Scion, Toyota's GenY auto division, has a busy year ahead. The Torrance division of Toyota Motor Sales, USA is in the midst of rolling out its iQ matchbox coupe, and is gearing up to launch the FRS sports car. Television ads are running now for the iQ. And the digital side of things is up to date. At least it is now. The automaker until fairly recently had a bit of a problem, and a particularly difficult one for a brand whose demographic is young: the website was outmoded, had no social elements, wasn't terribly scalable to mobile screens, and couldn't really be used on iPads because of its heavy use of Flash. That's all fixed. Scion last year handed all web duties to its creative AOR, Attik, which rebuilt the eight-year-old Scion.com from grill to tailpipe in HTML5 and CSS3 so it can be used with devices that are becoming the de facto interface for the Web: tablets, smartphones and other mobile screens. The agency says the navigation and layout structure is intended to be tablet- and touch-friendly. The idea is to make the site accessible from any screen, easy to navigate, scalable, and easy to alter to reflect integrated creative. Attik, which began as a graphic arts house in Huddersfield, UK (literally in the founder's attic), and has been AOR for Scion since the brand's inception, has been spending the last couple of years building out its digital talent. Among other big changes is that the site now has navigation functions that are never subsumed by other programs, and it also has social-media integration. The new site is also scalable, according to the agency, so that it can be easily altered or expanded with replaced content or shifted sections. The scalable part of it makes it easier to change the site to reflect national ad campaigns, promotional units and such. Owen Peacock, Scion national marketing communications manager, tells Marketing Daily that while it is a challenge for Scion to have an "unbundled" marketing-agency structure (meaning that while Attik is Scion's agency for creative, Scion has never really had a traditional AOR handling every aspect of marketing communications), it has worked. He says the company isn't changing that approach by having given Attik domain responsibility. "It's a challenge for product management and cohesiveness across vendors," he says. "And with advertising driving people to scion.com, we just realized that if they are seeing print, and TV when they get to online it should have the exact look and feel." Peacock says the change doesn't mean Scion is moving away from its unbundled approach. "I'm going after quality first and cost savings second; more than anything it's about customer experience. If it's best to bundle it at Attik, fine. If not, that's fine, too. I'm more for going best execution, period." He says Scion has the youngest customers in the industry. "When we are looking at that target, they are interfacing with the brand from desktops, tablets, mobile devices. And when they want fast access. That's top of mind. The old site took a long time to load. Now it's extremely fast." Attik's interactive creative director Jacob Ford said the new site is able to bend to marketing and campaign needs. "If they decide to have national campaign the next day we can adapt it quickly. The site architecture reflects how we wanted to make it easier for consumers to get information; everything is a click away." Ford says last month 50,000 people accessed the site via iPad. "It was scary to think that 45 days ago they would have been met with 'Flash not supported.' We are really trying to kill as many birds as possible here, getting ahead and addressing things that old site didn't have: a search function, or social or sharing function, for example.”
Cabot Creamery is launching Reward Volunteers, a mobile app allowing volunteers to log hours, post to Facebook and earn rewards for themselves and the nonprofits they serve. Cabot, the Vermont-based dairy farmers’ cooperative, developed the app, which works with Facebook Connect, with social business startup ChaloApps.com. It can be downloaded free on iTunes for use on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, or as a Web-based program on RewardVolunteers.coop and the sites of partnering organizations. Between Feb. 14 and July 7, volunteers can use Facebook Connect to track their hours, tag organizations, share photos and post activities. The more service hours accrued and sharing and “likes” generated for an organization, the more chances volunteers have to win prizes and the more chances their organizations have to win money. Between March and July, Cabot will hold monthly drawings to select winners of prizes such as gift baskets with Cabot cheeses and other items, Vermont ski passes, vacations at Liberty Hill Farm or Smugglers Notch, Keurig brewers, and $3,000 cash prizes. All participants also receive a $2 Cabot coupon. On July 7, five qualifying nonprofits will each be awarded $3,000. In addition to Cabot, organization sponsoring Reward Volunteers include AARP’s Create the Good, All for Good, Marriott, The National Cooperative Grocers Association and The National Cooperative Business Association. Reward Volunteers coincides with Cabot’s May through July Community Tour, during which the brand will hold events to celebrate co-ops and community service efforts at stops all along the East Coast Greenway, which stretches from Florida to Maine. The programs tie into the U.N.’s designation of 2012 as the International Year of the Cooperative.
