Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Links for 2012-05-31 [del.icio.us]

2012-06-01T00:00:00-07:00

PinShoppr.com
Pinshoppr is where eye candy meets eCommerce! Pinshoppr lets you shop for the hottest products on Pinterest. Start browsing by color, category or store

Links for 2012-05-30 [del.icio.us]

2012-05-31T00:00:00-07:00

Innovation Israel | #1 Startup Nation Community
A great resource for connecting with Israeli startups
TabTimes | Tablet news, trends, reviews, apps and solutions for professionals and business people
News by tablets, for tablets (okay, maybe just about tablets... and really, it should just be about the iPad since no one uses the others, but it's not)
Deezmaker | 3D Printing Fun
3D printer open sourced to go for $600 - still designed for early adopters but a sign of how rapidly prices are dropping
Any.DO | Make things happen (with friends)
I'm hearing great things about this app from my Israel trip
calm.com
"A place to relax" - guided or non-guided medition

How Startups Can Connect with Brands

2012-05-30T06:36:51-04:00

I'm in Israel right now, and for some of the trip I'm meeting with some fantastic startups, venture capitalists, and other connectors, doers, and thinkers here. I could be here all year and still not have time to meet everyone I'd want to in Tel Aviv alone.

I went up to Herzliya as the guest of Carmel Ventures to present to their partners, startups, and other guests on How Startups Can Connect with Brands. An annotated, downloadable version of the presentation is below. It follows last week's launch of Startup Outlook. Expect more to come.

How Startups Can Connect with Brands

View more PowerPoint from David Berkowitz

Is Social Advertising Broken?

2012-05-29T16:41:46-04:00

Is Social Advertising Broken?
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

As Facebook's stock limps along, a popular refrain says that social advertising doesn’t work. Ross Douthat, in a recent New York Times opinion, goes as far as to say that Facebook’s IPO is a sign of how the Internet “created a cultural revolution more than an economic one.” If Facebook is the biggest proponent of socially targeted ads and it can’t convince investors that it will grow rapidly, that must be a scathing indictment of its whole model, right?

Saying social advertising doesn't work because of Facebook's troubles is like saying democracy doesn't work because India – the world's largest democracy – struggles with epidemics of corruption, frustrating red tape, and issues serving hundreds of millions of its poorer citizens. Americans, divided as we may be, will generally laud the merits of democracy and claim it’s the best possible political system. Similarly, most New Yorkers will say the democratic system is functioning far better under Governor Cuomo than it did under the prior two short-lived administrations, but that means we wanted to change leadership rather than switch to fascism.

Facebook may be the most scalable model of social advertising, but it's one example. Often, it listens to feedback from marketers and agencies. Most of the time, it does what it wants and requires advertisers to accept it or go elsewhere. It is one publisher, and not the embodiment of all things social.

Sometimes, Facebook is truly innovative. It treats ads like content and content like potential ads. It seems to have borrowed this ethos from Google, which aims to organize all the world's information and considers ads just a piece of the whole.

Other times, Facebook operates against advertisers' best interests. For instance, Facebook routinely runs seven ads on a page, including its homepage, which should be far more valuable and exclusive. By focusing on driving up impression totals, Facebook hurts the ad experience. While Google has similar clutter with search advertising, its performance-based model reaches consumers who qualify themselves and actively seek advertisers. Facebook can't afford the same degree of clutter, especially when that alienates brand marketers.

Now that Facebook has to serve marketers in order to boost its stock price, it's quite possible that it will make social advertising more successful. This could be the kick in the pants it needs. Yet it's also possible that Facebook won't figure it out to the extent that it must to please shareholders and advertisers. And it's possible that Facebook will figure out a great social ad model online but won't be as successful with mobile, where its usage is shifting. That still doesn't meant social advertising is a failure.

