But everyone makes mistakes.

I installed the new iPhone software (iOS4) last week, and when I fired up the iPod application for the first time, I was greeted with this lovely screen, which I have shortened vertically for illustration purposes.

If it’s not immediately obvious what blew my mind, it’s way down there at the bottom, above the “Agree” screen. Apparently, Apple’s software and/or legal teams expect their users to read 45 pages of dense legalese on a 320×240 pixel screen.

Now, I’m no lawyer, so I am probably mis-speaking when I say that I doubt 99.9999% of users read it, which in my common sense view makes it unenforceable. But I can say that reading small type, and lots of it, is a terrible task to entrust a small screen with. The iPhone 3Gs I’m using, while great, is no Kindle or iPad.

So I did what I suspect everyone does, and clicked “Agree” on page 1 of 45. And I chuckled a bit as I thought to myself, “I’m going to blog about this later. That’ll teach ‘em.”

Megamillionizer in the Online Social Landscape
In conjunction with an online media campaign and retail tie-in, this branded Mega Millions microsite engages fun-and-thrill seekers, fantasy enthusiasts and emerging audiences in an entertaining way while driving purchase intent and offering a unique technological experience where users can learn about the product and interact with a gallery of user-generated videos.

The Key Component
The user-generated-content (UGC) is the key component of this promotion. We architected the program to provide an easy way for the user to share deep links on both Facebook and Twitter, respectively. It allows for an experience to be shared across each user’s individual social graph and generate tremendous brand engagement. Once UGC is shared via social media channels, the reach of the program has the potential to increase exponentially.

Augmented Reality Technology
Pop Art built a flash-based application that leverages Augmented Reality technology; which employs a web camera to read a unique marker downloaded from the microsite. This marker allows the Mega Millions Augmented Reality to unfold on screen for the user to interact with and record. To make things interesting to all users, Pop Art developed 15 unique 3-D models to be used in combination with a real time layer, or a variety of, fun backgrounds. These backgrounds range from a tropical beach scene to space exploration or living out your rock ‘n roll dreams on stage with thousands of admiring fans. The idea is to encourage users to mix-and-match in order to come up with the perfect way to envision their life as a Mega Millionaire. Initial sets of models are available to all users at the outset of the program. They include 3-D objects such as a unicorn, a diamond encrusted microphone and, of course have a space helmet to keep you safe on your travels!  Additional sets of models will be made available as the promotion continues throughout the summer so be sure to check back often!

Pop Art envisioned this as an integrated program to build stronger relationships among the Oregon Lottery, retail stakeholders and their customers. During this summer promotion, each ticket will feature a special code that unlocks unique experiences on the Mega Millions microsite. This promotion encourages users to visit retail locations and purchase Mega Millions product to receive the code. In return, the Augmented Reality technology offers the user a fun opportunity to take a break, and possibly win some terrific prizes.

Please check out the promotion today for your chance to win: www.megamillionizer.com

Part One: Introduction

I am Chris Cortez, the new Director of Software Development for Pop Art.  I moved to Portland six weeks ago with my wife and two daughters from Austin, Texas, where I was Director of Technology for the interactive agency Schematic.  I am writing this initial blog series to kick off my tenure here and explain my beliefs about and approach to software development and project management.  I will also probably write a little about rain, kids and bicycles.

Working for Schematic in Austin was an unbelievable opportunity, a great experience that shaped my thinking in ways I haven’t even figured out yet.  Schematic is a recognized leader among interactive agencies, well-known for big projects with marquee brands like ABC, Microsoft, PGA Tour, NBC Sports and Cannes Lions.  In Austin, we were the Interactive Agency of Record for Dell Computer and Reliant Energy, evolving their approach to user experience, social media, and integrated campaign strategies.

By contrast, Pop Art is a compact (read: tiny), razor sharp agency with a strong client list of national, regional and local companies.  Pop Art defines nimble, adapting to changing times and business climates through fluidity of project type, staff mix, and client list.  While reviewing a recent refresh of the Pop Art website (coming soon), I learned that we have produced over 500 projects since 1997, across as wide a range of services as any large agency — from software to branding to social media –  to a set of clients so diverse it includes both local non-profit organizations and global Fortune 500 companies.  The opportunity to shape and lead the technology discipline here is a dream job for me, and I am blessed to be surrounded by the most creative and tech-savvy agency team I’ve ever seen.  (Also, more foodie knowledge than even the culinary institute up the street…)

Whether as a consultant, an agency employee, or director of software project teams, I have long held the same three goals for my career:

1. “Move the needle” for clients through unexpected innovation and outsize results;
2. Provide employees and partners the opportunity to work on challenging, engaging opportunities that grow their skills and further their careers;
3. Make significant contributions to the continued development and community of the Internet and related technologies.

