It’s been said, but it’s worth repeating: brands must be intuitive when they approach consumers. It doesn’t take clairvoyance, but it does take a profound understanding of what you have to offer. After all, it was Jobs who led his team to view itself as its primary consumer. He reasoned that Apple was its own biggest critic and therefore better positioned than consumers to define relevancy and usability. Likewise, when brands place a self-critical eye on their own products and services, they will, in turn, create a brand for the people—a brand that focuses on people’s needs and human relationships rather than mere data and projections.

Thinking like customers Being “Human”

Consumers don’t expect perfection. In the event a mishap arises, brands will need to draw upon relationships they’ve cultivated to survive. If there are no relationships to cull, consumers will make a mad dash for the exit door. As Scott Goodson recounts in his article, “Is Brand Loyalty the Core to Apple’s Business?,” he writes:

Whenever Apple has problems with its products, its customers are incredibly forgiving and patient. They understand that issues can sometimes arise and they’ll continue to buy Apple products despite any mistakes they might make.

He attributes Apple’s firm consumer loyalty to emotional attachments resulting from Apple’s practice of standing firmly in its customers’ place—to offer quality just because it’s the right way to do business.

Taking care of loyalists

When you value something, you take care of it. This ideology is the backbone of relationship marketing. Studies show that repeat business accounts for 67 percent of revenue for most businesses. Still, many brands continue to focus on rewarding new relationships over more established ones. The telecommunications industry, for example, has yet to take hold of this methodology. It is replete with teaser offers that slight current customers. The brand that changes this practice will better connect with consumers.

Digital Bonding

Brands must use technology to forge relationships with consumers across the globe, without sacrificing humanity. When brands are less robotic by calling customers by name, personalizing their offerings, and asking for feedback and follow-up, they create a positive, lasting impression. Striking a balance between a brand’s online and offline presence is critical to establishing relationships.

Demonstrating value

At the heart of person-to-person marketing is “getting into the heads and hearts of consumers”. When brands position themselves as a resource, they will increase value perception. In a vested relationship, brands can ask questions, request referrals, and get to know what issues customers face for R&D purposes. Relationships require an investment of time, energy, and interaction in order to take root. Although money can facilitate these kinds of relationships, it can’t drive them. When brands plant seeds over time, they’re more likely to stay top of mind when consumers need what they have to offer.

With smartphones now outselling PCs, brands are now investing in discount strategies using mobile commerce. In 2011, US cosumers saved more than $4.6 billion using coupons; up from $500 million in 2010. Google’s study  “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” finds mobile users are motivated to take same-day action more than the average consumer. Mobile discounting is a viable option for brands to boost consumer engagement, especially for those already primed to purchase. There are three consumer trends that are also fueling technology as marketers seek platforms to engage mobile deal-seekers.  Among them are QR Codes, SMS and Near Field Communication (NFC) which are certain to be a part of, if not shape, the path of mobile couponing. 

QR Codes: Coupon Data Goldmine

Though QR codes have been around since the 1990s, they’ve just begun gaining traction in the marketing world within the last few years. In contrast to their older sibling, barcodes, QR Codes can encode 10 times more data using the same amount of real estate, making them particularly useful in data transfer. According to ComScore, by mid-2011, 14 million mobile users in the US scanned a QR code on their mobile device. This is encouraging news for brands looking to win big with deal-seekers. Since QR Codes are omni-directional, they can be used on many textures and surfaces, such as edible items, apparel, birth control, gifts, and artistic designs.

QR Codes offer the kind of measurable, location-specific results that help determine the success rate of marketing campaigns. In March 2011, Mountain Dew and Taco Bell released a promotion using QR codes linked to a website that offered free music downloads. Within two months, the campaign generated just under 200,000 QR code scans.

Still, as with any direct response mechanism, QR Codes a strategy in and of themselves, but tools that brands can leverage to stay top-of-mind and initiate or extend consumer engagement. In essence, QR Codes need to connect consumers with something of value in order to be successful. This is why they are a logical tool for mobile coupon strategies.

SMS Campaigns: Strategizing Consumer Behavior

The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that of the 73% of adults who text, 31% prefer to be reached by text. It makes sense then for brands to strategize mobile promotions with this consumer preference in mind. This direction couldn’t be more on point as IHL Group and RetailConnections report that 8 in 10 US mobile phone will use mobile text coupons by the end of 2012. Texting offers bare bones messaging without the bells and whistles other methods require, which make it a relatively simple way to get the word out. As an example, Crocs Inc. earned 94,000 coupon requests within one month using SMS.

