The expression, “Retail is Detail” has long existed.  As digital becomes integrated into the retail experience, what is being termed as “digitail,” the notion of detail in digitail takes on a whole other scope and, potentially, level of importance.   We (and consumers in general) have come to decode certain messages from the way product is displayed IRL (“in real life”).  A messy pile implies a discount.  No price = too expensive.  Behind a counter = Do not touch (or don’t play with it).   Meanwhile, for the most part, retail merchandising is having to compete against the online world.  Ideally, as consumers come to expect an omnipresent sales experience (“omni-channel”), retailers should be playing with – as opposed to against — digital and the online space.  Some companies are beginning to experiment with digital and having eCommerce directly available instore.  Digitail still in its embryonic stages.  L2 did a study in New York and Chicago and found that only 4 of the 71 stores it surveyed were doing a “baseline” level of digital integration.

Enhancing the consumer journey

Putting digital into the retail experience is a fine idea as long as (a) it enhances the customer journey, (b) it serves a purpose or business objective, and (c) it works.  You would think that (c) would go without saying. However, even some large brands seemingly have missed this point.  It speaks to the fact that digital is viewed either as glitzy gadget and/or management doesn’t see fit to check it.  In the “old” days, management did store checks and verified product display, pricing and placement.  Somehow, management’s eye has not been trained to review digital displays with the same level of acuity.  I hardly intended for this to be a rant against Levi’s, but it’s funny that the first two examples come from the same brand in two different countries.  Coincidence?

Here are a couple of visible examples of digital errors in retail.

Levi’s in Paris (Champs Elysées)

As you walk by the store (west to east), you see a large screen on the wall with video.

Upon closer inspection on the bottom right, you can see that the Windows pop up message is visible for all to see.  Would that it were transparency on the source or some form of customer engagement!

 Levi’s in London (SoHo)

Same type of problem, but different corner in a different store in a different country!  This Levi’s store has multiple screens embedded within the store.  I note that the look & feel of this Levi’s store is entirely different from the one in Paris.

Retail is Detail – Digitail is even more detail

As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail.  In a luxury environment, the need (or the sin) is even greater.  As companies attempt to bring digital into the workspace, the human component remains essential.  In these particular cases, it’s about training the management and staff to notice the errors and, more importantly, to know how to fix them quickly!

The post Retail is Detail, especially with Digitail (digital in retail) appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Minter Dialogue #61

This interview is with Giles Corbett, a fellow INSEAD alumnus, who runs Libon, as part of the Orange Group. Libon is an innovative OTT service that provides a radically different experience to ordinary voice mail.  For example, it transcribes voice messages into text with surprising accuracy.  Beyond voice mail functionality, Libon also provides VOIP services and is building a community.  It’s available in four different languages.  Personally, I’m a user and a fan, so I wanted to get to know more about the Libon business, and how it works within the Orange context. I do hope you’ll enjoy the conversation.

For those of you who are regular listeners, you will find a new jingle at the beginning of the show, courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. I invite you to take a spin!

You can sign up to the Minter Dialogue podcast here via iTunes.

To get Libon or connect with Giles Corbett:

• You can follow Giles at Twitter on @gicorb
• Sign up for Libon on iTunes
• Sign up on Google Play

Site (app) mentioned by Giles:

• Hailo for London taxis : www.hailo.com

————–

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:

Meanwhile, you can find my other English-speaking interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shying about rating this podcast on iTunes! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at : MinterDial.fr, on Buzzsprout or in iTunes.

The post Interview with Giles Corbett (@gicorb), Libon from Orange Vallee (MDE61) appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

As our worlds become evermore connected and inter-connected, a visible component to our networks could become more valuable.  I have been quite fascinated by how different visual mapping tools help to visualize our networks and, more importantly, what they can help us to understand ourselves.  I thought I would compare a few mapping tools that are available (and free) for different types of networks, including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

LinkedIn InMaps’ Visual Mapping – a birdseye view (literally)

The LinkedIn InMaps tool that creates a mapping by interconnections is revealing in that it tells you what I characterize as your network “spheres.”  What can I tell from this mapping?  Outside of the Rorschach Test (please deposit in the comments what you think you see in this map), I would tend to conclude that I have two rather large communities, two lesser and two peripheral ones.  Otherwise, LinkedIn’s internal mechanisms help you to take advantage of who knows who.

A Rorschach Test? My Linkedin Inmaps Mapping

Twitter on the map

Thanks certainly to the open API, you can find many visual mapping tools of your Twitter network.  There are a couple that I wanted to highlight for their readability.  Otherwise, the question would be: what purpose do these mappings serve?

