Gen Wow

E-Commerce 'Cratering': First Year-to-Year Decline Ever?

You know it's bad with online bargain hunters just stop hunting.

AD AGE is reporting that comScore has discovered that consumer web spending dropped 4% so far in November, v. the same period last year.

Either folks are waiting for Cyber Monday/Black Monday, or the term is going to take on all new meaning. Or maybe this is just this year's version of the annual ritual where retailers complain about how bad they think holiday sales are going to be just to lower expectations.

I mean, we're talking $8.19 billion in consumer e-commerce so far this month, compared to $8.51 billion last year. I'm not completely sure AD AGE's use of the word "Crater" is truly applicable.

Except that maybe it is. During the first 10 months of 2008, consumer e-commerce sales hit $102.1 billion - a 9% increase from the $93.6 billion spent in 2007. To see such a precipitous drop in November means the sound you're hearing is the economy screeching to a halt.

Let's hope all these efforts to kick start the economy start paying dividends pretty darn quick - before Christmas gets pretty darn Dickensian.

Read more about it all, here.

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GameStop To Teens: 'Hint Or Else' - Lose Your Porn Stash

Well, actually, the message is aimed at parents of teens, too. But there's enough here to offend - and resonate - with ever teenage boy and his parents. The idea: Hint at what you want, or else suffer the consequences.

At the Hint Or Else site, you can send customized hints to your BFF, The Best Mom Who Ever Lived, Grandma, Grandpa, or whomever. You select opening phrases like "I just heard December is this crazy, worldwide gift-giving month," and name your gift - from a Wii to a PS3 and beyond, plus your gift games of choice. You can seal the deal with lines like "Or you can get me something I'll have to pretend I like."

Appropriate? You be the judge.

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A New Tradition: Butterball Launches Blogs, Text Message Advice For Turkey Day

Frazzled home chefs may have something else to be thankful for next week: Butterball's going Web 2.0, cold turkey.

AD AGE is reporting that Butterball's "Turkey Talk-Line" 800# call-in line will now be augmented by blogs and "turkey texts."

It could be huge. The call-in line, launched in 1981, helps out over 100,000 consumers every year.

"When the Turkey Talk-Line started 28 years ago, the phone was the best way to give people the important turkey-cooking information they needed," Bill Klump, senior VP-marketing, Butterball, tells the pub. "This year, Butterball continues to evolve and reach new cooks with initiatives like turkey text messages, a new mobile website and web chats, so that we can provide Butterball's expert holiday advice the way modern cooks want it, anytime and anywhere."

The product becomes a service that, with luck, will result in far fewer spoiled Thanksgiving feasts.

Read all about it, here.

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'Guitar Hero'? Watch 'Bike Hero' Rock This New Viral Video

The Guitar Hero World Tour is going where only Honda's been before.

Take a look at this great new viral video in which a kid plays a real-world version of "Guitar Hero."

Sure, it steals a page from Honda's Road Music, but so what. It's fun, infectious - and damn it'd be cool if you could do this in real life. Rock on.

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Domino's, TiVo Team For Pizza Orders Via DVR

And it's about freakin' time, isn't it?

I expect my DVR to free me from television schedules and television commercials. Can't it deliver a piping hot peperoni pizza, too?

Well, TiVo and Domino's are making that happen, with a new interactive TV solution that enables TiVo subscribers to use the DVR service to order pizzas for pickup or delivery and (here's the genius) track the timing of deliveries.

"Interactive TV, in general, is the future," Rob Weisberg, VP-precision and print marketing at Domino's Pizza, tells AD AGE.

 "To give the average consumer the opportunity to order pizza while never getting up from watching Sunday football ... is pretty amazing."

No, not amazing. A freakin' dream come true.

And here I thought Pizza Hut's new Facebook pizza-ordering service was cool.

Read more about the Domino's/Tivo initiative, here.

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OfficeMax Brings The Elves Back To Micro Site

Go Elf Yourself.

That's the word from OfficeMax, which is resuscitating its popular Elfyourself.com site for the third straight year in the face of what's shaping up to be the toughest holiday retailing environment in decades.

In this year's outing, which is being developed by offbeat online video firm JibJab, will enable visitors to create elfin characters of themselves that dance to disco, country and other tunes. This time out, the promotion becomes a revenue generator itself. For $3.99, users can download videos to their desktops and create printed greeting cards and customized photo gifts like ornaments and mouse pads.

“It’s the craziest time for retail I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in retail 30-plus years,” Bob Thacker, senior vice president for marketing and advertising at OfficeMax, tells the New York Times.

