The combination of lower disposable incomes, cheaper prices and technology advances has made online shopping more attractive and easy for people. However, with just a laptop, tablet or mobile screen to convert browsers to buyers, online retailers need to evolve their websites to take advantage of human psychology and consumer behaviour.

Research described by Jonah Lehrer  in his Wired article The Neuroscience of Groupon shows that there are two ways to influence consumer behaviour:

• Increase desire for an item
• Convince people that they are getting a good deal

In an experiment researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford found that as people decide whether or not to buy products their nucleus accumbens, insula and frontal cortex are activated. These measure how much a person desires an object (nucleus accumbens) and whether they find the price good value (frontal cortex and insula). If retailers can measure and design shopping experiences that increase the activity in the person’s nucleus accumbens, and so increasing the desire for a product, while inhibiting the insula by making sure the customer feels like they are getting value for money, there is a greater likelihood that browsers will convert to customers.

When it comes to encouraging people to spend, real-world retailers have a tremendous advantage over online retailers. They can determine how much we desire a product. In an Apple store visitors can feel the quality of their products by holding them, in clothes stores shoppers can feel the quality of the materials and try items on, and in a food store senses can be excited with smells that increase the temptation to buy in a way that a photo can not compete. In fact, a study showed that lavender-scented restaurants increase the amount of money and time diners spent in the restaurant.

For online retailers it is very difficult to compete on emotions and desires with real-world retailers. As Jonah Lehrer argues, online retailers are still trying to sell to us with information even though emotions drive purchase decisions. Until the day comes when we develop an emotive internet, online retailers must continue to focus on the insula and take advantage of their ability to offer better savings on the same products. However, over-indulging the insula by offering lower prices is not enough to convince people to move from browsing, comparing and reviewing products to actually purchasing them. Retailers need to design an online experience that makes it easy for people to make purchase decisions.

High-street retailers have the advantage of allowing customers to feel an item, try it on, look at it from every angle, and read any information on the packaging or labels. E-commerce retailers don’t have this opportunity so they have to focus extra hard on ensuring that the experience and design of their online store converts browsers to shoppers.

Web Stress

No business wants to increase the stress level of their customers. However, spending money is an inherently stressful experience for many people, and convincing them to part with their cash is a hard task irrespective of the price. It is important that retailers look at their site’s user experience to make life as easy as possible for their customers to encourage them to purchase products.

User experience starts from the moment the website opens. People typically take 50 milliseconds to make a judgment about the website based on the speed at which the site opens and the immediate impression of the design of the website. Research by Computer Associates on neurological reactions of consumers to shopping online found that poorly performing websites require more concentration and result in increased stress for users. This is not good for business. Making an online store fast and easy to use ultimately determines if a person converts from a visitor into a buyer.

Pricing Psychology

Another aspect that significantly affects customer stress and sales is how retailers display the price of a product. A study by Sybil S. Yang , Sheryl E. Kimes, and Mauro M. Sessarego of Cornell University called $ or Dollars: Effects of Menu-price Formats on Restaurant Checks looked at different restaurant price display techniques:

• Number with a dollar sign ($10.00)
• Number without a dollar sign or decimals (10)
• Written price (ten dollars)

The researchers found that the written price (10) resulted in customers spending significantly more money. This is because they minimized the pain of buying by eliminating dollar signs and cents from the prices. Essentially, people suffered less than in a transaction that involved $ signs and so purchased more.

Checkout process

Spending money is an experience we often dislike, as seen by the behaviour of the insula in the research above, and online retailers don’t have lavender to heighten the experience of facing prices on our tablets or laptops. Therefore online retailers need to reduce the stress of the checkout process in any way they can to encourage people to stay and complete the purchase process. The process should be simple, without distractions, and with all the necessary information available to them. Some elements of an excellent checkout process are:

Registration: Any registration form is a barrier to shopping because they imply commitment that the person may be still unwilling to make and they take up unnecessary time. It is best to incorporate this during the checkout process.

Modify order: As the aim is not to stress the customer, make it easy for people to modify their order during the checkout process

Product details: Provide customers with as many details and options as possible to review before they complete the purchase: specify product details, provide a photo of the product, and a link to view the product page

Breadcrumbs: Unlike the product detail page where people want to spend time, the checkout process should have each step of the process clearly defined with breadcrumbs and involve as few steps as possible.

Disruption: Customers should not be taken out of the checkout process in case they do not return. They should have all the information available to them, such as FAQ, customer service numbers, and delivery times, so they do not need to look for it elsewhere on the site.

Shipping costs

In a 2010 study by the Foresee Institute across 30 online stores, the lack of shipping costs was the most important feature that significantly improved sales. Unfortunately many stores hide shipping costs to generate extra revenue. Hidden shipping costs will make shoppers feel that the store is taking advantage of them. Airlines are well-known practitioners of this: Ryanair and AirAsia don’t display the final cost of the ticket until the final step of their purchase process. So even if the ticket looks like unbeatable value, the additional charges added on make it less so.

When looking to convert a browser to shopper, there are 2 benefits for not listing shipping charges at the end of the purchase process:

1. It makes the purchase decision easier because there is no uncertainty about what the final price will be
2. It is easier to compare prices across stores, especially against brick-and-mortar stores. Online stores typically have a cost advantage, so providing a clear price during the browsing phase make it more likely people will convert

If shipping costs are unavoidable, they should be presented in an easy to understand way that does not exhaust people. This will reduce the pain of buying and make the decision to continue purchasing the product simple.

Shopping cart design

E-commerce sites do not want to encourage shoppers to purchase just 1 item at a time. This makes the design of the shopping cart essential in keeping people on the site and browsing products. Ideally, the shopping cart should allow people to add multiple products, edit the quantities, see what other people bought to help with upselling, and display the total cost without ever leaving the product page they are on.

One of the better examples of this soft-cart style shopping cart is at Pottery Barn.

It displays products that other customers bought and gives shoppers the option to go straight to checkout or to continue shopping. This meets two important criteria: keep shoppers interested in other products based on intelligent suggestions and make it easy to quickly purchase their product. However, it does not display the final price (shipping and taxes included) nor does it allow customers to increase the quantity of products to purchase.

Product detail page

The product detail page is the most important page for shoppers. It is here that people want to look in depth at the product and product information, and here where retailers need to move them from browsing various products to adding them into their shopping cart and purchasing them. Ensuring that all of this information is present in an appealing and organized manner means that the design of this page is crucial. There are a number of things that retailers need to focus on:

UX Design

It seems that many e-commerce sites spend too much time on the design and usability of the homepage and ignore the importance of the product detail page. This is the page that users spend most time on, looking at the product in detail, checking specs, reading reviews, comparing products and, hopefully, deciding to buy. It is important that all the information a customer needs or expects is present and structured in an intelligent way.

It is also important that retailers provide as much product information as possible: sizes, materials, weight, dimensions, colours, instructions, etc. The customer should not have any questions left unanswered about the product. If they do they are likely to go elsewhere, reducing the likelihood of a sale. North Face [www.thenorthface.com] do this well, giving shoppers all the information they are likely to need.

Photography

Product photographs are the most important design element of an e-commerce site. Without the ability to excite shoppers’ kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory senses that brick-and-mortar stores have, online retailers only have product photos to excite and convince shoppers to purchase. However, displaying a great product photo is not enough. As with typography, the photos need to match the sites style, colour scheme and branding, as with Threadless .

