While it seems unlikely that this funding avenue for L.A. waiter/actors and Brooklyn barista/songwriters keeps Goldman Sachs executives up at night, a few recent success stories demand a serious look at the crowd-sourced funding phenomenon. Startup marketing may no longer live exclusively in b-to-b, as consumers get in on backing the products and companies they desire.

In Austin, Texas, entrepreneurs sought to open the nation’s first package-free, zero-waste grocery store. When their idea fell short of the funding needed to open the doors to their bulk-bin bonanza, they turned to an online crowd-sourced funding campaign. The move not only greased their financial tracks, but also created marketing gold.

Utilizing the site IndieGoGo, the start-up posted a short concept video and established $25-$2,000 tiers for a $15,000 fund-raising goal. Within two months, they reached that goal with a variety of very non-Wall Street investment incentives, including t-shirts and growlers of beer. Naturally, many of the supporters were local, potential customers. Others, from California, Canada and the U.K., simply supported the brand concept.

Along the way, the company picked up more than 2,500 Twitter and 5,000 Facebook followers, as well as more than 120,000 YouTube views — all for a store that will not open until later this year. Many followers living thousands of miles away from in.gredients’ doormat, left notes already pleading for expansion. The company’s video pitch, constant online-engagement and a generous dose of blog and traditional media clips (including Time and Rolling Stone) established a solid brand without boundaries.

With the success of crowd-sourced funding now moving realistically into the entrepreneurial world, sold marketing — including brand stories, segment targeting, digital outreach and incentives, not only plays a role in getting customers in the door.

It may just be essential for getting the doors open in the first place.

1. This year looks eerily like last year. You haven’t seen any movement. The adage no news is good news does not apply here. Sure, you feel better than if you lost ground, but a lack of momentum only holds so long before things start to head south.

2. You’re continuing to give out those logo mouse pads because, after all, you paid for them. OK, so maybe it’s not that bad, but content can look dated quicker than you realize. Scan all your materials for any hot trends you were riding … if they’re past their prime, they possibly serve more harm than good. While we’re at it, look at your keyword data. How current is your lexicon?

3. You’re not hitting measurement projections. This one seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed how often people keep campaigns in place by focusing their creativity on excuses instead of outreach. Granted, sometimes projections may be off for a specific reason (e.g. bad weather during a regional promotion), but more times than not, you’re viewing musty strategy. And while we’re at it … stop blaming everything on a slow economy. It’s a fact, not an alibi. Smart companies look at how to best appeal to wary consumers. If you simply wait for the news to change, you might be the next dismal paragraph.

4. Measurement projections? If you have no idea what we mean in number three, we should talk. Remember, measurement does not stop with ROI. Your tools should look at holistic audience growth and conversion as well. If you haven’t been monitoring Click Through Rate (CTR), Conversion Rate, Cost Per Action (CPA) for your online and mobile campaigns as well, you might find yourself exhausted by swimming in a whirlpool.

5. You’re Justin Bieber. Today’s star is tomorrow’s reality-TV nightmare. If you’re riding high, it’s probably time to start looking for your next splash. Just ask Leif Garrett.

Sometimes the cure to what ails you might be a simple tweak or refocused promotion. Or, you might need to start digging at the roots in your audience definition or segmentation. Either way, ignoring those first something’s-not-right sniffs never proves pleasant.

Of all the social-media trends, we’ve curiously followed the location services most closely — specifically, Foursquare since its 2009 launch. Early on, it became apparent that Twitter could transform over-sharing of your favorite sandwich to a legitimate marketing communication. But how willing would people appear in transitioning cyber-stalking to a physical level with geo-location sites?

Apparently, we’re fairly willing. While it’s been a slow expansion beyond the realm of early adopters and the 35-and-under crowd, it seems this inexpensive mobile marketing continues to persistently tug at the holdouts, leaving many doom-and-gloom predictions cold.

Oh, how easily concerns of security can be dismissed with the offer of a free bagel upon check-in.

