Panel 2 of the day – this should be interesting. Again – best part is the questions at the end! Maybe I’ll start just recapping questions?
Panelist – Jason Winocour (Hunter PR)
He’s going to talk about geo-location apps today. Not going to get into privacy today. Show of hands in the room – who’s on FourSquare, Gowalla, FB Places – only 50-75 raised their hands, out of a room of 400+. Giving 101 overview of FourSquare, Gowalla and FB Places. The thing about FourSquare that’s problematic is that their BD team is overwhelmed right now. It’s difficult to work with them. (AMEN!)
He’s geting into case studies, starting with Starbucks/FourSquare. Another case study – Market Fair Mall in New Jersey – mayors got special parking spots (primo) at the mall parking lot. Nice.
Gowalla – he’s focusing on our Chevrolet/SXSW case study! Specifically, talking about our free rides to/from the airport when people checked into the airport on Gowalla. Very nice.
FB Places – Are they going to become the Walmart of geo-location? No rewards, incentives, gaming element YET.
Scvngr – involves skill along with just basic checking in b/c it’s a real-life scavenger hunt.
Now, out of geo-location, he’s going to talk about blogging platforms. Alot of people are blogging. Alot of people are reading blogs. What’s the new way to blog? Introducing Tumblr and Posterous. Both are good platforms. Stronger social aspect – allows re-blogging and “liking.” Bloggers can post from email/SMS.
Another panelist – Nick Mendoza (Zeno)
The tools he’s going to focus on: video, social media management, group buying.
Video – users watch an average of 15 hours/month of online video. Ooh – learned something new – you can edit YouTube videos with Tube Chop. Where have I been?!
Alot of people haven’t developed a social video strategy, much less a live video strategy (using tools like UStream).
Effective videos sell and entertain.
Show of hands again – how many people use social media management tools to listen? About 50% of the room raised hands. I want to look into Sprout Social. Tools like this are important to understand what’s being said about you/your brand, and gives you better insight as to how to respond/engage. Also allows for syndication of content.
Group buying now – he’s talking Groupon and the like. Yipit – look into this. This company aggregates all of these deals into 1 place. Group buying is all about the DEAL (D = daily, E = experience, A = awareness, L = local). One of the unique benefits of group buying is that it enables conversation to extend into people’s own social communities.
Questions – what do you think is going to be the next Twitter or Facebook? Nick – 3 pillars right now – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. What’s next – Scvngr, FourSquare – something related to mobile because people have their mobile phone in their pocket every day, all the time. He talked about Facetime on iPhone 4 and the power of using video, real-time services.
Jason – agree with everything Nick said, but he extends it into Augmented Reality. Walking down the street, you can see deals, information on businesses you’re passing (nice that he mentioned this, although he didn’t specifically say Out-of-Home or Interactive Out-of-Home). Also mentioned gaming.
Question – people are just starting to come around to social media, much less these “new” tools. What can you say about that? Jason – in terms of getting buy-in, geo-location has to be a natural tie-in with the brand and what they’re trying to accomplish. Does it make sense? Don’t try to force fit, don’t do it for the sake of doing it. You don’t want it to seem like you’re buying a new “toy.”
Nick – a big challenge is legal. A lot of these initiatives haven’t ever been done before so that might cause trepidation.
Question – hard time convincing marketing executives that when consumers are engaged in these types of engagements, they’re skeptical that the brand should be “involved” in the space. What’s the opportunity? Nick – any social network out there is NOT a marketing platform. We’re there to talk to our friends/communities. He offered up some research, but didn’t really answer the question.
Jason – people are receptive to hearing from brands. There’s a balance between commercial content and user-generated content. It’s about having the right metrics to show how far you can push this.