December Bulletin

Happy Holidays Everybody. Here's our December bulletin. If you'd like to cycle through the articles use the following bundle link: http://bit.ly/bundles/zachary/3

Eight Principles To Innovation
Ideas, creativity and innovation are a big part of our business. Although these elements of our business are intangible and are perceived to be intrinsic qualities, there are many factors that lead to their realization. Here are eight principles when approaching innovation along with some examples to get you going.
http://bit.ly/9WsKfd

Consumer Journey
Looking to create comprehensive customer experiences and discover new ways of engaging your audience? Look no further than customer journey maps. Understanding the minutia about audiences’ behaviour and brand engagement is a demanding and enlightening exercise. Here are a few tricks to keep in mind and be sure to speak to your Account Planners on the latest BBDO/Proximity engagement planning tool: InciteWorks.
http://bit.ly/fq9vlV

The Movement Is The Medium
Creating a branded movement is a strategic goal many organization hope to achieve yet few will realize. In all sincerity, it’s a tall order. The motivation behind “the movement” is to strengthen customer loyalty, integrate your brand with culture and provide visceral “ins” for consumers to connect with your brand. Although the strategy is far from news, the following is a good introduction to the basics of creating a branded movement.
http://bit.ly/dLRHpn

Social Shopping
It’s time to start thinking of point of sale in a whole new light. In 2010, we've seen the rise of so-called "social shopping" services. They rely heavily on technologies such as social networking, crowdsourcing and smart phone scanners. Here are five of the main social shopping developments of 2010.
http://rww.to/dKQqj9

Hack Your Brain
The evolution of video game interaction (Wii & Kinect) has revealed that different types of body movements have varying affects on emotion. Why is this important to marketers? Well, marketing has embraced engagement and interaction. In the same way we focus heavily on the details of messaging, we must now draw the same level of attention to interaction.
http://bit.ly/eKMljG

Gut Check
Years of market research have confirmed that emotion drivers have more impact that rational drivers. There’s no doubt, people are motivated by their visceral intuition. The following is a look at thirty seven human needs which can be met by purchasing a given product or service.
http://bit.ly/epncWO

Eight Principles To Innovation
Ideas, creativity and innovation are a big part of our business. Although these elements of our business are intangible and are perceived to be intrinsic qualities, there are many factors that lead to their realization. Here are eight principles when approaching innovation along with some examples to get you going.
http://bit.ly/9WsKfd

Consumer Journey
Looking to create comprehensive customer experiences and discover new ways of engaging your audience? Look no further than customer journey maps. Understanding the minutia about audiences’ behaviour and brand engagement is a demanding and enlightening exercise. Here are a few tricks to keep in mind and be sure to speak to your Account Planners on the latest BBDO/Proximity engagement planning tool: InciteWorks.
http://bit.ly/fq9vlV

The Movement Is The Medium
Creating a branded movement is a strategic goal many organization hope to achieve yet few will realize. In all sincerity, it’s a tall order. The motivation behind “the movement” is to strengthen customer loyalty, integrate your brand with culture and provide visceral “ins” for consumers to connect with your brand. Although the strategy is far from news, the following is a good introduction to the basics of creating a branded movement.
http://bit.ly/dLRHpn

Social Shopping
It’s time to start thinking of point of sale in a whole new light. In 2010, we've seen the rise of so-called "social shopping" services. They rely heavily on technologies such as social networking, crowdsourcing and smart phone scanners. Here are five of the main social shopping developments of 2010.
http://rww.to/dKQqj9

Hack Your Brain
The evolution of video game interaction (Wii & Kinect) has revealed that different types of body movements have varying affects on emotion. Why is this important to marketers? Well, marketing has embraced engagement and interaction. In the same way we focus heavily on the details of messaging, we must now draw the same level of attention to interaction.
http://bit.ly/eKMljG

Gut Check
Years of market research have confirmed that emotion drivers have more impact that rational drivers. There’s no doubt, people are motivated by their visceral intuition. The following is a look at thirty seven human needs which can be met by purchasing a given product or service.
http://bit.ly/epncWO

November Bulletin

We’re gonna do things a little different this month. Instead of uploading the individual articles as blog posts, we’ll simply post the newsletter and you can choose to engage with any content you wish from one post. Click on the article headlines to be linked.

We’ve also created a “bundle” of all the articles in the event you would like to cycle through them from one link. Simply click here.

