Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

• Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago.
• Few monitor their online presence with great regularity.
• Most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information.
• Internet users have reason to be uncertain about the availability of personal data; 60% of those who search for their names actually find information about themselves online, but 38% say their searches come up short.
• Among adults who create social networking profiles, transparency is the norm.
• More than half of all adult internet users have used a search engine to follow others’ footprints.

Get your groove on, DanceJam is coming.  This is a dance-focused social network that is hoping to become the “hub” for sharing and watching dance videos. Who’s it going after?  YouTube! (don’t laugh) Who’s its celebrity sponsor?  MC Hammer (OK laugh).  
 
Currently in Beta, Lil Mama is currently introducing the site, well, it’s better than Hammer. Set to launch, mid-January, beta users can sign up and upload their dance videos.  If their video is voted #1 after launch they win a prize, most likely a Flip video camera.
 
Kari Girarde

In our age of consumption,  this is a great reminder of how we contribute to the dilemma through our work. Hopefully, as we embark on 2008, this story will float in the back of our minds to make our exceptional experiences better for all of us in all respects.  

“From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.”

http://storyofstuff.com/

Heather Murray

A great deal of speculation on the direction of mobile marketing in 2008 has centered on delivery of location based services (LBS).  Industry observers are questioning whether this will be the year when this holy grail of mobile applications finally sees significant adoption.

Few deny the appeal of the convenience and targeting capabilities promised by LBS, yet, until recently, efforts to deliver such services to the mainstream have been hindered by cross-platform and technical limitations.

This year GPS will become a standard feature in new smartphones and Google Maps for Mobile's My Location service will be made available to millions of non-smart phone users. As a result, the technical limitations of LBS will no longer a major obstacle to development.

While mobile phones are seen as the principal platform for LBS delivery they are not the only contender. Recent widespread adoption of personal and in-vehicle navigation units have given the race to deliver LBS a new dimension. Navigation units have always been designed to deliver GPS location information and, when considered in combination with comparatively larger screens and two-way data transmission, the devices are ideally suited for LBS.

Personal navigation units are being scooped up at a tremendous rate and, while their market penetration is nowhere near that of mobile phones, there will soon be enough of them on the street to put them in the category of “viable content delivery platform.”

A further indicator that nav units are coming of age is the recent revelation that one of the first units capable of two-way data transmission, the Dash, runs on an open source embedded version of Linux, OpenMoko. If more manufactures follow their lead we may see some truly exceptional native and web-based applications for two-way nav units very soon.

Dan Neumann

One of the areas I am fascinated by is the debate, especially here in America, between Evolutionary Theory and Creationism.  The debates are intense and both sides tell their own story with a particular style and verve. Well what if the prose was reversed.. it would make for an interesting test.

Well check out this site, it is a really great video art project that retells the biblical and scientific creation stories, with the prose and tone reversed.  This is  very well put together, a lot of fun to watch and does raise the question - is it the philosophy or the way you tell the story that counts ;-)

http://duelity.net/

Baron Conway

If you love the iPhone's CoverFlow navigation but you haven't yet invested in the phone, check out PicLens by CoolIris. 

PicLens for Mac users
PicLens for PC users

PicLens offers up an immersive experience for viewing photos in your Picasa / Photobucket / Flickr albums, in Google Images / Yahoo Images / DeviantArt, with Facebook / MySpace and more. Without leaving your webpage, you can select multiple ways to view photos, including slideshow and full-screen. The best part -- so far only available on Firefox for Mac users -- is the "3D Wall" navigation with scroll bar, which is so cool that even mediocre pictures become enjoyable!
 
Lorna Murdock

 
Read an interview with two Warner executives about the decision in The Washington Post.

Matt Rosenberg

Videotrace does exactly what it sounds like. It enables a user to hand draw a wireframe over a video creating a 3D model that can be skinned by video elements. Check out the video. Totally rad.

http://www.acvt.com.au/research/videotrace/

This is surely going to be in the next release of After Effects.

Sean M Rhodes

JJ Abrams, the creator and producer of the Lost series is back at the viral game again for his theatrical release of Cloverfield.
 
