Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Why 2016 Won't be the Year of VR

To close out the year, I started writing a post about what won't happen in 2016. All my favorite subjects centered on virtual reality. The column below originally ran in Ad Age. 

Reality Check: 2016 Won't Be the Year of VR

10 Reasons Why Marketers Can't March Blindly Into Virtual Reality

If 2015 was the year in which mainstream marketers started caring about virtual reality, then in 2016, will VR become a budget line item? It's unlikely. Marketers' reality doesn't move at the speed of virtual reality. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Goodbye, PR VR gravy train. One of the reasons why marketers have taken notice of VR is the public relations value of first-mover campaigns. In 2015, VR meant PR. In 2016, the PR hype curve will tumble downward as the press gets tired of writing yet another story about brands either creating a VR stunt that all of 10 people use, or brands shipping thousands of cardboard VR viewers that get buried in a desk drawer. The more campaigns that launch, the more they sound like copycats.

2. Massive scaling in VR. Without PR delivering reach, marketers will need to get people to use their VR experiences. In 2016, massive scale in VR will mean an experience that reaches a million consumers, so marketers won't be cutting budgets from publishers that reach hundreds of millions of people. The cost of reaching hundreds of thousands of people, let alone a million, will be astronomical relative to other media, and the payoff will rarely be worth the effort. There are app store models emerging, such as Oculus Share, but that alone won't overcome hurdles marketers will have in promoting VR initiatives.

3. Familiar adoption curves. Whenever technologies and media debut, consumers gravitate to them first and most brands follow years later. This has been true for various forms of mobile and social media, and it's happening again in fields such as wearables and the internet of things. VR should benefit from marketers taking a more hands-on role to promote the technology themselves. Still, expect the vast majority of brands to jump into VR later this decade only if it becomes a mass market hit with consumers.

4. Definitions remain murky. Will VR become a catchall for any kind of souped-up video? That's happening already. For example, Stanford Football recently described a 360-degree video post on Facebook as VR, but it's a far cry from an experience designed for headsets such as Oculus Rift. As the quality of higher-end VR improves, liberal uses of the term VR cheapen the brand. When a marketer promotes VR content, the consumer won't have any clue what to expect.

5. A plea to a higher power.Oculus Rift is designed to work with higher-powered computers designed for gaming. It's not the kind of device that can plug into a Chromebook. Smartphones are rapidly evolving into supercomputers, and VR hardware keeps improving to overcome those limitations, but that won't be solved in 2016, and that will limit consumer adoption.

6. Don't try this at home. A lot of the best VR experiences are customized for certain events and locations, with higher production costs and additional hardware requirements, from handheld sensors to equipment such as bikes and treadmills. After experiencing the full potential of VR in such a custom setup, toying with a handheld handset will feel like a letdown.

7. Searching for a killer app. VR often poses an existential question for consumers: When is strapping on a headset better than using a mobile app or watching something on TV? For instance, a live sporting event may deliver courtside views and the option to explore the action from any angle, but the tradeoff is that one can't kick back and multitask. Focusing on a single experience sounds like a great idea, but it's an uphill fight in our distraction-oriented culture.

8. Social is being redefined. Facebook, which acquired Oculus, is betting that VR will be a social activity. It's true to some extent, but VR makes it far more difficult to connect with people who are in the same room. VR today rewards sharing perspectives with people in remote locations while blocking face-to-face interactions.

9. VR lacks compatibility. Remember the fun of creating apps for both iOS and Android before most people had smartphones? Now all of that is coming to a head again in the latest Betamax vs. VHS showdown, but it's so early that the field of contenders hasn't yet been winnowed down. For instance, will Microsoft's HoloLens be a breakthrough or the next Google Glass? Will developers build great experiences for HTC's Vive VR powered by Steam? Marketers and publishers can't afford to bet on every device and format, so that will cause many to wait for a shakeout.

10. Make the logo less pixelated. If you grew up with PCs in the 1980s, you'll recall graphics standards going from CGA to EGA to VGA, or gaming consoles going from 8-bit to 128-bit and beyond. A lot of VR is still in CGA, 8-bit days, so some of the most protective brand managers will squirm when they have to spend minutes twisting dials on headsets to make their own logo look clear.

