Atlanta’s week long Digital Atlanta event brings together entrepreneurs, local leaders and digital experts to explore every facet of how the internet, mobile, social and digital are re-shaping business and society. I had the opportunity to kick off the week with a keynote presentation on five big trends that are transforming the offline and online world.
The five trends are:
Bits to Atoms
Products to Experiences
Channels to Pockets
Audiences to Individuals
Cyberspace to Real Places
6. Radical innovation happens when
things get inexpensive
In 1998, it to cost $10,000,000 to get a
software startup off the ground.
In 2013, it’s a few thousand dollars
Hardware is following the same trajectory
20. Starbuck’s is the #1 mobile
commerce solution - $500
million in 2012 alone
The very best brands will have
the privilege of being carried in
their customer’s pocket – one
touch anywhere anytime
29. But there is hope.
Some companies are reinventing marketing.
30.
31. Most businesses today treat their customers
like tourists at giant attractions – big crowds
all experiencing the same thing at the same
time.
Great businesses go one step further. The put their
customers in smaller groups and take them
through a series of different experiences. It’s like a
virtual tour bus that drives tourists around a city to
a predefined sequence of attractions.
32. Amazing businesses build
experience roadmaps for their
customers – it’s like hiring a
personal tour guide for each
customer.
Before the tour, each customer
can share their interests, their
budget and their pace.
This lets each unique customer’s
experience unfold as they follow
their own path at their own pace.
36. Is this some wicked
new NSA iPhone App?
No.
(buried deep in the settings menu)
37. Proximity is
the new GPS
Think feet, not miles
It is two-way
You can authenticate
You can pay
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2013
Paypal wireless
payment – Beacon
(totally different
than iBeacon)
39. Place awareness increases personal security
Stolen cell phones, live broadcasting of video
The more businesses work to individualize your
experience, the less anonymity you have
We are used to this in the real world but it’s an entirely
different thing in the digital world
The biggest opportunities are the unintended
consequences of the trends we’ve only just started
to observe
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-10443022-father-and-son-reading-a-book.php?st=f702918Our parents taught us the most powerful lessons of our lives when we were growing up. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. I remember one in particular – don’t judge a book by its cover. My parents taught me never to stereotype. Just because people might look the same or have similar attributes, I should never lump them together. I was taught that everyone was unique and my responsibility was to look past their superficial similarities and see them as individual people. ***Isn’t it ironic that despite being told not to steretype our entire lives, that is exactly what we do as marketers every day. We look for common attributes between people and then treat them all the same identical way. We call the process segmenting. We call those customers audiences.
In short, never stereotype. I bet nearly every one of you heard the same thing from your parents and are probably passing that lesson on to your own children.
Here’s the irony. We, as marketers; everyone of us in this room; stereotype our customers. We are experts at looking across our customers and finding superficial similarities so we can organize them into convenient groups.In fact, we even have a word for the groups – we call them “audiences”.
But you can’t really blame us. There are only a handful of us but there are thousands or even millions of our customers. It is kind of like looking at our customers from a long distance through a pair of binoculars. You can sort of make out some of the details but you certainly can’t tell much about any inidividual or hear what they are saying.
Here’s the best part, when we find a convenient way to stereotype them into a group, we market to them as an audience. We end up saying the exact same thing to every one of them.Because we don’t know much about them as individuals, we make sure to share our message loudly and repeatedly in hopes that we might grab their attention for a moment or two.But there’s a problem.
We aren’t the only ones shouting at them. Every other marketer, whether it’s our competitor or just a bunch of other companies, is bombarding our customer. All these other marketers are shouting at the same group of customers make it harder and harder for you to be heard above the noise.
But there is hope. <we don’t need to give Amazon a brand logo here – I can just speak to them>
Some of you have started to separate your individual customers from the group. One of my favorite examples of great individual marketing comes from Amazon. <including some of you as our customers>A few years ago, I stumbled across a few of Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti Westerns. I loved them. So I purchased another one on Amazon. It was great. The next thing I know, Amazon is sending me emails and displaying offers on their site about more Clint Eastwood Westerns. You know what, I purchased every single one of them. What might have been a passing fancy on a few movies turned into a series of purchases over an entire year. Amazon nailed it.