David Berkowitz

The Consumer Electronics Show is a massive labyrinth. As soon as you enter Las Vegas for the event, and especially by the time you reach the Convention Center, you may feel like you’ll never escape.

The good news is that once you get free, it’s possible to put down your 3D glasses and reflect on what happened. If you weren’t there, then it’s all the more important to mute the hype (“Ryan Seacrest joined Steve Ballmer for Microsoft’s keynote!”) and get a sense of what matters.

The presentation is a guide for doing that. Based on that, here are some top highlights for marketers.

5 Things That Didn’t Matter

1. Ultrabooks: This was one of the big buzzwords. That’s all it is – a buzzword for a thin laptop the likes of which has been on the market for years. Yes, it took four years for PC makers to release a MacBook Air.
2. OLED: David Pogue said it best: “What’s so silly? Even if you bought one of these screens, you’d have nothing to watch. Nobody broadcasts or sells movies in 4K or 8K resolution.”
3. 3D TV: The televisions there were gorgeous, and I wish I could watch the Summer Olympics on one of those floor models (or all of them), but they’re impractical and won’t be a big seller. A huge drawback is that while wearing the glasses, one can’t interact with their digital devices — or other people in the room.
4. Nokia’s Windows Phone: It looks great, but marketers should be screaming, “Show me the market share!”
5. Social cars: Ford and Mercedes were among the automakers showing off cars with built-in social network access. That’s great that these cars are social by design, but that’s keeping up rather than changing consumer behavior.

5 Things That Mattered

1. Connected TVs: Sony, Samsung, Microsoft, Nuance, and many others showcased how TVs will better connect with other devices and add voice controls. This has the potential to make TV advertising far more interactive – and accountable.
2. Interactive gaming: WowWee, Discovery Bay, and Parrot all showed off toys and games where the software runs on a consumer’s phone or tablet, and the hardware seamlessly interacts with it.
3. Dressing room 3.0Microsoft, Bodymetrics and others are trying to crack 3D body mapping so that shoppers can comfortably find clothes that fit perfectly whenever they shop digitally.
4. Samsung’s AdHub: Samsung promoted its AdHub ad network to run on Android and its proprietary Bada system, competing directly with Google and potentially benefiting developers with more competition.
5. Google Indoor Maps: This launched for Vegas at CES, and there may be no better city in the world for this. Expect a ton of competition this year mapping malls, department stores, grocery stores, and other locations.

See the presentation for even more, and share your thoughts with us on what mattered most to you.

At 360i’s 2011 Digital Marketing Summit, we had the honor of hosting some of the best, most inspiring speakers from some of the biggest and most accomplished brands. While we can’t possibly do justice to all of the impactful keynotes and panels, we can at least curate and distill a handful of highlights.
Here are the top ten takeaways from the Digital Marketing Summit.

1) Facilitate the exchange of ideas by bringing marketers together for candid conversations. This was one of the goals expressed by 360i CEO Bryan Wiener at the start of the summit. Over the course of the day, you might find yourself in a conversation with marketers from an electronics brand, a financial services company, and a spirits producer. It’s invaluable to facilitate such an exchange, get inspired by their successes, and learn from their challenges. Such an event is the best kind of social networking there is, and the forum itself is thus greater than the sum of its individual presentations.

2) “People who are engaged with your brand buy your stuff.” – 360i CEO Bryan Wiener

3) The world’s going mobile. Wendy Clark, The Coca-Cola Company’s SVP of Integrated Marketing and Communications Capabilities, noted that by 2020, 90% of the world’s population is expected to have mobile phones. At the end of the day, 360i VP of Emerging Media David Berkowitz showed how mobile plays a role in every hour of consumers’ lives. Marketers can’t afford any further delays on creating compelling mobile experiences that tie in with their overarching programs.

4) Creativity is contagious. Wendy Clark’s talk included videos to some of Coca-Cola’s global campaigns to spread happiness, such as Argentina’s Friendship Machine and Brazil’s Happiness Truck. These creative examples combine the attitude of “What if…?” combined with the willingness to break rules.

5) Search remains a crucial starting point and nexus for marketing programs. Jessica Robinson, Associate Director of Consumer Engagement at Kraft Foods, says search is especially critical when launching new brands, and also for adapting to seasonal changes in purchase trends.

6) Consumers only want you to talk to them through social channels if you’re talking with them, not at them. – Ellen Stone, SVP of Brand Marketing, Bravo Media

7) Changes with video are upending so much of traditional media consumption patterns. This was a big theme when some of the largest online media companies shared their views on the media landscape in 2012 and beyond. Google’s David Bryant referred to YouTube as “the global campfire.” AOL’s Tim Castelli discussed bringing more multimedia into ad units. Yahoo’s Mark Ellis said Yahoo produces 9 of the top 10 original video programs online, and it’s making big bets on new series for the fall. Microsoft’s Rick Song was the most provocative, presenting a view of an Xbox-centric world where people will use their voices to interact with TV content and advertising, allowing media interactions to seamlessly transition across screens and devices.

