In this installment of “6 Things” I explore the joys of doing it in public. There's nothing I like better than some PDA. I'm talking about Public Displays of Art, of course. In my last blog, ("What the F...antastic!"), I made pithy and insightful remarks on the power of using unexpected experiences to engage the consumer. The following items are primarily art for art's sake, but it's not hard to draw conclusions to how similar installations can be used to grab the public's attention. It only takes three little words to demonstrate success, "Made you look!"

Antony Gormley: Event Horizon

Madison Square Park in New York City has a great program of public art. The exhibits rotate throughout the year, often with several happening simultaneously. The latest, "Event Horizon", is particularly impressive because it extends beyond the park. These figures (31 total) are placed on rooftops as far as 10 blocks away. They are all visible in and around the park, and each faces the square. Once you notice one, you begin to pick out the others. I admit to spending some time walking around trying to find them all. They have actually caused some controversy, but I think most would agree that it's an engaging and delightful exhibit.

IMPROV EVERYWHERE

Performance artists. Pranksters. Marketing geniuses? Somewhere between flashmob and sketch comedy, "Improv Everywhere" has staged some great events. As with any performance, some things hit and some miss, but they are all interesting if for no other reason than to see the public reactions. People love the unexpected. And even those not lucky enough to experience something live can get into the act through the videos posted on the web. A couple of my favorites are "Grocery Store Musical", "Frozen Grand Central", and "Where's Rob", but I encourage you to look at all their "missions". You may see some similarities to marketing stunts staged by various companies. "Improv Everywhere" has shown that people love to get involved and feel "part of the show"... and isn't the heart of marketing?
 

Street Art (Literally)

Julian Beever is one of several artists who create amazing pieces that are both public and transitory. If you have ever been fortunate enough to stumble upon this type of art, you know it can actually take your breath. It is so unexpected to find a something like this while walking down an otherwise unremarkable street that you can't help but stop and take some time to study it. Clearly, some brands have caught on to the idea.
 

Blowing Art Up

Mixed media artist, Joshua Allen Harris, creates whimsical installations that transform from a pile of what looks like trash into animated "living" creatures with the lifespan of a passing train. Brilliant.
 

Now you see it, now you don't.

This next piece is something I sort of stumbled upon on the web. I was drawn to it mostly because of its simplicity and the possibilities. I can see using this type of installation in an out-of-home marketing campaign to great effect. I'm writing the brief now :)

Graffiti? Art? Commentary?

And finally, I happened across this gem just the other night. While walking home, I spotted this painted on the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue north of 22nd street. This is a prime viewing area where tourists stop to take photos of the Empire State Building. Some may think this is simply a commentary on the traffic flow (and it may be), but I suspect it is the work of one the New York's many graffiti artists. True graffiti artists create works that are thought provoking, visually inspirational, or technically challenging. Some have gone on to become well known artists, others have maintained anonymity even in their fame, but most are simply inspired by the work. While it may be vandalism in the truest sense of the word, arguments that this type of art enriches society cannot be ignored. I'm not always sure which side of the fence I come down on. Perhaps I'll write my opinion on a wall on the way home. By the way, as a marketing idea, this has the appeal of authenticity, but it carries all kinds of potential problems, so go cautiously.

Almost every week I continue to be shocked at some aspect of how Facebook is treating the privacy of their users. While I think Facebook has done some amazing things to redefine the landscape of connection and community in the digital age, the way they auto-opt-in users to new policies and settings that unwittingly further expose them in a manner that is beyond confusing for almost everyone is driving me crazy.

It seems to be a total disregard for privacy that leverages "confuser interface design" tactics and misleading redesign functionality alterations to extend their dominance at the unknowing expense of most of their users. They actively seek to get you to enter as much personally defining data as possible. They make it incredibly complicated to manage your assorted privacy settings, then they go and make significant changes that auto-opt in users to new options like making all of your posts available to search engines or to share your personal data with applications and sites using FaceBook tools. All of this while presenting typical users with a perception of communicating and sharing with their "Friends." Maybe FaceBook is just working towards a Nobel Peace Prize by wanting everybody on the planet and every corporation to be Friends? Ummmm.... no.

Conversely, while not exempt from scrutiny, Twitter takes a much different approach. They begin by having an established perception that what you post is public, they have one very clear and simple blanket option to make your posts private, and the information they ask you to enter for registration is extremely limited.

