The Sounding Board

The Replay: 1.28.11

Image via The Daily

Happy Friday from a snowy Washington, D.C.! Here's a roundup of what currently has my attention online:

* News Corp. + Apple are getting set to launch the first "iPad only" newspaper, "The Daily," next week. What does this mean for PR and marketing professionals? There's more of an opportunity for organizations to rethink their story angles and delivery of them, and to develop and place their own visual content, including video, infographics / interactive data and photos. [PC Magazine]

* 10 online strategies for your next product launch. [Mashable]

* GigaOm's Ryan Kim reports that location-based services, such as FourSquare, Gowalla and Loopt, are "making progress, especially as [they] solve practical concerns for people." [GigaOm]

* With lots of cash lingering on some corporate balance sheets, 2011 is set to be a banner year for M&A activity. [The Deal]

* Salesforce.com is launching its first-ever TV ads during the Super Bowl. [Wall Street Journal] Interestingly, Salesforce.com collaborated with will.i.am (of Black Eyed Peas fame) for the ads, who just this week was named as Intel's "director of creative innovation." [Intel] Is this a new tech company trend?
 
* Great video of BoomTown's Kara Swisher talking about the changing landscape of the PR industry with former Facebook communications director Brandee Barker and others at the DLD Conference. [DLD11]

- Stephanie Wonderlick

TMA Announces Customer Message Management Event

On Wednesday, February 9th, the Technology Marketing Alliance welcomes Tim Riesterer to the Tower Club in Tysons Corner.  Tim is co-author of Customer Message Management: Increasing Marketing’s Impact on Selling and CMO and SVP of Customer Visions, a top sales methodology training company.

Tim’s book is a culmination of more than 20 years in sales and marketing, and his Customer Message Management approach will help marketers to create more customer-relevant messaging and sales-ready marketing materials.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Loosen the status quo and convince your prospects they need to do something different and make a decision to choose you.
• Find your unique point of view that can challenge prospect assumptions and communicate value vs. your competitors.
• Create messages that matter to your sales people, increasing their confidence and competence to tell a differentiated story with the prospect.

This event is open to all TMA members.  If you're interested in membership, more information can be found here.

We hope to see you at the February event. TMA members who have seen him speak, say he’s a top-notch presenter.

- Katie Hanusik

P.S. Don't forget to register.

Top Tech Trends of 2011–Part Three

So far in parts one and two of our break down of the top 10 tech trends of 2011 I’ve covered seven of our 10 tech trends. Now, in this thrilling third and final installment, I’ll break down the remaining three tech trends to watch for in 2011:



Context Aware Computing
Also commonly called the personalized web, this is about computers anticipating a user’s needs rather than just reacting to a user’s needs. By analyzing time, place, history and other factors computers can actually become more useful.

Thanks to the explosion of social media, how users are influenced, consume information, and make purchasing decisions has been altered forever, according to the HorizonWatching blog. Users are increasingly expecting company websites, products and services to be tailored to their individual preferences, past experiences and what they happen to be doing at this very moment. This puts the demand on business and IT leaders to create a personalized and engaging experience for end-users across all channels, both online and offline.

In 2011, expect business to focus on advanced solutions that can deliver a more personalized experience to end users. These solutions will be designed to mine the customer’s profile, buying behavior, browsing behavior and other insights obtained through marketing analytics in order to deliver a more customized and personalized online experience. According to Larry Dignan at Tech Republic, we should look for the marketing department, not the IT department, to launch these projects to drive sales.

Ubiquitous Computing
As Larry Dignan at Tech Republic says, ubiquitous computing in a nutshell is computers melting into things. Think of “Back to the Future II” or “The Jetsons.”

Ubiquitous computing isn’t quite here yet, but it is on its way. Radio Frequency ID and other technologies enable objects and systems to react and anticipate your presence and needs. The uses for these devices can be as simple as checking into your hotel room or place of work to as complicated as completely automating your home and energy usage. In fact, LG just announced at CES that they want to make televisions, mobile devices and household appliances “smarter” in 2011.

Flash Memory
Flash memory is perhaps the hottest enterprise IT trend you’ve never heard of. The solid state technology that has entered our lives through iPods, smart phones, tablets, laptops and practically any mobile device, is about to invade our life and the enterprise data center.

According to the HorizonWatching blog, the huge growth of unstructured data like videos, pictures, audio, and social media is taxing the storage systems of many data centers. In addition other trends are impacting storage, including Cloud computing, virtualization, energy costs, economics and performance.

