A Wider Net

Sony has a really cool-looking mobile exhibit rolling around the country at >$4/gallon. I have to admit - it looks like a giant toy that I want to pick up and play with. It comes completely loaded with lots playable product demos in individually themed environments.

My only criticism, having not experienced it firsthand yet, is: In these days of ridiculous gas prices, thanks to the ultra-rich who continue to line their portfolios with speculated gluttony, and our fear of environmental Armageddon only surpassed by our fear of four more years of bush-alikes, why would you roll out an 18-wheeler the size of Delaware and drive around the country with a bunch of PlayStation’s? Compare that to Nintendo, who chose to associate themselves with a Smart Car in their launch campaign.

Having JUST co-written an article with Turtle Transit’s General Manager, Joe Doyon, in the May/June issue of Exhibit Builder Magazine about the use of smaller vehicles for mobile marketing, I’m a little sensitive to this sort of thing.

Compare:

Two gadgets launched this this week that are worth mentioning here. The first is very well-known - the iPhone 3G. The second launched the day after to considerably less fanfare, but has big potential: The new HP TouchSmart2.

The iPhone is the easiest to talk about. The stories of it’s runaway success are second only to the stories of how it has completely changed the cell phone industry in the United States. Now the iPhone 3G is poised for a worldwide distribution at a price point that may very well keep it sold out for the rest of the year. Adding a support for the high speed 3G networks, better battery life, true GPS, and a host of software improvements that will be shared with it’s older brother and the iTouch line of media players, the iPhone 3G is a significant evolutionary improvement to the iPhone. At $199 and $299 for the 8 Gigabyte and 16 Gigabyte versions it is now cheaper than the Motorola Razor (at launch) and more functional than any handheld gaming system, all mobile phones, and many, if not most, laptop computers currently in use today. Some of us were a little disappointed at the lack of Flash support, lack of streaming video from the onboard camera, and lack of a 32 Gigabyte version, but this is still the coolest smartphone on the planet right now.

The HP TouchSmart 2 greatly improves on the previous model in form factor, functionality, and price. At $1300, it’s a pretty easy way to add touch and gesture control to a trade show demonstration kiosk. Take a look at the video on this link, but make sure you have the sound OFF first. You have been warned.

We’re producing a live video webcast about online video techniques? Cosmo Kramer makes a coffee table book about coffee table books and Cramer makes an online video about online video… is it just me or is that, like, really weird? Normally I avoid talking about Cramer’s work here on A Wider Net, but since this blog is all about marketing ideas and technology I figured this was an event our readers would want to hear about.

Developing online video programs for marketing and communications has never been easier, faster, or more confusing. Questions commonly asked include: How do I produce the video? Can I do it myself? How do I get it online? How do my customers find it? How do I measure the success of my online video programs? How do I make it go viral? Should I stick my video up on my website, on YouTube, or on some other network? How do I make it look great for everyone? Should I allow people to use my content on their sites and blogs? How do I build interactivity into my video content?

Do I have to use 8 treadmills or can I get away with one?

To answer some of these questions, check out Best Practices in Online Video: A Platform Approach on June 19, the first in our latest series of live webcasts. But rather than repeat all the details here, let me share a short promo video with you:

For more information and to register, please head over here. If you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see discussed, please feel free to comment on this post.

Twitter may not have the user base of Facebook or MySpace, but as social networks go, Twitter contains a dense population of internet early adopters and technology evangelists. Scattered among the millions of 140 character messages floating through Twitter each day, when it isn’t down due to capacity issues, are threaded discussions about consumer experiences with brands. Recently, Twitter users witnessed step-by-step “tweets” from one power user as she struggled with customer service at an Apple Store. She was having a terrible experience and her thousands of tuned-in Twitter followers knew about it. These are the sort of conversations that brands need to monitor and react to. Tracking twitter conversations is fairly easy. Doing something about what you find there - that’s not so easy.

Enter Frank Eliason. Frank is the person behind the Twitter account Comcastcares. I first heard about Frank through a technology podcast called “This Week in Tech” (TWiT). They described a person at Comcast Customer Outreach who had taken the initiative to handle service questions through Twitter and respond to them promptly. During the recording of the TWiT podcast, which is usually done in one take without edit, they were able to use Twitter to reach Frank at Comcast through his comcastcares account, and get him to call into the show via Skype. I was shocked at how quickly they were able to get him on the phone (although the skeptic in me is still not convinced it wasn’t staged like a “millionaire” lifeline call.)

