Techie Xmas: How Brands Are Digitally Transforming The Festive Season
For a growing number of brands, digital transformation is the gift that keeps giving. From product personalization to virtual reality experiences, connected appliances to social discounting, brands are experimenting with all manner of digital innovations to boost custom and consumer awareness this Christmas. Here are some that brought a twinkle to our tech-loving eyes.
John Lewis: Hoping For A Bounce From VR
The John Lewis Christmas ad has become a bit of a festive tradition in Britain. This year’s offering featuring Buster the Boxer’s trampoline antics went viral on social media within hours of its release. But the retail partnership is also boosting footfall in its flagship Oxford Street, London, department store by allowing customers to step inside the advertisement, into Buster’s garden. Donning an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset embedded in an animal mask, the customer steps onto a real trampoline and experiences themselves in full 360-degree immersive glory. They can bounce and interact with the other garden wildlife from the ad. For customers not able to get to London, John Lewis has also released a web-based virtual reality video that can be viewed on smartphones with a low-end Google Cardboard-style headset.So what’s the story here? It’s all about creating memorable experiences and increasing the love between customers and brands.
Lidl: Tweeting Down Prices
Discount supermarket Lidl’s interpretation of seasonal digital engagement is perhaps the perfect reflection of its no-frills brand image. There are no glitzy 3D graphics to be seen here. Lidl knows its customers care about one thing above all others: their pocket. Its digital masterstroke this year was its social price drop promotion. Each week in the run-up to Christmas, the store announced a luxury product they’d be discounting, such as lobster, and then gave customers a few days to tweet about it, cutting more off the price the more mentions it got. While the company could simply have discounted the products in question, the social element both helped to engage customers and gain Lidl lots of free social media coverage. When consumers feel part of a happening they are more likely to convert.
British Land: Turning Your Xmas Shopping Into A Game
Retail property giant British Land hit on the bright idea of augmenting mall-goers’ Christmas shopping experience with a seasonal ‘Pokémon Go!’-style augmented reality game. In Frosty’s Christmas Adventure, visitors can download an app to their smartphone and hunt for virtual presents placed around the mall, using their screen as an interactive window on the virtual world. The game can be played at 21 shopping centers across the UK. British Land believes it will boost customer enjoyment, engagement and (it hopes) sales during the oft-stressful pre-Christmas family shopping excursion.
Marmite: Spreading The Personal Touch
After hitting the headlines in the autumn following a showdown between Unilever and Tesco over Brexit-induced price-wrangling, Marmite is getting personal with its customers this Christmas. Online buyers ordering a jar can personalize the iconic logo with a name or word of their choice. Or you can just play around with the web app and share your jar without buying it. This led to substantial social media exposure as people shared their (often amusing) alternative labels for the love-it-or-hate-it spread. The brand had the foresight to include a profanity filter, although it’s a little overzealous and residents of Scunthorpe, for example, won’t be able to name their jar after their home town.
McDonald’s: Augmented Reality Advent Calendar
Like John Lewis, McDonald’s is extending its Christmas ad branding into its outlets, with a seasonal digital twist. The fast food giant has teamed up with AR specialist Blippar and Amazon to create an in-store, augmented reality advent calendar themed around the vintage doll, Juliette, that features in its Christmas ad. Customers download the Blippar app and hold their phone over the paper mat on their food tray, which shows the doors of the calendar. Each day a different door will open, revealing a gift. These include digital goods like games, avatars and camera filters, as well as the chance to win a £10 Amazon gift certificate.
Adidas: Shooting For Digital Exclusivity
Sportswear manufacturer Adidas aims to give its new Glitch customizable soccer boots an air of exclusivity and desirability among its young, social-media-savvy target customers. The company is only making the new boots available to those with an invitation code, which can be requested through the Glitch app. Adidas claims the ‘interchangeable’ boots — which comprise an inner shoe with a laceless outer skin — are a world first, allowing buyers to mix-and-match various designs to create their own combination. The promotion has been firmly designed to ramp up social media engagement with a group Adidas sees as core customers for the future. As part of this effort, it also enlisted popular YouTubers F2 Freestylers to help develop and test the new boots.We all love feeling special and in possession of something exclusive. Consumers fall for it every singe time!
SAM Labs: Lego For The IoT Generation?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to pique consumer interest this Christmas, particularly with Amazon’s heavy promotion of its Echo voice-controlled assistant and home IoT hub (and Google’s rival, Home, recently released in the US.) But while the range of IoT devices is exploding — from connected lighting, heating and entertainment devices to toys and kitchen appliances — brands are still only scratching the surface of what’s possible. Which is why we particularly like start-up SAM Labs’ series of IoT ‘construction kits’ for kids, which let your little ones create their own IoT devices and applications using a series of wireless switches, sensors and feedback devices that can be connected together in various circuits and configurations using an app with a simple drag and drop interface. The kits don’t come cheap, but then again, there’s always the possibility that your little geeklings design a device that becomes next year’s must-have IoT gadget gift. Happy holidays!
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Originally published at blog.100tb.com.
