Last month Esquire dropped the first magazine cover to incorporate e-ink technology. While the creative was underwhelming, the execution sure generated a lot of buzz.

Looks like in-store POP is next, followed one presumes by packaging (I'm betting on cereal boxes, but we'll see).

Quote:

Henkel's Right Guard is testing use of printed electronics to power flashing lights in corrugated in-store displays at Walgreens stores in the Chicago area, a first step for a technology from Arizona start-up company Nth Degree that could eventually bring low-cost streaming video to printed displays, packaging, direct mail or magazine inserts.

Link

MIT Advertising Lab has interesting commentary on Burger King's use of video games. Here's a quote:

Burger King ... made the decision to sell the games at $3.99, an extremely low price for disc-based (as opposed to downloadable) Xbox games but, as it turned out, a potentially much better price than “free.”
By choosing to charge even a small sum, Burger King seems to have sent a message to consumers that its games had real value, unlike other advergames they might have played and been disappointed by in the past. Burger King further supported the games with a strong marketing campaign that included advertisements shown during Saturday Night Live and during NFL games. All this sent a very clear message to consumers: “There is something of value waiting for you at Burger King.”

This is actually one of a series of articles abstracting the book Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business

MIT AdLab article Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The folks at Yahoo - who own Flickr - have asked a few of their Flickr users for permission to turn their kitty photos into emoticons for the Yahoo Messenger.

Here's a link to some of the results: Yahoo Messenger blog

Here's a reaction from one of the photographers (I have reason to know she's thrilled):

Tunie is Famous!! "Talk to the Paw" Emoticat™ Icon released today!

This is an interesting twist on CGM - pull consumer-generated media from your user base (it helps if your user base is photographers :-) rather than waiting for it to be pushed to you, and meet the consumer half-way (in this case by providing illustration talent). Wonder if they did this with any other classes of photo, or is it just cat pix?
Apparently this is to support a chat environment called Emoticats - more here.

Here's where to get the Yahoo chat client.

uiGarden.net has this interesting Usability Report on the iPhone.

Apparently texting on your Blackberry (or other device with physical keys for the letters) is more accurate.

Favorite quote:

On feature of the popup keyboard on the iPhone is the drag and lift feature which is said to reduce errors. Unfortunately not one user discovered this feature.

uiGarden.net post

Related evaluation of the iPhone against two other devices

UserCentric, the folks who did the usability testing

Like any other technology, as mobile media becomes more and more prevalent so do the ways in which consumers interact, customize and drive their evolution past that of which the product was originally designed. Repurposing, leveraging and riding the wave of these consumer driven evolutions is a powerful way to bring cutting edge promotions to market. The Pocket Film Festival in Japan is a shining example of this. How would you leverage this new trend in a promotion?

TOKYO (Hollywood Reporter) - The inaugural Pocket Film Festival in Japan, showing movies made entirely on mobile phone cameras, will kick off Friday in Yokohama.

Forty-eight films, chosen from more than 400 entries from 18 countries -- including Japan, Singapore, China, South Korea and Germany -- will screen in competition at the weekend event, organized by the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

The competition has two categories, one for films to be shown on regular screens and the other for films to be viewed on phones. The winning film will receive 500,000 yen (US$4,500).

"Being the first time for the festival, we weren't sure what to expect, but we've had a range of films from regular narrative stories to more experimental films," organizer Yuko Mori said.

"Of course, the resolution is comparatively low on phone cameras, so effective use of that is important," Mori said. "People have also made films where only a camera phone could go. One entry, by grade-school children, was even shot inside a fridge."

The festival also will feature symposiums on the possibilities for new content and applications using the medium of camera phones.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Link to the main site:

http://www.pocketfilms.jp/en/

Fun & games at becomeanmm.com: first, create a character for yourself. Mine's above.

Now, how long till can I use this little guy as my Second Life avatar??
Once you've created a character, you can use M&M partner Zazzle's service to put it on hats, shirts, etc.
The M&M site also includes a fairly basic World (pseudo-virtual - just a bunch of images you can click on, no real navigation or experience); and a couple of Flash games (couldn't get these to work on my visit).

