Google Wallet, ISIS’s biggest rival and frontrunner in the mobile payment race, already has check-out scanners in more than 100,000 retail locations, including the Gap, Office Max, and Walgreens, and many retailers will even offer both ISIS and Google Wallet as mobile payment options. However, there is little word regarding the lack of smartphone support for either system – Google Wallet, for example, is currently available on only four Sprint smartphones.

ISIS’s concrete stake in the race has launched the discussion of the future of mobile payment straight from conjecture into plan-of-attack. Our most recent Potty Posting offers a whole slew of information about the implications of mobile payment for brands and marketers, the technology used, category competitors, and the possibilities of what’s ahead. We’ll continue to track developments in these trends as the push for mobile payment progresses.

But as for now, it’s clear that brands, retailers, and even marketers who aren’t fast enough to keep up with the demand for mobile payment will undoubtedly be at a disadvantage when it comes to leveraging the opportunities it offers. Stay smart about mobile payment by keeping up with the Awesome Blog – we’ve got you covered.

Debit and credit cards are so last year. Checks have all but crossed the line into social taboo. And cash is basically, like, archaic.

Ugh, it’s like retailers don’t even want our money.

But wait! A few days ago, a Pew study found that 65% of surveyed tech critics and stakeholders believe mobile payments will replace cash and credit by 2020.

Even though mobile payment is still in its infancy, it seems like everyone is hopeful about its future, especially when it comes to improving the process with updated technologies.

Unfortunately, good citizens, we have cynics among us – those who worry about things like security, standardization, and the cost of new gadgets.

But fear not. We wouldn’t want you stranded in the Dark Ages of outdated currency. With this handy guide, follow us into the realm of information so you, too, can help welcome this brave new, digital-financial world.

What Is This Sorcery?

Put down the torches and pitchforks, townspeople. Brands that you already know and love have signed on to create promising mobile wallet apps, using these new technologies:

NFC, or Near-Field Communications, allows you to pay simply by waving your mobile phone at an NFC receptor at the register.  RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, is like NFC but can be used at a longer range. And 2D barcodes can even be scanned at the register from a customer’s phone to charge a pre-paid account.

Rather than producing your credit card at every purchase, mobile wallet apps store your financial data and use these technologies to pull it for you automatically, at the point of purchase.

The Google Wallet app, which uses NFC, currently only works with Citi Mastercard and the Google prepaid card, but it does sync with your Google Offers and hopes to soon hold all card types.

Acceptance is liberation. (credit: fullissue.com)

Like Google Wallet, ISIS, a joint venture of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, will also use NFC and will hold credit cards, loyalty cards, and promotions.

PayPal also plans to release its PayPal Wallet app soon. Unlike Google Wallet, it won’t use NFC but will let you change your payment method up to 7 days after you pay.

These apps will soon be able to hold multiple card/account numbers and allow you to choose which account you’d like to charge when you wave your phone at the receptor. They will also have the ability to store coupons, receipts, and past purchase information to facilitate discounts and returns easily.

However, as mentioned earlier, there are dissenters. They wonder if it could be easy for someone to access your bank accounts just by waving their phone near yours (no.) They don’t want to have to buy NFC-enabled phones (they’ll change their minds). And they complain about the lack of standardization in mobile payment technologies (ok, that might be a good point).

How Can Marketers Conjur This Black Magic?

What the dissenters don’t see is that evolving mobile payment platforms are prime real estate for marketers!

Imagine the ease of distributing targeted promotions! Using NFC, mobile wallet apps can already track a consumer’s location and purchase history, allowing brands to send her coupons for the store she’s browsing in or updates on items she frequently purchases.

Think of the social media integration! What if a check-in immediately rewarded her with a coupon loaded to her mobile wallet, and her purchase was discounted automatically at the register? And if she allows Facebook to post which coupons she was receiving, not only would it encourage more check-ins, but it would encourage her friends to adopt the app, too.

