Cymbolism is a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect. Taking web 2.0 folksonomy to the next stage, users are invited to organize the definition of color itself with word associations and tags.
Although somewhat obvious and nothing unpredictable, its good to be reminded of the basics. Here is a top ten list for agencies of the future thanks to Sapient and AdRants, including some sarcastic commentary from our friends at Adrants:
1. Greater knowledge of the digital space. (Seriously? That's a stunner!) 2. More use of "pull interactions." (Oh yes they did. They created a new buzzword for social media) 3. Leverage virtual communities. (Apparently, none of the surveyed CMO lived through the Second Life debacle) 4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending. (It would certainly be nice but, in most cases, it's never gonna happen. By definition, most senior management is disconnected from reality.) 5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing. (CDO? Seriously? Did they just create yet another CxO title?) 6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy. (See number five.) 7. Agencies that understand consumer behavior. (Um, yea. Like this is a new one. Not that all agencies deliver on this but this is supposed to be some new quality for agencies of the future?) 8. Demonstrate strategic thinking. ( A survey was needed to determine this finding?) 9. Branding and creative capabilities. (See number eight.) 10. Ability to measure success. (Well, duh! Of course, it's well known most agencies do not deliver will on this one.)
That's right - even banner ads can be sexy (with the bonus of a product demonstration too). Thanks to AdRants for this post.
Zippo Banner Campaign Ingeniously Inventive It's not often online banners excite. Gone are the days a banner would evoke anything other than "Will that friggin' thing stop flashing?!" But Pittsburgh agency Brunner has created an ingeniously inventive banner campaign for Zippo which makes humorous use of the product's primary function. In three version, a skyscraper banner is cut in two. The top half is a fake ad. The bottom is the actual ad for Zippo. The top reacts to the bottom and then the two come together to deliver more information about the lighter. You can see the three versions here, here and here.
An interesting way of ranking trends and displaying information... also a great resource of hot and hyped websites - thanks again to NGT.
Anyone who follows “trends” can tell you that not everything is worth its buzz. So what differentiates a one-hit wonder from the “next great thing”? Well, is it useful? And are people using it?
From the top-left, proceeding counter-clockwise:
1. The Jonas Brothers: Like fellow Disney-backed superstar Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers blasted onto the pre-teen scene (or thereabouts) with all the force of a candy-coated hammer. Sure they’ve got talent, but, like Ms. Montana, there’s quite a bit of hype involved, like a lot of hype. Sorry boys, see you in Tiger Beat.
2. Muxtape: Muxtape sure did have a lot of hype, and then it got served - legally. The hype for sharing personal music mixes survives, though, and it is undoubted that Muxtape is part of a larger trend in mixtape discovery sites.
3. Loopt: This location-based service beat others to the punch with an iPhone app (and popped neon collars.) Too bad it spammed everyone and showed their whereabouts without permission. Any social network-based LBS needs to have numbers to be useful, and Loopt just isn’t there yet.
4. Tumblr: Microblogging met macroblogging with this innovative platform, but Tumblr needs to improve their skinny interface and confusing citations to really win us over.
5. Face Your Manga: There’s not a lot to Face Your Manga, but you’ve never had as much fun wasting time either. So, yeah, it’s mostly hype and you’re not going to get a lot of utility out of it, but you will get a sweet avatar for your Twitter account.
6. Urban Spoon: This iPhone app even made the New York Times coverage when it launched, and while its fun to use the motion sensor, its restaurant recommendations will leave you hungry for a real guide.
7. Twitter Spam: JDE287uh9w8 is following you. Sweet! First random facebook friends, now robots spamming you on Twitter. Not that we have anything against robots, but they often don’t have many interesting things to say.
8. Blanka: If you enjoyed Street Fighter as a youth, or if you still do, chances are - at one point - you took a chance on Blanka. Were you rewarded? Maybe, but it was probably by accident. Sure, Blanka looks tough and if you mash the right buttons, he electrocutes his opponent, but everyone knows that Chun-Li is the best, and Blanka only matches up against Zangief and his inexplicable shin hair …
9. Emotes: They’re not getting a lot of attention and we’re not sure they deserve it yet, but Emotes are an interesting idea. A social site for youth, Emotes allow youngsters to work through their emotions in third person (via the aptly named “Emotes”). There’s a story in there somewhere, but for now it’s an interesting take on the common theme of social networking.
10. Placefav: The unique thing about Placefav is that it cuts to the point with location, location, location. Of all the things we snap on film, place is perhaps the most binding, as it sets a context. Placefav could be big for those who just want their images served up simply.
11. Instapaper: You see a thousand articles a day that are worth reading (RSS - noooo!) but you just don’t have time. While Instapaper isn’t offering you the best-case scenario - a time machine - they are offering the next best, which is a way to read it later. Which we still never did…until the Instapaper iPhone app! Genius.
12. Dodgeball: This LBS is an oldie but goodie that is dead simple to use. While Dodgeball’s time in the spotlight may have passed, we’ll keep “checking in” until something better comes along.
13. Drop.io’s Drop It Toolbar: Drop.io is awesome and if you don’t know, now you know. Even more awesome is Drop.io’s “Drop It” toolbar for Firefox. All you have to do is drag the file to be transferred over to the red dot on your browser. Once it’s done uploading, it will pop up in a new window. It’s easier than cake and twice as sweet.
14. Nokia N95: Speaking of time machines, we’re not sure the Nokia N95 isn’t one. It has everything else: pictures, movies, browsing, texting, barcode reading, video ringers, GPS… At a whopping $900, it’s supplanted the iPhone as THE status symbol for mobile youth. Full posting at: http://www.nextgreatthing.com/wordpress/2008/09/03/introducing-the-hype-rbola/
Thanks to Pete Blackshaw and AdAge - this is an interesting article about motivating employees as brand/company ambassadors. Some great thoughts for BMF and their clients... I wonder what a BMF culture book would entail?
Zappos Shows How Employees Can Be Brand-Builders Is This 'Overlooked Resource' as Important as Paid Ads?
