What other media channel can compare with this?

Consumers are rapidly adopting mobile devices and behaviors and spending an average of 2 hours per day on smartphone devices. We are rarely separated from them, and we check our phones every 6.5 minutes (or 150 times daily). 

MOBILE advertising grew by 88% in 2012

While MOBILE ad/media spending is only 1% of total media (vs. 10% share of consumer media time), MOBILE advertising grew by 88% in 2012 (from $2.4B to $4.5B). MOBILE ad spending growth to-date has been limited by marketers/agencies challenges in creating MOBILE ads designed specifically to take advantage of MOBILE devices. Chia Chen, SVP Mobile Practice Leader at Digitas indicated their client's mobile ad spending grew by 400% (4X more rapidly) because their ads for Amex, Taco Bell, M&Ms and other clients treated smart phones as "small TVs" and incorporated richer media, and more native creative palettes.

Global Tablet Advertising Study - Results Presented

Beth Doyle, Innovation Director at Vivaki, revealed the results of a 14-month global industry study of 20 million global tablet users (sponsored by 12 advertisers including P&G and Coke and 12 media companies) titled The Pool: The Tablet Lane - TABLETS RISING. This study tested 35-40 tablet advertising formats and yielded 3 STD Tablet ad formats being proven as meeting consumers' needs: (1) let me drive; (2) more for me; (3) "tablet-ize" the user experience; (4) no guessing games - keep it intuitive and simple. Clearly, with MOBILE (smartphone and tablet) ad standards emerging, marketers are well on their way to utilizing this new medium in unique ways not available through other previous media channels.

MOBILE's Big Differentiators

MOBILE is a one-to-one media channel and LOCATION is MOBILE's big differentiator. These devices give consumers the ability to find anything they need in real-time and for marketers (with opt-in permission) to find their best customers and prospects when they are in active shopping/buying mode. 40% of consumers already utilize MOBILE devices as their primary (exclusive) online research channel and 60% of mobile shopping converts to purchase (with 75% of sales take place in-store).

Todd Morris, EVP of Mobile & Marketing at Catalina indicated mobile-assisted grocery shoppers buy 8%+ more and over 1M+ consumers are already spending over $1B+ in mobile grocery shopping where items are scanned, store discounts/coupons are applied, and orders are delivered or picked up without waiting in checkout lines.

Trish Mueller, CMO at Home Depot indicated mCommerce grew 129% in 2012 and sales from MOBILE are projected to exceed $650M by 2016. Home Depot has developed a MOBILE web and apps which make it one of the top 10 retail sites creating "an endless aisle" where consumers can access 400,000 SKUs as well as product information and peer reviews at the point of purchase. One of the most innovative apps is "Find A Pro" where consumers can take a video of a problem, send it to Home Depot, and they will connect consumers with "Pros" who can bid the job.

Winston Wang, Global Director - Strategic Innovation at AB Bev, demonstrated "beer and MOBILE go hand-in-hand" indicating beer is the original social network and MOBILE is helping Sales & Marketing along the entire purchase funnel as well as in the loyalty/advocacy areas after purchase. Winston shared MOBILE apps for Stella Artois (9 step pouring ritual, LeBar finder), Beck's and Bud Light.

Announcement: A New MMA Initiative To Address The Mobile Talent Gap

MMA-NA has launched a NEW Mobile Talent Task Force (Jeff Gundersen - Co-Chair) and the first open Committee meeting was held at the MMA-NY 2013 Forum. All parties (marketers, agencies, media companies, technology providers, educators, training & development companies, and other interested parties) are invited to reach out to Jeff Gundersen for a copy of the "Strategic Framework" and related mobile talent research studies pertaining to this new Committee.

On the heels of a presentation by Lowe’s at the last Mobile Marketing Association get-together in San Francisco in January, Home Depot detailed its own measurable progress in engaging shoppers and selling more stuff through mobile devices.

Among the learnings:

• Home Depot’s mobile-optimized site and apps provide access to the 400,000 different product types available online – as compared to the 35,000 in physical stores.

• About a third of Home Depot’s traffic last year came through mobile.

• Home Depot’s app has been downloaded 3.5 million times, with traffic up 60 percent because people responded to opt-in push messages.

• Home Depot recently ran a test on Twitter and saw mobile engagement outpace desktop by 40 percent.

“The biggest challenge today for marketers is to make it exciting for consumers,” said Trish Mueller, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Home Depot. “We’re passionate about customer service and mobile provides such an amazing way to connect with the customer.”

In January, Sean Bartlett, director of mobile strategy and platforms at Lowe’s, told us how mobile innovation has entered the 65-year-old retailer’s 1,700 plus stores with 42,000 iPhones in the hands of associates, and Wi-Fi in store to give shoppers what they desire – easy and free access to product reviews and social networks.

So, if you want to build a case for mobile, watch the home improvement efforts. …

Rules and regulations, arguably the driest of mobile topics, were discussed in committee meetings, the larger sessions, and in hallway conversations when campaigns run and contemplated were being discussed.

And with good reason. Coinciding with the MMA Forum was news of a lawsuit where a Web user sued Facebook for allegedly sending her an SMS message suggesting that she send “friend” requests to other users.

Illinois resident Darya Ivankina alleges in her potential class-action lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, that the social-networking service violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending her cell phone an unwanted ad.

That law prohibits companies from using an automated dialing service to send SMS messages to people without first obtaining their consent. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act provides for damages of up to $1,500 per text message.

Facebook didn't have an immediate response.

While technological advances like Google Glass made for interesting conversation in New York, some of the most successful campaigns featured use of permission-based databases that brought value to the mobile user and the brand. …

We again heard that mobile searches create large opportunities. According to Google’s Tim Reis, 73 percent of mobile searches trigger additional action and conversions.  …

International mobile guru Tomi Ahonen reported that the average smartphone user looks at the device every five minutes – or 200 times a day. Further, he said that if one was counting full-length 160 character messages, a teenager sending 100 SMS per day would type the full text of “War & Peace” in under 7 months.

That’s a large amount of consumer interaction in any book.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade.  It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.

We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals.  On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt.  The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized.  These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.

Adapting to New Realities

Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers.  Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers.  For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers.  Yet, there are many more miles to go.  My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to this conclusion:

Personas, specifically in B2B, need to be adaptive to new goals and behaviors of buyers throughout their buyer’s journey.  In addition, personas need to be designed for the new practices, which are developing in marketing and sales.

The term buyer persona has been used universally to an extreme level. The term worked well when buyers relied on sales for their buying cycle for upwards to eighty percent.  We are seeing the inverse today.  Here is where I believe buyer trends as well as qualitative evidence is telling us to go:

B2B personas need to be researched, understood, and designed to meet robust goals and behaviors of buyers throughout the end-to-end buying cycle and brand experience.  In addition, personas need to be designed to enable as well as make more effective new practices, functions, and roles.

