Enjoy!

Shanghai Apple Store from Freddie Laker on Vimeo.

In this interview we I presented some key observations and predictions including:

-Privacy expectations will have to change

-Complete decentralization of social networks

-Our interactions with search engines will be different

-Rise of the content aggregators

-Social media augmented reality

-Influencer marketing will be redefined

-Ratings everywhere

-Social media agents

-Riding the Google Wave

-Thinking beyond nowness

-Social media everything and the return of digital media

Facebook’s Open Graph offers far more than the ability to “like pages.” It’s Facebook’s play to power the semantic web.

Facebook’s Open Graph can allow for deep personalization of any Open Graph-enabled content — content that reacts to your age, your gender, your friends, your personal preferences and even the things you “like.” The only thing required to fully achieve hyper-relevance would be understanding your location — but a soon-to-be-released update to the Open Graph API will allow developers to integrate location-based services into any website or mobile application. For example, imagine integrating Open Graph into Google’s search results and then think about what type of search results you might get back if you searched for “Caribbean vacation” and it knew that you were married, had two kids, lived in New York, were 34, had “liked” a Windsurfing Brand or a sport team, and were currently posting a search from your home address in the evening.

Facebook’s big mistake when rolling out the Open Graph was trying to hide what I believe is their true intention. They could have avoided the whole privacy debacle if they had asked consumers if they wanted to share some of their details with Open Graph “to allow for a new type of web experience that was truly personalized to their desires.” Many people would be willing to give up some of their privacy if they understood the upside. And those who didn’t could have been given the chance to opt out. They might be able to avoid the subject with consumers, but do they really believe their competition doesn’t see exactly what they’re doing?

Until early this week, I was wondering how Google would maintain their dominance in search if the key to the semantic web was effectively powered by social networks. I just couldn’t imagine Google wanting to leverage Facebook’s Open Graph to influence their search results and then Kevin Rose from Digg leaked that Google would be releasing their own social network called “Me.” I think Google’s true reasons for re-approaching social networks is because they recognize it’s a necessary component to achieving the next generation of search technology. And Orkut just didn’t get them there. As fascinating as it’s going to be to watch these two heavyweights duke it out to dominate our digital lives for the next 10 years, when I look at their past histories with privacy issues I can’t help but ask: should we be more scared than excited?

On the work front I’ll be running a workshop with Nathaniel Perez, SapientNitro’s social media whiz, focusing on location based marketing called “How To Create Location-Based Mobile Marketing (Shhhh … Without An Expert)” on Friday morning. If you’re in town I encourage you to check it out. Also Laura McFarlane will be leading a discussion with Ian Maskel from Unilever featuring our next generation vending machine that utilizes facial recognition technology for a very unique customer experience.

We’ve also got a very unique location based game that works in the spirit of the childhood favorite game Marco Polo. Rob and I will tell you more in an upcoming post that will really break the details down.

In the mean time enjoy this wonderful comic from WordsAndPictures. If you don’t read them already visit their site and subscribe to their content. It’s fantastic.

This pretty much sums up the most perfect guide to French for the week I’ve seen….

Comic from www.wordsandpicturesonline.com.

It’s easy to get caught up in today’s trends or even focus on the next six months. Some of 2009′s biggest trends included an increased emphasis on real-time search and information distribution, while distribution of marketing content in widgets and other pieces of portable content that worked across devices and social spaces also saw its stake rise. Plus, there were great improvements in social-media monitoring and analytics. And most notably, marketers finally acknowledged that social media was more than just a fad, with almost complete adoption by all major marketers.

Here are the top 11 predictions for what social media will look like in 2012 (based on a full presentation which is available on my blog). Some of these items exist today in their early stages, but this list is about what I believe will become the norm in 2012. Ultimately, share of voice, point of view and community influence will be more important than brand ownership — and marketers will need to get over it if they want to stay relevant in 2012.

1. Privacy expectations will (have to) change
There will be a cultural shift, whereby people will begin to find it increasingly more acceptable to expose more and more of their personal details on different forms of social media. Sharing your likes, dislikes, opinions, photos, videos and other forms of personal information will be the norm and people will become more accepting of personalized experiences, both corporate and personal, that are reacting to this dearth of personal information.

