Khan Academy and Bank of America

Saw a commercial for this service the other day. Financial training from the Kahn Academy sponsored by the Bank of America.  A partnership.    A nice idea.  If you have not seen or tried it, the Kahn Academy is an online repository of thousands of free video teaching segments, starting with topics like algrebra and physics.  These segments answer some basic financial questions like: What is a Mortgage? Very popular and useful. I have always wondered why other knowledge resources, like the Wikipedia, have not tried this.  Unclear how much the content from the Kahn Academy has been modified to fit the financial goals of Bank of America.

Getting Millennials to Love and Share your Product

In Adage:  " ... How to Get Millennials to Love and Share Your Product ... This Generation Wants to Be Engaged and Feel Good About Themselves ... "

Nestle Uses Photo App

In Mobile Marketer: A cute use of photo-taking in a smartphone to build brands.  A simple but a potentially useful idea.  Will it usefully engage?   Who will download it without real value?   Have the motivations been mapped.  " ... Nestlé is tapping into the hot mobile photo-sharing market with an application for Nesquik that makes the photo upload process more interactive. .... The chocolate milk brand has rolled out a new app called Bunny-fier that uses a device’s built-in camera to let consumers upload and share photos. The brand has a significant opportunity to hook consumers, but may find it challenging to persuade consumers to download it without additional features.... " 

Why Private Brands Fail

In MypBrands: Why private brands fail.  " ... Most brands fail. In fact, some estimate that 70-80% of new brands launched each year flounder and eventually flop. But do Private Brands fail? Do they follow the same sobering failure rate as other brands?... 

Private Brands fail differently than manufacturer brands. And because of this, tracking failure isn’t as obvious. Failure is not a word often used in reference to Private Brands, and yet there are clear ways retailer owned brands can fail in today’s marketplace. To become better brand builders, launchers and managers, we must become students of why Private Brands fail. ... " 

Retailing, Brands and Consumer Experience

In the coming weeks I will be passing along some of the excellent work by correspondent Phil Hendrix.   Here is a set of slides on Retailing, Brands and the Consumer Experience (slides; excerpts from presentation to Clorox iConnect Conference, May 2013)

Philip E. Hendrix, Ph.D. Director, immr and GigaOm Research analyst
phil.hendrix@immr.org  |  770.612.1488 (O)  | 678.294.8017 (M)  |  www.immr.org | Twitter: www.twitter.com/phil_hendrix

P&G's CoverGirl and Print Augmentation

Nice to see this happening.  Especially taking this beyond the now dated approach of QR Codes.  Note the mention of Blippar technology.  Which they say is: " .... a revolution for traditional print and marketing offering the power to turn every single piece of print or physical branding in the real world into an instantaneous digital, interactive experience. ... "

" ... Procter & Gamble's CoverGirl is experimenting with several different ways to leverage mobile to activate its print advertising in magazine, including QR codes, augmented reality and shoppable ads.

In Allure’s September issue, CoverGirl included a QR code on a tearaway that leads to a listing of CoverGirl offers, and in the tablet version, CoverGirl integrated a shopping feature into its ads. In Vogue, on the other hand, CoverGirl used a complex augmented reality feature via Blippar technology. ... " 

Bridging Divide Between Games and Brands

We looked at this very early on, but really want to see it work effectively.   I think there is also value for the added dimension of data from social games ... " ... Mobile games are touted as a prime platform for marketers  ... Games are a good complement to social networks on mobile devices and a prime opportunity for marketers, industries executives say. With $12 billion in mobile gaming revenue projected for next year, "mobile gaming has become a big deal very quickly. It took the video games business 10 years or more to get to that kind of size," said Facebook games lead Simon Whitcombe  ...  "

Becoming a Brand Specialist

 Some interesting thoughts on specialization and the data required to manage them.   How does this apply to other current hype areas, like Hadoop, Big Data or Predictive Analytics?  The comments are also instructive.  " ... Hitching your wagon to the latest 'it' technology can lead to lucrative pay and compelling job opportunities, but it's not without risk. dBase developer, anyone?   ... " 

Loyalty Via Social Intelligence

Interesting piece from .....  Susan Ganeshan, Chief Marketing Officer at newBrandAnalytics,   writes .... " ... Various industries use social intelligence to make strategic business decisions in a number of ways. Whether making large-scale decisions like how to spend a small budget or selecting a location for a new retail store, or even small decisions such as brand refreshes or uniform updates, social media plays a significant role in the decision-making process. ... "