Great day at Ad:Tech today, from panels to contacts, new business opportunities, new technologies, new trends, new services… Ad:Tech has it all.

The day started with a keynote from Jonathan Klein, President of CNN/US. John said that CNN embraces innovation, new technologies, new techniques, new trends, and urges all their employees to try new ideas. They have been using user generated content to get faster stories, they have a political blog aggregator that became the largest in the country, they have a program where an expert follows twitter feeds and answers questions and concerns online, in real time, they have a talk show where the host podcasts during commercials, linking the tv air experience with online / web experience. Another twitter fact is that CNN took 4 minutes to cover a recent earthquake in LA, whereas someone tweet it in 30 seconds. They also started providing more data for the next gen during the elections, especially seen during the debates; under the assumption that the younger gen can multitask and consume multiple feeds of information concurrently, they added the analysts’ opinions and scores during debates on side panels, as well as real time undecided voters conversions. Another link between air and web is John King’s touch screen; after the success of the John playing with the screen, they uploaded an interactive version to their site allowing anyone to play with it, just like on tv.  Read More »

I use Comcast for my home internet service. The connection is fast and pretty reliable, but dealing with their customer service department is like dealing with wooden puppets who can’t answer any question that doesn’t come off a cue card. I’m not the first person to have a complaint like this and candidly if you spend anytime searching the web you’ll find people with issues that range from annoying to shockingly bad.

They’ve managed to inspire a multitude of hate websites from ihatecomcast.com to comcastsucks.org. If you search Comcast on Google there is a video result showing a Comcast technician sleeping on a customer’s couch. I frequently talk about how a brand’s perception is now being defined not only by their own messaging, but by the content consumers are creating and permeating search, media sharing sites, and viral jokes. Comcast is case study example number one.

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LinkedIn announced today that it’s adding the ability to add custom applications to your profile page. It’s based on the OpenSocial application development platform.

OpenSocial didn’t take off nearly as fast as I thought it would. I had always assumed that when MySpace enabled it that adoption would pick-up rapidly. LinkedIn has now finally enabled it and I believe future tech like Google Friend Connect (which also uses OpenSocial) will really push this application platform over the top.

I installed two applications immediately. An application to quickly and easily port this blog to my profile as well an application that scans twitter with references to my company. The two apps are called Wordpress and Company Buzz respectively.

The installation was easy in terms of the number of clicks, but there were some bugs. LinkedIn didn’t acknowledge that the application was complete and the apps were only working intermittently when I viewed my profile. On the basis that I got the email they were launching this at 12.21 AM and blogged about it at 1.35 AM I’m going to cut them some slack. Hopefully it will work a bit better by the time you check it out.

If you haven’t got a LinkedIn profile yet your missing out. Social networking in the business space is equally as interesting as Facebook or MySpace. It’s just harder to pick up a date on LinkedIn…

Everyone knows that we’re very passionate about Facebook. We’ve been actively building Facebook applications since they first launched and consider them to be one of the fundamental differentiators that helped propel Facebook to such lofty heights.

Facebook embraced what I believe builds the most successful new model businesses successes on the web. They created an open platform and let user innovation drive the direction of their business. Unfortunately, like most open platforms, it got out of control. People abused their rights in an effort to push their application to the top. The constant stream of invitations to join applications became one of the number one gripes of Facebook users as they felt they were being aggressively “spammed” (even if it was by their friends).

Facebook has been re-evaluating it’s infrastructure quite a bit these days. A new Facebook layout, for better or worse, has been released. Additionally they have been making some heavy changes to how applications were handled within the system beyond the presentation layer.

The obvious change that you would have noticed includes shifting all of your applications mini-views to a tab on your profile called “Boxes”. Really? They couldn’t name it “applications” or “apps” so it was even mildly intuitive. It’s bad enough that they’re now treating the application concept they popularized as the ugly step-child, but this is just adding insult to injury. I wish they made the tab name “don’t click here” - it would probably get more people to check it out.

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I thought you might enjoy checking out this real-time widget comparing the search frequency comparison for Obama and McCain (as well as their running mates). I found it particulary interesting that people are searching for Palin more then any other candidate.

TV viewers watch about 15 to 20% of their prime time television via a DVR. Obviously this has been a major concern to marketers for the last couple of years, but there was a very interesting study released by Innerscope Research that might indicate some good news that was previously unanticipated.