Delivering coupons via SMS has sharing and customer relationship potential since brands can use SMS to initiate a 2-way conversation for feedback and follow-up.

Near Field Communication (NFC): Data Transfer Web 4.0-Style

As NFC-enabled smartphones are steadily being added to the roster, NFC is has the potential to be a useful data collection tool, which will help brands personalize promotions. While Google Wallet demonstrates the m-commerce potential of the NFC platform, the future of NFC will include data communication between NFC devices, and interactive marketing. To this end, Brad Wasz, co-founder of CouponTrade.com imagines how brands could capitalize on NFC technology: "The classic example is that of two friends near a coffee shop. The coffee shop could, in theory, alert the friends of [each other’s] presence and invite them to enjoy a two-for-one coupon."

There are several other technologies that could take the stage as mobile couponing gains ground. Augmented Reality, Digital Watermarks and Image Recognition are a few; however, the point is that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface to how mobile technology can help brands entice consumer activity. With these technologies, brands get the opportunity to court their ideal customer in ways that rival brick-and-mortar shopping experiences, and, in some cases, exceed them.

Do you see brand promotions using mobile technology as invasive or ground-breaking? Why? Share your thoughts.
 

In order to resonate with audiences, marketers must take into account how different audiences view the world. Global brands then have the ongoing task of authenticating themselves and connecting with every market.

Weight management brands, for example, must take extreme care in how they approach body image issues. Enter Weight Watchers France with its bold outcry, “Tu Veux Ou Tu Veux Pas?” (Do You or Don’t You?) to shake things up; now, you’ve got a culturally revealing message on your hands. In fact, Weight Watchers looks so different from market to market that a discussion about the culturalisms that inform its global advertising strategy is wanting.

In a provocative series of images atypical for this genre by US standards, the visual and aesthetic impact of Weight Watchers’ new French print and television ads pushes the edge of pop art. Using highly glossed female lips with various food types jarring from them, the Fred and & Farid-led “Treat Yourself Better” campaign makes a clear statement about restrictive diets in favor of Weight Watchers’ points-based system. The campaign is so provocative and curious that it makes weight loss look sensual. The mantra, "conquer" hunger and "show it who's boss," still plays on the self-sufficiency attitude American viewers are used to seeing, but its snazzy new flavor takes it up a notch by showing consumers that food appreciation, not indulgence, is the key to successful weight loss.

This way of thinking is somewhat alien to US audiences, which have been programmed to associate large quantities of food as valuable (lower-priced, value-sized fast food items, for example). Alternatively, the French enjoy a 2-hour lunch break and savor mealtime, favoring home-cooked food over eating out.  Mirielle Guiliano, author of “French Women Don't Get Fat,” points out that eating fast and standing up lends to gaining weight and suggests that French women ward off belly bulge by using the senses while eating. She also supports using a food journal to break unhealthy habits, something Weight Watchers has long supported. With this view, it is easier to see the thought pattern behind the French ads, which translate eating as a less ritualized past-time.

Unlike the French version, the American campaign is almost entirely celebrity-driven. Jennifer Hudson and Charles Barkley are current spokespersons for Weight Watchers. It’s meme, “Believe; because it works” went viral. In turn, Weight Watchers boosted sales by 25 percent to $1.82 billion last year, and its share price jumped 47 percent in 2011. Still, what do the ads say about US values—are US consumers star-struck? Probably not. According to an Adweek/Harris Interactive study, most US consumers say they aren’t swayed by celebrity endorsements; however, brands continue to use them. Regardless, US audiences crave authenticity in advertising and perhaps Hudson’s dramatic 80-pound weight loss translated that more than her celebrity status does.

Weight Watchers UK’s “Do it Our Way” campaign features songstress Alesha Dixon and a mostly female, non-actor cast celebrating their newly slimmed bodies and renewed vigor for life in street-party fashion. From the soundtrack’s bold lyrics and shoppers admiring themselves in mirrors to fearless swimsuit-wearing women, the ad clearly shows positive self-image as a result of weight loss as its core message. The website ads encourage dieters to “play Weight Watchers,” which serves as an extension of the whimsical, playful television ad.