We apologize for not providing content during the month of October. Due to medical reasons I was not able to pull together the bulletin. For ongoing content, follow us on Twitter.

Beyond Paid Media

Changes to the way consumers perceive and absorb marketing messages is forcing marketers to not only change their thinking but also the way they allocate spending and organize operations. Paid media remains important however its role within the grand scheme of the strategy has shifted dramatically. Discover four other forms of media and modern challenges for marketing organizations.

Disconnect For The Sake Of Creativity

Interruption-free space is sacred. Yet, in the digital era we live in, we are losing hold of the few sacred spaces that remain untouched by email, the Internet, people, and other forms of distraction. The consequence is the death of deep thinking and creativity. Find out how to fight the invisible forces for the connected world.

The Six Drivers Of Brand Utility

Is this marketing or just ridiculous? Many brands are experimenting with an approach known as brand utility. In short, brands are providing audiences with services & goods that aren’t necessarily sold but given away. Although it sounds similar to sampling, it’s not. Discover the difference between the two and learn about the six fundamentals to creating successful brand utility.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted

The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns. Malcolm Gladwell argues this isn’t the case by exposing the shallow underside of Twitter.

Digital Relativity

Space on the Internet is infinite. Time and attention, meanwhile, remain finite. This challenge to marketers has been dubbed “Digital Relativity”. In order to garner the attention of your audience in a world of Digital Relativity, you will need to create a compelling narrative--an emerging set of skills called Transmedia Storytelling. The following is a top line exploration of why Transmedia Storytelling is the right tool for the job.

The Future Is Eff’d

We’re all screwed. Douglas Coupland reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future. Don’t read this in a dark place or you’ll be sad.

If you have any questions, thoughts, etc please contact us or leave a comment.

Update

Our apologies that we've been off the radar for the last while. We're currently in the process of updating our past newsletters given the slacking we've been doing on our blog. You can check them out by going to older posts. For timely content from Firestarter please follow us on Twitter. Thanks for checking us out.

Welcome To The Decade Of Games

Game dynamics are fast becoming a critical currency of motivation. Their power lies not in connecting us to our friends, but in directly influencing our individual behaviour. More and more of these dynamics are being cleverly leveraged in real-world scenarios to influence your behavior. Smart companies will take this time to look at their product portfolios and community behaviors through the lens of game dynamics.

For those of you still trying to wrap your head around the meteoric rise of social networking over the past decade, this post might hurt a little bit. Because just as you and most of the world were getting a handle on it, the decade of social abruptly ended.

I don't mean that we will stop using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to share with our friends, colleagues and families. In fact, quite the opposite is true, our combined usage of these social networks will continue to increase. Rather, the decade of constructing the social layer is complete. The frameworks that we'll use to share socially are built, defined and controlled. Construction on the social layer ended with the launch of Facebook's Open Graph protocols over the last several months. All the interesting social stuff that will occur over the next decade (and there'll be lots, I'm sure), will exist within this predefined framework built and controlled by Facebook. In short, the decade of social is over.

What's taking its place? The decade of games.

When you hear games, you probably immediately think about things like World of WarCraft, the Nintendo Wii and Farmville. And while those are huge (and will get even bigger) I'm talking about the underlying game dynamics that are the core building blocks of those games. And in this decade of games, these game dynamics will move far beyond your computer screen and into decidedly non-game like environments, like the way we court customers, engage with others at work, discover where to hang out on Saturday nights and what, when and how we choose to purchase. More and more of these dynamics are being cleverly leveraged in real-world scenarios to influence your behavior. While the last decade was all about connections and integrating a social fabric to every facet of our digital and analog existence, this next decade is all about influence.

Game dynamics are fast becoming a critical currency of motivation. Their power lies not in connecting us to our friends, but in directly influencing our individual behavior.

The decade of games is starting now because cultural and technological shifts have led us to a perfect convergence of reach, relevance and demand. We're able to reach people anywhere at any time thanks to the powerful mobile devices that now travel everywhere we go. Facebook's Open Graph enables us to provide relevance to anyone with instant access to the social graph of connections. And there's the demand. Traditional forms of entertainment (movies, television... remember books?) are in a rapid decline. The demand for entertainment hasn't decreased, it's just shifted to a more interactive, pervasive form of entertainment. It's shifting to games.

