11th Screen

In my previous life, I was an independent filmmaker.  And in the life before that, I wrote.  I still write, but I don’t make films anymore, mainly because of time.  Making films takes every ounce of brain power, much less time, you can give it, especially if you’re doing it all by yourself.  I miss that type of creating.  I miss being in something that deep for that long of time. 

I experience similar acts of creating with my job, and have ever since I can remember.  One of the great things about marketing and communications is the creating aspect.  We tell stories and solve problems and ultimately create relationships through pictures and words – the same tools filmmakers use to bring their stories to life.

I can’t help but liken social media to filmmaking.  Brands can go the independent route and spend a fraction of the cost to do it themselves.  Or they can go the studio route and hire “professionals” to monitor, manage, reach out to, engage, report, and analyze every aspect of their social media presence(s).  Studios have the infrastructure in place to churn out film after film.  Independents have themselves and a few of their friends to make a film at a time.  Both can produce really good films, but the amount of time that it takes doesn’t differ between the two. 

Quite often, I believe there’s a misperception that going the independent route enables organizations to get it done quicker, cheaper, and perhaps even just as effective (if not more) than hiring someone else to do it.  There is no formula, regardless of who does what, for success.  But, just like films, social media requires time.  It’s a serious commitment and someone’s got to be down deep for an extended period of time to even put themselves in a position to succeed.

Films have an advantage over social media because their stories end.  In social media, the stories grow and evolve and continue on indefinitely.  They turn into relationships.  And relationships, no matter what direction you go, can’t be skimped.

I just read a great re-cap post on “super brand’s” use of Augmented Reality from Chris Lake on Econsultancy and it got me thinking.  Specifically about AR & QR codes.  I call both technologies enabling technologies because they both enable the offline to be merged with the online.  And they both enable deeper experiences with the brand.  But QR codes – really any barcodes – just don’t seem to have the attraction, nor the experimentation to scale and use that AR has.  Why do you think this is?

Aside from the end-visual difference between the two, I think it’s simple – QR codes don’t do for a brand what AR does.  In other words – QR codes are just another way to access information.  AR is another way to experience a brand.  It’s quite a big difference.

At the end of the day, do we really need QR codes?  We can duplicate the same experience through advertising a URL or a short code.  Some would even argue that accessing a deeper level of information through a URL/short code is a better experience than through a QR code.  You don’t have  to understand what it is, how it works, download an app, take a picture.  Just simply type or text for the information you want.

AR, on the other hand, is an experience unto itself.  You can’t duplicate the experience any other way.  And because AR is what it is, it allows brands to either create an experience or utility that can show things in ways that no other medium can.  And that’s one of the fascinating things to me about AR – it transcends the mediums/screens we use to consume media.  It lives, literally, somewhere between your hands in the real world and your eyes on whatever screen you experience it on.  It can immerse someone in a brand far more effectively than any barcode can.  And depending on the actual solution, it can probably immerse someone more than a TV commercial can, or a website, or a banner ad, or a “static” video.

QR codes & AR both have hurdles for sure.  Start with the technology needed and the effort required to access either of them.  But because of what each provides, do you think one will outlive the other?  Or do you think that they’re both here to stay?

I met a couple of guys from a Toronto-based company, Jibestream Media, at a show a few months ago.  At the time, I was playing around with the Las Vegas Convention Center’s wayfinder, and this guy walks up to me and asks me about wayfinding.

Side note – my take on wayfinding (and probably many others’) is that I think it’s such a utilitarian tool that can easily be implemented through touch technology and can also serve as an effective DOOH advertising platform.  The context, primarily where it’s actually placed, drives its effectiveness at doing both.  For instance, I don’t think the in-mall static paradigm is broken and needs interactivity, but it can certainly be enhanced for dynamic advertising purposes.  Wayfinding in a place like hospitals, on the other hand, should have a presence and interactivity might help its utility be more effective, particularly with mobile integration.  Advertising here might be less important, but can nonetheless be incorporated and leveraged.

Anyway….I sat down and talked with the company’s VP of Marketing, Chris Weigand, and watched demos of their solution – NOVOMAP – and in the end walked away pretty impressed with him and it.  Novomap is an interactive out-of-home platform that is built to handle wayfinding, dynamic advertising, mobile interactivity, and even social connections.  What I think is interesting here, aside from how great the solution looks (highly produced, great graphics, animation, and an easy-to-use UI), is all of the hooks that they’ve incorporated.  They’re tapped into what’s needed and what’s wanted.  By and large, mobile & social capability are not selling points to large facilities.  Wayfinding and dynamic advertising are tools that can impact their bottom line, so, I think that’s always the base of any solution like this.  This is what gets their attention.  But once these guys get in the door with the utility and a platform that can drive the prospective company’s business, they’re in a position for incremental value via smart, connecting-type solutions.  The type of solutions that will get people talking and excited – because mobile interactivity and connectiveness is now today’s consumer’s utility.

