Should You Play? These Gamification Statistics Say "Yes!"

Curiously enough -- one year ago, to the day -- I blogged about gamification. Now I revisit the growing influence of this marketing strategy with a compelling infographic from OnlineBusinessDegree. Thank you, Andrew Hunt, for sharing!

Thirsty Marketing: Slurp, Slurp

I've been watching Season 6 of "Mad Men." As fans know (and to boil it down to almost nothing), the show is about the history of advertising (the 50s, 60s, and 70s, so far) as seen though the eyes of copywriters and account pitchmen. The premise that the world can be moved by ground-breaking ad copy may have been true at one time. That time has passed. Here's the deal.

In 2013, consumers really have "heard it all" (about one million to seven million times per year, according to Yankelvich Research). 

No wonder, in this heavy laden content world, consumers both recognize and loathe being talked at and down to.

A case in point: Overuse of the term "community." Look folks, I'm your customer, not a member of your self-anointed community. True, I may love your product design and functionality (iPad) or treasure the incomparably customer-centric way you do business (Amazon). But I'm really just an Amazon enthusiast/fan and an Apple user (Note: Once upon a time, when the Mad Men were young, I used to be part of the Apple community because it was a community ...  but that's another story).

A second case in point: The co-opting of genuine customer service by the telecom industry's la-de-da marketing (or is it their NON-marketing) C-suiters. Have a problem? If you call in, you're sure to get recorded messages like these:

"Please hold; your call is very important to us."

or

 "A customer service executive will be right with you."

You've got to be kidding me, Comcast. Your customer service "executives" are paid a pittance. The big bucks go to investors and lobbyists who haunt Congress for de-regulation favors. We all know this. Get real .. or we'll get you. Lose your grip on that monopoly and you're done. We will remember.

Consumers Fight Back with Sharing

We've been hearing about "authentic" marketing for quite awhile. It matters ... a lot. But too many folks with something to sell, sell us short. We're getting even .. On message boards and Twitter and Facebook pages and Yelp. And here's an even bigger threat to "fool me twice": the sharing economy. Here, from an article in The Economist, check out what is, perhaps, the most successful peer-to-peer sharing scheme yet.

 "LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries. They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it—2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet."

This! Your house and mine, now competing with one of the most price-aggressive, stable industries in the world: hotels!

It's not quite over yet, though. Here  are a few positives for combating cons and intrusions while retaining the marketing edge and dealing with/cashing in on/exploiting the trend to peer sharing:

1. Do be authentic. It's okay to be funny (Mayhem is) and brilliant copywriting still builds customer goodwill (brought to you by "the most interesting man in the world"). But don't even try to cover up the truth.

2. If you have loyal customers, you already have the makings of your own "shared economy." Group pricing? Hosted information roundtables? Shipping/logistics packages? None of these are brand new, but maybe you have a twist to add. Consider the possibilities.

3. The world is rearranging its parts, which suggests new partnership opportunities. For example, who would have thought that hands-on construction worker types-- or realtors, for that matter -- could so successfully partner with artsy-heartsy interior designers? The Property Brothers, that's who... and they are cashing in.

4. Customers are both voting with their feet and screaming as they head for the exit. Voting and screaming. This could work.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

-- scrubbed by MarketingBrillo

If Managing Your Online Branding Hurts, SYNQY Could Ease the Pain

SYNQY -- a new start up near San Francisco -- is introducing an innovation designed to help organizations standardize and update the information that current and prospective customers see online.

Chairman and CEO Michael Weissman says SYNQY applies Meta embed code to a subscriber’s “brand assets”—logos, photos, messaging, video, registration forms, donation pages, white papers, slide presentations, articles, brochures, and so on. Thereafter, when an online user clicks on any coded asset, the right intended information pops up.

How It Works

To demonstrate, Weissman points to an Internet user who’s browsing an online fashion magazine that features a red dress sold by a major online retailer. Typically, when the user clicks on such a photo, she’s yanked off the magazine's website and plunked onto a seller's website. Too often, she has trouble getting back to the online magazine again. With SNYQY, wherever she sees the red dress online—either at the magazine’s site or anywhere else—her click pops up consistent information without jumping to a new site.

That’s the buyer’s (and the magazine’s) advantage. But Weissman says the marketer’s advantage is greater. As the CMO responsible for selling that red dress, SYNQY code automatically ensures that the buying experience is going to be the same for every buyer, every time.

