Experience Manifesto

Converting the Converted, and Other Tricks of the Light -- Adrants

Love this story from Brian Collins to describe what a brand is and how it should act. He always has great examples! Read the full article for other great stories that Brian told during the One Show presentation.

On Wednesday at the One Show Festival, design guru Brian Collins illustrated the power of branding with a history lesson about pirates.

Or rather, just their flag.

Back in 1748, if you had the misfortune of being a single bobbing ship at sea when a tattered vessel with a skull and crossbones crossed your path, you knew instantly what to expect.

"You're fucked." (Collins, verbatim.)

"As you sail closer," he continued, "the brand promise is reinforced by everything you see."

A cannon fires, shots go off: the brand promise becomes brand immersion. In three hours, maybe less, the brand delivers everything it promised: death, pillage, and maybe a not-so-promising hostage situation.

The fulfillment of the skull-and-crossbones "brand promise" remained so consistent over fifty-plus years that, by the 1800s, pirates didn't even need to waste gunpowder. They had only to raise the black flag to yield the desired results (surrender, animal fear, free doubloons and maybe some teabags).

Pirates (TM!) succeeded because they connected brand promise to performance.

Link: Converting the Converted, and Other Tricks of the Light -- Adrants.

Panera Bread

We're getting ready to see Iron Man at 3:15 and decided to have lunch at Panera's. Lots of folks have commented on the free Wi-Fi here vs. the paid Wi-Fi at Starbuck's. I know that Starbuck's is adding Wi-Fi if you're an AT&T customer, making the change away from T-Mobile. But at Panera's it's just free. But, they've also done something to show that they're committed to actually letting people work on their computers. As my wife observed, they seem to have outlets at every seat! Even with free Wi-Fi, the addition of power outlets is a big deal! Although I guess that means no forced battery-life time limits. It's close to our house and I do like their food!

So, off to Iron Man! I've heard good things, so my expectations are high.

Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile

Shouldn't Every Employee be a Brand Ambassador?

I was doing an interview for a new book about experiential marketing and I was asked about the importance brand ambassadors. My response was that while they were certainly very important when you were doing marketing events, the truth is that there shouldn't be a select group of brand ambassadors. Every employee that you hire should be a brand ambassador. We've written about the importance of retail in the past and updated our thoughts:

Retail Grows in Importance: Retail spaces will become even more important as a connection point between the consumer and the brand. And the people you hire to run your retail is becoming even more important today. Do you hire to save money or to find the best people possible to represent your brand? The consumer will know the difference.

So think about that the next time you're getting ready to hire someone. Would they be a great brand ambassador or are they simply a warm body that you can get on the cheap. Yea, I know money's tight, but give your employees something other then money to motivate them. Give them a passionate place to work. Give them the tools they need and let them make decisions. And don't be pissed off when you're employees don't care about the company when you cut their salaries/benefits while announcing that upper management made tens of millions in bonuses for saving the company money. If you're not going to treat them like they're important, they won't act like the company is important.

I'll remind you again of something we wrote back in 2003 for Event Marketer magazine. These rules are even more important today then when I wrote then 5 years ago. So read them and learn them. Your survival depends on knowing them!

1. Make it compelling. Is there a narrative story that the audience understands? Is there a narrative at all? What is the story that you tell to your customers every day? Could you define it? More importantly, can your audience? Make the product experience as good as the marketing experience. Ursula LeGuin describes a story this way -- What makes a story is - you want to 'find out what happens next' - this bit of the story leads you to the next one. When people interact with your brand, are they really interested in finding out more?

2. Deliver on your message and don’t use slogans to deliver an empty promise. Do you say that you’re committed to total customer satisfaction and then create rules of engagement that are of benefit to you and not your customers? Do you train your customer service staff to only say yes to a request after the customer has asked a certain number of times? Are you prepared to live your slogan in everything you do, and not just the easy things?

3. Make it a movement. Jim Ward, vp-marketing at Lucas Films, said recently that the next generation of brand marketing is creating a movement. Would people camp out in front of anything for up to three weeks for your product? Many companies have created movements—just listen to any Mac user talk about PCs. Is your brand a movement or simply a product? Are people passionate about your brand, your products, and your services? Do they sincerely want to share their stories of your brand with other people? Are you telling the same story with all of your employees? Are they telling the same story to your customers?

