Disney Makes a Big Bet on Geolocation with Gowalla

From Mashable:

Disney has decided to partner with location service Gowalla — rather than Facebook or Foursquare — for an immersive location-based campaign to help people explore its flagship Disneyworld and Disneyland parks.

The Gowalla/Disney partnership focuses around custom Passport pages that not only show off Disney-branded stamps (Gowalla’s version of Badges), but also a photo and check-in stream. Gowalla’s Disney page also offers Disney-branded pins that users can earn by completing specific trips within Disneyworld and Disneyland.

This isn’t just a few stamps and a check-in stream, though; Gowalla and Disney have created literally hundreds of stamps for rides and locales within the two parks. Everything from the fireworks show to “Finding Nemo-The Music” offers a stamp or pin that can be earned by checking in.

This is a major win for Gowalla; Disney is the world’s most-recognized entertainment brand, and any form of promotion by Disney should drive new users and extra attention to the location-based service. It’s struggled to keep a high profile in the face of stiff competition from Foursquare which raised $20 million earlier this year, and Facebook, whose Places feature recently got a new deals platform.

Neither Foursquare nor Facebook seem suited for creating the type of exploration experience that Disney likely wanted to deliver to its audience, which is why the Gowalla partnership makes some sense to us. Still, location is far from mainstream and it’s unclear how many people Mickey Mouse can drive to adopt the checkin.

5 Invaluable Marketing Lessons from an Epic Campaign for… Cream Cheese?

From Mashable:

Asking kitchen-savvy women to not only invent their own dishes, but also shoot, edit and upload videos to a contest website seems like a recipe for disaster. But when Kraft invited women to do just that in its latest online promotional campaign for Philadelphia Cream Cheese, it got about 5,600 more responses than the 400 it set as its goal. With Paula Deen at its helm, what was intended to be a one-year campaign blossomed into a thriving social network of more than 30,000 women.

“When it was all laid on the table, I couldn’t believe the opportunity. I had to pass on an ‘attagirl’ or a boost to more women out there,” explained Paula Deen at a recent promotional luncheon.

When someone seated at a nearby table reminded Deen that the campaign has also been successful in selling more cream cheese, she looked sarcastically surprised. “It did? I hadn’t even thought of that!” she said.

The truth is that the The Real Women of Philadelphia helped sell quite a bit more cream cheese — 5% more, as of August. As a branded social network, The Real Women of Philadelphia is about as successful as the cream-cheese-infused French Apple Cake that swept the dessert video competition. These four aspects contributed to the campaign’s sweet success:

1. Leverage an Existing Community

Instead of building a network from scratch, the campaign aligned itself with a personality that already had a large following. “This has been kind of like a marriage made in heaven,” Deen explained. “…Philadelphia Cream Cheese has always been a part of my refrigerator.”

There are arguably few personalities who could represent cream cheese with more gusto, and Paula Deen’s large fan base was likely to already be cooking with cream cheese. By advertising the Real Women of Philadelphia campaign on Paula Deen’s website and having Paula Deen star in ads on other media, Kraft was able to reach an existing community of the women it wanted to speak to. EQAL, the company that beat out companies like ABC and Yahoo for the opportunity to produce the campaign in partnership with Digitas, referred to Paula Deen’s role as the “igniter.”

2. Create a Reason for Users to Create Content

Even with Paula Deen as an ambassador, it’s hard to imagine that the campaign would have had much success as, let’s say, a social network feature on the Philadelphia Cream Cheese website. The competitive aspect was and is crucial to the success. For the first iteration of the contest, women submitted instructional videos about their invented cream cheese recipes. Sixteen finalists were chosen and flown to Atlanta for a live competition, hosted by Paula Deen, that determined the four women who would become “hosts” for the next iteration of the competition and win $25,000. Currently these four hosts are accepting submissions for the cookbook that Kraft will create using 80 of the best recipes from the community, recipes from the four hosts, and Paula Deen recipes. Every day the hosts choose a winning recipe from the community, which earns its author $500.

Because women have invested themselves in creating content for these contests, they feel more ownership of the site and are more likely to visit frequently. Greg Goodfried, the co-founder and COO of EQAL, says that it’s important to have some motive for people to create content on a branded social network. This motive doesn’t necessarily need to be a competition, but it needs to be strong enough to spark the community.

