In London, Kellogg's Swaps Snacks for Tweets to #tweetshop

At Pop-Up Store, Social Currency Buys Special K Cracker Crisps

By: Emma Hall Published: September 27, 2012

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Kellogg's is bridging the gap between social currency and real-life money by letting customers at a central London pop-up store pay for Special K Cracker Crisps with a tweet.

Kim Murray, the first Tweetshop shopper

Allowing consumers to spend their social currency isn't just a good promotional gimmick. It is a concrete illustration of the value that Twitter holds in the real world, as well as a demonstration of how our online and offline lives are merging.
The twittersphere has been active, not only with tweets from customers claiming their free snacks in-store, but also with people spreading the word about the novel idea of products for tweets, which was thought up by Mischief PR with its experiential and events arm, Slice.
Tweets bearing the requisite #tweetshop hashtag so far include "Here's to healthier crisps and turning tweets into currency" and "my first tweet and it's from #tweetshop! Brilliant! And free crisps as well!" The initial response has been overwhelmingly positive, with only one tweeter joking, "Disappointed to find out it only deals in crisps. Where's the option to trade tweets for Mulberry handbags?"
Zoe Lazarus, a partner at Lowe Counsel, has identified the trend toward monetizing social currency in her report, "The New Value Shift." She said, "Consumers now recognize the value of the data they create on social networks and search engines -- the Facebook IPO has highlighted that -- and the power is shifting, as brands begin to acknowledge the real value of consumer networks."
In South Africa this summer, a Cape Town vending machine was set up to deliver free BOS iced tea when it received a tweet with the hashtag #tweet4t. Innocent drinks, the smoothie-maker that is majority-owned by Olympic sponsor Coca-Cola, set up a "tweet for a seat" scheme, inviting its followers to tweet who they would like to take to the Olympics and why, including the hashtag #tweetforaseat.
American Express has also jumped on the trend for monetizing social-media value, running a campaign in conjunction with Foursquare and upmarket department store Harvey Nichols during London Fashion Week. Cardholders were able to sync their Amex card with Foursquare, and if they checked in at the department store they were given a $40 credit if they spent $40 in-store.
Also, at this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, two creative directors from R/GA won a Cyber Grand Prix for a campaign offering a free downloadable copy of their book to anyone who tweeted about it.

Kellogg's London tweetshop

But the Special K campaign may be the first example of real-life human interaction using the pay-with-a-tweet concept. Dan Glover, creative director of Mischief PR, said, "We believe that physical and social are one and the same. When we had the idea it felt very simple, and we did a lot of checking to be sure it was a world first. We jumped on that and made it happen -- it was eight weeks from idea to execution."
Sarah Case, brand manager for Special K, said in a statement, "The value of positive endorsements on social-media sites is beyond compare, so we're excited to be the first company to literally use social currency instead of financial currency to launch this new product in our bespoke Special K shop."
The pop-up store, open for just four days until Sept. 28 in London's Soho, is selling only Special K Cracker Crisps, a new low-calorie potato-chip snack from the Kellogg's-owned brand. It is staffed by Special K girls, all wearing red dresses familiar from the TV advertising. Among the hundreds of packs is a live community notice board that displays #tweetshop tweets as they happen.
Special K Cracker Crisps usually cost $1 a packet and are available in three flavors -- sea salt and balsamic vinegar, sweet chilli, or sour cream and onion. They come in at under 100 calories a pack.

This article focuses on the impact of 7-11 on the small stores in NYC

(Big) Gulp: Bodegas Fret Over 7-Eleven

By SUMATHI REDDY

Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

Competition from 7-Eleven convenience stores, like this one in Manhattan, have some bodegas worried.

