Archive for the 'Multi-Sensory' Category

Retail Reinvention: The Magic of Babies

Published on 05.14.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience and Multi-Sensory. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Manufacturers and retailers alike face stiff competition amidst a relatively flat market for baby products.  Just under 4 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2011, flat vs. 10 years ago, and the average woman has 2 children, a figure which has also remained flat.  So where’s the magic?  First, it’s a big market: an estimated $36.3 billion is spent annually by North Americans on baby products (including everything from food and diapers to clothes and furniture).   Second, the birth of a baby is a major life event that prompts a lot of spending in a very short time frame.  Third – and this the most important point for marketers — brand choices made at this teachable moment can impact brand choices for years to come, for the child as well as the parents.  In fact, research has shown that scent and sound preferences start forming in the womb!

When it comes to shopping for baby products, moms have great online and offline choices.  This article will focus on the leading specialty retailers — Babies”R”Us and Buy Buy Baby — but we can’t forget that they face off against mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart and Target as well as online-only retailers like Amazon.  And no discussion about kids’ products in America could be complete without mentioning Disney.  So … how are the baby experts reinventing the baby products shopping experience?

Babies”R”Us:  The Mainstream Mega-Store

Stores. Babies”R”Us is the nation’s leading retailer specializing in baby products, with their first store opened in 1996 and their website launched in June, 2000.  They aim to provide a unique value to shoppers by carrying a variety of popular name brands from Evenflo to Peg-Perego, plus store-brand, value-priced necessities like food and diapers and chain-exclusive offerings such as the new Truly Scrumptious by Heidi Klum line of “affordable luxuries for little ones”, including apparel and room decor.

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Innovation for the Ages: The New Longevity Economy

Published on 05.14.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The Institute for the Ages was recently created to help market researchers and product developers seize the opportunities presented by an aging population.  It’s located in Sarasota County, Florida, where 32% of today’s residents are over age 65 — a level the rest of the developed world won’t reach until 2050.  These ahead-of-the-curve demographics coupled with a high level of community engagement make the county a natural testing ground for new products and services for the aging.  The Institute poses a provocative question:  Sarasota County and Institute for the Ages are 40 years ahead of the most important demographic trend of our time – how far ahead are you?

Before we look 40 years into the future, let’s look back 40 years to see what’s changed about the face of aging, to get some ideas for what new issues we might face 40 years from now.

Past. In the 1970s, Americans over age 65 enjoyed more financial security than ever before, thanks in large measure to the benefits of Social Security income and Medicare health insurance — often supplemented by employer-provided pension plans and health insurance — along with other support programs stemming from the 1965 Older Americans Act.  But physical disability was on the rise among older people, as there were few good treatment options for many of their serious medical issues.

Present. Thanks to improved pharmaceuticals, better diet and exercise practices, and other medical interventions, the rate of physical and mental disability among the elderly has generally been reduced — though the larger population of adults over 65 (due to increased longevity) means the absolute number of disabled individuals is still rising.  However, there is concern that rising obesity levels may create a new threat, as obesity increases the risk of disability from diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and some forms of cancer.

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Beyond Physical: 7 Unique Expressions of Wellness Can Drive Innovation

Published on 05.14.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and What's New. 0 Comments Tags: , .

How do you respond when asked, “Are you doing well?” Do you focus immediately on your physical health and say something like, “Oh, my blood pressure’s a little high, but otherwise the doc says I’m in good shape.”  Physical health is certainly a primary aspect of wellness, but the concept of wellness is increasingly understood to now include seven aspects:  physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social, financial/occupational, and environmental.  As consumers come to understand this broader definition, new opportunities emerge for brands to incorporate additional aspects of wellness into their value proposition.

Whether you need to enhance the value proposition of an existing product or market a brand new one, try exploring the range of wellness expressions for new ideas.  Consider these examples of brands that have successfully and profitably made a connection with a particular aspect of wellness, either as the core brand promise or as a secondary mission.

