Fascinating. From FastCompany: The Future of Advertising

Twenty creative directors, planners, media strategists, and account executives from agencies across the country are down on all fours on the floor of a 100-year-old tenement on Manhattan's Lower East Side. They are each staring down at a blank poster-size sheet of paper, contemplating their most abject fears about their careers, their livelihoods, and their future. They have reason to worry. They are, after all, in the business of advertising.

This slight three-story brick building on the edge of Chinatown has been taken over by Hyper Island, a school based in Sweden renowned for producing the most coveted digital talent in the ad industry. That school is located in an old prison on the Baltic Sea, and students are taught that there are no boundaries when it comes to digital marketing.

Last summer, the Swedes at Hyper Island recognized that where there's panic, there's opportunity, and opened this New York branch. Like the many foreigners who settled in this downtown locale before, the school arrived with its own set of promises -- to drag the denizens of Madison Avenue into the 21st century. While its students back in Sweden are "digital natives," these elder New Yorkers are "digital immigrants," who have gathered for three days of hard-core immersion in dealing with the chaos digital technology has wrought on their industry. "Something digital immigrants would do," explains one instructor, "is make a phone call to make sure someone received an email."

Most of the men and women here -- average age: 38 -- have worked at agencies for more than a decade. Such tenure used to be considered an asset, but these days it's more of a liability. They're all well aware that coding is now prized over copywriting and that a résumé that includes Xbox and Google is more desirable than one featuring stints at BBDO or Grey.

Step one of their therapy, of course, is admitting there is a problem. In this room where Swedish pastries litter a couple of Ikea tables, they have been told that their first assignment is to "put [their] digital stinky fish on the table." So each supplicant finds some space on the floor and rolls out that big blank sheet of paper. Eventually, everyone writes something, and after a few minutes, the group gathers in a circle -- a safe space -- where one by one they voice their insecurities. The first person stands up. "I walk around in fear and loathing, dazed and confused," he says. Another confesses, "I'm a person who's petrified to fail." One by one, they exhale the cold fears of an entire industry: "I feel like I'm standing here and there are a thousand baseballs dropping from the sky and I don't know which ones to catch." "I left my cushy job at a global agency. Actually, I didn't leave; I was pushed out." "I kind of feel like the digital world is a gated world. It's wide open, but I don't even know enough to walk in." "This whole 'collaboration, we'll work together as a team' breaking down of the creative director and art director team -- I find it fucking difficult."

Depending on how you look at it, the next 72 hours are either a communal hazing or a primer on today's rules of marketing. Creative teams, the participants are told, now need to behave more like improv actors -- "story building" instead of storytelling -- so they can respond in real time to an unpredictable audience. Marketing actually needs to be useful -- "use-vertising" instead of advertising -- which means that you must think more like a product developer than an entertainer. While campaigns once promised glossy anthemic concepts, perfected before being shipped off to the waiting client, digital is incremental, experimental, continually optimized -- "perpetual beta" -- and never, ever finished. "Digital will fuck you up and the way your agencies are built to make money, staff things, price things," says the instructor. "You guys have to change your DNA, and you're going to have tough decisions." Later, there's an entire lesson on letting go of egos. Throughout the session, instructors remind the novitiates that these new rules are certain to change completely, and soon.

[ CHAOS ]

Like a beetle preserved in amber, the practice of advertising has sat virtually unchanged for the last half-century. Before 1960, ad making was a solitary practice. Copywriters toiled away on words to pitch a product, then handed them off to an art director who translated them into an illustration or photograph. Creative director Bill Bernbach (the B in DDB) changed all that when he recognized that pairing wordsmith and artist could spark genius. That simple move ignited the industry's creative revolution, raising the practice of advertising from sleazy salesmanship to some permutation of art.

The ad business became an assembly line as predictable as Henry Ford's. The client (whose goal was to get the word out about a product) paid an agency's account executive (whose job was to lure the client and then keep him happy), who briefed the brand planner (whose research uncovered the big consumer insight), who briefed the media planner (who decided which channel -- radio, print, outdoor, direct mail, or TV -- to advertise in). Then the copywriter/art director team would pass on its work (a big idea typically represented by storyboards for a 30-second TV commercial) to the producer (who worked with a director and editors to film and edit the commercial). Thanks to the media buyer (whose job was to wine-and-dine media companies to lower the price of TV spots, print pages, or radio slots), the ad would get funneled, like relatively fresh sausage, into some combination of those five mass media, which were anything but equal. TV ruled the world. After all, it not only reached a mass audience but was also the most expensive medium -- and the more the client spent, the more money the ad agency made.

That was then. Over the past few years, because of a combination of Internet disintermediation, recession, and corporate blindness, the assembly line has been obliterated -- economically, organizationally, and culturally. In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962. "Here we go again," moans Andy Nibley, the former CEO of ad agency Marsteller who, over the past decade, has also been the CEO of the digital arms of both Reuters and Universal Music. "First the news business, then the music business, then advertising. Is there any industry I get involved in that doesn't get destroyed by digital technology?"

Thanks to the Internet and digital technology, agencies are finding that the realization of their clients' ultimate fantasy -- the ability to customize a specific message to a specific person at a specific moment -- is within their grasp. It is also one very complex nightmare. After all, digital isn't just one channel. It's a medium that blooms thousands of other mediums. Brad Jakeman, who formerly led advertising at Citigroup and Macy's, says the explosion of platforms like search, geotargeting, the iPad, and mobile apps means fragmented media budgets and fragmented consumer attention. "The irony is that while there have never been more ways to reach consumers, it's never been harder to connect with consumers," explains Jakeman, now chief creative officer at Activision, the gaming company. The death of mass marketing means the end of lazy marketing. At agencies, the new norm is doing exponentially complex work. Think of the 200 Old Spice YouTube videos whipped up by Wieden+Kennedy in 48 hours. "Creating more work for less money is the big paradox," says Matt Howell, president of the Boston agency Modernista.

And the Internet has turned what used to be a controlled, one-way message into a real-time dialogue with millions. "Our power has been matched and, in some categories, rivaled by user influence," says Nick Brien, CEO of Interpublic Group's McCann Worldgroup, who notes that sites such as Engadget and Yelp can make or break a product. The opportunity for marketers is that instead of having to pay for their message to run somewhere, they can "earn" media for free, via consumers spreading YouTube clips, Groupons, and tweets as if they were trying to saturate their networks with photos of their newborn. Says Jon Bond, cofounder of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners who left his agency last year to launch a startup: "Marketing in the future is like sex. Only the losers will have to pay for it." But the dark side of a transparent marketplace is that marketers have never had more of an opportunity to rub consumers the wrong way and be publicly skewered. The days of lathering on a brand message that a product may not live up to are long gone.

All of this has made life much more confusing for the client. At a time of shrinking budgets, chief marketing officers don't know where to turn. They have little confidence that old-world agencies know how to navigate the chaos, and they don't know which newcomers to trust. "It's the most treacherous job in corporate America, blamed for everything and credited for nothing," concedes Jakeman, who notes that the average CMO tenure is down to 22 months.

With clients in a tailspin, the very role of agencies is in question. Many CMOs are shunning "agencies of record" relationships -- the plum long-term, retainer-based deals that have been the bread and butter of full-service firms. After an agency review last year, Angelique Krembs, marketing director of PepsiCo's SoBe brand, opted to work with only shops that specialized in digital, PR, or promotional work, excluding all generalist firms. "I didn't see it as us ditching a creative agency. We were going beyond traditional," says Krembs, in words that can hardly be reassuring to the old line. "We realized it was unlikely we'd find everything we wanted in one place." That's apt to become the norm as a generation of senior marketers emerges from the digital side, rather than from classic marketing educations at P&G or General Mills. For example, the recently appointed president of marketing at Sears, David Friedman, was recruited from the digital agency Razorfish.

Squeezed by clients, agencies are also beset by a host of new competitors attacking from every direction. Technology companies have commoditized much of the "art" of that old assembly line. Producing an ad doesn't have to be an expensive multiperson affair these days, given that commercial-quality high-definition video can now be shot on cameras that cost less than $2,000. Consultancies like Accenture and Sapient are branding themselves as digital agencies. Tech titans like Microsoft, IBM, and Google are rolling out tools that replace agency analysis with digital measurements that can predict the best targets for a campaign and quantify its success. Google, arguably the industry's most polarizing frenemy, is helping agencies use its planning and analytics tools, while at the same time automating their media-buying jobs. "With infinite ad inventory on the Internet, you just can't have people do [media planning] anymore," says Dan Salmon, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets who covers advertising and marketing services. "It's now being done by a piece of software."

Technology startups also digitize away agency roles. MediaMath, DataXu, and X + 1 are racing to deliver automated ad-buying platforms; Buildabrand.com [1] has reduced the branding process to an algorithm that produces customized logos in five minutes; Lotame is doing audience data management, which tracks every dollar spent and how it performs. Web 2.0 stars like Facebook and Foursquare are starting to work directly with brands, sometimes cutting agencies out of the conversation entirely.

The attack on the industry is also coming from agency expats. Former Crispin Porter + Bogusky exec John Winsor recently opened Victors & Spoils in Boulder, Colorado. Victors & Spoils has virtually no staff and "operates on the principles of crowdsourcing" -- currently the most vilified term in the agency world. Since its launch last year, Victors & Spoils has lured marketers at General Mills, Oakley, Virgin America, and Harley-Davidson, which just ditched its agency of record of 30 years. "Many agencies are hanging on to this idea that creativity is theirs to own and sell," says Harley CMO Mark-Hans Richer. "[Victors & Spoils] offered a great place to start versus sitting across from a creative who spent weeks crafting the perfect idea and gets upset if you want to change a word." Says Victors & Spoils chief creative officer Evan Fry, who's also a Crispin alum: "I think the new model is scary because all of us in the ad industry want to feel, at least from a creative point of view, that we have something no one else has. So if you're really good at it, you had to go to Creative Circus or Portfolio Center; you had to pay for it. Then you had to toil to get into a good shop. Then you had to get lucky to get on the good briefs. For someone to come out and say, 'We think a lot of people can offer great ideas' means, 'What, I'm not special?' "

For the enterprising client that can see clearly through the chaos, this new world holds promise. Kraft, for instance, has assembled a growing Rolodex of 70 new specialist partners. This isn't some fringe brand -- it's Kraft, the country's largest food marketer, which spends some $1.6 billion on marketing every year. The company is so open to new thinking that it recently hired a startup called GeniusRocket to develop a new campaign for the relaunch of its Athenos Hummus.

