The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) and The Wall Street Journal have announced winners of the first-ever Business Traveler Innovation Awards.

Corporate travelers nominated services, products and ideas that help to make business trips easier and more productive.

Submissions were categorized, and the public voted for their favorites.

The winner of the Travelers’ Choice Award, presented to the innovation that received the highest number of votes, and winners in each of the eight categories, will be honored at the 2010 NBTA International Convention & Exposition on August 9 in Houston.

Craig Banikowski, CCTE, C.P.M., CMM, NBTA President & CEO, said, “In today’s new corporate culture of cost containment, business travelers welcome innovations that help to make their trips more efficient and enjoyable.”

“While necessary to conduct successful business, life on the road can be challenging, and travelers have let us and others know that the products and services we’re honoring with the first Business Traveler Innovation Awards help them to maximize benefits gained from corporate travel.”

Travelers’ Choice Award
The 2010 NBTA Business Traveler Innovation Travelers’ Choice Award will be presented to Continental Airlines for the Mobile Boarding Pass. Continental Airlines introduced paperless boarding passes in December 2007, becoming the first carrier in the United States to offer this innovative product.

Paperless boarding passes enable customers to display a 2D bar code along with passenger and flight information on their mobile phone, eliminating the need for a paper boarding pass.

Category 1: Sustainable Practice
Criteria: Outstanding and original environmental efforts in the travel industry.
Winner: Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Innovation: Energy Efficient Thin Client Terminals

Enterprise’ new rental transaction system streamlines the company’s rental processes and offers significant environmental benefits in the process. The new system – ECARSTM 2.0 – connects the reservations, billing and reporting operations of more than 7,000 Enterprise rental offices around the world.

Use of the technology will enable Enterprise to cut its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 6.5 million pounds – a reduction of nearly 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per branch office per year.

Category 2: Travel Personalization
Criteria: Innovation and excellence in customizing the business travel experience for the individual.
Winner: Continental Airlines
Innovation: Mobile Boarding Pass

Category 3: Traveler Comfort and Well-Being
Criteria: Products/services that focus on travelers’ ease and well being.
Winner: Westin Hotels and Resorts
Innovation: The Heavenly Bed.

Westin jump-started the hotel-retail phenomenon in 2000 following tremendous guest feedback to the launch of its plush Heavenly Bed. To date, nearly 40,000 Heavenly Beds, 100,000 pillows, more than 32,000 sheets, and more than 10,000 signature Heavenly spa amenities have been sold. In late 2009, Westin furthered its commitment to shut-eye when it launched a sleep study and sleep hotline with the National Sleep Foundation to help travelers troubleshoot common sleep problems while on the road.

Category 4: Meetings & Conventions
Criteria: Solutions that optimize event success for corporate planners and/or attendees.
Winner: Hyatt
Innovation: The Hyatt Meeting Promise

The Hyatt Meeting Promise is a written guarantee of flawless event execution to ensure businesses get the most out of their corporate meeting experiences. The policy states that if the meeting planner’s expectations in terms of the service and/or quality of a meeting at a hotel are not met, Hyatt will immediately take steps to resolve the problem to the satisfaction of the meeting planner, and/or refund a portion of the master account with a credit for future use.

Category 5: Outstanding Apps
Criteria: Applications that help business travelers organize and/or make best use of their time on the road.
Winner: TripIt
Innovation: Travel Organizer

TripIt invented the Itinerator to help make it easier for busy travelers to organize and share their trip info.  Users can forward confirmation emails from over 1,000 different booking sites to automatically get a master itinerary with all travel plans, plus maps, directions, weather and more. TripIt has free mobile apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, as well as a mobile website that’s compatible with all mobile devices.

Category 6: Travel Convenience & Efficiency
Criteria: Services that expedite the travel process.
Winner: National Car Rental
Innovation: Emerald Club

Membership in The Emerald Club provides benefits and services designed to get travelers on their way faster than before.  Members can earn their choice of free rental days or hotel or airline points/ miles with National’s frequent travel partners.