The 7-Eleven next-door hadn't opened yet when Kyung Yu started to worry. The owner of Kyung's Fruit Store in Chelsea for more than 25 years, Mr. Yu even contemplated sending the company a plea for mercy this summer, warning that its arrival could spell doom for his business.
About a week ago, the convenience store's signature green and red sign was up, and the store was open. Mr. Yu is bracing for the worst. "If my business goes down, I don't know what I'm going to do," said Mr. Yu, whose offerings include Asian candy, orchids, coffee, a Korean bulgogi on a hero and a $2.99 turkey burger. His best hope: 7-Eleven will buy him out to expand.
In the 1990s, it was the Gap and Starbucks, and in the new century, Dunkin' Donuts and Subway sandwich shops have sprouted on what seems like every corner. Now 7-Eleven, the Dallas-based company that bills itself as the world's largest convenience retailer, is positioning itself to take on New York. It has plans to open 30 new outlets over the next five years, making it among the city's fastest-growing chains.
A staple of suburbia, 7-Eleven now has about 100 stores across the five boroughs, according to a list compiled by the company, with at least a dozen more expected to open by year's end.
It has grown 72% between 2008 and 2012, according to Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future, ranking it among the five fastest-growing retailers with 50 or more stores in the city.
Mr. Bowles said his group's annual count of chain stores in New York, due out in the next few weeks, will rank 7-Eleven as the 15th largest, compared with 26th in 2008. It is the first retailer that could pose a direct threat to one of the idiosyncrasies of New York City: its thousands of corner bodegas and mom-and-pop green grocers.
Officials from 7-Eleven say they have reached out to the Bodega Association of the U.S. They held a meeting earlier this month with its members to promote a business conversion program that allows established shop owners to become a 7-Eleven. They promote benefits that include a fully stocked store as well as regular visits from a business consultant, an inventory tracking system that boosts sales and reduces spoilage, and a model in which gross profits are split between corporate and the franchisee.

"In the street, people are talking about 7-Eleven," said Ramon Murphy, president of the Bodega Association of the U.S. "Some people agree, some people not agree. The main thing is, let's educate our members, let's be prepared for competition. If you want to be 7-Eleven, great. You don't want it, I'll help you, too. We want to keep the bodega in New York."
Many of the stores opening are corporately owned and looking for franchisees. But no one showed up to an open house at an Upper West Side location earlier this month. And no bodega owners have applied for the business conversion program, though nine other business owners have since February.
Jose Fernandez, who is president of the National Bodega Federation, a separate group, said though there have been concerns about 7-Eleven's expansion, at the moment the chain hasn't penetrated neighborhoods where many of their members operate. "Most of our members carry food products, usually from different countries, that 7-Eleven doesn't carry," he said.
But 7-Eleven, whose parent company, Seven & i Holdings Co., is based in Tokyo, is trying to cater to customer tastes beyond taquitos and Slurpees. A store on York Avenue in Manhattan, for example, carries a greater selection of organic cleaners and vegetarian products. One on the Upper West Side has kosher sandwiches, and in a Flushing, Queens, store, there are Chinese and Korean offerings.
While as a group, bodega and small grocery stores owners may not be worried about the 7-Eleven influx just yet, those sitting in their shadow say they are already feeling the squeeze.
"They're gonna close me," said Sedki Ali, the owner of 374 Deli on Eighth Avenue. The 7-Eleven is just a few blocks away from the one concerning Mr. Yu.
He said since 7-Eleven opened about a month ago, his sales have been cut in half. "I usually order cigarettes every week, now this is the third week I still have them," he said.
A similar refrain is heard in the East Village. Near a two-month-old 7-Eleven close to the once counterculture corner of St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue, bodega owners say they saw an instant hit to their bottom line when the store opened, with sales decreasing on everything from coffee and soda to hot dogs.
"We are trying to do different things," said the owner of Gem Spa, across the street. "We have to add. We are thinking of adding something. We don't know what to add."
—Pervaiz Shallwani contributed to this article. Write to Sumathi Reddy at sumathi.reddy@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared September 25, 2012, on page A21 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: (Big) Gulp: Bodegas Fret Over 7-Eleven.