References abound calling 2014 the first "year of virtual reality," and that will be true for the rest of the decade. 2016 will bring far more VR interest from marketers, far more experimentation, and lots of stunts and gimmicks. It just won't be the year for consistently scalable, reliable, repeatable campaigns.

Is the Thrill of the Product Hunt Gone?

This was originally published Medium and LinkedIn - seems like it's worth sharing here too...

Product Hunt debuted in mid-2014 at the perfect time to give startups a way to promote themselves to a populace that seemingly can’t get enough of them. But maybe some of us can get enough after all. Below, data from Product Hunt itself implies as much.

The Google Trend chart below tracking the search term “product hunt” tells some of the story. It’s followed by the one-year history of unique users to producthunt.com courtesy of Compete, with a similar fall spike, a lull in Q1, and some inconsistency since. (I’m assuming May 2015 was a tracking error; if that point was adjusted to fit between April and June traffic numbers, it would resemble Google’s a little better.)

What made me really curious about Product Hunt is that it’s achieved what I like to think of as the “Mad Men” effect. At first, it was really fun, and I couldn’t get enough of it. But after awhile, I felt like I was going there more because I had to than because I wanted to. Product Hunt is still a good resource for me, especially when friends post products (Hunter Walk posted a New York Times podcast with Lin-Manuel Miranda and it ate up an hour of my day). But it’s more of a utility now, the vegetables rather than dessert.

So is Product Hunt ennui an actual phenomenon? Product Hunt has some data available on its site, which I manually compiled to look for trends. Lists can be sorted by what’s “popular” and also by the number of “upvotes” (the equivalent of “likes”). There are some changes in rankings when looking at Product Hunt’s measure of popularity versus the number of votes, so to keep things simple, I used upvotes as the sole measure.

One very useful feature on Product Hunt is the monthly roundup of top products. The latest one from September, for instance, showcases the 30 most upvoted products on the site. From searching the site, it seems like those monthly lists started with February’s recap, so the data here spans eight months, from February through September.

First, let’s look at the total votes by month. It’s been a gradual downward trend this summer, and beyond May looking like an outlier, the slope is typically flat or downward. Each series listed along the x-axis here denotes the ranking number, so Series1 on the bottom shows the most upvoted product each month.

Looking at this on a more granular level, we can see each month’s individual rankings more clearly, with a clear winner of a product for five months followed by tighter clustering. There isn’t some kind of power rule here, such as where the first is twice as popular as the second, and the second is twice as popular as the third. The amount of clustering is surprising. February’s 3541-vote standout, by the way, was Startup Stash, a curated directory of hundreds of resources for startups (how meta!). May was a tough month to crack the leaderboard; the most popular product in September would have ranked seventh if it appeared in May. March brought the most votes for the number 10 slot (1241, compared to 856 in September).

Let’s flip the key. Instead of looking at the clusters by month, let’s look at them by series. Below, there’s an even more pronounced downward curve, with a lot of convergence in the back half of the top ten list (slots six through ten), and an indication that the popularity of the top three products each month tends to determine the month’s overall total. This is shown as both a line and a bar graph.

Perhaps this is all much ado about nothing. Four reasons in particular stand out as to why this may not mean much. Add your own reasons in the comments.

1) Upvotes may not be the best measure of activity. Perhaps people aren’t liking products as much, or perhaps there’s more commenting and sharing going on. Or maybe people are visiting product pages and then heading in droves to the featured product’s own site, rather than spending any time on Product Hunt itself.

2) There could be a long tail effect. Maybe the rich aren’t getting richer, but lesser known products are doing better. I’m not convinced that’s the case, but it’s a possibility.

3) Perhaps Product Hunt is too slow in letting new people participate. The site notes, “A limited number of people have access to comment and post on Product Hunt to maintain a healthy volume of submissions each day and thoughtful dialogue.” If it’s too limiting, then there may not be enough new blood to replace some natural attrition. (PS: I have a few Product Hunt invites; just reach out to me if you want one.)