Every year Zappos.com, one of the fastest-growing e-commerce sites, publishes a "culture book." Three hundred pages in length, the book includes written -- and often gushy -- testimonials from employees about what it means to work at Zappos.com.
"Our Zappos culture is truly the best work experience I have ever encountered," writes Chris V. "As a new employee of the company, I was blown away by how amazing the company really was. When I started I felt so unreal," notes David J. And on and on and on -- you get the idea.
Not by accident If you talk to Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh or his marketing chief Brian Kalma, you'll find a plan and a strategy, not to mention powerful, validating numbers to boot behind all this group love. Indeed, the vast majority of trial and repeat at Zappos.com is driven by word of mouth, and employees -- their motivation, their attentiveness to customers, their handling of feedback -- are foundational to that approach.
Mr. Kalma, director of creative services and brand marketing, employs the term "people planning," arguing that each employee needs to be a great point of contact with customers. "We invest the time and money into hiring and nurturing the right people, as many other companies do in their media planning," he said.
It's worth asking, Are employees a de facto ad channel? It might be a crude way to frame the question, but if in fact there's a tangible, measurable relationship between employee behavior and buzz, we can't ignore that free, high-impact employee-generated media -- EGM, if you will -- affects the broader media mix.
Hidden power "I do think that a well-trained, highly motivated workforce that understands the brand, their role in making it successful and who feels empowered to do just that, is any company's most powerful and most underutilized asset," says Rick Murray, CEO of Edelman Digital and board member of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).
Leslie Forde of Communispace, a firm that builds and manages online communities for brands, emphatically agrees, noting that employees are the "overlooked resource." She asks, "How many times have we extended forgiveness or patience to a brand that 'messes up' in a customer service interaction, because the individual employee that we've dealt with is impressive and professional?"
If Murray and Forde -- and countless others -- are right, shouldn't all of us in marketing be dialing this up in importance? Of course, getting this right is easier said than done. You can't just increase employee loyalty and advocacy overnight the way you can with media spend, and not everyone will want to go the full distance of Zappos.com.
To be sure, this is a long-term proposition. "ROI metrics for employee loyalty and education are more complex and require a long-term view," warns Forde. Moreover, employee training isn't necessarily within the scope of the CMO, and the HR department isn't necessarily incentivized to think about employees as brand-building billboards.
Then we have the risk factors. One downside of the employee-as-relationship-builder model, notes professor Tim Heath of Miami University in Ohio, "is employees leaving the company and taking 'their' customers with them, a threat that can be mitigated to some degree with non-compete clauses in contracts."
Worth a try It's a reasonable concern, but hardly a good excuse to sit idle. Indeed, there's a growing list of excellent reasons why we can start connecting dots to at least establish a beachhead to a new model:
Measurements: Let there be no doubt, but today we can quantify the conversation in such a way that we can pinpoint specific "talk drivers" around all aspects of employee behavior. Thanks to consumer-generated media analysis, we can now determine with high statistical significance why employee behavior at, say, Burger King or Taco Bell creates positive or negative conversation. We can even assign "reach" value to the conversation. We can determine just about every nuance related to customer service, which in the vast majority of cases implicated (or rewards) employee training or behavior. Smart listening always sets the foundation for better business processes.
Social-Media Experiments: Social-media tools provide brands with a broader spectrum of "test and measure" tools to pinpoint opportunities to better understand the impact of employee loyalty and advocacy. These tools also provide powerful windows into the character and personality of the employees. Just think about Frank Eliason and Richard Binhammer, the guys who Twitter for Comcast and Dell, respectively. (Disclosure: Comcast is a client.) There's a spirit and enthusiasm in their posts and commentary that reflects both their character and their employee advocacy. Corporate blogs are bringing the same opportunity and value to the table.
Online Video: The rock we've yet to truly uncover around online video is how it can enable brands to bring the character and authenticity of employees to the forefront. The "sight, sound and motion" benefits of employees talking across the video airwaves may well open up a powerful range of opportunities for companies to reap the full benefits of employee advocacy. Just think about Microsoft's four-year-old experiment with Channel9, the video-based employee blog. High authenticity, high impact.
The "New" Customer Service: As Zappos.com would readily tell us, the customer-service channel is perhaps the most critical brand-building arena, and employees are clearly central to this area. Brands should be conducting large and small experiments in this area to understand how a little extra "touch" can impact the game. Social-media tools can clearly help get brands started, but the learning might also start with the good old-fashioned phone scripts.
Rewards and Incentives: If the conversation is so measurable, and the outcomes of employee advocacy are more tangible, perhaps now is the time to create more data-grounded incentive and reward models. If, for example, only buzz directly calls out an exceptional contribution by an employee, perhaps this should be rewarded. Online consumers constantly call out Southwest or Nordstrom employees for going the extra distance. If it's measurable, it's rewardable, right?
I'm not suggesting that every company adopt the Zappos.com culture book. But if conversation is the new gold standard, and employees are consistently at the heart of the conversation, we have a big compelling reason -- and tons of upside -- in rethinking the importance of employee advocacy.
Thanks to FutureLab for this post. This is an interesting test for anyone claiming to use simple and accessible language
"SMOG-ing” or SMOG (aka. simplified measure of gobbledygook) allows you to measure the readability of a text by translating it into a score. This score reflects the years of formal education a person needs before being able to understand what is written.
Using the SMOG calculator of The Literacy Trust in the UK, I tested the SMOG score for some of our brand's using paragraphs from their "About Us" pages (if they were truly customer centric, the language they used should be understandable by the average customer checking them out). Most people understand a readability level under 10.
ClearView scored 20.3 = post-graduate degree required to understand what they’re talking about (the highest literacy level)
Coon scored 11.66 = some high-school needed
Hahn Super Dry scored 13 = some college/tertiary education needed
McDonald’s in Seattle has developed a site where users can stage an intervention for friends who are addicted to snobby iced coffees (specifically going up against Starbucks) to promote their new ranges of iced coffees.... Sounds a bit like last year's dare strategy??