Nestlé Puts GPS Trackers in Candy Bars for Golden Ticket Style Contest Willy Wonka would be proud By David Kiefaber

Nestlé's "We Will Find You" campaign sounds more like a threat than a marketing stunt, but it's not quite as Orwellian as the name would imply. Six Nestlé chocolate-bar wrappers in the U.K. have been outfitted with GPS trackers that activate when the wrappers are opened, at which point Nestlé's prize team pinpoints your whereabouts, swoops in and gives you £10,000. See, that's not too scary. The idea, enacted with help from JWT London, is being compared to Willy Wonka's golden tickets, minus the part where you tour a candy factory and eat food prototypes that could disfigure or kill you. For its part, Nestlé believes the effort "will particularly appeal to men." Your guess is as good as mine on that one.

This article claims that fast food logos are branded into the minds of children from an early age.

Childhood obesity is a growing health concern in the public sphere, but for many of us, it also hits close to home. But while public health campaigns have singled in on parents providing children with unhealthy nutrition options and with poor examples of healthy eating, new research indicates that some of the problem may lie with fast food companies and their overly effective marketing campaigns. A study has found that fast-food logos are branded into the minds of children from an early age.

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity has more than tripled over the past 30 years. And perhaps more damning, the government bureau reports that "[the] percentage of children aged 6-11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2008. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12-19 years who were obese increased from 5% to 18% over the same period." 

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas Medical Center, showed children 60 logos from popular food brands, like Rice Krispies and KFC and 60 logos from popular non-food brands, like BMW and FedEx. The children were aged between 10 and 14. Then, using a functional MRI scanner, which measures blood flow to different areas in the brain, they watched the brains of these children react to the different logos.
When showed images of fast food companies, the parts of the brain that control pleasure and appetite lit up. The brains did not do the same when showed images from companies not associated with food.
The brain's reaction may not seem like a big deal. After all, when someone mentions food, a common bodily response is to feel hungry. But researchers also found that children were more likely to choose the food branded with the logo with which they were familiar. When asked to taste a hamburger from a box with no label, and a hamburger from a box labeled McDonald's, the children overwhelmingly preferred the McDonald's burger.
Researchers' concern is that marketers for these companies are tapping into the reward portions of the brain long before children develop self-control. In addition, most of the foods marketed to children are high in caloric content, sugars, fat and sodium.
 "The brains of children are 'imprinted' with food logos," said Dr. Amanda Bruce, who led the study. "Without the necessary inhibitory processes to aid in decision-making, youth are particularly susceptible to making poor choices about what to eat."

Read more at http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/12318/20120925/fast-food-logos-imprinted-childrens-brains.htm#2EvY4y2rAqtWsjyw.99

Apple's Sales Strategy

Apple Store's Secret Sauce: 5 Steps of Service [video]

 

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Apple Store in Palo Alto CA

People do the craziest things in anApple Store. They record themselves dancing and post their videos to YouTube. Some have proposed marriage in Apple Stores. Comedian Mark Malkoff brought a goat into an Apple Store and produced a video on the other stuff he tries to get away with it (and he usually does). Why do people do such things? I believe it’s the people in the Apple Store—the soul of Apple—who make customers feel good and wouldn’t you want to return to a place that makes you feel good?

During my research into the Apple Retail Store I discovered that the store trains its employees to follow five steps of service, beginning from the moment the customer walks through the door. These steps will help anyone in any industry (retail or service) enhance the customer experience. They are so powerful that leaders should train their staff immediately to follow each and every step in each and every customer interaction.

Think of APPLE as an acronym. Each letter corresponds to a step.

Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome. Every customer should be greeted by an employee who is friendly, passionate and committed to customer service.  A customer’s perception of their experience begins to be formed in the first ten seconds of an interaction. Make those seconds count.

Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs. This simply means to ask a series of closed and open-ended question so you can match the customer with the right product, not the most expensive product. In the Apple Store, a closed-ended question elicits a simple yes or no such as, “Will this be your first Mac?” An open-ended question is more general and gives the sales associate (specialist) more information to guide the conversation. For example, “What will you be using the iPad for?”

