this means that in-store
sales will expand by more than $88
billion in the U.S. alone—significantly
outpacing the $13 billion ecommerce
will generate.
Retailers Must Do More Than
Use Innovative Technology in
Traditional Ways
Responding to the demand and
growing success of ecommerce,
brick-and-mortar stores have begun
fighting to regain relevance by adding
technology-enhanced touches to their
physical footprints. They are replacing
print signage with traditional displays,
installing self-service checkout,
incorporating in-aisle price and coupon
scanning and introducing touchscreen
way-finding from everything from
kiosks to store windows.
The same underlying expectations
around access, convenience and
control remain the same whether
online or off. But the purpose and
relevant methods to achieve that
control are profoundly different.
But what works online doesn’t carry
the same level of relevant value to the
physical store where consumers expect
completely different experiences.
Most successful ecommerce
experiences enable shoppers to
gain greater control over acquiring a
product. In contrast, shoppers expect
an in-store experience that is more
interactive and relational.
These shoppers are crossing store
thresholds with a new and evolving
set of immersive technologies at their
disposal (and in their pockets). For
them, there is no store. There is no
online. There is no mobile. There is
only that short distance between the
things they want and all the tools and
technologies they use every day to
connect to them—with the blended
expectation for a greater level of
digitally enhanced immersion within
the physical space.
Retail’s Greatest Opportunity for
Growth Lies in Connected Retail
Just as ecommerce spurred the
evolution of a new type of shopping
2012 Retail Sales Distribution 2016 Retail Sales Distribution
(Projected)
93%
91%
%7 %9
Online
$16 Billion
In-store
$210 Billion
Online
$29 Billion
In-store
$298 Billion
SOURCE: Forrester Research Online Retail Forecast, 2012 to 2016 (US)
158

associate
experience, in-store retail is poised to
undergo the same level of disruptive
evolution—transforming itself into
something so different it requires a
new name: Connected Retail.
Connected Retail goes beyond
the introduction of cool in-store
technologies. It involves creating
fully integrated, digitally enhanced
experiences that engage the
customer at the intersection between
the virtual and physical worlds—
where breakthroughs in in-store
innovation will exploit its unique
advantages.
Building the Foundation for
Connected Retail
So, how do you approach getting to
the promised land of retail nirvana?
Certainly it’s obvious that retailers are
experimenting with lots of ideas. That
rapid iteration—built on ideas that are
tested, modified and retested—is a
strong one, but it’s very easy to end up
with lots of fragmented ideas without
the right infrastructure and business
processes to support the new way of
thinking about omnichannel.
Foundational investments in four
core areas can make the difference
in building a platform that can ideally
support how retail is evolving.
1. Integrate your ecommerce engine
and order management
What may have originally started
as just your website’s engine to
drive online transactions has now
fully evolved into being capable to
act as the hub of your connection
to your customers through order
management that can likely extend
beyond your existing POS. Supporting
sales-assisted remote checkout and
even self-checkout are more critical
than ever as customer expectations
are shifting.
• Environments that inspire, adapt,
curate and evolve in real time
• Associates who are brand experts,
equipped with mobile-based,
collaborative tools and access to
consumer and inventory information
• Products that do more than simply
sit on a shelf, but feature
augmented packaging and digitally
enhanced merchandising that can
be activated and viewed through
mobile devices
• Customers who are given free reign
to connect to virtual and in-store
data that can be mashed, customized
and socially shared while still
shopping in-store
A Connected Retail
Experience Must Take
Into Account Four
Required Aspects:
BEHAVAVA IORAL INSIGHTS
ENABLLIINNGG TTEECCHHNNOLOGY
environment
customer
product
In-store
experience
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2. Drive pricing and inventory
management consistency
Being able to present a single face to
the customer across your channels is
an important capability that has almost
become table-stakes in the mind of
the customer. She doesn’t think in
channels and it’s next to impossible to
try and guess her ever-changing needs
and expectations. She uses multiple
devices in multiple ways at home,
online and in-store and she needs
the same information in all of those
places. Ultimately, this is easier said
than done, but it’s important to plan
properly to drive towards enterprise-
level views of your inventory as well
as consistent pricing regardless
of channel.
3. Consolidate sources
for product information
Typically retailers find themselves
in a situation where multiple points
of entry for product data have arisen
either through vendor systems and
spreadsheets or simply through
operating at the place of business
and ending up supporting multiple
systems and processes. It’s easy to see
how this can spiral out of control with
product set-up, merchandising and
marketing across numerous channels.
Having slightly different systems
and tools to support store, online,
mobile assortments and others is all
too common. Developing a roadmap
towards consolidation is a critical step
that most brands never take.
4. Develop a single view
of your customer
As your customer engages with your
brand through numerous channels,
how do you capture their information?
Opt-ins in-store, online and mobile can
easily create redundant information.
In order to move to a world where the
customer’s data can improve how
we market, we’ll need accurate and
complete data.
Connected Retail Requires a Shift in
Both Perspective and Organization
Change can be challenging, but
Connected Retail offers huge
rewards to retailers. Success will
hinge on overcoming the following
obstacles—and taking full advantage
of in-store’s unique opportunities—to
better connect to an enterprise-wide
experience strategy.
Establish P&L ownership that
can be operationally shared, but
departmentally managed. Budgetary
ownership is typically divided between
multiple stakeholders, by channel
or by departmental divisions without
accurate sales allocation systems.
160

161
A core set of metrics needs to be
acquired, shared and maintained
so that everyone throughout the
organization is working from the
same pool of data.
Build consensus on win-win
approaches to track measurable return.
Demonstrating ROI across investment
costs that are shared across
multiple channels and managerial
stakeholders is complicated. There’s
no silver bullet solution. But by
leveraging the collective insights and
expertise of your current leadership
to define a consistent approach, a
manageable, efficient and profitable
system that supports the business
and the customer can be designed
and implemented.
Create a behaviorally aware customer
interaction and analysis system.
Designing and implementing
innovative in-store experiences in a
rapidly evolving world of traditional
retail, ecommerce, social, mobile and
other channels is a constant battle.
The same technologies you use to
connect customers to your in-store
experiences should feed your analytic
engine to enable rapid innovation at
the point of convergence.
Close gaps between
implementation partners.
Multiplication of highly specialized
in-store activation companies,
local advertising and in-store
merchandising partners without
a holistic view of a seamlessly
connected, omnichannel experience
creates inconsistencies in branding
and operational management.
If it affects the store, it affects
the customer.
Enterprise collaboration is
demanding so give it time.
Even if there is consensus for change
throughout the organization, the
change itself can be time-consuming
and difficult to govern. It will take
time and a mash-up of perspectives.
Your in-store retail team will have a
completely different set of logistical
challenges than those facing your
online retail team. Find the points of
consensus. Build bridges to connect
not only their experiences, but their
operational objectives as well.
Digital Is the Opportunity,
Not the Threat
Customers want everything.
They genuinely believe everything
they can do online can be done
in-store, whether that’s rich product
information, immediate access to an
entire, global inventory, comparative
pricing or social shopping.
But when they’re in the store, they
want even more. They want the
advantages of digitally enhanced
physical experiences—dynamic
environments, endless aisles,
personal service, augmented
packaging and displays, locally
In-store retail is poised to undergo a
disruptive evolution—transforming itself
into something so different it requires a
new name: Connected Retail.
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relevant selection and messaging
and an immersive environment
that is less task-based and more
of an event.
It’s not a matter of online versus
offline, ecommerce versus in-store.
Consumers have made the leap to
omnichannel. And that leap has a
place and evolved expectation for that
quaint store of old. Regardless of the
phenomenal growth of online and
mobile retail, stores are here to stay.
Retailers will need to push beyond
traditional in-store environmental
thinking and adopt a rogue mentality
to redefine—not simply enhance—what
meets and greets shoppers. What
happens in the store no longer stays
in the store—nor did it necessarily
begin there.
Connected Retail offers a unique and
powerful advantage to design and
deliver connecting in-store experiences
that will revitalize and redefine the
role of the store in the omnichannel
shopping behavior today, and well into
the future.

GLOBALIZATION
The final trend in the future of experience is the increasing globalization
of the marketing environment.
No longer are marketing assets, brands and messages restricted within
a single country’s borders. Information travels farther and faster today
than in the past.
To adapt to this world, marketers must rethink how they operate. Few
regions represent the magnitude of the challenge—and the opportunity—
as China.
In this section, we posit a new CMO mindset necessary to operate in
the new marketing environment. In addition, our authors focused on
ecommerce and the luxury consumer in Southeast Asia.
4
TREND

Chasing the Global Chinese
Luxury Consumer:
A Connectology Approach
175
International
Ecommerce
Expansion
190
Understanding
Ecommerce in China
165
Future of Commerce:
Lifestyle Social Commerce
Goes Beyond Pinning
171
Five Challenges to
Tomorrow’s Global
Marketing Leaders
187
Glocalisation and the
Anthropology of Global
Marketing
181
OE
OE
OE

UNDERSTANDING
ECOMMERCE IN CHINA
Written by Robert Wang, Business Consulting Manager, Planning Department, China

China’s ecommerce industry has
continued to grow at a torrid pace,
reshaping traditional businesses
and changing the digital market
landscape. Prior to 2010, annual
growth of Chinese ecommerce was
higher than 100% for several years,
which lead to a 4.3% online penetration
rate in 2011, out of the total retail sales
of consumer goods. And, in 2014, it
is estimated that ecommerce in
China will reach the same 7 to 8%
penetration level as the U.S., France
and Germany.
But not only is China’s ecommerce
growing exponentially, it also employs
unique business strategies due to their
major ecommerce players, their B2C
growth and the way their consumers
shop and make purchases.
Who’s Playing?
In 2011, 76.8% of online retail sales were
consumer-to-consumer (compared
with roughly 20% in North America).1
Taobao Marketplace is by far the most
dominant, with a 90.4% share. With
more than 800 million product listings,
and over 500 million registered users
as of June 2012, Taobao Marketplace is
similar in some ways to eBay, although
the vast majority of products are new,
and sold at a fixed price.2
Much lower than global practice, the
remaining 23.2% of online retail sales
are business-to-consumer. Of this
23.2%, half is from Tmall (Tian Mao).
Next is 360buy with 17.2%. Mecox
Lane and Dangdang, the first two
China B2Cs that went public in the
U.S. stock market, only take 0.7% and
1.9% respectively.
Although B2C is growing faster than
C2C, Taobao is still estimated to
represent more than 60 to 70% of
all online retail sales through 2015.
Given the option between Taobao and
Tmall, most big brand owners choose
Tmall as their first ecommerce choice.
What’s Different?
Understanding Chinese ecommerce
is crucial in understanding how they
conduct business. There are four big
differences that distinguish Chinese
ecommerce from any other country:
1. More online-only retailers
In 2011, only 4 of the top 20 online
retailers had offline businesses in
China, which is just the opposite
of the U.S.; among the top 20 online
retailers in the U.S., only Amazon,
Newegg, Netflix and CDW don’t have
offline retail. In addition, few Chinese
retailers are providing online and offline
combined services, such as Zbird.com,
Shopin.net and Walmart.
2. Customer behavior:
Dominance of online chat
Most customers in China do their
online shopping during working hours
and most tend to use online chat to
solve pre- and post-sale problems,
only using call center services
when absolutely necessary. This
phenomenon is especially typical with
Taobao. In addition, most Chinese
like to open a new product page in a
different tab or window, meaning they
use the “go back” button much less
than their Western counterparts.
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GLOBALIZATION
In 2011, only 4 of the top 20 online
retailers had offline businesses in China.
1
Forrester Research, 2005
2
Alibaba Company Website. http://news.alibaba.com/specials/aboutalibaba/aligroup/index.html Accessed August 7, 2012

