Staging

It is not from nowhere that the term "staging" has found a use in marketing. With all the different platforms we use nowadays to market and present products, staging has become a more complex discipline, as it was 20 years ago. It is not only in shops, print media and with the packaging that we can stage our products, we have a much wider range of possiblities now. And it is not only the diversity of the media, but also the diverstiy of the devices the media is displayed on. Every device has its only prticularities, which have to be taken into consideration during the creation of the staging concept.

When you try to do some online research about staging, you will come across a massive amount of real estate agencies, talking about properly staging a house in order to improve sales. Here is an example. This is a pretty straight forward hint to what staging could mean. In this case it is how to design the surroundings of a product and everything which is related to it, in order to be able to make an experience out of it and therefore market it more effectively. It seems to me like this is a huge topic in the real estate business, but it is more difficult to find articles about it with a more general character.

So we have a product and now we want to stage it properly. What are the options we have? I have come up with the following (incomplete) list of instruments which I think could be useful:

- Packaging
- Homepage
- Video (Youtube)
- Banners
- Fragrance

I believe it's essential to try to combine as many instruments as possible, and also make sure that they are in line with each other. What I mean by this is, that the homepage should be staged in the same design as the packaging, for example. At least with regards to style, colors, font, etc. The customer should be able to recognize the link.

Now I would like to go through some of the instruments mentioned above and try to give examples for succeful implementations. I won't do this in too much detail, it's just to give an overview of how I believe staging works.

So first we have the packaging. Taking consumer electronics as an example, there are a few benchmarks we can consider. Apple and Samsung have clearly set the standard for the packaging of mobile devices and its peripherals. Here's an example of how packaging can actually generate content. To put it in simplw words: the packaging is so good, that design oriented people talk about it and post their opinions on blogs, forums and other social media. Remember I mentioned user generated content in a previous post? This is another example of it.

Creating a homepage nowadays is not like it was 10 years ago. Technologies evolve and the user's expectations do too. The good thing is, there are plenty of studies you can have access to concerning how a webpage has to be desigend in order to draw the user's attention to the right things. There are a few basic points, which have to be considered before starting to design a homepage. You can find them here. Furthermore we know today, where users look first on a homepage.

This example is from yahoo. Now I will compare it to a homepage of a company which I believe masters the art of staging. Nespresso plots their main brand ambassador George Clooney right in the middle of the field that is considered to be the first and most viewed. The whole area is a slider so as George disappears a delicious selection of chocolates appears, followed by a coffee machine and back to George. Everything the brand stands for within 3 slides. In my eyes this is a great example for successful online staging.

Staging should subliminally transfer the products quality. It is a way to make sure the customer perceives the product in the way we want. Russian Standard Vodka for example is considered a "cheap" product in Spain, while there Smirnoff is more of a premium brand. In northern Europe Russian Standard is marketet as a premium product on the other hand. And Campari (the owning company) does that through the way they stage it here. Check out this video on horizont.net.

Today we also have to consider that a lot of people are carrying internet capable mobile devices. Another opportunity for marketing, adverstising and therefore also for staging. BMW had a mobile camapaign launched this year via a news network application. This is just an example of how you could expand staging onto mobile devices.

So what was your favourite staging in 2011? Was it the royal wedding? Or maybe the end of a surpression? Whatever it might have been, I am sure you have already planned your own staging for tomorrow. And if not, good luck with that!

Cheers! P

Web 2.0

When I first heard the term "Web 2.0" I thought wow, finally a faster Internet. Right. Then I found out that USB 2.0 and Web 2.0 had absolutely nothing in common. ( Yes I know, all you nerds out there are frowning right now) Hmmm... so what is this Web 2.0 then? The term was introduced for the first time in January 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design.

So what do you do when you want to find out more about something? That's right, you Google it! When typing in the keyword "web 2.0", Google will vomit around 2'490'000'000 (yes that is in billion!) hits. Whow. What to do with so much information? Well, let's be pragmatic and start at the top: Wikipedia. Wikipedia says this about web 2.0. Wikipedia's definition is probably the most commonly used one on the planet. Why is that? Well, Wikipedia is always right... or is it not?

When wikipedia first launched, it was an absolute revolution. An encyclopedia written by everyone, on the internet, for free! Let's have a closer look at the "written by everyone" part. Because this is really the essence of what we are looking at here. Wikipedia was one of the first massively used platforms, where the users were responsible for its content. This created a whole new level of interaction. A new world, a self regulating world. Wikipedia is a perfect example of what Web 2.0 stands for. It is the use of the World Wide Web, not only as a static source for content, but as a platform for interactive behavior. Take the Mass Effect Wiki for example. This is a site in site type Wiki, integrated in Wikia. It is the place for Mass Effect enthusiasts, to share their experiences, their knowledge and their problems with this popular SciFi RPG (Role Play Game).

Now you might ask yourself: what does this have to do with marketing? A lot! It is every marketeers dream. Just imagine all the information the company publishing this game can gather about their customers. They can find out about their preferences, their wishes, their problems, their behavior in general...it's just fantastic! And it is a perfect opportunity to engage your customers too. Let them be part of it. Make them feel that they are a part of it. We will see more about this when I come to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in one of my following posts.

So Wikis are one good example of what characterizes Web 2.0. But that's not everything by far. Take the vast amount of social media platforms. It's all user generated content over there. And they live of the interaction between the users. The information the users publish during those interactions. A lot of times that information is valuable to someone, mainly companies. So suddenly we have a whole new pool of business models, which basically created itself, it just had to be harvested. And some are doing a pretty good job at it! The main tools we can use to implement user interaction on our platforms, homepages, e-shops, etc. are the following:

Podcasting
Blogging
Tagging
Contributing to RSS
Social bookmarking
Social networking


However, like with almost everything, there are drawbacks. Users are getting more and more scared of their data being misused. More and more people want to be more conservative with their data. That is a trend for sure. And what do we do with trends? We make a business out of them. And tadaa! Here you have a second gen facebook type thing which allows you to keep all your data private (at least they say so). And they offer a special service for brands too. And they don't refrain from spitting into Face...aehm book's face. Check it out for yourself.

I could go on for hours talking about this topic. But everything must come to an end. I have limited myself to Wikis and social media platforms here, but obviously there are many more ways to describe web 2.0. Here you can see the list of the top 100 Web 2.0 sites.

Oh, I think I forgot to mention something important. The crowd thing. Everything's a crowd these days. Crowdfunding, crowdsourcing.. It is said that the crowd is wise. It is wise because many are smarter than just a few. Well in most cases that might be true. I will contain myself from giving you a contrary example. The crowd really is that mass I was mentioning in the beginning. Most of you know the popular site Atizo. A perfect example for a crowdsourcing website. Solve problems, or even better, get them solved by the crowd. For zero, zilch, no money at all... I love it! Every company should love it. And many do. Like Migros, for example.

Cheers! P