Mobile World Congress – The Coolest Stuff

Although the newest cellphone offerings stole a lot of the spotlight at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, there were still some really cool product launches that I’m looking forward to seeing in person:

Lenovo Pocket Projector

This was one of the coolest things I think I saw come out of last week’s event, and for a lot of different reasons.  First of all this looks to be one of the most portable projectors I’ve seen.  Secondly, it hooks up to you cell phone and projects up to 110 inches, more than doubling the size of my TV (hello outdoor Netflix in the summer!).  And third, and probably the most important, you will be able to take this thing home and binge watch Breaking Bad in your yard against the side of your house for only $199.  Count me in.

HTC Vive

Virtual reality, it’s around the corner and I can see never having to speak to another human off in the distant horizon.  Maybe that’s a little much, but apparently this is the best virtual reality offering to date.  The HTC Vive sets itself apart by using two laser base stations and can track your movement within a 15X15 foot space – the result is a virtual reality experience unlike any other out there.

Huawei Watch

Ah the calculator watch of today.  Smart Watches are cool, they can do so much, they’re convenient, but they’re not the most fashion-forward thing I’ve ever seen.  Huawei is leading the pack in changing this, with a watch that looks like it could be worn by James Bond while he pulls up to a casino in an Aston Martin.  The Huawei might not have the power that Apple’s watch will have behind it, but it is certainly one I would strap to my wrist before meeting with a client, and I’ll just use the calculator on my phone.

Non-Profits and Social Media

Recently I made a drastic change to my career path.  I walked away from retail analytics after 7 years working for two different multi-billion dollar organizations and headed towards an industry that spoke to me as both a professional as well as a person.  Just about a month into my new role, I’m finding that working for a marketing agency dedicated to non-profit fundraising is where I should be…and it’s way different than what I’m used to.

One major difference is the role that social media plays in raising money for a charity.  While some have said that each like on a company’s facebook page is worth a staggering $174, I prefer the Forrester Research thought that it’s actually worth nothing.  To Forrester Research the facebook like is nothing more than potential energy that is not being utilized until something engages it; so it’s actually what engages it that’s worth the $174.  Non-profits have a solid understanding of this and the importance of the engaging force as opposed to the potential energy because they have to.  For a retailer the need is less immediate than it is for a non-profit and for these charities it pays (or donates) to get right to the point; for them and for the perception a potential donor will have – why should I feel it is imperative to donate to charity that is focused on “likes” rather than getting donations to help advanced their mission?  It’s hard to say there is a better example of this theory than this 2013 unicef advertisement

Mobile Payments: Where’s the Loyalty?

So Tim Cook at Apple thinks 2015 will be the year of Apple Pay.  Yes, iPhone sales were extremely strong for the holiday season, but Apple is fighting some really large retailers to get their payment service into the store.  When the list of stores not accepting Apple Pay include some of the country’s biggest retailers, Apple is fighting a steep uphill battle.  These retailers are choosing a platform called CurrentC over Apple Pay and with the backing of many big retailers may have the upper hand, that is until you consider that Apple Pay has the backing of some of the biggest banks in the country.  It’s difficult to say that one will win out, especially when you’re pitting Apple against WalMart.

When all the squabbling is done and stores figure out how to integrate both options into their point of sale software, there’s going to be another hurdle, and that’s figuring out how to integrate specific loyalty programs into the pay program.  How useful is Apple Pay when you have to pull out your car keys to have a cashier scan your loyalty card?  Kind of makes that seamless transaction look like a poorly sewn together patchwork quilt.  But hasn’t a retailer already figured this out?  Coffee anyone?

The Starbucks mobile app has been WILDLY successful for the chain, a smartphone and 2-D barcode is responsible for millions of weekly transactions at Starbucks locations.  The mobile app seamlessly integrates payments and loyalty programs so that customers can conveniently pay for their drink, or even more conveniently redeem rewards points for a free one.  This should be Apple’s focus, figuring out a way to integrate loyalty and purchase, then you’ll see them carry favor with the banks AND the retailers who will see loyalty involvement increase and mobile marketing opportunities skyrocket.

….Wait, Benjamin Vigier, whose team developed the mobile payment app and strategy for Starbucks is now heading up retail payments for Apple?  Well, it might have just become a little easier to say who’s going to win out between Apple Pay and CurrentC.

Push It, Push It Real Good

No, not the Salt N Peppa song that has a resurgence in a recent Geico commercial.  I’m talking about the bing, or buzz, or duck quack you hear when an app you downloaded thinks something important needs your attention right away…push notifications.  This is on the top of my mind lately because I was both annoyed and glad I had push notifications set up with my Bleacher Report app.  Last night I had incessant notifications during Saturday college basketball match-ups letting me know that Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein had a nice dunk and the Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim doesn’t care if people think he runs a dirty program.  Neither of these push-worthy events were surprising to me and made me wonder if Bleacher Report understands the word “Alert” and what kinds of stories are really alert-worthy.  Then I woke up this morning, looked at my phone and saw that legendary coach Dean Smith had passed away at 83 – thanks to my alert from Bleacher Report.  I attempted to shake of the remnants of a cold that has been hounding me for a week and opened up the Bleacher Report app to find out more about Smith and what some of the legendary players that he coached, like Michael Jordan, were saying through social media.  Because I follow college basket ball on Bleacher Report, I get every update about college basketball known to man, from a guard at Farleigh Dickinson making a layup to beat Wagner University to the passing of one of the most accomplished and respected coaches in college basketball history.