If you’re still not convinced that Foursquare goes beyond the hipsters and tweens, look at their check-in statistics from Black Friday this past holiday season. Yes, the hipsters came in first, placing Starbucks at number one, and the teens met their friends at McDonalds, which came in second. However, Wal-Mart sat solidly in third place at 150,000 check-ins that day. Others in the top 10 included the not-so-trendy locations of Target, Best Buy, Home Depot and Costco. Clearly, these check-ins were about promotional campaigns and associated discounts, not bragging rights as the man-about-town.

With more than 15 million global Foursquare users, the geo-location numbers don’t scratch at the social-media giants of Facebook and Twitter. However, with more than a half-million business locations now registered and an average of a billion check-ins per day, Foursquare’s momentum seems to be growing as it evolves into a more business-savvy tool.

The key to this success rests clearly on merchants’ abilities to motivate users. One standout last year was Starwood Hotels’ check-in reward program. Foursquare check-ins earned loyalty-program users an additional 250 points during the peak travel season. In less than two months of their summer promotion, Starwood distributed almost 10 million points. The program’s success prompted a second round for the holiday season.

So while others may dismiss these check-in promotions, we’re continuing to check them out. If momentum holds, 2012 could finally serve notice of their arrival.

• Hang On to Your Chads, America
No matter who’s in the race, election years always prove a little tricky, as topics rise and fall in consumers’ minds with every news cycle. If the past few months’ polling serves as any indication, we’re dealing with a very fickle voting public and should expect all sorts of issues to be thrown on the wall until something sticks. Economy, environment, taxes, healthcare? This could be a wild one.

• Exchanging Panic Rates
Consumers are scared of the euro issue even though they aren’t sure why. This makes the topic even more dangerous. Should we see the American economy gain some strength but stories of austerity measure across the pond continue, U.S. consumers may still hold their pocketbooks close. However, on the bright side, with many analysts predicting a possible even exchange between the dollar and euro by next fall, look for new movement in the travel industry and related products.

• QR Codes’ Luck with the Ladies
Quick Response or mobile-action codes caught on at astounding rates with print advertisers and every neighborhood realtor. They saw a 476 percent growth in magazine-ad use from January through September of this year. Surprisingly, fashion, beauty and celebrity magazines showed strong growth in QR-code use, killing the widespread fallacy that those funny black-and-white graphics would be confined within tech segments until gaining strength. Signs point to huge adoption rates among females. Revlon led in usage, followed by Cuisinart, Garnier, Delta and John Frieda.

• “American Idol” Dreams On
Preseason predictions of the revamped show’s 10th season forecasted a 15 to 20 percent drop. Well, look who pulled a Monday Night Football and stayed strong despite the changes in lineup. The new cast was not enough to make a comfortable audience tune out, and it retained the number-one rating, and more importantly, held a 79 percent higher rating among 18-to-49-year-olds than the next biggest show. Why should you care? A couple of kids singing pop covers proved the best argument for brand loyalty heading into 2012.

We’ll be back in a few weeks to hash through the latest in the new year. Until then, we wish you all a safe and happy holiday.

Business always holds a few mysteries, mumbled prayers and crossed fingers, but rough financial times tend to complicate things even more. Consumers remain apprehensive, fickle and reactionary as they turn daily transactions into an economic chess match. Business owners rush to redesign the dam before ever assessing the severity of a leak. That old, insecure term-paper logic abounds, even though history’s greatest minds of philosophy and business — from Occam’s razor in the 17th century to the late Steve Jobs — preached the virtues of simplicity.

The concept of simplicity is one we’ve talked about for years with our clients. Often, usually by the noble virtue of enthusiasm, people itch to think big with messages for start-ups, rebranding or market expansions. Layering multiple messages, bleeding too many conclusions from a single research design, or shoving a commencement ceremony’s worth of motivations into a :30 spot pulls businesses away from primary goals, such as selling more A to B.

But sticking to the basics requires discipline. Before rushing off with a solution, return to a few simple questions:

Who am I really talking to?
What do I need them to do?
What’s the real value to the customer?
How is this different from the competition?