Twitter seems to have figured out models that work well for its service, though it will have to be more aggressive to drive up revenues. There are new models arising everywhere, including those from Buzzfeed, Klout, Say Media, SocialTwist, SocialVibe, StumbleUpon, and Tumblr. Any of them can be used to prove or disprove the merits of social advertising, depending on the example and the pundit’s point of view.

There are some things we collectively know. We know that people trust their friends for recommendations, and ads can amplify those recommendations. We know that ads perform better when shared or endorsed by a trusted contact, even though there are various factors that impact how much better such ads perform. And we know that as long as consumers spend more time with social media, marketers will seek scalable ways to reach such audiences.

If you ask advertisers what they want, many will tell you they want television spots running on Facebook's homepage. Purists may cringe, but most people will be able to rattle off 20 TV spots they've seen before recalling a single Facebook ad. Purists may also note that MySpace ran homepage takeover ads that advertisers loved, until most of the site’s audience departed. Yet ads can't be blamed for the demise of MySpace any more than ads can be blamed for "Pan Am" getting canceled.

Social advertising – namely, ads that incorporate some kind of sharing functionality or are targeted based on an individual’s network of connections – is no more than five years old in any practical sense. There is a lot all of us have to learn. Given that Facebook is a public company now, it will have to learn faster than just about anyone else to justify its valuation. If it doesn’t succeed in that regard, there are plenty of others eager to figure it out and make their case to advertisers.

Links for 2012-05-24 [del.icio.us]

2012-05-25T00:00:00-07:00

Symptom checker and diagnosis calculator by Symcat
Symptom look-up with a guided dive into what's ailing you and what may be the most likely explanations
Giftmeo | Get Together. Gift Together.
New social commerce / group gifting site launched at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012
Mirth
TechCrunch Disrupt May 2012: "Mirth only requires a one-time sign-up with your 16-digit credit card number to get started. No app, no check-ins — all you need is your credit card. From there just visit your favorite spots like normal. If you visit the same restaurant twice in a rolling 30-day period, you instantly become a regular, meaning you’ll not only receive 3 percent off every purchase you make, but that the merchant will have a direct line of communication with you."
SnipSnap
TechCrunch May 2012: What if snipping a coupon was as simple as snapping your smartphone camera? That's the idea behind SnipSnap, the first app to scan, save, and redeem printed coupons on your mobile phone. Prepare to save some serious moolah.
SocialStock
TechCrunch May 2012: Invest in your friends and favorite places, build your portfolio and raise your social value.

Links for 2012-05-23 [del.icio.us]

2012-05-24T00:00:00-07:00

Agencies Play Startup Matchmakers | Digiday
“This was already a big part of my job, but now what we’re trying to do is figure out how to package this information in a way that benefits our clients and hopefully the rest of the industry,” said 360i vp of emerging media David Berkowitz, who is leading the effort. “This is about focusing on what we do best and providing strategic guidance to our clients,” he said. “It’s not about creating a whole new business model.”
Aurality
TechCrunch Disrupt 2012: Aurality makes it easier than ever to listen to blogs, news, articles or any website you love. Tell us exactly what you want or tune in to our recommendations. - Not my thing but there's probably a good audience for it
Babelverse - people powered real-time interpretation of the spoken word
TechCrunch Disrupt 2012: Babelverse relies on people to preserve the quality, context, cultural relevance, tone and emotion of the spoken word. Better than any algorithm! Machine translation is just not reliable for real conversations. Skilled multilingual and professional interpreters alike can earn money for their time, creating a new source of income for people all over the world. It also opens up a global market for interpretation. Babelverse interpreters receive a 70% cut of the per minute interpretation price. Rates are set by Babelverse(per language pair) according to several parameters such as cost of life in the relevant countries. Thus avoiding a bid to the bottom, both in terms of pricing and quality.
Chat& – Live Video Chat & Co Browsing
TechCrunch Dsirupt 2012: The Chat& software is a NO DOWNLOAD "SaaS" collaborative chat application that allows a company's live sales and support staff to connect directly with customers via 1-to-1 real-time sessions. Chat& delivers a virtual "e-showroom" that recreates the face-to-face experience a customer has with a real person in a retail showroom. When needed, the online assistant can take over website navigation for customers as if they were live and in-person with that individual.
Hoppit
TechCrunch Disrupt 2012: find local bars/restaurants by persona, mood, etc
ActiveGift
TechCrunch Disrupt 2012: social gifting site to plan group gifts, discuss ideas, get feedback from recipient. Not bad