I'm also driven crazy by the constant changes to FaceBook API's that make the lives of developers miserable as they struggle to work with this juggernaut of social media and the fact that they employed algorithms that began to selectively decide whose posts among my friends they thought I should see (and even excluded my wife's posts from my stream until I manually added her back in)... but that's a whole other couple of blog posts to write. The following is a short list of things I actually find less annoying than FaceBook's treatment of the concept of privacy:

15.       SPAM e-mail

14.       People who post their every Foursquare or Gowalla check-in to Twitter

13.       The mere existence of Farmville and Mafia Wars

12.       The first time I saw Clippy

 
      11.    Developers that hardcode and use auto-code generators out of laziness

10.       Requirements documents for a web site or app that say: "should work in every browser"

9.       Web sites that dramatically over-use Flash for everything they possibly can

8.       People that show up for an interview and haven't read and reviewed your company's web site or have any ability to articulate what your company does

7.       People that text or use mobile devices to tweet while driving (or drive while talking on their mobile phone without using a Bluetooth or hands-free device)

6.   People that call themselves "Social Media Gurus" in their bios or otherwise

5.   People in busy airports that obliviously stop walking out of the blue and then wonder why everyone crashes into them

4.   Every scene on the Fox TV series 24 that ever involved Kim Bauer

3.   Stupid people (as one of my friends is fond of saying as he quotes his old high school football coach, "Ya can't fix stupid.")

2.   The continued existence of IE6

1.   The constant deluge of Top <insert number here> Lists

• Jason Speaking
• Font Squirrel
• Matthew David's article Inside HTML5 on O'Reilly

I recently overheard several discussions and have seen a number of social media posts mocking virtual MMO world Second Life. Many declare it and its ilk dead. People are openly cynical towards it. Laughing at it seems like the hip and trendy thing to do unless you want to appear to be an idiot. And you're not an idiot, are you?

When Second Life first came onto the scene it was the shiny new toy with all the typical hype. You couldn't swing a dead virtual cat without hitting a marketer or interactive technologist that wanted to talk about Second Life. People ran to it like moths to a flame and then they got burned. I once heard Second Life brilliantly described as marketing's Vietnam. No one wants to talk about it or how bad things got screwed up there.

People spent tons of effort on research around it, heralded it as the next big thing, many even asked their employees to start playing it in a rush to become subject matter experts on it and figure out how to pitch their clients on creating branded virtual islands and experiences in this brave new 3D immersive world. And truly, the potential was staggering, nobody was wrong about that. But the results weren't what everyone had hoped for. Far from it. The technology and interface still had a steep learning curve for many users, there were numerous barriers to entry that made it unwieldy for many potential customers, the experience was still a stretch for the vast majority of mainstream users who were just beginning to figure out FaceBook, and the ROI for the required effort simply wasn't there beyond some immediate PR value. But more than anything, there was a conundrum around the openness and lack of control over the experience, namely that Second Life was (and still is to a large degree) rife with adult content, porn, virtual sex and many other things that most brands simply didn't want to be associated with or risk exposing their customers to as those customers struggled to navigate their way to BrandXYZ Island. So people left in droves, most corporations that had tested the waters began their mass exodus. Those that jumped on the bandwagon (who still had their jobs) shook their heads in embarrassment and apology vowing never to make that mistake again.

But here's the thing. They weren't wrong about the potential. People were simply overly zealous, reckless, and so anxious to be ahead of the curve to appear innovative and be early adopters that they just made bad decisions on timing and failed to do their homework. They invested far too much effort into something that was still far from being ready for prime time and the mainstream. They wanted to be bleeding edge and guess what? There was blood. And now people either talk about it hushed tones or openly deride it.

But did you forget the part where I said that it's full of porn, sex and adult content? That industry and genre of society is so all over it and advanced in its use of it that it's crazy. That's right. The same industry and users that were the first to embrace newsgroups, web sites, e-commerce, paid-subscriptions for content, cross-channel branding, and on-line video. And they are always months to years ahead of the mainstream adoption and monetization. They happen to have a user base that will go to great lengths to extend their experience and be willing to deal with early shortcomings of the technology. It's a multi-billion dollar industry that time after time leads the way.