Right for You?

Whether SYNQY is right for a given organization depends on how often people search for or buy that organization’s product(s) online. Weissman explains: “A printing company that depends on direct sales, but very little inbound marketing, is less likely to be a SYNQY customer. But an integrated communications firm that does content marketing and creates news stories to drive sales would be an excellent candidate. Large fundraising organizations with networks of partners or advocates would find SYNQY an option in managing their brand assets, as would a franchise company, political campaign, automobile dealership, or any organization with chapters.”

A New Process

Weissman differentiates SYNQY from so-called brand asset management entities that simply store digital materials for distribution. That process depends on human effort, he says—a sales person, chapter or branch manager, dealer, franchise owner, and so on.  By contrast, SYNQY manages and distributes brand assets without human involvement, thereby saving money. “So often, marketers are involved in non-bonus activities like updating content and keeping channels current. But there's no return for these labor-intensive activities. SYNQY can take over that job."

Build It Yourself?
The concept is easy, but building a competing technology would be very difficult and expensive, Weissman adds. “That's why it hasn't been done before. It would take millions of dollars to replicate what SYNQY does and millions more to keep it updated, but using SNYQY software is easy and inexpensive.”

How Much?

SNYQY costs $100 per user per month, which includes one SYNQY embed code. Additional SYNQY embeds cost $100 apiece per year.

Weissman, who has 25 years of high-tech marketing experience, suggests the price is a bargain for marketers who must spend thousands of dollars—or more—updating widespread, disparate Internet content. “Simply turning a static asset into a SYNQY is a 10 to 15 second effort, from start to finish. So, to take a catalog of 10 brand assets and turn them into trackable, manageable code would take less than five minutes and cost $1,000 — very little for most companies.”

What about retrofitting all the brand assets currently floating on the Internet?

“Many of our customers are starting with new assets,” Weissman says. “Eventually, we expect they will retrofit. The other approach is to put an entire product catalog inside a single SYNQY. This gives the best of both worlds.”

Free 30-day trials are available at SYNQY.com. Click below for a short video.

InfographICK: the Sick Pick Collection

As a follow-up to my blog titled "Time to Diagnose and Cure InfographICK" over at The Digital Nirvana, I promised TDN readers examples of infographics that need help. To find samples, I entered the hashtag #infographic in TweetDeck and the ooze flowed. 

1. This one hurts because I love Zipcar even if Avis did buy them (sob!) -- but, honest guys, WTHeck is this?

2. Infographics are supposed to be graphic, so they should be at least partially understood in any language, right? Uh... maybe not.

3. Okay, I don't really hate this one… I just don't like it. I'd rather read the article.

4. Speaking of which, WHY is this an infogrpahic and not a bulleted list?

5. If I tell myself this isn't an infographic, I like it. 

6. Yeah, yeah. the Internet is BIG. And your point is?

7. This one isn't too bad. Why? Because it's really an article with clip art (remember clip art?) 

8. This is interactive and has the potential to be awesome, cool, fantastic. Except .. what? Unintelligible? 

9. Not a bad idea, just a terrible font in all caps. Bad. 

10. This, truly, is the darkest of the dark. Plus I have NO idea what it means. 

11. Just to prove I'm not a total curmudgeon, this one I like. It makes sense! You can get it in one glance. It's what infographics are supposed to do.. Well, yeah. It's Wired. But like we said: Quality infographics are difficult to do and, therefore, cost $$$$.

12. Short enough to be decent. Hurray. No long snake, garbble-gook here.

13. And here's another good one: colorful, quick, to the point ..plus the designer had the good sense to get out of the way and let these logos stand on their own. 

14. Feels right: appropriate colors, nice font, quick presentation, good pointers. 


-- scrubbed by MarketingBrillo

Ways Customer Data Helps Customer Retention

No doubt, data is key to customer acquisition.

But data should be applied to customer retention, too.

When Loyalty360 surveyed 129 executives, here's what respondents said about how data ups the retention factor.

1. Assists with campaign segmentation by identifying groups of customers with similar interests.

2. Triggers 1:1 communications, by effectuating personalized emial campaigns.

3. Builds predictive analytic models that help extract information form the collective experience of a company's customer base and use the data to predict trends, propensities, and behavior.