Links for 2012-05-22 [del.icio.us]

2012-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

Badgeunlock.com | Foursquare Badge List
A list of Foursquare badge campaigns - useful for anyone considering this

Ten Principles of Big Data

2012-05-22T20:05:01-04:00

10 Principles of Big Data
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Once upon a time, there was a little data. People thought it was important but not all that sexy. Then it grew up, and everyone started calling it Big Data. Now it’s on all the Sexiest Trend Alive covers, and there are rumors that it is having affairs with all of the Kardashians, including Bruce Jenner.

Big Data arguably grew up, at least in popular parlance, thanks to all the information it has been gleaning from social and mobile media. Gotham Media Ventures focused on it during an Internet Week event, “Data Wars: The Future of Personal Information and Advertising.” I had the pleasure of joining an especially insightful bunch on the panel: Clickable Director of Social Strategy Jordan Franklin, MicroStrategy Senior Director Marc Hayem, LocalResponse President Kathy Leake, and Sonar CEO Brett Martin, along with moderator Terri Seligman of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC.

Over the course of the discussion, all of the panelists inspired a series of principles governing this era of Big Data. Here are the top ten:

1) We are all data. There’s very little about us that can’t be expressed as a data point. Our data includes who we talk to, where we go, our physical activity, what we consume, and what we don’t consume. We are the data.

2) We value data differently depending on whether we share it implicitly or explicitly. We don’t mind being asked to give consent to share data, and we usually don’t mind being ignorant. We only become alarmed when we become aware of data that we previously shared implicitly.

3) There must be a value exchange for sharing data. Brands, publishers, technology companies, and others determine what someone receives in return for providing the data. Sometimes this is through an overt agreement, while more often it’s a tacit barter.

4) What matters is how people perceive the value. A marketer may not think a $1 coupon is very valuable, but consumers may covet it. Similarly, a marketer may give away a new car that seems highly valuable, but the chance to win it may not move consumers to act.

5) Virtual value is just as real as tangible value. Consider a $1 coupon compared to a leaderboard where someone earns 100 points for checking into a location. The latter has no monetary value, but if the program is deployed properly, then those 100 points – and the bragging rights and self-esteem that go with them – may be more valuable than the tangible goods.

6)There’s a value chain beyond the exchange. If a user shares data with a publisher, that leads to more relevant advertising, which makes users more likely to return and earns more revenue per user, which leads to more profits, which leads the publisher to invest in hiring better talent and creating better content, which makes users more likely to share that content with others, which makes new users more likely to visit and become regular users.

7) Norms are changing. Jordan brought up the example of Facebook Beacon, which launched in 2007 and was promptly killed due to user backlash, compared to Facebook’s “frictionless sharing,” which may well deserve the same fate as Beacon but hasn’t attracted as much ire. The latest privacy controversy comes from SceneTap, which uses facial detection to show the demographic composition of bar patrons. It inspired Violet Blue to write in ZDNet, “San Francisco Hates Your Startup.” Many people commenting on such posts defend SceneTap, and in a few years, such technology may not raise a single eyebrow.

8) Standards are different online. Accept it. When you move into a new home, that Pottery Barn catalog will always find you within days, and yet none of the tens of millions of people who change residences each year protest about the surreptitious data usage. The standards are higher for social and mobile media because that data feels more personal.

