Shane McErlane

Hi my name is Shane and welcome to my blog, I work here with other BCT students. Everything in here has a story and a price. One thing I’ve learned after 20 years – you never know WHAT is going to come through that door.

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Final Documentation and Reflection

 Concept:

 ARven is a proposed platform created as a marketing tool that houses Augmented Reality designs that we have produced for clients. To start with, ARven specializes in business and loyalty cards, bringing the digital and physical worlds together to create a unique experience that speaks true to our client’s brand. Our artefact is an augmented reality loyalty card for our client YIBEI Lemontea.

 Business cards are still very much valued today in 2019, having varying significance around the world (Durham, 2019), business cards have remained the most effective way to create a more personal exchange of information in a quick manner. (Jackson, 2019).

Loyalty Cards have proven to be a very easy and effective way to cultivate returning customers whilst also often enabling a business to gather data in a more passive manner. (Valeanu, 2015).

Both are still very relevant and are used very often within businesses in the world, even with technology advancing. What ARven aims to use various techniques to create designs that will express client’s brands while also setting it apart from various marketing gimmicks that do not hold attention for long. We have done this by corresponding with our client ‘YIBEI’ and designing a product that will easily give a customer the information they want but also offer exclusive deals that would only be implemented on the card itself. This will keep people coming back to the app instead of being just a gimmick. This strategy has been implemented with other famous companies such as McDonald’s and Burger King, where they offer app exclusive deals so that people return to the app, creating returning customers.

Our choice to keep our artefact be based from a physical item (a physical card), comes from the personal connection that someone has when they can link something physical to an experience. For example, the reason people connect better in a face to face meeting rather than digital and the reason why most prefer to read solid books rather than eBooks. It also stems from the customs that surround the handling of a business card in various countries such as Japan. (Durham, 2019).

In a saturated world where every businessperson and their business are fighting for their opportunity to stand out of the crowd, ARven aims to provide a unique experience that will set their business or loyalty card apart from others. Adopting the AIDA model (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) our designs aim to provide value to our client’s brand. (Business Case Studies.)

  Context:

 Marketing is the basis of every business, extending out in many various ways, drawing in customers with different strategies. With the paradigm shift of marketing becoming a social engineering tool, driven with the advancement of technology pushing audiences online while pushing from ‘hard’ techniques towards ‘soft’ ones. (Lies, 2019).

 With the world of marketing become more saturated, it takes more and more to be noticed. The world of augmented reality is a growing one with many areas using AR in new and exciting ways. There have been some amazing uses of AR in the marketing world such as Disney’s AR colouring book (Buckler, 2018), but we feel like ARven has the potential to become a more personal and unique to each brand, person and business, emulating the traditional feeling of a business card while opening a world of potential within a small physical artefact. As marketing grows and evolves, its strategies change with it, and with the move from outbound marketing into inbound marketing (being four times more likely to cite success (Parmelee, 2018)), opportunity has opened up to where we are able to integrate an outbound method with inbound methods to develop a product that could influence the evolution of business cards.

 In relation to the market, at the time being, ARven sits in the field with other applications and platforms such as Linkedin’s Cardmunch in terms of dealing with business cards, although the aim of Cardmunch was to digitalise the information on the business cards therefore rendering the business card itself redundant after digitalised. ARvens aim is not to make the business card itself redundant but to give more value to the way we interact with these cards.

ARven sits in with other apps such as SnapCard which specialises in augmented reality within business media through what they are calling SnapCodes. This proves to be similar to what ARven intends to achieve although their focus is aimed more towards the digital with less attention pulled towards the physical. SnapCard can create business cards as well but they use a single format of a SnapCode which I feel limits the personal touch of a business card and limits how much a brand can express themselves through the physical. ARven aims to design unique designs for our clients which we feel will set us apart from SnapCard as well as our focus on keeping the importance on physical aspects of an exchange as well.

 A platform that has the potential to become a massive player in the world of AR business and loyalty cards is Snapchat. Snapchat is probably the largest influencer in terms of augmented reality in the industry today (Saleem, 2019). At the moment they do not specialize in the same field as ARven but with the development of their ‘Lens Studio’ where creators can develop their own environments tailored for snapchat, Snapchat has become an AR platform that is limited by the imagination of its users.

 Common questions that arose when addressing the public included;

 Will the app house my loyalty card information, such as my progress in the loyalty program? Why don’t we just use QR codes and Why do we still have the physical card?

 In relation to the housing card information, we do have plans to incorporate that into the design in the future. This would be most relevant within our loyalty card designs and would involve incorporating a user-based system into ARven and design a new UI and UX to display the information. Doing this would also give more value and incentive for businesses to use ARven because it will become a more fleshed out loyalty program, enabling access to customer information.