4. Helps to understand customer attitude and behavior, thus enhancing customer engagement.

5. Helps identify brand affinity.

6. Promotes product propensity and the ability to identify additional products the customer is likely to purchase.

7. Pinpoints channel preference.

Overall, Making Every Interaction Count: How Customer Intelligence Drives Customer Loyalty found that taking action based on the customer intelligence gained from mining and analyzing data yields bottomline results: 54.3% of respondents reported increased spend by loyalty members (54.3%)

Source: Making Every Interation Count, Joint paper of Acxiom and Loyalty360
Download the full paper here.

Big Data Doesn’t Know A Thing, But It Sure Can Ask the Right Questions

When I was 12, I remember telling my mother that if a human being could know all the events that factor into the moment just before an automobile accident, it would be possible to avoid the accident. Little did I know that, a) I was talking about “big data;” b) I was wrong.

Fortunately, a couple of guys who actually know what they’re talking about have written the book that explains it all: Predicting the Future With ‘Big Data’.

Kenneth Cukier is data editor for The Economist and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is Professor of internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. The co-authors appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show March 7.

If I understand what Cukier and Mayer-Schönberger are saying, big data leads us not to more facts, but to more data, within which will be more questions and, therefore, greater opportunities for insights. And yet, the whys of “the universe” will remain a mystery.

More Data Is Just More Data
The paradox, apparently, is this: More data negates — or at least counter-balances — the need for perfect data. Mayer-Schönberger puts it this way: “… as we have more data, we can also be accepting some inexactitude in how we collect the data and how perfectly curated the data is because we just have so much of it … [And, any move away from] an elusive quest to find causality, targets something much more pragmatic and much simpler called correlations. It means that we are not looking for the why. We are looking for the what and that’s good enough.”

The Power of the Spread Is the Greatest Power Yet
Mayer-Schönberger thinks both the invention of the printing press and the invention of the Internet will be dwarfed by another major leap forward: not the mere spreading of information, but the spreading of the power of information. [Crowd-sourcing, anyone? Or, maybe, targeted sharing?]

Say what? Cukier explains. “You can imagine that [big data is] going to actually change the way that businesses run. They’ll find their most precious asset might not be what they’re actually building [or selling or offering], but the data that goes into it — because they can learn from [that data] and cross-apply it to other things.”

Got data?
You’re in the cat bird’s seat. And you know it. As a marketer, you know better than to despair at data results. You just test again … and again. You just get more data.

Cukier gives us a good example: “Imagine an algebra teacher who would find out that 60 percent of her students got the same question wrong with the exact same answer. She would, therefore, learn that, in fact, maybe she taught the algebra wrong, that maybe she wasn’t clear enough.” Insight. New testing. More data.

Data Is Fake
Should we worry about the issue of big data and our privacy? Sure, because we always need to be vigilant as a society not to misuse or abuse big data. But keep calm.

Cuckier explains. “Data is only a simulacrum of reality. It is not the real thing, firstly. Also, we’ll never have all the data. That’s not actually possible … So this sort of hypothetical thought experiment of what will happen when we know everything about everyone, that day is just not going to happen. So on a practical level, to get wound up in knots about this doesn’t seem useful..”

If only I’d known then what I know now …

scrubbed by MarketingBrillo

Copywriting, sure. Graphic design... Oh My Wowser!

An article in Print magazine's enewsletter [April 10, 2013] reminded me how much we owe graphic designers [artists!] and how little homage we pay them.

Just look at these two graphics.

The first was created for Emerge magazine in 1994 to illustrate an article entitled "The First Amendment: Friend and Sometimes Foe."

The second graced the cover of an LGBT Marriage and Family Resources brochure in 2004.

I keep staring.


Print's article is promoting Dejan Krsic's book Mirko Ilić: Fist to Face. Krisic says, "You'll love this book if you:
1) love Time Magazine's art direction;
2) want to read an amazing story of perseverance and greatness;
3) have respect for the history of one of the greatest designers of the past generation.

I'd add one more reason. You'll love this book if these graphics:

4) make your mouth water, make you want to cry, or just make you want to stare.

Krsic describes llić as "a visionary and a leading voice of visual culture across disciplines and continents." That sentence made me think (again) of the brilliance and power graphic designers have brought to the marketing/advertising/social media/pop culture world that surrounds us.

On Mad Men, it's all about the copywriters and the wordsmiths. The artists are long-haired, bearded, pot smokin' freaks (Season 6). Not fair. The best ones -- like Ilić -- are serious souls who have helped change our world.

So, hug your graphic designer today. It's time.

Wowser!