Meanwhile, another massive industry, Gaming and Entertainment, has continued to embrace the technology. MMORPG's like World of Warcraft and many others plus the continually enhanced experiences offered via services like Xbox Live leverage incredibly rich and immersive interactive 3D gaming and social experiences. Project Natal from Microsoft even looks to change the game further by enabling more physical interaction without the need for a handheld controller to interface with games and virtual environments.

The technology continues to advance. The processing speeds to accommodate these environments continue to increase. The typical memory of average computers continues to increase. Broadband keeps getting broader and the average technical proclivity of users keeps getting higher.

Second Life continues to evolve with a large number of improvements for user experience and better content ratings to segment world areas that are more "adult-focused" from those that are not (a move which has even been protested by some of the Adult-Content focused current users of the platform). By some reports the amount of Adult content is even growing in lesser proportion to more mainstream content. And their parent company Linden Labs has been hard at work developing the Second Life Grid that enables companies and organizations to have and create private worlds that are independent from the mass Second Life world. Companies like Unity are doing amazing things to enable 3D games and experiences to be easily developed and require nothing more than a browser. More powerful game engines are coming out every day. And Windows Phone 7, coming out soon, will enable Xbox Live right from a phone.

So it's not that Second Life is dead. Far from it. It didn't want to go on the cart. What's dead is the spirit and vision from some whose egos were crushed because they were burned by being reckless in pursuit of the next big, cool thing. Note to these folks for the future: if it's full of little besides porn and sex it's probably not yet right for most brands. But you're crazy to not see that means it will eventually make its way into the mainstream. It just takes time. It's probably not going to happen tomorrow. But when it does, don't call it a comeback because it'll have been here for years. If you're smart, you're still paying attention to what they and others in this space are doing. And you are smart, aren't you?

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.

Social media marketing

What might surprise you is how quickly Twitter is growing as the social medium of choice among Fortune 500 companies. According to recent studies like “Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies,” conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Financial Insite, a Seattle-based Research Firm, Twitter is the platform of choice for Fortune 500 social media marketers.

The study examined the 2009 Fortune 500 in an attempt to quantify their adoption of social media tools and technologies, finding that 22% of Fortune 500 companies have a public-facing corporate blog – six percent more than 2008. The study also found that 86% of these blogs link directly to a corporate Twitter account, a 300% increase over 2008. Even more corporations have Twitter accounts, but not all link to them from their blog.

It would appear that Fortune 500 marketers are moving fast to Twitter for engaging with their key audiences. Of course, upon further analysis, you’d find that only 35% of these Twitter accounts are active – described as having been updated within the past 30 days. If I’m reading the study correctly, that means 65% are not being actively used.

While Fortune 500 companies have realized they need to be on Twitter – probably as defense against username squatting – few have truly embraced Twitter as a social channel. 

Of the groups that have engaged most heavily with Twitter, the insurance industry is leading the way, with 13 active Twitter accounts according to the study. Of course there are also companies like Exxon Mobil, the #1 company in the Fortune 500, that have no presence on Twitter.

A separate analysis of Fortune 500 Twitter, “The Global Social Media Check-Up” conducted by Burson-Marstellar, found that 79% of Fortune 100 Global companies are using one of four popular social media platforms, with Twitter leading Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogging as the platform of choice.

65% of Fortune Global 100 companies have active accounts on Twitter, while only 54% have Facebook accounts, 50% have YouTube channels, and 33% have a corporate blog. There is still plenty of room for improvement here.

Why Is Twitter the Preferred Platform?

Nobody knows for sure why Twitter is so popular, but there’s a good chance that it’s because it’s the easiest platform to launch. Companies can have a Twitter account up and running in a couple of hours (or less). There is a lot more work to do to launch a YouTube channel, corporate blog, or Facebook presence. It also takes considerably less resources to manage content production and audience interaction on Twitter than these other platforms. It’s a relatively low-cost and low-maintenance option for getting in the social media game.

Are Fortune 500 companies getting any value out of Twitter though? According to the Burson-Marstellar study, the answer is “yes”. Twitter accounts to the Fortune Global 100 average 1,489 followers. This doesn’t seem like much when you consider the average Facebook fan page for these companies has more than 40,000 fans, but it's progress.

A full copy of the new research report can be downloaded here: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch.