Category 7: Business Collaboration
Criteria: Platforms that keep business travelers connected to people and projects around the world.
Winner: Cisco Systems
Innovation: Show and Share

Cisco Show and Share is a social video system that helps organizations create and manage highly secure video communities to share ideas and expertise, optimize global video collaboration, and personalize the connection between customers and employees with user-generated content.

Category 8: Traveler Productivity
Criteria: Solutions that keep mobile executives productive.
Winner: Apple, Inc.
Innovation: iPad

iPad is the first tablet computer, a portable device intended to fill the gap between the smartphone and a traditional computer. It supports HD video and offers 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR support, as well as an accelerometer, compass, speaker, microphone and Apple standard 30-pin connector. At 0.5” thick and weighing 1.5lbs, it may just be heralding the start of a new era in portable computing.

Judges’ Selection Award – To Be Determined
Ten of the top submissions will be featured at the Business Traveler Innovation Pavilion at the NBTA Convention, where attendees can demonstrate and learn about products and services recommended by their colleagues.

A panel of travel celebrity judges will evaluate the featured innovations to determine the 2010 Business Travels Innovation Judges’ Selection Award winner, which will be honored with the nine other winners on August 9.

As 2011 planning season approaches, here are a few things you can do to increase the probability that you’ll get the resources you need for marketing to help drive business goals. Before you go in with your request, work your way down this checklist:
1. Ensure that you are aligned to the proper goals and objectives. Your recommendations need to be linked back to specific ways they will help achieve company goals: revenue, profit, customer value, market share, etc. The more specifically you can demonstrate these links, the more likely your recommendations will be taken seriously. Don’t focus on the intermediary steps like awareness or brand preference. Keep the emphasis on the business outcomes you intend to influence.
2. Make sure you’ve squeezed every drop from the current spend patterns.  These days, zero-based budgeting is price-of-entry. Before you can ask for more, you need to show how you have “de-funded” things you previously did that either A) didn’t work; B) weren’t aligned to evolving company goals; or C) seem less important now than other initiatives. By offering up some of your own cuts to partially fund your recommendations, you demonstrate a strong sense of managing a portfolio of investments, and a willingness to make hard choices with company money.
3. Have a plan for how you will prioritize the new marketing funds strategically, not just tactically. If you get another $1, where will you put it? Before you answer in terms describing programs or tactics, think about segments, geographies, channels, product groups, etc. Knowing where the best strategic leverage points are is far more important than tactical mix. You can always evolve the mix of tactics. But the best tactics applied against the wrong strategic needs won’t produce any results.
4. Identify the points of leverage you can exploit. Results accrue when you place resources behind places of competitive leverage. Knowing where your leverage points are helps ensure you are spending where it will produce noticeable outcomes. Common leverage points are relative value proposition: strength, channel dominance, message effectiveness, and customer switchability. There are others, too. But spending without leverage is just playing into the hands of the competitive environment. Without leverage, you have no reasonable expectation of changing anything.
5. Demonstrate an understanding of how the business environment has changed. Even if you have clear leverage opportunities, the business environment is powerful enough to neutralize just about any unilateral effort a given company might make. Sudden swings in the macro-economic spectrum or the regulatory environment could have you spending into an impenetrable headwind and dramatically reduce the expected impact of your investments. Identify the issues that could create the strongest headwind (or tailwind) for you — interest rates, employment rates, housing starts, currency fluxuations — and prepare an assessment of how they might impact your proposed results.
6. Proactively assess the risk of your plans. As marketers, we plan like matadors, but have the track record of the bull. We spend so much time conceptualizing our plans, but comparatively little imagining what might go wrong. Which is unfortunate, given that something almost always does go wrong. So run your plan by your company’s “Debbie downer” – the skeptical one who always sees the worst in everything. Let her tell you what might derail your plans, and then develop a plan to manage your risks accordingly. Being proactive about identifying and managing risks demonstrates your ability to dispassionately assess options and pursue realistic opportunities for success with your eyes wide open.
7. Propose “good” benchmarks and targets for your intended outcomes. Every recommendation should come with expected performance outcomes. Even if you present a range of possible results, you’ll need something to demonstrate the baseline of performance you are starting from, and the yardstick by which you will measure success. This creates the perception of accountability, which appeals to the deeply human desire to trust in someone else where our own personal expertise leaves off.
These seven pre-tested elements will prepare you for every question that might arise in connection with your proposals. And while competing investments might ultimately attract the resources you were fighting for, this process ensures that your reputation as a capable manager will grow even if your budget doesn’t.

