Presenting from the cloud, part two

I'm waiting for a plane to take off, and get into a conversation with the guy next to me.  He asks what I do, and when I explain that I run the strategy group at a digital agency, he wants to know what we've done and how we do it.

Robert v1.0 answer: I tell him what we do, ask for a card, tell him I'll send him samples or point him at a links list

Robert v2.0 answer: I whip out my iPhone, launch Soonr, and flip through a quick capabilities presentation, including creative samples, all served from the cloud.

How does it work?

• I signed up for Soonr, and got several other client-facing execs in the agency to do the same thing
• I created a folder for iPhone creds decks, and pointed it at Soonr for cloud backups
• I logged into my Soonr account and shared the file with my coworkers on the service
• I downloaded the Soonr app to my iPhone
• I optimized a version of our deck for the small screen, punching up font sizes and removing things like our tiny footer

That's it. Now, when I change the deck on my hard drive, it synchs with Soonr via the cloud and is available on my phone anywhere I have a connection. (Hard to do on a plane after takeoff right now, but wireless is increasingly available on planes, so that will be changing, and fast.

And with one of these, I could present to a crowd from the iPhone... is this a great world or what?

Are you presenting from the cloud? Let me know.

Presenting from the cloud, part one

 Recently we participated in a review where it was important to demonstrate to the prospect that we understood their highly digitally engaged target audience, and that we as an agency were very "digital" as well. We tailored our presentation to demonstrate both these points, chucking PowerPoint overboard along the way.

Here's a run-down of how we ran the presentation:

• Core slides (not many) ran off a presentation in Google Docs
• Ran a video with our account planner talking about research highlights from Vimeo
• The planner presented some theme boards about audience insights, which were built in Scrapblog
• Clicked over to Coroflot for our some case study creative
• Created comic-book illustrations of our clients and presented client references from Comiqs

Seem like a stunt? Maybe so. But when we said to the client

"We're not showing you anything from our local computer.

Everything you are seeing was created using tools your audience could seek out and try on the web."

The reaction was... great. Un-tethering the presentation physically helped our clients un-tether themselves from their expectations of what a presentation was supposed to be.

Of course, we had a backup plan - we downloaded the Google Docs presentation and all the graphical assets, and could have presented them from the laptop if we needed to. And don't forget to make sure the client has live internet access in the room!

Let me know about your adventures presenting from the cloud.

Infosnack: latest data on Twitterverse

The folks at Pew Internet have profiled Twitter users vs. Internet users who don't. (They do exist, trust me. Easy for the digerati to forget when you are immersed in the medium.)

We've packaged them visually for convenient consumption and snuggled the presentation into our slidespace at Slideshare ... bottom line is, Twitter users have a higher degree of affinity for mobile, wireless and social connection than your average online adult. Check out the slide on news consumption...

#socialbowl: Twitter tactics

While the great mass of digital commentators seem to have gravitated to simply reviewing Super Bowl ads this year (more on this later this week), we took a different tack, posting and asking for comments on advertisers web, social and mobile tie-ins. (We used hashtags #digitalbowl, #socialbowl and #mobilebowl.) We got a few contributors but ended up doing most of the posting ourselves... hope to build on it next year!

One thing we noted was Twitter participation among advertisers. We found four brands actively participating: HR Block, Sobe, Pepsi and E-Trade.

@hrblock helped us find the HR Block mobile site when we struggled with it, and offered to find out more information about device re-directs when one of our phones didn't pick up their site correctly. (Would have been better if hrblock actually followed through.

@sobeworld jumped in when we wondered where to get the 3D glasses, since the link referenced on their promo page didn't exist on the homepage it pointed to. Sobeworld pointed out that the promo had just ended, which we pointed out was probably accurate but possibly out of touch with the expectations of consumers sitting around gettting ready to watch the game. Bowled over by our impressive display of logic, sobeworld responded "noted"

What got a little weird was when sobeworld then switched into hungry lizard mode for the game - somewhat of a disconnect in voice and tone. When brands have a character tweeting, should they have a separate identity to just do basic customer service stuff? OR do the service stuff in the personality of the character... either way, but mix and match probably not the best approach.

@etradebaby kept up the tone of the campaign with a running commentary on the game and tweeted out  a link to some baby outtakes, too. Points for consistency. The baby caught onto the #superbowlads hashtag about halfway through the game. Nice catchup, but shouldn't you have known - even at your age?

@pepsuber also kept up the tone with inane tweets that featured a lot of "pepsi pepsi pepsi" messaging.

The verdict: No clear winners.  Good to see brands augmenting the ad conversation with Twitter, but lots of inconsistency and lack of ability for the tweeters to add value (beyond the E-Trade video extras) make this seem like exploratory efforts, not full-blown campaign elements.

Did we miss anyone? Let us know at #socialbowl.com

Radiohead is after me lucky charms

With all the crap music out there today (you kids get off my lawn!) it is so refreshing to see groups like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead give the entire music industry a run for their money using technology and creativity.