4. Be authentic. If you need more answers, talk to consumers. Be who you are and leverage what your company stands for. I recently had the opportunity to work on a product for a Fortune 100 company, helping to position them to a specific target audience. They wanted to talk about speed, but as anyone who has worked with large companies knows, speed is not one of their authentic story lines. They had many other authentic stories to tell, but it took a while for them to understand that and work with different language. Note that stories must be organic and can’t be rushed.
   

Link: Download Are You Just Hunting.pdf

Telling the Heavyweights They Have to Be Agile - New York Times

I started reading this article on the train home and something struck me as odd. All of the talk about how the ad industry needs to work so hard to change how the business is done. Well, that makes sense. Change happens in all industries. That's not really all that new, exciting or different.

What struck me was the discussion about how hard it is to make those changes. Hard because there's such a history of how we've done business that it's really hard to make changes.

But then I started thinking about how long our industry has been doing what we've been doing and thought "Hey, it's really only been since like the late '50's and probably the early '60's and that's not really that long."

We whine like we've been doing this for centuries and generations and therefore it's just impossible to make any changes. Like it's been passed along genetically from ad person to ad person. When really it's been what, 50 years? And the ad industry says this every time something new comes along. After a relatively short time of being in the radio business, everyone whined when TV showed up. And there were probably a lot of newspaper ad people who complained when radio showed up on the scene. Worse then thinking about everything from the past is knowing that in the not-to-distant-future, we'll be holding onto the internet like we're holding onto TV today.

So let's stop all the complaining about how hard it is to change. We haven't been doing traditional advertising that long to be this stuck.

LIKE Cher in the movie “Moonstruck” ordering Nicolas Cage to “Snap out of it!” — and slapping him across the face to emphasize her point — speakers at an advertising conference urged the industry to stop wallowing in self-pity and get on with the challenges ahead.

“We should just stop talking about what was,” Tom Carroll, president and chief executive at TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, said here on Tuesday at the start of the leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

“It’s like driving in the fog,” said Mr. Carroll, who is also the chairman of the association, known as the Four A’s. “You’re not sure what’s ahead of you, but you have to keep driving.”

Mr. Carroll acknowledged that it would be hard work to “change the way we do our business,” but called it a necessary response to the profound shifts in media, consumer behavior and technology that are remaking the advertising landscape.

“All industries recalibrate themselves,” Mr. Carroll said, illustrating his point with a rhetorical question, “How’d you like to be in the CD business?”

Mr. Carroll’s tough-love talk was echoed by a colleague, Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative at TBWA, who in wearing onstage his trademark garb of a T-shirt, jeans and sandals was perhaps the most casually dressed speaker in the 90-year history of the conference.

“Stop whining,” Mr. Clow told the estimated 380 attendees. The new realities “shouldn’t be scary,” he said, because they offer “a huge opportunity for us” to become far more useful to marketer clients as they seek more effective ways to sell products.

“If you want to participate, you’ve got to start hiring young people,” Mr. Clow said, “and don’t tell them what to do — ask them what to do.”

Link: Telling the Heavyweights They Have to Be Agile - New York Times.

The Blog Cuss-O-Meter - Do you cuss a lot in your blog or website?

UPDATE: It took a little work, but I've upped my score! Here's my latest ranking! How the fuck does it score me close to George Parker? Around 49.9% of the pages on your website contain cussing. This is 454% MORE than other websites who took this test.

I've always thought I curse a lot. I even made a joke about it last week when Sydney, my 7 year old daughter, was in the audience for the first time. But, now there's proof. I don't curse as much as George Parker over at AdScam/The Horror!, but hey, I curse 300% more then the other web sites who took the Cuss-O-Meter test. Shit, I'm only about 9 points behind George, so if I fuckin' work hard enough, maybe I can beat him! I wonder if they count comments?

Around 36% of the pages on your website contain cussing. This is 300% MORE than other websites who took this test.

Link: The Blog Cuss-O-Meter - Do you cuss a lot in your blog or website?.