Although the exhibition industry continued to suffer in the first quarter of 2010, its rate of decline so far this year has slowed, finds the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), which last week released the first quarter findings for its annual CEIR Index report.

According to CEIR data, the exhibition industry experienced a 4 percent decline in the first quarter of 2010, compared to the first quarter of 2009. Although it’s not growth, the decline is “much smaller” than the 11.6 percent decline between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009, CEIR pointed out.

Also shrinking, it indicated, is the decline in exhibition attendance. “The CEIR Index, released in April, reported that one of the leading indicators to look for in a recovery of the exhibition industry is professional attendees,” CEIR said in a news release. “First quarter data indicates a decrease of 0.2 percent over 2009, which is much less than the 1.5 percent decrease over the same period last year, as well as the year-end overall decrease of 4.1 percent.”

Although two more exhibition industry indicators—net square feet and revenue—also declined in the first quarter, by 6.2 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, compared to 14.8 percent and 19.7 percent last year, at least one economic indicator is up, according to CEIR, which painted an optimistic picture of the exhibition industry’s future.

“The Leading Economic Index, used by The Conference Board to project economic performance, reports an increase of 1.4 percent in March, following a 0.4 percent gain in February and a 0.6 percent rise in January,” CEIR said. “The U.S. LEI is now at its highest level. This indicates to economists that there will likely be moderately improving economic conditions over the next six to nine months.”

Before a trade show opens, no one knows if you have a 10’ in-line booth or a 40’ x 40’ island exhibit.  You are on an even playing field, and with the right pre-show marketing, you can attract as many customers as your larger competitors.

Here are some things to remember when you are planning your pre-show marketing:

• Create a pre-show strategy that takes advantage of the power of social media: microsites, social networking sites, purls (personal urls), and mailed or emailed invitations that reflect the look and feel of your exhibit and graphics.
• Your pre-show strategy should stand out and say:  “Look at us!  Forget the other guys! You don’t want to miss our booth!”
• An embedded email postcard is efficient and probably more effective than a snail mailing.
• Avoid using pre-printed labels if you are mailing—they are an automatic ‘junk mail’ signal
• Provide a value for attendees  to visit your booth—a value to them, not just to you. And communicate this value in every piece of pre-show marketing.
• Make an offer to attract attendees to your booth:  what’s in it for them if they put you on their must-see lists?
• Keep your  pre-show message short and compelling—but remember to include the basics, like your booth number.
• Give your prospects a reason to connect with you before the show, perhaps by giving them an additional incentive—perhaps free shipping or a discount on their first order.

The power of pre-show marketing is that it can unlock the success of your entire show!

(This article by Sue Hatch appeared on MeetingsNet.com)

For travel and meetings, nothing has vaulted to the top of the must-have list faster than wireless hotel Internet access. Most properties now offer Wi-Fi, but spotty service and high fees can still be an aggravation. That?s not the case at Holiday Inn, Hyatt?s Andaz Hotels, or Peninsula Hotels though; they were among the hotel brands that made HotelChatter?s list of Best Hotel Wi-Fi in its Annual Wi-Fi Report 2010.

While the data rates of 3G cellular networks have freed travelers to do much more on their mobile phones and on 3G card?enabled laptops, a Wi-Fi connection is still faster than 3G and a must for many. HotelChatter?s report is a useful guide to finding free, high-quality service?or for knowing that you?ll be adding $10 to $18 per day to your bill for the privilege of logging on.

The information in the report can also be an important starting point for site selection for travel and meetings managers. The Association for Corporate Travel Executives recently polled members and found that more than half had travelers who declined to stay at a property where the connectivity was marginal or poor.

