Has something like this ever happened to you?

"Imagine waking up and hearing an ad on TV for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, then checking your iPhone on the way to grab some coffee and seeing an e-mail for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal. Then, when you fire up Pandora for your workout, you hear ads for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, while on your Yahoo! mail, you are served a banner ad for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, and then on the subway, signage for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, and on the billboard outside your office, and in online video ads, and then, as you check-in into the Shake Shack – Bam! You get a Foursquare Deal Near-By with - you guessed it - a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal."

For years this integrated marketing approach of delivering the same message across multiple platforms was considered a best practice, however in the "always on" device-driven world we live in today, consumers tend to respond better to advertising that is tailored to the platform and recipient - in essence, delivering a unified experience versus a consistent message.

To learn more about my thoughts on unified marketing, visit my recent post on MediaBizBloggers.
 

The National Association of Television Program Executives Annual Event

I've been going to the NATPE TV supermarket for years.

I remember a time when millions of dollars were spent on the booths, and lavish parties were thrown for the execs and the affiliates.

I also saw it lose ground to CES during the financial meltdown, and now I've seen the start of a comeback for NATPE as an event and a marketplace.

I'm told there were a thousand more attendees at NATPE this year over last.

67 countries were represented here and every major content provider globally seemed to be in attendance.

This year, they had online show guides to help navigate the sessions and the floor, a hash tag and TwitterFall, a Facebook presence, and lots of social media interactions...they just needed better access to the NATPE Wi-Fi on site.

The theme this year was "Content First!”

Some things I heard and learned on content distribution, international programming, video strategies, brand integration and connected TVs:

Netflix, HULU, and other new(ish) content rich platforms need to be viewed as alternative distribution methods, not competitors. Beth Roberts of NBCU says broadcasters need to rethink their approach to windowing feature content to avoid being overwhelmed by all the new platforms.

But traditional media still sees platforms like Netflix as foes, where content producers see it as its friend. The truth is it's not going away, so everyone needs to play nice in the sandbox.

The mood overall was upbeat, as the advertising climate heats up again.

The international business was red hot according to my sources, and of course Latin American programming played a significant role here, with a large turnout from Univision, Telemundo and Televisa (not surprising in Miami)!

There was talk about the mainstay of Hispanic programming in the US Latino market- The Telenovela - being the best at serving the female demographic to the detriment of the male viewer. In other words, give the guys something more to watch as well!

Yahoo!, having lost the UGC battle To YouTube, is changing its video strategy to one of original video content.

Brand integration in programming was a big topic for the advertisers here. There was even a company on the floor pitching a software solution that inserts banners into video called SeamBI for seamless branding integration.

The talk about multi-screen TV consumption was still on a roll here, so that's good news for interactive TVs (but I'm still not convinced. Get Glue and Twitter while watching a show already distracts me).

And one last thought. It was an honor to see two old friends, Dick Ebersol and Mary Hart join Regis Philbin and Gerhard Zeiler, all Icons of television, receive the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award from NAPTE.  It truly was an inspiring event.

http://facebook.com/frankjradice

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http://www.def6.tv

About 18 months ago we bought a post-production business in Manhattan Creative Bubble (now definition 6) and  unified it into our interactive agency because we fundamentally believed that the future of the internet and marketing was brilliant story telling. We wanted a group of story tellers and emotion creators to be a core part of our team and have the capabilities to produce work for Hollywood, TV and Madison avenue at a world class level.  We have achieved this and since unification have won a Clio, an Emmy, an IBIXX, OMMA, ADDY, ProMax and even Small Agency campaign of the year from Advertising Age.  But what I did not expect was to be so engulfed by the discussion regarding "What is happening with TV, entertainment and the internet?"

 

Most of the conversation has sounded like "who moved my cheese?" especially to an outsider who never had cheese in the first place (cheese is consolidated broadcast advertising dollars and limited distribution channels such as movie theaters and DVD's). Ultimately, I've come to believe the issue isn't that TV is dead or dying, in fact it is growing and thriving, or that VOD is going to destroy Hollywood. The issue is that ad buys are more complex, dynamic, fragmented and content distributors are having to work harder to maintain margin and that content producers are having to become more sales savvy because they need to have more customers than the limited number of broadcasters and theater distributors from days long ago.  Everyone blames the internet, the Millennial’ s, the mobile revolution and cord cutters for fragmented the audience and making it harder and harder to find a digital dollar vs. digital penny.  As a response, we are seeing a slew of "Smart TV's" internet enabled televisions with app stores, over the top content, deals with VOD organizations and social integration. Awesome! Fantastic! we will bring the distractions from traditional living room TV into the living room and then we will get all the dollars in one place again and things will just be beautifully profitable for us again.   Except…..

 

Who asked you to make the idiot box Smart? I want to watch TV, not necessarily watch a specific show, just watch TV.  According to a #CES panel where either Nielsen or TV guide said "70%+ of the people who sit down to watch TV don't know what they are going to watch until they sit on the couch" - ok, I buy that, and to me that means I still want it to be easy, passive, yes I want to do discover, but not necessarily search and explore like I do with Google, Twitter and Pandora. Stations and networks are good, they have themes, they have repeats, they have marathons in case I've fallen behind or want to get immersed on a weekend afternoon in a new series. So stop touching my TV, I want to sit back, relax and watch the "History of Steel" or "Golf" or "The Guy from the 70's painting and talking in that soothing voice" - I don't want to grab content, make my own playlist, find my favorite actor that cross references with Kevin Bacon to kill 20%-50% of the time I have to WATCH TV. Leave my few times a week I have no plan, and only want to enjoy.  Now if you can make it work with my iPad and come with me on my phone when I'm in line at the supermarket, then I'm all yours and I look forward to the new adventures of "TV and Me".

Follow Michael on Twitter @mkogon

It’s December and the end of another year. We all know what that means. Christmas? Wrapping up the fiscal year? Coming up with New Year’s resolutions we won’t keep? No, my friend. No. Most importantly it’s the time of year for social media and the blogosphere to flood with Top [insert # here] of [insert random subject here] Lists! The Top 6 Most Googled Terms! The Top 10 Most Watched YouTube Videos! The Top 8 Most Popular Hashtags! The Top 12 Most Photographed Sandwiches! Gone are the days when Top 10 lists were the exclusive monopoly of the Ranking Dictator David Letterman! I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to imagine what could be more exciting. So I decided to create my own contribution to this joyous annual ranking extravaganza. And I’ve based this list on highly extensive research that includes thousands of my own opinions, hundreds of my own anecdotal experiences, and dozens of my own biases.

I’m quite certain that if all Twitter and Facebook posts with content that falls in one of the below 10 categories suddenly ceased that the entire world of social media would either collapse upon itself like a black hole or it would would see about as much use as telegram services do today... lots of RT's with cricket sounds.

10. Top X of Y Lists. I’m pretty certain that practically anyone can take about 5 minutes and write a list of X number of Y things on a blog then post it to Twitter and get a large number of click-throughs and RT’s.  I mean… you’re reading this one and I’m totally just making it all up as I go along with zero actual or real research to back it up.

9. Posting links to funny videos on YouTube. This is hilarious. This is too funny. Totally LOL! What’s interesting to me is how many of us roll our eyes at our parents for their constant barrage of forwarded e-mail humor, but we think nothing of posting our own barrage of it to social media each and every day.

8. Posting cute pictures of your kids and funny things they said. My kids are adorable, dammit. And everyone must know this. And if you don’t comment or reply with things like “Adorable!” and “So cute!” I will shun you by refusing to comment on how yummy that picture of your arugula salad looks. Take that.

