Congrats to Brad, partners and volunteers for putting together a truly special gathering of honest conversations, presentations, evening awards programs (where yes, Pop Art was honored with a Web Visionary award) and events for folks to gather. Attendees were richly rewarded by having far more offered than was possible to do. We were encouraged to get as much as humanly possible, out of the time and resources invested.

Humanizing Technology

An area of particular interest to me,  reflecting innovation Pop Art has been working on recently, is in the space of augmented reality (AR). It’s apparently “not new,” matter of fact, similar to the iPad, AR technology has been around for a couple decades. The difference now is that we have been empowered with devices, such as the “smart phone.”

So what makes a phone smart, versus say dumb, you wonder?

The popular culture creates language through an established shared meaning. Does the phone one has imply smart vs. “non-smart” back upon its owner? From the perspective of social science, how does this fit into “humanizing” technology? Say if that by owning one phone versus another really implied a level of intelligence within the technology, and by association, its owner.  If that was the case, could the technology one uses become a spoken or unspoken implication of  the “smart” vs. the “non-smart”? Will we start to introduce our technology, like part of our family; “hi, meet my smart phone?”

Technology’s infusion into the cultural fabric, and how this psychologically may implicate its human ”owner”  (or adopter) is increasingly an interesting area for marketers to watch. If we were to extend this concept to products; their relevance to consumers may come to be dominated by “smart” vs. “non-smart” brands. If we take a topical scan of the brands that are succeeding right now, looking at profitability as a criteria, there is much anecdotal evidence that this is becoming the case.

Smart Brands Make Technology Human

It is the beginning of something, I’d suggest, in its infancy.  State and national policy, regardless of partisan persuasion, also plays a role here. The unfolding outcomes of the net neutrality debate, regulation (or lack of regulation) around telecommunications, advertising’s function and role on the web, narrowed interest in the increasingly topic driven self-selection of content, consumers increasing demand for virtual sophistication of online channels and how brands play in this evolving landscape; collectively impart a profound influence how the internet will evolve, as well as shape and impact society, in the coming years.

To get a sense of what all that looks like, all in one place, following those that are riding the edge of the technology’s blade is time well spent. You may come away with more questions than answers, but the more we collectively ask, answer and solve these questions together, the more likely we are to keep technology human.

Most of us were reeling over the transition from the 20^th to 21^st century.  Accelerating at the speed of fiber optics, here comes a new decade.  If the last ten years are any indication of the web’s impact on the world, what lies ahead promises to take all of that to an entirely new level.  

This post offers a practical perspective on the trends that in combination are going to have a significant, lasting impact on the interactive social fabric. And the brands that continue to redefine cyberspace, the ever expanding frontier.

Layered Interactive               

Life is no longer compartmentalized in the way it once was. Our customers, peers, friends and families all shop, learn, consult one another and share online in ways never imagined.

Understanding how, why and where these experiences intersect helps to define the right mix and the right channels.  Assets like YouTube, flickr, Twitter, facebook, blogs and a slew of other rising stars; in combination with rich user experience driven web sites, infuse brands deeply into our lives.

 Brands that are able to satisfy demand for a user friendly, uber interactive “distribution pipeline,” AND centralize channels to join loosely connected tribes, will continue to redefine the web in the decade to come.

Understanding applications in isolation is just the beginning.  Together, and in the right combination, we work with our clients to unleash a virtual cyber-scape for their customers to explore, experience, and engage with their brands in a way that is personal and ongoing.  This post drills deeper into some of the things we’ve learned along the way. And a few of the trends we think will have significant impact on markets, business and the larger world we live in.

The Mobile Experience

Mobile is the catalyst in the mix. Think about it, what can’t your mobile phone do? And it’s only JUST the beginning.  Mobile applications are appearing for our favorite communities like LinkedIn and facebook. In many cases, they outshine the original source they’d been “ported” from.  Others like flickr and YouTube are also in this mix. 