3. Focus on Community Content, Not Your Content

Between videos of Paula Deen and vidoes starring the four hosts, the EQAL team has produced more than 50 videos for the site. But they are careful to keep the spotlight on the user-generated content. During the initial competition, for instance, the homepage featured select submissions. One main feature of the site is a gallery of community recipe submissions, and the team will post especially impressive contributions from the community on the LoveMyPhilly Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“There was a really great sense that the content people were sending in was the main attraction and made them feel like stars, and it made people thoroughly engaged,” Goodfried says.

4. Step Aside

When Kraft launched the campaign, the company wasn’t sure what to expect.

“I think originally we thought that they would talk a lot about food, a lot about the competition,” Goodfried says. “[We thought] there might be a little bit of competitive component to it, and they would just all be excited about the opportunity to win.”

When the women started talking about their personal lives, it surprised the community’s architects. At one point, a woman mentioned that she couldn’t afford a dress for her daughter’s school dance. Other women in the community offered to ship their own grown daughters’ dresses to her. One woman offered to make a dress. Another woman who wasn’t sure how to use a video editing program mailed her raw video submission to another member of the community who had volunteered to edit it.

Instead of trying to divert these discussions back toward cream cheese, EQAL decided to let the community shape the site. When the managers saw the conversations shaping around individuals lives, they added a weekly “spotlight” post in which they profile a community member that has been nominated or shared something interesting on the site. When forum topics popped up that were unrelated to Kraft, cheese, or food, they let them be. The tools on the site allowed women to create a robust profile, privately message each other, and participate in whatever way they wanted. By letting the members shape the community, Kraft was able to build a stronger one.

“These incredible personal connections that extended beyond food, beyond cooking, beyond anything related to the competition just occurred,” Goodfried says. “There are substantial numbers of women that we have talked to that have way more friends on Real Women of Philadelphia than they have on Facebook.”

5. Play a Supportive Role, Not a Director’s Role

If the creators of the social network can make it richer by getting out of the way, what are they supposed to do once the site launches?

In this case, they spent a lot of time helping women participate by fielding questions about editing and uploading videos. After a couple of weeks, other women in the community started answering these kinds of questions in the forums. But the role of the managers remained supportive.

“The only reason we build these sites is to encourage people to come to them to make content and submit content,” Goodfried says. “It’s not one-way where we’re just publishing things and people are coming and consuming it. We’re trying to start this spark of a conversation, this spark of community, and then encourage the community to be engaged.”

For Holiday Advertising, Target Takes Aim at #BlackFriday

From Mashable:

A week and a half before retail’s biggest day of the year, Target has bought the Twitter hashtag #BlackFriday.

The retail giant is using this promoted trend as a way to publicize a daily gift card sweepstakes between now and Saturday, November 27. This Wildfire-powered giveaway has users tweeting about the sweepstakes — tweets that, of course, include the #BlackFriday hashtag. Publicity that publicizes itself is so meta.

Target’s link from Twitter sends users to a promotional page focused on its two-day Black Friday sale. Target is also giving web shoppers special daily deals from this page.

While the hashtag, like any, carries its share of spam, a large number of real users are weighing in on Black Friday shopping plans (or working woes, for those who labor in retail). Target’s ad is a timely and appropriate entry into the ongoing conversation; at the same time, it amplifies the conversation as users jump on the trending topic bandwagon to discuss Black Friday and their holiday wishlists.

Twitter’s promoted trends are the kind of ad inventory that Ev Williams was talking about Wednesday at Web 2.0 Summit when he said that brands are demanding more ads than Twitter has available to sell them. In fact, the former Twitter CEO said the supply-demand ratio for ads had become the company’s biggest challenge.

Target itself is no stranger to smart inclusion of social media into its marketing and sales mix. Just yesterday, Target announced a partnership with location startup Shopkick to offer rewards for user checkins; at the end of the summer, the retailer worked with Gilt Groupe, a private-sale network, to promote its designer lines. And earlier this fall, the retailer began selling Facebook credits in stores.

What do you think: Is hashtag marketing going to generate great returns for Target and other major brands that experiment with Twitter advertising?

How To Engage Customers On YouTube Without Picking Up A Video Camera

From Social Times:

More and more brands are promoting themselves by posting their own videos to YouTube, hoping they’ll go viral. However, what you may not know is that you can achieve just as much success on YouTube, if not more, without even picking up a video camera. Read on to learn how you can engage your customers and spread the word about your brand and product without creating a single video.