If you hear the way these guys talk about their solution, you walk away feeling like they have it figured out.  They’re talking about it in all the right ways.  They’re working like crazy to get this into as many places as they can, even in test scenarios.  If you haven’t heard of them, check them out.  I’ve really enjoyed keeping up with them over the past few months and would love to see them succeed.  I think they have a pretty cool product that is effectively powerful.  Keep it up, guys.

I heard something the other day in an Innovation session put on by my company that has stuck with me ever since.  “It’s not about being expert knowers.  It’s about being expert learners.”

I believe that we, as professional marketers (and particularly strategists), have a responsibility to know what to look for and understand in how we can solve our clients’ challenges.  We know “best practices”, we know what questions to ask, we know technologies and mediums, and we can know that in order to be most effective, we should understand audience behaviors and attitudes.  We tend to know the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things and when we have no idea if we’re doing the right or wrong thing.  And many things in between.  Our knowledge and experience set a good baseline for everything we know.

But today more than ever, with the interconnected delivery and consumption ecosystem that we operate in, it’s unrealistic to know everything.  Evolution – in communication, technology, and consumer behavior – occurs every single day.  What is one way today could be another way tomorrow.  There’s just no way we can even pretend to know all there is to know, even about one particular subject/industry/vertical.  Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, wrote about research that discovered for someone to be considered an expert on anything, they had amassed 10,000 hours on that particular subject, or roughly 10 years of doing nothing else.  But it’s important to recognize that in that 10 year-span, they are not just doing.  They are continuously learning.  By the end of that 10-year-I’m-an-expert-on-X period, that person is also an expert learner. 

This is the cool thing about learning – we learn everyday, no only when we are “doing” whatever it is we “do.”  I suppose it just takes awareness and the wherewithal to recognize moments of learning and the filing away in the mind’s filing cabinet, assuming one wants to learn, first.  And this is me.  It’s more important to me to be an expert learner because the result of all that learning puts me that much closer to being an expert knower, not the other way around.

When it really gets down to it, do you like to learn?  Do you like to soak up information?  Do you like to be surrounded by people who you can learn from?  Do you think you can learn from anyone?    

If your answer to these is yes, I would encourage you to continue, regardless of how long you’ve been doing that thing you do.  If it’s no, come on, give it a try.

This is the second part of this two-part series on Build-A-Bear’s complete brand experience, one that I totally dig.

Now that I’d left the store, Tex in tow, I was directed to continue my (& Tex’s) experience online at Build-A-Bearville.  My behavior/attitudes as a 35-year old male is a bit different than Build-A-Bear’s target – a tech-savvy 10-year old girl – so I didn’t go straight home and hop online to visit the community.  But when I was ready, the first thing I did was take a look at something I received in-store – Tex’s birth certificate included two codes on it that allow me to register him in Build-A- Bearville.

This Build-A-Bearville is a great community for the audience.  It’s set up like a virtual world with custom avatars – both of you and your new best friend – where you can explore, make friends, buy things, and make your own home, among many others.  Some quick stats that I found to be very interesting, via Brandon at Kioskcom - users of Build-A-Bearville have created 1.5 million avatars (mine is below), 1.2 million unique visitors a month, avg. 30 min visit in the community.  They have created a sticky experience online. 

This process, getting set up in the community, personalizing it and everything, takes a bit of time, but once you get set up, you’ve created the foundation of your presence in the community.  Everything you do from that point forward builds and strengthens your presence in the community.  All of these actions drive you, as the consumer, deeper into the brand.  Every moment of engagement is an opportunity to build loyalty.  Their essence is woven through this entire experience in such a great way.  It’s even evidenced by their user agreement – their ”Golden Rule” – that everyone who joins has to agree to:

Be kind.  Treat others the way you would like to be treated.  Never give out personal information.  As a parent and as someone who gets/understands/encourages the use & impact of technology on my kids’ lives, these are rules that I want them to see everywhere they turn, certainly rules that I want them to see in an online community.

The “Be kind” and “Treat others the way you would like to be treated” must be engrained in their corporate culture, too, because everyone in-store embodies these characteristics.  Some might see all of this – the kindness, the language, the spirit of everything – as a little hokey, but for a brand who is made for a 10-year old tech savvy girl, they do so many things right.

I think one of the keys to this success is that they completely understand their audience.  They know exactly who they’re talking to, they believe it, (and it’s right), so everything they create as a brand is purposeful.  And as a result, is meaningful to their audience.  Purpose and meaning transcend technology and trends and slick marketing.  They enable much more probability to be sustainable over the long-haul.

