“Change the way we shop forever.” It’s a big idea, but can it really be done? Marks and Spencer seems to think so.
We know that demonstrating social impact is a big deal for commercial organisations these days, but social commitments can be quite hard to pin down, often too intangible, somehow peripheral to the person on the street.
Quite a lot was made of Marks and Spencer’s Plan A when it launched in 2007, not surprising since their stated ambition is to be the worlds most sustainable retailer. For M&S, Plan A is “not only the right thing to do,” it is “the only way to do business.” The good news is that it seems to be working, and its remit has grown. There are currently 180 sustainable initiatives going on within the business under the Plan A banner – from treating suppliers fairly to being the first UK retailer to charge for carrier bags.
Of course, having the right partners in place makes a huge difference. The most effective commercial and social partnerships are between organisations who share a common sense of purpose. Take Boots and Macmillan Cancer Support – whose aim is to make cancer information available and accessible on every high street, or Orange and Rockcorps – bringing people together with a big dose of optimism for the future.
One of M&S’ highest profile partners in delivering Plan A has been Oxfam, and so far the most visible face of this partnership has been their clothes exchange, where you get a £5 M&S voucher when you take unwanted M&S clothes to Oxfam. But anyone who’s been watching commercial TV in the last week or so will notice that the partnership has been taken to a new level. This new level is called ‘Shwopping.’ Essentially it’s a scheme where you can drop your unwanted clothes at M&S, but it feels like something bigger.
Bigger not because it’s fronted by the new face of Plan A, Joanna Lumley (though it can’t really hurt can it?) Bigger not even because they’ve coined a new name for it. Like other names that seem to fit the zeitgeist (‘bromance’, ‘sexting’) the name ‘Shwopping’ is one part annoying and four parts catchily obvious. But if you’re trying to get people to do something new then giving that thing a name is a smart move.
The main reason it feels bigger is because it’s a statement of M&S’ bigger purpose beyond just profit – an ambition to fundamentally change the way we think about how we shop – but one which we can all contribute to really easily. And the way it’s presented is almost too easy to resist: from Joanna telling us that it’s as obvious as recycling bottles, to the ‘Shwop drop’ boxes in store tothe intuitive and interactive website with real time totalisers and step by step guides.
It’s a challenge for big businesses to make their purpose beyond profit visible in everything they do, in a way which fits with their day to day business rather than feels like an add on. It feels like M&S has raised the bar with this.
Popuphood, launched last year in Oakland by Sarah Filley and Alfonso Dominguez, is an urban planning project with an unusual strategy for revitalizing depressed urban centers: the pop-up store.
“Ms. Filley and Mr. Dominguez persuaded a landlord to offer pop-up stores free six-month leases in locations that, in some cases, have been vacant for years. The merchants have a goal of turning a profit during the six months and then signing a longer-term lease, at a price to be negotiated. The landlord, Peter Sullivan Associates, is hoping that the free short-term leases will turn into longer-term revenue.”
Compared to the proliferation of pop-up retail by any big player from Target to Gucci, Popuphood’s approach harnesses the David and Goliath effect of rooting for the underdog - and the sense of possibility that comes with it.
Drawing on what seems like a tired marketing strategy for a solution that’s experimental, transient, urgent, novel and efficient, Popuphood’s strategy is a great example of boundaryless and constant beta behaviors we described in our recent Gamechangers report.
The Popuphood project made us wonder:
+ What can city planners learn from retailers?
+ What are other examples of success being redefined as fluid versus fixed experiences?
+ As more categories look to transform themselves from B2B to B2C – like healthcare and financial services – what can they learn from a pop up mentality?
Related:
+ Artist Julia Christensen’s Big Box Reuse project: how communities are repurpose abandoned retail spaces
+ Generation Sell: “Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business” (New York Times)
+ London’s Boxpark, a pop-up mall made of old shipping containers
+ “Urban culture is retail culture” (Trendwatching, Retail Renaissance)
(This is the fourth Future Patrol, a monthly series of macrotrend posts by WONY StrategistEmily Segal. You’ll see Wolff Olins’ established macrotrends called out with a hashtag.)
#Hyperloyalty
I. What it is:
Loyal3, launching in May, is a new startup that enables consumers to buy shares of companies (really $10 fractions of shares) directly on Facebook, an idea CEO Barry Schneider is calling “the ultimate ‘like’ button.”
Loyalty programs have already become a focal point for incenting consumer behavior, creating personalized perks, and gathering consumer data.
