Road signs on Piccadilly

Interesting approach to road signage from the Crown Estate on Piccadilly. It made me smile while sat in the traffic but doesn't really hit the mark with visibility. Still, when you're doing less than 3mph through the roadworks, who needs long distance visibility - clearly the Crown has a good grasp of the motoring experience on that stretch of their estate.

Who needs an ipad?

A tablet computer that you can actually type on wins gadget of the year and it's almost half the price.

Christmas coffee cup effect

On the face of it, it seems like a win win for Costa. If Starbucks benefit from Christmas sales hike by changing the colour of their cup, then why don’t we do the same thing?

To mark the Holiday season, Starbucks cups change from white to a festive red colour. It’s long been muted that the colour change provides a sales hike. In reality, it’s the festive season itself that does that. More social shopping taking place, gifting purchases, colder weather, seeing more of friends and family all contribute to a significant sales spike. In fact Starbucks generates almost 25% of its yearly sales during the six-week long Holiday shopping season with many Starbucks stores doubling their average weekly sales during these six weeks.

After 4 years of ‘conditioning’ in the UK, the red cup now acts as a trigger for that ‘Christmas spirit’ feeling, allowing Starbucks to extend this lucrative period into early November while also continuing to strengthen consumer affinity with the brand year on year.

Which brings us back to Costa – a limited edition Christmas cup could no doubt have a similar effect on their November trading, but unfortunately the execution just doesn’t feel premium enough. Rather than a warm fuzzy Christmas feeling, you’re left holding a cup that looks like a NASA canteen reject from the late 60s.

Do consumers really need to participate?

It’s been flavour of the month for a few years now but we’re still seeing brands use the misguided objective of consumer participation and ‘engagement’ within their communications and as a direct result of that, they continue to ask far too much of consumers themselves.

Like any objective, ‘engagement’ needs to be measurable – what exactly do we mean by engaging somebody? And to what degree? Getting a ‘like’ on Facebook is not going to tick that box as the widely circulated example from Futurelab illustrates…

Futurelab’s analysis of the 20 most-fanned celebrities on Facebook reveals that the number of “core fans” is significantly lower than the actual fan count. To compute the core fan count, the number of times each fan has commented on the page was calculated, and then the average taken - any fan whose comment count is higher than the average was classified as a “core fan”.

As of 12 May 2011, Eminem had over 41 million fans and Lady Gaga over 39 million fans. But the  average number of posts per fan for Eminem’s fan page was 1.17 while the average number of posts per fan for Lady Gaga was 1.82.

Eminem’s core fan count (i.e. fan whose comment count is higher than the average) is a paltry 575 and Lady Gaga core fan count is just 1,231. That’s just 0.001% and 0.003% of their overall fan numbers.

The lack of engagement doesn’t stop there. Because of the way content from fan pages syndicates into Facebook users’ news feeds. Unless someone has actively interacted with your page, they won’t receive your updates.  So the content is unlikely to be amplified and spread amongst fans and their own networks.

Brands need to recognise that a great idea can achieve active participation amongst the few, the challenge is how to best amplify this idea and participation in a way that will connect with the broader audience, often through mass communications that use the idea to reflect on the business as a whole. There are parallels with sponsorship – it’s often quoted that you need to be spending twice as much on the activation of your sponsorship as the contract cost itself. I touched upon O2’s use of their ‘priority’ service last week and after reading an excellent post Martin Weigel’s blog “The Enduring Power Of Stuff That Isn’t Useful And Why ‘Utility’ Will Not Overthrow Magic”, I thought these two further examples from Best Buy and Nike were also particularly pertinent given how well known both examples are, and how they are often cited for their successful participatory nature.

By 2010, Best Buy’s Twelpforce had responded to over 29,000 questions and accumulated 26,837 followers on Twitter. But consider this, it was the largest electronic retailer in the country - it takes a lot of shoppers to generate revenues of $4.4 billion in the month of December 2010. Consider too the sheer breadth of its offering, and that there are 245,267,292 people aged 15 years and over in the United States many of whom will presumably be in the market for some kind of electrical goods. And remember that the service was promoted through TV advertising as well as in-store-messaging. Suddenly it begins to feel as if that utility was actually delivered to and experienced directly by a relatively small population.

The Twelpforce had a much wider role than helping specific users, the mere availability of this service worked to elevate the brand’s reputation as being knowledgeable and responsive amongst a much broader population, even though they never took advantage of the service.

Another example is that of Nike+

According to data from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, in 2010 no less than 46,002,000 Americans ran or jogged 50+ days a year. Set against this, Nikeplus.com has a total global membership of close to 2,000,000. So given that the vast majority of the world’s runners clearly have not adopted Nike+, again one has to ask - does the big contribution of Nike+ lie in delivering an undoubtedly brilliant piece of utility to a few millions of committed, serious runners? Or does it lie in what that innovation communicates to the broader market for running gear? And what it does to sustain and bolster Nike’s running credentials - the roots of the company?

So rather than judging participatory ideas on immediate ROI or expecting mass participation and widespread ‘engagement’, brands need to instead consider the potential wider impact that a relatively small participation base could achieve.

Price isn't enough for the supermarket shopper

A recent YouGov poll has highlighted the cynicism with which shoppers view the supermarket price deals.
Only 18% agreed with the statement "I believe supermarkets' claims about cutting prices", with only 2% agreeing strongly. This isn't surprising when consumers are seeing continuing profit increases from the big four and further evidence from the Grocer price index backing this stance by highlighting the stagnant nature of base prices across a range of household products.

It does feel like they had it coming. While You Gov talk about "...one player needing to strike decisively and make consumers a clearly differentiated price/value offer" I think it actually highlights the fact that low prices is not enough. With the exception of Sainsbury's "Live well for less", the major supermarkets are reassuring their customers of their competitive prices but that's all the messaging appears to be doing. Reassuring and hopefully defending share against each other and the big discounters like Lidl and Netto who benefited in the last recession.

Customers expect competitive prices and now have the online tools to check that they're getting just that. Every time a customer does their shop in store they're hit with a barrage of price drops, promises and cuts. But price on its own is clearly not compelling enough to steal share. Partly due to the mistrust over just how much can be saved - after all, fuel prices now mean that a slightly longer car journey will negate any saving made at the new store - and partly because the price promise does not differentiate one store from another. The 'why should i bother changing?' needs a better response than simply 'because we're even cheaper'. Better customer service, fresher produce, more extensive ranges or added value on the shopping experience would all be good places to start.

Poppy appeal: the social opportunity

The poppy appeal has swung into action this week with even more opportunities to get involved and show your support. While there's huge amounts of content online it does strike me that it's the same supporters seeking out this online content who support it tirelessly offline.

There's nothing wrong with that, they are a great (and significant) group of influencers, but the poppy is such a symbolic emblem with widespread relevance to all, that it feels like a great opportunity to reach out to a younger audience through social media, rather than relying on existing supporters to visit the brand site. Here's an example we produced for Beatbullying that took the message to people rather than expecting them to come and find it on the charity's dotcom site. In this instance we had to raise awareness in order to try and affect Governemnt policy.

So in regard to the Poppy appeal, why for instance can't i donate through Facebook to recieve a virtual poppy on my face book profile for the next 11 days? And in so doing alert my network to the fact that i'm wearing my poppy?

I found this twitterpoppy app built by a 3rd party that does just that on Twitter. Hopefully it gains enough traction this year to be delivered in an official capacity next year and hopefully monetised to ensure that the Royal British Legion can continue to offer support to all of those that need it.