New research, presented by FitForCommerce, shows that geotargeted mobile coupons and ads are more effective than their online counterparts.  Holiday marketers, in particular, should definitely pay attention to this trend and introduce mobile calls to action into their overall campaigns this season.

Consumers are typically on-the-go during the holiday season, so they are not by their TVs or PCs as often.  Adding geotargeted coupons and ads can potentially make a non-shopper into a shopper by adding that extra incentive, especially because you are “touching” people while they are already in proximity of your location.

According to a separate survey, conducted by Deloitte, the 2009 holiday season saw 1 out of 5 shoppers using their phones to aid their holiday purchases.  Forty-five percent of those using their phones, used it for research while almost a third used it for coupons and product reviews.  And according to a study by Motorola Enterprise Mobile Solutions, more than 50% of consumers used mobile devices for 2009 in-store holiday shopping activity.  In addition, with the growth of smart phone technology over the past year (i.e. the DroidX and iPhone 4), many more consumers are connected and familiar with the mobile coupon world.

The overall mobile commerce revenue numbers are projected to double from $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion, this year, and the holiday season will be no exception to this increase.  For more information on how to get your company connected with a mobile campaign, go to: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7187.html or check out this video from Associate Editor, Dan Butcher, Final Take

Branding is more important than ever.  Your logo is the piece that ties all of your business’s aesthetics together – from the storefront to online.  The sophistication level among consumers on the web is continually growing, so if you are a business, creating a logo that translates online, is more important than ever.  Here are a few pieces of advice about how to make your business logo “sticky” to the web-savvy consumers.

1. Identity in a World of Infinite Choice – Your logo is your first impression.  Before a customer knows anything about what you sell, what you do, who you are, they’ll see your logo and have two choices: Keep reading or click away.  Creating a logo that resonates with the online consumer is crucial.
2. What Makes a Company Logo “Sticky?” – A logo needs to have a strong visual identity in order to make a strong impression.  The best and “stickiest” logos are ones built with a minimalist approach, as well as a well-thought out concept and bold colors and typography.  Make sure you don’t get caught up in trends and your logo doesn’t preach.  A great logo will be able to adapt to changing times and will have the ability to connect with the viewer because it will cut through most of the online noise.
3. Finding a Great Logo Designer – Personal referrals are usually the best way to find a talented designer.  If you don’t have someone that you trust, make sure you do your research:  Browse or search portfolios on quality websites like Behance, Carbonmade , and LogoPond. Portfolio networks make it easy to cross-reference design styles and get in touch with artists that pique your interest.  Subscribe to design blogs like Smashing Magazine, Designm.ag, and Six Revisions. The writers and contributors at these publications are usually designers and if their discussions of branding and identity align with your business vision, look for portfolio and contact links in their bios.   Social media is often a great way to discover design experts with serious skill and clout. If you can’t get a referral from one of your Twitter or Facebook pals, use social media search tools like TweepSearch and Google Blog Search to find profiles with “logo design” and “branding.” Check out their feeds and websites and make sure they appear to be well-respected and write authoritatively about their design expertise? If so, shoot over an e-mail and get a quote.
4. Translating Your Logo into a Social Web Presence – After putting so much hard work into your logo, the last thing you want to do is cheapen it by spreading it around all over the web.  Make sure that you introduce your logo on sites that correlate with your overall business plan, so your online identity acts as support and doesn’t distract from your overall message.

For more information, go to: http://mashable.com/2010/08/23/business-logo-design/

The economy has forced more than 49 million Americans (more than one in six people) to live in a household with three or more generations.  The implications of this research are huge for marketers because companies need to rethink everything from product sizes to reaching the multi-gen households and most importantly, which generation is the actual decision maker and the one to target.

The most common multigenerational household is a grandparent having their adult children and the grandkids move in with them.   The approximate 2.5 million grandparents of multigenerational households say they are responsible for the basic needs of the grandkids living with them, i.e. grandma and grandpa are the ones responsible for diapers, baby food, etc.  Marketers need to take this into consideration and maybe instead of solely focusing on targeting the “mom” companies widen their target demographic to include the grandparents.

Real Estate and Home Building are the most obvious industries that will be affected by the new household dynamics. Coldwell Banker Real Estate, for example, has made changes in their local marketing to keep up with the shift in home purchasing decisions to include multigenerational families.  The company has created special tours of the homes and they have also changed the description of properties to appeal to multi-gen households, including describing a 5th bedroom as an in-law quarters with separate bath.

Even though families who create a multi-gen household live together for financial reasons, they tend to have more discretionary income than single seniors  or recent college grads who live on their own.  Toys, book, travel, technology and car industries all could be utilizing this research and targeting the multi-gen family.

For more information, go to: http://adage.com/article?article_id=145506 or check out the full report at http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/752/the-return-of-the-multi-generational-family-household

Gap’s brand, Piperlime, recently found out there is a thin line between being cheeky and being offensive.  Piperlime started posting “snotty” comments like “Every time you wear sweatpants in public, a single guy leaves New York” and “Let’s put Saturday-night effort into Sunday afternoon” on their Facebook and Twitter pages, in an effort to connect with the older Generation Y shopper (aged 20-30).  While some fans found the posts funny, there were a lot of fans that were also irate.

