A Wider Net

Counting eyeballs is on every marketer’s “measurement 101″ curriculum. The eyebox2 from Xuuk (zook) allows you to count people who look at your digital sign. It doesn’t count heads - it counts eyes, and only eyes that are looking at the sign. It is actually a more accurate representation of impressions than a web ad server. Web ad servers cannot tell you if someone looked at an ad - only if they looked at the page.

The device is loaded with invisible light emitters and a tiny camera. The camera can detect light from the emitters reflecting off the back of people’s eyes - similar to flash bulb “red eye”. They must also have some logic in there to tell the difference between different people and people who stand there a long time.

You could, I suppose, use this with advertisers to verify impression counts against a campaign goal. I believe this tool is best used as a method for determining the optimal location of a sign, the optimal types of ads, rotation times, etc. It’s a tweaking tool. And I also imaging that you could use this for applications beyond digital signage. You could use it as a measurement tool at trade shows. Highway officials could use it to determine if that 20mph speed limit sign is sufficiently hidden from view for maximum speeding ticket revenue (I just know they do this somehow already).

I’d like to see this combined with the people-tracking systems offered by Smartvue. That would be one amazing onsite visitor measurement tool.

Are the Tour de France sponsors taking notice of this? Tech blog Everything USB highlights a Japanese website offering a programmable device that you clamp onto the spokes of a bicycle wheel. When the wheel spins, a row of LED’s displays a rotating message for all to see.

Idea: At your next big offsite conference, schedule a bike rally for the attendees. Outfit them with rental bikes and have them ride through the city sporting these LED message boards. They get team-building and energy-building exercise and your company or organization gets splashy promotion. Throw in a charity contribution for everyone who rides and you have headlines, tax benefits, and a noteworthy “green” activity.

This devices is technically ready for purchase, but you’ll have to navigate a rather insane (to my American eyes) Japanese website that features bizarre videos of the product being demonstrated by a guy wearing a horse head mask to hide his identity. I guess. If you want to make your own, these are even better.

Chief Marketer comments that marketers should take note of how the Yankees, or more specifically, A-Rod and his agent Scott Boras managed to steal the Red Sox thunder by announcing A-Rod’s departure from the Yankees in the middle of the fourth and ultimately clinching game of the World Series. They knew that most diehard baseball fans were glued to the game and they took the opportunity to drop a media bomb despite the fact that it was clearly a day for the Red Sox and the Rockies to hold the limelight. Call it crass, call it dirty - but it sure was effective.

As a Red Sox fan, I was disgusted. I hope A-Rod ends up dealt to a baseball league in some war-torn drought-ridden bug-infested place where his stories no longer matter. Since he is the most valuable commodity in baseball, that obviously won’t happen. But as a brand, A-Rod certainly isn’t creating a positive impression. According to headlines since the game, Boras has managed to really anger Major League Baseball, Fox Broadcasting, and quite a large segment of fans. Diehard Red Sox fans have been rallying and chanting NOT to sign A-Rod.

As a baseball fan, I was (again) disgusted because it stole the limelight from the game’s premiere night. But I kind of also wish that some OTHER sport like Football had managed to pull eyes away from the World Series. Why? Because even though the game suffered it’s second worst ratings for a world series game in history, the league still hasn’t learned their lesson. The games are on TOO LATE for young (and future) fans, and the Sox Sleep Deprived all know what I’m talking about. So, let Football own the media - they understand how important fans are to a sport.

As a marketer I’m both impressed and dismayed. I sometimes wish this sort of thing didn’t work. “Timing is Everything” is a fundamental concept but spreading controversial news at just the right time seems downright dirty. I guess it totally depends on what side you’re on. I applauded Steve Jobs when he announced the iPod hundreds of miles away from CES, completely stealing the tech headlines for the week. I’m sure CES wasn’t too happy about that.

Footnote: Boras has publicly apologized and claimed this stunt was unintentional. Speaking of timing: I’d have to call that apology “too late”.

The Doritos Unlock Xbox game creation competition reached a critical and exciting phase this week with the release of playable demos of the five finalists.

For those of you new to the contest, Microsoft’s Xbox division teamed up with Doritos to create a one-of-a-kind game creation contest. It launched back in in June. The rules were simple - submit a Doritos-brand-inspired game idea, and the winning entry will see their game produced as the worlds first user-generated Xbox Live Arcade Game - available for play to 12 million Xbox 360 console owners.

