Who would have thought? You are in a mall, walking by a Macy’s store and oops! You get an alert on your smart phone that Macy’s has a special discount for you if you walk in, right now.  Or, you are driving approximately 10 blocks from Taco Bell, and there goes off that alert again – this time with an offer from Taco Bell that’s well worth a stop, rather than the one you had planned on – that coffee shop across the street. It gets better.  If you walk into a store often enough, you will be able to click as you enter on the smart phone location and immediately get on a customer loyalty program, enabling you to add points for future purchases, much like frequent flyer programs with miles.

Of course, you have to be a location app user.

If this sounds futuristic, it’s not. It’s here. Apparently all this was made possible by Foursquare, the location-based social network that introduced a free analytics tool and dashboard last month, giving business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments.

Innovative marketers have managed to figure out how to maximize this into win-win situations. Just consider — Pepsico and the likes, sell more products, stores get more traffic and the consumer gets special offers geared to his/her likes and tastes.  And there’s another convenience soon to come.  As companies start to turn Foursquare (or other custom location applications) into a virtual loyalty-card program that offers customers discounts or other rewards for shopping, consumers get to toss all those customer loyalty cards that stuff up wallets and use smart phones as a simple replacement for it all.

Savvy businesses like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi, are using information reaped from smart phones that can signal someone’s location, to get live information about when and where people are shopping, track store traffic and note when their most loyal customers visit and market to them accordingly.

Of course, you have to want to be tracked and it’s good to remember that being a member of the likes of Foursquare is a proactive choice. But while it was fun and games just to check out who is sitting in the cafe across the street to find friends to meet up with spontaneously, so much information about you, presents a whole new scenario.

It is not only friends who are looking for you now, rather marketers, who are following your moves…

This may cause a momentary shudder (as in Big Brother Is Watching YOU, right out of George Orwell’s book, 1984), but my guess is that in 2010, it is the accepted reality — more so, if you get such advantages as loyalty points, discounts and free sodas.

It may just be that if Big Brother is, in fact watching, it no longer matters…

We introduce our fourth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Tom Searcy, who helps companies in finding business solutions.

Tom Searcy, co-author of  “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company”, author of “RFPs Suck!” and founder of Hunt Big Sales, is a sought after business solutions expert for small to mid-sized companies.  Follow Tom’s thought leadership through his blog: www.huntingbigsales.com or access his resources at www.huntbigsales.com.

I remember watching a documentary on nudists when I was of an age that I couldn’t yet buy my own “nudist” magazines at the drugstore…the ones with the brown wrappers…if they even bothered wrapping them. The documentary talked about the “freedom of nudity”, its “natural state” and “the beauty of the human form.” It was confusing as hell to me- because the human form, at least the ones at the colony, were not beautiful. Even at distance and with discreetly placed black-box-blockouts, these were some pretty unattractive people. Their nudity not only put me in a position to look at things I didn’t want too, but it answered questions about people, (surgery scars, stretch marks, the body’s response to gravity over time for example), that I was not asking.

The documentary was about a microscopic sliver of the population who had made a distinct choice. But we are all living naked now. You, me, our companies, our children. We are all naked. And we will be beyond naked very soon- (BTW, I don’t know what “beyond naked” means but I think it involves Flickr™ photos of our last set of x-rays and dental records). Are you ready to live naked?

YouTube™, Flickr™, Digg™, Twitter™, Facebook™, LinkedIn™ and the rest of the usual suspects of the social media revolution are creating a naked world. Every customer experience, every shipped product and online FAQ answer, each touchpoint in the chain of your business is open for scrutiny and discussion. You may be aware of this, which puts you ahead of the huge brands out there being lampooned every day in painful and direct ways. But what is your strategy?

I work with small to mid-sized companies who are trying to grow quickly. One of the things that we work on is their market image. One of the nice things about everyone being naked is that it’s easier to do the necessary research on a prospect company before you see them. But…It works in reverse…(sometimes when I work with companies they forget this part).

Here’s what I tell my small to mid-sized companies:

• Control – You don’t have it any more, so take a deep breath and stand tall, proud and naked. You can control your integrity and your authenticity. Focus on that. Don’t focus on the buttoning-down of over point of entry and exit to your perceived brand machine. That’s like trying to grab the wind with a sack.
• It’s Never Fair – Of course attacks are unfair. No one is trying to provide a ‘fair and balanced’ story, as if there ever is one. Don’t waste time trying to make their attacks ‘fair’ by offering your point-by-point answers. The bell has rung- you are not going to un-ring it. You can just respond.
• Fast and Good – A quick response that is reasonable is much better than a slow response that is perfect. Do you see Toyota out there floundering with the slow and perfect story? That’s because slow in the naked world is by definition imperfect.
• Find Your Voice – As a writer and speaker, I go through a number of exercises to make certain I am writing in my voice. Not what I think to be the “professional and homogenized” voice. In the heralded brands around the world, one of the key elements to the rankings is their consistency and authenticity of their voice. You need to make certain that the voice is an authentic voice.
• Be 3-D – All the movies are going 3-dimensional for the same reason; the audience expects a different experience. You have to be multi-dimensional in your market message. A website with a never-changing brochure of product/service lists doesn’t cut it. Customers want the multi-dimensional experience. Give it to them. Videos, photos, blogs and ever-changing content.
• Thousand Points of Light – Your brand is no longer just the crafted message of your marketing firm. The touchpoints are now your brand- employees, customers, vendors and competitors. You have to be out there knowing what is being said. You can’t survey once a quarter and keep track of the voices. This has to be a daily part of someone’s role. Key word searches and tracking make it easier- but it has to be done constantly.

On this blog-site, you can read past entries to see what it is like to live naked. Noemi’s blogs provide examples of how ugly in can look when big companies try to hide. This is especially true for those companies who have not yet realized that the emperor not only isn’t wearing clothes, but his wardrobe has been shredded. But the question for you should be “What is my strategy for living naked?”

When thinking through your strategy, include these questions:

1. On a simple Google search of my company’s name and my name, what comes up and in what order? Is it what I want to come up? How can I change it?
2. How do we tell our story to the world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? How is the world telling our story to us in the naked world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? What does it mean about us if no one is telling our story?
3. Who are the examples of companies, regardless of industry, that we look up too in the naked world? What can we learn from them?

Fortunately for me, living in a naked world requires neither diet, nor exercise nor surgery. But it does require confidence and a strategy. What’s yours?

The next video by The Pollack PR Marketing Group as part of our monthly 25th anniversary celebration:

Wearing my PR marketing hat while reading today’s New York Times’ article by Leslie Kaufman headlined, “At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business,” I found that the position taken by Denis Hayes (the national coordinator of the first Earth Day and who is again returning 40 years later to organize this year’s activities), regarding how Earth Day had turned into a marketing platform for selling products and services, totally out of whack. Hayes said, “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green,” and goes on to dramatically say, “It is tragic.”

Perverted marketing?  Tragic?  Not really. Opportunistic, yes, but that’s the good side of Corporate America – doing what it does best, but with a capitalistic bent, and jumping on the bandwagon of what seems a worthy and popular cause and — well OK, making a profit in doing so.

In part, Corporate America is actually responsible for supporting the original intent of Earth Day back in 1970 – to raise awareness of the urgent need to save our resources and stop the pollution of the planet — by developing services and products that are green and bringing them to the marketplace. The very marketers that Hayes criticized so harshly, the ones that saw an opportunity of maximizing Earth Day as a marketing platform, are also those that have been responsible for the rise of eco-consumerism, albeit as a by-product benefit.

So I say to the many pioneers of the environmental movement that find that eco-consumerism detracts from Earth Day’s original intent – think again. In part, it is continuing the job that the pioneers intended and spreading it far wider than bullhorn demonstrations ever could dream of.

Just consider what has happened over the forty years that ensued since that first Earth Day, back in 1970, when Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York City addressed a crowd of tens of thousands in Union Square, amidst an atmosphere that The New York Times then likened to a “secular revival meeting.” Forty years ago, only environmental activists thought about re-cycling or land fill poisons or polluted fisheries.  Now, before consumers buy, they check labels as to what “poison” might be in cleaning products, think “organic” before buying produce and use recyclable containers where possible, just to mention a few habits that have crept into our norm. We are becoming a society of eco-consumerists, and we have Corporate America to thank for its leadership in environmental innovation, as well as in getting customers to care, and then buy.

So I thank FAO Schwartz for its Greenzys penguin toy that, as an “ardent supporter of recycling, reusing and reducing waste” serves as a good role model for kids, and also Bahama Umbrella for its specially designed umbrella, with a drain so that water “can be stored, reused and recycled,” and the Gray Line, for its “Earth Week” package of day trips to green spots, as well as the many more companies that are turning us into an eco-consumerist society.

It’s become a partnership between environmental activists and Corporate America.  One needs the other for the good of all.

In recent news, there were updates on three of my blog topics of the last six months that caused me to have three “feel-good” moments.  And so, I thought I would share them, in descending order, with the most recent one first.

On April 8, 2010, writing in my blog headlined, “The Added Costs Of Flying,” I took exception with Spirit Airlines’ plan to start charging passengers for carry-on bags at a $45 per clip. I argued that it would certainly send a better message to the flying public for airlines to have the courage to simply raise their air ticket prices (notwithstanding price war games), rather than have a barrage of fees for once-free amenities that would total a ticket price hike anyway — but without the “smoke and mirrors.”  I voiced concern that this might spur on other airlines to follow suit.