Twolocation – Basic and easy

There is something to be said to making things simple.  Apple made a tiny fortune by rendering the complex simple (because they never lost sight of the customer experience).  Here is a basic map of my Twitter followers by Twocation, created by David Barker, out of London.  It is rudimentary, but at least, it is quickly understandable as to where my Twitter audience lies: US, France and England.  You can get a pop up of the exact number and percentage of followers by country.  Beyond that, Twocation doesn’t exactly provide much value.

Tweepsmap – The devil is in the details?

The mapping provided by Tweepsmap is rather simple (similar to Twocation), but it lacks in readability.  The good news is that you have a more precise understanding country by country directly on the map (as opposed to a separate table in Twocation).  Here one can observe two different colored birds, signifying the countries with the greatest representation.  Not much in the realm of value add, otherwise.  I’d say we have more devil than detail here.

Building your network over time…

The next option is by MapMyFollowers and this one looks at your followers in increments of 1000, which works out to a chronological understanding of where you have built up a following.  From the three tranches for me, below, you can see a spreading out of the followers, especially toward Asia.

Color-Coded Visual Mapping of your Facebook Network

Moving over to Facebook, Wolfram Alpha has launched a new service that enables you to get a grip on your Facebook community.  There a number of options, but I thought I’d highlight the color-coded network mapping.

The Wolfram Alpha mapping above plots my network of friends, showing who knows who and ascribes some to different categories: social insiders (share most friends), social outsiders (share at most one friend), social connectors (connect together different clusters of friends), social neighbors and social gateways.    These last two bear some explaining.  My Social Neighbor is someone with a small number of friends whom I don’t know.  My Social Gateway friends are those who connect me to people outside my network.  I like where this type of segmentation could lead.  And I wonder what could be the applications for a brand page?  Meanwhile, I must say that the Wolfram Alpha application is very robust and you can play with the data in multiple ways.  Definitely worth the spin!

Klout – Literal Spheres of Influence

Klout has provides a visual mapping of the “influencers” in your network, where each circle is sized (and colored) according to the person’s klout score.  Of the 1783 friends who have allowed their presence to be viewed from outside, just 234 (13.1%) have signed up for a Klout score.  The purpose of the graph is to invite you, as a Klout user, to “influence your friends” to join Klout.  To the extent you give kredit to the Klout score, this allows you to understand very quickly your immediate circle.  For some reason, Klout doesn’t provide the same visual mapping for your Twitter followers.

BlueNod – Event-based real-time mapping

Last but not least, I would be remiss not to mention Blue Nod which creates interesting ways to map — using only Twitter — an event, user or hashtag in real-time.  Blue Nod even provides a way to evaluate the influential Twitteratti during an event, which could have good implications for the more nimble marketers!  The BlueNod visual mapping identifies people who follow you versus those who don’t.  It connects them in ways that help understand the ebb and flow of a conference.  If you’re doing an event, I highly recommend trying it out.

Connecting with Twitter’s Director of UK, @BruceDaisley at the SocialBakers event

I’d love to hear about other visual mapping tools that caught your eye!  Let me know which one you liked above?  Or the ones you didn’t like!  Always glad to have your comments!

The post The exciting world of Visual Mapping of Networks and Spheres of Influence appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Minter Dialogue #58

This interview is with Francis Pisani, a truly polyglot esteemed journalist, author and professor from France, who has taught at some of the most established institutions in the world, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico. In 2011, Francis launched Winch5, a worldwide tour looking at innovation in its different forms. I had the good fortune to meet Francis through our collaboration at Netexplo, the observatory of new technologies with which I’ve been associated since leaving L’Oreal. In this interview, we discuss some of his lessons learned from his voyage around the world, how innovation is happening in surprising and different ways, and how countries, cities and companies are looking to insert innovation into their DNA.

If you enjoyed this show, you can sign up to the Minter Dialogue podcast here via iTunes.

To connect with Francis Pisani:

• You can send an email to Francis Pisani here
• Or follow Francis Pisani on Twitter (where you will see he tweets in multiple languages!)

————–

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:

Meanwhile, you can find my other English-speaking interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shying about rating this podcast on iTunes! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at : MinterDial.fr, on Buzzsprout or in iTunes.