Inside Spin sums it up well, “The phones are smarter, the networks are faster, an open development ecosystem is leading to faster innovation, and specialty mobile agencies have built up a solid knowledge base of what works…”

Many market leaders, and rising stars, are prepared to meet demand. Blending this with location based apps, mobile becomes a consumer compass of extraordinary power.  Here’s a short list for you to explore some of the brands that are redefining the digital frontier: Google   Google +   Facebook   Twitter   Tweet Geo-Tagging   Tweetdeck   I-Tweetie   I-Phone   Google’s Android   Google’s Android + Foursquare   Foursquare now ready for busines   Foursquare Yipit API   Gowalla Yowza

Geo-location; localized content hits home

The online user experience is becoming more localized and we expect to see major growth in the coming years as AT&T, Google, Yelp,  Foursquare and others get into the action. We already have geo-targeted ads, segmented content and social search serving content in a more personalized way. But now, we are seeing the emergence of local mobile search and mobile geo-aware social media platforms that blend gaming concepts in an effort to bridge the gap between online and offline experiences. With the smartphone becoming more ubiquitous, we are going to see some very interesting executions in the coming months and years.

The way these technologies and experiences will be financed is likely through advertising revenue and brand sponsorship. It is said that the U.S. local search advertising market is worth more than $4 billion. According to The Kelsey Group, revenues for mobile local search advertising are expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2013. This means that there will be plenty of investment dollars available for R&D in geo-location technologies. On January 31, 2010 The New York Times reported that the Bravo TV network has partnered with Foursquare in an effort to offer unique personal experiences to their fans and ad partners thereby reinforcing brand loyalty. This is just one of many examples to come where geo-located experiences will hit the mainstream in unique and interesting ways.

What does this mean for marketers?  It is another opportunity to leverage emerging technology for the benefit of brands and the user experience. They already want to engage on their own terms, so location based services offer a unique one-to-one marketing opportunity to the marketer and user alike. Location is just heating up and will surely leverage existing social media platforms to tap a user’s unique social graph. This means that engagements have to be well planned and executed because the reach of a program could experience exponential growth through other social media channels. It is all about delivering the right message at the right time, so it better be a good one.

WEB 2.0 turns 3

As the world has embraced web 2.0 to share a collective, “always on” global social experience, at the end of the day this has remained a largely social experiment.  To distill this down to its essence:

Web 1.0 has been hailed as the Geocities and Hotmail era.  Static HTML websites and link directories were bleeding edge.  Communication was one way and the world loved it.

Web 2.0 now expands this into a social “user generated” and “read-write” web. Publisher and consumer are often the same, blogs, social channels and “friends shopping with friends online” is the new norm.

Web 3.0 is when the web itself becomes “intelligent.” Many call this the era of semantic web (or the meaning of data). Things like personalization, intelligent search, essentially sharing content beyond the boundaries of applications and web sites.

For a really simplistic, useful explanation, here’s an overview explained with a stamp. For better understanding how this will apply, here’s the stamp in action.  The implications of what’s next, help us think about how we apply and layer these tools “in the now.” The way we are able to help our clients get ready for what’s next is informed by understanding which techniques and content inspire consumers to act. And the only way you can do this is to follow the data. Analytics will continue to become more important than ever to measure, optimize and refine how brands can best deliver meaningful value.

Analytics unleashed

Marketers have always used analytics to measure consumer behavior and ROI. However, we now have more insight than ever before thanks to the internet’s ability to offer limitless measurement and analysis opportunity. The web analytics industry which had been fledgling in past years, now takes center stage in today’s global market place. There are several contributing factors to the rise of this industry but most important are: bandwidth, the sophistication and accuracy of available tools and the fact that interactive is now at the center of all brand communication.

Web analytics helps the marketer is so many ways. Of course, it is fundamental to web site optimization where we aim to achieve the ultimate in conversion through continuous improvement of multi step process. This is an exercise that involves defining goals and selecting key performance metrics to measure against. But web analytics is so much more these days. With the rise of search, social media and mobile technology, there is a wealth of new information in which a marketer must capture to get the full story about a brand’s equity.  It is all about measuring consumer sentiment and delivering targeted content to the proper segment at a specific time. This means that web analytics is not just focused on your web site, but it’s about measuring marketing efforts in a holistic way.

At the heart of Web Analytics is the collection of data or quantitative research that enables a marketer empirical observation into their efforts. The ultimate goal is better communication through improved consumer awareness, engagement, conversion and loyalty. The difficulty in web analytics is not the collection of data, but rather the qualitative analysis of that data. Sure, it is one thing to collect it but how do you organize it? What data is most important to collect? What is this data telling you about your approach? What other conclusions can we draw?

Pop Art uses web analytics to measure the effectiveness of our web sites and campaigns. However, we also leverage it to gain deeper insight into consumer segments and various audiences over time. In this sense, we see web analytics not as a single execution, rather as a practice that provides business intelligence over the long term. It is intelligence that enables better choices in strategy and the tactical methods to achieve desired marketing goals.

