Snap, Inc., the parent company of SnapChat, self-identifies as a camera company. This new “camera company” is about to unveil its initial public offering and raise billions of dollars in the process. It’s a topic we explored thoroughly on The Bean Cast this week. Snap reported that its messaging service had 158 million daily active […]
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In certain circles, marketing automation is all the rage. People are genuinely excited by the idea that a machine can be programmed to anticipate a customer’s needs. Mostly this means a customer’s need for another email notification, but the idea behind marketing automation is much bigger than that. In the hospitality industry, for instance, it’s […]
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Stock images have a bad reputation in the creative community because creative teams set out to make original communications specific to one brand on the planet. That’s hard to do with an image that wasn’t shot specifically for the ad, or project, in question. And it’s impossible to do when using a stock image that’s […]
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Wouldn’t it be nice to ask one of the early heroes of the ad business a few questions? Thanks to IBM’s Watson, and some diligent research work from The Drum, we are now able to ask one deceased legend—David Ogilvy—about various items of importance. By the way, The Drum is a global media platform and […]
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In this growing global economy, it’s common for employees, vendors and consultants who are working on a single project to be scattered across the globe. Contract employees who work virtually, as well as those who regularly telecommute, are also on the rise. Employers have begun to realize that allowing employees to work from home actually encourages them to put in more hours and usually makes them more productive. However, the inability for people to congregate and exchange information inside a brick-and-mortar office presents unique challenges that previous generations did not have to overcome. Video conferencing allows for a simulated person-to-person experience. Even though there are numerous methods of achieving this, they all compete, which means until Blue Jeans cloud-based video bridging emerged, none of the services worked with each other. Now that this new technology has taken center stage, teams are being brought together from more locations than ever for collaboration. Here’s five ways that cloud-based video bridging makes it easier for people to get together.
1. It Provides Global Coverage
It allows people from every corner of the globe to join up for meetings and brain-storming sessions. A contractor in Tokyo working with a technician in New York who is overseen by a development team in Los Angeles can all work in conjunction with each other. Considering the costs of flights, hotels, visas and more, getting a team together for an in person meeting is well outside of a smaller company’s budget. Cloud-based video bridging does away with the distance and brings together a team as many times and they need, as often as they need, at a fraction of the cost of actual travel. It also allows employees to resume their work quicker, since there’s no need to travel.
2. Everyone Can Join In
While traditional video conferencing systems are beneficial, they’re also limited in that they don’t work together. Regardless of the complexity of the system, users are tied down to using the same software, hardware and devices. The cloud-based system frees people to use whichever video conferencing tools are available to them, so a group of managers in a specially-designed video conference room can communicate with a CEO using his smart phone while in transit, and they can invite a sales rep who is working from home on his laptop to the meeting as well. As long as the attendee has an internet connection, a commonly-used browser and a webcam, he or she can join in the video conference. Blue Jeans cloud-based video bridging allows someone who doesn’t have those things needs to be present, he or she can use a landline or mobile phone to participate with only audio. The system is fully compatible with most video conferencing platforms on the market, yet even without special software, anyone, anywhere can participate.
3. It Delivers Instant Data Sharing
It can also provide instant sharing of files, videos and more. Cloud-based video bridging lets meeting participants synchronously watch streamed video and receive files for real-time responses and collaboration. This makes it easy to determine when a potential customer is engaged by a sales presentation, because his reaction to the video can be seen as it plays. There are multiple applications where this is not only beneficial, but essential for proper and effective communication. No other platform allows reactions to material and data to be seen as it’s received. It’s like being right there with your audience. Moreover, the rich media can be uploaded beforehand to allow for easier deployment during the session.
4. It’s Easy and Maintenance-Free to Use
The cloud-based system also removes the need for a technical team, additional servers or special equipment. Because everything is managed externally, participants and organizers alike need only to arrive on time. There’s no set up, uploads, downloads or waiting for a system to let people in. This allows attendees to join in and begin the collaboration immediately, regardless of where they are or what device they’re on.
