Look at this picture of jeans and tell me how much you think it’s worth. And here’s some basic info to help you along: “Low rise straight leg jean provides a simple, clean and slim silhouette, crafted in stretch denim designed to flatter your curves. Imported.”

The brand is on par with Levi’s. Read More »

Ever wonder why the Adult Entertainment Expo is held at the same time, and in the same place, as CES?

I had the chance to be at the Consumer Electronics Show this year for the first time in many years.  It was overwhelming:  too many things to look at, and unfortunately too many of the same things (something like 1000 tablets (exaggerated), connected TV’s, 3D everything, a streaming media cacophony). Read More »

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Coca-Cola is holding its annual marketing meeting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. While this may sound surprising at first, it makes more sense when you consider some powerful statistics: 71 million Americans use a mobile device to access the internet every month and, in a recent study, 38% of US shoppers said they used their mobile devices to help make a final decision for an in-store purchase.

This helps explain the recent explosion of mobile marketing: According to eMarketer, mobile advertising spending is expected to top $1 billion in 2011, with the spending being equally distributed across messaging, search and display. Read More »

In the coming year, MLC will be exploring how mobile and social media are disrupting consumers’ decision making processes.  Members are telling us that stated purchase intent is less predictive than it used to be, and that more consumers are changing their minds at the last minute.  A recent McKinsey study supports these observations, finding that 40% of consumers change their mind at the point of purchase and end up buying something they hadn’t intended to purchase. We’re going to be testing a few hypotheses around why consumers aren’t following through on intentions and exploring what the best companies are doing to increase follow-through. Read More »

Mobile devices have played a huge role this year in holiday shopping already.   In a recent survey of 607 U.S.-based smartphone users, we asked respondents whether they planned to spend less, more or the same amount this holiday season.  A little more than 14.1% said they planned to spend more, while about 85% said either less or about the same.

We then analyzed those who planned to spend more, and discovered they are very savvy mobile users. Read More »

Last week, I wrote about why so many brands seem to be hitting a sophomore social media stall.  In short, they are failing to aim their social efforts at creating new-in-kind value for consumers around the brand.

Spotting these sorts of white-space opportunities is, of course, tricky.  Because we’re talking about new-in-kind value, we are almost by definition dealing in the realm of unarticulated or even unknown needs.  We can’t simply ask our consumers what they’d like to see in this space because they often don’t realize they need it.

So what’s a marketer to do?  We’d recommend looking at the nexus of four things:

1. Trends in consumer needs adjacent to your brand’s space
2. Emerging technologies (specific social, mobile, geo-location applications)
3. Your brand’s unique capabilities
4. Your brand’s essence

Here’s a live example, especially good for retailers, banks or any business model that has a strong presence and role to play in local communities.  Read More »

This week, the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project released a report examining mobile app adaption among American adults. Apps, just as a refresher, are third-party programs that can be installed on smartphones; typically, they are sold or offered for download in platform-specific stores like Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace.

With many marketers looking at developing apps for their brands, it’s worth a look at just how consumers are interacting with them.

Here are 10 of the more interesting nuggets from Pew’s report: Read More »

I met with a retail-industry member last week that’s in the midst of growing one of their businesses from a regional brand focused on Latin America to a global brand with a strong footprint in the US and the UK.  As we talked about what it will take to enter a crowded retail space, our member expressed it this way, “we need to be very clear what are our brand standards and what are our brand standouts.”

I loved the simplicity of the statement and the depth of the insight. Given the increasing prevalence of mobile/social/location technologies like Foursquare, it can be awfully tough for retailers to differentiate, so the customer experience has never been more important.  Do you know the difference between your brand standards and your brand standouts?  If you are like most businesses, the truthful answer is “no”. Read More »

If 2008-2009 represented the arrival of social media in force at least in terms of mainstream acceptance, you might say that 2010 and beyond represents the same for location. Services like Foursquare and Gowalla, which allow users to broadcast their current locations by “checking-in” with their mobile phones, have grown by leaps and bounds in recent months; Foursquare has, for instance, around 725,000 users, as well as 22 million total check-ins. Those numbers might seem like small potatoes, but they have bigger social networks on notice: Facebook will roll out a location feature within the coming weeks.

For those who aren’t familiar, here’s how these services typically work: Users access the service via their mobile phones (Foursquare has iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps) and are presented with a list of their friends locations. They can then “check in”, or add their own location, which works with the phone’s location features to determine where the user is. Since those features have a margin of error, a short list of places in the vicinity is presented to the user; he or she can pick from the list and share the correct location with their friends via Twitter or Facebook. Read More »