I've been playing games for at least half of my life (granted, I'm only 21) but that's still a long time. And, I'm currently the Chief Ninja (that's the non-game company equivalent of CEO) of SCVNGR, aGoogle Ventures backed mobile gaming company. Needless to say, I tend to think of life as a giant game. A somewhat poorly designed for sure, but one big game nevertheless. I enjoy watching how game dynamics subtly, often invisibly, influence almost everything that everyone does.

At SCVNGR, we've been able to examine the statistical effects of introducing game dynamics into situations that are decidedly not games. We've seen simple game dynamics increase traffic to locations 4X over a matter of days. We've seen others extend the average amount of engaged time consumers spend at a business by upwards of 40%. This propagation of game dynamics into the real world via the social graph and mobile devices will have powerful business consequences for those who understand how to leverage them.

At SCVNGR we like to joke that with any seven game dynamics you can get anyone to do anything. So with that, I'll present three of our favorites here:

The Appointment Dynamic

The appointment dynamic is a famous game mechanic in which to succeed a "player" must return at a predefined time to take a predetermined action. It's simple and immensely powerful.

The appointment dynamic is powerful enough to alter the behavior of an entire generation — "happy hours" are appointment dynamics, as is the pervasive game "Farmville" by Zynga. But we've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Imagine companies like Vitality leveraging this dynamic to improve the adherence rate to often less-than-pleasant medicinal regimens, or the government creating a large scale game (with financial incentives as rewards) to alter traffic patterns to decrease highway congestion in the mornings.

The Progression Dynamic

In the progression dynamic, a "player's" level of success is displayed in real-time and gradually improved through the completion of granular tasks. Somewhere deep-rooted in the human psyche we have this desire to complete any progression dynamic put in front of us as long as the steps to do so are itemized and clear. With this as a known dynamic, it's not hard to envision the ways that this can be leveraged even further in the real-world.

The canonical "game" example of the progression dynamic exists in Blizzard's World of WarCraft, the most popular immersive online game with over 11 million monthly players. In WoW players follow a well-defined progression dynamic as they level-up from a weak paladin level 1 to an unbelievably powerful paladin level 60 by completing missions and tasks.

But like most game dynamics, real-world implementations of this mechanic are not hard to find. Coffee shops regularly use this dynamic with their "buy nine cups of coffee and your 10th is free" cards. Next time you log into LinkedIn, check out how complete your profile is. If you're one of the lucky ones who's figured out how to have a complete LinkedIn profile, then you've won this specific game, but for the rest of us, you'll see a now familiar looking progression dynamic, urging us to take a couple more steps to move that blue progress bar from the left edge of the screen to the right.

Communal Discovery

Communal discovery is a mechanic which involves an entire community working together to solve a problem. The reason I've saved the communal discovery dynamic for last is that it, perhaps more than all others, presents incredible opportunities to positively influence the world as we enter this decade of games.

In an effort to illustrate the immense data-collection power of the now mature social layer (and incidentally the burgeoning game layer), DARPA launched a challenge late last year. They hid 10 red balloons at different locations all across the continental United States and offered $40,000 to the first team to correctly identify their locations. The winning team (a group from MIT) constructed a strategy that in many ways mirrored a pyramid scheme. It was a cleverly constructed waterfall of incentives that encouraged massive cooperation. Essentially everyone to give them data about any balloon's location won some portion of the prize money based on how many other people also submitted the location of that balloon. This created positive communal incentives across what rapidly became a large and self-propagating network. Their strategy managed to accurately identify all locations in less than 9 hours.

This communal discovery mechanic is immensely powerful and, as DARPA so elegantly displayed, can be used to solve immensely difficult problems in record time.

These are just three out of a myriad of game dynamics that will act as the core building blocks used to construct the game layer over the next couple years. We're right at the beginning of this decade of games and so now is the time for everyone to learn about these game dynamics and discover new ones. Smart companies will take this time to look at their product portfolios and community behaviors through the lens of game dynamics. Where could you employ progression or appointment dynamics on the existing social graph or through mobile to encourage upsells or repeat visits? The time is now to map out your game dynamic strategy. The more people that help in the construction of these frameworks, the better they will be. So, go play some games. Then start building.

Source - Harvard Business Review

LBS – Foursquare & Facebook Places

Insights from the internal, Dino Demopolous sheds some light on the differences in location based services provided by Facebook & Foursquare. Through the exploration of people and places the present and the future, Dino provides some interesting thoughts on the future of “checking in”.

