If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I started doing work with virtual reality back in the early 90's and coined the expression Experiential Advertising to talk about using VR to create immersive marketing experiences. Today we're combining that experience with the metaverse (what we used to call cyberspace) and our teams extensive experience with retail to create the next generation of retail experiences. Members of our metaverse retail team have worked with major retailers to develop their merchandising experiences, propelling brand presence, change, profitability, and performance through the orchestration of complex sales,... Continue reading

Curious as to what we do every day here at the Lab? We're excited to launch our new, overview video of the Brand Experience Lab. This video features our experienced team including Mitchell Edelman, James Ackerman, James Wiemer, Alexandra Zelcer and me and gives a great look into the selection of technology we offer such as Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality and the metaverse Shoppable live streaming Glasses-Free 3D Dynamic Interactive Displays Data on things Smart kiosks Virtual try-ons and more - all at our 14,000 sq. foot space in Jersey City! Want to know more about all of the technologies we're... Continue reading

As you may know, I was actively involved in VR back in the 90's (see here, here and here) and I coined the phrase Experiential Advertising to talk about the use of VR as a marketing tool way back about 1993. As I wrote back then: For the first time, consumers will be able to enter and, more importantly, interact with a corporate marketing message. From traveling through the human body to playing a virtual football game, consumers will be able to experience almost any marketing world. Virtual reality offers advertisers the ultimate sampling opportunity and will present a clutter... Continue reading

If you know me at all, you know how I feel about Oreo's. And if you don't, well, know that there's no way I could pass up a chance to visit the first Oreo Café at American Dream. Regular Oreo's, Double Stuff, yea, I can eat them all. Knowing I was pretty close to their first Café, I grabbed the family and we went over to check it out. I'm also a great fan of location based branding, using the physical space to bring your brand story to life. To me, this is more than just having stores, it's spaces... Continue reading

As you can see by the photos below, I recently decided it was time to make a change from the Covid beard I had grown this past year. I’ve had a beard mainly since I left Disney in about 1984, but hadn’t been clean shaven in about a decade. Because of that, the sudden shaving was really irritating my skin and I was getting a lot of razor burn. So I decided I would try an electric razor and see if that helped. I did my research and deciding which one I wanted, started to go to stores to buy... Continue reading

My daughter, Sydney, is a sophomore at Bucknell and like many students, she has had a tough year. Between suddenly having all of her classes go remote, the food program being really hard (at least last semester) and the lack of social experiences, it's been a hard year for her. But one thing that was awesome, is her experience at her residence hall, Fran's House. But last week, she had an experience that no one at college should have. Her house was attacked by a group of graduating seniors, members of a fraternity that had previously lived in the building... Continue reading

Unless you've been on a deserted island (which honestly, might've been a good idea for the past year), you've no doubt heard of 5G. You might even have a 5G phone right now, there are a number of them on the market right now. 3G enabled the phones to start being more than a voice/text device, while 4G brought us the data opportunity that we've been living in for a few years now. Without 4G, much of what we do on our phones on a daily basis would not be possible, including watching content, maps, etc. 5G, as it becomes... Continue reading

So, the very first, virtual CES has completed day one and, I have to be honest, it wasn't nearly as much fun as actually being there! No doubt, it's really hard to get as excited about things when you can't really see or touch them. The second challenge that I've actually had with CES for a few years is that many times, the show is pretty incremental. In fact, this was was what I said when I reviewed CES in 2019. So we'll see what the breakouts are this year and whether or not it's more incremental than innovative. You... Continue reading

I've been giving tours of #CES for 10 years now, this is the first year that I'm not checking into a Vegas hotel today! One of the reasons I was brought in to give tours was to help separate things that would be trends from things I didn't think would be trends. While I've had a few misses over the years, I haven't done that badly. So, while most people are currently posting CES trends, I thought I would talk about some things that won't be trends, at least any time soon. 8K TV's. Truth be told, no one needs... Continue reading

Repealing Section 230 has been a hot call this year, even hotter now that it's been tied to additional Covid relief in the Senate. And it's certainly been a hot topic for President Trump all year, even tied into his veto of the defense budget. But there's a serious amount of confusion about what 230 is and how it came about. So, let's start at the beginning. Section 230 was part of the Communication Decency Act of 1996. Yes, a good 10 years before social media even really existed. It doesn't just protect social media companies from lawsuits coming from... Continue reading

American Girl Doll store, NYC I was involved in a discussion on Twitter today and was reminded on the idea of the the third place. It was a topic that I used to write about about a great deal and with everything happening these days, guess it's kind of fallen off my radar lately. If you don't know the idea of the third place, it's this: In community building, the third place is the social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place"). Examples of third places would be environments such... Continue reading

UPDATE Was back at an actual movie theater this past weekend to see In the Heights. While the theater wasn't packed, it had a good crowd and we were certainly an enthusiastic audience. We had started to watch it at home on HBO Max and quite frankly, it wasn't at all the same experience as watching it in the cinema. It's not just the size of the screen, it's the entire experience. From the minute we walked in the door and got the aroma of the popcorn, to the seats and the screen/sound combination, everything is different. And the audience... Continue reading

During the Covid break, Sydney and I had the chance to speak with Alyssa Mullin from NUMA New York on a variety of Gen Z topics. In this section, Sydney talks about how they're using things like Instagram and, of course, TikTok. She also talks about her general media consumption and how right now, they're looking for things that make them feel nostalgic. Let us know what you think in the comments! Media Consumption Gen Z from NUMA New York on Vimeo. Continue reading

