Leader’s Blog

Interactive components and digital media continue to morph and adapt as new technologies and technology platforms continue to flood the market. Penguin’s approach to publishing interactive books provides continued validation to the hundreds of other innovations that surface daily.

Additionally, approach, implementation, and new channel integration challenges continue to expand and as a result, many new specialty agencies have been created and existing agencies are quickly moving to expand their product and services offerings to take advantage of these new opportunities.  Each is going to market on a promise that they are different from their competitors which leaves marketers scratching their heads about what resources are required to solve each unique business challenge they embark on.

Although it seems complex to identify and choose an appropriate partner, it is actually quite simple if viewed from a big picture perspective.

Because at the core this is about more than the Internet, more  than interactive media, and more than emerging technology platforms. At the core of successful marketing is the holistic customer experience. Marketers can feel confident that along with all of the quickly developing technologies, trends, and platforms, the customer experience remains core to the overarching Internet, interactive, digital and traditional marketing strategy.

The actual challenge for marketers remains the same. Marketers must first plan for how these new opportunities fit into the existing customer experience then  identify resources that are best fit to holistically integrate and manage the solutions that provide the greatest benefit to the business – not from a technical standpoint, but from an experience standpoint. The technical challenges will then be a result of the strategic integration work, or one thread of the larger experience project. This of course is a best case scenario for marketers, because it puts the critical aspects of delivering success in the hands of the experience planners, which is of course where it should be.

By strategically planning and weighing the benefits and feasibility of embarking on uncharted ground and new technologies and working with best of breed experience experts, marketers will continue to position themselves and their businesses for the greatest levels of success and growth opportunities.

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Target now accepts gift card payments via mobile device at its 1,740 U.S. stores.  Card holders can enter the login and pin for the gift card online or on the mobile version of the site, and a 2D barcode appears for cashier to scan.  Target is the first national chain to incorporate mobile enabled scanning across all locations but there are several other retailers - including Starbucks and 7-Eleven – piloting similar programs in their stores.

As the ability to scan barcodes from mobile devices becomes widely available, I envision uses expanding greatly to include other functions.  This would be a powerful way for retailers or even consumer goods companies to offer coupons to customers.  Giving consumers another (and I’d argue more convenient) way to save at the register could do wonders for brand loyalty.  I would love to see this take off as a way to handle store membership cards too.  It seems as if every retail store I go into now offers me a membership card for discounts or rewards, and I have to be honest I have started to turn most of them down because I can’t fathom adding another card to my wallet or key chain.  If they could offer me a version of their membership that could be scanned from my phone when I come in, I’d probably accept every membership I was offered.

The key to this for me is that I go everywhere with my phone in hand.  A retailer or consumer goods company that allows me to more easily spend or save with a few clicks of my phone would definitely be higher on my list than one that didn’t.

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Online display advertising began as one of those memorable marketing channels that often grabbed my attention.  As the market got more crowded though, I seemed to find myself ignoring many online ads – regardless of how visually interesting I perceived them to be – typically, because they just didn’t apply to me.

Google is hoping to change that experience as a result of their acquisition of startup Teracent, developer of a series of “machine-learning algorithms that can create and customize an ad in real-time, based on user preferences and other characteristics”.

What this really means is that Google would have the ability to serve up more relevant display ads based on location, time of day, language, placement of the ad, or even which ads have performed better in a given time period.   Teracent offers an additional expanded ability that could make the ads more dynamic on the page – serving up different creative or size of ads based on the users visiting the site.

This acquisition could mean a lot for a medium that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation lately, so I – for one – am excited to see online display ads get more targeted.

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Apple’s commercial featuring their suite of small business apps peaked curiosity for many business owners and operators. A grand development many businesses face at the local sales level – a streamlined ability to process credit card transactions while out in the field. It would provide the opportunity to replace archaic processing systems with a real-time solution. And it would result in cost saving for the business. What perhaps is not as obvious, is what impact would it have on the customer experience.

That’s right, credit card processing streamlines more then business processes, it streamlines customer experiences. Real-time processing allows end-to-end transactions to be completed in a few minutes, enabling purchasers to receive their goods and services faster, and as a result receive feelings of satisfaction sooner.

And faster turn-around at the point-of-purchase leads to shortened repeat purchase cycles, meaning the customer comes back for more, more frequently – another win for the business.

So as we continue to monitor the integration and transition to in-store, on the sales floor credit card processing systems, and remote credit card processing systems, we will also continue to monitor how these transactions evolve companies’ customer engagement strategies, After all, real-time processing opens the door to whole new worlds of opportunities to engage and profit, such as real-time second chance offers, and “you may also like” opportunities – delivered through the internet, in-store, in-person.

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