The Journey
It is paramount to understand a shopper’s life context, how they relate to a particular category and the ways they connect with that category and specific brands in order to deliver intuitive shopper marketing along the path to purchase. Out-of-store marketing should fit naturally into the way shoppers search, research and connect—delivering emotional resonance, simplifying the path and offering relevant information and content that is ultimately paid off in the store.

The Retail Experience
An intuitive retail environment meets the expectations a person has created in their everyday life, not just what they experience in the store. The environment builds on positive associations when a category or brand has them, and borrows from more high-involvement or high-emotion categories when it doesn’t. Stopping power is necessary to get noticed in-store, but shoppers often dismiss messaging and visual stimuli that are not relevant to them. Success in intuitive environments means delivering both recognizable relevance and unexpected difference to create disruption. Balancing these opposing forces requires making strategic and orchestrated choices. Clarity in in-store communications means going beyond simple. Ultimately, intuitive retail effectively distills a brand and brand message into a split-second communication so shoppers can instantly connect the dots of the messaging hierarchy.

Breaking Through the In-Store Clutter
Engaging shoppers through retail orchestration that communicates different elements of the brand proposition (on point-of-sale and displays) allows your brand to stand out in-store—from ten feet away to standing right in front of messaging.

Stop & Pull (Within Ten Feet). Capture the shopper’s attention, create split-second interest and initiate movement towards the shelf.

Enroll (Within Three Feet). Communicate a reason for shoppers to care and visualize the benefit.

Interact & Close (At Display). Encourage shopper/product interaction and aid in selection and purchase.

Fashion houses have been especially quick to jump on board the Instagram bandwagon, such as the Art of the Trench project from Burberry. The brand encouraged fans to don their trench coats and submit photos via Instagram, which were featured at artofthetrench.com alongside professional “trench coat portraits” by The Sartorialist’s Scott Schuman. Those promiscuous folks at Sartorialist also teamed up with Tiffany & Co. to encourage fashionable couples in New York and Paris to document their True Love In Pictures via Instagram, as shown in the image to the right. But to really pull the whole thing together, the pair offered a special Instagram photo filter that users could apply to their lovely images.

Instagram’s aforementioned Seamlessness also makes it an ideal platform for promotions and sweepstakes, as entering can involve little more than a photo and a quick tag. Levi’s is using the service to find new faces for their 2012 brand campaign by asking folks to tag images of themselves with #iamlevis. The early results seem to be attracting quite the spectrum of participants, ranging from American Apparel-y hipsters to shirtless muscle-bound jocks. Oh, and this guy. We hope he wins.

GE is similarly tapping Instagrammers to find a “social media photographer,” a position that would require the winner to take behind-the-scenes photos at GE’s jet engine facility for sharing on sites like Instagram and Tumblr. Entrants are tasked with bringing one of GE’s four foci to life (Moving, Curing, Powering and Building) and tagging their images with #GEInspiredMe. (You can see some of the selections below). Regardless of who wins the contest, we find it particularly interesting that a brand as complicated and amorphous as GE could use this promotion to clearly and simply communicate their core areas of expertise. Moreover, like the Levi’s campaign mentioned earlier, the brand is leveraging the Collective Curation of their fans to compile a large collection of compelling images of their products and processes. These assets can subsequently be used in all kinds of smart ways in the future, even if the respective marketers don’t know exactly what that’ll be just yet. But along the way, these Instagramming brands have already developed (pun intended) a deeper engagement with their most expressive consumers.

The photo-sharing app Instagram is perhaps the most intriguing example of a platform built for Collective Curation. (Actually, it’s also a damn fine tool for establishing your brand as a Guru, but we’ll get to that later.) The app is popular among users because of its simple photo filters and incredibly easy sharing functions, but also because it implements a Twitter-like tagging system that lets the images do the talking in these conversations. For instance, The Washington Post has asked readers to document the local impacts of the recession via Instagram by tagging their photos with the #econdebate tag (a couple are shown above). The collected images spark a multifaceted and compelling debate far more effectively than a vitriolic comment section ever would. (We’ve used a similar strategy on Upshot’s own homepage to showcase what’s inspiring us – look for the filmstrip at the bottom of the window.)

But the app isn’t just simple for users. An ideal example of Seamless Tech, Instagram’s flexible platform makes it easy for marketers to compile (and curate) photo galleries into their websites, Facebook pages, or other digital properties. For instance, the band The Vaccines managed to crowdsource a music video by asking attendees at their shows to tag their Instagram pictures with #vaccinesvideo. The band selected their favorite shots and incorporated them into the video shown below. And if an indie rock outfit can pull this off, just imagine what big-time brands like GE, Starbucks, and Levi’s could do. We’ll show you in part two of this post, coming tomorrow.