Brands are spending a lot of effort (and money) trying to get consumers to “Like” them on Facebook, but there are only a few brands consumers truly “love.” According to a survey of 1,000 people conducted by New York-based brand agency CBX, Apple is the brand they “love the most,” followed by Sony, Coca-Cola, Nike and Pepsi/Mountain Dew. The reasons listed for loving those companies ranged from “innovative” (Apple) to “reliable and dependable” (Sony) and “great/good taste” (Coca-Cola). Rounding out the Top 10 list were: Wal-Mart, Samsung, Chevrolet, Dell and Amazon. Apple was the clear winner among both men and women, although men were more likely to choose Nike and/or Sony as their second and third choices, while women picked Coca-Cola second. “‘Love,’ in all aspects of life, is about having a deep affection for something or someone. As love gets deeper, you start to develop feelings of trust, comfort and stability for/from that person or brand,” Greg S. Lippman, managing partner of CBX, tells Marketing Daily. “In the case of this survey, I think that all of these brands provide something to people that they believe they cannot get elsewhere. And in most cases, they also get that feeling of trust, comfort and stability from each of these brands.” Among other demographic breakdowns:
New findings from Google suggest that consumers are using smartphones, tablets and desktop computers throughout the purchase process. Based on research conducted with Ipsos, Google found that people use smartphones in particular at different points as they move toward a purchase. Nearly half (46%), for instance, said they researched an item on their smartphone before going to a store buy it. And 37% researched an item on their phone before buying it online. Four in 10 people who use their mobile phones to shop said they had made a purchase through the device itself. While people use all three devices- -- phone, tablet and PC -- to research purchases, some activities are more popular on specific devices. Tablet owners, for instance, read product reviews and looked for product information more from their tablet devices than from their PCs or smartphones (77% compared to 67% and 70%, respectively). Consumers favored smartphones for contacting a retailer. That’s a natural outgrowth of the ability to make a call directly, as well as retail sites and ads including click-to-call buttons. At the same time, people preferred PCs for comparing prices and looking for discounts and promotions by a fairly wide margin (roughly 20 percentage points). That indicates that consumers are mostly checking prices and deals before even leaving the house, rather than waiting to do so in-store via mobile. When it came to comparing product information, however, tablets came out slightly ahead of PCs and smartphones -- at 65% to 60% and 61%, respectively. The study suggests that people are relying on mobile devices more for shopping. Among consumers who used their devices to shop last year, 80% of smartphone shoppers and 70% of tablet users said they used their device more frequently this year. The Google/Ipsos results were based on a pair of surveys -- one involving 615 U.S. holiday season shoppers who made a purchase in at least one of 13 retail categories and another of the same size composed of mobile and desktop consumers who made retail purchases across the same range of categories.
Google is accelerating its focus on building out YouTube channels for the Hispanic market through partnerships with independent and traditional media companies, such as Telemundo, and Univision. The consumer segments range from retail to automotive to consumer products to technology. The project, which began last year, supports five channels, including ClevverTV, Tutele, Nuevon and Werevertumorro. Some of the channels in Spanish have English subtitles. Media providers have begun to focus on content for bicultural Latinos in hopes of attracting a variety of demographics, including second-and-third generation Hispanics. Lopez said this year he expects the majority of online growth to come from the Latino market. "About 95% of the teen population growth online in the U.S. will be Latino," said Mark Lopez, head of U.S. Hispanic audience at Google. Last year, Google created a team led by Lopez to focus on serving the 50 million U.S. Hispanics who have about $1 trillion in spending power; 30 million are online. The focus supports content across desktops, tablets, smartphones, and TVs. Lopez said Hispanic consumers have become much more tech savvy. About 55% use search engines to research tech-related information and rely on media consumption to make decisions. Online advertising effectively drives 61% of Hispanic tech shoppers to make in-store purchases, for example. Citing Nielsen numbers, Lopez said this year streaming video should grow 23% on the Web, as well 15% on mobile. Overall, Americans spend more than 33 hours per week watching video across screens, according to Nielson. While Google could opt into a subscription-based model for Hispanic channels in the future, today the offering remains an "open, ad-supported model," Lopez said.