Unlike rotating disk drives, which are seen as being energy hogs, flash memory is really just a storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. Disk drives are great for storing large amounts of data and will continue to have a relevant place in the data center in that role. But now that, thanks to virtualization, the bottleneck has shifted away from servers, there will be a new focus on storage performance that will pave the way for flash-based solutions. And, thanks to demand from consumers, the cost for this technology has been driven lower and lower, now making it an affordable and realistic solution.

However, a hybrid storage system that includes flash memory for speed and inexpensive rotating disks for capacity is both faster and cheaper than a system comprised solely of expensive high-performance rotating disks. According to Lightspeed Venture Partners, hybrid systems are expected to become the “flavor of the decade” for storage during 2011.

So what do you think? Do you agree that these are the top 10 tech trends to watch in 2011? What do you think should have been on the list?

--Jennifer

Super Social Media

If there ever is a time when you don’t want to switch the TV channel when a commercial comes on, that time is most likely during the Super Bowl. With viewing audiences of over 100 million and advertising rates as high as $3 million for 30 seconds, companies want to capture your attention and leave you with something worth talking about. This year, not only do companies want you to keep physically talking about their ad, they also want you to tweet about it, like it, and re-post it – before the ad even airs.

Spending on social media marketing reached over $1.9 billion last year and is not slowing down. This year more than ever, companies are leveraging social media to create additional buzz for their high priced Super Bowl advertisements by creating contests gearing up for the big game. After last year’s hugely successful Old Spice campaign, companies are hoping to recreate that sensation and the attention it received.



Car companies in particular are advertising big in the Super Bowl this year, with a record number of car companies having bought ads and ramping up their social media efforts prior to their Feb 6th commercials. BMW is linking a social media contest into its advertisement this year by hosting “The X3 Matchup.” BMW fans will have the opportunity to guess the exact configuration of an X3 that is featured in its upcoming Super Bowl Commercial. The contestant who guesses the closest configuration will be given a two-year lease of a new X3.

Mercedes, a first time Super Bowl advertiser, is hyping up for the big game by hosting “The World's First Twitter-Fueled Race." Four teams of two were selected to drive Mercedes from different cities across the U.S. to the game in Dallas, all the while tweeting and documenting their road trips. The team that receives the most Mercedes-Benz tweets and “like” votes on Facebook, will be given two new Mercedes. Mercedes is even promoting #MBtweetrace as a trending topic on twitter today to amp up their campaign.

One usual sponsor, who is not returning this year to Super Bowl advertising, is Papa John’s. Instead the company is putting their money towards a different type of campaign. Papa John’s announced that they will be sponsoring a digital campaign that will include giving away one large pizza to every American, should the Super Bowl go into over time.

Tune in February 6th to see the Packers battle the Steelers and be sure to let us know what commercials were your favorites!

--Kathryn

The Replay: 1.25.11

Photo credit: VentureBeat

In our industry, there's no shortage of folks willing to tell you that "content is king." But given that the digital universe is doubling every 18 months, it's impossible to claim that we're facing any short of information shortage. With new content coming at us from every direction, it can be difficult to wade through the proverbial haystack to find the good stuff.

Enter curation.

Content curation is editing on steroids. In actuality, content curation has been around since the dawn of the publishing industry. The job of the editor was to take the best information from around their industry and present that information in a manner that makes sense to readers.
- Joe Pulizzi, founder Junta42, and author of the book "Get Content. Get Customers."

As my colleagues would surely tell you, I'm addicted to my Google Reader. I vehemently disagree with reports that "RSS is dead." It's how I automatically keep up-to-date with ~150 blogs / news sources / anything that interests me with an RSS feed without having to remember to visit them all independently, and I know I'm not alone. I tend to make liberal use of our staff email distribution to send out articles that have caught my eye. In it's own way, this is already curation... which brings us to what I'm calling The Replay.

In each edition I'll call out links from the worlds of tech, PR, marketing, and anything else that strikes me. If you have a suggestion, or feedback on any of the links, let me know in the comments!

