People are always looking to refine the algorithm of matching consumer’s to products they think they would want to buy. Sites like Netflix, Amazon, Google, all aggregate data to try and give you the most accurate suggestions for each ‘unique’ individual. One app dares to be different. Buycott is an app designed to suggest products that you shouldn’t buy, all based on the unique individual that you are. It doesn’t necessarily take browsing or personal data to do this, but rather consumer input, creating less of a guess and more of an educated suggestion.

Buycott takes preferences such as political standings, opposition to racism, GMO labeling and etc. to create a list of brands for you not to purchase, given your preference. In case you were against child labor for example, a list of companies tagged to be involved in such behaviors would be flagged by the app for your boycotting. All of this is naturally cataloged for easy boycotting the next trip down the grocery.

Now to the implications of something like this. This app is relatively disruptive to the recommendation and PR scene. If companies don’t perform triage and contain situations quickly enough, contingent on the rise of such apps, it could lead to dire consequences. At the same time, at some point businesses wouldn’t even have control over something like this anymore unless they had the press under an iron fist. The trend of shifting power to the consumer will only continue and strengthen as time goes on.

Metrics and analytics tracking consumers are all the rage nowadays. You can’t make big decisions without being backed by data and all the new savvy startups and entrepreneurs are quick to jump on the bandwagon of refining that model. But think back a bit to the days of COMM 101 and the introduction of those acronyms you once thought were absolutely useless. Think back to SWOTs and the PESTs, when you actually thought about all the other external pressure on a business. Well that’s what these guys did.

There are tons of ways to get insights from consumers, but stop to think about all the other parties influencing a business. Competitors, pressure groups and oh wait, that’s right, the government. Each business is affected by laws that govern their industry and really, each business is essentially at the mercy of these laws. What if there was a way to get valuable information about legislation currently in motion? What if you could get stronger insights into bills about to be passed before they go through? Imagine the implications of knowing political changes before they even happen. Tightening up sustainability requirements and getting ahead of the curve before competitors even get wind of change. Improving cost structures before tariffs on exports right as your competitors sign that brand new contract with that foreign wholesaler.

In this day and age, information is power. Exploring each and every single type of information that can be made available to you is really just the logical next step.

Snapchat has been a huge fad of late. It’s a service where you send your friends images or videos much like a typical messaging service except that after a brief moment (mere seconds) the piece of media deletes itself, leaving no trace of its existence. A recent piece on AdAge talks of the value of having something so fleeting. It talks about the strength and value of ads and how that has been diminished so much as people follow such easy trends. The aim of marketing nowadays hasn’t necessarily been about innovation nor creating something of true value but to reach a certain critical mass of virality, utilizing the most effective tools of the moment to do so.

Examine the idea of having media shared on the internet to be temporary and fleeting like a Snapchat message. What if ads viewed by a person were only viewable or shareable once and after that it dissipates into the void. The amount of respect and value that marketers would have to inject into an ad would be tremendous. As what the article talks about, think about those notes you used to pass around when you were a kid. Those little scraps of paper containing nothing in particular that sometimes still remains as ingrained in your head as that first Coke jingle you heard on the radio. What if an ad for a resonated so strongly and was so well done that that happened. What would be the nature of marketing and the nature of digital marketing then. I don’t know about you but it’s one thought I wouldn’t mind exploring a little bit further.

In an interesting study by Saatchi & Saatchi, two identical twins were put on display in an art gallery as a test of aesthetics. After having participants view the twins, they were asked a series of questions like ‘who do you think has a better sex life?’ or ‘More parking tickets?’. The catch was that the only difference between the two individuals was that one twin was chewing gum and the other one was not.

Astonishingly, the twin chewing gum was favored by more than 73% of the participants. Now how does this relate to digital marketing? It’s all about impressions. People’s attention spans are fleeting and this number is dwindling by the year and by the month even. Findings like this fuel the optimization of ads to have better use of the scarce resource of consumers’ attention. Ads can be better tuned to grab the most attention in the smallest windows of time.

In a world where costs are determined per impression and per click, anything to make the most use of that is as beneficial as can be.

Link to the video here.

So recently, McDonald’s announced its partnering with the NFL to have their happy meals accompanied by figures representing the 32 NFL teams. The toys are supposed to be part of a strategy by the NFL to increase their reach with children, targeting a popular product often consumed by children. Apparently kids drawn into this are ‘locked for life’ in a grim summation of exactly what companies are trying to achieve with their marketing – lifelong, high-value customers.

Kids who are supporters of the NFL are almost always locked into being a fan for life. The NFL has seen this as a strong opportunity for a sustainable marketing venture and jumped at the chance.

On the other hand, McDonald’s is taking this opportunity to piggyback on the lifelong effects of brand association. If a kid becomes an NFL fan for life, guess what he/she’ll go on and look for when it’s half time and they’re hungry, that’s right – McDonald’s. Growing up with brands has been a strongly documented phenomenon in consumer behavior. It’s been shown in clinical tests documenting the blind taste test that taste centers were activated in the brain when products were known. When taste tests were conducted blind, judgement centers in the brain were actually activated more, leading to a stronger preference in Coke, which has been forged into a lifestyle brand.

It’s always been interesting to see the effects of these kinds of things on consumers, and while there isn’t a strong digital component to this marketing campaign, it’s infinitely interesting to see how easily and strongly influenced people can be.