bjbj This interview features Ben Sprecher from Incentive Targeting and I discussing
how location based marketing can be used for a lot of things but overused and anxious marketers
could spook customers to drop the whole thing. Bob: Ben, one of the biggest things that people
are talking about is mobile marketing, right? Ben: Right. Bob: So if I get them to opt-in
with their phone number, then I can send them messages when they're walking by my store
or if there's a sale or something, right? Ben: Sure. Bob: I think a man's phone is their
castle. I invite you in on the idea that I can control when you talk to me. So the idea
that somebody could, as I'm walking by, send me a little, "Hey, come in and get a $3 dollar
widget or something," I think that's really spammy. I think you have a different opinion.
Ben: I do, a little bit. First of all, I think that we are at a very important moment right
now. We are at the beginning of what I'm trying to call the "great convergence," the "great
mobile convergence," and there are five key components to that. Conveniently I've come
up with an acronym called CLAMP. Bob: CLAMP? Ben: CLAMP. So you've got couponing and deals.
Bob: You know how I feel about that. Ben: You've got loyalty. You've got analytics.
You've got mobile marketing, and you've got payment. If you look around the show floor
here, you've got companies like PayPal over there, Google over there. There are a number
of companies who are looking at this giant convergence of all these different key areas,
that have been very separated in the past, onto the mobile platform. The power of that
is not simply that you have all these different components in one place. It's by pulling them
together, you can make a much better go of giving the shopper what they want. Bob: What
do they want? Isn't it just coupons and deals? Isn t that what we're making our smartphones
into? Ben: The shopper wants relevance, right? Bob: So what does that mean to you? Ben: It
means a couple of things to me. First of all, it means making sure, and for marketers this
is a very counter-intuitive statement, but it means saying less. It means communicating
less. Up until today, every new marketing vehicle, whether it was direct mail, radio,
TV, whatever, has been perceived by marketers as another megaphone to shout at their shoppers.
Bob: Absolutely. Which is like the guy in high school with all the zits on his face
saying, "Look at me. I'm important," but we don't care, right? We care about us. Ben:
We care about us, exactly. Up until today, every marketer has treated it, with some exceptions,
as a new vehicle, a new megaphone to talk to their shopper. Now we are starting to have
an incredibly powerful computer that is with us all the time, that has incredible capabilities
and knows where we are, knows what time it is, and knows who we are. Bob: But still you're
programming it to be kind of spammy. I mean you're saying if somebody's within 300 feet
of my store, then project this message or this image or try to get the rat to the cheese
to come into my store, right? It's not really personalized. Ben: It absolutely can be, and
that's the challenge to marketers today, is we all need to pull back and instead of saying,
"Oh my God, I've got a new little megaphone that somebody's got with them all the time,"'
say, "I've got an incredibly powerful, incredibly personal way to talk to somebody, and I need
to respect that and respect them and use it only for good, never for evil." Bob: But that's
a whole new way to think, isn't it? It's like copywriting. Ben: It's completely new. Bob:
Beginning copywriters are all about "look how great I am, I do this, and I do this,
this and this." Yet we know that no one reads copy like that. They really look at how can
he help me solve this problem? Ben: That's exactly what it's about. So when you have
somebody who is walking down the street, if their phone chimes every 12 seconds as they
walk by stores, what's going to happen? They're going to opt out of that entire thing, right?
Bob: So one thing could kill the whole deal for them opting in to text messaging. Ben:
Exactly. Bob: It wouldn't just be that one store. Ben: The entire medium is at its infancy
right now, and the entire medium has the potential to either tip in potentially the greatest
way marketing has gone in human history, to be a little bit grand about it, or to be yet
another way that you get crappy, spammy offers from everybody you walk by. What that's about
is saying less. It's about using the information and the power of that medium to filter instead
of to broadcast. Bob: That's a whole different way of thinking, right? Ben: It's completely
opposite. Bob: That is not in evidence around here, I'm sorry. Ben: Well, I think that there
are . . . Bob: I mean it's a one size fits all. Just use our platform and you can do
what you've always done. Ben: Say anything you want to, do whatever you want. Bob: Right.
You can take your Valpak coupon and you can now make that into a Groupon coupon, okay,
great. But there's got to be more to it because that's the thing that iPad promised, and that's
what got everybody so excited. Like the first time you saw Facetime and it was two people
who were deaf, talking. That was a moment. You were taken aback, "I never thought of
that." But that took somebody to really turn it upside down, and I don't think we're seeing
any good examples in mobile. Have you seen any examples where it has been customized
and relevant and interesting, besides the work you probably already do? Ben: So to speak
in sort of general terms, I've seen some of those articulated as "vision direction." So
again, if you look at Google and PayPal as companies who are trying to think many steps
ahead here about where exactly is this whole thing going? The story that PayPal is showing
at their booth is someone going to a coffee shop, he is being given not just any offer
when they get anywhere near a coffee shop, but the phone knows them through loyalty as
somebody who likes vanilla lattes, and they know they're five minutes away on their walk
from the coffee shop. So now is the time to tell them, "Get your order in right now. Do
you want your normal vanilla latte?" That is something that anybody wants to receive.
So, done right, focusing not just on the who, but the where and the when . Bob: But I go
to the next level, even if it's an execution issue, that's all great. Ben, you're 5 minutes
out and you want to do it, except there's already of line of 20 out the door. So your
expectation, just go with me, is that when I show up, my drink is now first, and that
may not happen. Ben: This is where the retail doctor comes in, right? This is about where
you go and you help the retailers to understand that customer service means a different thing,
a little bit, in an era where there are many different ways where your customers are interacting
with you. Bob: This is a great idea. I'm going to pick this up. This is the end of Part 1.
We're going to take this up in the second, which is that idea of customer service has
a new meaning, and maybe we'll talk a little bit about loyalty on the second part too.
All right. Fair enough? Ben: All right. [Content_Types].xml u$Nw @8Jb _rels/.rels theme/theme/themeManager.xml
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