Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Why Should Marketers Care about the Age of the Cyborg?

I've got a new post in Ad Age about a subject we'll be hearing plenty more about in the coming decade: humanity's cyborgization, and how advertisers are learning from actuaries. The post starts:

You might know how much an impression's worth for your brand. Perhaps you can estimate the value of a click, or social actions such as buzz, likes and shares. But what if you could measure a customer's level of physical activity? What about posture, sleep habits, or even virility?

 That data's going to become increasingly available to marketers and advertisers as we head into the age of the cyborg.

Once a hallmark of science fiction, the human enhanced with mechanical superpowers is quickly becoming mainstream with the advent of wearable technology. Among the milestones arising over the past decade was Apple's success with slimming down the iPod and equipping it with enough storage to hold thousands of songs, which turned it into a popular workout accessory. A slew of add-ons sprung up to allow runners to wear the iPod as an armband. Then in May 2006, Nike released Nike+, in collaboration with Apple, a wireless chip embeddable in select shoe models. In a breakthrough melding of fashion and technology, the chip synced with the iPod, and later the iPhone, to track fitness activity and sync music to workouts. In 2012 Nike released the FuelBand, transitioning its technology from a chip hidden inside a shoe to a bracelet that became its own fashion statement.

Read the rest at Ad Age, and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.

 

How Do Brands View Vendor Pitches?

Digiday has a fantastic post this week featuring Brian Maynard, director of marketing for Jenn-Air at Whirlpool, on what he thinks of vendors pitching him all the time. It seems like every single vendor knows how to find him:

I can tell you that every day, every single day, I receive somewhere between 50-75 touches from someone wanting to sell me something. I get phone calls, emails; they even mail me letters. Of the 50-75, I maybe get to look at 25. They all say the same thing: “Can I get 30 minutes of your time?” If I did 10, I would not have time to do my job.

That sums up the challenge with the proliferation of vendors, especially since, as he notes, most aren't doing their homework. 

My job's a little different from his. I have to look at every single pitch - even if it's a smaller number of pitches than he gets daily. I try to meet with as many as I can. But as someone who is looking out for my 450 colleagues and dozens of clients, I have to be judicious and wind up with little tolerance for vendors who are unprofessionally pushy, lazy, or tone deaf. 

One of my biggest pet peeves lately: when a pitch isn't relevant for me and I tell someone in sales who exactly at my agency they should reach out to, and then they keep responding to me either to try the pitch again or complain that a colleague isn't getting back to them. If a colleague isn't getting back to them, that's because of their pitch, not me, and it only makes me think less of them. Often, I'll put a note in their contact file that they whine and waste my time.

Read the rest of the post at Digiday. Again, it's a great interview.

Startup Outlook 6 Live with 5 Great Video Technology Companies

360i's Startup Outlook is back for October, this time focusing on companies changing how we watch video and use it for marketing: Broadcast for Friends from Ustream, SundaySky, Tout, Viddy and VideoGenie.

Read and download the report directly here, sign up for updates at StartupOutlook.com, and catch a detailed recap on 360i's blog. 

Watch the Video Version of This Blog, via Wibbitz

Okay, it's not Star Wars. But it's compelling enough in terms of technology, with Wibbitz creating a video edition of any site or RSS feed. Play the video below. Presumably this prototype will keep getting better and thus more useful. As of now, there are already a number of ways to customize the video, including several music options. It reminds me a bit of SundaySky, featured in 360i's latest Startup Outlook report, which turns any feed of data into video - in that case, for marketing purposes.

Ad Age Column: Furby Confessions and Attachment Marketing

My latest column in Ad Age is a two-parter:

First, it's a confession. My wife and I are so attached to Furby that I'm not sure when I'll be able to bring it into the office, if ever:

My wife called me the other day saying she was with someone who wanted to talk to me. It was our Furby. I knew then that our life had changed. The new generation of the 1990s fad has found a way to tap into what should be a much bigger trend: attachment marketing.

