ADmented Reality - Google Glasses Remixed with Google Ads

Google's Project Glass is its attempt to make wearable computing mainstream 2014, and it's effectively a smart pair of glasses with an integrated heads-up display and a battery hidden inside the frame.

If you are one of the 16.5m people who have seen the latest Google glasses Youtube clip, you will probably appreciate this slightly more realistic version of Google's augmented reality glasses - now featuring contextual Google Ads, published by Jonathan McIntosh at rebelliouspixels!

All of the AdWords used are actual Google ad returns found via Google searches based on the dialogue, situation or setting in the original video.

NAM/KAM applications
Street accidents permitting, Google Glasses look like a potential boon to NAMs, especially in negotiation. Think of the advantages of instant lookup of sales stats, buyer’s name, bonus-progression, kamword definitions, simultaneous cost & value calculations, but especially continuous interpretation of body language signals and regular prompts to show a vestige of interest in the buyer….all whilst maintaining almost 100% apparent eye-contact…

Meanwhile, the only real decision is whether to shell out $1400 now for a developer’s working prototype, or await the mainstream launch in 2014, when the politicians will probably be telling us about the emerging green shoots of economic recovery…

Have an day-dreamy weekend, from the NamNews Team! 

P.S. Original Google Glasses clip here and useful technical details here.

Meet The Omnichannel Shopper: Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere

Add savvy (‘unwilling to outsource their purchasing decision-making to either suppliers or retailers, ever again’) to the omnichannel shopper and you have a major shift in  power to shoppers that choose how they interact with brands. Moreover they come complete with influential decision-making information readily available at their fingertips. Ignore at your peril...

Traditional channel management
The brand and retail ‘purists’ that devote energies to the preservation of discrete channel strategies like grocery, pharmacy, geography or even retail, mobile and web,  are missing the New Tricks of  providing a unified customer experience irrespective of the channel, to consumers that reward those who allow them to use a combination of store, catalogue, call centre, web and mobile - simultaneously.

In other words, meeting consumer needs...?

Managing the omnichannel
It follows that suppliers and retailers need to reorganise to accommodate this new market need, perhaps replacing the current channel manager role with that of Omnichannel Manager. This will enable a ‘one brain’ focus on ensuring that channels are not operating independently, thereby reducing the risk that the brand is attempting to maintain separate dialogues with an omnichannel shopper, and losing that shopper to a brand that is capable of engaging with them simultaneously in all channels…

Comments invited: 
1. Should all channel managers report into, or be replaced by, the Omnichannel manager?
2. Any practical downsides to building an omnichannel strategy now, like today?                        

(tips: unprecedented times, survival priority, risk-of-change, lack-of-experience, forgetting that with ideas in times of great change, everyone has the same level of experience…)

Touch but don't press - How daily Apples have become unhealthy for the competition

Latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel reveal that in the UK, more than one in seven people now have a tablet in their household and over 52% of the population own a smartphone. Couple this global realisation that tapping keys have become increasingly out-of-tune with consumer intuition and it can be seen why Apple have forced Microsoft, Blackberry and Nokia into catch-up mode…forever in pursuit of Apple’s innovator advantage.
In other words, Apple have made ‘screen-touching’ the only future…

A touching retail experience
Add to this the escalating success of Apple’s retail outlets, and it can be seen that the company is successfully applying the same fundamental creativity to retailing by populating its outlets with non-virtual Apple people! In fact, over the past five years, the company created 35,852 retail jobs, all acting as representatives for one of the best known brands in the world, optimising their unique combination of retail plus online plus a daily dialogue with enthusiastic users that few tech companies can duplicate.
In practice, their stores are more about being the front line for Apple advertising, rather than a ‘normal’ retail experience.

Helping people buy...
However, this experience of the ultra-softsell, in an open-table environment littered with products in constant use by enthusiastic shoppers, and continual access to human advice, can be addictive. In fact, this tactile experience, coupled with the realisation that the price cannot be bettered elsewhere, makes buying compulsive.
A frustrating lesson for ‘normal’ retailers everywhere….

Applying the Apple lessons to your business
Seth Godin extracts 10 iPad lessons to enhance your product launches, especially in niche markets.

Can you risk being out-of-touch in an Apple-free personal-corporate life balance that does not include a daily bite of the inevitapple?

Gourmet Flash-mobs, French Style!

