Last year, Forrester published an interesting report called “The Future of the Social Web”. In it, they talk about how social interactions on the web have changed since it first reached maturity (around 2003) and where social interactions are going through 2013. When I first read the report last year, Facebook Connect was all the rage and the predictions that were made seemed like on the glimmer of the future. But when I pulled out the report again late last week and realized that in less than a year, many of Forrester’s predictions had become a reality and that their predictions for 2013 were really only just around the corner, my jaw dropped.
It’s easy when you work in this business every day to take for granted the speed of innovation. When each day’s RSS feed bring something new, you can lose sight of the bigger picture. This is a dangerous position because as technology accelerates us ever faster toward “the future”, brands run the distinct risk of being left behind.
Forrester’s report described the era of social colonization which turned out to be a brief blip on the Internet’s timeline. In this stage, Facebook Connect allowed people to traverse the web, taking their Facebook friends with them. The boundaries between social networks and websites started to receed and the response was huge. Websites loved how Facebook Connect so simply made relevancy and sharability possible on their sites. Users loved the novelty of hanging around with their friends on little social colonies outside of Facebook.
Next comes the era of social context. This is the era we are in now, with all of it’s privacy pain and misfortune. The concept is that sites will recognize people’s personal identity and social graph and personalize their experience based on it. So when you arrive at Pandora.com, the site is personalized with your Facebook friends playlists and favorites, allowing you to browse their selections and work them into your own. Mark Zukerberg has really taken a beating for being the company that ushered in this era. But you can’t blame the kid. He has build a company with an extreme and successful approach to innovation. I think his problem is that he built a site based on the concept that you have a safe place to go and share things with people you know. But now, in the Twitter and Flickr era, open sharing has become a more important trend and Mark & Co are determined not to miss the boat. For the average Joe, this trend shift is not even a part of their consciousness so for the largest and most popular social network to thrust it upon them is going to be painful. But, I have no doubt that users will come around to the idea of a social context web and in many ways, they already have. But can Mark take us to the next level of Forrester’s prediction?
The next era is that of social commerce. Forrester predicts that by 2013 (and perhaps before), communities will become much more powerful. Versatile, open IDs will merge social sites and the larger web into a common experience. Users will have complete control over their identities and will choose what of their personal data they want to expose to brands. Brands that have gained users trust will be able to offer more personalized experiences on a larger scale and sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will become the intermediaries between consumers and brands in the information-sharing dance. Since consumers will at that point be harnessing their collective buying power through communities, this intermediary role becomes critical and powerful as does the brand’s ability to solicit that user’s data. Trust in a brand’s ability to do cool (not creepy) stuff with your personal information will elicit community purchases and become a true competitive advantage.
Facebook is clearly on the forefront of this movement today. My question is for how long? There are so many utilities out there for sharing, rating/liking, reviewing, acknowledging, etc. Will something like OpenID bring the robust unification of utilities that will make life easier on consumers and data more robust for marketers? Or do these folks at the OExchange have the solution, with their quest for standardizing the link and information sharing process across the web? Or will Facebook themselves deliver an interoperable standard for these items? And as more and more of these utilities move to open source solutions, how will your own brand be positioned to take advantage of a future that looks very different than today and yet is only a couple of years away.
Because we all got into marketing to have a little fun mixed in with our business (come on admit it, you did too), we will highlight marketing fun on our blog every Monday. Follow and contribute and you will become an inspired marketer plus the most interesting conversationalist at your next cocktail party, all courtesy Something Massive – #MonFun.
One of our very favorite marketers, Scion, announced their latest marketing innovation this morning. “Reinvent the Wheels” is a 6-part web-only reality series that chronicles the journeys of 6 creatives as they build a car that will further their creative craft and push the boundaries of self-expression. Scion has lined up tattoo artist ZULU to serve as a mentor and three tuners from famed garages to help bring the vehicles to life. True to the reality format, surprise challenges will give the contestants the opportunity to win additional time to put toward customizing their car.
You can watch the trailer here. For Scion, this is a perfect expression of their brand which has always sought to highlight and support indie creative, and of course to underscore the ultra-customization that Scion enables and encourages. And watching the series won’t feel at all like watching an ad. That’s fun.
Of course, content like this that is produced by brands is not entirely new. Although some brands adopted the format several years ago, we believe that only now are the stars aligning to make these kinds of initiatives a viable and effective means of marketing. The web has become a destination for entertainment – even beyond the 30 second funny video on YouTube – with the popularity of sites like Hulu. Plus, even despite the crazy proliferation of cable channels, the web remains the very best place to find niche content opportunities that speak directly to an individual’s taste and interests. Now brands can bring the kind of niche content that a movie studio or television network wouldn’t take a chance on to an audience perfect for their product or service. And if it’s popular enough, who know what format that content might take next – book, television, or big screen. It has been our experience that these kinds of opportunities are ripe for the taking, IF a marketer has a team on their side who understands the intricacies of creating compelling programming and distributing it via the web. We’ve got that know-how so reach out if you’d like to talk some more.
Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai’s heads must be spinning. These dudes are the founders of Foursquare (a site that has just hit it’s 1-year anniversary) and the news those two and their nifty company has generated since the beginning of the year is astonishing. From releases for new devices, to deals with major media and entertainment brands like Bravo!, Zagat, Warner Bros, HBO, History Channel, Canada’s Metro, and The New York Times , to copy-cat style strikes from more established services like Yelp, to the launch of a new dashboard to better serve business customers, to an integration with Bing maps; I can imagine that there’s never a dull moment at the Foursquare offices in New York.
Not to mention that in just one year, they have amassed half a million users, awarded 1,000,000 badges, located 1.4 million venues with 1,200 offering specials to Mayors, and clocked 15.5 million check ins.
Have your ears perked up yet? Although it’s hard to jump on the bandwagon of every single new technology launch out there, this one looks to have some staying power. Location-based marketing is a big trend for 2010 thanks to Foursquare, with the potential to revolutionize the way we calculate ROI on social media initiatives.
The best example so far comes from Tasti-D-Lite which offers the option to link their loyalty program to FourSquare and Twitter. Users who make the connection (and therefore have their visits to Tasti-D-Lite automatically broadcast to their networks) will receive additional loyalty points above and beyond the typical award with purchase.
Just last week, Starbucks jumped on board with an experimental new rewards program. Their barista badge is available for 5 Starbucks checkins and further, more targeted, rewards are in the works to keep the checking in rolling.
These are interesting developments that are good for marketers large and small … and good for Foursquare. I love that with this platform, the local coffee shop has just has much of an opportunity to reward their customers as does Starbucks, even if it may require a little extra ingenuity in the part of the local guys. And I know I’ll be even more apt to broadcast my whereabouts if marketers will reward me.
We’ve got our sights set on some big-name retailers and sponsors of large-scale events to test location-based strategies. Imagine the opportunities for feedback on in-store experiences, referrals to new locations or experiences, and rewards for loyalty. Real-time notification that your best customers are in the proximity of your brand brings all kinds of interesting opportunities to bear. I guess Dennis and Naveen aren’t the only ones with their heads spinning!
I swear we are not iPad obsessed. But we do think the tablet computer is about to be here in a big way and that it will again shape the way people consume media. The magazine industry is one area in particular where we think the iPad and future generations of the Kindle will really shine. Remember a few years ago when everyone said that magazines were here to stay because people liked the portability and the tactile experience of flipping through them? Insert the tablet computer into this equation and portability and tactile experience take on a whole new meaning.
VIVmag is an online luxury magazine targeted at professional women, 35+ with substantial HHI. Check out this amazing motion magazine cover and feature spread demo that photographer Alexx Henry and Co-Directors Cory Stassburger and Ming Hsuing produced to showcase how magazine content gets a whole new lease on life when it’s considered in the context of something like an iPad. Very fabulous indeed.
You can read more and get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the spread on Alexx Henry’s blog right here.
As an advertiser, I can just imagine the advertorial experiences that we could create to put a brand in the palm of user’s hand and make interactions truly enjoyable and integrated. Awesome.
Apple’s ability to generate mega interest in new product launches and press conferences is truly brilliant. As is common with most media consumption today, I actually didn’t watch the press conference in real time – neither on TV nor streaming. Rather, I caught little bits and pieces of it from CNN headlines and iReports, Huffington Post blurbs, Tweets, Facebook posts, and maybe 2 minutes of Fox News coverage as I passed by a television on my way to get a cup of coffee. Much of what influenced me during Wednesday’s buzz frenzy was commentary on the product’s ridiculous name. Here’s my favorite rendition of that hullabaloo. Don’t click if you aren’t amused by feminine hygiene sketch comedy!
After consuming all of that buzz, I just wasn’t that impressed. My takeaway was that this was a giant iPod Touch with a terrible name. But all of that buzz did motivate me to visit apple.com and check out the product. And that’s when my opinion shifted. I was converted from mildly intrigued to full-on salivating. And I think this brings up an interesting point about distributed media. Although the consumer’s fragmented media habits make it critical to adopt a distributed approach, marketers should not neglect their own sites. When a consumer is hungry for more information, they should not be disappointed if they make the effort to type in your URL.
For me the coup de grace was Apple.com’s product video. Now let’s face it, a 7+ minute product video is not something I’m going to take the time to watch from just any old brand. But with all of this buzz behind it, I figured it was at least worth watching the first 30 seconds. Apple, by leveraging their genius ability to cast their own employees (some hipsters but mostly middle-aged, white guys wearing golf shirts) and still make the video engaging, had my attention until the bitter end. I thought one small nuance was especially smart. Rather than showing people sitting on their couch using the product, they changed the perspective so that the camera positioning seemed to put the product in my very own lap while I sat on the couch. Suddenly, it wasn’t hard for me to envision playing the Yahtzee app on iPad with my husband without craning my neck to see his roll on the iPhone. I could picture myself as the first in my book club to show up with an iPad instead of a paper back. With the ease of a car salesman inviting me to picture the car in my own garage while handing over the keys, Apple got to me.
It goes without saying that the market will soon be flooded with advertisements about iPad, consumer reviews, and even more buzz about if/how the iPad will change user experience design, browsing habits, and media consumption. All of these things will most definitely impact audiences and sales. Despite all of the mixed messages and short clips that had me skeptical, thanks to a visit to a product website, at least one consumer (that’s me) is already sold.