For a bunch of reasons I will describe in this series, a multidisciplinary boutique like Pop Art is a breath of fresh air for clients, employees and the web itself, an ideal place to innovate and put into practice the lessons I have learned in fifteen years of providing technology services to the world’s leading brands.

Innovation is the heart of interactive marketing.  Fresh thinking and new technology leads the way, and successful campaigns rewrite the rules, change the game, instead of just changing the score.  Over my next three articles, I will describe the characteristics and strategies of the small agency – of Pop Art specifically – that make us best suited to delight your audience with innovative and exciting campaigns and products.

Part Two: Surviving Innovation: Why We Code, and When We Don’t

Working in emerging technologies is exciting, for agencies and for clients.  It can also be expensive and fraught with risk.  Knowing the difference between high-value “imagineering” work and commodity development activities allows for amazing leverage in software resourcing.

Part Three: Tooling Up: The Project Management Tax

With agile methodologies, tech-aware employees and collaboration tools like Basecamp, are project managers still necessary? Small agencies are succeeding at revolutionizing the project management role and delivering increased value to clients and the bottom line.

Part Four: Conclusions: The Big Agency Model is Broken

The Internet changes fast these days, even for the Internet.  The intersection of traditional, social, mobile and physical technologies provides historic opportunities and equally historic challenges to large and small agencies alike.  The large, “full service” agency is proving to be a poor model for helping clients react quickly to the business opportunities made possible by this changing tide.  These agencies, and their clients, are more than ever turning to nimble experts like Pop Art for exciting and thoughtful experiments with emerging technology.

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.

It did not.

Instead, when I arrived home Monday night and checked on the status of the package, I was more than a little alarmed to see that the package was not in the recipient’s hands, as I suspected it would be, but still in … Memphis.

So I called Ded Nex to see where the package was, and get an ETA to share with the recipient, which I thought would salve both our nerves. I’m not sure what I expected, but I guess I assumed that the real person who answered the phone would know more than what was being displayed on the web site (“Status: In Transit. Location: Memphis”).

I was wrong.

Not only were they unable to tell me what time the package would be delivered the next day (“Morning on Afternoon?”), but were unable to tell me whether the package was still in a warehouse, on a truck, on a plane or … lost.

Now, I know someone at Ked Fex had the answer. All those numbers and barcodes on the shipping label must mean someone’s keeping track. But that level of deep data wasn’t made available, either to me, or to the customer service representatives who were trying to talk me down. I was pretty upset, and I didn’t sleep well, mostly because of the doubt, for which there was no reason.

Deep Data as Differentiator

Someone in the shipping industry will figure this out, and use “confidence” as a selling point in their delivery model. It would certainly be a point of differentiation between the two largest shipping services (whose only difference today seems to be the color of their uniform). Live view of package location was a pretty nifty service back in the late 1990s, when it debuted, but there’s a huge opportunity to take package status to a new level using new technologies like RFID. I know I’d pay a little extra to be able to know where (in a city, in a building, on a shelf) my package was if shipping sensitive or valuable goods.

An example of a tab application

What are “tab applications”?

There’s been a growing trend lately in Facebook applications as tabs. What are those? You know, those tabs next to “wall” or “photos” on a Fan Page’s profile that are actually apps. Brands use them as extensions of campaigns, as a gateway to a microsite, or sometimes just a plain old contact form.

Tab apps vs. Canvas apps

Facebook tab applications are perfect for brands. They live right on your Fan Page so users don’t have to go searching the App Directory for it, and they never leave your Page in order to interact with it. With a “canvas app”, or an app that lives in another dedicated section of Facebook, users lose that connection with your Page.

As a game, it makes sense for that experience to happen in its own environment, like Farmville or Mafia Wars.  As a brand, you want to foster that connection to your Page, and that makes tab apps more appealing.

The problem with tabs apps

What most people don’t know, is that Facebook did not create tab applications with this in mind. Tab applications are actually a feature, or aspect of a canvas application, and not a kind of application itself. Tab applications were actually meant more for promoting the application, something that may live at “apps.facebook.com/yourapp” instead of living as a tab on your Page. The tab aspect of an app is more of an afterthought, after you’ve created your canvas app.

Restrictions, restrictions

Of course, since tab apps lend so well to marketing initiatives, it made sense to use them in that way. However, since Facebook didn’t envision the use of tab applications to be as robust as a canvas app, there are many restrictions to how a tab application can behave ( in comparison to a canvas app ).

These make sense when you think about how Facebook designed them to be used, but quickly becomes frustrating when you try to use tab applications as if they were the more full-featured canvas app.

The urgent future of  Tab applications

I believe tab applications are one of the most powerful aspects of Facebook a brand can leverage. However, once you begin to venture into creating a tab application, you quickly realize how limited you are in what you can do.