5. It Never Needs a Manual Update
Another unique thing about the cloud system is that it automatically updates. This means that everyone will be on the same version every time, allowing for total compatibility and easier communication. Moreover, as new features are developed, they can be added in without any effort from the user. They’re simply available the next time the service is deployed. Other products require frequent software updates that can delay meetings or crash systems. With this new technology there’s effortless connectivity, which provides faster start-times and fewer delays so the team can focus on the discussion at hand.
Technology can be wonderful or it can be immensely frustrating, full of glitches and lags. Blue Jeans cloud-based video bridging seamlessly brings more teams together from more locations, regardless of devices or software. This allows for faster, simpler and more unified collaboration, which is essential for companies who want to compete in today’s global economy.
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In a quest to innovate and apply leaner methods to age old practices, agencies are increasingly acting like media and technology companies.
In one such move, Publicis Groupe—agency parent to DigitasLBi, MRY, Razorfish and VivaKi—is joining the NYC Media Lab as a corporate member. Other partners include AT&T, ESPN, HBO, Hearst, NBCUniversal, News Corp., Time Warner Cable and Verizon.
The Lab connects companies seeking to advance new media technologies with university labs, programs and talent in New York. It was launched in 2010 by the New York City Economic Development Corp., New York University and Columbia University.
According to Adweek, all Publicis Groupe agencies have the chance to participate in the Lab’s media research initiatives, covering areas like design, data science and engineering.
This development will likely benefit clients in the end, but in the near term it may help high quality talent choose between offers from an Omnicom- or WPP-owned shop, and a similar offer from a Publicis-owned shop.
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The Internet brought everything closer. Everyone from business owners to foodies, were able to connect online and share information, run their business and generally, make a profit from anywhere in the world. However, the Internet played an even more dramatic role in the technology sector. Information sharing and open source technology in particular led to remarkable upheavals in the last decade and technology changed rapidly due to this simple online Internet sharing. Industry analysts on top websites like washingtonpost.com state that consumers can now expect rapid changes in devices and technology in the coming years. Emerging tech companies will be utilizing shared technology, R&D innovation and technical skills to display products and talents that will revolutionize the tech world.
What to Watch For
Although there are several companies hitting the headlines already, Technology Review has created a list of the emerging tech companies of 2014 that are worth watching out for and we’ve categorized them as per industry.
Computing
With the advent of the Internet, computing and online communication is an industry that is in high demand. This is particularly true for large businesses that have to keep up with the market by adapting to modern changing technology.
Communication and Video Conferencing
Videoconferencing in particular is turning out to be an interesting field to watch in 2014. Innovative products to watch out for include the following:
Biotechnology
The biotechnology field is improving rapidly. In the last two years, the field has several new companies creating innovative devices and software for public use.
These are just a few of the top innovative companies on the market but many more companies are still creating a buzz. Companies like Qihoo 360 Technology, Monsanto and Aquion Energy are all on the frontier of scientific breakthroughs and many more interesting products and services are expected to hit the market quite soon.
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The first thing I noticed when we stepped outside at the Austin airport was the smell of freshly cut grass. That may have been the most promising moment of SXSW Interactive.
SXSW’s website describes the Interactive portion of the festival as:
An incubator of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity, the 2014 event features five days of compelling presentations and panels from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable lineup of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer. From hands-on training to big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW Interactive has become the place to preview the technology of tomorrow today.
There wasn’t a ton of “the technology of tomorrow” this year. Many of the festival sessions covered the technology of last year.
In truth, this year’s event felt more like a World’s Fair of Brands. As someone from a creative agency, it was cool to see the big budget experiential displays that brands built. The pragmatic part of me wondered what KPIs those brands internally set for an event that was marketing to, well, a crowd of marketers.
