The future of reality is augmented

Augmented reality is still very much in its infancy, but it is an undeniable rising star technology application with a big future for both marketing and entertainment. I’ve been following the AR scene for a few years now and things are really heating up in this space as marketers increasingly look for ways to engage and interact with consumers in the physical world.

For Somali Canadian Hip-Hop artist K’naan, World Cup is pinnacle of steady rise to stardom

For me it started with the Korea/Japan World Cup in 2002. Which is to say that I didn’t watch (and to be honest, care) much about European football prior to watching Brazil’s prolific run toward claiming their fifth World Cup title 8 years ago. But since then, I’ve been bit by the footy bug. You certainly don’t need to be a lad from London to follow footy anymore. This year marked the first time I watched every Arsenal game. Thanks to a pot pourri of specialty channels, PVR, online video streaming, blogs, and 24/7 news feeds – no fan is left behind or left out in a media-everywhere-anytime world. Great days for sports fans to be sure, and very, very profitable days for sports teams who are cashing in big on extending their product to new markets.
 
Exactly one month from today on June 11th, the World Cup thriller starts anew and while Canada’s national team will be absent, there will be a major Canadian contribution to the festivities. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard some of K’naan’s work. Multiple Juno Awards, plenty of global music awards and recognition, and sold out live shows at big venues are now the norm for this creative powerhouse musician. But it wasn’t always like this for K’naan who grew up in war-torn Somalia before immigrating to Canada. K’naan didn’t even speak English when he moved to Toronto at the age of 13.
 
Vancouver-based new media maven Megan Cole posted this superb interview a few years ago (2007) at a time when K’naan’s star was just starting to rise.

When the 2010 World Cup begins in June from South Africa, the largest global sporting audience will be listening to K’naan and his catchy tune ‘Wavin Flag’ (original) which was chosen as the theme song for the tournament. I don’t think even K’naan himself could’ve imagined this a few short years ago…
 

Entrepreneurs can change the world

dailypixel has been a happy GotVmail.com customer for years. So when I heard a few months back that the company had bought a generic domain name and a re-branding announcement was on the way, needless to say I was intrigued. Sure enough in mid-April we received a letter from the founder/CEO announcing their new name, Grasshopper.com. It was a brilliant move to say the least. However, having a kickass brand name / location is half the battle, it’s what you do with it (ie, your messaging) that makes it a home run. After watching this viral video, I’d say the Grasshopper team deserves some serious high-fives!

Is T-Mobile’s viral campaign a shining example of social media? Or is it a rip-off? Or both?

Is T-Mobile’s viral campaign a shining example of social media? Or is it a rip-off? Or both? I think these are fair questions in the wake of T-Mobile’s recently released commercial which features a crowd of 13,500 people singing the Beatles ‘Hey Jude’ in unison with celebrity vocalist Pink leading the way.

On the one hand, it really is an impressive commercial spot in terms of scale. They used over 2000 microphones and 40+ cameras to capture the event in a public venue. T-Mobile successfully used social media tools like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to bring awareness to the event, which is a genuine social media victory given the large turnout. The end result is a polished commercial concept that is successfully going viral on the internet and getting much attention from the frontlines of the social media crowd. But is this really what social media is all about? Is this what we should be pointing to when companies want examples of social media / viral marketing done right? I’m not so sure. If there is any social media brilliance in the T-Mobile ‘Hey Jude’ campaign it is in their use of social media to organize the large public gathering. But that is pretty much where the ‘social media’ aspect of this ends, and where the rip-off begins. This ‘sing-along’ concept was pioneered 30+ years ago by Coca-Cola. Do you remember that 1971 commercial? If you are 30+ years of age, I bet you do.

What makes the Coca-Cola spot so much more impressive than T-Mobile’s latest campaign is in the originality of the concept. Coca-Cola didn’t borrow a song from a world-famous band, nor did they hire a highly-paid celebrity to drive engagement and traction. Coca-Cola produced their own song ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ which was so original, catchy and effective that after the commerical aired it was re-produced into a stand-alone full-length single that reached #7 on the charts in the United States, #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. The best illustration of how vital the components of ‘originality and creativity’ are when measuring marketing success is evidenced by this live video…

That’s 10,000 people at an American Idol audition in Atlanta (2007) singing Coca-Cola’s song over 35 years after the commercial aired for the first time, and even more impressive is that the primary demographic attending that event were likely not even born when the original commercial was made. How much is that worth to Coca-Cola? Priceless. In my view, the best examples of any form of marketing, especially social media marketing, needs to have an element of originality to it. If you simply copy, borrow or outright steal concepts, you will never hit the same mark as the original, and more importantly, you will potentially lose the biggest benefit of social media marketing – timelessness.