Emerging technologies in Experiential Marketing

A colleague and friend from Germany, Noora Guldemond, is writing her bachelor diploma thesis concerning augmented reality (AR) for the U.S. market. For her research, she created a survey for the Experiential Marketing market, which she's trying to spread as much as possible all over the U.S. in order to receive valid results. Could you do me a favor and take a few minutes to click on the link and take the survey? As you can imagine, this is pretty near & dear to Brand Experience Lab as well and I'm sure we'll be able to get Noora to share some of the date once she's completed the information. We both thank you in advance for helping out!

Link: Emerging technologies in Experiential Marketing.

Ad Age Marketing at the Movies

At the Ad Age Marketing at the Movies program and listening to the panel about innovative use of cinema.

David Krupp, Managing Director, Kinetic -- showed two funny spots, one for Chef Boy R Dee and AXE. Big boom came during the writers strike, when inventory cost on TV was going up for reruns. Might create a new weekend prime day part. He sees it as a part of the overall TV buy with more TV budget being allocated to in-cinema. You can showcase in a marquis way what a brand has to say. It doesn't deflect from the movies. And its not just the screen, but the entire theater. Two ways to work with innovation, tactically and strategic. We'll see more & more commercials shot specifically for in-cinema. Working mobile into OOH, but worried about it being intrusive before the movies.

Jack Sullivan, SVP/OOH Media Director, Starcom -- want to give people a new creative experience within the cinema and not just show them standard content from TV. Cinema media is by itself, but looking for more connecting points with the rest of OOH. All digital formats have their own measurement formats, but they need to come together to agree to one overall research strategy. Too many researchers working on too many independent programs. Digital cinema is front & center, it engages the audience. Expects 3D commercials in the near future. Interactive will grow across all OOH media.

Bob Martin -- talked about a cool promotion for Battlestar Galactica where they showed the new episode of Battlestar Galactica Razor two weeks before it launched on TV. By doing it as an invite only, promotional event, they were able to work within both the TV & movie industries. You have to have great respect for the audience. Digital will tip when there's more digital screens available. Must also make sure clients have the budget to create something worthy of the cinema audience. If it falls short, it's actually a negative. Cinema media is the most impactful of all the OOH digital media. Most OOH research is horrifying. 80% of prime time in a Tivo HH is watched on Tivo and 90% of shows are watched without commercials. Add value to the cinema experience. Creatives are inspired by working on cinema advertising, but want it to be more cinematic then standard commercial. Need to be respectful of the audience before bringing mobile into cinema experiences, but it will happen. ROI doesn't measure impact, innovation, how captivating the ad was. ROI is a backward facing tool.

Ruby Anik, SVP/Director of Brand Marketing at JC Penney was the keynote for the program. Both the consumer and the world around us have changed significantly. They have a wealth of information available to them and their experts in sorting out the information they need. She also talked about authenticity for brands. She showed a great video and I'll see if I can get a copy for the blog. Movies are the touchstones of our memories and experiences. It's a common language for us to share. Average of $34 million/each is spent to promote the blockbusters. Force factors driving changes:

Chaos. The old rules don't apply; the new ones aren't established.

Constancy. Desire/behaviors are constant, but the to old change.

Fragmentation. There have never been more choices; what we consider "mass" is evolving

Inundation. Consumers will increasingly be called on to identify or create filters for how/where to devote attention.

Authenticity. Consumers reject marketers speaking at them, not with them. And -- worse yet -- using them instead of relating to them.

Consumer control.

Depth. Consumer relish the ability to deep-dive where it matters most to them.

Engagement. Moving beyond reach & frequency.

Moving from monologue to "trilogue" with the consumer. They're listening in & participating. Four communication imperatives:

Be there

Be experience-able

Be valuable

Be genuine

Of course, AudienceGames & I were a big hit -- well, at least AudienceGames was! Right now, it's still so much fun to watch an audience enjoying the experience and talk to them afterwards. I mean, if we can keep jaded, cynical ad people happy, well that's a pretty powerful thing! We're starting talks with folks from around the world, exploring what we can do next with AudienceGames. I also enjoyed the presentation by Jim Bell from Reactrix and thought they are doing some cool work too.

So that's the wrap from me. All in all, a great morning in Chicago!

Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile

Change Is...

