This past year we saw consumer brands embrace social-media programs for branding and product promotions in sophisticated ways that most tech companies haven't quite gotten to yet.
Much of the reason behind the tech lag is due to the breadth of the audience, but also because tech buyers have tended toward expressing their opinions to companies without being asked.
Mountain Dew recently unveiled the details of its year-long DEWmocracy 2 program, "an open communications platform that relies on the collective intelligence of loyal consumers to shape the direction of the brand and Mountain Dew innovation pipeline." In layman's terms this means it is looking to go beyond crowdsourcing and incorporate a huge variety of community marketing and branding efforts into a bigger strategy.
DEWmocracy 2 launched in July and is a 12-month, seven-stage campaign that will result in the production of a completely user-generated Mountain Dew beverage. This is not dissimilar to a program Vitaminwater ran on Facebook earlier this year to crowdsource ideas for new flavors. The main difference is that DEWmocracy is a sophisticated, fairly massive endeavor, encompassing online communities like Facebook, video submissions, Twitter, and a variety of ways to vote, allowing users to share their thoughts.
I put forth a number of questions about the program to Brett O'Brien, director of marketing, Mountain Dew, detailed below.
What stage of the program are you currently in?
We completed the advertising challenge, which is the sixth stage of DEWmocracy, on December 13. DEW fans voted for their favorite advertising submissions, choosing six finalists. The finalists will now create short pitch videos for the Flavor Nations, which will each select which ad creator they would like to work within 2010 to create ads that will run on national TV.
Has any one particular tool been most effective in your marketing efforts?
Several tools have been effective, but we're particularly impressed with the consumer response to our call for video submissions on 12seconds.tv. In total, more than 1,000 videos [were] created by consumers and posted on 12seconds.tv and other social-media outlets. That type of response, coupled with the quality of the video submissions, screams a high level of consumer engagement. Consumer video submissions also enabled DEW loyalists to share content with other DEW drinkers and introduce them to the program not through the voice of the brand, but through the enthusiasm of fellow DEW fans.
Research firm Nielsen has released its top advertising trends for 2010. Not surprisingly the leading trend is the ability to measure activity that merges online and offline purchasing behavior, addressing the fact that users have expanded options for how they consume content and how they interact with brands.
Nielsen data shows that "time spent on each of the three screens--TV, PC and mobile--is increasing. In particular, the consumption of video content is on the rise across all platforms."
Top advertising trends for 2010
- Optimizing media convergence is a top priority
- New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones
- More cross-media ad campaigns surface
- Commercialization of social networking hubs increase
- More interesting and interactive online ads appear
The challenge with advertising mediums such as video (TV more so than online) is that they require users to not only be interested in the product but remember it when they are making a purchasing decision. This, of course, is why online advertising has proven to be such a lucrative model. Consumers, in theory, can be served an ad and then perform some kind of action, such as buying a product online.
Nielsen asserts that for consumer packaged goods, "purchasing decisions in 2010 will be affected by factors such as brand innovation, retailer assortment, proliferation of store brands, and healthy eating preferences." With the exception of healthy eating (maybe eco-friendly tech is the comparison?), the technology industry won't be dramatically different.
Large brands like Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft must continue to innovate (brand innovation), more start-ups will join the fray (retailer assortment), companies like Dell will offer more services to support their hardware business (proliferation of store brands) and maybe electric cars become the healthy eating of the tech world.
What remains to be seen is which advertising trends are the most efficient and cost-effective. Social networking has been largely aggregated onto a few major sites such as Facebook and MySpace, while other niche sites garner far less traffic (though potentially more per-user dollars.)
The biggest opportunity is to make people actually like seeing advertising. Despite all of the hype and success around ads, I've yet to meet someone who claims to just love Internet ads. We all accept ads as a part of our lives online, so there is certainly an opportunity for more interesting online ad formats.
Beginning in the first quarter of 2010, social sites IMVU and MyYearbook will launch a virtual currency exchange allowing users from either service to exchange currency between the sites.
Currency Connect is billed as a "cross property virtual currency exchange" system similar to how you would change U.S. dollars into euros if you were traveling in Europe. Users simply swap their currencies depending on what site they are on. Overall this is not a bad idea as I still find it surprising that users pony up real money for virtual money that can never be taken out of a specific site.
But, it does make me wonder when a bigger payments vendor, like PayPal, will get into the game and offer more of a de facto universal virtual. It's all well and good that two large-ish sites have launched this effort, but it can't be long before other social sites like Facebook join the fray. And, ultimately the site or currency with the most users is likely to be the one with the most users.
This opens up an opportunity for other sites with large user bases such as Google and Yahoo to offer a currency program. If users are already joining multiple social-networking sites, there is no doubt that they are also using search engines and instant messaging.
On the technical side, the service uses a simple set of REST APIs that implement the various checks and balances of the system. Security is maintained through tracking methods and server-to-server connections, which will initially limit how many sites can participate in the service. Again, a larger online service might have an easier time deploying a fully distributed, trusted service that didn't require point-to-point connections.
It's clear that virtual currencies have become an important part of social networking and gaming infrastructure. But, sooner or later fickle users will change their allegiances. A currency exchange offers a palatable escape method but still doesn't ever let you turn your virtual currency back into real money.
(Via VentureBeat)
It's no secret that Windows Mobile has hit a rough patch as the iPhone and Android-based smartphones have take center stage. Recent statistics from AdMob shows that Windows Mobile market share of Web surfing was way down during the past 12 months--more than 70 percent year over year.
Any number of people postulate that Windows Mobile will be dead, some say as soon as 2011, unless Microsoft figures out a way to not only make the operating system better but to convince users that they should care.
On the New York Times Bits blog, Steve Lohr wrote earlier Thursday on analyst Mark Anderson's comments suggesting that Microsoft abandon their consumer efforts entirely--that the company has lost the battle for consumers:
Except for gaming, it is 'game over' for Microsoft in the consumer market. It's time to declare Microsoft a loser in phones. Just get out of Dodge.
I'm not a huge fan of Windows Mobile, but Microsoft certainly can't give up on smartphones and really has no alternative but to make a big move in the mobile operating system space. And Windows Mobile is not nearly as bad as many people think--if you don't believe me, check out these results from mobile blog jkOntheRun.
I recently toyed with Windows Mobile phones at both Verizon and AT&T stores and I could absolutely see the appeal of the common desktop functional paradigm if I were a Windows user. But consumers are fickle and don't want to add an OS decision into their buying process. They just want the phone and its applications to work and be easy to use.
There remains a huge opportunity for Microsoft to take its dominant position and make Windows Mobile truly great, even if it means walking away from the status quo. And while that's not typically the Microsoft way, the company has shown with Bing that it can make those kinds of decisions (as well as less-positive choices.)
There are two very simple moves Microsoft could make that would not only shake up the whole market, but also build a path for the future:
... Read more
(Credit:
IBM)
IBM is continuing its investment in cloud computing with a new lab in Hong Kong, expanding the presence of its IBM China Development Laboratory (CDL), the company's largest with more than 5,000 developers on staff.
The laboratory builds on the e-mail technology of Outblaze Limited, a Hong Kong-based company whose messaging assets were acquired by IBM earlier this year and incorporated into the Lotus brand. The new lab claims to be the first of its kind in Hong Kong and shows both the importance of global development teams and IBM's focus on growth in emerging markets, a user segment that is theoretically more adaptable to different methods of application consumption and likely well-acquainted with browser-based applications.
Overall, the fourth quarter of 2009 has seen several interesting cloud-related announcements from IBM, including the LotusLive service that launched in October and already claims more than 18 million active users. Big Blue also launched the Cloud Academy program designed to help educators and students pursue cloud-computing initiatives and better take advantage of collaboration technology in their studies.
IBM has taken a leading role in the development and adoption of cloud services while other large vendors such as SAP, HP, Oracle, Sun and Microsoft have all made cloud-oriented announcements with few proof points that their efforts will be successful. There is no certainty that IBM will be successful either, but the company has at least made consistent progress in both technology and user adoption.
IBM representatives told me that the company will continue to focus on delivering "the most reliable and secure cloud services" architected to meet the needs of consumers as well as their mainstay enterprise buying audience. Totally logical, and still surprising that the other big vendors haven't figured out how to attract their core user base to cloud platforms and services.
The cloud remains a bit of an anomaly in the tech world, dominated by Amazon, an e-commerce site, while stalwart IT vendors like Microsoft continue to take baby steps toward mainstreaming their efforts.
My blogging colleague, James Urquhart, wrote this week about Microsoft's new business unit that merges its cloud and on-premise server group into one development team, which makes sense, at least in theory.
Practically speaking, Microsoft is way behind the curve and has a lot of ground to make. I've written in the past that the opportunity is theirs to lose, and it's hard to see how they plan to win, even with this new structure.
One of the headlines that caught my eye today is this blog post from the Amazon Web Services team about a new Memcached as a service offering from Gear6.
(Credit:
Memcached)
Similarly, Gear6 has added features such as replication, clustering, optimized memory utilization and management to create what it calls a Memcached distribution, much in the same manner as Linux distributions are packaged. Joaquin Ruiz, executive vice president of products at Gear6, provided me with additional insight into why Memcached is popular with Web 2.0 sites and why it matters for cloud computing.
The problem, according to Ruiz, is dynamic data services. In a recent blog post, he pointed to the tight connection between dynamic content and Web 2.0; that is, one defines the other. In this Web 2.0 world, the LAMP (and to some extent Java and Ruby) stack "provided a low-cost, efficient development foundation for Web 2.0 but did not free us from the monolithic, vertically oriented, "scale-up" platforms. Memcached provided the heavy lifting in terms of horizontally scaling ("scale-out") on non-monolithic SMP server architectures from Intel and AMD."
In the Facebook example, the Memcached tier stores members' personalized dynamic content, such as status updates, wall posts, etc., so that they can be quickly accessed when queried. It's a similar set up for Twitter tweets or comments on photos on Flickr. While latency in a social application is mildly annoying, latency in a transactional application could mean lost revenue.
Dynamic data services will likely remain an important part of cloud services, which brings us back to the idea of a Memcached service on a cloud platform. Amazon's Jeff Barr noted, "powerful, high-level services like this allow application developers to spend more time focusing on the novel and value-added aspects of their application and less time on the underlying infrastructure."
Anything that developers and companies can take advantage of to serve data faster and more efficiently means they have time to do other things, including increasing their bottom line.
Late last week it was reported that following Venezuela's lead in attempting to reduce "violent tendencies" in South American children, Brazilian Sen. Valdir Raupp has authored a bill that would make it a crime to make, import, or distribute "offensive" video games.
The goal of the bill is to "curb the manufacture, distribution, importation, distribution, trading, and custody, [and] storage of, the video games that affect the customs, traditions of the people, their worship, creeds, religions and symbols."
Where this ban, like many others, falls short is in assigning blame for societal ills to video games instead of dealing with larger social issues, including a lack of parental oversight. There are, no doubt, influences in Brazil that are different from the U.S., but video game ratings have proven to be an excellent example of an industry-wide standard that could easily be adopted internationally.
In a recent report, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) praised the video game industry for continuing "to have the strongest self-regulatory code" of all the entertainment sectors.
... Read moreGetting great publicity in the tech industry isn't as simple as following the right breadcrumbs. Based on feedback from some tech PR folks who I deal with at companies of varying sizes--publicly traded, VC-funded start-ups, and bootstrapped DIYers--here are five free tech industry PR resources that I would recommend. (If any tech PR folks out there have additional free resources they'd recommend, please comment.)
IT Memos
It can be incredibly painful to keep track of the thousands of tech events and speaking submission due dates each year. (Some--like RSA, Interop, CES, etc.--have lead times up to seven months in advance).
Keeping tabs on all the tech awards (like Webware 100, the Webbies, the Crunchies, etc.) and submission deadlines is no picnic either. And it's also dreadful to manually track "editorial calendars" (where tech publications often tip their hands on upcoming stories they are writing).
ITMemos is a free new e-mail alert from the team at IT Database that simply nudges subscribers about important upcoming opportunities in these areas. If you're not subscribed to this free alert, hundreds of tech PR people are finding out about/acting on these opportunities before you are, so GL.
(Disclosure: I am an advisor to IT Database.)
Help a Reporter Out
Many tech PR folks are familiar with the journalist/source-matching service called Profnet that used to charge an annual subscription fee leading a guy named Peter Shankman to do the end-around and start giving away the same service for free, while increasing the number of opportunities.
Sign up for the HARO newsletter and receive three daily digest e-mails that list out opportunities where reporters are searching for sources/comments for stories they are writing.
While "Tech" is just one section in the e-mail, and often you will open it without finding a relevant opportunity--it's totally worth it to subscribe for the times where you do come across a journalists' story that matches your company's tech category.
... Read moreAs we move toward 2010, there is little question that mobile devices and smartphones will continue to have a huge impact on the market. Research firm Nielsen predicts that smartphones will dominate market share by the end of 2011, with the iPhone and Android-based phones taking the lead spots by a wide margin over traditional cell phones.
As devices mature, Wi-Fi connections become more ubiquitous, and 3G networks become more reliable, consumers will start looking for new ways to use their smartphones as replacements for other larger devices, such as PCs and TVs. One area that has been called out for growth is mobile video and TV, as well as streaming movies directly to a mobile device.
mSpot CEO and co-founder Daren Tsui made the case to me recently that full-length streaming movies will be important to consumers in 2010 because people want entertainment on the go and on demand. Research suggests that the adoption curve will be lead by young males 18- to 24-years-old and parents with young children looking to keep kids distracted.
Not surprisingly, mobile carriers are very supportive of mobile movies. According to Tsui, mSpot has been powering mobile movies on the Sprint wireless network for three years and is currently working with other carriers to bring the service to their user base. Realistically, carriers will always be happy about services they can offer and charge for, but the real question is if they could handle an influx of users sucking down huge amounts of bandwidth.
The obvious obstacle to be overcome is the strength of the data network. Streaming full-length movies to a phone is data-intensive, and therefore relies heavily on a strong, consistently reliable network. Assuming WiFi is available, this is a non-issue, but, as an example, AT&T's 3G network has struggled with the data usage of iPhone users and you can just imagine what will happen when millions of people start streaming movies.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that my wife and I bring an iPod Touch out with us to entertain my 2.5-year-old with various games and movies. Pocket-size mobile devices, iPod or otherwise, can be great learning tools as well as distractions when things are going sideways or when you just want to go to a restaurant and not chase a kid around. That said, my iPhone/AT&T network experience has been so spotty that I would likely opt to keep the content local, though in an ideal world new content could be downloaded in the background.
Assuming bandwidth is not an issue there are many possibilities for mobile content to take the place of traditional PCs or print media but in the near term mobile content will be only as good as its data connection.
The Nintendo Wii remains a force to be reckoned with in the video game world and new survey statistics along with new revenue streams suggest that Nintendo has still has something up it's sleeve.
New survey data from Lottay, an online wish-list and gift giving site, shows that the Wii and its associated accessories will regain momentum during this year's holiday season.
The Wii and Wii-related gear were wished for twice as much as the Sony PS3 and Xbox 360 combined though 38 percent of people wanted something other than products--namely cash, and in one case, Satan (I assume for a visit, not as a full-time family member.)
And while a wish, or a request for a gift, is no guarantee that a product will actually sell, there is a dearth of exciting gifts for this holiday season, leaving room for the Wii and other less-new products to be successful.
Just a few weeks ago, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello commented that the "Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had anticipated" but Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway was extremely positive about the current sales and the future growth.
But, the focus in the U.S. remains on selling more titles and accessories, not branching out into additional services such as we've seen with Microsoft's Xbox Live, which provides access to Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm through the console.
Services supporting the Wii are much more sophisticated in Nintendo's home country of Japan, where the company previously launched an advertising program to turn family time into a commercial endeavor and a catering channel that lets users order food from a variety of vendors directly through the console, delivered directly to their front door.
This weekend Nintendo added to the Wii's variety of interactive offerings, with a paid video download service for Japan. "Theater no Ma" will offer a range of movies, anime and other paid content from providers including Walt Disney and Sesame Workshop.
Downloading rental content onto game consoles and set-top boxes has been common in the U.S for awhile, but the reason this service could prove meaningful in Japan is because Nintendo researchers previously found that 87 percent of Wii users use the console on the biggest screen in the house, which is still the one in the living room.