To date, Frank has sent 4,000 public updates to his twitter account, each under 140 characters. He answers questions as well as he can and sometimes forwards information to his office for direct follow-up. I recently had an awful experience at a local Comcast branch (an hour wait in the rain to pick up a set top box) followed by a so-so experience with a pair of smart yet helpless technicians who visited my home. I decided to give Frank a try before I called Comcast to express my sentiments.

I sent a message to comcastcares telling him that my cable signal looks far better when I connect my cable directly to my TV then when I use their new high-definition cable box. This is only a problem on standard definition channels, which look great on my other HDTV on an older HD cable box. Two technicians had been out to look at it and told me that the problem was the new line of Motorola set top boxes and that they decoded standard definition channels poorly. I was told to find another out-of-service old cable box or “live with it”. The technicians, in their defense, were friendly and fairly knowledgeable, but had their hands tied. Within seconds I had a response from Frank asking questions. We exchanged short messages off and on for a little while and then he took my account number over a private message and said he would have someone from his office contact me. Within 24 hours I received a call from their executive offices who are now working the problem. I will update the post with news of how this turns out.

Frank is a breath of fresh air at a company that I was convinced had completely lost their way. Comcast may still have fatal flaws when it comes to pricing, quality, and service, but Frank is a big step in the right direction. By listening to the conversations on Twitter and answering them publicly to the best of his abilities, Frank is helping to turn some of the Twitter community into Comcast fans, which is both a tall order and a powerful PR achievement. The real question will be: Is Comcast simply satisfying the needs of these few in return for some positive word of mouth like this, or is Comcast taking this feedback from the tech-savvy Twitter crowd and using it to adjust their business? In other words, does Comcast really care, or is it just Frank? Time will tell and Frank will, hopefully, let us know.

Update: Shortly after the call from the executive offices, I received a call booking an appointment with a technician. That technician came to my house and while his knowledge was exceptional, mine was a problem he was not able to resolve. The technical description is below. The story from the perspective of customer service is simply: they made a good effort to resolve my issue. It was, ultimately, an issue that will require improvements in their infrastructure to resolve so I was fairly out of luck, but they tried. Am I happy with the result? Not at all, but I understand that this is the best they can do at this time. I will be giving Verizon a close look when my year of free digital voice runs out, listening to the reviews of my neighbors who are switching to Verizon this month. At the end of the day, all the customer service in the world can’t save a bad product, and that may be what we’re dealing with here. If they want to keep customers, I think they need to start acknowledging their shortcomings, make a road map to improving their product, and stick to it in a very public way.

Technical Answer: We tried swapping the NEW Comcast HD box with a previous model, which had been working beautifully in my house on a much larger TV. The result was that the picture did, indeed, get cleaner on standard definition channels, but my other TV still looked better. Apparently my other TV, a 3-yr-old Sony HDTV, has a much better ability to clean up crappy signals than my brand new Samsung. Both look great on HDTV channels. But the older model Motorola set-top box also crushed the contrast and color of the picture, and I rejected it. I preferred the noise. So it appears there aren’t enough bits in each of the Comcast digital channels - they’re compressing video into too narrow a signal, and depending too much on the set-top box and TV to decode and clean it up. Most of what we watch now is HDTV but most of the channels are still standard def, and most of them look like relative crap.

Just a quick note to highlight my current favorite Twitter stream: Tweets from the Mars lander, Phoenix can be found here.
This is a very nice bit of PR from NASA/JPL. As Hollywood fuels our fondness for robots with personality (good or bad) we love this personification of a robot that has successfully traversed millions of miles, landed on the pole of another planet, and has now begin digging in search of ice and other goodies.

I look forward to it’s updates and I find it’s handling of public questions to be more interesting than anything on the NASA and JPL pages. Well done. Now, if only Twitter were one-millionth as reliable as Phoenix…

Photo of today’s first dig in the dirt was snagged from Phoenix Mars Mission page.