9) Government regulation isn’t as challenging for brands as changes in terms of service. The government of any country may enact regulation that affects the use of data, yet governments don’t move nearly as fast as Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and other technology companies.

10) Change is happening at an exponential pace. The data that’s available and the options for harnessing it keep multiplying. Keep pace however you can. Think creatively about how you can use all this data. Most importantly, remember that you’re not a brand or a publisher or an agency or a corporation; you’re a person. Respect people. The Golden Rule lives on.

Introducing Startup Outlook

2012-05-22T14:20:17-04:00

I'm excited to share some news about a project that I've been working on all spring. Now it's finally live, and it's your turn to take part.

First, check out Startup Outlook, a guide marketers can use to evaluate startups, with five startups featured this month: Immersive Labs, Luminate, QWiPS, Shapeways and Viggle.

Next, sign up for our June 12 kickoff event in NYC.

Digiday covers how "Agencies Play Startup Matchmakers"
My Ad Age byline on the criteria brands should use
360i's blog post announcing Startup Outlook

I welcome your feedback on this. Send suggestions about startups my way, and I hope to see you June 12.

Links for 2012-05-21 [del.icio.us]

2012-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

Comunitee
a) The spelling of this startup's name offends me on so many levels. It is actually painful to type. b) I haven't seen anything new here at all in terms of social news, except for how long it took to enter my preferences. c) Brett Petersel just joined as CMO. Good luck, Brett!
LEAP Motion
"Control your desktop and interact with apps through natural hand and finger movements with The Leap." - Ordered one of these. Can't wait.

Links for 2012-05-20 [del.icio.us]

2012-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

Facebook IPO goes public, company faces new challenges - Direct Marketing News
“The IPO means Facebook will have to pay more attention to its marketers because that's where the money is coming from,” said David Berkowitz, 360i's VP of emerging media. “Historically, marketers have needed Facebook more than it has needed marketers, but now the tables have turned and marketers are going to demand more accountability.” Berkowitz said Facebook can improve its offering through several ways, including improving its analytics, its search capabilities and potentially becoming an ad network similar to Google... Facebook has around 150 million users in the US alone. Facebook also has more information about users than Googcurrently has, Berkowitz said. “Social advertising works and Facebook is in a position to show this better than any other company on the planet,” Berkowitz said. “It needs to focus more on what the value is and it needs to tie it to more ROI metrics.”
Heard on the Street: When to Buy Facebook - WSJ.com
Facebook only began this year to allow ads directly in users' "news feed," and to permit advertisers to pay to make sure their ads are seen by those they wish to reach. And the social media giant has a Trojan horse in Facebook Connect, argues David Berkowitz, vice president of emerging media at 360i. The tool, launched in 2008, allows more than 9 million other websites and mobile apps to let their users log in using Facebook. That enables them to use social information that Facebook has captured about the user to, for instance, show what their friends "like" on the site. Facebook could go a step further and also allow sites that use Connect to incorporate individual user data into their advertising systems.
MAKE | 3DPrinterTradingCards
These are great visuals to understand the options with 3D printing

Death to Internet Week

2012-05-15T16:38:30-04:00

Death to Internet Week
(Long Live Mobile Week)
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Happy Internet Week! Did you realize it was that time of year again? It’s one of the holiest weeks on the digital media calendar, nestled between the first and second Social Media Weeks, and well ahead of Advertising Week and Social Week. Also, don’t confuse it for Foursquare Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day, neither of which take place during Internet Week, but they keep the spirit alive year-round.

Enjoy all these weeks while you can. If they are to maintain their relevance going forward, then all of them will disappear and will be rebranded Mobile Week. Good luck telling them apart, but that would at least achieve some degree of honesty in nomenclature.