HotelChatter?s sixth annual report includes sections on the best hotel Wi-Fi (below), the worst hotel Wi-Fi, international hotel Wi-Fi, and, for the major chains, sums up its findings in this chart.

The bad news for meeting professionals is that many hotel companies offer free Wi-Fi at their lower price brands but charge for the service at their higher-end business and luxury properties. For example, according to the HotelChatter report, InterContinental Hotels Group offers free in-room Wi-Fi at its Holiday Inn, Hotel Indigo, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites properties, but charges for it at all InterContinental properties and at some of its Crowne Plaza hotels.

One solution is making Wi-Fi a priority at the negotiating table. Twenty-three percent of ACTE members surveyed reported that they remove Wi-Fi fees from their preferred hotel contracts. Another solution is joining frequent-guest programs, many of which do not charge a fee.

HotelChatter?s Best Hotel Wi-Fi 2010

* Andaz Hotels
* Standard Hotels
* Peninsula Hotels
* Holiday Inn Hotels
* ?The Little Guys?: Ace Hotels, Gansevoort Hotels, AKA Hotels, Desires Hotels, Luxe Hotels, Personality Hotels, and BD Hotels

Always Free, All The Time

* Hotel Indigo
* Courtyard by Marriott Hotels
* Residence Inn Hotels
* Best Western Hotels
* Four Points by Sheraton
* Hyatt Place Hotels
* Element Hotels
* Aloft Hotels
* Red Roof Inns
* Hampton Inn Hotels
* ?Wyndham Garden Hotels
* ?Wingate By Wyndham
* Drury Hotels

Always Free for Loyalty-Program Members

* Kimpton Hotels: free for InTouch members
* JDV Hotels: free for Joy of Life Club members
* Omni Hotels: free for Omni Select Guest members
* Hyatt Hotels: free for Diamond- and Platinum-level members
* Fairmont Hotels: free for Fairmont Presidents Circle members
* Loews Hotels: free for YouFirst members at the Blue level
* Wyndham Hotels: free for ByRequest members

Mostly Free, Depending on the Brand

* Choice Hotels
* InterContinental Hotels
* Wyndham Hotels
Worst Hotel WiFi 2010
While we’ve practically acted like a Justin Bieber fan over the amount of new hotels with free WiFi that are out there, the truth remains that the hotel WiFi world is still confusing, incongruent, and unreliable.. Brand inconsistency (meaning it’s free at some hotels and not at others, even though they are the same brand) and worse, bad WiFi reception is still prevalent–even when you’ve ponied up the money WiFi. We’ve even heard of hotels that promise free WiFi but then telling you to run across the street to the restaurant to get it, or asking you to crowd around and old iMac in the lobby to tap into “free WiFi in the lobby”.

We’ve also identified an entire city where you are constantly struggling to find acceptable WiFi–Las Vegas. (But we do know of a few places to get it free.) Yet the biggest offenders on this list remain the hotels who repeatedly refuse to get hip to free WiFi, are charging up the wazoo, and more importantly charging inconsistently for what can be unreliable service. Again, let’s go on a perp walk.

1. W Hotels: Dear W Hotels, we’re really excited about all your cool new properties lined up for the next decade but you know what’s not cool? You’re schizophrenic WiFi policy. Wasn’t it free in lobbies a few years ago but pay-for in the room? We haven’t been able to log on in a W hotel lobby in a while and we’ve balked at paying the $15 daily fee in-room. You often refer to your properties as “cool” (colonial cool, cowboy cool, congressional cool, etc) but we think cool is understanding that the types of people who like your design, style and location also like free WiFi. And not just Platinum SPG members. So why not get cool to this already?

2. DoubleTree Hotels: Doubletree may have sumptuous free cookies but their pay-for-WiFi policy depresses and confuses us, especially now that they’ve begun to snap up cool hotels like theWit in Chicago and The Curtis Hotel in Denver. (theWit is pay-for while The Curtis is free.) Also confusing is the fact that some Doubletrees are free in the lobby and others are not. If you want to bill yourself as a “business friendly” hotel, then it should be free throughout, cookies be damned.