Physical wellness is more than the absence of disease or disability; it encompasses personal responsibility for all choices that affect your bodily health, from wearing a seatbelt in cars to exercising and eating a healthy diet to appropriate use of the health care system.  Many food brands include physical wellness as part of their value proposition by promising to help us maintain the health of our heart, digestive system, weight, and so on.  In a more unusual example, Goodnighties sleepwear is made from fabric treated with negatively charged ions and promises to neutralize body stress and promote better sleep.

Intellectual wellness requires lifelong learning, creativity, and problem solving. As our population ages, finding ways to maintain our mental acuity is a growing concern.  Activities from video games to weight training are being touted as beneficial for intellectual wellness. Dietary supplements like Focus Factor and Procera AVH have successfully tapped into our desire for intellectual wellness by promising to help you concentrate longer and focus better.

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Retail Reinvention: The Differentiated Success of Beauty Retailers Sephora and Ulta

Published on 04.15.2012 in End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and What's New. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Walmart is still the biggest seller of beauty products in the U.S., and they’ve been upping their game in recent years by introducing chain-exclusive beauty brands such as Hard Candy.  Nonetheless, two beauty-specialty retailers have thrived through the recent recession years:  Sephora, which focuses strictly on prestige products, and Ulta, which delivers unique value by bridging the prestige and mass markets.  In addition to being great examples of retailer differentiation, these chains have disrupted both the traditional department store selling model for prestige brands and the drug/mass selling model for mass market brands.  They are also great examples of retailers who have clearly defined their target market, have customized their in-store experience accordingly, and work hard to make their shoppers feel special and valued.  So – how do they do it, and what can we learn from them?

Sephora: Trusted Advisor for Fashionistas

Traditionally, Americans have shopped for high-end, or prestige, cosmetics and fragrances at department stores like Macy’s, but when Sephora entered the U.S. market in 1998, they completely reinvented the prestige cosmetics shopping experience.  They now have over 500 locations in the U.S. and significant market share.

In the traditional department store, each brand is isolated at a separate service counter, staffed by a salesperson who only sells that brand, and all products are stocked in closed cases.  This creates a rather high-pressure selling environment, can lead to long waits for service, and makes it very difficult to explore and experiment across brands.

In contrast, Sephora has a low-pressure environment which encourages exploration and experimentation.  Open shelving allows Sephora shoppers to touch, smell, and apply any product.  Sales staff are trained to probe for the shopper’s needs and then recommend appropriate items from any of the 250 brands they carry (including some “exclusively at Sephora” lines).   Their newest New York store even features a mobile payment system so that staff can process customer payments on the store floor (skipping the checkout counter, the least enjoyable part of the store experience for most shoppers), as well as in-store iPads that allow shoppers to scan QR codes to access product information, ratings, and reviews (see also: Using QR codes To Speed Customers Through the Purchase Decision Process).

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How Brandwashed Are You?

Published on 04.15.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and What's New. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Actionable marketing tips from neuromarketing expert Martin Lindstrom’s new book, Brandwashed.

Brandwashed purports to reveal the ways in which marketers manipulate consumers into buying more.  But it also gives us several good ideas for upping the effectiveness of our own marketing communications.  Based on Lindstrom’s extensive functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and observational research on how our brains respond to various images and messages, this book recommends several powerful ways to tap consumer demand, including appeals to fear, love, nostalgia, and peer approval.

How does it work?  When these emotions are triggered, our brains release “feel good” chemicals.  When we encounter these emotional triggers in combination with a branded product, our brains form a positive association:  get brand, get good feeling.  We want more of that good feeling, so we desire more of that brand.  And since the human brain is the result of millions of years of evolution, it reacts pretty consistently to these triggers, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or other individual characteristics – so a great campaign idea can be effectively extended to multiple target audiences.

Fear. Whether it’s fear of death, disease, poverty, or social isolation, fear is a powerful motivator.  Further, by uniting us against a common enemy, fear brings us together.  We actually enjoy spreading news about possible dangers.  Just think about how often we talk about infectious diseases and germophobia.  Examples of brands that have effectively connected to the fear trigger to drive sales:  Allstate’s Mayhem campaign and Lysol disinfectant’s campaign against the flu virus.   Is there some deep-seated fear that your brand can assuage?

