Microsoft has just tweeted that the Xbox 360 Kinect has sold 2.5 million units over the 25 days. Microsoft has a hit with Kinect, and the product deserves the kudos that it has generated. Microsoft is on target to sell 5 million units over holiday 2010, an auspicious achievement. But Kinect is just the beginning of more natural ways for people to interact with computing.
After Black Friday the press is reporting that Kinect sold 2.5 million units is less than a month and is beating the pace set by Wii in its debut. Congratulations Microsoft and Xbox! At Cheskin Added Value, we’re proud to have played a part in this success by illuminating the ecosystem and competitive gaps and suggesting how to position and message Kinect.
Brilliant. You can now use American Express membership awards points for Zynga games virtual goods, such as purple cows in Farmville that aren’t available any other way. Zynga gets a whole new source of customers spending real money on their game sites. AmEx can offer something to do with those membership points that often hang around unused and give the American Express card some social cachet. Experience has shown that once a user starts buying virtual goods in an online game, for a few weeks or longer they tend to get caught up in the “game play” and might even charge something extra on their AmEx card, knowing they’ll use the membership points for that special purple cow.
I would like to call out a great marketing campaign that hit over the Thanksgiving weekend. That’s the “Small Business Saturday” campaign by American Express OPEN, urging shoppers to remember small businesses on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Why did I this it was a good example of smart marketing?
Are we becoming more visually lead in this country?
Access to a vast array of visually stimulating media has never been so abundant or accessible in Britain. We’ve all heard the statistics about just how many messages we are being bombarded with on a daily basis, mass media has been on our radars for some time. But the nature of the communication does seem to have become more driven by a strong aesthetic language, driving a more superficial attitude to our brands and indeed our lifestyles. Read more…
Last month we gave a quick overview of design thinking principles for innovation. It generated a lot of interest, so this month we’ve decided to go into a little more detail.
You’ll see there’s a theme of ‘AND’s’ driving our thinking. We choose to see them as ‘AND’s’ rather than ‘OR’s’ because we believe that making a virtue of tensions opens up new opportunities. What does that mean concretely?
1. Understanding Context: Zooming Out AND In!
Once the objective of a project has been properly framed, people’s natural tendency is to roll up their sleeves and ‘leap in!’ Design thinking would have us start off by leaping out: what does our existing ecosystem consist of? Who are the users of our products/services? Who are our competitors? How is the context evolving?
• Listen to Eric Berlow’s 3-minute talk about reducing complexity by zooming out, observing problems as systems and interactions, then zooming back in to solve the innovation problem.
Time Magazine just published a list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010. It shows how many opportunities for innovation exist. It reminds me of when I was young and imagined inventing all kinds of things. But in the interim inventions have often come to seem like huge undertakings. This list just goes to show you can still break a particular problem down and invent a small piece that can have a huge impact.
If you’re bilingual (Spanish and English), or even know a little Spanish, and have attended the back room of focus groups in the United States you probably have heard weird words like “troca” and “pompa.” The former originates from “truck” and the latter from “pump.” Neither of those words are actually Spanish words, but they have become part of Hispanics’ everyday lexicon. Use of these made-up words in marketing and advertising is arguable, but for those purists out there- like me- remember that our beloved Spanish, even in its purest form, is deeply flawed.
I recently dined at Barbacco, a trattoria located in the SF financial district. Although the food and wine selection is fabulous, and I could say a lot about it, this isn’t going to be a review per se. I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised by the use of technology in what would typically be seen as a tech-free zone.
What are the challenges facing clients and agencies in a fast changing world? How can marketers make their budgets work harder? How is digital changing the way we connect with consumers?
We asked Mark Whiting, Director of Marketing Intelligence at Moët Hennessy for his thoughts on the future of marketing and insight – particularly for luxury brands. In these four short video extracts, Mark shares his view on some of the central questions marketers want answered. Read more…