Case in point: The Create Your Rainbow video app which allows you to edit between 12 cameras that filmed a live Radiohead show and then view and share your edit with other fans.

I'm not sure if the big record labels will ever figure out what is happening here. Musicians making music and allowing their fans to help package and promote it wrapped in a bit of their own creativity. By giving a bit of creative control over your packaging to the end user, you give them a vested interest in spreading your message.

It's magically delicious. -B

Moms beat an ad, but they can't beat Obama, Twitter

 
Motrin vs. Obama: smackdown

Motrin vs. Twitter: Motrin who?


Motringate took up what may or may not be an outsized portion of our collective attention last week. While Motrin certainly seems to have missed the boat on engaging in dialogue versus simply reacting by yanking the ad, Marketing VP at McNeil Labs Kathy Widmer can take some comfort from the fact that Obama and, in fact, the very topic of Twitter itself made Motrin look like, well, two tiny yellow -  er, i mean a couple of puny pills all week long.

Of course having a social media strategy involves an understanding of and committment to dialogue; in addition, however, relative influence is a key concept, and in just pulling the ad, it certainly seems as though Motrin's marketing team, and their ad agency (how many ad agencies understand dialogue and influence anyway?) showed a lack of preparation for both of these key issues.

Is  your brand team prepared - and do they understand that none of their agencies execute in a silo? That any 1.0 tactic can engage  2.0 audiences - whether you have a social strategy or not.

Understand the mindset, not just the media moment

According to ExactTarget's 2008 Channel Preference Survey,  younger consumers favor IM and text messaging for personal communication, but they prefer email for marketing communication. And 56% of those 18-24 had made a purchase because of a marketing message received vial email, down a little from 35-44 year olds, 66% of whom had purchased vial email.

The distinction is a clear indicator of the need to go beyond media usage alone as a targeting criteria, and to define the mindset associated with the use of a particular media form in order to understand the potential role of marketing for a particular user of a particular medium.

THINK's model of media usage clearly defines texting and IM usage among 18-24 year olds as an "interaction" mindset, and commercial email as a "transactional" mindset. Based on this model, brands would be wise to take very different approaches to each medium. This latest research bears out the distinction.

If any good can come from great evil...

Through history, moments of great adversity have often increased the speed of adoption of transformative technologies. Wars have given us widespread availability of radar, sonar and reliable wireless communications, Katrina drove expansion of the use of social networking and other self-publishing tools, and so on.

Will one outcome of the horrors at Virginia Tech be a sea-change in the adoption of text messaging networks? VT will join other schools such as Penn State in offering students the ability to register for text messaging, via offerings from vendors such as Rave Wireless.

But that's really the tip of the iceberg. What we should be looking at is the widespread adoption of text messaging for up-to-the minute alerting of critical news based on affiliation or place-based context... if:

• Carriers re-think their pricing models, and abandon the usurious surcharges for text messaging (by the message or flat-rate) that maintain it as a niche product for youth. In countries where SMS is dirt-cheap, volume is high.
• Carriers (or messaging networks) work with public safety officials to create more global opt-ins for messaging about public safety issues such as, heavens forbid, the incident at VT, an upcoming tsunami, a major hazardous material spill, etc. We still sit through those tests of the emergency broadcast system on terrestrial radio, after all.

Omnilert and M/A-Com have offerings that have enjoyed limited uptake. Time to get rolling on more widespread adoption.

MySpace not a popular shopping site: shocker!

The other day iProspect and Jupiter released the results of a new Social Networking User Behavior study. It seems that interviews with users of social media have found that users search social media sites to connect with friends, search reviews on Amazon when they want to buy stuff, and search YouTube when they are looking for entertainment. Oh, and social content on Amazon (reviews) are a lot more likely to influence purchase behavior than social content on MySpace or Facebook.

At the risk of sounding just a bit snarky, duh! Now that I have that out of my system -- this is why social networking and media consumption and sharing sites present marketers with opportunities to do things other than present product reviews and click to buy messaging -- for instance, branding. But even when you want to do that, just remember where your brand fits in the user's view of the media environment they have chosen to inhabit at that time. Market to the mindset, not just the medium.

Did we really need another survey to tell us this?

Advertising's chaos senario 2.0

Bob Garfield has a long thought-inspiring article at Ad Age on the chaotic conditions facing advertisers. In short its all about niche verses mass and the old global agencies and traditional media outlets are not structured to make the transition.  Bob comes up with five truths about the current situation.

1. People don't like ads
2. But they crave information
3. The consumer is in control. No, really.
4. Diversion of ad budgets
5. Pay-per-view

"In imagining Chaos 2.0, you must follow the no-money. And when you do, you'll have taken the Chaos Scenario one step further: to a digital landscape in which marketing achieves hitherto unimaginable effectiveness, but in which display advertising's main role will be to quickly, straightforwardly, informatively draw you into a broader brand experience."