Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Life Beyond Facebook
Carnegie-Mellon professor and game developer, Jesse Schell, offers an extremely insightful and thoughtful perspective on how Facebook and "reality-based" social platforms are going to affect our lives as consumers and marketers.

His conclusion, everything we do will be part of a game wherein we earn points toward rewards (social, virtual and real). Brush your teeth? +10 points! Walk to work? +100! Someone link syncs with your Tattoogle AdSense tattoo? +500!

He believes "...It's possible that they'll inspire us to be better people -- if the game systems are designed right."

Do you find yourself --- consciously or unconsciously -- altering your behavior based on virtual rewards?

Thanks to James Vreeland for the link.

Sam Cannon

Consumer Technologies, Ideas and Trends in Europe and What They Mean For Brands
The year 2010 is a date from science fiction.  By now we were supposed to have hover cars, paper clothes, android companions and be happily holidaying on the Moon while robot television cameras kept us safe and secure. 

CCTV may be live and well on most London streets.  But what is really happening in 2010 with regards to Internet technology?  Organic's team in London has been reviewing digital in Europe, looking at what the big themes are and thinking about what this means for brands at the start of this new decade.

image credit: newbirth

How Businesses and Marketers Can Use Mobile For Better Results

Advertising is not what it was ten years ago. The past decade has seen the advent of social computing and mobile technology, two forces that changed the game forever. What will the future hold? From point-of-sale to out-of-home, here are the top five ways we see the device formerly known as a phone changing the game this year and beyond.

1. Mobile will completely revolutionize the way local advertisers can connect with potential customers.
While online display advertising has been incredibly effective for many companies, it hasn't offered all that much value to small, independently owned businesses. For one, the web is good at scale, not so good at precision. It's difficult for mom-and-pops to reach the relatively small audiences that might reasonably be expected to patronize their stores.

A number of new location-based services are beginning to provide attractive alternatives for such small-scale advertisers. Foursquare, for one, allows small business to target offers based on a user's actual proximity to their location. These offers can deliver heightened relevance by appealing to a player's status, nearby friends, or demonstrated preferences. A similar service, Gowalla, has experimented with branded badges and actual prizes that users can win if they check in at a location. Google is also catering more to local businesses by making their Place pages more mobile-friendly. Advertisers can now create Place pages that are accessible through Google Maps, attach mobile coupons, and even include QR code stickers in their window that lead you to these pages.

These examples are really only scratching the surface of what's possible for local businesses through mobile. Expect to see more mom-and-pops jump on these platforms in 2010.

2. Growth in adoption of mobile shopping applications will continue to alter in-store consumer behavior, increasing the significance of mobile in point of sale decisions making.
There are a number of mobile applications and tools emerging that consumers can use to make their shopping trips more efficient, productive, and fun. First, there are mobile price comparison apps such as Shop Savvy, Red Laser, Amazon Mobile. These allow shoppers to compare prices at a given location against nearby competitors and online properties -- an incredibly powerful proposition. There are also crowdsourcing tools like Fashism and BazaarVoice's MobileVoice that help shoppers get outside opinions and feedback before purchasing. These types of apps are prime territory for marketers looking to inject a brand into a target audience's psyche at a critical juncture in their decision making process.
Then there are, of course, mobile coupons, which are finally getting some traction. Zavers, Yowza, mobiQpons and Cellfire are actively signing up small businesses, and it's only a matter of time before big box stores get on board. Add increased consumer adoption, POS redemption infrastructure and a social dynamic and the appeal to marketers will be greater than ever.

All of the above will provide inroads for more effective CRM, specifically, loyalty programs. Consumers checking their phone just before they buy something will create opportunity to deliver more effective personalized messaging derived from prior purchase decisions.

3. Brands and agencies will continue to build branded apps, but will also have more attractive display media options, thanks to Google.
In 2009, we saw a number of brands scramble to check mobile off their lists by creating apps. But now that the marketplace is crowded, many will take a step back and look at media-buying options instead. Google recognizes this; it's why they recently acquired AdMob, i.e., to get a corner on all that in-app content. Google will also build up their network of native app content by making development and deployment of ad-supported apps on their Android platform much easier than it currently is on the iPhone. This is all with the aim of more effectively extending it's AdSense platform to mobile.