If the answer to any of these is more than a few words, revisit and whittle it down.

More than likely, you’ll find your challenge is a bit less daunting than managing the euro debt crisis. Be grateful and steer away from bloated, complex solutions. At this economy’s rapid pace, only the light and nimble can maneuver the hairpin turns.

Blame it on bottom-dwelling 401Ks, prolonged life expectancy or a less physically taxing work environment (or, all the above), but the number of Americans older than 65 in the labor force increased 16 percent between 2007 and 2010. And before you claim this is a short-term quirk of the economy, consider that according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 65+ working crowd already jumped 101 percent between 1977 and 2007. Another trend red flag is that while previously those 65+ numbers included a lot of part-time employment, more and more now put in minimum 40-hour workweeks.

This movement creates a new sub-demographic within an age group, but also creates a new market within the workforce itself. How will the aging workers address healthcare, lifestyle or even simple leisure decisions while still on the job? Yes, there will be a longer period without a “fixed” income, but it’s coupled with a stretched out “savings period” — especially with many Baby Boomers trying to recover from the past few years. Many of these workers are single females. And, nearly 450,000 Americans 65 and older are actively looking for employment.

Marketing to the 65+ demographic isn’t new (and yes, as I age, I suddenly realize 65 is not simply the target for Life Alert and Snuggies). According to Marc Freedman, author of the new book “The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife,” the retirement concept many of us grew up with was largely a product of the post–World War II and Baby Boom labor shifts escorting older workers out of the market. The decades-long retirement became a big marketing opportunity in the lifestyle and service categories. We’re obviously talking to a different group than the 1930s farmer working until he dropped, but this new twist on aging poses some interesting opportunities in a new set of categories, including …

• Technology
• Education
• Home-office design
• Travel and hospitality

So, let us pause briefly to mourn the engraved years-of-service watch. Today, those 65+ have other needs on their minds. ]]> http://www.sanderswingo.com/insights/golden-years-a-new-market-emerges-with-an-aging-workforce/feed 0 http://www.sanderswingo.com/insights/ho-ho-hold-it http://www.sanderswingo.com/insights/ho-ho-hold-it#comments Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:38:39 +0000 Institute of Communications http://www.sanderswingo.com/?p=3761 Yes, Virginia, the 2011 Recession-Be-Damned Holiday Shopping Season is now open. We’re also marking the official end to the 2011 Christmas Creep Kvetching Season — the annual griping about tinsel during back-to-school shopping and Halloween Laffy Taffy instantly turning into candy canes. We may now legitimately be jolly without looking “commercial” to our peers.

If you even glanced at social media during the past 60 days, you noticed the viral campaign extending preseason cheer to Nordstrom Department Stores for their refusal to play reindeer games until after the turkey carcass was cold this year. Facebook, Twitter and the like sent up a digital hallelujah chorus surrounding the photo of a sign that read, “We won’t be decking our halls until Nov. 27. Why? Well, we just like the idea of celebrating one holiday at a time.”

Wait. November 27? Yep, it’s a photo of an old sign.

It seems this holiday restraint has been the mark of the Seattle-based retailer for a few decades. This year, the news broke viral on a grander scale, prompting new praise for the high-end store. Although the origins for this year’s surge are unknown (it’s the season for magic, right?), traditional media picked it up, and Americans miles from the nearest store fawned over Nordstrom’s stand for virtue — no matter how many gift bags were currently hidden in their own trunks. This probably does not hurt their online sales.

Let’s face it. Nordstrom’s shoppers are not your line-up-at-midnight-for-a-25-percent-discount crowd. There will likely be little shoving over the Chanel. Does this failure to encourage early holiday shopping hurt their sales? Obviously not much, per the tradition’s history.

Here are the takeaways from this year’s out-of-the-gate seasonal success:

Viral: Behold the Miraculous Wonder
Yes, we already knew this, but the fact that by the first 10 days of November the store’s old holiday sign registered more than 17,000 Facebook shares is a great reminder. That says nothing of the numerous blog posts and Tweets for which the #savethanksgiving and #nochristmasbeforethanksgiving hashtags were a strong promoter.