3. Four Seasons Hotels: This is our sixth annual WiFi Report and the Four Seasons Hotels group is on the list for the sixth time! What does it take to win such a prestigious award? Forcing your already high-paying guests to fork over at least $11 a day year after year to access this new-fangled contraption called the World Wide Web. Congrats FS!

4. Marriott Hotels, Flagship & High End properties: Bill, please don’t be mad at us! We love you and your secretary’s internet-savvy ways but the fact remains that WiFi is confusing at your hotels. JW Marriott, Marriott, Renaissance and Ritz-Carlton all still charge guests and at varying prices. And when we asked our Twitter audience for stories on egregious hotel WiFi many reader responses involved Marriott hotels. Now we know you are about to start offering free WiFi for Gold and Platinum members of Marriott Rewards but reaching that level takes a lot of nights sleeping with you — don’t follow Starwoods Platinum lead on this one. Please say that when Edition Hotels start opening later this year, that you will come through with the promise of free WiFi.

5. Mandarin Oriental Hotels: Mandarin has flown under our radar in previous years but this year we’ve noticed some outrageous WiFi charges at MO Hotels like £15 a day in London and $18 a day in Vegas. The MO hotels in NYC, Boston and Miami charge $15 a day for in-room access and there is no free WiFi at any of the other international locations, although some do have it free in the lobbies. This is some serious Four Seasons territory we are getting into here as Mandarin rooms are notoriously expensive. Is free WiFi not a part of Eastern philosophy?

Still Charging for In-Room Internet
· Hilton Hotels: Hilton has a bunch of lower-priced brands that do offer free WiFi for guests but their flagship Hilton brand, Conrad Hotels and Waldorf-Astoria Collections are all charging for them. And there doesn’t appear to be an incentive for high-status HHonors members either.
· Westin Hotels: Westin is all about renewal and relaxation but it’s kinda hard to block out life’s daily frustrations when you’re asking us to pay a daily rate for WiFi.
· Other Starwood Hotels: The rest of the Starwood Hotel brands like the Luxury Collection and St. Regis Hotels are still charging for internet. Starwood has offered it free to Platinum members of their SPG program but that is a super tough level to get to if you’re just a regular traveler and not Ryan Bingham.
· Thompson Hotels: The price varies from property to property but the cost typically start at $10 a day.
· Morgans Hotel Group: Internet charges start at $10.95 a day.
· Kor Hotels: Most Kor Hotel brands charge for internet in-rooms but there are some exceptions like the Viceroy Miami, The Viceroy Palm Springs and The Tides Zihuatanejo. So you can’t be sure of what you’ll get.

John Capone explores trust in brands. Visit gge.com to see how we can help you build trust in your brand across your markets.

When Millward Brown’s latest research (conducted in partnership with The Futures Company) reported Amazon is “the most trusted brand in U.S.” (either online or off) it said as much about the way customers now relate to brands as it did about customer service or the usual metrics used to measure brand success. The new “TrustR” metric employed by Millward, which indexes for both trust and the likelihood that a person will recommend a brand might very well have been termed the Facebook Factor.

That an online brand is most trusted is significant, that it is most trusted and most likely to be recommended is even more significant. The study, titled “Beyond Trust” purports to address “engaging consumers in a post-recession world,” but it can not avoid the post-digital world, where Amazon, a brand that has been at least partially socialized since the beginning of Amazon Lists more than a decade ago, has earned loyalty from its customers, and the ease of passing the brand around, of course puts it in position to capitalize on that loyalty.

A recent Forrester Research study showed that 59% of all online consumers engage in social networks at least once a month, and as this time spent with social media increases, so too do the opportunities for brands to connect with customers. Perhaps, at present, the interaction with customers is most effective in a niche area, as indicated by a study out of Rice University which found that a relatively small part of a brand’s customers are likely to become Facebook fans, but this is an area brands must master, as the Rice research also indicated that “fans” were significantly more likely to by loyal and spend more money on a brand.