Whether you are trying to promote a makeup or hairstyling product, an electronic device, a food or cooking tool, clothes, or something else entirely, odds are that people are already posting videos about it and talking about it on YouTube. They may be talking about your brand specifically, or they may be talking about a similar product. So you’ve got two options—(1) You can create your own video content to add to the clutter and do what you can to promote it; or (2) you can track down videos where people are already talking about and reviewing your product or similar products and reach out to those vloggers and viewers to help them help you. Which do you think is the better option? If you chose number 2 you’re correct.

There are thousands of vloggers on YouTube from all walks of life, of all tastes and interests. If you are thinking about promoting your brand or product on YouTube then sit down, do some research and find vloggers that are in, and speak to, your target market. Check out their videos, see what viewers are writing in the comments and start engaging with the community.

Engaging With The Community

If you see people asking questions about your specific brand, or a range of products that your product falls under, answer them. Be helpful, be friendly, be appealing. Remember, the goal is to kill them with kindness and get them interested in your product. Please, please, please note that it is never a good idea to be spammy. The idea is not to go onto relevant videos and write a comment like, “If you like this video you’ll LOVE eating Bob’s Bison Burgers,” with a link to your Bob’s Bison Burgers website. Not every comment or response that you make should be about your company. Be a part of the community, rather than just trying to promote your product.

Contacting Vloggers

Once you have become active in the YouTube community you can start reaching out to vloggers. Target vloggers that have a decent following and that vlog about topics related to your brand or product. Then contact them via YouTube, or private email if they provide it, to let them know about your product and that you would like to give them a free sample or loaner if they would like to review it.

Keep in mind that you may not even have to contact a vlogger personally. He or she may see your comments or find out about your product on their own and create a video to review it. Sounds pretty good, right?

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on this topic, and they spoke with the director of marketing for Benchmade knives who told them, “It’s cheaper and more convincing if a vlogger reviews a knife. To produce the same number of intricate 10- to 20-minute videos that [knife vlogger] Nutnfancy does for each product we make would be impossible to afford.” Benchmade offers loaner knives to vloggers for review, as well as classified information about future products, and discounts as compensation.

Lots of brands have reached out to YouTube stars to help them with their online video campaigns. Why not be the next?

Reacting To Feedback

When you engage with the community on YouTube in this fashion you are bound to get both positive and negative feedback. When a vlogger reviews your product there is no guarantee that it’s going to be a good review, and even if it is a great review there is no guarantee that people won’t criticize your product or brand in the comments. You’ve got to be ready to express gratitude for compliments, as well as to respond to criticism.

If someone makes a video saying something negative about your brand or product than respond, either with a video response or comment explaining why you chose to create your product a certain way, or thanking them for their suggestion and changing your product to accommodate, adding new features or creating additional products to fill a need that is missing. Remember, vloggers and their viewers are your customers. If they have comments or suggestions you need to hear them and react to make your product offering better and more suited to accommodate their needs.

Rick Loughery, social-media leader at GoPro, who makes digital video cameras for action sports, told the Wall Street Journal, “We have learned that listening is as important as talking.” WSJ goes on to say, “Listening to vloggers has…helped GoPro find new niches. For instance, the company learned through vlogs that people were mounting Hero cameras onto remote-controlled cars, boats, planes and helicopters—so GoPro created a kit designed specifically for those hobbyists.”

Social Business Takes a Human Touch, No Really

From Brian Solis:

The socialization of media is the undercurrent for the Industrial Revolution of our time. Yet, here we are today, forcing social media into the aging paradigms that the social revolution set out to upset in the first place.

Businesses still weigh the ROI of participation. Teams debate over who owns the company’s social presences. The parochial in middle and upper management see it as either a playground or an extension of existing broadcast channels. Champions believe it is a time to engage and improve experiences. Visionaries recognize its ability to socialize the entire business. Yet, almost every example we see today of successful social media endeavors is in reality, siloed and disconnected from the rest of the organization.

Marketing runs a creative contest on Facebook, but the rest of the business is unaware of the campaign.

Customer service reacts to customer problems, yet product development is unaware of the recurring problems and themes.

Representatives are unwittingly diluting the brand they represent with unguided tweets, updates, posts, comments, and videos.

HR monitors the mistakes made by employees, but no one guides them through training, guidelines, or branding.

Customers ask questions about products and services and while these updates show up on the monitoring reports of community managers, they do not receive a response from the sales team.