Yes, you may say that consumers are obviously keen on micropayments for mobile content. They did, after all, spend $6.2 billion on apps this year, according to Gartner. But consumers are even more fond of free, and in 2010 one way Google will challenge the iPhone is by creating a competitive alternative business model for developers. And where good apps are, consumers go and dollars follow.

Most major carriers and handset manufacturers have multiple Android devices slated for 2010 launch dates, so expect Android's user-base to catch up to the iPhone's by the end of 2010. The web-based Android app store is a hurdle to the experience and doesn't come close to the experience of the iTunes' desktop app. If Google can fix this, then developers may start putting Android first on their product roadmaps.

4. Advertising's outdoor real estate is fast becoming another connected channel capable of delivering high-fidelity digital experiences as unique, varied and measurable as more well-established mediums.
Outdoor advertising has traditionally been very difficult to measure. People move past signs through various modes of conveyance at varying rates of speed making it difficult to know who actually notices a given media unit. Add line of sight and dwell time, and the problem is further compounded.

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) signage is changing all this, and mobile is becoming the key to true measurement and engagement. Using their handsets, once-passive viewers can actually interact with an ad now. For example, Toyota released an iPhone app that let users to draw on the Thompson-Reuters screen in Times Square. Nike's "Chalkbot" allowed cycling fans to have a robot stencil messages of support for Tour de France riders on the pavement via SMS or Twitter. Vans' "Be Here" allowed its users to submit video, photo, or text messages from any of the brand's online properties to be displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square.
In all of the previous examples, mobile served as the glue or connective tissue between outdoor and the web. Indeed, the real potential of DOOH is to blend the digital with the physical world in public spaces. It will also eventually allow advertisers to customize once-mass ads to specific individuals based on data that their phone can reveal about them.

5. Consumers have new power to express their opinions through social technologies from anywhere, anytime. Smart marketers will do all they can to encourage and act on this real-time feedback.
While the crowds may not always be wise, they sure are vocal, and mobile devices are their microphones. In unprecedented numbers, consumers are using mobile-enabled publishing platforms, mainly Twitter, to instantly share their thoughts about products, services and brands.

The best companies have started closing this loop by listening to and acting on consumer's feedback. Some are even creating dedicated apps and services to collect it. Taxihack is a service for commenting live on NYC taxi drivers. SeeClickFix and CitySourced both give users mobile applications for reporting things like potholes and graffiti while out on the town. AT&T recently used a similar tactic with an iPhone app, Mark the Spot, which crowdsources areas of weak reception.

Much of the power seen in these mobile applications is through context attached to consumer feedback. Universal Theatres relies on a SMS response system to test out trailers and gauge audience response during screenings. This in the moment feedback makes for a much more accurate representation of viewers true opinions.

Whether brands carve out a dedicated mobile channel or simply rely on Twitter customer service, we'll see more embracing the feedback loop. The challenge going forward will be an internal one, setting up efficient systems to make sure consumer feedback can be acted on and implemented once it's heard.

How will you use mobile this year?



Allison Mooney and Caleb Kramer from MobileBehavior
Dan Neumann, @dneumann

A version of this post originally appeared on Advertising Age's Digital Next Blog.

Since the OS 3.0 release for iPhone last September, the number of available mobile augmented reality (AR) apps has grown quite a bit.
 
We've talked about a few of them on threeminds throughout the year:
• Yelp's app 
• Nokia's Point and Find 
• Virtual Tennis 

AR is a new type of UI (and user experience), so bugs and features are changing rapidly -- similar to web browsing back in 1994. Remember that?

One cool piece is that Layar's AR app now supports third party 3-D objects. That means that technologists can now build in overlays. And users get new controls that allow them to select multiple layers and control the radius better -- all in a new, less-cluttered interface.
 
It will be interesting to see how these types of interfaces (Yelp, UrbanSpoon, Twitter 360, etc.) are refined and expanded in the future.

Still, there are a few things that might make these interfaces really take off.

1. An aggregator.  A service that aggregates (and filters) content from multiple providers would allow AR to take off - as a publishing platform (similar to the ease of access and standards for Google Maps).

2. Standards.  APIs that make it easy to create AR content, as well as standards for AR interfaces will make AR more of a must have app versus a novelty. A good example is the horizontal gridline seen when using the UrbanSpoon app's AR feature. Instead of AR content moving up and down in the frame as you change the angle of your mobile device (being handheld, sensitive mobile devices will translate all movement into the UI), all content snaps to that horizontal line. 

