Tag Archives: SXSW

SXSW and DSE – Very Similar

I find myself in Austin at SXSW right now vs. coming home from Las Vegas and DSE. I have missed my friends at DSE and there are, no doubt, several (if not many) cool things emerging in the field of digital signage/enabling technologies that have surfaced there. But as I walk around SXSW, I can’t help but think of all of the similarities between the two conferences.

1. People are always going to use technology for technology’s sake – one of the best quotes I’ve heard today is, “alot of gadgets (read, “technology”) don’t solve the right problems.” I don’t know whether this is because people don’t dig deep enough to find the real problem or if they don’t care about problems, they just want to use technology. This is the problem with so much cool technology bombarding us – basically anyone can make anything with it.

2. There are very smart people out there who know how to purposefully use technology – yes, there are many, many crap emerging technology solutions out there, but there are also many good ones. One that I learned about today is: Food. You. Me. For anyone who likes to cook and has had thoughts about hosting a dinner party, but just didn’t feel confident that they could pull it off, this app is for you. It’s smart. These guys recognized a need to make novice cooks comfortable and knowledgable in cooking for more people than themselves, so they’ve created a utility-based app. (It’s in BETA right now, so if you’re interested, sign up to receive updates via email.) Although this particular example is about cooking, it’s an example of an insights-driven approach to solve a problem through technology. Two guys. They did this all themselves. It’s a really good idea and one that puts technology to use in the right way.

3. Passion abounds – some might call it over the top, but there is no doubting that professionals in each of these affected industries are incredibly passionate about what they do. You can’t teach passion. You can do what you can to harness it and point it in the right direction, but you can’t teach it. The recognition of such passion around me is inspiring.

4. Technology is no barrier at all – the more smartphones that get adopted by the “regular” consumer, the more comfortable they’ll get with unique interfaces and human-computer interaction. And, to me, this is the key. Because the technology is out there. Gesture, touch, NFC, RFID, QR – I have a feeling that consumers’ comfort with these sorts of technologies are going to be quicker than their comfort with moving from standard phones to smartphones. I was skeptical about NFC and how long it would take to get into market, at least for early adopters, and it’s not going to be long. I’m sure this is something that was discussed at DSE. I’ve had numerous discussions here.

I’ve only been here for 1.5 days. I’ve got 9 more to go. This is what has stuck out at me in my short time here. I’m sure that many more will become clear as the days pass. And as they do, you’ll hear them here. For now, good night and good luck.

Chronicles of an LBS Wanderer – 3

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Location-based services (LBS) – like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Yelp – made a big splash last year as a fairly successful, yet niche, mobile tactic for brands aiming to reach consumers in the real-world. They are great platforms for rewarding loyalty, real-time consumer reviews & tips, and for those who like such a thing, keeping track of your friends/family. I’ve “played” Foursquare consistently for a year now and dabbled in the others – Gowalla, Yelp, Loopt, SCVNGR. There’s interesting potential with this sort of technology, particularly when integrated with placed-based signage. But as I’ve wandered over the last year, I’m left wondering if these technologies will stick and ultimately reach the average consumer. And more than that, what it will take for them to reach that point? Here are my chronicles.

This is a follow-up post to yesterday’s. This first paragraph is the same, but everything after that is new!

Although I’ve spent my last few days at SXSW, I wasn’t really at SXSW. Working the conference means that you operate in a bubble and even the big news rarely penetrates it. From what I hear, though, location and gamification are two of the most prevalent themes. This is important because SXSW is known as the launching pad for emerging trends and start-ups. I suspect Foursquare and SCVNGR – both emerging in their own right – will reap the benefits of being highly present at SXSW this year.

Right before the conference, Foursquare announced a partnership program with American Express aimed at recognizing loyalty at local businesses. Some Austin favorites – like Stubbs BBQ and Whole Foods – are participating in the pilot program that gives consumers $5 back when they spend $5 using their AmEx card. Interesting.