4) Product Hunt is expanding into new categories such as games, books, and podcasts. That may dilute some of the interest around products but increase overall activity on the site.

What’s your take on Product Hunt? Were you ever in love with it? Are you still? Have you been waiting for months for an invite so that you can participate? If you go there, are you an upvoter, or a commenter, or just a browser and clicker?

It’s a phenomenally well done site, to the extent that there are “Product Hunt for X” clones out there, and it provides value for my own work at MRY. I actually found out about the site when a colleague posted a client’s product there last summer, and I’ve been a regular ever since. Being needed can be more important than being loved. The overall trend, though, isn’t encouraging. After all, a lot of my favorite products are those I discover because people I know upvote them, and fewer upvotes leads to less discovery.

 

When Real Drones Replace Your Drone-Like Colleagues

I've had drones on my mind a lot lately.

Part of it is because of the amazing crew at Yeah Drones that produced the first ever Drone Film Festival. My agency, MRY, was a gold sponsor, and the image above is the ad from the festival program. 

My agency also produced a video, some of which debuted at the festival, of the office of the future - where we envisioned what it would be like to hire drones: 

And then to push it further, I penned my first byline for VentureBeat: Why You Should Fear Take-Your-Drone-to-Work Day. It was also published on LinkedIn Pulse. 

One point of clarity on the article, which I'd love your feedback on: I first showed it to some people who thought it was satire. 

I don't think it is, even if it is humorous at points. I think drones will come to the workplace. They will have unexpected roles. They will generally not be welcome, though they will start saving some people's time and energy - and may make us a little more listless at work. 

Not everything described in the column may come to fruition, but it's a starting point, and one that I think we will have to grapple with in the coming years. What do you think?

If Not Nike, Who Will Win the Wearable Marathon?

Here's another byline that I've been delayed in posting. Like other bylines, I've included my original version below; the edition in Ad Age undoubtedly reads better, so you may want to skip ahead to that one instead.

 

FuelBand Won the Sprint, But Here’s How to Win the Wearable Marathon
By David Berkowitz

April 18 wasn’t just Good Friday this year. For many people working on the brand side, it will go down as one of the best Fridays ever. Nike just invented a new Hallmark holiday for marketers, and all they had to do was lay off some their wearable hardware team. While Nike later said it would keep supporting its FuelBand SE model and release new colors, Nike’s longterm commitment to tech hardware seems to be in doubt.

Marketers, how many times have you been in a meeting getting pitched from some agency creative or strategist trying to sell you on some outlandish idea, where the crux of the idea was, “Here’s how your brand can be more like Nike”? Sometimes it’s slide 3, and sometimes it’s slide 93, but it’s always there: that picture of the FuelBand all lit up daring your brand to be as forward-thinking as Nike.

You know what happened to those cutting edge Nike folks? The ones who were always making your brand look bad, assuming your brand isn’t Nike? Many are looking for their next gig.

This must be a come to Jesus moments for Nike. It invented the first household brand name in wearable technology before practically any layman knew what a wearable device was. Having a hot tech product these days for a company that earned $25 billion in revenue in 2013 doesn’t sound like such a bad idea when Facebook is willing to spend nearly $20 billion on a mobile app. Yet Nike couldn’t continue this indefinitely. FuelBand was designed to win the 400-meter dash, not the marathon.

To understand Nike’s challenge, check the Google Trends graph for FuelBand versus Fitbit. Especially interesting is what happened in January the past three years, during the Consumer Electronics Show. Around CES 2012, FuelBand interest spiked, almost keeping pace with the buzz starting to build around Fitbit. Come CES 2013, FuelBand searches were stagnating, while Fitbit was surging and had more than 3.5 times the FuelBand interest. Come CES 2014, Fuelband was cresting from the 2013 holiday season, yet FitBit now had 8 times as much interest. And Fitbit is just one of FuelBand’s competitors.