GeniusRocket is what an ad agency looks like when it's stripped of Madison Avenue skyscrapers, high-priced creatives on payroll, sushi dinners at Nobu, and two-week shoots at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. The firm is nothing more than a bare-bones website that crowdsources broadcast-ready TV ads from a pool of loosely vetted talent from Poland to Guam. A CMO accustomed to handing over millions of dollars to an agency for a campaign designed around a single spot can now hand GeniusRocket $40,000 -- and get seven spots, each of which will be syndicated on 20 web platforms for tracking, testing, sentiment analysis, and wide distribution. GeniusRocket gleans a 20% to 40% commission, and the rest goes to the creators. "It seemed like an interesting, cost-effective way to get some new creative ideas," says Marshall Hyzdu, the Kraft brand manager who hired GeniusRocket. "We fell in love with one spot.

"For an agency to be on the cutting edge, it must have heavy overhead," Hyzdu points out. "Versus GeniusRocket, which is a lean team focused on new ideas. I wonder if that becomes the new model." That kind of thinking sends shivers through the business. "I've gone to see all the big cheeses at all these big agencies, and the reaction to us tends to be in one of three buckets," says Mark Walsh, GeniusRocket's cofounder and CEO and a proud bottom-feeder. "If the executive is over 57, he says, 'Thank God I'm getting out of this business.' If they're in their forties, they say one of two things: 'You're Satan and you're out to kill me,' or 'You're Satan, but can you help me and not tell anybody?' "

"There's never been a better time to be in advertising," says Aaron Reitkopf, North American CEO of digital agency Profero, referring to the unbound possibilities of digital, "and there's never been a worse time." Reitkopf left his CEO post at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners a year ago and spent some time visiting agency heads while figuring out a next step. "At the beginning of our conversations, they would put on a brave face, but once you began to quiz them about the future, the door would close in the office," he says. "They'd look at you and say, 'I can't possibly know what the future looks like.' " There's only one thing everyone agrees on, Reitkopf says, and that's that there is too much excess: too many people, too many of the wrong kinds of people, too much bloat, too much inefficiency. And this in an industry that has laid off more than 160,000 people in the past two years. "Ohhhh," nods Reitkopf, "the carnage is going to be awesome."

[ OPPORTUNITY ]

Surviving that carnage, of course, is the real reason people sign up for Hyper Island's grueling three-day sessions. "You go in there not wanting to admit you're an alcoholic and by day two, you're like, 'I am a little bit of an alcoholic,' " says Kevin Moehlenkamp, chief creative officer of Boston-based Hill Holiday. Moehlenkamp attended the inaugural U.S. class last fall, which was held for the industry's top creative execs. "Before, I was a bit of a creative elitist. I thought digital was just another medium." TBWA\Chiat\Day chief creative officer Rob Schwartz attended that same course. He remembers that the group of top competitors arrived with cautious bravado. "Everyone was arms folded, it was very tense, and there was a lot of nervous laughter," says Schwartz. "The room had a Twitter feed, but 70% of the room didn't know what Twitter was."

Moehlenkamp and Schwartz say Hyper Island pushed them from digital observers to participants. "Before, I felt open to the conversation, but I wasn't in it," says Schwartz, who admits he had even been afraid to blog. "What they teach you is that with digital and social media, either you're on the shore or you jump in. The class gave me the confidence to jump in." The 20-year industry vet started blogging and says he has discovered that data tools -- which creatives have always shunned as an enemy of artistry -- help him stay ahead. Above all, he does not want to be left behind. "My fear was missing out on what could be the next creative revolution," he says. "I was too young for Bernbach. I didn't want to miss out this time."

Many in the business do realize that this moment of unsettling disruption is filled with possibilities. "The headline is, we're on the verge of a creative revolution," says Brian Martin, a consultant who has spent more than 25 years in the industry. Advertising's first creative revolution happened soon after television went mainstream. Digital has reached a similar saturation point. "It's an exciting time, not doom and gloom," says McCann's Brien, who is charged with turning around the atrophying behemoth. "It unleashes creativity." You might even argue that the revolution is the agencies' to lose. "In our business, whenever there's a disruption, our clients need guidance," says Brien's boss, Interpublic Group chairman and CEO Michael Roth.

For three years now, Joe Grimaldi, the longtime chief of IPG-owned Mullen, has been trying to drive change at his agency. Mullen is a Boston-based 40-year-old traditional agency with 550 employees, clients such as Timberland and LendingTree, and a lukewarm reputation for its creative work. Grimaldi decided that his agency had to unlearn its bad habits and develop agile, flexible ones. "We want to be an interdisciplinary company with adaptability built in," says Grimaldi, an Italian immigrant raised in Queens.

Nothing has come easy. "We brought people in from the outside to lead digitally," says Edward Boches, who for years was Mullen's chief creative officer, "but they always tried to change us into a pure digital play. Then the ad types who wanted to do brands and big ideas would say they're jerks who dis us, who think we're dinosaurs." That was only the beginning of the misfires. "In the early days, digital was always an afterthought, so we didn't acknowledge the true cost," says Boches, with his thick-as-chowder Boston accent. "We sold wrong, we neglected to put digital-savvy people in our new business roles. Instead of building digital things that had utility, we approached it from a messaging mind-set and put messaging into the space. It took us a while to realize that project management in the digital space is completely different."

For years, the agency had been located in a palatial mansion outside the city. People were isolated in offices and by long hallways; different disciplines never crossed paths. Last summer, Grimaldi relocated the agency to an open office in downtown Boston. Now, social-media people, creatives, media planners, technologists, and user-experience folks are sprinkled next to one another at modular desks. And Boches has ditched the CCO title for something more nebulous -- chief social-media officer. "It's really hard, to be honest," says Grimaldi, who's trying to get his staff to thrive by having more points of view.

There are signs that Grimaldi is succeeding. Earlier this year, Mullen launched Olympus's new PEN E-PL1 camera following a new mantra: "Everything we launch, we launch for free first." The campaign, which included the first augmented-reality 3-D camera demo, helped increase year-over-year sales by 55%. Mullen had to lay off 100 workers during the recession, but this year, it has hired about twice that after some impressive client wins. The agency recently caught the industry off guard after being awarded the business of two extremely progressive social-media clients, Zappos and JetBlue. Says Marty St. George, JetBlue's SVP of marketing and commercial strategy: "I don't think any of us expected Mullen to win. But we all noticed through its pitch process that you couldn't tell who the creative people were from the media people or the planning people. They all finished each other's sentences, regardless of what we were talking about."

[ MONEY ]

St. George says the most surprising aspect of JetBlue's agency search was how many firms still believed that the key to solving any business problem was the 30-second spot. But maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. Agencies still yearn for the fat 15% commissions they used to score off of a client's media spend, a spend ballooned mostly by television commercials. The industry isn't even close to adjusting to the truism that digital dimes don't replace analog dollars, the very problem that bedevils music labels, publishers, and television networks. Today, agencies really have no clue as to how they should get paid. "We still don't know how to monetize what we do," admits Peter McGuinness, CEO of Gotham, which, like Mullen, is owned by IPG. "We don't monetize ourselves properly, so we don't hit our margins."

In many ways, the end of the rich old model is the agencies' own fault. In the 1980s, agencies decided they could benefit from economies of scale, as well as manage client conflicts of interest, by merging. Not incidentally, this trend also gave the agency owners a way to cash out. The result was an industry centered on four major holding companies: WPP, Omnicom, IPG, and Publicis. But the move has backfired. "Agency leaders were making more money than the clients," says Martin, the industry consultant. "That's when the clients began to realize, 'Gosh, we must be paying them too much.' "

Clients forced the agencies into a service-fee model instead, which is far less lucrative. "It's like lawyers," explains BMO Capital's Salmon. "The fees are based on head count and time spent working." Grimaldi explains why this is so much tougher than the old model. "If a creative team now takes six people instead of two, just think about the burn rate of that room," he says. "Unfortunately, not everything generates as much money as it used to. There are only so many hours you can bill." Now those hours are getting squeezed from every direction. The clients employ procurement officers and cost consultants to negotiate down the fee on everybody in an agency. And given today's hypercompetition, agencies can sink up to $1 million and four months pitching for a new account they might never win. "When the smoke clears," says McGuinness, "we make no money."

Given this madness, the agencies still cling to those expensive TV buys. Bob Garfield, advertising-industry pundit and author of The Chaos Scenario, says, "Agencies have worked out very complex compensation formulas, which are nominally fee based, but if you track compensation against media spend, you will see that the lines are parallel." The less a client spends on media, Garfield continues, the less an agency makes. Some agencies are scrambling to address this by reinventing their compensation structures. "We are paying the price of belonging to an industry that does not know how to protect its own interests," wrote TBWA Worldwide chairman Jean Marie Dru in an Advertising Age manifesto entitled "Endless Pressure on Price Traps Agencies, Clients in Death Spiral." "We are our worst enemies."

Virtually every CEO in the business is now railing for one of two solutions to the problem of, well, not making enough money. First, they want to be financially rewarded for performance, and thanks to all those new data-analytics tools, for the first time ever, their effectiveness can be measured. Says IPG chairman Roth: "We should get higher [compensation] if it works and lower if it doesn't. That's how this industry can return to the profitability level." It's a nice thought, but those tools aren't infallible: While Wieden's innovative Web campaign for P&G's Old Spice garnered tons of publicity, Ad Age speculated that the boost in sales may well have been due to a coupon.