Listen up P&O people... This is a cool site for Viking Cruises (a booze cruise party ship) where you send in a video of you dancing and are matched up with other people that share your dance style. You can then meet up with them on ship to share the disco fever... Very funny to watchhttp://www.dance-match.se/
Medium Has Yet to Pan Out Financially, but There May Be a Solution Thanks to David Carson and AdAge
Online video now boasts a bigger audience than cable television, but its $1 billion in ad dollars is a fraction of the $70 billion in broadcast wealth many assumed would be redistributed. When will online video be the behemoth business everyone always crows about? Maybe when we quit treating its biggest strength as a weakness.
Old model won't fit You see, online video is not TV. Sorry to state the obvious, but even though we all know it's a very different medium, we are trying to force-fit it with a television ad model. Publishers are trying to divert TV ad dollars to online video platforms and feel the need to use the same language and formats as TV. They do this thinking it will help them bridge the knowledge gap and convince TV media buyers to shift their dollars.
It's a critical error. The two media are so fundamentally different that making comparisons in format and language will eventually stunt the growth and impact of online video for creators and marketers alike.
Let me make a comparison. Imagine if Google's search business didn't include AdSense but marketers paid a CPM or flat fee to be listed within search results -- just like the Yellow Pages, or a newspaper. This does two things. First, it makes the search results unusable to users because it's placing paid-for hits above anything more relevant. Second, because the search is now not as useful, its future audience potential diminishes. We would have never experienced the incredible benefit that Google eventually provided to users and marketers. They could have easily gone down this road, but they didn't. They knew their medium was fundamentally different from print and used a new ad model that suited it better.
What's the big diff? So what are the fundamental differences between TV and online video -- and what is the model?
People use them differently. TV attracts watchers, while online video attracts users. When I mention this to people, they always take issue with it. They say that people are, at the end of day, watching video. And I counter that just because TV and online video use moving images doesn't mean they're the same. It's like comparing Google to a magazine, or a newspaper: The fact that they all use words and paragraphs does make them similar in some ways, but they are obviously not the same. One major difference is how they're used.
The internet's inherent strength is as a noisy feedback machine where billions of people can provide input, share, embed, create and sculpt their own video experiences. They become part of the experience, not simply observers -- not unlike the difference between TV and video games. You don't watch video games, you play them.
Televised video has different levels of quality, and so does online video. In each case, the quality is largely in the eye of the beholder, and with online video, the way that the clips are used adds another dimension for evaluation. Nonetheless, though I have seen expensive, professional video get smoked by a homemade video of a guy dancing at a high-school talent show, an advertiser is still more likely to prefer the expensive professional video than the one (er, many) that people actually watch, share, embed and comment on.
So why are we treating this inherent strength of the medium as a weakness? Even worse, why are we blindly accepting that the best way to build online-video markets is by applying an ad model from a completely different medium?
Overlooking the real strength Because that's where marketers put their money. They see video on new boxes and think, "Hey, it's another place to put my video" and miss out on the real strength of the medium. Even worse, online-video companies feed this mentality by trying to showcase what the marketers think they want -- "quality content" -- and dismiss the entire feedback system that tells them what the users are actually doing.
People are not saying, "Gee, I like the idea of video on the Internet, but I'm not going to spend time with it until there is more quality content." The exact opposite is happening. Usage keeps growing as users find, consume, comment on, create and share videos by the billions. There is a value gap. The gap is between what people are actually doing and what advertisers think people should be watching. These two things are simply out of synch, and until we get them aligned, the market will putter along, with many lost opportunities.
People are moving to this new medium with or without the marketers' involvement -- that much is clear. The questions remaining to be answered are whether marketers will see the fundamental value and exploit it, and whether online-video companies will step up to the plate to get them there.
No phone is an island. It needs to connect with other phones, otherwise you’re just talking to yourself. The same can be said of mobile marketing. As a stand-alone medium, the handset is a relatively ineffective communications platform. But in conjunction with other forms–print, broadcast, out-of-home–it can be an incredibly powerful way to reach the consumer.
Just think about how put off people are by the concept of push SMS (i.e. getting pinged with marketing messages). No one wants spam to come to the cell phone, especially not the mobile industry. Phones are personal device (not to mention expensive) so we want full control of them. Not only do we customize them with colors and sounds, but we choose who we speak to, how, and when. Just look at how popular texting is becoming; it’s more popular than voice for young mobile users. There are even services like Slydial that let you dial up voicemail–no conversation required.
So how can brands market to consumers using their phones without pushing to them? Through engaging content and branded utility, basically providing something they want. This can be a mobile alert (your VP pick) or a mobile poll (your favorite performer). But unless there is some outside trigger, how can a brand generate awareness, let alone action?
The key is integration with other platforms that already have the consumer’s interest. TV shows like Top Chef and American Idol have done a great job of using airtime to promote their mobile components. Heart, Conde Nast and Wenner all include shortcodes and QR codes in their magazine’s ads. And services like ShifD (from the New York Times) and Instapaper let readers easily “bookmark” items on both their PCs and phones.
One platform still in its infancy, yet perhaps with the most potential, is out-of-home (OOH). This term, which includes advertising outdoors and in public venues, makes perfect sense for mobile. Billboads can do more than create awareness, they can include an IMMEDIATE call to action. Digital signage can enable a two-way interaction. In fact, any screen can become a touchpoint. Here are some examples in action:
Where’s Koodo? is an interactive game that allows commuters to interact with out-of-home advertising displays. Touchscreen kiosks in Montreal’s subway stations let waiting commuters play a Where’s Waldo-like game as well as check out Koodo Mobile’s phone and additional rate plan information.
Applications from Locamoda, a “social platform that connects people and places,” are appearing everywhere from Times Square to your local pub.
- Jumbli is a simple word game you can play on the big screen. - Wiffiti is their text-to-screen solution - Fotowall lets you send pictures to screens in bars, restaurants and other venues - Touchtunes lets you chose what song you want to play on the jukebox.
Once they have people’s attention, then they have valuable real estate.Advertisers can include a call to action on the screen through Locamoda’s shortcode so you can can get, say, the number for a taxi or a free drink. A smart campaign for Beck integrated with social networks to draw crowds to listening parties at local bars.