3. Different payment options
and checkout paths
Debit cards are the dominant payment
method in China. The credit system is
not mature enough and credit cards
are not yet widely used or accepted in
second- and third-tier cities. Cash on
delivery (COD) is widely used by most
B2C companies except Taobao.
Alipay, a payment processing
company, is dominating the online
payment business; PayPal has little
influence. But this online payment
process often leads to problems: In
China, the order is generated before
personal payment information is
supplied whereas, in the U.S., people
fill in the payment information before
submitting an order. The average
successful payment rate in China is
70 to 80%.
4. Mobile commerce
Mobile commerce is less developed
in China than in other commerce
counterparts. The few good practices
are not from foreign big brands, but
from local online players such as
Taobao, 360buy and VANCL. The
mobile apps for B2C are still mainly
for retail function. Some more
innovative functions like QR codes
and pricing comparisons were first
copied by 360buy.
Is B2C the Right Choice?
Since Taobao is dominating the online
shopping environment, independent
B2C websites are having trouble
staying afloat, partly because the
building phase of both front-end and
back-end systems are expensive,
requiring extensive customization.
The local solutions require a great
effort to integrate with the existing
systems, where language proficiency
and business understanding are huge
obstacles to overcome.
Consider Tmall.com. Formerly Taobao
Mall, Tmall was first introduced by
Taobao in April of 2008. It is a site for
B2C online retail and a platform for
local Chinese and international
businesses to sell quality goods to
consumers in China.
There is no doubt that most brands
are suitable for Tmall, but should
these retailers open flagship stores
on the site? Due to finance problems
in 2011, many retailers did just that,
since new customers were relatively
cheaper to capture in this space.
These retailers covered almost every
major category for online retail:
computers, electronics, apparel, baby
products and more. However, the
strategy was considered temporary
and many retailers provided a limited
inventory. For example, the Hong
Kong-based cosmetics retailer
Watsons, which has both retail and
private label brands, choose to sell
only the private label on Tmall.
Another obstacle for businesses has
been money and ROI. The Chinese
ecommerce market has been hot
since 2010, which has lead to huge
expenses in marketing and hiring. So
large investments and bad returns in
sales have left the independent B2C
retailer with a question mark. To
answer this question, businesses
must think about what a B2C can
provide that sites like Taobao can’t:
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Online to offline (O2O)
The store locator function is weak
in China, but physical stores can
enhance the customer user
experience, help sales and offer
stronger connections with customers.
In addition, offline opportunities are
huge in certain categories, like
furniture, where store experience
is very important.
Special supply chain
management (SCM)
For some categories like food,
logistical services are not always
professional in China, and Tmall can’t
satisfy that demand due to constraints.
However, some big retailers already
have in-house supply chain teams for
offline business, so expanding that
advantage online would be a unique
business opportunity.
Helping customer relationship
management (CRM)
O2O businesses can help improve
the CRM greatly, especially for the
retail industry where CRM is not yet
available (e.g., apparel). In addition,
ROI on CRM is excellent.
Digital marketing and branding
On Tmall, function and design
options are limited. However, with
an independent website you can
customize the marketing and branding
options. In addition, retail function is
not a must with an independent
B2C website.
The B2C Plan
If the former all point to yes, there
are four recommended phases
in order to open and sustain a
profitable, successful B2C:
Phase 1: Strategy
At the onset, it’s important to consider
the Tmall market size overview,
competitor analysis, Tmall strategy
and Tmall product and pricing strategy.
UNIQLO is a good example. Its products,
pricing and promotions are consistent
for online and offline channels. Very few
players have such discipline in China.
Prior to 2010, annual growth of Chinese
ecommerce was higher than 100% for
several years, which lead to a 4.3% online
penetration rate in 2011.
GLOBALIZATION

169
Phase 2: Building
Once the strategy is sorted out, Tmall
retailers should select vendors (many
large brands choose to outsource
daily operations) and hire a team,
from customer service to operations
to marketing to warehouses. Next, the
shop can be designed and integrated
with systems like ERP, WMS or CRM to
manage and coordinate all resources.
In addition, thought must be given to
inventory planning, warehouse setup
and financial and legal planning
among other aspects.
Phase 3: Marketing
Tmall is famous for its discounts, so
marketing and promotions are critical
to success. Discounts are even more
important than marketing expenses,
which can be a problem for pricing
strategy. According to a top partner
of Taobao, the average ROI of market
expense is around 10 to 15% of
revenue. The refund rate of Tmall is
lower than the Western standard (the
average refund rate of apparel is less
than 10%), and accounts receivable is
longer, at an average of seven days.
Among all the marketing tools, CRM,
SEO and SEM have relatively better
ROI, while online display ads, TV
commercials and offline billboards
are not as worthwhile.
Phase 4: Daily operation
Once you’ve set up the foundation for
a B2C, these operations and decisions
should be top considerations as well:
• Manage your vendor(s) closely
• Decide if you want to support COD
• Choose a form of online payment
(e.g., Alipay, Tenpay, 99Bill)
• Establish brand awareness
with SNS tools
• Consider opening more stores
on other platforms
(e.g., 360buy.com, Amazon.cn)
• Consider opening more stores on
group-buying or flash-sale channels
The Warehouse and Delivery
Bottleneck in China
The logistics industry takes 18% of
China’s GDP, which is twice as high
as Western countries. For online
retail businesses, every order is
considered a parcel and can be
quite expensive, eating up a budget.
Average costs for a parcel are:
• 5-10 RMB: Normal, low-service
local courier
• 5-15 RMB: Warehouse cost
• 12-20 RMB: Good delivery partner
Even if you can control the expense
well, don’t expect too much on the
logistic service level. Most foreign
brands in Tmall perform around
industry average. Today, there are still
many issues with delivery services:
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• The damage and theft rate is much
higher than Western countries.
• The on-time rate of delivery is
around 80% for a normal courier.
• Only foreign logistic companies
like FedEx or UPS and local
company ShunFeng, can provide
solid service, but are much
more costly.
• For first- and second-tier cities,
punctuality is better (1–2 days).
In remote areas, 4–5 days
are required.
• Only state-owned company China
Post (EMS) can cover all rural
areas, but they have the
worst service.
• For some festivals, most third-
party logistic companies do not
work. And in promotion season
(e.g., Double 11), the orders
back up and it takes a week for
warehouse and delivery companies
to operate.
Government Policy and Tax Issues
It is illegal for foreign companies to
conduct retail online in China. Only
100% domestic companies can apply
for an ICP (Internet Content Provider)
license, which allows them to
operate an online retail business, and
common practice is to have at least
two companies: one for the license
and one for retail.
However, policies are changing. We
see some foreign brands conducting
retail online without a license, though
technically they are still illegal.
Unlike Amazon’s better tax treatment
in the U.S., B2C merchants in China
have many taxes similar to offline
retailers. Only C2C merchants can
avoid taxes. Invoice issues are quite
complicated in China as well. There
are no e-invoices and merchants
often don’t give an invoice to a
customer if not specifically asked.
Conclusion
Ecommerce in China is complex,
unlike any other country and
in a constant state of flux. But
understanding Chinese business
practices can improve your Chinese
ecommerce strategy—and even your
business strategy at home—immensely.
170

FUTURE OF COMMERCE:
LIFESTYLE SOCIAL COMMERCE
GOES BEYOND PINNING
Written by Jeff Blais, Creative Director, Multi-Channel User Experience, Singapore
& Sushobhan Mukherjee, Vice President, Strategy, APAC, Singapore
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Social commerce is commonly seen
as a loop from curation to inspiration
to shopping. A slew of properties
like Pinterest and Fancy, which help
consumers create inspirational
pinboards for action, seem to define
the territory.
We sought to redefine the arena,
creating a device-agnostic, cloud-based
proof of concept that upends current
beliefs and has disruptive potential in
how brands, retailers and consumers
create profitable connections.
Pinterest: Making Commerce Social
The juxtaposition of “social,”
“commerce” and “lifestyle” almost
immediately suggests Pinterest.
Crowned the fastest-growing
independent site in history by comScore
and touted as driving more online retail
traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit
and YouTube combined, Pinterest
dominates mindshare in the arena of
social commerce.
It is not difficult to see why Pinterest
does seem like the future of social
commerce, at least in the U.S. and
UK (the source of most of its early
adopters). With the site doing away with
invites, one expects its distribution of
users to quickly mimic the distribution
and penetration of the larger social
networks, Facebook and Twitter.
This brings us to Asia. The third and
fourth largest nations on Facebook are
India and Indonesia. The second and
third largest nations on Twitter are
India and Indonesia. And China, with
538 million people online, the largest
population on the net, doesn’t have
Facebook or Twitter. But, what they do
have is 388 million users who go online
from mobile and wireless devices.
When one looks around Asia, online
looks distinctly mobile. What does
social commerce mean in this
mobile world?
Understanding the Mobile Continent
Asia accounts for more than half of
the world’s mobile subscribers. That
means three out of four have a mobile
phone. Now, imagine almost two
billion people for whom the mobile
phone is the first phone, the first
computer and the first private space
they have had. And with smartphone
prices dropping below 100 USD, half
the phones are already smartphones
of some hue or the other. This
phenomenon of entire generations
of technologies being skipped is
described as leapfrogging.
For decades, Asia lagged the
developed world. Recovering from
the ravages of colonialism, multiple
military conflicts and fledgling
economies, most of Asia endured
slow economic growth. Japan drew
away first, quickly transforming
itself into the second most
powerful economy.
“No one knows for sure what social
commerce will be in the future, but
it’s starting to look a lot like Pinterest.”
–Tricia Duryee, Technology Writer for AllThingsD (The Wall Street Journal)
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172

Sometime in the 70s, the Asian tigers
of Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and
Korea broke out. Then it was the turn
of China, followed by India, Vietnam
and Indonesia.
This rapid economic development
coincided with the consumer adoption
of computers. Then, the Internet
exploded around the same time as the
telecommunications infrastructure
moved to mobility. Technology products
were embraced quickly by a population
that was young, hungry for aspirational
products and driven by a need to flaunt
their newfound prosperity through
status symbols. Leapfrogging was the
result. It still continues.
Interestingly, leapfrogging makes
consumers embrace innovation faster,
because they don’t need to unlearn.
The rapid adoption of SMS or MMS
in Asia was perhaps aided by not
having landlines or voicemail. Mobile
payments, for example, are aided by low
penetration of banking and credit cards,
and calalyzed by the inherent need to
repatriate cross-border earning—and,
of course, mobile phone penetration.
On Device Research found recently that
38% of Chinese Internet users were
mobile only. That number rises to about
60% in Indonesia. As these numbers
grow, it is increasingly apparent that the
future of digital is mobile.
Which begs the question: Just how
valuable are desktop, web-based ideas
for commerce?
STYLEBOOK: RE-IMAGINING
LIFESTYLE COMMERCE FOR THE
MOBILE-FIRST AGE
Insight
Mobile devices—whether phones,
tablets or the intriguing phablet
(phone+tablet)—are ubiquitous
companions. Consumers use them
to view and share content, create
content, socialize, compare, shop and
purchase.
Ubiquity enables consumers to
be spontaneous. Spontaneity lets
consumers seize the moment.
Inspiration exists everywhere and
strikes unexpectedly. A dress one
likes on another or a display in a shop
window or a set in a film—each can be
an inspiration to enhance oneself and
one’s life.
Ubiquity + Spontaneity + Inspiration =
A strong platform for ideation.
Ideation
Social commerce, currently, is all
about reacting to collections that
others have created. For example,
one creates a pinboard after
re-pinning images from other
pinboards, which were
discovered passively.
The new and novel idea is to
transform passive discovery into active
identification, by collecting whatever
inspires oneself. Inspiration lies in the
eye of the beholder. Capturing these
inspirations and enabling them to be
stored, shared and purchased is the
core of the promise.
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Social sharing happens after the
inspiration, both to affirm one’s choice
and include others.
Implementation
A working prototype for this mobile
social commerce experience has been
created using Netbiscuits technology,
which is the leading cloud platform for
the development and delivery of web
experiences for multiple screens and
operating systems.
Collect and capture. People use their
phones to capture things they like (e.g.,
the design of furniture, the styling of
a bar or the design of a showroom).
They might capture a bag or dress
they see on the street or capture a
page in a magazine of certain products
they want to buy or are interested in
looking up on the web. They “like”
products their friends have posted on
other social sites such as Pinterest or
Facebook. Given a multi-device world,
ability to aggregate across a spectrum
of sources is essential. All these
collected items are stored in the cloud,
so that they may be accessed from
anywhere.
Recognize and purchase. Image
recognition engines such as Google
Goggles are able to match products
in the cloud to merchants selling
them. At the same time, while the
cloud items shape a user profile,
merchants are able to push matching
items the user might like. At the end
of the process is the connection to
the merchant, and the mobile social
commerce experience allows the user
to buy the items online.
Stylebook connects people, and their
inspirations and styles, to retailers
and brands that created them in the
first place. What a consumer chooses
is a reflection of who he or she is,
and this makes it a powerful lifestyle
statement.
A working prototype can be seen at
sapientpoc.com/stylebook.
A Future Beyond Pinning?
This is a demonstration of a “lifestyle
social commerce” experience that
enables consumers to discover,
collect and purchase products
based on trends, lifestyles and social
connections.
It is built to help brands and retailers
participate in the multi-device,
multi-channel reality of consumers,
especially rapidly evolving mobile-first
consumers, as seen across Asia.
It does seem like the future. Until the
next innovative idea, that is.
GLOBALIZATION
174

CHASING THE GLOBAL
CHINESE LUXURY CONSUMER:
A CONNECTOLOGY APPROACH
Written by David Thorpe, Vice President, Strategy, Miami
& Jake Wheeler, Creative Director, Global Projects, Shanghai/Miami