7. Individual content curation: The Human RSS. Who needs trained and experienced content editors that might actually have journalism degrees and do stupid things like verify sources and accuracy of information when you can rely upon that guy whose avatar is a close up of the upper left quarter of his face?

6. Celebrity Obituaries. What?! OMG! Another celebrity died? Quick! Pls RT! And don’t forget to add in your own personal tribute or reference memorable quotes.

5. Letting everyone know what new gadget you got. I mean, what good is having some new tech bling if you can’t show off your technical superiority to people you never talked to in high school or 736 of your Followers that you never met?

4. What you “Like”, where you are traveling to, what you are eating, what you are watching, what you are reading, what the weather is like where you are at, and who you are hanging out with. I unfortunately know more mundane details of the lives of people I never actually met, seldom see or barely ever spoke to then I really ever cared to know. It also scares me to realize that I now hear real-world conversations where people refer to themselves in the 3rd person stating they "Like this".

3. Apple rumors and anticipating Apple releases. If it wasn’t for debating what features might be in the next iPhone or complaining about the lack of Flash support on the iPad, Twitter could probably reduce its server capacity by about 10%. Never before have people spent so much effort complaining about products that they collectively and eagerly spend so much money on.

2. Opinions on the daily breaking news. Because all the talk shows, pundits, broadcast news commentators, and daily water cooler conversations really just didn’t give us enough of other people’s opinions on which to base our own.

1. Discussing social media. Seriously… has any other medium ever been used so reflexively to discuss itself? Imagine if the largest percent of your phone calls were to discuss phones and phone related technology or if most of your e-mails were focused on the subject of e-mail, e-mail clients, and e-mail servers. Pretty insane when you think about it.

Of course, I just realized I forgot to include a big one: complaining about products and services in general. But I only want 10 items in my list. #FAIL

All that said, please don't think this means I see social media as worthless or a waste of time. It is an incredibly powerful medium that really has changed the way people communicate and it has connected people with each other in a way that is truly staggering to consider. It can be an amazing way to gain insights, it has forever changed the nature and control of information flow, and it has empowered individuals and movements across the globe. It can connect consumers and brands in a more personal fashion than almost any preceeding medium. It has placed the pulse of the moment in any given place from any given person's perspective at the potential fingertips of billions. And IMO it's really just the beginning. So has anyone heard what the specs are on the rumored camera that's suppose to be in the next version of the iPad?

Happy New Year!

I woke up this morning to a pretty interesting e-mail that was sent to me by way of my Google profile from someone named David Anderson:

I am making a blog for an online writing class I'm taking through UF, and for a module on search techniques I needed to find a non-mainstream website about my topic (sports bars).  I found your old site, the East Lansing Bar Review, and I loved it so I've written my post for this assignment about it.  I've only made five posts so far, but here is a link anyway: http://sportsbarjunkie.blogspot.com/

This is really crazy in so many ways. The site he is referring to is something I created back around 1995. I was attending Michigan State University and worked part-time in the MSU Network Center to make some extra cash. My official title there was Mainframe Consultant and mostly I helped professors and students to use things like Gopher, Banyan VINES, FTP, configure dial-up PPP access, and learn how to use our Unix-based ELM e-mail client. This was a time when most corporations hadn’t even heard of the web, it had fledgling use by Universities, it was being referred to as a fad, and I had just helped to get Michigan State’s own first web sites up.

I wanted to play around more with this new-fangled world wide web so using a vi editor in Unix, working in HTML 1.0 and armed with a copy of the predominant browser of the time NCSA Mosaic, I decided to create a site that offered a personal review of all the local bars and pubs in the East Lansing, Michigan area. I had a lot of fun creating the site. I had even more fun doing the critical research required to provide the reviews. But it really was bare bones ugly, used hand coded tables, some basic formatting tags, and the most advanced thing it included (which was hot at the time) was an image map that used a monstrosity I created with a copy of Photoshop 1.0.

But so it was born: the East Lansing Bar Review. For a couple of years I kept updating it and occasionally I got really interesting feedback or comments. It even got me a few free beers from local bar owners. When I left MSU my younger brother Mike took over the site and moved it (all 4 or 5 HTML files and all 5-6 images) from my student web account to his. He kept it updated for a couple of more years before he graduated. A couple of years later we got tired of being contacted about it from people asking for updates so Mike posted a note on the site explaining this and since then it’s gathered electronic dust but apparently it’s still there.

15 years from when I created the site, I’m now the CTO of Definition 6 where we create massive high-end brand experiences that include transactional sites with extensive back-end systems integration, hundreds of thousands of pages of content in enterprise-class Content Management Systems, on-line video experiences, mobile web sites, mobile applications and more in addition to spending a ton of time doing Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, On-line Display Media, and Analytics.

In an effort for this blog post to have a point and not just be nostalgic rambling or reflection on how far we’ve come in terms of the web and on-line advancements, what really stands out to me is considering how high this site shows up in results for major search engines. If you search for East Lansing Bars it still comes up as one of the top several results on Google. And if you search as David describes he did in his blog post it’s number one. Keep in mind the site was originally written and posted before Google even existed and at a time when Yahoo! had just come onto the scene as a start-up. The very concept of organic search engine optimization didn’t even really exist let alone was it the means of livelihood for the legions of people that practice its art today. I’m sure there are some things to be said for how today’s algorithms treat a site with such a long tenure favorably as well as the tenure of links to that site. And I’m all but certain that the same site published today would not be treated so favorably. But it is probably worth noting that a site hosted at relatively bad URL by today’s SEO standards with no meta-data, no thought to Information Architecture, and bad file naming practices still shows up high for certain not uncommon searches when the content was meaningfully written and relevant to the subject matter of interest. I’ll leave the rest of the analysis to the real SEO experts out there (and my apologies to our Creative Department for even publishing a link to this relic of a site on our blog).

Thanks, David, for the trip down memory lane and for giving me some interesting things to think about this morning.

Following my post yesterday on great quotes from TEDx, I wanted to share some takeways from the event.

I was fortunate to attend the fourth TEDx Atlanta last Tuesday.  It was the third TEDx Atlanta that I have been lucky enough to both attend and help organize (as well as the second TEDx Atlanta sponsored by Definition 6).  As expected from any product or event associated with TED, the speakers were all great and the content was interesting and insightful.
















Having had a few days to let the content percolate, a few patterns have emerged:

The first is the importance, not of dropping out of college to change the world (we’ve all heard enough from geniuses who skipped school to accomplish great things), but of looking in perhaps unexpected places and connecting perhaps unlikely dots to do your best work.

Having the ability to see opportunity when others don’t, while obvious in its own right, was pervasive all day long.  A few years back, a book called The Medici Effect showcased how successful people all through history have repeatedly had this skill.  Being able to sit in a conference and have what Stanley and Danko might call “the geniuses next door” demonstrate this aptitude was enlightening. 

Ranging from Farmer D, who one day while stoned and skipping class in college, asked his Turkey sandwich “where did you come from?” to Mills Snowden, whose thinking about building a more efficient home randomly led him to being a contender for the X Prize. 

Perhaps Coca-Cola’s VP of Global Design, David Butler, summed it up best when he said: “We can’t think in silos anymore.  We have to think horizontally.  We have to think hollistically.”

While the only group to take the stage was the band Modern Skirts, the pattern from the day involves the importance of collaboration and sharing in accomplishing great things. 

Presenter Logan Smalley, maker of the award winning movie, “Darius Goes West” was a prime example of this.  He started making the film with a Google search asking how to make a documentary film.  By collaborating with people online, he eventually got passed his frustrations of not being able to afford the equipment when somebody told him that it doesn’t matter what he shoots the movie with – if he has a story to tell, people will listen.  Had he not pursued collaborating with other film makers as strongly as he did, there’s a good chance the movie would have never happened. 

