Brand Photos: Behind the Lens of Image Recognition

Pongr Perfect Memories

Brand Loyalty, Shopper Marketing | September 26, 2012 by Amy

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Harry Potter was one of the best series of novels in recent memory. Nonetheless, many were disappointed with how the novels were depicted on-screen. There were initial complaints of how the actors didn’t quite fit the characters of the book or how technology couldn’t catch up with the magical storyline; it wasn’t quite how people imagined it to be.

When we read a book, we put our imagination into work and create a world fit for the book and when movies don’t live up to our expectations, we are disappointed.

The same goes for pictures. They capture a moment we want to cherish. Photos take us back in time to that exact moment when the shutter went off or the time period we long to visit again. Sometimes, videos just don’t do justice for our memories.

Often times, brands carry the same effect as photos do: they capture memories of our past of when we enjoyed a certain candy bar, bag of chips or carbonated drink. You might have shared a Twix candy bar with your first love or popped M&Ms as you pulled an all-nighter while studying for finals.

Videos might capture the same, but can anyone create the perfect video to capture such memories? Not unless they’re highly skilled at video production. It won’t turn out as expected, just like the Harry Potter movies that didn’t quite live up to our imaginations. Pictures are simple: you focus on an object, press a button and capture the moment you want to cherish.

Pongr provides the perfect platform to share those memories of your favorite soft drink in high school, your favorite winter coat or even the ring your husband swept you away with. Invite your friends to Pongr and share memories of your favorite brands and products.

Pongr Treat!

Advertising, Brand Loyalty, Shopper Marketing | September 20, 2012 by Amy

October is right around the corner. That means tricks and treats are going to be right at your doorstep. We all have our favorite ghouls, ghosts and Disney characters to dress up as on the last day of October, but we also have our fair share of guilty pleasures: candies and chocolates.

Of course, candies and chocolates aren’t the only thing we enjoy; there are various recipes people whip up to celebrate Halloween and make it more special for children.

Pictures have captured countless Halloween memories for many families, but you can now add more memories and capture all of your favorite candy brands. You can share your favorite Halloween season brands and give others ideas for Halloween trick-or-treating or even discover ideas yourself.

When shopping at a nearby grocery store, you must’ve noticed the Halloween specials that were prepared by your favorite candy brands. Candy corns, Halloween themed chocolates, orange Oreos… They’re all back! Halloween edition products don’t last long, though. They’ll be around until Halloween and disappear like a vampire at the break of dawn.

Before it’s too late, #TrickOrTreat2012 and Pongr photos of your favorite Halloween edition treats.

Pongr Fashion Week… With Style

Brand Loyalty, Recent, Social Media | September 6, 2012 by Amy

As we welcome fall, New York welcomes worldwide fashionistas to 9 fabulous days of celebrating the brands that help the world play dress-up everyday. From the 5th to the 13th, Fashion Week will attract the world’s attention, but is known to be an exclusive engagement among the people who are well-known in the field.

The expansion of the Internet and social media has brought out a surprising number of creative individuals who love fashion and are known for their unique style. Many people show their love for fashion and New York’s Fashion Week through blog posts, pins and videos.

A case study of New Zealand’s Fashion Week found that 70% of the attendees first heard about the event through social media platforms, according to Mark Carbone. Carbone also states that there was up to 22,000 people who actively engaged in social media even 2 weeks before Fashion Week started.

Photos bring together those who are near and far, no matter where they are. It’s not just among people; people can also connect with brands through photos. This interaction with consumers will not only promote the events throughout Fashion Week, but also increase future business relationships.

Now, imagine Fashion Week extending to Boston, Chicago or even Shanghai.

Brands should maximize the value of consumer behavior by inviting them to engage with photos of their favorite brands. This would deepen the relationship with consumers and even broaden the stage of Fashion Week. Pongr would provide the perfect platform of making Fashion Week a nationwide and furthermore, a worldwide event.

What are some must-have items for this fall? Snap a photo of your favorite brand or item and share it with us! We invite you to Fashion Week, Pongr style.

Embracing Visual Social Media

Brand Loyalty, Mobile Marketing, Social Media | August 30, 2012 by Connor

In a recent article for Fast Company, Ekaterina Walter took note of something we’ve been talking about for quite a while now. Social media has become increasingly visual, with photos taking center-stage as the most shared and most talked about form of content. This trend is more than just a passing fad, and brands need to make photos an integral part of their marketing strategies. As Walter puts it, “pictures have become one of our default modes of sorting and understanding the vast amounts of information we’re exposed to every day.”