Photos play a crucial role in converting browsers to shoppers in a number of ways:

Influence: photos help users imagine using the product, how it fits into their life, and convinces them that it matches their needs. Photos are a more immediate and effective method of doing this than marketing blurbs and product reviews and can sell the product on their own without the need for content

Upselling: photos of product accessories can excite shoppers and help them imagine what else they can add on to enhance their product or experience

Reassure: photos can reassure shoppers that what they are buying fits their needs. This can be done by showing them how the product works, showing zoomable details, or highlighting exciting features or innovations

Typography

Along with focusing on the design of the site, especially the product page, and ensuring there are high quality photos of the products that inform and educate the shoppers, typography is another crucial element when trying to convert people to shoppers. Rather than typography that has been selected for its beauty and artistic merit, the most effective typography is simple and direct so shoppers don’t have to expend too much effort reading and understanding it. As outlined above, tiring shoppers out with unnecessary effort results in tense rather than relaxed shoppers who spend less time and money. This is why Helvetica is so popular. It doesn’t distract attention from the product photo and allows the content to be read quickly and easily.

Emotional Connect

Shopping is typically a social experience heavily influenced by friends, family and peers. This is because people look for social proof and validation that their purchase decisions have been correct. Technology has not yet accurately replicated the social experience of shopping in a group, but online retailers are leveraging social features on their websites to satisfy the human need for social validation.

This is seen in the ‘Amazon effect’, a term coined by Joshua Porter to explain why people start searching on Amazon before other retailers. Amazon is not necessarily better than other stores, nor does not have the best user experience, but people choose Amazon because they provide trustworthy reviews, personal stories, and informative comments about products and how they work in the real world. Providing user-generated feedback and ratings on Amazon increases trust in a product, provides social validation, and makes the purchasing decision easier for people. In fact, if Amazon personalized their feedback more by including a photo of the reviewer, the feedback would become more impactful and convincing.

Spending money is a stressful experience for people and online retailers have a limited ability to manage this. Therefore it is essential that they look at every aspect of the user experience to convert hesitant browsers to relaxed buyers.

A summary of the research can be seen below:

References:

• Roger Dooley, Neuromarketing, Available at http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog
• Jonah Lehrer, The Neuroscience of Groupon, Wired, September 8, 2011
• Smashing Magazine, The Best of Smashing Magazine, 2011
• Smashing Magazine, How to Create Selling E-Commerce Websites, 2011
• Smashing Magazine, Typography: Getting the hang of web typography, 2011

Image credit: wikinoticia

The Origins: 
A fundamental human trait is that we need patterns to understand and relate to the new. That is why most people find it very easy to relate to stories intellectually and emotionally. Stories provide a great way to reach out to people and create an instant sense of connect.

With the invention of stories, we bought the concept of heros, villains, gods, etc and established strong cultural and social bonds. The earliest recorded evidence of storytelling dates back to 35,000 year old paintings on the walls of Lascaux caves.

To the primitive man of that time, these paintings were a great way to describe the experience of a great hunt to those who did not participate and ensure common sense of connectedness. These story art paintings are also our first forms of visual art and narrated slideshows.
Hence what this proves that even though communication techniques and mediums evolve, but the fundamentals of good storytelling are ancient and one of the best way of communicating a message that is clear and relatable.

The objective of this article is to provide some insights into what makes a story great, why it is a very important skill for any brand even more so in the era of social. We will also look at examples of some interesting campaigns that have used smart storytelling to gain momentum and create an impact.

What makes a great story:

Before you start leveraging storytelling to create impact campaigns, its important to understand the constructs of a good story. There are some important questions that need to answered before you start. Who is the audience? What is your goal in telling your story? Are you persuading someone to invest in your company?  Are you trying to gain buy-in for an idea/product among your co-workers/customers?  Are you trying to inspire people to support a cause, an individual? Answering these kind of questions will help you create a crisp and hard hitting story.

Some other things you should remember when you create a story are:

• Stories are about people: People always connect with other people. So ensure your story revolves around characters which are like real-life people
• Make your characters speak: Make use of direct quotes and let your characters speak in a tone that provides an emotional connect and purpose to the story
• People easily get bored: Always keep your audience engaged and interested in what’s going to happen next. You can achieve this via elements like goals, obstacles, surprises in the story.
• Trigger emotions: A good story has the ability to stir the audience’s emotions. The objective is not to add an element of drama but to ensure that message stands out and is long remembered.
• Deliver a clear meaning: When your story is over, the audience should know what the story was about and have a reason for taking the journey with you. Without this you have just wasted a lot of their precious time.

Role of storytelling in era of social 

The glue that binds a community whether online or in the real world is a strong emotional connection with the purpose/ social object. In order for a brand to market itself effectively and to connect deeply with its community, it must have a message clearly articulates its core values, captures the attention of that community, and makes them emotionally invested. One of the best ways to achieve this defining its own narrative that is clear, hard hitting, and aligned to their values & vision.

Brands should try to augment their ability to tell a great and consistent story with technology advancements in real-time communication, location based services, and augmented reality to create an impact at the right moment. They should then use social media to provide customers with tools to share stories, and contribute their own relevant experiences.

One key advantages of the social era is that now brands have the ability to aggregate user stories that reiterate their message and add credibility. Though this also means that businesses must constantly monitor any conversation about the brand as consumers co-author their own stories, augment any positive exchanges, and publicly acknowledge and learn from negative ones.

Social Campaigns that leveraged storytelling 

To make all of this more relatable, lets look at the story of some campaigns which used smart storytelling to create value for the brand and achieve great success.

Make a wish Foundation Facebook Campaign: 

The Make-A-Wish created a Season of Wishes Facebook application. The app shared a stream the stories of children who participated in the foundation’s program. There were videos and photos associated with most stories. Users had provisions to like, share, and make donations towards stories.

The organizers mentioned that the approach of the campaign was not simply asking for donations but to create “stronger relationships and engagement that we believe, ultimately, will lead to more donations, more volunteer support, to more referrals.”

The strategy was to use social media as a channel to establish a dialogue and build relationships via powerful stories on child in the program.

Urgent Evoke:

Urgent evoke an “alternate reality” genre game was created to help empower young people all over the world, and especially in Africa, to learn about and come up with creative solutions to some of their biggest problems like  hunger, poverty, disease, war and oppression, water access, education, and climate change.

This world bank institute funded project involved participants going through a comic book storyline in which the main character would send out an “Urgent Evoke” message about some world harm taking place (e.g. clean water shortage, famine, etc). The players would have 10 weeks to, in the real world, do something that meaningfully addresses this kind of crisis through investigation, volunteering, or coming up with solutions. They would have to catalogue their work and would be awarded points on this post review. Each player would have to complete and document their contribution to get access to the next “evoke”. Players who completed the whole game and won were awarded mentorships, internships, scholarships and start-up money by the world bank.

The fact that each “evoke” was represented through a comic story meant that it became more fun to learn about the problem and create a sense of urgency to make a contribution amongst participants. This is a great example of a campaign that used creative storytelling and game design to great effect.