3. Accessiblity.  AR doesn't necessarily require a visual interface - applications like HearMe are audio-based A' and could work very well for visually-impaired users, as long as the menu systems to get to the AR feature are very easy to use or voice-based.  Conversely, AR content rendered visually could be very empowering to hearing-impaired users looking for information about their immediate surroundings.

What would you like to see?

Jay Bain

The word is out. The Twitter account ShitMyDadSays is going to broadcast. And it's not the first Twitter sensation to land a TV show. In May, we reported that networks might be developing a series based on Twitter. And back in September it was announced that Texts From Last Night is being picked up by Fox.

These account holders are selling out. I don't think their followers will follow them over to the boob tube. Here's why:

1. Censoring. How are they going to get away with saying the F-word on prime time? Maybe they'll take lessons from Battle Star Galatica and make up a new word. Frak? Uh, not so riveting anymore.

2. Lost in translation. Voice to text then back to voice again. Yeah, both ShitMyDadSays and Texts From Last Night originated as something that supposedly happened in real life. But the humor is in the short tweet delivery. Build a 23-minute (I'm giving them a 7-minute commercial break) story around things like, "she sang that 'this little piggy song' to my balls. and somehow made it work, with me only having two balls instead of five." That alone is funny. I really don't want to know the whole story around it. Or, "If mom calls, tell her I'm shitting... Son, marriage is about not having to lie about taking a shit." Are you laughing? I am. But I wouldn't be watching an old man walking into a bathroom. TMI.

3. Too much of a good thing. These accounts have a ton of followers because people get a good laugh once a day or so. Cram it into a half-hour segment every week and it'll get old fast.

4. Wrong audience. Who's reading this on Twitter? The largest users are 30-plus-somethings. Who's watching TV? According to a study on the big networks released last year, it's 50-plusers. I'm not sure my dad would think someone of my generation making a mockery out of what he said is funny.

5. Wrong message. Sure, most sitcoms are simply a bunch of one-off jokes somehow wrapped into a short story. I can't think of many interesting stories around a guy living with his dad. Seems pretty depressing to me. Texts From Last Night isn't any better. It'd be like one big party. A bunch of kids going out every night. What kind of message does that send our youth?

Will Justin keep tweeting quotes once his show airs? I would think he's save all his material for the show. So all those 742,593 readers (as of today) will have to find something else to laugh at. Or maybe he'd still tweet and save the best material for TV, turning his Twitter stream into a second string. In either case, both ShitMyDadSays and Texts From Last Night have jumped the shark.

How long before you stop following?

Update: The link and quote for Texts From Last Night above were originally posted incorrectly. They have now been corrected.

Sarah Jo Sautter

For the past few years, the publishing industry has undeniably experienced turmoil - shrinking circulation, declined ad sales, and an aging reader base. Today, younger consumers are accustomed to consuming content through digital channels, both online and through their mobile phones. Consumers crave real-time information and a social experience. To no surprise, magazines are throwing up Websites and creating iPhone apps in an attempt to hold on to an increasingly tech-savvy audience. Still, Website growth and iPhone app penetration for publishers creeps along at near glacial paces. Alas, a beacon of hope - a shining example of a company that has the potential to stabilize and (dare I say) revitalize the fashion category. And if publishers pay attention to the innovation displayed in this start-up, then every magazine stands to benefit.

As I read the NY Times this week (on my iPhone may I add), I stumbled upon an article about Polyvore. Started in 2007, Polyvore offers a service that has virtually flown under the radar of digital strategist. Their site allows users to take images from around the Web and combine them into collages. Most of the three million unique monthly viewers create fashion collages, mixing and matching their favorite pieces from old and new collections. On average, visitors spend close to eight minutes per session on the site - more than Vogue's style.com, instyle.com and even the NY Times online. So, what's the connection between making collages and saving the publishing industry?
 

I opened up the add-ons tab of Firefox 3.5 the other day and discovered the recommended 5-star add-on Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-out (TACO). It works by permanently setting tracking cookies that are nonsense, and making them persistent across cookie cache clears. With Ad Blockers already popular, is this the next salvo in the marketing versus the world war?