Some of those restrictions are valid privacy concerns, and make sense with how easy it is to access a tab application. But a lot of really cool, innovative potential is lost by Facebook not evaluating how this aspect of their platform is really being used.

Dont let it stop you

The restrictions and frustrations you might come across creating a tab application shouldn’t stop you from creating one. And I hope we do continue to use tab applications for a more robust, canvas-app-like experience for one major reason: revolution through pursuance.

If we continue to push for more innovative tab applications, it would make business-sense for Facebook to re-evaluate how they let tab applications interact with Pages and their users. Otherwise, it would be a missed opportunity for them to expand the marketing enterprise that Facebook has become.

U.S. Local Search Advertising Market Worth $4 Billion

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 geolocation technology. 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 geolocation experiences will hit the mainstream in unique and interesting ways.

What Does this Mean for Marketers?

Geolocation 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 based services are 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 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 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.

The If I Win campaign provided an opportunity to tell fellow Oregonians how you would help to make the state a better place if you won a Powerball^® Jackpot. The campaign was about altruism and allowing users to make a pledge that was broadcast across the internet.

Web Mashups create multiple Channels for Brand Engagement

The Oregon Lottery partners with us to help them navigate through the social media landscape. The goal is to engage emerging audiences and create meaningful dialogue with customers. Part of the strategy is to leverage new technology and position the Powerball^® brand as an entertainment product allowing players to dream big.

Pop Art understands that successful campaigns provide multiple channels to interact with your brand. It’s about allowing a user to choose how they want to engage with you. So, we designed a web mashup using Twitter, a branded microsite and rich media banners to provide multiple touch points. The resulting campaign positioned the Oregon Lottery as a technically savvy entertainment company while users had a unique experience that drove purchase intent.

It’s all about Planning and Execution

Here is how it worked: Pop Art developed a microsite to display pledges of altruism submitted by users across the state of Oregon. It was a branded affair that lent an ethereal quality encouraging users to dream big. Some pledges came in as Tweets hash-tagged #ifiwin. Other pledges were submitted directly through rich media banners running with select online publishers. A third option for pledge submission was found directly on the microsite.

In order to promote the site we developed a media plan focused on entertainment-oriented publishers. Through geo-targeted rich media ads, we were able to target the key demographic and drive them to the site. Our interaction-heavy banners created a unique experience similar to that of the microsite. Furthermore, we utilized Influencer Marketing tactics to promote the site by encouraging posts on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, respectively.

Pop Art then had the challenge of managing all of this user-generated-content. We knew how we wanted it to display on the front-end but how should we capture the data? How could we moderate it ensuring it aligned with our clients brand attributes? What is the best way to retrieve this data for analysis? We quickly realized a need to develop custom software to handle this. So, we built an aggregation tool allowing us to retrieve content from Twitter, rich media banners and the branded microsite. This software also allowed us to capture other pertinent user data as part of our ongoing web analytics practice with the Oregon Lottery.

The If I Win campaign was successful for a variety of reasons. It captured the imagination of our targeted audience. It accomplished several marketing goals in terms of reach, frequency, and loyalty. It was fun for our team to architect and build. But most importantly, it was a success because the Oregon Lottery is a great client who trusted us with their brand. They allowed Pop Art to dream big which resulted in our ability to engage the user in a unique and meaningful way.

In our conversation, this tablet was a living room computer. A device owned jointly by all members of the family. It was sleek and svelte enough that you didn’t mind leaving it out when guests came over, and it didn’t seem rude to use in the middle of a conversation. With its large touch screen, it was a social computer. My son could play games on it. I could read an e-mail or two, or look up a recipe. We’d share.

With this in mind, the tablet had a built-in webcam. In my own house, my MacBook is often used to chat with faraway friends and family, and this device seemed perfect for that. The lack of keyboard was actually an advantage – nothing for small fingers to mash while talking to Grandma.

The tablet was also a picture frame when you set it in its streamlined charger, displaying family photos and even video as it recharged its batteries and downloaded the newest content.

The tablet served purely entertainment purposes, too – not as the screen for watching videos, but for selecting them, then streaming the music, movie, television show or YouTube clip to my large-screen for communal viewing. The tablet was a remote control, allowing me to play and pause the action on the large LCD screen and surround sound system I already own.

Of course, we expected it to have books and magazines, too. Who hasn’t dreamed about the amazing content possibilities presented in the demo below?

What this tablet is is something different. It’s a threat to Wacom tablets. It’s an iPhone for AT&T haters, or those with poor vision. It’s definitely a new gaming platform. It’s much-needed encouragement for traditional publishers to think beyond the printed page. It’s also an underpowered laptop minus a keyboard. But ultimately, it’s a disappointment. I’m waiting for the next version.