The post Francis Pisani, Journalist, Author and World Traveler on Innovation (MDE58) cc @FrancisPisani appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

If you are thinking of hitting SXSW 2014 (which I already recommend!), I thought I’d share my first timer recommendations.  Here are my tips after having done my first SXSW in March 2013 (you can read my SXSW 2013 write-up here).  The 2014 dates are now set for March 7-11 for the Interactive part, March 7-16 for Film and March 11-16 for Music.

Optimizing your SxSW 2014

• First time you go, you need a guide or a conference sherpa  {Thanks to Jennifer for being mine in 2013!}
• 

  Find a benevolent sherpa for your first SXSW experience

  You need to book your hotel EARLY (and it’s best to get a hotel downtown).  That said, staying with kind local hosts makes a difference, too (bike puncture and all — thanks Matt and Jen!).  Want their contact details, let me know!

• Go to the conference light in gear — a tablet, a phone and chargers for both!  Old fashioned business cards are still valuable, even though I wish more people had BUMP!  Leave the rest of your stuff in your hotel room!  But, always keep a spare bag for the random goodies (for example, the one you get at check-in).
• Weather can be spotty at this time of the year in Austin, and you’ll be happy to have woolens in the evening when it can be rather chilly.
• Take the time to pick your sessions ahead of the visit, but don’t go over board – you can’t reserve a space and, unless you’re familiar with the physical layout of the different conference centers, you can end up running around town rather than benefitting from”going with the flow” and the positive effects of serendipity.
• There are several software tools to use to organize your schedule, including the one offered by SXSW.  None is perfect, but Lanyrd is probably my favorite because it is so easy to share with other attendees.
  
• Keep energy for the evening events, as the music and party side of SXSW is not to be missed. {Click to tweet!} 
• Get to the key sessions early and try to sit in the front row if you want to guarantee a clear non fuzzy shot of the slides.
• Note to sponsors: Events that are located away from the downtown center of Austin are just too far away (not that you can’t have an intimate gathering with due effect).

By all accounts, the music side of SXSW is evidently ANOTHER event… With another level of intensity… {Click to tweet!}  I hope to count myself among the crowd next year.

In addition you could also check out SXSW’s first timer’s guide.

The post Tips for your first time visit to South by Southwest – for SXSW 2014 appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Herewith some feedback about my experience at the pinnacle “social conference” South by Southwest (SXSW) 2013. Clearly, there is a sense among some of the high powered digerati that SXSW is now “overdone” and so they have decided it’s no longer worth attending.  I would disagree.  If you’ve never heard of it, “South by” is a conference/festival, featuring a unique blend of interactive (digital), film and music.  From my point of view, after attending 3 out of the 4 days of the interactive portion of the event, it was a very worthwhile trip and I got a lot out of it.  With some 26,000 attendees, it’s a big crowd and it’s hard not to find people of interest and to enter into highly engaging conversations.  Moreover, since it’s a combination of people from different industries and geographies, the flavor and dynamics of the congregation is extremely stimulating.   What did I get out of it?  I met some great new people in all sorts of different domains.  I found some pearls of how business and mindsets are evolving.  I witnessed the latest efforts in  guerilla marketing.  I came away with a host of new ideas to blog about.  On top of that, for conferences in Europe (France, in particular), I see opportunities for how conferences can be better run over here.

The High Value of Serendipity

While I had grand intentions to attend many sessions, I ended up letting myself go with some spontaneous and/or random encounters.  Some of these came after being “spotted” by acquaintances or friends via one or other social network (Twitter, Foursquare…).  Others were entirely unintended,  talking with people in lines (eg the folks at nu.nl), sitting next to someone in a restaurant or a bar (eMarketer, @CocktailDiva), or introducing yourself randomly at a party (NYT, @NowThisNews).  Those serendipitous encounters were very much a scintillating part of the SXSW experience.

Attendance is not obligatory

With the twitterati out in force, enhanced by the occasional Storify summary, you can literally “get” a conference by following the hashtag from afar. {Click to tweet if you like this}.  Some sessions I chose to follow from outside the room.  Sometimes, the Twitter stream is ample to get the main gist of a conference! {Click to tweet}.

Social Conference & Applications

Applications that help organize your conference, facilitate networking and improve interactivity continue to surface and improve.  For this SXSW, I used Lanyrd and the specific SXSW schedule (on their site).  Using two services simultaneously was definitely confusing, although neither alone was fully satisfactory.  I specifically liked the fact that Lanyrd let you share your schedule with great ease.  There’s bound to be many more new developments in this space.  The key is having everyone converging on the generally accepted (and best) one!