In the throes of a persistent global
economic downturn, the Chinese
luxury consumer has proven extremely
resilient. In 2005, Ernst and Young
predicted China would spend more
than $11.5 billion on luxury goods by
2015. Last year, China spent more than
$15.6 billion. China’s “middle” class of
160 million people—currently 12% of
the population—is expected to surge
to 74% of the population by 2030, and
$15 billion could be pocket change in a
decade or so.
So what’s the problem? The belief
that China today would be to luxury
what Japan was in the 1980s and
1990s is one assumption Western
companies have made in their haste
to see China as the answer to slowing
markets back home. The speed of
China’s growth is impressive, but it’s
also a complication. In 2012, many
established luxury brands reported
declining sales, slowed growth or a
desire to pull out of mainland China.
These figures offer fog as much as
light; business is booming on the
mainland for niche brands such as
Roger Vivier and major brands are
enjoying uninterrupted success to
their global profits.1
It seems the appetite is growing but
the diet and location are changing.
A significant part of the Chinese
luxury market2
is not in mainland
China. This poses a novel challenge:
The traditional luxury model of
conspicuous consumption relies on
the relatively static socio-economic
progression of a culture. It’s not
geared to map a hyper-dynamic
“glocal” market or manage diversity
across aspirations, contexts,
expectations and evolving notions of
luxury. The field remains open for
those with an insightful strategy to
capture the ultimate prize in the luxury
game—the Chinese luxury consumer.
A Luxurious Problem
Since the 1980s, European artisans,
traditionally low-volume, high-margin
producers noted for timeless style,
quality and craftsmanship, used hi-
gloss branding to leverage their status
and introduce “diffusion” lines in the
shape of handbags, lipsticks and
perfumes as on-ramps to mass luxury
consumption. This “democratization of
luxury” was meteorically successful;
enormous fortunes were won and the
expectations of the consumer forever
changed. An array of innovation seeks
to address demand; traditional retail
seasons of spring, summer and winter
are now augmented with pre-season
lines. And today, even supermarkets
have lines with luxury branding and
higher pricing.
Success comes at a price as high
as an Alta Sutura De Morgan Isaac
“Fashion is an odd jumble of contradictions,
of sympathies and antipathies. It exists
only by its being participated among a
certain number of persons, and its essence
is destroyed by being communicated to
a greater number.”
–William Hazlitt, Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners (1818)
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1
Richemont expects its half-year profits to be up to 40% higher than last year, despite concerns a slowdown in Asia could
crimp its earnings. Prada said that in 6 months to July 31, sales rose 36.5%. Financial Times, August 7, 2012
2
According to the Hurun Wealth Report 2012, China’s millionaires continue to spend heavily despite slower growth in the broader economy.
GLOBALIZATION
176

gown: Democratization has created
a world where luxury is fast losing its
meaning. Traditional luxury brands
face competition with high-volume,
minuscule margin brands at one end
and high-margin, fashionized brands
at the other, not to mention the rising
ranks of newcomers including Chinese
luxury brands such as Shanghai Tang.
To contend with such fierce
competition, big holding companies
acquire forgotten names to
reinvigorate their pipeline and push
their lucrative ones to create new
heights of ultra-luxury (products
made largely inaccessible through
price and planned scarcity), which
sets the context for a mass market of
“affordable luxury” diffusion lines.
Upping the stakes is a well-trodden
path, but it avoids larger existential
questions: What is luxury in a market
of a billion people? What must luxury
do to meet the promise of China? Can
it meet the demands of the new global
market, its scale and diversity, with a
model born in the 1960s and 1990s?
Speed is not only confined to the
cycle of fashionized product lines.
Chinese consumer taste is evolving
fast; especially in larger, cosmopolitan
cities, the craving for highly
recognizable luxury products appears
to be shifting to niche and under-the-
radar products that will distinguish
their owners from the masses.
This doesn’t fit with notions about
collectivist cultures. Speed of growth
and dynamism pose an interesting
quandary for the traditional model
of spectacle and diffusion, further
complicated when a culture has an
ambiguous relationship to luxury itself:
Mao, Confucius and Louis Vuitton in
Tiananmen Square is a conversation
held in a strange gravity.
A Different Consumer
The typical Bentley owner in China
is a 30-something Internet-savvy
entrepreneur—hardly the image of
a Bentley owner to Westerners.3
Why Bentley over a Rolls-Royce? A
Rolls-Royce is too showy, too obviously
luxury for the Chinese sensibility,
where modesty is valued but held in
balance with face and respect.
Another feature of Chinese growth
to confound Western observers is
the “failure” of the middle class to
materialize in the way expected. While
relatively easy to bundle Chinese
consumers into a middle class socio-
economic group, they simply do not
exhibit the same aspirations and
shopping habits of the middle class
in the West; rather, the Chinese see
“middle” as a phase on the path to
riches. In order to accelerate that
journey, people will save for months
to purchase a luxury good, whose
symbolic power imbues social status
and garners respect. To do so, they’ll
trade down to discount brands
elsewhere. Feast and famine live
as bedmates.
Companies that position themselves
in the middle place themselves in
no-man’s land.4
When venerable
British retailer Marks & Spencer took
its middle message to China, the
market and target weren’t interested.
Ralph Lauren5
hit the same void and
is now buying back its licenses and
concentrating on select theater retail
177
3
http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/21/car-buyer-types-identity08-forbeslife-cx_jm_1121cars_slide_11.html?thisspeed=25000
4
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-16/for-u-dot-s-dot-brands-theres-no-middle-in-chinas-middle-class/
5
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/06/21/if-ralph-lauren-acts-like-coach-in-china-its-stock-will-take-off/
4
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in a concerted effort to reposition itself
as a premium brand in China.
Ways of Seeing
The West, like every culture, has a
problem: It assumes the way it sees
is the “right” way. A culture’s mode of
thinking forms the backbone of how
individuals relate to one another; it
informs how we reason and how we
construct meaning. But it also limits
the ability to see beyond context.
Western thought is geared to causality.
It rests on a belief that things can
exist in isolation and are subject to
governing rules; break something
down to its component parts and you
can find the truth. In stark contrast,
the Chinese view this type of thinking
as inviting extreme and mistaken
conclusions. Chinese thought sees any
event as embedded in a meaningful
whole in which all the elements are
constantly changing and rearranging
themselves.
This fundamental difference in
organizing concepts is apparent in our
cultural storytelling modes. Western
stories describe actions whereas
the Chinese equivalent describes
relationships between people.
When given a series of images, an
Asian child is more likely to group
relationally, pairing a cow with grass
because a cow eats grass. A Western
child tends to place the cow with a
chicken because they fit into the same
“taxonomical” category.6
Balancing
differences in the construction
of meaning is crucial when
“storyscaping” global brand narratives,
from the use of imagery and language
to choices in celebrity endorsement.
The relational nature of Chinese
society creates a paradox of tighter
collective binding but also a low-trust
environment, which explains the
importance of rituals and principles
like “guanxi” and “shai.”7
“Guanxi”
describes the basic dynamic in
personalized networks of influence.
It closes the distance of network ties
to reduce risk, a form of insurance in
a low-trust environment. In turn, the
principles of “guanxi” are bound by
face (“mianzi”) and reciprocity (“bao”),
subtle acknowledgements of the
power dynamic within the network.
Position in relation to others is loaded
with meaning, which explains why
some luxury brands become essential
utilities in belonging to the crowd
(e.g., Bentley).
A new phenomena emerging in
social networking sites is “shai”—
bragging about possessions is a
hyperbolic embrace of consumerism
and individualism, and it flies in
the face of traditional structures,
yet it also deeply mimics its rules.
According to the China Youth Daily,
most brag about “connections”
(65.4%), followed by “income” (64.7%)
and “consumption” (62.1%). Many
attribute the explosion of “shai” to
a decline in social morality. Hard
to ignore and harness, “shai” is the
double-edged sword of Chinese mass
exposure. The fantasy component
GLOBALIZATION
178
The West, like every culture, has a problem:
It assumes the way it sees is the “right” way.
6
Richard Nisbett, “The Geography of Thought”
7
Fei Xiaotong, “From the Soil”

of “shai” makes it tricky territory for
luxury brands that want to promote
timeless quality.
For luxury brands, understanding
the relational society offers insights
necessary to tread through the
contradictions. Luxury retailers
must remember that the exceptional
meaning of a luxury good cannot be
construed in and of itself; rather,
its value is created in terms of its
influence on and for a person in
respect to their network. It’s not
enough to say, “This car is the best,”
because of external criteria. In a
network society, the standard by
which something imparts prestige in
their inner and outer networks is the
dictum of value for a luxury product.
The engagement of a brand is not just
in producing spectacle but in adding
value to its context; the relationship it
has with place is vital.
Making It Work
For luxury brands, success begins and
ends with meaning. Resuscitating
luxury and sustaining its value
requires pushing a label’s meaning
beyond the label itself. Most often
this occurs as a service or status
to the buyer that has a deeper
resonance. To create resonance,
brand strategies must evolve to be
in service of their audience and the
relational context of that audience.
Take the organic farm at the
Fairmont Yangcheng Lake Hotel.
Having an on-premise organic farm
isn’t a harbinger of a local slow-food
movement in China like it might
be in the U.S. Rather, it cleverly
positions hotelier Fairmont as a
luxury experience. In a country where
food safety and food sourcing are
hot button topics, this kind of quality
assurance conveys meaning beyond
1,000 thread count sheets. Fairmont’s
strategy is a manifestation of a
broader shift to enhance its in situ
experience and seamlessly meld
place and space, the physical and the
digital into a unified value experience.
Evolution of Luxury
Marketing as Service
Despite talk for decades about
customer-centricity, brand marketing
hasn’t really caught up with oratory.
When perceived as a service, the
realm of marketing activities is
liberated from the constraints of
a bought channel world; it offers
take-with-you interactive utility. In
a networked society, the traditional
media cascade doesn’t have staying
power. A shift to service addresses
this deficit. There’s always a role
for what happens at home, but in a
digital world you have to be able to let
the value you created “there” pay off
“here”—and to know what’s working
requires connecting the two.
When you can buy anything from
the comfort of your own home, the
physical and personal experience
has to step up. Department stores
like Harrods blaze the trail on social,
local and mobile integration of their
institution into the cultural fabric of
the environment, and Barneys New
York has long integrated cultural
events into its store experience.
In China, TAG Heuer recently
launched an effort to better its
penetration and reputation with a
digital editorial approach. Employing
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a quarterly journal filled with high-
end content, and partially authored
by key opinion leaders, their strategy
aims to build trust within network
influencers while giving end readers
a native-language brand experience
with global themes and quality mixed
with local interests.
China’s low-trust environment
is iterated by a state-controlled
mediascape. Service addresses the
pervasive trust issue as does brand
editorial over pure advertising. It
took Net-a-Porter’s melding of
editorial perspectives with service
to successfully usher premium
fashion into ecommerce. Editorial’s
role is to provide a trusted shortcut
through the maze of choice. But
when editorial is melded into a
commerce vehicle, there must be
new assurances to ensure content
honors its allegiance to
the customer.
Connecting With the
Chinese Luxury Consumer
For all its vast potential and
opportunity, China is equally complex
and idiosyncratic. Perhaps fittingly,
to a Chinese perspective, there are
answers but there isn’t one answer.
An optimal solution for a brand is
where connected thinking drives
meaning, trust and service for the new
Chinese luxury consumer. A brand
must understand how its unique
service proposition plays out within
the mechanics of a relational society.
For the Chinese luxury consumer,
any meaningful solution should be
native-language, globally portable and
connected.
In the end, while messaging will take
many forms on many devices in many
languages, and while our target is
fast-moving, rapidly-evolving and
transnational, the plan to capture them
starts in a deceptively simple place—by
thinking more like the Chinese.
GLOBALIZATION
180

GLOCALISATION
AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY
OF GLOBAL MARKETING
Written by Megan Bannon, Cultural Anthropologist—Manager Experience Strategy, London
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

GLOBALIZATION
182
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A client asks you to employ a global
marketing campaign in China, Brazil
and the U.S. Oh, and they need it in
six weeks. What do you do?
It’s often a mixed reaction. The first
feeling is excitement, but a controlled
freak-out quickly follows. How do
you connect with people in multiple
countries on a real and relevant level
that will be successful? How do you
do this under such time constraints?
How many times have brands and
their agencies failed at this?
On a global scale, it’s not good
enough to simply have a great
product or campaign. Just because
it works in one region doesn’t mean
it will work in another. Success for
global brands comes when they
figure out how their product or
service culturally fits into peoples’
lives. In order to form authentic
connections and breakthrough
ideas, we have to have a deep
understanding of people. It takes a
truly anthropological approach.
As globalisation has continued to be
fueled by advancing technologies and
the opening of political boundaries,
marketers are forging into territories
they’ve never gone before. In some
senses the world is getting smaller,
but our jobs as marketers are getting
much, much larger. More and more,
our clients are global in nature, and,
increasingly, so is our work.
There are approximately 198
countries, roughly 6,500 languages
and countless cultures and sub-
cultures in the world. So how
as marketers do we cope with
globalisation? Not even the best
social scientists in the world have a
grasp on a fraction of these cultures,
so how are we expected to design
products and campaigns that are
globally consistent, yet locally
relevant?
While we can’t expect to become
experts in every market we operate
in, through a “glocalised” approach,
we can design successfully on a
global scale.
What Is Glocalisation?
The term “glocalisation” was first
coined in the 1990s by British
sociologist Roland Robertson
(following a long history of discussions
on global forces in the marketplace).
The term was fanatically discussed
in social science, economics and
business circles, both practicing and
academic. It disappeared from the
mainstream scene for a number of
years, and now the term’s relevance
seems to have made a resurgence in
the business world.
As the name suggests, glocalisation
is the act of taking something on a
global level and adapting it on a local
level. McDonald’s is often cited as
one of the most successful examples,
as they have created local formats
for their restaurants. While globally,
you can get the same Big Mac in
Shanghai that you get in New York,
locally, McDonald’s has
Glocalisation is the act of taking something
global and adapting it on a local level.