Tiffany – Love is everywhere

Tiffany & Co. created a microsite and iPhone app that allowed real-life couples to share their romantic stories through a film or series of photos. All of these stories were compiled and placed on a map  to create a unique ensemble of user generated romantic tales. Visitors also had access to a compendium of love tips and in addition to this the site also provided information on Manhattan as the “ultimate city for falling ecstatically in love.”

The campaign got kickstarted with filmmaker Edward Burns’ story “Will You Marry Me?,” a short film created exclusively for Tiffany & Co. The film presented variety of couples who shared heartfelt, humorous and surprising tales of their romantic journeys. These couples were photographed in New York’s settings and showcased jewelry, photographs or love letters that symbolized their life together.

The initial film created a strong message which helped Tiffany excite couples to share their own stories and connect as a community around the theme of romance.

Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a short animated documentary on the lifecycle of material goods. The documentary is critical of excessive consumerism and strongly promotes sustainability. What made the documentary special was as compared to previous attempts like ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore, this was much shorter, entertaining and still managed to drive home a strong and clear message.

The duration of the film make it easier to become part of one class and still have time to stir a discussion. This helped quickly spread it amongst teachers, who recommended it to one another as a brief, provocative way of drawing students attention and subsequent dialogue on this subject. Another reason why many educators say the film was a boon to them is because it helped address the gap in what textbooks said about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years.

The project has been a great success and according to the Los Angeles Times as of July 2010, the film had been translated into 15 languages and had been viewed by over 12 million people. The film still gets actively shared and watched on social platforms like youtube and has resulted in a lot of variants on related topics.

This project is a great example of how smart and effective storytelling can not only create rapid awareness but potentially trigger a movement in the era of social.

Takeaway:

I hope this article will get brands excited about the power of storytelling and how they can use it to create campaigns that strengthen connections with and within their customer communities.

Image credits:

Image References:

• http://oklahoma4h.okstate.edu/aitc/images/agart/lascauxbulls2.jpg
• http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/SeasonOfWishes.jpg
• http://api.ning.com/files/7je4O2M25MABT2llSFWV1nN3LaY1RzLlIamprbojLqHHv6do41ZsFqkRv6x-bi5H/Page2.jpg
• http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HMNeidTlEwY/Tee01SQRDKI/AAAAAAAACNo/3VfgQuruEn4/s1600/Picture+38.png
• http://ntn.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SOS-flyer.jpg
• http://marketingandsalesguru.com/tag/the-power-of-storytelling/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling

For many of us, our car (or our bike) is more of a passion than a product. We spend months researching which car / bike we should buy. They are our prized possession, conversation starters and status symbol. We connect easily with other people owning the same car or model as us and whenever we get to meet such people, our conversations often go around this passion we share.

All these characteristics make automobiles a great product to be marketed with social media and hence it is not surprising to see that some of the best social media marketing campaigns have come out of the boardrooms of automobile companies. Not only that, each and every sizeable player in the automobile market is dirtying his hands in the social media marketing space.

So what is it that makes automobile marketers love social media and how are they using to space to come up with the finest of the campaigns. This article aims to tell you the reason behind their love, some examples of the best automobile marketing campaigns and what the social media marketing community can learn from automobile marketers.

Why social media marketing for automobile?

A car is more than just a car: Social media marketing works best when you are marketing a passion and not a product. A passion makes people bond and directs conversation. These conversations around passions are the heartbeat of social media marketing and a campaign run as long as these conversations run.

The best thing about marketing automobiles is that they are larger than the product. For many of us, they are a passion and as I said earlier, are talking points of our conversations. Hence, no other media suits selling an automobile better than social media for its abilities to connect people, connect with people and engage them.

Instrumental in research, recommendations and advocacy: What sells a car? The three most prominent factors that I can think are research, recommendations and loyalty. Since a car is a considerable investment, we spend a lot of time researching on the best models, understanding the specifications, comparing brands and their various models. Here we use a lot of recommendations from our friends, talk to the experts among them, search for reviews online or research into specifications to understand whether we need them or not. Sometimes, our loyalty for a particular brand makes us advocate specific models to others.

Interestingly, when it comes to cars traditional media helps you in none of the above factors affecting the sale. A 20 second ad spot, half page emailer or full page banner is just not enough to satisfy a consumer’s needs. Social media, however, is a great tool here. It generates conversations for recommendations, supports thought leadership for research and gives a platform to brand advocates to promote their favourite brands

Time bandwidth for engagement: Another thing about cars that makes social media an attractive tool for marketing is that cars are not purchased on impulse. Customers take their time in deciding which cars they need to buy. Inbound marketing techniques like social media marketing, might not be best at generating mass awareness quickly (like ads), but they are great when it comes to engaging consumers across every stage of the sales funnel.  And hence, considering the prolonged time period between that the consumers take in deciding their cars, social media marketers get enough time to engage the consumer in conversations, develop a relationship with him and convince him for their product.

How auto industry is using social media?

There are no fixed set of strategies for marketing anything through social media. How your market yourself depends upon what you are selling and whom you are selling to. So if you are selling cars and automobiles, you strategies will be built around the fact that you are selling a passion, a subject around which people talk a lot, around which people have lots of stories to share and people react badly if anything goes wrong with it.

Based on this you will see that brands are using 7 different strategies to sell automobiles:

Listen and respond: This is an old school way of using social media and is often the first step of a brands entry into social media marketing. But we cannot undermine that this very strategy has helped brands like Dell generate millions of revenue. Moreover when it comes to car, people are very verbose on social channel and love to talk about them. Hence you have all the auto majors like Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, GM on Twitter tweeting their way to respond to consumers, listen to their conversations and find opportunities.

The interesting thing here is that most of the automobile majors have their senior staff (and not external hired agencies) doing talking on these social platforms like Scott Monty for Ford and Adam Denison for GM

Toyota used the same strategy during the massive 2.3 million vehicle recall in January 2010 but with a difference. They got Digg to let people ask Toyota questions and others to ‘digg’ the most popular questions. Then Toyota got their President for North American sales operation, Jim Lentz to answer these questions in a video interview.

Conversations with customers: Once you know that your consumers are talking and researching about your cars online, it is a good idea to give them a place to get the best content for your brand. This is where blogs come really handy in having meaningful conversations with consumers.

