Compare Political & Retail Strategies

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Just published an excerpt from my recent book Fast Shopper, Slow Store in the Retail Touchpoints publication. 

As a post script to this chapter, the 2013 election underscored the value of digital BIG DATA. When President Obama hired an analytics war room that was five times the investment in his 2008 campaign, we knew where the focus would be.

Pointedly President Obama’s team hired a supermarket sales promotions “Chief Scientist” called Rayid Ghani. His team rated PERSUADABILITY. . . the art of knowing who was likely to “swing” blue.

Mr. Ghani knew where to target.  This data helped them target media and played perfectly into the mobile (personal) opt-in strategy that the Obama team excelled at throughout the campaign. It allowed them to successfully knock on BLUE doors not RED and target BLUE (and possibly BLUE) phones and steer the vote.

I like to draw a parallel between politics and retail as it illustrates that tactics in one vertical as applicable cross-industry. I would say it is essential for banking, publishing, and entertainment verticals to understand that they are not alone.

The connected screen and the new (painfully) independent shopper are disrupting all incumbent  industries.

Many people in the business of connecting to retail customers are busy reworking their game plan. It may reassure the reader that no one is immune to digital disruption, which has left most industry folk, from brands to broadcasters, from publishers to politicians, questioning the way they engage with their audiences.

The 2012 U.S. presidential election was a perfect example of brands desperately seeking buyers. As the candidates claw for positioning, it is evident that the election process is (surprisingly or not) similar to selling a product in a hugely competitive retail market. Each electoral cycle demonstrates the challenge of courting an increasingly digital public.

The techniques that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney used to market their platform and gather votes are the same as those embraced by brands to manage their market presence, build engagement, and move their audience to a sale. All the challenges of chasing the itinerant mobile public are the same as those facing bewildered shopkeepers.

Mobile Retail Focus for 2013? (60min Business World interview)

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In the following interview I discuss with , the preeminent business blogger (Blog Business World), that retailers need to embrace new strategies to reconnect with their customers. We discuss:

  • Strategies to win back customers who have left the malls, big box, and other retail outlets for their mobile devices.
  • How the behavior of mobile shoppers is different from both tethered online customers and from the traditional in store consumer.
  • Techniques for winning back those customers, reconnecting with them, and regaining their long term loyalty.
  • How to embrace mobile technology as a competitive advantage for your business, and place yourself in the forefront of the mobile shopping revolution.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/FastShopper

10 mobile predictions for 2013 in under 75 words

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1.      Substitute “Mobile” for more inclusive term “CONNECTED SCREENS”
2.      Geo-LOCATION crucial to social strategy
3.      NFC continues to be far field
4.      For RETAIL: space between bricks and clicks most valuable
5.      For everyone: space CONNECTING screens most valuable
6.      Mobile viruses push SECURITY agenda
7.      More PRIVACY transgressions, More PRIVACY protection
8.      ANDROID increase the lead in a 3 horse race
9.      Operator CAPACITY drives new business models
10.  Through-The-Middle (TTM) services counter OTT

Why Square’s Giftcards are essential for its wallet strategy

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Square’s business model is successful but needs accelerated growth in 2013. If Mr. Dorsey can shake the trees in the prepaid world, he can expand his business significantly.

Prepaid gift cards are a valuable strategy for Square for two key reasons:

  • One is growth – a digital gift card is viral and thus expands Square’s influence horizontally. And Square wants more users. Now a viral nudge will lead a friend to download a free Square Wallet from the Apple App Store or Google Play.
  • Secondly, is margin – Square plans to disrupt the incumbent gift card issuing fees with a low 2.75 percent charge. Given there is no high bank interchange on prepaid, Square can reap a healthy margin.

Key to adoption on the small screen will be the user experience – especially with a viral gift product. As Jack Dorsey says, “This is a product where the experience really matters.”

A Square user can search for nearby businesses, click to buy a gift card and enter the recipient’s email address. The recipient (benefactor) can download the Square Wallet app (Square’s preferred outcome) or save Square gift cards to Apple’s new Passbook app.