1. How to organize and integrate your marketing operation to create a cohesive message
2. How to identify early in the process if you are achieving your goals
3. How to optimize your branding efforts and align them with your sales organization

• RedBull Connect – This site gives users access to information and articles from several Red Bull websites. This is a nice repository for everything related to red Bull without smacking users in the face with its advertising.  Consumers can comment, post, and interact with others without being forced to buy a Red Bull while, at the same time, red Bull always being part of the equation.

• Citysearch – The Facebook Connect portion of this is minimal; this is a good example of utilizing FB Connect to grab user information without implementing it for advertising.  The site personalizes your location when you connect with FB and automatically creates your personal profile and connects you with other Facebook friends on Citysearch - allowing you to share restaurant and other local recommendations via your Facebook feed.

• Pandora – Pandora uses less of a full-blown Facebook Connect microsite, and more of an application, but it is still a nice use of Facebook technology. The application can be used to share songs or a station with your Facebook friends.

I recently read that the White House has chosen an Open Source CMS (Content Management System) to develop their government Web site. This announcement caught my attention for several reasons--not only are many agencies moving their clients to open source and praising it's virtues, I also started using Drupal this past year and found it remarkably fast and easy to setup and maintain my own Web sites with quality results. Despite some criticism of open source over the years--more and more commercial (and government) developers are choosing it.

It's hard to argue against the benefits of free software, especially when results show that the software does what we expect, often exceeds expectations, and provides more opportunities for expansion than many proprietary products. While relative newcomers Drupal and Wordpress lead the pack for CMS offerings, open source mainstays such as Linux and Perl have been around for many years--not only surviving, but thriving over time. In a study by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle of SAP Labs, LLC, Total Growth of Open Source results have shown that "the total amount of source code and the total number of projects double about every 14 months." Open source enables freedom for both users and developers to move & change quickly when needed, as well as providing more flexibility with software decisions such as to upgrade or not to upgrade. It's really no surprise that businesses and individuals are moving to open source at exponential rates.

Of course, Open Source has always been very much associated with Free, although there are other solid reasons to choose it beyond its cost. The pool of development resources is not limited to a specific company or provider, but instead is seemingly unlimited. As a specific open source project becomes popular, more and more developers start contributing, growing and adding to the code. Not only do they enhance the software to make it better for everyone, but they also create markets for their own support services. The better the code is--more people will use it-- and the more support is needed. Large developer communities have evolved around each software project, contributing to its growth, and administering its support. These open source communities are continually coming up with new innovations, powerful add-ons, extensions, and effective tools.

With so many open source choices available, even the ubiquitous LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl) has come to be accepted as generic term for any completely open source application stack--substituting interchangeable parts from other sources that include "PostgreSQL, SQLLite, Apache Derby," as well as "PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy and JavaScript." Even behemoth Microsoft has entered the game with their own Open Source CMS Platform.

Additionally, interactive ad agencies are able to offer their managed computer services at lower rates when developers take advantage of Open Source technologies. This enables clients to do more within their budgets. Every size company can now take advantage of Website integration, online advertising, and interactive media development due to the emergence of open source and accumulation of knowledge brought to us by the developer community. Businesses across industries are now embracing these technologies, taking advantage of interactive media, and using a more integrated approach to marketing with the vast number of new tools that are now available from these creative, innovative communities of developers.

I've been hearing the phrase "Drinking from the fire hose" more often than usual lately. The curious thing is that it's coming from Interactive Media Professionals (including myself), as much as from end users. With the exponential growth of the Internet and its related technologies, we now have access to more information, in more places, in more ways than ever before. Web 2.0, Social Media, Application Software Development, Mobile and related technologies are having a profound impact on Interactive Marketing Strategies. Many agencies are capable at traditional & online media marketing, or they may have strong technical capabilities--but, it is rare to find an agency that has all of these abilities and deep technical resources such as Definition 6.

To follow the fire hose analogy--anyone faced with that situation would get out of the way. The high volume and velocity of incoming data require some type of control and direction to be useful to ourselves, our clients, and our business.  Developers, interactive designers, and marketers are faced with the same questions as consumers--how to manage the onslaught of incoming information. Interactive Ad Agencies are faced with the additional responsibility of creating new tools to distribute information in a clear and meaningful way. These interactive professionals are the firemen holding the hose. 