The contest appears to be enjoying great success. First, their microsite reaches a large gaming audience where they collected 2,314 game idea entries. That’s 2,314 ideas. For free. From that list of ideas, the judges pared it down to 5 finalists, and created five playable demos, again accessible through their microsite (no Xbox required). They even produced documentaries about the finalist teams and posted them on the site.

That’s where they are today - down to the final five. And everyone gets to play the demos and vote on which game will make it to Xbox Live Arcade.

Doritos gets tremendous exposure into the gaming market - both casual AND hardcore, which amounts to over 100 million people in the USA alone. They also get gamer-cred. (provided the final game doesn’t suck like the Yaris disaster). Xbox gets ideas - and a game - and a perhaps a small torrent of people buying Xbox’s to play “Dodgeball” or whichever title wins. The winner gets fame and opportunities.

And you get to play five demos of up-and-coming Doritos-branded games right now. It’s win-win-win-win.

The winner will be announced on November 19, 2007. The winner of the contest that is. The real winners appear to be Doritos and XBox.

First, Facebook snubs google and sides with Microsoft:

Update: Facebook chooses Microsoft over Google | InfoWorld | News | 2007-10-24 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Second, Facebook is going to be accessible through Blackberries:
Update: Facebook teams up with RIM | InfoWorld | News | 2007-10-24 | By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

While the Microsoft deal is significant, it was the RIM deal that gave me something to think about. Facebook users are using blackberries. That means Facebook is growing up (demographically).

Computerworld writes glowingly about the iTouch - listing a dozen or so very compelling reasons why it makes a great business tool. While I agree that carrying this slick gadget around in your pocket makes for one slick elevator demo, the lack of an editable calendar and missing GPS for getting directions to your meeting seriously clobbers it’s usefulness in business, in my opinion. But read for yourself - if you plan to carry a phone with GPS and don’t care about calendar, then it may be perfect for you.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reported about a new ad model created by instant message chat aggregator Meebo. Faced with an interesting problem that their average user sits on the site for 2.5 hours without a page refresh, Meebo realized that the typical method of selling ads by impression was never going to work. Instead, ads are treated sort of like skins, where the users can add them to their backgrounds, create icons, and access related content. They can also deny the ad. They push a new ad during the session - up to five times per session.

This is similar to a promotional model in place on Microsoft’s popular video game platform XBOX Live. Through the XBOX 360, users can download free themes and gamerpics (like big buddy icons). When applied, a theme changes the background image of every page (called a blade) in the XBOX Live interface. I have seen movies, tv shows, and products promoted this way. Missing from this mode,l but present in the Meebo solution, is the path to click through to the product site or download additional content like MP3’s and videos.

This approach is intriguing to me because, unlike a traditional ad, this has the potential to give the user something in return for taking their time and attention. If they can manage to target the ad well, so a fan of hardcore punk music isn’t fed a Beonce’ ad, then the users may come to appreciate what would otherwise be considered an intrusion.

And it’s a boatload more appealing than those annoying AOL ads or AOL popups. It may explain this trend:

The winners of the annual EIBTM Worldwide Technology Watch were announced last week. SpotMe 2, a handheld networking and communication tool, won top honors. The runners-up included nTAG, eTouches, Jambo Networks, and Jot Event Messaging Systems.

Shown below: The SpotMe 2

Complete details at MeetingsNet.

Making it’s way around the more buzz-trendy web sites over the past year or two has been talk of Moo Cards - tiny business cards that have different images on the back (or front, really) of each card. Having received samples and caught a few in the wild, I have to say I really like these things.

For starters, they feel great. They have a nice matte laminate to them and they feel substantial. Secondly, the images are completely unique and can convey whatever sentiment you want. And they’re pretty cheap - a box of 100 is $19.99.

You can purchase pre-made sets of images, but the real magic is pulling images from your own photo archives on one of a dozen photo sharing sites including Flickr. You can make them personal, using images that speak to your professional expertise or family life, or corporate-wide, with a marketing group controlling the image pool that is used for the cards.

They also successfully scan through a CardScan scanner. I love unusual business cards but hate it when they don’t work through scanners and other useful business card extra-curricular activities. The really nasty ones are the ones that are made of metal and get confiscated at airport security because they could be considered lethal weapons. Brilliant.