Likewise, by working with a close group of friends (all of which knew nothing about movie making) he was able to build the alliance and gain the support he needed to accomplish his goal of making a movie to raise awareness of the disease that his friend was suffering from all while giving his friend the experience of a lifetime.  He additionally said, “The modern approach to movie making is one of mankind’s most incredible and perhaps most underutilized tools for collaborative problem solving.”  Today, everything is about collaboration.  

This leads to what was probably the most prevailant pattern of the day:  As David Butler coined it: “Learn by doing.”  Logan Smalley’s Google search is an example of this, as is Mills Snowden’s work on creating a car that can achieve 100 miles per gallon (like Logan, Mills had zero category experience prior to his effort).  On this subject, Mills said, “The most important part of developing your idea is that you have to start.”  Farmer D (Daron Joffe) is a self-taught organic farmer.  Even the band’s opening set which utilized various furniture to make noise exemplified this notion.

When asked by an audience member how to move beyond the brainstorming stage, a panel of the first five speakers responded:

• You need to enroll people in your idea... You’re very limited if you’re the only one doing it.

• Be sure you’re prepared to know what you’re talking about before you get people involved.

• Use the language of the people you’re talking to... Don’t get lost in your own language.

Part Two:  The National Basketball Association (NBA)

In Part One of my look at the presence of natural social networks in sports, I looked at social media's impact on professional soccer. In this part, I'll look at the National Basketball Association.

Let's start by taking a look at the top corporate brands on Facebook:



At first glance, it appears that one of the most effective tactics utilizing social media is providing promotional privileges for fans to get their pick-me-up.  Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Red Bull are all in the top five. What can brands in other industries learn from the natural social networks formed by sports?  

The NBA, at #9 on the list, is actually ranked 1st in “Page Value” by the same site.  Its success in the social media space is likely driven by its success across the globe, with a powerful fan nation both online and off.  

For over three decades the league has been expanding internationally with marketing programs growing the game in over 240 different countries.  

The international growth demonstrates the sport’s ability to translate across culture, gender, and level of play. In an interview with Emilio Collins, the Senior VP of Global Marketing Partnerships for NBA Entertainment, he explains how the nature of the game facilitates social inclusion. “The game can be played a variety of ways, 1 on 1, indoors or outdoors, male or female.”  

Participation fueled the craving for content, which proved profitable for the NBA.  In fact, Collins cites content distribution as the NBA’s number one source of international revenue.  150 different broadcast partners and numerous highlight shows provide fans their daily fix of the league’s core attributes: passion, teamwork, intensity, history of the franchises, and tradition of the league.  Combined, this is the caffeine equivalent to sports fans.  

Most importantly, the league has maintained its brand identity throughout its development.  Collins states this simply, “Basketball is the NBA.  One entity, one brand associated with the sport.”  The sweat, tears, and slam dunks all make up the National Basketball Association, and the fan nation follows religiously.

So what can other brands learn from the NBA?  “Make your consumers as passionate about your brand as you are,” suggests Collins.  Find those defining attributes that make you brand stand out, and offer a powerful identity to encapsulate those attributes.  

For example, take the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, cited as the turning point in the NBA’s international growth by Collins.  This is when the world met the Dream Team, setting the stage for the perfect storm of sport, strategy, and brand.  “Kids got to see how inspirational the sport can be, and they saw the domination of our players.  And as a result, we saw all points of our business grow—the distribution of media, participation rates, and the increase of international players,” said Collins.  In effect, the NBA only had 17 international players in 1992.  Now they have 85.  

Regardless of industry, businesses can learn a great deal from the NBA’s success.  More companies need to find passion in their product or service offering and package this into one voice, one brand.  Once established, this brand should serve as Team Captain to employees, fans, and followers, directing the entire team down a path to victory.

Just as athletes communicate during the game to adjust the game plan on the fly, utilize social media to listen to your consumers and respond with innovative marketing strategies.  Finally, commit… to your team, to your fans, and to the game plan.  The NBA has done just this, and fans and teams alike are enjoying its success.

Google Instant is a new search enhancement from Google that loads new search results with each keystroke you type – it performs queries in real-time. Google is now pretty much predicting what you are searching for before you finish typing your query. Of course, this confirms what we've all known for years, Google IS actually smarter than you.



According to Google, the primary benefits of Google Instant include:

•    Faster searches – Google Instant predicts what you are looking for before you finish typing (Google states this can save a user 2-5 seconds per search)

•    Smarter predictions – Google knows the words people use to search for different things – as you start typing, Google produces a list of search terms (usually including the one you were about to type)

•    Instant Results – you no longer have to hit return to get your search results – your search results load as you’re typing.

Those are some pretty meaninful benefits. For me, I"m most excited about the fact that Google has unveiled some pretty significant innovation around what it does best: search. 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant and with this launch, it's pretty clear Google plans to maintain its market dominance as the world's most used search engine.

But Wait, Do I Need to Change My SEO Strategy?

The most common question people will want to know about Google Instant is what impact these changes will have on search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. The short answer: none. According to Google, Google Instant doesn’t change page rankings at all, so your current rankings will be intact.

Realistically, SEO strategies will need to change as a result of Google Instant. For starters, marketers should pay attention to what alternative terms appear in Google’s suggestions list under the new Google Instant model.

Google's suggestions can sway users to select a term other than the one they intended to search. Depending on the terms your site is indexed for, and the volume of searches for the particular term each month, websites could notice a decrease (or increase) in traffic as a result of the suggestions.

Search engine marketers would be wise to optimize their sites for suggested terms that may compete with terms they already enjoy prominent ranking.

Closing Thoughts

Google Instant is a significant change in the way Google works. I like the change and feel it’s a great enhancement to the user experience. I also like anything that saves me time in my workday (even if it’s only five seconds at a time).

By improving the user experience and delivering more instant gratification for users, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google’s market share tick up a bit. As usage increases and user experience improves as a result of Google Instant, organic and paid search strategies may need to evolve to adapt to changes. For now, marketers should hold tight, but earmark some more budget for search enhancements in 2011.

What do you think? Do you like Google Instant? Does it improve your search experience?

BONUS: Want more on Google Instant? Watch Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search, discuss these changes in her interview with TechCrunch:

“6 Things” is a list of things I've come across that I find interesting, inspiring, adventurous, or just plain cool. I’ll be publishing these fairly regularly, so keep an eye out.

It's been a little while since my last "6 Things" post. It's not that I haven't had lots of cool stuff ooze through the interweb onto my screen, it's just that I wanted to get my CAT/Clio posts out. And besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder... or is that absinthe?

This list features 6 awesome time-sucking activities I've come across recently. They aren't all new, but if you haven't had the pleasure of using these to fill up your copious free time, then you are in for a treat. Actually, the real question is, "are these a waste of time?" If you are engaged and entertained, is that not a worthwhile activity? Who's to say, but if you get caught at work spending your time on these... you don't know me.

Most of these are tied to brands. Do they do anything for them? Much of marketing is building awareness, so in that sense, many of these are successful (but not all). Will they lead to better business? That's hard to say, but they probably aren't hurting it.

1. Who doesn't want a paper head?
Converse has posted an application on their blog that allows you to make a paper mask of yourself.  Here's mine.

It took some time, but it wasn't difficult. You can print on 8 1/2 by 11 paper, but only if you are making a mask for your cat (it's very small). 11x17 will yield a nearly life-size mask (that's what I used). If you have access to a large format printer, a giant paper head would be awesome.

