Retail experience evolution–take it with you!

I continue to be baffled by assertions that mobile is a threat to digital signage.  I was responding to a question via email and thought it would be a good blog post.  So here is the meat of that email.  (Another good example of repurposing content).

Mobile is not a threat to digital signage.  It’s an opportunity for partnership.  Mobile devices should be used to extend reach of digital signage, for customer interaction and control, and for content creation.

Consumers are now taking their screens with them.  A year ago, people were watching YouTube and Facebook videos on their mobile phones.  Now they’re watching live TV broadcasts.  A few weeks ago, while riding home on Lynx (Charlotte’s commuter train) from NCAA Tournament games, I found myself watching games from other venues on my phone.  I didn’t want to wait to get home to keep up with the action.

Our culture of instant information—anywhere, anytime—is resulting in the need for advertisers (both traditional and online) to provide methods for consumers to interact in a manner where their mobile devices allow them to dive deeper.  In that way the ads generate the interest, and then provide an element of way-finding for the users to gather more info on products, services and promotions.  This can include more detailed reviews, videos, coupons—pretty much anything that can be imagined.

My company’s digital signage solution is already achieving this through the support of 2D barcodes (QR Codes, JAG Tags, MS Tag) within a majority of our templates, and the inclusion of a QR Code generator within our Cobalt digital signage solution.  Interaction is also achieved with 2D barcodes where our clients enable the viewing of additional product and service details, publishing of coupons, etc. on smartphones with code readers.

Content creation within Cobalt is achieved today with our Twitter integration.  From anywhere a Cobalt user can update content by simply tweeting it.  Within minutes it is updated on their screens.  This can also easily be done with Facebook feeds, and Facebook and Flickr photo and video albums.  Vimeo may also be a possible mobile and social media source for video content created from mobile phones.

Proximity marketing is achieved through the integration of Facebook places, Foursquare, Color or other popular mobile apps.  Consumers are using these to show affinity for brands and places, locate nearby friends, shop deals promoted through these services and I’m sure more to come.  Digital signage should be used by retail venues to promote the use of these services in ways that both demonstrate to consumers that they want these relationships and recognize those who are using them.  Displaying recent Foursquare or Facebook “check-ins”, encouraging photo and video sharing, and recognizing frequent patrons can go a long way toward extending the reach of a brand.  Digital signage is a perfect initiator for this practice.

In short, the possibilities and opportunities both for digital signage companies and consumers include virtually anything we can imagine–and then some.  I can’t wait to see how the retail experience  continues to evolve as a result.

The Value of Social Media Marketing

It’s been a while since I last posted.  During a recent run I was thinking about social media marketing and thought it was time to type again.  So I’m going to make an effort to ponder something during a run each week, and leave it here for the world to see.  Hopefully, something will resonate.

My wife recently started a small company focussed on helping other small- and mid-sized companies with marketing project management and social media marketing strategies.  This certainly isn’t an advertisement for what she’s doing (if you’re interested, you’ll see a link to her company from my LinkedIn profile–I’m also the treasurer).  But it is intended to validate the latter part of the business description I just provided.

There has been a ton of buzz about social media over the past few years, and over the past year or so more specifically about how businesses are using it to extend their brands and engage their clients.  It’s this second part that I believe is where the true value of social media marketing resides.

I’m sure that there have been many marketing-related articles and blog posts about the value of social media in promotion.  But as a layman, I’m going to try to connect the dots on my own.

During my run, it occurred to me that in this economy traditional advertising has not been effective (cost or otherwise) for companies other than the largest brands who consistently focus marketing dollars on brand-building.  Think Coke, Bud Light and AT&T.  For the rest of the business world, and especially small businesses, succeeding during the past few years has been heavily based upon the relationships these companies have had with their customers.

So social media enables businesses (and brands) to extend the reach of these relationships.  Now a local business can engage with a customer at her place of work via Twitter, on her phone via location-based applications such as Foursquare or at home with Facebook.  Of course there are dozens of other social media platforms, but I chose these few based upon their popularity.

Via these “forums” a business can promote specials and the latest “news” surrounding the brand.  As importantly, the company may solicit feedback or comments from a customer, or encourage that customer to share her affinity for the company with her friends and colleagues.  This last portion is where the relationship truly extends its reach, growing to include others in the circles the original customer shares.

This certainly does not directly result in revenue for the business with every “degree of separation” that these relationships grow.  But it creates a brand affinity that companies just can’t buy with traditional advertising–and at a substantially reduced cost.

