Story Plot: How brands are embracing Brand Commerce to offer user experience that amalgamates physical and virtual worlds, and bring the point of inspiration closer to the point of purchase.
People’s behavior is changing, but not without the help of technology. Although it has been happening in different ways, the convergence of the physical and digital worlds has been consistent in all fields.
We, as advertisers, have always had narrative for brands in the past. Once digital took flight, we managed to choose the right leg of technology to aid a specific brand’s image. But the time has now come to combine brand narratives and story-telling with technology and commerce. The multiple channels in technology can be used to reach out to potential customers in the digital sphere, while still upping the ante on how a brand’s story is told.
Those instances where we instinctively turn to our phones to learn, discover, watch or do something, are known as micro-moments. These are always around the corner, and when tapped into effectively, have the potential to enhance the consumer-brand relationship. We call it Brand Commerce, an experience that streams into both our physical and virtual worlds. It is ground-breaking, considering how something as abstract as user-experience can be cashed in on when applied effectively. And it is time our clients are made aware of this.
Brand Commerce is much more than just QR Codes, Click Here buttons or any other tools of immediate gratification; it’s the combination of brand storytelling and technology, with commerce to boot. With myriad technologies at our disposal, the next big brand experience is just an experiment away. Amazon Go is imminent proof of this argument. By designing both the digital and physical world to flow seamlessly as one, it made the customers’ experiences more ‘shoppable’, for lack of a cooler word.
Working in a medium built on two-way communication brings the constant need to adapt to the various behavioural changes at play. It would be putting it lightly to say that people today are dependent on technology. Yesterday’s technology has become today’s mundane and by understanding this very behavior, our storytellers are in cahoots with Creative Technologists in the quest for big ideas. And yes, Creative Technologist is that new breed in our industry which mixes art with technology to blend out the next big thing. Isometric, our listening tool, plays an important part here.
Using only Oculus Rift technology and an Emotiv reader, we at Isobar monitored users’ brainwaves and by reading the spikes in neurological activity, we could identify and shortlist the products which stimulated high levels of engagement. Team in Australia and Japan partnered with Uniqlo in using a similar technology which recommended the products that showed great response when the users’ brainwaves were mapped.
Our US team worked with Wyndham Worldwide on a project, where customers were placed in a virtual space to experience how their stay would be.
With the nation, currently at the throes of cashless transactions, our doors to innovation have just opened wider. The cashless-economy state that has prevailed is a trigger which can be made use of to amplify these ‘shoppable’ experiences. Payment without cash or in contact was once seen as being advanced. But now, the wave of new interfaces that will make shopping as effortless as taking a selfie is getting bigger.
Technology is shifting along a certain path, and while it’s changing consumer behavior domestically, it’s also recasting all business models under the sun