This also enables them to be “channel agnostic.”  They don’t care about “screens” (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, whatever), they care about their experience.  And they let the experience drive particular messages/content in each channel, whatever they perceive to be the best to deliver those messages to this audience.  If digital signage doesn’t make sense to the experience, they don’t utilize that channel.  If it does, they do.  This alleviates the “just because” syndrome that many brands and marketers tend to fall victim to, particularly with DOOH/digital signage.

Brandon said they are looking for the right ways to integrate mobile into this equation.  Since these guys can be purposeful in everything they do, I would only expect this mobile integration to be another fitting piece to the puzzle.  I said earlier that they have created a sticky experience online, but in fact, they have created a sticky brand experience all the way around.  Kudos to them.

PS – some of the cool things offered in the community are:  online newsletter/paper, tasks & challenges, virtual badges, mini-games, pre-written chat messages.  My avatar can do things like wave and dance (yes, the dancing is fun!)  Tex can even roam around the community with me and play fetch.  There are lots of things to do in a safe environment.

Would love to know your thoughts, impressions, etc…Shout if you want.

I think many of my blog posts are too long.  In an effort to try to balance giving you complete thoughts and short(er) blog posts, I’m going to break this one up into two.  This is the first in a two-part series on Build-A-Bear’s Complete Brand Experience.

Leave it to a toy maker to get it right. 

Last month, I sat in on a session at Kioskcom and heard Brandon Elliott from Build-A-Bear speak.  I’ve been in Build-A-Bear before with my daughter, but didn’t recognize the superb job they do in creating a complete brand experience.  Yes, their sales associates are super friendly and use “bear” in as much of their vocabulary as they can – that’s not what I’m talking about.  What I’m talking about is extending the in-store experience (the offline experience) well beyond the store.  What I didn’t understand was how effectively they’ve created a cohesive, multi-channel brand experience.  Merging the offline with the online.  Using multiple “screens” as compliments to each other, not duplicates.  Creating brand evangelists, in part, by being channel agnostic.  So, after hearing Brandon speak, I had to go back into Build-A-Bear and experience it all for myself.

I was hypersensitive of my surroundings, so of course, the first thing I saw when I walked in was:

Score #1.  This company has a purpose.  They’re not in the business of making stuffed animals.  They’re in the business of making best friends.  Big distinction and one that is the foundation that enables them to create such a deep experience.  Relationships with stuffed animals end in time, for one reason or another.  Relationships with best friends are timeless.

So, here I was, faced with the joy of picking out my new best friend.  And although he wasn’t a bear, I knew him when I saw him. 

Score #1.5.  Every time one of these particular friends are chosen, Build-A-Bear donates $1 to the World Wildlife Fund.  Once I picked him out, the next step in the process was to bring him to life.  And here, in the store, you do that by picking out a heart, of course.  Before the heart goes in, you make a wish and give it a kiss.  Nice touch.

Score #2.  Details, details, details.  It’s not about picking out a non-stuffed animal and then getting it stuffed.  It’s about bringing this new best friend to life in a real & meaningful way.  This is part of the brand experience and there’s not a friend that gets made who doesn’t have a heart with a kiss and a wish.

Once I brought him to life, I was able to make him a legitimate member of the Cearley family by creating a birth certificate on the in-store kiosks.  While these kiosks are purely designed for utility, they are designed for a specific audience – kids (to be specific, 10 year old girls.)  All of the prompts on screen and buttons on keyboard are color & shape coded.  It’s a very easy process to go through – right in line with the rest of the experience.

And so my new best friend, Tex, was officially born.  With a heart, a kiss, a wish and a kiosk.

Score #3.  Personalization.  As you can see, Tex is a baseball fan.  I could have made him anything I wanted through all of the clothes and accessories available to me in-store.  Although not a huge deal for me, kids love this part of the experience because they get to personalize their new best friend from head to toe.  Socks, shoes, sunglasses, purses and everything in between. 

This is the point, in-store, where my experience ended.  I was handed Tex’s real birth certificate, Tex himself, and directed to Build-A-Bearville online.  Just as the purpose statement that I saw when entering, I was left leaving with this new promise:

Isn’t this experience great?  Even if you don’t care for making new best friends, you have to hand it to Build-A-Bear for creating such an immersive brand experience – the details – from what you see, to what you hear, to what you do, every step of the way.  And this isn’t even the complete picture, but it’s here, my friends, where we’ll pick up next time…

It’s a few days late, but here’s my “Objects & Relationships” presentation from IACP.  Two things:

1. I know that I’m simplifying the concept of “social objects.” It was most appropriate for this audience and personally, I like the simplicity.
2. On the rambling, especially on the first slide, I’ll improve. I know it’s not fun to look at a white slide while I ramble (for those who know me know that I can ramble). I like this idea of multimedia education so I’ll strive to get better at this.

And for those of you who want the presentation itself, here you go.