Such services will be immeasurably important. Digital is a young person’s main source of communication and entertainment. But (prior to some popular belief) they do NOT want to be sitting in front of their computers all day. They’d prefer to use their down time (commuting, waiting in line) to do things like IM, read sports news, or just kill time with a game. These emerging platforms are letting mobile users interact with their environments–and brands–in ways never before possible.
E-paper isn’t new but this is a cool way of wearing it. Like a slap band, its a bracelet you can wear around your wrist then unfurl to watch a movie etc. the best bit is that its eco-friendly since it is powered from the kinetic energy created by the person wearing it. [Thanks to GlueLondon] Full article found at: http://www.gluelondon.com/newsletter_show_content.php?content_id=399
Dynamic Logic recently announced the aggregate results of mobile branding research studies which compared people exposed to the mobile campaigns to those not exposed, suggesting that mobile advertising can be an effective medium for raising brand metrics throughout the purchase funnel.
An average increase of +23.9 percentage points in Mobile Ad Awareness shows that these campaigns generally cut through and grab users' attention. Average increases in Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent of +5.4 and +4.7 percentage points, respectively, support the ability of mobile advertising to change consumers' attitudes towards a brand and to drive intent to purchase. Mobile Advertising Impact on Brand Metrics
Significant Metric
Positive Impact (Delta % of respondents)
Mobile ad awareness
23.9%
Message association
12.2
Aided brand awareness
6.9
Brand favorability
5.4
Purchase intent
4.7
Source: Dynamic Logic AdIndex, July 2008 (Delta is % of respondents positively impacted by mobile ad exposure. Initial study considered small sample size)
N.B.: These findings are based on 21 mobile ad campaigns across a variety of industries. (Alcohol, Automotive, Consumer Electronice, CPG, Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Telecomm, Travel) The averages could significantly change as the number of campaigns increases, so any comparison made to them is directional.
The report posits that part of the reason for these positive increases may be a result of the newness of the medium. People may be intrigued and pay more attention to the advertising on their mobile phone since it is presented on a smaller screen and is located in a less cluttered environment compared to the Internet.
Michelle Eule, Managing Director of Dynamic Logic, says "... As we do more studies, we continue to build these initial averages into a normative database that can be used for a more granular look into the mobile data... (the) same way our... database is used for online performance benchmarking and planning."
Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President, Digital Sales, MTVN Networks, notes that "These averages clearly demonstrate to marketers that mobile is an increasingly powerful medium for communicating ad messages and engaging with today's consumer... Having initial averages to compare a campaign's performance against can serve as a guideline to what's working and what's not in these early stages of the medium... "
For more information, please visit Dynamic Logic, a Millward Brown company, here.
Targeting 16 yr old boys this campaign for Nestle launched this week and all feasible digital channels have been employed to reach this audience and allow them to share in the fun .
Hans Fagerlund is the spokesperson for the new Kit Kat Chunky Cookies & Cream campaign and is the world Chunga Champion - a game where players manoeuvre their Chunga pieces to form the tallest tower without making it topple. Keep an eye on the tower stability and friction meters as you move the pieces, if you pull the wrong piece you may just find yourself in Tower Falls. Play against your Facebook friends or the world champion himself, Hans Fagerlund.
Take a look at the campaign in whichever environment you prefer - you can add Hans as a Facebook friend; download his Facebook application or Messenger Themepack; watch Chunga-struck on YouTube; visit his MySpace page & become a friend; play the game; win prizes......... every social community you can think of.
Social Media and Web 2.0 is a lot about providing the tools and therefore the means for everyone to create content, that they believe others may want to see. I have personally created a lot of corporate, professional entertainment and music films over the years using high end equipment but now, like many millions around the world, find it a fun and satisfying process to be able to create films and stories in virtual worlds, aka machinima. (Quite a few are over on my personal virtual blog justvirtual)
There are literally millions of machinimas emanating from the likes of World of Warcraft, Sims, Movies, Halo, Second Life, Half Life and many more. Most are done for the love vs the money and some make it onto the big screen. For the creators it is about expressing ‘their’ world and experiences to each other but of course there is something else as important here.
Laurel (heart) talked recently on a machinima I did in Twinity and about the ‘free advertising’ it offers for the brand or platform. For me it is also about creating an environment where simple tools encourage large numbers of people to come together remotely and do real-time, collaborative content creation for extended periods. It makes the world very, very sticky when they have shared creative goals and purpose - not just pre-constructed game play. Some may say game quests are social too and I believe when the players get ‘creative’ with the mechanic and ‘bend the rule’ together it certainly is.
Comfortably Fun
Using game or social virtual worlds to entertain each other in this deeply immersive way, leads us to imagine what the potential will be when bandwidth and graphic realism are no longer limitations. Perhaps a portent of the future here is a machinima I did of a forty three minute performance of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, in a social world, Second Life. It was captured last week and it is useful to remind us all what is going on here. There are around 70 people logged in together in real time from around the world, most audience a few performers. About 8 are ‘animating’ on stage or controlling lights, effects or triggering scripted animations and I am recording the whole thing at the same time. This is digital puppeteering. I captured elements of the performance three times and put together this compilation edit. More after the embed…
So this all started with an invite from a self motivated group, led by Debbie Trilling, who for the love of what they do, created an inworld, cross-reality, musical tribute. CARPs (Cybernetic Art Research Project) inventive and emotionally driven version of Pink Floyd’s 1980’s album was a truly international affair and many hours were spent developing and performing a Virtual Show to this music that reaches a new audience every few years.The reason the music reaches new audiences is because of its use in ‘community created content’ just like this, a far more poignent way to share digital content. More than 2000 avatars have experienced this particular concert inworld generating 10 000s of impressions across blogs and media sites. That is the key point - don’t dismiss game or virtual worlds as being irrelevant because of perceived low numbers - these are active and proficient online users who see the 2D web as a ’simple’ publishing tool and become prolific creators of content and by implication major influencers.