Present a solution for the customer to take home today. Apple likes to remind its store employees that they are not in the business of selling computers. They are in the business of “enriching lives.” A sale isn’t the only way to enrich the life of a customer and to build loyalty. For example, a customer might be frustrated to walk into an Apple Store expecting to see a technical specialist (a “Genius”) only to be told they need an appointment at the Genius Bar. A trained specialist would offer an alternative solution such as, “We have appointments available tomorrow. May I sign you up or show you how to reserve an appointment on our web site?”

Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns. Customers have what are called “unexpressed” wishes or concerns. Specialists are trained to pick up on these concerns during the ‘probing’ step, which is why it is important to ask good questions. For example, some long-time PC users might be reluctant to learn a new operating system but they don’t necessarily express that concern. A specialist who uncovers this information might spend more time describing One-to-One, a unique program for Mac customers who want to learn more about the computer in one hour face-to-face sessions with a “creative.” The program, which a customer can purchase for $99 upon buying a Mac, is good for one year and includes a transfer of data from a PC to Mac. It was intended to build a customer for life and often does just that. It’s also a good recruiting tool. Many people who work in an Apple Store were One-to-One customers.

End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return. How a person feels when they end a transaction significantly impacts how they perceive the brand and whether they are likely to recommend the brand to others. For example, a creative teaching a workshop might say, “I really like the presentation you’ve started with Apple Keynote. Please drop in again when you’re close to being finished and we’ll give you more tips on how to refine it.” Even after a purchase, it’s not uncommon for a specialist to give a customer a business card should they have more questions. Above all, give your customer a reason to return.

For more examples of these conversations, please review slides 33 to 49 ofthis presentation. These five steps of service are powerful and apply to almost any customer interaction. Customers will reward you with their wallet and their loyalty if you make them feel appreciated, confident, and happy. That’s the Apple Store way.

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This article focuses on product promotions to kids that are restricted during the Saturday morning TV schedule.

Child's Play: Food Makers Hook Kids on Mobile Games

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI

Scott Lewis for The Wall Street Journal

In summer, four-year-old Anna Woltjen and her sister Madeline, age 7, play mobile games on their parent's iPads and iPhones in Avalon, N.J. During the school year they are more busy with school activities and homework.

Like many children, 4-year-old Anna Woltjen pesters her mother during shopping trips for sweets and snacks. She has a fondness for all kinds of goodies but saves the hard sell for her favorite brands: Cookie Dough Bites, SuperPretzel and Icee frozen treats.

The New Jersey preschooler also asks for her mother's iPhone to play some of her favorite games, including "Cookie Dough Bites Factory," "SuperPretzel Factory" and "Icee Maker."

Mobile apps are a new, popular, and unregulated way to market candy and soft drinks to children. WSJ's Anton Troianovski reports. Photo: Scott Lewis for The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. food companies are reaching children by embedding their products in simple and enticing games for touch-screen phones and tablets. The new medium is far cheaper than Saturday morning TV commercials and could prove as effective.

The mobile games demonstrate how new technology is changing U.S. commerce, drawing tighter bonds between marketers and young consumers.

"The apps are certainly targeted at kids," said Melinda Champion, vice president of marketing at J&J Snack Foods Corp. in New Jersey, which makes SuperPretzel and Icee drinks. "If you get the kids saying, 'Mom, I would love a SuperPretzel,' mom will often buy it for them."

Some apps are already hits. Players love racing against a timer to mix bowls of dough in "SuperPretzel Factory," which since mid-July has ranked as one of the most popular free children's games in Apple Inc.'s iPhone App Store. "Icee Maker" has been downloaded from the Apple store more than eight million times since its release last year, the app's developer said.

Scott Lewis for The Wall Street Journal

Anna Woltjen, 4, plays games on a family iPhone.

"It's almost a constant commercial," Anna's mother, Christine Woltjen, said of some smartphone games favored by her three children. Ms. Woltjen, of Moorestown, N.J., accepts that ads are part of U.S. culture, she said: "If it keeps them entertained for a couple minutes, it's not like my kids are only going to eat Cookie Dough Bites and not vegetables at dinner."

Makers of snacks, sweet drinks and candy have long been under government and public pressure to limit advertising to minors on TV and the Web. They are now finding the unregulated medium of mobile devices an effective substitute to trigger demand and cinch brand loyalty.