Persona Buying Cycle™

As new operational models for marketing and sales develop, there are 5 buying behavior phases of the buying cycle personas must now address:

1. Audience Behavior: the concept of content marketing reaching audiences is more prevalent.  Audience goals and behaviors are distinctly different when not in the market for products or services.  Yet, awareness, insight, and intelligence are an important component of connecting with existing customers and future buyers today.  Content marketing effectiveness is enabled when it can reach many different types of audiences.  Audience personas must now include the likes of industry influences and more.
2. Lead Behavior: one of the fastest growing areas, in terms of emerging practices, is the rise in lead nurturing and lead development.  Buyers have distinct goals and behaviors when they convert from being a part of a wider audience to an interested party.   New forms of lead research and lead personas can create more effective conversions from an interested party to an active buyer.
3. Buyer Behavior: the core persona when buyers have become actually engaged in the process of buying.  Buying behaviors, and buying goals, operate on a different level when buyers are actively engaged in the buying process.  Buyer personas, true their original intent, are designed to enable the buying process between buyer and seller.
4. Customer Behavior: when a buyer becomes a customer, there is a trial period underway.  This trial period consists of a different set of goals and behaviors meaningful to confirmation and customer experience.  Specific customer personas can enable understanding and capabilities to meet customer goals post-sale.  Implementation and customer support teams can benefit immensely from personas designed specifically for their roles.
5. Brand Behavior: brand management is emerging out of the shadows, as a competency B2B companies have to get right today.  Fulfilling the brand promise consistently is one of the hardest jobs of marketing and an organization as a whole.  Customers and buyers have different goals, behaviors, and beliefs, which surround brands.  The goal here is to convert customer personas into brand persona advocates.

A recommendation for forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders is to begin thinking in terms of the Persona Buying Cycle™ versus a singular focus on a buyer persona.  One certainty is the buyer’s journey not only begins before buyers think of themselves as a buyer, but also extends beyond the purchase.  Having a common visual and story of how buyer’s goals and behaviors change throughout the buying cycle is compelling.   We are also seeing activities, functions, and roles widen in marketing and sales in response to changing buying behaviors.  The Persona Buying Cycle™ is a natural extension to address both of these developments.

Positive Outcomes

Creating B2B personas through the lenses of a Persona Buying Cycle™ help bring these positive outcomes:

• • Make personas relevant throughout the major touchpoints of the end-to-end buyer’s journey
  • Make personas more practical to each functional team interacting with audiences, buyers, and customers
  • Make demand generation, lead generation, opportunity management, and customer experience more effective
  • Provide a common communications platform for understanding buyers
  • Foster alignment between marketing and sales by mapping to specific buyer goals and behaviors

In a dozen years, we have seen the then straightforward buyer-seller dynamics become more complex.  How B2B views the use of personas, from a pragmatic standpoint, now must adapt.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• The Art of Buying

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

THE MYTH: Higher value offers drive better results.

“If I offer you more for less, you’ll accept and become a devoted customer.”

It’s an easy assumption to make, regardless of what product or service you’re marketing.  But consumers have figured out the ins and outs of dangling carrots, and marketers are realizing that long-term success requires more than offering ‘the most’ or ‘the greatest’.

Offers based on value alone tend to fall into a few categories:

“Too good to be true”: We’ve all had the pleasure of answering that dreaded phone call – the one that inevitably comes right at dinner time with someone offering us a free trip to an exotic resort. Most hang up the phone before the offer is fully revealed, but for those who choose to wait it out, that ‘too good to be true’ offer is eventually followed up with a long list of blackout dates, less than appealing air travel, and a forceful requirement to ‘act now’ or lose the opportunity.

“It’s great and I’ll wait": I can’t say that I’m much of a couponer, but it’s amazing to see how shoppers have figured out the constantly rotating catalogs of discounts issued by their local stores.  And what’s even more amazing is how they’ve altered their shopping behaviors to ensure they always receive the best deal.  Back in the day, a marketing offer was a ‘treat’ – something that was rare enough to catch someone’s attention and more importantly, change someone’s behaviors.  In today’s age of so many event or calendar triggered offers, consumers assume that an offer will arrive – with some predicting the timing down to the hour or day – and therefore, do not act until it arrives.

“Missed the mark": I was shocked a few months back when my wife received a pamphlet of coupons and an educational booklet highlighting a ‘how-to’ guide for baby gear. I quickly asked if there was something she needed to fill me in on – given the fact that our two children are half grown and I was pretty sure we didn’t have plans for more.  Looks like someone “missed the mark” she said, as she headed to the door to take it to our more than gracious, seven-month pregnant neighbor.  There must have been over $100 worth of coupons – a great value for someone, but not for us.

THE REALITY: Offers with the right value drive better results.

Back to my earlier comment about a marketing offer being a ‘treat’ – the beauty of the mobile channel is its ability to help marketers engage with customers at an individual level. This takes customer engagement to an entirely new level – marketing can finally be personalized, relevant, and most importantly, valuable to your customers.  And that’s the key to mobile marketing success – defining what’s valuable for each customer and just as important, what’s valuable for your business.

It all goes back to understanding your customers’ behaviors – what services they use, how they act, who they’re connected to, what their buying preferences are, etc. – and aligning offers to your higher order marketing objective.   For example, if the goal is to increase usage consumption, the development of personalized marketing treatments should stem from the insight you have on each individual’s usage (past, current, and predicted consumption), and how this compares to how  you would like them to use your service.

A ‘marketing treatment’ doesn’t always contain an offer – sometimes a simple reminder or an educational FYI is all it takes for someone to act.  In fact, although one may assume that a higher dollar discount will result in a more positive response, it can actually do quite the opposite by decreasing the brands’ perceived value – and cannibalizing your potential revenue.

WHY IT MATTERS: Successful marketing is all about building long-term, profitable relationships – not achieving incremental gains with one-hit wonders.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day tracking of click-throughs and opt-ins but those aren’t the KPIs that truly matter.  Revenues, retention rates, brand loyalty – these should be the driving forces behind each and every offer delivered.  Marketing is not about driving a single response, but having a long-lasting, sustainable positive impact on customer behavior.

So the real challenge is altering – and most importantly, scaling – your marketing approach to deliver the right offers to each customer over time.   Using a pre-determined set of marketing treatments doesn’t cut it when the behavioral contexts of your mobile customers are continually changing, and in turn, so are their definitions of what’s valuable.   So what’s needed?  Marketing capabilities that offer the ultimate flexibility – allowing you to create and test an infinite number of marketing treatments to then determine what’s best for whom.

Luckily for marketers, marketing technologies rich with automation and machine learning are coming to the rescue and doing a lot of the thinking behind the scenes.  Think of it like a baker and his recipes.  You provide all of the ingredients – the data, the offers, the contexts, the messaging, the call to action, etc. – and he determines what works best.  Voila!

A good example is the recently concluded Linley Tech Mobile Conference, held last week in Santa Clara, CA and organized by Mountain View, CA-based The Linley Group, a market research firm providing independent technology analyses of semiconductors for networking, communications, mobile, and wireless applications. The company also produces a trade publication, Microprocessor Report.

This was the fourth year the event was held; according to company founder and Principal Analyst Linley Gwennap, the conference attracted about 200 people, including those from mobile IP and chip companies, handset and other device vendors, carriers and software vendors, as well as the financial community and press. Attendees represented a broad range of companies, including Broadcom, China Mobile, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, Imagination Technologies, Marvel, Samsung and Sony, as well as financial analysts from Bank of America, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Wells Fargo.