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The Scent of Success

Published on 04.15.2012 in End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and What's New. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The smell of Christmas: pine trees and gingerbread.  The smell of a baby: baby powder and milk. Hundreds of scientific studies have proven what we know intuitively, i.e. scents can evoke strong memories and emotions and even inspire certain behaviors. Today, we take a look at some of the latest news on scent and the innovative ways scent is being used in consumer marketing.

Freshening Our Homes:  Clean Environment, Wild Luxury

Home air fresheners are the obvious place to start, and the April 2012 issue of Real Simple magazine provides a great example.  An ad for Air Wick air fresheners entices us to “bring home the vibrant scents of nature,” as they’ve created a limited edition of four new scents inspired by America’s great national parks, including Yellowstone’s Wildflower Valley and Alaska’s Glacier Bay.  A beautiful picture of Yellowstone Park is overlaid with scent, encouraging readers to “rub here to experience Wildflower Valley.”  While scratch-and-sniff spots are familiar, having one right on a magazine page is rare, making the Air Wick National Park product line seem even more special.   At the bottom of the ad, consumers are encouraged to go to their website to join the Fragrant Homes Club for exclusive coupons and to enter a sweepstakes to win a trip to one of the parks.

When it comes to scents for household products, Procter & Gamble scent experts say that fragrance megatrends seem to surface every decade or so. Following the rise of cucumber melon in the 1980s, scents evoking rain were popular during the 1990s, followed by clean linen and lavender vanilla.

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Speed Up the Purchase Decision Process with QR (Quick Response) Codes and Microsoft Tags

Published on 02.22.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience and Multi-Sensory. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

According to a study by Forrester Research, 5% of U.S. adults scanned a bar code with their smartphone in 2011, up from 1% in 2010.  In other words, QR codes are on track to reach a critical mass of usage over the next year, making them a truly viable marketing medium.

The advantage of these scannable codes is speed:  instead of reading and typing in a long web address, you just open the code-reader app on your smartphone, hold your phone over the code as if taking a picture.  The app reads the code (which is just a link to a specific web page) and instantly displays that web page on your screen.   Now that we understand how the technology works, let’s take a look at some of ways you can employ QR codes to move consumers through the purchase decision process.

Assist consumers with information gathering, to move them more quickly from awareness to interest – A magazine ad or point-of-purchase sign can generate awareness of the new product, while a QR code can then link an interested consumer to a video that provides more information – for example, a demo on how to use the product, a scientific expert’s view of the product, or user testimonials.  This is an efficient way to educate consumers about highly innovative or technical products.  Here are three great examples that are likely to speed up the buyer decision process significantly.

EXAMPLE 1:  A print ad for Columbia’s new Omni-Heat Electric jackets shows us a fashionable jacket being worn by a skier, which linked to a video showing how you operate the jacket’s heating system.

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3 Ways to Boost Your CQ (Creativity Quotient)

Published on 02.22.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation and Multi-Sensory. 0 Comments Tags: , .

If we are to find the most dreaded tasks an employee ever gets, coming up with a creative solution will be one of them. “We are going to come up with something creative here” your boss declares and the blood drains from your face. Of course it would. “Coming up with something creative” implies that you are, no, that you are expected to be creative. And you are not. You would swear you are not. Never have been. That’s why you chose to do what you do and not write novels or create TV advertisements.

We hear you. And completely disagree with you. You truly are creative, just like everyone else. There are millions of creative ideas (some useful, some not so much) your mind can conceive. You can tease them out when you are solving a specific challenge or just for fun. Here are a few tips and techniques to help unlock your creative mind:

  1. Change your perspective. Whatever challenge you have in front of you, there is more than one way of looking at it. Try seeing the problem through fresh eyes. Clear your mind from the details you already know and from the frustration you have accumulated. Pretend you are an independent consultant. Or your boss. Or your kid. Pretend this is the first time each of these people hears about the challenge. What will they think first? What are the questions they would ask? Who would they call? Scribble down these ideas and make these calls. Chances are, by the time this “exercise” is over, you will have uncovered a new resource and will be down a path to an idea that never occurred to you before.
  2. Create when you are tired. No wonder you don’t feel creative during the 9-to-5 grind. Because your mind is so tightly wound during this time— you are juggling projects, taking calls and running from one meeting to another—this is the worst time to produce creative ideas. A recent study by Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks established that people are better at solving creativity problems at a time when they are most tired. Think about it; where do you usually come up with ideas? In the shower? Right after waking up? Right before going to bed? In the middle of the night? These are all times when you are relaxed and your mind is in sort of a mid-state, perhaps half-asleep. This is when the most peculiar thoughts may occur to you and you may even surprise yourself with your creativity. So stop beating yourself up for having trouble being creative at the office and spend a little more time in the shower instead. Continue reading ’3 Ways to Boost Your CQ (Creativity Quotient)’