Those who think that organising a flash-mob means simply encouraging members of your social network to turn up ‘as-is’, need to check out the 25 year old French version…
Dressed head-to-toe in white, flash-mob guests must bring a table and two white chairs, a picnic basket filled with "quality menu items" and a china service, including stemware and flatware. Only wine or champagne are allowed, as beer and hard alcohol drinks are considered no-nos.

A compelling invitation, in the right media?
Last week, thousands of participants at the "Diner en blanc" were told of the venue via social media sites and the Internet, then rushed to assemble in the heart of Paris' Marais district, in a 25-year-old tradition that still leaves passers-by open-mouthed. Other venues in Paris have included Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum's courtyard, Les Invalides, the final resting place of Napoleon, and the famed Champs-Elysees.
The pop-up event is so popular it has been picked up around the world, with Diner en Blanc events planned this year for the United States, Canada, Spain, Singapore, Mexico and even Rwanda.

Traditional new product launches a little passe? 
Given the competition for attention represented by this 25 year evolution of consumer engagement, it may partially explain the increasing expense and diminishing returns in attempting to persuade ‘our’ apathetic/savvy consumer to drop everything and rush to buy our brand in a Kings Cross supermarket…  
Perhaps a little less money, a little more creativity, and ideally unique, starting at home?
In fact, for something really different, why not make this a pop-up weekend, from the NamNews Team?

Walgreens-Boots - a new $100bn global customer?

With yesterday’s Stage1 purchase, Walgreens-Boots ($100bn) began a process that in three years will see them become a $130bn global player (prescription medicines, OTC and Beauty) with $100m savings on purchases in Year1.
In other words, plenty of time for suppliers to procrastinate on issues like prices and terms disparities…Wrong!

Given the high speed at which companies move in these circumstances (see their combined site which opened yesterday, and appears to have taken months of top secret preparation…) and the fact that Wall Street appear to think that Walgreens are paying over the odds for Alliance Boots (see yesterday’s drop in share price), suppliers would be wise to anticipate early pressures on prices to both companies ‘to prove it is a good deal’.

Action:
1. Check your US colleagues for your company sales to Walgreens, along with retail/wholesale margins, net margins on Walgreens business, credit periods and terms, plus pointers on trade funding and deductions…fast!

2. Check your UK and rest-of-world colleagues for your company sales to Alliance Boots, along with retail/wholesale margins, net margins on the AB business, credit periods and terms, plus pointers on trade funding and deductions…faster!

3. Quick ‘what-if’ on all of the above rising to the highest common set, the worst scenario for the business…even faster!

4. Map out key steps to harmonise prices & terms….already overdue!

5. Selling Prices to Walgreens and Alliance Boots: Run the following numbers for discounts of 1%, 2.5% and 5% on your best selling prices to each company
- Assume your total annual sales to Walgreens-Boots                 = £120m, ex. taxes
- Assume your Net Profit margin on Walgreens-Boots business   = 7%     = £8.4m
- Assume additional discount                                                    = 2.5%  = £3.0m
- New sales                                                                             = £117m
- Assume Costs, etc. remain the same                                      = 93% of £120m = £111.6m
- New net margin                                            = 4.6% i.e. 100-[(£111.6/117) x 100] = £5.4m
- Incremental sales to restore net profit  of £8.4m                     = £65m = £182m- £117m
                                                                                          i.e. (£8.4m/4.6) x 100 = £182m

6. Time to map out your Walgreens-Boots negotiation strategy, globally?

Underestimating a 26% CAGR customer in a flatline zero-sum world…

With a vision ‘to be the earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they want to buy online’, the problem in many categories is that Amazon’s vision is becoming reality, fast.

Walmart-like origins

Essentially, having started trading in 1994, Amazon has grown fast, and in relatively low profile to its current global scale of US$48bn, growing over the four years of the global financial crisis at a CAGR of 26%, producing a net margin of 2.2% and an ROCE of 9.06% in fiscal 2011. In other words, serious customer-centric retailing, from a standing start, rather like Walmart - only faster - with an EDLP platform that seems to retain its excitement for consumers, everywhere.

Customer-level assortment
Amazon is raising not only the online commerce bar, with all of its potential efficiencies, but is also going to the heart of state-of-the-art retailing, providing much more than store level assortment. It is, in effect, tailoring the offering to individual consumer level, better than any other provider.

Convincing colleagues, fast
Our free analysis of Amazon’s business model aims at helping you build an in-house case to raise its profile within the business. We have also added a key-point treatment of the wealth of insight available within Amazon’s 2011 Annual report to help you explore the implications for your categories.