 QR codes are widely used and are effective for the purposes that they have been intended for but when using it in terms of design or representing a brand, we feel that it doesn’t portray a brand effectively. As explained above, other companies have variations of a QR code to bring up various links and designs and as we explained, our design can provide a more indicative representation of a company.

 Something that we feel is an important aspect of our project is the fact that we see that there I still a lot of value in a physical artefact. As I explained earlier there is something to be said about the connections and connotations within the interaction of handing something to someone and the ability to feel and touch something, that proves the value that we see. Although we do see that there is room to refine this aspect of our design because there also many benefits to removing the physical such as issues that retain to waste but we find it important that we express our stance on the issue and hold strong to it.

 ARven has the long-term goal of expanding into a shared open platform where other creators can hold their designs. This will set us apart from other platforms while also being a way to encourage the use of AR and help the platform grow through a community. This is achievable but we are limited by how fast and efficiently we can grow the platform. Growth will require us to continually recruit new clients and then develop their unique designs at a rate in which we can sustain. To ease this limitation, we would have to bring aboard a larger team than only two but even that would run into its own sustainability problems due to budgets. At the moment ARven is only on android but we are aiming on bringing it to IOS systems as well. Another limitation is making sure that ARven follows the AIDA model because stats show that although the general public’s app usage is at an all-time high, they are not downloading apps and there is a barrier threshold to overcome where the platform/app provides more value to not only gain an audience but to keep an audience. (Knight, 2019).

 Overall ARven has been a pleasure to work on as a team, the work for semester 1 was split into Shane providing research, context, concept and reasoning with Austin controlling the production of the artefact. This worked for this semester but moving forward Shane will have to move more into the production side as we build the platform. Still more research and user testing will have to be done to refine the concept into a stronger platform but a lot of the work going forward will be building more card designs building a database for a larger platform.

 With the right interest and passion and with technology becoming more advanced, we feel that ARven is very capable of growing into the open platform that we are working towards.

  References:

 Buckler. L. (2018, July 5). 7 Examples that Prove How Powerful AR Is in Marketing. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://martech.zone/augmented-reality-marketing-examples/

Business Case Studies. How the role of marketing drives business forwards, A Portakabin case study. [Article]. Retrieved from: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/portakabin/how-the-role-of-marketing-drives-business-forwards/introduction.html

 CardMunch https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cardmunch#section-overview

 Durham. J. (2019, April 9). Business Card Etiquette in Various Countries. Worketiquette.co.uk. [Article]. Retrieved from: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/business-card-etiquette-in-various-countries.html

 Jackson. A. (2019, February 13). 8 Reasons Why Business Cards Are Still Important. Designhill. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.designhill.com/design-blog/reasons-why-business-cards-are-still-important/

 Knight. A. (2019, March 31). The Data Behind Why Apps Fail. [Essay]. Retrieved from: https://austinknight.com/writing/the-data-behind-why-apps-fail

 Lies. J. (2019). Marketing Intelligence and Big Data: Digital Marketing Techniques on their Way to Becoming Social Engineering Techniques in Marketing. International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, (5), 134. Retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/10.9781/ijimai.2019.05.002

 Parmelee. A. (2018, January 5). The Effective Marketing Strategies You Need to Know for 2019. iMPACT. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/the-effective-marketing-strategies-you-need-to-know-for-2018

 Saleem. S. (2019, March 8). Augmented Reality Marketing - Ecommerce Future is here! Cloudways.com. https://www.cloudways.com/blog/augmented-reality-in-marketing/

 SnapCard https://www.snapcard.id/en/

 Valeanu. A. (2015, June 3). 20 Free and Premium Loyalty Card Templates Design. Designmodo. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://designmodo.com/loyalty-cards/

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AR card prototype

After trying to get the application to work on Iphone, we asked Laurent if he could help. He saw that we were using a unity application and said that it isnt very compatible with Iphone and to try an Android, to which we did and had to our joy the application worked just as it should. 

In the future we hope to address this issue and bring the application over to Iphone so that we are not limiting any users.

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Providing Value

With all of the research of other services such as loyalty programs and other marketing services, it was clear that our product had to have a clear value. One problem we came across was having one application for one design so we decided to try bring it one step further and come up with the concept of ARven. A combination of AR and heaven ARven is a platform that has will house multiple designs within one app, so instead of only having to download one app for one card, the dream is to have one app for all of our cards.