It also explores how attachment marketing can apply to brands:

The bond that we formed with the robot is emblematic of this new era of attachment marketing. One consumer brand has a strong grasp of attachment marketing today: Nike. Its Fuelband includes a clever hook – a digital mascot named Fuelie that appears on the app and website to congratulate and motivate users for fitness achievements great and small. How many people wind up working out more or wearing the Fuelband longer just to please Fuelie? He looks like some animated spark of electricity, the kind of amorphous, peppy, personable character that could easily moonlight as an Olympics mascot.

Read the full post in Ad Age.

 

Startup Outlook Issue 5 Live - Shopping Edition

Have you wondered when the latest edition of Startup Outlook would be out? You don't have to wait any longer. Here's an update via 360i's blog: 

This month’s Startup Outlook report focuses on the emerging platforms that are changing the way brands and consumers connect both digitally and in-store. Social commerce, mobile commerce, crowdsourcing and SEO all play a part in this transformation, and provide the basis for this month’s featured companies: BloomReach, Quirky, Shopkick, Swirl and Wrapp. [Editor’s Note: To learn more about Wrapp, check out our recent Q&A with Lisa Enckell, the company’s Head of Marketing.]

Read or download the report here:

 

Startup Outlook: Issue 5, September 2012 from 360i

If you want your company to be featured in a future edition of Startup Outlook, contact me via any of the links from the blog, or just email me at dberkowitz (@) 360i (dot) com. 

How I Keep Track of Startups and Emerging Technologies - A BestVendor List

Lately, I've been checking into BestVendor, a new service that lets you rate software and apps you use, mostly for business but also for personal purposes. While it's a work in progress, it keeps adding more useful features. One of the latest is Lists, where anyone can create a topical, curated list.

Check out my list: How to Keep Track of Startups and Emerging Technologies. What else would you add to it? If you create a list, share it in the comments as well.

10 Comebacks I'd Like to See

Second Life's new motto: "They're not real, but they're spectacular!"

Ten Comebacks I'd Like to See
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

It could be the Olympics, or the fear of another early ending to the Mets’ season, or Ben Folds reuniting with the other two guys as they ironically tour again as Ben Folds Five. Whatever the reason, I’ve got comeback fever. While I try to find the cure, I keep thinking about social media. Here are 10 social media comebacks that I’d love to see:

1) Facebook’s stock: As a marketer, I don’t care what Facebook’s share price is. But the price indicates that Facebook is struggling to properly value its assets and communicate that value to marketers and investors. As a public company, Facebook is more accountable to marketers. With ads now appearing in the News Feed and on mobile devices, Facebook is delivering more of what brands want without sacrificing the user experience. It will have to keep moving faster, though.

2) Yahoo’s relevance: Yahoo’s still great for display media buyers, but there was a time when Yahoo was a pioneer in search (well before Google), an innovator in mobile (well before Google), and a scrappy social disruptor (Google’s working on it). Yahoo brought together acquisitions like Flickr (alive, but in need of resuscitation), Delicious (which it sold), and Upcoming (which somehow still exists as a Yahoo brand). OK, its homegrown network, Yahoo 360 ,was a Google Buzz-esque flop, but now its one big social idea is to connect all its pages to Facebook and get people to automatically share everything they read. There better be more. This week’s updates to IntoNow are a start.

3) Hashable’s idea: Hashable had a vision of replacing business cards and making introductions easier. It relied too much on game mechanics, and the company took itself so seriously that it inspired the memorable post “Hashable is Worthless” during SXSW 2011. Someone will come up with a better way to digitally connect people professionally, and when it happens, we’ll probably see just how close Hashable was.

4) Foursquare’s mojo. Yes, Foursquare is growing, and it just released Promoted Updates. The company matters less for what it is than what it was. Foursquare was a catalyst for marketers to expand their thinking around mobile marketing, location-based services, and game mechanics. Now, when I encounter someone using Foursquare, it’s often to get $5 back on their AmEx statement. That’s a great reason to love American Express, but it turns Foursquare into a coupon pusher. I still like and regularly use it, but I want to get back to loving Foursquare again.