On the subway this morning and my car has one side taken over by the Change Is campaign by Delta airlines. Change Is: The only U.S. airline flying to Capetown or Change Is: Flying to Heathrow. I'm sure you've seen the ads. Someone actually pointed out to me that the Greek sign for change is delta, but I guess I never really got that. But the thing is, the changes they listed don't really seem all that big. I mean, is the airlines such a patriotic industry that we would be excited that Delta is the only US.airline flying to South Africa? Didn't do that much for me!

I would've like to see signs that said Change Is: Getting rid of this inanely stupid pricing system or maybe Change Is: Not Making our Frequent Flyers Go Through Contortions To Use Their Miles. Or maybe Change Is: Taking Care of our Employees so Well That They Can't Wait to Take Care of You! I could've gotten very excited about things like that!

But no, they just put simple things in their ads that frankly no one really cares about. Well, I shouldn't say no one. But I'm guessing not many people actually think that flying to Heathrow represents much of a change.

And, as it turns out, I'm flying Delta to Chicago tonight, so I can tell you firsthand that Change Is Not: A Significantly Different Flying Experience. Since I'm on a Delta flight handled by Comair, I didn't come up on the self service kiosk, forcing me to wait on a long line for help. Then, as I came to the front, the woman behind the counter left, leaving about 15 of us to be handled by one guy. And three people, including an employee on personal travel, all cut in front of us. The guy who helped me was nice enough, but it was still a frustrating check in experience. And we're leaving from gate 23, which at the Delta terminal at JFK is about 3 days away from the security check in. But, it did give me some exercise for the day!

I'm sure the flight will be uneventful and that's always good. But I can't stress enough that this is one industry really in need of hearing that the consumer is in control. You'd think that given they were in the hospitality industry, we wouldn't have to remind them of that!

Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile

Marketing at the Movies - Advertising Age - Ad Age Events

I'll be presenting at the Ad Age Marketing at the Movies program this Tuesday in Chicago if anyone's going to be there. We'll be doing a demo of AudienceGames in addition to a presentation about the future of in-cinema as we see it. Holler if you're going to be there!

Link: Marketing at the Movies - Advertising Age - Ad Age Events.

Some Random Thoughts on Tactics

I know, I've been quiet lately. Part of it is travel, part of it is work and part of it is probably ADD setting in and just losing interest in blogging. It's been almost 4 years, so it's not surprising that I'm losing some steam.

But part of it is also trying to figure out what else I can keep adding to the conversation. I'm using Twitter a little more these days, because I can just write something quick & get it out. With only 140 characters, I don't have to think that much about what I'm going to say. I just say it and move on.

With the blog, of course, I feel like maybe I need to write something more in-depth, with some real thought behind it. But, maybe I can take from the twitterverse and just do some short, random thoughts. After all, no one likes to come to a blog with no recent updates. Is something better then nothing? Do I sound like Carrie on Sex in the City? And, what about Naomi?

It is interesting to continue to watch the ad industry continue to jump from tact to tactic. A few days back, someone twittered about how all of the cool people had community in their title. Now, I think they were really just being funny and all, but if you look back over the past couple of years at the ad industry, it's actually a good indication of what happens.

After all, a few years back, everyone was talking "branded content." That was the future of our business (despite the fact that branded content was almost as old as content. Apparently none of the branded content gurus had heard the story of why they're called soap operas!). I would love to know how many branded content firms were created back then! But more importantly, I'd like to know how many are still around today.

Next, we all became WOM experts. It seemed like even more then the branded content, thousands of WOM companies & experts popped up over night, helping clients understand the very complex world of WOM and being viral. (I was being sarcastic there.) And as we learned when we all became authentic, WOM can't be manipulated. We said then and continue to say today, WOM is a by product of doing something well. It's not a tactic by itself. And once again I'll say, if you allocate X% of your marketing budget to WOM, doesn't that have to mean you expect the rest of your marketing to be too lame for anyone to talk about? Shouldn't 100% of what you do be designed to generate WOM?

Then we moved to Second Life & the virtual worlds. Suddenly, we had all these experts in the metaverse explaining why virtual worlds were the next big, frontier. Again, lots of companies started around this one, single tactic, while proclaiming it the future of advertising. Lots of hype, lots of money poured into Second Life and lots of mediocre results for the most part. Companies just didn't understand how to use virtual worlds and most of the experts didn't have any better handle then the clients did. And before you write me off as just not getting it, I did my first Adweek interview on advertising in virtual worlds in 1994.

