Glamour just announced a mobile e-commerce initiative with snap-to- buy tags…A process where you scan a tag and then enter a credit card number to complete the purchase. This is a pretty involved process that will limit the number of actual engagements until this technology becomes widespread.

Moreover, Glamour is moving beyond the pages of its magazine to do this in a Taxi environment using both Taxi TV (video) and Print ads in the Taxi under the Glamour banner for Lancôme during Fashion Week.

We are encouraged to see magazines stepping outside the bounds of the printed page and using their brand to test new digital frontiers. We encourage them to put measurement metrics in place to capture consumer engagement and interaction – and to share this information with the advertising community. The more transparent the data, the more actionable these initiatives will become. Of course, some of these experiments will fail, and in time, more will succeed. Together, publishers and advertisers will identify successful formulas that will demonstrate the continued and intensified connection women have with these strong brands.

In a recent New York Times article, Mickey Meece describes her news consumption routine: pick up the paper, toss it on the table with intentions to read later, get the news on her iPad instead. She lists out her regular rotation of news sources, which are different than mine and probably different than yours as well. Unlike the days when everyone received the same newspaper and without the myriad additional sources available online, our consumption of printed news is becoming more instant, customizable, and as a result, more segmented.

But this comes at a price. Not only for the newspaper industry feeling the pressure from an ever increasingly digital world, but also for the consumer. Meece points out numerous news aggregating apps for tablets that were created as a way to access all the information a newshound could want, all in one place and exactly how you want it…if you’re willing to work for it. Until the day when apps can read our minds and know what we want, we still have to go through the manual labor of telling the app to build something full of must reads while leaving out the clutter.

Is it worth it to today’s ever-on-the-go consumer though? We could be content to sit back and have the news companies deliver to us, either physically or electronically, the stories their editors deem important enough to print and simply pick and choose which sections we want to take in. Or we could be proactive and use those electronic sources to become our own editors to get precisely the newspaper we want, thus becoming more engaged and empowered readers.

These one stop shops are not only a convenient way to gather all of our favorite news sources and content sections, it should also be a way for advertisers to conveniently target interested consumers. Yet while sampling 5 of the aggregating apps Meece mentions, I was not served a single ad unless I clicked through a headline to read the story on the source website. A lack of ads seems such a waste since I am consciously handing the apps my interests along with my attention. The increasing customization available through these apps will benefit consumers as well as advertisers, if only they’re willing to put in the effort.

This debuted earlier in the week but still worth viewing. The PayPal show what future-shopping might look like their their new payment platforms.

The options include everything from “bump” payments and transfers where consumers need only bump their phones to transfer funds to the always popular QR code check-out.

As part of their integrated campaign in support of the company’s 2012 Versa Seda model, Nissan is leveraging a previously widely unexploited Apple iAd feature to help deliver the campaigns’ young, tech savvy target consumer.

The Versa iAd utilizes gyro technology–offered on the iPad and iPhone–to allow the user to take in a 360-degree view of the car as they pan their device to the left or right while viewing the ad.  True to its name, the iAd also offers elements of jazzy interaction to the experience: when a viewer shakes their phone, for example, the people in the ad will put on different hats. 

A classy convergence of technology and targeting!

Talk about a back fire. Only one month into the company split of Netflix (into Netflix – Streaming and Qwikster – DVD’s), the once skyrocketing video entertainment powerhouse has lost over 1 million subscribers. Also, they have employed a more than backwards business strategy. Netflix CEO is effectively eliminating his core business prospects from the funnel, making it more difficult to convert new users. If Netflix remained as just Netflix, cross selling opportunities or possibily upselling opportunities would have remained from DVD to Streaming. Now, a user of Netflix DVD is automatically enrolled in Qwikster DVD, not only losing brand loyalists, but also making it more complex to be signed up for both services. Two companies. Two contracts. Too many issues. Without the brand Netflix for the DVD business, there is an increased concerned that users will become brand agnostic and switch to a different provider.

Check out the articles here

Yesterday Google released their Wallet app, a handy tool they originally announced back in May.  The app makes your phone a quick and easy means to pay for virtually anything payable by credit card and provides an answer to the George Costanza wallet.  Google Wallet is made possible through a partnership with Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and First Data.  Currently, it is only available to Citi Mastercard holders as well as holders of the Google Prepaid Card (fundable through any “existing plastic credit card”).

Google’s goal is to make it possible to add all payment cards to Google Wallet, and as a thank you to early adopters, it is offering a $10 free bonus to the Google Prepaid Card when users set it up in Google Wallet before the end of 2011.

Read more…

Rather than succumb to the supposed print-killing tablet, newspapers are trying to figure out how to make the device work to their advantage. Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and Los Angeles Times among others, is currently rumored to be developing a tablet device of their very own.