5) Groupon’s original approach: Groupon’s etymology derives from its origins as a group buying platform. It was exciting, in the way that winning your first eBay was exciting ten or fifteen years ago. If deals didn’t get enough subscribers, they wouldn’t materialize, much like Kickstarter projects today. If you loved it, you’d need to tell your friends. Who’s bragging to their friends they bought a Groupon now? 

6) Barcode Hero and Stickybits: There was a brief time when barcodes were wonderfully weird marketing vehicles. Barcode Hero added a gaming layer to barcode scans. After scanning relevant products, I was the king of Kraft, and even the king of shoes after killing time waiting for my wife to finish up at DSW. Stickybits treated barcodes as a content gateway, so you could scan a code and leave comments, photos, and videos. While neither company was destined to be a mass market hit, it was fun looking at black and white lines and boxes in entirely new ways.

7) Chat bots: Before there was Siri, there was SmarterChild, an instant messaging bot that was a fun alternative to search engines. Before instant messaging, there was Dr. Sbaitso, a DOS program that was the world’s first mass market virtual therapist. They didn’t catch on in time for brands to take part, but Siri will have a longer shelf life.

8) Color’s concept: If Instagram was the “Blair Witch Project” of mobile apps, Color was the “Waterworld.” It had a creative premise but couldn’t live up to the expectations set by its funding. The idea of an app that displays content shared from your immediate location sounds like a great social experiment, and perhaps even an important technology underlying the future of how content will be shared. Color pivoted and is now a video-sharing app. Yawn.

9) Second Life: I have fond memories of hanging out on H&R Block’s virtual island, where the avatars of real tax advisors would answer consumers’ avatars’ tax questions. I also recall another time tagging along with some clique of avatars (this may or may not have been when I met my first virtual furry), and one of them kindly offered me some digital genitalia to make my avatar look less like a Ken doll. Second Life is still around, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it in a marketing plan.

10) Digg: Digg introduced millions of people to social discovery, crowdsourcing, and creating content that’s designed to spread through social networks rather than search engines. Now there are new owners that want to make Digg a verb again. I’m especially excited for two reasons. First, Buzzfeed is on the verge of a monopoly for publicizing stories like, “Gotye’s 50 Funniest Kittens at the 2012 Lego Olympics.” Buzzfeed needs more competition. Secondly, as much as I couldn’t stand Digg’s fanboys with their hero worship of the site’s founders, Reddit’s insular crowd of contributors is even worse, voting up photos about – what else? – what it’s like introducing people to Reddit. Digg, you can do better.

I may often get nostalgic, but not everything needs an encore. I’m perfectly happy to say farewell to MySpace, Google Buzz, the hype around widgets, and every game that resembles FarmVille. Yet the Internet is the best comeback generator the world has ever known. It rebooted Betty White’s career, brought “Arrested Development” back from oblivion, and made Nikola Tesla a scientific folk hero. Some of these social media comebacks are destined to happen. When they do, you’ll hear about it – on Digg, from friends sharing a Yahoo story, via SmarterChild, or by scanning a barcode sticker in Second Life.

 

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

Flying Too Close to the Sun

Flying Too Close to the Sun
originally puiblished in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Remember Highlight? Sure, it’s still around, and it’s premature to write it off. Yet the new app that received the most buzz at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year just gained a new competitor: Facebook.

There have been many instances recently of the rich getting richer, with the best functionality and features getting incorporated into the most dominant platforms. Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter are among those especially adept at making dreams come true while simultaneously unleashing nightmares.

Here are four ways this has been happening lately:

1) Proximity Networks

Tracx reported that Highlight, Glancee, and Sonar respectively received the most buzz at SXSW in March. All three offer twists on a similar theme: find friends near you, and potentially your friends’ friends as well. To most people, the idea of constantly sharing one’s location to strangers sounds creepy, so it doesn’t have mainstream potential in its current form. That’s presumably why Foursquare, which was all about finding friends before it relaunched to focus on discovering local businesses, has been cautious here. Meanwhile, Apple’s Find My Friends mobile service is entirely focused on locating select people, and generally only for brief intervals.