Professional marketeers need to be aware of the power of machinima (consumer films in worlds they are very loyal too) and how by allowing the use of often locked down content is probably the best way to introduce ‘old’ content to new audiences. As an example, while I was putting together this ‘mash-up’ compilation I tried a recording of the reunion performance of the Comfortably Numb at Live 8 a few years ago and was entranced by the synergy of visual and song. Hope you do too. BTW a medium quality (90MB MP4) download of the YouTube above is available here. Worth playing full screen with the volume up and the lights down
To further consider how effective game world movies are. I created again out of a moment of relaxation a ‘flycam’ film around some of my ‘builds’ in Second Life. I like others were entranced by the new feature in the engine, Windlight. This rendered more naturalistic reflections and skyscapes for example. The machinima was a self expressive piece, some improvised guitar and piano and flowing movement, not really an typical ‘traffic’ generating video.
Ticking along at a few hundred views over a month on YouTube then Linden Lab decided to feature it on their machinima page. For a week or so it was getting between two to four thousands views per day. Over the past four months or so it has been viewed over 30 000 times, not bad for an ‘art’ video? But outside the numbers what is the dynamic at play here? Well it is really simple. If you own any space where people frequent, make it really, really easy for them to share their experiences. You scratch their back and they will yours. Give them the tools to make it easy to create professional looking content. Let them do the viral marketing for you. Even though the community realise they are doing you a ‘big’ favour, the joy they get from sharing is part of their own virtuous circle.
Motion sensors on windows enable customers to try on clothing even when the store is closed. Simple reflections in windows coupled with still shots of outfits create an engaging user experience.
A 3M film covering a glass window with rear projection creates this eye grabbing window display. It's able to be updated with new content on a regular basis and themed for store events/seasons.
Introduction | When something previously deemed ‘emerging’ has managed to completely invade the mainstream, you know it's time to throw overboard any remaining doubts and inhibitions, and just get going to claim your shrinking piece of the pie.
Case in point: the near-total triumph of the ‘online revolution’ (1.4 billion people online, anyone?), which now has the ‘offline world’ more often than not playing second fiddle in everything from commerce to entertainment to communications to politics.
In fact, ‘offline’ is now so intertwined with ‘online’ that a whole slew of new products and services and campaigns are just waiting to be dreamed up by … well… you? Our definition:
OFF=ON | More and more, the offline world (a.k.a. the real world, meatspace or atom-arena) is adjusting to and mirroring the increasingly dominant online world, from tone of voice to product development to business processes to customer relationships. Get ready to truly cater to an ONLINE OXYGEN generation even if you’re in ancient sectors like automotive and fast moving consumer goods.
For this briefing, we chose to focus on hands-on innovation. Which to us means coming up with new goods, services and experiences. And as this is about current OFF=ON developments, we’re excluding researched-to-death topics like straightforward ecommerce or cross-media strategies.
After all, it’s the start of a new business season, we’re all busy, and you’re all ready to get something new executed fast. So here we go:
Let’s start with some fun stuff that nevertheless falls into the sign-of-the-times category. To marry well-known digital visuals (from pixels to logos to black-and-white QR compositions) with physical objects creates a powerful OFF=ON message. Learn from:
The Houston Fence, located on the corner of New York’s Broadway and Houston, is a temporary outdoor installation inspired by QR-code patterns. These bar codes, when scanned with a mobile phone, allow pedestrians to seamlessly connect to online content such as websites and blogs. Meant to be read in different scales and speeds (pedestrian, cars, bikes, etc) the two sided-fence uses put-in cups as ‘pixels’ to create a permeable pattern in the sixty chain-link fences that have been set up alongside Houston Street as safety barriers for the Houston corridor reconstruction project.
Japanese casual fashion retailer Uniqlo is offering special Google-branded goods to selected users in Japan who install a Uniqlo button for the Google Toolbar. Products range from keitai straps to Google bags.
Spanish-born Cristian Zuzunaga, a 2007 graduate from the Royal College of Arts in London, believes the pixel is the icon of our time and has designed a Pixel Couch that will be produced by Danish manufacturer Kvadrat and sold through Moroso.
Hanging from a purple ribbon, this now sold-out pixelated lilac was offered on ModCloth.
Seattle-based designer Jana Brevick regarding her Jacked—Cat 5 Compliant Wedding Set: "A wedding set for the unconventional! The female ring has a choice of four opaque colors: turquoise, white, orange or black. The male ring stands tall and dramatically transparent. The world is your technological oyster.” These rings, too, are sold out.
The by-now-commonplace practice of letting customers customize and personalize an existing offline product online (from Nike ID to personalized M&Ms) is being joined by products that start out online-only, then find their way into the offline world. Witness:
With the rise of virtual worlds, the burgeoning fashion market for avatars brought real-world brands and designs into the virtual realm. Now, the trend appears to be going the other way as companies begin to let consumers get their avatar fashions made into real-world clothes. EA and H&M recently held a Sims 2 H&M Fashion Runway Contest in which any Sims 2 player could participate by designing an H&M-inspired outfit using the game's design tool and uploading it to TheSims2.com Exchange. The winning outfit has been made available for purchase in nearly 1,000 H&M retail locations in the US, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong and China for USD 14.90.
The Sims also got into bed with IKEA, making available digital versions of existing IKEA furniture, but no (known) plans exist yet to introduce new Sims-made IKEA furniture in a real world IKEA store near you.
A new partnership between Swedish avatar dress-up site Stardoll and German t-shirt commerce site Spreadshirt allows users to take virtual clothes they create or see online and get them made into the real thing. Users will be able to take logos or graphics from popular labels in the Stardoll world and get them emblazoned on real-life t-shirts, hats and other items.
But let’s not forget about the avatars themselves: Fabjectory turns virtual world characters/avatars into detailed, full-color, real-life statuettes. The figures are built on a Z-Corp rapid prototyping machine. 1/400th of an inch at a time, the machine lays down a plaster powder that it covers with a type of colored glue. Fabjectory currently is available for Second Life, Nintendo Mii and Google Sketchup and is looking for other virtual world operators to partner with. Prices for a real-world avatar vary between USD 50–200 depending on character complexity and the virtual world it's from.