It seemed to be the consensus among attendees that there wasn’t a breakout startup star of the festival. That said, there were some inspired moments. Here are my top three:
TechCrunch’s Josh Constine interviewing Secret co-founder David Byttow.
If you missed this session, I’m truly sorry. Secret is one of several new anonymous apps that are rising in social. The SF tech community in particular has flocked to this 40+-day old app, making the secrets that appear there somewhat of a Silicon Valley parlor guessing game. But hearing Byttow speak to the human insights behind the app—the notion that at the end of the day we all want to be understood and by removing our identity we can more easily convey emotions—that is a beautiful basic human insight upon which to build a platform.
New York Times best seller Jonah Berger talking about what drives word-of-mouth.
Funny thing about this, I’d been trying to connect with Jonah in Philadelphia for a few months. He’s a Professor at Wharton, but has been in residence at Duke this semester. I had to travel to Austin to finally catch up with him. It was worth it. Jonah has identified a science behind why people share, something he calls six STEPPS, an acronym for Social currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical value, and Stories. Read his book.
Equipping and inspiring the next generation with Dean Kamen.
A master inventor, engineer and humanitarian, Dean Kamen is a genius living among us. He may be best known as the inventor of the Segway, but this guy has invented enough things that he’s toeing Ben Franklin territory. He’s also the guy who helped make Coca Cola’s Freestyle machines in exchange for distribution of his water and power generators to schools in Ghana. This guy isn’t just smart, he’s a better person than many of us. And that’s what a lot of his talk boiled down to. The world of ideas isn’t a zero sum game. Technology isn’t a zero sum game. We can help the world while we help ourselves.
It was an interesting SXSW, to be sure. I had fewer mind-bending hallway conversations due to the sheer volume of the event, and that was a bummer. But beyond the teeming venues, full sessions, long lines, and celebrity appearances, inspiration was around, if you listened for it.
Apart from the event itself, Austin is an attractive American city to visit in the temperate month of March. Here are three must visits:
Shady Grove: Austin-inspired menu with a gorgeous tree-lined patio and cowboy-esque interior. Yee-haw.
The Salt Lick Bar-B-Que: It’s a little bit of drive from downtown and worth every minute. These people are cooking meat in a pit the family built in 1967. With a recipe inspired by their great-grandmother named Bettie from Mississippi. I don’t think anything more needs to be said about this. Let’s go.
The LBJ Presidential Library: I’m a politics and history nerd. Next year, I am definitely making time for this!
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Heads up SFO. A small city of people are flying in for Dreamforce, the annual user conference put on by Salesforce.com in San Francisco this week.
According to reports, some of the Dreamforce badge wearers will be seeking information on how to incorporate social media marketing and social selling into their practice. Others may be looking for a good party to attend. I hear Green Day is performing at a VIP function. How punk rock is that?
According to USA TODAY’s preview piece on the conference, L’Oreal began using new marketing and analysis tools Salesforce rolled out this year.
The software helps automate the process of discovering the interests of existing customers, then deciding which promotions to send to their social media accounts, via text or video ads.
L’Oreal brand managers used it to sign up thousands of hair salon owners in the U.S., who in turn used it to create thousands of Facebook pages that were peppered with social media ads for shampoos and conditioners.
I am a huge fan of discovering the interests of existing customers. That’s the fuel on which marketing runs. But I will admit to getting hung up a bit with the idea that software will effectively automate the process. I’m not saying software does not work in this capacity, or that this particular software as a service is not needed. Rather, I want to question which sales and marketing processes can and should be automated, and which work best when done manually.
I know this much, an email does not equal a phone call and a phone call does not equal a face-to-face meeting. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, and possibly include said thoughts in an upcoming feature article.
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How many hours a day do you spend on Facebook? Is it enough time to fully understand the ins-and-outs of the platform and all its various uses?
I am a heavy Facebook user myself, but basic things like looking up a Facebook Page’s followers continue to prove difficult.
