Let your avatar do your living for you

From Mashable
This is an awesome example of a brand getting the social platforms it wants to engage in, then delivering relevant value that's tied back to the band...


Coca Cola’s Facebook App, Burn Alter Ego
We’ve seen some pretty interesting advertising campaigns that utilize Facebook’s platform for integrated applications, such as Bob Dylan’s. Most of them have been pretty cool, even in their blatant attempts to get users to spread a brand’s name around to their friends. Coca-Cola’s latest, however, seems like it could be fun.

It’s branding is rather subtle–if you add the app to your profile (click here), you may not even recognize that it’s a marketing effort until you’ve gotten it all set up and begin to play. The product being promoted? Coca-Cola’s drink Burn. The app itself? An avatar alter ego that goes clubbing at night, and reports back in the morning. That report shows up on your Burn app blog, your profile page, and even your newsfeed.

You can choose to go out with your other friends that have added the application, or make new friends while your out. Who knows? You may even bump into a celebrity avatar, and have all your friends thinking you were out with Paris Hilton last night.

At any rate, there’s a bit more to this application than trying to trick your friends on your newsfeed. The more you go out and enjoy the Burn night life, the more options you’ll unlock for your avatar. New outfits, hair dos, furniture for your apartment, and more. Looking through the application’s unlockable extras, there don’t appear to be too many more than what’s already available, so I’m curious to know how far Coca-Cola plans to build out the Burn application and others like it.

Depending on the success of the Burn app, however, and the potential for other services like SceneCaster may be recognized even faster, for use as branding tools across social networks.

Blogs get airbourne

Thanks PSFK for this on blog content hitting the skies:

On our recent flight on Virgin America to SFO we noticed that music blog/label RCRD LBL has a music channel on their In Flight Entertainment system. VA also has video podcasts from Boing Boing, Digg and TED which are updated monthly.

Charles Ogilvie who created and runs the system told PSFK that the new airline hopes to have more daily blog content to sit alongside traditional media when they launch their Read section of the IFE.

Virgin America

Mobile banking

This from NewsOK By Don Mecoy - Business Writer
Seems even in the US they are ready for the mobile and money to meet

Online banking, a concept introduced just 13 years ago, has reached a point that many customers won't do business with a bank that doesn't offer it.

A 2007 consumer survey found that 85 percent of respondents wouldn't bank with an institution that didn't offer online banking. Nearly two of three respondents said they would move their finances to another institution that provided more robust online banking features, according to the CashEdge survey.

Roger Beverage, Oklahoma Bankers Association president, said electronic banking is now an expectation for customers and a necessity for banks.

"If you're going to maintain loyalty of customers — not just satisfaction, but loyalty — you're going to have to continue to explore ways for them to do business with you. And electronic banking is certainly one of those ways,” Beverage said.

Now that 40 percent of consumers have demonstrated willingness to bank via computer, mobile phone banking is the next wave, experts say.

"It will evolve into a mobile wallet, allowing banks to generate greater electronic payment volume through the combination of electronic loyalty programs, mobile marketing, and contactless payments,” says Dan Schatt, author of the report and senior analyst at Celent.

Despite the convenience of electronic banking, there remains a niche for the classic bank branch. In fact, customer satisfaction surveys show that smaller banks and credit unions do a slightly better job of pleasing customers

Enhance Real-World Shopping With Web Tools

From Adage published: April 21, 2008 BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com)


-- Procter & Gamble Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel ranks it among the company's best digital initiatives, and Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley called it out to analysts in February as a prime example of innovation.

Kiosks are taking info from online to in-store.

But it's not just P&G that's impressed with Olay for You, an online product- recommendation program that's attracted more than a million visitors since January, 80% of whom completed an involved question-and-answer process and spent an average of eight minutes on the site.

Wal-Mart Stores has begun testing an in-store version of Olay for You via kiosks in stores, marking the latest of several efforts in which offline retailers are looking to tap the convenience and functionality of online tools, such as search and recommendation engines, to improve the often-annoying offline shopping experience.

It may not be a bad idea. Even as overall retail sales started tanking late last year, online retail sales were growing at healthy double-digit rates, according to ComScore and Nielsen Online.

Ease in the aisle
For the growing number of consumers who prefer the online experience to traditional shopping, the ease of finding products and getting recommendations clearly is a draw, said Carter Cast. Mr. Cast, a former CEO of Walmart.com and head of strategy for Wal-Mart Stores in the U.S., became CEO of fledgling specialty online retailer Netshops late last year.

Because of expectations created by web shopping, consumers increasingly expect offline stores to have the goods they want and make them easy to find, Mr. Cast said. "So the ante is raised in the physical world."

Unfortunately, stores aren't always anteing up. "I've read statistics that show a surprisingly high number of people [more than 10%] will go into a big-box and leave without [buying anything] because they haven't found what they want," he said.