Brands like Volkswagen and GM understand this fact and hence they have run a number of blogs to engage, inform and connect with their audience.  While VW has individual blogs for its different models like Jetta, Passat and Beetle; GM runs other popular blogs like fastlane, drivingtheheartland etc

Microcampaigns: These are small campaigns, often for a duration of a month or two, that aim at exciting the audience for the car and increasing recall in the consumer’s minds. From a technology point of view, such campaigns are often applications running on platforms like Facebook rather than run on an independent platform. Few examples of such campaigns have been listed below:

• In 2008, BMW launched an online graffiti contest, where participants could paint BMW cars with graffiti tools – a simple but effective campaign to engage audience around the brand
• Volkswagen Nederland launched another app called the Fanwagen, where it asked its audience to vote among the all time VW classics – the Beetle and the T1 – and they can win the vehicle as a reward. The classics were however armed with social media features like print your newsfeed, relationship status near the number plate and many more
• Harley Davidson launched the H-D Fan Machine contest where they asked fans to submit ideas for H-D web videos about how life is better on a Harley. You can see some interesting stories coming from fans
• In another campaign, 100 cars for good, Toyota decided to donate 100 cars to organizations that need them for doing good. Many non profits participated while others voted for the non profits they thought needed the cars most.
• Honda Civic launched a quest called the Honda Super Civic Quest, which took participants across various clues and challenges across different Honda channels to win a Honda Civic

User Generated WOM campaigns: This strategy truly uses the social potential behind marketing cars. If people love talking about cars, let’s get them some more reasons to do so! And hence you have major automobile makers creating campaigns that ask people to share stories and experience with their cars. Although the idea is simple, it is leading to tremendous word or mouth from people. People today might not believe the brand, but they will definitely buy such stories from other customers. Here are some examples of such social media campaigns:

• The Road we are on campaign by Chevrolet focussed on celebration of 100 years of Chevy and asked customers to share their wonderful memories with Chevrolet on the platform. Interestingly, they also have filmed a series of documentary style webisodes for Bridgeville and the role Chevy has played in the history and culture of the city. Another campaign by Toyota – The Camry Effect too has Camry users sharing their journeys and memories on the platforms
• Jeep launched the ‘Have fun out there’ campaign, where it asked it customer to share their moments of fun with jeep. They got some exciting submissions, like a fan converted his jeep a music machine, others shared their photos of coast camping with jeep
• Such user generated social campaigns might now always be about cars but also about a particular value carried by the car brand. For e.g. Volkswagen launched a brilliant campaign some time back called the fun theory where they asked people to post ideas about exciting and fun ways to change people’s behaviour. In the teaser campaign, they converted a subway staircase into a large piano with each step as musical keys, to encourage people to use stairs more than escalators.

Social Reality shows: Some of the biggest of the car brands have used social media to create mega campaigns on the likes of reality shows but executed socially. How social reality shows are different from user generated contests is that in UGC, the focus is the content generated by people, whereas social reality shows are less about the content and more about the excitement behind the task and the participating people. Here are a few exciting examples:

• Ford launched the Fiesta Movement campaign that is considered to be a benchmark among the social media campaigns. Ford in order to generate buzz about the launch of the new Fiesta model, gave it into the hands of 100 social agents, who drove it across US and completed various missions thereby promoting the vehicle on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. The success of Fiesta Movement led Ford to launch a second chapter, where participating teams engaged with local talents to find creative ways to promote Fiesta
• Chevrolet too launched a reality contest on similar lines called the Chevrolet’s SXSW road trip challenge. However the reality contest was more crowdsourced in ways like the challenges and mission were decided by the crowd.
• In India, Mitsubishi launched a similar contest for Cedia in 2009, where they used social media to find the finalist and asked them to tour across India along various routes and share their experiences with the community.

Communities: Building a community of car lovers is definitely a great idea. Not only it creates an active pull-based marketing platform that your consumers visit often, it also helps you understand your fans and exposes you to large amounts of valuable data from conversations in the community. I have not seen many online community initiatives by auto mobile companies (although there are many independent fan communities), however there is a specific example by BMW mini called creative use of space – a community of artists and designers – that is worth talking about. This community engages people in projects and initiatives around making ‘creative use of space’ – and core value behind the BMW mini brand

Experience Apps: These apps are more sales focussed and aim at bringing the in-car experience to a potential customers. Although currently most of these apps are at a catalogue level ( see… ), there is a great potential of moving a level higher and adding social components to these apps ( like user generated reviews for various features, related blog links for more research, ability to share experience with your network of friends and followers etc

Automobile companies have very aggressively adopted new marketing models and made their marketing more social and engaging. They have succeeded in creating interesting social media marketing campaigns, and also have proved the ability to market successfully with this media. We would look forward to more fascinating campaigns from car makers in the near future.

Image credit: Moviewallpaper.net and Stuffkit.com

Pranks may be one of the most elusive form of comic behavior. Even dictionaries don’t seem to have a precise definition. They define pranks as  “ it is, by turns, a malicious trick, a conjuring act performed to deceive or surprise, a mischievous frolic, and more”. This reason could be that the best of pranks have always blurred the lines between appropriate and inappropriate conduct.

Abbie Hoffman, a serial prankster from the 1960s had classified pranks into 3 types

1. Good Pranks – They were amusingly satirical

2. Bad Pranks – gratuitously vindictive

3. Neutral one – Surreal and soft on the victim.

One of the famous pranks of Abbie and his group involved showering the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with dollar bills and as a result bringing the ticker tape to a halt for six minutes. It’s hard to say if this prank would purely fall into the 1st category.

In this article we are going to explore a particular type of prank called flash mobs. Flash mobs are social in nature and since their inception have been used for amusement, branding, social impact, opportunistic crime, etc. We will look at examples for each of these objectives, dwell into it’s mechanics, the influence of communication technology, and finally probe if there is potential for greater social impact via flash mobs.

The Origins of Flash Mobs:

A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place to perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse.

One of the first flash mobs was created in Manhattan by Bill Wasik senior editor of Harper’s Magazine. The moboccurred on June 3, 2003, at Macy’s department store. More than 130 people converged at the ninth floor rug department of the store, gathering around an expensive rug. All the participants had been advised to say that the gatherers lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York, and that they were shopping for a “love rug” as that they made all their purchase decisions as a group.

Organizing a Flash Mob: 

Since flash mobs involve a large group of people who have to meet and behave in a predefined manner, such events require adequate planning. The success of any flash mobs really depends on the coordination between the participants and clarity of tasks. Some key things to keep in mind when planning a flash mob:

Clear sense of purpose for conducting the flash mob

Deciding the tasks and their sequence for the occasion

Sharing clear instructions to the group of participants on objective, location, timing, and tasks

Arranging for any props needed as part of the event

Knowledge about the limitations of the location

Ensuring that there is someone capturing a great video of the event ( amazing to get to watch it later on or share online)

Finishing the event in a way as if nothing ever happened

Role of Social Tools 

Advances in social media and mobile technologies has certainly made it easier to organize mobs quickly and with better coordination. What these tools able to create real time location specific social networks. These networks make it easy for the mobs to coordinate on location and in real-time, hence making it that much harder to predict behavior and also ensure they can adapt their behavior in real-time. Two such applications are BuzzMob and Yobongo.

BuzzMob: In this application users create “Rings” around geographical areas–from a single building to a three-mile wide area. That place gets a virtual wall that includes a live stream of posts, tips and pictures from users who are in the location (as validated by GPS) and join the Ring. Rings can be public or password-protected.

Yobongo: This application was also an earlier entrant in the space. They provide a way for users to connect and communicate with other like minded people nearby.

Foursquare is itself moving toward realtime conversation and has launched an events check-in feature.

Flash Marketing – (T- Mobile’s Flash Mob Campaign): 

T-Mobile organized a flash mob at Heathrow airport’s Terminal 5. Thousands of travelers flying in were being unexpectedly greeted by hundreds of singers and dancers as part of a flash mob.

The greeting were being performed by crowd of more than 500 people – a mixture of waiting public, taxi drivers, cabin crew and baggage handlers - spontaneously bursting into synchronized song and dance. Some of the flash mobparticipants were made aware of the flash mob having been texted by T-Mobile. The performance was supported by a human orchestra of 20 singers using their voices to mimic instruments.