2. Complete decentralization of social networks
The concept of a friend network will be a portable experience. You’ll find most digital experiences will be able to leverage the power of your social networks in a way that leverages your readily available personal information and the relationships you’ve established. We’re already seeing the beginnings of this with Facebook Connect and Google’s FriendConnect.

3. Our interaction with search engines will be different
Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google’s Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.

4. Rise of the content aggregators
The amount of content online is growing at an exponential rate, and most online users have at least three online profiles from social networks to micro-blogging to social news sites. Our ability to manage this influx is challenging, and content aggregators will be the new demi-gods, bringing method to madness (and make a killing). Filtering and managing content will be big business for those who can get it right and provide easy-to-use services.

5. Social media augmented reality
Openly accessible information from the social-media space will be used to enhance everyday experiences. For example: the contacts book in your phone links to Facebook and Twitter to show real-time updates on what the contact is doing before you put in the call, real-time reviews from friends and associates will appear in GPS-based mapping services as a standard feature, and socially enabled CRM will change the way companies manage business relationships forever.

6. Influencer marketing will be redefined
As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically. As a basic example, the inclusion of Twitter in Google search results or Google’s soon-to-be-released Social Search will permeate search results with content that will not be managed by Google’s infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become exponentially more effective and important.

7. Ratings everywhere
In today’s world, having a commerce site that doesn’t have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.

8. Social media agents
Managing the customer experience offline and online is already a key concern for marketers and customer-experience advocates. As businesses continue to support customers by monitoring and engaging in the social media space, tools to optimize this experience will become more important. Expect to see a certain percentage of responses handled by natural language engines that can respond to basic commentary such as “my service is down” or “I never received my package.”

9. Riding the (Google) wave
It’s still early days as Google Wave is still primarily limited to developers but it has the potential to revolutionize collaboration and engagement. Wave offers marketers a unique way, at minimal cost, to allow consumers to engage with each other in way that is miles beyond anything we’re currently using. Savvy marketers will develop extensions for Wave that evolve its unique communication toolset into a rich brand experience that is immersive but allows for new levels of interaction from crowdsourced storytelling to crowdsourced product design.

10. Thinking beyond “nowness”
In 2009 we became very focused on the real-time nature of social media. The implications behind consumer feedback and interaction around brands using tools like Twitter or Facebook’s news stream caused marketers to re-evaluate the power of social media tools in parallel to “traditional” digital-media channels such as search. Looking into the future we’ll need to try and evaluate what’s next and the likely answer is based on the next evolution of the web as we know it: the semantic web. In a semantic web world, search engines, for example, will anticipate the best search results we’re looking for based on what they know about us (such as all our public social networking profiles). There will be an opportunity for marketers who push the limits of their imagination to anticipate what marketing will look like in this next stage of the web and creating new and compelling experiences that we’re only touching the surface of now.

11. Social media everything and the return of digital media
Social functions will become so commonplace in digital experiences that the thought of not having socially-enhanced experiences will seem illogical. Digital media by its very nature is inherently social. I hope we’re not talking about social media in 2012, and we just refer to everything as digital media again.

(This post was originally posted on AdAge’s DigitalNext Blog.)

Social Media 2012 focuses on new innovations in social media that are just starting to appear in production or experimental forms and that I believe will be future trends to watch as marketers. Regardless of your knowledge level with social media you will find content in here that you have not heard or seen before and I hope you find it as inspiring to listen to as I found it to research and develop for this presentation.

Does “tweeting” mean you’ve figured it out? Does knowing how to “friend” someone qualify you as a modern marketer of the new advertising age? Hardly. In fact, reaching that lofty goal is less about the tactics we employ, and more about our overall approach to the complexities of the modern consumer.

Our jobs are becoming more demanding. Big businesses now operate in a multi-market, multi-lingual, and frequently multi-brand world. A world filled with commercial and cultural nuances. The modern marketers I respect are finding ways to address these nuances by developing cross-market and cross-brand efficiencies. They’re fostering smarter collaboration across teams, agencies, and disciplines, producing big brand ideas that transcend tactical executions and work in markets of varying sophistication, and they’re leveraging their scale to lower costs while focusing their marketing dollars in the right growth areas. All while producing great work.