A recent study by The Succeed Foundation with the University of the West of England (UWE) found that UK women feel that more needs to be done to promote positive body image. Specifically, the study also found that:

 - 79% of the women surveyed would like to lose weight, despite the fact that the majority of the women sampled (78.37%) were actually within the underweight or 'normal' weight ranges.
 - 93% of the women surveyed reported that they had had negative thoughts about their appearance within the past week.
 - 39% of the women surveyed reported that they would have cosmetic surgery to change their appearance. Of the 39% who said they would have cosmetic surgery, 76% would opt for multiple surgical procedures.

The UK Weight Watchers’ ads then seem very much in synch with the cultural fabric by focusing on positive body image and self-empowerment.

Weight Watchers’ German ad features modestly dressed women with average waistlines talking about their weight loss struggles and pointing to Weight Watchers’ supportive, self-paced  program.  The German version is void of the generous claims we often see in weight loss ads. In fact, it seems in-line with the same beauty standards that prompted its most-read women’s magazine, Brigitte, to use everyday models instead of thinner, professional ones. The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Andreas Lebert, said, “"for years we've had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up… But this is disturbing and perverse and what has it got to do with our real reader?”.

Weight Watchers’ China division is only 2 years old; however, rising affluence has made this a potential viable market for Weight Watchers as China has one of the world’s fastest-growing obesity rates. Weight Watchers followed suit by opening an office in Shanghai and is taking steps to promote its program there. Likewise, its South African efforts are still very much at the ground-level. Despite this, and as obesity is a growing, global epidemic, it is conceivable that timing and not location is the biggest factor in its outreach strategy. As Weight Watchers gains footing internationally, we can be sure that intriguing, all-telling marketing will follow, giving us a bird’s eye view of how we compare in our treatment of body image across the globe.

What other campaigns reveal cultural differences among global audiences?
 

Consumers are talking, sharing, and researching more and as a result, broadcast technology no longer holds the first chair. The emergence of social media, with its hyper-fragmented niche audiences, means that mass appeal is no longer effective and marketing must now be highly targeted. Business as usual can’t survive these changing times; this is a brave new world.

In so many ways, the microagency is everything the traditional agency is not—scalable, trailblazing, and nimble; however, the biggest advantage of the microagency model for brands is its ability to effectively adapt to the changing market.

A Greenhouse for Collaboration

Simply put, a microagency is a collaborative group of solo practitioners or small studios that come together on a per project basis to establish a larger, specialized commercial offering. Unlike traditional creative agencies, the microagency’s collaborators are not set. Microagencies have the flexibility to pool the best resources for specific aspects of each project and retool as strategies evolve.  Since this dynamic creative team brings complementing perspective and expertise, the platform is a curated greenhouse for out-of-the-box strategies and prolific solutions. With less overhead, brands benefit from top-tier talent at boutique pricing when they use microagencies. 

Collaboration is the hallmark of the microagency model. When your creative team is disjointed, it shows. Many of us can recall campaigns where the strategy and design seemed at odds and sales were way off target as a result. Think Dell’s “Della” website and you get the picture of what happens when a creative team hands over its mojo and checks out. Sure, there is a refreshing bit of experimentation that goes along with making a provocative campaign. Still, there should be an authentic, organic feel to each campaign that stems from your team being on the same page with consumers. In this way, each collaborator—from writer to designer, strategist to developer—should each share an accountability that is intrinsic to any viable partnership.

Large creative agencies are known for their silos, which cloud the collaborative experience and, by default, impact output. Conversely, microagencies are masterful collaboration environments. In microagencies, each expert is keenly aware of how his or her role affects the bottom line. This makes for a well-rounded, cohesive team.

A Curated Creative Team

There is something intrinsically wrong with the assembly-line approach to marketing a brand. While the business of marketing ‘big’ is compelling, ‘value’ is what ultimately trumps size. The expertise of the small collectives is blazing the way for corporations large and small to establish relevancy, adaptability, and demonstrate expertise in this fast-paced marketplace.

Large creative agencies tend to farm out portions of a campaign to suppliers without encouraging collaboration on the strategic whole; in today’s social-media driven market, this strategy is suicidal. As brands leverage talent outside of their core teams, they should embrace collaboration regardless of where their team members come from. Microagencies bridge this gap and intuitively function as extensions of internal groups and are hand-picked for the job at hand.

