The industry needs to embrace new technologies and rethink how to engage with the younger shopper, but I don’t believe that replacing people with technology is the right solution. Shoppers simply want their new online expectations met in the offline retail environment. We shouldn’t be replacing people with technology; we should be enabling and empowering them with technology. This applies to the sales or customer service representatives and shoppers.

There are wonderful examples of this approach that have popped up around the world. At Burberry in China sales associates are armed with iPads that allow them to check the company’s entire inventory and recommend items that aren’t available in that particular store. If the shopper wants the item, it can be purchased on the spot and is shipped directly to their home. Neiman Marcus has been testing a new opt-in location awareness app that notifies the sales staff when a loyal customer walks through the door and provides them with information to guide the shopping experience (e.g., previous purchase history, Facebook profile). Macy’s uses QR codes on their apparel tags that allow shoppers to watch a video from the designer discussing the particular line or item. Both New Balance and LL Bean use RFID to cue shopper information videos when an item is picked up.  Whole Foods is even testing a gesture-controlled shopping cart that follows you around the store tracking your purchases and your shopping list.

So let’s keep the people, but make them better with technology.

How it Works

Pick your movie details. You start by choosing a film you want to promote and the city you want to watch it in. Then enter some basics about your social network—how many followers you have on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and how many you’ll email about the event. This helps them determine the size of theater and potential to fill the seats. (Guessing they have some fancy algorithms and combobulators to figure that part out.) At this stage you also have to agree to their promoter terms, basics on what you can and cannot do.

Promote your event. Then it’s up to you to get the word out about your event, via social networks, email, etc., and get people to sign up. Their website will soon have an area for users to browse local events to hook up with others. And depending on the film (and licensing agreement), they’ll provide digital images, clips and/or sound recordings for you to advertising the event.

Attend movie. Once you hit the required amount of RSVPs—it tips similar to Groupon-type services—you can enjoy the movie in a theater with your friends and community.

What They Offer

Tugg works with film studios and independent filmmakers to offer a rich content library. They continually add new titles including the biggest blockbusters, film festival favorites, award-winning shorts, repertory classics, and everything in between.

It’s a great opportunity for movies that have limited release or go straight to video. Right now their site is promoting two films: The Tree of Life which had limited release; and The Loved Ones, described as “Sixteen Candles meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” which sounds like either.

It doesn’t look like there are any limitations for brands using the service. So I’m looking forward to Pacifico’s event and screening of The Endless Summer (hint, hint).

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.

1. Sympathize with shoppers
Reaching shoppers today requires an understanding of their world, life and shopping experience. Start by seeing the retail environment through their eyes—they have a reason for being at a specific retailer, a budget and a time limit; they know what they want and need to have; and they typically give themselves 20 minutes to get it, pay for it and pack it in the car.
Great shopper marketing creative requires a keen understanding of shopper needs, the retail environment, marketing vehicles and messaging.

2. Understand purchase barriers
Identifying barriers is a critical step in shopper marketing. Creative development should address both consideration and conversion barriers in a specific channel, category and on a specific brand. Messaging outside of the store often times must address a poor shopping experience or selection perceptions at a retailer to even be considered for a shopping trip. Enabling de-selection is a common solution to aid conversion of brands in cluttered categories and education helps when a product has usage uncertainty or poor value perception.
Great shopper marketing creative acknowledges and overcomes consideration and conversion barriers.

3. Match the message to the vehicle based on shopper expectations
Communications priorities should be based on the most relevant consumer communication for a particular marketing vehicle. But remember that shoppers have pre-determined expectations, so choose messages accordingly and let the vehicle dictate the lead. For example, shoppers expect circulars to feature items on sale this week, so lead messaging should focus on price to drive them to a specific retailer. They look at displays (endcaps or floor stands) for what’s new, what’s on sale and reminders to buy, so focus lead messaging on the product benefits to drive incremental (planned or unplanned) purchases.
Great shopper marketing creative leverages expectations to increase acceptance.

4. Create an intuitive retail experience
Stopping power is necessary to get noticed in-store, but shoppers often dismiss messaging and visual stimuli that are not relevant to them. Creating an intuitive environment 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 to compelling. When done correctly, intuitive retail instantly connects the dots of the messaging hierarchy in a split second.
Great shopper marketing creative should act as retail shorthand.

5. Collaborate with retailers
The retailer owns the environment and has final approval, so establish expectations for the balance between a brand’s equity and the retailer’s from the get go. Include the retailer in your planning and shopper research (e.g., focus groups, shopalongs, competitive store audits, etc.). Create multifunctional teams (from the beginning) to ensure seamless execution that is transparent to the shopper. When appropriate, present a couple of creative options (for larger scale events vs. smaller programs).
Great shopper marketing creative aligns mutual business goals through execution.