Plus, there’s potential to move into other forms of media – MasterCard’s QkR app can pull purchasing information from just about anywhere, including QR codes, TV signals, and the Xbox Kinect. Praise technology of the future!

Say NO to the tyranny of physical currency! Demand your NFC-enabled smartphone today!

(credit: venturebeat.com)

The opportunities of mobile payment are looking promising. While the technologies and full capabilities of the apps are still to be cemented, brands are sure to see significant benefits when the rough edges are smoothed out regarding standardizations and security misperceptions. But, once mobile payment technology is ready for the mainstream, brands can use it to inspire action and usher in the glorious age of mobile finance!

Now the concept is evolving, and brands are catching on. The same grocery shopping wall is currently being tested on a smaller scale in several bus stops throughout Seoul, and household needs giant Procter & Gamble executed a wall in four major subway stations in Prague featuring razors, laundry detergent and the like at the end of 2011. Just weeks ago, consumers in New York were treated to a shoppable apothecary wall by Conde Nast’s Glamour magazine, and Chicago’s own O’Hare airport is currently sporting a wall by Sears with popular toys for boys and girls (seen in the photo above). Business traveling parents take note—if you forgot to grab little Susie or Bobby a souvenir from your trip, this wall could be your saving grace on the way to baggage claim. Just a few clicks and the latest Elmo-doll sensation could be yours!

While many of the executions noted are using the more widely recognized QR codes for scanning purposes, SpyderLink’s Snap Tags are also starting to make appearances in the world of (literal) window shopping.

With brands on the lookout for new ways to target consumers, technology takes center stage with virtual walls providing a seamless, simplified shopping experience.

Gender Bender, an examination of shifting gender based demographics and dynamics, featured in our Ten Trends for 2012 report, builds on a theme we’ve been following and writing about over the past few years. Namely, that with women’s educational ascendancy and growing economic power we’re now witnessing one of the most dramatic cultural upheavals in this country’s history.

In her new book, The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family, best selling writer and Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy presents a fascinating perspective on what she calls the Big Shift. Drawing on many of the same sources we’ve cited in our own observations about these changes, Mundy outlines a broad variety of current indicators which speak to what’s in store for our culture as women wield greater influence in the workplace and the marketplace. For instance, fifty-seven percent of undergraduates are now female, and women earn the majority of doctorates and master’s degrees, leading some experts to predict that in the next two decades, medicine and law will be dominated by women. Already, according to a 2009 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey, in 4 out of 10 working couples, wives out-earned their husbands — essentially doubling this figure in just two decades. Mundy does note that women have not quite shattered the glass ceiling given that they still face a wage gap; women working full time earn a median wage that is eighty-one percent of what men make. Still, when we look at single women in their twenties in major metro areas, women are already out-earning their male twenty-something peers. Look out!

As we’ve noted before, many marketers continue to either ignore or misinterpret what these changes mean for today’s household dynamics. One of the Mundy’s most important observations centers on how increasing income parity is redefining relationships and changing younger Americans’ notions of masculinity and parenting. With so much evidence pointing to a more egalitarian approach to raising children, a sophisticated marketer like Kimberly-Clark recently sparked what Advertising Age called a poop storm of controversy when outraged fathers launched an online attack on a Huggies campaign which portrayed fathers as clueless and inept. At Internet speed, one outraged Pennsylvania father started a petition entitled “We’re Dads, Huggies. Not Dummies.” Armed with his own powerful demographic stat, Routly pointed out that according to the most recent U.S. census, one in three fathers acts as his family’s primary child caregiver. Lesson learned, Kimberly-Clark quickly apologized and retooled the campaign.

A broad spectrum of cultural norms will be reshaped as gender roles shift and evolve. And smart marketing will reflect these changes without distorting or misinterpreting what they mean for both men and women. Yet the road to enlightenment can be a winding one, so while we expect to see more intelligent depictions of involved fathers like those in P&G’s new Vicks campaign, we may also have to witness a few more poop storms.