Finally, if still in any doubt about Amazon’s impact on your business, think 50% of most categories in the next 5 years, and see if that provides an appropriate wakeup call…

Exploring the downside: A positive benefit at the museum of failed products…

Spend time vividly imagining exactly how wrong things could go in reality, and you'll often turn bottomless, nebulous fears into finite and manageable ones.

Happiness reached via positive thinking is fleeting and brittle; negative visualisation generates a vastly more dependable calm.

A new book* by Oliver Burkeman supports the intuitive realisation of many NAMs and KAMs, that we learn more from failure than success. In other words, when a project is successful, all of our energy goes into bragging about it, whilst a failure keeps us awake nights, revisiting every step, missed signal and failed KPI…

Provided we have the courage and power to cut our losses, maximise the learnings and move on to try again, the overall result can be positive.

The book deals with examples of many failed FMCG brand variants available at the Museum of Failed Products, Michigan (part of GfK Custom Research, North America). More details of products here. Each failure must have made it through a series of meetings at which nobody realised that the product was doomed. Perhaps nobody wanted to contemplate the prospect of failure; perhaps someone did, but didn't want to bring it up for discussion. The examples are fascinating in themselves, but also reassuring for those marketers and KAMs that feel their little set-back is a one-off…

*The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, by Oliver Burkeman, published next week by Canongate at £15 (guardianbookshop.co.uk )  

Making ideas work in the KAM role

In the same way that objections should be regarded as buying signals, so too should degree-of-resistance be seen as an indicator of ‘goodness’ in the spread of ideas. Fear of plagiarism can also be a constraint, however, as per Howard Aiken:  "Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats"

Have a persistent weekend, from the Namnews Team!

Going into Administration, what then?

Given yesterday’s news of Peters Bakery collapse into administration, together with today’s report in DIY Week that Allders of Croydon are ‘facing administration’ it might be useful for NAMs & KAMs to explore the possible consequences and implications of such moves.

As a legal concept, administration is a procedure under UK insolvency laws. It functions as a rescue mechanism for insolvent entities and allows them to carry on running their business. The process – an alternative to liquidation – means a company in administration is operated by the administrator (as interim chief executive) on behalf of the creditors as a going concern while options are sought short of liquidation. These options include recapitalising the business, selling the business to new owners, or demerging it into elements that can be sold and closing the remainder.

Options for Peters Bakery
In the case of Peters Bakery, it might be assumed that the owners have already explored the options of recapitalising and/or selling off the business, leaving the option of demerging into elements that can be sold, i.e. the bakery and the shops (The mobile sales operation might remain with the bakery as the better option).

The bakery
The bakery with its relatively new plant and its supply arrangements with major retailers could be attractive as a buy-out by management or takeover by  another bakery where increased scale/synergies might add appeal, and some negotiation muscle ref the multiples.

The shops
Meanwhile, the 54 shops with their regional brand equity could also present viable options in terms of either management buyout or acquisition by another retailer. Given the parallels with Greggs shops in terms of positioning, possible acquisition might be worth adding as an agenda item  at the next meeting of the Greggs team…

Which options do you feel are best for Peters Bakery?

Walmart, P&G QR-Code Initiative, the back-story...

Yesterday’s NamNews’ most downloaded news-item raises some interesting implications:

• This month-long initiative features virtual "pop-up" QR stores at Chicago bus stops and a "food truck"-style mobile hub in Manhattan, featuring P&G products was led by P&G, but in reality attempts to drive sales to Walmart’s online facility
• This innovative combination of mobile, social and real-time commerce appears to be an attempt by Walmart to neutralise Amazon’s increasing dominance in urban areas, a place where quick delivery is more convenient than access to big-box retailers
• (Amazon: think €36bn sales, growing at 46% p.a., 1-click purchase and ‘instant’ delivery…compulsive!)
• For P&G, a way of getting large packs into the hands of consumers, ultra-conveniently…
• ….apart from the peripheral impact of some extra on-street advertising in high-traffic urban areas..

Do you think the WM/P&G initiative is the shape of things to come?
In fact, which supplier-retailer combination will be first in the UK?  

Auchan opens first bio-supermarket Coeur de nature

Auchan has opened its first organic supermarket in Bretigny-sur-Orge. The supermarket has a sales area of ​​1,000 square meters. "We offer everyday products that consumers need to eat organic," says Guy Verdier, CEO of Coeur de Nature. There are in addition to the obvious products, natural products, cosmetics, and baby products. A total of 13,000 products in store, including 2,000 of the house brand.

