Take me to your Leader!

Why The iPhone 5 Will Be Wider, Not Taller

Freddie Laker — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:00:21 +0000

This article was original posted on September 10th, 2012 on PSFK.com: http://www.psfk.com/2012/09/iphone-5-design.html

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The iPhone 5 rumor mill is in overdrive, but the focus of the speculation is misplaced. Looking ahead to the more connected Apple device ecosystem, I actually think that the iPhone 5 will be wider – not taller.

Industry insiders agree the new ‘taller’ screen has a 16:9 screen resolution. This is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to start the process of updating the entire iTunes app ecosystem to a new standard that will ensure compatibility across a future version of the Apple device ecosystem that includes the Apple TV.

There is a new digital revolution underway in the living room. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Roku, Boxee and others are all fighting to own the new TV experience, but our collective focus remains on the smartphone and the tablet. This will change. So much so that I am betting the next phase of my career on it.

Gigaom predicted approximately 250,000,000 Smart TVs will be in play by 2015. Almost half of US based consumers do not understand what a smart TV is according to the YouGov Smart TV Study. Apple, regardless of your opinion of them, is exceptionally good at bringing innovative products into the mainstream. The all but confirmed release of an updated Apple TV, that includes full integration of Apps along with a next generation user experience, will bring the desire to own a Smart TV into the mainstream. The new technology frontier will be forged by Smart TVs and with it I’m expecting an opportunity to arise as significant as when smartphones or tablets became mainstream devices.

But let me say this again, it is not just about another device coming into the market (iPhone 5, Smart TVs), but rather what the interrelationship is between all of the devices and what the long-range roadmap in play to connect everything looks like. The all-but-confirmed release of an updated Apple TV that includes full integration of Apps along with a next generation user experience will bring the passion and desire to own a Smart TV into the mainstream.

The future of consumer electronics will revolve around the connected ecosystem. iPhone and iPad owners will flock to the Apple TV to complete their digital ecosystem as their devices become increasingly interconnected. Android users although excited and inspired by the Apple TV will seek a compatible experience for their ecosystem in the Google TV. The best thing that will ever happen to Google TV is Apple TV.

It is my prediction that in the next year we will continue to see more shifts in aspect ratios around devices, both tablets and phones, as we move to a more complete and connected ecosystem. Will we see this in the rumored iPad mini? Perhaps, but unlikely. Instead, I think Apple will update the full size iPad and then follow up with a new iPad mini aspect ratio at a closer time to the TV. One thing not in question, however, is the pending Smart TV revolution that will enter the mainstream (and our living rooms) and the that implications for changes in consumer behavior will be profound. The revolution will be connected, integrated and require new standards. The iPhone 5 is just the beginning, but one of the most important steps we’ve seen yet.

Five Challenges For Tomorrow’s Global Marketing Leaders

Freddie Laker — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 03:00:12 +0000

This article was originally posted at Forbes: Click here to view it there.

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This article is by Freddie Laker, VP of global marketing strategy, and Hilding Anderson, research and insights director, both at SapientNitro.

CMOs are struggling to adapt to a world that has fundamentally changed over the course of their careers. Disruptive digital technologies and the new expectations of the global consumer are forcing global firms to adjust and innovate.

SapientNitro has made a significant effort to understand how these changes are impacting large global organizations. What we found was surprising: Just 15% of senior marketers feel prepared to deal with the rapidly changing consumer, and just 8% believe agencies are succeeding in their support of global brands.

Our CMO Global Marketing Readiness Study, a six-month research study of 114 CMO-level marketers, identified five significant challenges that should act as a wake-up call to global marketers:

1. Disruptive technologies.

The proliferation of new technologies – from social media and mobile apps to in-store digital experiences and mobile payments – represents a set of obstacles for which senior marketers are ill prepared. Just 20% consider themselves ‘very knowledgeable’ about technology, yet by 2017 these CMOs will purchase more technology than their CIOs, according to Gartner. The scale of these investments must be at a global level within the organization, yet be mindful of local market requirements. The challenge points to a need for a technology-savvy global CMO with a sensitivity for local-global relationships and the flexibility to adapt to and embrace disruptive technologies and social media-driven, personalized marketing.

2. Globally connected consumers.

A new class of consumers, adept with and empowered by affordable ubiquitous technology, has changed the marketing rules. Our research shows that 82% of senior marketers feel that interconnected consumers have broken down the barriers between global and local marketing. Global marketing’s core challenge has been to deliver relevant messages to the local market, but in an age where assets designed for one country are rapidly shared around the world, the challenge is to give global consumers a delicate balance of local, regional and global campaigns – simultaneously.

