mobile apps, sites & commerce for fashion: a FashionForward Digital redux

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

I was honored to speak at the FashionForward Digital Conference held at New York’s Crosby Street Hotel on October 27^th.  A collection of many of the brightest minds in the fashion digital arena assembled during the day to share innovative thoughts on the state of the industry through the lens of social media, digital design, branded content, digital advertising, and luxury consumer behavior defined through cognitive anthropology.

In the midst of the collective intelligence gathered across such a wide range of topical interests, where did the subject of the emerging mobile arena fit in? Are fashion brands seriously considering the implications of this new communications platform? If so, did they have a solid strategy of how best to succeed? With so many questions within the room, I was tasked with discussing the varied strategies associated with mobile sites, apps, and commerce for fashion brands. I’ll provide a recap of the discussion for our valued readers of Fashion’s Collective, but for those of you reading this piece without the fortune to have been in attendance, do yourself a favor and attend the next conference by any means necessary.

When discussing the strategic importance of mobile sites or apps and how best to utilize them in the brand marketing portfolio, one must first understand the mindset of the consumer. What causes an individual to choose one path to engagement over another? The prototypical mobile web consumer is utilitarian in nature. She often shops from a broader portfolio of brands. She engages with the brand on her mobile device in limited time intervals, searching for her intended object of consideration and, in a best case scenario, proceeding through the purchase path as simply and expediently as possible. As such, effective mobile website design principles adhere to the philosophy that there is elegance (and competitive advantage) in speed and simplicity.  Quite simply put, as Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Whereas the typical mobile web consumer is more hurried and prospectively less loyal to a limited subset of brands, the prototypical mobile application consumer is part of a far more loyal, engaged, and attentive audience set. She looks to the brands she covets for style guide expertise and depends on the brand as definitive experts. As such, she will spend more time interacting with the brand through the native app downloaded to her device, viewing video content, style tips, and look books. The native functions of the smartphone devices can more effectively be utilized within an app construct, allowing consumers to use the native camera to scan images of QR codes to launch compelling mobile marketing campaigns.

The underlying theme of the discussion, however, was an undeniable truth. Regardless of which side of the aisle you stand in the debate between mobile sites and apps, mobile is here and it is now. Suffering analysis paralysis veiled in warring ideology of which solution suits the brand more appropriately will not get any brand closer to mobile success. One of the evolutionary societal trends that mobile is driving is a migration away from a tethered desktop web environment and getting consumers out into the world again. In no other industry segment is this more important than in fashion. Your consumers are no longer stationary targets, so stationary methods of interacting with them no longer apply. Those brands that take first mover position with innovative and engaging mobile offerings will be those who endear themselves most to this new base of connected consumers.  Please plan accordingly.

mobile integration for pop-up marketing strategies

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

The conceptual model of pop-up retail is certainly not a new strategy in the brand and product marketing playbook.  Pop-up stores have been effectively employed by a number of the world’s most recognizable brands. Most often they are used to introduce new product, gauge consumer interests, and enhance exposure through cleverly placed, transitory concept venues that are designed to generate buzz by creating an out of the ordinary brand experience.

By nature both experiential and ephemeral, the pop-up concept forces a greater degree of interactivity and imaginative engagement between brand and consumer because the timetable to create memorable impressions is accelerated.  The consumer desire to experience a pop-up venue is fueled by time sensitivity and exclusive access to the brand. Customers want the opportunity to experience a unique orchestration of art and commerce available to a limited few, given time and space restrictions.

For these orchestrations to be staged and performed symphonically, however, brands must invest extensive economic and operational resources in these intentionally limited interval sprints designed to generate excitement among a limited consumer base able to experience them.  The persistent question among brand marketers continues to be how to most effectively scale an innovative pop-up strategy to achieve maximum exposure impact.  Enter the mobile medium, and the introduction of a new, complimentary approach to pop-up experiential marketing.

The essence of the pop-up experience is time sensitivity, location and exclusivity.  Much the same is true when speaking of the differentiated elements of the mobile medium.  The mobile medium is location aware, dialed-in to time, intensely personal, action-oriented, and integrated into the social DNA of the digital native consumer.  As such, the medium conveys a unique value proposition to experiential brand marketing – offering a transitive platform for a more scalable and consistent pop-up retail delivery infrastructure.

The end goal for any mobile optimized pop-up engagement campaign can vary. From driving store traffic to providing game clues through QR code scans to an invitation-only event, or from delivering limited availability product and promotional offers to showcase exclusive branded production content.  The true value is in the platform that couriers the message and ensures a more cost effective and consistent series of consumer encounters with the brand. These campaigns effectually serve as component extensions of a comprehensive experiential pop-up marketing strategy.