We have deliberately chosen to sell mostly products of specialized brands in the store. The family business wants to make organic goods more widely available to everyone, although the price remains the biggest obstacle. That is apparent from an examination of l'Agence Bio. For 77 percent of consumers who do not buy organic products, the price appears to be the main obstacle.

Source: Le Figaro

Morrisons feeds Big Brother, really!

In a UK supermarket first, the new deal allows budget-conscious housemates on the show to buy groceries from Morrisons in their weekly shop, delivered on screen in the supermarket’s trademarked bags…

This link with the UK’s most down-to-earth grocer should help keep some of the most extreme housemates grounded, thus minimising the possible emergence of the “Truman Show” Delusion now becoming more common in the US…

“Truman Show” delusion?
In fact, psychiatrists are seeing an increase in the number of patients who think they are the unwilling star of a secret reality show. This “Truman Show” delusion may be the first mental illness to come out of the 21st century's obsession with quick and easy fame.

The First Lawsuit
Nicholas Marzano believes he is the subject of a secret reality show, and everyone in his town of Hillside, Illinois is in on it. He's suing TV company HBO in federal court for, in his words, "filming and broadcasting a hidden camera reality show depicting the day-to-day activities of plaintiff" without his consent. His suit, filed in April, alleges that HBO has hidden cameras throughout his home, installed controlling devices in his car, enlisted the help of local police, and recruited actors to portray "attorneys, government and law enforcement officials, physicians, employers, prospective employers, family, friends, neighbours, and co-workers," all so that their show about his life can continue. Marzano also says HBO is keeping him from getting a job or paying his bills, so that he will be forced to remain on the show…..
(See a further 5 case studies here.)

For NAMs and KAMs with a compulsion to read all of the source material, the real article is available for sale by the journal Cognitive Neuropsychiatry

A reality wake-up call?
The real issue is the extent to which we are all in the process of emerging from a 30-year ‘unreality’ show, with growth built on credit, a world where forecasting meant adding 10% to last year’s figures, and a combination of inflation and devaluation, all ably managed by trusted politicians and bankers, helping to sustain unreal levels of ‘feel-good’ consumerism…

This unprecedented wake-up call means we are all now playing for real at having to think for ourselves, unwilling to outsource our decision-making to retailers and marketers, determined to settle for nothing less than demonstrable value-for-money, ever again….

Have a really nice weekend, from the NamNews Team!

If the Numbers Don't Add Up, They Probably Don't

Following a global financial crisis that has left governments floundering, business managers have lost confidence in both bankers’ and politicians’ ability to reverse downward spirals in economic performance at country level.

This in turn is causing middle management to have to choose between denial and confusion as they attempt to move the business forward, where many of the numbers no longer appear to count.

Given that denial is obviously no longer a viable option, it remains for NAMs and KAMs to attempt to make workable sense of the unprecedented chaos in the market, as a basis for building customer strategies that have some chance of delivering acceptable returns on investment, while others naively await some guidance from the system…

Our latest guidance available free  

Pound shop revolution hits the big supermarkets!

More than one-in-six products being sold in supermarkets are now priced at exactly £1 or £2, highlighting how the pound shop revolution has started to affect long established rivals.

Supermarkets, and also chemist chains, have started to rely on distinctive red stickers, and very clear £1 or £2 prices in a bid to attract shoppers on a budget, as well as those consumers fed up trying to work out complex deals.

The combined demand by pound shops and the Big Four has to be a driver of both scale and relative permanence of the £1 offer, until a prolonged bout of inflation morphs it into £2, the new £1…

Welcome back to the post-Jubilee realities, from the NamNews Team! 

World's biggest boxes of pasta on sale in Turkey

Given the Jubilee Weekend and the possibility of extra friends dropping in, why risk running out of the basics?

Simply pick up a half-tonne box of Barilla spaghetti now on sale in Turkey.

Too heavy and too big for the shopping trolley, delivery is included in the price, at Turkey's Migros Ticaret supermarket chain.

The mega box of penne pasta, sells for 999 Turkish lira ($560), for charity.

The boxes at 1-and-a-half meters high and well over a meter wide, are for sale at supermarkets in Istanbul, Edirne and the resort port city of Bodrum. All revenues from the sales of the massive cartons will go to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

As with some ‘one-off’ promotional ideas, what happens if the half tonne carton really takes off and becomes a ‘must stock’ line, complete with listing fees, availability KPIs and returns allowances…apart from becoming an irresistible challenge for the professional shop-lifter...

Have a giant Jubilee weekend, from the NamNews Team!