A complete transformation of the customer experience is happening at stores and restaurants. With a tablet, sales associates can pull up your purchase history, help you compare options, and check out items, while customers can research in-store inventory and place orders as soon as they enter the store or restaurant.

In the quick-service restaurant industry, mobile devices will lead to more efficient turnover; restaurants that have deployed mobile devices have seen a 25%increase int he number of times they can turn the table, thus serving more customers every shift.  By 2015, more than 2.7 million tablets a year will be shipped for use in North American retail and hospitality centers, presenting an increase of 450% over the next four years.  Specialty retailers will deploy nearly half of all the tablets shipped to retail.

Handheld devices are also expected to reduce the shipments of traditional point-of-sale devices by 11% in 2012 and by as much as 20% in some segments.  By 2015, annual shipments of mobile devices will be four times that of traditional POS terminals.  While the most popular tablet by far is the iPad, it remains a big unknown if the Windows or Android tablets will make a dent.

Apple’s influence is being felt in other ways, as well.  Many retailers have a strong desire to replicate the Apple Store experience.  The efficiency and speed with which customers are served when they walk in the door is undeniable.  However, being able to duplicate the ease with which Apple store employees can look up information, bring out items, and process credit card payments will not be easy for everyone to replicate.

Using mobile devices would be a huge win for retailers, but it’s still a significant investment that will require training.  Retailers will need to think carefully about how they’re going to apply digital devices to their stores. There is also no guarantee that equipping sales associates with mobile devices will deter consumers from whipping out their smartphones or tablets and making an online purchase from another retailer right there in your store.

Retailers need to accept the fact that more and more consumers have smartphones.  They can either fight this uphill or embrace new ways to be the customers’ advocate by making an in-store experience that is so compelling that people want to come in.  While tablets and smartphones should not replace great service, retailers who master complementing the comprehensive in-store shopping experience with new screens will win significant market-share in the future.

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.

Ten marketing quotes as a thought for the day this Thursday:

10.  “If you wait until there’s another case study in your industry, you will be too late.”  ~  Seth Godin, keynote speaker and author of Permission Marketing

9.  “No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.”  ~  Chris Brogan, keynote speaker and founder of New Marketing Labs.

8.  “Instead of one-way interruption, web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it.”  ~ David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

7.  “Your culture IS your brand.”  ~  Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

6.  “Focus on the core problem your business solves and put out lots of content, enthusiasm and ideas about how to solve that problem.”  ~  Laura Fitton, founder OneForty.com

5.  “You can’t just ask customers what they want and try to give that to them.  By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”  ~  Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple

4.  “Make the customer the hero of your story.”  ~  Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs

3.  “What makes content engaging is relevancy.  You need to connect the content with the context.”  ~  Gail Goodman, President of Constant Contact

2.  “Audiences everywhere are tough.  They don’t have time to be bored or browbeaten by orthodox, old-fashioned advertising.”  ~  Craig Davis, Partner at J. Walter Thompson

1.    “We have embarked upon the world’s largest and longest cocktail party, and every issue imaginable is up for grabs.”  ~   Geoffrey Moore, author of Dealing with Darwin

To me, one of the highlights of every Christmas season is the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book and its selection of fantasy gifts.  Do you dream of Jeannie?  Well, even if you don’t, this “I Dream of Jeannie”-inspired 18-foot yurt is a great glam-ping getaway — if you have $75,000 to spare for the “Dream Folly.”

While it may just look like a strange oversized tent in the middle of the yard, the interior is more intricate than many homes.  The yurt is decorated with hand-embroidered velvet down pillows, a velvet couch, vases of roses, candles and a crystal chandelier.  The colors and textures are selected “bubbles of a warm, soothing bath.”

Since Neiman’s is in the business of granting wishes, you can choose a different color scheme and decor from the ones depicted here.  But why bother?  There’s no improving upon perfection.  Simply ask for this dream getaway, and they will have it installed on your estate grounds in the blink of an eye.  For every retreat sold, Neiman Marcus will donate $5,000 to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  The “Dream Folly” stands 12’5″ tall with an 18′ diameter.