Then there's the industry's biggest fantasy about compensation. "We have to figure out how to get paid for the big idea, and what that idea is worth," says McGuiness. What's a big idea? Something as ubiquitous as MasterCard's "Priceless" campaign that arguably could transform a business. "This is a holdover from 20th-century marketing," says Brian Collins, a former Ogilvy exec who now runs an innovation consultancy. "People who think that way are supremely well equipped to work in a world that no longer exists." Plus, as Garfield points out, "in the whole history of mass advertising, the number of transformative ideas that have created wealth via advertising you can count on one set of fingers and toes." Garfield sees this big-idea payday as the last wish of an industry that's drowning. "In a world where media spend is in inexorable decline, and where advertising per se is an endangered species, [agencies] don't know where to turn," he says. "The realization of the nightmare is under way. And that nightmare is the utter collapse of the business model."

[ ADAPTATION ]

In its fight for survival, the advertising industry is at war with itself. Generalists are competing with specialists. Interactive shops are vying to become full-service agencies, while traditional shops are yearning to become digitally integrated. "The Great Race," as Forrester Research dubbed it in March, drives a more intense competition over an already shrinking pie, and there won't be room for everyone. En route to the center, agencies are chasing one another to the bottom. "I spoke to a high-level CMO the other day," says Profero's Reitkopf. "She said, 'I work with a holding company's promotions company, its social-marketing company, its response-marketing company. Every time we're in the room together, it's fine, but the minute I walk out to get a cup of coffee, someone will follow me and tell me they can do what the other agencies do for cheaper." Adds Harley CMO Richer: "Agency networks supposedly combine all these experts together on your behalf, but it only really happens when the business is at risk of walking out the door. Before then, these creative entities are locked off in separate P&Ls. They're not built to solve clients' problems, they're built to satisfy individual P&Ls."

Publicis Groupe chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy admits this. "Historically," the Frenchman says, "one way to manage a holding company -- which still is the case for other holding companies -- is to stimulate each agency to compete with each other. The stimulation was about rivalry and competition within the same group. They felt that this was the best way to drive growth."

These divisions were exacerbated in the 1990s, when holding companies spun their media departments out of creative agencies into stand-alone companies, creating new entities such as Omnicom's OMD and WPP's Mindshare. The goal was to hold onto a client's media spend even if the client took its creative business elsewhere. But marketers like Johnson & Johnson's Brian Perkins are now begging media and creative shops to bundle back up. "When media and communications planning have become more important than ever," Perkins wrote in Ad Age this year, "why are our media agencies further (physically and philosophically) from the people who create advertising?"

Lévy is aggressively trying to bridge that gap. He recently created Vivaki, which is largely an internal effort to get its media agencies, Starcom MediaVest and Zenith Optimedia, to collaborate with its digital agencies, Digitas and Razorfish. The carrot he's employing is deeply traditional: a change in fiscal incentive structure. While each agency has its own P&L, the pay of top execs also depends on Vivaki's P&L of the combined companies. "In the beginning, it was a really hard pill for me to swallow," says Bob Lord, CEO of Razorfish, which was acquired last year by Publicis. "I built my career at Razorfish being the most aggressive, saying we can do everything for the client. Now it's supposed to be okay to say, 'Well, we are weaker in CRM, and we can learn from Digitas.' That's a hard thing for people to accept."

Of course, the willingness of Lévy and other holding-company CEOs to experiment is based on their continued belief that one-stop shops will outlive and even outpace any disrupter. "We have to be ahead of the curve in all areas," says IPG's Roth (who earned $6.3 million in 2009, down 40% from the year before). "We'll do it by investing in or partnering with these new types of companies and making them part of our offering." In other words, holding companies will ultimately do what they believe they do best: They will chase the next shiny object, hedge their bets with acquisitions, and perhaps make their already monolithic structures even more colossal.

Rosemarie Ryan and Ty Montague have a smaller vision of the future. Until June, the two were the North American copresidents of JWT, the WPP-owned behemoth, armed with a combined 40 years in the business. Then they quit. Montague and Ryan decided to build a new kind of marketing business with no old-world waste and inefficiency. Co, which Montague describes as "a brand studio built for 21st-century CEOs and CMOs," is a tiny group of consultants from the agency, technology, and business-strategy worlds that can "deploy the right team for the right action at the right time for the right outcome."

Its ability to scale up and tackle a wide range of client problems will come from the eclectic network of 44 specialist companies they've lured to play nice with them, from digital agencies like Big Spaceship to crowdsourcing firms like Victors & Spoils to bigger companies like McCann Worldgroup and Horizon Media, the largest U.S. independent media-services company. "We want to be as small as possible and as big as necessary," Montague says. "It's not about scale; it's about scalability. Even though we have only five employees, right now we have 1,500 people we can put against an opportunity." Says Bill Koenigsberg, CEO of Horizon: "Getting a piece of business doesn't mean they have to hire an army. There's a nice elasticity there."

Co's financial model is to be paid a retainer, a flat project fee, or equity, depending on its client; it does not get a cut of what its specialists bill. "We are, by its nature, helping to build businesses that we do not own," says Montague. Since it doesn't own any of those specialists, Co has no vested interest in treating a client's business problem with any particular solution. Its goal is to move from the ghetto of marketing into the world of pure problem solving, so Co plans to work with only clients who promise C-level access beyond the CMO. "The answer can come from marketing, but it can also come from R&D or product innovation or design," Montague says.

Earlier this year, technology observer Clay Shirky argued that "complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond." Societies like the Romans and the lowland Mayans fell because further reductions became too uncomfortable for those in power. "Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification," writes Shirky. After disintegration, he explains further, the members of a society disperse, experimenting with new ways of doing things. "When the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity," he writes, "it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future."

Co may be an example of how the members of this collapsing industry could make it simpler and more logical. "I think all of it [the industry] needs to get smaller to get better again, on some level," says Ryan. Co may or may not succeed, but what makes its model so intriguing is that the company doesn't have to make a big bet on a single possible future. "I don't think anybody can look you in the eye and say, 'This is what the business will look like in 20 years,' " says Ryan. "If they do, they're lying." Co's only plan for growth is that its founders will hire other tiny teams of four or five people. In other words, Co's only growth plan is another pod.

That may be a vision for the industry as a whole. With all the defections of top agency talent over the past year -- Alex Bogusky from Crispin, Gerry Graf from Saatchi, Kevin Roddy from BBH -- it's easy to imagine a new advertising ecosystem of pods built around industry stars who have left their lumbering institutions behind. The holding companies will still exist, but around them could emerge a chaotic pattern of startups, independent talent, and connectors who thrive with minimum overhead. That kind of industry would be a fraction of the size of the current one. It would create opportunities for the most talented and hurt everyone else. It would be harder work, with fewer assistants and fewer million-dollar paydays. But this smaller business would be aloft on its new creative potential rather than sinking under the weight of its past.

[DISCUSS]

Tweet your answer to What is the Future of Advertising? by using the hashtag #adfuture [2] and join the discussion about Madison Avenue. Go to advertwitter.fastcompany.com [3] to read about everyone else's vision of the ad industry.

 

[4]

fastcompany While there've never been more ways to reach consumers, it's never been harder to connect w/them. #adfuture http://bit.ly/cTeQx2 7 hours ago reply 10+ recent retweets

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Seems DOOH is getting serious looks! From DigitalSignageToday.com: HP, Scala tossing rocks in the DS pond

Tech giant HP announced today that it's expanding beyond digital signage displays and getting into digital signage solutions — an announcement that should certainly send at least a ripple or two across the DS pond.

HP today introduced two new media players that will come pre-loaded and pre-configured with Scala content management software, marking the company's first foray into the behind-the-scenes inner workings of digital signage. And Scala also used the opportunity to springboard the announcement of its new QuickStart service.

When Gulliverian companies with international brand recognition like HP, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco start throwing their hats in the ring — as all have done recently — it's bound to be good news for the sector overall.

For companies like those aforementioned to now have divisions or groups focused on digital signage with an executive tasked with leading the charge into the space certainly means something, Scala executive vice president Jeff Porter says.

"It's a pretty big deal for somebody like HP to actually have somebody who's like their 'King of Digital Signage;' it really wasn't on their radar screen before," he said. "They've not had a division or a group that's been focusing on digital signage before, but now they do. It's kind of like digital signage is now coming of age."

That's not the first time someone has opined that digital signage is finally starting to come of age, but with big fish swimming in a relatively little pond, maybe this time it's true?

"(It means) nothing but good, I would say," Porter said. "It's validation of the things that we've been doing for the last 20-some-odd years ... It's really something that I think is pretty amazing."

HP and Scala announced today that the computer company is introducing two new digital signage players — the HP SignagePlayer mp8000s and HP SignagePlayer mp8000r — that will come pre-loaded and pre-configured with Scala content management software. HP describes the players as "low-cost, easy-to-use ... designed for independent retailers and other small to midsize businesses that want to deploy full-featured digital signage at a single location or across a small network."

Bob Rosenberry, HP's manager, Visual Solutions, runs the company's marketing strategies for digital signage and kiosks, and he says that while his company has been supplying displays for about a year, the new players "would be our first entry into solutions."

There are also already numerous digital signage installations around the world where HP was involved as a recumbent IT supplier, he says, but this does mark a new direction for HP in the space.

"This would be our first kind of for-purpose solution," he said. "In a way we've been in the business for a while ... but this is our first for-purpose, developed solution specifically for digital signage, aside from displays."

HP has had an eye on the digital signage space "for a while," and has been ramping up in that solution space, Rosenberry says.

"It's a growing area that really fits into a bunch of our key competencies already," he said. "When you look at the overall scope of HP, with displays, PCs, services, all backed by the global support of the organization, we think digital signage fits well into that."

The new HP players come in two form factors, with the smaller one measuring about 10 by 10 by 2 inches, and the larger about 15 by 13 by 3.5. HP has a special mount that fits the smaller player in comfortably behind the display — Porter showed an example during his interview — and the larger has full plug-in card capability and a graphics card in its more powerful system.

Scala also announced that it was introducing its new Scala QuickStart, supporting the new HP players, beginning in early December. The new QuickStart service offers what Scala is calling "a new and innovative 'zero-configuration' scheme, allowing even entry-level users a way to set up and manage a Scala digital signage network with ease."

Porter gave a brief phone/Web demo of the new service today, showing how even a brand new user could be logged onto the QuickStart system in seconds. Scala intends the new software-as-a-service to be a simple, easy-to-use service that helps make the new HP players workable solutions out of the box for even the least experienced deployer.

"It's a red-letter day in terms of being able to bring digital signage to the masses," Porter said, "and make it super-simple and easy but yet have the full-featured Scala player to back it up."

via digitalsignagetoday.com

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LBS + Transaction = The True Potential of Mobile Ads: With Foursquare, Ads Let You Check In at Your Favorite Billboard

IN a city passionate about the environment and technology, commuters are using their smartphones to check in at a popular social networking service to help keep a critter threatened by climate change from checking out.

“What does it take to help save the endangered pika? About 20 seconds,” read ads from Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, that line San Francisco transit stations and feature the cute rabbitlike American pika in its Sierra Nevada mountain redoubt. “Check in now at Foursquare at ‘Earthjustice ad.’ Every time you check in, an Earthjustice donor will donate $10 to protect endangered species.”

Foursquare, a rapidly growing social network, lets people use their mobile phones to announce their location to friends. When they arrive at a restaurant, bar or another site, they “check in” and can broadcast their whereabouts through other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The Earthjustice campaign appears to be among the first to let people check in at a physical billboard, a tactic that has proved successful for the firm and could be attractive to other advertisers, according to industry analysts and Foursquare executives.

“Tying in location allows the advertiser to see which particular ads are more successful at prompting responses,” said Noah Elkin, a mobile marketing analyst at eMarketer, a New York research firm. “Plus, checking in allows each person to share what they think is important about the ad campaign. If they post their check-ins to Facebook and Twitter, you’ve reached a much broader audience.”

•

Earthjustice’s foray in location-based fund-raising began after the group was offered free ad space to run public service announcements at several Bay Area Rapid Transit stations.

“Foursquare was becoming very popular, especially here in San Francisco, and the BP oil spill had happened not too long before, so it was this perfect storm,” said Ray Wan, the marketing manager for Earthjustice, which is based in Oakland, Calif. “A lot of the time people are standing around BART checking their phones as they wait for their train, so it was a no-brainer to use Foursquare as way to get them to engage with the ads and support our work.”

Earthjustice persuaded one of its donors in the Bay Area, whom Mr. Wan described as “very progressive” but who wished to remain anonymous, to pledge $50,000 toward the experimental campaign.

Human Ideas, a Minneapolis firm, created the wall-size ad featuring the pika, which many biologists consider the animal most at risk in the continental United States from global warming. Earthjustice represents the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that is fighting to place the pika on state and federal endangered species lists.

The pint-size mammal lives mostly in mountainous areas in the western United States and Canada, and even a small spike in its body temperature is fatal. As temperatures have risen, pika populations have vanished from lower elevations, while other populations have remained stable. In February, federal officials declined to give endangered species status to the pika.

The ad for the pika is just one of three that Human Ideas has created for Earthjustice. Another ad, squeezed between billboards for banks and insurance companies, shows an offshore oil rig and declares, “Use your cellphone to drill the oil industry.” A third ad pictures Lake Tahoe, admonishing commuters, “Don’t just stand there. Stand there and help keep Tahoe’s water clean.”

“We want donor dollars to go to causes that are meaningful to Californians,” said Mr. Wan. “When you’re standing around in this urban environment, all the ads are for Starbucks or banks, so to see the pika staring at you turns your head.”

•

Commuters have checked in at the ads more than 5,700 times, meeting Earthjustice’s $50,000 fund-raising goal.

Many of those who use Foursquare automatically post their Earthjustice check-ins on their Twitter and Facebook pages, further spreading the group’s message.

Part of Foursquare’s appeal is that it is also a game, awarding the title of “mayor” to those who check in the most times at a particular location. Playing to Foursquare devotees’ competitive juices is paying off for Earthjustice in the form of multiple check-ins and thus more donations.

Michael Lopez, for instance, has reigned as the mayor of the Earthjustice ad at one BART station and said he had checked in more than a dozen times at various ads around San Francisco as he commuted between his home, college and work.

“The pika caught my attention,” said Mr. Lopez, 27, who posts his Foursquare check-ins to his Twitter feed, creating a trail of digital bread crumbs that track his daily routine. “I usually pass by the ads every day, and since it’ll be saving an endangered animal’s life I thought I might as well go for it and check in,” he said.

Gil Riego Jr., a 27-year-old photographer, has held the Earthjustice mayorship at two downtown BART stations.

“I like the idea that you can use something like social networking to make more of a difference than just one person can,” he said. “Nowadays everyone is so connected, so it’s a good way to spread a good word.”

The potential to reach people like Mr. Lopez and Mr. Riego has resulted in numerous inquiries to Foursquare from nonprofit organizations and corporations about creating check-ins at advertisements and even products themselves, according to Tristan Walker, Foursquare’s head of business development.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for brands to engage with consumers,” said Mr. Walker, who added that Foursquare for now was focusing on services for brick-and-mortar businesses.

Whether consumers would willing to check in at, say, a Coke ad in exchange for a coupon, remains to be seen, according to Mr. Elkin.

But Mr. Wan is sold on marrying location-based advertising to environmental causes.

“It creates a treasure trove of data,” said Mr. Wan, on how people respond to advertising. He added that other nonprofits have contacted Earthjustice about starting their own Foursquare campaigns. “We would love to expand this to other cities.”

via nytimes.com

I've always thought that Out-Of-Home and Mobile Advertising go hand-in-hand. This campaign is proof positive that they do - and such a powerful proof at that, if only because of its sheer simplicity. OOH provides the impetus, Mobile closes the sale.

This certainly makes up for that "wasted half" that advertisers always speak of.

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'Crunch Cashes In. Be inspired. From GigaOM: Michael Arrington’s Road to Millions

Earlier this week, AOL snapped up TechCrunch, a technology blog network started by former attorney Michael Arrington, for an undisclosed amount of money. The final price is said to be somewhere between $25 million to $60 million. The acquisition has sparked a lot of conversation, especially among his peers.

To me, it’s an opportunity to reflect on the past decade and the evolution of blog-based media. Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc., have been the torchbearers of this new fast-paced, slightly quirky, highly passionate form of media.

Michael and I, along with my dear friend Rafat Ali, were early converts to this new kind of media. Like Arrington, I learned much about blogging from Dave Winer and Doc Searls. I married blogging to my analytical and old-school reporting skills, and it turned into GigaOM, the company. Rafat took his love of media and content and started PaidContent, which was acquired by The Guardian. Michael took his doggedness and heart-on-sleeve passion for all things startup-related and turned it into TechCrunch.

Michael is a somewhat complicated man, one who often elicits a very binary emotional response. He can be both a ruthless competitor and an extremely loyal friend, and I’ve been on both sides of that equation. We are competitors, but not enemies. From my vantage point, he worked extremely hard, sometimes too hard, to make TechCrunch something a big, New York company would pay millions of dollars to own.

As I looked back over the past five years, there were some seminal moments that helped shape Michael’s — and thus TechCrunch’s — destiny. With the help of the folks from Column Five Media, we created this infographic, which is the story of TechCrunch.

Earlier this week, when he announced the acquisition, it dawned on me what a pivotal moment in the history of blog-based media entities it was. Five years ago, we were the upstarts, the outsiders and the crazies. Today, we are the media. Go figure!

Related research from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• The Age of the Feed-Based User Interface
• Is Amazon the New Self-Publish Kingpin?
• To Win In the Mobile Market, Focus On Consumers

via gigaom.com

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Excerpt: Use the POST Method to Plan Your Mobile Strategy: Tech News «

In the excerpt below, from the book Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, the authors discuss how a company can bring its business to the mobile web.

The technological and strategic choices facing you as you deploy a mobile application are complex. You may be highly empowered and resourceful, but you still need a plan. We recommend that you follow the POST method, named for the four steps you follow in building your plan: people, objectives, strategy, technology. If you read Groundswell, you know we use the POST method for companies that are pursuing social technologies; the same basic technique applies in designing a mobile strategy. As with social applications, the key for mobile applications is to examine the people and objectives first, before designing a strategy and choosing a technology.

people: examine your customers’ mobile behaviors

Before you get started, evaluate the mobile behaviors of your target audience. Our survey research shows that E*TRADE’s customers are nearly twice as likely to be connecting with the mobile Internet as average customers. This is the type of research E*TRADE used to decide that a BlackBerry application would be popular with its day traders and mass affluent customers. As you can see from figure 5-1, owners of different types of mobile devices behave differently. And you need to plan not only for what devices and behaviors your customers have now, but for how their activities will change in the future. As a rule of thumb, younger customers are more comfortable with devices like the iPhone and mobile behaviors like texting and downloading content. And of course, in the United States and Europe, BlackBerry devices appeal more to professionals.

One quick way to assess your customers’ profile is to look at the mobile browser traffic to your Web site. When Sears noticed increasing mobile traffic to its site, it designed a mobile Web site that delivered information to these customers better. Another retailer redesigned its mobile site after noting that 80 percent of the mobile traffic came from iPhones. If you’ve already got a mobile Web site, pay close attention to the devices that access it—this mix will tell you if it makes sense to create a mobile application for Apple, BlackBerry, or Google Android phones.

You can find out more with customer surveys or through information in syndicated surveys like Forrester’s Technographics. Regardless of what method you use, though, don’t design a mobile strategy until you’ve gathered intelligence about your customers’ mobile behaviors.

objectives: determine how both you and your customers will benefit

Once you know your customers’ mobile habits, you need to figure out why you’re bothering to connect with them. Mobile applications can help with marketing, sales, and service; to be successful, you must narrow down which objective you’re pursuing. There are three basic categories of mobile objective (and always remember, mobile offerings work only if your customers get as much out of them as you do).

Increasing Sales

Mobile applications that increase sales succeed in multiple ways. For example, Pizza Hut’s iPhone application generated more than $1 million in sales the first three months it was live. Targeting a young audience, Pizza Hut built a pizza delivery racing game into the app. Because the Pizza Hut app made it easy to add toppings, iPhone orders totaled significantly more per order than orders coming in by telephone calls.

You can also increase sales by increasing the information in interactions. Benjamin Moore’s director of color technology, Carl Minchew, worked on the development of an iPhone app called ben Color Capture so customers could take photos and then find paint colors to match or complement colors in the photos. Inspiration like that can lead consumers from ideas to transactions. Benjamin Moore’s application also includes a store locator, a popular feature that helps drive sales. Target goes a step further on this front; its mobile application actually helps identify whether local stores have products in stock.

Decreasing Costs

Mobile applications save money by connecting people directly with answers, removing service people from the process. This is a perfect example of a win-win, since the customer gets quicker service while the company saves costs and increases the quality of the interaction. Mobile connections are part of the groundswell customer service we described in the previous chapter.

For example, Nationwide Insurance built an iPhone app that walks its policyholders through the process of preparing to file a claim right at the scene of an auto accident.6 The application includes prompts to take all the necessary steps, including calling the police, recording the location with GPS, taking photos, locating a repair shop, and even turning all the pixels white so the phone can be used as a flashlight. Customers get faster service and don’t miss steps since they don’t have to call an agent. Nationwide gets claims with more complete information, saving their claims agents time.

Related Research

• Mobile Overview, Q2 2010 
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010 
• Infrastructure Overview, Q2 2010 
• Connected Consumer Market Overview, Q2 2010 

iPhone apps are not the only way to connect with customers. American Airlines delivers information on flights, delays, and cancellations with SMS, email, and a mobile site, the perfect way to reassure nervous travelers.

Increasing Loyalty

Even if you can’t increase sales or decrease costs, mobile applications that supply information can generate love— or at least satisfaction. For example, Bank of America’s online site and apps are designed to improve its customer experience. The apps are designed to answer questions like “Where is the closest ATM?” and “What’s my balance?” The experience uses a login and authentication taken directly from the bank’s online banking service, further reinforcing the idea that the company provides convenient service. Notice that these applications are not replacing calls—most of the inquiries conducted on mobile devices would never come into the bank as phone calls—but instead reinforcing the idea that the bank is a service leader.

After 1 million iPhone downloads of the Bank of America app—the most of any financial application for the iPhone—the bank began publicizing its mobile phone services with TV commercials.

strategy: what’s the long-term plan for your mobile application?

Once you’ve evaluated your people and objectives, refine your strategy. Remember the focus on immediacy, simplicity, and context, empowering customers with information. In this phase, you’ll want to answer questions like these:

• Where will the information that fuels your application come from? What systems does your application need to touch and coordinate with (for example, billing, customer service, or your own Web group)?
• How will you publicize your application so customers know about it? Consider traditional advertising, customer emails, mobile services like AdMob, and signage.
• Once your application is built, will you concentrate on reaching more people by supporting more platforms, or on extending the functionality for the applications you have already built?
• How will you gather data from mobile users and use it to benefit your business? Who is responsible for that data?
• Is this a short-term promotion or a long-term commitment? If it’s long-term, who will maintain the application?
• What’s your model? Is the application actually a product you can charge for, or will you be delivering benefits to the rest of your business?
• How will you measure those benefits?

technology: what types of mobile application are you building?

Most people start their mobile thinking with technology, because the boss told them to build an iPhone app or his daughter is nuts about text messaging. It’s far better to start by solidifying your people, objectives, and strategy. But eventually, you’ll need to know how you’ll deliver mobile value. Your strategy can include one or more of the following:

• Text messaging. Messaging strategies have the enormous benefit that nearly every phone supports them, and over half of U.S. mobile phone users use text messages.Text messages, also known as SMS (short message service), are suited to the timely delivery of perishable information, like eBay auctions; query responses, like stock quotes; and voting and sweepstakes entries.
• Mobile sites. At this writing, one in nine mobile phone customers say they access the Web monthly on their phones; we expect this to grow to 39 percent by 2014. Reconfiguring your site to recognize and deliver content for mobile phones makes sense, but it’s far more than just shoving content around. You’ll need to identify which bits of information are most valuable to mobile users and design layouts, menus, and graphics to deliver them quickly. The emerging Web standard HTML5 will make mobile sites easier to create.
• Apps. Since the iPhone came out, apps are all the rage. While apps can get access to phone features like location, the camera, messaging, and links to other Web sites, they can cost around $100,000 to develop. Since they take a moment for customers to download and take up space on the phone’s display, you’ll need to spend money to promote them to generate awareness and make sure they have value. Another challenge is the variety of incompatible app platforms from Apple, Google, RIM, and others.

Adapted from Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler (Harvard Business Review Press). Copyright 2010, Forrester Research, Inc.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Will Metered Mobile Data Slow the App Market’s Growth?
• The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

via gigaom.com

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This spells M-E-D-I-A-D-I-S-R-U-P-T-O-R to me: Paper-Thin Screens With a Twist

By MICHAEL TOTTY

Lots of researchers have been trying to come up with a way to make flexible displays that work like computer screens but with a literal twist—they can be bent, rolled and folded like a sheet of paper.

Journal Reports

Read the complete Technology: Innovation Awards report .

Plus, see the list of the winners and runners-up for The Wall Street Journal's 2010 Technology Innovation Awards, get an update on past winners and read opinions from innovators on what will win in coming years .

The Taiwan-based Industrial Technology Research Institute, or ITRI, won the top prize in this year's Innovation Awards contest for a manufacturing technique that promises to clear the way for commercial development of high-quality displays on flexible materials.

Flexible displays are attractive for several reasons: They're lighter than glass displays, making it possible to build larger consumer devices, such as e-readers or tablet computers, that aren't too heavy. They can also be used in some novel applications, such as interactive newspapers that can be bent or rolled and be as portable as the paper-based versions.

"With a stable, viable and cost-effective flexible-display technology," says Barry H. Jaruzelski, an Innovation Awards judge and a partner at consulting firm Booz & Co., "the door is opened to a wide range of truly new applications in consumer electronics and device interfaces."

But producing flexible displays in commercial quantities has proved challenging. To understand why, and why ITRI's innovation has promise, requires a brief tutorial.

View Full Image

ITRI

A flexible display from Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute

Making a flexible display as fully functional as the typical flat-panel computer screen requires layering thin-film transistors on a flexible substrate. Because the flexible material can curl or shift during this process, it's bonded temporarily to a rigid piece of glass. The completed flexible display then has to be detached from the glass without being damaged, which is difficult to do efficiently enough to make the displays on a commercial scale.

ITRI's solution—which it calls FlexUPD, for flexible universal panel for displays—is novel yet simple. It places a "debonding" layer of nonadhesive material between the flexible substrate and the glass. The substrate, which has an adhesive backing, is made slightly larger than the final flexible display and the debonding layer, so it stays steady on the glass. Once the transistors are layered on the substrate and enclosed, the display can be cut out from the excess substrate and easily lifted off the glass.

The idea for the debonding layer, says an ITRI spokeswoman, came from watching cooks prepare paper-thin Taiwanese pancakes, which can be easily peeled from a pan at high temperatures. Cheng-Chung Lee and Tzong-Ming Lee, ITRI division directors, are credited with the idea.

The technique, the institute says, can be used with a variety of displays, including current liquid-crystal-display, or LCD, screens and the next-generation displays made with organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs.

ITRI has demonstrated a prototype paper-thin display made with this process, and has licensed the technology to display maker AU Optronics Corp. of Taiwan. The first product using the technology, a flexible display for an e-reader, is planned for release by the end of the year, an ITRI spokeswoman says.

View Full Image

ITRI

Other companies have demonstrated flexible-screen prototypes and plan to bring them to market using a different manufacturing technology. None, including ITRI's technology, have yet seen commercial success, but ITRI says its improvements make its entry more cost-effective than competing technologies. Also, it says, the technology is compatible with existing factories for fabricating displays, so it can be widely adopted by display makers.

Judges for the Innovation Awards, while noting that ITRI is still in the early stages of commercializing the technology, cited the possible benefits of flexible displays. "This looks like a simple and elegant solution to a manufacturing problem," says William Webb, director of technology resources for Ofcom in the U.K.

ITRI, a nonprofit organization, won an Innovation Award in 2009 for its FleXpeaker, a paper-thin loudspeaker system.

Mr. Totty is a news editor for The Journal Report in San Francisco. He can be reached at michael.totty@wsj.com.

via online.wsj.com

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And the march of the Code continues... Readable on a Smartphone, Bar Codes Come to TV

From the comfort of their sofas, mobile-phone users can scan a bar code embedded in commercials on certain evening shows on Bravo and instantly obtain additional information about a product and a discount to buy it.

The 45-second commercials by the online fashion retailer Bluefly show snippets of its “Closet Confessions” interviews with designers and celebrities like Bethenny Frankel, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” and the Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir.

When the cellphone is pointed at the on-screen bar code, the user is linked to a complete closet-baring episode, which can run as long as five minutes, and offered a $30 discount on a $150 purchase at bluefly.com, which sells designer and other branded clothing and accessories.

“We see this as a great way to expand our audience in a measurable way,” said Bradford Matson, Bluefly’s chief marketing officer. “This is new for us, but we expect our page views to double.”

Bravo’s audience “is very engaged in fashion and pop culture,” said Mr. Matson. In previous seasons, Bluefly worked with Bravo’s popular television series “Project Runway,” where novice designers compete. (The show has since moved to Lifetime.)

Bar codes have been used more widely in Asia and Europe, including on television, but in the United States, the lack of one standard code — reminiscent of the quarrel over VHS and Beta formats — as well as the relatively small number of smartphone users equipped with appropriate software have slowed the technology’s use, said Michael Becker, managing director for North America of the Mobile Marketing Association, the industry’s group.

“Using bar codes is starting to spread,” he said, “because more people are using smartphones, and many of those phones have the scanning application to read the codes.”