It’s big news for Foursquare, for sure. This is the type of association they need to make the average consumer aware and familiar with “Foursquare.” And it’s something like this – a partner with a major merchant – that gives them hope of actually affecting consumer behavior enough that it makes a lasting impact on their business.

But will it work?

Who knows. That remains to be the million dollar question. Quite literally.

I think, for both SCVNGR and Foursquare, these announcements provide more clarity of their place (and use) in the market. SCVNGR is becoming more and more the mobile game that brands and consumers can engage with in out in the real world. Foursquare is becoming more and more the mobile loyalty tool that brands can use to reward their most loyal customers.

This definition is a good thing. It lessens the I-want-to-do-everything-for-everyone syndrome that is easy to adopt, especially as a start-up company. (Although SCVNGR did announce a new venture, LevelUp, that combines group-based daily deals with loyalty.)

But the real question remains – will consumers care enough to engage through one/both/more of these mobile emerging technologies more than once?

The rise and proliferation of mobility, beyond mobile phones, will certainly help. I have been using my iPad 2 since I purchased it over the weekend. One thing that stuck out to me was the diverse audience in the lines. That just says to me that there is a growing appetite, by many more people, for more and different mobile devices. More and more people want to experiment and if the experience is good enough, they’ll adopt. So, the technology and the behavior that drives using technology in a specific way will continue to evolve, and for technologies like Foursquare and SCVNGR, this is half of the battle.

The other half of the battle is answering the value question. Just because it’s available doesn’t mean people are going to engage. Just because it’s more game-like doesn’t mean people are going to engage. Rewarding loyalty? I can see that driving engagement. But it has to be more wide spread than a single, typically more exclusive merchant than American Express. I couldn’t have participated in the promotion because I don’t carry an AmEx card. I, like many average consumers, am conscious of spending and one of the mantras driving my purchases is, “if you can’t pay cash, you shouldn’t buy it.” I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one who lets that mantra drive their purchase behavior. I’m also willing to bet that I’m in the overwhelming majority of average consumers who don’t carry an AmEx card. So, what does a promotion like this leave me with?

Hope?

Disappointment?

No.

Nothing really.

It’s just another example of the value I got out of checking in while I was at SXSW. Nothing.

But, you know what? I keep doing it. Because I can. Because it’s a little fun for me. Because I have a tinge of hope of uncovering something new, even if it is a badge.

But those are hardly sustainable.

For now, though, I keep wandering and wondering.

Chronicles of an LBS Wanderer – 2

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What will drive mass adoption of location-based mobile technologies? Is it all about the game?

SCVNGR’s CEO, Seth Priebatsch, gave the keynote a few nights ago where he announced a new “game layer” on an already-interesting game platform. I wasn’t there, but it seemed like he gave a good overview of what’s wrong with the current location-based platforms (not enough people using them, tied to specific location, sparse rewards) and looked forward to what can make these types of technologies engaging and sticky. His answer, from all accounts, is tied to making the experience – er, life – more game-like. He didn’t unveil any specific features to SCVNGR that will enhance the experience, but he talked about a few concepts. Most interestingly, he talked about the concept of the “game layer.”

“The last decade was the decade of social — it took connections between friends, family, and coworkers and put them online. It’s called Facebook. The social layer traffics in connections.” Conversely, Priebatsch says that the Game layer traffics in influence — “It will influence where we go, what we do, and how we do it.”

I find this interesting on many fronts. Two, in particular, are:

1. The social layer is inherently influential. Word-of-mouth – offline & online – influences those around us, what they like, how they connect, and ultimately what they buy. I don’t see how making it a game changes the influence dynamic.
2. He, like many others I talk to in the world, think in terms of behaviors, not technology. Technology is a means to an end. It is becoming powerful enough to enable certain behaviors, but it’s certainly not the lead. Does the digital signage industry think in terms of behaviors or technology?