The conference focused on a wide array of topics; here’s a snapshot:

• Heterogeneous processing
• Licensable CPUs for mobile devices
• Licensable GPU and DSP cores
• Mobile semiconductors
• Mobile SoC design issues
• Mobile software trends
• Multicore application processors
• Other low-power IP cores

The presentations addressed design issues for mobile devices -- tablet computers, smartphones, navigation devices, media players, handheld games, and e-book readers.

One of the conference highlights, noted Gwennap, was a panel on the growing China mobile market, featuring executives from China Mobile, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek and Spreadtrum. The panel addressed key challenges and opportunities for mobile products in China, the diverging demands of Chinese consumers and the different tiering in that enormous market. One interesting takeaway: the total available market for mobile handsets in China is larger than the entire population of the United States!

Another session on mobile CPUs talked about major issues for mobile product development. One of the panelists, Mark Throndson, serves as Director of Processor Technology Marketing for UK-based Imagination Technologies.

One of Throndson’s conclusions was that industry trends are forcing more efficiency in how companies build products, and to enable this, new technologies are abstracting software development away from the underlying hardware/instruction sets.

“At the end of the day, even though software is becoming less dependent on the hardware it runs on, good underlying architectures are still important as they affect the user experience through delivering high performance, longer battery life, and lower costs,” said Throndson.

Another interesting session focused on power-optimized design. This is an increasing challenge as today’s mobile devices integrate ever-more features and functionality, yet battery technology hasn’t kept pace. A couple of session participants proposed that the answer lies in adding a bit more complexity in hardware to handle power management. While this additional logic may consume some power, the end result, according to these panelists, is increased efficiency and longer battery life.

I’ve been to gobs of analyst-driven events that focused too much on promoting the market research firm and its offerings; the buzz on the Linley gathering from attendees is that it was two days well-spent.

But more about that later.

There’s a lot happening in retail these days, for both the customer and the retailer. Driving much of this is a unique and unprecedented combination of new technologies, unparalleled access to information, and significant changes in shoppers’ behaviors.

What’s especially different today is that shoppers, instead of retailers, are leading the way. Shoppers are taking their own networked computers, disguised as smartphones, into to the store. Retailers are left playing catch up with the new smartphone enabled shopping behaviors. This is in stark contrast from the time where retailers could largely implement and manage the rate of technology adoption.

Looking ahead, there is no doubt that technology will become an even more significant part of in-store retailing.

The questions are: How will traditional brick and mortar retailers deal with the smartphone? How do retailers take advantage of these new shopping behaviors? This is where Amazon comes back into the discussion.

Most importantly: How does Amazon do it and how do more traditional retailers take advantage of these strategies? There are a number of key perspectives, goals and strategies that have positioned Amazon as the highly successful dominant online retailer, as well as a significant influence on off-line retail. We’ll focus on a few of them here.

Look underneath Amazon’s hood - or the website - to learn the additional key drivers of their success.

The golden rule at Amazon is that the customer is, in fact, gold - both figuratively and literally. Customers make the purchase decisions, generating revenue for Amazon. At Amazon, decisions are often made that are good for the customer but may not be directly beneficial to Amazon’s bottom line. These decisions are still made and implemented because of Amazon’s laser focus on consumers.

Secondly, the corporate culture is best described as relentless. They don’t stand still. No challenge is too daunting and employees continually drive to improve what they deliver. If you’re not driving hard, you are in the way. Employees act fast, take measurements, improve and repeat.

Thirdly, they thrive on technology, but not technology for technology’s sake. Amazon does not view itself as a retail company using technology; they’re actually a technology company focused on advancing the state of retail. They are dedicated to scalable systems, fast response/delivery and reliability.

Additionally, Amazon knows data. It is one of the original big data companies. And they know how to use it.
Everything – that is, EVERYTHING - is incessantly measured, analyzed and understood. If you don’t have data, don’t show up at the meeting. That leads to a strong bias toward fact-based decision making. (One of my favorite Amazon conference rooms had the permanent sign “In God we trust, all others bring data” on the wall.)

Finally, Amazon has used this information to personalize the shopping experience. With tens of millions of products in the catalog, Amazon has the ability to show each of its more than one hundred million customers exactly what they are most interested in. They go on to present those products and related information in ways that will help customers make faster, more confident purchase decisions.

How does all of this relate to traditional retailers? The invasion of smartphones has made the physical store more similar to Amazon’s website than to the same store 10 years ago. These same shoppers have been trained by Amazon to use digital tools to help make purchase decisions – but now they’re also doing it in-store.

Data gathered through the smartphones can be used to analyze the complete shopping process. Retailers can know what their customers have on their shopping lists – before they even reach the store. They can see what shoppers search for, the suggestions and offers they respond to and what they eventually purchase. They can even see where the shoppers are inside the store.

This invaluable data can be used to deliver a highly personalized shopping experience, drive more revenue, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

With more than 90% of retail happening in traditional brick and mortar stores, retailers can use Amazon’s strategies to their own advantage. Those that take this data and use it to improve their businesses will be successful. Others will be left struggling to keep up.

The new normal in retail is definitely Amazon.

Facebook said little about advertisements during its Home introduction. To me that says either they didn’t want to bring up the subject or they haven’t fleshed out the details and weren’t prepared to talk about a half-baked plan. Most likely, it’s both.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s unveiling of the product was described as an opportunity to give mobile owners the ability to see the world through people instead of apps. This road has been traveled before – Windows Phone positions itself similarly. And it hasn’t been a home run for Microsoft.

For some, mobile phones aren’t about people. They are about self.  Mobile is the ultimate personalization product – the phone rings the way we want it to, looks the way we want it to, and has just the content, including photos and apps, that we want.

Few, very few would choose to see brand messages in their Facebook feed, but at the risk of offending my friends, I’ll take a relevant offer for me from a business 100 times out of 100 if the alternative is seeing the 16^th picture of the kid playing soccer. Really, that goes for the third or fourth Instagram on.

As to Foursquare, according to Advertising Age, the company has started pitching digital agencies on a new ad product that would use Foursquare's location and behavioral data to contextualize ads on other platforms.

The ad product is still in development and will eventually allow advertisers to use Foursquare data to target ads purchased through ad exchanges or networks, according to the publication.

When launched, it will mark Foursquare's first attempt to generate revenue outside promoted listings and specials advertised within its app. That certainly is necessary given that the four-year-old company reportedly had only $2 million in revenue in 2012.

Ken Allard, managing director of global business strategy at digital agency Huge, a unit of IPG, told Advertising Age that Foursquare's "unique and proprietary data is incredibly valuable."

Of course, that remains to be seen. For me, it has to be better than that third shot of 4-year-old Johnny and his buddies trying to head a soccer ball in the rain. Seeing that has never been my goal.

Just for grins, I decided to see who else was enamored enough with this concept to say something in the vlogosphere. It doesn’t take long to see that the Taco Bell corporation has its own video channel on YouTube, which is garnering more than 11 million total views, much of it devoted to the trending taco product. However, I started wondering to what extent that represents real mind-share for the brand, Taco Bell, among potential consumers versus the plethora of other video apps or platforms out there. For example, Twitter’s Vine is the number one video app download (number two overall Free), and according to Apple’s app shop, that’s close to 25 million users.