Does it do anything for Converse? Well, they are really a lifestyle brand, so I say yes. Their blog is all about be cool, hip, and funky... and this fits right in.

2. Rube Goldberg meets Jeopardy
To promote their Chrome browser, Google created a hybrid video/trivia game.

 

It uses a cool YouTube feature that lets you play multiple movies in a sequence and interleaves little trivia games between them. The object is to get through the course as quickly as possible.

It's fun, uses Google services (search and YouTube), and it gets the message out that chrome is fast (over and over, in fact). Will it make you download chrome? It might. They provide a handy download link right on the page.

3. Drink a fake beer, win a real prize.

To promote Strongbow beer, they poured a virtual pint and invited everyone to take a sip.

4. Do a little dance.

You, too, can be a video DJ, creating a seizure inducing video montage that you can send to all your friends.



5. Cast you and your friends in a film trailer.

"Lost in Val Sinestra" is a horror film directed and starring you and your friends. Well, at least that's what the trailer says. If you have a Facebook account, create your own. 



Sure Pixar is great, but have you thought that if Buzz Lightyear would just drop a few more F-bombs it would be high-larious. Well, now is your chance to script a 3D movie your way.

These are not new, but they are still fun to make and watch. Between the too-cute characters and the almost creepy vocalizations, it's hard not to love them. You can create free movies using a limited character set. "Premium" characters cost money (which I suppose is how they stay in business). But even if you only play around and never actually "publish" a movie, it can be hours of fun.

(warning: Most of these movies are rated M for mature... although clearly the people making them are not.)

Over the past two years, and more specifically the last six months, more and more companies are understanding the need to have online video on their website.  A good website should be a place where a person can come and get good solid information on a company, product, or service.  A great website will tell an engaging story around the brand that will pull the customer in and make him or her want to get more information. Great video content can take your site to the next level.

But what makes great video content?

What is good video?  Just like anything else subjective, that depends on the viewer.  However, with the constant arrival of high quality production/camera equipment for both professionals and consumers, creating a good quality production video is not nearly as difficult as it used to be.  From homemade videos and basic talking head videos to more professional e-commerce pieces and live action mixed with animation, online video has a wide array of uses.  Now, more than ever, producers and users of online video really need to focus more on the message itself and make sure that is engaging.

Here are some examples of great video content I've seen used - hopefully this will spawn some ideas for how you can leverage online video on your website:

• President Obama - Even using cameras installed on computers will work for the right message, as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign showed.  David Plouffe used a series of videos made in his office to keep Obama’s fans informed of what was going on in the campaign.  While being just a very basic, low production video, Plouffe used PPT slides to emphasize certain points and utilized the fact that the information itself was interesting to viewers to make a more engaging video. 

• TED – A great website with an incredible array of videos of speakers on a variety of subjects, this is a fantastic example of the most basic video production can still be engaging and entertaining as long as the subject matter is worthwhile.  Nothing more than a camera following a speaker around on stage (granted, some of the speakers are among the brightest people on Earth).

• E-commerce – plenty of companies are trying to use video as part of their e-commerce strategy to get users to buy their products.  Zappos has been leading the charge, creating not only their own youtube video but also asking consumers to create their own videos showing their experience with their shoes. Lots of great press and interest in this campaign has made for a very successful period for the company. Diesel has a great video on their site of video utilizing tagging and e-commerce within the video.  For companies who feel they can engage customers with their products while being worn/used by others, this is another great example. 

• Viral videos – Everyone wants to have the next viral video ant there are some great examples of thses – from the homemade laughing baby video that has been viewed 115MM times, to the now famous music video for OK Go on treadmills, there are plenty of ways for companies to engage with consumers. 

Many of the top brands have their own YouTube pages to let consumers immerse themselves in the brand experience.  As we all know, YouTube is now the second most used search engine in the world behind Google – so use it.  Create your own channel – post videos, link them to your Facebook page and tweet about them. See what happens.

Another great way to engage in viral is of course comedy.  One of my favorite sites for this is Return of Terry Tate - Terry is a former NFL player who both creates his own viral videos (professionally done) and is also often used as a spokesperson in viral videos for brands.  Check out his website  - and if you have budget and want to do something hilarious, think about him.  I have seen examples of both external and internal company videos featuring Terry.

So, companies hoping to use online video no longer have to worry about huge production budgets for these videos.  Of course, the better the video looks, the more likely it is to be shared.  But, as I mentioned before, if you can create a great story to tell, you don’t have to spend a million dollars to tell it.

Here are some other great online video sites that you may or may not have heard of:

• Funny Or Die - www.funnyordie.com
• DailyMotion - www.dailymotion.com
• MyDamnChannel - www.mydamnchannel.com
• NextNewNetworks - www.nextnewnetworks.com
• Heavy - www.heavy.com

These are some of my favorites. Please feel free to share some of your favorite sites with me as well - I'd love to check them out.

Who doesn't love a good Top Ten list? The answer is nobody! Why else would Letterman still be doing it after all these years? I decided it was due time I compiled my own. So, here is my Top Ten List of Top Ten Lists:

#10 - Letterman’s Top 10 - the mother of all top 10 lists

#9 - Top 10 Cat Videos - woo hoo (ironically, I'm allergic... but not to video)
 
#8 - Top 10 Best Tracking Shots Ever - a personal favorite

#7 - Top 10 Inventions That Changed the World - did the bread slicer make the list?
    
#6 - Top 10 Sports Cliches -

#5 - Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs - yeah, thanks for narrowing it down guys. It does have a Top 10 though.

#4 - Top 10 Burgers in the U.S. - according to Playboy (the obvious source)

#3 - Top 10-est Rap Albums of All Time - according to Steady Bloggin'

#2 - Top 10 Video Share Websites - from Top Ten Reviews

And... drum roll please... my #1 pick for best Top 10 lists is...

#1 - Wayne's World - the duo revised the famous bit a couple of years ago.

My point is not the Top Ten lists, but rather, that these lists (and in some cases the corresponding content) have been around for as long as we can remember.  Essentially it’s like a radio DJ of old, someone making choices for you and putting the selected material into neat little buckets to presumably be more easily consumed.

For brands the time has come that we start talking about making a clear distinction when it comes to web video (and content), and all brand messaging online for that matter - the distinction between content vs. intent.

Cats doing wacky stuff is merely content for content sake, there’s no intent to make it spread or sell anything. It’s just…cats? However, what if you do in fact to want to speak to the cat people. What then? How do you ‘meow’ to the feline masses? You want to connect with, collect and ultimately sell to the cat people.

Now we have intent.

This is crucial as the era of services like Peter Gabriel’s TheFilter.com reach the marketplace and begin to filter content for us. Forget search. Imagine all the portals claiming to be the source for the most effective filtering, aggregating only the content that’s right for you.

The media landscape is already fragmented to such a degree it’s difficult for anyone, even the most literate and tech savvy, to follow. Which means now it’s even more important that brands are intentional when creating content to reach their preferred consumer.

Can you just throw a banner ad on some zany video of Al Bundy dancing to the latest Major Lazer jam? Sure, that still works…Google’s banking on it. But you’re not speaking directly to anyone.

Instead, go find people. Your people. Seek them out where they are, and speak to them in their language so you connect in a way that’s engaging, authentic, and real. Intent.

Now take that idea and run with it. That’s what the Internet is for.


(Image Credit: Number 10 by yoppy)

The following is an abbreviated step-by-step guide to measuring social media ROI.

Step 1: Define Goals & Success Metrics
The first step of ROI measurement is defining your goals.  What do you hope to accomplish by being active in the social space?  One problem is that brands launch social campaigns without clearly identifying or understanding their goals, which makes measuring success difficult (if not impossible).  

