Shadow QR Codes Drive Sunny Sales in Korea
I have never scanned a QR code in my life. I don’t even have the app! But this campaign from Korea is definitely inspiring in its clever use of nature and novelty.
Korea is well ahead in terms of tech adoption and most of the people have a smartphone and are familiar with QR codes. The campaign is for Emart, one of the largest big box retailers in Korea. Emart needed to increase its lunchtime sales and found a novel way to do so by using mobile to drive sales. They created a three dimensional QR code that only revealed itself during 12 to 1 pm when the sun hit it at just the right angle. The code was placed across the city and anyone who scanned it was given a special discount code for 25% off Emart products, redeemable in-store or through their mobile ecommerce site. Best of all, the goods would be delivered to the customer’s home.
The results: 12,000 coupons were issued during the promotion, Emart membership increased by 58%, and the company succeeded in increasing their in-store sales by 25%.
Here’s hoping for more clever use of QR codes here in Australia so I can finally be inspired to get the app and get something worthwhile out of it. Emart ticks the boxes for getting the right motivation and interest for scanning the code, and providing a valuable benefit, and of course.. share-ability!
What do you think?
Now on offer: Facebook Offers
In a move that surely surprises no one, Facebook this week launched ‘Offers’ in Australia, currently available in beta to a limited number of business pages and soon to be available to all pages.
Facebook Offers follows in the footsteps of FourSquare and the multitude of group buying websites that have sprung up over the past years, leveraging the power of bulk buying and word of mouth.
While FourSquare integrated with Facebook over two years ago, at the time Facebook Places replicated the technology of using the location based services facility that FourSquare offered. Facebook Places was replaced with the tagging location technology soon after.
How Does It Work?
Facebook Offers works in much the same way as FourSquare, without the check-in component – an offer is posted on the business page of a brand, such as a coffee shop and appears on the brand page and in your newsfeed. The offer might involve a buy one get one free, or a discount on a product or service, which is redeemed on the brands page. Facebook Offers differs by emailing the offer directly to the consumer, who then takes their mobile device, or a printout, to the venue to redeem their offer.
The offer can be capped, and made available for a limited time only. Facebook then tracks how many offers have been redeemed, which is displayed on the brand page, and the offer can be shared with friends in the same way other content on Facebook is shared.
Here is a bit more about Facebook Offers.
What Does this Mean for FourSquare?
FourSquare announced this week they have 20 million users worldwide, with over 2 billion check-ins, but Facebook Places had 30 million users within two months of launching in 2010. So, will brands choose FourSquare, which uses location based che
ck ins for their offers, or Facebook, which only requires you to ‘like’?
Questions could also be raised about how to police the redemption of Facebook Offers – what is stopping a consumer from redeeming an offer on more than one occasion, especially if that offer is on a mobile device? And what about staff training and ensuring that your brand ambassadors are across all the offers published in time for them to be redeemed?
Recent evidence from Group Buying sites show discounts and freebie offers generally bring customers in the door, but getting them to come back is the area that needs work. It may be that Facebook Offers provides the key to loyalty marketing in the future, given that most people redeeming the offers will already be fans of the brand.
Will you use Facebook Offers for your business?
Sephora’s Digital & Social Makeover Is Right on Trend
Our latest FRANkademy session on social business and retail has tweaked all our brains into retail mode! We spent quite a far bit of time hunting for great examples of retailers putting social and innovation into their offerings. But they’re really not too uncommon these days. One stellar example is the cosmetics retailer Sephora, which is best known for its bricks-and-mortar stores that not only offer a huge variety of brands and products, but continually enhances the retail experience for its customers.
The 1,600 store retailer is taking its US digital operations to the next level with what its calling “a social and mobile makeover”. The updates include an overhauled website with ultra specific search functionality and improved mobile web and iOS apps, all of which go a long way in helping customers find the products they want, helping them buy with greater confidence and improving efficiency.
“Digital is a must for the future of retailing,” said Julie Bornstein, senior vice president, Sephora Direct. “With the social, digital, mobile and website updates, we’re giving our clients the most customizable experience in the beauty industry, and connecting clients with our experts in the ways that are most relevant to them. We’re excited to makeover the future of shopping.”