The one concept that he talked about that I don’t think I agree with much at all – he outlined how many of the principles we associate with games — levels, rules, rewards, motivated players, etc. — are exemplified by our school system. The problem, he says, is that school has an engagement issue: people are bored. I don’t think gamifying the school system is the answer. I think better teachers are the answers. Anyway….

All of this is rhetoric right now. SCVNGR, just like Foursquare, has had a nice little entry into the world. Certain groups of people have latched on. Some brands have, too.

But the question remains – what will drive mass adoption? And for the long-term?

Is it really adding another layer to life, this game layer?

Friday’s 4-1-1, What a Social Media Road Trip Can Teach Us Style

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I starting writing this post a couple of days ago while we were in the middle of the road trip. It has since ended, all of the road trippers made it to Austin safely, and they’re still talking about it. I planned the first Chevy Road Trip last year, too, and this is one of the most rewarding initiatives I’ve ever worked on. I’m proud to share this work and my learnings.

My last few days have been spent on a huge activation for one of our clients (Chevrolet) at SXSW. Correction – my last few months. But over the last few days, the activation that I’ve been leading (The Chevy SXSW Road Trip Challenge) has been in full force. We identified some of the top digerati, entrepreneurs, and filmmakers from 9 cities in North America, provided all of them with Chevy vehicles, and asked them to document their journey all the way down to Austin. We’ve developed 11 challenges for them to complete, and over the last few days, we have literally been unfolding them in real-time. The road trippers learn more and more as they’re going and it’s making for some great content and most of all, great experiences.

I am continuously amazed at the power of people and technology. And even more specifically, technology that enables connections – like social media platforms. A couple of weeks ago at DSE, in Shelly Palmer’s keynote, he said the biggest change in technology today is the speed and scale that it enables connections and amplifies voices. It’s so true. I have experienced this first-hand over this road trip.

Every time I do something – small and large scale – I try as hard as I can to be aware of and absorb what is happening in the weeds and all around. I call on many things from past experiences and even still, I learn something new in every circumstance. And learning is only so good when you don’t use it to teach others. So, here are some of those learnings from this road trip. I hope you find, at least some of it, helpful and/or insightful.

1. The brand is not in control – regardless of how much you literally prescribe a journey, it is harder and harder to predict exactly how much of it will go according to plan. You can set up the best, most defined parameters and structure it in a way that has the most potential to yield positive results, but in the end, you are not in control. The people are. The best thing you can do is to be there, be open, and be willing to offer encouragement and/or help.

2. Flexibility, if not THE key, is a critical key to success – you can always bank on curveballs when people are involved and you turn the experience over to them. If you don’t have a plan B, C, D, E and F, you’ll quite likely be scrambling to solve problems that present themselves regularly. Foresight is certainly important, but if you’re not willing to be flexible, you shouldn’t participate in social media. The key, really, is to be responsible in your flexibility.

3. Over communicate, over communicate, over communicate – there is no such thing as enough proactive communication, especially for something like this that is so intense and occurs in a specified timeframe. Everyone involved behind the scenes – the community managers and the brand team – have many things on their plates to deal with. To assume someone knows something or will take care of something is death. I’m sure you’ve heard it before – communicate early and often. It’s a simple concept, but difficult to practice.

4. Interpretation is pesky thing – how members in the community interpret various components of an initiative like this is going to be different than how you, as the organizer/manager, interpret them. Our road trip centered around 11 challenges that each team had to complete over their 3 days on the road. While we wrote those challenges to be loose and open to interpretation, we found out very early on that how we expected the teams to interpret those challenges was completely different from how they actually interpreted them. In this instance, it was a good thing. It made the content more unique and diverse. But the real important thing here is – you must be crystal clear in your communication with the community if you don’t want anything to be misinterpreted. Even then, it’s bound to happen.