Loyal3’s move to put real stakes behind consumer engagement shows that loyalty is beginning to generate new revenue models. The #Hyperloyalty trend is about precisely this kind of consumer-focused shift from marketing to value creation.
Future Patrol predicts that loyalty programs will become an expectation for every brand –even in industries that have conventionally gone without them – with elements such as crowdfunding, branded currencies and extra perks for good social media behavior as key features.
II. Some examples:
FROM REWARDS TO MICROECONOMY
The line between jokes and innovation has become increasingly blurry. Virgin Holidays’ April Fools’ Day hoax, a branded currency with Richard Branson’s face on it, recalls a trend we discussed in Future Patrol’s #Funny Money post: loyalty and rewards programs are becoming alternative currencies unto themselves, with points that can be redeemed for nearly as many things as cash can.
“Most large companies – from Starbucks to British Airways to Sheraton to American Express – are evolving their reward and point loyalty systems into digital micro-economies, complete with redemption and exchange between systems.” (Cayman Financial Review)
EXTREME CONSUMERS
Frequent flyers are the day traders of this new economy.
“Mileage runners are the high-tech nomadic wanderers of the air. Predominantly male, generally obsessed with flying and miles, and typically employed in white-collar careers that involve significant business travel, they scour the web for cheap flights, phoning in sick or using vacation days to fly the longest itineraries they can string together.”
GAMING THE SYSTEM
Loyalty programs – and games – are both about incenting customer behavior, and both use feedback loops and points to that end. But a loyalty system need not actually be a game to feel like one.
“Assembling a mileage run means deciphering complex fare rules and pulling together information from up to a dozen websites. It’s an achievement that tickles the same satisfying problem-solving centers of the brain as a Sudoku puzzle, and always ends in the deep-rooted human thrills of travel and flight.” (Wired)(“Frequent Flyer” documentary on Vimeo)
THE EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE
Freedom is the best perk.
“Designing programs with an overarching theme of “freedom” can instill incredible power into our initiatives.” …. “Not “freebies.” But “freedom.” The ability to do things, to make decisions, to enhance one’s life, in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The word is telling. Many elements contribute to freedom, and, yes, the freebie is one such element. Others include privilege, convenience, assistance, guidance, choice and ease.” (“Freedom: Perhaps the ultimate aspirational reward” Colloquy Blog)
COERCIVE CURRENCIES
However, “freedom” is not the first word that comes to mind when integrating social media into loyalty schemes. Giving consumers deals or discounts because they have desirable social media influence is a marketing trend, but also can create a coercive situation in which consumers must forfeit deals if they want to preserve their privacy
+ Gilt Groupe provides extra discounts for users with high Klout scores
+ Amex / Twitter: The new Twitter integration lets American Express cardholder receive special offers by tweeting with a special hashtag. Initial partners include Zappos, the Cheesecake Factory, McDonald’s, Best Buy, Virgin America, and Whole Foods. In order to redeem a deal, you send a tweet with a hashtag and the offer is loaded on to the account. The credit appears automatically when the card is swiped. (Venturebeat)
+ Exchange systems like Pay with a Tweet, or Chime.in that exchange goods for social media “love” and personal data from consumers
+ Reputation currencies like Whuffie Bank (where you get discounts and rewards based on your online social reputation)
III. What this means for brand:
+ Extreme consumers and mileage runners have invented their own rituals around current loyalty infrastructures. There’s an opportunity for brands to leverage the subcultures that spring up around the way they architect their companies. What seems like extreme niche behavior today will likely be mainstream tomorrow.
+ Don’t become so seamless and ubiquitous that you slip beneath the convenience threshold. Failure and friction are important elements in building brand loyalty – and put the “social” in social media. Help your customers “play, fail, replay, achieve, succeed and progress” (LS:N).
+ Brands that make customers feel free are powerful, but the feeling of getting away with something may be even more powerful.
Tug of Store is simple: A picture of an item pops up, and you click on the left side if it’s crap, on the right side if it’s cool, tugging against whoever else is clicking on the site. After a hundred clicks, the verdict flashes on the screen, and the next watch / kayak / pair of shoes steps forth to be judged.
The site is an experiment with the recently released Svpply API, playing on elements of Chat Roulette, Hot or Not, and the convention of Facebook’s thumbs up.
Mercifully, there is no nuanced engagement, no “thinking,” and no actual shopping. After only a few moments, Tug of Store gives you a clear verdict, and a list of the coolest and crappiest stores.At the time of this blog post, the coolest is Etsy, and the crappiest is End Clothing.