Tuangou ( Flash Buy) – China’s fun way of combining Group buying + Flash Mobs

The way Tuangou works is that if you want to buy something from a local store – a car, a luxury fashion item, gadget or gizmo, you tap your social and local networks online for others wanting the same thing and you organize a flashmob. You then agree to turn up at the poor unsuspecting store en-masse at a particular time and demand a group discount.

The logic is that the store manager would trade margin for volume and make the sell, and hence the mob walks out of the store with your discounted purchase. This is a fast growing social commerce trend of team-buying in China that fuses online collaboration with high street retail.

Tuangou provides an opportunity to inject some fun back into the Western style of group buying. There could be an interesting opportunity to add the immediacy of a real-world Tuangou to group buy tools to increase the location-based social fun.

Cause Mobs – End Hunger Campaign

Dancers and drummers wearing bright orange T-shirts with the words “Ending Hunger” entertained shoppers at the St. Paul’s Farmer’s Market in St. Paul, Minnesota. They performed a choreographed rendition of Glee’s “Halo”/“Walking on Sunshine” mash-up.

The mob was produced by Bremer Bank, a Midwestern bank chain, as part of the company’s sixth annual “Taking Action to End Hunger” campaign to raise awareness and donations for Feeding America and local food banks. Bremer posted the video on YouTube and promised to donate $1 for every view up to $10,000 — in addition to matching donations made through the bank’s website. The final haul? More than $84,000.

Flash Robs – The ugly side of a flash mob

As we know all good pranks can border toward bad conduct. It takes very easy flash mob having malicious intent to cause serious damage. Flash robs are essentially a criminal incarnation of the flash mobs.

A common version of a flash rob involves a group of unwanted visitors: typically swarms of teenagers/ young adults who plot via Twitter, phone texts and Facebook to descend on stores and steal merchandise.

A group of 30 teens flooded a Maryland 7-Eleven in August, helping themselves to chips and other snacks. Police initially labeled the group a flash mob organized via cellphones, but it turned out that the group had designed the plot while riding a city bus.

what scares most authorities is that social tools have now made it possible introduce pre-meditation in mob behaviors in real time which previously have only been thought as sporadic gathering.

Social Change Agent : Potential future/evolution of Flash mobs

An interesting and possibly the most valuable utility of flash mobs was discovered through the actions of the occupy squads. These squads are groups of people willing and committed to responding to examples of injustice created by the system, wherever they should arise. For example if someone is harassed by a bank, an employer, government red tape,etc they no longer have to face it all alone – now they have a group, a squad, a movement to back them up.

With the availability of social tools like BuzzMobs could it be possible for people to signup for certain causes and help creation of occupy squads in real time at any location where there is a form of injustice happening.

If this works it may transform flash mobs into a real powerful social change agent. Surely seems like something to explore further, what say ?

References

• http://www.economist.com/node/5323412
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob
• http://www.wikihow.com/Organize-a-Flash-Mob
• http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/Flash-Mob-Trend-Spawns-A-New-Social-Media-Industry.aspx
• http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/11/01/T-Mobile-Heathrow-Flash-Mob.aspx
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu%C3%A1ng%C3%B2u
• http://nonprofitresource.blogspot.com/2011/06/flash-mob-to-end-hunger.html
• http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/flash-mob-raids-7-11-store-in-silver-spring-maryland/

Image credit: Fusionworkout and Utne

This article was originally written for Kuliza’s Social Technology Quarterly – A research publication focused towards the emerging developments and trends in the space of social technologies and social media. You can download the latest issue (issue 3) of STQ from www.socialtechnologyquarterly.com

Brands have realized that such a SoLoMo consumer would like this mix of Social, Location and Mobile available on his smart phone to make his life (and in fact his shopping) as easy as possible and would give preference to brands that enable this. This triggers a race between the brands to tap this breed of SoLoMo customer.

So, how do you sell to the SoLoMo? At Kuliza, we realized that among all the industry verticals, the retail industry has come a long way in catering to their need and has launched interesting initiatives to make their shopping quicker, simpler and more reliable. Hence we deep dived into this space to research into what the world’s top retail brands are doing to attract the SoLoMo consumer.

How are world’s leading retailers selling to the SoLoMo?

Walmart: The world’s largest retailer has come up with interesting applications on iPhone, iPad and Android to improve the in-store and out –store shopping experience of the consumer. Their mobile apps help the customers get detailed product info, see reviews, order from their phone to get items delivered at the doorstep. The app makes the shopping experience even simpler as it adds items on bar-code scanning, find stores using maps, check what is in stock in a particular store, find in-store items using the aisle locator, check off items with shopping and save more with coupons.

Another interesting initiative by Walmart is the innovative fusion of Social + Mobile + Retail with @Walmartlabs. The idea is to use millions of pieces of data generates in the open social web through forums, tweets, blogs etc to create interesting analytics insights and use them to facilitate smarter purchase.

Tesco

Tesco too has mobile apps (for Android and iOS) to help consumers make smart purchases. Consumers can use the app to browse through products, scan products to reorder them, add products to the list etc.

On the top of these mobile apps, Tesco has also initiated some very interesting campaigns to attract to the SoLoMo consumers. One such campaign was launched at Korea where they put up billboard of grocery products with QR codes in the subway stations. The users could simply scan the QR codes to add products to the list.

Tesco is also using Augmented Reality (AR) to help its customer see 3D images of the product they want to buy to help them get a better online purchase satisfaction. Their AR app allows them to place markers in front of their computer cameras to see 3D images of the product they want to buy.

Amazon

When you see the traditional retailers like Tesco and Walmart coming up with such interesting ideas, you do expect an online retailer like Amazon to be neck deep into the SoLoMo game.

Amazon does have a bunch of apps for the SoLoMo consumer. Here are a glimpse of the few interesting ones:

• Amazon mobile (iTunes and Android): Helps user to get the full Amazon.com experience from mobile phones from selection to reviews, product comparison to purchase
• Amazon Fresh (iTunes and Android): Aids grocery delivery. The app allows users to choose delivery slots, pick past purchased items, scan barcode to order etc
• Amazon Student: (iTunes): To help student buy and sell books
• Amazon Habit (iTunes): Daily sales of handpicked selection of designer brands
• Endless (iPhone): For premier accessories from designers
• Kindle (iTunes and Android): For the Kindle experience on your non Kindle devices and for purchasing books and magazines
• Window shopping (iTunes): A rich media experience to browse interesting products and learn more about them.

Although the range of apps is exciting, however having such a wide range would need the customer to download and install multiple apps and that is a hassle. I would look forward to an umbrella app from Amazon that contains all the various apps.

ebay

If I have to pick one retailer that is doing a commendable job to attract the SoLoMo consumer, I will pick eBay for the amazing thought they have put behind their smartphone apps. The eBay mobile has a bunch of Android, Blackberry, iOS, windows phone and mobile web

ebay app helps users on the move to easily sell and buy their items on Ebay with their smart phones. Sellers can research pricing trends and know the best price they can get for their product. They can either scan the product barcode with their phone to put it on auction or enter detail by taking pics with their phone camera.  Sellers too can get the full ebay experience like get alerts when they have been outbid or if an auction is closing, get minute by minute information about what is happening in their account and make quick search and purchase.

ebay Fashion app allows users to build their wardrobe and get personal styling accessories, shop exclusive flash sales and share interests and purchases with Facebook friends. The app also has an Augmented Reality feature that lets users try sunglasses virtually.