Just as any campaign does, effective social media requires a strategy.  That may be a topic of a future post.  I’ll have to ponder that on my next run.

Stifling the free market is not the solution

The capitalist in me has a major issue with the assertion that Google might be a threat to the economy, as suggested in Googleopoly VI Seeing The Big Picture: How Google is Monopolizing Consumer Internet Media & Threatening a Price Deflationary Spiral & Job Losses in a $ Trillion Sector, by Scott Cleland.  Heck, that title alone might be a threat to the economy if too many copies were printed.

While I can appreciate the intent of anti-trust laws, few will find what Google has done to improve productivity, creativity and collaboration over the past decade to be anything but revolutionary.

Yes, there are open source productivity suites such as OpenOffice available to users.  But Google Docs provides similar functionality without the need for installation, upgrades and general IT support.  It simultaneously allows users access  and collaborate on these documents from any browser on any system anywhere with Internet access.

Gmail, Google Voice, Google Talk, Google Maps, Calendar, and dozens of additional web-based tools further enhance productivity and collaboration.  This doesn’t even include Google’s successful acquisitions, such as YouTube, Picassa and Blogger.  Google has done an outstanding job either improving on existing products and services through interface, enhancements and integration, or creating entirely new ones.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are certainly reasonable concerns over Google’s access and use of collected user entered and tracking data.  But remember that each of these tools that I’ve listed above are available free of charge.  Anyone who things that “free” is truly free is certainly naive.

Remember that prior to Google’s coming of age, Microsoft was the target of world domination theorists.  Yahoo has been similarly positioned in the past.

Google should be applauded for what it has done to improve many of our personal and professional experiences.  Up and coming companies, as well as those large companies waiting in the wings, should be doing their best to learn from and improve upon what Google has done.

Let’s encourage success instead of stifling creativity, ingenuity and efficiency.  In a decade, perhaps we’ll be reading complaints of some new company and comparing it to Google, just as Google is compared to Microsoft today.

On-Demand Media in the Workplace

With even those businesses with the most strict policies and technical challenges embracing social media as a means to evangelize their products and services and improve both internal and external communication, I frequently wonder what it will take for more businesses to use on-demand media as a means for corporate communication and training.  There are certainly many businesses out there that do just this.  And many more that offer technologies to facilitate this process.  But these represent only a small percentage of businesses that could utilize these services.

My seven and nine-year-old daughters routinely “shoot” video with my oldest’s iPod Nano.  We watch their home videos on the Nano’s tiny screen or sometimes on the home computer after loading the videos with Photoshop Elements.  My wife does the same with her pocket-sized digital camera at swim meets, dance recitals and the such.  Occasionally, they end up on Facebook.  As far as I know they haven’t made it to YouTube yet.  But many others’ home videos have.

The point being that there are video capture devices all around us, and easy means to make them available to others.  Within reach I have an iPhone, digital camera, iPod Nano, video camera and web-camera.  All also include microphones.  I can very simply capture images, video, audio.  I can nearly as simply assemble these with free or very inexpensive tools like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie.

Individuals do this every day.  They then upload to YouTube, Facebook, or dozens of other free and subscription services to make this content available to friends and family.  Businesses do the same (some times more professionally produced, other times not) to promote their offerings on these same or branded websites.

Some organizations use branded YouTube channels to both promote and educate.  iTunes offers simple publishing tools for audio and video Podcasts.  Are written “Poddocs” too far behind now that Apple has introduced its iBooks bookstore app?  Apple already has the fastest growing on-demand video platform.  A recent Financial Times article identifies iTunes as likely to be the largest video-on demand service, surpassing both Comcast and Time Warner, within a few years.

I’m not suggesting that Apple has the solution–just that they have the right idea.  With rare exceptions (e.g., Final Cut Pro and Mac Pro), they certainly have consumer product leanings.  Their iMovie product is excellent.  iMovie for the iPhone was recently released at a cost of  only $4.95.  Add in a simple distribution tool in iTunes Podcasts, and they essentially have a very inexpensive, easy-to-use, and consumer-friendly platform for businesses to use for publicly accessible video training.

This, of course, does not address those instances where businesses must contain their media within the friendly confines of corporate networks.  I suppose that Apple could license its iTunes platform for similar purposes.  But that’s unlikely given existing precedent.  More likely, alternative asset management systems such as Microsoft’s popular SharePoint enterprise platform would suffice.