Young children can master the largely intuitive touch screens well before they read. A recent survey by research firm NPD Group found that 37% of 4- and 5-year-old Americans were using such mobile devices as a smartphone, tablet or iPod Touch, compared with less than a quarter of children that age who used a laptop computer.

The food-industry games generally have rudimentary graphics and objectives simple enough for small children to understand. They have raised debate over who should be responsible for their impact on children—parents or the government.

"Right now there are some limits to how much exposure kids can have to advertising on the Internet just because they're not always sitting at a computer," said Jennifer Harris, who directs research of marketing practices at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. "But if they have their phone with them, they can be playing these games that are basically advertisements in school and basically 24/7."

No federal regulations govern how advertising is presented to children on the Internet. Some consumer advocates argue rules are needed, given that the Federal Communications Commission already regulates TV advertising directed at children.

Scrutiny of advertising to children has roots in the 1960s, when viewers of Saturday-morning cartoons were inundated with TV commercials for sugary foods. The FCC limits commercial time on weekend children's shows to 10.5 minutes per hour and effectively prohibits product placement, noting that young children are "more vulnerable to commercial messages."

Scott Lewis for The Wall Street Journal

Bobby Woltjen, 8, plays Cookie Dough Bites Factory on a family iPhone.

Congress in 1980 barred the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors ad practices, from making broad new rules on food advertising to children. The commission and three other federal agencies last year released draft guidelines recommending that companies only advertise healthy foods to children, regardless of the medium. Companies were resistant.

"I think it's clear there's no congressional appetite for even government-proposed voluntary guidelines, much less regulation," said Mary Engle, head of the FTC's advertising practices division.

Many parents say they prefer to decide which apps their children use. Some said they don't pay much attention to how their children use mobile devices.

"The Icee game is definitely a good form of advertising. It definitely works," said Darren Ortiz of Coaldale, Pa., who was visiting New York's Times Square recently with his 11-year-old son, Noah. "But like I said, it's harmless—it's definitely good that they play that versus some of the other violent videogames that are out there."

For Noah, talk of the Icee game triggered a craving for the sweet, fizzy, frozen drink. "When I think about it," he said, "I really want one."

Food companies including Kraft Foods Inc. and Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. helped pioneer online games on the website Candystand.com, which was launched in 1997.

"If you were to walk into a roomful of kids and say, 'OK. All of you that want to watch a commercial go on the left side, and all of you that want to play a game go on the right side,' where is everybody going to go?" said Scott Tannen, an early manager of Candystand, who in 2008 joined a private investment group that bought the popular website from Wrigley.

An emerging childhood obesity epidemic—striking nearly one in five Americans between ages 2 and 19—rekindled debate on new advertising rules.

Large food companies responded in 2006 by forming the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, part of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which encouraged voluntary commitments to advertising healthier food to children.

Within a year, a dozen companies including McDonald's Corp., Burger King Worldwide Inc., Mars Inc. and Kraft signed a pledge to shift more child-directed advertising to healthier foods. Post Holdings LLC and General Mills Inc. later shut down websites that pitched sugary foods alongside games.

In 2008, the council said, "advertising to the nation's children has already undergone a substantial shift toward the promotion of better-for-you foods."

By then, smartphones and tablets had started changing consumer habits. Now, some of those same companies are rushing to build a presence on mobile devices with games that appeal to children.

Wrigley this summer touted a new smartphone app, "Candy Sports." Players can hit baseballs toward a Skittles logo, kick footballs into a Starburst sign and shoot free throws in a virtual basketball arena plastered with Life Savers Gummies banners. The app is targeted to teenagers and adults, Wrigley spokeswoman Jennifer Jackson-Luth said. Like all Mars subsidiaries, she said, the company doesn't market to young children.

Kraft recently released an iPad app, "Dinner, Not Art." Players slide pieces of Mac & Cheese around the screen to create "macaroni art." Kraft said the game and its other mobile-game projects are aimed at and advertised to teens and young adults, though the TV commercial for the app stars two children who appear closer to grade-school age.