I did come across two fun apps that were worthwhile, especially in a conference setting.

• The first is Good Karma, “the first social hotspot.”  Good Karma is a pay as you go pocket-sized wifi that does not require a contract and, when you let others connect via your hot spot, your price goes down.  I connected and enjoyed the kind karma of a Dutchman while in Austin.
• The second one is called Highlight (see below), an app that helps you identify friends and people of interest around you.

Highlight App

Geolocalization and Street marketing

The level of Commercialness was evident… The going deal was a tweet (despite not knowing which account or klout anyone had….).  Example: Get a refresher kit freebie for a tweet. In addition, I started to “feel” the efforts of geolocalized interaction.  Specifically, during my stay in Texas, two locations at which I dined connected with me shortly after an initial check-in or tweet: the Gaylord Hotel (Dallas) and the Kerbey Lane Cafe (Austin).  I still don’t see much of that in Paris.  I say, let’s do more geolocalized interaction in Paris!  {Please click to Tweet if you agree!}

Highlight sessions at SXSW

I attended roughly 12 sessions over the three days.  Predictably, it was a bit hit or miss.  Although I did get turned away from a few sessions that I had targeted, I attended three great sessions that I captured in a Storify recap:

• Work-Life Balance – Why women can’t have it all with Anne-Marie Slaughter – Here’s my Storify of this session
• Physical & Digital Collide: Retail Rewired with Dan Shust (Resource) and Barry Bourbon (Gensler) - Storify
• Digital Time Machines and the Future of Learning with Rus Gant (Professor at Harvard) and Al Bunshaft (MD at Dassault Systems in North America) talking about the terrific research and 3D imaging of the Giza Pyramids – Storify

Austin – the pearl of Texas

As my friend, Stan (from Dallas) says, Austin is the best city in the state.  And, I must say that the town has great flavor.  Carrying the informal motto Keep Austin Weird, it’s a town with a distinctly bohemian flair, a most entertaining bar-filled (East) Sixth Street and a very welcoming local population.  Certainly wish my town’s motto included the word Weird  {Click to Tweet if you agree!}

My interest this year was focused on the interactive side of SxSW.  By all accounts, the music side of SxSW is evidently ANOTHER event… With another level of intensity… Maybe I’ll get a chance to discover the other facets of this gloriously social conference next year.

The post Social Conference – South by Southwest SXSW 2013 Highlights & Reactions appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Minter Dialogue #54

This interview is with Adrien Henni, co-founder and chief editor of East West Digital News, an English language media focused on the evolving Russian digital market. He is also advisor to FaberNovel, the innovation consultancy out of Paris.  In this interview, we discuss the Russian digital landscape, some of the latest innovations to come out of Russia and some of the keys to doing business and digital marketing in Russia.

You can also sign up to the Minter Dialogue podcast here via iTunes.

To connect with Adrien Henni and East West Digital News:

• Adrien Henni on Linkedin
• East West Digital News on Facebook
• East West Digital News on Twitter

Sites mentioned by Adrien Henni

• Innovation in Russia – now the #14 in the world according to the Global Innovation Index by Bloomberg
• Linkedin is indeed in Russian
• Displair – next generation screens
• Dora from Intersoft – mobile applications with radioactivity meter (EWDN article about Dora)
• Pinterest in Russia: pinme.ru (Pinterest copy cat)
• eCommerce in Russia by EWDN

————–

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:

Meanwhile, you can find my other English-speaking interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shying about rating this podcast on iTunes! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at : MinterDial.fr, on Buzzsprout or in iTunes.

The post Adrien Henni, East West Digital News co-founder and Chief Editor (MDE54) appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Minter Dialogue #53 – Reports from Netexplo

In the second of the series, here is an interview with Netexplo Forum 2013 award winner, Matt Stempeck.  Matt created LazyTruth, an open source system to help us vet the false from the true with those mails coming from well-intentioned friends. LazyTruth was one of the top 10 award winners at the Netexplo Forum (Feb 14-15), where we look at the new technology trends the world over. Matt is part of team at MIT Media Labs, studying the future of journalism and media, social media and social change. LazyTruth is a fabulous project for anyone looking to get a cleaner inbox and ridding us of those fallacious viral emails!  You can read up more about the Netexplo 2013 Forum here in a prior post.

You can sign up to the Minter Dialogue podcast here via iTunes.