Imagine how tricky certain aspects of Facebook are to the casual user. What’s this messaging function? Is it email? Why does it look like a chat box? And so on…
Ryan Holiday, author of Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, points to a short list of attributes one must attain to become functionally literate in online media environments today.
Knowing how to tell a troll from a serious thinker, spotting linkbait, understanding a meme, cross checking articles against each other, even posting a comment to disagree with something–these are skills. They might not feel like it, but they are. And they’re easier to acquire the higher your tax bracket.
Holiday also suggests, if you work as a security guard or at the counter of a Wendy’s, our modern media environment is “significantly more difficult to track.” He asserts that a person’s reality (who is not in front of a computer all day) is shaped by the things that “tend to trickle about and from the Internet.” Meanwhile, the people with time and money inhabit another universe of free and paid information, that more closely resembles the news.
I might add there are degrees of media literacy to consider here. Apart from the inequity that Holiday addresses, we have our own literacy problems to address inside marketing communications. For instance, if you are hoping to sway security guards or retail counter workers on your client’s behalf, check yourself before coming up with a consumer-generated content idea that rolls out on Instagram.
We can also look to SEO and other technical marketing information as a media literacy problem inside our own industry. Last week, a poacher emailed one of my clients this subject line: Errors on your website. He then proceeded to point out a “canonical URL issue,” in hopes of winning new business.
It is my obligation as someone conducting business in the digital realm to know enough about such things to respond intelligently when my client asks, even though I don’t have a web dev background. Thankfully, I can ask the publisher of AdPulp about it. But the point remains, we’re all navigating an increasingly complex river of information. Power to the people who artfully simplify.
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Digital advertising will account for 22.7% of all worldwide ad investments this year, or about $117.60 billion — up 13% compared with 2012, according to estimates from eMarketer and Starcom MediaVest Group.
I’m not certain this is a good thing. Unless, brands and their agency partners clearly know what they’re doing with all that money.
I posted this new Adobe commercial from Goodby Silverstein & Partners on my friend Bob Hoffman’s Facebook wall. Hoffman is a champion of common sense and logic in the face of much digital advertising speculation. Recently on his Ad Contrarian site, he pointed to a Solve Media study that claims 46% of the viewership reported by websites seems to be fraudulent. That’s a lot of ghost traffic.
As someone with feet in both the media and marketing worlds, I can say it’s not all that simple to say exactly how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from and if they are real people or not. Yes, there are tools aplenty, but tools are biased. How you choose to measure something impacts the data and flavors the results.
If we can’t trust the data, or the people who willfully manipulate it, what or who can we trust in terms of getting value for our ad dollars? We can’t trust the traditional ad guys who are invested in making TV. We can’t trust the digital demigods either. This is not a good situation for the ad business, nor for the clients who need to trust someone to help them reach their communications objectives.
My take is create a media plan that makes sense for your particular business situation. I often drive by a large lot of shiny Airstream campers, and I think here is a company that desperately needs well-made TV to tell the story of weekends in the mountains. Naturally, a client like this would also be well advised to develop its digital assets. Thus, the divide between TV and digital is a false divide. Companies need to spend on both TV and digital and apply the best metrics available to each, while keeping in mind that persuasion is an art.
The post Whether Perpetrated By Bots or By Babies, Click Fraud Is A Crime appeared first on AdPulp.
In an industry starving for innovation, some wild ideas will be thrown at the wall. Some of them will even stick, before sliding down and out of view.
Quick, look at this idea — a smart beer cup connected to your Facebook account — for it too may slide from view.
Chris Matyszczyk writing for CNET says:
I am sure that some will be vastly entertained by waking up after a night when they got truly toasted to discover how many people they truly toasted.
Awkward though it seems at first glance, there is something here that I like. Budweiser is making an effort to be useful, and that I salute. Although, I do question the need for this particular application of technology, and I wonder if Twitter isn’t a better platform for it, given that following behavior on Twitter is “promiscuous,” and better suited to “meeting and greeting.”
