The Official Fluid Blog

Hi all,

Fluid got to take the stage at eTail East’s Social Commerce Summit last week. So fun. We share our presentation with you here:

I attended the GlobalLogic Innovate! conference on Tuesday and Wednesday in Palo Alto. We work with a development team from GlobalLogic (formerly Cubika) in Argentina. Although some of the sessions were geared towards a more corporate audience and were a bit dry (imho), some of the other sessions had some interesting perspectives on innovation that directly applied to Fluid. Some highlights:

Sal Khan
Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, talked about how the Khan Academy came into existence and now thrives. The Khan Academy is turning the educational system on its ear by allowing students to master material independently at home, and better leverage teachers time at school to help struggling students and to synthesize the basic materials into more interesting projects. (Of course it also works great for independent study without any classroom time at all.)

The Khan Academy uses YouTube for instructional videos, offers online tests, and organizes all the materials. It also provides a dashboard for teachers or parents to oversee the work of their students. There is nothing especially trailblazing in the technology. They offer valuable content (the courses) in a way that scales well on the internet. Sal saw and addressed an immediate (and initially fairly modest) need, which grew incrementally based on concrete needs. And the result is a revolutionary fix for a problem as daunting as our befuddled educational system.

Geoff Moore
Geoff Moore is a venture capitalist and old school high tech Silicon Valley guru.

We need discipline around innovation. It is not inherently good. One must consider the return on the investment in innovation. We should focus on the key “moments of engagement” in your business (such as the initial impression of a PDP, for example). There are 3 goals of innovation:

• Differentiation: Break new ground. Must be ambitious.
• Neutralization: Keep up with your competitors (Microsoft is the master of this). Must be fast.
• Productivity: Save money. This equates to “best in class”, which is not terribly sexy but can be good business.

The three goals are mutually exclusive. Deliberately choose which you want, and maintain discipline to achieve it.

Tom Fishburne
Tom is a “marketoonist”. He was previously the VP of marketing at Method Soap, a company that depends on innovation to survive. Before that he worked at General Mills, a company that does not.

“Usage is like oxygen for ideas.” It is hard to get meaningful feedback from focus groups about products or product categories that do not yet exist. It is almost an oxymoron. A better alternative is to take products to market and see how they do.

In order to innovate, one must dare to differentiate and take risks with those differentiations. When innovating it is important not to dilute the creative ideas to the point that they no longer differentiate and are therefore irrelevant. To innovate one must nurture the germ of the creative ideas, and make them more revolutionary rather than safer. Most good ideas get killed by over-cautiousness.

As Kenmore’s social media agency of record we get a fair number of trips in to Chicago. Here are seven observations from our latest:

1. Fluid’s Rachel Roy fan-only Facebook shop resonates – with fans and with clients. Andrew, our CXO, explains why it works here. A 25% increase in fans in the first 24 hours is worth talking about.

2. Lucky magazine is integrating digital into publishing and fashion in great ways. In this month’s issue: Daily Deals for their At Your Service, QR code promos and ads using ShopText (think text-to-give becomes text-to-buy or sample).

3. Social media expertise is excelling in-house. As more brands hire community engagement or social media managers we’re finding big opportunities for strong partnerships. Client understanding will lead the shake out of social media vendors and offerings. Yay.

4. It’s time to upgrade my iPhone. Why? Video. What sparked this thought? I watched a guy clean and squeegee the windows near SFO security with more gusto, style and love than can ever be imagined. It was awesome. He needs to be seen.

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Last year Alicia Keys asked American Idol watchers to text-to-give. It yielded $450K – the largest portion of the $4M total donated via mobile texts in 2009.

That record has been broken. As of last week, the Red Cross alone has received over $25M in text-to-give donations for Haiti. $3M in the first 24 hours. 25% of the overall Red Cross funds donated.

A devastating event + human generosity + mobile technology equals:

- A broad base of in-the-moment givers
- A momentous moment for mobile

The money raised to positively impact Haiti relief efforts is the biggest win. The implications for e/mCommerce though are incredibly exciting.

Here are the top five things I see text-to-give teaching us:

1. The power of “virtual” currency
Disney has Disney Dollars. Facebook and online games have their own currency. Chuck E. Cheese has tokens. Casinos transact in chips. Credit cards aren’t the same as cold hard cash. Whether we like it or not, these all leverage the fact that people are likely to spend more money when they’re not transacting in actual dollars. Text-to-buy via mobile creates this same sense of distance.

[Haiti donations efforts were focused on $5 and $10 donations. My colleague smartly asked, what if they’d allowed text codes with varying cash amounts (HAITI25, HAITI50, etc.)? Would donations be that much bigger?]

2. Mobile providers as payment systems
Text-to-give means that providers become the payment method. The $10 donation goes on our mobile bills and the providers reconcile with the non-profits to ensure that the donations reach their end destination. This puts providers in a powerful position.

It’s not a big leap to think about facilitating mCommerce purchases via text messaging. Mobile providers could become the next PayPal – taking a percentage on the pass-through before the order is delivered to a retailer.

3. Social sharing after an action
Companies are consumed with how to make their commerce and brands more social. Much of it is focused on sparking purchases through the power of social networks. What about making them social post-purchase?
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Damn. Should I be concerned?

Bacon currently has 379,844 fans on Facebook. Kevin Bacon has 5,985. With six degree of separation that likely equals an amount that exceeds the number of Facebook fans for your brand.

Unless you’re Coca-Cola (4,007,785 fans), who let two fans keep running their page or Starbucks (5,116,222 fans) who frankly, is Starbucks.

Free shipping for becoming a fan wasn’t enough for JCrew (164,848 fans) to unseat bacon. Although kudos to them for their simple implementation of a proven ecommerce winner.

A brand’s number of fans has become the stuff of bragging rights and for some, night sweats. Rivaled only by the quest for viral video views on YouTube.

My opinion: Kick the leader board to the curb and don’t let bacon get your brand down.
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The dollar is making a comeback. I don’t mean in international currency. I’m talking virtual chocolate cake, garden growing and accountability. Two mind racing ideas from last week:

1. Inside Network and Serious Business released a report projecting U.S. virtual goods to hit $1B this year. It’s a twist on nothing for something driven by Facebook apps like Farmville – which gained a mind bending 18M users in the last month to hit 51M monthly uniques.

Or the goods can be as simple as a $1 virtual birthday gift. Adding $1 seems to make it mean more than when it’s free.

[From an ecommerce perspective: What are you selling that people would want in a virtual form? Or where could we be selling it?]

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We are pleased to announce an exciting addition to the Fluid team. Amy Lanigan has recently joined Fluid as Director of Client Strategy after previously serving as Assistant Director of Strategy at AKQA. While at AKQA Amy worked with high profile clients such as Target, Gap and Charles Schwab.

We’ve brought Amy on because gone are the days where retailers can rigidly control virtually every aspect of their online presence and shopping experience. Blogs and customer reviews mean consumers have a voice in the conversation. Content is increasingly portable and flexible. Conversion funnels begin before consumers get to your site and social networks allow consumers unprecedented influence over what friends and strangers are buying online and in stores. This complex landscape requires shopping and brand experiences that are thoughtful, flexible and strategic.

It is Amy’s job to help our clients plot a path through this evolving landscape, particularly in social media, and to make sure everything Fluid deploys is on target from both a quantitative business and brand perspective.

Welcome, Amy.