Though he hasn't seen some of the newer systems in stores, such as the Olay system being tested by Wal-Mart and P&G, he said they have potential. Mr. Cast also said more retailers will look to mimic the online experience by porting inventory data from their stores to their websites to give consumers real-time information about product availability.

OTC offline
Another take on the online-to-offline phenomenon is Evincii, which began installing kiosks offering a mix of search and recommendation-engine capabilities in the over-the-counter-drug sections of Longs pharmacies in California in 2006 and is looking to roll out the concept nationally.

Johnson & Johnson is an initial advertiser on the system, which allows advertisers to place ads similar to online display ads, including video, around search results.

But like Google or other search engines, Evincii looks to return "organic" results only based on the criteria shoppers input, such as their symptoms, said Charles Koo, CEO of the private-equity-backed venture. Then, once they've selected a product, the kiosk helps them locate it on the shelf.

Not only does Olay for You appear to have had unusual success -- consumers like the site so much that about 7% have contacted P&G's consumer-relations staff to say so, more than double the average for online initiatives -- it also comes from an unusual source. It was created by Talk Me Into It, a digital agency founded last year by Marie McNeely, a former global equity director on P&G's fabric and home-care business for Saatchi & Saatchi, which handles creative duties both for Tide and Olay. It's the first project for Talk Me Into It, which has offices in New York and New Zealand.

Helping hand
The idea was largely to help Olay, and consumers, cope with a downside of the brand's success over the past eight years: A proliferation of products and product ranges has made it difficult, particularly for newcomers to the brand or category, to know what they should buy or even where they should start in making a decision, a P&G spokesman said.

While P&G has tried in-store kiosks before with such brands Clairol and Millstone coffee, Olay For You's combination of a highly graphic, iterative interview process and a soothing female voice may come closest to actually simulating a customer-service rep.

But while all the systems sound like good ideas, James Sorenson, exec VP-retail and shopper insights for TNS Sorenson, said getting consumers to search online in the store may be a nonstarter. While consumers might be willing to spend the time to do search queries from the comfort of their homes, doing it in stores is another matter, he said.

Mr. Koo, however, said Evincii's research at Longs indicates that 15% to 18% of visitors to OTC-drug departments use the kiosks, numbers similar to those that ComScore found last year of consumers who use online search to research package goods. Stores using the kiosks, he said, had category sales lifts of 3% to 6%.

"That was a surprise to everybody, because we thought initially it was just a good vehicle for advertisers," Mr. Koo said. "But it certainly helped retail sales, too.

Great example of data made beautiful

Also from Contagious, a fantastic example of how the imaginative use of data, this time comments and profile information from dating sites, can turn information into something creative and visually stunning that can be interacted with in the real world... awesome

The wonderful Jonathan Harris of 10x10 fame has launched www.iwantyoutowantme.org with Sep Kamvar. The project has been commissioned by New York’s MOMA to explore the search for love and online dating through his res touch screen monitors. Have a look at the installation here:

A real, virtual life getting closer?

Here's a link BusinessWeek's special report on virtual life, ' the coming virtual web' section: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070416_780263.htm

They are putting the arrival of a functioning virtual web as decades away... i personally think it'll happen somewhat faster; most likely driven out of Asia where the ability of people to have virtual selves, combined with anywhere, anytime access via mobile phone, will make a viable, parallel life a reality.

Imagine... Send you virtual self off from your phone to do your shopping, news gathering, banking and maybe get lucky...

Check this out from Vollee

Cooooooooooooooooool webcam driven interface

Found on Contagious - Mouse No More - 22/04/2008

The bizarre technologies of Minority Report are becoming increasingly likely every time we look up. Microsoft’s Surface technology was followed quickly by its miniature parallel the iPhone and now even musical loon Björk is touring with a reacTable. This kind of advanced interactivity is now coming to websites, thanks to UK design agency Clusta who have developed what they claim is the first ever commercial website to be navigated and controlled by movement, picked up via webcam.

The technology has been developed for Publicis and Hal Riney (www.hrp.com) with a demo hosted at http://hrp.clusta.com. The site is controlled by waving your hands to virtually touch or swipe the screen, connecting with ‘hotspots’ to navigate through different areas of the site.

Matthew Clugston, creative director at Clusta told Contagious: ‘Clusta is trying to create a more immersive and engaging experience for users - this is obviously something very valuable to both brands and businesses. Hal Riney were brave enough to utilise a technology ordinarily only seen in the games community - but the publicity and the immersiveness we managed to create for the user has paid off for them.’

Clusta hopes that the site could put an end to Repetitive Strain Injury or even lead the way for a computer interface based entirely around gestures and movements. The next step for the technology is to recognise speed of movement and then develop the grabbing and dropping of objects around the screen.

Clugston continues: ‘From there, we’re moving into the realms of virtual shopping where consumers will conceivably be able to virtually walk around a fully functioning digitally created music store to pick up their latest 3D movies. Such technology is closer than many people think and we’re working hard to make that day a not-too-distant reality.’

Philip K. Dick would approve.