The update: According to an AP article reported by Harry R. Weber, “Six Democratic senators want to hit U.S. airlines with a tax if they charge passengers for their carry-on bags.” The senators hoped that this move would deter other airlines from following Spirit Airlines’ lead. We need to wait as to whether or not this gains traction to win support in Congress, but how wonderful is it for senators to take a stand on behalf of consumers?

On March 11, 2010, I debated in my blog headlined, “A Furious Debate Heats Up As The National Enquirer Reaches For The Gold,” the worthiness of The National Enquirer as a candidate for a Pulitzer Prize, even though it actually qualified for that prestigious prize for having been the first to “out” the John Edwards story all the way through his denials of the affair and of fathering a child out of wedlock.

The update: Happily its entry did not win which, in my opinion, left the prestigious and legendary journalism, untainted.  But history was made anyway, and in a positive way, with the win of a cartoonist for SFGate.com, the online arm of the San Francisco Chronicle, and an investigative journalist at ProPublica who won Pulitzer Prizes for their work.  Although there was a previous wining online entry, Politifact, a database project of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, this is the first time any online-only publication has won an award for editorial content.

Last November 4, 2009, I wrote in my blog headlined, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Is On The Prowl Again, that the FTC was not amused that credit rating companies were using the mandated free credit reports as a lure for charging a monthly service fee that alert subscribers to important changes in their credit status.  Apparently “free” was not actually free.  Still, although the FTC, at that time, countered with warnings as well as ads about their warnings, they did little else to prevent consumers from getting “bilked” by would-be free sites.

The update: According to a Sacramento Bee report, “To crack down on misleading advertising, the Federal Trade Commission is requiring companies offering “free credit reports” to state clearly that there’s only one authorized site to get them: AnnualCreditReport.com. The new rules, a mostly overlooked piece of last year’s massive credit-card reform bill, are aimed at deceptive radio, TV and online ads that hook consumers with catchy jingles and promises of “free” credit reports.

Good change is in the air…

When will it end?

First, back when, they took away the complementary meals and replaced them with a for-purchase array of soggy sandwiches and salads prepared well ahead of departure.  Next came extra rows of seats, leaving anyone over 5 feet tall in a squished position for the duration of the flight. Then came per-baggage fees, which resulted in added carry on bags for cost saving, causing a ruckus on board as travelers wrestled to garner the ever-decreasing storage space in overhead compartments.

And now, under the sales tagline of ‘Bring Less; Pay Less’, Spirit Airlines is planning a new charge — $45 per carry-on bag.

But wait.  That’s not as bad as it can get.

UK-based budget airline Ryan Airlines, is charging to go to the toilet.  Yes, that’s right, they have installed slots in their cabin toilets that require passengers to insert either a pound coin, or a one-euro coin to use the toilets.  At that cost, many may opt to “hold it” (on short trips, that is) and wait for a land toilet upon arrival.

Moreover, Ryan Airlines is considering, but has not yet implemented, a “fat tax” for overweight passengers. From a messaging point of view, one thing is for overweight passengers to voluntarily buy two seats in order to fit, and yet another, is to be taxed for their fat.

OK, this does not mean that other airlines will follow with these desperate moves as they search for more revenue, but hey, it’s out there so, who knows?  Case in point is that charging for checked baggage quickly became the accepted norm, so why not carry-on bags?

In the end, disgruntled passengers may result in more empty seats, clearly far more costly than the price of sandwiches and checked luggage, so it’s in the airlines’ interest to “sit up and listen.”

One airline is exemplary in that regard. Southwest Airlines should be commended for not descending into this madness, while still achieving growth. Southwest’s policy of ‘bags fly free’ has apparently not dented their bottom line. According to an AP report, Southwest Airlines passenger revenue per available seat mile rose 22 percent from last year, while the carrier’s occupancy rate rose 3.7 percentage points to 81 percent.

There is a lot to be said for that airline’s long-term commitment to a strategy of compelling customer relations and a personality in the marketplace that customers find interesting and engaging, which adds up to “happy and loyal passengers.”

C’mon airlines. The sales gimmick of piecing together costs to make ends meet is slick and the intent is transparent to all air passengers — for they too, can add…

Southwest gets it.  It’s about passenger satisfaction and engagement and finding creative means to make ends meet, rather than nickel and diming passengers.  It can be the real differentiator, impacting an airline’s bottom line far more effectively than silly add-on costs.

The curious power of modern computer technology has allowed us to view the world around us through our webcams and iPhones, and in so doing, we have been able to super-impose images, video and sound over our view of reality. The result: augmented reality.

This new trend of entertainment technology has led to some remarkable applications.  For example: face-recognition technology uses your webcam to put a Transformer’s head on you; it allows you to try on virtual sunglasses as well as translate street signs by looking at them through a mobile device, or bring animated characters to life on your desktop with a webcam.