Consider some recent milestones:

Facebook announced it has more than 500 million mobile users. There’s no turning back now that Facebook has the majority of its audience accessing the service from mobile devices. In March, 83 million people used only Facebook’s mobile services and not its online site; this jumped 43% from 58 million in December. For Twitter, this is old hat. Back in September, Twitter’s CEO said that 55% of its active users logged on via a mobile device.
TechCrunch reported that Facebook’s 900 million users give it a 90% reach of all social media users, based on the 1 billion global social media users mentioned in a new social media report from the ITU. Its reporting could use some work. First of all, a quick search revealed that the ITU cited the 1 billion figure last year, when Facebook had a mere 750 million users. Second, the ITU counts China’s leading social service QQ in the total. QQ has more than 700 million users as of last September. Given that Facebook is banned in China, and given that QQ has also continued to grow rapidly, that means the number of combined users for those services alone is at least 1.6 billion and will likely top 2 billion in the coming months. The growth for QQ is, surprise, getting a major boost from mobile. Its Mobile QQ Game Hall application recently surpassed 200 million users, and that’s just one of several mobile services QQ offers.
Facebook users are spending more time with the property on mobile devices. comScore reported that U.S. Facebook users spent an average of 441 minutes per month accessing it via mobile properties, compared to just 391 minutes via PCs.

None of this should be particularly shocking. It doesn’t matter whether a site’s offering the weather or selling snowshoes; in time, most of that usage will come from mobile devices. For social media, the changes are happening even faster for two key reasons:

1) Mobile devices have always been designed for communication, so the only difference now is that people are using the devices more for data than voice. Younger Americans prefer texting to talking, and that preference line is creeping into older demographics each year.

2) Social media is increasingly about sharing content. The easiest way to create content – especially anything involving sound, images, or video – is through a mobile device. Once that content is created, it’s now fairly effortless to share it. Sharing content is usually the purpose of creating it. The ends and the means are the same. Why create content? To share it. Why share content? Because it was created.

That’s why all these event weeks can save themselves from irrelevance and rename themselves Mobile Week now. Yet even if you accept the premise for Social Media Week, Social Week, and Internet Week, the one that may be a harder sell is Advertising Week. After all, advertising is everywhere, and it’s not just digital. On top of that, mobile advertising is a tiny share of the pie, and marketers are hardly closing the gap between where they’re spending media dollars and where consumers are spending their time.

Advertising Week should be the first to change its name. It’s traditional advertising – TV, radio, print, out of home, in-store – that’s most likely to reach people who have their mobile devices on them. It doesn’t matter what the call to action is; the mobile device gives consumers a way to express their interest by taking action.

We’ll see which week changes its name first. In the meantime, I wish you a happy Mobile Week, and I hope to see you at the next Mobile Week, which should be coming up any week now.

Buzzfeed, Interesting Word Choice in Your Meme Coverage...

2012-05-15T16:17:23-04:00

Buzzfeed just posted about the "Ignore Hitler" meme spreading through Draw Something. I'm not really offended by the meme, but there has to be a better subheader for the story than saying "They've lost 6 million..." That's an unfortunate Holocaust reference, used in the context here of an app losing some users.

See You At These Internet Week NY Events

2012-05-14T10:39:25-04:00

Happy Internet Week, boys and girls! It's like every other week, except you get to use the internet. Woohoo!

Let me know if we'll be in the same place. Here are a few events where I'm speaking:

MediaPost's OMMA Social - New York, NY
-Moderator: Instant RFP
-May 15

Gotham Media Ventures: Data Wars - The Future of Personal Information and Advertising - New York, NY
-Speaker
-May 16

DigitalFlashNYC: Social TV - What's Really Happening - New York, NY
-Speaker
-May 17

I'll also be at a number of other events and functions this week, including:

NYU's Interative Telecommunications Program show
- May 14-15 (I'm going Mon)

AppNation
- May 16

IAB Innovation Days
- May 16/17 (I'll be there May 17, probably early to catch Buzzfeed's Jon Steinberg)

Social Swagger by Plyfe and Social Media Society, benefiting Nothing But Nets
- May 16, 7pm

Using Social Media to Spark Global Conversation - panel at IWNY HQ with Coca-Cola, Oreo, NBC Olympics (#clients), along with 360i
- May 17, 4pm

And that's just a start of it. Let me know if we'll be in any of the same places.