My personal fascination lies in the fact that digital marketing — and at a minimum Internet based technology — is helping to drive this evolution. Digital marketing is at different stages depending on which markets you are working in around the globe. But in almost all instances, it seems to function as the great connector that helps to bring cross-channel experiences to the consumer.

Digital, once deemed complex and expensive by the rest of the advertising world, actually offers the ability to produce re-usable libraries of common tools that can be shared across markets and brands, empowering them to focus their budgets on brilliant creative ideas instead of unnecessary technology that had been used multiples times in the last year by other agencies and brand teams.

Social media monitoring tools can be set up for enterprise businesses and deliver intelligence to multiple brands across multiple markets at reduced costs while facilitating a deeper understanding of the consumer. Web based collaboration tools are helping to produce better ideas, faster, with equal input from brand agencies, digital agencies, and media agencies.

I’m not discrediting the importance of innovation. I’m the world’s worst culprit for loving new exciting platforms in digital marketing. I just think we need to step back and reevaluate what makes us pat someone on the back for being in a “digital master class” that understands modern marketing. Some of the biggest companies in the world who frequently get accused of being laggards are realizing how scale and digital marketing play VERY well together, and could form the cement in their global marketing initiatives.

In the end, modern marketers are putting their money where there mouth is and, as a result, giving their agencies what amounts to a thinly veiled, but no less justifiable ultimatum: show us results, the analytics to support them, and develop creative in a cost effective way, or we’ll find someone who can. We should all heed the warning. Those who don’t? Well, then they don’t know “tweet” about modern marketing.

I’ve been really struggling to keep up with my blogging and professional writing lately. Hopefully I’ll get some more time in December when I take some time off. In the meantime I’ll share a very simple funny email my friend Jill Schoen shared at the office.  I’m assuming these are real, either way they’re absolutely classic.

As the title says… “Some People Should Not Have Facebook”…

ENJOY!

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Simply put, I’m excited about the potential of mobile marketing and particularly the convergence of social networking and mobile. New capabilities on phones are opening doors to limitless new marketing innovations and, simultaneously, developing countries are having entirely new segments of their population enter the digital world. I spend a lot of time in the day dreaming about how to bring entirely new digital experiences to people, but I think we need to proceed with caution. Marketers, the frequently reckless group of individuals we are, are in danger of screwing it up (again).

Consider the lessons from social media. One of the factors that caused so many marketers to fail in this space is they forgot basic web etiquette and lost sight that all successful marketing (on the modern web) is some form of value exchange. Consumers must be approached in a way that is not disruptive or disrespectful of their time. Social media was never free — the buzz created around your brand or people’s willingness to come together as a community was earned. They would tolerate a certain amount of advertising if it was a reasonable value exchange.

Mobile, the ever-present digital touch point, is for many of us not only an essential daily tool, but also a place of great privacy and perceived intimacy. We’re far more sensitive about the “value exchange” in the mobile world. In addition we don’t click ads as often because, in my opinion, we’re frequently trying to get quick digital or social experiences on the mobile device in between other events. We have frequent interaction with our mobile devices, but the sessions might be shorter.

Sometimes I like to talk about the “paradox of marketing.” As marketers we feel obligated to get our clients/brands where the eyeballs are. We then descend on that thing like vultures and in most cases we destroy that thing we originally loved and saw as an opportunity to reach consumers. (Think George from “Of Mice and Men” with the rabbit.) We’re currently in the process of killing Twitter as well.

The next great mobile revolution will be focused on the culmination of social networks, geo-location services, content creation/sharing, augmented reality and the functions that come with rapidly increased bandwidth, such as live streaming video. My fear is that marketers will be irresponsible and will use these technologies to pound consumers with horrible interruptive ads that make consumers revolt against mobile marketing. We’ve already had epic failures with some marketers’ mass SMS broadcasting and then the totally idiotic idea of connecting to discoverable Bluetooth phones when they’re in proximity of a broadcast point.