Today, we're all experts in social media and community. Once again being hailed as the future & savior of the advertising industry. Blogs, twitters, Facebook, Myspace, etc. And now everyone cool has the word "community" in their title. And for my friends in this new world of community, how many brand communities to you actually belong to? I mean, ones that aren't a client and therefore paying you to be a part of.

And for all of the community experts out there, how many of them are recommending physical, face-to-face community efforts? I mean, lots of brands have billions of dollars of real estate that most community experts don't even think about! Apple has a huge community and they do a lot of their socializing right there, in the stores. I love Twitter, but it will never replace actually meeting people. Just look at how the attendees of the recent Blogger Social talk about that event. Sure, online communities are important, but if you're not talking to your clients about offline communities too, should you really be calling yourself a community manager?

And that's why me and lots of other folks talk about experience so much. Because your brand is the accumulation of everything you do. You don't succeed or fail based on a single tactic. You create compelling, authentic & relevant experiences across every interaction with your audience. The formula is really pretty simple (man, I wish I could make pretty pictures like David Armano does!):

Great Product + Great Experience = Great Success

Play & experiment with everything you can. Use all of the tools & tactics available to you. But understand, that a good blog or Twitter program won't help you overcome a bad product or generally bad brand experience.

And maybe one, all of the cool people will have experience in their title.

PS — I’ll buy a beer for anyone who knows where the Naomi reference above!

Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile

ABC News: The Last Lecture: A Love Story for Your Life

I wrote about the Randy Pausch Video last fall and had a chance to see the ABC News program featuring Randy last night. If you haven't seen it, well, you should. I saw Randy quite frequently when he (and I) was very active in the ETC there, but haven't seen him in a while. But, every time I see the video or read more (I'm going to try and get his book tonight), it really brings some important life lesson to me. It's one thing to read someone else's book about overcoming challenges, etc., but it's another thing to know the person that you're reading about.

One thing stood out last night. He asks if you'd rather be a Tigger or an Eeyore and honestly, I'm usually an Eeyore. Sure, when I'm up on stage doing a presentation (performing), I seem pretty Tigger like, but when I come off the stage it's really easy to become Eeyore. I can't tell you how many times I'ce had to remind myself to be a Tigger today. And hopefully, I'll keep reminding myself until I don't need the reminder anymore.

Randy, you've made a huge impact in some many peoples lives. Thanks for the video, the story and the book. Our prayers are with you & your family!

Link: ABC News: The Last Lecture: A Love Story for Your Life.

Link: Amazon.com: The Last Lecture: Randy Pausch,Jeffrey Zaslow: Books.

Sorry for the Lack of Posts!

Sorry that I've been so quiet lately. I'm spending more time out and about in Copenhagen, so that's a good thing! I've been taking notes about my trip and start getting them posted this week, I hope! Heading to Arhus tomorrow to get ready for the NORDIC EXCEPTIONAL TRENDSHOP and really looking forward to being a part of that program! I'll try to do some posting tonight & tomorrow and will certainly be blogging from the NEXT event on Friday.

Sydney Learns Old Tech

We were at my in-laws for Easter and they have a very old typewriter. So Sydney typed her first story on it for us and she really had a lot of fun. I think that she actually enjoyed all of the tactile sensations of typing. The feel, the sounds, the smell of the ink and she got a real satisfaction of pulling that paper out to read us her story. Maybe she'll be a writer! =

The Measurement Excuse

This thought has been running around my head for quite some time, but a couple of recent events & conversations have really galvanized it for me. It's how measurements and new tools keep circling each other

During the recent Ad Age Digital Conference, most of the session on new digital tools at some point came around to a discussion of measurements & metrics. How do we measure these new tools people asked. What's the right metrics for social media? How does it fit into our existing buying (CPM) model?

Then today, I think I was sitting next to someone filling out a Nielsen diary. Now, to be completely candid, I'm not really 100% certain -- hell, I'm less then 50% sure that's what she was doing! But it got me thinking about what the current measurement metrics are and how they're impacting our thinking today.

