Mobile Couponing, Infographics and Tesco

I had lunch yesterday with an old colleague who moved to Toronto a couple of years ago to work with Transcontinental Media. We had an interesting conversation about couponing, which is apparently a big thing in North America – much bigger than it is here in the UK. My ex-colleague was concerned that, as a consumer publisher, Transcontinental’s use as a channel for distributing coupons was falling.

He blamed this on two things: firstly, most of the bigger multiple grocers/retailers have increasingly large loyalty schemes which are replacing magazines as distribution channels with which brands can reach consumers with coupons. Replacing rather than working alongside because the data-driven loyalty schemes can be much, much more targeted because they hold much, much more data. And secondly because these same grocers are using mobile to traget their consumers with coupons: print is once again losing out to digital.

I was intrigued by all of this. I have a Tesco loyalty card, and they send me a DM piece through the post every now and again. It’s packed full of vouchers that either go staright in the bin or sit in a pile of other post for a couple of months before going in the bin. I pop into Tesco on the way home from work on a whim if I need something for dinner that night. I don’t plan to pop into Tesco that morning, or even that lunchtime, it’s usually as I leave the office, or even as I walk past the store. I don’t carry the vouchers with me just in case I do that.

More to the point, the idea of standing at the checkout faffing with bits of paper whilst the huge queue of people behind me builds and builds and gets more and more frustrated and annoyed doesn’t appeal either. When I see other people doing that I (totally unreasonably) want to scream at them that they’re eating into my tiny and extremely valuable leisure time just so they can get a penny off a bunch of bananas.

So, given all of that, would couponing, mobile style, work on me? Well the answer to that is…maybe. If I could tell Tesco that I’m interested in, say, offers on wine and pizza. If Tesco could detect, via geo-location, when I was in their store and either mail or SMS me an offer for wine or pizza. If I could present that offer, on my phone, at checkout. Then, I MIGHT think about using couponing.

Conincidentally I came across this infographic by Tiffany Farrant (via AP Find) about mobile couponing today. Great graphic, telling an interesting story:

Infographic By Promotional Codes

So what does all of this mean for my friend at Transcontinental? Well, either find a new revenue stream, or think about getting your data up to scratch. And all the time keep a very close eye on the development of the slate market and the way people use slates. If they, as many people expect, start to replce magazines, then maybe they can also replace magazines as a distributor of coupons.

This post originally appeared on my company blog, here.

Japan, the strange country

I love the style of this animation by Japanese artist and designer Kenichi Tanaka. The infographics are simple and easy and keep you engaged, and the approach and subject matter fit beautifully.

I’m not all that sure about his assertion that Japan is ‘the strange country’ though – he seems to concentrate on two broad themes: Japanese cultural peculiarities and generic bad stuff associated with almost all developed nations. So whilst it’s interesting to know about the issues of Japanese girls’ obsession with dieting and brands, food waste, wasteful water imports, disposable chopsticks, overfishing etc, I don’t think they’re all that informative about Japan as a nation – we Brits have similar issues, as do most industrialised (or post industrialised) nations. Things like shyness and love hotels and suicide are much more interesting, although even the suicide statistic comes with the phrase ‘a healthy economy doesn’t necessarily make a happy economy, does it?’, which comes across as a bit obvious and trite, even if it is meant to be knowing.

But none of this should detract too much from what is a great piece of work that we enjoyed. Check it out:

UPDATE (01 April 2010): since I wrote this post Kenichi seems to have taken down the English version of the video. You can see the Japanese version here – that it makes sense without the English voiceover is testament to the quality of the graphics.

This post originally appeared on my company website here.

Good

Good is a site devoted to helping people live well and do good. Which is all very well and good – but what we really like about Good are the brilliant infographics. Check them out!