Website functions to help the customer, whatever their needs are
The revamp has been three years in the making, and the result is the best-organized search for beauty products on the web. The newly improved search function on Sephora’s website enables anyone to find the product they are looking for. Each product on the site has been tagged with over 25 attributes (for what age, colour, ingredients, benefits, fragrance, formulations, price etc.). And of course, this detailed product tagging creates massive opportunities for search engine use as well. Sephora has enhanced their online shopping experience to make it as easy, hassle-free and flexible as possible. Once shoppers have found the product they want, they can buy it online (in half the time as before), or they can check if it available in one of its physical stores.
Sephora's new web functions
Their new website also allows users to create favourite product lists, learn the latest trends through frequent style updates, get personalised advice, watch tutorials from the editors, and interact with experts instantly. All these features are also available on the mobile site, reflecting the company’s dedication to creating a seamless experience across all channels.
In-store digital and social integration
After perfecting its in-store app-powered scanning capabilities, Sephora will soon begin installing iPads in more than 100 of its stores this year, to let customers navigate Sephora’s thousands of products, menus of services offered at the Beauty Studio, and get tips on makeup and styling. The iPads will help personalise the shopping experience for customers and offer help and advice on demand. For example, a customer considering booking in a treatment or buying a product can view videos of the treatment. Customers can scan a product in-store on the iPad and see all its details, and what others are saying about it via social media and online reviews. They can also look up their own personal shopping history and their wishlists, which all get synced between the web and mobile apps.
Every store will also be outfitted with iPod Touches for sales staff to use for mobile point of sale, to look up customers’ purchase history or access customers’ loyalty points. For example, after a customer gets a complimentary makeover at the Sephora Beauty Studio, staff can scan the product beside the customer (who is seated at the mirror admiring themselves) which is added to the customer’s profile. The customer can pay right there and then and walk out – no lines and no hassles.
Social plays for awareness and reputation building
The company has also developed an official Pinterest integration, adding “Pin it” buttons to all its brand and product pages. Staff have been invited to create boards so that shoppers can see what products the experts are using. Sephora is already running a popular sweepstakes on Pinterest:
Sephora’s new Instagram feed (which is also a board of its own on their Pinterest account) gives followers a behind-the-scenes look at the company and its staff, and what trends and products are driving buzz in the beauty world.
Many retailers are hesitant to bridge the online and offline world, but Sephora is doing it right – putting the customer at the centre of their strategy and constantly creating value for them.
Starbucks – Christmas Magic
Starbucks U.S is launching its first major augmented reality app leading up to Christmas that will allow customers to animate their coffee cups with their smartphones!
The app will work by pointing your phone’s camera at the special cups and 47 additional objects, such as bags of coffee, on display at Starbucks retail locations.
Doing so will produce animations involving five characters and it also allows you to interact with the characters.
The app also includes traditional and social sharing capabilities
CLOO – genius or gone too far?
Well this is definitely a unique one! Who would have ever thought a smartphone app could be the answer to those who are out and about and ‘desperate’ for a bathroom. Soon this will be made possible in the U.S via ‘CLOO’ (Community + Loo) which will connect those in urgent need of a toilet with those in the community that are willing to share one!
CLOO is a community of registered host members who are willing to share their bathrooms in exchange for a small fee. After downloading the CLOO app, those in need of a bathroom will be able to use it to see the registered hosts nearby. Along with basic details, the app will also indicate whether those hosts share any social networking friends in common with the user, as well as the host’s community rating and the price of their toilet. Users can then send a request to see if the host is home; if they are, the user is then invited to use the host’s toilet and payment is deposited into the host’s account. Afterwards, ratings for each party can be submitted through CLOO.
Not sure if this is something I would partake in, but heck when you gotta go you gotta go!
How the mobile web is disappointing global users
Even though I’m perfectly grateful for having an iPhone with 3G, I’m not very happy with my provider (who shall remain nameless). I haven’t had proper 3G for almost a year – instead I’m trapped in constant ‘roaming’ mode. But even when I’m on a wireless network at home, I find it’s just not fast enough using the Internet, especially when pages aren’t optimised for mobile. With 71% of Australians using their smartphone to find information online, why aren’t more websites scaled down for mobile?
Mobile websites have of course sprung up a lot more in recent times, but a great portion of them aren’t even near fast enough – countless mobile users still curse over the slow download times.
A Visual.ly user, Angel, has made a very revealing infographic about the satisfaction of mobile users.
