Frontiering Talk

Fleishman-Hillard Inc. and Harris Interactive have published an excellent white paper which examines how the internet influences the modern consumer.

The study is titled  “Digital Life Index Study”  and highlights how the internet influences shopping behaviours, making particular comparisons between the UK, Germany and France.

4 key insights of the study were:-

Digital Influence:

The Internet is by far the most important medium in the lives of European consumers — but companies are underinvesting in that influence.

Behavioural Framework: Consumer use of the Internet falls into five distinct classes of behaviours. 

Research, Communication, Commerce are the 3 more established behaviours. 
In the expanding web 2.0 environment Consumer Generated Content is rapidly rising in importance. 
The 5th behaviour is consuming Internet content on Mobile devices.
Smart marketers will clearly understand the mix of behaviours that is most critical to their business — and formulate integrated campaigns to address that mix.

Consumers use the Internet in different ways to make different decisions.

The differences are driven by the impact of the decision on their lives and the range of available choices. e.g. Buying commoditised items like airline tickets are made with less consultation with online consumers than choices that have higher personal impact such as healthcare, or major electronic purchases.

Consumers see the clear benefits of the Internet to their lives, but they still have strong concerns that need to be addressed.

Clearly consumers recognise the value of the internet as a medium, but are also voicing concerns over internet safety.

Digital media allows the creation of some innovative tools to help with filtering large list into a manageable and personalised selection.

Real Estate matching is a challenge that most of us have been through at least once, and one that real estate agents solve with an exchange of location information for customer needs parameters such as property requirements and price.

The web has given rise to a wealth of property information, and now represents a major resource for prospective buyers.  Not surprisingly, the industry boasts some of the best examples of how the internet is changing our shopping behaviour.  Examples such as Zillow,  Trulia and Realestate.com.au are continuing evolving the service of matching customer real estate needs against their pool of properties.

Hoodeo is a new online business that launched today and attempts to apply a neighbourhood filter to the property selection process.  After filling in about 10 questions (on 3 pages), you get this page.

The chart (and survey questions) graph the results according to Lifestyle, Property and Price.

I think Hoodeo should have enhanced the engagement of the survey by using images, and I believe the “Lifestyle” parameter should be sub-divided into a selection of lifestyle categories.

The site doesn’t include social features to allow customers to rate, review, share and have conversations about the neighbourhood variables.

Perspective: Whilst digital allows websites to provide functionality not offered in other communication channels, the “experience” is what separates good sites from great ones, and what results in word of mouth spread of the features offered.

A new social network has launched in Australia which hopes to address some of the key insights from online social media research.

Vibe Village is a social network which is hoping to connect brands to social influencers, by targeting 3 needs.

Being First.

I still remember running home to tell my brothers that I had found a way to get through the lane way at the back of my house, only to be disappointed when it became apparent that the news wasn’t news to them.

One of the key motivators for research and discovery is to be one of the first to know about a certain product, service.  Being First can be a relative concept, for example there is only one Neil Armstrong.  Yet, it’s much more common to be the first person in our social group to communicate a new fact.

Free stuff.

We all like stuff for free, so much so that we are almost suspicious when we are offered free things.  Vibe Village lets its members chose products that match their interests, offering programs that members can register for, and obtain free stuff such as advance copies of soon to be released DVD’s and new innovative products.

Share and Shape.

Members are encouraged to shape the innovation of products by being given a direct voice to products, and are also given opportunities to share news by hosting parties.

In today’s world of advertising clutter, it’s more and more difficult to get your message in the hands of the people who can provide a genuine word of mouth communication.  Vibe Village is attempting to provide a targeted solution for brands wanting to recruit product evangelists, by providing access to individuals who are passionate about your category. 

Disclosure: Vibe Village has been a client of Frontiering

When I was young, radio shows such as American Top 40, or Billboard were the established authorities on determining the most popular artist or album.
The internet has revolutionised the distribution of music and it’s no surprise that there is no shortage of innovation in the delivery of informational services.

Recognising that popularity includes discussions, consumption as well as purchase, the BBC has created an index of bands and tracks.

The index is updated every 6 hours, using IBM’s Semantic Super Computing which scans sites such MySpace, Bebo, Last.fm, iTunes, Google, YouTube, monitoring conversations, music listened to, artists watched, and songs downloaded, to establish the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web.

The more conversations an artist or song receives and the more it is is downloaded or played, the higher up the Sound Index they are listed.

The Sound Index can also be filtered based on genre, location of people and age group.

Whilst you are unable to “click through” to the actual conversations for a given artist, this index represents a good indicator of their marketing performance.

I can see these type of measures being applied to almost any industry or category. The Food Index, The Restaurant Index, even the Agency Index.
Are you monitoring what is being said about your brand or service?

