Digital Insights

Is it possible to pack all of 2800 products onto a conventional 300x250 pixel banner? IKEA thinks it's all possible and have created the "smallest store in the world"! And yes you can browse all the 2800 products simply by hovering over the 300x250 banner.

Check out the details in the video below:

IKEA: “We targeted people looking for studio flats as well as one/two bedroom apartments by placing our tiny stores in the real estate section of community websites”

How do people feel about: Finding out about brands

Key insights from the Digital Life research conducted by TNS:

• Fast growth markets are more open to brands on social networks than developed markets, which show resistance to both buying and engaging with brands in these spaces.
• Globally, people's openness or resistance to brands on social networks is not dependent on age.Older age groups are as open to brands as their younger counterparts.
• People are much more resistant to buying products than they are to learning about them on social networks.

You seen it. Typical product booths providing you with the samples from perfumes to cosmetics. But how many times will you actually remember or recall that particular brand? No many I guess. Nivea’s Q10 Plus might just change your perception. Rather than the usual product pitch, they have turn the trial of Nivea’s Q10 Plus product into the actual "after-effect" experience through a unique and fun flash mob campaign.

Here's the video of the Nivea Q10+ Wouaaah Flash Mob experience:

Rich snippets provide you with the ability to help Google highlight sections of your website which might be helpful or be a point of interest for them while researching for information (i.e. receipes search) or simply doing a comparison of product reviews for a camera.

With that being said,how do you actually get started? Here's a couple of videos from Google to help you get started.

Still not enough? Here's more tips in implementing those rich snippets.

Forget about yada yada Social Media....from how do business get sexy to how do I monetized my social media ROI. Have you instead thought about building and interacting with your customers from a one to one personal propsective instead? In the following Gary Vaynerchuk shows his thought on building a one to one approach at the 2011 Inc 500 Conference.

What percentage of your traffic is driven through mobile devices? Large increment over the years? Or? And how are you presenting your offering or solution to your current and potential customers alike.

Mobile devices present an incredible opportunity for companies to create truly delightful brand accretive marketing and digital existences. In the following video Avinash Kaushik shares insights on how you can apply the framework for bringing fast, innovative measurement to your business.

What's in for the future of product development for Google? Larry Page chats about his thoughts from Search, Android, YouTube, Chrome to Google+ in the following session at Google Zeitgeist 2011.

Larry Page: "But if you have a healthy disregard for the impossible, you actually get better people to work on your project. You know,they get really excited, they work really hard. You know,they work late at night. And it also turns out that most companies aren't crazy enough to do anything like that. And so you don't - they - nobody else is doing it. So you're the only ones. And, again, you get the best people."

Want to brighten up your friend's day? How about popping by a vending maching which allows you to send a personlized message or video to your friend along with a bottle of icy cold soda especially during hot noon? Earlier this year, Pepsi launch a Social Vending System that enables anyone to gift a friend by selecting a beverage and entering the recipient’s name, mobile number and a personalized text message.

Which also allows that individual to further personalize the gift with a short video recorded at the vending machine. The gift can be redeem it at any PepsiCo Social Vending system. That is not all,the recipient could also pay it forward and gift a beverage to someone else too.

“Social Vending extends our consumers’ social networks beyond the confines of their own devices and transforms a static, transaction-oriented experience into something fun and exciting they’ll want to return to, again and again.” Mikel Durham, Chief Innovation Officer, PepsiCo.

This could be the future of transforming something static to a multiple touch points for more brands in the near future.

Why bother spending the time to manually update your friends where you are having your holiday when you can just easily swipe and do that. Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel has made it possible for you to do that - simply by just swiping the wristband provided and you can start taking pictures, checking in and updating your status at various points in the hotel. Not getting enough yet ? How about posting this message on your Facebook wall "Hanging out at the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel…Jealous?"

This is not something new we have came across and will see RFID technology getting more hardwired into real world setting as social API becomes more mainstream. Seems like a novel idea in driving the buzz but how could the hotel or other brands actually translate that into actual business outputs and not just riding onto RFID integration scene.

(download)

Click here to download:

swipe-and-check-in-on-facebook-at-ushuaia-ibiza-beach-hotel-GuHBnvDheglxyiifeDCE.zip (131 KB)

How many times have you received an email which is really HUMAN when you have signed up for their service or even purchase something from Amazon? Many times what you will receive are automated or simply a robot saying "Hi thanks for your support....blah blah". Dave Hyndman shared a uncommon "your order has shipped" order confirmation email from CD Baby, which not only wow him but also getting me excited to actually share this with you all here reading this.

Here's the somewhat uncommon but awesome way to excite your customers:

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Sunday, December 11th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby.  We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year".  We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby

Points to ponder:

• Are your current email communicating to your customers somewhat automated or humanized?
• How can you take the approach above by CD Baby and derive a more humanized approach in communicating to your customers?