The prominence of images makes total sense in the evolution of social media. Dr. William J. Ward, Social Media professor at Syracuse University, points out that it all started with blogs, the earliest form of social networking online. “When we moved to status updates on Facebook, our posts became shorter,” he says. “Then micro-blogs like Twitter came along and shortened our updates to 140 characters. Now we are even skipping words altogether and moving towards more visual communication.”

It’s easy to take high-resolution photos with a mobile device, and photos are very popular on social media sites.

Walter notes that this move towards visual social media has to do with our overwhelming preference for mobile devices. Some studies have placed the percentage of people in the U.S. who access the Internet using their mobile handsets as high as 78%, in comparison to only 68% using a desktop or laptop computer. With mobile phone camera resolutions getting better and better, it’s much easier to snap a photo and post it to a social profile than to “[type] out a status update on a two-inch keyboard.”

This strong affinity for visual media among consumers makes the path clear for brands in terms of marketing. Encouraging users to take and submit their own photos is both a fun way to get consumers engaged with the brand as well as a useful way for brands to collect valuable earned media that can be used for marketing purposes on social media and beyond. Photo contests foster creativity and self-expression and help consumers to develop a strong, lasting relationship with the brand.

The crucial takeaway from an article like Walter’s is that this is an important trend that isn’t going away anytime soon. Brands need to embrace their customers’ fascination with images and incorporate photos into marketing strategies. Walter concludes her article by asserting that “brands that can rock visual media will find themselves market leaders.” We couldn’t agree more.

Pongr Makes Marketing Personal

Brand Loyalty, Social Media | August 22, 2012 by Connor

Technology has made it easier than ever for people to connect. Brands need to take advantage of the tools at hand to build relationships with consumers.

Technology connects people every day. Fifteen years ago, we would have had to pay exorbitant long distance rates to talk to a cousin across the pond, but now he’s just a click away. We’ve embraced tech for personal use and connecting with friends and family, but in many ways, interacting with brands and companies still feels a bit like the dark ages.

According to a recent study by Empathica, Inc., 62% of those polled thought brands didn’t sufficiently monitor and participate in online conversations. Too many brands establish profiles on social media sites only to not take advantage of the full interactive power of these networks.

Engaging with consumers doesn’t mean just answering questions posted to the brand’s Facebook Timeline or responding to Tweets. The key is making fans feel special, like they’re more than just a number. Every consumer has a unique relationship with the brand, and the way the brand interacts with them should reflect that.

Pongr’s photo response marketing platform offers brands an unprecedented opportunity to get to know their fans. Photos can tell you a lot about a person—not to mention all the valuable data that is collected when fans participate in photo contests, such as their location, demographic group, and brand photo history. This information gives brands who’ve enabled Photo Response Marketing an advantage when reaching out and making genuine, personal connections with their customers.

Promotions and special offers are great, but why not send your customers only the deals that are most relevant to them and that they’re most likely to enjoy? In essence, Pongr’s platform makes personal connections scalable. Even a large company can send customers individually tailored content. Social media is just that—social. New technology can not only connect people across the globe, but it can also give brands a chance to connect with their customers like never before and build lasting relationships that translate into brand loyalty.

In-Store and Digital Marketing: A Perfect Match

Augmented Reality, Brand Loyalty, Mobile Marketing, Shopper Marketing | August 1, 2012 by Connor

More and more consumers have their mobile devices in hand while shopping.

In her latest article for AdAge, Clara Shih talks about using social media to boost engagement on a local level. Even big brands like Walmart are creating social media pages for each store in an effort to connect with local customers and push content that’s especially relevant to them. She makes the observation that “in-store and digital experiences are merging,” which we couldn’t agree with more. As more and more consumers start shopping with a smartphone in one hand and a credit card in the other, retailers need to be ready to engage with shoppers digitally.

Shih notes that one of the challenges of this is bringing the social media or e-commerce team and the field store operations team together. If brands are going to do in-store digital engagement well, it’s crucial that it be part of a unified effort between all aspects of traditional shopper marketing, sales, and social media.

Consumers Are Talking— Are Brands Listening?

Brand Loyalty, Mobile Marketing, Shopper Marketing | July 23, 2012 by Connor

According to a new study by Empathica, Inc., 82% of consumers want to engage retail brands via mobile channels. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Brands, your customers want to talk to you. The problem is, a lot of brands aren’t talking back. About 62% of those polled by Empathica felt brands don’t monitor online conversations.

By ignoring mobile marketing, brands are not only missing out on excellent avenues to push their message, they’re actively avoiding the frequencies their consumers specifically want to communicate with them on.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that consumers would want to engage with brands via their mobile devices. Over 50% of U.S. mobile users have smartphones, and we’re becoming more and more inseparable from our handsets. Consumers want everything at their fingertips, and they’re actively reaching out to brands through their mobile devices.