To read more about LazyTruth here:

• Netexplo PDF Report on LazyTruth
• Engadget Writeup on Lazy Truth
• Bad Data blog write up (out of France)

Follow Matt Stempeck

• Matt Stempeck @mstem on Twitter

————–

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:

Meanwhile, you can find my other English-speaking interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shying about rating this podcast on iTunes! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at : MinterDial.fr, on Buzzsprout or in iTunes.

The post MDE53: Matt Stempeck – LazyTruth wins at Netexplo 2013 cc @mstem appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Aside from the feast of interesting people, fascinating material and the discovery of new technology trends from around the world that you can find at the Netexplo Forum, I came across a nifty app that brings a whole new type of discovery to a conference. It is called BlueNod.  It essentially maps and visualizes a Twitter profile, community or hashtag and allows you to see instantly Twitter influence.  In the case of the Netexplo Forum, I used it at several times throughout the event and found the experience rather enjoyable as a way of seeing what was being tweeted, by whom and with what amplification.  During the two days, BlueNod tabluated 5000 tweets (hashtag #Netexplo).  You can check out the Netexplo event in BlueNod yourself here.  Note that BlueNod is still under beta development (you need to ask for an invitation to have full access).

beta.bluenod.com

Visualization: Twitter Influence and Discovery

The BlueNod system allows you to see — at different intervals — who has the biggest influence, who has neighboring communities as well as follow the tweets and view (easily) the profiles of individuals.  When you log in, you can also see who you are following (green dots) or not (blue).  According to BlueNod’s site, here is what the service promises:

• a simple and quick way to find and visualize any user account or hashtag on Twitter
• browse connected people and content in a fast and efficient way
• look deeper into your communities with time navigation and data storage
• engage with your communities and see your impact instantly

I think this kind of tool can provide a promising new way to “curate” the twitter universe and quickly get to the heart of an issue or follow the core of a conference.  I was quite fascinated by the “influence” circles.  My only caveat with BlueNod so far is that the size of the circle is designated to gauge the influence of that Tweeter.  It seems that the influence is measured in function of the number of retweets during a specific event or on a specific hashtag.  If you double check against Klout or Kred, for example, you can find a fair amount of discrepancy between the latent influence and the realtime influence in that singular moment/event.  That said, having influence measurement for a specific issue, event can be very useful, too.

The Oscars – Twitter influence according to BlueNod

Since it’s hot news, you check out a snaposhot BlueNod mapping of the hashtag #oscars.

Not surprisingly, taking a mere 200 tweets (and 315 users including the retweeters) with #oscars in it over the course of a minute this morning (7:14am), you will see that @TheAcademy had top influence and radiance.  On the left you can see who among these 200 tweets had the biggest influence over that time span.  I note, with not a little pride, that my gang at Redken 5th Ave snuck in (kudos!).  On the mapping, among other things I could quickly see, I had two people I follow… And by clicking on the Tweets tab, I got a quick scan of what was captured by BlueNod.  A great way to “plunge” into Hollywood’s biggest night.

Are you a taker?  Give it a spin and tell me what you think!

The post Blue Nod: A new Twitter influence and community visualization tool at #Netexplo 2013 appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.

Minter Dialogue #52 – Reports from Netexplo

Some of you will hopefully have followed the Netexplo Forum 2013, 14-15 February, where we look at the new technology trends the world over. I was able to catch up with a few of the prize winners. This first interview is with Dr Nanshu Lu, the Grand Winner of the Netexplo 2013 Awards. Her project, Electronic Tattoos, is absolutely stunning.  Among her many achievements, Nanshu was identified in 2012 as one of the world’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35 by Technology Review Magazine.  In this interview, Nanshu, who has a Ph.D from Harvard in Mechanics of Materials, describes what Electronic Tattoos are and some of the potential applications.

You can sign up to the Minter Dialogue podcast here via iTunes.

Curving, tiny wires in Lu’s “Electronic Tattoo” form a soft and pliable mesh.
Photograph by Nanshu Lu and Alex Jerez

About Nanshu Lu’s Electronic Tattoos project:

• Nanshu Lu’s profile page at University of Texas Austin 
• You can download the Netexplo Report on Electronic Tattoos here (pdf)

————–

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue Radio Show:

Meanwhile, you can find my other English-speaking interviews on the Minter Dialogue Radio Show on Buzzsprout or via iTunes. Please don’t be shying about rating this podcast on iTunes! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at : MinterDial.fr, on Buzzsprout or in iTunes.

The post MDE52: Interview with Nanshu Lu, Electronic Tattoos at #Netexplo 2013 appeared first on Branding and digital marketing strategy | The Myndset by Minter Dial.