These little cards are insanely collectible, too. There are hoards of Flickr members trading them through their photo galleries all the time. Now how cool is that? That your card would end up being kept because of it’s collectible value? Nice.

I like the idea of having different departments with their own image galleries. Let the consistent corporate stuff live on the information side, and give the image side some personality. Cool.

More stories on Moo Cards can be found at Buzz Feed.

I have been working on, in, and around webcasts for seven or eight years now, and I can say with some certainty that webcasts are boring. That’s really saying something, since I actively suggest webcasts as one potential part of a marketing or communications strategy. But to be fair, they’re usually boring. They’re not all boring, and they don’t have to be boring - they just usually are.

The sad thing is, webcasts have long been sold as the answer to boring conference calls. And there are still millions of meetings carried out huddled around a Polycom starfish or some other conference phone. I’ve even conducted conference calls with five people huddled around my cell phone with the speaker turned on. Now THAT’S engaging.

WHY ARE WEBCASTS BORING?

1. PowerPoint. The focal point of most webcasts, webinars, and webconferences is a slide window built in, most likely, PowerPoint. And the vast majority of those presentations suffer from the same ills I discussed in this post. Where PowerPoint can dull the fun in a live meeting, it’s absolutely lethal in a webcast.
2. The Presenter(s). A webcast is a public speaking event. Just because your audience isn’t in the room with you doesn’t mean they’re not there. If you wouldn’t put your presenters in front of a large crowd at a face-to-face event, then don’t put them in a webcast.
3. Looooongggggg. Look to YouTube for the answer to your question about how long your webcast should be. YouTube has stated that the optimal length for their videos is 2 minutes. I’ve seen webcasts range from 5 minutes to 5 hours and without question, the most well-received were under 30 minutes. These days shorter is better. Going back to watch a long webcast using chapters seems to be giving way to shorter presentations and more of them.
4. The Experience. Your audience is at their desk. Your webcast is competing for attention against piles of unfinished work, the phone, coworker interruptions, incoming email and rss feeds, and widget alerts. Asking them to focus on their computer screens can be asking quite a lot. I’ve always thought it would be fun to email the attendees a PDF of a sign that says “Don’t Bother Me- I’m Watching a Webcast!” to hang on the back of their chair or office door, if they are so equipped.
5. Bad Video or Audio. YouTube has lowered the bar for video production standards, but serious webcasts still benefit from real production values - clear, intelligible audio and video that uses multiple cameras, decent lighting, etc.
6. Interactivity. One of the coolest aspects of webcasts and webconferences is interactivity - yet very few webcasts use the interactivity at their disposal. Q&A is only one part - you can push polls and surveys, provide content to explore, and allow users to network with each other. Frankly, it’s amazing that so few webcasts offer any kind of audience networking, discussions, or group opinions.
7. Fun(less). Webcasts are a natural platform for using games to reinforce content and create engaging fun, but they almost never incorporate them. You can push trivia games, bingo, and all kinds of simple flash games - and they can be competitive with the rest of the audience, with a prize reward. Add a game, make it fun - make it memorable.

WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO?

Handle more questions: Many long webcasts get long because they handle questions one at a time. With an audience of 500 people asking 1000 questions, a typical webcast gets to 10-20 of them. Instead, you may consider having a team of people answering questions via text that the audience can browse right within the webcast player, at their leisure. That way more people get their questions answered faster.

Get a Moderator: A good moderator can spruce up a webcast better than a coat of paint on an old house. By setting the pace, keeping things moving, and using their talents to keep the energy level up, a professional moderator can make or break a webcast.

“You”: The man of the year, “you”, wants to be involved. Let the audience drive. Q&A and user-driven chapters and interactivity is just part of it. Support Social Media. Companies like Operator11 are building webcast platforms using Adobe Flash that allow any audience member to insert their own videos, live or pre-recorded, into the overall broadcast (under the control of the webcast producer, of course.) Support Social Networking. A webcast audience usually has a lot in common. Let them meet each other and communicate about the topic at hand. Before the webcast, let them tell you what they want to discuss.

Any other ideas on how to improve webcasts are most welcome - especially if anyone has a way to broadcast chocolate.

no… that picture is not of me.