Nintendo’s creative master wizard, Shigeru Miyamoto, has blessed the gaming and pop culture world with Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Nintendogs, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. He is often called the “father of modern gaming” and is largely responsible for the runaway success of the Wii console. It is safe to say that when Shiggy talks, people listen. And that point has been clarified, solidified, and immortalized by a recent Time readers poll that places Miyamoto clearly at the top of the list of “most influential people in the world”.

I don’t have a big idea around this announcement other than to offer some digital applause to an industry maverick and creative genius. But since we’re talking about him as a top “influencer”, we should really pay attention to his latest prophecy.

Wii Fit, Nintendo’s latest phenomenon, hits the United States this month after a rather stunning bit of success in Japan. I would have thought that a fitness game would have about as much chance of succeeding in the gaming world as George Bush does of properly pronouncing “Nuclear”. Apparently the “new” gaming world whole-heartedly disagrees. Wii Fit, which comes with a unique accessory called the Balance Board, compels gamers to get off the beanbags and participate in body-rocking aerobics, yoga, and sports games. It’s well-designed, fun, and addictive. It is also selling like crazy - there have been about 2 million copies of Wii Fit sold in Japan - nearly matching the sales of the Sony Playstation 3 - a console that is supposed to compete with the Wii itself, not one of it’s game/accessories. In the UK, stores have reported selling Wii Fit at a rate of one every 4 seconds. Will it catch fire in the US, especially so shortly after the release of the highest-rated, fastest-selling, highest-grossing media title of all time, the ultra-ridiculously-violent Grand Theft Auto IV? Almost certainly, since the Wii audience, which is the largest segment if the US gamer population, can’t buy GTA for their console.

But other than giving you a shopping tip (pre-order it), and wondering why it didn’t come out in time for Mothers Day or the critical New Year’s Resolution day, I mention Wii Fit so you can start planning it as an incentive gift, as an interactive audience attraction at trade shows and mobile exhibits, and as an investment in your employees work/life “balance”. “Wii Fit won’t make you fit”, says the most influential person in the world, but it will make you aware of your body. Let’s see how we can use it to make people aware of you.

EMS 2008 ended last Wednesday, but there is still much to share. The exhibit floor contained more than 60 exhibits covering a wide range of event technology and services. As you might expect at a marketing summit, there was pretty much every type of audience acquisition tactic deployed there - SMS text message contests, the ol’ bring-the-thing-in-the-swag-bag-to-our-booth-and-enter-to-win-a-thing…. thing, great big steaming heaps of swag, big lead-gen contest giveaways, bikini’s and “brand ambassadors” (the linguistically neutered version of “booth-babes”), a guy projecting logos on the wall using a video-projector-on-a-stick, digital versions of “spin the wheel to win a prize”, oxygen bars, massages, video games, and the old standby - chocolate. I did not, however, see any sweaty Buddha’s on unicycles. Someone was asleep on the job.

Here are three of my favorites:

KAON Interactive featured a unique kiosk solution, called the v-OSK (see example screen below), that allows exhibitors to showcase products that cannot be on the show floor due to size or other constraints. An entire library of products can be featured on the interactive touch screens and operators can easily get a feel for the product by rotating and zooming around a photo-accurate 3D model. Having produced many kiosks of this type of over the years, I think this is the slickest virtual product demo solution I have seen. It isn’t 3D stereo, but I imagine that is the next step in this product’s evolution. I was particularly impressed that the assets and most of the interactive experience can be replicated online as well as on the kiosk, making the solution immensely more valuable. KAON can produce these as a turnkey service but they also work with production and design agencies for content creation, including model building.

Pixman, the army of ambassadors-for-hire schlepping 30-pound knapsacks connected to LCD-monitors-on-sticks that hover over the wearer’s head like a freakish square digital halo, were the ones with the video-projector-on-a-stick. They obviously like to stick stuff on sticks. But they also like being the center of attention, which is good because they usually are. They have upgraded the LCD monitor knapsack rig to include a qwerty keyboard built into the arm band of the wearer for data entry - sort of what Wonder Woman’s amazon bracelets would look like if Microsoft made them. The projector-on-a-stick was very clever as a way to sneak a video onto a surface and then turn and run when the fuzz get the call. All of their technology supports their “nomadic media” tagline - media that can wander and deliver a message to a large event from within the crowd.