Other Kraft mobile games include "Jell-O Jiggle It," in which players try to get a cube of Jell-O to dance, and "Sour Fling," which features Sour Patch Kids candies tossed past obstacles.

In the past six months, the 16 large food companies that make up the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative have shown increased interest in mobile marketing, said the group's director, Elaine D. Kolish.

Ms. Kolish said apps downloaded by parents for their children don't qualify as child-directed advertising and should be free of any new rules. "We don't view it as our place to be a superparent—the nanny of the parents and the children to say what products they can see and what games they can play," she said.

One of the first food-branded mobile games sprang out of a 2009 brainstorming session at a small design firm in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Teresa Kiplinger, a partner at the firm, impulsively licked her iPhone. The screen responded.

Within weeks, Ms. Kiplinger and her partner had a pitch for a longtime client, Dum Dum Pops maker Spangler Candy Co. of Bryan, Ohio. The app, "Dum Dums Lick-A-Pop," would let players ingest a virtual Dum Dum lollipop by licking their smartphone before a clock ran out.

Spangler signed off, but Apple rejected the app, saying licking could damage the devices. Developers replaced licking with a vertical finger swipe and the result was "Dum Dums Flick-A-Pop."

The app has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times, Spangler said, and fans have spent the equivalent of more than 112 years swiping through the company's virtual lollipops. About a third of the traffic is coming from iPod Touches, which are popular with children.

The game's typical user, said Spangler marketing chief Jim Knight, is "probably your 6- to 12-year-old."

For smaller companies, these apps level the playing field against larger competitors. J&J Snack Foods, the makers of SuperPretzel and Icee, reported $744 million in sales in the fiscal year that ended last September, compared with Kraft and Mars, which last year reported revenues of $54 billion and $30 billion, respectively.

Mr. Knight said developing the Dum Dums game cost less than $10,000, barely the price of four 30-second TV spots during Saturday morning cartoons, according to average advertising prices provided by Nielsen.

Carol Janet was an early app explorer. She runs an Atlanta licensing agency that helps companies get their brands on everything from toys to T-shirts. Two years ago, she saw her daughter's 3-year-old niece sitting on her training potty, engrossed in an iPad.

"She was so at ease with it, so familiar," recalled Ms. Janet. "I just said to myself, 'Oh, my goodness. I have to be here. I have to take every single one of my clients into this because these young kids are the future consumers for my brands.' "

Ms. Janet struck a deal with Anthony Campiti, a videogame developer in Las Vegas, to build the mobile app for the Icee company, one of her clients, and later for SuperPretzel.

Mr. Campiti's software company, Sunstorm Interactive, has churned out dozens of simple apps in which players assembled sweets and snacks by tapping levers and buttons on the screen. Four of the top 25 free children's games in the U.S. iPhone App Store on Monday were made by Mr. Campiti's company.

Related

·         New Rules on Kids' Web Ads

·         Mom, Please Feed My Apps!

·         Facebook Explores Giving Kids Access

·         What Happens When Toddlers Zone Out With an iPad

"Kids are our No. 1 consumer," said Susan Woods, Icee's marketing chief. "The fact that they may think about getting an Icee next time they see an Icee machine is a lot more likely if they've engaged themselves with something to do with Icee."

The idea has spread. Last year, Scott Samet, president of Taste of Nature Inc., saw his 4- and 7-year-old children fascinated with Mr. Campiti's games. Mr. Samet's Santa Monica, Calif.-based company shifted strategies years ago from trying to sell healthy food to movie theaters to selling candy, such as Cookie Dough Bites. While trying to boost retail sales, he had Mr. Campiti build him an app.

The app—"Cookie Dough Bites Factory"—has been downloaded more than three million times, Mr. Samet said, and directly reaches children without the high cost of TV advertising.

"When you do something in print or you do an in-store display, that might appeal more to a parent or a mom—somebody who's shopping for groceries," he said. "This is mostly kids and teens actually playing a candy-making game that allows them to interact with a brand."

Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com