With a great example of showing that you care about the passions of your customers - Friskies created three branded HTML 5 / CSS3 games for tablet devices, that generate “cat-gagement” by awakening the natural instincts of cats to react to movement.
It’s not the only example out there, and some may say that the branding is a little off, but my cat had a great time going fishing.
Okay, this is about the craziest technological trend I have spotted in a while. Robotic furniture that is self-powered through the electricity generated from the living and dying of insects, rodents and other small animals, using microbial fuel cells. The product category is called Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots. “Huh?”, you say? That’s what I said. Check it out:
Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots from Auger-Loizeau on Vimeo.
It looks like this video was posted to Vimeo 2 years ago already. I am surprised this interesting trend hasn’t caught on and that I hadn’t heard about it before. I would have expected to see first implementations ready for sale at Ligne Roset? Joking and issues of taste aside, I would love to see the marketing brief for this one.
Submitted by Daniel Wiedmann
Leo Burnett Worldwide CCO Mark Tutssel sent us this inspiring video today. Jay Denhart also blogged about this from a semantic point of view here a few weeks ago, but I felt like talking about its relevance to the study of human behavior and brand management.
In this TED talk, research Deb Roy talks about an amazing project in which he recorded every word and image in his house, as his newborn son grew to learn how to talk and walk. Every bit of human behavior recorded, tracked. He has also found ways of visualizing this data in interesting new ways, unveiling patterns that may not have been apparent before.
Taking this approach the connected mass media world, he has used the tools available to him to show how people, mass media, content and contexts can be interlinked in 3D models, so that we can observe human behavior in the form of new social and interaction structures.
As a creative agency that has declared people and their behavior as the starting point of all our work (and with it behavioral planning), the sheer amount of MIT Media Lab computing power, long-term research vision and prowess to study human behavior makes me drool in envy. But also, as we move away from the brand era of mass media messaging to the people era of connected experiences, the work of Deb Roy reconfirms that continuous and deep study of human behavior - and the endeavor to create tools that help us understand it - is a worthwhile cause. Simply finding out about people’s attitudes and values, and inferring their preferences, just doesn’t cut it anymore. Rather, not only does behavioral planning unveil new patterns and types of insights that we wouldn’t have seen before, it also inspires us in ways to help brands make a qualitative difference in people’s lives that the tools of the TV and Brand era could never have.
While unfathomably complex to unravel and to look at, behavioral insights are much more substantive than traditional “consumer” insights, as they do not express an inferred interpretation about what people think or say about a brand (and how we then may be able to manipulate their perception) but rather, behavioral insights are building blocks to people’s journey through different product categories that paint a much more complete picture of how they actually live, and what they actually do. In other words, finding out what people say or think isn’t nearly as interesting or inspiring as what they do. Not only because those two things are rarely the same, but, more importantly, because today brand management and creating brand engagement isn’t so much about saying something to people but doing something with or for people along their whole customer life cycle. Observing behavior and understanding the drivers of behavior (as beautifully visualized by Deb Roy) therefore leads to not only to a completely different way of creating communications, but also to more purposeful interactions and experiences that allow brands to play a meaningful role in people’s lives.
To most technology buffs, Ray Kurzweil is a household name. He’s made a name for himself predicting technological paradigm shifts fairly accurately and has written many books on the future that not all of hope will happen as he describes.
Apparently he has written a new book that he just plugged on the Colbert report. It seems like a recycled version of one of his last ones, but still, the vision he paints is quite logical and scary at the same time.
Luckily, history isn’t always logical, but still the examples he brings in a worth checking out and not really far-fetched when you look at human behavior. Also, Stephen Colbert’s interview style is always a treat.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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Cool stuff being discussed at SXSW in Austin this weekend. Check out this short video from Mashable showing panelists discussing how people are using social media, specifically Twitter, to interact with TV content.
Panelists included Chloe Sladden of Twitter and Gavin Purcell from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Some television shows have already explicitly included social media mechanics, but many content providers seem to be unprepared for how to structure or approach conversations around their programs. It seems like their biggest concern is control of the conversation.