CES 2014 was a landmark event for another reason. One of the most important announcements there came from Tory Burch, which teased a new accessory collection for Fitbit Flex. Tory Burch is making the Fitbit more fashionable. Nike’s options are limited here, as it must support FuelBand over any other technology. If FuelBand can’t iterate and innovate as fast as other products, then Nike must attach its iconic swoosh to a losing player. Yet Nike is a brand that wants to find the next Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, not the next Tim Tebow.

What may have tripped up Nike is its own mission statement, which says Nike is here “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world (*if you have a body, you are an athlete).” If Nike’s in the innovation business, and its target market is everyone, the FuelBand makes sense. The only way it seems that they could justify shuttering FuelBand is by saying it’s no longer innovative, but I’d argue some aspects of the FuelBand – especially in its design – are far more innovative than Fitbit Flex and other competitors.

What Nike ultimately had to accept is that while it says it’s in the innovation business, it’s mostly in the footwear and apparel business. Every brand grapples with this, where many have these lofty ideals, but consumers are more practical. People can get inspiration and innovation from a lot of brands, from Pope Francis to Google. People can only get those comfortable, well-engineered, swoosh-sporting sneakers from one source.

I’ve dealt with this internally too. During a brand positioning discussion for my agency, one colleague said how we should be in the business of changing the world. And I had to be the jerk who said, “That’s not what we do. We help corporations sell mouthwash, booze, and credit cards.” We have to be honest with ourselves about what business we’re in if we’re going to earn the trust of our customers.

And that, ultimately, is what brands can say to agencies who have been trying to come up with the next FuelBand. It’s the brand manager or CMO who needs to say, “Sorry, we’re not in the innovation business.” Stand up for the business you’re in. There’s no time to humor another agency creative who wishes they were in the business of changing the world.

 

Catch My New Presentation from Crowdsourcing Week - All the Way from Singapore

Hi from Singapore, or as they say in Singapore, Hi from Singapore (the joys of visiting former British colonies...).

Today, I'm presenting at Crowdsourcing Week here, a conference with impressive speakers from all over the world talking about different opportunities for and ramifications of crowdsourcing. I'm honored to be among them, giving a talk on how crowdsourcing impacts advertising and marketing.

The presentation is available via the shortened URL bit.ly/crowdads, and I've also embedded it below. Note this presentation below is not only annotated, but it includes a number of examples that I couldn't share in the 20-minute talk, so this is the director's cut.

Also, as usual with my Slideshare presentations, if you want to know the source material for anything, including images used, just refer to the notes on each slide. You can download the presentation as well.

Let me know what you think, and what other examples should be included here.

 

 

Crowd Advertising Success Stories and Challenges - Crowdsourcing Week from David Berkowitz

 

 

 

10 Themes from 2012's Bagels & Beer with Berky

A snapshot of a Bagels & Berky session from Atlanta; yes, the bagels are better in NY, but "Grits with Berky" doesn't have the same ring to it.

I recently shared some highlights of my pet project at 360i on 360i's blog:

At carbohydrate-crazy 360i, a number of us gather every other week late afternoon Wednesday for Beer with Berky and first thing Friday for Bagels with Berky (both abbreviated as BwB). At these sessions, anyone who shows up takes part in discussions about new technologies, media, trends, and industry news, and I – the eponymous Berky – get to serve as host and moderator.

The notes from all of this year’s sessions spanned 36 pages, with hundreds of links and dozens of supporting documents. To give you just a taste of what we’ve covered, here’s a more consolidated version. For the full effect, grab a Guinness or a bagel (or both!) while reading.

My colleague running 360i's blog did such a great job laying out the post that I'll refrain from sharing it entirely here, so check it out and let me know what you think should be a focus in 2013.

 

Startup Outlook Issue 3 Now Live with Adly, Livefyre, Media Armor, Pulse, and uSamp

I'm excited to share the latest edition of 360i's Startup Outlook, which you can visit directly at www.startupoutlook.com. It includes a guide for how brands can evaluate startups, with five companies featured each month. This edition includes: Adly, Livefyre, Media Armor, Pulse and uSamp , all part of Greycroft Partners.