The site accelerates what shopping on the internet has become: this product is crap, this product is cool, and that’s the whole story.
(This is the third Future Patrol, a monthly series of macrotrend posts by WONY StrategistEmily Segal. You’ll see Wolff Olins’ established macrotrends called out with a hashtag.)
This post is one in a series of sketches that will look to extreme consumer behavior to see what ideas they open up for brands. The following sketches are of “immortal” consumers who consume in the context of a very long time scheme.
What it is:
Ray Kurzweil believes that humans will outsmart death in 2045. If people can live forever, we’re going to overpopulate and run out of resources. On the other hand, if we’re immortal, do we need to hang on to precious things?
The more that the mainstream concept of time shifts, the more basic consumption models will also likely shift. It seems like the ultimate collaborative commerce scenario (what we call #Streaming Ownership) may come when people are no longer worried about passing their possessions on to their children. It could be like the Shakers-meets-AirBnB. Resources may be limited, but brands (in the form of stories, ideas, and feelings) can be unlimited.
Some current examples:
- The Long Now is an organization that “hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common…to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”
This is part of a giant clock Long Now is building to tick for 10,000 years.
- Life Extensionistsor Longevists believe that by supporting/consuming the right technologies, they can “conquer the blight of involuntary death.” This segment thinks future technological breakthroughs in tissue rejuvenationwithstem cells,molecularrepair, andorganreplacement will eventually enable humans to have indefinite lifespans through complete rejuvenation to a healthy youthful condition.
- Preppers are also preparing for a long future, but of a different kind: they believe that the collapse of civilization is imminent, and are stockpiling accordingly.
Preppers, as a community, are trying to solve a difficult consumption problem: what stuff to buy, how much of it, and how to store it. Usually people focus on guns or water, creating Without the Rule of Law (WROL) and Shit Hits the Fan (SHTF) videos and sites that read like Consumer Reports for the End Times.
Does “Without the Rule of Law” imply “under the rule of brand”? After all, much of the Prepper advice centers around brands, i.e., “this is a quality brand of antibiotic to stockpile.” Brands that are stickier than the civilization that spawned them are a scary thought.
“We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots…The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures.” (Subculture of Americans Prepares for Civilization’s Collapse, Reuters)
- Self Quantifiers who obsessively count, track, and analyze data about their lives (here, a video from Catherine Hooper, who’s known for planning her life by the hour) are not uniformly interested in living forever, but do have a very intimate relationship with the clock. In this highly scrupulous pocket of consumption, wasted time (and wasted energy) are major concerns and something to be avoided at all costs.
What this means for business:
> Is the implication of immortal consumers that companies should sell things that are going to last, and/or guarantee lifetime upkeep, in the manner of Patagonia, Barbour, LL Bean, or other “heritage” brands? Probably not. Make things that people can hack, measure and share. Eternity is a long time to stay enthralled with a single jacket.
> Create services and products where people feel safe. Starbucks as a reliable third space is almost a good example.
> Disrupt the disruption: be consistent and steady while every other business is radically changing.
> Longer consumer memory means that accountability has legs: you can’t “worry about it later” because older generations of customers will be around to remember.
Images via Wired, the Long Now, YouTube user Carrie3570 and Quantified Self
You know the little kick of dopamine you get whenever your phone buzzes with a new text message? Imagine what it would be like if you were the thing buzzing. In the future, a magnetic marking on your arm, stomach, finger or fingernail might be able to alert you to a new text message, call, calendar alert or low battery warning.
According to Digital Spy, Nokia is filing a patent for a new “vibrating magnetic tattoo” that will do just that—an interesting project among a growing number of investigations into “haptic” (or touch) feedback in mobile devices.
Their patent application details stamping or spraying “ferromagnetic” material onto your skin and then linking it to your phone. Based on your phone’s commands, the material would vibrate with “one short pulse, multiple short pulses, few long pulses… strong pulses, weak pulses and so on,” according to the filing.
Cambridge-based Zoran Radivojevic and Piers Andrew are the inventors, along with Finland-based Jarkko Saunamaki and Tapani Jokinen.
There’s obvious value in creating #useful experiences that enrich customers’ lives, and being the first in your sector to do it. But is this truly useful? Similarly to the “Face Unlock” system in Google’s latest Android operating system, your magnet tattoo could be used as an identity check, like a magnetic fingerprint. In a very noisy place, where you risk not hearing your phone, this technology would certainly make you aware of it. In quiet places, it could also be less disturbing than the sound of your phone vibrating.
