Soon I’ll be trotting off to Greece to attempt something I’ve never been able to achieve before: a tan. So, unfortunately, this will be the last post for the month of August. It’s about a virtual supermarket in South Korea, a really cool innovation thought of by Tesco (or Home Plus, as it’s known over there) that brings the supermarket to the subway station…em, virtually.
This isn’t strictly about advertising, but it certainly is about marketing. You’ll often hear people demand, quite forcefully, that advertising and marketing are completely different things, as if it actually mattered. It doesn’t. It’s just more business jargon; nobody in the industry is going to accidently start ‘advertising’ when they were supposed to be ‘marketing’. And besides, in my opinion, the two should always be worked on in close collaboration anyway.
This isn’t strictly about advertising, but it certainly is about marketing. You’ll often hear people demand, quite forcefully, that advertising and marketing are completely different things, as if it actually mattered. It doesn’t. It’s just more business jargon; nobody in the industry is going to accidently start ‘advertising’ when they were supposed to be ‘marketing’. And besides, in my opinion, the two should always be worked on in close collaboration anyway.
Anywho, this ‘marketing’ innovation is a fantastic idea, especially since the Internet is being shoved onto the mobile scene at a hectic pace. The video above mentions that Korean people are the second hardest working people in the world (which is a bit ambiguous, but I’ll take their word for it), and that shopping is a dreaded task. Personally, I don’t agree. I find food shopping so exciting that when I was younger I got way too giddy and had a major shopping trolley accident. My dad still hasn’t forgiven me for the embarrassment. But whether you like supermarket trips or not (or coasting along on trolleys like they’re giant scooters), you have to wonder whether this idea will take off around the world or not...
I can definitely see this happening in Manhattan, New York. A lot of the signs would point to its arrival: lack of building space for new supermarkets, hard-working and time-consumed people, a love of new technology, and…hipsters. I don’t like making predictions that are too long-term, so I won’t speculate about somewhere like London yet. I’m not sure if it would be as socially acceptable over there to start scanning Tube trains for your groceries. Plus you can’t riot and loot a virtual supermarket, so I’ll at least wait until the madness calms down before guessing if the UK would fancy it or not.
