June is a great month — a Jedemi month — with all kinds of creativity sprouting up like wildflowers.
We saw plenty of examples of companies seemingly letting down their hair down by doing some imaginative activities geared at making customers stop, smile — and perhaps take action. Read on!
Charge It!!
That phrase takes on meaning way outside our Flintstones memories.
We thought Neiman Marcus (AKA “Needless Markups” similar to how folks call Whole Foods, Whole Paycheck) did a really good thing by rolling out free phone-charging stations (ChargeItSpot) in its stores. The kiosks enable customers to lock up their phones while they shop, then retrieve them with a full battery.
Scott Emmons, head of the Innovation Lab at Neiman Marcus, told MediaPost the plan is to both strengthen its digital connection to shoppers, while making the in-store experience more enjoyable.
We checked out the press release to learn more about Neiman Marcus’ partner ChargeItSpot. Besides the charging stations, they offer a mobile app that alerts users when their cell phone battery is running low and points them to the nearest ChargeItSpot kiosk. That’s thinking 360-degrees.
Pop-up Robot…
Last month we covered some retail innovations like Samsung’s “unstore” and the Lululemon Lab in NoHo, so it feels like a natural progression to discuss the Mr. Robot shop that’s opening in Manhattan.
>> Some background: Mr. Robot is a show on USA Network that follows Elliot, a cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night, who gets recruited by a mysterious underground group (fsociety) to destroy the firm he is paid to protect. The writing is fantastic as you hear what’s going on in Elliot’s head – lots of voice-over describing what he’s seeing, along with the dialogue which includes lots of techie and corporate references. <<
Worth checking out on Amazon Prime
AdAge’s Adrianne Pasquarelli piece about the Mr. Robot shop in the “disrupt”-themed installation at Story, the five-year-old concept shop based in Manhattan that earns the bulk of its revenue from sponsorships, is what caught our attention. Further #SCMF research brought us to this from Popular Science’s site.
AWSI, this “shop” is a great way to draw attention to the new season which begins in July.
The “Uncarrier” Unveils Plan for Tourists…
This is pretty cool. We learned that T-Mobile is “friending” tourists by giving visitors to the United States three weeks of mobile connectivity for $30. Starting June 12, the plan will offer customers 1,000 minutes of domestic calling in the United States, 2 GB of 4G LTE data and unlimited 2G data thereafter, and unlimited domestic and international texting.
T-Mobile said the plan will come without SIM or activation fees. International customers will receive a new U.S. number when they sign up for the plan since foreign numbers cannot be ported, the carrier said.
Kickstarter Campaign for Pebble’s New Core…
The San Francisco Chronicle piece by Benny Evangelista got our attention because Pebble, a crowd-funded sensation from a few years back when they launched a campaign for a smartwatch which hit the market well before Apple, is back with something we’d like to try. Called Pebble Core, it is a combination activity tracker and music player that’s reasonably priced ($69 on Kickstarter and $99 in stores).
The GPS tracking syncs with activity-logging apps Runkeeper, Strava, MapMyRun, Google Fit and Under Armour Record. Plus, it can also stream Spotify Premium and has 4 GB of memory to play downloaded Spotify songs if wireless connections aren’t available. It can also activate certain apps, like Uber, and send an emergency text to friends or family.
We especially thought the Alexa integration was cool. We mainly use Alexa for listening to Canadian Sports broadcasts (Tune-in) and Amazon Prime Music), but the possibilities… worth pondering.
Note: The Verge had an interesting piece (Let Alexa transform Pebble Core into the Combadge of your dreams) worth checking out.
The Un-New York Times Magazine
The New York issue of the New York Times Magazine shifted its layout to emphasize the city’s distinctive skyline.
A city on an island, teeming with cash and ego, has nowhere to go but up. And up. And up. Imagine the Manhattan skyline in a time-lapse filmstrip, starting around 1890 — when the New York World Building crested above the 284-foot spire of Trinity Church — and culminating in the present day: it is a series of continual skyward propulsions, each new proud round overshadowing the last.
In the intro, Editor-in-Chief Jake Silverstein noted:
- The city has 21 buildings with roof heights above 800 feet
- Seven of them have been completed in the past 15 years (and three of those the past 36 months).
And you have to read it sideways for the full effect. We applaud the creative effort by the Times.
One for the Road – Emojis Gone Wild…
AdWeek’s Lauren Johnson wrote a piece (“Motorola Imagines What Happens to Emojis When Your Phone Shatters) about a follow-on campaign for Motorola’s Droid Turbo 2 which touts a shatterproof screen.
Notable Quotable from Motorola’s head of North America marketing, Barbara Liss:
As we thought about how to really tell the story of shatterproof in a way that is relevant and meaningful to people, the agency came to us with this idea about the world inside your phone and what happens to all of these emojis that are so prevalent and part of our everyday life. We thought it was a great way to attract the millennial crowd as well as the older crowd—emojis have really become almost a universal language.
This definitely fits the “ice box humor” category as the possibilities are endless.
That’s a wrap! Thanks for reading and #SCMF!
—The Gang
P.S. Oh yeah, don’t forget to check out our featured song below.
We picked Justin Timberlake’s catchy tune: “CAN’T STOP THE FEELING!”
The video is a lot of fun. We can’t stop watching it, honestly.
And there’s more… The song is from the “DreamWorks’ TROLLS” movie. We found this video showing the reaction of the DreamWorks team to their “first listen” of the song.
[…] Robot (USA Network) Mr. Robot was mentioned back in June, in anticipation of Season […]