Manufacturing Moments and Marketing Serendipity: Welcome to the New Frontier

This is a repost of an article I wrote for Forbes in May on the idea of manufactured serendipity and marketing. ________________________________________________________
The idea of manufactured serendipity is not new within the digital world. Whether it’s finding out when friends and other interesting people are nearby or what they recommended in your current location, our apps have given us plenty of moments of discovery. You know when you “discover" that really cool coffee shop thanks to Foursquare or meet up with a friend you didn’t expect to see thanks to Glancee, Highlight, Sonar and Banjo or newer entries like quadstreaker and the updated Google Maps.

While these apps are useful, they are lacking in the most powerful element: a specific action that benefits you, the user. This gap has led to an interesting and emerging trend from marketers – combining manufactured serendipity with timeliness. And, what’s emerging is a new idea: The marketplace of moments.

The marketplace of moments is the creation of time-limited offers and deals via mobile that depend on your being in the right place, at the right time and taking the necessary action. A step beyond Foursquare deals, these marketplace moments place a premium of time and combine that with the discovery element of manufactured serendipity. Here are some examples:

• Guatemalan sneaker store, Meat Packer’s Hijack added a time-sensitive discount feature to its existing app to steal customers from rival stores. Using GPS technology to track when a customer entered the rival store, the app pushed a notification to the customer offering a time-sensitive discount at Meat Peak. The discount started at 99% and decreased to 1% with each second that passed causing customers to rush to Meat Pack to get the best deal. In one week alone, Meat Pack took 600 customers from its competitors. 
• Emart’s “Sunny Sale” in South Korea used a three-dimensional QR code that was placed across Seoul and could only be scanned during 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. daily, due to the sunlight casting a shadow to complete the QR code. Anybody who scanned the code was given a special discount code of 25% off that could be redeemed in store or through their mobile e-commerce site. Emart saw an enormous increase in sales during the promotion. 
• BiteHunter in the United States is a niche daily deal aggregator site that uses a real-time location based on an iPhone mobile app. The app sets your location automatically and presents you with offers. Search results are displayed in a convenient map format. Additionally, the site offers a one-click payment option, restaurant contact information and reviews. 

Each of these apps creates a sense of urgency at a point of relevancy. But it’s clearly only the beginning. There is a great opportunity to expand the marketplace of moments.

For example, what happens if you take this marketplace of moments a step further and pair with it predictive apps that are based on emotion? Let’s say you use Happstr (a mobile app that lets users mark geographical locations where they’re feeling happy.) When you walk past one of these happy places, a restaurant where you had a great first date for example, and you are served a discount that you have to use within the next hour.

Suddenly, you’ve combined an emotional memory with a marketplace moment. The relevance of such an action is sure to increase positive feelings and potentially boost loyalty for your product or service. There are many powerful opportunities that have yet to be explored combining emotion, timeliness and technology. It’s just up to marketers to act.

The Convergence of Fitness and Digital

Wow! It's been a while since I've had a chance to write anything. It's been a busy summer between moving from Minneapolis to Manhattan and starting a new job. Anyway, fall is finally here in New York and with it, I want to repurpose some blog posts I've been writing for my current employer. I hope you enjoy them! Here's the first one from August:
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Keeping fit while traveling has always been a bit of a challenge. While a lot of hotels have gyms and a person can always throw on sneakers and go for a run, it’s easy to lose focus on the road. Workouts get off track. And, it’s easy to get out of shape.

As noted in trendwatching’s 11 Crucial Trends to Watch for 2011 report, the convergence of wellness and health is an emerging consumer trend. Health has become as important as traditional status symbols and consumers expect health-related tools to “improve their quality of life, rather than merely treating illnesses and ailments.”

The convergence of fitness and digital platforms not only addresses consumers’ interest in improving their quality of life through wellness but taps into two seemingly opposed consumer trends: the increased interest in ultra-personalization and the emergence of inclusive, global communities of shared interests. Despite the obvious tensions between these two trends, fitness platforms appear to be capitalizing on the intersection of needs between the two.

Mobile apps are allowing for even more personalization and customization, giving customers added control of the information they receive, when, where and how they receive it. The ultra personalization trend has been instrumental in the creation of a number of fitness platforms:

• Nike+ is one of the most well-known running platforms. Using a tracking device within your shoe or another GPS-enabled device, it tracks each of your runs and provides an endless about of information about each run including maps, calories burnt, stride, etc.
• YogaTailor creates custom personalized yoga video workouts for you, maximizing the benefits within your available time and level of experience.
• Jog.fm helps you create a playlist to match whatever pace you want to run, walk or cycle at based on beats per minute (BPM). It takes the existing music in your library and mixes it according to your requested pace. While options exist for listening to others’ playlists, it still revolves mainly around your music, your playlist, and mostly your desired pace.

While people want to personalize their options for working out, they also want to share their experiences and get support from a community with shared interests. Brands are tapping into people’s need to have a community of support around them as they reach for their goals. This need is especially strong in the fitness category and can be the missing link in terms of exercise for a person who has to travel regularly. Fitness platforms are focusing on creating inclusive communities that can be accessed anytime, everywhere and are based on similar fitness interests and goals:

• Two weeks ago, Speedo rolled out their new platform, “Pace Club. Speedo’s Pace Club includes a mobile app that allows swimmers to sign up for training programs, log workouts, view professional athletes demonstrating proper technique and share their progress with friends through Pace Club’s virtual “Swim Team,” as well as on Facebook or Twitter.  Additionally, “Splash Tags” allow consumers to search for and review pools – as of launch, 3,500 pools had already been entered into the system, the most comprehensive directory in the country. There’s also a blog featuring content by Speedo athletes and a product widget showcasing relevant Speedo products.
• Endomondo is a social network for runners. At its core, it is a cross-platform running app with a huge network of fellow runners built in. It has apps across most mobile platforms and GPS-enabled devices including Garmin. With Endomondo installed on your mobile device, you can track where you run, how long you run, check your personal best times, and share them with friends. From the Endomondo site, you can view exercise summaries, issue invites and challenges to get your friends involved in your fitness push, and participate in site-wide challenges.
• Track-a-thon is an app developed by mcgarrybowen labs to support a runner’s fans. The runner downloads the app onto his or her iphone and then carries it with him or her throughout the race. The spectator can then visually track a person’s race progress along the course including runners’ distance, speed elevation and the music they are listening to (assuming the race allows music).

According to trendwatching, “the ‘consumerization’ of health means that more consumers will choose products with embedded health benefits that are actually well designed, desirable, accessible, fun, tasty, interesting or storied.” So, the next time you are going on a trip, consider checking out a few of these tools and see if you find it easier to stay in shape while on the road.