As with the Hanso Corporation for Lost, a fictional corporation, Tagruato has been created to start a buzz and a back-story for the film releasing in two weeks.
 
There really isn’t anything new here (except for the plot clues), but it’s important for us to note how studios and filmmakers are using digital platforms to communicate with fans and thereby creating a longer advertising cycle.  Giving the fans and bloggers content to consume well ahead of release.   Traditionally the advertising push for a theatrical release is 4 to 6 weeks ahead of the release date.   Clues for Cloverfield started about 6 months ago with the release of the teaser trailer.  Its cut very vaguely with little clues to the plot line, but when it was released, the bloggers and Abrams (Lost) fans were set abuzz.  We covered the Slusho microsite last month on ThreeMinds.
 
Cloverfield isn’t the only example of this strategy. WB, the studio for Batman – The Dark Knight has been using the same techniques for the past 6 months, well ahead of its Summer 08 release.  With Batman it seems even more overt with most of the movie being shot on locations with easy access for fans to record and post videos to YouTube and a plethora of thinly veiled teaser sites.   
 
It will be interesting to watch and see how the studios follow users to the web and start using it even more as a buzz generating machine.

Chris Chavkin

Opens with a warm and friendly version of the 2-minute drill.
The Joyride feature is trippy but fun.
And a fun car configurator that doesn't bore you with the business rules.

http://demo.fb.se/e/volvo/c30/sites/C30/

(thanks to Organic alumnus Jonathan Litwack for the link.)

Sam Cannon

All across the country, Hillary fans/haters are communicating back and forth about her surprising win (see below).
 
Mike Huckabee has smartly interjected himself into this conversation with the tagline “Who Can Defeat Hillary?” above all GMail conversations on this topic – likely by purchasing the word ‘Hillary’ for a few cents per click.
 
If you love Hillary, or another candidate, you probably won’t click the link and cost Mike a nickel. 
 
If you don’t, Huckabee has found the elusive undecided voter who is actively thinking about the election.  Further filter that group with those who want to know “Who can defeat Hillary”, and you have exactly the audience Huckabee needs to reach.
 
Google further allows users to filter their searches by location of the user, so Mr. Huckabee could only run this campaign in South Carolina or Michigan if he wanted.
 
Just some food for thought about what types of conversations we want our clients to be a part of and what type of inquiry will drive target customers to learn more.
 
Joshua Fischer

A picture is worth a thousand words. Each year, UNICEF selects a photo of the year with the goal to illuminate the suffering and hope of children worldwide. This year, American photo journalist Stephanie Sinclair's won with her image of a 40-year-old groom and his 11-year old bride in Afghanistan.

Go to Der Spiegel to see 11 other images of children in crisis across the globe.

Sonja Scharrer

Xobni, a new Outlook plugin, truly does aggregate some very useful data, and only after a few minutes of toying with it, I have the feeling I won’t be able to work without it!
  
They’re even using an entertaining YouTube video (similar to Choate) for recruiting:

Apparently they are quite generous and provide all employees with pizza pockets and 11” CRTs!
 
Morgan Tiley

I thought I had seen a submission at one time about Lumosity.com, but I searched and couldn’t find one. Which leads me to the point of my submission: I’m getting old and losing my mind!
 
I used to have a near photographic memory, but I’m losing it fast, and since I hit 40 it’s been slipping away at an alarming rate. Having heard that people who keep their brains active as they get older are less likely to get senile, I decided to step up the amount of puzzles and brain teasers that I do.
 
Not too long ago, I discovered (or perhaps rediscovered? I could swear I had heard of it before) Lumosity.com. It bills itself as “A fast, fun and effective way to take care of your brain.” And it’s developed by “leading scientists”! What more could you want? The leading scientists are mostly neuroscientists from Stanford and UCSF, and Lumos Labs is in San Francisco, so maybe some of you San Franciscans are already familiar with Lumosity, or even have the leading scientists over for your glamorous and intellectual dinner parties.

