“With more than 8,000 locations, nearly two-thirds of which are within three miles of the United States population, we get a lot of check-ins,” said Rich Lesperance, director of marketing and ecommerce at Walgreens, Deerfield, IL.

“It is important for us to learn what they are most interested in, why they check-in at Walgreens and what we do to make their experience even better,” he said.

LocalResponse’s technology pings check-in services, including Facebook Places, foursquare and Yelp among other location-based services. Once LocalResponse knows that a user is at a certain location, the service can send out relevant, store-specific offer via Twitter.

In order to connect with a user, consumers must post their check-in information to Twitter, which has public data that LocalResponse can use.

LocalResponse then sends a tweet from the Walgreens Twitter account within 60 seconds to the user with the offer. Each tweet includes a link that users can click on to view the deal.

Walgreens is currently sending out the Twitter deals to promote Halls cough drops.

Once a user opened the piece of locked content, they could text a time-sensitive keyword to a short code to receive a mobile coupon.

According to LocalResponse, the average click-through-rate for campaigns such as the Walgreens example is 40 percent, showing the connection that social media plays in location-based check-ins.

CBS is the network broadcasting the 54th Grammy Awards that will air on Feb. 12. Target has bought mobile ad inventory across CBS’ mobile site and Web site.

The ads promote albums from Adele and The Fray. Each ad features a picture of the artist and encourages users to tap to learn more. Users who tap on the ads are redirected to Target’s mobile Web site, where they can learn more about the artist and the album. Consumers can then choose to either buy the album via the mobile site or find the item in-store. Users can type their zip code into their mobile device to find a nearby Target location.

Users can share the albums via email, SMS and Twitter to friends and family. They can also read user reviews and add the item to their wish lists.

The Grammy program is Target’s latest advertising initiative that uses mobile to support in-store sales. Recently, Target used mobile commerce-enabled ads to give mobile customers a sneak peek at an upcoming three-day sale.

Adele is expected to be a big winner at the Grammy Awards with six nominations, which is a great opportunity for Target to push sales of the album leading up to the show.

1. Social is a paradigm shift

Thanks to the emergence of digital media channels, the way people shop is fundamentally and irreversibly different from a few years ago. We’ve moved on from brand-controlled messages to a world of empowered consumers in a channel-agnostic marketplace.

This brings with it new rules and metrics for acquiring, retaining and interacting with customers.

The power of selling has been with the seller because of the broadcast model and advertising culture. Over the last few years, technology has changed. The customer is now exercising this power.

Search is still a critical mechanism for the web, but time spent on search is up just 1%, compared to a 50% increase in time spent on social networks.”

To take advantage of this, brands must ensure there is a consistent customer experience across online, instore and mobile channels, and social must be a part of every aspect of the business.

2. Social data reveals the why behind the buy

Opinions from friends are still the most trusted source for purchasing decisions – 90% of consumers now trust peer recommendations compared to 14% that rely on advertising.

With the growth of social, consumer conversations are now available online giving businesses access to new data and an opportunity to align more closely to the needs of customers.

Listening to people in social media is fantastic because the comment is made at the moment of high engagement. What you learn through this kind of medium cannot be gathered through research.”

Understanding trends in consumer data allows businesses to become more customer-centric, which is proven to drive sales, decrease returns and support costs, inspire product innovation, and power effective marketing.

3. Becoming customer-centric demands cultural and organisational transformation

Social media brings companies closer to their customers; the real people who shop for, buy, and use their products and services.

The shift in power from broadcast to fragmented media, from brand to consumer, from paid media to earned media, collectively requires a new focus for businesses: an obsessive devotion to understanding and delighting customers.

This calls for an organisation-wide cultural shift at every level.

See the full report by Bazaarvoice

Lydia Dishman wrote an article for Forbes that describes the new app, which is summarized below.

In April, Walmart bought Kosmix, a social media start-up focused on e-commerce for $300 million. The new firm joined Silicon Valley-based @WalmartLabs division to work on building the retail giant’s online shopping experience.

One result of the collaboration are apps for the iPhone and iPad. They are designed to simplify weekly shopping trips for grocery staples, and should be launched by Black Friday.

The National Retail Federation estimates over 52 percent of smartphone users will use their devices for holiday shopping. There’s been significant mobile adoption among the estimated 140 million customers who walk through Walmart stores every week.

One feature of the app is smart shopping lists, which allows customers to add items either by scanning a barcode on a product they already have or by speaking or typing the name of the item. They’ll also be able to access product details, customer reviews, and local availability. A budgeting tool calculates the total price of the list as items are added and calls up manufacturer’s coupons where available.

See the original article at: http://onforb.es/ssv90Y

Mashable published the infographic below to present JiWire’s findings.

Below is a mini-interview with Jason Parker of Leo Burnett. As Jason explains, his view is that account planning is no longer about consumers, but about people and experiences.

