Stepping up engagement efforts as mobile’s mercury rises, customer strategists are excited about more people turning to smartphones for entertainment and to manage their daily lives.  In 2010, Morgan Stanley Research predicted that smartphone sales would exceed PC sales in 2012, and according to Gartner Research Group, by 2015, tablet computers will outsell PCs by 60%.

As we move into more than 50% of people having smartphones, we’re moving into the meat of consumerism, in which people will have a device that allows them to have a richer engagement with content.  This stage of adoption presents numerous opportunities for retailers to introduce a full-blown mobile program.

The best mobile campaigns are those that integrate with other channels combining mobile with location and social engagement.  Consumers start feeling connected to the company when they are immersed in an omnichannel brand experience.  Companies have already started to test the waters with creative mobile campaigns that are embedded in an app, a Facebook link, a quick response (QR) code, or a combination of all three.

In taking mobile campaigns to the next level, Robert Brosnan, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, points to geolocation tools as an increasingly popular way to give consumers more tailored information about a company’s products.  Anyone carrying a smartphone brings with them a far more accurate geolocation service than anything Foursquare, Gowalla, or Google could provide via the Web.  Most smartphone apps from retailers, say BestBuy or Amazon, already access location information even though they must ask permission first.  Expect this feature to move from just “check-ins” to actively triggering marketing programs and offers in real time.

Location is a key feature of marketing.  It’s harder to convince people to get into their car and drive to your store.  Using Foursquare, or something like it, to show nearby customers that your store is just across the street makes a compelling argument to get them to come to you.  According to a study by Google and OTX research firm, the most popular mobile shopping activity is locating the nearest retailer.  When consumers find local information, 88% take action within a day; of this number, 61% call a retailer and 59% visit a store.  Combining localized information with enticing offers makes businesses even more compelling.  From a marketing perspective, rewarding frequent customers with special offers is a great way to build customer loyalty, but for most retailers, it’s still at the experimentation stage.

Another hot trend for retailers in 2012 is the use of quick response (QR) codes.  QR codes have been touted by early adopters as a fast way to get information to customers.  These square bar codes can be scanned with a smartphone to display text, contact information, a web site, or a promotional video in the phone’s browser.  Over the past year, businesses have slapped QR codes on magazines, business cards, bus stop ads, in TV commercials… anywhere consumers are easily utilizing their mobile devices to acquire content and/or get product information.

On the flip side, adoption rates for QR codes have been slow.  Educating consumers about how to access the codes and understand their benefits have been the biggest challenges to using this technology.  Some companies, such as Macy’s and The Home Depot, made an effort to ensure they were not leaving their customers in the dark when they launched their QR code programs last year.  Recognizing that not everyone is tech-savvy, Macy’s released a YouTube video explaining how the program works.  Macy’s also make sure that customers who didn’t have a smartphone could still participate in the program by texting.  On a similar note, when The Home Depot launched its QR code program, it also ensured that customers could access the program by texting, as well as by scanning the code with a smartphone.

As more companies recognize a complete transformation of customers’ expectations and experiences, retailers will have to make that in-store experience so compelling on omnichannel screens that people will continue to want to come in while utilizing their mobile device.  Mobile has been probably the biggest social and economic phenomenon of the past few years — revolutionizing the way in which people interact and consume and representing a major opportunity for retailers.  If implemented correctly, mobile offers retailers the opportunity to benefit not only from new sales streams, but also from increasing customer loyalty, driving customers to existing sales channels and, perhaps most importantly, differentiating the customer experience.  In short, mobile is less of a transactional channel, and more about ‘MeTail’ — the touch point for interaction between retailers and consumers throughout the entire shopper experience.

NEWS FLASH:  The technology gender gap has virtually closed and that the majority of women are hungry, even voracious, for technology.  While men have historically been considered the earliest adopters and heaviest consumers of new technology, this perception does not tell the whole story. The key difference is that women are utilizing new technologies in their own way. In particular, women are most likely to adopt new technology when it is social and relevant—that is, when it seamlessly improves their day-to-day lives.