Regardless, consumer products and services often evolve to meet corporate needs.  The employees are already the content producers.  They are already eager for platforms and methods to share this information.  It’s time that more companies establish platforms to support this type of creativity and collaboration.

How is hyper-localization like SaaS?

Bernard Golden wrote a very interesting perspective regarding the direction of local media, with a comparison to cloud computing.  It was published on CIO.com yesterday.  In the post, Golden discusses the quick demise of newspaper as readers migrated to the web.  He further predicts, with help from Alan Mutter, that local TV could very well follow suit.

The debate over hyper-localization of news has been ocuring for the past decade.  It’s often argued that the big newspapers lost their audience, not due to access of web over print, but due to a focus on world or national content rather than local content.  People in a market turn to their local news sources for local news, not what’s happening in Cape Town, South Africa.

Hyper-localization goes beyond news.  It means that individuals demand relevant content regardless of the venue or application. It’s why grocery stores print coupons for the products that you buy (or at least products marketed to comparable demographics) on the back of your receipt.  It’s why advertising on web-pages is trafficked based upon your browsing patterns.  And it’s why advertisers want platforms that tie into POS systems so that their pitch can be customized real-time, based upon customer demographics, sales transactions and traffic patterns.

We’ve come to expect this level of customization over the past couple decades.  We no longer by music by albums, but by single tracks.  Cars are offered with a myriad of “options”.  TV isn’t watched per the networks’ schedules, but from your DVR or on-demand.  So why shouldn’t our local news transition from a half-hour at 6pm and 11pm to a host of RSS feeds assembled in the order we want them, rather than teasers that require us to sit through five minutes of weather pattern explanation before showing the forecast followed by local sports.  Do I really care about what happened 30 minutes away from home, or can I just focus on the local news from the areas of town where I live, work and play.

Golden’s transition from media to cloud-based computing services initially caught me off-guard.  It didn’t seem to apply.  But his argument is basically that are used to what we want, when we want it, and that we’ll pay by the drink for it.  If we want more, we’ll ratchet up the service for it.  Look at our your cable or satellite TV bill, or satellite radio.  It’s basically that.  Want a movie?  Add it to the bill.  Want every NFL game?  Tack it on.  Then drop it off at the end of the season, or next season, when your team drafts poorly.

Why not do the same with infrastructure and software?  Businesses want the same customization as individuals.  It may not be hyper-localization.  But the same rules apply.  Need more bandwidth?  Tack it on.  Additional CPU power?  Add it.  More (or fewer) seat licenses for an application?  If it’s web-based, there’s a licensing model for that.

SaaS and IaaS adoption has taken off over the past few years.  The economy has prevented many businesses, and individuals, from investing in large systems and software implementation.  The people that run those businesses are the same ones looking for that customization in their consumer lives.  They pay for other services and products on a monthly basis as consumers.  Why not do the same in their professional lives. IaaS and SaaS fulfill that need, and give them the agility and scalability to move where and when they need to.

iPhone Goes IT? Is iPad next?

I read an interesting article on CIO Online this morning.  In iPhone Wins Over the Tech Crowd,  author Tom Kaneshige spends some time with Special Devices IS Manager, Shane Allen, discussing why his IT team has fled the Blackberry, and even Windows platforms, to adopt the iPhone as an IT tool.

Prior to it’s release, I reviewed the potential IT aspect of the iPad in this blog.  Then, I cited that the applications would eventually determine if IT would embrace it.  I’ve often thought that, at their respective price points, both the iPhone and iPad could be made to be very versatile IT tools.  It appears as though the development community has identified this as well.

Since the Android release, and the subsequent popularity of the two Droid phones, I leaned more in that direction.  After all, Google’s platform is significantly more open.  And it is supported on more devices and networks.  Developers have been gravitating to Android applications–but not fleeing the iPhone as quickly as some predicted.

It will be interesting to see which, if either, wins the IT community.  There’s no question that each platform is ripe for tool development.

Once IT adoption grows, I predict that we’ll see these devices springing up elsewhere.  Many business models–from hospitals to warehouses–could, given the right applications, utilize these devices.  But until IT supports them, general business adoption will be slow.

Mobile Money

After hearing about Asians buying soft drinks and performing other monetary transactions via their mobile phones for the past ten years, it looks like North Americans are finally ready to jump on the bandwagon.  While the technical infrastructure has been here for a while, Americans and Canadians mobile technology has traditionally lagged that of eastern countries like Japan and Korea.  Our willingness to pass cash via technology has similarly lagged.