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Similar Services

CardMunch

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cardmunch#section-overview

SnapCard

https://www.snapcard.id/en/

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Why Most Apps Fail

A revealing article that states that even though app usage is at an all time high, app downloads are not growing in relation. This is due to only the same certain amount of apps being used. This raised the issue of an ‘app barrier’ and made us question how we could provide a service that provided true value.

Knight. A. (2019, March 31). The Data Behind Why Apps Fail. [Essay]. Retrieved from: https://austinknight.com/writing/the-data-behind-why-apps-fail

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AR in Marketing

Examples of AR Marketing

Buckler. L. (2018, July 5). 7 Examples that Prove How Powerful AR Is in Marketing.  [Article]. Retrieved from: https://martech.zone/augmented-reality-marketing-examples/

AR in Marketing

Saleem. S. (2019, March 8). Augmented Reality Marketing - The Ecommerce Future is here! Cloudways.com. https://www.cloudways.com/blog/augmented-reality-in-marketing/

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Final Loyalty Card Design

We have decided on a design that we feel represents YIBEI and has a working marker for the program.

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Marketing Intelligence and Big Data: Digital Marketing Techniques on their Way to Becoming Social Engineering Techniques in Marketing

Lies. J. (2019). Marketing Intelligence and Big Data: Digital Marketing Techniques on their Way to Becoming Social Engineering Techniques in Marketing. International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, (5), 134. Retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/10.9781/ijimai.2019.05.002

Marketing changing to become a social engineering tool 

Iterates how marketing has changed from hard sales into soft sales with the development of technology, social media and various other Big data tools. More reach and less invasive, more organic.

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A Marketing Opportunity

By researching marketing strategies, we will be able to translate that into our product and ensure that our product has value to our clients and will last in the market.

Inbound marketing strategies are more effective

Parmelee. A. (2018, January 5). The Effective Marketing Strategies You Need to Know for 2019. iMPACT. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/the-effective-marketing-strategies-you-need-to-know-for-2018

Explains inbound methods are proving to be more effective strategies, methods such as video and visuals, social media, ROI(Return on Investment) and measurement and email & marketing automation.

The Purpose of Marketing and AIDA

Business Case Studies. How the role of marketing drives business forwards, A Portakabin case study. [Article]. Retrieved from: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/portakabin/how-the-role-of-marketing-drives-business-forwards/introduction.html

The purpose of marketing is to create a customer. A business has two basic functions - Marketing and Innovation. Effective marketing campaigns take into account the AIDA Model - that it should raise Awareness of the product, excite Interest in it, create a Desire for it and encourage Action to buy it.

Effective Marketing Strategies

Woschnick. V. (2018, February 7). Top 10 Most Effective Marketing Strategies. Weidert.com. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.weidert.com/whole_brain_marketing_blog/bid/108524/top-10-most-effective-marketing-strategies

Most effective strategies are a combination of inbound strategies, taking on more of a soft approach.

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Building Customer Loyalty

Six questions to help build customer loyalty.

What are the expectations of our customers and what it will take to exceed them?

What differentiates our company in the eyes of our customers?

To what extent can we grow our business with our existing customers?

How do our interactions with our customers affect their satisfaction and buying behavior?

Do we have any customer segments that require different treatment? and

How loyal is our customer base and how can we improve it?

Berkowitz. J. (2006, March). Six question to help build customer loyalty. SearchCRM TechTarget. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://searchcrm.techtarget.com/answer/Six-questions-to-help-build-customer-loyalty

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Concepts for our loyalty card

Austin put together a few concepts for the loyalty card

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Business Card Etiquette in the world

Different countries hold differing significance and customs for example, Japan hold emphasis on the whole process including very much so the physical.

“ To give and receive business cards in Japan is quite ceremonial. You should, therefore, invest in high quality cards and keep them in good condition by keeping them in a business card case and treat both the giving and receiving of business cards with the same degree of respect as you would show the person him or herself. Status is important in Japan so make sure your title is prominent on the card. And, whilst it’s perfectly acceptable to give your card with one hand, make sure you accept one with both hands. Don’t put it away in your pocket at a meeting. Keep it on the table in front of you and, if you are meeting several people at once who have all given you their cards, not only is it respectful to keep all the cards on the table in front of you until the meeting has concluded but it’s also useful in that, in placing them in front of you in the order in which people are seated, it will help you remember their names. “

Durham. J. (2019, April 9). Business Card Etiquette in Various Countries. Worketiquette.co.uk. [Article]. Retrieved from: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/business-card-etiquette-in-various-countries.html

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Business Cards in 2019

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Business Card Research

Purpose of a Business Card

Schnotz. W. (2018, April 23). What is the Purpose of a Business Card? Azcentral.com. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/purpose-business-card-4556.html

Conveys contact information, Helps customers remember you, Reflects your companies values, Differentiates you from competition.