The success of the gift card strategy may be dependent on Square being able to sign up additional big name merchants such as Starbucks, which began accepting payments via Square Wallet this fall. But Square will have a hard time finding another commerce partner like Starbucks. As I like to say you can successfully sell an addictive substance – coffee – on every street corner in America.

It is harder for other retailers. With a close-loop gift card you need partners with scale.

 

Why Apple’s New Patents are Commerce Game Changers?

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This week Apple added a new patent (US 8,321,294) to its war chest.  The EasyPay patent is worth a closer look. The commerce patent allows mobile shoppers to activate and buy items from physical stores via the Internet connection on their device.

While this seems pretty clear and reflects Apple’s EasyPay trials:  it is far more profound. Combined with Apple’s earlier patent (US 8,290,513) in October using magnetic fields (as a substitute to NFC) this is clearly is Apple’s showrooming and mobile commerce positioning statement.

Why are these two patents so interesting? One, while the EasyPay trail used QR codes, the new patent definition of shopper is far broader:

“Techniques for improved interaction between online retailers and traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that provide patron-accessible networks are disclosed. The location and/or the fact that any given purchase was made from a particular retailer’s patron-accessible network can be tracked for a variety of purposes. The invention can facilitate partnering between online retailers (i.e. online stores) and traditional ‘brick-and-mortar’ business establishments. As an example, the invention can be used to track and give credit for online purchases at an online retailer that are facilitated by a brick-and-mortar retailer.”

Now combine the two patents. The earlier Apple patent in October was for a Method and Apparatus for Triggering Network Device Discovery. This was Apple way of side stepping NFC and using the phones’ compass output patterns (magnetic field signatures).

EasyPay can be expanded to leverage any network device discovery.  This allows any store shelf or walk-by media to be activated via a magnetic field tap and jump into an EasyPay checkout process. Path-to-purchase becomes “PURCHASE”.

Is Facebook suddenly a 13x ROI ad network?

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Facebook in 2012 had a hard time convincing the retail market that it was a mobile commerce player. Facebook opened storefronts with GameStop and others retail partners. They should have been a success. However, all languished and were closed over the course of the storefront trial.

While Facebook may not be the destination that users go to shop, it has proven its value as the preeminent social “influencer” of commerce. Today’s Samsung results vindicate the network and all doubters.

After a three-week, $10 million ad buy with Facebook, Samsung reached over 100 million unique users and generated $129 million in sales! That is a 13x return on a $10 million ad buy.

While these numbers are powerful testament to the social shopping behaviour on the web. Samsung has more than 20 million fans on Facebook and needed to find ways influence their buying decisions. SALES not LIKES drive profits!

Coming out of the tremendous results from Cyber Monday, we know that somewhere advertising and commerce needs to find a closer connection. The market is still in the pursue of a way for sales-driving networks like Facebook (in the advertising world) to connect more seamlessly to commerce conversion network (in the retail world).

PayPal reported a 200% increase in transactions through this past weekend. If Facebook’s reach could be married to a “one-click commerce” checkout, this 13x conversion rate may jump a significant multiple.

In a world where “path to purchase” is a perilous path and we need find ways to better connect these two worlds.

Floor finder. Google Maps Malls! More Big Data!

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Big news: Google maps goes indoors: Macys, Home Depots, IKEA. Now pick your floor, your aisle and map.

(Here is me safely found at the Macy’s Clinique counter on the first floor.)

Indoor mapping has always been key to better understanding shopping behavior and marketing in a more targeted, intelligent manner.

Google has partnered with retailers, airport authorities in the United States and Japan. Share floor plans. And I would guess share valuable consumer data!

Sorry Android only. A setback for Apple maps and their data domination.

 

Ochlocracy? Are Facebook’s libertarian roots eroding?