A robust investment in digital companion content and a social media program that began late last year helped CBS Interactive claim success with its Grammy Live multi-screen complement to Sunday’s on-air awards show. “For our three-day Grammy Live experience we got over 1 million viewers of content over 72 hours,” says Marc DeBevoise, SVP and GM, Entertainment Division, CBS Interactive. Starting late last week, CBS Interactive -- in partnership with the Recording Academy -- ran extensive video, news and image content from pre-show events to Grammy.com and CBS.com as well as into iOS apps. The majority of traffic to Grammy Live went to the Web, but DeBevoise adds that the iOS apps proved extremely popular -- remaining near the top of the free app charts in the iTunes App Store late last week. The peak viewership of the second-screen experience occurred on Sunday during the pre-show red carpet arrivals. According to DeBevoise, the success of Grammy Live demonstrates the special power networks have to create the kind of enhanced content to their own shows that drive users across displays. “There are a lot of guys touting second screens as their thing,” he says. “They aren’t necessarily second screen; they don’t have a lot to offer." Competition may be heating up between the networks crafting their own cross-screen experiences and third parties claiming to do the same. In the last year, many companies like IntoNow, Umami, ConnecTV and Shazam have poured into the mobile space with apps that detect and complement TV content. In fact, CBS and The Recording Academy partnered with Shazam this year for the Grammys. The audio ID app detected that the show was on and pushed out links to download the iTunes track for the on-air performance. DeBevoise says this Shazam partnership was a “promotional deal” to drive tune-ins, and distinguishes it from the exclusive material the original content provider can offer. “As a network we do it hand-in-hand with our broadcasters and you see what can happen. This is truly second-screen that can build on what is going on on-air. It is not just a light experience.” On the other hand, he admits that the cost and effort involved in a constant stream of parallel programming efforts can be prohibitive. “You can’t program a full second-screen experience for every episode of every show. But on events like these in big areas, there are ways to develop programming experiences that are viable.” One of the key learnings from this second-screen outing was the force of social TV. BlueFin Labs reports that the Grammy Awards set a record 13 million comments in social media during the event -- up 1,280% since last year and beating even the Super Bowl’s 12.2 million mentions. DeBevoise says Grammy Live started riding that wave back in November when it started a “Garage to the Grammys” contest on Facebook. Music fans were enlisted to elect a band to perform on the Grammy Live feed. Nearly 1,000 bands were involved, and the winner garnered over 750,000 votes, he says. “We got the social conversation going early and we fulfilled it on Grammy Live. We learned that the integration of social early on and during the event was key.”
“Sir, you aren’t booked in this hotel until next month,” the clerk said as my heart sank. My wife was already gasping for air at the check-in counter, she was laughing so hard. A crafted romantic getaway had been thwarted by my mishandling of the iPad. No joke. True story. I had plotted to surprise my wife on her birthday last October with a weekend getaway at a hotel within walking distance of our house. Apparently, a fat finger at checkout had booked me on the same night a month later than I thought I was booking. First, you must understand that my wife loves coming with me to hotels because, she claims, she loves separating me from my house filled with gadget distractions. “You pay closer attention…TO ME!” So for her birthday, I book a room literally a mile from our house for the weekend. I tell her simply to pack an overnight bag and then puzzle her as I walk us both right past the car. We walk to downtown Wilmington as she is wondering, what is up? Of course I am all full of myself at how clever I have been in giving her a birthday present that is as offbeat and quirky as she is and demonstrates that I actually have been paying attention all these years and understand her wants and needs. Until the big reveal crashes headlong into the clerk at the local Sheraton. “And we are all booked tonight,” he adds. Which is why she is in hysterics as she sees the plan revealed and destroyed in seconds. She knows intuitively that I bungled something involving a gadget. And it was all the fault of T-commerce. I got the inspiration for this scheme when iPadding one evening. I used the Safari browser to navigate to my favorite and trusted hotel booking site. Well, somewhere in the tortured process of navigating a site that was not optimized for tablets I must have advanced the calendar interface and booked for a Friday night the month after I intended. “This is the best birthday present I