For me and many people that would say this on & off the record, the Nielsens were are best, a great attempt at doing something very hard. Especially given what the world was like when they started and what technology was available back then. Inaddition, there was much less content for the audience to watch, so I'm guessing that it was much easier to fill out those journals. I mean growing up just outside of NYC on Long Island, I think we only had 6 or 7 stations to choose from, including public broadcasting. (Yea, I'm old enough to remember duck & cover drills too, wanna' make something of it???) So how hard was it to remember what you watched on a certain night with such limited choices?

Plus, watching was an entirely different experience. You had one, maybe 2 TV's in a household if you were really well off, so usually the family gathered together. It was a communal event, not only within your family, but in the larger society as well. You gathered the next morning and everyone asked Did Archie really say that? or Who shot JR? And when we watched TV, we weren't distracted by the myriad of choices we have today. Maybe Dad read the newspaper and the kids did homework (in my house, I don't really remember if Dad read the newspaper and we kids did homework or roughhoused.), but everyone was in the same room. Until 9 PM, of course, when the kids went to bed and TV opened up to more adult programming, like letting a character say damn!

Additionally, the world seemed much more homogenious, even in it's diversity. Maybe a little embarrassed to say that we were a pretty stereotypical, white middle income family. And most of my friends were exactly like me for the most part. We did all watch the same shows and we more or less all thought the same way. At least back then we pretended to think the same way even if we really didn't. So I think it was easier to find a more representitive sample in the relatively small (although statistically correct) small Neilsen families group.

So the journals were a perfect way to keep track & develop some kind of measurement for TV. But we all know, that at best, it was not a truly perfect measurement of our TV viewing habits. And as we got more channels and more distractions on our time, it continued to slide downhill as he wway we should measure TV viewership.

And while it may be easy to attach Nielsen's shortcomings, the truth is, no one really wants it to change. For all our bitching, pissing & moaning about the need for change, deep down, we all really like the status quo. Some time back, I wrote about observing my dogs getting into bed with us. The circle & circle to trample down the covers to make it suitable for sleeping. This is from the real need that animals had thousands of years ago when dogs lived in the wild and they really needed to create their own bed. My dogs? Heck, they've never even been camping! And it's our bed, they really don't need to trample down the covers to make a place to sleep.

Yet we, metaphorically speaking, circle & circle to trample down our beds. So, we continue to do things they way we've done them, even though technology has in so many ways given us such incredible new tools to use.

But, in our industry, knowledge is feared, because it neccitates a new way to look at the information. We say to our friends trying to measure in-store that CPM can be a piece of the measurement, but how can it be compared to other passive experience like TV. I'm in the store to buy, if you can influence me there, shouldn't that be worth more?

So we get to where we are today, where the status quo keeps us happy and becomes our excuse not to use new tools. While TV measurement has become a mostly meaningless tool (and everyone I talk to about this agrees with this in private), we pretend that until the new tools can reach the same measure of success our current tools achieve, we can't really use them. And yet many of our current measurement tools just suck!

And it's becoming more & more clear to me that this measurement conversation is for many, not all, just a read herring so we maintain the status quo. Full steam ahead and damn the torpedos. It's coming from a lot of people who don't want change, not from people looking to make the change work.

And the truth is, we'll hit bumps and we'll screw up. We'll head down one path only to discover it's wrong and we'll probably miss some paths completely. This isn't just the way of the media business, it's the way of the world. It's how life works. As Einstein said, Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new.

So instead of this constant discussion about the lack of proper metrics, why don't we just admit we're afraid of getting on the roller coaster. Stop worrying about the measurement and get out there and try things. Your audience is trying new things and they're not worried about the metrics.

The only metric you need to track is how well you put your audience first and let your needs take the backseat.

Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile

Very Cool Video

In my theater days, I worked with a theater called the Empire State Youth Theater Institute and they presented a great show by the Laterna Magika called The Lost Fairy Tale, that used a similar technique and let me tell you, it was just the coolest thing to watch! We were working backstage up in the fly gallery and it took us a while to realize that there were people actually moving everything!

So this is a video from Japan and they are doing some very similar work! It's a very good reminder of how it's the content, not the technology that makes a story work. You can see all of the tricks behind what's happening, but it's still a great visual experience!