The other problem I noticed about Taco Bell’s YouTube-centric video strategy is that the icon link off the main digital brand property, www.tacobell.com, takes the visitor out of its controlled brand experience and back to the Taco Bell channel that is a subdomain to www.youtube.com. Also, if you search Google for “Taco Bell video” with the Video search button, the first page of returns is almost all postings to YouTube or third party media sites like ABC or CBS, nothing owned by the main TB corporate domain.

So, you’re the digital media guru for Taco Bell, you’re driving cross-synergies between your fast food retail store and your snack food brands, and you have at least 11 million consumers loyal enough to check out your video content on YouTube. What, then, should your video strategy be? Vine is a video-based social network designed to drive more traffic for Twitter. YouTube is a broadcasting platform designed to aggregate eyeballs for Google’s ad-server business model. What should be Taco Bell’s objective with video content? Help Google and Twitter make more money? Entertain? Merely maintain a presence in the Twitterverse? How about treating its customers as a media audience?

What that means is creating a branded video interface that is multi-screen capable (web, smartphone, tablet, TV, telepresence) which not only aggregates video content that can be repurposed, i.e., TV commercials, but also takes a concerted approach to producing compelling, original content that’s integrated with the customer experience. For example, if I’m a loyal viewer of TacoBell.tv, a branded media player that lives within the main corporate domain, www.tacobell, why can’t that content follow me all the way through my customer experience?

Why not equip Taco Bell retail stores with an iPad at every table, so that I can log into my video profile, which has the last 5 orders I made so it’s easy for me to reorder, or a full customizable item-by-item order-entry menu with original video content from the chefs who cooked up the recipe, along with other user reviews, adjacent to those menu orders? Once the order is taken, the interface would allow me to immediately upload a video comment that could either be for the benefit of internal Taco Bell customer advocacy, or if appropriate, posted to the Live User Comment channel on TacoBell.tv. Here’s an even crazier idea: how about a Secret Menu channel of celebrity favorites (ode to In/Out).

Another version of TacoBell.tv would be available as a smartphone app.  My TacoBell profile, using GPS and sensor-presence techniques, knows the exact store I’m entering, the last 5 meals I ordered, and can authenticate my profile, complete with my favorite video content, to the iPad embedded in the table I choose for dining.  I can also in real time open a Google hangout session with my cousin in Florida to see if he shares my same tastes in Taco Bell food and video content!  While you’re at it, why not reward me with a video coupon for a free desert or combo meal on my next visit?  Also, I probably wouldn’t mind if TacoBell.tv asked my permission to opt-in to other video offers personalized to my consumer persona. (The current TB app in the Apple app store gets only a two and one-half star rating, so it could benefit from a few more bells and whistles.)

Short message:  powerful consumer brands like Taco Bell must start thinking and acting like media companies – controlling their own brand experience with entertaining, pervasive video content and a compelling user experience across any consumption format or platform – and by so doing, converting their physical assets, like capital-intensive brick-and-mortar storefronts, into working digital capital!

One of the most interesting occurred before the exhibit halls opened -- the first GDC State of the Industry survey that polled more than 2,500 attendees. The results revealed some intriguing trends in funding, platform preference and publishing models.

For starters, how are developers funding their projects? A few survey numbers:

• 72% are being funded by a company’s existing war chest or an individual’s personal funds

• 9% are from VCs

• 10% are publisher-funded

• 4% are crowdfunded – and 8% of the developers have worked on crowdfunded projects, with another 44% planning to go this route in the future

Indies Rising

The survey also found that 53% of respondents consider themselves ‘indie developers’; 46% are employed at companies of 10 people or less – and only 24% reported they worked with a publisher on their last game.

Platforms

According to survey results, more respondents are developing for smartphones and tablets than for any other platform – 38% released their last game for smartphones and tablets; 55% are making their current games there; 58% will release their next games on these platforms.

Cool Stuff

Survey results aside, there were some cool products to play with and even some significant Windows 8 stats rolled out by Microsoft as part of its full-court press to draw more games and developers to the platform.

Hands down, the most popular was Irvine, CA-based Oculus VR’s Rift, a virtual reality headset with stereoscopic 3-D, a 110-degree field of view and low-latency head tracking. Woe to anyone who strayed along the footpath leading up to their booth once the morning doors swung wide – they would have been trampled by the hordes who ran pell mell to line up and play ‘Hawken’, a first-person shooter game that situates players inside a levitating war machine.

Beyond, the hype, equally impressive was that the company raised $2.4 million from crowdfunding.

As reported by John Gaudiosi, editor of Gamerhub.tv, a video syndication network, Zombie Studios demonstrated Daylight, slated for release sometime this fall. It’s the first horror game for Sony’s new PlayStation 4. A team of six people, noted Gaudiosi, created the game and are self-publishing on PlayStation 4.

Daylight, said Gaudiosi, “traps players inside a haunted insane asylum. Armed only with the light and apps from your in-game smartphone, you must try to get out alive. There are no weapons other than your feet – which are best used to run.”

Gaudiosi added that the developer has written “a lot of back story about centuries of souls who were mistreated within the asylum’s walls.”

Lastly, Develop said that Microsoft is attracting a slew of developers to Windows 8, some of which include Disney, GameHouse and Glu. The publication added that “as for revenue share on the Windows Store and what benefits successful developers can receive on the platform, should an app pass $25,000 in sales, developers will start receiving an 80% share of all subsequent sales, instead of the usual 70/30 split.”

Look forward to seeing what will unfold during GDC 2014!

Here's a little overview...

The  Newcastle Brown Ale campaign is meant to mock common stereotypes consumers might have about hand-crafted beer. For example: the belief that it is only served in select bars that tend to be difficult to find.

Newcastle is placing QR codes on tap handles in bars where their products are available with a call to action to scan the code to find the nearest Newcastle. When consumers scan the code, they are directed to a landing page with an arrow that points towards the tap handle and reads, “There it is.”

According to Mobile Marketer, video is also a big priority of the campaign. On mobile, Newcastle is running pre-rolls on sites that include Comedy Central, The Onion and YouTube to distribute their video content.

Newcastle has also developed a mobile optimized site where of-age consumers can interact with branded videos and learn more about their products. The campaign is being used to push a new line of 14.9 oz. beer cans; available in ten-packs nationwide and is the brainchild of Droga5, a New York based agency.

On the surface, this campaign seems to hit quite a few positive notes like the use of QR codes and mobile video. When we look under the hood of the campaign however, I find it to be a decent idea with a lack-luster [consumer facing] execution.

In many bars, taps are located on the back-side of the bar, away from the consumer, or difficult to get to from behind a row of people seated at bar stools. You can actually see this challenge clearly depicted in some of their own content.

In this case many would applaud Newcastle simply for the use of in-bar QR codes, however, it would seem that they've fallen victim to several pitfalls of what not to do with a QR campaign.

When we look at best practices for QR codes, brands need to make sure that they are easily accessible in convenient, well lit locations and should typically include a text-in component to increase opportunity for consumer engagement. Even with smartphone penetration being over 50% of the mobile marketplace and, in Newcastle's defense the type of phone their core consumer most likely carries, SMS is still the top action taken on mobile devices across the board.

Another issue is that when consumers scan a QR codes, they are expecting some sort of value exchange. This value doesn't necessarily need to be quantified by a discount or free product; in many instances, a rich or entertaining experience can provide enough value back to the consumer. This QR code leads to creative that will most likely leave the consumer wondering, “What was the point?”. It provides neither quantitative value, a rich experience or any sort of entertainment; even if it was an attempt at "humorously pointing out that QR codes are meant to drive purchase." - Brett Steen, Brand Manager at Newcastle Brown Ale.