Due to the saturation of brand messages in the marketplace, advertisers today should be trying to push the boundaries of aesthetics and originality more than they ever have. That is precisely what made something like the Eepy Bird – Diet Coke + Mentos viral videos such an incredible albeit accidental boon for Diet Coke and Mentos, or the Subservient Chicken campaign for Burger King. They were completely original concepts that will endure for decades. I’m quite certain if and when a large public gathering in the future spontaneously starts singing ‘Hey Jude’, it will have little to do with T-Mobile, and everything to do with a band called The Beatles.

Online video is defining an entire generation

With so much attention focused on things like business models / revenue, other ‘web 2.0’ technologies and a failing economy, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that online video continues to grow not just in consumption / usage, but also in cultural importance. A new ‘must-read’ study was recently released in Europe called ‘Video Republic’. It specifically focuses on the growing importance and transformative nature of online video and how an entire generation of youth is using this new medium to communicate, create, learn, entertain and connect with the world around them.

Cheap digital technology and broadband access have broken the moving-image monopoly held by production companies and broadcasters. In its place a new theatre of public information has emerged: a messy, alternative realm of video creation and exchange that extends across the internet, television, festivals and campaigns. This report charts the rise of the ‘Video Republic’ across Europe, a new space for debate and expression dominated by young people. Drawing on the extensive research with experts and young people in the UK, Turkey, Germany, Romania and Finland, it argues that the stakes are high, both for the contributors to this realm and for the democracies they live in. Confusion about regulation, copyright and privacy means that young people are plunging headlong into an uncertain set of new relationships online. And around Europe, new types of expressive inequality are emerging as many are held back from participating by poor access and a lack of resources. As young people experience greater freedoms online, many are choosing to ‘route around’ political and cultural institutions rather than take them on directly. This poses a profound challenge to decision-makers, but it also creates new opportunities. For democracies starved of legitimacy, it offers hope for a new sphere of democratic expression and participation. With a range of recommendations for government, media and the private sector, this report outlines how we can channel the creativity locked inside the Video Republic.

You can download the full .PDF version of this report: click here. This study was also featured in the The Guardian this week.

The report makes recommendations to help adults cope with the changing online environment, and calls particularly on schools to help youngsters understand the long-term implications of living their lives in a semi-public way. “Schools, universities and businesses should prepare young people for an era where CVs may well be obsolete, enabling them to manage their online reputation,” says the report. “This generation of young people are guineapigs … we need an educational response that extends beyond the focus of safety, towards broader questions of privacy and intellectual property.” It also suggests that creating video blogs and online diaries should be part of the school curriculum, used by schools in the same way that they organise museum trips or extra art classes.

via PR Studies

Top Kindergarten Prospect?

I really enjoyed watching this video about Marquise Walker, a young basketball phenom and his father. Not only is the kid quite a special talent, but the story behind the story is equally if not more fascinating than what this kid can do with a basketball at such a young age. The father is using YouTube and a carefully crafted marketing strategy (that started when Marquise was 2!) to get his son national exposure and a genuine shot at a career in basketball.

Physical vs. Electronic

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of Blockbuster has been greatly exaggerated,” CEO, James W. Keyes, told analysts in a conference call.

In many ways Blockbuster is the Rosetta Stone for this evolving ‘physical vs. electronic’ media distribution tug-of-war. We live in the physical world but more and more of our media consumption is being enabled through digital delivery mechanisms. As such, businesses like Blockbuster which were deeply reliant on the physical distribution of media are having to re-think their business model and change course on-the-fly. Blockbuster has a lot of good things going for it. A household brand name that is synonumous with entertainment, strong local presence and visibility and a solid track record executing their (albeit outdated) business model. The big challenge for Blockbuster is to figure out a way to make bricks and mortar profitable in an era where retail shelve space is far more expensive and limiting than server space.