Similarly, ebay Stubhub gets users to the world’s largest ticket marketplace. Users can find tickets for the shows they like, select ticket prices and choose seats with the app. ebay Classifieds app helps users to post, search and browse items easily and get the full classifieds’ experience from phone.

To add to this, ebay has bunch of other apps to help users find deals and buy & sell stuff from half.com

Target

The Minnesota based, world’s second largest retailer is not behind the competition when it comes to wooing the SoLoMo consumer. Although they have shopping apps for almost every device, their mobile apps are not very different from others. The features include shopping from the app, bar code scanning, ability to find stores with maps, deals, coupons, reviews and in-store search.

Ikea

The Sweden based home products company has been printing its catalogues for the last 60 years. Now it has brought its catalogue to the mobile phone with its catalogue app for a rich and interactive experience with the catalogue. They also have launched an Augmented Reality app to help users see how specific furniture products would look at their home.

Ikea also has a text based mobile loyalty program which on subscribing sends messages on deal, games and alerts. Also to facilitate purchase with mobile phones, Ikeas has a mobile shopping site where customers and browse through products and find offers.

Home Depot

This is another brand that is doing something interesting keeping the SoLoMo consumer in mind. While most of the shopping apps of other brands have more or less the same operating mechanism, Home Depot’s shopping app is innovative and targets some very critical needs of the consumer.

The home improvement and construction products retailer has built a mobile shopping app that has an interactive calliper to measure the lengths of objects so that you don’t go wrong with your purchase. It also allows you to measure size of nuts and screws, calculate amount of material required for paint, insulations etc. The app helps consumer find stores and locate items inside the stores. Moreover, if you want to see the video of your do-it-yourself project, the app has them too!

This is definitely not the end of the list as you will see many other retail major like Best Buy, Macy’s and Kohl’s fighting their way into the world of a Social, Local and Mobile consumer.

So this brings us back to the original question. How do you sell to the SoLomo? Seeing how retailers are solving this problem, here are a few questions you need to ask yourself before you plan your app:

• What are the problems your customers are facing: A SoLoMo app is not just a marketing tool to create buzz, but should target specific problems of your consumer. The Home Depot’s app helps consumers measure screw sizes before they make purchases, Tesco’s app helped the busy Korean commuters shop faster, Walmart’s app help consumers locate products inside the store.
• Is your app blurring the wall between online and offline shopping: Your customer might like to get an in-store experience sitting at home or get an online social experience while inside your store (See Facebook fitting room by Diesel). Is your app helping in that?
• How are you leveraging the location layer: Can your customers find your stores, see what products are available in their nearest stores and check collections? Certain mobile CRM apps like place pop send location sensitive messages such as personalized deals and offers from brands to customers in the vicinity
• How social is your shopping experience: People want to take advice from their network or see reviews from other buyers before they buy stuff. Is your app enabling that?

If you start researching how celebrities use social media and narrow a little on Facebook and Twitter you will see a prominent name in both the platforms: Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) has 45,633,442 Facebook fans and 16,862,231 Twitter followers. She is among the most popular celebrities on social media, but what is interesting is the list of celebrities who use social media, ranging from Barack Obama (@BarackObama) to Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) to Kate Perry (@katyperry). There are celebrities from all aspects of life using social media, and how they use it is different from how non-celebrities use it. Their audience is far more widespread and the statements they make online can lead to both a positive change or result in a defamation lawsuit. One such example has been Courtney Love (@Courtney) who has already been sued a couple of times for her defamatory tweets

Celebrities typically use social media to converse with their fans, or share updates, photographs and videos with them. Along with promoting their latest campaign, or music or movie release, they also promote social causes that they support.

InterestingCases

One interesting case in the use of social media is Barack Obama. He was hailed as ‘the first social media president’ and one of the first politicians to leverage social media for political campaigns. His election success and large social media following is a result of his social media strategy. He harnessed his blog, YouTube account, Twitter stream (he has over 11 million followers), and Facebook page (he has over 24 million fans) during the presidential elections. He now uses Twitter and Facebook updates to communicate his views on various topics.

Another interesting celebrity on social media is Ashton Kutcher. He was one of the very early Twitter users when twitter was actually made fun of in late night talk shows. @aplusk was the first celebrity to discover the potential of Twitter as a medium to communicate with fans. He also is considered to be more technically-know-hoe among all celebrities and was one of the very few celebrities who replied to each one of his fans personally. Things here got a little ugly when he tweeted defending Joe Paterno, who was fired in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal. As a result of the criticism he faced, he decided to let his team at Katalyst update his Twitter account. Kutcher is one of the celebrities who has been active on most of the social media platforms right from Twitter and Facebook to Google plus and YouTube.

PromotingSocialCauses

Celebrities also use social media to promote social causes to their audience. In this case the pre-requisite is that celebrities should be passionate about the cause. One campaign that attracted the support of many social media heavyweights such as Lady Gaga, Justein Beiber (@justinbieber) and Britney Spears (@britneyspears) was the ‘I am gonna be your friend’ campaign. The campaign was about saving the starving children in Eastern Africa. Bob Marley’s video was the main face of the campaign. The movement was supported heavily on Facebook and Twitter by all celebrities. Other campaigns are backed by just one celebrity. Two examples are:

• Lady Gaga established a partnership with the Robin Hood Foundation to spread awareness about the homeless in New York and donate $1 million via a crowd-sourced charity contest.
• Justin Beiber partnered with Pencils of Promise to launch Schools4All to provide education to millions of children around the world

Whether for collaborative or individual campaigns, celebrities provide charities and NGOs a vast reach that they cannot otherwise achieve on their own, resulting in more help, support and donations from the public.

But how successful are these campaigns? We see that the most successful of the campaigns were the ones where the celebrities were passionate about the cause. When the celebrities are not passionate about the cause and do it just for the money, then the cause does not fare well.

Movies and music

Social media is used to promote all types of movies. Movies invariably have an official website, official Facebook page, Twitter handle, and of course a hashtag to promote the film and make sure fans are involved in all the discussions revolving around the movie. The recent release of the Indian film Ra.One, one of the most expensive Bollywood films ever made, was promoted fiercely on Facebook/Twitter/Google+). A new marketing initiative for Ra.One, made possible by Google+, was a hangout for fans with Shah Rukh Khan.

Social media has opened a vast gateway for music lovers and music bands. If you look at the top celebrity list in social media you will see the top spots are ruled by singers. Social media has also catapulted some to stardom – Justin Beiber became known through his first YouTube video and Rebeca Black became famous for her Friday Night YouTube video.

Social media has enabled well-known bands to control more of their music and content than previously. It works well for bands that already have a following, such as the Cranberries who can give away their latest song for free on facebook, or Maroon 5, who released their latest video of “Moves Like a Jagger Video” with Victoria’s Secret models lip syncing on YouTube. The initial trailblazers in controlling the release of material were Radiohead. Their album “In the Rainbow” was released initially only on their website for download and people could pay as much or as little as they wanted for it.