Check it out at http://www.lumosity.com/

Stephanie Terry

I just finished watching Steve Jobs do his thing at MacWorld today and was really excited to see the new-and-improved Apple TV (”Take 2) which promises to revolutionize my home movie watching experience. It mirrors the incredibly successful iPod/iTunes music ecosystem for movies on the “Big Screen” in our living rooms. No need for a computer, no need for DVDs, no need for Blu-ray, no need for VoD via your cable box. Apple has signed up every major movie studio (huge inventory) and Take 2 will elegantly deliver DVD and HD quality movies to your favorite 56" LCD 1080p screen.

(If you don’t want to watch it on your big screen HD-TV, you can simply transfer your movie to your PC, iPod or iPhone for remote, mobile viewing.)

When the original Apple TV launched last year I rushed to my local Apple store to check it out. I was disappointed by its poor video quality, poor movie selection and clunky interface. The overall experience was sub-par. Jobs admitted this today. He said that Apple had failed to inspire with rev 1.0 of Apple TV.

There is major competition in this space - competing with Apple is Amazon and Netflix plus every cable provider and satellite provider with their own VOD service.

David Card at Jupiter thinks that Take 2 will not be successful. His colleague Michael Gartenberg disagrees.

So, who’s right? What do you think? Card or Gartenberg?

I’m siding with Gartenberg on this one - this is a winner in my eyes:

• Ease of use (Apple’s elegant, exceptional experience)
• Breadth of content (Every major studio is already signed up and their entire collective catalog will become available on this device)
• Lets me watch it on my HD-TV the way I like to watch my movies (No need for a computer hookup, no need for DVDs, no need for an expensive Blu-ray, no need for VoD via your cable box)
• Choice of viewing device (When I’m traveling I can take my movies on my iPod or laptop)

Some friends and I play in a garage band for fun and guilt-free beer-drinking on weeknights (which I guess amounts to the same thing). Recently we recorded an album, and decided to create a label and release it online. We managed to get listed on iTunes, eMusic, plus physical distribution through CDBaby. It’s cheap to do, we sold a few (I suspect to friends and family), and getting “sales figures” made for some cheap entertainment.

But recently, a Google search showed us our little CD was listed on a Russian Mp3 Torrent site for free download. And then shortly afterwards, on another mp3 site. And another! We were fascinated by this: where had they got the CD from? Surely no one would bother uploading our album — I mean, who would want it aside from our friends anyway? Do these sites employ some sort of bottom trawling methodology, where they simply troll BitTorrent and scoop up whatever’s out there, in-demand or not? Or perhaps someone simply uploaded it as a form of social currency?

Oddly, one site also offers users the ability to “Download it legally for .09¢ a track!” Now, obviously we have no agreement with them, so we were mystified by the legal claim (aside from it being an outright lie). It turns out copyright law is, not surprisingly, quite different and a little murky in Russia. As long as they are giving a piece of sales to the Russian Licensing Societies, it’s arguably legal there and hard to stop -- as the RIAA found out when they finally managed to shut down the huge allofmp3.com, only to see it replaced by myriad others.

What this makes clear is that the scale of music sharing/piracy has shifted – it’s a big business now, presumably based on site traffic – as has the definition of “legal” in a global digital marketplace. And while The Porktrashers are amused to see that our album – our little album! -- has been downloaded a couple of hundred times already, if you are a big label, or anyone trying to earn a living selling music the traditional way, this can’t be amusing so much as terrifying. The question is, will this be the shift that finally forces the big labels to change their business model?

Elliott Smith

As convergence descends on the living room we are starting to see a lot of televisions designed to deliver web content over a broadband connection, bypassing a standalone PC. New models introduced by Sony, Samsung and Sharp at CES all showcased various ways of digesting online content. Of the three manufactures, Sharp’s Aquos Net offering was most the most promising. Televisions with Aquos Net include a browser by Netfront optimized for slightly lower resolutions of LCD TVs. What’s nice about the use of Netfront is that the company provides an SDK to help developers port and preview content to embedded platforms. In addition to the Netfront SDK, Sharp is providing its own SDK and developer program to support development of widgets. Sharp’s widgets are similar to desktop widgets in that they are downloaded from a gallery and are designed to be viewed while watching live TV.

I think Sharp has made some good choices with this product. By providing developer support from the outset they are likely to wind up with more content than competitors with closed delivery infrastructures. Let’s hope more manufacturers follow Sharp’s lead and, even better, that real standards emerge in the channel. It’s already a headache optimizing content for multiple browsers.  