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 2:51 am
The annual Edelman Trust Barometer always has interesting results. The tenth survey consisted of 4,875 interviews (25 years to 64 years):

The finding that jumped out at me was this:

- Trust in information from friends and peers, “people like me,” dropped by 20 points, from 47 to 27 percent.

- Trust in information from digital media–blogs, social networks, and free content sources like Wikipedia or Google news, remains low: only between 11 percent and 22 percent of respondents express trust in information about companies from these sources.

This is bad news for PR agencies because social media has been the ‘point of the spear’ for so many firms. This is what brings in new business.

This is bad news for all the ’social media experts’ out there trying to convince companies to buy their services because of the potential brand damage from not responding to ‘conversations’ in social media.

What’s the point in jumping to engage if people don’t trust their peers anyway?

This is bad news for many startups that offer real-time monitoring of the ’social’ web. There is less need for their services.

But it’s not just social media…

Other types of media have also fallen in the Edelman Trust Barometer, but not to the same degree as trust in peers.

- Trust in credibility of TV news declined by 20 points, from 44 to 24 percent.

- Trust in news coverage on the radio dropped by 17 points, from 48 to 31 percent.

- Trust in newspapers fell by 14 points, from 46 to 32 percent.

- Only 38 percent trust media (as an institution) to do what is right, down from 46 percent in 2008.

- Media companies (as an industry) have declined in credibility by 16 points (from 48 to 32 percent).

- In the U.S., media companies are tied with the insurance industry for last place. Banks are second from the bottom.

- Top trusted industry is technology and it has widened its lead over other industries.

- Tied for the second most trusted industry is Biotech and Automotive at 63 percent, followed by Energy, Retail and Food at 61 percent.

But why is ALL media less trustworthy?

- Is it because we now have more media now than ever before, both social and traditional sources of media?

- Is it because more of any thing, devalues that thing? We have more media in more forms, at more times, than at anytime in our history. Is trust in media being lost because trust has become more diluted?

- Traditional media still leads as a source for social media. But traditional media is under pressure, with fewer resources. That means more mistakes, less time to check sources, resulting in a lower quality product. That can’t be good for building trust in media.

- Is social media losing trust because of all the social media marketeers that seem to be the loudest voices in many streams?

That would make it seem as if social media can be manipulated, or used to an advantage by businesses. Which is exactly what the social media mavens are saying. A key finding of the Edelman Trust Barometer is that trust in businesses is fragile.

Therefore, is it business involvement in social media that is affecting people’s trust in social and traditional media?

The Edelman survey has raised some interesting questions…(see GGE.com for some answers)

Tom Foremski reports on the business and culture of Silicon Valley at the intersection of technology and media. He also writes at Silicon Valley Watcher. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

from  Jim Gilmartin 

(To reach the important trade show attendee, the experiential potential of conventions must be tapped. Visit gge.com to see how we can help)

The 18-to-49 age group has been the Holy Grail since the 1950s. Today, the baby boomer generation makes up about one-third of the U.S. population but it controls three-fourths of the wealth. It wields $2 trillion in annual buying power. Nevertheless, frustration is mounting because the $275 billion ad industry still gears only 10% of ads toward 50-plus customers.

So How Do You Connect?

Marketing communications should be easy to read and be experiential in nature. They should reflect and understand the values of this demo and positioned as a gateway to desired experiences. Values and motivators for this group include:

• Autonomy and self sufficiency (independence/participation)

• Social connectedness (relationships/friendships)

• Altruism (opportunity to share wisdom and ability to do for others: family, community and country)

• Personal growth (gain knowledge)

• Revitalization (need to rejuvenate)

The more ads and sales approaches that reflect the product or service is in harmony with these values and motivators the higher the success rate.

Aging-related changes like reduced vision need also be considered. For example, as we age, we need more light to see, pastel colors become distorted and blend to dark, etc. Large font, serif type, vivid colors, etc. are recommended.

We See What We Want To See

There is also evidence that communications that take a “less is more” approach to this demo are more effective. Presenting your company or product in a manner that is more suggestive than descriptive allows the target demo to subjectively interpret the message based upon his/her needs, values and motivators.

