James Tenser

Storyteller-In-Chief at TensersTirades.com

Eye-Opening Short Film on Food Security

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Watch 'Man in the Maze' on Vimeo

THOSE OF US who live close to the Nogales port of entry (about 90 miles south of Tucson) are at least dimly aware of the colossal flow of fresh produce that crosses the border from Mexico every day. The food helps sustain us, but there is also an appalling amount wasted that could improve the lives of people in need of improved food security.

Today I became aware of a short documentary film that explores several facets of this reality. The film-makers did such a fine job that they were honored with a Short Film Challenge award from the Sundance Institute.

I learned about this remarkable piece of story-telling from a great article on Tucson.com by Kathleen Allen. She did solid job of collecting relevant links and comments about the film.

Although not addressed directly in the film or article, I think part of the challenge may relate to long and costly delays at the border crossing. I wrote about this issue here in a 2009 Tirade, “Watching the Wheels.”

© Copyright 2015 James Tenser

Contactless Payments — What’s Taking So Long?

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Mywallet in PolandIT’S BEEN A HALF-DECADE since I first got religion about the potential for “contactless payments” using NFC-enabled wallets in mobile phones. A very bright entrepreneur brought the concept to my attention and asked me to help advise his new firm. I agreed and got myself launched up the learning curve.

Most readers probably know that NFC (near-field communications) is a form of wireless radio that works only across a few centimeters. It’s perfect for enabling a mobile phone to communicate securely with a point of sale terminal. If the phone has an NFC chip and wallet app installed, a tap can function as a substitute for a card-swipe to enable payments and even frequent-shopper redemptions in a few milliseconds.

Mobile wallets are gaining traction throughout the developed world. The image reproduced here documents Eurobank’s version in Poland. Here in the U.S. we observe a slower pace of development, although the recent launch of Apple Pay seems to have kicked up the interest. Then again, yesterday’s disclosure of a data breech affecting the competing CurrentC service from Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) has a lot of heads shaking.

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Where’s the ROI for Social Media?

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AN INSTANT POLL that recently appeared on the home page of CPGmatters.com sheds some light on an important part of social media evaluation; namely, Return On Investment. Every CPG company of consequence has a social media strategy nowadays.

So do marketers think social media is a success?

ShopperTech.org
This article originally appeared on ShopperTech.org

Not really, say nearly nine of ten executives who took part in the poll. Only 12% say that social media is a success in CPG. Three of four respondents say concern over ROI is holding back success:

  • There is not enough ROI so far to be a success (19%)
  • It is very difficult to measure ROI at this time (56%).

Meanwhile, 12% say it’s too early to determine the success of social media in CPG.

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SCAMP: Deconstructing Shopper Experience in a Big Data World

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Download Presentation (PDF format)

HOW SHALL WE UNDERSTAND SHOPPER EXPERIENCE in the present era of digital and social media immersion outside the store?

I’ve been insisting for some time now that the walls of the store are dissolving before our eyes as shoppers arrive pre-conditioned, pre-considered, even pre-decided due to their SoMoLoMe experiences outside of the building. Earlier this month I had the privilege of sharing some ideas about the flip side of this equation as participant in an excellent webinar, “Digital Disruption and the Retail Experience: Earning Loyalty in the Age of Empowered Consumers.”

Click to view recorded forum

The event was part of the Customer eXperience Thought Leader Forum series, produced by our good friends at CustomerThink. Conformit sponsored. I joined Miguel Ramos, Mobile Practice Lead at Confirmit, to explain how the retail enterprise can be re-engineered for success in the age of empowered consumers.

To make my points, I updated SCAMP, a model I developed for understanding customer experience in the physical store. The new wrinkle was to examine with a few examples how social, mobile, and digital experiences are influencing retail experience engineering in an era where Big Data flows can overwhelm store data. SCAMP is a model with five pillars: Service, Convenience, Ambiance, Merchandising, and Price, I originally proposed here in TensersTirades in 2008.

I invite you to click the images above to access the full webinar recording or to download a PDF copy of the slide deck.

© Copyright 2014 James Tenser