3. Localization revisited.

Coping with the diversity of “global consumers” that also have strong regional subcultures is regarded as a challenge by 75% of senior marketers. A recent Millward Brown study found that of ads that tested exceptionally well in one country, just over one in 10 did equally well in another country – raising real questions about the cost efficiencies of cross-border campaigns. Add to this the growing tensions between local and global roles and authority within the organization – challenging for 82% of senior marketers – and what becomes clear is the need for organizational design and digital platforms that allow for a multi-channel, multi-disciplinary mindset across the organization.

4. Multi-channel misses.

A full 37% of senior marketers don’t believe that their marketing activities are fully integrated across digital and traditional channels. The opportunity to grow revenues from multi-channel consumers requires investments in digital experiences that are too large for a single market, but which must provide flexibility for localization. The bottom line is that senior marketers need to adopt the “global mindset” that will let them displace strong organizational silos, specialized partners and a reliance on traditional single-channel campaigns in order to realize the benefits of cross-channel experiences.

5. Organizational structures.

Too often, the three executive branches of CMO, CEO and CTO claim an overlapping interest in the area of digital experience, leading to a failure to organize efficiently for the new global marketing environment. Our research shows that 56% of marketers agree coordination between digital and traditional marketing teams is more challenging than five years ago – silos and a lack of coordination are getting worse just as the need for collaboration is becoming greater.

These trends leave us to believe in the rise of a new breed of “marketer” with a global marketing mindset. This new global CMO should build strategies that cross silos and approaches and combine the characteristics of a traditional marketer with the skills traditionally associated with a CTO and even with the recently created CXO offices. A decade ago the ecommerce or digital function would have reported to the CIO, but today we’re seeing about 50% report to the CMO – the single largest bucket of C-level oversight for digital.

Mastering this evolved global marketing mindset could be what defines the most successful brands of the next decade. But having a global mindset isn’t just for global brands; as businesses look to export their success into other markets, brands must increasingly defend against new global competition.

China: Will It Re-define Our Digital Landscape? (SXSW Presentation)

Freddie Laker — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:27:37 +0000

If you’re interested in China and how the digital and social media landscape will evolve globally in the next 15 years then you’ll find this interesting.

I wanted to share the presentation I gave at SXSW this year. I have uploaded it to SlideShare and also embedded the live audio taken at the event.

I’d like to give a special thanks to my colleagues in the Shanghai office for helping me to learn about China and answering all my unusual questions. I hope they feel this presentation represents that I was listening, learning, and have a genuine admiration for their country.

China – Will It Redefine Our Digital Landscape? (SXSW Presentation)

View another webinar from Freddie Laker

Google Wallet Launches

Rob Gonda — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:44:27 +0000

Google officially rolled out its Google Wallet mobile payment system Monday. Is still in its infancy, but the system already shows a lot of promise.

It uses a technology called NFC (Near Field Communication) to securely send your payments digitally.

The only phone in the US that supports NFC is the Google Nexus S, available with t-mobile and Sprint, and there are high hopes that the iPhone 5 will support it too.

Right now, Google Wallet only works with Citi-Mastercards and the Google Prepaid Card. Visa and Google announced a worldwide agreement to support the Visa payWave app, but it will still be up to the financial institutions and banks to add support.

The “tap and pay” method of payment is cool, but the Google Wallet feature that has the most potential is what Google is calling SingleTap. The SingleTap experience means that users can combine their coupons, loyalty cards and payment method all with one tap. It’s an interesting concept … digital save all your credit cards, loyalty cards, and soon tickets, boarding passes, and more.

Security

At first it might be scary to think you will enter all your data into your phone … what if it gets lost? Well, it’s a lot better than if your wallet gets lost … at least your phone has an initial passcode, a second pin number for Google Wallet, and if you’re smart, a remote format feature to securely delete your entire phone’s data should it get stolen.

Privacy

A big question that many would-be users are sure to have about Google Wallet is “does this mean Google knows what I buy.” The answer, at least right now, is no. Google does record local transactions on your phone, but these transactions are only identified by amount and location and are only viewable to you.

In practice, this means that if I look at my Google Wallet history, I only see a date, an amount and an approximate location. Google says that it is working to roll out a more robust digital receipt system in the future.