Is Reality Broken?

2012-05-08T16:01:53-04:00

Is Reality Broken?
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider
- also, for more on the challenges with gamification, read the previous piece The Motivation Bubble

Is reality broken? I’ve been grappling with the idea ever since reading “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal, who argues that games provide a better, more motivating version of life than reality. Almost inherent in her description of gameplay is the social component, as the vast majority of her examples involve games people play together -- usually virtually.

Much of the book is enlightening, such as when McGonigal discusses how some real-world movements and daily routines have become more meaningful by judiciously incorporating game mechanics. Elsewhere, however, I found myself sulking over her vision of reality. Below are ten passages from McGonigal, followed by why they are so troubling:

1) “The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy. And so, there is a growing perception in the gaming community: Reality, compared to games, is broken.”

Why must we always be happy? This is part of a bigger social problem. Sprinkles Cupcakes was designed from the ground up to make us happy, but it’s a bad idea to eat there daily. Filling out timesheets isn’t fulfilling, but I can put my happiness on hold briefly to support my colleagues.

2) “We are starving, and our games are feeding us.”

Games often feed us empty calories.

3) “Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work.”

It’s twisted logic to call gaming the opposite of depression. Gaming isn’t the same as actual work. The purpose matters. Saving a fictitious planet is different from supporting a family.

4) “We’re much happier enlivening time rather than killing time.”

Playing games doesn’t always enliven time. It’s often a drug hit or cheap thrill compared to fulfillment from doing something meaningful.

5) “Compared with games, reality is depressing. Games focus our energy, with relentless optimism, on something we’re good at and enjoy.”

This statement is depressing. How does one get out of bed in the morning thinking like this?

6) “…Beyond a certain playing threshold—for most gamers, it seems to be somewhere around twenty hours a week—they start to wonder if they’re perhaps missing out on real life.”

It’s hardly shocking, but that is a high threshold to trigger gamer’s remorse.

7) “Gamers, without a doubt, are reinventing what we think of as our daily community infrastructure. They’re experimenting with new ways to create social capital, and they’re developing habits that provide more social bonding and connectivity than any bowling league ever could.”

Bowling is a sport -- a physical activity that brings people together face to face. Similarly, my Madden NFL prowess does not give me more social capital than Eli Manning.

8) “…It’s no accident that Halo players are so inclined toward collective efforts. It’s the direct result of the game’s epic, and awe-inspiring, aesthetic. Today’s best game designers are experts at giving individuals the chance to be a part of something bigger…”

Collective efforts are not inherently positive. Nazi Germany, the Cultural Revolution, and Al Qaeda all offered ways for people to be part of a larger movement.

9) “Jean M. Twenge, a professor of psychology and the author of Generation Me, has persuasively argued that the youngest generations today—particularly anyone born after 1980—are, in her words, ‘more miserable than ever before.’”

Aren’t these the people who have grown up playing digital games?

10) “How would it feel to get constant, real-time positive feedback in our real lives, whenever we’re tackling obstacles and working hard? Would we be more motivated? Would we feel more rewarded? Would we challenge ourselves more?”

If we got a “like” or “+1” for everything we did, we’d start setting expectations too high. Did you ever post something on Facebook you were sure would be “liked” a lot but was largely ignored? It’s a brief letdown, and too many such disappointments can add up if one tries too hard to get a response.

Despite the critiques, there’s plenty to love in the book. Consider one of her conclusions: “We have to be thoughtful about where and when we apply game-like feedback systems. If everything in life becomes about tackling harder challenges, scoring more points, and reaching higher levels, we run the risk of becoming too focused on the gratifications of positive feedback. And the last thing we want is to lose our ability to enjoy an activity for its own sake.”