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.

As an outside consultant in Digital Strategy, I believe that sometimes my role should be the Question Asker, not the final provider of answers.  And so, especially during the early stages of an engagement, I find myself asking the following questions:

1. Is the organization as ready to digitally transform itself as I think it is?
2. How can we accelerate the growth of the company by transforming the “how” of what they do and not just “what”?
3. By focusing on human beings and user experience, can I help reduce the uncertainty in the client’s business?
4. Do the people who work at the client company believe they know more than the CEO does?
5. Do they actually know more than CEO does?
6. What will help the client company grow faster:  more control or more value creation?
7. Should people who create value be governed by people who control it?
8. Is the client company C-suite too focused on control?
9. Are they obsessed with control?
10. How can I encourage giving more control to others in the organization, especially employees who create value?
11. What rules could the client company get rid of today that would increase their ability to create value?
12. Could we throw out the entire company rulebook?
13. Would my (hypothetical) children want to work in a company like this one?
14. Would the C-suite’s children want to work in their company?

Any suggestions for other questions?

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.

A big problem with most marketers is that too much time is spent on familiar territory… rearranging the deck chairs rather than looking for new worlds to conquer.  When a new CMO is appointed, and his/her first six months are consumed with reviewing agency assignments, refining media mixes, and touting brand-perception levels and “likes” on Facebook, this executive is probably headed for trouble.  Making matters worse, marketers seem to be in a parallel universe when it comes to communicating with top management, not to mention the sales operation.

CEOs and sales have little patience for the soft and fuzzy yardsticks marketers use to measure their progress.  As an example, the new CEO of IBM (who came from the marketing department), Virgina Rometty, has built a career on pushing herself into unfamiliar territory.  “Growth and comfort do not co-exist,” Rometty told Bloomberg Business Week.  One reason Ms Rometty made it to the top at IBM is that she had broad enough strategic responsibilities to make things happen.  In 2009, she was appointed Senior Vice President of Marketing, Sales, & Strategy, and a big part of her job was to bring software and consulting services to emerging markets, where growth is a lot more robust.  “Whatever business you’re in, it’s going to commoditize over time, so you have to keep moving it to a higher value and change,” says Rometty.

The marketing function, strange as it seems, is oftentimes not as connected to the sales function as it should be for optimum results.  The metrics that marketing people use are not in sync with how salespeople measure themselves, and sometimes it seems marketers want to abdicate their brands’ destiny to forces beyond them.  Sales guys don’t understand talk like “empowering the consumer.”  Therefore, sales and marketing should sit under the same strategic corporate-messaging and consumer-facing umbrella so that both sides can communicate for a common goal.  By combining sales and strategy with marketing, companies can not only align all the revenue-producing components under one roof, but can create clear-cut goals that everyone understands and buys into.

excerpted from Rance Crain’s Opinion article in November 7, 2011 issue of Advertising Age

Therefore, I am completely excited to be winding up an amazing week at Acquity Group headquarters in Chicago, Il., for New Hire Orientation.  Yes, I’ve changed my work yet again, and just started work as a Senior Manager, Digital Strategy, in the Dallas (Frisco), Texas, office where I’ll be developing digital marketing strategies from gathering primary and secondary research and integrating findings into long-term roadmaps for global clients.

Acquity Group is the world’s leading multi-channel commerce and digital marketing company, creating award-winning digital experiences for global brands, according to AdAge.  Our multi-disciplinary approach brings together digital strategy, user experience, and technology to create brand-unique experiences that build unbreakable customer relationships.

Our clients touch you everyday with unique digital experiences that are changing the way you live, work, and play.  We create those experiences spanning web, mobile, social and new emerging channels for over 500 global brands.  With our next big think, we offer news and resources, big ideas, and innovative strategies in thought leadership pieces for real-world business challenges.

Here, our plan is simple… Keep building at the intersection of Technology + Creativity to…

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.