Most marketing and sales center on customers’ objective identities (demographic and psychographic) and research shows that a product’s message succeeds when it connects with a customer’s subjective identity (allowing for individual interpretation). Brilliant messages and sales presentations not connecting with the subjective mind are usually unproductive.

Stories Work Well

Another good communication tactic is the greater use of story-telling techniques. Stories are generally quicker to arouse emotions than straightforward propositions about a product’s features. Think Hallmark cards. They surpass most in using stories to present its products.

Today’s customer universe is age-weighted toward midlife values. Resistance to emotionally neutral information (mainly processed in the left hemisphere of the brain) increases in midlife. Receptivity to emotionally enriched information — such as stories — increases in midlife. Storytelling has become an important part of market strategy. Whoever tells the best story and tells it best will most likely win.

Engage:Boomers blog.

At GGE, we’ve known about experience marketing since 1961. Visit gge.com for more information.

The Last Campaign: How Experiences Are Becoming the New Advertising

Red Bull, Virgin America, Uniqlo and Guinness Lead the Way
Posted by Garrick Schmitt on 11.10.09 @ 09:50 AM         
Garrick Schmitt

Is advertising dying? It’s certainly fashionable to say so. Conventional wisdom holds that traditional media’s grip on consumers continues to slip as they increasingly turn to the internet and their peers for entertainment and purchasing recommendations.

In fact, any planner worth his or her salt can reel off a stream of statistics pointing to advertising’s demise — or lack of effectiveness, at least: Prime-time continues to erode as all the major networks saw significant declines for last year’s season; 77% of U.S. consumers trust businesses less than they did a year ago; consumers trust their peers’ opinions online more than any other source and a whopping 83% of Mad Men’s supposedly ad-friendly time-shifted audience fast forwards through commercials according to Tivo. The list goes on and on.

But perhaps it’s not that advertising is failing but that brand experiences (both on and offline) are really what are capturing the imagination of today’s consumer. In FEED, a new report that I authored with my colleagues at Razorfish, we found that digital brand experiences are having an inordinate sway on consumer purchasing habits and brand affinity.

For example, 65% of U.S. consumers report a digital experience changing their perception about a brand (either positively or negatively) and 97% of that group report that the same experience ultimately influenced whether or not they went on to purchase a product from that brand. In a nutshell, experience matters. A lot.

Of course, brands that were “born digital” intuitively know this. Google and Amazon are pioneering experiential brands. That’s why Amazon continues to pour money into improving its customer service rather than run traditional advertising or marketing campaigns. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said, “We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.” Zappos (which recently hired Mullen) built its brand the same way, as has Facebook.

But what about more traditionally-minded marketers who weren’t born digital? Can they succeed in an experience-driven world? The answer is “yes” and here are some of the best:

Red Bull: Red Bull basically pioneered the experiential category. Not only did the brand rise to prominence by sponsoring alternative athletes and lifestyles, it went further by creating its own events, like Red Bull’s Flugtag and even its own sports like Red Bull’s Crashed Ice, which takes over old Quebec with a mix of hockey and motorcross. Even the brand’s website has morphed into a blog, much like today’s most popular publishers.

 Camper: Most of us in the U.S. think of Camper as purely a comfortable yet stylish shoe brand. But the Spanish company is much more and pursues a brand ethos that’s both traditional, cultural and fashion forward simultaneously. Proof: Casa Camper, stylish (but laid back) hotels in Barcelona and Berlin that embodies the brand’s essence. Ditto for Camper Together which taps up and coming artists to create one-of-a-kind boutiques. 

Guinness: Guinness may be 250 years old, but it’s acting like a much, much younger marketer. The company has embraced experiential branding both literally and figuratively with its “It’s Alive Inside” positioning. For its anniversary, Guinness offered up Remarkable Experiences, including a trip into space. It also released a pub-finder iPhone application with a social media twist. More impressively, the brand created the Guinness Storehouse, a seven-story building that functions as both museum and pub, that has now become one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions. And, more recently, Guinness even wired up its rugby team with RFID tags (including balls and players) to capture a whole range of statistics about how fast, powerfully and effectively the game is played.