How will this kind of thing change the landscape of what we [as marketers] are doing?

I don't believe this will be a game-changer. The key thing to remember is that, as digital marketers, we are not normal and neither are our friends. 
 
Outside our world:

• People still use dial-up.
• People still don't know the difference between a browser and a search engine. (But really, why should they care? Craig Ritchie talked about this in an earlier threeminds' post.)
• People wouldn't know how to find what a Firefox or an add-on was with a map and Sherpa.

 
People who use alternative browsers and are aware of and install plug-ins are still the small minority of people we reach with our advertising. It's very likely they've already installed plug-ins such as Ad-Block Plus, which hide our banners, and paid-search results in Google.  So TACO would be redundant.

But as this trend increases, and more of these safeguards are built into browsers by default, we'll probably see shifts in three directions.
 

1.      First-Party ad serving. Partnerships with content providers, where ads will be pushed by the host site and data becomes more fragmented as a result.

2.      Rise of Akamai and similar data pipes. They already have access to all of the web traffic out there (more or less). They just need to find a way to make it easily used and they'll start selling ads. No need for "bad" cookies here, Akamai is already everywhere

3.      Opt-in viewing. Increased usage of panel-based, opt-in marketing groups who explicitly give permission to us to market to them.

So not only are the tools changing the landscape, the way we use those tools are changing too. Even if most users aren't using filtering or blocking add-ons, we should be forecasting they might. Our job as marketers is to get into the minds of our targets and ask, "What would ______ do today? Next week?" What else is vying for their attention? And how do we make our stuff more relevant and interesting? Pick up where the post about content over location left off. Tricky? Maybe. But more interesting than the straight and narrow path.
 
Dean McRobie
Stephen Murray
Sarah Jo Sautter

Our little Norwegian-based company, Opera, is at it again with a bold claim that it will "reinvent the web" with its new Opera Unite service.
 
Some of the features available to Mac, PC, or Linux/Unix users:

• File sharing -- securely share files direct from your computer
• Web server -- turns your home computer into a web server via Opera Unite URL
• Media player -- direct link to your music collection from any web browser
• Photo sharing -- shares your image library over the web without requiring a photo service
• Lounge -- self-contained chat service running on your computer
• Fridge -- a place where friends and family can post notes

All sounds good on paper. But we have some skeptics here:

"These Swiss army knife apps that attempt to do everything for everyone tend to fall short in the end. The convenience of having all that functionality in one place often comes at the expense of the robust functionality we expect from dedicated apps.

Take the photo-sharing feature. Sounds nice, but are you really going to use go for that over Flickr or Picasa? Especially if it means fragmenting your library? Will the media player have the codec support I have in my dedicated media player?

Looks nice on paper, but I'm not buying shares just yet."
- Dan Neumann
 
"I'm wondering how this would compare to Google Wave. Google Wave is claiming to 'reinvent email', but it sounds like they are trying to do a lot of the same stuff by making it more collaborative, real-time, and enable sharing."
- Marta Strickland
 
"Opera's promo video and new list of features are uninspired, in my opinion. One could replace Opera with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Xbox, and probably countless other platforms, and no one would notice the difference. This is a failure in branding and product strategy.
 
As for this vs. Google Wave, the Wave team has truly examined the experience from the user's perspective, and uniquely rebuilt communication online, while Opera Unite seems to be just adding on functionality that certainly isn't revolutionary. That is, the elements of Wave aren't new, but most people don't use things like Wikis and Twitter... Wave is positioned to take over because of its simplicity and intuitive structure.
 
And btw... 'Fridge?' Dumb."
-Craig Ritchie

 
These are all valid points and they've left us wondering three questions:
1.  Will people really make the leap from their "trusted" current browser?
2.  How long before other browsers copy these services?
3.  And last but not least, the privacy issue. Will people be fearful of sharing their stuff?
 
Opera has been around for over a decade and had features like tabbed browsing and a search bar at the top of the browser before Firefox did and is looked to as an innovator on the web browser front by companies like Mozilla. So the thought about other browsers copying Opera's services is absolutely correct.
 
Opera claims their mobile and computer-based browsers are very secure - even safer with user data than Firefox and any product they develop tends to include the same encryption and security. Even if people trust that, it may not get past the legal barriers. The file sharing aspects of this product may be frowned upon by the U.S. legal system, as they will likely fall into the same category of services like Grokster and Napster. However, with a much larger following for Opera outside of the US, and being Norway-based, we don't really think they're concerned about that.
 
