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New Year Resolution - Arts Marketing Blog 2011 - Part 1 - Trends for 2011

OK so this my third attempt to getting around to my New Years Resolution of writing a meaningful monthly blog about 'Arts Marketing' for the online community. It's Friday afternoon at 4:30pm and I am determined to get something up and out by the end of the day.

Hopefully my monthly blog will give you an insight into some of the thinking around 'Marketing' trends from the Arts industry and what we can learn from others. I can't promise that I won't go off on a tangent about a new band/brand or music video but that's the fun of writing a post. Each month I'll choose a different theme and include a links, URLS, and Videos. It's mainly the things that I'm researching anyway so I'll share the discoveries along the way.

twitter.com/matt_NTW

PART 1 - TRENDS FOR 2011

January is a good time for setting out your stall and trying to take the temperature of the year..here are 3 of the best to keep to keep in mind..

(links to all sources are included at the end of post)

1. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

When it comes to the mega trend of GENERATION G (that's G for Generosity, not Greed), there’s no better way for a brand to put its money where its mouth (or heart) is than engaging in Random Acts of Kindness (R.A.K.). Consumers' cravings for realness, for the human touch, ensure that everything from brands randomly picking up the tab to sending a surprise gift will be one of the most effective ways to connect with (potential) customers in 2011 - especially beleaguered consumers in North America, Europe and Japan. For brands, a serious (and sincere) R.A.K. strategy may mean no longer being seen as inflexible and unwieldy, but as more compassionate and charismatic instead. Something which is, of course, priceless and actually fun.

Fueling the R.A.K. trend is brands’ ability to actually know what’s happening in consumers’ lives (good or bad!), as people publicly and knowingly disclose (from Facebook to Twitter) more and more about their daily lives, their moods or their whereabouts.

Social networks also enable acts of kindness to spread far beyond its recipients, as they will gladly tell their friends and followers about the unexpected good news (see SOCIAL-LITES). Two fun examples to copy or improve on in the next 12 months:

Flower delivery service Interflora has launched a social media campaign in the UK designed to brighten up the lives of Twitter users by sending them flowers. As part of the campaign, Interflora monitors Twitter looking for users that it believes might need cheering up. Once found, the users are contacted by tweet, and sent a bouquet of flowers as a surprise.

Dutch airline KLM’s ‘How Happiness Spreads’ Foursquare-based campaign employed a ‘Surprise Team’ to give passengers tailored, unexpected gifts at the airport. Throughout November 2010, as soon as someone checked-in at a KLM Foursquare location within its network of airports, the Surprise Team went online to find more background information about the person, decided upon a suitable gift and gave it them before they flew. For instance, one traveler tweeted he would miss a PSV Eindhoven football game while he was in New York. The Surprise Team, accordingly, gave him a Lonely Planet guide book of NYC with all the football bars highlighted in blue.

2. PRICING PANDEMONIUM (This one would be great for Theatre Tickets/Season Passes)

While consumers have always looked out for special offers and discounts, new technologies and services mean that 2011 will see total PRICE PANDEMONIUM:

More consumers are constantly connected, and when they hear about new deals online can quickly and easily spread them through their social networks.
Increasingly, consumers will be part of exclusive networks or groups to either receive special deals or demand them.
Mobile devices increasingly enable consumers to find or receive dynamic deals right at the point of sale, or to compare prices online. Case in point: Amazon.com just released an iPhone app that allows users to compare prices by scanning the product's barcode, photographing it or saying its name.

Always-on connectivity is changing consumer spending habits in myriad ways. For example, coupon clipping required planning and dedication, hence wasn't that popular with consumers more interested in the here and now (see NOWISM), but now is a near-effortless online activity. Furthermore, whipping out one’s smartphone at the counter, getting the latest deal via GPS, or barcode scanning is well, smart. And therefore a source of status rather than shame.

Brands will continue to respond with a host of innovative new business models and pricing strategies in the next 12 months, building on:

Group buying. The two billion consumers now online can exercise their collective buying power, helped by the host of services and social networks that make it easier than ever to organize and act. Keep an eye on 2010's big success story Groupon or their competitor Living Social. Indeed, group buying sites are springing up everywhere, from GoNabit (that covers Arab markets such as Kuwait and Dubai), to Big Lion (Russia) and Daily Deal (Germany). Or consider these two examples as confirmation that group buying is here to stay: in September 2010, Chinese group buying site Taobao sold 200 Smart cars in 3 1/2 hours, while in October 2010 Walmart used Facebook to run their own group buying offer, which got the 5,000 'likes' needed to make the deal happen within 24 hours.
Member sales. The old 'club' format (think of Costco) has been given a new lease on life online, where niche communities thrive. Making some memberships limited or invitation-only, only increases the perceived exclusivity; SOCIAL-LITE consumers enjoy the social aspects of shopping, while for brands, offering reduced prices privately to small groups confounds TRANSPARENCY TRIUMPH. Designer fashion brands were some of the first to offer heavily discounted ranges to select groups, via sites such as vente-privee.com, Gilt Groupe and iDeeli but member sales are now expanding to areas such as travel (Jetsetter) and home furnishings (One Kings Lane).
Flash sales. Both groups and member communities frequently use time-limited offers that encourage impulse buys. By limiting the time available, and frequently only making sales available to members, brands are able to shift excess inventory quickly. DellOutlet and Threadless have seen great success with Twitter flash sales, and in November 2010 flash sale site Hautelook integrated its offers into its Facebook page, so that consumers could take up the day's deal without leaving the site. Indeed, with so many daily deals, there are now sites like Yipit and MyNines that aggregate all the deals.
Less of a flash sale and more of a weekend-sale is retailer J. Crew's online factory store. Open every weekend from midday Friday to midnight Sunday (EST), the site offers a limited selection of some of J. Crew's most popular pieces, produced exclusively for the factory, at reduced prices.
Local discounts. With more and more consumers being able to broadcast their location, either publicly via Facebook, Twitter or other dedicated location-based services, brands can offer deals directly to consumers virtually at the point of sale. These can be rewards for performing certain actions (Shopkick and Checkpoints), geo-located promotions (PlaceCast), or just geo-enabled apps such as UK-based Vouchercloud. Indeed, despite the hype around check-in game services such as Foursquare, B2C brands are finding that the best way to incentivize customers is to offer them deals (witness Gap's promotion to launch Facebook Deals).
Dynamic pricing. Traditionally practiced by the airline industry, improvements in real-time information are now allowing other sectors to experiment with innovative dynamic pricing models, such as the US-based Off and Away, which auctions hotel rooms, and Swoopo, a German 'entertainment shopping' site where every bid placed extends the auction's time period.

3. SOCIAL-LITES AND TWITSUMERS (TWITTERNOMICS)

In 2011, word of mouth and recommendations will be even more dependent on P2P dynamics.
If TWINSUMERS* (consumers with similar consumer patterns, likes and dislikes, and who are hence valuable sources for recommendations on what to buy and experience) are all about improving 'search curation', SOCIAL-LITES are all about discovery, as consumers become curators; actively broadcasting, remixing, compiling, commenting, sharing and recommending content, products, purchases, experiences to both their friends and wider audiences.

* An update on our TWINSUMER trend will find its way to you soon. That is, if you're signed up to receive our monthly Trend Briefings.

Why would consumers want to become curators? Because many of them are investing time and effort in building BRAND ME, via online profiles that record their opinions and recommendations. And as audiences in knowledge economies value interesting, relevant and useful tidbits, they bestow status on those curators or SOCIAL-LITES who share.

Furthermore, it's never been easier to be a SOCIAL-LITE. Rather than having to call, text or even email people personally, social networks' streams allow users to easily broadcast information to a wide range of people without interrupting or intruding.

So, consumers will talk more about brands this year than ever before, and opportunities for brands that create engaging content that consumers want to share, or that have personalities that actually engage consumers will also be bigger than ever. Making it easy for SOCIAL-LITES to retweet or 'like' this content is of course requirement number one. Examples:

The STRP Art and Technology Festival which ran from 18 - 28 November 2010 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, employed the use of RFID in museums and galleries that allow guests to rate art via RFID wristbands. Visitors used RFID wristbands and 'dashes' (which represent how much they liked something) to tag art, with the results collated to create a visible "tag cloud," showing the most popular exhibits, and where they were located.
Gogobot is an online travel community with a social lens. Users ask questions about destinations (think 'Where's a fun restaurant in Paris?'), not just to the Gogobot community but also to their Facebook and Twitter networks. Gogobot collates the answers, and includes pictures and links to all of the places mentioned.
Levi's has integrated its online store with Facebook, allowing shoppers to socially interact with friends and create a 'like minded shopping' experience. From the Levi's store, users are able to share products with friends through the Friend Store, 'Like' them or search for 'Top Liked' products within Facebook.
Amazon now enables users to integrate their Facebook and Amazon accounts. The feature allows Amazon to connect through to a user's social network, then base recommendations (think books, DVDs and musicians) upon the information found in his/her Facebook profile.
US based Mombo analyzes Twitter feeds from users all over the world and assigns ratings on movies based on the collective opinion of Twitter users, with each tweet being analyzed by the site's 'sentiment analysis' engine. Users who sign in with Twitter will get movie recommendations based on what they and their friends have tweeted about.
Storify helps its users to curate content that they find on social networking sites. Users cut and paste pieces of content (including pictures and video) from various sources on the web and put it all together in order to communicate their desired message.

Warning: Social customs and behaviors are still evolving. But the connections that consumers establish with one another are personal and therefore valuable (and not all about brands!). And SOCIAL-LITES still operate in a social sphere with intrinsic importance to participants. As such, brands need to tread carefully, treating consumers with respect, and be completely transparent. Get it wrong and you'll find 2011's SOCIAL-LITES can be bitchy as hell ;-)

CLICK HERE FOR FULL 2011 TREND BREIFING

Trend Hunters Top 20 Trends - Annoying American Voice but some interesting examples

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New Year Resolution - Arts Marketing Blog 2011 - Part 1 - Trends for 2011

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