 UNIQLO: Few companies have so used digital like Uniqlo to both build a brand and breakthrough to new consumers — and on a truly global scale.The Japanese retailer surprises and delights consumers at every turn, whether through innovative iPhone applications, calendars, e-commerce, stylebooks and microsites. Uniqlo’s experiential efforts not only express the brand, but reach new consumers who may live thousands of miles away from the nearest retail location. 

Virgin America: Virgin America has gone further than most, ensuring that the experience is the marketing — and advertising in many cases. The brand targeted tech-savvy consumers early on with its Red system entertainment console and in-flight WiFi. It showed off its dramatic interiors in promotions with Diggnation and YouTube celebrities; became an early adopter of Twitter for customer service; and reinforced its brand values through its simple booking engine on VirginAmerica.com. And now, for the holidays, Virgin America is partnering with Google to offer free WiFi for travelers.

 Nike: Nike, of course, has been moving in this experiential direction for a few years. ‘We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Nike’s Trevor Edwards told the New York Times in 2007. ”We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.” And so they have. The company continually earns kudos for consumer experience breakthroughs like Nike+, its online running community; the Human Race, a global running event; and more recently the Livestrong Chalkbot which enabled users to submit a text message that would be painted (digitally) on the route of the Tour de France.

Experiences, it would seem, are the new advertising. Experiences reach and engage customers in new and more meaningful ways, they promote “trial” over simply messaging and — quite frankly — experiences are much more suited to our digital era when everything is just a click away. Our challenge now, as marketers, is to make sure that our products and brands can actually live up to the experiences that we advertise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Garrick Schmitt is group VP of experience planning at Razorfish and the agency’s global lead for user experience. He publishes FEED, Razorfish’s annual digital brand experience report and in his spare time flails about on Twitter @gschmitt.

Forty percent of exhibitors use online social media to promote their exhibits, according to a new study by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research.

Personal social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, are the most popular online tools among exhibitors. Roughly 41 percent of survey respondents say they use these networks for promotional purposes, while 36 percent use videos, and 34 percent use blogs, according to the paper, entitled “Effective Methods of Visitor Promotion, Part II: Exhibitors.” The use of these three tools is expected to rise in the next three years, especially the use of blogs. In three years, 44 percent of the 218 exhibitor respondents anticipate using blogs to promote exhibits.

Approximately 26 percent of respondents use virtual events, while 23 percent use microblogs, like Twitter. These percentages are anticipated to rise to 31 percent and 30 percent, respectively, in three years.

Further, the study revealed that exhibitors, on average, spend about $32,200 in pre- and post-show promotion for their largest event each year. Exhibitors in the industrial sector spend the most ($47,400), while government/nonprofits the least ($4,700). Roughly 57 percent expect their marketing budgets to remain the same in 2010, while 36 percent expect a decrease.

Six out of 10 respondents use multiple promotional vehicles. Handouts (62 percent), giveaways (61 percent), e-mail (58 percent), print advertising (51 percent), online advertising (49 percent), direct mail (49 percent), and show signage (49 percent) are the most popular.

Interestingly, some of the least employed methods were considered to be the most effective. For example, hospitality/entertainment for groups had the highest effectiveness rating, with 67 percent calling it an effective means of promotion. Further, 62 percent said guerilla marketing was effective, while 55 percent ranked social networking as effective. Coupons (54 percent), and giveaways (54 percent) were also high on the list.

Overall, 84 percent of those surveyed say they would like a preregistered list of attendees from the exhibition organizer.

Around 90 percent of exhibitors measure the return on investment of exhibiting, but not all measure success the same way. The most important measure, they say, is qualified leads, followed by brand awareness and potential sales. For more information on how you can use social media in your exhibit program, visit us at www.gge.com.

Go to CEIR’s Web site for more information or to obtain the study.

 Dave Kovaleski on www.meetingnet.com