ever didn’t get,” she quipped. All because I had been lulled into some false comfort buying over my tablet. We have been talking all year in this industry about the new “user modes” that touchscreens seem to create for us. There is a real difference, I expect, between having a laptop open and before you in the living room and having a tablet to tap and swipe. We already well know that engagement rates on tablets dwarf those of the Web when it comes to many content properties. Magazines were among the first to discover this in their early magazine apps. But in recent months, retailers have seen metrics coming from tablet browsers that got everyone excited. People like to shop on this thing. “One of the largest electronics retailers this past season saw their tablet traffic grow from 1.5% year-over-year of activity to 3%,” says Alex Schmelkin, CEO, Alexander Interactive, who has been working with several major brands on optimizing their sites for tablets. He echoes recent preliminary metrics that show tablet users appear to be in a shopping groove in their prime-time browsing and actually spend more. “It may seem like a small segment, but the trajectory shows it is becoming important,” he says. Schmelkin has other retail clients that are already seeing up to 10% of traffic coming from a tablet browser. And the electronics retailer is getting average orders from tablets that are $50 higher than from the Web. Not only is the tablet customer more affluent, but Schmelkin is finding that "if you put them in a more immersive experience on the tablet, they will pay more.” Alexander Interactive has been running “personal analysis” in the form of interviews with users to determine that tablet shopping mode is just different. “When you sit on the couch and evaluate a bottle of wine or a rug, it is a more intimate mode of shopping -- more casual and relaxed,” Schmelkin says. For some retail categories he is working with -- like wine -- the demo, the mode of use and the time of tablet use converge perfectly. In these cases, he is looking at a tablet-first approach. For a high-end wine auctioneer, for instance, prime time for tablets is at just the point when a wine lover is thinking of cracking open that evening bottle. “It is even better than the desktop, when they are less inclined to buy that expensive bottle,” he says. Some of the emerging nomenclature of tablet retail design comes from the responsive design principles that are becoming the new buzzwords among agencies and developers these days. While apps are best for the kinds of sites a user is visiting on a daily basis, browsing in retail is more opportunistic. Schmelkin leads many of these clients away from apps and to a tablet-optimized Web solution. When responsive design can be implemented from the bottom up from scratch, then designers can anticipate what various site elements from a common code base will do on different screen and interface configurations. The feature set gets stripped down as the screen size degrades, but basic functionality and brand identity remain. With retailers that are not ready to rebuild, the company often will create a tablet-only experience. Some aspects of a tablet-optimized experience are obvious. You need bigger buttons and have to dispense with the hover functions. But for retailers, image zooming becomes an issue on tablets if a low-res jpeg is filling the screen. They install extra code that detects the browser and swaps in higher-res images during zoom maneuvers. Drop-down menus must be curtailed and made easier to navigate with fat fingers. And Next and Previous buttons in slide shows need to adapt to swiping maneuvers. The various screen sizes are proving especially challenging. All of the format changes that are acceptable on a 10-inch tablet suddenly become difficult to traverse on a Kindle Fire. “The smaller interfaces are feeling more like a smartphone than an iPad,” Schmelkin says. But while the average sale stats are higher for T-commerce, the conversions can still suffer, largely because the tip of the funnel is the typical choke point for willing buyers. Translating the payment process from Web to tablets needs special care. The forms and orders of elements -- limiting multi-screen Next/Previous operations, accounting for slower speeds and dodgy javascript handling -- all factor in to a point-of-sale piece that is still under construction for T-commerce. Schmelkin is quite right, I expect, in saying that once tablet-optimized retail sites appear more broadly we will see the tablet conversions pop as many shoppers find that the tablet marries time, place and mode perfectly for tapping a buy button. As for me? Well, my T-commerce activities have been curtailed of late. “Can I call your daughter? Oh, please let me be the one to tell her this? Please?” my wife insists as we walk back home from downtown. “You just gave me the best present -- a story I can tell the rest of our lives.” She adds: “You have to write a column about this -- you have to. ” OK, sweetie. Here is your valentine: your husband humiliated by his iPad.