At the height of the dotcom boom, an old colleague used to remind me that technology is simply a way of doing things. As the old broadcast model of advertising becomes obsolete, and user discovery & social interaction drive engagement, the function of marketing itself must now change to meet these communication challenges. This new model now poses new questions about where marketers should be, how they communicate, and when that interaction will occur.  I still remember the first  7-Eleven convenience store that opened in my neighborhood, and discovering that name comes from its operating hours—--it was a big deal to be open until 11PM! Marketers didn’t create more ads to attract customers from 9-5, they simply changed to meet customers on their own terms.

Integrated interactive marketing campaigns must be open and immersed in the culture to create value and be relevant. Successful marketers are positioned alongside their target market, making use of tactics such as Branded Content and Branded Entertainment to engage the user, enabling them to discover that value on their own, and decide what truly fulfills their needs. This is not an easy task, and creating meaningful user interaction grows out of qualified analysis of users and their interactions. Those of us in Media and Advertising have been exposed to these ideas before, but never before have these been more important to interactive design. Today's consumer has become a partner in the design process, and defines how we approach our interactions with them. Social media tools such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter provide marketers with a limitless cache of information to help segment, target and engage users as never before— which only highlights the need for efficient processing of data.

Our obligation to clients is to find the relevant information, manage and organize it, and disperse it to potential customers.  To do this, we interpret client requirements and translate those requirements into a meaningful Interactive Experience. We need to collect and analyze enough user data to create strong, branded messages that reach the intended target. In addition, we must combine data with the tools and applications that make it meaningful to those target consumers.

In this new age of discovery, the true Integrated Interactive Agencies are taking the time and effort to find the tools necessary to do the job, or when needed, create them. With information coming constantly from every direction, those who are efficient at organizing, managing, and presenting it will be successful. Otherwise, we're just spraying a fire hose.  If we attempt to do that, consumers will just get out of the way.

In the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about moving beyond the 30 second commercial. This is more than just a commentary on format. It is really speaking to the way people consume media and the best way to leverage that consumption to get your brand’s message out. Web and mobile are providing a greater percentage of viewer’s video content, and that trend is increasing. But even though they are viewing their content on a different screen, they are still looking for an entertaining and engaging video experience.

The most successful commercial campaigns have always been the ones that entertain, whether humorous, touching, or visually stimulating. As the viewer’s lives become more media saturated, their desire to be entertained becomes more acute. This is why an old concept has resurrected, albeit in an updated form. Branded entertainment was the norm in the early days of television and it’s time has come again. Rather than trying to make commercials entertaining enough to capture consumers’ attention, why not create entertaining programming that promotes your brand. Branded entertainment, when done correctly, is a very effective way to get your brand noticed. Not only will you be putting your brand in front of your customers, you will actually enlist them in spreading the word. The challenge is to create something consumers will associate with your brand in a positive way that will not feel like merely an extended commercial.

For less than what it might cost to create a traditional commercial campaign and buy the media time, you can have a short film or series produced, put it on the web, and get millions of eyes on it. A series has an advantage over a single spot in that it can grab viewers and become a destination, allowing secondary branding opportunities. As with any advertising, there are many failed attempts at this. In order to be successful, you can't throw up just any old thing and hope it sticks. On the web, content is king, and consumers are becoming increasingly discriminating about what they will watch and pass to others. They may have switched screens, but they are looking for the same level of content they are used to seeing on television. There is a lot of competition for people’s attention but right now well produced and entertaining content is hard to come by. Now is the time to take advantage of the void. Produce a great show and users will find you. The most common mistake is thinking that something for web use does not need the attention you might give to something that will be shown on TV. Because the cost of getting something up on the web is cheap (relative to traditional media) many old-guard agencies tend to not put enough money into production. They fall back on old patterns that tie budget to the cost of the media. It is important to put the proper resources into creating your property.

And even though I have spoken mostly about web and mobile as fast growing platforms, that doesn’t mean it is time to abandon the television. Some of the lessons we are learning in the digital realm can be applied to traditional TV. More and more shows are using embedded sponsorship. And the numbers of channels available in specific markets make the prospect of producing a branded show an economic reality. The world of entertainment is changing quickly, with new options and possibilities opening up every day.