The use of branded mobile video and a mobile optimized site as the hub for said content should have played a larger role in the QR execution. If they were going to have the QR codes lead to anything, it should have been one of their branded videos with a secondary call to action to visit the site for added content.

The mobile site itself is clean, easy to navigate and chalked with entertaining content. I would  however, have liked to see some sharing capabilities included into the site’s content, but applaud Newcastle for creating an engaging mobile experience that is well optimized. Some of the videos are fun and would probably have garnered earned views via shared posts on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

All in all, I’d say Newcastle and Droga5 got it about half right and would give this campaign:

Image Credit: MobileMarketer

Dan Wittmers

Dan Wittmers is the Mobile Manager for Initiative – NY and the Founder of the Mobile Leaders Alliance. He has a natural understanding of the entire mobile ecosystem, and during his tenure, has had the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 brands and agencies across North America. Educated in media, messaging, development, SaaS tools and predictive analytics, he is an emerging thought leader in the mobile industry.

Delivering personalized offers based on an individual’s behaviors (see my previous posts) is only valuable if you can determine the best time to engage.  It can be challenging for marketers to pinpoint given the ever-changing contexts of mobile users but those who can up their game are rewarded with better results – and happier customers.

THE MYTH: Event-based marketing is all about context.

Think of the kid who gets into a fight on the playground.  Before he even gets through the door, his mom is grounding him for his inexcusable behavior.  All the way to his room, he’s pleading with her – “just let me tell you the whole story!”  Once she takes the time to listen she learns that: the classroom bully has been picking on him for weeks, the teacher has done little to address the situation, and it all came to a head when the bully was on a mission to push him off the monkey bars.  Suddenly, her take on the appropriate action quickly changes.

Herein lies the problem with event-based marketing – it’s based on a single data point and disregards the circumstances leading up to a specific action as well as what’s predicted to happen next.  Event-based marketing is not about understanding context – it’s about detecting an occurrence.

Look at an event-based marketing campaign tied to increasing mobile purchases:  users who engage with a mobile site without making a purchase immediately receive a 20% off offer just after they quit their shopping session.  Seems like a good way to entice a return visit and future purchase, right?  Possibly but is the 20% discount really necessary?

THE REALITY: Event-based is one-dimensional, context is multidimensional.

Before mobile, the term ‘contextual marketing’ referred to determining through cookies what someone may want to see or buy while searching the web.  With mobile this concept might as well be on steroids.  So many dimensions – usage, location, social interactions, time, purchases, state of mind, etc. – that are constantly changing based on the nature of each individual mobile user.

To truly engage mobile users in a way that will impact their behaviors, marketers have to advance beyond a point in time snapshot to understand context in its entirety.

Let’s look back at our campaign for increasing mobile purchases.  Remember that 20% carrot being used to entice shoppers to come back and buy?   When you apply an understanding of context multi-dimensionally you determine that certain shoppers have a ‘sleep on it’ behavioral pattern: look, leave, come back, and buy.  Without that 20% carrot, they will still come back and buy – and you will bank the full purchase price.

WHY IT MATTERS: Acting in context means knowing how and when to drive the right behavior.

Effective marketing is being able to actually influence customer behavior to drive a desired result or action, i.e. make a purchase, visit a store, share with a friend, like a company more.  But prior to the mobile channel, marketing efforts had to be broad enough to appeal to a wide audience – which left little room for personalization and contextual relevance.

Advance to today’s mobile age and we see the opportunity – and challenge – facing marketers.  It’s no longer about choosing the right billboard location or selecting the right daypart; it’s about knowing the right time – for each and every customer – to act in order to drive the right behavior.

By leveraging advanced marketing techniques that gather, analyze and act on mobile data, marketers are able to determine the contexts tied to driving specific behaviors and then monitor for customers entering those contexts.  Even better is the automatic triggering of the right communication or offer which means that the marketer can engage with each individual at the specific moment they’re most likely to impact their behavior.

Contextual marketing that incorporates real-time decisioning and right time action delivers tremendous value to the customer through personalized, more relevant interactions.  But even greater value lies with the marketer.  By having the capability to understand individual customer behavior over time and act in the right context, marketers can focus on influencing customer behaviors that truly impact the bottom line.

So the next time you get a phone call from your child’s school, give him a chance to put things in ‘context’ before you take action – you may be surprised at how your actions will change.

Next myth to debunk – “creating valuable offers.”  Stay tuned!

Changes can be unsettling, whether they're potential or actual, positive or negative. You may be gearing up for a promotion/new position, staring at a wide-open field of new prospective clients, or launching new products and services. Or you may be hunkering down in the face of outsourcing, downsizing, mergers/consolidations, takeovers, and local or global competition. 

Consider the Changes Taking Place at Yahoo!

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has certainly unleashed enormous, untold passions about how, when and where people should work at Yahoo.

The recent, now infamous, change requiring Yahoo employees to work in the office instead of telecommuting from home has been likened to the shot heard round the world.

No less than a great war has ensued and Marissa Mayer has been villainized and vilified by some and verified and validated by others.

It is no secret that Yahoo has been struggling to keep pace with the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google, all of whom have strong in-office cultures and not coincidentally, strong revenues to match.

In Our Opinion...It’s not about trusting people to work at home, it’s about Mayer’s challenge in the turnaround of Yahoo regardless of where people are working. Mayer has to build a new corporate culture of trust in the infinite possibilities of what the Yahoo organization can create together.

However, as we are hearing, this change process is creating considerable stress for Yahoo employees.

How We Respond to Change

Do you respond or react to change and do you know the difference? As soon as something nudges you out of your regular routine, or challenges your understanding of how the world works and where you fit into it, it will likely trigger a deluge of feelings including; fear, anxiety, overwhelm, excitement, distraction or denial.

How Does the Way You Respond to Change Impact Your Brand?

These feelings can manifest in your behavior.  You may, unconsciously, act out with behavior that is not a brand match for you, or your communication style alters, both at work and at home. You might feel compelled to push yourself and others to overwork, or take the opposite approach - which most do - and procrastinate, avoid the work that's on your plate and get sidetracked with misconceptions, assumptions and gossip to changes that may or may not happen.

On a personal level, your self-care may suffer and you may reach for unhealthy substances, get less sleep, skip meals or overindulge. You might cut yourself off from friends and family, and spend more time alone or with other people who have unhealthy habits or attract people who are in the same place as you.

The Impact

Dealing with change requires flexibility, resilience and an ability to think on your feet. Unfortunately, when you're caught up in your reaction to change, these mental abilities are affected as well. When you're preoccupied, worried and focused on the future instead of the present, it's much harder to concentrate and apply your brainpower to what's in front of you.

Great leaders are admired for their serenity and confidence even in the face of uncertainty and upheaval. For many of us, though, when change is afoot, serenity is far from our reach. Instead, emotions are much closer to the surface and can flare up at the most inopportune times. Whether you lash out, cry, or pound on your desk behind closed doors, it's incredibly uncomfortable to feel so out of control.