8 ) “A lot of people are talking about storytelling. But you need to empower the storytellers in addition to providing the platform.” – 360i’s Matt Wurst, via Twitter

9) The speaker least directly focused on marketing was safely the most inspiring to marketers in the room. Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada garnered the most tweets of the day from the audience, but there were also several stretches of his talk where everyone was silently leaning forward, too focused on listening to attempt to share his remarks. Perhaps the most universally applicable of his messages was, “You can’t keep doing what didn’t work and expect that it will work.” It’s a problem that he deals with in reforming America’s educational system, and it’s a problem most marketers have encountered as well. But let’s be honest here – he was there to connect with people, not just marketers. And as people, we need to be concerned with the future of the United States and make education reform both a local and national priority.

10) A tweet from 360i’s Katie Perry perfectly summed up the day: “Underlying lesson from both keynotes at #360iDMS today: Stop accepting mediocrity.”

While we can’t possibly list everyone by name, thanks to each and all of the speakers for all their effort and time spent on providing value at the event, the hundreds of attendees who took a day or more out of their frenetic schedules to participate, and the dozens of our colleagues here at 360i who spent months making this event particularly memorable and meaningful. So much more of what we learned and what we’re inspired to act on will be the subject of countless posts here in the months ahead.

360i’s 2011 Digital Marketing Summit ended with a featured presentation on A Mobile Day in the Life, looking at the role mobile devices play in every hour of someone’s day. Marketers have constant opportunities to reach people anytime, anywhere, so it’s important to know the evolving ways people are consuming, interacting with, and creating media.

The slides from SlideShare are below (a few slides are a little fuzzy, but you can get the gist). Links to all the apps featured are included below.

Sleeping / Getting Ready

4am: Sleep Science

5am: WakeMate

6am: Lark

7am: FitFu

8am: Go Try It On

The 9-5 Workday

9am: NeoReader (one of the best mobile barcode readers)

10am: Summify, Aurasma

11am: Pinterest

12pm: Foursquare

1pm: Dokobots

2pm: Rosetta Stone

3pm: TaskRabbit

4pm: Google+

Drinks, Dinner and Unwinding

5pm: TabbedOut

6pm: Kraft iFood Assistant, Coupons.com’s GroceryIQ, CheckPoints

7pm: Barcode Hero

8pm: Snooth, MealSnap

9pm: IntoNow, GetGlue

10pm: Fashism

11pm: Localmind

Out for the Night

12am: Google Offers

1am: Sonar

2am: Alfred

3am: FoodSpotting

At 360i’s Digital Marketing Summit, AOL, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft presented on Exploring the Online Landscape: 2012 and Beyond. Here are some highlights.

Michael Learmonth, Digital Editor, Advertising Age
Tim Castelli, SVP of Sales – Eastern Region, AOL
Mark Ellis, Vice President, North American Field Sales, Yahoo!
David Bryant, Creative Strategist, Google
Rick Song, General Manager – Eastern Region, Microsoft

AOL: Tim Castelli, SVP Sales – Eastern US Region

-Engaged people are more likely to buy your stuff. – 360i CEO Bryan Wiener
-Content is the best way to engage people.
-AOL launched Project Devil because the web wasn’t great for brand marketers, or consumers.
-Launched new units such as Window Shopper – encourage shopping without leaving the site, and Creative Optimization – better incorporation of your images into its ads.

David Bryant, Creative Strategist, Google

-Introducing the “Human Operationg System” – interfacing very well with other humans
-We’re still physical. We are making technology more compatible with us. Humans become more abstract, while computers become more physical. We like things to act like physical objects. The closer we simulate the real world, the better.
-We are social. We were sharing stories 32,000 years ago, before we read or spoke or wrote. If we had a global campfire, it would probably be YouTube. We constantly invent new ways of telling stories. See Kutiman on YouTube, for example.
-Location: we closely link location with emotional memory.

Rick Song, General Manager – Eastern Region, Microsoft

-Global creative solutions team (aka BEET – branded entertainment and experience team): build custom stories from the ground up for brands
-Ties in web, video, mobile, Xbox
-Kinect: fastest selling consumer device in history (10MM devices in 4 months). Average Xbox Live user spends 60 hours a month on it, and 40% is non-gaming. Big focus on voice controls, which are extending into the ads. In time, it should extend into live TV viewing directly through the Xbox. The tile experience will mirror the Windows Phone tiles. Bing search will be closely integrated.
-NUI Ads – Natural User Interface: see an ad on Xbox, say “tweet this,” and it goes right to your feed. Say “Xbox near me” and it can find local stores in your neighborhood, or get a text to your phone. This has the potential to change TV advertising.