A recent Unisys study, cited on CSO Online, finds that an overwhelming percentage (83) of US mobile phone users are ready to join the revolution.  It seems that convenience triumphs once again.

Yes, there are potential security risks.  But most are the same as those resident in online banking, and online shopping.  Credit card use has always carried a risk–what is that waiter doing with my card when he walks around the corner where I can’t see him.  But that risk often comes with the security of knowing that your exposure may be minimized by the bank’s assurance that you are only responsible for X dollars should your card be fraudulently used and properly reported.

Similar recent articles show that mobile devices are being widely adopted worldwide for entertainment and travel ticket purchasing and check-in.  European and Asian rail passengers are rapidly turning to their mobile devices for both types of transactions.  Delta and other airlines allow passengers to download boarding passes to their mobile devices for use at a growing number of airports.  My wife even purchased Miley Cyrus concert tickets for my daughters on TicketMaster via my iPhone while we were driving through the North Carolina mountains last summer.

The New York Times recently published and article and subsequent blog about New Yorkers sending money via their phones to friends who where picking up coffee.  And PayPal’s recent launch of its second version of the Send Money application for iPhone makes it simple and fast for individuals to pass money between one-another or to a business.

It’s coming.  I’ve often been a promoter of the elimination of change.  (I can’t stand the weight and sound of it in my pocket.)  Perhaps this is a sign of something bigger–the eventual elimination of cash.  Or will privacy trump convenience, as consumers concern for the knowledge and analysis of their transactions outweighs their desire to avoid another stop at the ATM.  My bet is being placed on convenience.

Gun Dog Training, Children & Management

P.J. O’Rourke’s article, Fetch Daddy a Drink, from the February/March 2010 issue of Garden & Gun is simply brilliant.  His dry humor and cerebral writing style are not anything that I can compete with.  But they are things that I can appreciate.

His single-sentence fourth paragraph beckon’s you to read on.  ”It took me years to realize that I should stop asking myself what I’m doing wrong as a parent and start asking myself what I’m doing right as a dog handler.”

The lessons from gun dog training that he relates to his child-rearing experience are simple ones:

1. Start ‘em young
2. Repetition, repetition, and still more repetition
3. Keep lessons short
4. Don’t clutter up his brain with useless nonsense
5. Discipline
6. Use simple commands
7. Praise

Those who know me, understand that I’m not a “pet person”.  I also grew up the son of a hunter.  Maybe it’s because of this that I don’t struggle to appreciate how these two unseemingly familiar topics may be related.

Similar to my last post, O’Rourke’s lesson is simple and applicable to most management situations.  We tend to over-complicate life–and business.  If something works in one situation, it can likely be applied to (many) others.

Find what works for you in your family or social life.  Then break it down to it’s more core elements.  Like O’Rourke, I bet you’ll find a lesson there that you can use elsewhere.  Maybe even in the office.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned Scuba Diving

As I was pondering what thoughts to share on my next blog post, I went to my usual sources.  I often find thoughts provoked by world, domestic, business or technology news.  And I have a tendency to be captivated by leadership attributes of individuals and even organizations.

Then someone shared with me a poem that we’ve all read at least a dozen times, named All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  Robert Fulghum’s timeless poem sticks with us all because of its simplicity and honesty.  Since its first release, as part of a collection of poems in 1986, a number of would-be authors have coined their own variants.  Some are excellent.  Others are entirely inappropriate for this, or most any blog.

For an unknown reason I started thinking about the lessons I’ve learned via scuba diving that apply to life in general.  Here goes.

1. Whether going underwater or otherwise out into the world, it’s always best to have a plan.  Where are you going, for how long, what are you going to do while you’re there, and when will you be back.  Spontaneity can wonderful.  But some things in life are safer done with a plan in place.

2. In life or overboard, it’s not only safer to go with a buddy, it’s more enjoyable.

3. Relax. Nearly everything in life is better when you’re in the right state of mind.  And your air lasts longer.

4. Once you slow down and relax, observe what’s occurring around you.  There a good chance that you’ve been missing many of the details, and that they just might be more interesting that whatever you’ve been focusing upon.

5. Don’t be afraid to try something new.  Explore!  You just might find something new that you like.

6. Get your own gear–and the right gear for that matter.  That level of commitment will insure that you remain engaged.  It’s always easier to quit something that you really want to do when you can make the excuse that you don’t have the tools.