The invitation-only site has taken the creative world by storm. It’s given users access to a seemingly endless world of “pins” that can be saved on their own categorized pinboards and titled however they see fit. See a recipe on a blog that you want to make for dinner next weekend? Pin it to your “foodie” board. When you click on it later you’ll be taken back to the original recipe. Planning a wedding and trying to find the perfect bouquet inspiration? Do a search for flowers and pin photos of gorgeous bouquets to your little heart’s desire on your “tie the knot” board. See a quotation that makes you laugh, cry or think of a friend? Pin it!

Silbermann and his co-founders took the visual bookmarking to another level. Users may “follow” friends (and strangers), and comment on each other’s posts, much like on other social networking sites. Facebook users may also recognize the “like” button on Pinterest, while Twitterers can use their beloved hashtags in their pin captions. A recently updated iPhone app and brand-new mobile capabilities for other smartphones make for easy pinning on the go. In other words, the idea that inspiration is all around us has been “pinned” down, and you can quite literally take it with you wherever you go.

As Pinterest continues to grow, brands are taking note and jumping on the pinningwagon too. The popular home goods retailer West Elm uses the site to pin not only their own catalog of products, but other inspirational images as well. From there, followers can click on or repin images that link to the West Elm website where visitors can easily purchase. It’s that simple!

Go ahead. Request an invitation here. And start pinning!

But while Ariel was busy cleaning up a mess, Mr. Beam was dumping all sorts of colors into a plain white room. The clip below shows how their blank canvas was anything but limiting, even going so far as to seemingly manipulate the textures of the items in the room (perhaps most impressively when the couch “becomes” leather at the 0:34 mark). While this example is certainly visually appealing, it also speaks to projection mapping’s ability to overcome special limitations in finite environments. After all, this clip runs through as many rooms as you’d find displayed in some department stores, all within the confines of a modest space. Does this mean that future IKEAs could fit into a crammed storefront on Milwaukee Avenue? It’s possible.

Speaking of working within limitations, it’s no secret that projection mapping requires some incredibly precise alignment between the projected elements and the surfaces on which they interact. That explains why many of the more elaborate shows are stationary displays in a single location, never to hit the road. Well, apparently that era’s over. DJ Amon Tobin recently embarked on a tour in which he’s embedded in a gigantic wall of cubes, onto which an accompanying array of intricate projections swirl, explode, grind, and shatter in rhythm with the music. (See the behind the scenes clip below.) Holy crap, it’s definitely the future.

1. Temporary urbanism. It’s the new term for pop-up retail. We love pop-up retail. And we love its new moniker as well.

2. The new Crate & Barrel catalog. Just hit mailboxes this week, complete with a redesign. It’s visually and graphically appealing and has loads of editorial content.

3. 3D. I’ve avoided the reincarnation of 3D for awhile, thinking it would be seizure-inducing. But I have to admit, on games and movies it’s made for (versus added in post-effects), it’s pretty awesome.

4. Print’s finest hour. Brands are showcasing their finest print in all the huge fall magazine issues on stands now.

5. Jay-Z and Kayne West’s much anticipated collaboration album “Watch the Throne” was released on Monday. It launched on iTunes first (at-retail follows next week), a great example of how musicians are leading with embracing digital first and thinking brick-and-mortar second.

6. Target’s back-to-school ads. In a sea of back-to-school promotions, Target is running one of the few (if not the only) television spots that is not price-driven. Has a great emotional hook about school and teachers.

7. Craftsman Public Parks Rehab Project. It’s exciting to see one of our programs do so well and to see consumers truly engage with it. Self-servingly, it’s also nice to see someone else give it a shout-out, JeffBullas.com.

8. Paging System. Why is it making us happy? Because that’s how marketing runs at Upshot.

What’s making you happy this week?

Now since you’ve deduced my sensitivity to sharing my space with others, I want to point out that there are some great ways that surfaces and spaces can be affected to effect people in a positive way!

If you’ve ever been to Upshot, it won’t surprise you that we love a collaborative space. Lounge seating areas and walls that you can write, pin, magnet and project on fill our office. To my delight, it seemed like companies are really embracing this idea with new products which will undoubtedly improve your space and your mood.

If the Walls Could Talk

In Chalk.
People really like to see their name and/or leave an impression. A full wall of chalkboard paint is a great way to do it (and this was covered after day 1 of the event).
www.magnamagic.com

In Marker.
This is for the chalk-averse in the group. Who wants to lean against this wall in their black tee?