If you read anything here, skip to the end for the interview with Greycroft's Ian Sigalow. He's got fantastic perspective on the startup space, so it was a treat for me to read. 

360i - Startup Outlook - Issue 3

10 Things Facebook Can Do With Face.com

10 Things Facebook Can Do with Face.com
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider; above image via Face.com's iPhone app Klik 

One of the fastest-growing Facebook groups this year must be for people whose companies have been acquired by the social network. Following Instagram, Facebook acquired loyalty app Tagtile, proximity network Glancee, photo sharing service Lightbox, social gifting app Karma, and, this week, facial recognition platform Face.com. The last one’s a fascinating company with cutting-edge technology for marketers and publishers, as well as a new consumer-facing iPhone app, Klik, that can learn to recognize friends’ faces based on their Facebook profiles. 

What could Facebook do with Face.com? Here are 10 possibilities. Note that these are all what could be done, rather than what should or will happen.

1) Suggest faces to tag in friends’ photos on Facebook, rather than requiring users to manually tag everyone.

2) Target ads to people based on the facial expressions in their Facebook photos. Also allow Facebook page updates to be targeted to fans’ facial expressions. For instance, Virgin Atlantic could target special offers to people whose photos make them look so serious that they need a vacation.

3) Offer an option of logging into Facebook using your face rather than your username and password.

4) Build on the Apple partnership and combine Siri.com with Face.com. When handling your requests, Siri will not just analyze what you say but how you look when you say it. When you wink, Siri will know you are being sarcastic. 

5) Improve accessibility for people with speech disabilities. It didn’t take much searching to find a story about Intel working on automated lip reading back in 2003, and Engadget covered an academic approach in 2009. This could benefit Siri as well. Beyond the accessibility enhancements, it could let people  mouth commands to their phones when it’s inconvenient to talk aloud. 

6) Make “liking” real. Require people to smile to like something. Or just offer it as a bonus option for users to show they really like it. 

7) Create an app for event organizers to verify attendees based on recognizing faces of those who registered on Facebook.

8) Offer facial-based age verification when people like and share content from alcohol brands. My wife would love getting facially carded if she tried liking Smirnoff. She’d love it even more if it said she was too young and she should stop lying about her year of birth on Facebook.

9) Team up with Google to create a realistic “Minority Report” theme park. Combining Google’s self-driving cars and intent-based targeting with Facebook’s one billion users and Face.com, little in the movie seems fictitious. 

10) Buy book.com. Barnes & Noble owns the site, so Facebook may have to buy Barnes & Noble. That seems doable. Facebook has a market cap of $67 billion, compared to $917 million for the bookseller. Then Facebook can merge Face.com and Book.com and call it… Facebook. 

The possibilities are endless? What else should Facebook do? Just look into your webcam, mouth your response, and remember to smile. You want Facebook to know you’re happy, don’t you? 

 

Introducing Startup Outlook

I'm excited to share some news about a project that I've been working on all spring. Now it's finally live, and it's your turn to take part.

First, check out Startup Outlook, a guide marketers can use to evaluate startups, with five startups featured this month: Immersive Labs, Luminate, QWiPS, Shapeways and Viggle. 

Next, sign up for our June 12 kickoff event in NYC. 

Read more: 

• Digiday covers how "Agencies Play Startup Matchmakers"
• My Ad Age byline on the criteria brands should use 
• 360i's blog post announcing Startup Outlook

I welcome your feedback on this. Send suggestions about startups my way, and I hope to see you June 12.

 

RFID and NFC presentation from SXSW

Whoa, that title's a mouthful. Interested in radio frequency identification (RFID) or near field communications (NFC)? Have no clue what either are? I hope the talk I'm giving at South by Southwest (SXSW) will be useful for both audiences, and I welcome your feedback. Slides are below, the short link is bit.ly/sxswnfc, and further resources appear at the end.

Thanks to Dan Shust for having me as part of SXSW's Future 15 convergence series. Tweet him the word "gimme" to get his slides on convergence trends - great stuff.

How Near Field Communications (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Will Change Mobile - SXSW 2011

View more presentations from David Berkowitz