“Our conclusion was that people don’t skip ads,” said Carl Marci, cofounder and CEO of Innerscope Research. “They’re just processing them differently.”

Innerscope indicates that viewers are fast forwarding commercials during their favorite TV shows in “hyper-alert state emotionally” meaning that the mild adrenaline of wanting to not skip past their show was allowing the process the visual data at an accelerated rate.

What does that mean in English? It means that people are able to absorb video scrolling past at even 3x or 6x speeds and still recall the information a day later. Viewers could still recognize and remember ads for major brands, but obviously not to the extent of ads at regular viewing speed.

As a side note viewers of the popular hit Heroes (which I love, but watch on Hulu) viewed the show at closer to 30% of the time on a DVR. Nerds of the world unite….

To read more visit this article from LiveScience:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081002/sc_livescience/tvadsgrabattentioninfastforward

PART V OF THE “TREND WATCHING TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN MARKETING” SERIES:

Let's Hug!

A survey was done at the end of last year that asked people  What their most important source of information was. 80% responded the Internet followed by TV, Radio, and Newspaper at 68%, 63%, and 63% respectively. Simultaneously 73% of people responded personal source as their most important method. When the two highest categories Internet and Personal Source can be so close coordinated in a social network it paves the way for potentially the most important way to communicate with consumers. - USC Annenberg School: Digital Future Report 2007

We can target Age, Connection Type, Day Part, Education Level, Ethnicity, Gender, Geographical, Interest Groups, Marital Status, Parents, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Smoker/Drinker, Enthusiast Targeting.  Unfortunately we’re still just pushing more target ads, when we should be targeting communities and using this knowledge to engage them in a longer conversation.

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A friend tipped me off to this great post on Josh Spear’s blog on “Cat Cafes” in Tokyo, Japan. Essentially you can go to to a cafe and rent a cat to play with for an hour. As Josh points out - this is really indicative of how unique their fast paced culture is. Althought I don’t see this as outside the realm of possability in a major cities like New York or London.

Check it out:
http://www.joshspear.com/item/japanese-cat-cafes/

Technorati Profile

PART III OF THE “TREND WATCHING TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN MARKETING” SERIES:

Everyone talk’s about using “key influencers”. We hear these terms used in pitches for new campaigns all the time.

 It’s easy to think of businesses, celebrities, or high profile websites as “key influencers” or places “key influencers” frequent respectively, but today’s new media key influencers are far more powerful then any of their predecessors.

They have a platform – a large platform. They can create content hourly or daily if they like. They’re not like writers who created editorial content for magazines – they’re not beholden to anyone. They blog, vlog, twitter, or live broadcast their thoughts in the form of random thoughts, daily news, or even skits.

 More importantly, due to the strength of their personalities and frequently lack of corporate association, these new media key influencers are able to build long-term trusting relationships with consumers.

We need to leverage these key influencers with product placement or subtle endorsements. Notice I said subtle. These are inexpensive ways to get your brand out there. 

SMOSH is a great example. As of April 2008, they have over 337,000 subscribers on YouTube, making them the most subscribed “producers” on YouTube. Most of their videos have over 2 to 3 million views. Smosh’s most famous video, a tribue to the Pokemon Theme had more then 24,000,000 views on YouTube.

The reality is very few media buying companies are recommending these solutions to their clients. I haven’t decided if I think it’s because it’s their not social media friendly or if they’re just lazy and don’t want to look out of their typical comfort zone. Whatever the reason - there’s an opportunity for marketers here.

PART II OF THE “TREND WATCHING TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN MARKETING” SERIES:

True loyalty – and the word of mouth buzz that comes with it – evolves naturally from the great experiences you have with a company over time.

Notably great experiences are punctuated by a moment of “wow”. Sometimes it’s when the product or service delights,  or maybe when it anticipates the needs of a particular niche or a large group of people, or my personal favorite, for no legitimate business reason, when it pleasantly surprises a person.

Many of you have initiatives using all of or most of these methods, and so do your competitors. You’re creating great ads hoping that consumers will connect with you. These ads are in banners, on search results, on branded micro-sites, in company blogs, and perhaps you have even created a page in Facebook or MySpace. These are all good things, but ultimately we’re still talking about the strategies that have effectively worked in advertising for the last 100 years with just more mediums in play.

Reaching Your Audience

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