Embracing digital – New moves for old companies

Are incumbent companies starting to see the light when it comes to embracing digital? Evidence is slowly starting to point in that direction.

Artists are known for embracing change and innovation, but the art market itself has been slow to adapt to changing consumer behaviour. Now mega e-tailer Amazon is selling art on its site, and venerable auction house Christie’s is pushing headlong into online-only sales, as Mashable recently reported. And while fashion designers know how to use digital to push the envelope, the fashion industry as a business has been notorious for their skittishness at investing in efficient, immersive digital experiences for their customers, so worried are they about detracting from the brand. So it was reassuring to see during Paris Fashion Week recently that French marque Chloé had gotten the message. As Zeitgeist’s dear friend and fashion aficionado Rachel Arthur details on her blog, the brand launched a dedicated microsite for their runway show. Brands like Burberry and Louis Vuitton have been doing this for at least three years, so in of itself it’s nothing new. What made the experience different were two things. Firstly, the site created a journey that started before the show, and continued after it, rather than merely offering a stream of live video and little else. More importantly, it tried to make the experience one that reflected the influence of those watching. As Rachel points out,

“As the event unfolded, so too did different albums under a moodboard header, including one for the collection looks, one for accessories, another for the guests, and one from backstage. Users could click on individual images and share them via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Weibo, or heart them to add them to their own personal moodboard page.

‘[We] are excited to see how you direct your own Chloé show,’ read the invite.”

The recognition of platforms like Weibo should be seen as another coup for Chloé. Too often, companies send out communications to global audiences with perfunctory links to Facebook and Twitter. Not only is there no call to action for these links (why is it that the user should go there?), but there is no recognition that one of the world’s most populous and prosperous markets are more into their Renren and Weibo.

Elsewhere, despite what seems like some niggling problems, Zeitgeist was excited and intrigued to read about Disney‘s latest foray into embracing how consumers use digital devices, this time creating a second-screen experience in movie theaters. Second Screen Live, as Disney have branded it, doesn’t immediately sound particularly logical, as GigaOm point out,

“Of all the places I’d thought would be forbidden to the second screen experience, movie theaters were near the top of my list. After all, you’re paying a premium ticket price for the opportunity to sit in a dark theater and immerse yourself in a narrative — second screen devices operate in direct opposition to that.”

And yet the Little Mermaid experience that the writer goes on to describe cannot be faulted for its attempt at innovation, at reaching beyond current thinking (not to mention revenue streams), in order to forge a new relationship between the viewer and the product. Kudos.

Lastly, Zeitgeist wanted to mention the US television network Fox as a classic example of a company that has slowly come to realise the power of working with digital, rather than against it. In years passed, companies like Fox were indisputably heavily involved in digital, but only from a punitive standpoint. Fox and others were ruthless in their distribution of takedown notices to sites hosting content they deemed to infringe on their product. Fan sites that exploded in support and admiration for shows like The X-Files were summarily threatened with legal action and closed. There was little thought given to the positive sentiment sites were creating around the product, and little thought given to the destruction of brand equity that such takedown notices brought about. Not to mention the dessication of communities that had come together from different parts of the world, their single shared attribute being that they were evangelists of what you were selling. Clips of shows, such as The Simpsons, appearing on YouTube would be treated with similar disdain. So it shows how far we’ve come in a few years that this morning when Zeitgeist went onto YouTube he was greeted on the homepage with a sponsored link from Fox pointing him to the opening scenes of the latest Simpsons episode, before it aired. Definitely a move in the right direction.

Once notorious for their stringent outlook on content dissemination online, Fox now pushes free content across multiple digital channels

Evian miss a trick with new device

A nicely put together video by Evian featuring a little machine you attach to your fridge to order more water. At a Future Laboratory trends briefing last year, audience members were told how simply putting a smiling face on displays encourages interaction (not to mention obedience). But is this device everything it could be?

Firstly, it is self-evident that bottled water is a pain to buy in a shop, only then to have to lug it home. Far better for it to be delivered. But the purchase of bottled water (presumably more than one bottle, as suggested in the video) would naturally be part of a larger, weekly shop, involving other products. Taking it out of the larger shopping process could prove difficult, or worse, make people realise just how much they spend on a product that also happens to come out of the tap, for free.

Secondly, have there been any environmental considerations thought of here? From the video this isn’t ckear, but if you are ordering bottled water to be delivered by vehicle, you’re quickly burning a lot of carbon.

Thirdly, could the tactics deployed in this strategy have been smarter? Presumably the strategy here was to get people drinking more water by taking the hassle out of fetching it themselves. So what about something that could prompt the user. Something that perhaps tried to measure water consumption per person in the household, after keying in the relevant data, to prompt you when you haven’t had your daily suggested intake? Or, even smarter, what about some true M2M activity? We’ve talked about M2M previously, and many brands are still reluctant to engage. This could have been a nice way for Evian to dip their branded toe in the water (no pun intended), perhaps using scales in a smart fridge to see how much water is left, calculating how much time that will take to be drunk, and prompting the consumer with a call to action to order more. Currently this product seems to rely on people motivating themselves to order more.

Evian is a wonderful brand. They perhaps should have thought harder here.