There’s so much new technology that has the potential to redefine interaction between brands and consumers, but unfortunately too many of us are still using advertising techniques that we’ve used for the last century — and they are primarily disruptive in nature.

The “techies” have done a great job of continuing to innovate and evolve the medium. Now it’s time for marketers to show the same passion for innovation and evolve with the medium, rethink our approaches and be respectful of the most intimate of digital touch points. We’re marching into holy ground with mobile marketing and if we’re not careful a select few of us will ruin it for the rest of us and this time, I don’t think consumers will be as forgiving.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell you: We’re in a recession.

The doom has advertisers hanging signs along the lines of “Will Work For Food” on their agency walls, and marketers continue to face facts and figures like these, from Forrester’s 2009 Global CMO Recession Survey: 71% of marketing budgets have been reduced this year, and more than half reported reductions greater than 20%.

Now here comes the curveball: I think this might be the best thing that has happened to our industry in decades. Yes, I said that. While I have empathy for those that have lost jobs and the extra pressure many of us are facing, it’s also forced us to innovate, reinvent ourselves, think more strategically, and, most importantly, bring a level of sophistication and maturity that, in my opinion, has been desperately missing from digital advertising throughout most of the industry.

There are five trends I believe are reshaping the face of marketing.

Brand as an enabler
We’re moving away from short-sighted, highly sales-driven marketing campaigns in favor of long-term brand platforms that use evergreen content to add value to your day. Examples include Nike+, whose latest effort serves as an enabler of self-discovery and health and delivers a sense of community within the running world. Bank of America’s Small Business Online Community is also a great example in that it helps business owners to share knowledge. A final example is Kraft’s iFood Assistant iPhone app, which adds convenience to recipe planning.

All these initiatives gave something while asking for little or nothing in return. But they’ll ultimately help foster a relationship with the consumer that builds brand value, loyalty and engagement for less money than the cost of repetitive ad campaigns.

Distributed content
This trend moves us more in line to the modern digital ecosystem. It’s fragmented and complex, with consumers interacting through many devices and sites. Modern digital marketers have recognized that in terms of the consumer, the center is everywhere. As a result, digital content is now designed to be syndicated, reskinned and reformatted while still remaining relevant. This evolution is pushing advertisers away from building million-dollar microsites and toward smart, tactical ideas that revolve around specific needs or even communities. Now consumers can access similar content across primary websites, partner sites, widgets, applications, social presences, blogs and mobile devices. They can even enjoy entire rich experiences without ever visiting a primary brand site.

Customer service as marketing
While a great product or service backed up with great customer support or service remains your biggest asset in achieving success, never before has the vehicle of customer service become one your best methods for connecting with consumers in a social-media-driven web. Big business is taking notice, with brands like Comcast and Dell changing consumer sentiment around their brands and engaging them in the communities in which they reside. Better yet, they are doing so in a way that feels natural and adds value to the conversation, all while driving additional sales, boosting loyalty, and lowering operational and marketing costs.

Next-generation listening and targeting
As the way people spend their time becomes increasingly fragmented and marketers continue to face growing pressures to demonstrate the value of our services, the tools we are using to do so have undergone a significant evolution. More than 100 technology firms are offering variants of social-media-monitoring tools that measure not only references to key search terms but also the sentiment of the messaging around them. In doing so, these tools not only provide insight into customer behavior that extends miles beyond surveys and focus groups, they help to inform media strategies that include both media buying and influencer marketing.

As an industry we have moved beyond basic web and campaign analytics. Marketing firms are now able to monitor the entire customer life cycle with significantly more accuracy and then track the correlation between traditional, digital and commerce channels and customer conversion.

Meaningful metrics
Deep analytics and tracking are enabling meaningful insight. As a result, in its ongoing path to full maturity, digital marketing is finally adopting meaningful metrics that we can equate back to real business value. Now marketers are moving beyond digital-campaign measurement standards such as traffic and are instead mapping key performance indicators back to metrics and ultimately the conversation funnel, which includes the different levels of engagement — awareness, consideration, purchase intent, purchase and loyalty.

A massive recession is never a good thing, but it’s safe to say that someday, when the marketing sun is in full shine, we will find that some good came from it.

(As Featured on AdAge.com)