The new campaign “Let’s Get Dressed,” is hailing both the positive and negative commentary as a success.  The “passion” the fans have responded with, both positive and negative, lets the brand know their campaign is one that people are paying attention to.  In addition to the social media aspect of the campaign, ads can be found in fashion magazines and celebrity weeklies, as well as a full outdoor campaign and a pop-up store opening on September 1st.  Finally the brand’s recently relaunched site features an app that allows customers to try out new looks on mannequins.

The campaign is meant to be cheeky, but the company does know when it goes to far, as they did last Friday morning with this post: “If the frenemy sees you out in public in your TV-watching clothes, the frenemy wins.”  So many fans and consumers were offended, the company knew it had gone from playful and fun spirited to offensive.  Despite, a few slight missteps, the company is thrilled with the overall success and  according to Piperlime, their Facebook “likes” increased 934% between August 2nd and the 9th, with 479% increase in comments.

For more information about the campaign’s successes and set-backs, go to: http://adage.com/article?article_id=145411

MasterCard has been promoting its MarketPlace e-commerce site via an out-of-home campaign in New York, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia.  The goal of the campaign is to expose consumers to MasterCard’s new site both online and offline.  The O-O-H campaign includes “storefront ads featuring black-and-white vinyl panels and taglines like: “A Smarter Way to Shop Online” and “Where Bargains Find You.”

The displays also included motion sensor-activated screens, with different items popping up as people walk by.  Whether shoes, a purse, a laptop or makeup items are displayed on the screen, consumers can view the latest offers on these items via the mobile component which gives consumers access to MasterCard MarketPlace’s RSS feed and allows them to e-mail deals to themselves.

The O-O-H campaign will be supported by TV, print and online ads.  There will also be a Twitter component where the company will be “tweeting “overwhelming offers,” which are “time-sensitive” deals offered daily on the site.”

For more information about MasterCard’s new ecommerce site, go to: http://marketplace.mastercard.com/

Information about the campaign provided by Brandweek

Although reward programs, loyalty cards, club memberships and discount coupons have been around for decades, they are great at reaching the one-time purchaser, but haven’t proven themselves as the best way to retain customers.  Some studies say that these methods are little more than just names sitting in a company’s database.

With the mobile technology advancing at a rapid pace, companies should be looking to add a mobile element to their already existing loyalty/reward/couponning programs, in hopes of avoiding the stagnate state the programs have fallen into.  Mobility allows companies to get their brand in front of customers several times a day, week or month, instead of only when the consumer pulls out their wallet to use the membership card or monthly coupon.

Here are several ways that merchants can configure and make it easy for consumer to use mobile coupons:

• Manual interaction: The customer provides the loyalty card code or the voucher code and the merchant manually inserts the code into the system.

• Bar code: The customer shows the mono-dimensional barcode to the merchant who then can read it through a scanner.

• 2D code: The customer shows the bi-dimensional code to the merchant who can read it through a scanner.

• Near Field Communication (NFC): This contactless technology allows data exchange from the customer’s mobile phone to the merchant’s reader.

Sears and Dominos Pizza are two companies that recently used mobile to attract consumers and reward them.  Click on the links below to read about each of their approaches and use of mobile technology.

Sears: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/6993.html

Dominos Pizza: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/database-crm/7037.html

Visa is targeting young trendsetters and shopping enthusiasts with their free online shopping tool: Rightcliq.  The aoo is designed to make online shopping more social by allowing users to create wish lists, obtain feedback from friends, find special offers, store payment information online and track orders.  The tool is not overtly pushing Visa, as it actually accepts competitors like MasterCard, but the company is hoping that consumers are inspired by the product and the Visa technology enough to use them.

Rightcliq aims to make e-commerce easier and more fun, which Visa hopes will in turn fuel more online sales.  With young trendsetters and shopping enthusiasts accounting for 20% of the online shopping population and 26% of the spending, Visa believes Rightcliq will boost their current average of 10 transactions per month.

For more information about the e-commerce tool, go to: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/02/visa-rightcliq/

Enroll here: https://rightcliq.visa.com/ECSWebApp/enroll/welcome.go

AT&T is hoping to dominate the mobile bar code marketing channel with it’s 3 new services.  Code Scanner and Create-a-Code allow consumers to scan and create mobile bar codes.  The third service, Code Management Platform, works best for businesses who want to build, manage and utilize their own mobile bar code experiences.

The first application, the Code Scanner, “can be downloaded for free from BlackBerry App World, Android Market, or at http://www.scan.mobi.”  This application specializes is users scanning already developed and in-market 1D and 2D bar codes that are found in magazines, stores and online.

The second technology, Create-a-Code, lets users develop their own functioning bar codes, simply by going to : http://www.att.com/createacode.

Finally, the Code Management platform enables businesses to create, manage and measure mobile bar code campaigns and can be launched through indoor and outdoor signage, packaging, catalogs, television, the Internet, and print and mail advertising.

AT&T believes these three “easy-to-use” mobile bar coding platforms will catapult them into being the leader of the technology.  To read more about the platforms, as well as check out a video, go to: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/6997.html