Here are a few examples of social media goals:
•    Expand brand or product awareness
•    Increase engagement with brand
•    Generate qualified leads
•    Drive sales
•    Build community
•    Create brand advocates
•    Qualify fans and convert them to customers
•    Improve customer satisfaction
•    Establish company as a thought leader
•    Attract talent

Once goals have been defined, the next step is determining the appropriate success metrics that align with these goals. For example, if a goal is to increase brand awareness, metrics might include the volume of online discussion or “buzz” about your brand, the level of audience engagement (re-tweets, comments, posts, video views), the number of fans, followers, etc. and the number of user impressions.

The following are examples of social media success metrics:
•    Volume of  online “buzz” about a brand
•    Volume of positive sentiment
•    Number of fans, followers, readers (or number of high-quality/targeted fans)
•    Engagement (number of video views, duration of views, time spent on the company blog site, time spent playing a company’s branded game application, etc.)
•    Volume of user comments posted to company blog, profile or posted content
•    Retweet or peer-sharing statistics for related content and posts
•    Comment or retweet resonation (number of user comments multiplied by
    how many followers or friends each user has)
•    Media coverage
•     Media impressions (mentions on blogs or other media multiplied by the size
    of the audience)
•    Quantity of new or qualified sales leads (referred from social sites)
•    Website Referral Traffic (from social sites)
•    Advertising click-through rates
•    Volume of customer service issues handled

Step 2: Establish a Baseline
In order to effectively measure success, make sure to first establish a baseline by determining your current position within the social landscape.  For instance, if your goal is to increase awareness and you will be tracking the amount of “buzz” or mentions about your brand, you must first know what the current levels are before taking actions to reach that goal.  Without establishing this baseline, it’s difficult to accurately show ROI.

There are a variety of analytics tools available to help with social media measurement.  I won’t go into too much detail here (there are dozens of options), but a few of these include Google Analytics, Social Mention, Viral Heat, Scout Labs, Radian6, and Listen Logic.  These tools can be used to gather key social media metrics and help you identify strengths and weaknesses of your social presence.

Step 3: Measure and Track Success
After you launch your social media program, begin the measurement process to track success.  Gather the success metrics from your analytics tools and start to see how (or if) they correlate to higher sales, increased customer satisfaction, website traffic, store traffic, etc.  Try to identify trends where possible. Does positive consumer sentiment or an increase in chatter about your brand lead to higher website/store traffic, leads or sales?  Recognizing these trends and identifying their point of origin is key in measuring social media ROI.  

(Image Credit: "Basics of Social Media ROI," by Oliver Blanchard)

While the race for ‘ownership’ of the LBS market (Location Based Services) rages on, and naysayers’ debate its viability, I am sold on the concept.

If you are not familiar, LBS are the latest craze in the ever growing social media marketing landscape.  The general principle is that an end user uses their smart phone and its GPS abilities to ‘check in’ to their current location. 

Like its social media older cousins Facebook and Twitter, there are many out there that think this is just a passing phenomena - a game if you will.  Like Facebook and its now 400 million plus users, and Twitter and it’s large following I believe in the LBS strategy.  Out of the pack has emerged two ‘major’ players in the field, FourSquare and Gowalla.  Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and even Apple are also looking at entering the playing field but I believe they will have to make an acquisition to truly play. 

Along with the hype of these types of services there is also a lot of criticism.  Since I am a ‘fan’ and a user I might be a bit jaded but I think I can at least address the critics; here are the gripes I have heard, some legit, some just silly:

1. If you tell everyone where you are then you are leaving your house open to be robbed.  I originally thought that this was a ‘non-issue’ I have to admit but after a conversation with people smarter than I over drinks I have amended my opinion.  This is one that you DO have to pay attention to.  Use common sense, if you are ‘checking in’ on vacation, turn off the setting that posts to Facebook and Twitter, so ONLY your friends on that LBS Tool of your choice get it.  Second, and this goes whether you use and LBS or not, CHECK YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS IN FACEBOOK!  Facebook has gone through a number of changes and many people have forgotten to go into their settings and make sure they have the level of privacy that they want.  For me, I only want FRIENDS seeing information; others may have different standards and that’s cool, just make sure you are comfortable with yours.  As for Twitter, you can ‘protect your tweets’ as well so only your followers can see them.

2. You can get stalked by a crazy ex and have to deal with all that.  True, but is that really a concern?  If it was, you wouldn’t be on FB, Twitter or LinkedIn.  Can it be a problem?  Sure.  However, you don’t have to tell EVERYONE where you are.  Your standard LBS lets you self select who the information goes to.  Side note – crazy ex probably knows all your haunts and when you like to be there anyway…

3. Why would you want to be doing free marketing/advertising for a place or a brand?  Are we seriously talking about this one in 2010?  Look down at your feet people (go ahead, I’ll wait) --- is that a ‘swoosh’?  Did NIKE pay you to wear their shoes or did you drop $100+?  How about that laptop I carry around?  You know the really sleek, chrome looking thing with the fruit in the middle very well lit?  Let’s face it people, WE have become walking billboards!  Take the silly Ed Hardy T-shirts (yes, I am just over 40 and don’t get it).  You have people clamoring to be seen in an Ed Hardy, and what is besides some crazy print with the biggest part of it being his SIGNATURE!!!  I’ll talk more about personal brands in another blog.So there are some of the negatives, which may be legitimate, but aren’t exactly deal breakers.

What are the positives you might ask?

1. It’s fun and it’s social.  One of my favorite shows as a kid was CHEERS, the bar where everyone knows your name.  Basically, with a tool like FourSquare you can become your own walking CHEERS.  Check in at a friendly place and the bartender says, “Welcome, how about a beer Mr. Peterson”, OR how about you get to a place that is running an amazing special, you could take the time and call or your friends, or break your fingers and text them OR check in with an LBS, type in a comment, it automatically gets to everyone through whatever social tools you are using and who knows what can happen when everyone shows up.  Simply put, in its most elemental form, it’s a way to extend the party.

2. As I have heard from Social Media Guru, Gary Vaynerchuck, “why would someone check in at a bar?”  Give’em a free beer and watch them check in all day!  What a cool way to earn stuff and allow a small business truly establish a win-win customer loyalty program.  At one of the Whole Foods in Austin, TX you get a very valuable coupon on your 5th visit.  What does this do?  It drives loyalty, rewards it, makes it fun and even mysterious…what will I get on my 10th check in, etc…Not enough small businesses are using these tools to see a huge uptick here but I believe by this time next year it will be off the charts.

3. That last part of #2 is part of the biggest positive from a business application and it’s the direct corollary to the third criticism.  I’m not sure when MARKETING became a four letter word but when it comes to LBS that is seems to be the #1 complaint and it goes something like this, “that stuff is just one big marketing ploy to get you to go somewhere or buy something”.  My response is somewhere along the famous Socrates reply of “duh!”  Isn’t that the whole reason for newspapers, magazines, TV shows, etc…sure they have their entertainment and news value BUT no one is shocked to know that advertisers are paying to place their content in front of your eyeballs to get you to buy stuff!  Not sure why the uproar when it comes to LBS, it seems to me like a natural fit.