PixInk Design: A Microagency Designed For the $20 Trillion Consumer

As a microagency, PixInk offers the benefits of a highly vetted group of experts in brand strategy, technology and marketing to guide brands in reaching women, the world’s most influential consumer. We are nimble enough to respond to market changes quickly and bring entrepreneurial dedication and talent to each project without the expense of overhead. Our experience in crafting digital brand experiences for the $20 trillion women market is rooted in the persuasive design research  put forth by  Stanford University’s Dr. B.J. Fogg. Our Brand Boardroom takes an atelier-style approach to brand design and marketing using dream team consulting. As the first agency focused on marketing to women based in the San Francisco Bay area, our panel of industry experts share an impressive, specialized background that helps us stay relevant, fresh, and innovative.

Brands that consider microagencies over traditional agencies are generally savvier about measuring true ROI. They are focused on seizing the best thought leadership to drive their campaigns using a panel of experts. Seamlessly tying the essence of a brand throughout its component parts is a major benefit of micro-shops. Even monolithic brands like Google are enlisting the expertise of smaller agency models.

Which aspects of the microagency are most beneficial to brands?

Adding to the cache of social media outlets, Pinterest has arrived on the scene. For individuals, the benefits are clear, but can brands find using Pinterest an outlet to building their Brand?  Pinterest’s goal is to “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”   The difference from other social media sites?  Pinterest connects people through visual inspiration.  More than an organization tool, Pinterest is a think tank for brands. Through choreography of “visual storytelling,” brands can demonstrate their unique DNA and utilize Pinterest’s roots in the tenets of the Law of Attraction and set trends that connect users emotionally with one another.

Metaphysical Marketing Connecting

“Like begets like” is the theory behind the Law of Attraction, the belief that centers on visually and vocally projecting positive thinking to encourage positive outcomes. Vision boards are a way of rendering this theory. Pinterest’s white- or cork-board set up is an online version of a similar thought process. There’s something vulnerable and therapeutic about sharing one’s dreams with strangers; however, as images get picked up or “repinned” onto other mind maps, that vulnerability becomes somewhat of an emotional connection that stems from sharing a common journey. The concept that others share similar “someday” and “here and now” visions is reassuring. Brands that share in this level of intimate exposure will cultivate a meaningful and impactful presence on Pinterest as well as lay the groundwork for community. They will also forge genuine connections while emotionally triggering consumer buying and loyalty.

Targeted Focus Groups

For brands, what’s better than having an extremely targeted clique upon which to bounce ideas, evolve, express a unique style, and plant and water brand-seeds? Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, which connect people through secondary and tertiary associations, Pinterest primarily links interests together and then sets the stage for the people who crafted those interests to connect. Because Pinterest autobiographically weaves the core elements of a brand, something transparent and authentic reaches the surface. In this way, brands can build trust and connect with their followers more organically.

Trend-setting

Pinterest is indicating promise as a commerce site by driving meaningful traffic to online retailers like Etsy. Major brands such as Nordstrom and Lands End are also paying attention. Shauna Causey, Social Media Manager for Nordstrom notes, “We found that [Pinterest is] a great way to not only share info but also learn about our community. Pinterest allows us to see what trends and styles the community likes based on engagement – likes and repins”.Brands. The viral potential of followers sharing your brand’s personality and style with similarly inspired individuals and groups is a monumental differentiation from Facebook. Considering that only 1% of Facebook Fans create content on Fan pages, Pinterest’s user-contributed model is already several steps ahead because everyone participates.

Women Lead the Way

True to their social genes, women have female-skewed Pinterest membership. In fact, demographic data suggests that 70% of users are women. The social site is also geared towards women’s design inclinations. Whether displaying a collage of clothing and accessories, posting recipe photos, or a moving video, the clean, feedback-based layout is visually encouraging and intuitive to how women interact. As women represent over 80% of global spending, brands must acknowledge Pinterest as a growing influence. This massive female purse power positions Pinterest as a noteworthy contender against other social media sites in the social commerce space.

Really, what’s not to love about Pinterest? It’s been called inspiring, stimulating—even addictive. Pinterest’s landscape is set for individuals and brands alike to share and collect. Scrapbooking the big picture, while keeping in mind its component parts, acquiring and offering feedback, and inspiring others along the way is an important part of every brand’s journey. Pinterest is a centralized platform to do all of these things and other opportunities are sure to emerge as brands delve more deeply into Pinterest waters

The beauty and auto industries have historically used “skinny” to sell lifestyle dreams. While beauty and auto brands are using more discretion in their advertising now, the “skinny” concept has but changed partners—except instead of washboard abdominals and slender legs, technology brands are touting the thinnest, most portable electronics as their trophies for good health. For many consumers, technology brands sell a more immediate, attainable lifestyle and consumers are paying attention. Words like “sleek” and “slenderized” are used to describe electronics from laptops to razors. With a focus on design, presentation and innovation, the luxury technology channel becoming an extension of users’ desires and needs while fashionably revolutionizing a new “thin”. Who knew that technology would have become a status symbol?