Social media also gives smaller bands a far larger potential audience than they would have had. Apart from communicating and sharing videos through Facebook and Twitter they can also upload their songs to platforms like soundcloud. Here people can instantaneously upload sounds and songs. There is also the MyBand application on Facebook, which has proved popular. Another recently launched, music-orientated social network has been turntable.fm. The main objective is to go beyond the Facebook and Twitter format of direct interaction, providing an experience similar to the “AOL chatrooms concept”.

Social media has expanded the marketing potential for celebrities and their movies, music or social causes. This can be on popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter or social networks built around specific interests. However, with the need to reach as many people as possible, it is unlikely that celebrities will gravitate to social networks focused on a shared interest, like turntable.fm. What is more likely is that celebrities will continue to populate the platform where most of their fans already are, or look to bring fans to their own websites where they can form a whole new concept of social interaction.

[This post was originally written for Plugged.in and published on17th Jan]

Image credits: ps22chorus.blogspot.com, crushable and tgdaily

Let me explain with simple example:

Here <html> is the ancestor of all the other elements; in other words, all the other
elements are descendants of <html>. The <head> and <body> elements are children
of <html>. Therefore, in addition to being the ancestor of <head> and <body>,
<html> is also their parent. The <p> elements are children (and descendants)
of <div>, descendants of <body> and <html>, and siblings of each other.

One of the most powerful aspects of jQuery is its ability to make Document Object Model (DOM) traversal easy. The DOM is a family-tree structure of sorts.

How to get element from HTML page

No matter which type of selector we want to use in jQuery, it always starts with the dollar sign and parentheses: $(). $() function removes the need to do a for loop to access a group of elements since whatever we put inside the parentheses will be looped through automatically and stored as a jQuery object.

Below you can see list of the selectors included in CSS:

A tag Name: $(‘p’) – get all paragraphs in the documents.
An ID: $(‘#some-id’) – get the single elment in the document that has the corresponding some-id ID.
A Class: $(‘.some-class’) - get all elements in the document that have class of  some-class.
$(‘#selected-plays li’) - get all list items that are descendant with an ID of selected-plays.
$(‘#selected-plays li:not(.some-class)’) - get all list items that are descendant with an ID of selected plays and does not a some-class attached with himself.

Now this is the one way to get an element from the HTML page. There are couple of other ways to find an elements form HTML page, like xPath, custom- selector etc.

XPath Selectors

XMl Path language (XPath) is a type of language for identifying different elements or their values within XML documents, similar to the way CSS identifies elements in HTML documents. The jQuery library supports a basic set of XPath selectors that we  can use alongside CSS selectors, if we so desire.

When it comes to attribute selectors like name, title etc., jQuery uses the XPath convention of identifying attributes by prefixing them with the @symbol inside Square brackets. For example, to select all links that have  a title attribute, we would write the following:
$(‘a[@title]‘) .

The most important things that attribute selectors accept regular-expression-like syntax for the beginning (^) or ending ($) of a string. They also take an asterisk (*) to indicate an
arbitrary position within a string. For example, let’s say you have lots of links in your page and you want to add different text colors:

$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘) :- get all anchor elements(a) with an href attribute that begins with email. After selecting that you can addclass, remove class, can add attribute or can remove attribute, can directly add css.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).addClass(‘some-class’); This will add only some-class from selected element.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).removeClass(‘test-class’); This will remove only test-class from selected element.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).removeClass(); If you use this then this will remove all classes from selected elements.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).attr(‘disabled’ ,’disabled’); By using this function you can add attribute from selected elments.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).removeAttr(‘disabled’); By using this function you can remove attribute from selected elments.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).css(‘fontSize’, 14); This is the way to add directly style on selcted elements.
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).hide(); (will hide all anchor elements with an href attribute that begins with email).
$(‘a[@href^="email:"]‘).show();(will show all anchor elements with an href attribute that begins with email).

These are the most important functions of jQuery, where each jquery developer spends their time.

Custom Selectors

To the wide variety of CSS and XPath selectors, jQuery adds its own custom selectors. The syntax is the same as the CSS pseudo-class syntax, where the selector startswith a colon (:). For example, if we wanted to select the second item from a matched set of divs with a class of horizontal, we would write it like this:

$(‘div.horizontal:eq(1)’) .

A mistake that even experienced developers also make is that the eq(1) gets the second item from the set because JavaScript array numbering is zero-based, meaning that it starts with 0. In contrast, CSS is one-based, so a CSS selector such as $(‘div:nth-child(1)’) gets any div that is the first child  of its parent.

If you want to read more about selectors, you can refer jQuery API. In my next post I will explain all these concepts with examples and after that will write about event handler.

The following are the list of tutorials that I will post on this blog:

• What is jQuery and what jQuery does.
• How to get anything from HTML page by using jQuery.
• DOM Traversal with example.
• Event Handling mechanisms and difference between bind and live event.
• Form Validation with Jquery plugin.
• Table Manipulation with Jquery.

In this article I will explain what is jQuery, why we use jQuery, and why jQuery works well.

What is jQuery and why do we use jQuery?

Today’s world wide web is a dynamic environment. To build interesting, interactive sites developers are turning to Javascript libraries such as jQuery to automate common tasks and simplify complicated tasks. jQuery is a powerful javascript library that can enhance your website regardless of your background.

What does jQuery do?

Access parts of a page: Without a Javascript library, many lines of code must be written to traverse the Document Object Model (DOM) tree. jQuery offers a robust and efficient selector mechanism for retrieving exactly the piece of the document that is to be inspected.

Modify the appearnce of a page: jQuery can change the classes or individual style properties applied to a portion of the document even after the page has been rendered.

Alter the content of a Page: jQuery can modify the content of a document itself, like text can be changed, images can be inserted or swapped, list can be reordered, etc. The most important things is jQuery library removes the browser specific complextity.

Why does jQuery work well?

Always work with sets: When we instruct jQuery, for example, to find all the elements with the class “collapsible” and hide them, there is no need to loop through each returned element. Instead methods such as .hide() are designed to automatically work on sets of objects instead of individual ones.

Allow multiple actions in one line: To avoid overuse of temporary variables or wastful repetition, jQuery follows a programming pattern called chaining for the majority of its methods. This means that the result of the most operations on an object is the object itself, ready for the next action to be applied to it.

So now you know why jQuery is so important, let me give you one glimpse of jQuery with this example.

For example: If I write: $(‘p’).addClass(‘emphasized’);

This will find all parts of the document that have the p tag attached with them and will add ‘emphasized’ class to selected elements.

How does it work?

The fundamental operation in jQuery is selecting a part of the document. This is done with the $() construct. The $() function is actually a factory for the jQuery Object. Typically it takes a string as a parameter, which can contain any css selector expression, like “id name”, “class name” etc.

Injecting the New Class:

addClass method adds a css class to the part of the page that we have selected and removeClass method removes a class.

In the next article I will write how to get anything from HTML page by using jQuery and how to modify them.

[This article is a part of Social Technology Quarterly - Kuliza research publication for emerging developments and trends in the space of social technology and social media. See more similar articles at the STQ homepage]

Over the course of this article, I wish to do a construct of the notion of the Social Media Technology as a new kind of media. I shall refer to Bolter and Grusin, amongst others to understand why the notion of the Social Media technology is a New Media that plays out on the notion of remediation. I shall be looking into this with the example case study on Social Commerce and how the notion of media and Social media is changing and will continue to change the way we do our commerce.