6. Inspire Shoppers to Act
Finally, shopper marketing needs to inspire shoppers to act. The creative product should fan the flames of inspiration. It’s too simplistic to think that people will only find something valuable if it is presented in a rational and tangible way. Intangibles are part of life and should be embraced. People don’t walk through life calculating its benefits. They experience life. To deliver real value to people, shopper marketing needs to connect with them emotionally. And give them a reason to act—using value PLUS emotion, education, entertainment and engagement.
Great shopper marketing creative engages shoppers emotionally.

Click the image below for the full-size infographic!

In January, 2011, Starbucks launched its Mobile Card payment program available on most smartphones. SMART. No doubt you’re already on your phone at 8:30 in the morning while ordering a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte, so it’s easy to flash your “Touch to Pay” barcode and be on your way. The app replaces your reloadable Starbucks card (while keeping your rewards intact), and you can preload it from your bank account within the same screen.

With the release of Google Wallet, users can now pay with a simple tap at Mastercard paypass terminals. For now, this is advancement only for those with Google phones…and a Citi Mastercard. But, with this technological groundbreaking device, users are also able to receive offers and store loyalty points via the app.  We’re attached to our phones, so what better way to reach us directly when we’re making a transaction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shopkick offers rewards for simply stepping inside a store and scoping out merchandise. It displays deals and discounts close in proximity to your location. The more you peruse, the more points are earned for redemptions ranging from clothes to electronics.

While cashless-ness becomes the norm, we can only assume that consumers will rely less on the benjamins, but let’s not forget about Future Fear. A lot of emphasis is placed on convenience and practicality when we look at technological enhancements. It’s our job to find the perfect balance between convenience and trust.

What we can gather from our own shopping habits is that we rely heavily on the convenience factor, no doubt about it. We’ve become increasingly comfortable with everything being accessible through our phones. We can purchase a Groupon, find our way to Alaska and back, and even count the steps we take around the office with our smartphones.

“What? I can’t just show you the e-mail, I have to print it out?!”

As marketers, we should reach our consumers as soon as they walk into the store, making it harder not to refuse a great deal on the very same phone used to swipe and pay. It has been reported that 20% of smartphone users have compared prices while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. Additionally, 15% of smartphone users have redeemed a mobile coupon (ladies more so than gentlemen). Let’s take advantage of these time-saving, less paper-wasting social platforms that deliver instantaneous results without hassle. Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, so creating more convenient methods of in-store redemption and offers will put us ahead of the game—and the checkout line.

What will it take for YOU to go CASH-LESS?

Many hotels are already offering experience-based rewards in their loyalty programs and enhanced concierge services to assist guests with discovering the world outside of the hotel. Instead of stockpiling points for a free night’s stay, members of these programs can earn cultural activities, like going backstage before a performance at the Peking Opera or spending the day with a professional bullfighter. Some loyalty programs even offer express experiences specifically designed for business travelers who may only have an hour or two to spare but who still want to go home with at least one memorable insight into the destination they visited.

Additionally, several startups have recently emerged to meet the wanderlusty needs of travelers by offering trip curation tools, local knowledge and a much-needed dose of personalization to the online trip planning process.

Launched in April, Vayable connects travelers with tour guides offering unique and intimate local experiences, like scouting Montmartre street art in Paris or visiting sample sales in NYC with a fashion insider. By allowing these independent guides to sell their local knowledge, Vayable is redefining the tour and activity segment of the travel market.

And then there’s Fortnighter, also launched this year, which provides (for a fee) made-to-order itineraries from professional travel writers based on the user’s dates of travel, interests and budget. Fortnighter brings currency, personalization and expert knowledge to the travel planning table and allows users to steer clear of the unreliability of algorithms and user reviews.

A slew of other services have also cropped up recently. All of this suggests that the travel experience marketplace is heating up, and there appears to be room for more. When looking across the dreaming, researching, booking, experiencing and sharing travel cycle, what kind of product or service can you offer that will assist travelers with collecting those sought-after experiences? How do you evoke the moments that inspire us when we travel? How do you help deliver more authentic travel experiences?

We love cheat sheets at Upshot, and make a point of creating them whenever possible. At my recent “Content Marketing Lunch-n-Learn” I closed with the following best practices. Planning a campaign, promotion, or marketing vehicle where content plays a role? The following will help keep you on course and hopefully provide some food for thought:

1. Think Long Term. How can we use this opportunity to create a marketing platform we can leverage ongoing?
2. Be Resourceful. What assets do we already own that can be repurposed, revamped or redone? Is there public data or an API (social networks, etc.) we can use? What media partnerships could be forged with brands that already have content our consumers want?
3. Stay Relevant. What can we create that consumers will find of value? What will put a smile on their face or change their lives for the better?
4. Treat it like an Investment. Marketing-related content we create or generate via our users is an investment in assets we can reuse and repurpose as our marketing efforts evolve.
5. Be Patient! Payoffs are not always immediate.
6. Fill Gaps in the Niche. What’s missing and what are people demanding?
7. Be Clever and get More Play. Appear non-competitive and offer something the big guys don’t have—done right, the competitors will link to your content!
8. Don’t half-ass it. Content marketing works—that’s why 6 out of 10 marketers increased their content marketing budgets last year. It’s only going to get more crowded and cream rises to the top.
9. Understand Your Targets. If you’re creating content for specific types of consumers, then you better understand their lifestyles. If not, hire someone who does to create the strategy.
10. Have Fun, be Creative! Content marketing is fun and an opportunity to be creative in countless ways. Embrace it!