So watch & enjoy!

NORDIC EXCEPTIONAL TRENDSHOP | Innovationlab.dk

I'm very excited to be participating in the upcoming Nordic Exceptional Trendshop in Aarhus, Denmark on the 4th of April. While I think that the work we're doing is pretty cool, the speakers on this program are truly Mindblowers! From an experimental physicist, experts in cyborgs, ubiquitous computing, innovation, mixed reality and others, it's an incredibly full day. I'm pretty sure my head will be exploding by the end of it all! And, if that wasn't enough, there's also an exhibit area that has osme of the coolest stuff I've ever seen. And that's saying a lot! Like what you say? How about:

The Floating Light Bulb. Light bulb is a levitating yet powered light bulb. It will float stably in midair and remain on for years without any physical contact, charging, or batteries. Ironically, with the levitation and wireless power circuitry both on, this entire package still consumes less than half the power of an incandescent bulb.

Jabberstamp is the first tool that allows children to synthesize their drawings and voices. To use Jabberstamp, children create drawings, collages or paintings on normal paper. They press a special rubber stamp onto the page to record sounds into their drawings. When children touch the marks of the stamp with a small trumpet, they can hear the sounds playback, retelling the stories they have created.' (Sydney got to play with Jabberstamp last year at SIGGRAPH and she loved it!)

Pileus is an umbrella connected to the Internet to make walking in rainy days fun. Pileus has a large screen on the top surface, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass, and it provides two main functions; A Social Photo-sharing and A 3D Map Navigation.

The Dynamically Transparent Window responds to the movements of people passing by. By using thin strips of the foil, narrow bands on the facade change in order to reveal what is on display in the store when people walk by the window. The facade uses various interaction modes in order to lure the by-passers near and make them explore the display

More about the program:

NEXT no. 5: MINDBLOWERS This year’s Nordic Exceptional Trendshop is a hail to all Mindblowers - the mental movers, thinkers and doers that manage to rock our way of thinking and doing. Part exhibition and part conference, NEXT no. 5 shifts your mind from its socket through a burst of speaking thinkers and exhibiting experimenters. Take a break from forced free thinking and feast on the few that live what most wouldn’t even dream of.

Innovation Lab has been round the world to select the best specimens of expanders in the realm of technology and product development. April 4 in Aarhus, we buckle up to meet the makers of time to come.

Mindblowers, Mindblow us!

I'm actually doing two programs for the folks at the Innovation Lab, so I'll get time to visit Copenhagen for a few days in between. It's my first time there, so I'm looking forward to every aspect of the trip. I'll be blogging and twittering from there, so watch the blog for updates!

Link: NORDIC EXCEPTIONAL TRENDSHOP | Innovationlab.dk.

Here's Where Social Media Really Hurts!

So Lane Hartwell just posted this on Twitter (sorry if it offends anyone!)

Um.ok.wtf. @ gap in SF. Just found a dried, bloody tampon in the pocket of some pants i was trying. Barf.

And that lead Sarah Lacy to reply:

@lanehartwell: wow. wow. wow. wow. wow. never going to the gap again.

Which is the post that I read and I just had to go find out what it was all about. I figured it had to be something pretty strong for Sarah to say she would never go back to the Gap again and, well, it was pretty strong!

And while I think advertisers will certainly screw up social media (see Experience Manifesto: Why Advertising Will Destroy Social Media for my take on that issue), I think that brands do need to take very seriously what happens when someone has an experience like this and then starts broadcasting it to the world. And in this case, it looks like Lane actually sent this out from her cell phone, so it was really an on-the-spot message.

And that's the good & bad of what's possible today. It's the immediacy of the communication. So, when I'm having a very positive experience somewhere, whether it's with a brand or not, I can tell everyone right away. It's exciting and real time. But, when I have a bad experience, it's all raw & emotional. I'm not filtering it through my thought process like I do when I'm writing an article. I just say it, like Lane did.

Now, crappy stuff like this happens to companies all the time. I was a park employee at Disney World and I can share horror stories with you! And, the brand is not always directly to blame. I mean, clearly, someone else created the situation that Lane encountered at the Gap. It wasn't a corporate-made nightmare. But, the question is, how quickly is Gap prepared to respond to this story before it really gains traction. Will they reach out to Lane and somehow make her feel better? Are they monitoring the twitter/blog conversations so that they will even know this happened? Mistakes will always happen. Today, how you respond to them is the important issue.