Business Cards in 2019

Business Matters. (2019, April 14). Why Business Cards are Still Important in 2019.  Bmmagazine.co.nz. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/business/why-business-cards-are-still-important-in-2019/

More personal and direct, (article does not give many references to back this up)

8 Reasons Business Cards Are Still Relevant

Jackson. A. (2019, February 13). 8 Reasons Why Business Cards Are Still Important. Designhill. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.designhill.com/design-blog/reasons-why-business-cards-are-still-important/

“The cards help establish a warm personal relationship with clients. It is a marketing tool to create trust, establish brand, and convey a message to the potential customers.”

Are Business Cards Still Relevant - Why are they less popular?

Editor. (2019, March 26). Is It Really Necessary to Have Business Cards in 2019? Homebusinessmag.com. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://homebusinessmag.com/marketing/networking/necessary-business-cards-2019/

Less popular because of environmental effects (less waste) and incapability of portraying more information than something like LinknIn

16 Professionals Give Their Opinion on Business Cards

Forbes Agency Council. (2017, November 24). Is The Business Card Dead? 16 Experts Share Their Thoughts. Forbes.com. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/11/24/is-the-business-card-dead-16-experts-share-their-thoughts/#4fc146bb7992

Pros and Cons on both, redundant because of technology, relevant as a more personal and quicker form of trading info.

It is a hotly contested question if the physical business card is still relevant in 2019 but the consensus is that they are still very relevant and that the personal physical ritual of gifting someone is still very valued in the market today. The fact that people have tried different methods that aim to get rid of the need for the physical card and have not been as successful such as attaching QR codes (Forbes Agency Council, 2017), proves that there is still much need and value in sustaining the physical aspect of a business card.

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Business Card Examples

Business Card Examples:

Chibana. N. (2016, December). 60 Eye-Catching Business Card Examples. Visme.co. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://visme.co/blog/business-card-design-inspiration/

A possible avenue for helping to make our business card stand out would be Metallic Business cards, this would give less incentive to throw the card away and make more of an impression. This method is unfortunately limited by colours and design.

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Loyalty Cards

Before we can start designing our own loyalty card it is important that we have a good understanding of what loyalty cards are and some examples of previous designs. 

A loyalty card can be defined as an identity card issued by a retailer to its customers as part as a incentive scheme. From looking at various examples, it is clear that a good loyalty card should be an indicative representation of its brand.

How Loyalty Cards are used and their purpose

Valeanu. A. (2015, June 3). 20 Free and Premium Loyalty Card Templates Design. Designmodo. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://designmodo.com/loyalty-cards/

An article on how loyalty cards are used and what their purpose is ( benefits to business and customer).

Gives info about the customer;

Customer Demographics, Customer location, Products purchased, Frequency and amount of purchase, Customer responsiveness, Redemption information.

Loyalty card programs created to create an emotional attachment with the brand.

Defining Loyalty Cards

Rouse. M. (2009, April). Loyalty card program. SearchCRM TechTarget. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/loyalty-card-program

Explains loyalty cards as an incentive plan that can allow business’ to gather data.

Survey - 86% of American shoppers are listed in a loyalty database.

Loyalty programs - types and advantages

Cranston. E. (2017, December 14). What Are Loyalty Programs And How Do They Work? Merchant Maverick. [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.merchantmaverick.com/loyalty-programs-work/

This article talks about what are loyalty programs, the type of loyalty programs and how they work. Good pro and con for different types and explains them well. 

E.g. Frequency cards;  While these punch cards are low cost, they don’t track any customer information and are more open to fraud.

How companies use loyalty card data

BBC.com. (2018, March 21). How do companies use my loyalty card data? [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43483426

Ways companies use our loyalty card data - Marketing, tracking movements, building a ‘profile’, sharing with other brands.

Examples of innovative and successful loyalty programs

Peacock. L. (2018, September 4). 10 Examples of Innovative Retail Loyalty Programs.  [Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.shopify.com/blog/loyalty-program

Gives examples of loyalty programs that have worked really well and have shown to be innovative and talks about how they were implemented and why they worked and are special - Starbucks, Apple, DSW, Amazon Prime, etc…

In summary loyalty cards and loyalty programs are quite effective ways to maintain a returning customer base while also having the ability to provide essential customer habit data. 

Although simple to implement, the more successful loyalty cards seem to be able to balance engagement and value to continue to being customers back to the retailer.

Post thought (Having a digital loyalty card on a user based app would add more of a pro with frequency cards because a business would be able to harvest data from a cheaper loyalty program)

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YIBEI Lemon-tea promotional video