There are a number of useful nuggets tossed out in the video, including the idea that curators get people to see normally-overlooked connections between things and think about what those connections mean. But it’s worth noting the two words that come up again and again in the video: “trust” and “interesting.” The connection is no coincidence. People (and brands) that become successful curators do so by earning the trust of their audiences, and that trust is built by continually prioritizing what’s interesting over what’s new (in the words of one speaker in the video). Trusting a curator really means trusting his or her guidance to information that’s worth your time, because you respect the curator’s perspective, opinion, motivation, and insight. Boy, that sure sounds like a strong foundation on which you can build your brand, doesn’t it?

Oh, and we shouldn’t overlook the company that brought you this video. Percolate offers a particularly valuable viewpoint on curation because of their publishing platform, which is specifically built to help brands create content that straddles both Guruism and Collective Curation. Central to Percolate’s approach is the concept of “stock and flow” content, which means striking a healthy balance of long-form insight pieces (“stock”) and quickly consumable bites that keep an audience returning on a frequent basis (“flow”). Taken together, stock and flow help a Curator become both a durable resource for timeless insights and a vigorous generator of easily shareable (read: tweetable) snippets. You can see this concept (and the Percolate platform) at work on the Healthymagination site from GE.  Trying to humanize a complicated (and typically B2B) organization like GE isn’t easy, but it’s a simple sell to get consumers excited about a site that provides visitors with a wealth of wellness information through homegrown, long-form content from health experts, augmented with a steady stream of short-form content captured from around the web.

In our take on Mindfulness as an important shift in consumers’ attitudes this year, we were careful to note that we’re not predicting scads of new Buddhists across the country despite mindfulness’ origins in Buddhist teachings. So although the article does acknowledge this association in the reporter’s description of a mindful meal in an actual Buddhist monastery, he also includes evidence of a wider embrace of mindful eating on the part of experts who study Americans’ often tortured relationship with food. The article includes quotes from Prof. Brian Wansink, from the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and the author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” as well as from Dr. Lilian Cheung, a Harvard nutritionist who has devoted herself to studying the benefits of more mindful eating, and is “passionately encouraging corporations and health care providers to try it.” Dr. Cheung has already sparked a monthly mindful lunch at that arbiter of all things cool in the corporate world, Google’s corporate HQ.

As noted in the NYT piece, eating with mindfulness is not so much about what we eat, but how we eat. The frantic, hyper-speed pace of modern life is influencing every facet of our lives, from how we think, shop, work, and eat. We’re eating on the go, at our desk, and we’re often racing through our meals without noting not only how much we just scarfed down, but how much we actually enjoyed the experience of that particular food, snack or meal. As noted in our trends report, brands who can remind their consumers to slow down a bit, enjoy the moment, and truly savor the experience with their product stand to benefit from this growing awareness that mindfulness will forge a more emotional and fulfilling connection with that consumer. Food for thought indeed!

But hashtags weren’t the only form of social media making waves in the coveted Super Bowl ads. Cars.com and Pepsi (among others) used Shazam’s audio-recognition software to promote secret offers, full-length videos and charitable donations. GoDaddy.com’s ad with Danica Patrick used a QR code to send viewers to “too hot for TV” extended content featuring The Pussycat Dolls (for the record, my hubby and a friend watched it and were unimpressed). And in perhaps their most popular spot of the evening, Bud Light’s ad featuring a dog named “Weego” that fetches beer used Facebook to generate awareness for rescue dogs by promising to donate $1 (up to $250,000) to Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation for every “like” Weego receives. Best Buy didn’t actually use any of the noted social media, but instead highlighted several mobile innovators, ranging from the sender of the very first text message to the creator of Instagram.

According to Bluefin Labs, the game generated more than 12 million (and counting) social media comments across sites like Facebook and Twitter, with nearly a million relating to the commercials alone, making Super Bowl XLVI the biggest social media TV event ever, by a wide margin. A perfect example of our Seamless Tech trend, marketers used social media to let users live in the moment and interact with the ads in new ways, without interrupting the moment—that is, the next big play of the game.

Which Super Bowl ad was your favorite?

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.