Mobile Price Match

3 comments July 16th, 2008

Summary from post on Advertising Lab~

Imagine: You find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and were the same product is available for a lower price.

This future just got one step closer with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, “a shopping assistant meant to help you find online and local prices when you’re out and about shopping.” For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.

In a post on industry blog Advertising Lab last January on online experiences and offline expectations, the author writes, “Retailers gotta act quick if they want to have some control over the converging experiences. In a few years, people will be carrying web browsers in their pockets and won’t be needing all this retail innovation. Then they would go to Barnes & Noble to browse books and order the ones they like on Amazon right from the store.”

That part about “a few years” was probably too optimistic. Not only can we now browse the internet with small devices, such as our phones, these same devices can assist us with where to get the best deal.

“Sex”-y Marketing

Add comment May 19th, 2008

Little is sexier than having your brand being an integral part of an uber-luxurious, hyper-chic world inhabited by Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda…as luxury brands Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo learned. The return of Sex and the City to the big screen has made for a match made in product-placement heaven for some new players - Mercedes Benz, Skyy vodka and Bag, Borrow or Steal among them - according to this recent piece by Ad Age.

That said, there’s lots of tie-ins and cross promotion being done as new brands try and jump on the Sex bandwagon…what do you suppose the image below (part of a print campaign) is advertising? The Movie or a Product?

Don’t discount the power or product placement - do you really think that six-inch heals that cost half a month’s salary would have made it into the national conversation without the cache of Carrie Bradshaw’s personal (albeit fictional) endorsement? I always wondered how a “writer” in New York City with no apparent full-time job could afford that swanky one-bedroom apartment AND those expensive shoes. There’s a lot to be said for escapism, I suppose.

(BTW, the ad above is for Skyy vodka…see the blue bottle superimposed over the building, just under the huge graphic of the movie’s title??)