Also fun is the ability to insert your character into a little Flash movie:

Link

New research into the effects of stimuli on consumer focus reveal a direct link between scents and purchases.

From Canadian Broadcasting Corp:

The mere whiff of a chocolate chip cookie can cause a shopper to stray off-course, abandoning their budget for unplanned, impulse purchases, according to a study on consumer behaviour.

The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, suggests stimuli that trigger the appetite can cause consumers to opt for immediate pleasures.

"We found that an appetitive stimulus not only affects behaviour in a specific behaviour domain but induces a shared state that propels a consumer to choose smaller-sooner options in unrelated domains," said researcher Xiuping Li, of the National University of Singapore, in the study.

"The findings demonstrated that an appetitive stimulus could induce a general motivational state, called the hot state, which focuses one's attention on the immediate environment."

Two tests involving students at the University of Toronto were conducted. In the first study, participants were asked to select photographs of either food or nature for use in a magazine. Researchers later asked participants if they would prefer playing a lottery that pays out a lower amount sooner or one that pays a higher amount at a later date.

The study found that those who were shown the photos of food were nearly 20 percentage points more likely to select the lottery with the smaller jackpot.

In a second test, researchers found that 67 per cent of women assigned to a room with a hidden cookie-scented candle were more likely to make an impulse sweater purchase, even when told they were on a strict budget. By comparison, only 17 per cent of women in a room without the scented candle decided to make the impulse buy.

The stimulus prompted participants to lose sight of future goals, focusing instead on the present, the study said.

"The scent of the appetitive stimulus led to reduced happiness with remote gains, which implied that participants in a present-oriented state were less sensitive to future values," the study said.

Li noted that retailers might use the findings to create an atmosphere that would entice shoppers to stay longer.

"If retailers want to push their customers to shop more rather than stay longer, they should not only maintain a pleasant environment but also an environment full of temptations and excitement," Li said in a release.

Looking to other continents has always been an effective way to predict what may be on the horizon within the U.S. retail sector. This becomes even more true when dealing with aesthetics and design. The export of the McDonald's brand to European markets has been a long and tedious exercise for the burger giant. Not satisfied with just catering offerings to the significantly different palate of our friends across the pond, McDonald's has been making a concerted effort to not only alter their menu but now their environments. A Parisian design studio was tasked with creating 9 different looks that walk the tight rope of retaining brand identity while overhauling aging environments. Could this signal a new trend in U.S. retail exporting their brands for "freshening" overseas?

McCafe in Germany

McDonald's in Germany

McDonald's Milan, Italy

Here's a piece from Church of the Customer about a Belgian beer brand.

A cult brand like Westvleteren is created by people religiously devoted to their craft. The monks in Belgium are serious about their business, but they do not obsess over maximizing profit or monetizing eyeballs. They do not do brand extension. They embrace scarcity as a necessary component of quality, thereby ensuring future value. Just as the Wii is a cult hit because it is an excellent product that's not easy to buy, so too with an unlabeled beer that's been religiously produced for 170 years.


After all, cult is the root of culture. It is culture that creates a cult brand.

Link

WIRED has a timely article on this:

Basically these things have been in continuous demand for the whole year - even in the usually-slack summer season. Because it takes so long to ramp up production, Nintendo was unable to catch up as they expected to.

Quote:

"Typically, we'd have begun stockpiling console hardware back in August" for the holiday season... "But this year, we were selling all the Wii we could get, and we got all the way through the summer with basically no inventory in our warehouse."

Here's a product that has vastly expanded the market in its category - despite not being the top choice for gaming cognoscenti. Now we've got people in retirement homes staging tournaments on Wii - people who wouldn't have looked at any other gaming system. A classic market-maker.

Wired story

Erickson Tribune

Thanks to Dave Winer and Marc Andreesen for the latter