Fresh Eye : : Articles

When is a pill bottle Media?
When it’s Liquid Media.

By Linda Zimmer

 

Mom is fixing dinner. TV News Tonight is reviewing the headlines. Janie is sitting at the table chatting about the project she needs to finish for school while flipping through her Young Teen magazine. Dad grabs a quick look at the newspaper as he helps Jake learn the finer points of setting the dinner table.

 

Ah, the rhythm of modern life.

 

Traditional marketing attempts to force open the window of opportunity for involvement. It knocks, intrudes and shouts in order to gain the attention of the busy, pre-occupied and the harried. What if our marketing could get in sync with the modern cadence?

 

Point your phone at the “for sale” sign in front of that house you’ve been eyeing, and the square footage and list price is displayed. Take a picture of an ad with your camera phone and get the nearest location to purchase the product or additional information. Approach that intriguing person at your networking function and your nametag gives you her name and hobbies, helping you break the ice. Forget to take your medicine? Your pill bottle will send you an SMS.

 

That’s “Liquid Media” in action. Liquid Media is content on the move. It is product when we want it. It is information delivered how we want it.

 

Most importantly, Liquid Media is fluid, both in channel and in application. It moves with the customer and through channels never before defined as “media.” It delivers “frame of mind” marketing – making use of those valuable moments when the customer is tuned in and when the window of opportunity is wide open for engagement, purchase, or content. No prying required.

 

Liquid Media in Motion
Liquid Media accommodate and support consumer lifestyle trends and the demand of “what I want, when I want it.” Let’s look at a few examples.

• Mobile operator 02 Ireland implemented a recent promotion during the England vs. Ireland rugby match. Using special wearable tags, the 02 team targeted England fans at the airport and were also onsite for the match. The infrared and Bluetooth tags worn by the 02 team enabled fans on both sides to download national anthem and rugby ring tones to their phones, at the moment of interest – and fun. While promoting the operator, it also tapped into and supported the social moment in which the fans were engaged.

 

• Elle, Jane and Vibe magazines are “animating” their print adverts for advertisers. They are doing it through Mobit, a visual recognition service, that turns a mobile camera image into thousands of immediate response promotional opportunities: coupons, give-aways, purchases, nearest location, downloads, and onward into your imagination. Saturn Cars, Target Stores, Absolut Vodka and many more are using the ads – and getting “engagement” metrics on the consumer response at their frame-of-mind moment.

 

• SNS Brussels is in mid-promotion with an online movie/ad called “Passion.” It allows you to input your own text message into the movie advert, and thus, change the plot. And of course it allows you to share it with your friends. Just fill out the simple online form, and email the movie to a friend.
• And, yes, there really is a pill bottle that is also “media..” The SIMpill is a bottle, programmed by your pharmacist that will notify a patient or a caregiver if medicine is not taken within a specific period of time. It is currently used for those who need vital, life-sustaining medication and for whom such a reminder is more than a convenience.

Liquid Media has the fluidity to deliver marketing beyond “the message.” That fluidity takes the form of the channel, the content, the product, the message or the consumer’s definition of “now.” It is our marketing creativity that must dream up ways that will engage, delight and serve our customers at moments when they are open to us.

 

Our customers are living Liquid Media lifestyles. It’s time we get in sync with them.