Want this list in portable format? Download it here.

Earned media often comes in the form of content being created by consumers about a brand, frequently through platforms the brand creates or maintains. Likely sources include social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, but often can be in the form or promotions where a brand has asked for an opinion, expression or point-of-view (like voting in a poll for example).

Once a promotion has ended, such promotional content is often left by the wayside, occasionally only being leveraged if the promotion gets repeated. This is unfortunate as often such assets could be culled and repurposed for ongoing content marketing efforts.

Recently we helped execute a promotion here at Upshot where we asked consumers for tips & tricks related to the use of the brand’s products. We had tens of thousands of entries and of course not all the tips we received were gems. However, there were scores of interesting and noteworthy entries.

As we’re now planning a website relaunch for this same brand, we’re considering that content a valued asset. Through a promotion where the tips served a specific purpose, we now have the secondary benefit of assets we can reuse in our relaunch, this time positioned as expert tips from peers. This will help bolster the brand’s credibility and perfectly complements the product data we intend to publish on the site. Not to mention the added content will undoubtedly help our SEO efforts.

Have you executed recent promotions where you collected user-generated content? Ask yourself: how can we repurpose? Can we distill it down into interesting trends we can share with our consumers? Can we pair it with our product data on our website?

If you’re gearing up for future promotions, think past the promotion and what types of content your most valued consumers can contribute. With the holidays drawing near (gulp), now is a great time to think about how year end marketing efforts can create valuable marketing content you can reap the benefits from in 2012.

Here’s their exact copy for the search:

Think you are the Next BIG Thing?

Calling curvy ladies everywhere! Our best-selling Disco Pant (and around 10 other sexy styles) are now available in size XL, for those of us who need a little extra wiggle room where it counts. We’re looking for fresh faces (and curvaceous bods) to fill these babies out. If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the next XLent model, send us photos of you and your junk to back it up.

Just send us two recent photographs of yourself, one that clearly shows your face and one of your body. We’ll select a winner to be flown out to our Los Angeles headquarters to star in your own bootylicious photoshoot. Runners up will win an enviable assortment of our favorite new styles in XL!

Show us what you’re workin’ with!

As a copywriter and as a woman, there are just so many things wrong with the wording of this campaign, including but not limited to the fact that not once do they use a positive or real adjective to describe plus-sized women. As one irate blogger says, it’s just “jokey, made up words like ‘junk’ and ‘XLent.’ Nothing that denotes attractiveness without a crude reference to size.”

Essentially, it was hard for me to take this campaign seriously, and apparently, I’m not the only one.

To Nancy Upton, a Dallas-based blogger, the contest was one big fat insult. “The puns, the insulting, giggly tones, and the over-used euphemisms for fat that were scattered throughout the campaign’s solicitation began to crystallize an opinion in my mind. How offensive the campaign was,” Upton wrote in a post on the Daily Beast. To Upton, “The company was co-opting the mantra of plus-size empowerment and glazing it with its unmistakable brand of female objectification.”

And not only did her words strike a chord with American Apparel’s Creative Director, Iris Alonza, so did the spoof photos she submitted to the contest. Upton teamed up with friend Shannon Skloss to take modeling pictures of her devouring fried chicken in a pool, soaking in a bath of ranch dressing, smearing an entire pie on her face and body, and other satirical situations.

Photo credit: Shannon Skloss

See Upton’s full submission here.

The irony here is that Nancy Upton won the contest, at least in popularity, but she won’t be modeling for the company anytime soon. The brand hasn’t announced their official winner, but in a scathing response to Upton, Alonza wrote:

“Oh—and regarding winning the contest, while you were clearly the popular choice, we have decided to award the prizes to other contestants that we feel truly exemplify the idea of beauty inside and out, and whom we will be proud to have representing our company.”

What she meant to say was, “We decided to pick a winner who already likes our brand in hopes that she will just sit there on her ‘full-sized fanny’ and look pretty, er…I mean, XLent.”

So what can we learn from all this not-so-XLent publicity that the “Next BIG Thing” campaign has garnered for American Apparel? To put it simply, tone is everything. And for a company who’s built their brand with what some have labeled as misogynist advertising, they probably should have steered clear of their “Hey, girl, we get you!” tone, especially for a target that’s been purposely excluded up until now.

*Made-up statistic pulled out of thin air to add some color to this post
**American Apparel (AA) threatened to file bankruptcy this year. With the belts of so many Americans loosening, maybe AA decided it was time to expand…literally.