Last, but not least, I liked the Immersa-Dome from Aardvark Applications - a rentable sensory thrill ride that bombards you with immersive video, programmable scents, wind, seat vibration, and wrap-around sound. They can even add interactivity and high definition video. Since throughput is an issue with this one-seater device, I think the price is a little steep, but if you have the space and budget, and if you need to get someone immersed in the sights, sounds, and smells of a brand - then this is the coolest way to wrap that all in one. They also make multi-sensory theaters for larger crowds, but they aren’t quite as immersive. Considering how dorky you look sitting in the chair with your head inside a dome that makes you look more than a little like the Martian from Bugs Bunny, the theater may be the way to go. Use your own judgement to gauge the dork-tolerance of the crowd.

Day 2 started off with a celebrity-laden presentation by Rohan Oza, Sr. VP of Marketing for Glaceau - the Coca-Cola-owned makers of Vitamin Water and Smart Water. He described the meteoric rise of their product in a category they had to define themselves - “enhanced water”. Despite the plain packaging design and unprecedented category, Vitamin Water is already bigger than Snapple, will be bigger than Red Bull next year, and bigger than Gatorade in three years, according to Oza. I found their celebrity partnerships particularly impressive, especially when you consider that 50 Cent signed up when the company first launched, demanding a stake in the company instead of payment, and his own “formulation”.

The first breakout session of the day for me was a data collection session led by Motorola Sr. Sports Marketing Manager Sharon Brown. Motorola also featured a celebrity-studded presentation featuring, among others, Danica Patrick, who made history this week by becoming the first woman to win an Indy car race. Sharon described a number of comprehensive private and industry events where Motorola captured date in return for prizes or entrance. Many of their programs also involved SMS text messaging to gather email addresses in return for chances to win prizes.

Today’s luncheon keynote was Jeff Singsaas, the General Manager of Event Marketing for Microsoft. Jeff opened with a stunning reel depicting some of the 20,000 events Microsoft stages annually. 75% of these events are Microsoft branded events. He slipped in the mind-melting stat that Microsoft is spending nearly $1billion on events annually.

He proclaimed that Digital will never replace face-to-face events, something I whole-heartedly agree with. Then he proceeded to detail Microsoft’s strategy to deliver virtual events - online companions to face-to-face events as a mechanism to extend reach and lifespan of the event. In one example, a CES virtual event website, they received 100 visitors online for every 1 visitor on site - a staggering bonus to their event spend ROI.

Ron Allen, Microsoft’s Marketing Solutions Manager, detailed their internal platform for executing virtual events. In a nutshell, they are working to deliver online alternatives to most onsite event components, using a variety of media and navigation techniques. Streaming video and photos are just part of the overall online experience. You can see what this looks like at their virtual events demo site. You’ll be able to see the whole keynote when the EMS team post it to their website.

The next session I attended covered 360 degree engagement - live and online components of events. This session also featured Microsoft technology and the speaker was Connie Fontaine - Manager of Experiential and Multi-Cultural Communications from Ford. She spoke in depth of their innovative partnership with Microsoft to launch the Sync feature - a system that lets you control your phone and MP3 player with voice commands. In fact, last night they won an X award for activation of a cause related event (not sure what the cause was).

She described a very interesting social networking/social media/viral campaign featuring two young women, Kim and Seana, who traveled across the USA performing music and delivering videos of their experience along the way. While the webisodes were somewhat scripted, the women were real. In fact, they surprised us at the end of the session by having Kim, the singer/songwriter of the pair, perform a song in front of us - 300 marketing people in chairs (tough crowd). She sounded delightful but she was about 4-foot-nothing and we could barely see her! One attendee commended Connie for being a true representative of experiential marketing by bringing Kim into the presentation. I agree - that was a very cool touch.

During some of the exhibit hours I checked out a variety of products ranging from interactives to video projection spheres. My favorite was the immersion dome, which I will feature in a separate post.