Still, none of this should be a surprise. If you watch Twitter streams during broadcasts, don’t you always see conversations about the content? I know I have to actually ‘unplug’ to avoid spoilers if I’m taping (what a quaint word) a show nowadays.
Via Mashable
In this TED video, Deb Roy talks about how by taping almost everything that is said or done in his his house, he assembled a rich dataset that captured (among other things) deep insight into how/when his son learned words.
Of course, this kind of research can start people thinking that “I don’t want to record everything in my life!” but I think the implications more far-reaching than privacy concerns alone.
More than anything, I’m fascinated about the possibilities of video and audio data mining in order to study human behavior. The sheer volume of data available through continuous capture lends itself to using regression and other modeling tools to identify patterns that are too subtle for mere observation to pick up on.
1. His presentation shows what is possible in terms of re-creating the real world using very flat-looking tools like overheard video recorders. It creates new possibilities in terms of monitoring behavior through truly non-obtrusive means - increasing the validity of the results. Naturally, I don’t imagine this to be fool proof, as some people might never really ‘get used’ to being taped constantly.
2. The idea of creating a permanent memory bank can be considered to be a family service - allowing families that live great distances from their younger generations to peek into developments (especially major life moments) from afar.
3. I like the fact that he spent time talking about context for learning. It is amazing to see the possibility to model both by location and ‘actor’ - i.e., knowing which combinations of people, situations and places encoded new information in his child’s development.
4. Naturally, as a marketer I’m fascinated to understand how conversations can be triggered by interaction with content, whether online or on TV, and being able to analyse how these different media interact with a family has my mouth watering.
Enjoy.
Via TED
Recently someone at W&V asked me if there were any creative uses for Google Street View, and there was only the album release of “The Editors” that came to mind.
Well, now there is more.
Red Bull Street Art lets you tag known Graffiti locations on streetview so everyone can see the best graffiti in the world. Not sure how this gives me wings, but then again, it’s a pretty cool idea.
CMS Wire has an excellent article about how mobile marketing is changing, and I found one sentence (actually the first one in the article) especially remarkable:
It used to be about “mobile access” but that’s not it anymore. Our portable devices are now access, participation and creation devices.
Ultimately, this little sentence encapsulates what so many marketers find difficult to accept in how technology has changed how they can engage consumers. It expresses that the consumer expects more than just hearing about your product or service. Reach cannot be only measure of your success anymore. The consumer today needs more than just access to your marketing message.
The rise of mobile as a powerful communication and engagement channel has some marketers thinking about fixing access, rather than designing the right experiences. ”Our site isn’t mobile-accessible! Quick! Make a mobile version!” Unfortunately this reaction tends to lead to suboptimal design for the mobile user.
Thoughtful and strategic marketers know that mobile is not just about access, there are 4 other steps to take in order to have mobile as a strategic element in your marketing plan.
1. The Person - Yes, we always start with the user. What are their behaviors? What devices are they depending on, and what are they doing with them? How are the steps on their journey helped or hindered due to the products, information or services they are using?
2. The Purpose - What do you exist to offer or do? Why would a person desire to participate with you? Linked to the first step, you have to know WHY WILL THEY CARE?
3. The End Game - If they participate with you, what can they gain? And linked to this element is the step of planning how you will be able to measure the participation that you garner from your supporters.
4. The Structure - Where and with what will they participate? In this step you start to get a good idea of the overall shape of the idea. This phase also requires knowing if there are already great platforms out there to utilize, like a smart partner or existing application that can help bring easy functionality to whatever you’re creating.
5. The Access - OK, it is a consideration. Just not the only one! You have to know what the experiences will feel like across the various devices that they may have access to.
And if it looks like the first 3 steps are not unique to mobile campaigns, you win the jackpot - they’re not. Any use of mobile as a delivery channel should start rooted in the Brand, not the channel alone.
So - looking at mobile elements of campaigns you’ve seen, who do you think has taken a strategic approach?
Via @cmswire
Need a quick fix with some facts about global mobile use? This slideshow is almost 5 months old and still a great resource.
Enjoy!