Do you think the new Opera will do as they promise and "reinvent the web?"
 
Tyler King
Sarah Jo Sautter

A close friend of mine used to work at the Virgin Megastore here in San Francisco. An affable fellow, he coordinated the in-store sets by the rather diverse array of musicians who used to pop up to do a few songs. Increasingly, he also managed other areas of the operation when fewer musicians started showing up. As sales of music slowed and the store grappled to reorganize around merchandising, my friend started to lament his fate within the larger context of music retailing. "I didn't get into this to sell t-shirts," he said to me once. He quit and went back to work as a trombone player in a number of local bands.

Well, today is an interesting day. And somewhere this gentleman is probably going to see this post in my Facebook feed and have an interesting moment of introspection. Because there is not one, but two fascinating pieces of news coming out of Viginland today. First, yesterday marked the closing of the flagship of Virgin's Megastore chain--the 57,000 square foot, two level outlet in New York's Union Square. But much more significantly, today Virgin announced a plan that may eventually prove to unseat Apple's iTunes and redefine the model by which the increasingly digital world of media is consumed. In fact, if you're my musician friend you might want to sit down right about now.

Unlimited MP3 downloads. From the world's largest music family of record labels in the industry: Universal Music Group. For $24.50 a month.

People familiar with the service said it would cost 10-15 pounds ($16.30-$24.50) per month, which could appeal to parents concerned by children accessing illegal sites.
The service, which both sides described as a world first, would allow Virgin Media broadband customers to both listen by streaming and download to keep as many music tracks and albums as they want from Universal's catalog.

The music will be in the MP3 format, meaning it can be played on the vast majority of music devices, including the iPod and mobile phones.

The service, which would compete with Apple's iTunes, is set to launch later this year.

Unlimited MP3 downloads. For a flat monthly fee. Say it again. All of a sudden, the entire model of consuming music is flipped on its ear. Just like that, the primary consideration is no longer the cost or illegality of acquiring music, but the cost of storing it digitally. The ownership issue might even be rendered moot by a new breed of consumer--one who is probably also intimately familiar with the streaming-download model--that doesn't need to own the music to enjoy it pretty much whenever and wherever.

While I couldn't reach Lars Ulrich of Metallica for comment, one has to wonder how this model can adequately support the payment of artist royalties. Moreover, one has to wonder what this portends for all manner of copyright-protected media. Are subscription services the future of other forms of media as well? With this media increasingly consumed via digital device and stored on hard-drive(s), "ownership" in the sense defined by the thousands of LPs I currently have in storage may be headed out the door. We'll just pay some set amount, borrow what we want, in whatever degree of permanence we desire, and then press delete when we're done.

It's hard to believe, but it has been scarcely more than 100 years since the mass marketing of gramophones began and with it the era of the consumption of recorded music. Before that time, the only way to consume music was to see in performed live by someone else, or to play it yourself. With not everyone being talented in this capacity, the world of live performance was where the music really lived. As the record industry matured and American consumerism grew up alongside it, the propensity to maintain large music collections flourished. Now, perhaps the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction. If you can listen to or own virtually any piece of recorded music anytime you want, maybe the thrill and value of ownership is diminished. And paradoxically, perhaps this will return the original form of consuming music to greater prominence. I'll have to ask my trombone-playing former Virgin employee friend in ten years or so.

Daniel Turman

The U.S. Postal Service recently launched a very nice way to use augmented reality (AR). Their Virtual Box Simulator is unusual in that it offers real utility by allowing users to determine appropriate box size for what they want to ship. Simply print out their eagle logo. Then use your webcam.

Branded AR executions are under fire these days and agencies who use the technology are often derided for buying into a novelty that offers little value to end users. Some critics have even gone as far as to draw comparisons with Second Life.

Dan Neumann notes: Recently, I've seen a few executions that seem to defy much of this criticism. This is one of them.

Karri Ojanen wrote about a mobile application that broke through this with entertainment value. The Virtual Box Simulator is another. And it appears to bring much product and service value. How long before the other shipping companies follow?

Thanks to Dan Neumann for the link.
Sarah Jo Sautter