Hat Tip: Taplister
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I have been staring at hundreds of advertising and digital agency websites on my Pinterest directory trying to decode each agency’s objectives and strategies. Frankly, the lack of ad agency website differentiation, especially if you view these websites from a new business perspective, is confounding.
Every once an awhile I come across an agency that is doing something different. In this case, the something different is a social media tool from Copacino+Fujikado, a leading Seattle agency born in 1998. The agency is known for its iconic Seattle Mariners work and a range of other famous brands including SAFECO and REI.
C+F, which has a very clean site by the way, has a “+ curated” button on its navigation bar. The + curated tool lives on each page and allows a visitor to save pages from the site and add them to a curated list that the visitor can email to himself or someone else.
The + curated device works for at least four important reasons.
+ curated helps the visitor to save and share content (especially the agency’s work.) An action that is generally difficult in website viewing.
It works as a user-activated new business tool.
It provides the agency with data on who is visiting and sharing. Again, a new way to solve the problem of the anonymous visitor.
It is different and cool and provides the agency with a new shiny thing that they can show to clients to prove that they actually walk the social media talk. Most agencies try to deliver social chops by showing their Twitter feed.
C+F has managed to move past the now ubiquitous home page Twitter feed to demonstrate agency-owned digital prowess.
Peter Levitan is an advertising agency consultant dedicated to helping advertising agencies add new business in our age of disruption. He can be found everyday right here: www.peterlevitan.com
The post An Agency Website That Works From Copacino+Fujikado appeared first on AdPulp.
We often talk about placing the customer, not the brand, in the center of the action online.
According to Technology Review, the brainiacs at MIT are well beyond just talking about it. They’re doing it.
The researchers built a prototype website for British Telecom, set up to sell broadband plans. The website is designed so that the first few clicks that visitors make are likely to reveal aspects of cognitive style. For example, the initial page that a user sees lets her choose, among other things, to compare plans using a chart or to interact with a broadband advisor. “You can see that someone who’s very analytic is probably more likely to go to ‘compare plans’ than to the direct advisor,” says John Hauser, a professor of marketing at the Sloan School. Within about 10 clicks, the system makes a guess at the user’s cognitive style and morphs to fit. “If we determine that you like lots of graphs, you’re going to start seeing lots of graphs,” he says. “If we determine that you like to get advice from peers, you’re going to see lots of advice from peers.”
The maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop on Thursday launched a basic version available for free online.
San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.
Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. And, once they register, users can get to their accounts from different computers.
Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that’s in the works.
[via Associate Press]
Lee Gomes of The Wall Street Journal looks at the efforts by neuroscientists to understand what makes certain websites irresistible to the human brain.
Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, who is interested in the evolutionary and biological basis of the human need for information.
Coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.
It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us ‘infovores.’
I don’t know what the opposite of opiods are, but I’m pretty sure I’m being pelted with them left and right.
Joel Johnson of Boing Boing Gadgets caused a bit of a stir yesterday, appearing on an AT&T Tech Channel online show and changing the subject to discuss AT&T’s plans to filter the Internet.
As Joel says:
As you can see from the video, the crew ended up scrubbing the interview about half-way through. Figuring that might happen, I asked my steely-nerved friend Richard Blakeley to tape the first take. I wanted to make sure that we had a record of the event, primarily to ensure that AT&T would have no reason to try to bury the interview entirely—the same reason I am running this clip now, while discussion about what to do with my segment in post-production is surely underway.
After the crew got their wits about them—they were not very happy with me, understandably—we went on to shoot a second take, which to Hugh’s credit also included not only talk of gadgets, but of network neutrality and AT&T’s collusion with the NSA. I look forward to seeing that segment air on the The Hugh Thompson Show.
It’s yet another lesson for all you Join The Conversation/Two-Way Dialogue/New Transparency/Consumer Engagement gurus: Companies want to control the conversation as much as possible. And it could get very, very ugly.
Thanks to The Consumerist for pointing to this.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