To intelligently integrate mobile for this highly scalable model, considerations must be given to the aspects of the medium that make it unique.  Whereas the physical pop-up experience is spatially focused – with considerations concentrated primarily on location, staging, atmosphere, and exhibition – the success of pop-up mobile encounters is predicated on creating actionable mobile moments that adhere to the following fundamental premises:

The Mobile Consumer is a Moving Target

The mobile medium is constantly connected and often in motion. As such, it represents the ideal events-driven medium for engaging consumers in a pop-up fashion. Effective mobile events, when properly orchestrated, consist of actionable, properly sequenced occurrences and provide an instantaneous portal into the brand encounter. This ability to effectively market in the moment bridges communication lag, with precision aim focused at the moving target.

The Mobile Medium is Transitive

Mobile provides a consistent interface for customers to assist in the navigation of an ever-evolving ecosystem of digital consumer touchpoints.  The transitive functions of the mobile medium provide the continuous messaging and engagement capabilities necessary to deliver a pop-up marketing model. This model ensures a balanced, timely, and relevant encounter with the brand, providing heightened degrees of interaction.

The Mobile Medium is Contextually Aware

Location and time recognition capabilities specific to the medium allow savvy pop-up mobile marketers to engage consumers in a contextually relevant manner.  The effectiveness of any pop-up mobile marketing campaign is predicated on being relevant. Communicating branded messaging with an understanding of time and space creates interaction momentum and encourages consumer engagement.

Pop-up retail marketing is fundamentally designed to provide a metaphysical outlet for brands to see beyond the boundaries of their own brick and mortar and provide experiences for consumers that excite, entertain, and illustrate the innovation of the brand. The mobile medium is uniquely equipped to provide that same level of intrigue, based on an understanding of the context through which a consumer engages in brand encounters. The imaginations of marketers are free to guide consumers along a collaborative journey and create truly engaging, consistent, and scalable experiences that build intimacy and loyalty, while highlighting the creative vision and innovative nature of the brand.

sophisticated game mechanics for luxury mobile marketing

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

The 21^st Century digital native consumer is hyperconnected, socially integrated, empowered with information, and always in motion.  The mobile medium has been a tremendous catalyst for consumers to get out into the world and experience.  As we as a society evolve from stationary models of entertainment and information gathering to one that experiences our world by immersing ourselves in it, we are constantly seeking ways to make our encounters more meaningful and interesting. The power of connection and information allows us to demand greater degrees of intimacy with the brands we most admire.  We actively search for ways to achieve efficiencies while being consistently entertained and informed along the journey.  What does this mean for luxury brands as they try to engage this digital native?

The primary function of marketing has always been to attempt to boost the lifetime value of a brand’s consumer base by increasing loyalty and, in turn, the average selling price of a good or service, while simultaneously heightening the desirability of a brand to a larger potential base.  In this hyperconnected world, marketers are constantly testing strategies to expand engagements, improve lines of communications, entertain, and create intimacy with consumers.  Marketers are discovering that applying gaming mechanics to campaigns can be an effective strategy for advancing brand loyalty by increasing participation.  Brand marketing can no longer be cemented in unidirectional communication strategies, so engaging consumers and encouraging them to interact with brands is essential for success.

Gamification fundamentally succeeds as a marketing strategy because it fulfills our basic human needs for achievement, status, and rewards by effectively playing on our desire to compete.  However, this seemingly intuitive evolution in approach takes on an added layer of complexity for luxury marketers. Luxury’s consumer base has little patience for clutter or noise and expects brands to participate with them, without the need for social objects and digital status symbols like badges and mayorships, or virtual goods and currencies.  That said, how do gaming mechanics apply and how can they be leveraged in a way that is subtle, refined, and on-brand, not ostentatious and designed for the masses.  What are sophisticated game mechanics for luxury mobile marketing?

For decades, travel and hospitality brands have provided the quintessential example of refined, smooth game mechanics through rewards programs.  Showing loyalty to a particular airline or hotel brand is rewarded by priority access, express lanes for check-in, and points that carry redeemable monetary value.  These types of seasoned game mechanics incent loyalty and participation for mutual value between brand and consumer.  They provide engagement, the ability to achieve status, and exclusive rewards for the most loyal participants.

The luxury digital native is not concerned with competition, nor is she interested in mass marketing attempts at gaming.   In an era where conspicuous consumption is passé, the luxury consumer is far more subtle and sophisticated.  She is seduced by exclusivity – by her inclusion in a lifestyle and her personal connection with luxury brands that few can attain.  She seeks a greater degree of intimacy with the brands she covets and expects those brands to reward her for her faithfulness.  Attempts to gamify the luxury retail experience with strategies successful in more mass-market campaigns are perilous.  The luxury consumer desires priority access to the brand that is exclusive and available only to a limited few.  Rewarding loyalty with exclusive access is at the heart of the luxury game mechanics strategic equation, with refinement taking priority over conspicuous competition.

leveraging mobile to market in the moment

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

Mobile is an action-oriented medium.  Mobile shoppers are moving targets, so stationary forms of traditional branded engagements need not apply.  Effective mobile marketing strategies accentuate the unique strengths of the medium and must work to solve the numerous elements of variability associated with marketing in the moment.  The mastery of managing high levels of volatility will prove to be of great worth. The opportunity to engage consumers in a contextually relevant manner, based on knowledge of both time and space, with campaigns that provide increased interaction and social relevance, is unrivaled in any other communications medium.

