After the hugely successful Nabaztag, our friends at Violet have introduced Mir:ror. Simply stated, Mir:ror is an RFID reader. But in fact, it is really a pretty complete platform and a gateway that bridges the real and virtual worlds.
Fostering customer loyalty is a key challenge for many brands these days. As our economy shifts from being product-based to becoming more experience-based, Mir:ror allows companies to provide clients with more than just a manufactured static good or a time-bounded service. With Mir:ror, the client’s experience can begin before and end well after his or her contact with the supplier, the goods or the services.
For example, imagine you bought tickets for an event such as a hockey game or a concert. The tickets could include a unique signature, using an RFID tag that costs just a few cents to produce. When you place the ticket on the Mir:ror, it would launch an interactive experience on the client’s computer. The experience can be a one-time preview or it can evolve to show new content at regular intervals up until the day of the event. Content can come in the form of information, education, promotions and other types of multimedia interactions. After the event, clients could scan the ticket stub again to view videos, pictures and personalized messages triggering memories of the experience and creating further engagement. This also provides an easy and relevant venue for promoting the next event, up-selling or cross-selling them similar products or just turning them into fans.
In the off-the-shelf product world, Mir:ror can help extend the “shopping experience” beyond the mall, store, or showroom the product was purchased in. A digital camera, clothing accessory, or even a car key can trigger a personalized and context-relevant experience. A simple scan can provide users with product information, connect them to other users or fans, or present them with related products and services.
The idea with Mir:ror is to promote engagement and to transform from a passive user into an engaged fan.
Mir:ror’s platform is designed to be easy and cost-efficient for brands to leverage to create unique user experiences. The server-side can collaborate with existing web services while client interactions can be programmed in a proven and widely standardized language: ECMAscript (formerly known as Javascript).
One can easily imagine how Mir:ror enabled devices can be integrated into existing social networks such as Facebook and virtual worlds such as Second Life or World of Warcraft.
I’d welcome your comments and would be glad to refer you to our good friends and partners at Violet.
What a great hardware piece Mir:ror is. A lot of agencies are waiting for this kind of hardware to become popular. Imagine the possibilities if we could attach an RFID tag on consumer package good to create a personalized experience. I hope this product will have a huge penetration so we could start working on very impressive marketing innovation.
You should see that !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVC3xVfpnVE
Keren- Thanks for the video hightlighting the features of the Mir:or.
Nabaztag made it on the The Top 10 Worst Gadgets of 2007.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4236755.html?page=5
Here are the highlights
“…you will be sorely disappointed. Also, it often ignores your requests and kind of doesn’t work.”
“It costs $165, and getting it to actually read our e-mails was more harrowing than setting up a wireless network (our old Teddy Ruckspin could have done a better job).”
I am surprised how anyone could herald this as a success. Here are mistakes you can learn from.
As Guy Kawasaki suggests in The Art of Start and again in Reality Check, it is important to design products that trigger emotions. It doesn’t matter whether people love it or hate it, but a product must unconditionally appeal to a market niche.
Excerpt from The Art of Start:
POLARIZE PEOPLE. When you create a product or service that some people love, don’t be surprised when others hate you. Your goal is to catalyze passion—pro or anti. […] Car design is a good example of the love-versus-hate reaction; consider the bifurcation of people’s reactions to cars such as the Mini Cooper, Infiniti Fx 45,and Toyota Scion xB. People are either devoted fans or relentless critics, and that’s good.
Furthermore, Popular Mechanic’s criticism can be made of any ubiquitous computing device on the market, and it so happens that the Nabaztag is a precursor of its category.
However, I agree that although the Nabaztag looks curved and smooth, it has a few “rough edges”.
We are not talking about “some people not loving it”, we’re talking about consistently bad reviews. Your quote is of little consolation to Nabaztag customers stuck with a product with a lot more than a few rough edges who probably feel ripped-off
“http://davortech.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/nabaztag-now-officially-sucks/”
It’s also ironic that you should quote Guy Kawasaki. Mr Kassardjian, reality check: the nabaztag is no Mac.
I think we cursed Apple. They are experiencing major reliability problems. See http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1838713&tstart=15.
Mir:ror can help extend the “shopping experience” beyond the mall, store, or showroom the product was purchased in. A digital camera, clothing accessory, or even a car key can trigger a personalized and context-relevant experience
This also provides an easy and relevant venue for promoting the next event, up-selling or cross-selling them similar products or just turning them into fans.
[...] consumer. The Nabaztag is a connected rabbit that communicates through ambient signals, and the Mir:ror is an RFID reader that acts as a gateway to bridge the real and virtual [...]