adjusted their menus and restaurant
layouts to meet the local tastes and
dietary needs in each of their
100-plus countries.
Conversely, we’ve seen brands like
Best Buy fail. Recently, they had to
close their UK operation because
their U.S. model just didn’t fit. It
seems they fell into the trap of
overlooking the major differences in
culture between the two markets.
So how do we make it work and
increase global success?
SapientNitro’s Research and Insights
department is often at the forefront
of experiencing and coping with the
challenges of working on a global
level. We are often the first to be
deployed to various corners of the
world, both physically and virtually,
to test the waters and report back on
the hearts and minds of people. Even
though we can, through technology,
be in the living rooms of people in
Brazil, China and the U.S. all within
the same day, the freedom and ability
that this has granted us does not
come without its challenges.
We are faced with complex issues
of linguistics, customs, symbols,
meanings, rites, rituals and laws.
The ultimate challenge is turning
research findings into successful
marketing campaigns on a global
scale.
So how do we cope with these
challenges, and make authentic
connections with people around
the globe? While anthropology is
at the heart of the approach, an
interdisciplinary team, distributed
across geographies, provides the
global perspective tempered with key
local expertise. It’s part methodology,
part tried-and-true experience and a
lot of detail management.
Making Global Work
One of the biggest challenges
of working globally is logistics.
Managing people, vendors,
translation, interpretation,
moderation resources, travel
and time zones can’t be
underestimated or undervalued.
To maintain your sanity:
1. Go native. Plan for time to
acclimate to new time zones and
contexts. Anthropologists spend one
to two years studying a particular
culture. You will likely spend a few
days to a few weeks. Make sure you
build in time to acclimate to the
places you are travelling. It’s quite
a shock to the body and the mind to
skip ahead or back a number of time
zones. You will not do your best work
the moment you step off the plane.
Employ a key tenet of ethnography
and conduct participant observation.
There is a lot to be gained
contextually from experiencing
your surroundings. Don’t make the
business traveler mistake of only
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Go see where your product or service is
sold. Observe people. Get a sense for the
context and culture you will be designing for.

seeing the hotel and the inside of the
office. Go see where your product or
service is sold. Observe people. Get
a sense for the context and culture
you will be designing for.
2. Choose your gatekeepers wisely.
Consolidate the number of third-party
vendors you work with. The fewer
moving parts that need to be managed
the better. For research in particular,
a single vendor managing recruiting,
translation, moderation and facilities
is ideal. This will reduce the number
of dependencies and possible
mistakes that can be made.
Make sure you have fully qualified
partners—they are your gatekeepers
and can hold the keys to your success
or failure. Just because they are great
in one region does not mean that they
will be in another. Wherever possible
get references, and make sure they
have real experience in the region you
are working. Ask how they will ensure
and guarantee quality control.
3. Use locals as your seers. As you are
gathering data and insights in multiple
regions, you are going to want to
make the most of your time. Schedule
regular debriefs and rest that will allow
you to think about your conversations
and observations. Conduct debriefs
with a current local native. As you are
reporting your observations, they will
help guide your interpretations and call
out nuances that you perhaps didn’t
pick up on.
Go Virtual
The past few years have seen the rise
of virtual techniques for gathering
human insights across the globe. Often
called virtual ethnography, these tools
and vendors use a series of video
GLOBALIZATION

cameras combined with moderated
and un-moderated techniques to get
into the homes and hearts of people
around the world.
There can be some great time and
budget benefits to doing research
this way. It can often be ramped up
fairly quickly and it allows a dispersed
team to participate in the research
without having to travel. With some
platforms, you may get searchable
transcripts with accompanying
videos, which can be great for
analysis and client presentations.
However, it’s not without its
limitations. The cost for good
solutions on the market can be quite
high, and contextually, it can leave
something to be desired. While you
are talking to people who are sitting
in their living rooms, you are not
actually there with them.
One of the biggest challenges is
evolving the conversation. One of the
most powerful elements of contextual
research is being able to evolve the
discussions as we learn more and
begin to develop and test hypotheses.
When doing remote research, we don’t
have the time or ability to do this on
the spot because the scripts we use
are static and often translated once.
That’s not to say that virtual
techniques are not valuable. They
are—but they should be chosen
wisely and with the benefits and
drawbacks in mind.
Bringing It All Together
In the end, you are tasked with
creating something that is glocal—
globally consistent and locally
relevant. You have reams of data
gathered locally to analyse and
turn into a global view. How do you
identify those global truths and local
nuances?
1. Maintain cultural relevance.
Simple translation of data from a
foreign language to English is not
enough. Often, straight translations
lack context, and much can get lost.
It’s important that what is gathered
is not just translated, but interpreted.
This means making sure that
information is not just linguistically
translated, but also culturally
translated, which needs to be done
by someone who has local context.
2. Keep the tribe together. Once
you are finished doing fieldwork,
it’s essential to bring everything
together—and this means bringing
all of the team members together.
Each person holds different pieces
of context and perspectives that are
going to be key inputs into determining
the right glocal approach.
185
4
TREND
One of the biggest challenges [of remote
ethnography] is evolving discussions as we
learn more and begin to develop and test
hypotheses. This is much more difficult
remotely than in person.

186
Typically, we spend at least a
week debriefing all of our sessions
and getting the data back out of
our heads. This is best done in a
war room—a room dedicated to
immersing the team in the worlds
and people being studied. It often
starts in pure chaos, as individual
pieces of data get unloaded from our
brains and notes. Over the course of
the week, this data becomes more
organised, until finally we walk away
with key insights that will help us
make design decisions.
3. Include the native perspective
throughout the process. Whenever
possible, include the native perspective.
By working with people who are
from—and live in—the markets we
are studying, we can cross-check
our analysis and make sure that our
interpretations truly resonate from the
native perspective. This will also help
avoid major marketing gaffs such as
linguistic or cultural no-nos.
The native perspective can be
found through global colleagues,
moderators and consultants in
the local market, or research
participants. As things progress from
idea to product, continually check in
with these natives to make sure that
products and campaigns are still
culturally relevant.
Global marketing is not an easy
feat. While borders are seemingly
disappearing, the need for local
relevance is not. Through an
anthropological approach that is
carefully guided, we can understand
how products and services can be
both globally consistent and locally
relevant. This is a step that agencies
and brands alike cannot afford to skip
in their global expeditions.

5 Challenges to
Tomorrow’s Global
Marketing Leaders
Written by Hilding Anderson,
Sr. Manager Research + Insights, Washington, DC
& Freddie Laker, VP Global Marketing, Miami

CMOs are struggling to adapt to a
world that has fundamentally changed
over the course of their careers.
Disruptive digital technologies and
the new expectations of the global
consumer are forcing global firms to
adjust and innovate.
SapientNitro has made a significant
effort to understand how these
changes are impacting large global
organizations. What we found was
surprising: Just 15% of senior
marketers feel prepared to deal
with the rapidly changing consumer,
and just 8% believe agencies are
succeeding in their support of
global brands.
Our CMO Global Marketing Readiness
Study, a 6-month research study of
114 CMO-level marketers, identified 5
significant challenges that should act
as a wake-up call to global marketers:
1. Disruptive technologies
The proliferation of new
technologies—from social media
and mobile apps to in-store digital
experiences and mobile payments—
represents a set of obstacles
for which senior marketers are
ill-prepared. Just 20% consider
themselves “very knowledgeable”
about technology, yet by 2017
these CMOs will purchase more
technology than their CIOs,
according to Gartner. The scale
of these investments must be at a
global level within the organization,
yet be mindful of local market
requirements. The challenge points
to a need for a technology-savvy
global CMO with a sensitivity for
local-global relationships and the
flexibility to adapt to and
embrace disruptive technologies
and social media-driven,
personalized marketing.
2. Globally connected consumers
A new class of consumers, adept
with and empowered by affordable
ubiquitous technology, has changed
the marketing rules. Our research
shows that 82% of senior marketers
feel that interconnected consumers
have broken down the barriers
between global and local marketing.
Global marketing’s core challenge
has been to deliver relevant messages
to the local market, but in an age
where assets designed for one
country are rapidly shared around the
world, the challenge is to give global
consumers a delicate balance of local,
regional and global campaigns—
simultaneously.
3. Localization revisited
Coping with the diversity of “global
consumers” who also have strong
regional subcultures is regarded
as a challenge by 75% of senior
marketers. A recent Millward Brown
study found that, of ads that tested
exceptionally well in one country, just
over 1 in 10 did equally well in another
country—raising real questions
about the cost efficiencies of cross-
border campaigns. Add to this the
growing tensions between local and
global roles and authority within the
organization—challenging for 82% of
senior marketers—and what becomes
clear is the need for organizational
design and digital platforms that allow
for a multi-channel, multi-disciplinary
mindset across the organization.
GLOBALIZATION
188
GLOBAL MARKETING IS MORE
IMPORTANT THAN 5 YEARS AGO
% of respondents who agreed
or strongly agreed
The importance of managing global campaigns
is greater than it was 5 years ago.
The interconnectedness of today’s consumer
is breaking down the barriers between global
and local marketing.
The core challenge for today’s global
marketer: Global marketing is recognized
as more important than 5 years ago, even
as global and local marketing distinctions
break down.
43% 45% 88%
50% 32% 82%
COMPANIES ARE STRUGGLING
TO ADAPT
% of respondents who strongly agreed
15%
Our global marketing organization is prepared
to deal with rapidly changing consumer trends
around digitalization and globalization.
Our marketing activities are fully integrated
and working together (e.g., digial activities are
in sync with traditional media campaigns).
To survive in the new marketing world,
marketers must be flexible. Yet a minority
of marketers feel prepared to deal with
integrating their marketing activities to reach
these consumers.
Source: SapientNitro Q2 2012 online survey to
114 senior marketers with global responsibilities
9%
4
TREND

4. Multi-channel misses
A full 37% of senior marketers don’t
believe that their marketing activities
are fully integrated across digital and
traditional channels. The opportunity
to grow revenues from multi-channel
consumers require investments in
digital experiences that are too large
for a single market, but which must
provide flexibility for localization. The
bottom line is that senior marketers
need to adopt the “global mindset”
that will let them displace strong
organizational silos, specialized
partners and a reliance on traditional
single-channel campaigns in order to
realize the benefits of cross-channel
experiences.
5. Organizational structures
Too often, the three executive
branches of CMO, CEO and CTO claim
an overlapping interest in the area of
digital experience, leading to a failure
to organize efficiently for the new
global marketing environment. Our
research shows that 56% of marketers
agree coordination between digital
and traditional marketing teams is
more challenging than five years
ago—silos and a lack of coordination
are getting worse just as the need for
collaboration is becoming greater.
These trends lead us to believe in the
rise of a new breed of marketer with
a global marketing mindset. This new
global CMO should build strategies
that cross silos and approaches and
combine the characteristics of a
traditional marketer with the skills
traditionally associated with a CTO—
and even with the recently created CXO
offices. A decade ago the ecommerce
or digital function would have reported
to the CIO, but today we’re seeing
about 50% report to the CMO—the
single largest bucket of C-level
oversight for digital.
Mastering this evolved global marketing
mindset could be what defines the most
successful brands of the next decade.
But having a global mindset isn’t just
for global brands; as businesses look to
export their success into other markets,
brands must increasingly defend
against new global competition.
Top performing firms and their agency
partners are already addressing the
obstacles and adopting the new global
mindset to successfully build their
brands with a worldwide audience.
Only the best-prepared organizations
and CMOs who embrace this mentality
will thrive.
189
SOCIAL MEDIA RISES TO BE A TOP CONCERN—GLOBALLY
Managing global campaigns in the new digital world was underlined as
a key challenge. In particular, social media and blending offline/online
experiences were key global marketing challenges.
66%
Q: What are the most important global
trends in marketing that will impact your
business in the next 3–5 years?
Explosion of social media
Growing importance of emerging markets
Blending of offline/online experiences
44%
#1
#2
41% #3
4
TREND
This article is an excerpt of the Global Marketing Series.
For more information and the full research findings, go to bit.ly/Q0RnB8