The concept that the thinner the technology, the more luxurious, more relevant, and successful the individual is an Apple phenomenon. It was Apple that successfully marketed retail experiences beyond price points and other technology brands are vying for a similar fortune. These brands are using innovation as the point of entry into that same luxury space. Recent product announcements at CES 2012 reveal some of the latest attempts of technology brands to crack the luxury market using the “Thin Code”:

Here’s a round up of the latest in thin tech we’re excited to see develop.

Thin TV: Organic-LED TV

AT CES 2012, LG Electronics offered details about its new 55-inch O-LED TV. According to LG, the new display will be the world's largest OLED TV and will feature an extremely small bezel on the edges at 4 millimeters thick, which is thinner than most smartphones, and weighing 16.5 pounds. It also boasts minimal energy consumption.

Skinny Smartphone: Paper Phone

A result of research at Queen's University in Canada, the e-paper prototype Paper Phone   has a 3.75-inch thin-film display and developers call it the world's first flexible smartphone. It can do everything a smartphone can, like make calls, display electronic media, store a list of contacts, and play music. The prototype is based on E-Ink technology and is about the thickness of a conference badge. It is used by bending the corners to turn a page, squeezing it to make a call, and writing on it with a pen. 

Reduced Laptop: Rolltop

Although the concept of a bendable, roll-up laptop has been around for a while, Germany's Orkin Design has recently made tweaks to the prototype that make this concept a real-life possiblity. The Rolltop laptop proposes a flat panel display wrapped around a cylinder core using O-LED and touchscreen technologies to form a notebook, tablet, and monitor.

Statistically, more consumers are using mobile technology to buy things, share information, and research according to SHIFT: How Consumer Behavior With Mobile Technology is Changing the Game For Retail and Brand Marketing, so it makes sense that gadgets would shrink. As long as consumers continue to multi-task life and work, mobile will be relevant and “thin” will have an abundant market. Still, as technology brands push for skinny technology, they must remember to follow the leader. Apple’s success isn’t because it offers the newest and the best in every category. Its focus on user experiences—even at the retail level, its ability to translate and anticipate consumer needs, and communicate solutions to them are what make Apple luxurious. Technology brands would do well to emulate this formula and take it a step further considering their own unique core values and goals. Without these considerations, technology brands will be only as relevant as their last product and thus risk making themselves their own greatest competitor.

In your opinion, which technology brands are offering “thin-novation” but missing the mark of enhanced user experiences?

Innovator – in·no·va·tor (n.) – a person or an organization who is one of the first to introduce into reality something better than before.

Cesar Castro’s an innovator, a community sourcing guru. He brings to our Brand Boardroom a wealth of experience and know-how when it comes to designing and executing platforms to assemble together diverse groups to see what’s on their minds.

One of Cesar’s recent projects involved working with a global consumer products company — they were looking to collect internal-employee-driven ideas from 12 company regions around a particular brand. The challenge was to design a virtual brainstorming platform to engage this diverse and dispersed global group. Cesar’s team provided innovation expertise to design the entire process from start to finish including the question framework, company recruiting recommendations and the use of motivations/incentives. As well, a proprietary brainstorming platform was created to host the online event.

The virtual brainstorming event took place over five days and upon completion, a comprehensive report including all the raw data was provided, along with additional tools to prioritize top ideas and filter results. Participation was key and the event garnered global participation from all 12 regions and resulted in many new ideas around the brand.

PixInk is excited to welcome Cesar Castro to our Brand Boardroom to leverage his expertise building turn-key brainstorming platforms to help our clients drive breakthrough ideas.

Girl gamers were previously thought to be socially awkward teens or introverted middle-agers, but in fact, women from various life stages and experiences are now joining the ranks of online gamers. On behalf of GameHouse®, Harris Interactive conducted a recent study to find that 64% of female online gamers are over 35 years old with an average age of 42.

The Face of Girl Gamers

In the US, older women have increasing casual game parity when compared to men of the same age groups. According to comScore, older women drive online gaming engagement among other women. To this end, gamers in the 45-54 and 55-plus groups reflect the new face of gamers. While action, adventure, and sports games are still dominated by young males, on average, women are playing casual games (puzzles, solitaire, Scrabble, for example) more than two times as men. Games like Farmville and Fashion Wars are just a few of the games that women frequent. Networked online games (games that can be played with other players) are also becoming increasingly popular among women.