The last session of the day was the unveiling of data from the EMI EventView study, which George P Johnson launched nearly a decade ago. This data, however, covered the past three years. Highlights from this presentation:
- Event Marketing, as a percentage of a large company’s total marketing budget, dropped slightly from 26% in ‘05 to 21% in ‘07, probably due to the rise of digital marketing.
- Trade shows, as a percentage of the types of events large companies participate in, have risen from 52-62% since ‘05 - trade shows are UP!
- Marketer’s perception of ROI value of various types of marketing was down slightly over the past three years, but Event Marketing is still considered the top ROI model due primarily to two factors - the # of people reached, and the focussed targeting of that audience.
- Procurement is apparently having less of a say in the final decision of which vendor is selected for Event Marketing activities.
- 41% of large companies plan to implement green initiatives in their event functions within the next year. Only 25% had no plans to do so at all.

And last but certainly not least, the night was capped off with a networking party at the River East Art Center. Ethos design provided the environment which included a massive lighted bar, distinctive modern furnishings, and large projection scrims with video images of an artist painting what appeared to be Japanese text and illustrations on rice paper. The artist was also in the room painting actual panels among us. Everything they provided was eco-friendly in some way. Bacardi was a sponsor, and is 100% to blame for any typos in this post.

Tomorrow is a half-day before we catch a flight. I may not be able to write about it until Thursday. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, this has been an outstanding event full of valuable information and conversations

I just got back from Vermilion, a fabulous Latin-Indian fusion restaurant where we enjoyed some explosively flavorful combinations. I am told this is the hottest trend in Chicago cuisine. I can see why. According to our waiter, one of the dishes, a lobster tail thingy, was voted one of the top 20 dishes in America by USA Today. How could we NOT try it? HIGHLY recommended (the dish AND the joint.)

Today was a great start for the Experiential Marketing Summit. We ran into many old friends in the trade show and event marketing industry, and we were pleased to hear that the attendance reached over 1,000 people this year.

The morning started for us with a 3.5 hour workshop led by Event Marketer Magazine founders Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover (the event organizers) talking about some research recently gathered by the Event Marketing Institute and trends about the industry as a whole. Kerry started with the research slides and revealed that, to everyone’s surprise, ROI measurement is markedly down in the event industry. 82% of the industry reported measuring ROI of their events in 2005 compared to only 67% in 2007. If you’re thinking that gets you off the hook - guess again. They also found that companies that measure are 2.5 times more likely to get their marketing programs funded than those that don’t measure.

One of the clear problems with ROI measurements was illustrated at the start of the session when Kerry asked who in the room actively measured their events and roughly 30% raised their hands. However, when he asked who had dedicated budgets for measurement, hardly anyone raised their hands. Apparently corporations want their measurement and they want it for free. That clearly won’t cut it.

Dan Hanover, a lively, entertaining, and intelligent speaker spoke next. He started by explaining that the term “destination” will replace the term “experience”. There were a lot of groans in the room as people saw a rebrand in their company’s future. Destinations are defined as places people will line up to attend - can be trade shows, mobile marketing exhibits, private events, popup stores - whatever. As long as people want to get there and will go out of their way, wait a while, and even pay to get in.

Dan also reminded us that event marketing is getting more and more expensive while attendance probably isn’t going up. We need to reach more people. To do this, the industry needs to come up with ways to get more people to draw 4 additional people into the brand. “This is the only way we’re going to be able to afford this stuff in five years,” Dan forecast.

The highlight of the day was the luncheon general session with Amy Curtis-Mcintyre, formerly the marketing maven behind Jet Blue’s meteoric rise. As of last Monday, she is with Hyatt Hotels. Amy was a fantastic speaker - warm, funny, smart, sharp, and refreshingly frank. She had a remarkable ability to answer seemingly complicated marketing problems with very simple and logical solutions. She shared an outstanding anecdote about a trip she and her husband took to a fancy resort in the mountains, riding there in a rented Jeep SUV. When they were ready to leave, they packed up the Jeep and discovered to their surprise and delight that the resort had filled the tank with gas without asking. The Jeep had been running on fumes when they arrived. This was so amazing to them that they spoke of little else about their fabulous trip other than this mind-blowing gesture. It made me wonder what my company can do to surprise and delight our customers to this degree.