I have been thinking about Facebook Places over the past couple of days. Though I have yet to try it since it has not been made available in Canada, I am interested to see how it differs from Foursquare. Or, more accurately, how I will use it differently, how brands might use it differently and how it might co exist with Foursquare.

In my mind, I find it useful to view location based services and what they offer through two distinct lenses. The first is, of course, the lens of PEOPLE that use these services. The second is the PLACES themselves, the actual locations in which we check in. Sure, it is an obvious distinction, but here is how I see some of the implications when we think of these two lenses as they apply to what is happening NOW versus what has happened in the past, or THEN. In other words, how do these services play out in how they deliver value right now, in real time, and how does that differ from how value accrues over time? And how is that different for people and places?

Here is my rudimentary chart:

I. Places, Now

This is the data that is made available in real time about what is currently popping at a given location. It is the basic role of Foursquare, as far as Places are concerned; animating the present. How many people are right here, right now at this place? Think of, say, a bar or club, and in many ways this is pretty obvious, people have been doing it with text messages or by telephone for ages. I know that as a DJ this is a behaviour that we saw evolve through the medieval ages (the 1990s, as people would rifle off text messages to their friends upon walking in the club to let them know if the party was happening.

Of course, the present is most definitely vital to location based services, but it is far from everything. Making use of the real time information that is being provided is a huge benefit for places, especially commercial places, but it is different than the long term breadth and depth of information and data that location services can provided. More on that below, but Yelp is just one starting point as an example.

2. Places, Then

I think of this as the layers of meaning attached to locations over time. Yes, much of this can be, and is, commercial in nature. Things like loyalty programs, CRM type stuff. Huge for business. But I think it is quite telling that the example used by one of the Facebook developers when Places was launched was of a beach that you were at, and discovered that this was the place where your parents had their first kiss. How sweet!

This hints at the long term project and goal that transcends the present, commercial or otherwise, and is the beginning of an underlying digital archive of information and meaning attached to physical locations, or places. I should say, it is a beginning, instead of the beginning. There is a lot of interesting work being done by the folks at Bing Maps, for instance, to develop rich layers of meaning on city maps. But given the sheer size of Facebook, this project can take off in a very natural, mass way, by making it part of the regular social stuff we share with friends.

So, in contrast to Foursquares game mechanic driven focus on what is going onnow, I think Places strength will be in building meaning over time for locations. This is a lofty goal, but as long as the behaviour of checking in becomes adopted and second nature, it will happen given the sheer size of Facebook. Here is how Augie Ray from Forrester put it,

Soon, the local restaurant or hiking trail may have as rich a personality as do the people on Facebook, not because everyone has visited but because your friends have. And in the end, isn’t that what we really care about? Not who is mayor of our local coffee shop, but what our friends did, said, and liked when they were there before us

3. People, Now

When Foursquare launched, it was described as one part social city guide, one part mobile friend finder. For users, the mobile friend finder is exactly the benefit of real time location data. Knowing that your buddies are drinking at the bar around the corner from where you are right now is compelling, and at its best, this is where Foursquare and the other services shine. It is why unlocking badges is such an important engine to the game. And though you are encouraged to leave tips or reviews for your friends or others about places, it really is one of the lesser used functions. The focus is on the now, the game and collecting badges. Indeed, the whole idea of the resetting leaderboard underscores the inherent temporal logic of Foursquare.

4. People, Then

This is where Facebook has the biggest opportunity. The goal is to make checking in and the social relevance of location on par with the many other social behaviours and interactions we already share on Facebook, like tagging each other in pictures or posting on each others wall.

This is from the Facebook Places page:

If you're already using Places, it's like you checked in yourself without having to do a thing. If you're not using Places yet, it's just like being mentioned in a status update.

Putting the check in in the wider context of social behaviours we are already familiar with will be a huge accomplishment if they can pull it off, and if we actually adopt it as users, because we will have the potential of seeing a lot of rich meaning emerge over time for how we relate with places in the real world. This can be incredibly relevant to our friends and network.

Part of this relevance will be in the now, so that we know where are friends are in real time, but in contrast to Foursquare, that relevance will also grow and emerge over time as it is woven in to the fabric of our social behaviours. Or, as the clever Facebook put it, the where joins with the who, what, when. Smart.