So, here are a few action steps for marketers so that they enable sincere connections and engagement with their highly desirable female audiences:

1. Use technology solutions to mimic, amplify, augment, or simplify existing behaviors.  Don’t get wrapped up in the gee-whiz of new technology… using tech for tech’s sake.  Women are busy and don’t want or have time to do or learn more.  Instead, focus on how technology can augment, improve, and/or simplify what’s already happening in the analog world.
2. Fully leverage the social nature of women.  Well before the rise of the Internet, women tapped into their real-world social networks to get and make recommendations on what to buy, read, eat, see, and do.  Facebook has amplified those connections to the nth degree.  Women, especially younger ones, are also looking for validation.  Consider ways you can increase your brand’s social currency… How can you create a message that will drive people to socialize around it?  And, how can you tap into the social graph at point-of-purchase, when women tend to call family or friends for opinions?
3. Acknowledge the side effects of technology.  Brands, particularly tech brands, can continue to play up connectivity, social networking, and all the benefits that make digital media so addictive for women.  At the same time, women are tech fatigued, stressed out, overstimulated and also afraid.  Digital technology has created a seismic shift in how humans relate to each other, and they’re afraid of losing closeness with those they care about or missing out on real-world experiences.  Brands whose core message exudes simplicity or human connection will find a well of opportunity.
4. Create experiences designed for simultaneous consumption and engagement.  Women are no longer interacting with media and technology in a focused, linear way.  Rather, they’re chatting on Facebook as they watch TV, texting while flipping through a magazine, gaming on an iPad while listening to music.  Brands should steer attention between one medium and another in a continuous loop, timing secondary content to stream alongside primary content.  Leveraging women’s impulse to multitask can turn a potential negative (distraction and frustration) into a positive (an immersive experience).
5. Continuously ask, “what’s the value exchange?”  Since women are so strapped for time, offer them something of value in return for doing anything above and beyond what they already do.  What do women get in return for viewing, interacting with, contributing to, or amplifying your content or campaign?  Unless there is some sort of value exchange, there’s little reason for a positive action to take place at all.  The fact that women spend more time on fewer sites, and the fact that they are selective with the apps they choose, indicates that they’re generally looking for a more qualitative experience.
6. Make more of the micro-memories.  As the family chroniclers, women have always used cameras to capture memories- birthdays, graduations, weddings.  Now, as smartphone cameras become more turbocharged, a camera is always in her pocket.  And, as photo-sharing apps proliferate, she’s capturing not only the big, but the small: her son’s scowl on a car ride, her daughter’s ice cream-covered face.  While these micro-moments or micro-achievements were rarely chronicled before, today they’re continually recorded and shared in real-time via email, text, or social media.  How can brands better embrace, encourage, and leverage this behavior?
7. Find ways to ease FOMO (fear of missing out).  Social media today fuels fears of missing out, with people feeling that their peers are doing, know about, or possess more than they do.  For mothers, there is FOMO around the lives of other families as well as the lifestyles of childless friends with far more free time (and money?).  For others, social media turns an evening at home into a guilt-ridden night of continually checking Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates.  Marketers can help ease this anxiety by assuring the afflicted that they’re not missing out on much at all.  Brands offering simply pleasures, for example, can convey that stepping back from the fray rather than following the crowd can be a smarter choice.
8. Master mobile compatibility, commerce, messaging and location-based everything.  Right now, most women are still using the mobile phone primarily for its basic communication functions, much like the early days of the Internet when people tapped into a fraction of its full potential.  However, as the availability of wireless broadband expands and the cost of advanced mobile smartphones drops, the device is becoming the preferred hub for digital activity… and, digital natives are leading the way.  The mobile phone is evolving into a woman’s Swiss Army knife, helping her manage all her identities (mom, daughter, boss/employee, wife, friend, sister, etc.) simultaneously.  As a result, brands need to create seamless experiences optimized for mobile and local.
9. Look for opportunities to merge tech with non-tech categories.  As the Hewlett-Packard/Vivienne Tam collaboration demonstrates, synergies and desirability can be gained from the marriage of technology and non-technology brands.  For non-tech brands, the challenge is to figure out how to make their offerings tech-enabled or to find relevant collaborative stories.  For tech brands, the challenge is to identify partnerships that feel organic rather than forced.

Female tech users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer Internet and ecommerce companies.  When it comes to shopping and social, women rule, and it’s not only the web as we think of it today.   Women are also adopting mobile technology and are driving trends in that space like mobile video viewing and mobile payments.