Cellphone fees — whether the user has an Internet access plan or pays for each data download — have also hampered such mobile technologies. Even so, a report last month from Nielsen predicted that smartphones, which now account for 25 percent of the domestic mobile market, would overtake standard mobile phones by the end of 2011.

Mr. Becker predicted that bar codes would become more common because “they are simple and quick to use,” he said, “and they trigger a richer, quicker and more interactive experience for the user.”

The Bravo campaign is using the traditional bar code, called a QR, or quick response, code to connect the user wirelessly to Web sites, photos or videos from an advertiser. Its campaign, created internally and produced with Moxie Pictures, employs Scanbuy software. Competitors like JagTag use a different technology and its bar codes can be colorful.

While Bluefly is the first national retailer to use bar codes in its television commercials, the Weather Channel and HBO also have briefly tested the technology. In February, the Weather Channel ran a promotion to urge viewers to gain access to more local weather data by downloading its Android phone application from the bar code on its screen. The Weather Channel reported that mobile application downloads increased by 20 percent.

In May, in the last episode of ABC’s “Lost” series, HBO broadcast a bar code to promote the third season of its summer vampire series, “True Blood,” to audiences in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The bar code, which was red and black with a drop of blood, was designed by Warbasse Design and ran at the end of a 30-second commercial to advertise the series.

“For now, this is a clever way to make the commercial last longer,” said Philip Warbasse, chief executive of Warbasse Design, based in Santa Monica. “It’s in its infancy now but within a year or two, this will be mainstream with bar codes becoming the preferred method for television advertisers to deliver extras to interested viewers.”

Those extras, in Bluefly’s campaign, include extended peeks into the lavish closets of Ms. Frankel, Mr. Weir, the fashion designer Christian Siriano, Nicky Hilton, the model Harley Viera Newton and the publicist Kelly Cutrone and her young daughter. The commercials will be seen on “Top Chef,” “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” “Flipping Out,” “Top Chef Just Desserts” and “The Rachel Zoe Project” through the fall season.

Bluefly hopes that the ease and convenience of clicking on a bar code will encourage more viewers to learn about the Web site. Online “Closet Confessions” fans, Mr. Matson said, have increased their shopping orders an average of 50 percent, from $300 to $450.

“We have added new style stars after the Web video series was so successful,” he said. “We got a half-million page views the first month we launched it.” “Closet Confessions,” Mr. Matson said, “is custom-made for the fashion obsessed.”

via nytimes.com

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From Richard Branson, one of my entrepreneur-heroes: Five Secrets to Business Success

I am often asked if I have found a secret – or at least a consistent answer – to successfully building businesses over my career.

So I’ve spent some time thinking about what characterizes so many of Virgin’s successful ventures and, importantly, what went wrong when we did not get it right. Reflecting across 40 years I have come up with five “secrets.”

No. 1: Enjoy What You Are Doing.
Because starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. When I started Virgin from a basement flat in West London, I did not set out to build a business empire. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the bills.

There was no great plan or strategy. The name itself was thought up on the hoof. One night some friends and I were chatting over a few drinks and decided to call our group Virgin, as we were all new to business. The name stuck and had a certain ring to it.

For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

A businesswoman or a businessman is not unlike an artist. What you have when you start a company is a blank canvas; you have to fill it. Just as a good artist has to get every single detail right on that canvas, a businessman or businesswoman has to get every single little thing right when first setting up in business in order to succeed. However, unlike a work of art, the business is never finished. It constantly evolves.

If a businessperson sets out to make a real difference to other people’s lives, and achieves that, he or she will be able to pay the bills and have a successful business to boot.

No. 2: Create Something That Stands Out.
Whether you have a product, a service or a brand, it is not easy to start a company and to survive and thrive in the modern world. In fact, you’ve got to do something radically different to make a mark today.

Look at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years. Microsoft, Google or Apple, for example, shook up a sector by doing something that hadn’t ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.

No. 3: Create Something That Everybody Who Works for You is Really Proud of.
Businesses generally consist of a group of people, and they are your biggest assets.

No. 4: Be a Good Leader.
As a leader you have to be a really good listener. You need to know your own mind but there is no point in imposing your views on others without some debate. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice.

Get out there, listen to people, draw people out and learn from them. As a leader you’ve also got to be extremely good at praising people. Never openly criticize people; never lose your temper, and always lavish praise on your colleagues for a job well done.

People flourish if they’re praised. Usually they don’t need to be told when they’ve done wrong because most of the time they know it. If somebody is not working out, don’t automatically throw him or her out of the company. A company should genuinely be a family. So see if there’s another job within the company that suits them better. On most occasions you’ll find something for every single kind of personality.

No. 5: Be Visible.
A good leader does not get stuck behind a desk. I’ve never worked in an office – I’ve always worked from home – but I get out and about, meeting people. It seems I am traveling all the time but I always have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down questions, concerns or good ideas.

If I’m on a Virgin Atlantic plane, I make certain to get out and meet all the staff and many of the passengers. If you meet a group of Virgin Atlantic crew members, you are going to have at least 10 suggestions or ideas. If I don’t write them down, I may remember only one the next day. By writing them down, I remember all 10. Get out and shake hands with all the passengers on the plane, and again, there are going to be people who had a problem or have a suggestion. Write it down, make sure that you get their names, get their e-mail addresses, and make sure the next day that you respond to them.

Of course, I try to make sure that we appoint managing directors who have the same philosophy. That way we can run a large group of companies in the same way a small business owner runs a family business – keeping it responsive and friendly.

When you’re building a business from scratch, the key word for many years is “survival.” It’s tough to survive. In the beginning you haven’t got the time or energy to worry about saving the world. You’ve just got to fight to make sure you can look after your bank manager and be able to pay the bills. Literally, your full concentration has to be on surviving.

Obviously, if you don’t survive, just remember that most businesses fail and the best lessons are usually learned from failure. You must not get too dispirited. Just get back up and try again.

© 2010 Richard Branson 

via entrepreneur.com

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See QR codes for more details. Why QR codes are killer app for driving sales and brand loyalty

Why QR codes are killer app for driving sales and brand loyalty

By Giselle Tsirulnik

September 24, 2010

The QR codes were found on billboards in NYC and LA

A year ago QR codes were primarily used to complement short-life media such as a newspaper ad. Today’s mobile marketer is taking a more long-term approach to reach a wider audience over an extended period.

We now see QR codes on product packaging of large brands such as Heineken and in the retail environment with retailers such as Gap and Jones New York adopting the technology. Brands finally realize that QR codes give shoppers an immediate connection to additional information that can potentially close a sale.

“The use cases are virtually endless, but Gap has codes in the store to help people decide which jean is the right fit for their body type or Best Buy is using codes to give people product details and user reviews,” said David Javitch, vice president of marketing at Scanbuy, New York.

“A customer already in the store is the closest to making a purchase, so this is a tool that can help them make that decision in one click,” he said.

Mobilizing static media
Marketers can incorporate QR codes to complement traditional marketing efforts.
 
The codes could link consumers to product demos, videos, the brand’s Facebook or Twitter page, and some are linking directly to mobile commerce sites. 

Window displays armed with QR codes

In Esquire Magazine, Brooks Brothers has a multi-page spread where the reader can scan to purchase any of the items highlighted in the brand’s fall collection.

“QR codes are very close to the ‘tipping point,' and the fourth quarter will push us over the top,” Mr. Javitch said. “We will be releasing some data next week from our ScanLife platform, but one key stat is that we see more scans in a month than we did in all of 2009 combined.” 

That explosive growth is driven by a number of factors. 

A QR Code

Smartphone and mobile application adoption is growing quickly.

Additionally, carriers are doing their part to create awareness. For example, Sprint is preloading the application and Verizon is using codes in marketing.

“Consumers told us three years ago that they will scan if the infrastructure and the codes are there, and that is what we are now seeing,” Mr. Javitch said.

Awareness is up
Greater proliferation and awareness has probably been the key for 2D bar code campaigns over the past year – with a range of extremely diverse use cases, according to Laura Marriott, Denver-based acting chief marketing officer of NeoMedia Technologies Inc.

There is definitely a trend towards adoption by major global brands and retailers such as Calvin Klein and McDonalds.

Marketers are beginning to take advantage of the ability that QR codes provide to bring engagement and interactivity to marketing and advertising campaigns.

“We are also seeing increased use of QR codes in other areas of enterprise such as logistics as they’re extremely useful mechanisms for track and trace delivery solutions or ticketing,” Ms. Marriott said.

“Mobile ticketing solutions, such as those supplied by NeoMedia, also enable the easy validation of 2D mobile tickets from mobile phone screens – granting consumers immediate access to events and/or transportation, without having to search for paper tickets,” she said.

By embedding QR codes into product or delivery packaging, suppliers and courier companies can establish easy means of tracking workforce progress or keeping their warehouses up to date on stock information.

QR codes are becoming a necessary element for brands to integrate into their cross-media initiatives whether out of home, online, television or print.

For example, by embedding a mobile bar code on a billboard, brands are able to activate the advertisement and engage the consumer on the go. 

Once they have established the dialogue with the consumer, whether around product information, movie times, trailers or coupons, they can then continue to correspond, based on consumer opt in, and continue to communicate their brand message.

Analytics based on the consumer scan of the code including time of day and location help brands make better purchase decisions around their advertising and ensure optimal utilization and communication of message. 

“Although in their infancy, the potential for brands to leverage mobile bar codes in all of their initiatives is enormous,” Ms. Marriott said. “I don’t believe we have reached a tipping point for QR codes. 

“Although we have seen a larger number of brands trialing the mobile bar code capability, the tipping point will come from broader consumer awareness and education on how to scan codes and activate and engage with this new functionality,” she said. 

“We are certainly close and brands/agencies are doing a great job of showing the potential for using this hot, new mobile media.”

Anna Kim-Williams, senior global media strategist of the Startup Business Group at Microsoft, Redmond, WA, said that mobile bar codes provide fast access to more information.

Retailers, specifically, can give visitors to their brick and mortar stores immediate access to the same types of in-depth product information they have come to expect online.