The variables associated with a successful mobile marketing campaign are the immediacy, mapping, interaction, and collective aspects.  Each variable must be planned for in order to deliver a relevant experience between brand and customer and strengthen the mutual connection.  Today’s digital native consumer is empowered with more information and access to brands than ever.  They are also hyper-connected to an influential social graph where tribal knowledge is constantly being shared.  As such, successful marketers can no longer simply market at consumers.  They must learn to market to context and, in turn, remain (or become) relevant.  The strength of the mobile medium from a marketing perspective is its ability to provide customers with contextual relevance in their engagements with brands.  The margin for error in any connection is slight, so considerations must be made for each changeable element to ensure the experience is on brand and on point.

Immediacy Variable

The mobile medium is in the moment.  Unlike other communications vehicles that are stationary and heavily presentation-oriented, the mobile medium is actionable, time sensitive, on the go, and always on.  Given the limited time intervals of engagement opportunity, brands must ensure that communications are crisp and the call to action is clear, concise, and quick to participate in.

Mapping Variable

One of the primary differentiators of the mobile medium is location awareness.  Engaging in a contextually relevant way assumes an entirely unique perspective when brands can determine the location of a consumer. Brands are then able to interact with customers instantly, and with location-based relevance, through the intensely personal smart device that is always within arm’s reach.

Interaction Variable

Today’s hyper-connected customer actively seeks out true engagement with the brands they most admire.  A unidirectional, one size fits all approach to marketing, from a mobile perspective, undermines the strength of the medium and fails to deliver truly interactive experiences between the brand and the consumer.  Successful mobile strategies encourage customers to participate in the connection encounter with the brand.

Collective Variable

Mobile marketers must learn to market within the social graphs of their consumer base.  A natural byproduct of increased access to information in the hands of the digital native is shrinking levels of brand loyalty.  Word of mouth is still the most effective form of marketing.  Providing contextually relevant, engaging experiences with consumers compels them to share.  It draws upon a very basic human need to be altruistic and communicate experiences that help others.  Marketing to the collective requires an understanding that the power of shared experiences has far reaching implications beyond the immediate in the moment interaction.

The mobile medium represents the most powerful mechanism for delivering contextually relevant consumer-brand communications yet experienced in marketing.  To take advantage of its unique capabilities, however, successful marketing strategies must evolve beyond the employment of a unidirectional approach to communicating with customers.  The digital natives of today’s hyper-connected world seek contextual relevance in their engagements with brands.  Their experience is defined not only by the message itself, but the context in which the message was presented.  Marketers who effectively solve the variables associated with the mobile medium will provide unique experiences for consumers, irrespective of the constraints of time or space, in ways differentiated, highly relevant, and intensely personal.  Only then will they realize the power and influence of marketing in the moment.

is your mobile strategy in motion?

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

In the constant-connective world of transmedia-enabled consumer engagement, it is imperative for retail marketers to challenge traditional structures of siloed brand marketing channels.  Antiquated concepts of disparate sales and marketing avenues no longer hold relevancy for modern consumers, who expect a more unified experience with the brands they admire, regardless of medium.  The creation of consistent, unified brand experiences cross-medium has become de rigueur in any effective marketing strategy, with each channel acting not as one in a series of disconnected elements, but as a related transitive variable along the consumer engagement continuum.

Mobile events are inherently transitive in nature.  The differentiated elements of the channel – constant connectivity, location awareness, personalization, and social connection – add affinity to consumer/brand interactions and empower the medium uniquely as a transitive, events-driven interface. This provides dependable communication capabilities that serve as a vehicle for binding a vast network of potential touch points.  This array of possible touch points forms the foundation for the creation of a consumer interaction progression – a tight, dependable orchestration of relevance in branded communications that seeks intimacy in an increasingly interconnected expanse of brand advocates, irrespective of time or space.

The consumer engagement continuum can best be described within the conceptual construct of transmedia interaction.  Today’s consumer is not simply a “customer” or a “shopper” – they are consumers not only of information, social media, etc., but also consumers of context.  Brands are now faced with the unfamiliar challenge of not only marketing to people, but also marketing to context.  Experiences along the continuum will vary based upon the medium consumers choose to engage the brand with and from.  The “stories” or experiences delivered by the brand will vary, dependent upon the channel – whether television, the stationary web, interactive signage, or at the store level.  It is imperative for marketers of the brand to create unified, steady experiences and, in turn, become adept “storytellers” across all of the varied mediums in a manner that accentuates each channel’s uniquely distinguished properties and strengths.