INTERNATIONAL
ECOMMERCE
EXPANSION
Written by Don Shields, Multi-Channel Strategy Director, London
ONLINE
EXCLUSIVE
CONTENT

Many retailers in both the USA and
UK are now realising that, with weak
economies at home, their only real
hope for substantial sales growth is
from international expansion. But,
this is not an easy path to tread; there
are many tales of failure to be found
next to the success stories. What can
we learn from these stories and what
do they tell us about international
expansion in the digital age?
International expansion, in the past,
would entail lengthy meetings to
plan strategy and investigate the best
markets for expansion, with multiple
studies done and endless hours
of plotting and planning. A recent
example being the much-planned
and strategised opening of Best Buy
stores in the UK, including years of
preparation and meticulous planning
with thousands of hours of new store
staff training. They opened beautiful
shops the size of small aircraft
hangars across the UK, along with
a brand new website. We look back
now as Best Buy leaves the shores of
the UK and retreats to the Americas
where it is also suffering a loss of
market share and sales. This is a very
cautionary tale. How does a company
so well known for customer service
and attention to detail end up having to
give up and go home?
Then we turn our gaze to a small
online clothing retailer, originally
named As Seen on Screen (ASOS).
This company has grown from
nothing to expected sales of £1
billion by 2015. They started selling
aggressively overseas two years ago,
and now have more sales overseas
than within the UK. In order to sell
overseas, ASOS simply worked with
their shipping partners and changed
their checkout to accept addresses
in other countries. As sales in a
country start to grow, they add
additional languages to the product
descriptions. How does such a young
company with only a website grow
and expand so quickly? What is their
secret?
These two examples represent two
dramatically different approaches to
expanding retail internationally. In
between these two extremes you find
other retail stories.
One of our largest clients, Marks
& Spencer, has reinvigorated their
international expansion efforts.
They have reentered France a
decade after their exit, with a new
shop on the Champs-Elysées and
a new website. This gives them the
advantages of a physical location for
PR and psychological use with press
and customers, but allows them to
deliver products to anyone in France
via the website. This strategy of
targeting shops in major cities with an
ecommerce website to cover demand
in the rest of the country is a very
interesting approach.
Clas Ohlson, a SapientNitro client in
Sweden, has recently launched their
UK website. They have expanded their
stores to 12 in major metropolitan
areas around the UK. They have also
adopted a strategy of placing stores
in strategic locations and allowing the
website to fulfill demand outside of
those areas. This approach will also
allow them to pursue more national
advertising. They were previously
191
4
TREND
I found five themes in common
amongst the successful expansions:
• Do and don’t overthink
• Invest wisely in your website
• Keep your early costs low
• Have the capacity to keep
customers happy
• Let the customers lead you
What do these
different stories say
about successful
expansion today?

constrained by the locations where
they had stores, but now they can fulfill
orders anywhere in the UK.
Clas Ohlson is not new to international
expansion, having shops and websites
in both Norway and Finland, but the UK
was a big jump, both geographically
and culturally. This jump is the only
website where product is picked,
packed and shipped from a warehouse
in the UK. They had to do this to
accommodate the demand for next-
day deliveries from UK customers.
They have partnered with a third-party
logistics provider (3PL) in a shared
warehouse facility to keep down costs
as the website builds in popularity.
Do and Don’t Overthink
The key lesson here is from both ASOS
and Marks & Spencer: When they
started their ecommerce international
expansion, it was by getting an
international shipping partner and
modifying checkout to accept foreign
addresses and credit cards. This does
not require three years of planning
and preparation. Reliable shipping
partners are available in the UK and
USA that can explain the complexities
of international custom laws and other
logistical hurdles. Multiple payment
gateways are available that cover
most major countries for credit card
transactions and offer fraud protection
services. A simple selection of
shipping partner and global payment
can be done with changes to checkout
on a website, and can be up and
running in less than four months. The
sooner you decide to act, the sooner
you can start collecting revenue from
international customers.
Invest Wisely in Your Website
This does not require a major IT
effort in most cases, though it may
well lead to a major IT effort after
the international revenue stream
has been proven. Marks & Spencer
choose to go with the Software as a
Service (SaaS) provider Demandware
to launch their French website.
Their current website is running
on the Amazon platform. They
were not ready to undergo a multi-
million pound re-platforming just
for the French website. The key
was less is more. The end goal of a
French website was not a glorious
technological achievement but
resulted in a French ecommerce site
that could ship products from existing
UK fulfillment centers.
Keep Your Early Costs Low
This is a recurring theme in all the
successful stories. The key is to
limit up-front investment until the
new international revenue stream is
proven. ASOS does not translate their
website into a native language until
sales from that country indicate a
strong interest in their products. They
currently only offer six languages and
three of those are different versions
GLOBALIZATION
192
“Bolland would not be drawn on further
European expansion plans but said the French
strategy of targeting a major city with stores
and covering the rest of the country with a
website could be replicated elsewhere.”
–guardian.co.uk, Friday, 1 April, 2011

of English (American, British and
Australian). They continue to grow
revenue and keep costs low.
Have the Capacity to Keep
Customers Happy
This is crucial as it is the flip side of
keeping costs low. You have to invest
enough so if the offer is a success,
you can meet the demand. Marks &
Spencer and ASOS deal with this the
same way—by having a giant pick,
pack and ship capacity for the UK that
also serves international customers.
This works well for clothing retailers
where parcel sizes are often small
and light. It is the heavier goods, like
tools, electronics and homewares
that present the real problems. Clas
Ohlson decided the best solution
was to share a warehouse and staff
with other UK retailers. They share
their warehouse with two other
retailers, allowing their 3PL partner
to be flexible in staffing and capacity
planning. This allows them to keep
their costs low, but have capacity to
meet significant peaks of demand.
Let the Customers Lead You
The best plans often fall apart in the heat
of trading. Therefore, the more flexible
you are, the easier it is to respond to your
customers and follow their lead. If you
have good contracts with your shipping
partners and good capacity in your
warehouse, when you get an additional
2,000 orders from Spain, you can satisfy
those customers, start increasing your
marketing budget for Spain and start
translating your website into Spanish.
Clas Ohlson will be using its UK website
to help plan their next store openings.
They are watching where people
are ordering from and what they are
ordering to help fine-tune their store
ranges.
Those retailers who successfully
expand their brand internationally are
seeing significant sales gains. In July
2012, The Financial Times reported
that, “Shares in ASOS rose more than
10 percent after the online fashion
group posted a solid increase in UK
sales, bucking the trend of dismal
trading figures from the British high
street. Although ASOS’s year-on-year
UK sales growth of 8 percent was the
smallest among its four divisions, the
figures cheered City investors who
have become accustomed to gloomy
news from retailers. ... The figures
were aided by stronger growth in US
sales, up 83 percent year-on-year to
£12.9m, while at ASOS’s rest of the
world division, which includes its Asian
and Australian operations, retail sales
rose 61 percent to £43.5m.”
The real key to today’s successful
international expansion is using the
flexibility of ecommerce to help lead
the expansion. It is these intrinsic
advantages to ecommerce that allow
the retailer to maintain cost, but
remain flexible enough to follow their
customers and deliver good quality
products and services.
193
4
TREND

SINGAPORE
208
INDIA
205
US
195 GERMANY
201
UK
198
RUSSIA
203
CHINA
213 AUSTRALIA
215
JAPAN
211
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
We asked our strategists across nine countries a set of six key questions to understand the global
marketing landscape. Touching on top creative campaigns, examples of great multi-channel
marketing and the role of social in their area, they revealed some of the best local work.
Importantly, they also revealed what they see as the key opportunities for marketers in the region.
From Southeast Asia to Europe, this is our perspective on how marketing continues to evolve.

QUESTION 1:
IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS, WHAT
WERE THE MOST CREATIVE,
DESIGN-DRIVEN CAMPAIGNS OF
NOTE IN YOUR REGION?
Something that stood out for us
this year because of its balance of
discovery with the delivery of content
and stunning imagery for a new
interface is the Katachi Magazine
for iPad. We highly recommend you
support the download and just dive in.
QUESTION 2:
IN THE NEXT 12 – 24 MONTHS,
WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE KEY
OPPORTUNITIES FOR MARKETERS
IN YOUR REGION?
Brands can challenge
and change pop culture
The global recession saw budget cuts
everywhere. Conversely, consumer
expectations from the entertainment
world have never been higher.
The symbiosis between brands
and entertainment has never
been more tantalizing.
We either love or hate the Heineken
and 007 tie up for the new movie in
the franchise. But it’s brave—it’s
brave for Heineken to pay 45 million
pounds for the placement, and it’s
brave for the producers to take on
the Bond mythology. We are living in
an era in which brave brands will be
rewarded.
Adjunct to this is an interesting
phenomenon that’s cropping up as
we move away from message and
towards behavior: Brands that put
their money where their mouth is.
On July 9th, the Old Spice Twitter
page mused, “Why is it that ‘fire
sauce’ isn’t made with any real fire?
Seems like false advertising,” to which
Taco Bell replied, “Is your deodorant
made with really old spices?”
The revenge of retail
We were equal parts compassionate
and baffled when Best Buy
freaked out at the phenomenon of
showrooming. Their fear was based on
a loss of control. And we can’t help but
feel that that way of thinking is old and
unsustainable.
Retailers need to take a page out of
the book of hotels. What hotels have
always been amazing at is designing
additional services—rooftop bars,
spas, entertainment and clubs—
US PERSPECTIVES
195
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
301.7B
Mobile Connections
338,000,000
107.9%
39.2%
$32.03B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Facebook 89.70%
2. YouTube 2.33%
3. Twitter 1.30%
Written by:
Justin Barkhuizen,
Strategist, New York
Gabe Weiss,
Digital Director, New York
Rob Murray, Senior Manager,
Research & Insights, New York
Source: eMarketer Digital World Atlas and Comparative Estimates (April 2012) provided all data except as noted. Data is for the full year 2011.
Mobile Connections defined as an active mobile device connected to a cellular network. (e.g., if you have a personal mobile and work cellular-enabled
tablet, you have two connections.)

196
that attract people from other
hotels. Retailers will need to honor
the sacred space that physical retail
is today through magical, intimate
and personalized experiences.
Pilot, pilot, pilot
For the most part, organizational
change needs to catch up to
technological change and
consumer expectations. And that
is an expensive thing to do, both in
hardware and comfort terms. Pilots
can drive organizational evolution
because of their discernable
parameters. In March, Square
quietly rolled out a 30 NYC cab pilot
program. Five months later, Square
announced a $25M collaboration
with Starbucks with significant
implications for the mobile payments
market. Roll one out.
QUESTION 3:
WHAT WOULD YOU HIGHLIGHT AS
THE BEST EXAMPLES OF MULTI-
CHANNEL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
IN YOUR REGION?
We love what J.Crew has done. In
2011, they were a brand with no
viable proposition either as a value
or as a premium brand, and that was
reflected in their sales. By getting
behind the taste makers (like men’s
stylist Jack O’Connor and his Jack
Knows Best style guide blog), they
matched consumer-driven design
language à la Pinterest in their
catalogues for resonance, placed
their wares within a lifestyle context
and opened a few bespoke retail
stores. Store sales are up 26% and
direct sales are up 19%.1
The other multi-channel marketing
campaign that has us surrounded
is the brand of Sarah Palin. She’s a
reality TV show star (the premiere
of which was TLC’s most watched
ever), an anchor on a news channel,
a savvy user of social media and an
author (her book sold 300,000 copies
in its first week). No doubt, a PS3
game is in the works. Love her or
hate her, you know her name and
her agenda.
QUESTION 4:
WHAT IS THE LATEST, HOTTEST
MOBILE APPLICATION OR MOBILE
PRODUCT IN YOUR REGION?
The apps we use every day have
gotten better, but mobile continues
to be the hotbed of innovation.
Many apps are in version 3.0+.
What is different are the upgrades.
While SXSW 2012 saw buzz around
a litany of local social discovery
networks from Sonar to Highlight
to Banjo, those apps lost their hype
pretty quickly with little adoption.
Excitement about new apps has
been replaced by excitement for the
latest upgrades. Recent upgrades
we love include:
Social: Twitter, Foursquare
News: Flipboard, Pulse
Music: Spotify, Shazam
Travel: TripIt, Flight+
Emerging app areas include second
screen apps (e.g., HBO GO, NBC
Olympics TV Everywhere), simple
gaming (e.g., Jungle Run, Where’s
My Water) and app discovery (e.g.,
Appsfire, Apps Gone Free).
QUESTION 5:
HOW HAS MOBILE CHANGED THE
WAY MARKETERS ENGAGE IN
COMMERCE? WHAT IS NEW AND
INNOVATIVE IN MOBILE
COMMERCE IN YOUR REGION?
Big box retailers are increasingly
using omnichannel tactics like
wishlists, rewards, social shopping,
coupon alerts, geo-fencing and image
recognition to leverage the shift
to mobile commerce. Connecting
tastes, networks, curation and mobile
commerce in fashion and style apps is
a rich area of innovation. We’ve seen
many retailers move to Pinterest,
but other startups to watch include
Trendabl, Pose, The Cools and Lyst.
Showrooming continues to be the
white elephant in the aisle. It’s
1
US
1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/business/media/j-crew-wants-to-reconnect-with-its-base.html?_r=1&ref=business

trending in a few retail sectors,
especially in certain areas like
books, games and electronics, but
the categories are expanding beyond
these three. Best Buy, Target,
Walmart, JCPenney and Stop &
Shop are all addressing these new
behaviors with strategies such as
a renewed focus on service that
consumers can only get in-store.
WalmartLabs’ “social genome”
project is an example of how retailers
are using data from Facebook and
other social sites in order to tailor
content to specific people based on
deep data analysis. Walmart calls it
a “deep semantic analysis of social
media.” We call it very interesting.
QUESTION 6:
HOW HAVE SOCIAL PLATFORMS
EVOLVED IN YOUR REGION? WHAT
DOES IT MEAN FOR BRANDS?
“Evolve” is indeed the operative word
when looking at social platforms in
2012. Facebook, Google+, Twitter,
LinkedIn and Foursquare continue
to mature and optimize their user
experiences and their monetization,
especially on their mobile apps as they
test various advertising approaches.
In 2012, we are witnessing a
Precambrian-like explosion of micro-
niche social platforms focused on
mobile. Each app or platform focuses
on one key social aspect to attract and
serve. For example, Pair and Duet
connect couples one-on-one, Viddy
and Cinemagram gives users a way to
share and customize videos and Path
is a closed-circle photo sharing and
geo-check-in tool.
Knowing that people are using
things like Pinterest to collect, save,
categorize and share products and
moments means that, at the very
least, brands need to think through
their photography strategy.
197
US PERSPECTIVES