“An average movie theater will not show a film unless it can attract at least 1,500 people over a two-week run; that’s essentially the rent for a screen. An average record store needs to sell at least two copies of a CD per year to make it worth carrying; that’s the rent for a half inch of shelf space. And so on for DVD rental shops, videogame stores, booksellers, and newsstands. In each case, retailers will carry only content that can generate sufficient demand to earn its keep. But each can pull only from a limited local population – perhaps a 10-mile radius for a typical movie theater, less than that for music and bookstores, and even less (just a mile or two) for video rental shops. It’s not enough for a great documentary to have a potential national audience of half a million; what matters is how many it has in the northern part of Rockville, Maryland, and among the mall shoppers of Walnut Creek, California.” – Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine

Many have suggested that Blockbuster should buy Netflix, the largest mail-driven DVD rental service. However, while buying Netflix may give their DVD-by-mail business a serious shot in the arm, it does not address the need for a new retail strategy for their 7800+ physical locations. Blockbuster gave a good hint about which direction they were eyeing when they tabled an offer to buy struggling electronic retailer Circuit City. While Blockbuster has since withdrawn their offer to buy Circuit City, it’s pretty clear that Blockbuster wants to delve deeper into selling consumer electronics.

Keyes: …if you look through the rear-view mirror, you say, “It’s a video store, why would they sell a Blu-ray player?” but as Blu-ray discs become more popular, what better place to buy it, what better place to demonstrate it to our customers than the people that are in once or twice a week renting videos. They keep seeing it and pretty soon it’s an impulse item and they want to have one. So, if they’re going to buy their Blu-ray player, and get home and realize they don’t have an 1080p television. Without having an assortment of 50 TVs on the floor, could we sell them a 42-inch Bravia TV? That’s 1080p so their Blu-ray experience is more robust. Sure, it becomes an impulse item, almost a convenience item. Now, back to your original question, technology is the secret sauce in the transformation of Blockbuster.

Imagine in the future someone walking up to you in the store and you’re admiring that Blu-ray player. They’re able to sell you the PS3 player off the floor and then show you on a handheld tablet PC an assortment of 10 different TV sets that are all 1080p-enabled and bring up the transaction right there, swipe your credit card right on the spot like you would in an Apple store, and have that TV installed tomorrow.

Except a lot of the big ticket purchases you’re mentioning are not impulse buys by any means.
Keyes: Well, you’re right. A lot of them aren’t but I’m not trying to be Best Buy. What we think the role is that impulse purchaser, the person who is less price sensitive, the person who sees that beautiful 42-inch display who says, “You know, I’m a busy person. I’m just going to get it.” Thankfully, that’s a huge portion of the customer base. Not everybody is a Wal-Mart shopper, yet ironically in the consumer electronics industry, virtually everybody in the industry tries to out price Wal-Mart. Again, if you’re selling solutions, you look at what the price of an Apple product is versus a competing product in another consumer electronics environment, and you’re not buying Apple products cheap. You’re buying solutions and you’re paying a pretty good premium for the convenience of that product working and the solution being readily available. As a retailer, that’s where we’re heading.

This is where CEO Keyes really starts to lose me, and I predict, his business too.

TV migrating to the Net

As an update to my previous post on CBC’s assertion that “Traditional TV and radio usage is not being displaced by the Internet” and “The trend is towards personalizing and controlling media, not developing new ways to consume it” comes yet another study that seems to debunk the CBC’s hypothesis. Again, I’ll preface this by saying that I do recognize Canada and the U.S. markets are not interchangeable when it comes to data. However, I do think when evaluating media consumption patterns and trends, there is much to learn from U.S. data as a loose barometer for present and future Canadian behaviour.845657-media_httpwwwjamescogancomimagescharttvgif_aqgsyGGDxFnslob

New data from recent months show online television viewers are using the web not just as fill-in or catch-up, but as TV replacement. IMMI finds more than 20 percent of panel members watch some prime time programming online, and the largest segment of online television viewers are white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25-44.

A few quick notes worthy of mention. The 25-44 age demographic is older than some might think when it comes to viewing TV programming on the web. The other stat that jumps out is the 50% using the internet as a ‘TV replacement’. While that number may not be indicative of the entire market nor indicative of what is currently happening in Canada, even with a grain of salt, it’s a clear sign that there is a migration taking place. Suggesting that the internet is not displacing TV usage in any meaningful way seems akin to burying your head in the sand. You can download the full Integrated Media Measurement report in PDF form, over here.

Space tourism close to blasting off

Even if I had the money, I’m not sure this would be a great way to spend it. But I must admit, it would be tempting to take a ride into space.

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism firm funded by Richard Branson, has unveiled White Knight Two, the carrier designed to piggyback the yet-unfinished SpaceShipTwo rocket into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Virgin Galactic plans to charge space tourists hundreds of thousands of dollars for brief jaunts into space. Even at that price, buyers are lining up. – TNW

If Mr. Branson can get those tickets down to about $99, including dinner – I’d be all over it!