Experiate » Technology

My good friend Mike over at 11th screen tweeted about this yesterday. When he tweets, I listen. So I checked this out. This is the amazingly cool “Smiling Noodle” from Kraft, developed by MonsterMedia.

This is a terrific way to get people engaged with a brand. And Kraft and MonsterMedia took the essence of the product – the elbow macaroni – and created a fun and engaging interactive. Very well done.

But here’s the problem. This doesn’t sell Mac and Cheese. That’s the point. Right?

These interactive screens were placed around the country (Chicago, New York, LA) in high traffic areas. And it looks like it got a lot of audience engagement. But did it sell any Mac and Cheese? Here are three reasons why this is a challenge:

Where Can I Buy? One of the most important tenets with digital engagement is the viewer’s ability to act upon what she has just experienced. The takeaway here is not the smile, it’s the brand impression. She needs to move that impression forward on the path to purchase. But if she can’t, the impression is lost as soon as the next bright, shiny object enters her field of view.

There Is No Takeaway. Unlike the Smile Happy Ice Cream campaign that Unilever created, this doesn’t give the viewer any takeaway, like the product, or a coupon, or a QR code for their mobile device to really open the gates of communication. With an immediate return, the customer connects the impression with the result – the product or access to it. This creates an indelible mark on the viewer’s mindset, and provides marketers with real data on the success of the device.

Using a Shotgun When You Need a Sniper Rifle. These were placed in high traffic areas to get viewer engagement, but I’m willing to bet that a large percentage of the people who interacted with it aren’t really Mac and Cheese fans. Sure, you’ll get a massive amount of people who will try it, making the numbers sexy, but if those viewers are not customers of Kraft or Mac and Cheese, it’s an inefficient execution. The value of each impression is much lower because of the high traffic strategy.

In the end, someone has to pay for this (yes, I know it’s the customer, but bear with me). As these devices become more prevalent in our culture, so too will the need to justify the expense on the marketing budget to create and deploy them. This is advertising, and advertising is made to get people to buy. If they don’t buy, these devices are no more than costly wet noodles.

Ba dum dum.

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One Reason Brands Don’t Like Digital Signage

Paul — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:00:18 +0000

Top: All the TVs in the electronics department at Target; Middle left, Whirlpool interactive at Lowe's; Middle right: Sony Altus display at Best Buy; Bottom, Phillips TV endcap at Target.

What is worse, paying a retailer to have static printed signage delivered to a store that never makes it to the sales floor, or hang a screen that is not turned on?

The brand paid an enormous amount of money to the retailer to have these displays as part of the retail experience. I’m guessing the retailer is the owner of the maintenance of these as part of the agreement (they usually are, but MDF agreements can get funky depending on who is holding the pen signing it). And, chances are that the brand representatives that frequent these stores are not happy to see how their displays are managed. In many cases, the retailer has direct influence over the content itself. With the home theater department, the content is run by the retailer. In Target (or Best Buy, or Costco, or Walmart), both the retailer and the brand lose.

If you want to see what the Whirlpool interactive looks like, visit my friend Mike Cearley’s blog here.

The Sony Altus display above shows the startup screen, not even the attract loop video. This display was at the Best Buy in Richfield, Minnesota, less than one mile from Best Buy’s corporate headquarters. I showed this picture to Sony corporate personnel during a presentation.

This was their response.

This is not how brands want to see their merchandise is a store. And this is yet another reason the adoption rate for digital signage continues to struggle. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who is to blame – the store manager, the brand representative, the technology. It is a bad experience for the customer, the one and only reason it’s there.

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Unilever, Ice Cream, and Smiles

Paul — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:00:26 +0000

On June 21, SapientNitro unveiled what they call “the world’s first ever smile-activated ice cream vending machine for Unilever.” (PR here). Here’s SapientNitro’s demo video:

How cool is this? Unilever is taking digital interactivity seriously, and three things really stuck with me on this:

Personal Engagement. It’s not enough to just look at a camera and smile, but the computer recognizes a smile and then reacts to it. The computer captures your smile and “measures it 15 times a second, and if it’s big enough, rewards you with your very own ice cream. For free.” The physical interaction with the screen is more fun because it’s less work. You don’t need to push tons of buttons, you just need to smile.

It takes 72 muscles to frown, 14 to smile, and five bucks to fake it. (Click image to buy 'em!)

Connectivity. By allowing users to upload the images to Facebook, word of mouth goes digital. This makes Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all the others much more relevant to people and products. For decades, word of mouth has been the most effective marketing tool. Making it easy for people to do that will give brands prime real estate in a consumer’s brain.

The Source. It isn’t a retailer or a brand, it’s Unilever, parent company of brands like Bertolli, Hellman’s, Dove, and Axe. Oh, and Unilever is the world’s biggest ice cream manufacturer with brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Good Humor, Breyers and Klondike. They can take this experience across any number of brands with the potential to engage the viewer.

The demo unit was unveiled in Lisbon, Portugal on May 21. Unilever plans to roll out to high-traffic customer locations around the world over the next 18 months.

The video ends with great copy: “An ice cream van for the digital age.”

That's sweet. I won't have to run after this any more.

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I see London, I see…Everyone in London…

Paul — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:00:42 +0000

I see...that my advert...errrr...train is late!

In order to know what kind of content fits, you need to know where people are (or where they are going), and when they are there. You can build your demographic profile, then you can complete the equation: Impression = Right Content + Right Place + Right Time. We continue to develop ways to know where people are so we know how to engage them; the moving target is the hardest part.

Last week (June 15th) Transport for London announced that it was releasing all the travel data about the city’s transport infrastructure – the tube, the buses, the river services – to allow web developers to create applications making it easier for passengers to track the transport system. Previously, this information was available but with restrictions on data usage for commercial gain (read: licensing!). Now, it’s an open API that anyone can use to develop apps for the internet, mobile devices, or anywhere people want to know if their bus is on time.

Yesterday saw the release of a real-time tracking application that pinpoints the locations of London’s underground trains. Using Transport for London’s API, Matthew Somerville created a tracking system in only a few hours. It’s not without bugs, as Somerville freely admits on the page, but it is a huge leap ahead. (He means the application has bugs, not that the underground has creepy crawlies.)

Bonus: We will know when the apocalypse is due to arrive.

This leads to the application of digital signage. We want to know where people are, and when they are there (wherever ‘there’ is). If we pair demographic profiling with these two factors, we can develop targeted and engaging content, generating incredible value for an impression.

No content has impact if no one is there to watch it. By tracking the traffic with arrival and departure times across several thousand points in a given city, we can better schedule content in the right place at the right time. Campaigns will have greater impact across geographic locations.

Advertisers should be all over this to make part of their current and future plans, as brands seek to find new ways to reach their audience.

The Picadilly Line to Cockfosters isn't due to leave for another 30 minutes. Another pint?

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