Oh, and then there’s FigurePrints for World of Warcraft characters, and Japanese Tsukulus, which lets its customers print 3D figurines on the spot in their Tokyo showroom.
Moving on from avatar gestation to turning *any* virtual design into atoms: as discussed in our earlier MAKE IT YOURSELF trend description, New Zealand’s Ponoko turns two-dimensional designs into three-dimensional objects by way of laser-cutting plastics and wood products. Besides creating products for themselves, users can also sell their designs through Ponoko, with the company handling payments and shipping. Which makes this OFF=ON venture into a great GENERATION C(ASH) showcase, too.
Ponoko was recently joined by Shapeways. Part of Philips' Lifestyle Incubator, Shapeways lets users upload 3D designs and have them produced on one of its 3D printers.
Oh, and let’s not forget about yet another ‘born online’ sub-category: crowd production, which sees groups of creative consumers build new products from scratch online. From phones to sneakers. It just doesn't stop ;-)
A booming OFF=ON category all by itself, a digital lifestyle lubricant is a traditional product that incorporates functionalities and enablers to make it more compatible with the online world. From iPod chargers sewn into coats to web-based connections for plush toys.
Want to add your own lubricants? Here’s a selection of examples to get you going:
The new JVC Everio camcorder enables one-button uploads to YouTube. The button also limits recordings to 10 minutes, which matches YouTube's file-size limit and eliminates the need to manually time recordings or edit and shorten footage before uploading. Casio offers a similar service. Now that’s what we call ‘thinking with your audience’. It also fits with our ‘END OF TRIBEVERTISING’and the beginning of 'TRIBE OFFERINGS' trends, but we’ll saving those two exclusively for our 2009 Trend Report ;-)
Webkinz are stuffed animals that each have an attached tag with a unique Secret Code printed on it that allows access to the virtual Webkinz World, where users will find a virtual version of their pet. Every pet gets its own room in Webkinz World and kids can decorate the rooms and buy items for their pets from the W Shop. Webkinz has begun the process of localizing Webkinz World to broaden its international reach. Aiming for a roll-out by mid-October 2008, Ganz is translating key features, like the adoption process, into French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese.
Made of Bavarian leather, Noon Solar’s Corland Solar Powered Bag incorporates a flexible solar panel that allows for charging a cell phone or iPod. Check out these other solar bag makers, too: Reware, Eclipse, Picard and Voltaic. Hey, marrying ECO-ICONIC with OFF=ON is as good as it gets.
Fashion and tech have an ongoing love affair, from O'Neill's NavJack to the above creation (which made us smile); Erik De Nijs—a third-year product design student at the HKU school of arts in Utrecht, the Netherlands—came up with these "beauty and the geek" concept jeans. Surprisingly enough, there's no dedicated website, but that may just be part of a budding 'ON=OFF' trend ;-)
Planes and trains adding wifi is no longer a story, but automobiles are still in an early phase of the OFF=ON cycle. For a move towards digitizing cars, keep an eye on Ford’s SYNC and GM’s Onstar, while true en-route online access is made possible by Autonet Mobile. The latter turns cars into wifi hotspots, allowing multiple people to connect their computers to the internet. Autonet runs over both 3G and 2.5G cellular data networks and is capable of receiving WiMax signals. Users simply plug a router into their car's cigarette lighter, start their wifi device(s) and surf the net. Autonet Mobile claims to be effective on more than 95 percent of roads in the US.
Avis was Autonet's first corporate customer, rebranding the service as Avis Connect, currently available at 13 locations across the US for USD 10.95 per day. Autonet recently also entered into a partnership with Chrysler to create Chrysler UConnect, which is offered in all 2009 models and will also work with earlier Chrysler models.
This is where OFF=ON gets most interesting. A whole new set of business practices and processes, not to mention client involvement and marketing techniques, have emerged online, and the offline world is slowly but certainly adapting. To clarify, this is not about linking online to offline (which is very useful but not new; think, for example, of brick & mortar pick-up locations for online purchases), but instead about mirroring offline what’s being done better online.
Case in point: last December, The Wall Street Journal reported on shops (Brookstone, Staples and Canadian supermarket Loblaws) taking a page from the e-commerce world, featuring endorsements from shoppers on product displays in their physical stores.
Clearly, that’s just the beginning. From real-world supermarket layouts mirroring more intuitive website layouts, to allowing for more in-store customization, catering to consumers who are accustomed to mixing and matching whatever they feel like online.
It’s a pretty heady mix of trends like INFOLUST and FREE LOVE and other trends that encompass changing behavior and expectations among consumers who live part of their lives in a limitless online world. Please re-read our EXPECTATION ECONOMY briefing for more on the drivers behind changing and ever-higher expectations.
To get hands-on, let’s move on to an ‘offline’ business that is mirroring the best that the online world has to offer:
TCHO is a San Francisco-based chocolate manufacturer. Its founders started Wired magazine, so it’s no surprise they’re taking a high-tech approach to the production of an age-old delight. In its factory, TCHO combines recycled and refurbished legacy chocolate equipment with the latest process control, information and communications systems.
The company's "obsessively good" dark chocolate is created in limited-run "beta editions" that are only available online and at its factory store. Continuous flavor development and customer feedback mean that varieties are constantly evolving, with new versions emerging as frequently as every 36 hours. TCHO also aims to change the way people describe chocolate and has created a new taxonomy based on common-sense terms like "nutty", "fruity" and "chocolatey" to help people find the types they like best. Products are named accordingly, such as the recent Beta C Ghana 0.2x release, for example, in which the "C" stands for chocolatey. Finally, TCHO embraces a social mission that goes beyond Fair Trade to help farmers by transferring knowledge of how to grow and ferment better beans, allowing them to escape commodity production and become premium producers. TCHO's 50g chocolate bars, wrapped in plain brown paper, are priced at USD 4 each.