Consider, also, the impact on the people around you. Emotional outbursts, whether at work or at home, can irrevocably damage your effectiveness, your reputation and your relationships.

Successful Strategies for Dealing With Change

Here are five strategies to help you remain flexible and resilient in the face of change:

1. Take care of YOUr body. Eat well, sleep well and refrain from harmful habits like indulging in caffeine adrenaline behavior, excessive drinking, or other risky behavior. Work out whatever that is for you!

2. Take care of YOUr mind. Stay in the present moment. Challenge your negative thinking and keep things in perspective; when the doom and gloom sets in, ask, "How important is this, really?"

3. Take control of YOUr emotions. Find reasons to smile and laugh, even when you don't feel like it—especially when you don't feel like it! Funny movies, blogs or videos can help. Vent your negative feelings by exercising, banging on a drum or pounding on a pillow.

4. Treat others well. Strengthen your good relationships so you can draw on their support and work at your challenging relationships so they don't add to your stress.  In fact, this may be a good time to remove them from your life altogether.

5. Take charge. Be proactive and prepare the best you can for the changes that might come, but then accept the reality of the moment. Think back to other challenges that you've come through and remind yourself that everything will work out okay this time, too.

Pop quiz: Which company first treated online retail as a revolution and not an evolution of traditional retail? (The answer is at the end of the article).

Retailers generally understand that customers are increasingly using their mobile devices to help them shop. But more often than not, the strategy retailers use is to take their existing ecommerce website and “optimize” it for delivery on the smaller mobile screen. Not surprisingly, the usual result is the same old, traditional ecommerce.

Much of this situation is driven by the omnichannel and “responsive design” approaches where “all channels need to look and feel the same.” Part of it is because the ecommerce team is given the responsibility to extend the mobile presence (“digital is digital”) and views the mobile phone user as just another home-or-office online shopper. Another reason is that repurposed ecommerce sites are usually the fastest thing that can be done and be loosely called “mobile.”

Lastly, part of the issue is that retailers approach “mobile” as a problem to be fixed and do not appreciate the significant new opportunity it offers.

The key to understanding the potential of mobile in retail and how to leverage it comes in two steps.

First, it’s important to understand what’s different about mobile. Instead of looking at the similarities of mobile with traditional PCs and PC-based browsing, focus on what is unique both in terms of the technology and, more importantly, what is different about how people are using it.

Second, determine how to best take advantage of it in the context of retailers’ goals. Can mobile be used to increase sales, deliver better customer service, and increase customer loyalty? Can it help the retailer understand the customer better?

On the first point, mobile devices are just that: mobile. Customers are increasingly taking their phones into stores to assist them with their shopping decisions – currently more than 66% of them. That’s very different than PCs. With more than 90% of retail occurring in-store, that’s significant (and begs the question of why the ecommerce tail is wagging the in-store dog).

When a shopper is inside a store, the primary influence comes from the physical brick and mortar experience. Customers intuitively expect mobile to augment and enhance that environment and not drag them into the disassociated online world (where, incidentally, they are one click away from every other retailers’ online offerings).

Secondly, how can physical store assets be turned into a competitive advantage? How can retailers help customers? How can they deliver more of the retail brand promise?

Shoppers expect their mobile devices to connect them with the physical store. Mobile can help customers find products in-store using indoor maps and graphically show them exact product locations. It can take the shopping list and turn it into an efficient path through the store. And now that retailers know a customer’s shopping list, they can offer highly personalized offers and product suggestions.

A recent study shows that by integrating these indoor locations technologies into retail apps shoppers become five times more engaged - more engaged with products, stores and brands. And that drives increased sales and greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.

It also provides the retailer deep insights into what their customers want, what they respond to and how the retailer can improve merchandising and marketing.

That’s the true retailer – and shopper – opportunity with mobile.

And it’s just the beginning. As with many new technologies, we’re just scratching the surface. It’s impossible to look more than a few years out and predict how retailers and shoppers will connect using mobile. But one thing is for sure: it will look less like ecommerce and be more connected to the store.

Mobile also turns your physical store into an incredible asset that online retailers cannot compete with.

So, don’t treat the mobile opportunity in retail as a problem to be fixed. It’s an incredible opportunity that will provide traditional retailers a whole new set of positive interactions with their customers. Take advantage of it.

Pop quiz answer: Amazon

Of course, to our knowledge, only one of those scenarios came true. Whatever. Such is your life when your role is to create a Center of Excellence for global consumer trend insights and a forward-looking mindset that can support and inform design, product development, strategy, business and marketing functions throughout Ford.

Speaking to a packed audience (granted seemingly every venue was overflowing), Connelly offered Lessons From A Futurist during South by Southwest Interactive.

Many of her assertions were on the surprising side. Among them:

She once thought that the future is a mystery and best unexplored.

Connelly cautioned against the use of SWOT analysis that attempts to look at a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. She said that such endeavors limit thinking and fail to take change into account.

“It’s foolish for an organization to think it owns its strengths,” she said. “Those are defined by the marketplace.”

Connelly describes her job as a mission to look outside the automotive industry to understand what's happening in social, technological, economic, environmental and political arenas so that we can understand shifts that are coming that may influence consumers' values, attitudes and behaviors. She looks for those insights and collaborates with people in Ford Design and Product Development who try to turn them into business propositions.

She said that SXSW was the perfect venue to talk about “information addiction” which she said is a medical condition. Further, she cautioned attendees from information overload, adding that it takes away self-reflection time that spurs innovation.

“Explore what you can't control,” Connelly said. “Use scenario planning - what if's.

You don't have to be a victim to the future - you can help develop it.”

It’s customary for mobile tech companies to show off their new products at heavy-hitter trade show events like the Consumer Electronics Show and Mobile World Congress (MWC). However, mobile phone marketers are increasingly hawking their wares via traditional TV advertising and social media, banner ads, point-of-purchase displays and more.

Marketing execs at Apple, Samsung and Google (to name a few) are feeding hungry consumers their newest models and features with marketing slogans, celebrity endorsements and special YouTube content. The tactics successfully tease potential and existing customers into a state of anticipation for the latest new-phone launch.

There's the upcoming Google Nexus phone, which is enjoying a strong run-up in sales due its increasingly low price point for consumers and its relentless focus on quality. Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google, recently promised on a Google+ thread that the next Nexus phone will have “insanely great cameras.”

And of course, there was the recent launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 on March 14 in New York City. As one of the most anticipated gadgets slated for a 2013 release, the Galaxy S4 is featured in Samsung’s star-studded ad campaigns featuring Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan (for Galaxy S4) and Tim Burton (for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0).

In the global mobile landscape, Samsung's “Next Big Thing” campaign appears to be working; according to the Communities Dominate blog, they're dominating worldwide sales of smartphones, with almost 31 percent of the market share. Apple is second with 19.5 percent.

Where Was Apple at the MWC?

At the recent Mobile World Congress, Apple was intentionally absent. Part of the reason is that Apple famously chooses to throw Apple-branded events for big announcements. But even more eye-opening is the very public fact that Apple hasn’t released a new product for six months. Industry speculation points to a possible next iPhone launch as early as Q3 of this year.

There are the ongoing and endless rumors of an iTV launch, though TV/tech enthusiasts will tell you they've been hearing about that one for a while now. Apple investors haven’t been impressed with the brand’s stagnate performance and it’s one of the reasons stocks have plummeted in the last six months.