Does it have to be this way though?  Can I follow college hoops and only get the important stuff?  Who makes the decisions on what truly needs to be pushed?  Or am I missing the point, is the video of the Cauley-Stein dunk what actually gets people to open up the app in hopes of seeing the video?  My only argument to that would be that the alerts are continuous, I received no less than 6 alerts to great drunks or shots on Saturday alone, how great can something be if there are 5, 6, 7 other great things every day?

Bleacher report addresses one of the negatives about push notifications, they’re not just to a downloaded app, but actually to an account where a person has chosen what they want to follow.  But, Bleacher Report assumes that I want to know everything about college basketball including the somewhat mundane.  The Huffington Post on the other hand keeps me updated with the most important news, and I’ve never even told them what I’m interested in – I’ve received three alerts from my Huffington Post App over the past 5 days and all of them have been pertinent and meaningful which naturally drove me to open the app.

This is not as much a gripe about Bleacher Reports push notifications as it is a statement on maybe giving your consumers everything all the time isn’t the best approach.  To me, Bleacher Report alerts are so expected that I often don’t even read them.  Imagine if a company subscribed to this everything all the time philosophy as well?  Customers would be disregarding their messages and may miss the important ones when the company needs to drive sales in order to meet their goals and forecast.  Why not save the hard push for Dean Smith, and we’ll leave the soft push (the little red number in the corner of the app) for when a guy who’s on scholarship to dunk a basketball, dunks a basketball.

Flatscreens, and smartphones, and tablets….and Zombies?

If you’re like me, you’re always on another device while watching TV, and the mother of all second screen experiences is right around the corner: The Walking Dead’s mid-season premier.  While companies look for ways to combat consumers skipping through commercials on DVR’ed shows, AMC and the producers of The Walking Dead are looking for ways to ensure that fans are watching live and embracing the second screen phenomenon.  The Walking Dead’s story sync was such a hit with viewers who matched up the live episode with story lines on their smartphones and tablets that AMC expanded it to other shows on the network like Breaking Bad.

What makes this phenomenon such a a big win for networks is that they are winning in so many different ways.  Viewers are watching the shows live, they are sitting through commercials during the broadcast and seeing advertisements during the follow along story lines on their ipads.  The integration and ease of posting through social media is increasing social chatter and increasing participants in the story-sync format with each show.  Producers of the show say that each season the number of participants in the story-sync format sits well above 1 million.

This Sunday, I will be watching the premier of the second half of the season and logging on to my ipad to follow along, vote on whether or not I think Rick has the group headed in the right direction and find out more information on that axe he just used to kill a zombie.  And, oh yeah, watching Hyundai commercials…

Social Change through Social Media

Recently there has been an enormous amount of media attention paid to the killings of several African-American men in the United States, Eric Garner and Michael Brown specifically.  What these killings prompted was a massive amount of social activism, mostly by those who were skeptical of the circumstances surrounding these events.  In the week following the announcement that a jury in Missouri did not find enough evidence to file charges against the police officer in the Michael Brown shooting, over 3.5 million tweets were shared regarding the decision.  Social media’s ability to quickly share information about a decision like the one in Missouri is credited for many of the highly organized protests that followed.  But, has social media really changed society’s response to events like this that there is a clear difference between what happened after the Michael Brown decision and the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King?  Some experts think that the spread of information in these two cases is not really that dissimilar, but what is clearly different is how people are now perceiving and also using this information.  In the Rodney King case, people were watching events unfold live on TV and in the Brown case, these live events were streaming through social media outlets like Twitter in real time.  While there doesn’t seem to be a major difference in the timing of when people are learning about events, there is a stark difference in how people are interacting.  While Rodney Kind verdict viewers were watching these events on TV by themselves or with small groups, people monitoring the Michael Brown case were able to interact with millions of people throughout the world as well as large groups locally.  Social media has allowed people to quickly find like-minded individuals and has made it easier for these groups to organize.

Social media can be a catalyst for change when used correctly.  But, the appetite for constant information and constant interaction can sometimes work as a double-edged sword.  In the Trayvon Martin case, inaccurate images were used and circulated widely characterizing the young man who was killed as dangerous giving credence to George Zimmerman’s story for why he shot Martin.  In the Michael Brown case, twitter erupted with the hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown to counter this, showing how Social Media can be used to bring a focus to an issue that may not be readily reported by traditional news outlets and how quickly it can catch fire.  While social media cultivated the inaccurate portrayal of Martin, it was used to counter that in the Brown case.

Consumer Driven Commerce

Whether they like it or not, brands are more and more reliant upon their consumers to advocate for their products.  In the next few weeks, I will discuss the impact that emerging media is having on commerce and how brands are leveraging these new marketing vehicles as well as the consumers who are behind them.

Perhaps the most important contribution to the mountain bike community in recent years has been the emergence of action cameras, specifically the GoPro.  Through the use of these cameras, mountain bikers have been able to move product discussions from the pages of magazines to Youtube and Vimeo, and the magazines have followed.  Instead of picking up the latest issue of MountainBike at a local grocery store, consumers are looking for product reviews on the same internet video service where they are uploading videos of of their latest rides.

 

The video above uses a GoPro to record some of the trail footage, but the video itself still has the feel of a product review anyone would find in the pages of a magazine.  These publishers are going where the customer is, and they are featured right alongside the amateur trail riding mountain biker wanting to show off the performance of a bike he just spent $9,000 on.  As a consumer, where do your interests reside, with the Youtube review of a bike by a magazine publisher reliant upon advertising dollars to stay in business, or the video of a the bike ridden the way you ride it on trails that could very well be the same you ride on?  Or like me, a little of both, but before GoPro, I’m not sure I had the choice…

GoPro cameras might be the perfect example for why consumers have a larger stake in product marketing – they make it easy to be in the game.  The ease of posting these videos has turned these consumers into brand spokespeople whether they know it or not.