The take-home points here:
1. Every page needs to be optimised for mobile – It is imperative to have a mobile version of your site that automatically loads when a user accesses it from a mobile device. If you disappoint, or worse, frustrate and infuriate them with slow loading times, they are unlikely to return to the page. Mobile pages are easy to set up and cost little compared to the costs of losing would-be customers.
2. The mobile site needs to be lightning quick – if it takes more than 3 seconds, you’ve already lost 60% of the users. A good tip is to have no images (or just one small image, perhaps as the header) on the mobile site and to reduce the use of styling.
Next week I’ll be posting some tips on making great mobile sites by some neat ways to balance loading time, aesthetics, and increasing functionality.
See the world differently with these apps
There is an app for ANYTHING these days. You are lost in a foreign country and need a translator? There is an app for that! You need to find a parking spot in the city? There is an app for that! You want to know at what time you hit the deep sleep phase at night? There is an app for that!
The list goes on and there are many apps worth mentioning but this articles is all about the way you see things in your world- literally and metaphorically
GlassesOff
This new app for iPhones promises exactly that: with regular exercise your glasses may come off. The app works by training the mind to translate blurry images into clear ones. So your brain actually can help you see things when your eyes deteriorate naturally as you age.
Source: www.psfk.com
Clinical tests have shown that the app is effective, enabling an average reduction in ‘eye age’ from 50.5 to 41.9. The app will be launched on the iPhone next year and is expected to cost around $90 for a three-month subscription.
via PSFK
Slavery Footprint
This Android application opens your eyes in a different way and highlights the unethically sourced things we consume daily. The app asks some questions about your lifestyle and shopping habits and then shows you the regions where forced labor is used to produce the foods and products you buy and calculates how may slaves work for you.
You can then post your result on to social networks to raise awareness and invite friend to check out the app. For more info go to: http://slaveryfootprint.org/
VizWiz
This crowd sourced app allows blind people to “see” the things they are unsure of such as dollar bills, objects in their pantry, etc. They basically take a photo of the object, ask a question about it such as “is this a can of tuna”? and send it off to VizWiZ. The app then just forwards this info on to real people who answer the question in seconds.
Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com
This app is still in the lab but surely will be available soon.
There’s Always Next Season
We’re really excited to report we’ve launched another integrated campaign that used Bought and Earned media properties to drive engagement, increase reach and brand awareness.
The campaign involved one of FRANk’s clients, Carsales.com.au, who recognised that a lot of football fans are lamenting the fact that their football season is over for 2011 and to cheer them up Carsales wanted to remind them that “There’s Always Next Season.” With that sentiment in mind they’ve decided to giveaway football memberships to the AFL/NRL club of your choice in 2012.
At FRANk we bought this to life by building two mechanisms that would engage the Carsales audience at two different touch points.
Bought: Our relationship with Sports Mate, whom Carsales has been involved with via AFL/NRL live app meant that we could utilise the existing dynamic banners on the app to drive entries into the competition. We designed and implemented a fully customised web form with a simple mechanic so as not to interrupt the users experience with the app for more than a few seconds.
Earned: Secondly, we built an application on the Carsales Facebook page that has driven more likes and increased the reach of the brand across the entrant’s social networks. As part of the application functionality we built an automatic ‘Like’ component to enter the competition and an optional push function to notify the entrants friends about the competition.
At FRANk we believe an integrated media approach is the best way to ensure audience engagement and results from the first week have been super positive. We’ll keep you informed of the progress in coming weeks, but if you haven’t entered the comp, make sure you do, here!
Secondly, we built a Facebook application that has driven more likes and increased the reach of the brand across the entrant’s social networks. As part of the app we built an automatic ‘Like’ component and an optional push notification to an entrant’s network
Facebook Check-in Deals arrives in Australia – how it can work for you
After intensive testing in New Zealand, Facebook Check-in Deals has finally launched in Australia just a few days ago on the 15th of August. Starting with big brand partners – Commonwealth bank, KFC, 7-Eleven and Westfield shopping centres, it certainly is arriving with a bang and getting people excited about checking in to business’s Facebook Places page to receive offers – for example, the Commonwealth Bank is offering 2 free movie tickets for opening a new account and 7-Eleven will let you have a big 450ml bottle of Coca-Cola for $1 – that’s if you check in on Facebook, of course.