198
QUESTION 1:
One creative, design-driven campaign
worth mentioning is the Invisible
Drive for the Mercedes-Benz F-Cell.
The F-Cell has zero emissions being,
in effect, almost invisible to the
environment. A spectacular piece
of creative technology was used
to demonstrate this key feature: A
camera and projection system that
made the car nearly invisible to
those on the street. As the ghost-
like vehicle drove by, the attention it
created was intense. It was featured
in both offline and online press,
blogged about and talked about the
world over.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
The ubiquity of smart mobile devices,
combined with the explosive growth
of tablets (primarily the iPad), is
impossible to ignore. There are
clearly opportunities for creating
engaging marketing experiences on
those platforms. It is remarkable to
think that five years ago, the iPhone
had just launched, Facebook had only
(!) 100 million primarily college users,
Twitter was a blip on the radar and
the iPad was still years away. The
new norm is a multiplicity of channels
like none we’ve ever seen.
Thus, the real opportunity for
marketers in the UK and Europe
(as with the rest of the world) is the
combination of these channels rather
than obsessing on any single one.
Marketing as a service, the blending
of channels in real time to create
new experiences and trans-media
storytelling are the most exciting and
value-rich campaigns or services we
can bring to life.
QUESTION 3:
IN YOUR REGION?
One great example of multi-channel
marketing in the UK is the I AM
PLAYR Nike campaign.
I AM PLAYR is a visceral campaign,
enabling football-loving teens to
live the lifestyle of a professional
footballer. Delivered primarily
through a microsite, I AM PLAYR
also leveraged a Facebook app,
UK PERSPECTIVES
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration1
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
109B
Mobile Connections
81,900,000
130.6%
51.3%
$7.72B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Facebook 48.20%
2. YouTube 25%
3. Twitter 2.30%
Written by:
Zachary Paradis,
Director Experience
Strategy, London
Omaid Hiwaizi,
Planning Director,
London
Dean Wilson,
Experience Strategy,
London
Zanna Wharfe,
Social Strategy,
London
Simon James,
EU Lead of Analytics,
London
1
Source: comScore 2012

print-based support in sports and
men’s magazines, digital advertising,
social media marketing and in-game
viral mechanics to provide a web of
engaging interactions. The campaign
introduced players to new products
in the Nike boot store as well as
the Nike Academy, two properties
that legitimize Nike’s relevance to
the target market and drive sales of
related products.
QUESTION 4:
There have been a myriad of
interesting mobile apps recently
released, but none are more
captivating or potentially widely
applicable than Chirp.
Chirp is an app and platform that
enables the sharing of links, photos
or other content, using sound. Why
sound? Chirp explains, “Because
sound is everywhere. Because there
are billions of little loudspeakers
on Earth: in radios, TVs, laptops,
phones. So everywhere there’s a
loudspeaker, you can put links to
useful or interesting or helpful stuff.
That’s why.”
Can marketing be delivered by the
sound of a bus engine driving past?
Could service be embedded into the
beeps of a doorbell or the squawk of
an ATM? Sound is powerful because
it can share information at a distance,
not necessarily when visible and in
a way that doesn’t require us to be
logged in or already “connected.”
Although not yet at critical mass, it’s
199
UK PERSPECTIVES

2
UK
pretty interesting to imagine a world
filled with data delivered through
sound. Chirp, built by a startup in
London, could help us get there.
QUESTION 5:
Mobile is forcing every marketer
to push service and commerce
capabilities directly to consumers,
wherever and whenever. Many of the
first wave of mobile “brand utilities,”
developed by marketers aligned with
advertising and communications,
were brand heavy and utility light.
Customers have overwhelmingly
responded negatively to these types
of solutions that are big on flash and
small on function.
Conversely, one UK brand that has
really nailed mobile commerce is
Ocado, the grocery and retail delivery
service. While their excellent website
is tuned to help customers minimize
time spent shopping, all the while
showing options for saving money
with alternatives, the brilliance of
Ocado’s experience really comes into
its own through mobile channels. The
Ocado on the Go app supports mobile
experiences across BlackBerry,
Windows Phone 7 and, of course, iOS.
The initial launch was successful
and each successive iteration of
their app has introduced additional
functionality to extend its value.
QUESTION 6:
We might say this year after year,
but 2013 will be a big year for
social. Given the high-profile IPOs
for Facebook and LinkedIn, and the
expensive acquisition by Facebook of
Instagram, social media is growing
up fast; it’s now more accountable to
investors and businesses than ever
before. This seems sensible given
social’s reach.
Over 73% of European Internet users
use at least one social network.
While social networks generally were
once the domains of the young, they
are now used across age groups.
For example, over a quarter of UK
Facebook users (nearly 10 million
people) are 45 or older.
News of social media’s influence
on the London riots in 2011 was
only partially true. There was
blame placed on social media for
contributing to and inciting violence,
but social media’s impact in the
community’s clean up effort was
notable too. Needless to say, brands
targeting Europe need to have a
clear social media strategy and a
willingness to embed it into their
business.
200

QUESTION 1:
CNN’s ECOSPHERE was a digital
ecosystem, a living 3D visualization
of the online global discussion, that
grew from tweets using the hashtag
#COP17. The design and mechanics
of the ECOSPHERE were closely
based on organic growth in the plant
world. Tweets that spoke about
similar things were grouped together
on each branch, while new thoughts
were planted as seeds. Topics
competed for space and survival in
the limited environment.
The ECOSPHERE showed the
audience the well-trodden climate
change theme from a fresh
perspective. It built fascination into
the story by giving the audience new
insights into the issues. By making
the public actively involved in the
global discussion, it drove interest
by making people’s opinions and
comments part of the story and part
of the conference.
The ECOSPHERE project brought
over 120,000 voices to the UN Climate
Change Conference in Durban
(COP17) and generated 6.7 million
non-CNN media contacts in just one
month. 20 million viewers followed
CNN’s COP17 coverage on TV. Today,
the ECOSPHERE continues to grow
(with the RIO+20 Earth Summit),
displaying over 226,000 tweets from
around the world.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
We all know that people love to play
games on their phones, especially
short games that are not too difficult
and offer a reward at the end. In
2012–2013, we’ll see an explosion
of engagement-focused content.
Retailers will deliver simple, brand-
focused games to their customers.
The customers will play those games
and receive a reward at the end—
perhaps an especially good coupon.
QUESTION 3:
WHAT WOULD YOU HIGHLIGHT
AS THE BEST EXAMPLES OF
MULTI-CHANNEL MARKETING
CAMPAIGNS IN YOUR REGION?
At the German Mail Order Business
Conference, Europe’s largest meeting
place for mail order business, direct
marketing and ecommerce, Sport
Chek won the multi-channel special
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration1
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
41.3B
Mobile Connections
110,300,000
135.4%
37.5%
$5.85B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Facebook 72.70%
2. StudiVZ sites 13.20%
3. Wer-Kennt-Wen.de 9.8%
GERMANY PERSPECTIVES
201
Written by:
Laura Van Soest,
Marketing Manager,
Munich
1
Source: comScore 2012

prize. Their campaign—”We do
sports. What are you doing?”—was
voted the best strategy of the year.
QUESTION 4:
Farming Simulator is the #1 paid app
in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
This app lets its users cultivate their
fields with various vehicles and start
their own agricultural enterprises
by choosing seeds, plowing fields,
growing crops and selling the harvest.
Another popular mobile product is
Free Throws like Dirk Nowitzki from
ING-DiBa. ING-DiBa wanted to make
their young target group aware of
the effectiveness and simplicity
of direct banking during basketball
events across Germany.
Passers-by were able to control
a billboard with their smartphone
and throw virtual basketballs, with
simultaneous live interaction with
the web community. ING-DiBa was
able to demonstrate how easy and
efficient banking can be in a very
compelling way, and position itself as
an innovation leader. The campaign
attracted hundreds of enthusiastic
on-the-spot players. And, in turn,
their friends generated several
thousand “likes” to cheer them on.
QUESTION 5:
HOW HAS MOBILE CHANGED
THE WAY MARKETERS ENGAGE
IN COMMERCE? WHAT IS NEW
AND INNOVATIVE IN MOBILE
In 2012, all the top companies in
Germany adopted “digital assets”
for mobile. For example, big car
manufacturers have their key
marketing tool, the car configurator,
available on smartphones. And
almost all big retailers now have
a mobile shop. The willingness to
spend more money and time into
concepts for mobile is increasing.
The next step will be to connect the
digital added value with the physical
stationary shops via mobile by providing
specific relevant and contextual
information, localized campaigns
and integrated experiences.
QUESTION 6:
The enterprise market of social
collaboration, content and
communication tools has exploded
over the past 12 months; on-premise
or cloud versions of social media
tools can help balance openness with
acceptable risk.
Public social media sites are viewed
as only one part of an overall social
business strategy, used primarily as
sources for social sentiment signals,
vehicles for brand management
and external communication and
channels for customer management
and sales.
Millennials joining the workforce
are wired to use social and mobile
channels to bond, socialize and solve
problems. Organizations that lack
internal, governed social media and
computing channels may find their
younger employees using public
tools as a well-intentioned,
but risky, alternative.
Businesses large and small are
now making focused investments
in deploying social technology and
media into well-mapped social
networks for specific business
objectives across the enterprise
value chain.
202
3
GERMANY

Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
11.8B
Mobile Connections
185,900,000
134.0%
19%
$1.56B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Vkontakte 42M
2. Odnoklassniki 34M
3. Moi Mir Mail.ru 19M
RUSSIA PERSPECTIVES
QUESTION 1:
IKEA “Kitchen View”
A very simple and powerful idea
is enabled by the technology. A
consumer can explore design and
functionality of furniture sets online
from different perspectives, with the
eyes of a grandma, a kid, a dog or the
fish in the tank.
GM “Yes of Corsa”
This campaign achieved great sales
results by appealing to hipsters.
MegaFon 4G launch
One of the loudest product launches
by a tier 1 telecom operator.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
Due to slow growth of economics
and stagnant disposable income for
consumers, the competition in all
domains is getting stronger. The
marketers will be focusing on smart,
innovative solutions aiming to win
consumers’ attentions and wallet
shares. There will be a big demand
on technology-empowered ideas.
Digital signage, interactive in-store
solutions and location-based and
mobile marketing have a solid
potential.
QUESTION 3:
IN YOUR REGION?
Adidas All Originals Make Moves
incorporated numerous online videos
featuring top stars like Katy Perry
and footballer Lionel Messi. Social
media and traditional spots were
used to promote a new tag line of
“all original” for Adidas to support the
launch of their new ZX shoe line.
Red Quest
The story, centered around an
environmental catastrophe in Russia,
was created to invite customers
of MTS Russia, a mobile service
operator, to find the “Guardians” who
203
Written by:
Alex Astakhov,
Senior Strategic
Planner, Moscow
1
Source: Research & Markets, 2012

204
4
RUSSIA
hold the secret to save the earth
from ecological disaster. Points
earned during play could be
redeemed for prizes at the Red
Quest store.
QUESTION 4:
WhatsApp Messenger
This cross-platform smartphone
messenger uses push notifications
to instantly get messages to friends,
colleagues and family. A encrypted
replacement for SMS, it allows you
to privately exchange text, pictures,
audio notes and video messages
at no cost—even if they are sent
internationally.
Yandex.Taxi
Billing itself as “the quickest
way to get a taxi in Moscow,”
Yandex.Taxi follows in the paths
of other taxi apps in the U.S. and
Singapore by offering integration
with multiple taxi companies,
taxi tracking on GPS and up-to-
date taxi numbers for 300 cities
across Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and
Kazakhstan.
QUESTION 5:
Mobile has not made a significant
change for marketing or commercial
functions yet. The budgets allocated
to mobile marketing or very low.
However, there is a very strong
accelerating trend towards
mobile marketing in financial
and retail domains.
QUESTION 6:
Social platforms have a very solid
coverage of the Internet population.
For brands, this channel is a great
opportunity to build awareness
and meaningfully engage with
consumers using the variety of
technical opportunities available.