Thinking back to that first kiss on the beach example provided by the Facebook developer, it is worth noting that he intended it to show how Places will be meaningful twenty years down the road, as we develop the shared social history of location awareness with our friends and network.

With respect to brands and commercial applications, I think that Facebook might have got it right this time around. Instead of jamming an intrusive and strange interaction down our throat, like Beacon, it is banking on first socializing the check in among users so that it becomes second nature. I suspect that they are purposely waiting to roll out commercial applications because job one is to acclimatize Facebook users to using location features and discovering the many ways that they can deliver value, over time, in ways that go beyond just collecting loyalty points or a free latte.

Source - Chroma

Experiences Trump the Material

Consumers continue trading in material spending for experiences. Initiated by the recession and maintained through positive reinforcement, consumers are finding greater happiness through social interactions and personal experiences. It’s long but it opens up the conversation around brands as experiences vs. products. Marketers pay heed.

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people. Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.” So one day she stepped off.

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number. Her mother called her crazy.

Today, three years after Ms. Strobel and Mr. Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen. Mr. Smith is completing a doctorate in physiology; Ms. Strobel happily works from home as a Web designer and freelance writer. She owns four plates, three pairs of shoes and two pots. With Mr. Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms. Strobel’s income of about $24,000 a year covers their bills. They are still car-free but have bikes. One other thing they no longer have: $30,000 of debt.

Ms. Strobel’s mother is impressed. Now the couple have money to travel and to contribute to the education funds of nieces and nephews. And because their debt is paid off, Ms. Strobel works fewer hours, giving her time to be outdoors, and to volunteer, which she does about four hours a week for a nonprofit outreach program called Living Yoga.

“The idea that you need to go bigger to be happy is false,” she says. “I really believe that the acquisition of material goods doesn’t bring about happiness.”

While Ms. Strobel and her husband overhauled their spending habits before the recession, legions of other consumers have since had to reconsider their own lifestyles, bringing a major shift in the nation’s consumption patterns.

“We’re moving from a conspicuous consumption — which is ‘buy without regard’ — to a calculated consumption,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at the NPD Group, the retailing research and consulting firm.

Amid weak job and housing markets, consumers are saving more and spending less than they have in decades, and industry professionals expect that trend to continue. Consumers saved 6.4 percent of their after-tax income in June, according to a new government report. Before the recession, the rate was 1 to 2 percent for many years. In June, consumer spending and personal incomes were essentially flat compared with May, suggesting that the American economy, as dependent as it is on shoppers opening their wallets and purses, isn’t likely to rebound anytime soon.

On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.

If consumers end up sticking with their newfound spending habits, some tactics that retailers and marketers began deploying during the recession could become lasting business strategies. Among those strategies are proffering merchandise that makes being at home more entertaining and trying to make consumers feel special by giving them access to exclusive events and more personal customer service.

While the current round of stinginess may simply be a response to the economic downturn, some analysts say consumers may also be permanently adjusting their spending based on what they’ve discovered about what truly makes them happy or fulfilled.

“This actually is a topic that hasn’t been researched very much until recently,” says Elizabeth W. Dunn, an associate professor in the psychology department at the University of British Columbia, who is at the forefront of research on consumption and happiness. “There’s massive literature on income and happiness. It’s amazing how little there is on how to spend your money.”

Conspicuous consumption has been an object of fascination going back at least as far as 1899, when the economist Thorstein Veblen published “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” a book that analyzed, in part, how people spent their money in order to demonstrate their social status.

And it’s been a truism for eons that extra cash always makes life a little easier. Studies over the last few decades have shown that money, up to a certain point, makes people happier because it lets them meet basic needs. The latest round of research is, for lack of a better term, all about emotional efficiency: how to reap the most happiness for your dollar. So just where does happiness reside for consumers? Scholars and researchers haven’t determined whether Armani will put a bigger smile on your face than Dolce & Gabbana. But they have found that our types of purchases, their size and frequency, and even the timing of the spending all affect long-term happiness.

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff. “It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.) Thomas DeLeire, an associate professor of public affairs, population, health and economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, recently published research examining nine major categories of consumption. He and Ariel Kalil of the University of Chicago discovered that the only category to be positively related to happiness was leisure: vacations, entertainment, sports and equipment like golf clubs and fishing poles.

