TOWARD THE 22ND CENTURY
Let's journey to Direct Marketing's future. Ideas born at the dawn of the 21st century seem embryonic when viewed after their full expression decades later as the 22nd century approaches. DM has morphed from Direct Marketing to information-based DM or Data Marketing. DM now drives retail as well as direct. DM messages are immediate, constant and at the consumer's fingertips, but filtered by pre-set consumer preferences. Media, geo-marketing and search have undergone huge transformations.
Filtering, Search and Geo-Marketing
Consumers are always reachable with video, audio and text via personal communicators -- advanced successors to the web and Blackberrytm cell phones1. Personal communicators are embedded in clothing2, or body3, and heavily filter marketing messages via presets of interests, such as, for 5 pm Tuesday:
These interests are entered into the communicator effective for a year, month, week, day, hour or even minute and extend e-mail filtering to all messages4 including geo-text messages generated by retail businesses.5 Messages are also filtered based on distance from one's exact location at any moment, shown as (x miles).
Martin Baier's 20th century innovation of zip-code marketing has been transformed into geographic marketing based not only on where people live, but also on where they are at a particular moment.
Personal calls are also filtered for the 5- 11 pm time period, e.g.:
The descendants of navigation devices in vehicles are robot personal concierges with "search" capabilities7. Just as with the filtering on communicators, consumers program in what they need, how close it must be and their deadline. The device proactively finds it for them. A family traveling the Interstate on a hot day craves ice cream and enters it. They see a map of ice cream shops along their route with distance from the exit. The name of each shop, specials and sales are available at the touch of a button. The family can make a selection and reroute there, or ask to be reminded each time they approach an exit near ice cream. Listings are pay-per-click. This new type of search becomes as important to retail business as web searches and yellow-page listings were in 2005.
Predictive modeling reaches new heights, merging demographic, lifestyle and individual preferences and buying histories with geographic location histories. The new models consider:
DM Converges with Retail
Information-based DM has shifted from Direct to Data Marketing because it is used both for direct sales and retail. Prada's early 21st century RFID clothing that identifies customers and "pops" their database record as they enter the store is commonplace, but as then, sales clerks require training to better use this data.9
Some stores are converged stores where consumers examine and try products. Routine questions are answered through automated "expert system" knowledgebases for each product accessed by touch-screen or speech (recognition). In a pinch, consumers ask for a live contact-center agent. The purchase is usually made on-screen or via speech. Purchases are delivered, or retrieved from the warehouse and handed to the customer as they leave the store. This business model reduces labor costs and helps consumers get lower prices.10
Media Morphs
Media is changed too. Newspapers download to flexible, cloth-like flexible screen11 newspapers that can display video and links to more details. Ads feature e-mail and phone response via the touch of a virtual button on the LCD "paper." A thousand radio and TV channels are available with most songs, music videos, TV series episodes and movies available "on-demand." Commercials are integrated into on-demand programs or access screens to reach these viewers.
Products sport embedded advertising-communications systems. Embedded e-mail devices in cars ask if you'd like to schedule your regular service with the dealer, give you options for times and send the message to the dealer to schedule the appointment. They also sell accessories. Bicycles, home HVAC systems and other products are similarly "connected."12
Embedded communication isn't limited to machines. Bluetooth headsets were just the beginning at the last turn of the century. Personal communicators are embedded into clothing with voice-command capabilities, mini keyboards literally "up your sleeve" and screens built into eyeglasses13. The always-in-touch human begins to resemble a creature from Star-Trek's The Borg.
Three-dimensional holographic projections literally bring advertising into the room, with clothing and more modeled in three-dimensions and celebrity endorsers appearing like real life when they deliver the "call to action."
Like the big screen on Star-Trek, e-mails are video mail. The home entertainment center's big screen accesses all media from Holograms to Digital TV to Web to Video Phone. Web chat, text messaging and instant-messaging have converged14. Multi-channel and at-home shopping generate more sales volume than pure retail.
The World Shrinks
More business is global, with manufacturing, ordering/service and marketing often located in different countries. Distribution locations are on multiple continents. New monetary standards make international transactions easier and more secure. Improved computer-based translation software15 fosters worldwide ordering via computer and speech-recognition.
2099
Although there are new media and new ways to reply, DM continues to be about 50% list/media, 25% offer and 25% creative. Amid vast changes, some principles are immutable.
Of course, the innovations and world described above are old news in 2099. These were in place decades earlier, many by 2054 for DM Days 100. DM in 2099 was truly inconceivable in 2005. Could Messrs. Sears and Ward have foreseen catalogs created with a computer and viewed instantly by buyers around the world via the web? Probably not, since the earliest electronic computer was invented decades after their passing. However, each generation of Data (Direct) Marketers infuse their work with imagination that each day brings the future closer.
Notes from 2005
1Cell phone-email -web devices with much faster processors and more memory are inevitable, based on the history of computing devices and "Moore's Law." Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit chip will double every couple of years. See http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm.
2Already available are jackets to accommodate technology. The SCOTTeVEST has a solar panel to charge and special pockets to hold your cell phone/PDA as well as a "personal area network" cord conduit system to connect everything together. They recently introduced Hidden Cargo Khaki slacks. See http://www.scottevest.com/.
3Identification chips can already be implanted. See http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,50187,00.html. We commonly implant teeth, knee joints and pacemakers today. Elective implants of earphones, microphones and "computer screen" eye visors could become as common as piercings.
4Early 21st century e-mail filters commonly let known senders pass through and screen out others. Authentication systems that screen out illegal spammers are currently being adopted. A step beyond authentication of a bona-fide sender could be filtering based on universal product identifier codes transmitted along with authentication data.
5Geo-text messages are a descendant of 20th century realtor's "talking houses" that use low power AM or FM radio transmitters to beam info about for-sale houses to interested passers by who see a sign beckoning them to tune in. Geo-text messages are transmitted to recipients who are close by and set their filters to accept messages about the particular product or service offered.
6In the early 21st century, SBC privacy manager service (available for a monthly fee) screens for ok'd phone numbers. Similarly, some e-mail spam blockers only let through pre-authorized addresses. This development simply allows for numbers to be put in address book categories that may be invoked at various times.
7Such devices currently map out routes and currently locate businesses. With the natural advancement of processing power of such systems and their software, the PC-like searches and scheduling described are readily achievable.
8This is taking buying behavior models to the next dimension, by adding in detailed data that will be available about traffic and proximity. Imagine if retail traffic studies (e.g., 1,000 people pass this corner a day on foot and 50,000 in a vehicle) included the name and cell phone number or e-mail of each person passing by, and was merged with buying behavior and other characteristics. Location of call phone devices is already classifiable by which cell sites they use. Location will become more precise as GPS capabilities are integrated into such devices.
9PRADA was very early in this space, and even though they didn't get its use right, they showed it could be done.
10This is simply an aggregation of existing capabilities. Touch-screen, voice recognition and knowledge-bases (in help desk software) are already in use. Linking them together in a retail environment is conceivable. Using contact-center agents rather than sales clerks for specialized questions is done by direct marketers today.
11Researchers at The Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, Xerox Corporation, HP and others are working on such devices now.
12Think of this as a text/e-mail version of GM's On-Star.
13There is already some activity in the wearable display (visor) market. Early crude versions were used for "virtual reality" rides.
14These are similar systems, but are currently proprietary to their medium. Convergence is a matter of standards.
15Current versions of this software is crude. Additional processing power, and other expected advancements (particularly in areas such as natural speech voice recognition) may solve many problems.
Courtesy Of: CADM's adMarks