“It’s not like we’re providing Fred and Ginger in the Depression,” Mr. Thacker added, referring to the kinds of musicals that entertained moviegoers in the 1930s, but “if there was ever a need for frivolity, for escape, this is a place to find it.”

OfficeMax isn't alone. As the Times reports, a number of big store brands are using a myriad of digital strategies to stave off The Grinch.

This effort, I think, sounds promising. And I think this promotion-as-product offering strategy will be carried by others as digital finds itself needing to support itself while burnishing the brand in an otherwise gloomy time for marketers and consumers alike.

Read more about it all, here.

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Sprint Widgets: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Nothing Very Useful

I saw this a few weeks back and kept forgetting to post about it. It's completely worthless, but I love it. It's the "This Is Now" Sprint Widgets dashboard from Goodby.

In one place, you'll see widgets featuring such ephemera as the number of coffee cups being produced. The number of 911 calls being made. The top words being used online (at this moment, "from" and "while"). The number of eggs being produced.

It's all very fun, and designed, somehow, to promote Sprint's mobile card for laptop computers (the idea that you can get up to speed on anything and everything, wherever you are right now.) 

Speaking of which, go ahead and stop what you're doing now and waste several minutes here. You may or may not regret it.

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Ordering Pizza Hut From Your Facebook Page

Get some pizza on your Face(book).

That's the new pitch from Pizza Hut, which has launched a Facebook app that will enable customers to place pizza orders without leaving their profile pages. I'm not sure if that means your visitors can order, too, but either way, a pizza may soon be en route. 

And the Hut is sweetening the deal - with e-gift cards and the chance to win $50 gift certificates for ordering online.

There's good reason for the move. According to AD AGE, Pizza Hut has already passed $1 billion in online sales. Along the way, it's been collecting valuable customer data it'd never get with newspaper coupons or even phone orders.

What's more, competitors are moving aggressively into the space. Crispin's Pizza Builder site for Dominos - dubbed BFD (um, as in "Big Fantastic Deal") - enables you to visually build your custom pizza and place an order for delivery "in about 30 minutes."

Factor in the order accuracy in these online initiatives and the productivity from not having store order takers answering phones all day, and online is looking like a winner. So is mobile, of course.

But still - they need to make these things as dialing the phone number.

Now that'd make for a killer app(etite).

Read more, here. And get the app, here.

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'Iron Man 2,' 'Spider-Man 4' Gear Up For Mobile Advergames

Marvel Entertainment is ramping up its mobile advergame initiatives in anticipation of a full slate of movies - including Iron Man 2, Spider-Man 4, Hulk 2, Captain America and the superhero team-up The Avengers.

Many of the films, which tie together elements and stars (Robert Downey Jr., for instance, has already been in Iron Man and Hulk and will be featured in The Avengers, which is a Hulk-Iron Man-Captain America-Thor team-up flick), will be the subject of new mobile games from Gameloft as part of a multi-year deal.

“Gameloft has earned its well-deserved reputation for excellence as a developer and publisher of top-selling mobile games," said Ira Rubenstein, Executive Vice President, Marvel’s Global Digital Media Group. “When you combine that level of execution with worldwide distribution, it is easy to see why Gameloft is the ideal partner to bring Spider-Man and Iron Man 2 to mobile gaming.”

Spider-Man will get the first mobile game, set to come out in 2009, in anticipation for Spider-Man 4. 

In BRANDING UNBOUND the book, I look at how mobile games were part of the promotional plans for Spider-Man 3 and DC's Superman Returns. The mobile medium in general - and mobile games in particular - are an especially powerful way of engaging key fan demographics for the superhero genre.

As Marvel moves into mobile comics, look for mobile to play an even bigger role in these 21st century franchises.

Read more about the Marvel-Gameloft initiative, here.

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Forget Obama v. McCain: Online, It's Dunkin's v. Starbucks

The competition between Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks has reached the fervor of a political campaign.

Dunkin, for one, has set up a site to promote the fact that a recent national taste test shows people prefer Dunkin's coffee over Starbucks. The site even includes a grassroots e-cards that fans can send to others.

What's next, an interactive word-association map like the one the New York Times has for today's other big event?

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Peyton Manning's Back With More Personalized Pep Talks

Peyton's priceless - again.

On the heels of the hugely successful "pep talks" personalizable video initiative, Peyton Manning's back with "Suite Talk," where he peps up your friends and family in a drop-menu-based customized video engine, brought to you from MasterCard. I still like "pep talks" better - but this is fun, too. Try it yourself, here.

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