Backyard Gardening Raises Vegetables AND Marketing Opportunities

Published on 02.22.2012 in End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and What's New. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

More Americans are growing vegetables, berries, and herbs in their yards, up 10% from 2007 to 2008 and up another 21% from 2008 to 2009.  Over one-third of American households now participate in food gardening.  The rise of buzzwords like urban gardening and suburban farming, as well as the number of new publications on the subject (e.g., Urban Farm), suggests we are looking at an important trend.  So what should marketers be doing with this information?

An important first step is to understand WHY food gardening is on the rise.  Research from the National Gardening Association indicates that the recession is one major factor:  consumers are motivated to grow their own food to cut their grocery bills.  An equal number are focused on eating healthier and getting fresher, more flavorful produce than they can get at the store.  Others are interested in sustainable living or getting their families more involved in outdoor activities.

Next, we have to wonder whether this is a trend that will last or fade away quickly.  There are several indicators we can look at for this.   First, as noted above, there are multiple converging factors driving the consumer behavior, and that’s always a good sign of a trend with longevity.  Second, we see retail sales trends involving numerous products across multiple categories – that’s another good sign.  Third, the Home Depot Garden Club website’s monthly poll for January 2012 shows that the number one gardening goal for 2012 is Growing My Own Vegetables with 41% of the votes  (admittedly, not the most scientific research, but still an indicator).  Let’s take a look at some of the new products that are capitalizing on these opportunities.

According to leading seed vendor, Burpee, sales of vegetable seeds and gardening supplies have grown substantially in the past few years, with the trend continuing into 2012.   Whereas tomatoes were the hottest product in 2010, herb gardening was on the rise in 2011.  Burpee offers some interesting new products targeting consumers interested in increasing their vegetable consumption for nutritional reasons, but who don’t necessarily have much gardening experience.  One example is their Healing Hands Lettuce Mix, a combination of four varieties of lettuce in a single pellet, which can be planted in a 10” container (if you don’t have an in-ground garden) and harvested every 3 weeks all summer long.  This salad mix promises 20% more lutein and 30% more beta-carotene than the average salad mix.

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Retail Reinvention: How Retailers are Staying Relevant to their Shoppers. Part 2: Levi Strauss

Published on 12.01.2011 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

As consumer interests and priorities change over time, retailers need to update — or even reinvent — their marketing strategy to stay relevant.  In this series of articles, we’ll review the success stories of several retailers in different industries.

In the highly dynamic and ever fickle world of fashion – where popular colors and designs changing as fast as the seasons – Levi Strauss has been a icon for over 150 years.  So — how has Levi’s achieved its status as a top global brand with FY 2010 net revenue of over $4 billion, +7% over prior year?

In addition to maintaining the ever-popular 501 jeans series, the company’s research into evolving consumer segments and their specific needs has led Levi Strauss to create very innovative line extensions that fit both the company image and modern consumer needs.

  • For women, the Curve ID jeans system recognizes that women vary dramatically not just in their waist size (the typical basis for jeans sizing), but also in the shape of their hips and seat.   Combining these three measurements places one into the Slight, Demi, Bold, or Supreme curve category.  The side seams and waistband are uniquely shaped to flatter each fit.  Levi’s even created a special measuring tape so that store staff can quickly determine the right fit for each shopper, as well as an online app explaining how to measure yourself at home.  Did you know that more than half of all women try on at least TEN pairs of jeans to find one pair they will buy?  Not only does the Curve ID system make the shopping process easier, the fit is so flattering that women rave about how good they look in these jeans.  Confident in shopping and in wearing – that’s a big win.