-Stephanie Wonderlick

* Just in time for tonight's State of the Union address, it's The State of the Web! [The Oatmeal]

* Speaking of the State of the Union, President Obama will be taking questions via Twitter and answering them via YouTube on Thursday. [AllTwitter]

* In addition to juicing and daily fitness, eight business, marketing and PR lessons from the life and work of Jack LaLanne. [Seth Godin's Blog]

* There's another meme arguing that the press release is dead! Haven't we been here before? Can't we all just agree that pointless press releases are dead and that there are a many, many alternatives to consider for news? [Forbes]

* Proof that it's sometimes worth listening when you think a telemarketer's on the other line. [MSNBC]

* Have you seen the Forbes web redesign? Forbes' Andrea Speigel offered a great look at the changes. [Forbes]

* There's a new DC Tech Meetup! Read more about it and join! [TechCocktail]

* DC-area startup Mixx was acquired by UberMedia. Congrats! [The Mixx Blog]

* The Green Bay Packers are in the Super Bowl! Watch out Steelers! (The Wisconsin-ite in me is obligated to include this on the list.) [ESPN]

Top Tech Trends of 2011-Part 2

So in part one of our break down of the top 10 tech trends of 2011 we covered cloud computing, security and video. Now it’s time to discuss four more trends to be on the look out for in 2011: mobile applications, tablet computers, social communication and collaboration and analytics.



Mobile Apps
Not much here that most of us didn’t already know. As more and more people purchase smart phones, (Gartner estimated that by the end of 2010 1.2 billion people would carry smart phones) the demand for mobile apps will also continue to increase (IDC predicts that nearly 25 billion mobile apps will be sold in 2011, up from 10 billion in 2010). So just what kinds of apps do people want?

Consumers will use price comparison apps to shop for better deals, they will demand mobile banking and payments and according to IDC 14 percent of adult Americans will use a mobile health app in 2011. And just how will we all purchase these apps for our smart phones? App stores will be the primary (and, in some cases, the only) way to distribute applications to smart phones and other mobile devices.  (Already this year Apple launched their Mac App Store with 1,000+ apps.)

Tablets
While Apple’s iPad was the darling of 2010, Gartner predicts that more than 55 million tablets will be sold in 2011 and that all the major original equipment manufacturers (Research in Motion, Samsung, HTC, Acer, Motorola, Dell, etc.) will have their own tablets out this year. In fact, Motorola and LG already launched new tablets at CES earlier this month.

So why didn’t we see more of these tablets in 2010? Experts say the lack of non-Apple tablets and smartbooks in 2010 was because there was no software to run on them. The operating system of choice for these products is Android, but Google has actively discouraged manufacturers from using current versions of Android on these larger devices.

However, with Android Version 3.0 (Gingerbread) out now, and the next version of Android, Honeycomb, due out around the middle of this year, consumers can expect much more competition in the tablet market. Consumers will find that different tablets also have different capabilities. Some, like the iPad, will be used heavily for media consumption and playing games. Research in Motion's PlayBook will be designed largely for use with business documents while Cisco is bringing out the Cius, an Android tablet designed specifically for TelePresence videoconferencing and other business communications applications.

Social Communication and Collaboration
Social computing in 2011 goes beyond the obvious social networking applications of Facebook and Twitter.  According to Gartner senior vice president Peter Sondergaard it’s about the transformation of the culture and attitudes that will blur the divide between personal and professional activities.  In fact, IDC believes that more than 40 percent of SMBs will be using social networks by the end of 2011 while Gartner predicts that by 2016 social technologies will be integrated with most business applications.

Another interesting point that Gartner makes is that by the end of 2011, more than 75 percent of devices shipped in mature markets will include a GPS. According to Entrepreneur, location services will grow in popularity as people get more comfortable checking in to a business.  If 2010 belonged to Foursquare it's likely that Facebook will rain on Foursquare's parade in 2011. With tons of data and the architecture behind Facebook's response to Foursquare about to be rolled out globally, Facebook is well positioned to actually make location-based services useful to business.

Analytics
Business leaders today desire deeper knowledge and insights on all aspects of their business and they know that the information they need is available within all the data flowing through company IT systems.  Advanced analytics solutions can help business leaders adopt a proactive versus reactive strategy, enabling them to predict future behaviors and events before they occur.   Specifically we are looking at two types of analytics – next generation analytics and social analytics.

Regarding next generation analytics, Gartner says, “increasing computing capabilities of computers including mobile devices along with improving connectivity are enabling a shift in how businesses support operational decisions. It is becoming possible to run simulations or models to predict the future outcome, rather than to simply provide backward looking data about past interactions, and to do these predictions in real-time to support each individual business action.”

The concept of social analytics on the other hand revolves around taking social networking data and incorporating it into enterprise analysis. It involves the process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations among people, topics and ideas. These interactions may occur on social software applications used in the workplace, in internally or externally facing communities or on the social web.