How does Facebook Deals work?
It’s a relatively simple concept that Facebook copied from Foursquare (which they unsuccessfully tried to buy for US$125 million). Facebook Check-in Deals allows businesses to create coupons and discounts on the social network, which can be unlocked upon a Facebook user’s check-in to the business location on Facebook Places through the Facebook mobile app. The types of deals can vary according to what kind of purchasing motivation the business wishes to encourage – such as trial purchase, loyalty, group purchasing, or charity association. . Now with Facebook Check-in Deals, users can also see what offers are nearby and share those deals with their friends.
Types of check-in deals
There are four types of deals available in the US. However, it is unclear whether these exact same deal types will be available in Australia following the launch with Commonwealth Bank, KFC, 7-Eleven and Westfield.
If you are a business owner, you might be wondering how to jump onto Facebook Check-in Deals – will it be good for your business?
1. Encouraging trial and impulse purchase – When reason people look up Facebook Deals on their mobile is to look for deals right there and then. Not only does putting your business out there on Facebook Deals generate awareness and interest, but if it may also incentivise new customers to then make the effort to walk through your doors, explore and trial your business. For existing customers, it may also encourage impulse purchase – even if someone wasn’t feeling like a coffee, they might just buy it because a cafe they were familiar with were having a deal. This is a great opportunity to quickly gain cashflow without going through daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial who manually curate the deals.
2. Build brand loyalty – Offering deals that relate to a customer’s repeat check-ins to your business will incentivise them to come again in order to redeem bigger rewards. Your business may thus become the go-to for a certain product or service.
3. Spreading word of mouth – Using the Facebook network helps spread word about your business and its offerings. As customers check in and redeem deals, the information is published on the network to all their friends – which in turn, generates awareness and motivation to jump in on the deal themselves. The average Facebook user has 130 friends – which means one user’s check-in and redemption of a Deal spreads the information to 130 people’s newsfeeds – think of all the publicity!
4. Direct contact with fans – The complete integration with Facebook means a business can promote their deal by sending a message directly to its Fans and community. There will also be a Deals tab on your Fanpage – so your Fans, old and new, will know about your Deal. They will also have an option to Like your Deal and thus share it with their friends.
5. Timely and geo-located deals target customers better – Most group buying services rely on emails to spam subscribers with daily deals and after a while, customers just aren’t bothered to look at them. But on the other hand, how many people have Facebook on their mobile? While customers will be able to receive offers from Facebook Deals via email, they will mostly show up in the news feed and in the app – which means better targeting of people’s needs and and wants at the right time and place.
“Retail, and particularly the way we can now target shoppers with special deals and discounts, has changed dramatically over the past decade,” Westfield’s General Manager of Marketing, John Batistich said. “With tools such as Facebook Check In Deals we’re now able to communicate to our shoppers in relevant and localised ways.”
Update on 26 August 2011:
Facebook Places has been shifted from being a mobile-only feature to a cross-device location-tagging feature. Facebook blogged that their changes in privacy policies would change the way users mark their locations. Facebook isn’t quitting the locations-based service space – it’s simply making check-ins part of status updates in location tagging.
According to Aaron Shapiro, CEO of the digital agency Huge, “They’re removing location as a standalone service – something that was not getting much traction within Facebook anyway. They’re replacing it with something that can be far more powerful – location services that are fully integrated into the core Facebook experience.”
The in-stream check-in aims to make location tagging as ubiquitous as tagging people in pictures and posts – which means your business can be tagged, mentioned, spoken about, etc. within the status update, along with the description of the deal that was redeemed by a Facebook user – providing a huge potential for conversation, engagement and awareness.
Interested in using Facebook Check-in Deals for your business? Hit us up at FRANk to see how we can help you with creating awareness, buzz and word of mouth for your business.
Snap the Value
It seems these days that society is getting lazier. Anything to cut down time, hassle & effort is usually the option we go for, agree?
That being said I’m always on the lookout for new initiatives, especially clever ones. One I did come across recently on Springwise is a new way to value a car.
There are several online options to do this at present, but in Sweden recently a new ‘snappier’ way (pardon the pun) has been developed through a mobile app from bilpriser.se where you can speedily be provided the estimated price of a car from simply taking a photo of its registration plate. It can also deliver the technical specifications of the vehicle, run insurance cost comparisons.