Social Media is becoming an important channel for hosting conversations as evidenced by US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s  response to an invitation by a leading social women’s network BlogHer.

Obama sat with BlogHer on Sunday to answer key policy questions developed by this community of bloggers specifically for 2008 presidential candidates.

Blogher is one of the largest collection of blogs by women, and therefore a ripe audience of influential people that brands should include in their communication plans.

Dr Martens are running a campaign allowing consumers to create a boot design at http://dmbootdesign.com/

After selecting the boot canvas (8-hole or 14-hole), and then using the sites pen and paint tools, or using their own tools, 2 consumers will be selected to have their boot designs manufactured and sold in shops worldwide.  One will be chosen by the people, and the other by a panel of industry insiders.

This isn’t the first campaign of it’s type, but it is still a good fit for the brand.  It’s a pity that they don’t provide an option for consumers to purchase their design, even if there was a premium price point.

Personalisation is a trend we see continuing and whether your brand is a car, or a toothbrush, providing consumers some way to be involved in the creation is a clever strategy.

For those who loved the 1982 classic Tron movie, will enjoy this cardboard version.

This just shows the type of quality content that can be created and shared online.

Brands should consider tapping into these resources for producing videos.

via EpicFu

There is certainly a growing trend for small companies to support the growing demand for personalised products.  E.g. Brewtopia in Australia allows consumers to personalise their own beverage label.

Vuru.com takes personalization to the degree where it provides customised daily supplement pill packs sent out as several months supply. They have created several starter pack formats linked to lifestyles, but you can also completely personalize your own.  Great for people who are taking several different supplements.  The site also contains a Vitamin Concierge, which is free for consumers that take 15 or more pills per day. 

And now we can add Customised Tea to the list of personalised products, (although it’s currently only available to US and Canadian consumers).  Known as Design a Tea, the company provides the ability for consumers to select a base tea to start with (Black,Oolong, Green, or Rooibos), and then add 1 or 2 flavours from the more than 40 available. The final step involves selecting the tea format (loose or bagged).  A personalised message can be included on the packaging if the product is being purchased as a gift. Pricing starts at USD $4.75 for 10 bags or 22g of loose tea.   And if the choices are too overwhelming, there is an assortment of pre-designed blends.

A collaborative story written by 140 different elementary and middle school students across the globe using Twitter.com.

Each student used the same @manyvoices Twitter Account. to contribute their 140 (or less) characters. The story concluded at the 140th entry. At that point, we collectively edited and revised our little Twitter story before publishing it as a small book through Lulu.com.

Kind of brings the whole, write a line and pass it on exercise into something that is global.

Listening to consumers has never been more important.  What are your consumers saying?

Sleeveface is defined as "one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion"

This unique art-form has inspired over 1400 Flickr photos, a series of Youtube videos, and even a Facebook group with over 10,000 members.

This is a great example of a self powered community linked by the single common objective of creating art from record sleeves.

Mysupermarket is a free shopping and comparison website for supermarket shoppers that includes direct links with the big four UK supermarket chains.

Each product also shows the weight or volume, price, special offers and price per unit, as well as detailed nutritional information.

Once you get to the checkout the site’s Trolley Checker tool displays the cost of purchasing those contents at each of the 4 online stores. In addition a Price Checker tool recommends changes to save you money. There is also a Health Checker tool to help remind you of healthier product options.

mySupermarket definitely provides a valuable service which puts it in good place to be a kind of Supermarket Concierge.

As a suggestion, I think it would be nice to see them add Ratings / Reviews of delivery services.

Internet access speeds, lower cost of video equipment, and ease of video sharing has lead to an expansion of video content on the web.

3 former Google employees have launched a site that is positioned as a video based “how-to guide” to pretty much anything. In their words, “Imagine an ever-expanding universe of how-to knowledge, created for you and by you. That’s Howcast“.

The site also effectively uses Wiki technology to encourage collaboration / updates from users.  Examples include “How to clean your ipod”, “How to store an unopened bottle of wine”.  The site is well laid out and designed to capture feedback as well as commentary in line with today’s “conversational web”.  The videos follow a similar format where an instructor explains what is needed to complete the task, followed by step-by-step instructions explained in a voiceover. If users want to write their own “how to”, they can use the Howcast template; scripts are then sent to film school students for production.

The “How To” web market has a number of existing players such as Instructables and Expert Village which have been focused on text / image based content.   

Contributors to Howcast also benefit from distribution deals that syndicate content through other channels such as Joost, Verizon’s VCast.  This is a clever business model as it will enable Howcast to grow quickly. 

I couldn’t help thinking of the possibilities this structure has for mainstream education.  Howcast generates the “learning objects” and then effectively uses latest technology tools for teaching.  All you would need to add is a module that tracks what learning objects you have viewed, and testing to measure both the effectiveness of the learning object and to ensure students have grasp the concept being explained.