The list goes on and on with little resolution as we are focused on real-time vs. real world. We need not only champions, but we now need leaders to help us cut through the red tape and unite the organization behind a flag of relevance and evolution.

Everything starts with recognizing that we must cater to an audience where its parts are in fact, greater than its sum. We must partition our social strategy to engage the diversity of the social consumer and address the unique requirements and attention of each.

This is about humanizing not only the brand, but also the methodologies that govern customer relations and adapting the systems that support it.

Socializing CRM

sCRM is the hot ticket in enterprise 2.0 at the moment, yet its champions are mired in technology as are the champions for social media in general. In many ways we’re blinded by the networks and our need to listen, respond, and update. But, we miss the intimacy necessary to learn, adapt, and earn relevance. And now, we’re consumed with wiring Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Yelp into our existing CRM infrastructure to help us automate enlightenment and engagement. While we close gaps caused by the distribution and scale of social web and the people who define it, we fail to see the human touchpoints to connect with the right people in the right places at the right time. That is, after all, where scalability resides; the ability to engage influential consumers in a one-to-one-to-many practice to amplify intention, purpose, and value.

1+1 = Many

Essentially, we’re practically fooled into a belief that we should not over think social, but not doing so, we trivialize the opportunity, ultimately investing in a program that at the end of the day, falls short of meeting the needs of the social consumer.

What’s the value of a Like?

What is a Twitter Follower worth?

What is the significance of a Tweet, check-in, or comment?

How do we reduce the costs of support through social?

To answer these questions, we must have a vision of the experience and actions we wish to introduce into these rich and active social ecosystems. Yes, this is a “click to action” and in order for businesses to socialize CRM, they must socialize the entire business. Not all of the 3F’s (friends, fans, followers) are created equally. Individually, rarely collectively, they are looking for substance, direction, recognition and even empowerment. In order to activate the social web and unlock meaningful conversations, we must look beyond customers. We must officially recognize all those who influence their actions and introduce a conversational workflow that traverses the business chasms to learn and lead – in public.

Social Science is the Center of Social Business

Customer Relationship Management > Social CRM > SRM >Relationships > Relevance

One of the celebrated companies renown for its innovation in social customer service is actually a lesson in how social “anything” becomes great PR. When you look behind the scenes, you actually see more duct tape and rubber bands than fluidity and polish. Business units are still siloed and even the chief executives have gone on record saying that the acts of engagement do more for the company’s PR than it does for the improvement of products and services. Just look at your favorite social media source and you’ll see an endless array of examples of how brands are succeeding in social media. Again, most of them are basking in the brilliance of individual victories, some are actually breaking through the internal barriers that prevent collaboration, and others are simply stunts designed to spike conversations, sales, and PR. Nothing wrong with it…especially if it work as intended.

You and I are here together, right now, to do something greater. It’s up to us to lead the way for the socialization of business, understanding that it’s an uphill journey for the foreseeable future. But in the end, our experience and triumphs are unparalleled.

Social media are the goldmines of anthropology, sociology and ethnography. To excel here, we must embrace social science to create and earn relevance. Some businesses already get this. For example, Intel employs anthropologists such as Genevieve Bell to understand how certain cultures adopt technology and also how products should be designed with humans represented in every step of the process. I challenge businesses seeking to socialize their business to hire social scientists to not only understand culture and its role in consumerism, but also to humanize the processes and systems erecting to facilitate engagement and social CRM. It takes a human touch to embrace and inspire the social consumer, build communities, and activate advocacy. If we can hear, see, and feel the customer and all those who influence them, then why would we think social is where we can excel. Surely, it’s not because we show up. It’s only because we earn and deserve our place within each network.

We must humanize our brand, our products, and our processes to improve and influence experiences. Doing so will help us find our voice, our mission, and our purpose…our cadence. Give people a reason to connect with us, trust us, and represent us.

HOW TO: Activate Your Brand’s Super Influencers

From Mashable:

As a marketer, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the 1% rule — that just 1% of your brand’s social media followers are responsible for the majority of sharing. They share your social media campaigns with their larger social network, passing on links to your contests, promotions, deals, and other marketing campaigns. These key influencers are more than just fans — they’re brand ambassadors.

