Tag Archives: location
Johnny Schroepfer | Critical Mass Chicago
Mobile and emerging technology have historically had more hype than actual adoption or implementation within marketing campaigns; but with the proliferation of mobile devices and digitization, the mobile channel is slowly becoming a necessity rather than a novelty. In this post, I wanted to address key developmental areas of mobile and their impact on customer experience and engagement.
Traditional & Mobile Integration in Marketing
From an integrative marketing standpoint, the mobile device can be seen as an extension of the brand experience; it’s what connects the end user with the brand messaging. Mobile is often an overlooked or undervalued channel of communication but in reality, it’s one of the most personal forms of communication in this digital world. When campaigns are successfully crafted and executed, the channel that connects the end user with the message has the power to change both brand perception and consumer behavior. With that said I believe we will continue to see more brands create mobile campaigns or initiatives that complement traditional marketing channels while allocating a significant amount of their advertising budget towards mobile and emerging technologies.
Advertising
The recent launch of the Apple iAd platform will only further prove my point that there will continue to be a major marketing shift and emphasis on mobile within integrated marketing campaigns. The iAd platform allows developers to create beautiful and rich advertising executions that are less disruptive and reach the consumer at the intersection of emotion and interactivity. In addition to this innovative approach, the developers will retain 60% of revenues which have already shown signs of success. Obviously, these signs of success are due more to novelty rather than active engagement and interest, but the iAd platform is definitely a step in the right direction for advertisers.
Payment
Mobile commerce is another key area of significant growth that is driving adoption and new users. With more brands integrating traditional and mobile campaigns, allowing consumers to easily pay for various products and services on-the-go will benefit both parties. Apples iTunes payment system is a great example of quick, convenient one-click purchasing. During the D8 conference, eBay CEO, John Donahoe, discussed the adoption of the mobile device as a way to pay for goods and services. Donahoe explained that the mobile delivered $600M last year and will deliver $1.5B to $2.0B in revenue to eBay this year.
Adam Bracegirdle | Critical Mass Calgary
Timeliness is of benefit in this industry, and although Facebook’s announcement of the open graph protocol happened an eternity ago by web standards, I feel in this case the ramifications of such an event demand a step back. To say that the open graph protocol is ‘revolutionary’ is in my opinion an understatement. Many will say “Facebook is late to the game. Google, Yahoo and MySpace all have a shared standard for OpenID through OpenSocial, ergo, this is a non-event”. My reply to that is simply, not really. Nothing has been done at this level. Not to mention none of those services come near Facebook in terms of user-engagement. I don’t think we’ll fully realize how profound this moment is for a number of years. And I don’t just mean in terms of the internet. This has the potential to change the way we buy products, how we react to world events, what music we listen to and how we find it, among many other things. I won’t say it’s a ‘good thing’ as that is, and will remain, a point surrounded in a great deal of debate. I will however say that I believe this is certainly a moment worth looking at.
On the surface it seems as though Facebook is attempting in this moment to centralize the internet around it’s own service. Of course they don’t word it that way, “The open graph puts people at the center of the web.” says CEO Mark Zuckerberg “It means the web can become a series of personally and semantically meaningful connections.” Sounds vaguely positive to me, and if the new Facebook graph protocol seemed slightly confusing to you at first, you’re not alone. I was scratching my head a little too, so I’ll start by explaining it’s core functionality and then I’ll expand on the merits of each point.
It all starts with social plug-ins; these allow Facebook to be ported pretty much anywhere. When you visit a site that’s using social plug-ins, you’ll be able to see all the people in your network who have visited before, what they did there and if they recommend or ‘liked’ anything on the page. This to me represents the nail in the coffin when it comes to digital channel convergence. Once Facebook roots itself in the online experience with social plug-ins we can no longer consider social a channel at all. It becomes the experience, and instant personalization is the result. Of course user-engagement and the ubiquity of the plug-in will effect how personal your experience can be. Facebook has addressed this by using cookies and iFrames to remember a user no matter where they are in addition to providing developers with a far simpler, robust API and an open authentication protocol called OAuth.
The site level component, Facebook’s ‘like’ button, adds further functionality using the open graph protocol. If I decide I ‘like’ something while I’m online (it could be anything; music, images, videos, books, products, you name it) I can use Facebook’s universal ‘like’ button and the site will create a connection between me and that object. Best of all, the connection can include semantic data (like type, color, genre, location, etc.) and appears as an object in Facebook with it’s own set of functionality. The communication is not one way either, sites can correspond directly with the subset of users who’ve decided to hit the ‘like’ button.