Mark Ellis, Vice President, North American Field Sales, Yahoo!

-Billing itself as the premier digital media company.
-Leading properties: #1 in News, Sports, TV, Finance, Mail, Shopping, Real Estate, Messenger, Autos, etc
-Yahoo royal wedding coverage: 20 million unique US users, 1 billion pageviews. Tent pole events are a big focus as they keep setting new records in the audience.
-Personalized content: Content Optimization Relevancy Engine (CORE) – serving 13 million variations of the homepage a day
-Innovations:
* Original video programming – Yahoo produces 9 of top original video programs, launching more this fall. Yahoo Screen launching to build on that.
* Connected everywhere – TV, phone, tablets, PCs. Next gen news stand for iPad – Livestand. Uses CORE. Focus on IntoNow.
* Social discovery and discussion: Social version of Yahoo News, with deep Facebook integration.

Some moments can last forever. As a marketer, you have the power to create such moments yourself. Are you ready for your moment of truth?

You better be. The “moment of truth” concept has been around for years now. There are three you may have heard of so far, and I’ll make the case for a fourth.

• The best known is the First Moment of Truth (FMOT), coined by Procter & Gamble in 2005. This is the window, just three to seven seconds long, where a shopper encounters a product on a store shelf and decides whether to buy it.
• The Second Moment of Truth (SMOT), also described by P&G, is the moment when a consumer uses the product. This is another powerful marketing opportunity.
• Google first added the prequel, called the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) in a blog post last year and now on a new site with a must-read e-book. This is the period of time where a consumer searches for information and is exposed to various sources before arriving at the store.
• The fourth moment that must be added is the Infinite Moment of Truth (IMOT). If a shopper progressed from ZMOT to FMOT to SMOT (or, from researching to shopping to owning), then there’s the potential for sharing. The IMOT is infinite in three ways: a consumer can share such experiences with a nearly infinite number of people directly and indirectly; there are infinite ways a consumer can share such experiences; and the consumer can share such experiences over an infinite period of time.

Read the full article »

By now, you’ve had a chance to try out Google Plus or read countless posts about it from the lucky thousands or millions or however many have access. If you’re like me, you’ve jumped from one column saying how it’s Google’s best homegrown social service ever (compared to Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Knol and Lively) to the next saying it follows in the footsteps of Google’s other homegrown social services (see Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Knol and Lively).

You don’t have time for any more of that. Let’s cut to the chase with an FAQ, penned by someone who has no insider knowledge but has at least joined a Google Plus video chat with ubergeek Robert Scoble. While some questions are invented, many came directly to me via Google+, Facebook, and my colleagues.

Q: What does Google+ do?

It’s a social network, like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a video chat application, like Skype. It’s a feed to show what you’re interested in, like Tumblr in a sense, but more like an RSS feed of news alerts. It allows for things to be shared with a small, select group of people, like Path. You can check in, like Foursquare. And, umm, there’s other stuff.

Q: Okay, so what does it really do, and why should I use it?

It does all of these things, and it will do even more.  In some ways, I want Google to really nail this, partly because I respect the company and partly because I’m rooting for some friends there. On the flipside, I’m juggling too many social services as is, and I’m in no rush to use another, especially one that doesn’t easily integrate with all the rest of them. It’s quite possible you will instantly love one of its features, but most will need to wait for it to develop more.

Q: What’s a Circle?

A Circle, in Google+ parlance, is a custom group of friends. You put people you know or are interested in into one or more Circles — friends, family, coworkers, groupies, clients, church members, soccer moms, or whatever you want. You can share things publicly, to specific Circles, all Circles, or even extended Circles — which are the people in your connections’ Circles.

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I recently spoke to DIGIDAY:DAILY about group photo-sharing app Color, which has picked up $41 million in venture financing. In the article I tell Bryan Barletta that Color can maintain its cool factor by adapting and scaling to offer new ways to share and consumer content based on what’s happening in your immediate surroundings.

Image via Color

The DIGIDAY piece goes on to list four ways Color could potentially turn a profit – if it’s able to capture strong user interest: Brand Accounts (allowing for real-time conversation and interaction in local hubs by posing questions, challenges and sharing events); Contextual Advertising (through tags or photo buckets, not currently available within the app); Real-time Location Ads (venues encouraging patrons to use the app and show how much fun they’re having); and Filters and Frames (branded filters, in vein with Instagram and Hipstamatic).

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