Of course, once you tell your friends about your new magnetic tattoo, ignoring their calls will become all the more incriminating.
What do you think? A #useful innovation or an uncomfortable intrusion?
Thank you PSFK and The Daily Beast for pointing us to two new currencies we hadn’t heard of. One is called the “Nanto” and the other you might recognize from your laundry room.
No Money? Make Your Own
A French city called Nantes, population 300,000, will soon introduce its own virtual currency to complement the euro and encourage trade between its small local businesses. By next year, participating businesses will be able to pay or be paid in something called “Nanto.”
Accelerated by the financial crisis, Europe has seen a trend of small businesses looking to make more cashless exchanges. The WIR cooperative bank in Basel, Switzerland is already using a similar cashless payment system, but this is the first time a large European city is trying the experiment.
Tide laundry detergent has become the item to steal. According to reports in The Daily, NPR, and The Daily Beast, Tide’s recently become a major target for thieves from New York to Oregon, who are using it as a type of street currency because of its steadily high retail price. According to Planet Money, Tide’s street re-sale is anywhere from $5-$10 a bottle. It’s unclear if people are trading it for other goods, as well as cash.
While it’s hard to find hard data on this “trend,” there are loads of good anecdotes on the Web. For instance, one man in Minnesota stole $25,000 in Tide over 15 months before getting caught last year. It’s apparently enough of a problem that CVS is looking into special security measures to keep Tide on the shelf.
So why Tide and not Wisk or Seventh Generation? According to The Daily it’s all about brand recognition, both in the store and on the street. “Police say it’s simply because the Procter & Gamble detergent is the most popular and, with its Day-Glo orange logo, most recognizable of brands.”
The headline is a quote from Sebastian Thrun, a prominent computer scientist at Stanford, and one third of the team that founded the online learning community Udacity.com. Thrun was made famous last year when he announced his first free online class “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” and nearly 160,000 students in more than 190 countries signed up for it, almost overnight.
Thrun, who led the development of Google’s self-driving car, recently teamed up with David Evans, a professor on leave from the University of Virginia, to offer a new class that teaches you the programming language Python, by way of teaching you how to build a search engine. Again, at its announcement, throngs of folks signed up— close to 90,000, including me.
What Thrun means when he says he’s seen Wonderland is that he’s seeing (and creating) a brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses — what the New York Times calls MOOCs.
At the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Thrun said “having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again. I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”
I’m having my own adventures in Wonderland. For the past two weeks, I’ve dedicated a good chunk of free time to watching Thrun and Evans’ lectures on Udacity.com, taking the pop quizzes that test my comprehension throughout the unit, and doing the homework that reinforces everything. When I’ve forgotten a rule or function, I just go back to Evans’ YouTube videos, and watch him draw it out on his electronic whiteboard again. This class isn’t for credit, but the knowledge is real and it costs $0.
You might wonder how they plan to sustain their crusade of offering free high-quality educations to a limitless amount of people anywhere in the world. Well, Udacity, which is supported by Charles River Ventures, has a plan for that.
They’re going to start monetizing their students’ skills — and helping them get jobs — by getting their permission to sell leads to recruiting companies. If recruiters are looking for people with specific skills in a specific area, that’s information Udacity will have and be able to provide to them, for a fee.
Wildly disruptive, but crazy enough to make total sense. You learn for free. Potential employers learn about your skills. And your teachers benefit from having connected you both.
The Jordan brand is absolutely massive. Led by a 71% share of the US basketball shoe market (according to SportsOneSource), the label brings in over $1 billion each year. In fact, the brand built around 14x all-star Michael Jordan is so huge that other NBA players like Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony have actually signed deals to directly promote Jordan.
Think about how crazy that is: Nike has celebrity athletes boosting another celebrity athlete. Clearly, the Nike/Jordan relationship has grown way larger than the simple endorsement it began as (a 5 year, $2.5 million agreement, with royalties).
That’s what makes the lawsuit filed late last week by Jordan (the man) against Chinese sportswear company Qiaodan Sports (Chinese for “Jordan Sports”) so interesting. The hoops star has been called Qiaodan in China since he burst into the NBA in 1984. Now, Jordan’s claiming that this company has unfairly built their entire brand around his identity. In a video statement on his website he says ”no one should lose control of their own name…It’s not about the money. It’s about principle. Protecting my identity and my name.”