What other (superior) processes and changed consumer behavior now taking place online can you incorporate into your offline business? Here are a number of keywords and phrases defining the online world, ready to be projected on a white wall ;-)
Sharing
Constant, 24/7, always on
Keeping in touch
Cheap, fast and easy
Snack culture
Free
Ongoing feedback
Transparency
Anonymity
Customization, personalization, creation
Searchability
Easy befriending & connecting
Instant gratification
Collaboration
Micro celebrity
DIY
Multiple personalities
Total control (or at least the illusion of it)
Overload
Beta testing
…and so on
Remember our tips on how to apply a trend? The easiest one suggests that you babble away in the language of those consumers who are already 'living' the trend: show them you get it,* show them you know what they're excited about—this really is marketing, advertising and PR in its simplest form.
If nothing innovative comes to mind when brainstorming about OFF=ON (something we have a hard time imagining, but hey), at least try to speak your digi-audience's language:
*Though make sure you back it up in execution of whatever it is you’re peddling, OK?
Instead of providing long-winded explanations of camera features on paper like a lot of other brands, Leica built a “pixel dog” out of Lego and placed it in public places around Germany to promote its new Leica D-Lux 3 digital camera. The aim of the campaign was to demonstrate how ill-defined objects can look when you don't use a high definition camera like the Leica D-Lux 3 Meister Camera. Which of course doesn’t pay homage to pixels like our earlier examples, but it did get quite a bit of attention.
DHL China's recent 24 Hour Online Tracking street campaign in Beijing was intended to drive awareness of its online 24/7 tracking system. DHL's agency Ogilvy & Mather attached a large silhouette of a computer cursor on DHL’s vans which worked the routes around Beijing’s Central Business District. DHL couriers also wore cardboard cut-outs of big white mouse cursors when delivering packages.
The Langham Place hotel in Hong Kong offers a selection of technological treats that includes state-of-the-art IP phones which guests can personalize with their own photos, flight details and more before they arrive, and there's a mobile version they can use anywhere in the hotel. Smell the technology, indeed.
* The above doesn't even include text messaging/SMS shorthand speak. Or chat abbreviations. Or Web 2.0 monikers. One thing though: if you do this, you make sure you get it 100% right. Just saying.
Wait, there's more. The attraction is mutual. Just as there’s immense value in incorporating online into everything you do if you're a predominantly offline brand, there’s also brand equity in being visible in the bricks-and-mortar world if you're 'from the web'.
In fact, expect ‘online’ to enjoy being 'offline' more than ever. Three quick sub-trends that are currently fueling ON=OFF: visibility, warm bodies and mobile mania.
Reality check: many consumers still value the physical over the virtual (and as we will see further down below, even the very wired are venturing out more, not less). So online brands want to be seen and want to be part of the real world to add visibility to their brands. Not to mention that despite the rapid growth of ecommerce, consumers still spend the majority of their budgets offline. Examples:
Etsy, the online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade, has a brick-and-mortar space, called Etsy Labs. It’s located at 325 Gold Street in Brooklyn, New York. It functions as a community workspace where Etsy offers classes, open crafting times and occasional events. Every Monday from 4pm–8pm Etsy also holds an open crafting night where the community space in its offices is open to the public.
Threadless, a popular online t-shirt design business, opened its first store in Chicago last year. Threadless Chicago incorporates a shopping area and a gallery, both showcasing work by winning Threadless designers. One of the main goals of the Threadless store was to have real, live, tangible events around the launching of new tees every week. Threadless releases 8 or 9 new and reprinted designs online every Monday, and the Threadless store launches the new tees the Friday before they get released on the website. Threadless is considering opening additional stores in "smaller, artsy communities" like San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Boulder, Columbus, Boston, Minneapolis and Savannah (as opposed to launching retail outlets in traditional A-markets).
The msnbc.com Digital Café at the NBC Experience Store in New York’s Rockefeller Center aims to bring to life msnbc.com's trademark "fuller spectrum of news" in a casual café setting. Visitors have access to free wifi, and the digital café features five NewsArcades—Spectra touch screen kiosk news readers—featuring the site’s NewsBreaker and NewsBlaster games, in which players use a paddle to keep a ball in play and break the bricks on the screen to reveal headlines.
According to msnbc.com, "By bringing the msnbc.com experience offline to create a news-infused café, we’ve created a digital playground where consumers can engage and experiment with news in unconventional ways."
Based in Shanghai, Duo Guo sells mobile content through specialized kiosks in brick-and-mortar retail stores. It has developed partnerships with large retailers in China and global media companies to bring games, ringtones, software and other mobile services to China's 500 million mobile phone users in a retail setting. Each Duo Guo kiosk is staffed by a salesperson who helps customers as they browse for content. As many Chinese consumers are reportedly wary of buying online, fearing that they'll be overcharged or end up paying for the wrong thing, the kiosks are doing brisk business. Launched last year and backed by US hedge fund Jana Partners, Duo Guo currently has about 25 outlets in Shanghai. It is in the process of expanding to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Beijing, with hopes of having 100 stores by year's end, and 500 by the end of 2009.
From the web to paper: Bertelsmann is about to publish the Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume in German. The first edition will contain 50,000 Wikipedia articles printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 images. The jury is still out on this one, but it’s certainly ON=OFF ;-)
By the way, a proven success in this field is MOO, a printing service, which points out on its site: "There's virtual communication like email, instant message or video. People belong to virtual communities like social networks, image sharing or interest groups. And in these communities they use virtual identities to share virtual content: writing, photography, design, music, video... Sometimes, we think life is just a little too virtual. So we dream up new tools that help people turn their virtual content into beautiful print products for the real world."
The more people connect, date, befriend, network and socialize online, the more likely they are to eventually meet up in meatspace. Why? Because people actually enjoy interacting with other warm bodies. Or so we've heard ;-) From parties to travel to tennis matches to seminars to conventions to hooking up for a night, frequent online contact if not social networking actually often result in meeting up outside cyberspace. A small batch of examples:
Meeting up just because you can | Meetup helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world. With more than 2,000 groups that get together in local communities each day, Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup currently has 4.7 million members in 3,601 cities worldwide, 46,315 local groups, 4,916 Meetup topics and facilitates 102,000 Meetups monthly. Their tagline? “Use the Internet to get off the Internet!”