It's 2020 and we're in the middle of a pandemic where people can't go out to eat in restaurants as we usually do. Thankfully, take out and delivery is booming! So why do so many restaurants still not have their actual menu online??? Sometimes I can find the menu in pictures taken by guests and posted on Yelp or Trip Advisor, but the restaurant itself doesn’t have their menu available. This seems like such a simple thing to do to keep themselves going in these very challenging times. If I can't get this simple, basic information, how can you expect... Continue reading

We are excited to welcome Veda Labs as a member to the Brand Experience Lab! VedaLabs is an India based company who uses an AI platform that helps retailers gather real time insights. From their website: Veda labs as an AI platform that offers deep insights powered by computer vision and machine learning. These insights allow a business owner to extract deep insights from any form of video data in real time. VedaVision™ allows retailers the following: Real Time Reporting. A single dashboard that allows you to have a real time data on how your stores are performing based on... Continue reading

I know it’s hard to believe, especially for some of the youngsters who might be reading this, but there was a time when air travel was so much nicer than it is today. And no, I’m not talking about back in the 40’s! If you were waiting for a flight to depart and there was a problem, the airline might move you to a competing company to make sure you got to your destination. They might even do that if it was your fault, like getting to the airport late and missing your flight. Not that I have any firsthand... Continue reading

Don't forget to join us this Thursday for a fun talk about media, marketing and #GenZ. Sydney Polinchock & I will be talking about: The relationship between Gen Z and technology. What media are they consuming? How is this influencing the way they spend your time and money? What is the biggest challenge in marketing to Gen Z right now? What are marketers getting wrong? Who is getting it right? What marketing campaigns are resonating right now? What trends are you most excited about moving forward? * What trends are you not excited about? Hit the link here for additional... Continue reading

I've noticed something lately as it relates to my content viewing habits. I watch a lot of shows for one season, but rarely have I watched beyond that. Even shows I really like, it just seems to be very hard to keep going into multiple seasons. I have one season attention disorder! Now, clearly, part of the problem is me and my normal ADHD, but I also think the way content works today is part of the problem. One I was growing up, there were two TV seasons, the fall and the spring. You knew that shows generally started in... Continue reading

A few days ago, I posted What will Retailers Do Post #Covid19? and started the conversation about what we need to do as an industry to recover when the coronavirus threat is over. It reminded me of a previous piece I wrote almost 20 years ago. Back in 2001, I was on deadline to turn in an article that would be of interest to the theme park industry the week of 9-11. Needless to say, that deadline passed and it was another few weeks before I was able to write again. The challenge was that I couldn't figure out what... Continue reading

With #Covid19 closing everything around us, we're all either in a lock down or panic mode. In the NY metro area, everything has been closed. My daughter is home from college for the rest of the semester and everyone is trying to figure out how long this will last. Lauren Thomas, writing about the industry at CNBC, had an article indicating that retail closures could top 15,000 this year. On top of everything that's happened in previous years, I'm sure this was not the year retailers wanted. Here at the Lab, we've been talking about the importance of creating authentic,... Continue reading

We'll be at Euroshop next week, looking for new companies to join us at the Lab. If you'll be there as well, let us know, we'd love to meet! You can reach out to Jim Ackerman or Mitch Edelman to schedule a time to meet. We'll be at the show all day Monday - Wednesday and available after hours as well. Looking forward to meeting in Dusseldorf! You can click here to learn more about what we offer to members, including: Shared Space working with BEL design team Access to tech member network spaces while in NY Client support for... Continue reading

Over two years ago, Paul Dietz, an old friend who used to run the Mitsubishi Electronics Research Lab, reached out about a new company who was developing with some technology that he said would blow me away. He showed me some videos and they were pretty damn cool, I had to admit, but I'm not sure I knew what they were showing me. So Jim Ackerman and I went to visit their space in Redmond and we were just blown away. Parallel Reality was one of those technologies that was really just magic to me. This technology innovation allows a... Continue reading

Unlike most folks my age (60), I'm actually on TikTok quite a lot these days. Started as research for a client and frankly, was pretty addicting for me. In fact, I recognized Charli D'Amelio before I recognized Boomer Esiason in the Sabra hummus Super Bowl ad. She has about 1.7 billion view of TikTok, far more than most brand views I've tracked on the site. Yes, there are a lot of things that are just silly and yes, most of what's happening on TikTok isn't fundamentally different than what's come before it. Frankly, many of the things I watch on... Continue reading

Last weekend, Jim Ackerman and I had the chance to go down and help the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU celebrate their 20th anniversary. The Brand Experience Lab is starting to work with them on a number of initiatives and hope to have some of their most exciting technologies here in our space in Jersey City early next year. Some 20+ years ago, I had the great fortune to meet Don Marinelli, then the Associate head of the drama department at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and and Scott Stevens, then with the computer sciences department at CMU. At the time,... Continue reading

Had a chance to visit the brand new, Toys R Us at the Garden State Plaza on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the first of their new physical stores. Not surprisingly, the first thing you can notice is how small the store is compared to their previous stores. They are currently opening up two locations, the one we have here in NJ and a second one in Houston. While a traditional store from the first version would've been around 40,000 sf, the store I visited was about 6,500 sf according to reports I've read. Also understand that future stores will be... Continue reading