At my company, we’ve seen that brands that track and quantify word-of-mouth impact have found that these key influencers can drive 20, 30, or even 70% of all visits to their campaign pages, beating out display and search advertising as the most efficient driver of traffic to their sites. That’s pretty incredible, considering social campaigns require no media buys and cost next to nothing to implement, whereas banners and search ads are a huge expense. These “super influencers” drive an even higher share of conversion — on average influencing 30% or more of all conversions on marketers’ sites just by recommending a brand’s products, content, or promotions to their online communities.

When you see data like these as regularly as we do, you realize pretty quickly that super influencers are worth engaging. If you can reach out to this 1% directly by offering them special promotions, thanking them for their influence, and rewarding them for their loyalty, they will be motivated to share early and share often.

Identifying your key influencers is fairly straightforward. There are a wealth of social media measurement tools that enable marketers to find the people who are talking most about their brand, see what type of content they’re sharing and with whom, and how they are sharing it (e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, their own blogs, etc.). Once you find these influencers, the trick is activating them to share even more.

Here are three tips to help you activate your top influencers.

1. Reserve Your Best Content for Influencers Only

Influencers love to be an inside source of information for their friends and followers by sharing contests, information, or deals with their social networks before other people have heard about them. Create exclusive content you share only with your key influencers, and let them know they were one of a select few to receive this special offer. This makes your brand advocates feel appreciated and provides them with exclusive information they can use to boost their reputation as a source of inside deals.

One of my company’s clients decided to engage its most ardent fans when planning a large industry event. The company reached out to these key influencers, inviting them to post a “register now” button on their blogs and websites, and offering them lower-cost VIP passes if they shared the event with friends. The result was a huge uptick in sharing that significantly influenced registrations for the event. People who found out about the conference from an influencer were 37% more likely to register than direct visitors, and influencers ended up driving more than $1 million in total registrations.

2. Mine the Blogs and Forums

When you’re looking for super influencers, chances are you’ve already determined who shares the most on Facebook and Twitter. But, in many cases, the people who really influence traffic and conversion on your site are the bloggers. One of our clients launched a social media contest and found that one blogger alone shared the contest with thousands of people and directly drove 42% of all traffic to the contest page.

To find and activate the people who are truly passionate about your products, services, or sector, you’ve got to carefully monitor the blogosphere, message boards, and forums. Once you’ve used analytics tools to find exactly which individuals are driving the most traffic to your campaign sites, you need to reach out to these people individually. Treat them like the real VIPs they are. Let them know you appreciate their loyalty and interest in your products. We’ve found influencers appreciate your attention and kind words even more than exclusive promotions.

3. Differentiate the Influencers from the Super Influencers

Your top fans are so valuable they are worth the extra effort of some special attention. But, not all influencers are alike.

When you plot the influence of individuals, you’ll see a curve that looks a lot like the long tail distribution of search terms. Influence follows a “power law,” where a relatively small number of individuals influence the lion’s share of referrals. Those at the peak of this curve are the super influencers, and those in the tail are regular influencers. Super influencers have large, loyal followings and audiences who trust their insights. The latter are people who pass along info to friends and family from time to time via e-mail and Facebook.

Understanding these differences is key to crafting your influencer activation strategy. You need to interact with super influencers on a one-to-one basis, but you could target the rest of your influencers a bit more broadly.

For example, you will want to reach out directly to all your influencers by commenting on their blogs and syndicating their content via Twitter, Facebook, and your own blog. Thank them for their loyalty, and generally praise them. But, make sure to go the extra mile with your super influencers. Offer super influencers the opportunity to obtain and review your products before they hit the market, for example. Offer them after-hours shopping at your stores, a few free hours of your services, or invite them to a special VIP party. Be creative, and have fun. Remember, your super influencers, when treated right, can drive a huge percentage of your site’s overall traffic. Isn’t that worth throwing a party?

The Takeaway

Just identifying your key influencers is not enough in today’s market. Instead, you’ve got to find them and then motivate them to share. Over the long term, your goal as a marketer is to increase the size of your influencer base. By finding and engaging in a direct dialogue with your super influencers, you’ll get a clear idea of what motivates these brand ambassadors to share. Then, armed with that knowledge, you can begin reaching out to your influencers — and even your fans who never share — to offer the right kind of content and rewards to turn more “followers” into “sharers.”

Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline

From Mashable:

The hyperlink is the fundamental building block of the Internet, and effectively ties reference points to useful content. Without the hyperlink, the web would be nothing more than silos of content lacking semantic connections.