Using data from a study by the National Institute on Aging, Professor DeLeire compared the happiness derived from different levels of spending to the happiness people get from being married. (Studies have shown that marriage increases happiness.) “A $20,000 increase in spending on leisure was roughly equivalent to the happiness boost one gets from marriage,” he said, adding that spending on leisure activities appeared to make people less lonely and increased their interactions with others.

According to retailers and analysts, consumers have gravitated more toward experiences than possessions over the last couple of years, opting to use their extra cash for nights at home with family, watching movies and playing games — or for “staycations” in the backyard. Many retailing professionals think this is not a fad, but rather “the new normal.”

“I think many of these changes are permanent changes,” says Jennifer Black, president of the retailing research company Jennifer Black & Associates and a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors in Oregon. “I think people are realizing they don’t need what they had. They’re more interested in creating memories.” She largely attributes this to baby boomers’ continuing concerns about the job market and their ability to send their children to college. While they will still spend, they will spend less, she said, having reset their priorities.

While it is unlikely that most consumers will downsize as much as Ms. Strobel did, many have been, well, happily surprised by the pleasures of living a little more simply. The Boston Consulting Group said in a June report that recession anxiety had prompted a “back-to-basics movement,” with things like home and family increasing in importance over the last two years, while things like luxury and status have declined.

“There’s been an emotional rebirth connected to acquiring things that’s really come out of this recession,” says Wendy Liebmann, chief executive of WSL Strategic Retail, a marketing consulting firm that works with manufacturers and retailers. “We hear people talking about the desire not to lose that — that connection, the moment, the family, the experience.”

Current research suggests that, unlike consumption of material goods, spending on leisure and services typically strengthens social bonds, which in turn helps amplify happiness. (Academics are already in broad agreement that there is a strong correlation between the quality of people’s relationships and their happiness; hence, anything that promotes stronger social bonds has a good chance of making us feel all warm and fuzzy.)

And the creation of complex, sophisticated relationships is a rare thing in the world. As Professor Dunn and her colleagues Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson point out in their forthcoming paper, only termites, naked mole rats and certain insects like ants and bees construct social networks as complex as those of human beings. In that elite little club, humans are the only ones who shop.

At the height of the recession in 2008, Wal-Mart Stores realized that consumers were “cocooning” — vacationing in their yards, eating more dinners at home, organizing family game nights. So it responded by grouping items in its stores that would turn any den into an at-home movie theater or transform a backyard into a slice of the Catskills. Wal-Mart wasn’t just selling barbecues and board games. It was selling experiences. “We spend a lot of time listening to our customers,” says Amy Lester, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, “and know that they have a set amount to spend and need to juggle to meet that amount.”

One reason that paying for experiences gives us longer-lasting happiness is that we can reminisce about them, researchers say. That’s true for even the most middling of experiences. That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with “rosy recollection,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. Professor Lyubomirsky has a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. “Trips aren’t all perfect,” she notes, “but we remember them as perfect.”

Another reason that scholars contend that experiences provide a bigger pop than things is that they can’t be absorbed in one gulp — it takes more time to adapt to them and engage with them than it does to put on a new leather jacket or turn on that shiny flat-screen TV. “We buy a new house, we get accustomed to it,” says Professor Lyubomirsky, who studies what psychologists call “hedonic adaptation,” a phenomenon in which people quickly become used to changes, great or terrible, in order to maintain a stable level of happiness.

Over time, that means the buzz from a new purchase is pushed toward the emotional norm. “We stop getting pleasure from it,” she says. And then, of course, we buy new things.

When Ed Diener, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois and a former president of the International Positive Psychology Association — which promotes the study of what lets people lead fulfilling lives — was house-hunting with his wife, they saw several homes with features they liked. But unlike couples who choose a house because of its open floor plan, fancy kitchens, great light, or spacious bedrooms, Professor Diener arrived at his decision after considering hedonic-adaptation research.

“One home was close to hiking trails, making going hiking very easy,” he said in an e-mail. “Thinking about the research, I argued that the hiking trails could be a factor contributing to our happiness, and we should worry less about things like how pretty the kitchen floor is or whether the sinks are fancy. We bought the home near the hiking trail and it has been great, and we haven’t tired of this feature because we take a walk four or five days a week.”

Scholars have discovered that one way consumers combat hedonic adaptation is to buy many small pleasures instead of one big one. Instead of a new Jaguar, Professor Lyubomirsky advises, buy a massage once a week, have lots of fresh flowers delivered and make phone calls to friends in Europe. Instead of a two-week long vacation, take a few three-day weekends. “We do adapt to the little things,” she says, “but because there’s so many, it will take longer.”