7. Doing something with a buddy is just the first step.  Almost everything in life improves when you share the experience with others.  The more you give, the more you’ll find that you receive.

The point of this exercise is that whatever your passion or interest, if your filter it down its core elements, you’re likely to find a fair share of lessons that may be applied to life in general.  My examples of planning, having a “buddy”, relaxing, observing, exploring and sharing could easily reference any experience in life.  Whether you’re entering a job interview, a marriage, dealing with children, or going on vacation, these simple steps are applicable.

I suppose that’s why Fulghum’s poem achieved so much success that nearly 25 years later it’s still being emailed between friends.  By keeping things simple, not only can everyone relate.  But people  take away from these simple lessons something that improves their everyday life–and that of those around them.

It’s the Data, Stupid

In a prior blog post, I commented on the value of metadata.  Some recent observations have reiterated this in my mind.  Many a company, and application, was built around the need for information.

Google, alone, has thrown billions at hundreds of applications that might provide users with a venue for submitting data via keyed entry, traffic patterns, file sharing and other “profiling” of user actions.  For the past four years (and a couple days), Twitter has collected information freely supplied by its users.

Facebook has spent the past several years as a platform for users to share information with one-another.  Quietly behind the scenes, they’ve allowed companies and individuals to develop applications for this platform.  Each time a user shares one of these “apps” with another user, that data is tracked.  Worse, often the sharing user’s other profile data is also made available to the application for further data mining.  Facebook has received a good deal of criticism during the past 18 months for this.  While they’ve made it easier for users to “lock-down” accounts so that they may only be shared with friends, most Facebook users are too naïve to do so, and many have installed so many applications that doing so requires an enormous amount of time to administer.

Like Twitter, Foursquare receives regular updates by users offering their location, actions and local insight.

Is this bad?  No.  Might it be used to do something harmful?  Absolutely.  In just a couple weeks, personal privacy advocate website PleaseRobMe.com attracted so much international press that it stopped displaying what it initially intended to promote.  In the authors’ own words “We are satisfied with the attention we’ve gotten for an issue that we deeply care about.”  What is that issue?  They wrote a simple algorithm to track users freely published Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other information to show when people were away from home and were promoting themselves as prime targets for home robbery.

Like almost everything else in life, there are two sides to every story.  Just because something can be used in a negative way doesn’t mean that it is bad.  The same user tracking data may be used for businesses to more directly target marketing to consumers who wish to receive it.  Companies do so on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare for example.

Most grocery stores, and many other retailers, offer frequent shopper or affinity cards that offer discounts and promotions.  Amazon uses user search and past sale history to recommend items.  Users appreciate the personalization and attention, and like the fact that weeding through thousands (or more) items is simpler.

Why do businesses want this data?  Simply put, the more they know about you, the better they can serve you.  Scary?  Perhaps.  But this type of personal privacy has eroded since the advent of credit cards and large banks, and has evolved substantially in the past 15 years as data capture, storage and mining has become much more sophisticated.

Now individual activity is tracked through subscriptions (both online and mail), buying habits (both online and in-store), web browsing, channel surfing, banking and a host of other transactions that every one of us makes every day.  Data is captured via credit cards, computers, affinity cards, cable boxes, and a host of scanners. (Yet, the 2010 US Census form still must be mailed in, rather than completed online.  Our tax dollars are, again, hard at work.)

Data is stored in databases that are relatively small, easy to organize and quick to sort through.  As an example, my small company now logs more than 50 million ad and event playback transactions each month for just one client with fewer than 500 locations.

America, and the world may have entered the information age over 20 years ago.  But the real ability to sort through all of this data to get to the information has only become a reality for the masses in the past few years.  Sure, the blue chip companies could filter this data long before this.  But now the speed and intelligence required to aggregate data from multiple sources, process, and develop information that may be used to make real-time decisions is just coming to fruition.

Business intelligence, data mining, real-time metrics, and analytics are they next wave of business.  Companies like Google, SAS, Yahoo! and to a lesser degree Microsoft, have known and capitalized on this for years. Smaller companies are popping up to fill industry- and application-specific niches.  They’ll likely be absorbed by the larger companies or grow to compete among them.

As consumers, this is not something that can (or should) be fought–but instead something that should be embraced responsibly. If not, we will be left behind with mailboxes full of spam and our identities in jeopardy.  Likewise, businesses that are not looking to their customers and transactions for data to help them grow, specialize and target will also be left behind.  But those that do will compete and lead their respective industries as this wave of knowledge grows toward something we can’t even imagine today.