Samsung Winning the Mobile Race?

It’s hard to ignore Samsung’s constant innovation; they're the tortoise to the Apple’s hare in the adage, “slow and steady wins the race.” The New York Times agrees, writing, "Senior executives at mobile network operators, the companies that sell the bulk of Samsung and Apple phones around the world, said Samsung's rise to the top had not been an accident but the product of a methodical, longterm strategy to offer a more affordable, accessible alternative to Apple.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Mobile Markets Are Big for 2013?

According to BrandChannel.com, Apple, like Samsung and other technology giants, has been seeking growth opportunities in the emerging markets commonly referred to as the "BRIC" countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), contrary to the maturing mobile markets in Europe and the United States.

The Apple-Samsung war is tough going – in India, for example, Apple is struggling to make headway against a dominant Samsung, which was recently ranked as one of India's top three most trusted brands. The other two top brands were Sony and Nokia. Apple has yet to create a solid brand strategy in that notable market.

What personal characteristics do we look for when hiring for Private Equity?

How can you assess if you have the “chops” to work for private equity? Is your personal brand a match for private equity? What can you expect and what is expected once you are hired, in terms of the operational differences, compared to working for a large, publicly owned company?

If you are considering a career opportunity in a private equity financed business, then check out the top 5 qualities and characteristics to better understand if you really are ready, willing and able. 

1. PE firms want to work with entrepreneurs.

Private equity firms have been started by investment bankers, successful corporate executives and entrepreneurs with a proven track record of building wealth by risking capital and building businesses entrepreneurially. In selecting a CEO, COO, or other C-level executive, private equity firms want to see proven entrepreneurship in the executive’s prior career steps. Has the candidate successfully started and built a business from scratch? Has he or she turned around a troubled business? Does the candidate have the proven track record and hands-on leadership profile to build confidence among others in the organization (including strategic alliance partners)? You need not apply if you do not have “entrepreneurial DNA" and passion, plus prior success implementing a business plan involving significant change (i.e., not managing a “steady state" business).

2. PE investors want “hunters" not “farmers."

While they tend not to manage from quarter to quarter, like so many public companies, private equity investors are looking for—and expecting—mega-growth of a business over a five- to seven-year window. The expectation is that the returns on capital are multiples of the original investment once the business is sold (usually to a strategic buyer) at the end of the investment period. Hunters have the fearlessness to compete in the marketplace on a daily basis, and their hunting skills are usually directly tied to an ability to increase the top-line revenues. In addition to growth via acquisition, most private equity investors evaluate revenue increases in the base line (“same store") business. This almost always leads them to hire a new Head of New Business—and it always needs to be a “hunter." We recently completed four executive search assignments nationwide for this type of position, most within the first year after a private equity firm has made an investment.

3. PE firms hire "doers" with a strong bias for action.

In LBOs and buyouts of privately held businesses, there are typically major issues that need to be addressed immediately: the prior owner/parent company/CEO may have failed; growth in the business may be stagnant; and investments or changes in the business were deferred because it was deemed a “non-core" asset. This is one reason that private equity investors like to hire “doers" with a bias for action – because typically so much needs to be done – and very quickly. Consider the GM turnaround and the three months the Board gave the initial CEO before making a change. As Jack Welch has said numerous times, a non-decision is sometimes the worst decision a CEO can make. If you are a procrastinator, stay away from private equity.

4. PE investors are reasonable until they become unreasonable.

Private equity investors typically resist hands-on involvement in the day-to-day operations of a business. They will typically put two to three of their own people on the Board of Directors and will remain minimally involved as long as the business moves forward according to (and in alignment with) the corporate business plan. They may come to Board meetings to listen to the CEO (and others in senior management), and they’ll work on complementary activities related to expanding and growing the business, such as additional acquisitions, or capital investment to increase manufacturing capacity. However, when/if the CEO and senior leadership begin missing the milestones, and the business turns south (even slightly), they are back with a vengeance ready to make changes in the senior leadership team (i.e., trade out the CEO, hire a strong COO with a sales/business development background, etc.) Working with a private equity-backed firm is potentially good for executives who (1) under-promise and over-deliver, and (2) are good at developing and implementing realistic business plans—and keeping the company on track and ahead of the key milestones outlined in these plans.

5. PE firms want an accelerated pace of change; be prepared to “ride the rapids."

While many C-level executives express frustrations at the slow pace of change in large corporations, many are unprepared emotionally to work in the rapid waters of private equity. You can expect almost 180 degrees the opposite environment once you switch over to a private equity-owned business. When you meet with the partners of these firms, invariably the first question they will ask you is, “If given this job, what would you do first?" and “What would be your plan for growing/fixing this business?"

Know what works best for your personal brand before jumping in!

It is extremely important to be prepared, and to do your homework, especially if you are considering one of these types of opportunities. For some true entrepreneurs, those unafraid of operating without a safety net, it can be exhilarating and highly rewarding (equity stakes and payouts are usually much higher than stock options earned inside a public company). However, for those executives lacking the necessary risk-profile and DNA, this is a career step to be avoided altogether.

If you have worked for a private equity firm, or have considered pursuing one of these opportunities, please write to us and share your experiences and perspectives.

When we hear the word endurance, we usually relate it to the performance, stamina and the resilience of an athlete. As leaders and emerging leaders, we suggest you “hear” the word and take the same definition, but add the elements of bravery, prevail, and persistence.

Particularly in these challenging economic times, we need to create athlete-like minds AND bodies to sustain performance in the pace of the current marketplace, to be great role models, and to create outstanding results in every area of our lives!

Endurance is Crucial not Optional

Where does your brand need to ramp up it’s endurance? Is it the challenges of your company, role or business sector? Is it the balancing of work and home responsibilities? Or perhaps it is the uncertainty of your brand not getting the traction it needs. What do you need to do to strengthen and flex your endurance muscles? What can you eliminate or change immediately to increase endurance both personally and professionally?

What relevance does building physical endurance have to your performance in business? In our experience as senior-level talent acquisition and personal branding specialists, endurance is crucial and not optional. We all know and have seen too many examples of over-stressed and out-of-shape CEOs, some of whom have died on the job due to stress-related illnesses or heart attacks.

Clearly, such a lifestyle is personally dangerous. But it can also be professionally dangerous. In today’s 24/7/365 environment, you do not want to risk making a costly business or personal brand decision simply because you were tired, careless, and sloppy due to a lack of endurance.

Also, if you are a C-level or even an emerging leader and you do not take care of yourself, how can you expect to be a role model for others in the organization? To the contrary, you send an undesirable message to the organization.