The role of mobility solutions in the engagement continuum is to provide persistent momentum through consistent exchanges across an ever-evolving ecosystem of digital screens, as well at the brick and mortar level.  Effective mobile events blur the lines of siloed brand engagements, existing most efficiently in temporal, closed-loop occurrences as a cross-medium portal into the brand encounter.   These transitive capabilities existent in the mobile medium enable true transmedia concentration, bridging channel communication gaps with precision aim at the moving target, the mobile consumer, by effectively navigating location, personalization, and limited time sequences of interaction.

Mobile consumers are not stationary targets, therefore engaging with them requires consideration be given to the variability of exchange.  Where is the consumer right now?  What is she interested in?  How can I compel her to visit my store location? What can I reward her with to increase her loyalty to the brand?  What can I do to make her feel included?  How can I use the medium to make her encounter with the brand more efficient?  What experience can I provide to her that she would feel compelled to share?   When viewed through this lens, the possibilities for engaging consumers are limited only to the imagination and ingenuity of the brand.

It is important to conceive of mobile solutions from an events-driven perspective.  Unlike other digital mediums, which are stationary and intensely focused on presentation and content, the mobile medium is location-aware, action-oriented, time-sensitive, and socially connected.  Actions and events provide the necessary momentum for the engagement continuum to flourish.  The transitive functions of the mobile channel provide the consistent messaging and engagement capabilities necessary to deliver a transmedia marketing model – a model that ensures a balanced, cross-medium experience with the brand across the continuum, constantly engrossing consumers with timeliness and relevance to provide deeper levels of interaction than previously thought possible.  For the continuum to effectively exist, it must have energy to provide momentum.  Transitive mobility in the continuum is the catalyst for the creation of this model of unified brand experiences, designed to deliver consistency of engagement regardless of where, when, and how consumers choose to interact with the brand.

the medium is the message: mobility and the art of contextual relevance

Effective consumer engagement can no longer be conceived of with a unidirectional mindset.  The digital natives of the wired universe are constantly being presented with a dizzying array of branded digital touchpoints and are expecting communications of a consistent, yet unique, brand message cross medium.  Mixing medium metaphors is poor practice, so the challenge that brands now face is to become adept transmedia storytellers, creating messaging patterns, not simply repeating a single universal idea without regard for the medium through which they are communicated.  Brands must master the art of not simply marketing to people but, instead, master the art of marketing to context.  They must become contextually relevant in their communications with consumers across the engagement continuum, with considered focus specific to the medium they chose to engage with and from.

In today’s digital arena, a closer examination of Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism “the medium is the message” is more necessary than ever before.  Is the ever-evolving ecosystem of digital screens – whether television, digital signage, the stationary web, or the mobile web – simply a uniquely arrayed collective of transitive messengers, serving up calculated content bred from an understanding of their inherent strengths as mediums?  Certainly, given its inherent strengths as a unique medium – location recognition, personalization, immediacy, and social connectivity – mobile is positioned as the most contextually relevant medium in a marketer’s engagement portfolio.  However, has the medium itself, as McLuhan hypothesized, indeed become the message?

Consider for a moment McLuhan’s premise: “The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. “  To effectively argue for or against this premise we must understand the implications of the mobile medium and how it provides the new scale suggested by McLuhan.  The answer is not in the technology itself but, rather, in the context of the message delivered by the medium – the circumstances that form the setting for engagement in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.  Is the experience relevant based on my current location or my personal preferences?  Is it relevant from a timing perspective?  Is it interesting enough for me to want to engage in or share with my friends?  The mobile medium, in ways vastly superior any other, addresses the context of these questions through its inherent action-orientation.  It is always connected, location aware, socially connected, and intensely personal.  The medium provides true context and that context is the essence of the message, regardless of its content.

Instantaneous access to information, location awareness, social connectedness, personalization, immediate accessibility – these characteristics forms the inherent value proposition of mobile devices as natural extensions of our human selves. Our lives are inextricably tied to these extraordinarily powerful devices – our address book, phone directory, pictures of family and friends, our social graph, our tastes and preferences, our mobile wallet, our identity.  The mobile medium allows consumers to ingest communications in a manner that is contextually relevant because it is so instantaneous and intensely personal.  The medium becomes the message by the same definition that McLuhan’s light bulb example illustrated his premise.  The device is a transport mechanism akin to electricity.  The web it is connected to and the applications it natively serves are filament.  The medium and the message, and new scale of their associated consequences, are in the context.