To make a successful leap into curated commerce, brands need to understand what is driving their consumers there in the first place, says M&C Saatchi Strategy Planner Katherine Paphitis.

The act of ‘social shopping’ has evolved over the last few decades.

We have seen shopping migrate from purely offline – purchasing items with the approval of friends by your side – to being socially activated online – purchasing via new affirmative networks in Pinterest, Polyvore and Svpply.

In 2012 this new crop of ‘curated commerce’ destinations are starting to gain traction.

What is ‘curated commerce’ you ask? Think of it simply as online social networks which let people tag any interesting thing they find online to profile pages.

The majority of tags are either products or images, which link back to brands’ e-commerce websites in some way so that users can ultimately purchase what inspires them.

As with most digital innovation, these sites are enabling people to do the things they’ve always done; just in a much more immediate, seamless and public way.

Their real success, however, lies not in the channel, but in their ability to tap into intrinsic human behaviours, five of which are discussed below:

Our primal urge to hunt and gather

We want to keep things that make us feel good and we like knowing they are kept somewhere safe – a treasured shoebox full of life’s memorabilia.

By hunting through the web and other people’s curated profiles, users can gather, or ‘curate’, objects of desire to bring back to their own profile pages.

Our desire for instant gratification

From early childhood, the natural human desire is to have what we want right now.

Curated commerce sites allow for instant gratification through their ‘Buy Later’ or ‘Pin It’ Buttons integrated into the Bookmarks Bar of the user’s search engine. This makes it possible to see desirable content from across the web and attain it immediately.

Our guilt-avoidance instincts

Think of window shopping – browsing shops with no intent to purchase takes away the guilt or financial constraints.

Similarly for curated commerce, the transaction is separated from the browsing experience, so any post-purchase dissonance is removed from the user’s relation with the site.

Our innate herding mentality

When social groups form, it is likely the herd will move together. "Benign" herding behaviours occur frequently in everyday decisions based on learning from the information, opinions and preferences of others.

Likewise, these sites provide the user with the means to find and ‘follow’ like-minded people with whom they would otherwise have no opportunity to in real life or in other social media channels.

Our basic need for self-actualisation

We all have an urge to express ourselves. This comes down to the desire to create our ideal selves and our dreams; and showcase these to the world.

At its most basic form, curated commerce provides a simple and visually rich public forum for creative self-expression. It is the overtly conspicuous nature of sharing this curated content that makes these tools fun to use in the first place.

A part of self-actualisation is also a desire to seek validation in our everyday decisions or actions.

A simple validation mechanism is harnessed in the default settings of these sites, which notifies the user by email of others’ interactions with their posts.

Seeing this instant interaction with content they have shared provides powerful positive reinforcement for users to keep engaging with the site.

By starting with a deep understanding of the innate human behaviours being appeased by curated commerce sites, brands can leverage the power of the ‘social shopping’ evolution.

If harnessed correctly, this knowledge will provide brands a new opportunity to engage with their consumers in richer and more meaningful ways.

 

M&C Saatchi Regional Creative Director Asia Pacific Tom McFarlane offers a creative's critique to a trade mag's critique of creative.

I’ve been an avid reader of AdNews since I began in this business, which must be about 420 editors ago.

And I still enjoy it.

Well most of it.

Everything but Creative Choice really.

By now everyone knows how I feel about the proliferation of self-flagellating forums in the trade press.

Creative Choice is of course a misnomer, as the contributing critics have no choice.

They’re simply given half a dozen disparate ads to dissect and discuss.

But forget the randomness of the approach, let’s look at the randomness of those chosen to critique it.

I know our industry inhabits a very small pond so there’s a paucity of big fish.

I also know, that a bit like a 5-year-old’s birthday party, AdNews has to give all the kiddies a go.

But please, is it too much to expect that those chosen have earned the right to judge others?

I know I’d rather have my work judged by Messrs Brown, Blackley, Belgiovane, Cummins or Keogh et al.

In short, they know good work from bad.

It might also be useful if the critics had some inkling of the strategy, task at hand and the target audience. Without it, their outpourings have little more validity than that old chestnut “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like”.

Now for a confession.

I was goaded into writing about Creative Choice by a recent critique of our EFTPOS work.

One critic decided to not only question the idea, but challenge the whole strategy.

“I don’t buy the insight”, he proclaimed.

(Is anybody else as bored with the word insight as I am?)

Okay, so already he knows more than the Strategy Planning Director, research folk and the very smart group of clients with vast experience in the financial services category, who’ve worked on this project for months.

Our critic then goes on to ask:

“Why are queens featured in the spot claiming they are kings? Confusing.”

Not to most people according to the research.

This is followed by –

“Maybe I’m being to literal?”

Yes, depressingly literal for somebody with the title “Creative Director” after their name.

Then comes the predictable doozy.

“Also the EFTPOS loading page is hardly fit for a king.”

Look I know you’re a digital guy, but you were asked to critique a TV commercial. Stick to the brief.

Am I playing the man rather than the ball (well I’m a Collingwood supporter, so Melbourne readers, draw your own conclusion).

No I’m not beating up on the critic, I’m questioning the process. I’m sure he is a very nice guy. And at the risk of retreating to a more conciliatory tone, at least he had the courage to speak his mind, unlike a lot of the beige contributors to Creative Choice who are overly worried about offending a potential employer.

While I’m on the subject of critics and trade magazines, the quote of the year (thus far) popped up on a rival magazine’s online critique of Harvey Norman’s advertising.

One pundit proffered this little gem:

“The problem is that the (Harvey Norman) brand doesn’t make me feel anything beyond cheap.”

Mission accomplished I’d say.

For all those readers champing at the bit to critique these musings, I offer a few words from Somerset Maugham.

“People ask you for criticism but they really only want praise.”