I could like, +1, tweet, pin, tumble and stumble that passage. I could send McGonigal a digital or physical sticker commending it. I could create a badge for her website. None of that, I hope, remotely approaches that feeling of accomplishment she must have savored when releasing her idea to the world.

A Glass Half Mindful, Half Social

2012-05-01T17:57:24-04:00

A view of Charlie Rose, and a glass more than half full, from Sebastian Thrun

A Glass Half Mindful, Half Social
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

What if you didn’t need a mobile phone to share content? What if you could share your literal point of view? What if “always on” didn’t just mean an internet connection that was constantly active, but referred to a device you wore that was always on you, ready to share your thoughts practically as soon as they came to mind?

That’s the idea behind Project Glass, Google’s latest foray into hardware. It’s a different twist for Google. Instead of competing with Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, Google will soon be competing with LensCrafters. Its new product is a form of wearable computing, with a tiny camera and transparent screen mounted on the front rim of glasses; the lenses themselves aren’t needed.

As of now, it’s a curiosity. It’s not yet on the market, and it’s not clear if anyone will want it. I’m sure I’m not the only person who watched the demo video and thought, “If I wanted to wear headgear, I wouldn’t have gotten Lasik.”

Then came the Charlie Rose interview with Sebastian Thrun, a Google Fellow and former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It was the first public interview with anyone at Google wearing the prototype, and I was mesmerized. It was a sneak peek into a future that’s both beautiful and horrifying. I can’t remember ever thinking simultaneously, “I want that now” and “I hope to never go anywhere near that.” I’m neither a fan nor detractor of Charlie Rose, but I give him credit for staying focused on the interview. It must have been hard taking Thrun seriously, despite his credentials.

Thrun’s discussion with Rose about Project Glass was brief; most of it focused on the demo video itself. It shows someone using the hardware to check the weather, save reminders about events, get transportation updates, check into a coffee truck, and use video chat, among other activities. With so many possibilities, what will be the proverbial killer app? Thrun told Rose, “The compelling use case for us is the sharing experience. Other people can now see through my eyes.”

It was a beautiful moment. Thrun downplayed a lot of the more sophisticated features like using augmented reality for image recognition. The feature that excites me the most is being able to recognize faces, even though I have a wonderful accessory to handle that already – my wife. Thrun’s take was simple and elegant. Project Glass is a hands-free way to share your actual perspective. Used well, it’s bound to trigger waves of empathy from those seeing that perspective. How much more powerful will it be to share your point of view when you’re doing so literally?

And then, what happens when you can always share your point of view? Will you blink and share whatever you see? Will you be even more inclined to tweet that you’re checking into the food truck you just instagrammed on Tumblr? Will you ever see the world around you? These are concerns already, but Project Glass raises the possibility that we’ll always be looking at the world through glass and not through our eyes.

Project Glass could thus further diminish our ability to be mindful, where we process the sensory information in our immediate surroundings instead of thinking about anything else. It’s vividly described in the book “Your Brain at Work” by David Rock. He writes, “When you sit on that jetty and stop to pay attention to the warmth of the sun on your skin, you soon notice the breeze, too. Activating the direct-experience network increases the richness of other incoming data, which helps you perceive more information around you. Noticing more information lets you see more options, which helps you make better choices, which makes you more effective at work.”

Rock describes how to be mindful and urges the reader to try it for ten seconds. The first time I tried it, I could feel the mental strain. Then I attempted it while walking to the subway one morning, and I was amazed how I could hear the footsteps of everyone walking by me and the phone conversations of people on the street. I understood Rock’s quote from mindfulness researcher John Teasdale: “Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful.” With a screen constantly hovering over your face, is mindfulness even possible?