Before credit cards and cellphones enabled consumers to have almost anything they wanted at any time, the experience of shopping was richer, says Ms. Liebmann of WSL Strategic Retail. “You saved for it, you anticipated it,” she says. In other words, waiting for something and working hard to get it made it feel more valuable and more stimulating.

In fact, scholars have found that anticipation increases happiness. Considering buying an iPad? You might want to think about it as long as possible before taking one home. Likewise about a Caribbean escape: you’ll get more pleasure if you book a flight in advance than if you book it at the last minute.

Once upon a time, with roots that go back to medieval marketplaces featuring stalls that functioned as stores, shopping offered a way to connect socially, as Ms. Liebmann and others have pointed out. But over the last decade, retailing came to be about one thing: unbridled acquisition, epitomized by big-box stores where the mantra was “stack ’em high and let ’em fly” and online transactions that required no social interaction at all — you didn’t even have to leave your home. The recession, however, may force retailers to become reacquainted with shopping’s historical roots. “I think there’s a real opportunity in retail to be able to romance the experience again,” says Ms. Liebmann. “Retailers are going to have to work very hard to create that emotional feeling again. And it can’t just be ‘Here’s another thing to buy.’ It has to have a real sense of experience to it.”

Industry professionals say they have difficulty identifying any retailer that is managing to do this well today, with one notable exception: Apple, which offers an interactive retail experience, including classes.

Marie Driscoll, head of the retailing group at Standard & Poor’s, says chains have to adapt to new consumer preferences by offering better service, special events and access to designers. Analysts at the Boston Consulting Group advise that companies offer more affordable indulgences, like video games that provide an at-home workout for far less than the cost of a gym membership.

Mr. Cohen of the NPD Group says some companies are doing this. Best Buy is promoting its Geek Squad, promising shoppers before they buy that complicated electronic thingamajig that its employees will hold their hands through the installation process and beyond. “Nowadays with the economic climate, customers definitely are going for a quality experience,” says Nick DeVita, a home entertainment adviser with the Geek Squad. “If they’re going to spend their money, they want to make sure it’s for the right thing, the right service.”

With competition for consumer dollars fiercer than it’s been in decades, retailers have had to make the shopping experience more compelling. Mr. Cohen says automakers are offering 30-day test drives, while some clothing stores are promising free personal shoppers. Malls are providing day care while parents shop. Even on the Web, retailers are connecting on customers on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, hoping to win their loyalty by offering discounts and invitations to special events.

For the last four years, Roko Belic, a Los Angeles filmmaker, has been traveling the world making a documentary called “Happy.” Since beginning work on the film, he has moved to a beach in Malibu from his house in the San Francisco suburbs. San Francisco was nice, but he couldn’t surf there. “I moved to a trailer park,” says Mr. Belic, “which is the first real community that I’ve lived in in my life.” Now he surfs three or four times a week. “It definitely has made me happier,” he says. “The things we are trained to think make us happy, like having a new car every couple of years and buying the latest fashions, don’t make us happy.”

Mr. Belic says his documentary shows that “the one single trait that’s common among every single person who is happy is strong relationships.” Buying luxury goods, conversely, tends to be an endless cycle of one-upmanship, in which the neighbors have a fancy new car and — bingo! — now you want one, too, scholars say. A study published in June in Psychological Science by Ms. Dunn and others found that wealth interfered with people’s ability to savor positive emotions and experiences, because having an embarrassment of riches reduced the ability to reap enjoyment from life’s smaller everyday pleasures, like eating a chocolate bar.

Alternatively, spending money on an event, like camping or a wine tasting with friends, leaves people less likely to compare their experiences with those of others — and, therefore, happier.

Of course, some fashion lovers beg to differ. For many people, clothes will never be more than utilitarian. But for a certain segment of the population, clothes are an art form, a means of self-expression, a way for families to pass down memories through generations. For them, studies concluding that people eventually stop deriving pleasure from material things don’t ring true. “No way,” says Hayley Corwick, who writes the popular fashion blog Madison Avenue Spy. “I could pull out things from my closet that I bought when I was 17 that I still love.” She rejects the idea that happiness has to be an either-or proposition. Some days, you want a trip, she says; other days, you want a Tom Ford handbag.