According to a CNN article, the tablet will reportedly operate on a version of Google’s Android operating system, feature software customized to local newspapers, and include other functions expected of tablet devices such as downloading apps, playing games and surfing the internet. Tribune wants to give the tablet to consumers for free (or at very low cost) in exchange for an extended 2-year subscription to their paper.

Whether people choose to take this offer will likely depend on the technical specs of the Tribune’s tablet compared to powerful computing devices like the iPad. Price points are sure to also be a factor. Counting the estimated price for a 2-year subscription as the cost of a “free” Tribune tablet and using the aforementioned newspapers as examples, the price comparison is as follows:

*Software providing total access to digital copy of full paper, not an app. Price from Barnes & Noble Nook store.

Since this device release is still in the rumor phase, it is unclear whether Tribune would charge the extended subscribers the same price they do now or move to the digital price to entice customers. Consumers will no doubt be aware that a digital copy will greatly reduce printing, distributing and other costs for the paper and expect to see those savings passed on to them.

The Philadelphia Media Network will begin testing their own tablet promotion this week by providing 5,000 discounted tablets preloaded with three newspaper apps and three sponsors: Comcast, Wells Fargo, and Main Line Health, a regional hospital network. If this trend continues, Apple may see a new wave of tablets in the marketplace starting to encroach on its overwhelming share of the tablet pie. After all, why would someone need to purchase a $500 iPad when they can get a comparable multi-functional device by simply extending a subscription to their local newspaper?

Because newspapers depend on advertising as well as newsstand sales for their revenue stream, these new tablet devices offer an opportunity for advertisers to get creative. Imagine placing an interactive ad for a clothing store in the style section of a digital newspaper. Consumers can have the opportunity to browse and get information about featured articles of clothing then easily connect over to the store website to make a purchase. Moving from print to a digital medium encourages ads to be interactive and engaging, improving the consumer’s experience with the brand. Whether it will be because of Tribune and other newspaper companies, or the organic move of content to tablets, if the reader is present, advertisers need to be there to engage with them.

With Hotels.com’s smartphone application, on-the-go travelers can book a hotel room from almost anywhere—even at the very last minute. In their latest digital video piece, Hotels.com tapped professional stuntman and skydiver JT Holmes to illustrate–in extreme fashion–just how easy it is to book a room while ‘on the fly’…literally.

“The Hotels.com mobile booking application is so fast,” shouts Holmes from the relative safety of a small plane flying above the beautiful, resort-studded shores of Lake Tahoe, CA, “you can even book in a free-fall!” Equipped only with a parachute and and iPhone, the stuntman leaps into a 15,000 foot free-fall and sets to the process of booking a hotel room while flying at over 115 miles per hour towards his ultimate destination: the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa & Casino.

The stunt is actually a live-action version of Hotels.com’s most recent animated television commercial, in which the brands’ clay-animated spokesman, Smart, also books a hotel room while on a skydiving vacation. 

The Hotels.com mobile booking app, available for iPhone and Android, features specialized offers, including exclusive mobile deals and over 20,000 last minute deals.  It’s a great tool, and we wouldn’t recommend traveling (or skydiving ) without it!  So why don’t you join the million+ smartphone users who are already using it by downloading the application for yourself at www.thesmarterapp.com. 

Now that’s smart. So smart.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is looking for ways to put a stop to the rioting in London.  One solution that is currently being explored is barring suspected rioters from using social media and other communication devices.  Theresa May, the Home secretary, met with executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Research In Motion (maker of BlackBerry) to seek ways to prevent rioters from using these mediums to organize more trouble.

Cameron said, “when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

Facebook has said it has removed “credible threats of violence” from the site.  However, they have also noted that social media has been used in positive ways such as mass cleanups of the riots.

In attempting to restrict use of social media, the British government was met with protest by free-speech campaigners.  This case is an brings up some interesting questions.  How much responsibility is in the hands of these social media companies?  Is the government approaching a violation of British citizens’ basic freedoms?  Read the full article here.

I am sure you have heard the story of the marketer who purchased one of the first iPhones. One of his client’s objectives was to raise $100,000 quickly. So the gentleman waited on line for a few weeks, bought the phone, auctioned it on ebay for $100,000 and gave the money to his client. Rob Shoesmith is not that guy. But he is still leveraging the buzz that comes with all things Apple.

Rob is the guy who will be camping out soon for the iPhone 5…already…even though it hasn’t actually been announced yet- and won’t be announced for at least another month. Rob will be living in a tent outside of an Apple store in London’s Convent Garden district, surviving mostly on the attention and subsequent gifts/sponsorships he has been receiving.

The focus has shifted from the iPhone 5 to an experiment that will determine “if it’s possible to live off of Apple’s huge marketing influence”. So far Rob has received solar-powered iPhone chargers, web cams, candy and oddly…garden gnomes.

Rob Shoesmith we salute you. Now lets just hope the iPhone 5 announcement isn’t delayed past September.