What Motivates Her Game

According to “Inside the Minds of Girl Gamers,” by Business Insider, women have four primary motivations for playing online games: to detach (escape), to win (competition), to be productive (challenge), and to interact (social). The Harris Interactive study provides specific data to support the aforementioned categories: 61% of women play to relieve stress, 58% play to alleviate boredom, and 58% game to get a mental break from their lives. Despite the fact that 83% of women prefer to game alone, the same study showed that more than half of online gamers are women and that these women also are more likely to lead offline social lives than women who don’t game.

Why Brands Should Join In

“Women on the Web: How Women Are Shaping the Internet”, a white paper by comScore notes, “In the US market, women make just under half of the internet population but generate 58 percent of e-commerce dollars”. As such, retail brands have a significant opportunity to blend women’s growing interest in gaming with their propensity to shop online. Since women spend 20 percent more time on retail sites than men, they are primed for engagement and interaction to encourage sales and ongoing e-commerce relationships. Holding true to their purse power, women dominate virtually every consumer category, with outdoor/sports, consumer electronics/software, and music categories being only marginally outpaced by men.

Games provide an innovative, underutilized opportunity to interact with women by giving her an avenue to escape, compete, be challenged, and interact. According to Forrester, a technology and market research company, 84% of marketers have no plans to use games in their marketing efforts despite the fact that online games represent audiences that rival television. With contextually relevant games, brands can tune into lucrative and innovative ways to connect with consumers, and particularly, the world’s most powerful consumer, which boasts over $20 trillion in consumer spending: women. 

By using merchandise design, fashion brands are taking the opportunity to guide consumer behavior and reinforce brand image in the brick-and-mortar world. Technology retail design, on the other hand, hasn’t yet caught on to the value of similar display aesthetics. With a few notable exceptions (Apple and Sony being two), technology brands continue to produce bland, homogenous ways of “showcasing” their products in both flagship stores and via other retail/e-tail channels.

XX-Factor Wiring

Not acknowledging the importance of presentation throughout the consumer shopping experience alienates technology retailers’ most financially significant consumers — women. Women purchase 57% of consumer electronics, accounting for $80 billion in consumer dollars. This degree of influence provides a compelling business case for putting women’s preferences and shopping considerations at the forefront of their design strategies. These considerations include:

 - Women’s communication styles

 - Their decision-making processes

 - Their design aesthetics (images, graphics, colors, etc.)

 - Their propensity towards simple, graphic-oriented designs

Navigating the Female Circuit

Since women are largely responsible for purchasing items for others in their households, they approach the shopping experience differently than do men. Therefore, it follows that retailers design spaces according to how women buy. According to Kelly Mooney, president of Resource Interactive, women are influenced first by lifestyle and then by the product.

Andrea Learned, author of Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy, says that women make layered observations when pondering purchasing decisions. For example, they may ask: Will this product fit in my house? Who will use this product? Is this product safe to use around my kids? Retailers would do well to craft their messaging and design around highlights of what women really want to know, and insure that their shopping experience is positive. To this end, technology retail giant Best Buy recently recruited a panel of 40 women to inform the design of a flagship store made for women and by women.

Fashion-Forward Application

Because many tech brands depend on retail distributors to help them claim profits, their integrity and identity are vulnerable to shoulder-brushing competitors all vying for consumer attention. For this reason, retail displays play a major role in forging emotional connections with their consumers. Looking to the fashion boutique as an example, technology retailers can see how well-designed presentations help maintain the integrity of a brand despite the use of a multi-brand platform.

Using fashion retail as a blueprint, retailers can tap into the power of atmospherics to influence women’s consumer buying decisions and help them experience technology brands in a more positive and differentiating way. 

Designers have begun to embrace creativity in direct marketing and design not by the “rules,” but for responses.

Everything we know about direct marketing is shifting. Print-inspired email design is emerging from the cautious best practices once responsible for rigid templates, preview panes, and (gasp) plain-text emails. As Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison discussed recently on MediaPost: 

Women consumers are scrolling through emails, which are beginning to resemble glossy magazine ads more than unresponsive direct marketing sell sheets, which typically frequent inboxes. Brands are being rewarded for their design rebellion with opens, clicks, oohs, and ahs.

Design Rules

Design Responsively

Some Best Practices Still Rule