QUESTION 1:
Fox Crime
The launch of the Fox Crime Channel
on Indian TV was one of the most
creative, brand-driven, integrated
digital campaigns. The campaign
launched nationwide with three
30-second films. Outdoor, print and
online display ads were leveraged to
drive eager detectives to solve the
case on the Fox Crime website and
collaborate with other fans
on Facebook.
The game blended investigative
elements with clues hidden in
film, the Facebook brand page and
microsites linked to a particular
crime scene. For each clue
deciphered, players unlocked a part
of the mystery, which they could
share with friends on Facebook and
Twitter. The five winners were sent
on all-expense paid trips to the
Museum of Crime and Punishment
in Washington, DC.
So far, the microsite has received
330,000 views, over 180,000 unique
website visitors and 77,000 followers
on Twitter. The Facebook fan page
has grown by more than 400% from
19,000 to over 76,000 fans.
Why This Kolaveri Di
This social media campaign caught
the world’s attention and effortlessly
became India’s biggest meme.
It instantly went viral on social
networking sites because of its
“Tanglish” lyrics. Many people didn’t
realize it was a planned campaign and
organically shared it on their own.
In the first 4 days, the video had 4
million views, swelling to 19 million
views in 3 weeks. On Facebook, 6.5
million users have shared it, while 40
radio stations have played it across
the world. At last count, the video had
registered over 60 millions views on
YouTube and been downloaded by 2
million people on their mobile devices.
The Coolest Job
Having launched the Miller High Life
beer in India, and to publicize their
brand, Miller was looking for ”qualified
individuals” to promote the beer. The
lucky winner was paid 100,000 rupees
(€1,532 or $2,184) per month to travel
to different clubs in India to drink,
dance and promote the brand.
The competition generated a lot
of hype in India through a number
of strategies. For example, Miller
launched the competition but didn’t
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
9.9B
Mobile Connections
893,800,000
75.2%
8%
$0.35B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Facebook 50M
2. Twitter 15M
3. LinkedIn 15M
INDIA PERSPECTIVES
205
Written by:
Shubhradeep Guha,
Global Capability
Lead & Vice President,
Gurgaon

reveal the brand for over a month,
which created a lot of buzz. In
addition, a Facebook application was
created to test applicants’ social
credentials, increasing the number
of “likes.” And gamification was
added by getting users to complete
missions before they could advance
further into the competition.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
Integrated campaigns
While obvious, integrated campaigns
are a particular opportunity in the
Indian market because they are
still warming up to digital. After
juggling mainline and digital agencies
separately, clients and marketers
are fast realizing the importance of
working on large, integrated digital
platforms that can deliver consistent
brand messages.
Contextual and location-
based marketing
As more and more people are getting
digitally equipped while on the go,
there exists a huge opportunity
for brands to contextualize their
messaging based on the geography
and mind-state of the consumer.
QUESTION 3:
#Anything4Jetta
Anything4Jetta set a benchmark for
integrated brand campaigns. The
strategy of the campaign combined
innovations in both print and digital
advertising for maximum impact.
The involvement of followers on
Twitter prompted participation,
with the opportunity of winning the
ultimate prize—a Volkswagen Jetta.
Over the first 3 days, the campaign
recorded 54,000 tweets and the
website received over 100,000 views.
The @volkswagenindia account
also netted an incremental 4,000
followers, fostering a community for
future activities.
Tata Tea
In November 2011, the Soch Badlo
campaign for Tata Tea was launched
under the brand’s Jaago Re platform.
The nation was in turmoil, and there
was a lot of negative sentiment driven
by global and domestic factors. The
words “Soch Badlo” literally mean
“change of perspective.” Launched
with a series of TV ads, the campaign
instantly and successfully gained
traction on social media.
The digital campaign was built on the
premise that if we see perspective
in the form of a positive story, it will
lead to positivity. Today, the website
is a crowd-sourced aggregator of all
things positive, be it real-life unsung
heroes, music, art or books.
QUESTION 4:
WhatsApp, Dropbox, Facebook,
Twitter, Pulse, Burrp and Zomato
are some of the top mobile apps
and products in India currently.
QUESTION 5:
Mobile is growing in India with more
than 800 million subscribers, and
the advancement of smartphones
with 3G-enabled services is rapidly
expanding. With that, online retailers,
telecom service providers and banks
are providing users a platform
where they can make their payments
using their mobile devices. Mobile
payments are the next big thing.
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5
INDIA

This has opened the gates to mobile
advertising, mobile application
development and mobile commerce
in India. According to BuzzCity’s
latest report, India is the top-
performing mobile advertising
region in Asia. The growth in mobile
advertising globally is tremendous
with ads served on a year-on-year
growth of 139%. With respect to
some number crunching, more than
126 billion ads were served in 2011,
compared with 52 billion in 2010.
Key players and platforms include
Paymate (an SMS-based payment
service), Obopay (a U.S.-based mobile
payment service that entered the
Indian market last year) and ICICI
Bank (which recently introduced its
mobile banking application iMobile).
QUESTION 6:
Facebook
After the mass exodus from Orkut,
Facebook has become the Indian
youth’s favourite pastime. Facebook
has said its user base in India has
grown from 8 million in 2010 to 50
million now and most people access
the site through mobile phones,
prompting it to rethink its business
model. While for other countries it
was the desktop that was first used,
in India it’s the mobile phone.
From brand perspectives, Facebook
has evolved as a platform. “Like-
gating” is giving way to newer
forms of engagement and brands
have started to look for more
meaningful engagement from their
Facebook users.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is fast becoming a native digital
channel. Indians have seen tremendous
value in it and have gone on to become
the second largest country on LinkedIn
with 15 million users.
It also derives its value from trust and
attracts a much purposeful audience.
Interestingly, one of India’s popular
matrimony sites—bharatmatrimony.com
—tied up with LinkedIn to enhance its
credibility. Brands have a fabulous
opportunity to speak to the desired
and right set of consumers. The
ability to sharply segment and profile
the consumers makes it an excellent
platform for brands.
Twitter
Twitter is a breaking news channel
in India. Driven by celebrities and
Twitter demi-gods, it is fast assuming
its seriousness as a brand platform
with around 15 million users. Brands
have started to leverage the full
potential of Twitter by elevating it from
being just a conversational channel
to an immensely participative and
engaging channel for consumers.
Last year, India saw some successful
brand campaigns on Twitter including
SapientNitro’s #crickwit campaign
for Sprite.
INDIA PERSPECTIVES
207

208
SINGAPORE PERSPECTIVES
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration2
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce1
1.6B
Mobile Connections
7,755,200
149.5%
59%
$0.11B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Facebook 72.70%
2. Twitter 19.9
3. LinkedIn 13.5
Written by:
Jue Lu, Manager,
User Experience
Design, Singapore
Ekin Turker Ozer,
Senior Information
Architect, Singapore
QUESTION 1:
DESIGN-DRIVEN CAMPAIGNS
OF NOTE IN YOUR REGION?
OK Go
All Is Not Lost is an interactive
campaign (OK Go calls it a “Video
Dance Messenger”), presumably
to promote Google Chrome, which
uses spandex-clad dancers to send
a personalized message through an
interactive HTML5 interface.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
Key opportunities lie in social and
mobile commerce for marketers who
are able to understand them and
come up with innovative tools while
keeping an eye on local requirements
and demand. The reach—billions of
mobile subscribers—makes mobile
such a great channel for brands to
engage with consumers. Asia Pacific
will also have the most mPayment
users in the world.
Space Balloon
1
Sources: Yahoo!/Singapore Management University/PayPal
2
Source: Synovate, Pax Q4 2012-Q3 2011

209
SINGAPORE PERSPECTIVES
Backseat Driver
Mobile MedicSunny Sale
Connecting Lifelines
QUESTION 3:
Honda Internavi Connecting Lifelines
Through a 3G network, this navigation
system recommends routes based on
real-time traffic data collected from
other Internavi-equipped vehicles. By
color-coding roads based on acces-
sibility, Honda converts complex data
into an easy-to-read real-time map.
Emart Sunny Sale
The sundial QR code, which uses
sunlight and shadow, only works from
12 p.m. to 1 p.m. and gives users a
unique shopping experience.
ToyToyota’s Backseat Driver
This iPhone application lets kids enjoy
driving while safely buckled up in
the back seat. The ToyToyota website
states that the “Toy inside Toyota” is
“for the kids, and for the grownups,”
and we wouldn’t be surprised to see
some dads taking a backseat too.
Mobile Medic
An augmented reality mobile applica-
tion bringing “medically diagnosable
advertising to life” for the Australian
Defence Force.

210
6
SINGAPORE
QUESTION 4:
Today’s most popular apps are
gaming, photo and video editing
and IM apps.
Gothere.sg is an example of good
use of technology. This app lets
its users search places, browse
amenities and find directions for
bus, train, taxi or car anywhere in
Singapore. Directions are given with
estimated trip duration and fare.
QUESTION 5:
Mobile commerce is gaining traction
in the Asia Pacific region; forecasts
predict that the transaction value
for payments being settled over a
mobile device will reach $267 billion
in 2016. In some markets such as
Indonesia, users have leapfrogged
over ecommerce and gone straight
to mobile commerce. In-app and
service purchases enticed by content
providers and mobile apps are new
in mobile commerce in our region.
QUESTION 6:
Across the region, consumer
adoption of social platforms is
increasing (72.7% reach), and
in many cases driving Internet
adoption. While Facebook is the
dominant player in markets like
Singapore, local social platforms
dominate in others. Hundreds
of millions of people connect on
Facebook, LinkedIn, Cyworld, Mixi,
Qzone, Renren, Kaixin and other
localised equivalents.
Users are increasingly moving from
being just consumers of content
to actively sharing and, recently,
creating new content. For brands,
this means the opportunity to start
being a part of the conversation
that’s already going on about them.
Go There

Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
112.9B
Mobile Connections
121,800,000
95.6%
18%
$8.53B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach
1. Mixi 13.5M
2. Twitter 13.2
3. LinkedIn 5.3
JAPAN PERSPECTIVES
QUESTION 1:
Chivas 18 “Aroma of Tokyo”
Isobar Japan’s Chivas 18 “Aroma
of Tokyo” campaign stands out. It
melded augmented reality (AR) with
geo-locational smartphone apps in
order to show a younger drinking
audience in Japan (the legal drinking
age is 20) an authentic bar-going
experience—all in order to curb their
current habit of having lighter drinks
solely with their meals. This work
was developed in collaboration with
18 well-known bars across Tokyo
that served 18 different cocktails,
each celebrating the Chivas 18YO
brand. The AR browser Layar, Google
Maps and Foursquare were used to
guide customers to the bars using a
gamification approach.
Intel’s Museum of Me
This campaign allowed Facebook
users to “create and explore a visual
archive” of their social lives. It trans-
formed Facebook profile data into a
virtual hall of memories, including
galleries and imaginary crowds.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
While the Japanese mobile market
has long been far ahead of the rest of
world, it has been regulated, resulting
in a higher usage of feature phones.
But with smartphone penetration
going from 6% in 2011 to 20% in
2012 (according to Google), and
smartphones outselling feature
phones for the first time ever in
February 2012 (per comScore),
marketers will need to shift to this
more robust platform of delivery.
It’s well understood that a “keitai”
(cellphone) is not just another tool in
the device toolbox for the “Nihonjin”
(Japanese people). For many, a
mobile phone is the only personal
media that they have, since a work
computer is for work, and many
families share a home computer, due
to home size limitations. As a result,
the average Japanese person is highly
engaged and uses the phone to do
more things than any other country.
So beyond building useful or fun
applications, pre-conditioning from
years of making payments with
feature phones should allow for a
frictionless transition to smartphone
mCommerce and mobile payments
for businesses of all sizes. Also,
current ad spend to mobile time
spend is tipped so low that smart
marketers will begin to ensure
211
Written by:
R. Lance Garcia,
Associate Creative
Director, Miami

212
7
JAPAN
that spend in mobile advertising is
increased and think carefully on how
to add value for the world’s most
sophisticated mobile users, who are
notably enthusiastic about embracing
the latest gadgets and trends.
QUESTION 3:
The brand Lotte collaborated
with YouTube to promote the new
Fit’s gum. The dance competition
campaign used a great integration
of communication efforts with online
and offline tactics.
QUESTION 4:
NHN Japan Corporation’s
smartphone application LINE is
a global messaging service that’s
available in 230 countries. The
company has 35 million users
worldwide (16 million in Japan
alone) since its launch a year ago.
QUESTION 5:
Consumers will engage themselves
more with mobile applications on
smartphones, especially youth in
high schools and colleges. NHN,
the service provider of LINE,
recently announced that they have
developed the communication tool
“Stamp,” which enables online
users to communicate with cute
iconic characters. It has already sold
350 million Japanese Yen worth of
stamps within the first two months.
Mobile commerce is much older
in Japan than in the U.S.; it has
been many years since we had
native barcode readers and NFC
capabilities. And many things are
possible today like paying vending
machines and mobile banking.
QUESTION 6:
Social platforms are evolving and
spreading, and the number of users
on social platforms has increased.
This means that brands will need to
consider one-to-one communication
with users to reach them. SoftBank
is one company that’s doing well on
social platforms. They use Twitter
to support users’ questions or
solve problems.
Emergency services are also
considering using social networks in
disaster situations, with the National
Fire and Disaster Management
Agency recently assembling
representatives of Mixi, Twitter,
Yahoo! and NHN Japan, as well as
various government and emergency
groups to consider options. This
evolution is motivated in part by the
March earthquake and tsunami—and
the role in which Google’s Person
Finder played in recovering from
that disaster. These services could
introduce an additional role for social
media for consumers.