She said that her goal at Jet Blue was to make Coach Class “suck less”. In fact, by eliminating First Class, the whole Jet Blue plane felt more upper class. She also shared that she launched jetblue.com with a budget of $200K in only 60 days and it turned $5K in ticket sales on day 1. She said it was simple and idiot-proof - something she takes seriously with everything her customers touch. One of her most colorful yet insightful comments dealt with corporate branded merchandise: “if people don’t want to steal your sh!# then your brand is in real trouble.”

She described how Jet Blue spent as much time and effort marketing to their internal audience as they do their customers. Treat your employees very well and they will treat your customers very well. Think about how a shoddy photocopied job application form feels to an applicant compared to one that is beautifully designed. She said “great design rules” - we couldn’t agree more.

The afternoon sessions were mostly great. First, I took in Ric Peeler and Bryon Rhoads from Intel who spoke about their social media experience with events like CES and the Intel Developer Forum. They had many interesting tips and examples to offer. One highlight was their CES 2007 exhibit which allowed people to produce videos in the booth and upload them to YouTube. The highly Intel-branded videos enjoyed about 100,000 views in aggregate, including user-generated content highlighted by this Dancing Dork.

The last session that I attended didn’t do much for me. It was billed as a “virtual event” overview but it was actually about two people who use a $99/mo webinar package to sell cruise vacations to retired people.

After the sessions they opened up the exhibit hall for a reception with free drinks and nibbles. There were many interesting exhibits, including KAON interactive who makes the V-OSK virtual product demo kiosk, which I will write about in detail later.

All in all, it was an outstanding day 1 and I need to crash immediately in preparation for day 2!

If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, consider yourself lucky. Twitter can be an incredible time sink and it’s not clear that the signal to noise ratio can be managed to the point where it’s anything but a life-logging digression. In fact, studies will one day show that reading too many posts about menial situational updates like “I’m eating a peach” will actually make you dumber. But if you’re a marketing professional (given the nature of this blog, you probably are), you probably need to stay in tune with the “tweets” of Twitter because there is a fair amount of interesting things you can do with 140 characters or less. If you need a primer on Twitter, check out their FAQ.

I started using Twitter again recently after some previously tweet-resistant coworkers fell victim to the Twitter gravitational forces. So far, I am not hooked, nor am I leaning that way, but as I occasionally skim the posts from the various people I follow, I have found a few ideas that have inspired me among the many that have completely wasted my time. Earlier today, I received one that inspired me to write this post.

An exhibition, the New Media Expo, had started “following” me (subscribing to my twitter updates). Why? Because they want me to attend their expo. By “following” me, they expect a “follow-back” where I return the favor by following their updates (Jonathan Coulton has to write a “follow-back” song to the tune of “Hollaback Girl”.) Even if the user isn’t prone to automatically following everyone who follows them, most people will check out the new follower to see who they are. The “open rate” for twitter follow announcements has got to be worthy of the marketing hall of fame. But what I really like is the fact that the response mechanism is a subscription - they tune into you by following you, automatically, on twitter.

The New Media Expo, and many other events, are targeting influencers within the twitter community, and “following” all of their followers and followees. That’s not a word… I’m pretty sure. Example - they figure Robert Scoble is a good person to connect with for a tech event. They follow him. Then they look at his list of people that he follows, and they systematically follow all of them. Of those people some will opt to follow the expo’s twitter feed. And their friends will find out. And viro-exponentially it goes. That’s also not a word, but you get my gist. Gist is a word - a strange and miserably overused word, but a word nonetheless. GIST also stands for Girls Into Science and Technology, which is really really cool, and Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, which is really, really not cool. My Scrabulous skills just leveled up.

Back to Twitter: So you can market your event through twitter using this viral, WOM, tap-the-sap-of-the-influencers method, and you can also do one or more of the following:

- Tweet news from the show, like Forrester.
- Automatically Tweet the RSS feed from your event blog. Don’t have an event blog? Start one now - your attendees want in on the process.
- Enlist twitterers in the same fashion that many events enlist bloggers. Give them access and privileges and ask only that they enjoy the show and post what they want.
- Incorporate mobile device features into your event offering such as mobile agendas, alerts, handle questions from text messages or tweets, and SMS polling. Using Twitter as a Q&A vehicle will naturally inspire people to tweet about the show.
- Offer free passes to influencers with many followers that align with your target demographics.

Did I miss anything?

Yup - my twitter feed