Take control of building the endurance you need to maximize your performance. Incorporate our EC Top 5 List of “Endurance Best Practices” into your daily schedule to improve your endurance:

1. Take an Endurance assessment. Check your endurance levels and create an action plan where you need energy the most. Want more endurance?  Stop doing what drags you down. Plan for eliminating the “tolerations” in the following areas; business, personal, finance, health and well-being, and relationships. This could include questions, such as; What is keeping me up at night? When do I schedule time away from my work?  What do I need to improve to get into better physical condition? What relationships do I need to remove that drain me of my energy?  Remaining active outside the office will help you build the stamina and endurance you will need on the job.
2. Develop and maintain an optimistic attitude. It is proven medically, people with a “glass half full” mentality are happier and less stressed than their alternative counterparts.  It takes a lot less energy to be positive. Work on your unique outlook and eliminate worrying about all the people, places and things that are not aligned with being positive or outside of your personal control.
3. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate! Identify the tasks at work and at home that you really do not want to do or you are not good at (the “drudge” tasks) and delegate these immediately. You will be amazed how much lighter this will make you feel and give your endurance a boost! Notice how our energy levels seems to be low when we do not want to do something or be somewhere we don’t want to be.
4. Take Control of Your Calendar. Don’t constantly overbook yourself. For example, after a late night of meetings, travel or client entertaining, do not schedule yourself for a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting. Give yourself time to recover. Don’t let business issues spill over into your personal life and vice versa. Work on compartmentalizing the different areas of your life and use success and happiness in one area to raise your energy and spirits in the other areas.
5. Plan ahead. Be Pro-Active! Manage your health and mental well-being! Most senior executives have at least four to five weeks of vacation annually; you will be surprised how many do not take this time off, or if they do, they actually work all day on vacation. Set boundaries, leave the laptop at home, empower others to step up, and disengage on a quarterly basis.

And above all…check in with yourself on a regular basis and make course corrections as necessary, you can shift and change as you need to. Continue to build your brand to endure maximum performance!

My message to marketers: beware.

I’m not anti-innovation. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’m in tech as much for the unknown as the known. But let’s concentrate on the known for a minute. The estimated 30,000 going to Austin are not the norm (in more ways than one). We seemingly all carry iPhones and Macs, and many of us check in on Foursquare.

The norm is likely your brand’s target — about half of U.S. mobile subscribers don’t yet carry a smartphone, much less line up to buy a Mac. Their idea of a check-in involves questions of smoking versus non-smoking, a room away from the elevator, and the time the buffet opens in the morning.

What we saw at the Austin Convention Center and environs last year were early-adopter models, ones that caused a ripple on Twitter but not so much on Main Street.

The geo-location startups came into a marketplace that today shows only 30 million global users of leader Foursquare (for perspective, there are well over 300 million mobile subscribers in the United States alone and more than 6 billion worldwide).

So what is a brand manager to do? The smartest ones are relying on a mix of products and services that aren’t necessarily aimed at early adopters. Ford employs a variety of mobile strategies and tactics, including a text call to action in traditional media that produced a 15.4 percent lead conversion. An influencer on Twitter described the program as “meat and potatoes.” As a CMO who hasn’t touched beef in decades, I’ll dine on “meat and potatoes” all day and all night for such lead success.

We’ll certainly again hear lots this year about the mobile wallet. There surely will be hype around near field communication. But cash gone by Tuesday? Ummm, no.

So what should we do in Austin? Live. Learn. But don’t jump in blindly, sunshine or not.

With smartphones becoming the default mobile device, the process of showrooming is simplified with apps like Amazon Price Check, RedLaser, etc...  In response to this growing threat, Target and Best Buy have taken drastic steps to directly price match leading online retailers.  At a macro level the threat to brick and mortar retailers is clear, what has widely been ignored is understanding who is doing the showrooming.

In the largest showrooming study to date, Placed identified where Amazon customers who indicated they had showroomed in the past, shopped in January 2013.  This population was further segmented by Gender.  The results were significant, finding Male Showroomers were 39% more likely to visit Best Buy, 24% more likely to visit Home Depot, and 23% more likely to visit Lowe's than the US population.  For Female Showroomers the top three were completely different with Kohl's at 49%, PetSmart at 47%, and Bed Bath and Beyond at 46%.

These insights inform brick and mortar retailers on potential risks associated with showrooming and their customers.  Retailers not directly impacted by showrooming today, should take this as an opportunity to proactively address showrooming in their aisles, or risk reactive measures that drive down margins (ex. price matching).

For online retailers, this highlights an opportunity to leverage mobile to gain marketshare.  By leveraging geofencing, online retailers can proactively target audiences that have a propensity to view items offline, but purchase online (at a lower price point). Understanding these behaviors makes location a key feature to drive ROI for mobile media campaigns.

David Shim is the Founder and CEO of Placed, the leader in location analytics.  By connecting the physical and digital worlds, Placed has created a new class of analytics focused on location.  Prior to Placed, David has held leadership roles in product, marketing, and operations at Quantcast, WebTrends, Farecast, and Razorfish.

THE MYTH: Segmentation equals personalization.

Does everyone who falls into a certain behavioral profile have the same needs and wants at any given time? Most likely not.

Although the availability of dynamic customer data is helping mobile marketers shift their focus from demographical profiles to behavioral ones, there’s still an all too common practice that stands in the way of true personalization.

You probably know it well.  It’s segmentation.

You track and analyze how different customer behaviors impact desired actions. You define behavioral profiles, i.e. high spenders, moderate users, balance hoarders, etc.  You identify segments of customers based on these profiles.  You send offers to each segment.

That’s personalization, right?   Well, not exactly.

What about the behaviors that someone displays before they become a ‘moderate user’?  Or the predicted behaviors that may alter this classification? What about the customer’s current context?  Or their motivations for action after receiving an initial offer? What about the elasticity limits of the customer? Or their changing social graph?

In the world of dynamic mobile data, segmentation often falls short in delivering personalized offers.

THE REALITY: Personalization is only achievable at the individual level.

How often do you have the same needs in the same context as your neighbor down the street who is also classified as a ‘high spender’?  You work in the city; he’s retired. You spend based on need; he spends based on impulse. Your mobile device is for work and personal use; his mobile device is his sole connection to the Internet.

Personalization is about delivering the right offer in the right context to the right person. And although the stars may perfectly align for multiple people at the same time, it’s not likely.

It’s important for marketers to understand behaviors and needs as they change – for individual customers.  It’s also important to be able to act on that understanding with a communication or offer that’s both timely and relevant.

WHY IT MATTERS: Relevance builds trust and value.

How many pieces of mail do you throw into the recycling bin each week? What about the emails you mark as spam before you even open them?  What about the TV commercials that you mute?

Although the abundance of irrelevant offers delivered via traditional marketing channels may be annoying, we’ve come to accept the process of sifting through a slew to find the relevant few. And for email, we can pick the time when we’re up for the challenge.

Not the case with mobile. We’ve all seen the studies where people rank their mobile device as one of their ‘must haves’ – sometimes going to the extreme and ranking mobile device dependency above that of transportation, electricity or even running water. Consumers rely on anytime, anywhere communication, and with this dependency, comes high expectations – expectations for the carriers providing the service and for the brands that choose to engage with their customers via this highly personal channel.

Delivering SMS offers based on a group of ‘like’ behaviors or when it’s ‘most’ relevant for a segment of customers does not deliver on the promise of personalization via the mobile device. Nor does it deliver on your customers’ expectations of adding value to their mobile experience.

Yes, delivering offers based on understanding individual needs and behaviors at any given time does require more sophisticated analytics and advanced marketing technologies, but most marketers can’t afford to wait.

With new technologies that not only constantly track and monitor behaviors at an individual level but also leverage automated decisioning to enable action at the right time, marketers ensure optimal relevancy of each communication and offer.  And this means more value for everyone.

Next myth to debunk - “triggering an offer.”  Stay tuned!