Though the name Qiaodan is a trademark registered by the company in accordance with Chinese laws, Jordan’s own personal brand has transcended nations and language. Jordan or Qiaodan, he seems to have a pretty strong case.
(This is the second Future Patrol, a monthly series of macrotrend posts by WONY StrategistEmily Segal. You’ll see Wolff Olins’ established macrotrends called out with a hashtag.)
Every time you pay for a magazine subscription with Hilton loyalty points, or exchange a foursquare checkin for a shot of tequila, or donate your time as a volunteer, you’re using an alternative (or complementary) currency, which can be defined as anything that serves as a medium of exchange, a stored value, and a standard of value.
Money has always been “virtual,” since it refers to something that isn’t present. But our current scenario is another turn of the screw:
“We are moving towards a world in which money consists solely of data that is kept someplace in the network. When we pay someone in that world all we are really doing is causing some data to move around. The shift from the physical to the virtual raises a number of exciting possibilities for the future of money including the rise of reputation currencies.” Union Square Ventures
Financial upheaval, rapidly decentralizing power and peer-to-peer networks mean that consumers are increasingly down to trade directly with one another and stash their money with nontraditional businesses. (The recent success of the low-fee money transfer startup Dwolla, which just completed their first round of funding with Union Square Ventures is a good example.)
What it is:
The #Funny Money trend is about a new situation in the near future in which it is normal to choose among many different currencies – either in addition to or in place of dollars – when paying for stuff. Imagine a bank where you can pay in combinations of time, personal data, loyalty points and governmental money. Barter, rental, and gift systems will be central parts of mainstream finance, as well as built-in discounts for positive social behavior and wide social media reach.
“Value” and “trust” may be moving targets, but are more crucial than ever. KS12’s Future of Money video defines it this way: “Banks will be whatever best mediates trust in communities.” Brands, too, will be under increased pressure to create/sustain/communicate trust.
+ loyalty and rewards programs: “Most large companies – from Starbucks to British Airways to Sheraton to American Express – are evolving their reward and point loyalty systems into digital micro-economies, complete with redemption and exchange between systems.” Cayman Financial Review
Ven is a digital currency that began as a way to pay for stuff within the social network Hubculture. In late 2008, the currency became tradeable to anyone with an email address, making it the first global digital currency to become valuable outside of its original social network, as well as the first ‘invented’ digital currency to be listed by Thompson Reuters.
Unlike the controversial Bitcoin, Ven is weighted against a basket of currencies and commodities that includes carbon futures, which gives it a “green” point of view.
As one of the creators of Ven writes: “Including carbon in the basket makes the Ven ‘language’ for finance slightly different and puts emphasis on sustainability in a way old currencies cannot.” Rise of Private Money, Cayman Financial Review
The Metacurrency project also describes money as a language and a way of looking into the future:
“In everyday English, we use the words money and currency interchangeably. However, we are reclaiming the word “currency” for something much more powerful than money alone. Money is still certainly a type of currency, but currencies are much more. They are the creators of currents — part of the language of living systems.Currency: a formal system used to shape, enable or measure currents.”MetaCurrency
Currencies have a POV, money is editorial, and land, labor, and capital (the traditional components of capitalism) – are not sufficiently telling the story. As Jerry Michalski, Founder of the Relationship Economy Expedition therexpedition.com puts it: the new “relationship economy” needs to find a way to nurture the commons, the gift economy, and the commercial economy all at once.
What this means for business:
> If consumers have way more currencies to choose from, brand comes in as a major way to negotiate the options
> There is such a thing as “too seamless”
“Is it possible to make a system that’s too easy to use, where you reduce so much friction from the transaction process that people aren’t necessarily aware of what they’re spending on something?” NYT
> An opportunity to rethink loyalty programs
“Most large companies – from Starbucks to British Airways to Sheraton to American Express – are evolving their reward and point loyalty systems into digital micro-economies, complete with redemption and exchange between systems.” Cayman Financial Review
> Actual peer-to-peer value creation from social networks
“What if Facebook evolved to have a functionality like Zopa or Lending Club, allowing you to directly lend and borrow with other Facebook users, and earn a great rate of interest. Extend that one step further to Facebook offering an entire mobile based money transfer system, something like M-PESA, which could then create a simple mechanism for international microfinance. If Facebook goes this far, Credits could quickly face regulatory scrutiny if they actually influence or devalue currencies in other markets.” Forbes
> New freedom to compare systems and rethink the distribution of wealth:
