The Way We Live

(Apple i) Cloud computing

I kind of know what cloud computing is.  People have talked about it for a couple of years now, and I understand it's a Good Thing.  It means, for example, I don't have to pay high, fixed costs to manage the bandwidth I need for my digital marketing campaigns.  It means that some of the applications I run are less prone to gum up.  But my view of cloud computing is pretty much this:

(from here)

If I work hard at it I get it, but it's complicated, somewhat abstract and entirely related to my professional life.

Last weekend though I had one of those epiphanies.  I've recently been downloading books to read on my iPad.  I'm halfway through a book, and on Saturday I was out and about without my iPad but with my iPhone.  I had a bit of time to kill so I idly clicked on the iBook app on my phone and my jaw dropped.  Not only did the phone share the library I've created on the iPad, but the book I was currently reading was open, and to the page I had reached on the iPad an hour earlier while I sat reading in my living room.  I didn't do anything.  I didn't synch, I didn't Bluetooth, I didn't Bump.  I just said 'yes' to iCloud when I set the two devices up and Apple looked after the rest.

As storage gets cheaper and bandwidth increases we'll get more and more used to consuming content wherever and however we want it.  Eventually we'll figure out the open standards required to make seamless content work whatever we're consuming it on, but as usual Apple are the first to figure out how to make it easy for everyone.  

Apple's proprietary platforms will eventually put an upper limit on the reach of iCloud, but for now it's a formidable competitive advantage. It's a service that makes the Apple ecosystem more compelling.  

And best of all, I now understand a bit more about cloud computing.

 

3D printing for expectant parents

When we had our son, now aged 7, we got a scan like this about halfway through the pregnancy:

(from here)

When our daughter came along a couple of years later we were offered one of these:

(from here)

We didn't go for the 3D scan - they're a bit too close to the mummified bodies that get pulled out of peat bogs for my liking - but plenty of people pay their two quid and carry a scan like this around for a few weeks.

Now though, a 3D scan can be turned into something far more, er, noticeable:

 \

So if you're having a baby at Hiro-o Ladies, an obstetric clinic in Tokyo, you can have your foetus cast in resin for eternity.  Or just an individual body part if you'd prefer.  And best of all, in mobile-mad Japan they've reduced the scale of the cast so they can be turned into mobile phone charms.  

I keep half an eye out for things that George Lucas invented in Star Wars that are now possible.  I think this almost qualifies.

(from here)

Lego Cuusoo: long-term co-creation

A pretty good rule for co-creation is to start with something people are already creating.  This worked well for Walker's, who developed a very successful promotion, Do Us A Flavour, around the insight that everyone has a favourite flavour of crisps and loves to talk about it.

Although a part of the incentive for people to submit their flavour was a 1% share of profit from the new flavour for ever, the project was a marketing idea with a business model attached.  Nothing wrong with that - it's a great campaign - but Cuusoo from Lego feels more fundamental.  More like a new way of doing business with some marketing attached.

The idea is simple.  Design the Lego model that you think other Lego fans will like, submit it to the community and if it gets 10,000 'likes' then a panel of Lego designers will assess it for market-worthiness.  If the panel thinks the idea is strong enough then Lego will turn it into a kit and give you 1% of profits they generate from it for 5 years.

This is brilliant for 3 simple reasons.  First, everyone who's ever played with Lego moves quickly from the models Lego sell to the models they can build themselves, so there's an infinite supply of potential new kits.  Second, there's already a very healthy (and vocal) Lego community built over years of successful social and CRM activity, so assessing the likeability of a potential new model is easy.  And finally, even if a kit isn't produced, the possibilility that their model may end up in a Lego box on shelves worldwide is enough to make any Lego fan a die-hard advocate.

One of the mistakes marketers make with co-creation is to force a behaviour that isn't natural.  You can get people to do pretty much anything (even make ads) if you make the incentive compelling enough. But you're always going to have more success, and the quality of co-creation is always going to be better, if you incentivise something that people already do - whether that's talking about their favourite crisps or building an amazing Lego model.  

It looks like Cuusoo kits are available only in Japan at the minute.  Any new business model needs to be tested but I reckon Lego are onto a winner here.  If they can cope with the demand they should open the floodgates.  They'll only lock their fans in more when they do.

Final word: this is my son's new Lego blog.  I promised him I'd plug it!

2 quick posts: illegal file-sharing for 3D renders

One of my favourite sci-fi books is called The Diamond Age by Neal Stevenson.  I like it because it's about what books might become.  And I like it because the author imagines a world where anyone can make anything and our entire economic model, based ultimately on finite resources, is thus made irrelevant.  In the book, people can make simple things in their homes, or they can go to a larger 'fab' and make bigger things.  Both at home and in public the technology imagined is basically a 3D printer.

I was never quite sure where the raw materials came from - I probably need to go back and take another look - but the notion of making your own stuff is pretty beguiling.  Additive manufacturing - starting with nothing and building tangible things layer by layer is nothing new.  3D printers have been around for a while; CES 2012 was full of them.  But everyone's favourite file-sharing site, PirateBay, has just brought Neal Stevenson's vision one step closer.

We've been able to download pirated content - games, music, movies, software, even books - for a while.  But I bet Sigma, the camera lens maker, never thought this would happen:

This is an image from a torrent link on Pirate Bay for a 3D render of a camera lens.  I could download it, and if I had a 3D printer at home, running the right software, I could make it.  Sigma would never even know.

It's not actually as bad as it looks.  The seeder makes it clear that his CAD file is for a model of a camera lens, not the real thing.  But it's a small step from the model of a lens to the individual components of a lens and the instructions needed to put it together.

With enough time and ingenuity we can reverse-engineer anything.  We can figure out what we need to print, and in what material, to create our own shoes.  Or car part.  What PirateBay have opened up is the possibility that the shoes might be Vivienne Westwood or the car part an 'original' VW part.  

Suddenly, a whole bunch of people in businesses that make physical stuff and therefore thought they were safe from the disruptive effects of digital technology might be sleeping a little less easily...

2 quick posts: augmented reality in publishing

The music industry has been disrupted by digital.  The movie industry has been disrupted by digital.  Shopping has been disrupted.  Mass media has been disrupted.  the list goes on.

Publishing is changing too, but the industry seems to be doing a better job of keeping up.  Most importantly, they've realised that although the printed book is the form that we're used to, the content of those books is the thing we value.  So e-books are now sold at volume, and although I wouldn't want to be a bookseller right now, publishers are doing OK.  And here's another evolution of the publishing form, this time taking advantage of AR.  

Every planner has a book in them, and I'm no different.  However, I've been mulling over how I combine my day job - digital marketing - with writing.  I have a new job now so this project is on the back burner for a while, but this book of poetry is getting close to some of the things I want to try:

 

AR effects seen on a laptop screen via your webcam seem a bit old-fashioned now.  I'd have published the book with a companion iPad app so that:

• the triggering of the AR effect is more intuitive and the publisher can use a wider variety of images as triggers, and
• the publisher has the option of selling the app and creating a secondary revenue stream

Being somewhat conservative when it comes to books - I love the feel of paper - I'm pleased publishers have new ways of enhancing the experience of the printed word.  I like the fact that books can be sold at cost and that profit can come from a digitally-driven companion experience.  And I love the fact that kids' books particularly have a new lease of life.  

One last thought though: in an age when businesses and people are encouraged to collaborate and build ecosystems to survive, how does the author starving in his garret need to change?  Some already illustrate as well as write, but do authors now need to learn 3D-rendering skills?  I wonder how many will?

 

Gesture-based interaction

I wrote about the Kinect and the evolution of the UI a couple of months back.  

Typically when a new technology comes along, developers will get hold of it and produce some fairly gimmicky work, but which shows the world the sort of things that are possible with the new kit.  In time, more serious applications are developed that start to provide real value to users, and so, inexorably the technology matures.  This is the journey we've been on with Augmented Reality, for example.

So, predictably, gesture-based interaction beyond gaming is already starting to appear out in the wild.  It's a bit gimmicky, but that's to be expected.  Here's one involving an electric skateboard:

 

Pretty cool.  The skater controls his speed by raising and lowering his hands, just like gamers do on many, many racing games for iPhone and iPad, except for real.

Second, gestures that do away with the TV remote.  

Watch from about 2' 10".  It's a bit more useful, but still ultimately a gimmick.  It's quite a long way from gaming however, so a sign that the technology is moving quickly away from its roots.  

Expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing over the coming months, particularly as developers get to grips with the Kinect SDK.  The opportunities for marketers are clear, with utility and entertainment provided via gesture in any physical space, from conferences to trade shows to events to retail.  It'll be throwaway to begin with, but that's OK.  The signs are that we're already figuring this fantastic new technology out.

Axe Anarchy activation

 

I like Axe communications.  They have a late-teens male audience which encourages them to innovate, and a platform - hot women can't help but like Axe users - that more or less guarantees audience involvement.  So it's annoyingly easy for Unilever to extend every Axe campaign idea in a million different directions.

This one looks interesting.  Collaborative content creation with contributors written into the narrative - naturally involving hot women - and all underpinned by simple sharing options.  If I was written into a cool graphic novel I'd want to show people, so I have no doubt this will work well.  The advertising will provide reach, the activation idea will drive advocacy.  All in all, a nice piece of work.

a milestone: my 100th post

35746 words later, this is post number 100.  If I cut and paste all 100 posts into Wordle, this is what I get:

a few things stand out:

1. I set out to write about how people use technology and how brands and marketing play a part in the process.  So I'm pleased that the word I've used most is 'people'.  If there's a thread running through the blog, it's this.
2. Technology brands have been popular over the 2 years I've been writing.  Facebook seems to be the brand I've mentioned most, with four of the usual suspects also featuring to different degrees - Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Apple.  Interestingly there's no mention of Amazon, although I've certainly written about them once or twice.
3. Digital strategies are next - specifically content, mobile and social.  No surprises here; mobile and social are hotbeds of innovation relative to digital technology in broader terms, and increasingly brands are relying on content - entertainment or utility - to drive long-term engagement.  
4. Technologies and platforms feature reasonably significantly - iPad, iPhone, Android, TV.  The first three have been very high-profile over the last couple of years, and the evolution of TV has continued apace, with, for example, the BBC iPlayer now being made available via 450+ devices.

So that's it.  100 posts, around 350 words each, and, I hope, some useful information along the way.  Do I have a favourite?  Not really.  But I've enjoyed writing them and will continue to do so unless my new job gets too much in the way.  The pace of change in technology-enabled marketing is still dizzying, so there'll be no shortage of stuff to write about.

Heineken social x 2

Two pieces of Christmas work from Heineken, one so-so, one super.

First, the so-so:

 

This is only so-so because it's simply a Christmas take on the 'get people to write stuff in digital channels and we'll show it in the real world' mechanic.  This is a mechanic we've seen many, many times before.  

The people involved get extra credit for making the real-world Christmas tree really big and giving it a nice industrial / steampunk-lite aesthetic, but ultimately this is unoriginal.  And although I understand why Heineken have based messages on pre-written copy (for colleagues, close family etc.) the execution would have been way better had they provided a free-text option and then moderated the submissions.  Still, if you have lots of FB friends in Singapore you might well provide some content so it'll probably be counted as a success.

Next the super:

 

I love the mechanic here.  It's simple, it takes advantage of the fact that the Internet is reaIly good at audience aggregation, and it's funny.  Best of all I haven't seen it before.  I prefer the mechanic to the product in fact; I'd love to see pay it forward as a standard offer from online retailers.  After all, giving to others is better for us, psychologically speaking, than spending on ourselves.

Whatever you think of these ideas though, you have to give Heineken credit for the fact that they're experimenting.  Beer brands are rooted in sociability, so the more they use social channels and mechanics to promote themselves the more their sociability message will land.  Not everything will be successful but this is a pretty good start.

 

the porous border between game and real

(chinese soldiers gaming, from here)

Gaming and game mechanics are increasingly a part of the marketing toolkit.  At the same time, game marketers are looking to the real world to promote their virtual products.  

GT Academy from Nissan is the best-known example.  Because gamers have (some of) the skills of their real-world counterparts it's a small step to testing out their gaming skills for real.  So Nissan's GT racing team has built a long-term co-marketing programme with Playstation to find great drivers from among the players of Gran Turismo.

Earler this year, T-Mobile filmed another in their series of 'surprising stuff happening in the real world' ads.  This time it was a live staging of Angry Birds, at scale.

 

This doesn't quite do it for me as they didn't go the whole hog (!) and build a large catapault to fire their birds from.  Instead they used a large screen and spoofed the best bit of the game.  

Driving is one thing; first-person shooters are another entirely.  Nonetheless, Turtle Beach, a maker of audio gaming gear, has apparently recruited a gamer who enjoys taking out the enemy virtually, and is giving him the opportunity to discover a real-life warzone.  So Phil the gamer from New Zealand is being sent to Iraq:

 

I've got a sneaking feeling there might be a bit of a publicity backlash if Phil actually, you know, shot someone while he was there.  The agency responsible seems to agree:

As to whether Phil visits the frontlines, all Droga5 partner Mike O’Sullivan would say was that there were some logistical mishaps in the upcoming series which made for interesting watching.

This is a nicely provocative bit of work and I expect there to be some media frothing at the mouth about it, all no doubt intended to amplify the campaign and bring the Turtle Beach name some broader reach (I had no clue who they were before I saw this story).  

To sum up, the mechanic of taking virtual game action and replaying it in the real world is such a simple, effective one that I don't think it'll go away any time soon. You have to be real though - the GT players really drive performance cars, and Phil the gamer really went to Iraq.  Any sort of trickery like the Angry Birds example makes the communications impact much, much lower.