"One of our longest standing clients, Honda Australia, lead the way in innovative digital investment in their industry. When we first talked with them about creating the world’s first iPhone based car showroom, it seemed like a somewhat risky proposition.

Looking past the risk and considering the potential returns from the investment, we were given the go ahead to create the application.

Since launch, the Honda iShowroom has been downloaded over 20,000 times, and has consistently been one of the top rated business applications on the iTunes Australia store. Furthermore, the cost of reaching customers through this channel was significantly lower than the cost of reaching those customers through other more traditional channels.

American Express commissioned Future:Poll, the research division of The Future Laboratory, current and future consumer spending trends. The findings demonstrate how consumers are changing, reassessing a model of capitalism that has driven unparalleled growth in the world’s economy over the last 50 years. Consumers are becoming more discriminating, seeking local, authentic, meaningful experiences and using technology in evolutionary new ways to come together to compare, shop and review. Consumers are reshaping the rules of spending, pricing and product access in ways that will revolutionize our way of life and are already affecting local and regional economies.

Consumers are seeking and cultivating simpler ways of living, but are also innovating the ways they shop and consume. The study identified five American consumer spending trends for 2011 and beyond. Below is a summary by Brand Channel. I’m struck by the focus on community and collaboration.

1. Rurbanism 

Urban consumers say they are beginning to think like their rural neighbors, demonstrating an interest in more local, home-grown and community focused interactions. They're shopping for more sustainable products that protect the environment. More than half of Americans say they try to support their local economy.

2. Give-a-nomics 

Purchasing has now become a way of giving. Consumers want to give back to charity, preserve the environment or help their communities, and they are increasingly expecting brands to be socially responsible. A whopping 83 percent of Americans want products, services and retailers to support worthy causes. (American Express embodies this through its Foundation outreach, and commitments such as its Members Project relief efforts in Sierra Leone, highlighted above).

3. Co-Created Own Brands (COBs) 

These days, consumers wield a lot more power; they want to co-create brands and buy brand that are customized to their needs. Twenty-three percent of consumers are looking for products they can customize.

4. Commsumption

Consumption has turned into "commsumption" — now consumers are shopping as groups and consuming as communities, especially when it comes to recommending brands to peers and buying online. Brand marketers can take advantage of this by appealing to local consumers and reaching out through online social channels. Forty-one percent of American consumers say they buy more products online than they did a year ago.

5. Check In to Check Out (CiCo)

American consumers are going mobile. As a result, brand marketers are increasingly personalizing location-based offers, enticing shoppers to "check in" and take advantage of promotions on the go before they "check out." Consumers are also sharing deals and buying in groups more. Twenty-three percent of consumers say the availability of smartphones has an impact on their spending.

Royal Dutch Airline KLM has started a fantastic campaign to connect with their customers called KLM Surprise. The campaign involves surprising travelers with unique gifts based on their social networking profiles.

When passengers check in at KLM’s Foursquare locations, the KLM Surprise team then uses social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to find out information about the passenger. They use the information to come up with a personalized gift to surprise the passenger at the airport. The team follows up after surprising a passenger by monitoring the conversation on social networks. They also take photos of the people they have surprised and post them to the KLM Facebook page.

Check out some of the pictures above of passengers being surprised with everything from champagne to a watch. This is social done right, and what a nice treat for the holiday season!

For more, check out The Next Web.

Loving the above image courtesy of @hyku depicting the complexity of “behind-the-scenes” social strategy creation. It’s the first in a series of social media graphics Josh Hallett will be sharing over the next few weeks.

Via: http://hyku.com/blog/

Blown away by this amazing use of OOH. Double Happiness is a take on the traditional billboard that is meant to “respond to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to be prevailing overall.” It allows participants to “reappropriate” different fragments of their city.

“By playing this game, and testing their limits, two people can experience together a new perception of space, void, lightness and recover an awareness of the physical world.”

What are some of your favorite OOO executions? Another I love is Nokia’s giant digital arrow.

When asked about a few images often used in advertising to elicit a reaction from viewers, two in five Americans (41%) say that given the options of "a puppy", "a baby", "a sweet old lady" and "a sweet old man", a puppy is most likely to tug at their heart-strings when they see it in a commercial. One-third say a baby (34%) is most likely to do so, while small percentages say a sweet old lady (3%) or a sweet old man (2%); 19% say none of these is likely to tug at their heart-strings.

These are some of the findings of a new Adweek Media/Harris Poll, survey of 2,098 U.S. adults surveyed online between October 5 and 7, 2010 by Harris Interactive

Full report here: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/mid/1508/articleId/627/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/Default.aspx

• The market will become over-saturated with coupons, deals, etc. (a la Facebook Deals, "Like" us to get a free coupon), and consumers will begin to expect and even demand never paying full price for anything. Products will become more expensive so that these offers can continue. 
• Online/social customer service will be huge. I think a new channel will emerge for dealing only with social, real-time online customer service - move it off of Facebook and Twitter, and let them go back to what they were built for.
• Brands that "get it right" will truly become media companies - pushing out content, in addition to products and services, more than ever. 

By now, you are probably familiar with Forrester’s popular Paid, Owned & Earned Media model. Earned media is the rage this year, as brands try to figure out the best way to drive positive WOM – allowing consumers, trusted friends to spread the message. However, a blog post from Digital Ingredients amplifies the importance of a new, emerging category – where I think the future of media is headed - Promoted Media.

Promoted media amplifies paid messages AND takes advantage of more organic WOM. An example: Twitter’s new Promoted Tweets. The chart above is definitely something to consider. What do you think? Will more promoted, joint opportunities emerge?

Enjoyed glancing through L2’s Digital Retail Index. Who ranked first? REI, IKEA and of course Threadless. The report is chock full of great data and case studies, and it even shows glimpses of the future. Will 2011 be the year V-Commerce takes off?

Really enjoyed reading through L2’s Digital IQ Index on Luxury brands. They assessed and ranked nearly 100 luxury brands in the digital space on a scale from Genius to Feeble, including Burberry, Chanel, Jimmy Choo. Coach, Ralph Lauren, and Louis Vuitton were named most “Genius” for everything from their mobile apps, to blogger outreach and e-commerce. The report goes on to predict where the Luxury market is headed, and provides some great case studies, including Coach’s Poppy execution, one of my favorites.

Based on eye-tracking research, where should the logo or brand identity be placed so that consumers actually see it? Hill says that the best place is the lower middle part of the page or layout, At that point, the viewer will have engaged emotionally with the leading part of the ad, and will then have the opportunity to associate the brand with solving a problem or satisfying consumers’ wants.