It’s Facebook that will now likely determine to what extent any of this catches on. Not only did Facebook acquire Glancee, but it is testing out a feature dubbed Find Friends Nearby (initially codenamed Friendshake) that emerged from a hackathon. There are bugs; tech legend Robert Scoble commented on TechCrunch how it didn’t live up to what Highlight did so well. But this is version 0.1 of a feature that Facebook barely publicized. Version 0.1 of a feature from Facebook with its nearly 1 billion users is a heck of a lot more meaningful than version 10.0 of a service that reaches 10,000 or even 1 million users.

2) Facial Recognition

As discussed in this series last week, Facebook recently acquired Face.com. Days later, I received an email from Google+ with the subject line, “Is this you in Daniel Berkowitz’s album?” Daniel’s my father. He uploaded a number of photos, and didn’t tag anyone. But Google recognized me because I enabled a feature called Find My Face. Google’s documentation notes, “After you turn on Find my Face, Google+ uses the photos you're tagged in to create a model of your face. The model updates as tags of you are added or removed, and you can delete the entire face model at any time by turning off Find my Face.”

Few people probably know this setting even exists, so it won’t have much of an immediate impact, and many will prefer it stays off. Heck, the Daily Mail reported that Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said the company “was ‘unlikely’ to employ facial recognition programs.” Yet vain as I am, I love the idea that Google can find photos of me. I then have the option of tagging myself. Really, who wouldn’t want to know what photos of them are online? This hints at what Facebook can do with Face.com, following Google acquiring related technology PittPatt last year to create its own offering.

I’ve used facial recognition software for years, and nothing prepared me for receiving that email from Google. As a bonus, it found seven photos, and all of them were of me. It’s all the more impressive given that in many photos, it’s hard to tell me apart from my oldest brother. How long will it be before facial recognition software can tell the difference between identical twins? We can’t be that far off.

3) Check-Ins

Checking in has proven to be a fad, for the most part. Even Foursquare minimized the prominence of the check-in feature in the latest version of its app. Yet location-sharing remains all the more important, especially when considering how common it is now for people to append their location to posts in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other services. Now Apple may be dabbling with check-ins. Bloomberg reported that Apple will incorporate Yelp’s check-in functionality within its new mobile mapping software coming this fall. Yelp was always an also-ran with check-ins, and most other check-in-themed services have long since died through acquisition or disinterest. It’s questionable how core Yelp check-ins will be for Apple’s maps, but once the upgrade is live, Foursquare could be further marginalized.

4) Curation

There once was an amazing service called Summify that aggregated the links shared by anyone you followed on Twitter and then delivered them as email digests. Then Twitter acquired it, and Summify started winding down operations. That made room for other services, such as News.me -- one not quite as good, but an acceptable alternative. Then Twitter came out with its daily email digest, which also isn’t as great a product as what Summify offered, but it’s very good and will likely obviate the need for any others. Summify and then News.me made Twitter far more useful for me. It turns out Twitter’s now doing that on its own thanks to its new addition.

The Sun

Glancee, Face.com, Yelp, and Summify all won by creating products that have the potential to become core parts of major companies’ value propositions. Yet that’s a dangerous game, like Icarus playing chicken with the sun. Facebook probably didn’t even need Glancee, as its rival prototype came out of a hackathon. Apple will hurt a slew of local services by focusing on Yelp.

Yet as a character once noted on “30 Rock,” “When a big one falls, four little ones move up.” Google and Facebook may inspire others like Microsoft and Apple to invest more in facial recognition. Or others may look for the next generation, whether it’s voice recognition, retina scanning, or DNA-based friend finding. Even when a few get burned, plenty others still want their shot at getting close to the sun. A few will even overpower it.