Traditionally, hyperlinks live in browser windows on desktop monitors. Today, however, some hyperlinks are moving offline, where they can be “clicked” by people roaming the real world.

By printing a Quick Response (QR) bar code on any item — a lamp, the program booklet of an event, or a retail store window -– a consumer can quickly link from the real-world experience to rich web content via his smartphone. Using QR codes, jump points to the Internet can be placed anywhere in the physical world.

The ability to place a QR code on anything offers opportunities for businesses and consumers. These are a few examples of how a business can leverage QR codes and turn real-world “clicks” into sales:

• You have been looking for the perfect lamp for your living room for a long time. You see the perfect one — not in a furniture show room, but in a hotel lobby. At the base of a lamp is a QR code. You scan it with your phone, click a link to “buy it now,” and purchase the lamp on the spot.
• You drive across town to purchase a leather jacket from a fashion boutique. By the time you arrive, the store is closed. A retail window badge reads: “Sorry, we’re closed! Scan this code to buy online, and receive free shipping!” The free shipping offer is normally not available online, but since you made the trek, the store offers you a reward.
• You attend a musical and have a great time. Reviewing the Playbill at home, you encounter a QR code that you can scan to order tickets for the next musical at the venue. The tickets are offered at 40% off, and the offer is only good for seven days. With the offer laid perfectly in front of you, and positive memories of tonight’s musical fresh in your mind, you purchase the tickets.

Context-Sensitive Marketing

These examples illustrate the power of a new opportunity created by QR codes that we call context-sensitive marketing, or CSM.

Remember those impulse items in the supermarket checkout aisle? The savvy merchant, knowing you are likely to be hungry while food shopping, shows you quick fixes like a candy bar. CSM enables the same type of impulse buying, only this time, it’s “virtual impulse buying.” The idea behind CSM is to reach your customers when they are most likely to be interested in your product. With the knowledge of what context you’re in –- staring at furniture, attending a musical, or shopping for clothes — the ability to engage in virtual impulse buying is literally at your fingertips.

From the consumer’s standpoint, CSM is a convenience. Scanning a QR code is a deliberate act the consumer is choosing to take part in. On the other hand, GPS-triggered smartphone pop-ups are not part of the CSM playbook, because the consumer never opts-in (or out) of the content.

In addition to purchasing convenience, a real-world hyperlink can trigger multimedia or crowdsourced wisdom that can help you in a pinch. Imagine, for example, needing to re-thread the belts on a child’s car seat, but not having the manual in front of you to show you how. There is no need to Google () the product or scavenge through your file cabinet for the manual; just scan the QR code and have the manual or a how-to video appear right on your phone.

Is the Real World Ready for Contextual Links?

All of this technology may sound great, but is the world ready for QR codes? Changing consumer behavior is notoriously difficult. Will consumers find scanning items with their smartphones to be a natural and useful act?

Technologically, the convergence of three trends are equipping consumers with the tools to make QR code scanning seamless:

• The growth of wireless data transmissions through 3G+ and Wi-Fi;
• The ubiquity of Internet-connected mobile mini-computers, a.k.a. smartphones (equipped with GPS and high-definition cameras); and
• The emergence of data storage in the Internet cloud.

According to Nielsen, 51% of all Americans will be carrying smartphones by 2011. The number of QR codes in circulation is reported to increase significantly. QR reading apps are quick to launch, quick to scan and available on every smartphone operating system.

Behaviorally, the mass adoption of QR codes will depend most critically on the utility of what is behind the QR code. Businesses need to provide scan-worthy content that truly makes the lives of consumers better after taking the time — however short — to scan a QR code. To this end, businesses simply need to be creative. Provide a special offer to incentivize the scan or save time for the consumer by providing context-triggered helping hands.

As a final example, imagine discovering that the water dispenser on your home fridge isn’t working. You open the fridge and see the indicator light informing you that your water filter cartridge needs replacing. What do you do? Will you fire up your laptop and type into a Google search box the exact model of your water filter cartridge replacement, then hunt for the best deal online? That’s what I did last year. But with any luck, next time around, a QR code will be printed on the water filter with the prompt: “Scan me to reorder.” Grabbing my phone, I scan the code, pulling up a 15% manufacturer’s discount if I order the cartridge directly. I click to buy, knowing I saved time and money, which I can now spend on more worthwhile activities.

That is the power of context-sensitive marketing.