“[Tags can be used to] integrate sales channels for a unified experience,” Ms. Kim-Williams said. “Connect various sales channels, including your brick and mortar stores, online stores, and catalogs to provide a more cohesive experience for shoppers.”

Retailers could also use mobile bar codes to create interactive gift cards. 

With a QR code on a gift card, retail customers can easily check their balance, find the closest store, or view or listen to a message from the gift giver – and turn those interactions into merchandising opportunities.

QR codes for holiday marketing
A number of retail-related campaigns will be launching this holiday season, per Mr. Javitch.  

Codes offer a great way to drive people into the store, or incite purchase on the mobile device. 

All traditional media from newspaper ads to catalogs should include codes to help make the purchasing decision easier.

For the holidays specifically, marketers can use QR codes to connect consumers with store locators, holiday store hours or to get people sign up for exclusive offers. 

“We have seen a few basic best practices that really drive results,” Mr. Javitch said. “Place codes on traditional media that will be relevant to an on-the-go consumer.

“Print, direct mail and point of sale are performing best,” he said. “Take a strategic approach so the code seamlessly links from the traditional placement to something of real value, like an offer or user reviews – and don’t forget to make the content mobile formatted.

“And finally, it’s still important to include a simple call to action next to the code which tells someone what they will find by scanning, and how to get a code scanning app if they don’t have one already.”

Ms. Marriott provided some best practices around the use of QR codes for holiday marketing:

Integrate mobile bar codes into existing digital and traditional media
2D mobile codes are most successful when they are an integral part of the overall campaign – included in both digital and traditional communication channels as a significant element.

Focus on consumer education
Given their relatively recent entry into the market, consumer education also needs to paramount in the campaign, with clear instructions on how to scan 2D codes and what kind of information will be received as a result – otherwise consumers may be hesitant to participate.

Ensure consumer privacy
Ensure that the consumer’s experience and privacy of interaction is safeguarded in all instances.

Ensure code integration is effective and appropriate for medium
2D codes should also be printed in black and white, and if utilizing on a media that has a reflective element, adapted appropriately for the medium.

Ensure campaigns are fully tested
Test and test again to ensure that the code works accurately and efficiently. Indeed, any content or service that is triggered by scanning a mobile bar code should be tested to ensure that it works, that it is optimized for mobile and delivers on the value promised to the consumer. This is absolutely fundamental to the consumer experience and interaction with your campaign.

Utilize global, open standards, not proprietary technologies or codes
The deployment of proprietary solutions should also be avoided as it can limit consumer access or market penetration, which will clearly impact on results. The use of mobile bar code solutions that are based on open standards is therefore vital.

Define your expected results
Prior to launching the campaign, ensure you have an understanding of success metrics for the campaign and how to measure them so that you and your brand are able to confirm and assure success.

Have fun!
Mobile bar codes provide an easy means for the consumer to interact with your brand. Have fun and get creative in the campaigns that you deploy to ensure efficiency and high response rates for all participants.

"There are a variety of ways Microsoft Tag can be incorporated into holiday mobile initiatives whether through contests, coupons or information about holiday sales," Ms. Kim-Williams said.

"Marketers can also provide additional product information and help consumers make purchasing decisions through Tags posted at POS or on store shelves," she said. 

Use cases
Last month Verizon Wireless placed QR codes throughout a multichannel campaign to promote its Droid devices and the Warner Bros. film "Inception" that included print ads, in-store displays, direct mail, Web sites and iPad ads.

The campaign achieved 175,000 bar code scans (see story).

Heineken has placed 2D bar codes on all packaging for Heineken and Heineken Light, including six-packs, 12-packs and cases, across the United States for the summer season. Consumers who participate in the sweepstakes scanning a 2D bar code can win a free application or music downloads, t-shirts and Fender guitars (see story).

Warner Home Video Canada placed 2D bar codes on pizza boxes to promote new DVD and Blu-ray releases (see story).

Simmons Bedding Co. has rolled out an in-store QR tagging application to simplify the buying process for consumers as they shop for mattresses and bedding at JCPenney stores (see story).

Jones New York launched a smart store design in its Macy’s Herald Square location to enhance the shopping experience by letting consumers interact with apparel using their smartphones.

The store design uses Microsoft Tags to direct consumers through the shopping experience, from selecting a suit to styling it. It is targeted at time-starved women who are balancing work and family while trying to find time for themselves (see story).

Tips
Ms. Kim-Williams suggests "Tag-rich" environments. If an end user sees multiple bar codes in their environment, they are way more likely to interact than if they see one or two.

Experiences optimized for mobile are key.

On occasion, companies try to take the easy way out and not optimize the content for mobile. This is not a wise decision.

End users have a low tolerance for bad user experience on their mobile device. Simply linking to a PC Web site is one of the quickest ways to ensure failure, per Ms. Kim-Williams. 

Mixing it up is also key.

Bar codes is interesting because they can be can linked to a broad range of experiences. 

Marketers can mix it up and link to mobile Web sites, video, slide shows, contests and promotions.

The phrase, "content is king," plays an important role in the practice of QR codes.

"I know this is an old saying, but it still holds true with 2D bar coding," Ms. Kim-Williams said. "You have to provide end users with compelling content at the end of a scan. 

"If the content isn't seen as valuable to the scanner, there is a high likelihood they won't come back for more," she said.  

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New Paradigms. New Models. New World. Inspiring. From NYT:Leaving a Giant Agency to Start a Boutique

Co:, with a colon, is the name of an agency being opened in New York by Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan, who surprised Madison Avenue in March by disclosing that they would leave their senior posts at the giant JWT for an entrepreneurial venture. The name — perhaps one of the pithiest for any agency — is meant to suggest the Co: business model by evoking words like co-creation, collaboration and co-venturing.

Fittingly, Mr. Montague and Ms. Ryan had been co-presidents of the North American operations of JWT, part of WPP; she arrived at the agency in 2004 and he joined a year later. Mr. Montague had also been chief creative officer for North America. They joined a lengthy list of top executives of large agencies who have recently left to open their own shops, take ownership stakes in smaller agencies or, in some instances, quit advertising.

“We’re in a period of great change in the business,” Mr. Montague said in an interview. He and Ms. Ryan, who are both 47, are “in a period of our lives to do our own things,” he said.

Ms. Ryan, who joined Mr. Montague for the interview, chimed in, “Or never do our own things.” (They frequently finished each other’s sentences during a 30-minute chat, discussing their plans with a reporter for the first time since they left JWT.)

•

The pair said they knew the world was not waiting for another agency, but one with a nontraditional approach may be welcomed by marketers looking for different approaches to solving problems and selling products.

Mr. Montague and Ms. Ryan, whose titles at Co: are co-founders, described the agency as a “brand studio,” likening it to a movie studio that provides money and infrastructure to a continually changing lineup of actors, writers, directors and producers.

At Co:, “teams are formed around individual client needs,” Mr. Montague said, “and when the needs are satisfied, the teams are dispersed.”

To form those teams, Co: will draw from a list of “co-conspirators” — 40 agencies, consultancies and firms that specialize in tasks like media services, digital and interactive marketing, public relations, social media, design, brand identity, event marketing, technology, ideation and gaming.

“It’s forming relationships with specialist experts,” Mr. Montague said, or, he added, laughing, “coalitions of the willing.”

Those potential collaborators — a mix of established and fledgling agencies — include Big Spaceship, Blue State Digital, Campfire, Collins, Consigliere, Creative Feed, DKC Public Relations and Integrated Marketing, Horizon Media, MediaLink, Naked Communications, Powell Communications, Propellerfish, Red Bricks Media, Vast Ventures and Victors & Spoils.

“Ty and I have always been looking for something to work on together,” said Brian Collins, chief creative officer at Collins in New York, which works on design, brand experiences and brand strategy.

Mr. Collins compared how he will work with Co: to when he led the Brand Innovation Group at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and collaborated with agencies like AKQA and Wieden & Kennedy on assignments for clients like Coca-Cola. Co: is opening with four clients, two of which Mr. Montague and Ms. Ryan named: Madison Square Garden, for the New York Knicks, and MTV Networks, for the Spike cable channel. The others are a “luxury conglomerate” and a consultancy, Ms. Ryan said.

Howard Jacobs, senior vice president for marketing and ticket sales at the MSG Sports unit of Madison Square Garden, said he was attracted to Co: because the task he confronts — “how do you reignite the deeply passionate relationship that existed between the City of New York and the Knicks?” — is “so clearly not an ‘advertising exercise’ ” but rather requires “a multidisciplinary approach, part strategy, part storytelling, part brand creation, part technology, part design.”

•

“We’re going to access the various resources Co: offers and throw some of our own in there,” Mr. Jacobs said, to determine “what is the future of fan engagement” with the team.

Co: is also interested in generating revenue through investing in or starting businesses, which agencies like Anomaly and Bartle Bogle Hegarty also do in addition to marketing work. That explains the presence of Vast Ventures on the list of collaborators.

“I’m an adviser to Ty and Rosemarie and plan to be a ‘co-conspirator,’ looking at opportunities with them to potentially invest in,” said Doug Chertok, chief executive at Vast Ventures in New York.

“And I plan to invest in Co:,” he added.

Co: is opening with two senior executives in addition to Mr. Montague and Ms. Ryan. They are Neil Parker, 45, chief strategy officer, who was most recently global head of strategy at Wolff Olins, part of the Omnicom Group, and Richard Schatzberger, 33, chief technology officer, who was most recently director for creative technology at Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

There are plans to hire a fifth senior executive, Ms. Ryan said, a chief commercial officer who would “help us run the co-venture side.”

Mr. Montague said the pair “had a great run at JWT,” but “it just felt it was time” to “cast our lot outside” the realm of worldwide agency networks.

As for being entrepreneurial in this economy, tough times often bring on “a period of innovation,” he added.

“Starting a business is energizing, exciting and a little bit scary,” Mr. Montague said. “When you wake up every day, you don’t quite know what’s going to happen next.”