Marshall McLuhan one of the greatest writers on media says and I quote, “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”  It is in this context that I analyze the Social Media Technologies construct. The SMTs have changed our lives and that is a fact that we accept. But at the same time, it has also resulted in a lot of users (or consumers) of leaving the traditional media forms. This can be felt over the numerous discussions I have with the present internet users, who claim to do just about anything, from watching movies to hearing music to writing to painting to socializing to entertainment, over a Social Media platform. This article hopes to provide an argument for the rise of this phenomenon and I use the notion of remediation to provide an argument of why SMTs are nothing but a construct of the traditional.

Bolter and Grusin in their landmark book, ‘Remediation: Understanding New Media‘ , talk about the basis of the creation of a new media. The broad claim is that every media re-mediates itself and it does so through a series of other concepts in the form of ‘Transparent Immediacy’ or ‘Hypermediacy’. They term this as the ‘double logic of remediation’.  We as technologists and designers are constantly looking to remediate to create something that could be exciting, engaging and has an awesome user experience. The same argument can be applied to the Social Media technologies.

“Remediation is the process whereby computer graphics, virtual reality, and the internet define themselves by borrowing from and refashioning media such as painting, photography, television, and film.”  This is an important note, as the context of the SMTs is an online system. We take the notion of the existing mediums of media to re-create and as a result re-mediate the existing into a new technological framework. The rise of the usage of Facebook (almost over 800 million users) to do almost anything is just a testimony to that. Americans spend close to 101,000 years of time over Facebook in a single month! We have more and more people checking their Social Media presence updates first thing at the start of the day, goes onto to signify that the boundaries are blurring. The real world becomes analogous with the online world. This phenomena is manifested by the fact that there’s also a significant increase in the number of conversations about the virtual life on the real life and vice versa.

Analyzing a medium through a semiotic theory view point,  we know that there is the notion of a signifier (the one making the claim, and in this case the media which is the audio, text or the video) and the signified (the meaning of what is implied through the signifiers). The channel for this relation earlier were the traditional forms of media viz, television, radio etc. and now is the Social Media Technologies. This notion of “Transparent Immediacy” is the perfection, or removal, of the gap between signifier and signified, such that a representation is perceived to be the thing itself. The intent therefore, is to design and build a medium that aims to do just that.

Transparent Immediacy is at play the moment you think about engaging an audience with a strong online presence, where you expect the user to spend more time online. You wish to make the viewer forget the presence of the medium and believe that he is in the presence of the objects of representation. Because of the extent that social media has taken over our lives, we are no longer aware of confronting a medium, but instead stands in an immediate relationship to the contents of that medium. The principal of transparent immediacy refers to users’ desire for immediacy in access, understanding, and interaction. This is to say, users want an immediate connection with the medium. This is also true in the present context when we want everything at the tip of our fingers and responses faster. For eg., we write a mail, or a post on Facebook or tweet and expect a reply, likes, or re-tweet or a reply to tweet almost immediately. We forget the presence of the medium as a medium and assume it to be present right there in front.

The other concept is the notion of Hypermediacy, which is in totally the opposite side of the spectrum to Transparent Immediacy. Hypermediacy is a “style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium“. Hypermediacy plays upon the desire for immediacy and transparent immediacy, making us hyper-conscious of our act of seeing (or gazing). This means that it does not stop only at the transparent immediacy, but goes a step ahead and make the user aware of its presence. So the usage of the words like tweet, blog, wall, share, likes it are a testimony to the act of hypermediacy. The meanings of each of these are signified differently than the original meaning of the words. In the context of the Social Media Technologies, it is constructed in a hypermediated manner and the moment these words are used, the users are aware of the presence of the media.

Let us take the example of Social Commerce. In the ideal situation of a perfectly remediated environment of the social commerce world, that tries to remediate the instances of the real life physical shop, there should be no difference between the experience of seeing a product in person and on the computer screen.  Designers and technologists have the challenge to strive towards that. To make things simpler, let us take the example of a Online store front.

Let us do a small comparison of what aspects an Online Storefront remediates in order to provide the same shopping experience as a real store.

1. The availability of a product brochure and ability to experience the product in its full form. In the ideal case the businesses should also able to give the tactile experience to a store too. The haptic feedback provide to the user would be the missing cog in remediating the experience of the store entirely and the physical representation of the product catalogue. The detailing of this experience to which is possible through the existing available technologies would be an interesting thing to work on.

2. In a store you ask questions to the sales persons. On a online store front, having the feasability of the being able to talk to anyone at any point of time, during the course of the surfing through the store, would be remediating the notion of the sales persons. The experience

3. Man is a social animal. We go to shop with people around us. We take feedback from people. We call others whilst, we are doing our shopping and we immediately take feedback the moment we come out of a trial room in a cloth shop. In the remediated experience of the online store, allowing the users to the extent of having them experience the same notion of gaining feedback is essential. It is this particular notion, of people relying on, getting influenced by the feedback, comments and suggestions of others; that makes Social commerce so much more interesting (and challenging).

4. Ability to provide recommendations, push promotions through a channel that is easy to access and connect with the customers.

5. Post purchase, we always provide feedback about something. Whether it be good or bad. Recommendations are made after the usage of a product (or service). Post purchase engagement is a key part, when looking into a shopping experience. Remediating this important experience is essential for success of any Social commerce avenue.

While the above could be applicable to just about any online presence, it is the social part, that differentiates a social commerce platform like say a facebook store, compared to any other  online commerce avenues. Thus in my opinion, a social commerce platform is the only platform that can remediate as close to the real life shopping experience, than any other.

The challenges

What I have mentioned here is the remediating the experience more than the media. The challenges however come more when it comes to remediating issues for which there is no real remediation possible. Remediating the notion of trust, or the issues of privacy is something that continues to remain a challenge to the designers of Social Media platforms.

In conclusion, Social Media technology can be seen as a construct of the Transparent Immediacy and the Hypermediacy. We are adopting Social Media technologies in a way to remediate the lifestyle we live out and the lifeworlds we live in. The key is to make this experiences as more immersive and interfaceless when we talk about immediacy. On the other hand, hypermediacy allows us to remain cognizant of the platforms and mediums that we are accessing the information in. It is thus opaque, in the face and often juxtaposed over the virtual-real, which the immediacy had set out to bring about. Unknowingly it forces a repeated contact with the interface and as a result it becomes an integral part our lives. Social media technologies are repeatedly doing that.  What was once thought of to be completely immersive and “real” eventually comes to be explored as an aesthetics of a particular media format and the only authenticity lies in the experience that the media sets out to achieve by virtue of the things it has to offer.

The arguments will continue that this form of new media is doing exactly what their predecessors have done, i.e. presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media. In the times that we live in, a medium can never operate in isolation, because it must enter into relationships of respect and rivalry with other (and often traditional) media. It is only when we understand the above, that we can get a better understanding of the new media we talk about these days, i.e. Social Media and develop an appreciation for it.

[Image credits: My corporate media and Canadian Foods Inc]

[This article is a part of Social Technology Quarterly - Kuliza research publication for emerging developments and trends in the space of social technology and social media. See more similar articles at the STQ homepage]