Do You Hear What I Hear?
Consumers like to feel their grumbling has some purpose. Whether it’s a brief hat tip to the holiday craziness or a simple nod acknowledging that cries don’t fall upon deaf ears, consumer acknowledgement wins incredible brand points that hopefully hold greater shelf life than circular coupons.

So, holiday cheers to Nordstrom Department Stores. We’d raise a glass of eggnog if we weren’t still so full of turkey. Happy shopping.

“Do Not Track” Legislation
Everyone’s witnessed the growing web of information sharing. You update a social medium with a thought about sneakers and the next screen offers you an ad for a new set of kicks. Is this a more convenient way to deliver messages to audiences who crave them most or a digital eavesdropping on your private conversation to the 748 friends in your social networks?

The FTC requested a “do not track” service similar to a “do not call” opt-out and the Obama administration is requesting an online privacy bill of rights. However, after a burst of legislative movement on the matter last spring, this month U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Daniel Weitzner said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that he hoped any new laws would be “flexible” and allow for continued innovations to online communication.

Collecting on Kids
Earlier this year, Consumer Reports estimated 7.5 million children age 12 and under use Facebook. Stated another way, they reported 7.5 million illegal accounts. The 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa) prevents websites that collect consumer data from signing up those under the age of 13. While this is clearly stated on the site, the growing number of young users and the need to keep expanding led Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg to recently attest that the company plans to challenge the regulations at some point.

We’ll leave any socialization discussions to the psychiatrist and sociologist. However, any debate of this sort will surely pull us in the time warp of the 1970s, when parents protested that Saturday morning Scooby Doo- and Fat Albert-marathons resulted in children’s demands for toys and sugary cereals. It continues today with crossover marketing of children’s series and promotional product. A new medium results in a new challenge.

Digital gives marketers great opportunities to finely pinpoint engaged audiences. Just how close they can target will be better defined in the coming months. Digital is officially a major market contender. Let the scrutiny begin.

First, college-radio pioneers R.E.M. announced their retirement. Next, MTV President Stephen Friedman, when discussing programming changes, proclaimed, “We needed to let go of Generation X so we could own the Millennials.”

Et tu, Moonman?

The build-up of economic pressures and kicks possibly contributed to last week’s faster-than-you-can-say-Atari viral dissemination of Mat Honan’s “Generation X Doesn’t Want to Hear It.” Honan, a senior reporter for Gizmodo, penned a part-lament, part-scolding from the group many dub the “wrong place, wrong time” kids. In the end, he concludes, Gen-Xers are tired and just want to be left alone to enjoy a beer.

The smallest generation, with approximately 46 million, those born between 1965 and 1978 seem almost forgotten in the current economic saga. Once again a latchkey child, they go home to occupy their sofa, recalculate their post-bully entertainment allowance, and make their own peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.

However, marketers and entrepreneurs shouldn’t lose sight of this group among the louder Boomers and Millennials. This generation may just hold the greatest workforce and consumer shifts we’ve seen in awhile.

The Center For Work-Life Policy’s September release of “The X Factor: Tapping into the Strengths of the 33 to 46-Year-Old Generation” revealed huge Gen-X findings, including …

• 91 percent of women and 68 percent of men are part of dual-income couples
• 36 percent of women earn more than their spouses
• nearly a third of high-income earners work 60+ hours a week
• 43 percent claim student-loan debt influenced their career choices, while 74 percent cite credit-card debt
• workers expect to stay on the job an average of nine years longer than anticipated
• the real jaw-dropper: 43 percent of women and 32 percent of men do not have children

This generation, which has already witnessed three recessions, the housing bubble, layoffs, outsourcing and multiple consolidations, stands poised to redefine aging. Retirement will often be later and female-controlled, with fewer heirs and memories of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t income. They are educated and know how to assimilate, but feel their youthful rebellion was snatched away by the kid refusing to look up from his smartphone while crossing in front of their aging SUVs.

Never underestimate the quiet ones. The game-changing status they longed for may still be ahead.