It’s the first I’ve seen of custom colored magnet glass surface. Scaled to just about any size (within their 72” x 144” panel max) with varied ways of installation. Writeable, magnetic and tempered—it’s basically unbreakable. Pretty much any color that suits your fancy. Imagine full walls of this in your office, retail or pop-up space. www.skydesign.com/glass/collection/vitracolor

In A Different Kind of Marker.
This one’s been out there winning awards since its debut in 2009 and is one of my favorites. Dry erase paint is so simple and such a great way to interact work in a space. www.mdcwall.com/tabrasa

Check out the bottom right picture. It’s an example of how dry erase paint came to life in one of our projects (Disney Vacation Club’s Doorway to Dream store) as a life-sized coloring book wall for kids.

More NeoCon insights to come—stay tuned for SPACE INVASION: Share Your Seat.

Crowdsourcing’s been an understandably controversial topic over the past few years, leading to heated debates about whether the wisdom of the crowd is superior or inferior to the input (and output) of professionals. While there’s evidence to support both poles of that debate, we happen to think that this dichotomy is a bit silly. Our only two choices are complete submission to the masses or holing up with experts and ignoring outside input? C’mon. Thankfully, the most innovative presenters at SXSWi have all dismissed this debate in their day-to-day operations. Instead, they’ve synthesized the knowledge of experts and the insights of the crowd in order to generate truly useful innovations. From Twitter to Gowalla to foursquare, we kept hearing a common refrain: these services’ most popular features were the product of detailed-oriented professionals gaining a deep understanding of how their audiences were interacting with the products they’d created. Sometimes these insights came from enabling their users with significant (but not unlimited) power, and trusting them to fill in the gaps in the service. Other times, users would push against (or completely circumvent) the limits of the systems, so the creators learned to restructure the rules to accommodate these behaviors. Let’s see what each of these approaches look like in practice.

One great example of empowering the crowd came from a less-expected source at SXSW: General Mills. Their head of Social Engagement explained how the brand created a variety of tools that encourage and enable content creators. For example, General Mills’ created the opt-in network My Blog Spark to provide bloggers with exclusive content that they could use in their posts, ultimately making their blogs more compelling for readers. (The topics range from food to home electronics to auto care, showing that this is far more than a site that just shills for General Mills’ products). But perhaps no one empowered the crowd as much as foursquare, considering that the service currently offers over 250,000 places to check-in… and the company doesn’t have an outside sales team. In other words, each place in this database was crowdsourced, with relevant data provided either by eager foursquare users or the venue owners themselves. That sounds impressive to us, but CEO Dennis Crowley’s not going to be content until that number hits the 5 million range. Aim high, right? But, you don’t get a twenty-fold increase by sitting back and hoping the crowd picks up the slack. Crowley and friends are unveiling a dashboard of tools for participating merchants that provide them with unprecedented data on their customers: who shows up most often, who’s most responsive to deals, who always shows up with friends, and who don’t come around here no more. By empowering their most important participants, foursquare gives the crowd an irresistible tool in exchange for growing the service’s database of places and specials.

On the other hand, sometimes the crowd is wisest when it’s breaking the rules. In a fascinating panel called “Stop Listening to Your Customers,” Mark Trammel spoke about his experience as a design researcher in coming up with the new Twitter site. As suggested by the panel’s name, he’s not a big fan of surveying his users (because people tend to give unintentionally misleading answers), preferring instead to observe users’ natural behavior in context. We might not think of this as crowdsourcing in the traditional sense, but it’s clear that Twitter’s (successful) new layout was very much the product of observing the crowd’s use of the site, rather than having experts in a room brainstorming about ideal features. (Trammel also threw out a number of gems about effective behavioral testing; our favorite was “Sprint to a functional prototype, test over and over, then iterate.” In other words, it’s fine if the setup is ugly – and Twitter’s testing setup most certainly was – as long as you’re testing users’ behavioral responses to a service’s core elements.) Gowalla’s designers found similar successes by closely watching the way their users were interacting with their service. We might expect that users mostly check-in at bars and restaurants, but Gowalla observed that their users were regularly checking-in at less-expected sites such as landmarks, stadiums, airports, and amusement parks. In response, the site created beautifully-designed “stamps” for check-ins at venues in these categories, culminating in a series of customized stamps for the rides at Disney parks (shown below).

So, is crowdsourcing really the problem here? Or, the ultimate solution? No, and no. The crowd does indeed exude wisdom from time to time, but it often takes experts to recognize, unearth, and apply these smarts. Finding ways to extract the best elements from both sides of the continuum is your best bet for rich, actionable insights.

Stay tuned for Part 9 of our SXSWrapup!

Once marketers buy into Brand Patronage, there’s an understandable temptation to go after the biggest stars on the biggest stages. From a PR perspective, you’re pretty much guaranteed a big splash if you grab yourself a Lady Gaga or Black Eyed Pea (both will be making appearances in subsequent Brand Patronage coverage). But, remember that Brand Patronage isn’t just about half-assed testimonials from megastars; rather, it’s about forging partnerships where both the brand and the artist can flex their creative muscles in a collaborative effort. For this to work effectively, marketers must be careful about choosing artists (and a medium) that are the right fit for their brand.

That’d explain why you don’t see Macallan scotch working with, say, Katy Perry. In fact, the brand isn’t working with musicians at all. Rather, they’ve created a series called The Macallan Masters of Photography, which enlists some of the sharpest shooters in the field to tell the story of the Macallan production process. The latest installment features a project from Albert Watson, in which he is tasked with highlighting the Spanish sherry oak casks in which Macallan is aged. Fortunately, the brand didn’t add any other stipulations to the project; even Watson remarked, “The freedom and encouragement given to me allowed the creation of a visual journey demanding complete artistic integrity.” Watson settled on a story about a couple traveling from a Spanish forest to Scotland, and the end product (as seen in the video above) certainly evokes luxury, refinement, and distinction.

Of course, highlighting the wood is a pretty straightforward way of bringing the brand into the exhibition. But, there’s also more subtle branding being done through the choice of the medium. Photography is a slow process (in terms of setting up the shot), has a rich heritage, and focuses on minute details when it’s done right. These elements are certainly consistent with the brand attributes that Macallan is trying to cultivate, so their choice of both Watson and the medium of photography are appropriate for the brand. The campaign also supports amateur photographers with a contest, which encourages consumers to submit their own photos to be judged by Watson for a chance to win Nikon equipment. It’s a picture perfect extension to an already-compelling campaign.

But Macallan isn’t the only marketer peering through a viewfinder for inspiration. The Dali Museum, which recently opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, also turned to photography to promote (and help fund) the new attraction, although their campaign presents a stark contrast to the slow refinement of the Macallan project. For one, the Dali execution takes the traditional camera out of the mix, opting instead for a twist on the mega-popular Hipstamatic iPhone app. While the standard version of this app allows iPhone users to add all kinds of analog effects to their photos, the museum’s version (named the GoodPak – shown in the image below) expands these features to include elements of Dali-esque surrealism. They’ve also got their own user-submission contest, judged by – wait for it – John Waters. (C’mon, you know you chuckled at that.) While there are some other goodies included in the GoodPak, the most good comes from that fact that all proceeds from the Pak’s sales will go toward the museum. For more info on the app, head this way.

The Celeb Spotter from Ok Magazine is most definitely not one of those cases.

Yes, the iPhone app from this British tabloid taps their star-struck readers to crowdsource the real-time locations of Prince William or Posh Spice or whatever. If you catch a tabloid-topping celeb sipping tea in Chelsea (note: I clearly have no idea what celebrities like to do in the UK), you can add the data point to the collective map and let the hordes come a-runnin’ (are you worried, Zuckerberg?). While we can’t help but respond to this with a beaten-down “ugh,” the marketer in us does need to commend the brand for creating the kind of serendipitous experiences we discussed in a recent post. And in general, Celeb Spotter uses location in the manner we keep advocating: to make their marketing more relevant and meaningful for their consumers. Even if their consumers are superficial, celebrity-obsessed tools that are signaling the decline of civilization.

Alright, we need to get that taste out of our mouths. Surely, there are more important applications of real-time crowdsourced location data? Thankfully, yes. A US soldier named Jonathan Springer has developed an iPhone app called Tactical Nav that applies the Celeb Spotter idea to tracking the Taliban in Afghanistan. When soldiers have information about the locations of their enemies (or other objectives), the app empowers them to add this data to a collaborative map that other soldiers can access.

This same spirit of DIY location has popped up from an equally unexpected source: a Baltimore-based graffiti artist by the name of Gaia who has (geo-) tagged his own (graffiti) tags. His personalized Google map shows the locations of his current street art (as well as locations where his work has been removed), and includes links to Flickr photos of the relevant pieces. For brands that operate in the travel and hospitality space, or for any brand that could legitimately curate a tour of lesser-known locales, there’s lots to learn from this unlikely source.

An example that may be more applicable to our non-combat, graffiti-resistant clients (as well as our Cause with Effect trend) comes from a Northern Californian fire department that created an iPhone app called… well, it’s called “Fire Department.” While the firemen could benefit from a bit of creative inspiration when it comes to names, they’re perfectly fine on their own when it comes to life-saving innovation in the location space. As shown in the video at the top of this post, the app sends alerts to CPR-trained citizens when there’s a need for CPR in a nearby public place. The “nearby” element is crucial, since humans have about 10 minutes to survive after their heart stops beating, so locating a CPR-trained person in the vicinity can literally be a matter of life and death. Ahhh, knowing about this application  makes it so much easier to deal with the Celeb Spotter drivel up top. Hopefully other brands will consider ways to turn real-time location data into apps that really make a difference.