4. Last but not least and this is by far where I see the big win for LBS and that is creating partnerships to pull off some really cool stuff.  I was discussing the value of FourSquare with an Executive at one of the major record labels.  She is responsible for new acts and we were discussing the value of LBS for her and she said; give me one way it works in my world.  So I said, do you have an all girl band you want to promote?  The answer was yes.  How about an in store ‘tour’ across America teamed with an outlet like Express?  You have all the traditional ways to support it but now add an LBS layer for very little cost.  It is also a completed integrated approach across all the social media tools; from Facebook, to Twitter, blogs, Flickr and a full activation using LBS.  Her eyes lit up and she said, write it up and let’s take a look at it.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg.So, mock it if you want.  Five years ago you never thought you’d be on Facebook. 

If you can remember back to 1991, if someone asked if you wanted to be accessible 24/7 via the phone, some new thing called email and a feature called text that in our old lexicon meant a book at school you would have said, “no freaking way”…and how many of you don’t have a cell phone today?

Off-the-rack SEO plans from four years ago are still turning up in proposals. You can spot one by seeing how they rely heavily on keyword optimization and site-to-site link building.

While these aren’t tactics that should be thrown away, they pay no attention to the fact that the Web has turned social. SEO is no longer about telling the search algorithms what to think of your site. The search engines are more interested in what everyone else thinks about your site.

Forming strategic link partnerships and making sure you’ve used all the right keywords does one thing – it tells the search engines that you know what you want to be ranked well for. This is an important step but nowadays good SEO doesn’t stop there.

The goal should be to build organic traffic not just SEO traffic. You should be leveraging social media tactics to get more people sharing links to your site. Make sure your site itself is Web 2.0-friendly so you get a viral effect from the increase in traffic.

The more recommendations and mentions your site has online the higher the probability of your site being ranked well for your target keywords. Essentially, if more people are discussing your company as the best place to find product XYZ, then the search engines will rank your company higher for product XYZ. Encouraging and facilitating discussion around your products or services can be as simple as offering the functionality on your site to do so.

Capturing User Reviews on your site creates more content to attract Search Engines but also creates copy that other users may want to share. Let's say one of your customers shares a story of how your product solved their problem or was a best fit for their need in a user review captured on your site.

Other shoppers may want to send this review to other shoppers who have similar needs or problems. The more convenient you make the action of sharing the user review, the more likely it will be shared. This functionality can be done through an AddThis button, a FaceBook Share button or a ReTweet button.

With all of this sharing going on through social buttons or good 'ol fashioned cut & paste, you could run into a problem with people sharing different versions of the same link. This is especially likely when you are using Session IDs or when people are sharing links to search results from your site's search box. The URLs can point back to the same content but how each user arrived at that content could change how the URL looks. How is a Search Engine to know which version of the URL to index and rank? Here come canonical links to the rescue.

Canonical links are not brand new yet they are very under used. Canonical links are inserted as <link> tags in your header tag within your HTML. This is a relatively simple operation when compared to creating 302 redirects and modifying your .htaccess files. If that last sentence gave you a nose bleed then canonical links are definitely a better option for you when it comes to dealing with multiple links pointing to the same content.

Making sure your site is social friendly as well as SEO friendly can multiply your traffic greatly. Socially-friendly sites are a great leap forward but don't forget the basics! Content is still king.

A fact about YouTube: 10,512,000 hours of video have been uploaded in the last year. So what’s the future of online video you ask? Look no further than YouTube for the answer.

I was recently part of a panel discussing online video in all it’s forms: pre-roll, branded, UGC, rich media, spreadable (or viral)…the list goes on an on. One question that I’ve been pondering was the last of the evening at the DFWIMA event. What does the future of online video hold? It was tough to answer, mainly, because I think we’re already there. Wait, what?

Look no further than this guy, doing 32 songs in 8 minutes. A guy with a great little idea and LOTS of talent doing what he does best. Next thing you know, 4 million views and tons of imitators. Personally, I think his next video should up the ante; 64 songs in 4 minutes! But back to the future.

This kid and his guitar captivated myself and 3 other specialists in our respective media fields for 8 whole minutes! Then I passed it on and it became the backbone of this blog. How would a kid and his guitar ever made that happen in the time before YouTube? He wouldn’t.

Need more evidence the future is here? Well, that brings us back to Time Magazine’s list of YouTube’s top 50 videos of all time. You can see work both branded and unbranded that’s spread like wild fire amongst users that have viewed, shared, commented on, rated, blogged, tweeted and eventually actively participated with – which in some cases means imitation, others parody. But they all mean engagement.

Here are the top 10 things I noticed about the top 50 list:

1. Kittens still rule spreadable video

2. Second only to kittens are cute kids...especially when said kids are coming down from heavy sedation

3. Small animals that aren’t kittens still get big laughs, and views.

4. Laughter is the international language, most of these just make us laugh or smile – which undoubtedly makes us want to share.

5. Music is also the international language, (when not speaking laughter) – from the Rick Roll to Evolution of Dance to the Hey Jude Kid (which is a two ‘fer – cute kid and music) music is a common theme.

6. People love subtitles. It’s a simple way for the Average Joe, not video editor Joe, to get in on the fun, assuming he’s got a great idea like Literal Music Videos or the epically popular Hitler series (which if you haven’t seen is not what you think)…both are hilarious.

7. Babies. Man people love babies!

8. Classics stand the test of time. Why? Original ideas are timeless. Lazy Sunday – it put the SNL digital shorts on the map. Chocolate Rain, like a chocolate 20 car pile up – you just can’t overt your eyes, or something that just plain tugs the heartstrings like Randy Pausch. If you’ve never seen it, stop what your doing and grab some Kleenex.

9.  From the department of redundancy department - let me say it again - great ideas are timeless. The stuff that people share is probably smart, funny or outrageous in someway, but most importantly elicits an emotional reaction. Whether narrative or not, it's short, to the point and not a huge investment of time for me to enjoy and then share.

10. Finally, who doesn't love these lists! Give me more! I hope some other outlets take the ball and run with it. I'd love to see what VICE (VBS.TV) or The World's Best Ever (theworldsbestever.com) rank the Top 50 You Tube Videos. What does the Mommy Blogger think for that matter - is she a kitten lady? Who knows....we'll have to wait and see. (I'm looking at you Mommy Blogger)

 

During the Vancouver Olympics in February, I conducted an informal experiment to arbitrate which mobile Olympics experience would be superior--the mobile site at www.NBCOlympics.com, or the NBC Olympics iPhone App. Other than the mens and womens medal round hockey games, my entire olympics experience was mobile-- I kept totally up to date using only my iPhone.

I recently had the opportunity to attend MIX 2010, Microsoft's annual conference for web designers and developers focused on building great user experiences, in Las Vegas, along with Definition 6's two interactive Creative Directors from Atlanta and New York.

MIX 2010 is highly unlike most other Microsoft conferences where the topics frequently focus on .NET, Exchange, Office, and Windows. Instead it's chock full of design and UX goodness - a geeky love fest for all the cool tech that goes into creating great web, mobile, desktop, kiosk, and other assorted technically enabled experiences using the Microsoft platform.

It's hard to argue that this isn't an arena in which Microsoft is still playing a lot of catch-up. Adobe Creative Suite and Flash/Flex are still easily the staple of most creative and design departments. And many people definitely hug their MacBooks and frantically wave their iPhones about when asked to provide examples of great user interface design. But if there was one thing abundantly clear at MIX 2010 it is that Microsoft has no plans to cede the battle on these fronts, they are rapidly catching up in many areas, and even appear to be leading the way in a few. Seriously.

Microsoft is a marathon runner, not a sprinter. And as Steve Ballmer said at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference last year regarding questions as to why Microsoft doesn't cede such battles as Search and Advertising and retreat back home to their core Windows, Office, or SQL Server business lines, "We. Don't. Go. Home." Anyone who doesn't believe him should have been at MIX. And do you really have to look further than an example like the Xbox?

