What is Phygital Marketing and how will it boost brand success, customer experience

Phygital Marketing is when physical world integrates the digital world and bridges gap between offline users and online consumers. In other words, the action from users that requires a Sense of Urgency , while making sure they engage with the brand,  immerse in the experience & the product while getting value-add out of it & have real-time conversations are the requirements for a successful phygital marketing.  

The core idea is to make sure we can get users to interact physically using offline and online medium with objects, products, services, visuals etc that we otherwise see on a regular basis, but don’t necessarily engage with it in the real sense of the term. 

A wonderful example would be:

1. Fiat Street Evo app. In this you can use the app and physically scan the Road TRAFFIC signs and get related features of the car.eg. the stop sign shows the brakes feature of the car, the Parking sign shows the parking sensors. For this, the users have to download the app and engage with the traffic signs physically when they were out in the street. Once they do, they can see the car on their mobile, learn about the features etc. 

Another example of phygital marketing is of:

2. A retailer in Brazil who introduced in-store real-time Facebook “Like” feeds on clothing hangers for specific products. The focus was to help potential buyers with their purchasing decision by showcasing how many likes or how popular that product is with so many others and this was happening in with a live stream feeds of LIKES. Users can use that information either way, as in, one could decide how popular it is or if its too common and you do not want to make that purchase depending on how you see it as a consumer. for eg some users would love to purchase products, clothing etc if its a trend and very popular while others might feel its too mainstream and now become very common.

As a digital marketer, your focus should not be merely to force purchases from prospects or have a pitch to sell all the time, but to predict the emotions that drive consumers to buy via the ‘mood retail’ concept, as in, driving decisions to engage based on insights and data about consumers. 

Few more wonderful examples of Phygital marketing:

3. The Golden State Warrior Stephen Curry led the NBA in three-pointers and he even became the first player to everscore 400 of them in a season. Capitalizing on that buzz, Under Armour teamed up with the NBA 2K16 video game in a Droga5 campaign. In this Curry even outperformed the video game version of himself. Best part was that, that was focus of the social campaign which was “BreaktheGame”

Because Curry is so good at the awesome three pointers he even outperformed the video game version of himself. That’s the focus of the social campaign, #BreaktheGame. During NBA finals, every time Curry scored a three-pointer, a three-second video was released. In each video, focus was that he will do a trick that his alter ego wasn’t programmed to perform. Very cool way to engage.

4. Intel partnered with Adidas to display shoes in their ins-stores (but shoes that were actually out of stock). It was designed by U.K. shop Start Creative, in which the display rendered products in 3-D, and allowed prospects / shoppers to even spin, zoom in on the shoes, check out the specs from a touch-screen display and completely engage in an immersive experience virtually while in the store of products that were very new or not in stock as of now.

5.The Olympics: Conversations:  The amount of negative and positive emotions in Tweets referencing the Olympics was reflected in a nightly light show during the games, with yellow as positive, green neutral and purple negative.

It can work for various industries, for eg. retail, education, hospitality, fashion, travel, lifestyle, events, tech, banking & finance, real-estate, etc

Best way to plan and win at a Phygital marketing campaign is:

• Start with the goals
• focus on target demographics/users
• Plan and design with a clear focus to engage, drive responses in real-time, entertain, add value and educate. 

Be Well

Ananth V

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