Meet-ups while traveling |Dopplr lets travelers privately share their future travel plans with friends and colleagues. The service highlights converging plans, informing members by e-mail, text message or Twitter that three people they know will be in Paris when they next visit. Dopplr also links with online calendars and other social networks and is accessible on mobile phones. Other similar and related sites include TripLife, Groople and Triporama.
Meet-ups and sports | What better excuse to meet up with people and play some ball than to become part of a social networking site just for tennis players, soccer players, squash players and so on? Case in point: Mesh Tennis, which lets tennis players find other players of their own skill level, in their own area.
And then there are BikeSpace.net ("Map, Meet, Move") and FitLink and Golf-Finder.net and Walker Tracker ("Walk more, be healthier, meet other walkers") and SkiSpace and many more that we will leave up to you to find and, if relevant, partner with.
Meet-ups and sex |Adult FriendFinder—the ‘casual encounters’ site—now claims more than 20 million active members. Like cybersex, real-world sex is turning into instant gratification, with the help of millions of other willing and able participants. The rate-before-you-date features add a level of TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY. Warm bodies indeed.
Meet-ups and CROWD CLOUT | Let’s not forget about CROWD CLOUT and especially the team-purchase phenomenon, which involves strangers organizing themselves around a specific product or service. Think electronics, home furnishings, cars and so on. These like-minded shoppers then meet up in real-world stores and showrooms on a coordinated date and time, literally mobbing the seller, negotiating a group discount on the spot. Popular Chinese sites that are enabling the crowds to first group online, then plan for real world shopmobbing, are TeamBuy, Taobao and Liba. Combined, these sites now boast hundreds of thousands of registered members, making money from ads and/or commissions from suppliers who are happy to have the mobs choose their store over a competitor's.
Last but not least, with sites like Facebook having hit the 100 million member mark, and chat being the new email, it’s no surprise that warm bodies-FEEDER BUSINESSES are popping up, too. Here are two services that add a touch of real world to burgeoning online human interaction:
Online flower store Social Flowers has created a way for consumers to send flowers to their Facebook friends without having to ask for their personal details. How it works? Users install the Social Flowers Facebook application, select a recipient from their friends list, pick a floral gift and pay. Social Flowers then sends the recipient an email and a Facebook notification requesting their address, and the flowers are delivered by one of 30,000 local florists in the US and Canada. Social Flowers aims to extend its service to other social networks as soon as possible.
UK-based Light Agency has introduced a Mars-branded widget that makes it possible to send real candy. The widget allows UK users of Facebook to choose from a range of Mars confectionery gifts from its Celebrate Sweet Shop online. To send one, they simply select a friend, add a message and pay for the gift via tokens or their PayPal account. A message is sent to the gift recipient requesting their mobile number, and a unique Celebrate Voucher ID and gift details are then sent to them via SMS text. To collect the gift, the recipient just visits one of more than 12,500 participating PayPoint retailers and shows the Celebrate Voucher ID.
Availabot is a golden oldie (it’s an ancient two years old!!), offering a physical representation of presence in instant messenger applications, which means Availabot plugs into your computer by USB, stands to attention when your chat buddy comes online, and falls down when they go away. Brilliant, and somehow very ON=OFF. But it apparently got stuck in concept mode. So could someone please bring this to market? (Just the waves of PR should make it worth the effort.)
OK, it’s really happening now. For years and years, futurists, cyber-gurus, trend watchers and other overly-optimistic gadget-fetishists have been predicting the glorious coming of the mobile web. Never mind that the lack of wireless broadband combined with archaic and money-grabbing mobile operators turned that dream into a sustained mobile nightmare.
But. The clowds are parting. 3G, 4G, even 5G are coming to the rescue, and of course (dare we say it) the iPhone! You can spend the next few weeks poring over the countless research docs on mobile-finally-meets-web currently being released (here, here and here, for a start), but they all show the same thing: owners of iPhones and smartphones and tablets and nano-notebooks are embracing an improved online-on-the-go experience.
But please forget proprietary portals or paying by the byte: all consumers ever wanted to do on-the-go was whatever they were already doing on clunky computers, and then some. Read: diving into the online world fast and without limits, on whatever gadget offers the best marriage between size, apps and portability. With some serious GPS action thrown in, too.
Which means that cyberspace as we know it (read: a wonderous world of control and make-believe restricted to desktops at home or in poorly-lit offices, and laptops that don’t venture too far from spotty hotspots) is about to vanish, and will be replaced by something that is everywhere, enabling consumers if not enticing* them to actually venture out into the—you guessed it—real world. Though when that happens, what will constitute the real world will be up for debate. Anyway. Get ready for a generation that is (finally) always online while offline. And vice versa.
* Helped by thousands of GPS-aided apps, refinded local search tools and other PLANNED SPONTANEITY services, being online-on-the go will mean more offline adventures and experiences than ever before.
Yes, we know, we know, those of you who are hyper-wired and live in a Web 4.0 world may crave something that looks beyond our short-term-future findings. Which means you will inevitably end up at Kevin Kelly's thinking. Watch his ‘Next 5,000 days’ TED video, which deals with the web of things and more, here. If you haven’t done so already, of course.
It doesn’t take marketing genius to apply OFF=ON and ON=OFF to your own brand. Here’s what you can set in motion today:
Incorporate online symbols into one of your next designs.
Have customers design something from scratch online, then bring it into the real world.
Add any kind of online functionality or access feature to existing physical products.
Study and then incorporate winning characteristics of living and doing business online into your offline processes.
Infuse your campaigns with the language of the online-versed.
Give your online brand an offline presence.
Partner with any kind of relevant meet-up venture.
Introduce a 'warm bodies FEEDER BUSINESS'.
Hop on the mobile-meets-web bandwagon. Start with introducing an iPhone app. Hey, if British Airways can do it...
Look beyond the next 6 to 12 months and dive into leading online gurus' visions. After all, even if their exact timing is sometimes off, their predictions so far have all come true.
Cymbolism is a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect. Taking web 2.0 folksonomy to the next stage, users are invited to organize the definition of color itself with word associations and tags.