 The Chinese online maps site Edushi.com has an innovative approach to circumvent the Chinese government’s control over the public use of high-res satellite imagery. The result? Google Maps meets SimCity. Check out this Shanghai city map for instance:

http://sh.edushi.com

Whether the manifestation is informative and of high usability is debatable, but no one can deny its attraction. Note the McDonald’s and KFC shortcut buttons on the right – the wonders/plights of globalization… Where’s Panda Express?

Fang-Yu Lin

 Virtual Cable™ is a unique display for a car navigation system. The driver sees the Virtual Cable™ image through the windshield. It appears as if suspended over the road, similar to a trolley cable. The image is in true 3D and appears to be a natural part of the landscape. The driver uses only peripheral vision to follow the Virtual Cable™. All components used by the Virtual Cable™ display are currently mass produced for other purposes, so it's not just a pipe-dream.

Imagine driving at night and just following a red cable above your car, that is viewable during the day, as well as during the night, just telling you where to go and where to turn.

The Virtual Cable™ is so powerful, intuitive, unambiguous and safe because it appears and behaves with true 3 dimensionality within the landscape.

More info and live video here: http://virtual-cable.net

Lau Ardelean

Like most design folks – and many others – I’m a big fan of the way Apple has used design to redefine how we perceive and interactive with technology. And like many, I have worshipped at the alter of Apple’s design chief and visionary Jonathon Ives. How could you not?

But this recent posting at Gizmodo makes me feel that while I may not have been worshipping a false god exactly (I subscribe to the Picasso view that “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”), it may be time to explore the some of the Old Testament of Dieter Rams.

There was a fun blog post on Pingdom yesterday that describes tidy data center cabling practices as an artistic expression.  Contrasted with other photos these look like something from a Cirque du Soleil set design, or perhaps a stringier kind of Dale Chihuly exhibit.  If you ever doubted geeky data center guys aren’t creative, your wires are crossed.  Beauty may be found in the starkest environments.
 
Michael Beavers

Lazr Bunny

He and other design-oriented practitioners like Jason Fried at 37Signals have called personas artificial, over-used, and over-hyped.
 
We love personas at Organic, and we use the persona process on every engagement. I have tended to ignore the haters, but this is a topic that won't seem to die.  I think it's time to defend personas.

Many defenders of the persona process point out that personas are just a tool, and that like any tool, they can be wielded poorly.  There are plenty of flawed personas out there, but you should attack the research methods that went into a badly executed persona, not damn the persona concept in general.

Personally, I have never thought of personas as a tool.  Personas are an artifact. And that artifact can be created by any number of means.  Ethnographic research is one such tool.  Quantitative surveys are another tool.  Interviewing product managers or customer service people within a client company are a tool.  Third party research is a tool. 

Great customer insights are generated using some triangulation of these different sources of information, and the outcome of that triangulation, at least at Organic, is the persona artifact.  The persona artifact encapsulates and synthesizes everything you learned from applying your research tools.

To me the form factor of that artifact is a design decision which should suit the context of the client engagement.  It could be a paper doll, sure, but in the past we have developed video montages, physical spaces that represent where a persona lives, a women's purse and all its associated contents. Each of these executions created an empathetic touchstone for the team to rally around.

There is no question in my mind from dozens of engagements that (well-crafted) personas:
(a) develop empathy for the customer in the design team
(b) help us as consultants better understand the nature of the business problem that our clients are facing
(c) create more customer-centric relationships between our clients about their end-users

Maybe where more design-oriented practitioners have a problem with personas is in the way that advertising agencies have appropriated what was a design methodology and made it their own.

http://northsouthproject.com/
 
I love that this initiative takes indigenous techniques and designs from developing countries in the southern hemisphere and adapts them to the contemporary tastes and expectations of consumers in the northern hemisphere. I think the resulting product designs are beautiful – and what a bonus that they are built on such a well-thought out sustainable model. It’s collaboration on a global scale.
 
BTW, I found a write up on this interesting project in Air Canada’s En Route magazine, which is (for an airline rag) an exceptional experience in itself…
 
Victoria Thorpe