While this entertainment technology is very entertaining indeed, what are the implications for marketers? There is currently much discussion on the potential marketing value of augmented reality technology, what with new mobile applications and online programs popping up everyday, but there is little clear regard for measurable and useful marketing tactics.

Certainly, the use of augmented reality to develop viral social media campaigns is viable. According to Businessweek, it has been done by Kia Motors, Nestle, Frito Lay, and Wise Foods however with mixed results.   Still, it is expected that $170 million will be dumped into mobile augmented reality advertising within the next 5 years.

Viral videos, tactically, are only one slice of the augmented reality pie. Take for instance what iPhone apps Layar and SekaiCamera are doing. Both apps have taken augmented reality and geo-positioned this together into a whole new virtual universe, where consumers can hold up their iPhone, see information about the business in front of them, as well as its phone number and Wikipedia article. SekaiCamera takes it further, and allows users to post their own comments (virtually) on that business or location. Already a huge success in Asia, the SekaiCamera phenomena could potentially transform the world into a series of post-it notes visible to anyone who holds up their iPhone or Android. The ability to slap a comment on a restaurant’s physical location makes Yelp look like child’s play.

The marketing potential for an app like SekaiCamera trumps imagination. Coupling geo-positioning and augmented reality is a great way to get the word out about one’s brand. In one sense, the whole wide world can be an advertising platform wherein companies can post messages in physical locations right where their audience is. Creative campaigns could even include treasure hunts, whereby customers who uncover particular messages in particular locations, get free prizes or discounts. Or companies could award discounts to consumers who post in the sky about their product. Brick and mortar locations could encourage customers to post virtual tags all over the wall, telling other customers of their positive experiences there.

The overarching point is that the online world has now come full circle and the once global universe of social media marketing is now being transformed into a geo-located virtual reality  – right back in the middle of your target audience’s physical location.

While it will take time for SekaiCamera and other apps like it to catch on in the U.S., location “check in” apps like FourSquare are already transforming the market. The trend is inevitable: mobile technology and augmented reality will bring customers back into the real world and away from their global social media safety net. Online or off, it is still about location, location, location.

Associated Press

Almost a year ago, on April 17 of ’09, in my blog titled, Bringing Brands Down Without A Safety Net… I wrote about Domino’s nightmare customer-generated video, showing disgusting and filthy antics from a server in preparing a pizza.  The video exploded virally on YouTube, causing unspeakable damage to the 50-year old reputation of the company.  As it turns out, the story had a happy ending, with Domino’s ultimate brand pivot — as they reformulated recipes and opened up a first-ever transparency communication on social networks.

Now it’s food giant, Nestlé’s turn to battle social media wars, as Greenpeace-backed environmental activists used social media in the last two weeks, to attack Nestlé over its purchase of palm oil for use in their KitKat candy bars and other products.  As reported by Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal, the protestors “have swamped Nestle’s Facebook page with negative comments, used Twitter as a loud speaker and, posted a negative video on YouTube.
The activists claim that, “Nestlé is contributing to the destruction of Indonesia’s rain forest, potentially fueling global warming and endangering orangutans.”  Yet according to Nestle, only 1.25% of all the palm oil Nestlé used last year was from the Indonesian firm.

Not much chance that Nestlé will be responsible for destroying any rain forest in the near future.  Clearly much ado over nothing, but that’s not the point.  It’s out there, regardless.

Look, attacks on brands by individuals or consumer groups are not new. The “genie is out of the bottle” and there is no stuffing it back in anymore.  Companies will have to live with the fact that social media has offered all those who wish, a speaker’s platform with a “mega-bullhorn,” giving credence to all, without thought as to “from whose mouth it cometh.” Social media channels have enabled the volume to be turned up and the speed to quicken as to damaging rhetoric, leaving brands exposed and naked, with little recourse how to halt the onslaught.

Nestle’s contemporary dilemma has elicited various responses from professionals.  Some have suggested that Nestlé should temporarily shut down its Facebook page. Some have suggested they should cut down any two-way communications for now. Others have encouraged the company to post changes that will abate the protests, which it did, but the din continues. Nestlé itself had asked YouTube to take down the videos, but unfortunately only after the videos had spread virally beyond control.

I would offer that preparedness might be the answer. It always was so, but traditionally crises plans were more geared to accidents, product failures, whistle blowers or general company disasters, such as manufacturing delays.  A crisis communication plan clearly should include social media “attacks” from consumer groups, replete with a multi-media planned response approach.

I would add that a policy of ongoing transparency, coupled with daily interaction and consumer engagement can, with any luck, catch a disgruntled comment that can get an immediate response, well before it spirals out of control.  May be time consuming to do, but necessary…

The Army had it right – Be Prepared.