Diversity

American Express, Visa, Paypal, Google, and the major carriers are all racing towards raining the NFC arena. Google was the first to go-to-market, and there’s a recent announcement that American Express, Discover and Visa have all licensed their NFC technologies to Google, the next step is to get the thousands of financial institutions and merchants on-board with an NFC system.

Other uses

NFC is going to be one of the key technologies of 2012 … with easy communication among phones and cheap RFID tags, we will not only see seamless mobile payments, but also tap to get additional info on any product, posters, magazines, or socially connect to other phones for gaming or networking. NFC’s possibilities are endless – so expect an innovative and fun year to come.

Google+ US-geek-male skewed Infographic

Rob Gonda — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:07:34 +0000

Google+ now finally open to the public “might” make me change my perception. Google+ (plus) launched early July on an invite only basis, which seems to have heavily skewed towards a geeky male US-based audience. At the moment, Google+ really has nothing to offer in the social end … yes, the way you organize friends is better (IMO) than Facebook, and … … … well, that’s it … You might have heard me claim that it will compete against iCloud in the quest to conquer your hard data (photos, videos, music, files) – but that’s another post on its own.

The first Google+ infographic was released an the numbers pretty much confirm it: 26 million users, 100% of which work in software engineering, web development, advertising, or related careers. Should be interesting to watch it shift (or not) now that Google+ is open to the public.

Innovation & Emerging Trends at SXSW 2012

Rob Gonda — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:30:57 +0000

Buzz words come and go faster than bad news, another year went by and now it’s all about Apple iCloud, Google+, mobile payments, cloud computing, NFC, IPTV – everything is moving so fast, it’s exciting, we want to be part of it all – but how to prioritize? what’s sustainable? which ones are trends and which ones are fads? what are the true drivers behind these experiences that will really impact behavior and habits?

If you’d like to learn how to take a step back, re-organize the fast evolving world, and come up with those critical insights that will drive value and allow to predict the outcome – please vote for my session at SXSW 2012. Would appreciate your help and welcome all feedback.

Appreciated, and looking forward to another great year at SXSW.

SapientNitro is going to have great presence again this year, take some time and check out all our proposals.

The Future of Mobile Payments [Infographic]

Rob Gonda — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:40:04 +0000

As smartphone vendors and mobile operators shift their strategies to incorporate wireless payment technologies into mobile phones, consumers will soon be able to drop their wallet and carry every piece of important payment information on their handset.

NFC is already starting to be built into a range of Android smartphones, RIM and Nokia have committed to the technology and Apple is reportedly adding the contactless technology to its new iOS devices. GPlus has created an infographic detailing how NFC will replace our wallets and shows how companies are set to revolutionise the way we shop.

This infographic is focused mainly in the US, and it should be very interesting to see if Google Wallets would add more credit cards, and what ISIS has really planned as it gains support from all the major carriers.

Security has to evolve, new types of fraud and nfc sniffing will arise, and along with mobile merchant payments – we should keep a close eye on peer to peer money transfer that will enable the second market and shadow economies.

Cannes Review > AOL Seminar

Rob Gonda — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Monday, 20 June. Review for The Re-Calibration of Form and Function Online by AOL, presented by Tim Armstrong, CEO – AOL, and Arianna Huffington – Co-founder, Editor-in-Chief – The Huffington Post.

Huffington Post: Adrianna opened up, she’s extremely charismatic, funny, and overall a great entertainer. Overall she provided a lot more entertainment than good content, but that’s part being up there.

Her big idea: values online should mimic values offline. She gave a brief history of the Internet and claimed it has been very immature, and asked what shou

ld the Internet be when it grows up? All online brand experiences should focus on 4 pillars:

1. Trust: brands need trust 2. Authenticity: is like pornography – you know it when you see it 3. Engagement: around their values, not their products 4. Pursuit of happiness

…. that was it – very enlightening!

AOL: Then Tim took the stage, here comes the good part. Tim shows state of the art research and studies performed on aol.com using eye tracking to fully understand behavior, attention, reactions to visual stimulus, and A/B testing performed by changing key content units on the page. The result, staggering, Tim concludes that the future of the Internet and effective monetization models will consist of migrating from old fashion traditional banners to new improved bigger banners. Yes! By changing the format, adding more richness, better experience, more video, and making it longer, you can effectively increase the noise to effectively disrupt the attention of the web users and make him look at the ad. That Tim described as Ads with human emotion.