Probably the hottest subject of discussion and presentations was Windows Phone 7 Series. I am, admittedly, an avid iPhone user who stood in line the first week they came out. I happily ditched my old Windows Mobile device and it's BlackBerry predecessors back then to live in Apple's world and I've never been seriously tempted to use something else until I saw WP7.

I really believe WP7 is a game changer for Microsoft and the mobile industry. Sure, it has some shortcomings. I don't know how they could decide to not include copy-and-paste as a feature in the first release. And like iPhone, they also do not have application multi-tasking and they appear to have similarly stringent plans regarding their app store.

But the interface is fantastic, I love the "hub" metaphors, streaming video and even Xbox Live over the phone looked amazing. Not sure exactly how badly those things will kill battery life, but they sure looked impressive. For heavy Outlook users, the Outlook mobile experience on WP7 may alone be enough to get you to switch. Just awesome. And there's a chance it could finally be the breakthrough that Zune has been looking for.

Silverlight 4 is definitely another big step in the right direction. They continue to slowly chip away at adoption and now claim that it's at 60% market penetration, probably mostly attributable to the Olympics and adoption and rollouts of Windows 7.

Tools like Expression Blend keep getting better, and Sketchflow may even be better than the competition, it is simply cool. IE9 beta demos also got big buzz. It appears they have surpassed Firefox on overall performance, are coming close to Chrome in many aspects, and for certain functions like handling of video and HTML5 they could end up being even faster and better (when running on a Windows platform of course) by taking better advantage of your computer's processor and using a form of background hardware-based acceleration. The head-to-head examples showing some really slick use of animation and video in HTML5 were really amazing.

The one thing that Microsoft has which no one else can offer (not Google, not Adobe, not Apple, not anyone) is an end-to-end story on tools and capabilities in this arena. The depth and breadth of their tools and services is truly staggering when you put it all together. And I'm not just talking about the typical story of Windows + Visual Studio + .NET + SQL Server. On top of that throw in Expression Studio with SketchFlow + Project "Dallas" + Azure + Silverlight + Surface + Windows Phone 7 + OpenData + IE9 + Bing Search and Maps and on and on. Sure you can poke certain holes in individual pieces versus their competitors. But the cohesive power of all that together makes for a truly impressive lineup.

There definitely were a few other good tidbits at MIX. Announcements around Orchard, freely available tools for WP7 development, great live streaming of Channel9 straight from the event, strengthening support for JQuery, and a surprising number of atypical logos on screens being talked about as friends (e.g. Wordpress, Drupal, PHP, etc.).

And the keynotes included fantastic sessions by Scott Guthrie (@scottgu), VP of Microsoft's Developer Division, and great demonstrations by consummate tech presenter Scott Hanselman (@shanselman). But for me, the highlight of MIX was the opportunity to see Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher Microsoft Research, speak live. He is simply brilliant and one of the most passionate people alive when it comes to interface design and technology.

If you've never seen him speak it is worth your time to google (or bing) for videos of his speeches and spend an entire day just watching them. As the conference organizer, Microsoft's Thomas Lewis (@TommyLee), put it in a tweet during Bill Buxton's keynote: "OMFG! Buxton's brutality has destroyed Vegas! Only zombies, mushrooms & lavender frogs have survived! DESIGN IS GOD!". I couldn't have put it better myself. Buxton's speeches are often too filled with memorable lines to count, though my favorite at MIX included "The most important thing in the system is the wetware... the human being" during a segment where he described the importance of taking into account all the users different prior experiences within the specific environmental contexts of where, when and how they will use a system that you are designing.

Side note: I still don't understand how such an amazing guy who lives and breathes design and is considered the Father of Multi-Touch can have such a horrible personal web site, but I can only assume it's a "cobbler's children" thing.

And last but not least, the overall crowd and dynamic of the attendees at MIX was fantastic if not a bit quirky. It was a great group of highly intelligent people that are all passionate about great design and truly unafraid to ask the hard questions of Microsoft and dole out praise as well as tough love in person in the sessions and in torrents over Twitter. Unlike typical creative and design conferences it's definitely rooted in a true developer core (e.g. more guys still talking about compilers as opposed to a more mixed-gender crowd talking about heuristics and having used many tools like these for years), but unlike normal Microsoft conferences it's a large group of people who love great creative design and have been dying for Microsoft to bring these kinds of things to the table.

This conference in Vegas was more WXSW for geeks than it was the concurrently running SXSW, but Twitter and Foursquare definitely reigned supreme there as well as the tools that joined everyone together digitally during the sessions, into the evening, around the bars, and throughout the event. Sunday evening even kicked off the conference with a massive tweetup at the MIX Lounge at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. There is a real embrace of Twitter showing through by Microsoft that is really uncanny with regard to how they normally react to any tech service that they don't build and own.

At Definition 6, we do use a lot of tools and services across platforms including a very significant amount of work in the Microsoft platform. And we do use tools and design for platforms that are competitive to many of those that were showcased at MIX 2010. But there is no doubt that what we saw there has given us a lot to think about, some great ideas, and a few new weapons to put in our arsenal. We look forward to using many of these to create great solutions for our customers and to seeing them continue to evolve and improve.

I just returned from SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) and was blown away by the scale of the festival. There were more than 15,000 people in attendance, looking to expand their knowledge around the Web, social and mobile (for the most part).

It would be impossible for me to summarize the entire festival for you, so here's the "what was trending" version with what you might have missed in the stream:

#1 Location-Based Services Stole the Show

For the first time in many months, something made more noise than Twitter among the Web crowd, namely Foursquare and Gowalla. While there are a bunch of location-based services (LBS) out there, SXSW Interactive was a showdown between Foursquare and Gowalla.

SXSWi was the perfect venue for LBS to take off, due to its geographic focus, large number of events and high concentration of early-adopters. I saw more people checking in on Foursquare than tweeting. Foursquare hit a new usage record at the show, with more than 347,000 check-ins in a day.

Every inch of Austin was checked-in to on one or both of these services during SXSWi, with attendees trying to take over mayorships on any piece of fictional real estate they could find. There's still some question over business models and monetization, but with usage levels like this, there remains a lot of potential.

Gowalla (a similar service) made a fair impact at the festival, but was overshadowed a bit by Foursquare's daily four square games, custom SXSWi badges, heaps of swag, and its star-studded party with the likes of Ashton Kutcher.

While there was a lot of buzz for Foursquare, you really need massive user adoption to make this stuff work. At a show with 15,000+ people, you're bound to have a friend nearby. To really make LBS stick, locations will have to start offering up incentives to people who check in (the most logical extension to all this stuff).

To quote Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote (see #3): "Why the heck would I check in somewhere? If someone gives you a f**king beer for checking in, you're going to check in."

It's true, once businesses start rewarding customers for their check-ins, services like Foursquare are going to explode in popularity (which is what happended when Twitter followers started to get hookups). I wouldn't be surprised to see Foursquare owned by somebody else by the time SXSW rolls around next year.

#2 Private Parts

The more people share online - such as where they're having lunch or who they're hanging out with at SXSWi - the more privacy becomes an issue.

Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, delivered the opening remarks at SXSWi, quickly launching into a mild attack on Google Buzz and Facebook for their recent, well-reported missteps regarding privacy. "Just because something is publicly accessible, it doesn't mean people want it publicized," said Boyd.

As more and more people take to lifestreaming, there's mounting concerns over the sharing of sensitive information. Boyd says she's never met anyone that really knew what their privacy settings were on any social site they use.

While on one hand brands want to open up the lines of communication with customers, they also need to consider any potential privacy implications.

There's a great write-up on Danah's keynote on Techcrunch here.

