Play is the thing?
Why stay in a regular room at the Wynn Resort when the Cabanas are "The ultimate in luxury?"
This is exactly what a widget can ask at checkout.
Well, if Shakespeare were alive today writing copy in Vegas, he might amend it to something like, "The luxury upgrades are the thing."
The only thing Vegas may have in larger numbers than gaming tables are the endless array of upgrades. Who wants to stay in a regular room when there's the suite? Who wants a suite when there's the supreme suite? Why go to a club if you're not allowed in the VIP room?
This world of endless, luxurious upsells becomes super-powered in a widget.
If someone finds anything in Las Vegas that isn't upgradeable or combined into a package, please leave that comment below.
To start, brands can put time on their side. Once someone has started the reservation process, special upgrade offers can be automatically triggered and made time- or action-sensitive. Like a Vegas version of the Amazon Gold Box, users could see a message like, "Our King Suite is now available to you as a discounted upgrade for the next 38 seconds."
Brands can use the same impulse techniques to add more luxury to every reservation.
Upgrades are just the start to what can be customized in real-time for widget users. Since each desktop application is unique, brands can create complete vacation packages personalized to the trip in real-time at any point in the decision-making process.
Glam up the desktop
Even my poor Photoshopping shows just how much more powerful Cirque Du Soleil assets are when applied to the desktop.
A big part of the draw of Las Vegas is the aesthetic: the constant parade of visual pleasure, especially when compared to life back home. In Las Vegas, making the ordinary extraordinary is an essential element to brand equity.
This metaphor is equally powerful when applied to people's computers. Is there anything more mundane than a computer desktop?
Desktops across the country are crying out for a Vegas-style makeover, transporting them to the fantastic-fantasies-come-to-life that make Vegas the destination it is. Just think of the appeal of Vegas showgirls presenting outlook reminders, or trapeze artists dangling from the perilous heights of the top of the monitor. This is the kind of breakthrough branding that is only possible through a BDA.
But adding a little Vegas means more than merely decorating the desktop. It is establishing a consistently reinforced branding message for the resort, and reminding users every moment they're on their computer where to go when they visit.
What's more, by having this kind of persistent exposure on the desktop makes that brand the one that "feels right" for the person seriously considering a vacation.
A world without email workarounds
This Mirage email prompting a click to the animation they would have wanted to send is exactly the problem widgets eliminate. They might as well say: "We'd love to send this cool invite to you directly, but we can't email that. Instead, here's a more boring rendition made for your inbox."
Another incredibly useful function of BDAs is the instantaneous communication, making timely messages and promotions 100 percent delivered and granularly segmented in real-time.
Today's Vegas resort emails can basically be split into two categories: special pricing for certain stays and event promotion.
With BDAs, the days of email workarounds are officially over. Resorts can load high-quality video into users' BDAs in the background while their internet connection is idle. As soon as it's loaded, and alert lets the user know there's something new to view, and upon opening the BDA, Tom Jones can croon in all his glory, enticing people to click and reserve their room now.
For special room rate offers, resorts can go far deeper than the seasonal reductions based on demand that happens now via email. Messages and rate specials can be delivered to individual users based on any number of dynamics criteria: the room and stay length of their last visit, favored amenity discounts… anything you can pull as a report in the CRM system can be used to market instantaneously to micro-targeted groups of users directly on the desktop.
And once they've reserved their room, the application can give them a running countdown to their vacation, with an interesting Tom Jones factoid every day, along with the weather forecast for their trip, all in real-time, all without a single email caught in a junk filter.
Next: Back at the office