The Story of Unstoring.

The enD of The ShoP AS We KnoW iT !

One of the first products to be sold on the Internet was a pizza. That was in 1994 and the provider was an international restaurant chain called Pizza Hut. One year later Jeff Bezos took up the idea of online retailing. He started by selling books online on amazon. com. The sales channel faced a wall of scepticism. Who in the world would order books online when they could buy them in a shop? Fifteen years later the answer is clear: lots of people, and more every day. A comparatively young trio of Apple, Google and Amazon are in the process of forcing 500 years of printing and its distribution channels to adopt new business models. This development is already in full swing in the music industry and has the potential to turn conventional retail upside down. The triumphal advance of the Internet and e-commerce is changing the way in which the world gets its information, exchanges views and ideas, and shops. There is no sign that this momentum is about to change. The launch of user-friendly Internet browsers in the mid-1990s triggered the race for ever cheaper and more powerful terminals; since then, the story of retailing has been an ongoing process of steady revision. Bypassing the shop.

Unstoring denotes a development that short-circuits the classic retailer. It is a future that could render shops superfluous – if they refuse to change. The reality is that digital technologies are increasingly part of the real world. The clear distinction between online and offline, between virtual and real, is blurring as the two universes merge. But what will happen to conventional shops when more people use the (virtual) pixel shopping cart than the conventional (real) wire cart? When sales migrate off the retail floor, it is time to reinvent the retail store.

Download the summary of the report here

Facebook Considers Adding The Hate Button.

Just imagine the impact on your brand's Facebook centered marketing strategy if you have more "hates" than "likes" on your brand's timeline. 

When the original Like button was announced, Mark Zuckerberg made a bold prediction there would be over 1 billion Likes across the web in just the first 24 hours. Sources at Facebook say Mark is estimating 2 billion Hates on the first day. Facebook studies have shown the sad fact that people hate things on the Internet more than they like things. There’s also an internal debate on whether the new button should be called “Hate” or “Dislike.”

Since the tiny Like button makes up such a huge part of Facebook’s revenue, the introduction of the Hate button could raise Facebook’s valuation further ahead of the IPO.

If FB decides to add the button, then personally I think "dislike" has a better ring to it than "hate".

Read more about the possibilities of hate button here

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Saving Abandoned Brand Mobile Apps.

There’s a graveyard of brand apps that were a little more than a flash in the pan in terms of repeat usage from consumers. And the reason for this is simple. The majority of brand apps serve little or no utility at all to users.

The key, unsurprisingly, is making apps that are based more on long-term utility rather than campaign one-offs. The tradeoff is that true brand platforms require a mix of departments while most brand apps originate from marketing departments and are geared to specific campaigns.

“Utility apps have broken the path for the app world,” said Yvonne Caravia, chief experience officer for Mobients, a mobile design and strategy agency. “People who are on the go want to get stuff done quickly, and having a branded app that provides some sort of utility is a good way to get them coming back over and over again.

A study by Localytics found that just one in four mobile apps are never used again after being downloaded. The same study also found that 26 percent of apps aren’t used more than once.

Read more here

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5 + 1 Huge Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Afford to Ignore

"Digital marketing is a discipline in flux", says Jonathan Gardner. We face an onslaught of shiny new technologies and platforms that promise to “change everything.” Marketers are creating similarly breathless headlines, proclaiming the next revolutionary devices/apps/social networks.

Yet, even smart marketers don’t know what changes the future will bring; but they do need to be aware that their industry is changing every day. For instance, to reach consumers marketers need to be increasingly mobile, engaging, relevant and aware of the contexts in which we currently operate. 

Here are five digital marketing trends as identified by Jonathan Gardner:

1. Location Services

2. New Ad Formats

3. User-Generated Curation

4. Advertise by Format

5. Integrated Marketing

Read more on these trends here. Would love to add Hybrid Retailing as the 6th trend, wherein there is a seamless integration of the ZMOT and the FMOT, specifically with the use of mobile devices. 

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Deals May Get You in the Door, but They Won't Build Relationships.

2010 & 2011 were all about "deals". Everyone chased the "new & shiny objects" However, there is an increasing concern on the value of the "deal customers". Marketers have avidly sought social-media fans in recent years, often using deals or sweepstakes to boost numbers. But are they really attracting the right people? 

Data from social-media analytics firm Colligent suggest many brands have attracted lots of deal seekers. And while these consumers may be profitable, they're not the most-effective brand advocates, according to some analysts and social-media executives. 

Brands that build fan bases using sweepstakes "end up with a very difficult time trying to get those fans to engage," said Justin Kistner, director of social products at analytics firm WebTrends. "They were never with your brand in the first place. They just wanted a chance to win that iPad," he said. "We call it garbage fans." 

Twitter now is even touting its relative lack of deal-seekers among brand followers as a selling point vs. Facebook. 

Read more here on Adage.  Also read here about "deep discounting"

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