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I was listening to David Kirkpatrick read The FaceBook Effect biking to work this working. The opening chapter is about how Oscar Morales galvanized Colombia against the FARC terrorist group. Hundreds of thousands marched globally off the drum of Oscar’s Facebook page . . .

. . and it struck me as mildly ironic that while Facebook has become synonymous with democracy (a million voices against the “powers that be”), its new Silicon Valley HQ is now at the center of an “anti-democracy” debate.

Facebook proposed this week that it will terminate its community users’ right to vote on changes to site policies. When you give a libertine community certain powers (such as the right to impact the site’s design) it speaks to the core philosophy of an organization.

When the same company says that it is “too big for democracy”, one may take this as a sign that the post-IPO corporate culture is clamping down on what made Facebook a successful social experiment.

I can understand that a corporation may find democracy inconvenient. I can understand that many in this new public company could see this user-based democracy as a slipper slope to ochlocracy.

However, it speaks to Facebook’s libertine roots. It is incredulous to use FARC as examples of The Facebook Effect and then withdraw that same crowd-sourcing element that has enabled the community to grow.

It’s Black Friday @ 5:23 pm. Norman Rockwell, it must be Big Data.

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At 5:23 p.m. (not 5:00, not 5:30) Thanksgiving Day ends and the cloud shopping begins. So says eBay data pundits.

Dinner plates are cleared from the table across the Midwest. Mom and Dad switch on the TV and open their tablets to multitask. EBay is at the trigger waiting to fire off mobile-only deals to the shoppers small screen. Let the shopping games begin.

Now the Norman Rockwell scene is complete. After-dinner glass of wine in hand, TV playing some background entertainment and the American family with tablet open and small screen deals at hand. Picture perfect.

From personal work with CPGs and retailers over the course of 2012, it is clear that mobile messaging complement traditional direct marketing channels. Add a mobile message to an email blast and the conversion rates jump 10 – 15 per cent in 2012.

Black Friday is the not the first mobile shopping season but it is the first sign of Big Data and smarter targeting across all the shoppers connected screens. The winners are the folk with the mobile reach and frequency to scrap enough data big to drive smart segmentation: Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Google, Apple are the main players and often the CPGs and retailers are unwittingly feeding them the shopper intelligence necessary for them to grow fat and happy.

Stop. CPGs and retailers have to take this data back. The retail Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) is an example of retailers getting ahead of the game. A group of more than 14 brand name retailers and merchants have formed a new company called MCX, a mobile payment network that will let customers pay by mobile phone application at participating gas stations, retail stores, supermarkets, and restaurants.

This equals more big data on the consumer. This equals targeted deals and smart shopper marketing strategies. This equals a new world for Black Friday 2013.

OTT needs to go TTM: The New Orwell-Speak

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OTT (or Over-The-Top) has been coined as a disruptive term that refers to new monetization services that ride for free (or for little cost) over existing broadcaster and carrier infrastructure.

Is it interesting that incumbent companies (and their executives) that have been adversely effected by OTT services, seem to be happy to use this term at conferences and in boardrooms. These executives have been hoodwinked into promoting OTT as a necessary business evil.

Instead of bemoaning how Apple is OTTing AT&T or how Amazon is OTTing Best Buy or how Netflix is OTTing Turner, the disrupted companies need to own the new words on the street. It is Orwellian: Words are used in his book, 1984, in order to control and censor the language that the public used or more pointedly are not able to use.

In an OTT economy, incumbent carriers, retailers, broadcasters need to change the term. I propose that they need to innovate “Through-The-Middle” (TTM). Carriers, retailers and broadcasters need to take back the discussion and start taking about strategies to leverage their assets “Through-The-Middle”.

  1. Carriers need to talk about the TTM services that they can launch and manage using their communities and billing relationships.
  2. Retailer need to talk about the TTM in-store clientelling trust that is moving shoppers seamlessly into purchase in-store and in-(their) cloud.
  3. Broadcaster need to talk about the TTM assets that are creating seamless multi-screen engagement platforms.

The term is TTM!