So, I'll let you know if I hear any more about this story.

Link: Twitter / lane hartwell: Um.ok.wtf. @ gap in SF. Jus....

Around the Web: Ad Age Digital Conference Coverage - Advertising Age - Digital

Yea, we had a lot of fun with the audience during our presentation! It's the cool thing about playing with cool toys is that we always have a lot of fun with the audience. Nothing like getting 300 or so jaded ad folks to hoot, holler and laugh to prove the point that we just need more fun in our lives! Unfortunately, in the rush to get set up, I forgot my camera and didn't get any pictures of the audience playing, but if I find any, I'll be sure to get them up online!

David Polinchock's audience games presentation, in which the conference attendees collectively played pong on the big screen, was a huge hit. So were his tweets from the event. Last summer his Brand Experience Lab launched these interactive audience games in theaters as entertainment before a movie starts. He announced yesterday that they were rolling out a pilot program with National CineMedia and, if successful, will bow audience games in the top 20 markets on about 750 screens. Good news for bored movie goers everywhere.

Link: Around the Web: Ad Age Digital Conference Coverage - Advertising Age - Digital.

NATIONAL CINEMEDIA TO TEST AUDIENCEGAMES™

Wahoo, we can finally make the official announcement! As you can see by the release below, we've entered into an exclusive partnership with National CineMedia and once we complete the test, we'll begin rolling it out to the top 20 markets on about 750 screens.

What's makes it so exciting to us is creating a new kind of social media, one that truly bring the power of the people into the experience. (See Experience Manifesto: Is AudienceGames a Social Media? to read some more thoughts on this.) Additionally, we'll be able to work with a number of partners to see what happens when you need to create content for a large group of people who only have a short time to play. It's actually a pretty difficult game design challenge!

We'll be writing a lot more about our progress, so keep checking back to see how we're doing. And look for AudienceGames to be in a theater near you later this year! Remember, you can go to Brand Experience Lab -- AudienceGames In-Cinema Experience for additional information or to see video from our first two programs. We'll have a dedicated AudienceGames web site up in the near future.

National CineMedia and Brand Experience Lab have entered into an exclusive partnership to bring AudienceGame™ interactive gaming to the big screen. The new relationship provides for a test program to ensure seamless integration of the Brand Experience Lab proprietary gaming technology into National CineMedia’s FirstLook digital entertainment and advertising pre-feature program. If the pilot program is successful, a broader rollout into select theatres in the top 20 DMAs will be completed.

Brand Experience Lab’s AudienceGame is a kind of “advergame” which is played by theatre audiences moving together to act as a “virtual joystick” to control the gaming elements on the big screen. Brand Experience Lab has designed and produced custom cinema AudienceGames for clients including MSNBC.com in the USA and for Volvo in UK, receiving international acclaim and generating up to 70% unaided recall with audiences.

Through FirstLook, the Lobby Entertainment Network (LEN) and other promotional products, National CineMedia provides advertisers with bundled offerings of on-screen and lobby marketing products that provide multiple ways to interact with theatre patrons. National CineMedia operates the largest digital in-theatre network in North America, the Digital Content Network (DCN)SM, which allows for the targeted distribution of advertising and content to specified auditoriums and lobby areas within its network of more than 1,200 AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark USA, Inc., Regal Entertainment Group and other network affiliate movie theatres, including over 13,200 digital screens nationally. Beginning later in 2008, Loews theatres will also become part of the NCM network bringing its reach to approximately 16,500 screens nationwide.

Websites as graphs - an HTML DOM Visualizer Applet

Cool little thing that I read about over at PSFK. But in your web address and it turns it into this very cool, visual graph. Not sure what it means, but it looks cool! According to PSFK, the site was made by Salathe Marcel, the structure and different colors reflect different HTML tags such as A or DIV or IMG. Try it our with your own web site and see what you get! Our blog is on the left, our web site is on the right. Guess I need to get more happening on our web site!

Link: Websites as graphs - an HTML DOM Visualizer Applet.