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Try it out: Send a tweet containing the phrase “the best thing ever” and then refresh this page. Magic.

In a recent post, I made a chart that showed the relationship between new and emerging technologies and mainstream consumer adoption of those technologies. Marketers are normally early adopters as it’s their job to look out for that latest trend or fad to super-glue their brand to. By the time newer technologies become fully adopted by the majority of consumers, odds are the key moment to leverage that technology has passed.

Perfect example, about six months ago, GE’s SmartGrid popped up and became the first mainstream use of Augmented Reality. Marketers still have yet to pick their jaws up off the floor and are salivating at the chance to take their crack at it. Fast forward the clock a few weeks and Mobile AR started becoming the topic of most conceptual brainstorms around my agency.

Before we knew it, the iPhone 3GS came out with a build in compass and shortly thereafter apps are already being rolled out that utilize this feature in AR. However, not many people have the 3GS yet, or at least, not enought to be considered enough eyeballs for marketers. So let’s roll the clock forward a year: more contracts have expired for previous iPhone users and the number of iPhone 3GS users skyrockets. During this time, droves of Mobile AR applications roll out from independent producers simply because of its cool factor. Now feeling comfortable with the amount of 3GS users, marketers dip their toe into cranking out AR apps for the iPhone.

However, it’s too late, it isn’t cool anymore and no one needs another AR app on their iPhone to see where the nearest restaurants or bars are. Odds are there were few forward thinking companies that could spot this trend early on and created an AR app as an “experimental investment”. Odds are they were successful in their launch. The “quick followers” will lose out.

Technologies are rising and falling exponentially faster and faster and companies and marketers must begin to take more and more risks by investing in a diversified portfolio of technologies. Some may hit, many wont.

Choose wisely, invest in bacon.

Adjustments or additions please pop-in a comment.

Twitter. Augmented reality. Insert up and coming technology here. Marketers are always on top of the new hot things. However, the strong majority of consumers in any given target market are never at the adoption level of marketers, especially digitally oriented ones. This is unfortunate.

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However, one things missing from a world that has everything - advertising. At least not as we know it today in 2009. In the next 15 years, it is possible that traditional display advertising will be rendered ineffective as a marketing tactic.

This will happen because of two reasons:

1. Technology will empower humans to show and hide what they please in their world, including all forms of advertising (think AdBlock for your eyeballs)
2. Over-cluttering will cause a social immunity to advertising

The first sign of the advertising apocalypse is AdBlock Plus (a program installed in your browser that locates and hides online display advertisements including banners, AdWords and even videos). This technology has over 4,000,000 subscribers (Source: Wikipedia) so clearly, the human race has a dis-interest in messages being forced into their line of sight.

The good thing about this is that technology will create some really awesome ways to push marketing messages to people and become more interactive. You remember the scene from Minority Report where the interactive billboards called people by their first and last names as they walked by it. This technology is coming…if not already here… and I assure you, marketers who have the dollars to leverage new technologies in their favor, will be the first to jump on the big brother bandwagon.

However, even with all of these serious advancements in the tech world, people will still eventually become immune to push-based and interruptive marketing.

So what’s a marketer to do when you live in a world where people can opt-out from seeing advertising wherever they go? It comes down to a simple core principle that’s been around for a while: fulfill an unmet need via both the product and the marketing that supports it. Digital can take this a step further in the right direction.

This need can include the human desire for social currency, i.e. “dude, check out this video on YouTube, it’s hilarious!”. That video just happens to be mildly branded, and drive to an interactive experience that then entertains the hell out of both the dude and the bro who showed him. Recently, the most obvious fit here is mildly branded applications — iPhone apps are a perfect example, widgets were the first iteration of this. However, even applications now are becoming cluttered.

Marketers in 2024 will be faced with some serious challenges as technology only further empowers people to choose what they want to see, when they want to see it. Should be fun.

Your digital agency probably has droves of amazing ideas, and for whatever reason, they aren’t always able to devote time or resources to flushing out those ideas. Odds are, with a few tweaks, these ideas can become digital products that offer true value to a user set. That value can be anywhere from “wow that’s really useful in my life” to simply a “wow that’s really ridiculously cool”.

Some things to watch out for are issues with branding strategies. For instance, a location-based bookmarking application that allows users to geotag pictures of the places they’ve always wanted to go but have never had the time or money to get there, would be great for an airline, hotel, or travel-centric company. You can then use that geotagged data to alert the consumer of special offers pertaining to any relevant locations they may have bookmarked. They buy your products, get the brand exposure, and most importantly their trip to Rome… everybody wins.

The same service however, would not be so good for Heinz Ketchup. Staying on strategy, or finding the right way to weave in a communication platform is vital for the success of an initiative like this.

An application that pulls the level of pollen in the air for the day from an online weather service and make a recommendation as to the specific allergy product you might need that day (Benadryl’s Pollen Alert Widget) is not only useful, but it drives some serious branding as well. Start thinking of things that your target market would really truly need and use — and I’m not just talking about product information or tips. I’m talking about things that they would use every day, or at least once a week. How can digital fulfill those needs? Digital shops have the budgets and resources to create something that lasts longer than just your next promotion. They have the power to create something of value for their client and their client’s customers.

After this extra value is established, the amount of media that supports the initiative (though still somewhat necessary) won’t matter as much. People will want to tell others about your wonderful new product, and online word of mouth will take over and feed the fire known as “viral marketing”. (We need a new word for “viral” by the way, any suggestions?)

Now this doesn’t have to be a life changing product or service. It can be as simple as an application that asks you for your zip code and an email address and alerts you anytime a specific item you asked for goes on sale in your area… and does nothing else. This sort of automation easily connects potential buyers with a business, and doesn’t waste anyone’s time.

The flip side of this is that digital agencies also have the resources to be able to craft product offerings for their clients as well. What business problem does your brand need solved? The first, and most obvious choice is to provide a listening and brand monitoring platform to your client. A tool that aggregates what’s being said about a brand in the blogs, news, Twitter, Flickr or YouTube is not only useful for your client, but useful for the agency as well. However, not all clients have the time to review and analyze the effects of what is (or isn’t) being said about their brands. Productize this research as it has tremendous value. Offer a monthly recap of what happened in the blogs, show connections between online buzz and offline activities, pose questions or concerns that consumers may have had, or show them an idea that someone mentioned on Twitter. What was the most enticing user generated content? Client’s want to know about what their consumers are doing with their brand.

The digital realm can not only solve lots of problems, but it can also create lots of cost-effective opportunities. With the growing ability to easily port applications from device to device, the reach is nearly there and soon enough, marketers and brands that don’t begin to offer digital services that provide an additional benefit to the consumer will be looked at as ignoring their consumers’ growing digital life. Fueled by the rise of Web 2.0 apps, brands will have to force themselves to be forward thinking and be willing to take the monetary risk associated with creating such an application. But more importantly, the rewards will be plentiful when a brand actually fulfills an unmet consumer via the use of modern technologies.