Stay tuned! As we continue to share our findings, and offer new ways of applying the tools touched on through-out this post.  The content offered here is not an exhaustive list, but some of the things we see as most significant for our clients and their brands. Let us know how these tools in combination are working for you.  

Value in this sense meaning optimizing return on your investment whether that effort takes form as an offline advertisement, a new application, a blog, a well intended social media effort or a targeted banner ad. There are a few simple principles that consistently will give you maximum yield for the effort expended.

Starting with clarity around what an initiative aims to achieve, defining what success looks like and how it will be measured is a great first step. Fold in the following ingredients and watch your recipe deliver tasty outcomes; getting extra lift across all distribution channels.

Aspiration

Help your customers connect with your brand in a way that enhances their lives. Back in the last century, the “it” kid of sales was “solution selling” – which centered on finding your audience’s pain point. For those curious where being a “solution provider” came from, now you can better understand the source. This is all good and fine, but beyond isolating the pain, what does your customer aspire to achieve? And how does your brand meet them in this future day?  Balancing reality with aspiration when done in an effective and provable way has far greater likelihood to engage and appeal to your audience. Infusing all your media channels with this framing “lifts all boats” or simply, improves conversion, consideration and typically accelerates adoption significantly.

Honesty

Choose the right interactive channels to communicate your brand honestly. Nothing kills brand share quicker than misusing a social channel, or pushing content out to the “masses” that is off message to the tribe it aims to connect with. Junk food for the masses is destined to under achieve. Even the social media darling facebook, some see as experiencing a mass exodus, based on too much exposure or a perception of manipulation that has driven folks off to other channels like twitter. Hidden ingredients are quickly discovered, and the outcome can thwart well intended efforts merely by not considering the diet a particular audience may have.

Simplicity

Seems obvious, but sometimes being tricky can work against a brand. Complex applications or applications that no one will use, or mash ups with no clear benefit are not going to be a brand accelerator. Twitter for instance serves this up this with a forced character limit. As a general rule, speak simply, provide good, clean information your audience can digest and incentive to help them connect with your brand, to care or relate to the action you’d like to inspire.

Other tasty ingredients such as consistency, authenticity and usefulness are additional brand accelerators. When used consistently in combination, ingredients to provide audiences the substance they are hungry for. Satisfy them with content that feeds their hunger, and you will build a loyal following that keeps them coming back for more.

And then came the web, it changed everything.  Integrated marketing was once the Holy Grail.  But in today’s rough and tumble economy, integrated marketing across traditional channels, even with a great web site, just isn’t enough anymore.  “Getting there first” happens in masse.  The internet is alive, it has a pulse. In one of the most turbulent economic periods our nation has experienced since the great depression, how is it some companies are not only surviving – but thriving?

A small sub-set of US businesses who consistently outperform competitors have ingeniously brought their brands to life online. Companies like Apple, Verizon, Nike, Netflix and Amazon are at the head of the class.  The common thread across each and every one? Interactive product positioning leads their brands’ competitive edge.

For the marketing pros out there who have seen fads come and go, weighing out the trends to design an equal balance of innovation with traditional marketing is what separates market leaders from market leader wannabes. As companies large and small judiciously weigh out where to invest their precious marketing dollars, analysis of which channels will produce the greatest return on investment has been elevated to a science.

In order to yield a full return on investment in these tough times, products must effectively deliver on their brand promise in a meaningful and interactive way. Companies like Apple, Verizon, Nike, Netflix and Amazon (in addition to other US and global market leaders) just figured out how to do this first. It’s not rocket science, but it does require that a deeper strategic interactive overlay leads brand positioning – not reacts – to larger market forces. The current consumer driven marketplace doesn’t tolerate a mass marketing, non-targeted, disconnected relationship with the brands they choose to do business with.

Cultural Fabric
Distribution of information via an ever expanding network of web channels has begun to define the cultural fabric. Trends point to the growing significance of wireless, mobile and social networks not just in terms of adoption, but more importantly, in terms of revenue.

In the coming weeks, a series of blog posts will continue to explore trends, interactive phenomena, strategies and ways of thinking about the cyber landscape. Like it or lump it, “it is what it is,” is no longer what it once was.  Adapting, adopting and advancing your brand’s life force in the larger interactive ecosystem is a huge opportunity. Lead with Interactive™ is how we talk about it. Business impact is how we measure it.