“The message for all marketers is a simple one: consumers want to be heard,” says Gary Edwards, chief customer officer of Empathica. Pongr’s always-on mobile photo marketing tools make it easy and scalable for brands to respond to photos that consumers take with their phones, and keep the conversation going with engaging direct response content. This dialogue helps build a lasting relationship between brand and customer.

At Pongr, we see ourselves as a matchmaker, helping brands who don’t know how to engage with customers to respond appropriately, like coaching middle school boys on how to talk to girls at a school dance. Consumers love taking photos with their mobile phones, so photo-triggered direct response content is the ideal platform for cementing brand loyalty. As we’ve said before, though, the key to successful marketing is listening. Brands who pay attention to what their customers want will find building a relationship with consumers gets easier and easier.

Always-On is Always Good

Brand Loyalty, Mobile Marketing | July 17, 2012 by Connor

Why reinvent the wheel every time your brand wants to run a new promotion?

Brands and advertising agencies have a lot to consider when designing a successful marketing program. One of the most important things is the ease of use and benefit for the consumer. A program that’s simple, straightforward, and effective will help to cement customer loyalty. Why reinvent the wheel every time your brand wants to run a new promotion? Always-on, reusable marketing programs are easy for both brand and consumer and build long-term customer loyalty.

There are many great examples of these kind of large scale programs working successfully. American Airlines first introduced a program in 1981 that rewarded their customers who flew often with free flights and more. Today, almost every major airline has a frequent flier program following that model.

Retailers reward loyalty as well, with systems as simple as a physical card that gets punched with every purchase to mobile apps that allow users to pay and accumulate rewards points all in one, like the Starbucks Mobile App. Enormous brands like Starbucks can easily invest in their own branded app, but third-party partners like foursquare or Pongr make it simple even for smaller brands to use a loyalty model by rewarding consumers for check-ins or photos.

Photos Make Social Media Social Again

Brand Ambassadors, Social Media | June 28, 2012 by Connor

Brands—how much do you know about your Facebook fans? I mean, really know? You know how many you have, you can see how and when they interact with your content, but what else can you say about your fans? How many use your product on a daily basis, or how many wish they could? Which ones clicked “like” on your page two years ago and then forgot about you entirely, and which ones remain devoted brand enthusiasts who proudly advocate for your brand and spread word of mouth via their own personal profiles?

Chances are, most brands can’t answer these questions. A new like or follow doesn’t tell brands much about the users themselves, and this makes it very challenging to engage with fans on the personal, one-to-one level that social media promises. As a result, lots of brands have resorted to simply blasting their message on Facebook and Twitter, and they’re a bit lost when it comes to personalized, individual engagement with fans.

Victoria Ransom points out this challenge in her latest blog post for AdAge today. She proposes that brands need to implement systems to aggregate and analyze social data in order to be able to create highly personalized interactions with consumers. Of course, this is exactly what makes Pongr’s photo response management tools so great.

Here and Now: Relevant Ads Are Effective Ads

Advertising, Brand Loyalty, Mobile Marketing, Shopper Marketing | June 21, 2012 by Connor

Knowing as much information as possible about their consumers has always been important to advertisers. The more relevant an ad, the more effective it’s going to be. Special-interest magazines, for example, usually only run ads for products that will appeal to their readers. Advertisers are always trying to learn more about their consumers in order to make promotions and offers more relevant.

The #1 mobile shopping activity is taking pictures of products. A relevant, well-timed promotional offer can help drive the sale.

With the advent of mobile marketing, brands no longer have to provide relevant content based solely on the demographics of their consumer alone—really relevant content is content that finds the consumer at just the right moment, in just the right place. Direct response shopper marketing that is delivered in the moment of intent—in the store, when the consumer is actively considering buying the product—is the most effective way to turn a shopper into a buyer. If a consumer receives a relevant promotion or offer right after taking a photo of a product in store, there’s a good chance they’re going to act on it.

By using Pongr’s photo-triggered direct response tools, brands can take the relevance of their promotions a step further. Our system provides valuable CRM data for brands to help them send individually tailored messages and offers based on factors like how many photos the user has taken of the brand before, what other brands they like and take photos of, and what brands their friends like and take photos of. Brands can use intelligent tools to determine what the most effective angle is for each consumer, taking into account a wealth of data.

Ultimately, advertising is about driving sales. No one’s going to argue that. But by making the process fun and valuable to the consumer through highly relevant marketing, brands will develop a lasting relationship with the consumer based on trust and loyalty, the value of which cannot be underestimated.

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