Project Glass shows the liberation of a hands-free device, but such liberation is misleading. When we bought cordless phones and then cellphones and then smartphones, we were liberated from physical wires only to find ourselves more tethered to the handsets. If Project Glass is successful, we’ll free up our hands at the risk of losing our minds.

10 Social Marketing Lessons from The Hunger Games

2012-04-24T13:34:20-04:00

10 Lessons from The Hunger Games
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

When you read or watched “The Hunger Games,” did you catch all the lessons for social media marketers? Any story about a post-apocalyptic society sacrificing 23 teenagers annually was clearly written with marketers in mind.

Maybe that’s not the case, but there’s still plenty marketers can learn. Before getting into it, there are two things you need to know. First, there are a lot of spoilers here. I may well have spoiled everything. Next, I only watched the movie. I tried reading the first book twice and couldn’t get into it. If you’re a purist, I’m sorry, but I have no clue how faithful the movie was to the book.

Enough caveats. Here are 10 lessons coming all the way from Panem, the nation featured in “The Hunger Games”:

1) Know your strengths. Heroine Katniss is the archer. Her cohort Peeta could pin Hulk Hogan. Figure out what your brand’s strengths are and play to them.

2) Being nice reaps dividends. Katniss wasn’t the most approachable contender, but she needed a crash course in charm school. As a marketer and a brand, there has to be some reason for your target audience to like you. If there isn’t, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

3) Promote your assets. One of the heroes of the film, Cinna, is a stylist, so “Project Runway” junkies have someone to root for. Cinna aids Katniss and Peeta by dressing them in opening night attire that everyone notices. Cinna knows that it doesn’t matter who has the most talent or substance; assets need to get attention. Marketers in turn need to invest in promoting the great content they create for social channels. It doesn’t always stand out on its own.

4) Find your own turf, and get comfortable there first. During the Hunger Games competition, there’s a central, coveted plot of land by a structure called the Cornucopia that offers tempting rewards for participants. The problem is it’s also where most people get killed. For many marketers, Facebook is that Cornucopia. Yes, it’s important, and it has the richest user base, but marketers also need to carve out their own territory that they can own and defend.

5) The rules of the game can always be changed. Nothing is fair about the Hunger Games. Stay vigilant. Just when you think you know what you’re doing and everything’s humming, platforms can change, or people can change how they use the platforms. There’s little inertia in social media.

6) If you give people what they want, you still run the risk of irking the king. Consider the case of Seneca Crane, the lead game designer. He was the one changing the rules to make the games more entertaining. Then he broke one rule too many and paid the ultimate price for it. This often happens with social marketers, when they knowingly violate a platform’s rules in a creative move designed to get lots of press. These kinds of stunts are often shut down. Give Seneca credit though, as he died valiantly.

7) Learn how to blend in. Beyond being freakishly strong, Peeta is a talented camouflage artist. It’s a useful skill to have with social media. While brands aren’t people, marketers’ updates are often mixed in with consumers’ friends’ content. That’s a great opportunity for marketers, especially when consumers opt to receive brands’ messages that way.

8) The small, quiet ones have a shot at greatness. Consider Rue, the young, diminutive ally of Katniss, and a champion hide-and-seek player. She shows strategic brilliance and selfless courage. Similarly, many of the best uses of social media come from smaller brands that don’t have the most ardent followings. What matters is how you use your talents.

9) Don’t be content with your success. Haymitch, the advisor to Katniss and Peeta, survived the death match in a prior decade. When he first appears in the story, he’s a cantankerous, antisocial alcoholic. Aspire to greatness, and achieve it when you can, but then think about how to keep it going.

10) The odds are ever in your favor. If you’ve followed along thus far, you’ve got a pretty good handle on the rules of the Games -- and when to break them. Still, not everyone’s going to win. Most mess up making avoidable errors. Fortunately, unlike for most of the Hunger Games contestants, there are plenty of second and third chances. Learn from others’ mistakes, learn from yours, and make the odds work for you.