In fact, so many women use technology every day that segmenting and target all of them becomes difficult.  At one end of the spectrum sits the mobile warriors who are connected 24/7 and at the other the much more casual, utilitarian users who tend to be annoyed by tech intrusions.  However, commonalities across all age and social grouping are prevalent.  First and foremost is purchasing power.  Women spend about $5 trillion, or half of the U.S. GDP, every year.  And, there’s a well-known industry fact that women control or have a say in 80% (or more) of all household purchases…. An audience any marketer cannot afford to ignore.

Another common trait women share is engagement.  Whether you believe that women are innately better communicators than men or not, they do talk more and text more than men every month, 28% and 14%, respectively, according to Nielsen data, and use social features of their mobile devices like SMS, MMS and social networking more when compared to men.  “Online, women are more engaged than men, spending more time on fewer sites during a single sitting- a valuable attribute to advertisers.  They also visit more social and community sites, which is especially important given the popularity of immediate online/social discussion during major TV events like awards shows and reality programming,” wrote Jackie Bergeron, VP-local audience insights, Nielsen Media Research, in a recent blog post.

What is comes down to is… Women aren’t interested in the gee-whiz-look-what-it-can-do abilities of technology.  Instead, their approach to technology is much more practical, and they’re using technology to do more, to extend themselves as career woman, wife, girlfriend, mother, friend, sister, daughter, and volunteer.

Until now, the story has been about women catching up with men, whether that’s in use of mobile or using the Internet or social media.  But, the next wave of women and technology is not just about catching up, but setting and influencing trends… from social gaming to group buying and more.  In Web 3.0 world, women are poised to be key in the humanizing of technology.  Streaming, intuitive, collaborative, and connected media are all very suited to women’s information and entertainment gathering habits.

As marketing dollars move to interactive, advertiser spending on digital marketing is predicted to reach $77 billion, the amount spent on TV advertising today, by 2016, according to a Forrester Interactive five-year forecast.  Currently, marketers spend about $34.5 billion a year, or about 16% of their total ad spending, on interactive campaigns.  Between search marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, email marketing and social media, these five interactive outlets will grow from 16% to 26% of all advertising spending by 2016.

The growth will be fueled no only by greater acceptance of interactive channels, but also by marketers’ hiring larger interactive teams; growing excitement about emerging media, including mobile, social and online video; the cost-effectiveness of interactive marketing; and customer obsession with online media and portable devices, such as smartphones and tablet PCs.

This year, spending on mobile paid advertising and search will surpass that of email and social media and will soar at a 38% compound annual growth rat, to $8.2 billion by 2016, the report says.  Forrester’s prediction in 2009 that mobile marketing adoption would hit its stride in 2011 proved right on.  The mobile medium will continue to grow as marketers create more relevant mobile ads, mobile devices become even more mainstream, and buyers embrace more mobile commerce and the advertising that drives it.

Marketing executives who are married with kids might be surprised to find that they represent a mere one in five households nationwide.  So, what does a typical household look like?  Today, it’s just as likely to be headed by a woman as traditional married-couple households have fallen into minority status.  In fact, the 2010 Census found a record low 48% of U. S. households were married couples and that iconic American family, the married with children, had slipped to a new low of 20% of all households.

In fact, more than 35 million women are “householders,” the term used by the Census for heads of households of any gender, which is a record high and double the number counted in the 1980 U.S. Census.  The major reason women householders are ascendant is their increasing earning power.  In March 2011, a population survey found that in 37% of the nation’s married-couple families the wife was either the primary or the only wage earner.

Are men still the drivers of trends?  How do women approach the new mobile technologies?  Is the realm of gadgets still a mens’ business?  Interestingly enough, a recent study from Women at NBCU found that women are the main drivers of tech trends, particularly on social networks.

So, what does this mean for mobile?  Women represent both powerful socio-economic change agents and a major market opportunity for mobile operators.  As the mobile revolution continues to affect people at all levels of the economic pyramid, one thing is clear:  the face of the new subscriber over the next several years is female.

Evidence has been mounting for decades that empowering women leads to positive economic and social change. Some of the most powerful ways to advance development center on increasing women’s access to education, health care and financial services, which in turn allows them to improve their quality of life and that of their families. The importance of women as socio-economic change agents is vital to future generations and households.

Mobile phones are a tool for economic growth, and investing in women improves the overall well-being of families.  Empowering more women with mobile phones can accelerate social and economic development.  ”Moms” are a definitely an emerging and lucrative target group for marketers.  They are using social networks longer and more frequently to share their views on kids and education, and they are even more heavy mobile users.  Mothers make up 20% Internet traffic and are the fastest-growing buyers of iPhones.  And, a Nielsen report claims that American mothers are sharing more photos and news on Facebook than anyone else.