QUESTION 1:
Volkswagen’s People’s Car Project, a
campaign that tapped into the energy of
post-communist China, stands out to us.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
Mobile integration
Marketers in China already
understand the huge potential of
mobile marketing. More than 1
billion mobile subscribers and more
than 120 million smartphone users
are hard to ignore. Nevertheless,
marketers still view mobile as
an additional “screen” for their
campaigns. We believe that in
order to harvest the potential of
mobile, marketers need to realize
that the mobile phone is much
more than a screen; it is the key
connector between the physical and
digital realms of their product and
communication experiences.
Evolution from reporting
to optimization
Chinese marketers are already
collecting data about their campaign
and communication performance.
In order to make full use of their
own, as well as publicly available
third party data (e.g., Baidu keyword
searches, Taobao ecommerce
searches), they need to learn how to
optimize their communication based
on test results that verify hypotheses
generated based on this data.
Content marketing
Social media has been the key
marketing trend in China for more
than 2 years. Increasingly, brands
have learned that in addition to
creating products and marketing
messages, they need to create
useful or entertaining content that
represents and amplifies their brand
online. That learning process is still
painfully slow as marketers fear a loss
of control over the conversation and
fraudulent posts continue to poison
trust in the conversation online.
QUESTION 3:
The Nike Festival of Sports is a sports
festival that covers almost every
major sport in China (e.g., basketball,
football (soccer), badminton, table
tennis, running, golf, tennis).
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
182B
Mobile Connections
983,600,000
73.6%
19%
$8.1B
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Shares
1. Tencent Qzone 40%
2. Sina Weibo 26%
3. QQ 22%
CHINA PERSPECTIVES
213
Written by:
Kaki Law, Associate Creative
Director, UX, Shanghai
Florian Pihs, Senior Planning
Director, Strategy, Innovation
& Optimization, Shanghai
$ of eCommerce: iResearchChina Q2 2012; Online Advertising Spending: iResearchChina 2012
Top 3 Social Media Platforms: Reach estimated via JiaThis proxy, which measures number of “shares” as of 2011.

Gamification plays a very important
role throughout the campaign.
Participants are given tasks that could
take place at the event, in-store
and on social media platforms.
Points collected can be redeemed
online at Nike’s ecommerce
platform. Participants can also
meet superstars like LeBron James,
Amare Stoudemire, Kyrie Irving and
Paul Rodriguez.
QUESTION 4:
The latest mobile application is
MeYou. MeYou (which means “close
friends” in Chinese) is a path-like
application recently launched by
Sina Weibo to enhance its private
messaging feature. This move also
reveals Sina’s intention to enable
deeper relationships between
bloggers and their followers. In
terms of top mobile applications, we
would highlight WeChat, Sina Weibo
and Dianping.
The mobile payment category is also
expanding. There are 2 major
kinds of mobile payment products in
China: one from leading technology
companies and one from startups.
Alipay’s mobile payment service is
currently the most popular mobile
payment product in China. In
addition, there are a few Square-like
mobile payment applications. Unlike
Square from the U.S., which focuses
on allowing users to purchase at
the retail space, Lakala and Yeahka
focus on enabling users to make
payments to their personal bills.
Mobile phones themselves are also
very hot these days, particularly
those that are China-made. The most
popular brands are Xiaomi, OPPO
Finder and Meizu.
QUESTION 5:
COMMERCE? WHAT IS NEW
While the mobile market in China
is very innovative and robust, and
mobile commerce is growing rapidly
(Taobao, China’s ecommerce
behemoth, reached its annual mobile
commerce target in June 2012),
brands are slow to adapt. Most
brands are still grappling to find an
effective approach to ecommerce
and multi-channel marketing and
we’ve just started to see mobile
commerce on the horizon. We expect
mobile commerce to come into focus
in 2014 once brands have nailed down
their ecommerce strategies.
QUESTION 6:
It’s a critical time for social
platforms in the social ecommerce
category in China. Social platforms
like Tencent Qzone and Sina Weibo
have evolved in 3 major areas:
social commerce integration, VIP/
membership services and features,
and the launch of their real-name
verification system.
Among all these major moves,
social commerce integration is the
most important one to brands. For
example, on Sina Weibo, brands can
go beyond just building awareness:
They can actually place products on
their brand page with the Sina Weibo
Enterprise Solution. The actual
purchase can then take place either
on Tmall or on their own online
ecommerce platform. This kind of
integration closes the experience
gap between social platforms and a
brand’s website.
There are also newcomers in the
social commerce platform category
and they are going through a critical
time. Leading are two Pinterest-like
platforms: Mogujie and Meilishuo.
Mogujie has more than 3 million
registered users and fosters over
RMB 120 million for Taobao. And
Tencent may buy Meilishuo to get
into the game of social commerce.
214
8
CHINA

215
AUSTRALIA PERSPECTIVES
Written by:
Mark Krebs,
Strategy Planner,
Brisbane
Dan Wilson,
CRM Director,
Brisbane
QUESTION 1:
Our Brisbane office recently won a
Gold Lion at Cannes for Earphone
Bully, an anti-bullying interactive
experience for kids. The project was
awarded for its innovation in radio
(the team used 3D sound to literally
put bullies in your head), however, the
website itself uses powerful imagery
and simple design to bring the user
into the world of a bullying victim.
The screen intentionally transitions
to black to focus the listener on the
sound, while also subtly revealing his
or her own reflection.
QUESTION 2:
IN YOUR REGION?
There’s certainly great opportunity to
capture people researching products
online through great quality content.
In short, getting the right content
to the right person, in the right
place and at the right time. Content
marketing is a beast in its own right,
but there are plenty of examples of
brands doing it well.
It goes without saying that connecting
marketing communication and
experiences through data and
technology will be key over the next
12–24 months. So there’s a lot of
digital marketing and analysis and
technology opportunities presenting
themselves to marketers at the
moment. What is most important in
deciding which avenues to take is to
stay true to the brand.
QUESTION 3:
Commonwealth Bank has upped the
ante since last year, not just from
a multi-channel marketing point
of view, but from an overarching
customer experience point of view
as well. Some examples of their
work include the CommBank
Mobile Connections
Penetration
Smartphone
Penetration
Online Advertising
Spending
$ of eCommerce
32.2B
Mobile Connections
24,800,000
113.9%
40%
$2.66B
1. Facebook 7.612M
2. YouTube 5,778
3. QQ 4,395
Top 3 Social Media
Platforms by Reach

216
Kaching app and the overhaul
of their website experience.
From a pure multi-channel
campaign point of view, another
highlight would be Coca-Cola
Australia’s “Share a Coke”
campaign.
QUESTION 4:
Despite great mobile applications
like Kaching, it seems really basic
mobile app games like Draw
Something, Autodance and Face
Juggler have taken Australia by
storm, showing that Australians
are increasingly turning to their
mobile devices during moments
of boredom as well.
QUESTION 5:
The growing use of smartphones,
especially the iPhone in Australia,
is a key factor driving Internet
retailing. mCommerce is
increasingly becoming mainstream
for merchants and consumers.
PayPal Australia revealed it
processed mobile transactions to
the value of 42 million Australian
dollars in 2010.
Wesfarmers’ Coles brand and
Woolworths each developed
iPhone and Android applications
to assist shoppers in their
grocery buying experience in
2011. Woolworths’ app has been
the more successful of the two.
They have also branched out
into broader mobile experiences
creating a Tesco-like out-of-home
mobile shopping experience.
QUESTION 6:
The biggest platform evolution
was the introduction of Facebook’s
Timeline layout, a clear indication
of their intention to take a stronger
grasp on content (both consumer
and brand). What this means is
that users are spending more time
engaging with content on timelines,
and less on content streams
within Facebook tabs. Facebook is
increasingly connecting to other
social platforms and behaviours.
Brands will need to understand
not only the ways in which they can
use the channel to connect with
consumers, but also the “why.”
Why should consumers connect
with us, and what are the social
behaviours we want to create
as a brand? Of course, the more
Facebook spreads out and connects
functions within the social space,
the more opportunity there is for
niche platforms to focus on “just
one thing” and do it better, as seen
with the explosion of Pinterest this
year. Brand marketers will need to
keep an ear to the ground, and be
nimble and flexible enough to be
able to spot opportunities, for the
brand and business objectives.
9
AUSTRALIA

Each year, we sit down to face the difficult challenge of distilling SapientNitro’s thinking into
a single report—a daunting task given our 10,000 employees, spread across 35 global offices.
Yet, ultimately, it’s a rewarding one.
Last year, we focused on the evolution of mobile. This year, our focus is on the evolving
nature of experience. We believe that the nature of our experience with brands—be it retail,
financial services, travel and hospitality or the many others we serve—is in a period of
dynamic change. No longer are there strict divisions between the digital and physical worlds.
We see the key drivers of this change across the four major trends we chose this year—the
rise of the consumer who demands real-time control, the role of business infrastructure
in tracking and personalizing services, the blurring of lines across the online and offline
worlds, and the increasingly global nature of the marketing environment.
Some highlights from the report include “Responsive Design 101: Optimizing for Multiple
Screens,” in which Dan Israel and Mayur Gupta highlight the strengths and weaknesses
of a flexible design system. In “The ‘Big Data’ Era: Learning to Act in Real Time,” James
Buchanan identifies the balance that marketers must maintain to respond quickly yet
accurately to their data—even with partial information. And in “Storyscaping: Building
Worlds, Not Ads,” Gaston Legorburu notes how storytelling, which marketers have been
doing for generations, is changing.
We also made a substantial investment in research: We believe “In-Store Digital Retail: The
Quest for Omnichannel” makes a meaningful contribution to the current state of the in-store
experience. What we found was that in-store experiences—at least at the New York-based
store locations we visited—remain display oriented, and didn’t support user tasks and goals
in the shopping process, despite much posturing and discussion about how retail is evolving.
Regardless of the specific article, one theme comes across clearly—we live in a period of
intense change. New competitors are rising, even as traditional and slow-moving firms
struggle and weaken. Companies that are able to innovate their products and services—
and, ultimately, the experiences they offer—will be best equipped to survive.
We hope you enjoy Insights 2013, and make sure you visit sapient.com/insights for exclusive,
digital-only content you can’t find anywhere else.
Thank you for your interest and time,
Hilding and Lauren
NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
217

About SapientNitro
SapientNitroSM
, part of Sapient®
, is an integrated marketing and technology
services firm. We create and engineer highly relevant experiences that
accelerate business growth and fuel brand advocacy for our clients. By
combining multi-channel marketing, multi-channel commerce and the
technology that binds them, we influence customer behavior across the
spectrum of content, communication and commerce channels, resulting
in deeper, more meaningful relationships between customers and brands.
SapientNitro services global leaders such as Chrysler, Citi, The Coca-Cola
Company, Lufthansa, Target and Vodafone through our operations in North
America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Visit www.sapientnitro.com or follow us
on Twitter @sapientnitro.
For additional information:
Lauren Nguyen Cohen
Director, Marketing
lcohen@sapient.com
@ltnguyen
Hilding Anderson
Senior Manager, Research + Insights
handerson@sapient.com
@hildinganderson
For media inquiries:
David LaBar
Global Communications Director
dlabar@sapient.com
@dlabar
Design:
Chiny Chewning
Creative Director
Carol Montoto
Associate Creative Director
Emily Carroll
Designer
218

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