Has mobile shopping really arrived? I have to know.
So I’m pledging to buy every holiday gift this year using my smartphone, starting on Black Friday and ending on December 24.
Welcome to the Great Mobile Holiday Shopping Challenge.
Why am I doing this? Good question. The short answer is that I boasted to a room full of co-workers that I could do it. More importantly, it promises to be an incredible learning experience and a real-life opportunity to live the mobile shopping customer experience at the busiest, craziest time of year for retailers.
My holiday list is full of family, friends and even a fiancé, so this is no faint attempt. I’ll chronicle every step of the way, dishing on the good, the bad and the ugly of mobile shopping.
What I’ll share:
• Reviews of programs, sites and apps that purport to make mobile shopping easier
• Effectiveness of SMS programs for mobile shoppers
• Where branded and 3rd party apps fit in the mobile shopping experience
• How shopping experiences can differ based on device
• Debunk and confirm mobile shopping myths
• Mobile shopping best practices
Follow me at mobileshopping.tumblr.com. Join me as I accept challenges, examine mobile shopping myths and use every tool at my disposal to solve the challenge of holiday mobile shopping.
Is broadcast television about to experience a renaissance? In terms of masterful storytelling, incredible production values and cultural endurance — no, probably not.
Despite a lot of really wonderful shows of late, the economics of reality programming will continue to perpetuate that genre blight for quite some time to come, so fans of the “real housewives” franchise can relax. But in the sense of “nyah, nyah, DVRs and the Internet didn’t kill us” – yeah, I think so. And the amazing thing is that the smallest screens and their tablet big brothers are the ones that are going to enable this.
Whether it’s Direct TV’s NFL Sunday Ticket, HBO Go or Turner’s “TV Everywhere” push, your favorite shows and the commercials that may or may not come with them are about to be available to you pretty much anytime wherever you are in a way that Slingbox could never quite pull off.
With Nielsen capturing both time and space-shifted viewership AND assigning ratings credit, you’ve got a recipe for success that spares the cable and broadcast networks the agony of dealing with the digital revolution that nearly cost them everything. The benchmark for success will remain rooted in the same system that has served them for the past six decades.
Success even in the tablet and mobile space will be reduced to simply the quantifiable number of individuals who had the “opportunity to see” an ad. So now those amazing little devices aren’t cannibalizing viewership but rather contributing to it. Broadcasters are happy. Device manufacturers are happy with new content channels driving demand and reliance upon their products.
Even non-broadcast publishers will be happy because the accountability bar (measurement and success metrics) on these devices will be set about as low as it could possibly be while still completely satisfying the biggest ad spenders in the business. Agencies are happy because they don’t have to invest in earnest attempts to defend or improve upon a given media plan relative to its delivery against specific business objectives.
Who loses? Well, viewers lose because they’re still subjected to advertising (which honestly, as an advertiser, is totally fine with me), plus whether they know it or not, they’re likely paying a premium for the privilege of remote viewing — either to their cable or satellite provider, their mobile carrier or both. The carriers lose because of the bandwidth strain this could put on their already strained networks, and due to the general blame pattern in their space of: carrier first, device second (unless it’s an Apple device, which by law must remain blameless), and personal behavior last.
Finally, advertisers lose on two fronts: now a commercial exposure on a 2×2-inch screen carries the same weight as on a 60” LED panel with THX surround sound (caveat emptor if you’re looking for impact). This is a more subtle issue, but the basic gist is that impact doesn’t matter, which strengthens the argument for the continued misuse of GRPs as a level set across media types, regardless of format differences. These combined issues, in turn, point to the probability that the nascent field of measurement and accountability in the mobile space could get sidelined for a while. I guess just having the opportunity to see an ad will have to be good enough for now.
Bottom line? TV wins! Hurray for TV! I love TV!
The act of reading an actual book—not an online article, not an excerpt printed out by your professor—for pleasure is a dying form of entertainment. Many kids, teens and even adults don’t make it an active priority to seek out what their next book to read will be.
What can we do to remedy this? Creating the next Harry Potter is simply not enough to ignite mainly kids and teens excitement for reading. So what’s the answer? How do we save this out-of-favor pastime that is vital to our youth’s intellectual development?
Mashable reports “book trailers are now essential to the publishing industry”. Most authors have not come around to fully embrace this tactic, but it does solve a crucial problem: getting one’s attention long enough to sell the story. It can take days, or chapters upon chapters to really “hook” a reader, but with a (well made) teaser trailer you can do it in under a minute.
A small group of fans who follow particular authors have taken to creating their own stylized trailers that have been received and positively welcomed by the teen audience.
Is this an opportunity for agencies to offer their services to authors, to help them create unique promotional teasers for books? Is this something that will soon become the norm—book trailers during commercial breaks on TeenNick? I don’t know, but I do know that I am enthused to see how this takes flight and if it stays in the air.
Haven’t really paid attention to the book trailer scene? Here are some of the best (and worst) book trailers from the 2010 and 2011 Moby Awards:
Best Small House:
Tree of Codes — Jonathan Safran Foer
Best Big House:
Packing for Mars — Mary Roach
Worst Big House:
Savages — Don Winslow
Most Celebtastic Performance:
James Franco — Super Sad True Love Story
As you can tell, there are many different ways to approach a trailer: Re-enacting key parts, compiling reader’s reactions and more. The question is, will book trailers be a game-changing tactic, or just a passing trend?