Then to try to make this statement a little more appealing, the rephrases it as brands will simply rent 20% of AOL’s portal space, so it’s not technically a banner anymore, it’s a space where they can embed rich content. Much better, phew, I thought the future of the Internet are better banners.

Ok, now finally for some real business value. Studies show that 83% of consumers use fewer than 30 sites a month; they use 20 fixed brands, and 10 rotating brands. I found this insight quite useful, makes you rethink the entire SEO and long-tail strategy. So that’s AOL’s strategy? Let’s acquire all the top brands to make sure we’re always part of the top 20.

Finally some words of wisdom: give creativity a space in the web and stop taking orders from the silicon valley.

Such statement was intended to please a creative audience, but I totally disagree. There is much to learn from the silicon valley, and the future of experiences is a marriage of brands, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

Original Session Description:

Digital media has long been considered a singular experience for consumers and mostly a direct response vehicle for brands. However, as content reclaims its rightful seat at the center of the platform and brands take an increasingly significant role in improving the experience, the industry must change the online environment as we know it. Join Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington as they discuss the shifting intersection of content, creativity, advertising and technology; the increasing importance of context; and ultimately outline what this brave (and brand!) new digital world can, should and will look like.

Cannes Review > Beyond the Horizon

Rob Gonda — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:35:34 +0000

Monday, 20 June. Review for Beyond the Horizon by PHD, presented by Mark Holden , Global Strategy and Planning Director.

Intro: The session was consistent with the overall 2011 theme of marketing technology – the role of technology impact in advertising, marketing, and customer experience. Mark did a great job describing a bunch of new tech and putting them in perspective of why they matter for the new consumer.

He opened up stating that there are 1.2 billion people in social networks – no surprise, but the next 1 billion will enter through mobile. We all knew how important mobile is, this is just a reassurance.

Next he explained that what drives technology is us, individuals, humanity. Technology is a human invention to solve human problems, being driven strictly by human needs. Therefore, technology is a consequence of human needs and desires – and what is driving humans? What drives humanity is need for abundance: we want everything, everyone, everywhere – and we won’t stop until we get it.

Following the intro, Mark jumped into multiple categories of technical innovations, grouped by infrastructure, interface, and internet.

Infrastructure: Fibre to the home will bring wired gigabit connections to every household. Similarly, 4g , lte, wimax will massively improve wireless connectivity. With ubiquitous broadband connectivity, there will be no more distinction between media types: HD video will download just as fast as 3d world games, music, or photos.

Connectivity combined with the growing cloud capabilities, will delegate storage and processing to the cloud, focusing devices back to graphic processing, graphic hardware acceleration, and sensors.

Interface: Oled and ultrahd will allow video 16 times better than HDTV to be displayed in a thin-almost-invisible flexible layer. Price is still prohibitive, but in the upcoming years this technology will allow video to be embedded pretty much anywhere.

Connected TVs will totally chance the dynamics of what is TV today. Addressable content – meaning it can be targeted and personalized -, a mix of current TV broadcast with the marvels of the Internet: everything is tracked, served dynamically, everyone can be a media company, publishers have direct access to the consumer.

The top experiences enabled by such mix will be embedded content, clickable content, video hot-spotting, and the already coined t-commerce for Television Commerce.

The first noticeable change will be linear TV with dynamic targeted ads, targeting the household by programs watched, demographics, or if the TV provider is also the ISP, perhaps bundle behavioral data into web usage, or if the TV is part of a gaming platform, them also get gaming and social behavioral data. Ultimately, content providers will sit in a world of data that will be used to personalize the TV watching experience.

We did not get into greater debates of what will happen to the 30-second stop, what would happen to advertising dollars, what would be the media and business model of the future.

Lastly Mark mentioned a bunch of interface techs, but didn’t get into detail for any of them: oled, graphene, audio spotlight, voice recognition, virtual personal assistants, markless AR, NFC, e-coupling. Out of these techs, you will probably see tons of buzz around AR and NFC in 2012.

Internet: This section talked about the socialization of the web and predicted that search will move from links to likes. The reasoning behind this assertion is that search will eventually become semantic, and will try to provide relevant personalized results as opposed to generic results. Tying search into the social graph and prioritizing results based on conversations, likes by social circles – or similarly +1 by Google Circles, part of their new highly popular Google+.