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'Awit ng barkada' - HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes | The Philippine Star

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Location. Location. Location-Based Service. Again. Geotargeted mobile coupons and ads more effective than online

Geotargeted mobile coupons and ads more effective than online

By Dan Butcher

August 30, 2010

Mobile coupons are one way to drive commerce

Holiday marketers take note: Mobile coupons and ads that are targeted by location are more effective than online coupons and ads, according to a FitForCommerce executive.

Mobile calls to action featuring an SMS keyword and short code or mobile bar code can make holiday-themed traditional media actionable. Savvy retailers can get the word out about holiday sales via SMS, the mobile Web and branded applications, while brands can use various forms of mobile advertising to achieve their holiday-specific goals.

In the sixth installment of a series focused on mobile marketing during the holidays, Mobile Marketer’s Dan Butcher interviewed Jill Dvorak, senior consultant of mobile commerce at FitForCommerce, Short Hills, NJ. Here is what she had to say:

With so much noise and holiday-themed advertising starting around Thanksgiving and even before, how can a brand use the mobile medium to get noticed during this period of very competitive media?
Like any other marketing medium, cross-promotion and a seamless transition for customers between the different retail channels is necessary.

Site promotion codes should work on all channels, but having special mobile coupons to increase adoption is becoming more common.

Jill Dvorak is senior consultant of mobile commerce at FitForCommerce

Geotargeted coupons and ads will have a much higher redemption rates than online versions, and can potentially make a non-shopper into a shopper by adding that extra incentive.

Also, since social and mobile typically trend close together, having a mobile site with share to social abilities and vice versa is an easy win.  

Retailers can make a splash by thinking creatively about their brand and what the customer would want. If you go in with this strategy, the possibilities are endless. 

Which sectors/verticals are most important during the holidays, and which sectors/verticals match up best with which demographics?
Affluent shoppers are currently spending the most per demographic on mobile sites as they were the majority of the first adopters to have phones capable of surfing and shopping.

Since mobile adoption is occurring five times faster than other technologies, you can be sure a segment of your customer base wants to interact with your site from their mobile device.

Look at your analytics—preferably your mobile ones if you have them—to see how and where people are arriving and dropping off.

Ultimately, you want to have your mobile site pages tagged so that you know your best and worst converting pages to make tweaks before the holiday rush.

If your customers love gaming, they probably have an iPhone. If you have a strictly corporate audience, BlackBerries are your first device to target.

The younger the demographic is, the more important it is to have a mobile application.

If your demographic is still shopping bricks-and-mortar, then investing in mobile may not be the best use of development or marketing dollars this holiday season.

If your demographic and customers are really into social media and your fans are following tweets, then a mobile application is probably very important.

Overall, you need to understand what your customers’ needs and wants are and spend that money appropriately to reach them.

Given that many people are traveling and away from the TV and their PCs during the holidays, and the fact that people need to do more in less time, how can mobile address these types of general advertising challenges?
Mobile phones are one of the best places brands can exist these days.

Think about other forms of marketing and advertising—nothing has a continual touch point with the customer the majority of their day.

People have their phone out at work, it’s with them—and likely their entertainment—on the ride home, and it’s even next to people when they sleep.

Studies have shown that people would rather lose their wallet than their phone. 

All that said, people still demand immediacy. Mobile sites need to load quickly, be quick to help solve a problem or let the user find what they want in a hurry.

There are also a number of basic tips to follow including making the search function larger than normal, linking “My Account” to the Web version and checkout should be streamlined with secure payments as an option.

Whether at a retail store location or not, the mobile site should to help increase efficiency and save consumers time. This gain can come in many forms.

For example, give a customer the ability to research ratings, prices and reviews on your site—and you can be sure they will check other sites—from their phone, which will help them avoid the wait to talk to a sales associate.

Shoppers can also save time by using a mobile site checkout to avoid lines or can even pre-order ahead of time from their phone and have their purchase delivered to their car outside of the store.

Why is mobile advertising significant/necessary for marketers during the holiday season?
According to a Deloitte survey, during the 2009 holiday season one out of five shoppers intended to use their mobile phone.

Of those who used their phone, forty-five percent used it for research, nearly a third used it to get coupons or product reviews, and 25 percent used their mobile device to purchase a good or service.

Since the mobile commerce revenue numbers are projected to double from $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion this year, the 2010 holiday season will be no exception to the growth. 

Mobile adoption is occurring five times faster than other technologies, with no signs of slowing yet.

More than 50 percent of consumers used mobile devices for 2009 in-store holiday shopping activity, according to a study by Motorola Enterprise Mobile Solutions.

Sixty-four percent of consumers between ages 18-34 used their device for shopping, while 33 percent of consumers over 34 years old used their device.

These percentages will continue to grow, so being in the mobile space is more important than ever.

Today, mobile is a relatively fresh marketing and branding tool, thus retailers can expect a much more engaged experience with the customer than currently seen on the Web or other channels. But this channel cannot operate in a vacuum.

The speed of mobile device adoption is starting to give most retailers a real chance to create a direct connection to their customers in a very busy marketing world.

Ultimately, like any other marketing tool, brands have to be relevant.

The brand, product offerings and value proposition should dictate how a company can add something useful for their customer while they are on-the-go.

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Marketer

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From Mobile Marketer: Talent crisis looms in mobile advertising and marketing

Talent crisis looms in mobile advertising and marketing

By Peter Finocchiaro

August 30, 2010

While mobile has become ubiquitous, there is not enough qualified talent for marketing the medium

While there is no shortage of engineers, it is marketing and commerce managers where mobile is struggling to find qualified talent. Simply migrating an online executive may not cut the mustard.

However, that is exactly the situation many companies looking to expand in the mobile space have faced, as there appears to be a dearth of qualified individuals. Some brands and firms have placed marketers with online expertise in strategic mobile positions, but such personnel decisions put these companies at risk of glazing over the intricacies of the medium.

“Mobile is just as vast as online, and in some ways there are added complexities,” said David Berkowitz, director of emerging media at 360i, New York. “Mobile can be even broader and more complicated.

“If marketers are just trying to have one person who gets mobile, it will be hard to get a deep understanding of it all,” he said. “There are still a lot of questions we’ll see in terms of where mobile fits in organizationally.

“People don’t have a strong grasp yet of exactly where the talent will come from.”

360i is a digital agency that focuses on search engine marketing, social media and mobile marketing.

Online and mobile different
Placing online specialists in mobile positions is not a long-term solution for producing effective mobile strategies.

“Mobile is an onion – it’s so many layers, from handsets to carriers to all the applications, all the technology and all the pieces,” said Alan Rambam, founder and chief strategic officer at Mobile Behavior, New York, an OmniCom Group company. “It’s not just digital marketing, and you need to know that.

“You see folks [working in mobile] that were on the periphery of mobile,” Mr. Rambam said. “Maybe they worked for a carrier or worked in some mobile capacity, but didn’t really [understand everything].”

While the two mediums have much in common, the nuances of mobile demand knowledgeable and experienced marketers in the field.

Agencies and marketing firms looking to hire marketing managers for mobile campaigns need to be careful to find experienced individuals to fill important roles.

But what qualifications should hiring firms be looking for?

“If you’re looking for account executives, client services and marketing, those are the departments that really require in-depth knowledge about how the mobile space differs from all other fields,” said Shira Simmonds, president and cofounder of Ping Mobile, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

“A lot of individuals are looking to get into the digital space,” she said. “Maybe they came from online, maybe traditional, and they’re trying to move into digital, but it’s a big change,” she said.

Not enough experience
In addition to the difficulties of converting online experts to the mobile field, companies could have difficulty finding marketing managers with the breadth and depth of knowledge to coordinate multichannel mobile campaigns.

Experts left and right insist that mobile efforts cannot simply exist in a vacuum, but instead must be part of a larger marketing ecosystem.

However, the talent in mobile tends to be one-dimensional, according to Jay Highley, president and founder of Pangea Partners, Indianapolis, IN.

“People have had experience in one area of mobile marketing or commerce, depending on what exposure they’ve had in the past,” Mr. Highley said. “I don’t think there are a lot of people who have a broad experience base across a number of mobile marketing dimensions.”

Likewise, Mobile Behavior’s Mr. Rambam said that many brands making the push into mobile are approaching the marketing with a one-dimensional, on-again-off-again approach.

Since mobile applications are so hot right now, marketers are in a hurry to develop them.

Oftentimes, an application is all brands do to develop their mobile strategy.

“Applications get so much ink that people say, ‘I want an iPhone application,’” Mr. Rambam said. “That’s not a mobile strategy.

“Real mobile strategies are lacking right now – the knowledge of how much you can do and what you can do,” he said. “People are lacking the necessary understanding [of the mobile medium].

“It’s an issue.”

How to fix it
Mr. Rambam said that the supply of professionals with comprehensive knowledge of mobile strategy falls short of the demand.

Brands and agencies need to invest more capital in mobile in order to develop a corps of competent marketing managers with the knowledge set necessary to deliver integrated mobile campaigns.

Budgets need to increase.

“Budgets need to rise above simple messaging budgets,” Mr. Rambam said. “Real integration needs to happen.

“We’re still in a situation where people are just trying it out [for the first time],” he said. “We’re a ways out.”

Online marketers can make the transition to the mobile space.

However, they will need to gain substantial hands-on experience in mobile in order to develop strategies that reflect the field’s unique properties.

Education will also be imperative to training the leaders of tomorrow’s mobile space.

“You have to have a good foundation of mobile experience, and you have to know how it differs from other media channels,” Ping’s Ms. Simmonds said. “Sometimes it requires a really good, in-depth training program.”

Still, there is some hope.

More time, effort and investment will all be crucial to developing the human capital necessary for the mobile medium’s growth.

As brands begin making full-throated efforts in the space, marketers are gaining valuable experience in crafting strong mobile campaigns.

“I can tell you, from working with brands and agencies, we’re training them on the ins and outs of mobile,” Ms. Simmonds said. “Marketers from these agencies are going to be very ripe in the job market if they want to move over and work in mobile organizations.

“In the next year or two, as more brands are starting to dabble in mobile, expand their reach and enhance mobile strategies, the job market will evolve in conjunction with that,” she said.

Final Take
Peter Finocchiaro, editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer, New York

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