PB: What does a Planning Director do?

JP: So, account planning is just another term for Strategy. It started in the UK years ago when agencies saw that media had a ton of research that wasn’t being fully applied so they created specialized account managers to use it. It’s the merge between Account Management and Media Planning (hence, Account Planning). It’s evolved over the years and now incorporates a lot of different types of disciplines. For example, my background’s in psychology and have done some traditional brand planning as well as digital strategy.

What I do is work to unify ideas to create holistic programs and experiences. The UX part of my job (though I’d not refer to myself as a UX planner) is essentially in designing communication experiences. Part research and insights, part media, part creative, part content strategy, part UX. Sounds like a lot, but it’s really a lot of orchestration.

PB: What do you like most about your job?

JP: What I love about what I do is the chance to work with diverse people with different types of expertise. It’s about finding a common thread and making it work to simplify and focus experiences. I often refer to what I do as creative problem solving – lots of folks do that, so nothing special – but I’m lucky in that I get to apply it across a lot of different disciplines.

Designing experiences is increasingly important as consumer communication becomes more complex. To me, design is about simplification and focus which is needed now more than ever. This also includes graphic design. Creating elegance out of complexity.

PB: What are the biggest things on the horizon that you’re interested in?

JP: What I’m most excited about right now is that the need to create meaningful experiences for people is actually forcing us to go back to understanding fundamental human behaviors. It’s no longer about consumers, it’s about people. It’s not about brand perceptions and attitudes, it’s about human motivation and behavior. Disruption, persuasion… all these things are no longer as relevant as we try to create communication experiences that actually DO things for people – help them in ways beyond just buying a product. It’s about creating marketing that’s a service in and of itself.

Tagwhat announces the launch of its publishing platform that allows anyone to create and monetize their own location-based multimedia stories. Comprised of video, audio, images, and text, Tagwhat stories can be placed anywhere in the world for mobile users to discover.

Tagwhat’s mobile application delivers location-based stories in real-life context by employing GPS and a digital compass. Stories are displayed in order of proximity to the user and are organized in Channels that are toggled on and off to quickly filter through different streams of content. Tap on a story to launch the full multimedia experience. The mobile application launched in July seeded with content created by its in-house team of journalists and filmmakers as well as select launch partners including the Associated Press (AP) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Since then, the demand for access to Tagwhat’s publishing platform has been tremendous.

“Today marks the start of a new mobile medium: Multimedia Stories at Places. We go to radio for audio, to TV for video, and now Tagwhat delivers multimedia experiences tied to places on the mobile.” said co-founder and CEO, Dave Elchoness.

How does it work? Visit publish.tagwhat.com and follow the steps. Tap on the map where the story will be found. Input text and upload the video, images, and audio that tell the story. Assign the story to one of Tagwhat’s channels: Heritage, Movies, Books, Sports, Music, Real Estate, Food, Art, or Nature. Add in actions that automatically link users to websites for additional content or commerce, and interaction through email, phone, and SMS. Tagwhat will review submissions to ensure a high quality user experience.

What kind of stories fit in Tagwhat? A restaurant could publish a video interview with its chef talking about her inspiration for the signature dishes she has created. An art gallery could offer images and video of artists creating their works to encourage passersby to learn more. Sports teams can now deliver great media experiences to fans in and around the stadium. Realtors can offer prospective buyers video walkthroughs of properties and a deeper look at the neighborhood and nearby schools.

Publishers can easily monetize their stories in Tagwhat. A band could, for example, publish video and audio from a recent show, place the story at a concert hall, and include a link to purchase tickets or souvenirs.

“Anyone with a location in mind, now has a canvas for offering a story to people at that place.” said Elchoness. “Think about all the videos, images, and other content hidden away on the internet in sites like YouTube and Flickr. Tagwhat extends these beyond the ‘web’ to real places surrounding real people for entertainment, education, information, commerce, or any purpose benefiting from place-based engagement.”

[Excerpted from Tagwhat Press Release]

The following is a mini-interview I conducted with Adriano Braun Galvao, author of Design Relationships: Integrating User Information into Product Development, and VP of Sylver Consulting. 

PB: What is your book about?

ABG: This book introduces an innovative method for creating products that work better for consumers. The methodology, developed through pragmatic case studies, is applicable to industrial projects, helping developers to define attributes of future products, and reducing the chances of making wrong decisions about the relationships between product functions and users’ tasks. Some of the key topics addressed in the book are: affordances, product architecture and user research.

PB: How can UX strategy and design professionals put this information to practical use in their projects?

ABG: As products are being embedded with increased functional and interface capabilities, there is a rising demand for design methods that can incorporate user interaction into the product architecture design process. The affordance-based method and the practical case studies presented in this book make it an excellent reference for practitioners, students and academics in the product development field.

PB: What is on the user experience or digital horizon that most interests you?

ABG: Digital spaces and related applications.