“Uh-huh” – we worked with a non-profit called Adopt-a-Classroom and scheduled stops for each of the teams along their way. It was, by far, the most inspiring thing to watch how the teams embraced the classrooms and the impact that those classrooms had on the teams. The teams were asked to raise $200 for their classrooms and every single one of them took it as a collective call-to-action and got their own communities involved and raised much more than they were asked. One team even raised $5,000+. This was a good cause. It’s one of those causes where just a little can make a huge impact. Social media – and the connections that it enables, the speed and scale – is a powerful doin’-good machine.

“Duh” – I’ve heard many people ask, “what is the brand getting out of this?” And from my perspective, the answer is simple – get people to experience the cars and people behind the initiative and then tell their communities about it. Good and bad. This is a learning process and what better way to learn than have 40+ people essentially living in the cars for 3 days. The road trippers have been open and honest and in order to provide value and get better, that’s what the brand needs.

It’s all quite simple, really. It’s just a matter of doing.

Here’s a cool site to check out everything road trip-related and a video to boot. As always, thanks for reading! If you have any questions about this or anything else, I’d love to hear from you!

SXSW….with a little more IOOH

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(Full Disclosure – I’ll be at SXSW as part of the Chevrolet SXSW Team. Chevrolet is an official sponsor this year of SXSW.)

So, the road trip came to an end last night. All of the teams made it to Austin safe and sound. They generated tons of great content. It was fun to watch. I think the IOOH experiment was successful. (A few people told me last night that they really enjoyed the interaction.) I greatly underestimated the logistical component of those clues, though. We had to ship and coordinate with ~16 different hotels, all different days to be delivered, and different times to check-in. There were many variables that made this particular component challenging. That’s to be expected, though, when using a guerilla-like approach. We couldn’t do much – this isn’t a sophisticated use of OOH – but the point was to try to be as innovative as we could with this element of the experience.

To me, this is an interesting, very realistic way to give people more information/engagement with something as simple and as ubiquitous as post cards. If I were in charge of a city/state branding initiative, where we were responsible for doing the “standards”, like post cards, I would immediately print the cards with some sort of tags/codes like QR codes/MS tags. There would be so many opportunities for deeper, more dynamic engagement and content. You could drive to videos of city/state leaders, citizens, even b-roll-type footage. Even fun facts about the city/state. Even a website (which I know is not preferred, but could be tailored to the content on the card.) Or if you wanted to get a little more creative, you could drive people from a card of say, The Statue of Liberty, to The Empire State building, just the way we did with the scavenger-hunt post cards. It could actually add a refreshing element to these otherwise novel (at best) objects. I suppose in this scenario, these wouldn’t necessarily be true IOOH because the user would, in most cases, end up owning the card, but it’s still a vehicle to enable deeper engagement through an emerging technology.

And yes, I think QR codes are an emerging technology in the US. I don’t know if they’ll catch on here, but SXSW is doing their part to introduce them to a large, influential audience. I’ve said it before, but I think one of the top stories coming out of SXSW is going to be QR codes. They’re on the badges, they’re posted around the convention center, and we’re contributing by using them in various ways. We’ve placed them on all of the ride & drive Chevy vehicles so that people can learn more about each vehicle that they’re riding in or seeing out in the open spaces around the convention center. And we’re placing them on a new car – the Cruze – as a way for people to interact with it because here, they can’t drive it or even get inside it. All of the codes are placed on the car in locations that are specific to the content that they’ll receive. So, if someone wants to learn about the Cruze’s engine, they’ll take a picture of the code on the hood of the car.

The content behind the codes, though, is really going to be key to make these things compelling and show their potential in how they can benefit the user. We’re incorporating Chevy-in-pop-culture facts centered around film & music with the ride & drive vehicles, as well as special product content. With the Cruze, we’re incorporating quizzes and exclusive video content that people can only experience in this way – through these QR codes at SXSW. The payoff has to equal, or preferably, outweigh the buildup. Otherwise, it just makes for a bad experience and bad experiences are, well….bad.

