Parental Persuasion Program

NewEgg.com, an electronic website have come up with a 'Parental Persuasion Program'. It's designed to give students the tools to convince their parents to buy them new electronic goods for their education.

It's a clever use of personalisation, re-targetting and good-old fashioned pester power. 

After students have created a wishlist, a custom URL link is sent to their parents in a personalised email. Once the parents click on the link they are 'cookied' which enables the site to retarget them with online banners, with different messaging based on the profile their child has picked out for them (like penny pincher or helicopter parent).

Take a look here: http://www.newegg.com/back-to-school-shopping/

A Quick Snapshot of How it Works

They start by creating a wishlist of the goods they want.

Next they select which type of parents they have (penny pincher, helicopter parent, workaholic, BBF or geek..) This information is used to customise messaging in emails, banner ads and videos.

Then they give their parents names and email and their own name and email and approve email, banner ads and posters to be sent to their parents. 

Email example:

 Banner ad example:

thanks, em

An Augmented future...

A fascinating and fun short film looking at an augmented future. The fruit ninja chopping particularly good, as is the start of dating scene. You know this all could happen.

Enjoy, be frightened, scoff. Etc

Cheers

Nic

iPad Inspiration

Today we are straying away from a marketing related post and looking at a good dose of thought-provoking inspiration.

Like TED? Then take a look at their new venture - TED books for the iPad and kindle.

For those who don't know of TED its worth checking out. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. They bring together unique perspectives on the world around us through entertaining speakers and capture it all on video. Most talks are are between 7 and 45 minutes.

TED books is a series of ebooks which build on some of the most popular speakers at TED. The books are long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting, available on the Kindle and iPad. They are currently offering a 'founding member' subscription price on the iPad where you can download all the ebooks for 3 months for $14.99. Bargain.

Enjoy.

em

Many lightweight interactions over time

Here is a great talk on building relationships in Facebook. 

As you know, when you meet someone new it usually takes many small interactions to develop a relationship. Same thing goes for brands. So it makes sense that Facebook is most effective when brands make many lightweight interactions over time.

‘Heavyweight’, immersive interactive apps play an important role but because we are asking people to spend a lot more time with us it’s far more effective once you’ve built a relationship from many small interactions over time.Many brands launch with heavyweight apps, when they would get a lot more traction if they spent the time to develop relationships first. It’s like throwing a big party. It’s going to be a much bigger event if you invite people you’ve built relationships with, rather than strangers. 

Just one app does not make an effective social media strategy. We need to think about building relationships through many small interactions, over time, as well as the big hitters.

View the video: http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2012/07/newcreativecanvas

Em

Mobile alarm app incorporates the current weather, time and day of the week into its wake-up music. Nice.

Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo have created a ‘social alarm clock’ for the mobile. It tells you what the weather is going to be like, the time and day of week, all mixed in with music to suit the day. The background changes each day. It also enables people to share via social media the time, weather and temperature at the moment they turned the alarm off. You can see a data visualisation of this from other people around the world.

It’s a nice way to remind people of your brand from the moment they wake up.

Website: www.uniqlo-wakeup.com

Em

What happens when you hit the Google search button

Ever wondered what happens on the interwebs when you hit search on Google? They've put together a handy little infographic that explains the process.

Image from Mashable.

A Twitter campaign for the boys

Needs little introduction. Enjoy.