Tocquigny

It’s that time of year again! Tocquigny is celebrating the holidays with a new update to How We Love Food, the collection of recipes from Yvonne Tocquigny, founder and CEO of Tocquigny. The cookbook is filled with new recipes to inspire your next dinner party, romantic evening in or cozy meal with your family. Regardless of the occasion, Yvonne’s recipes are sure to delight! (I, for one, cannot wait to try the Spicy Mussel Soup with Bruschetta and Yvonne’s Mother’s Snowball recipe.)

Over the years, How We Love Food has evolved from print to digital, and in July 2011, we launched the How We Love Food iPad App. The various incarnations of the cookbook reflect the evolution of the way we share information with our friends and family. Like many emerging technologies, the How We Love Food iPad App takes a common, physical item and enhances it to meet today’s “at your fingertips” expectations. The goal is not to change the fundamental motivations behind sharing food with loved ones, but to enable and encourage new ways of doing so.

I recently had the privilege to work on an iPad version of Yvonne’s cookbook, How We Love Food, and enjoyed every minute of it. Since it was an internal project, we had the flexibility to try some new technologies. We chose to write the cookbook app using Titanium Appcelerator. The platform is nice, especially for someone like me who comes from a strong web programming background. Appcelerator uses JavaScript as the high-level coding language, and then compiles into an Apple xCode project in Objective-C that can be run on the iOS simulator and ultimately submitted to the iTunes App Store. The documentation was a bit weak, but with a little experimentation, I was on my way.

Appcelerator also has another perk that we have yet to use: Compiling to Android from the same base code. There is a significant amount of work to be done on designing the front end to work on differing screen sizes of Android devices, but the core functionality can simply be recompiled into a native Android Java application. One of the most interesting accomplishmentsof this project was an Appcelerator code hack — kudos to Tocquigny team member Jake Riesterer — that allowed us to save very detailed analytics in real time to our database server. We are able to track every user session in detail, including the user’s location and each interaction with the App all the way down to the specific recipe on which they used the illustration zooming feature. And in the end, the beauty and simplicity of the design landed us in Apple’s “New and Noteworthy” section for its category.

Check it out here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/how-we-love-food/id445071073?mt=8.

In my humble opinion, the majority of successful businesses employ two crucial foundational elements: quality product and effective persuasion.

In the traditional business model, product is what gets the prospect in the door, while persuasion compels the sale.

One of the secret weapons of branding, however, is the contrary: use persuasion for acquisition and product for conversion.

I’ve always had a weakness for rhetoric (see my past blog posts on the subject). How can human language be as powerful as a multi-million dollar super computer or as lethal as a machete? How can an audience be transformed through emotion, logic and credibility?

                                                       The Brand Manifesto

While most companies have mission and vision statements, only a select few have adopted brand manifestos. These commonly short, frank and liberal declarations don’t articulate what a company aspires to be — they define the company’s driving principles and passions. They are the living anthems and battle cries of a brand, something so finely ingrained in the company’s DNA that a bankruptcy or rebranding has little chance of changing it. Brand manifestos are written rhetoric at its finest.

But don’t just take it from me. Let some of the greatest brands speak for themselves:    

“Why should we pay for clicks when we get organic clicks for free? Should I buy my own brand terms?”

If you’ve heard these questions from a client, boss, or peer, you are not alone.

For years I have worked with a variety of clients that have posed these and other questions related to the return on paid-search brand terms. Measurability, control, and overall ROI are good responses to these questions, but when pressed for proof, it has been difficult to come up with solid research to back up the rationale.

Of course, as an agency, we are inclined to recommend brand terms because those terms will provide very efficient clicks and conversions to prop up the overall metrics for the client. If they are removed, the loss of those keywords usually impacts the results in a negative way. When asked pointedly on numerous occasions about our recommendation to purchase the client’s actual brand name and derivations of it, I have always referred to the importance of that tactic for metrics health — but now I’m armed with something better.

Google recently released results from an in-depth study on this topic and posted it for public consumption here. It was also covered in a good article by SearchEngineLand, which gives a less-technical explanation.

The details of the study are pretty interesting, and the methodology appears to be very sound. Google statisticians conducted over 400 studies on paused accounts to determine if organic clicks would increase to make up for the drop in traffic.

The study shows that paid search drives incremental clicks compared to organic search, with little cannibalization of organic traffic. “A meta-analysis of several hundred of these studies reveals that over 89% of the ads clicks are incremental, in the sense that the visits to the advertiser’s site would not have occurred without the ad campaigns,” state the authors of the study. The results were fairly consistent across verticals as well as international markets tested.

The takeaway: It is worth it. You SHOULD pay for those clicks and buy those brand terms. And now we have a pretty convincing rationale for this tactic.

Last Monday Tocquigny’s own Craig Saper tweeted something that has been on my mind ever since:

“iOS 5’s location-based reminder platform is brilliant. The second I stepped out of my office, I was reminded to pick up a dinner ingredient.”

iOS 5 - Apple’s new operating system for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch - will include location-aware notifications as part of the API when it launches to the public this fall. Beta users like Craig are already seeing the value of creating custom location-aware reminders through Apple’s own Reminders app, which is designed to alert users of a to-do when arriving or leaving a location.

To what level an app can use location-aware notifications is not yet clear to me (opt-in vs. opt-out, available only when an app is active, always on in the background and so on). But it’s safe to assume that this new level of location integration will change how marketers and product developers think about location-based services going forward. After all, the mobile screen, unlike the computer screen or the TV screen, is always with you and always on- perfect for streamlined, real-time personal engagement.

There are countless opportunities to light-up location-aware notifications in meaningful ways. For example:

• Out for a run at Lady Bird Lake with MapMyRun? In 0.25 miles, you’ll find free water provided by the Trail Foundation.
• At Waterloo Records? Get a coupon for Amy’s Ice Cream.
• Passing Whole Foods? Salmon is on sale.
• Friends checked-in at a nearby happy hour? Stop in for a deal on appetizers.

With location-aware notifications, companies can start communicating with a specific person, with her varied interests and sensibilities, in a specific location. This isn’t simply reconfiguring current communications; this is a new way to engage with customers. It should be designed to be relevant and actionable while on-the-go. After all, connecting with a customer through her mobile device is intensely personal, and if we want to achieve that level of engagement, we must be prepared to add meaning.

Managing privacy is the trick here. There is a fine line between relevant opted-in communication and unwanted promotions. As marketers, our role is to understand how the consumer wants to engage and help her manage her preferences.

Have you thought about how you can take advantage of this new level of location-integration for your business?