#3 Gary Vaynerchuk's Keynote

There had to be more than 1,000 people there to hear Gary Vaynerchuk have a conversation with the crowd. Gary is all about connecting with people on a personal level. He stood at the door and personally thanked everyone for attending the keynote (did I mention there were about 1,000 people in there?).

Gary has a no-BS approach to his presentations that reallly make you just want to watch him again. Bottom line? Most companies don't care and consumers know it. When companies even show they care a little, they get rewarded (Zappos is a perfect example).

For a great summary of the keynote, check out Andrew Mager's post on ZDNet. And in case you're wondering, he's got a mean four square serve too.

For a more coloful view into the keynote, you can watch it here. The quality's a bit shaky, but you can still get the content. Keep in mind, Gary's a brilliant speaker, but he does have a potty mouth (in case you get offended by profanity).

#4 Twitter Launches @anywhere

While Foursquare and Gowalla drove the buzz, Twitter still managed to get its share of the lime light. Unfortunately, a good part of the chatter revolved around how boring the keynote was, causing about half the room to leave before it was over.

Dissappointing keynote asside, the launch of @anywhere was significant. @anywhere is a new framework that enables developers to integrate the Twitter experience into their sites. Early @Anywhere partners include eBay, Amazon, Salesforce.com, Bing, Yahoo! and MSNBC.

For the full scoop on @anywhere, check out the official Twitter blog.

#5 Can You Digg It?

Almost launched in the midst of SXSWi was the announcement that Digg is getting a major overhaul. Digg CEO Jay Adelson made the announcement at the "Bigg Digg Shindigg" (love the name). The overhaul will include personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard. You can learn more about the new version (and sign up for the beta) at http://new.digg.com.

#6 QR Codes

There were QR codes (Quick Response code technology) on everything at SXSWi, from everyone's name badges to the fleet of Chevys on display. QR codes, a special type of bar code, are becoming more prevalent in advertising and product packaging. They provide an added way for consumers to interact with content, typically through a mobile device.

For example, if you used one of the QR readers (like I-Nigma for the iPhone) to scan an attendees badge at SXSWi, you were able to save the person's information. It was a cool way to exchange information, despite the experience being a bit slow. Look for QR codes to show up more and more (more on the SXSWi QR stuff here).

Checking Out

In conclusion, when all the hype dies down, everyone will remember this year's SXSWi as the kickoff of LBS for the masses. If last year was the year of "What are you doing?", this year will certainly be the year of the "Check-in".

Were you there? What was your favorite part of SXSWi? Let us know.

(Image Credits: Danah Boyd Art by amanichannel)

 “6 Things” is a list of things I have recently come across that I find interesting, inspiring, adventurous, or just plain cool. I’ll be publishing these fairly regularly, so keep an eye out.

          
I recently participated in a panel discussion on “augmented reality” at the Samsung center in NYC (more on that here). So today’s list begins with several things being done (or dreamed) in A/R.

1.  Esquire Augmented Reality Issue
           
One of my fellow panelists was the Art Director from Esquire magazine and he showcased the December A/R issue of Esquire. If you haven’t seen it, check out the demo. And if you can get your hands on a copy of the magazine, try it out yourself. As with most executions of A/R, it’s still got a way to go, but you can see the potential of bringing a new experience and added value to a publication or product.

2.  AR Art for the LAYAR
          
Many of you may be familiar with the LAYAR mobile application for Android and iPhones. It’s an A/R platform that lets developers “easily” create specific A/R executions for mobile devises. It uses the GPS, accelerometer, and camera to place objects and info in the environment around you. One of the those executions is “ART AR” that allows you to experience virtual art that has been placed at a specific location. If you are lucky enough to be near one of these locations, you simple view your surroundings on your phone’s display and voila… art all around you. I think this Mondrian sculpture has been placed at various locations, one of them being around the corner from where I live. Watching this video doesn’t really convey the experience. It’s pretty cool to see a virtual structure all around you. Again, it suffers from current technology limitations, but the possibilities are exciting.

3.  “SixthSense”
          
Here we get a glimpse into where A/R might lead. Clearly, the goal is to make this as a passive an experience as possible. This research team has assembled some off the shelf hardware and written some new software that allows you to integrate digital information into your everyday experience. It’s rough, and not entirely developed, but even at this stage it is pretty impressive.

4.   “Augmented (hyper) Reality”
          
This is a futuristic look at A/R. What will it be like when we really can overlay our world with a virtual world? One of the things all marketers struggle with is how to get branding in front of a consumer in a way that will not make them feel as if they are having something thrust upon them. One of the topics discussed at the panel was that if a consumer feels they are getting value (information, entertainment, etc) then they will accept a certain amount of invasive marketing. Would you be open the kind of branding seen in this video if it allowed the kind of interaction it promises?

5.  Banshee Beat
         
Stepping away from A/R, here’s clever music video that was made by using Google Map’s Streetview. It traces the artists drive to work via the freeways of LA. Simple, engaging, fun.

6.  Upular
          
And finally, here’s a new offering from video remix artist, Pogo. He creates new works of music and video by using sounds and images contained in movies. Unlike many remix artists, he only uses sounds from the film. I found this one to be particularly successful because it can stand on its own as a great song. (As an aside, I first became aware of Pogo when his video was used to demonstrate www.yooouuutuuube.com, a fun use of the Google API that has since been co-opted for on on-air HBO promo campaign… the web leads again.)

Intuition can guide you to the place of innovation, and analysis guides you to the method of innovation.

Driving down costs is the goal of every business in every industry. Identifying and nailing down Cost Drivers in a Interactive Media Agency is one of the most challenging aspects of Innovation due to the service model and diversity of projects. The more diverse the services and the more capabilities an organization has, the harder the cost drivers are to innovate. This is the challenge.

Create Measurability

In order to analyze data, you need to collect data. The first step is to establish a normalized set of information, and discover commonalities that you measure over time. It's difficult in service business models to identify measurable practices since commonality between projects may not exist. In contrast, it is much easier to find measurable actvities within consistent services. For example, in the realm of public service such as law enforcement, response times can be measured which can lead to innovation in terms of communication technologies, route mapping, and routine patrolling route generation to optimize the response times and measure improvements. In the same light, commonality and metrics need to be put in place so that you can innovate. Without this baseline set of metrics, most improvements are subjective and can be hit and miss.

Measurability and Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing strategies and improved search engine optimization follow the same metaphorical principle. Because optimization is always a moving target, you have to establish a control on your marketing practices and only change a few independent variables at a time, such as keyword density, or keyword targeting in ads, in order to see their effect. In the case of organic search results, the effect of changes may take weeks or even months before they actually show results. To top it off, search algorithms and prioritization change "without notice." To discover these changes requires a scientific mindset for the search engine optimization consultants.

The cost drivers in Search Engine Marketing involve keyword market prices. Camping a commonly used keyword for PPC can cost you a fortune. Using longtail strategies and finding ways to effectively identify your product, service or company is the innovation point, and only good analysis and keyword research will get you there. Consistency is the rule of the game to establish and maintain hold of brand loyalty, market share, market segment, and also online in terms of keyword ownership, and search engine rankings.

Internet Application Development

With Internet Services, the identification of cost drivers needs to be built into the process by abstracting out parts of the process that show commonality and measurability. This should be the starting gate through which your innovation charges. Like online marketing, application development is a moving target. New technologies explode onto the marketplace on a regular basis, tempting you to change how you do business. Again by using a scientific approach, by controlling your process and making sure you change a few things at a time, you can drive changes from the right point of view rather than hype, and effectively make improvements on your cost drivers.