Ms. Strobel — our heroine who moved into the 400-square foot apartment — is now an advocate of simple living, writing in her spare time about her own life choices at Rowdykittens.com. “My lifestyle now would not be possible if I still had a huge two-bedroom apartment filled to the gills with stuff, two cars, and 30 grand in debt,” she says. “Give away some of your stuff,” she advises. “See how it feels.”

Source - NYT

Five Ways Big Brands Are Using Foursquare

Unlike other more mainstream social networks, the business potential of Foursquare may not be immediately apparent. At present, the location-based network is less about conversations and resource sharing, and more about tying your social activities to physical places.

For brick-and-mortar businesses, a Foursquare strategy makes a lot of sense. But what about brand promotion in general, say in the entertainment or publishing worlds? With Foursquare, it’s not about linking users back to your site or products, but creating a new location-based product that has value for fans and followers. Here’s how five big brands are attempting to connect location to their online social presences.

1. Recommendations with Personality: Bravo

In the television industry, Bravo was one of the first networks to get on board with Foursquare, and 50,000 of its fans have followed so far. The network’s programming is a mix of food, fashion, and reality drama, and the TV personalities and hosts that viewers love are the ones making recommendations on Foursquare. Restaurant, shopping, and hotel suggestions reinforce Bravo’s image as a network of culture experts, and the personalities who leave tips through the brand add that bit of personal flavor or sass that draws viewers to the shows in the first place. Fans don’t follow for Bravo per se; they’re following to see where Top Chefs andMillionaire Matchmakers spend their time in New York and LA.

2. Restaurant Reviews: Zagat

If there was ever a brand made for Foursquare, Zagat is it. The 30+ year-old publication is the go-to guide for restaurant and hotel reviews, and their embrace of numerous social media channels is noteworthy. Zagat uses Foursquare the way many individual users do — by leaving food-related tips about locations. And Zagat is not city-specific. You’ll find foodie tips from Los Angeles, to New York, to Cambridge, MA. Zagat’s Foursquare account is an obvious way to reinforce everything the brand is known for, and perhaps tap into a new demographic of diners who may be reluctant to carry around a paperback guide in addition to their smartphones.

3. Celebrity Sway: MTV

While we may not yet live in a world where celebrities want fans to know their locations in real-time, filtering their favorite places through an over-arching brand is a good start. Fans can keep tabs on the favorite haunts of stars from Jersey Shore and The Hills, driving the social connection to these personalities beyond the TV and into The Real World (pun intended). Not only can users see where the stars have been, but what they did, enjoyed, and recommend. And there’s always the possibility that visiting a bar frequented by a celeb increases your chances of meeting him or her. That aspect is certainly part of MTV’s Foursquare appeal.

4. Urban Exploration: New York Magazine

New York Magazine uses Foursquare to drive home its coverage of city-specific culture. This account is about much more than just food. It targets the social New Yorker with tips on retail stores, bars, and public spaces. The tips not only offer details on pricing and goings-on, but provide links back to the magazine’s website for deeper coverage. In this regard, New York Magazines’ approach to Foursquare is akin to the Twitter strategy of many publishers, with the added value of location.

5. Edutainment: The History Channel

Staff at The History Channel know what their viewers are into — it’s fairly obvious, given the namesake. So while Foursquare doesn’t offer much in terms of driving traffic to a program or website, locations are fostering an interesting kind of brand engagement here.

The account leaves tips at various sites, including interesting historical background on the locations. It’s trivia, but with a real-world and educational context. For instance, did you know that the Wabasha Street Caves in St. Paul, MN are man-made sandstone mines that date back to the 1840s, and were opened as a restaurant and night club in the 1920s?

This is a clever use of indirect marketing. The History Channel doesn’t have to promote its shows or link back to content to remind fans why they enjoy the programming. More than 47,000 followers are already enjoying the historical tips left by the account, since its launch in April.

Conclusion

The trouble with emerging networks like Foursquare is that users and big brands alike are having difficulty sticking with it. In all of the examples above, you can see that brand representatives jumped into the checkin game with vigor early on, but eventually updated the accounts less and less — some have not added tips for months. For now, location services are still an ancillary part of many social media strategies, but they won’t be forever. Many predict that when cultural acceptance, mainstream social integration, and business value finally coincide, location sharing will be as common and natural as updating your Facebook status. When it happens, will your brand be ready?

Source - Mashable