This is definitely one of those examples of consumers demanding more ‘instant’ access to relevant information, I know I would give it a go!
Awash with waves of iphone apps
As a marketing communications company we owe it to ourselves and our loyal clients to stay abreast of the ever evolving communications-shift that is in play. One of my solutions to appear knowledgeable is to surround myself with people and companies who are pioneering change.
One such company is Lookout Mobile who make iphone apps, jointly managed by Patrick and Daniel. One of their hero app is Aussie Rules Live and they are one of the leaders in this emerging market.
I was talking with them yesterday and they remarked that app development is now in its third-wave, which intrigued me. Wave One…all the way back in July 2008 largely came from 3G backyard developers and in hindsight were kind of crude, but fun. Wave Two emerged with 3GS. The “S” is for speed and gave birth to funkier apps such as the compass, improved gaming and augmented reality. A great example of the latter is in this clip.
Wave Three is capitalising on “second-mover advantage” which revisits existing apps and simply improves upon them. Weather apps are a good example with Pocket Weather emerging as one of the most popular.
From an iphone owner’s point of view there are so many new apps emerging and that awareness of the best apps is largely through friends and “have you seen this app?” conversations. It occured to me that aside from itunes there is no destination which provides independent, user generated, reviews and views. Apps are currently ranked in the app store by 1-5 stars which is fine but limited. I thought such a site might be called iphoneappreview.com.au. To my surprise i was able to register this url, which i did yesterday. Dot com was taken and takes us here, a site developed by doshdosh and the wrong advice it has over 14,000 app reviews and currently ranks 328,000 on alexa.
The iphone app market is in early stages of development and penetration and i figure with the right collective attitude and experience now is a good time to explore the opportunity to provide a UGC app-review platform as a destination in a market that is destined to grow dramatically. So is there anyone out there who agrees with the opportunity and would like to contribute at this formative stage in the life-cycle of apps? Please let me know.
Green with envy over Orange
It’s a shame that Hutchison Telecom in Australia rolled the Orange mobile phone brand into what is now known as 3 in 2006, as we’re being robbed of some great cinema advertising coming out of the UK.
Orange has signed up US stars Danny Glover, Juliette Lewis, Sigourney Weaver and Emilio Estevez to appear in its cinema ad campaign this year, which has been running since 2003. The creative agency (Fallon) have a new take on the famous franchise, which sees the long-running formula of celebrities having their movie pitches ripped apart by Dresden and his boorish Orange Film Board colleagues replaced by the Orange Film Studios, which makes new versions of Hollywood classics. A spin-off digital campaign to promote the spoof movie in the latest commercial has also been created.
Orange is a great case study for having a long term brand strategy. Their long-term ownership of the cinema medium (in the telecommunications sector) with a humourous take on ‘turning off your mobile’ reaches a young audience spending a lot of time out of home, and using their phone as a social hub. The strong content of the ads also increases engagement, in an environment where ad avoidance is fairly easy.
Initiatives such as Orange Wednesday continue to add value to the consumer with 2 for 1 films and even pizzas (through a deal with UK chain Pizza Express). In the mobile phone market, where handsets, technology and deals change as quickly as you can say ‘Harry Potter’, owning a medium and to an extent, a day of the week stands the Orange brand in good stead.
Great stuff!
iPhone, do you?
Tomorrow sees the first bounce of the 2009 AFL season and one of the hero applications (apps) developed by Look out Mobile is Aussie Rules Live. Developed for the iphone and ipod touch check out the video for a demonstration of the features. These include
- live scores
- Live text commentary for all games
- Live goal kickers
- Live ladder updates
- Shake the phone for live score updates!
- Full fixtures and individual team fixtures
- Latest team news
- Previous round scores and goal kickers
- Compare results, ladder and head to head from past seasons (v.2 update)
If you’d like to download this app then look no further than here
Last week Apple announced a wave of new developments from its new operating platform…called 3.0. One of them will enable e-commerce.
This opens up the field to all sorts of pocket convenience for services such as subscribing to magazines.
We see this as an interesting opportunity for publishers in a climate where hard copy sales are generally heading south. Any savings from not having to print could be passed on, ads could be interactive, new concepts could be trialed, real time opinions could be garnered etc.
Watch for an avalanche of e-commerce enabled apps tumbling into play this June.
Go Saints.