Other research about mobile phone marketing and women has shown more varied results.  Last year, a company conducted mobile shopping survey of 1,600 women that found 94% of them were interested in more mobile shopping and mobile marketing.  In the same month, social network SheSpeaks conducted an online survey of similar size that found only 10% of women have downloaded any shopping-related applications to their mobile devices, and 62% are not even interested in doing so.

For now, whether mobile phones are indeed the key to reaching women depends largely on which indicator — shopping app adoption, interest in mobile, reference during shopping trips — you believe proves it.  However, most smartphone-wielding mothers put their phones to work while they shop, according to a survey by mobile ad network Greystripe, and 66% acknowledged that their smartphones play a role in their shopping trips.

Behold… Now, we present “The iGen“, the generation coming in behind the Millennials.

If we take 1995 as the end of the Millennials, the iGen is already 50 million-strong and they will start turning 16 in just 10 weeks.  The youngest are already shaping their parents’ spending patterns.  (How many 4-year-olds have iPads before, or as an excuse for, their parents?)

So, meet iGen.  Advertising Age is credited with coining the term Generation Y in August 1993.  In retrospect, the name didn’t age well and morphed in the Millennials since it seemed to presumed that the generation was an iteration of the Gen Xers called “cynical, purple-haired, Nirvana inspired blobs watching TV.”  Perhaps, it’s in honor of the late Steve Jobs, who will have done a lot to shape this group even if he’s no longer around to see the full impact.

The “i” can stand for many things.  Interactive, naturally:  these kids are born after the rise of the Internet.  They’re not just accustomed to it, like Millennials, they know no world without it.  They’re immersed in more media than any generation before them.  They’re International; those born today are already a majority-minority population according to some of the leading demographers.

The “i” can also grow with them.  It could stand for their self-reliance (all about “I”) or their Independence, a counter-punch against their helicoptered predecessors.  Perhaps, they’ll be Iconoclasts or Idealists.  Maybe, they’ll all just seem like Idiots.  And, it could stand for something we haven’t even thought yet to apply to them.  Yet, however you want to fill in the variable, they’re here.

And now, they’re Identified.

Via editorial by Matt Carmichael 

Never underestimate the consumer… but, even with all the technological tools and social media at marketers’ fingertips, it’s increasingly difficult to keep up with consumers’ continually shifting lifestyles, income levels and habits.  The October 17, 2011 issue of Advertising Age dispelled some of the myths and uncovered the trends that motivate and resonate with consumers around the world.

Nuances by the numbers:

• $50 == Consumer-packaged-goods companies are going small to reach the low-end consumer, who has only $40 to $50 a week in disposable income left to spend on a family of four for groceries.
• 67% == Though 67% of consumers say they don’t think advertisers should b allowed to target ads based on browsing behavior, what they do is a very different thing.
• 6,200,000 == The number of long-term unemployed, those without a job for 27 weeks or more, jumped to 6.2 million, up from 6 million in August 2011.
• 28.3% == The new “fusionista” is the 14 million Hispanic millennials in the U.S. which is 28.3% of the total U.S. Hispanic population.  Some 15.6% of them are American-born and 12.7% are foreign-born.
• 366 == From 2000 to 2010, the nation’s 366 metropolitan areas picked up nearly all population growth: 92.4%.  Most of these, 84%, chose to live in or near a city of 50,000 people or more.
• $10 == The “iGen” of consumers under 18 has an income of $10 to $39 per week, but wields a big influence on parents.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust

Strategic thinkers visualize what might or could be, and take a holistic approach to day-to-day issues and challenges.  Which forces me to wonder, what are the distinguishing characteristics of strategic thinkers?

• Curiosity:  You’re genuinely interested in what’s going on in your unit, company, industry, and wider business environment.
• Flexibility:  You’re able to adapt approaches and shift ideas when new information suggests the need to do so.
• Future focus:  You constantly consider how the conditions in which your group and company operate may change in the coming months.
• Positive outlook:  You view challenges as opportunities, and you believe that success is possible.
• Openness:  You welcome new ideas from supervisors, peers, employees, and outside stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and business partners.
• Breadth:  You continually work to broaden your knowledge and experience, so you can see connections and patterns across seemingly unrelated fields of knowledge.