Additionally, the web is finally slowly moving from a massively unstructured pile of data to better organized self-descriptive objects, thanks to Facebook’s Open Graph efforts and now Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s schema.org efforts. Pages in the web will have additional metadata explaining the context behind them, as well as defining relations to other content. This will slowly have a big impact in SEO.

Other topics covered vertical search, social commerce, and gamification.

Following connectivity, the discussion naturally moved to mobile connectivity. We will rely on smart phones for what is now called real time living or just-in-time living. Every piece of information we need is always available at our fingertips, and we make real time decision, moving from from preset preplanned activities into real time experiences. And because we are making this real-time decisions, brands cannot just preplan a journey for us, they have to also adapt and engage in real-time experiences, reacting to every trigger and response.

Media agency 2016: So what does this all mean for the advertising industry? What does the media agency look like in 2016? The industry will shift from analog, dated, simple holding of a bunch of media properties to being a creative-technology led industry. Agencies will have to understand the power of technology in driving human experiences, and be able to creative and enhance these experiences. Media will be just data, and the largest agencies are already starting to invest in AMP: Audience Management Platforms.

Audience Management Platforms: Now I’ve heard multiple names for these platforms, such as CEP: Customer Experience Platform, MMP: Marketing Management Platform. Ultimately, it’s a data mart / data wharehousing platform that aggregates 360 customer data across every channel, and provides a layer of intelligence that drives personalized experiences. Content delivery, web sites, mobile apps, and media buying are nothing but layers of experience, that should be all centrally controlled by a single governing platform. This platform can hook into other contextual brokers, but I won’t get into too much detail right now. Back to Mark, he also sees this platform managing RTB: Real-Time Bidding and creative optimization; mainly meaning that it will control the time, content, and context where media is delivered.

With this shift in the media business model, we can predict that media futures exchange will become a very interesting area really soon.

Social: Mark predicts that in a few years the social media practice will be mature and in high demand, that people good at social will be superstars. I must say that people good at understanding human behavior are already superstars, and social is just the nature of humanity, and has always been part of connections planning. The discipline is simply evolving due to evolution of technology, but the roots have not changed.

Evolution of the Agency: Perhaps not so much evolution, but given that marketing is now getting the feedback loop and connected back into the brand essence, agencies will take the role of NPD: new product development.

Conclusion: At the very end of this long tech talk, Mark showed a phenomenal closing video! Very emotional, good sound and music, experiential. I will post the video as soon as I get a copy and clearance.

The session was pretty inspiring and reassured the critical role of a marketing technologist / creative technologist in the agency and client organizations.

Original Session Description:

Over the last five years the industry has seen the most dramatic changes to the world of communications. The social media revolution has fundamentally changed the fabric of society. Right now, one in every two people within the developed world is connected-up through social networks. This is resulting in to a quickening in the speed at which information, and therefore influence, is moving. More than this, PHD believes that this is changing the actual physics of how marketing works. And this rate of change is accelerating. Looking ahead this change will be driven by such things as demographic, attitudinal and psychographic shifts, and media-ownership regulation. But the biggest driver of change will of course be technology. Technology will not just be a driver of change it will be the driver of change. Technological advancements that are now on the horizon will enable the development of new marketing communications platforms through which to engage with people. New possibilities will emerge through the coming together of such as technologies as smart TVs, markerless augmented reality, enhanced voice-recognition, transparent OLED screens, haptic feedback, gesture input and NFC.

In this session PHD will explore the incredible technology that is on the horizon and project ahead on what the exciting possibilities are for marketing and advertising.

The Internet Every Sixty Seconds

Freddie Laker — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:17:20 +0000

A couple fun and digestible bits of digital content were shared with me today. Infographics and well edited videos seem to be used increasingly as a great form of self promotion but at the end of a day I’m a sucker for well presented stats and figures.

Check out the video below which reflects the latest update to the ‘Social Media Revolution’ series.

The visual above, created by Go-Globe.com, reflects the following:

Search engine Google serves more that 694,445 queries
6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr
600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content
695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Social Networking site Facebook
70 New domains are registered
168,000,000+ emails are sent
320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Social Networking site Twitter
iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times
20,000 new posts are published on Micro-blogging platform tumbler
Popular web browser FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times
Popular blogging platform WordPress is downloaded more than 50 times
WordPress Plugins aredownloaded more than 125 times
100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn
40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com
100+ questions are asked on Answers.com
1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content
1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com
1,200+ new ads are created on Craigslist
370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users
13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora
1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company