I’m confident in ours. Tomorrow, we’ll find out.

Example of our QR codes on the Cruze:

More to come tomorrow, after the booth opens and the Cruze is covered in codes. Farewell for the night from Austin!

QR Code Mania

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Does everyone automatically have QR code mania? It seems like they do in my world. The last two weeks have been filled with questions and examples and tweets about QR codes. I’m even planning an initiative with QR codes (more to come on that in the near future!) Everywhere I turn, I’m hearing and thinking about QR codes.

I’ve seen some good examples, like the recent Detroit Red Wings program, that enables users to watch an exclusive video from their mobile phones. The call-to-action is clear, informative, and the Red Wings even play an instructional video during their games. They’re seeing success and even thinking of ways they can extend fans’ experience beyond this initiative.

I’ve seen bad examples, like the Weather Channel on-TV code, that enables users to automatically download the Weather Channel app. This execution falls short on a number of levels, most notably originating from a TV screen. I think the beauty in these codes is that they’re able to extend a non-digital medium into a digital medium in a seemless fashion. Aside from that, the call-to-action isn’t clear and the app is only available on Android devices. And you would think that a television network would have ample opportunity and resources to share instructional videos on new technology that they want their audience to engage with, even more than a sports arena.

And I’ve seen future examples that I’m about to experience myself. SXSW is including QR codes on name badges to instantly connect attendees with other attendees. I will be interested to see an audience like this, completely up on technology, interact with it and each other. I’m also interested to see how SXSW introduces them to attendees on-site and the resources that they make available for all of us.

On the surface, I’m happy that I’m in the midst of QR code mania, but like all emerging technologies, QR codes can easily be more ineffective than effective. Especially in North America, where this technology still has not caught on, despite its acceptance and success overseas, particularly in Japan & Southeast Asia. A huge barrier is our mobile phones and the various platforms and inconsistent reader applications. One app can interpret the data as a V-card, while one can interpret the data as a text message, one only operates on the iPhone and one can work across most mobile platforms. And, oh by the way, each one of these reader apps must be installed by the user before they can be used.

I think these particular barriers are all relatively minor for the potential return. Installing the right reader application on my phone is not a laborious process. It’s certainly worth it when I can simply take a picture of a code and experience some sort of deeper, personal engagement. And QR codes, themselves, are so easy to make that anyone can really incorporate them into any initiative in a matter of minutes.

What we have to consider though – the thing that makes the difference between ineffective and effective – is the complete experience. The devil’s in the details, so they say, and they can either make the Red Wings experience or the Weather Channel experience. To be effective, the user needs to know exactly what to do. They need to know what to download on what type of phone and once it’s downloaded, what exactly to do then. It seems simple, but the call-to-action must be clear and concise. These types of experiences are not website-like experiences where users know what to expect on a click, and even then, users need to be encouraged to click that particular box or image or text. This is a new experience. Most people don’t even know what QR codes are. But they can accept them and will even interact with them if they’re given clear instructions and expectations. The payoff has to be there on the other end, too. That’s another element of the experience that can make or break these initiatives. What content is the user going to see or interact with once they take a picture of that QR code? Is it a video? Is it a pre-drafted tweet? Is it an app? Or better yet, is it something that is only offered in this particular way through this particular channel?

QR codes can enable immediate interaction with meaningful content in a unique way. They can enable extremely rich experiences and in doing so, can help build trust between brands and their audience. But to be effective, they must be used the right way. They must be thought through. And in the end, they must not be done just to be done, just because they’re the mania of the day.

What QR code executions have you seen that are most effective? What are the least effective solutions you’ve seen? Let me know!

11th Screen

Technology + Connections

Tag Archives: SXSW

SXSW and DSE – Very Similar

Chronicles of an LBS Wanderer – 3

Chronicles of an LBS Wanderer – 2

SXSW….with a little more IOOH

QR Code Mania