Stay tuned for the third and final installment of the top ten tech trends of 2011 when I'll discuss context-aware computing, ubiquitous computing and flash memory!

--Jennifer

Confessions of an American Analytics Junkie

Post hoc ergo proctor hoc is perhaps the Tyrannosaurus Rex of logical fallacies.

Our brains are wired, for better or worse, to recognize order in an otherwise entropic universe; to connect the dots, real or imagined; to detect—or else to synthesize—plausible cause and effect.

Sadly, as we learned from the Transformers films, there’s often less than meets the eye.

I’m looking at an analytics report this morning, and I’m struck by two things: One, how much we seem to know about evaluating correlative elements, and two, how little we seem to care about the elements themselves.



Chris Kieff summed it up nicely when he said, “We look at Web analytics to learn about people, when all they can tell us about is computers.”

He’s right: We greeted the onset of digital measurement with open arms, precisely because—unlike their human masters—computers cannot lie.

But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? Computers are unapologetically, maddeningly literal. And so we—the non-literal human observers—are left re-interpreting a literal, digital interpretation of non-literal human behavior.

Got that?

Somehow, we unwittingly added a whole new layer of separation between observers and observable phenomena. Call it the digital noisemaker.

Worse, we gained a false sense of certainty in the process; those data are seductive, you know—so numerical and orderly, practically begging for inclusion in a pie chart-fueled, late-night boardroom diatribe.

We aim for Sherlock Holmes, but more often we land on John Nash Jr. intermittent bursts of insight sandwiched between scores of randomness and insanity.

Welcome to the AI century. Artificial intelligence, indeed.

--Jonathan

Top Tech Trends of 2011...Part One

Now that the New Year is in full swing it’s time to take a look at what are predicted to be the top tech trends of 2011. The list includes everything from the obvious (cloud computing and tablet computers) to the complex (context-aware and ubiquitous computing).

This list was the result of countless Google searches but was largely influenced by Gartner’s list of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2011. Lucky for me, a variety of tech publications, such as Baseline, CIO Insight, Computerworld and many, many others put together their own lists of the top tech trends to watch in 2011. So, without further ado, here is the list in no particular order:



1. Cloud Computing
2. Security
3. Video
4. Mobile Applications
5. Tablet Computers
6. Social Communication and Collaboration
7. Analytics
8. Context-Aware Computing
9. Ubiquitous Computing
10. Flash Memory

To make this fun for everyone, I’m going to break this down into three posts. The first three trends I’ll run through are cloud computing, security and video.

Cloud Computing
Probably the most obvious trend in technology, Computerworld’s Forecast 2011 respondents said that cloud computing is the most overhyped technology but that it is also the number two technology with the most promise in 2011. Cloud computing has been hot for the past three years and it’s no longer a question “if” organizations will adopt the technology but “when” and “how” they will take advantage of this technological shift.

Currently, cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. According to Gartner, the next 3 years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between these two extremes. For many companies, private clouds are becoming stepping-stones into the cloud as companies use them to test the waters before moving entirely to the cloud. There’s also a growing interest in private ‘community clouds’ hosted for a group of organizations that trust each other.

While enterprise adoption of cloud computing progressed in 2010, eWEEK predicts that 2011 will be the year when industry giants from across the spectrum – including major financial institutions, pharmaceuticals and retailers – will migrate major internal and external IT systems to the cloud. However, many CIOs and business leaders are concerned with having their data residing outside their firewall. The largest hurdles to cloud computing however, will continue to be a lack of cloud standards and concerns regarding security, availability and performance.

Security
Once an afterthought, security today must be factored in at every step of the way when deploying new technology and protecting existing technology. As I’ve already pointed out, one of the biggest detractors of cloud computing services is the lack of governance tools and the perceived lack of security in the cloud. According to Randy Barr, CSO at Qualys Inc. 2011 will see an emergence of cloud standards and certifications. Because security will be evaluated when choosing cloud services, standards and certifications will be extremely important to help customers gauge how secure their data will be kept.

Smart phones will be a primary concern for many corporations that don’t want employees accessing company secrets via unsecured mobile networks. For consumers, as banks and ecommerce sites deploy apps that give customers unprecedented access to their bank accounts, security becomes more important than ever.

Says Barr, a member of the Cloud Security Alliance, "We can expect new solutions to address mobile devices, but could see a large data breach to expose the issue of mobile security before we see a solution."

A hacked cloud provider could provide mass access to confidential mobile device data when mobile users are using cloud-based mobile device support, he says. In addition, loss or theft of mobile devices could provide root-level access to cloud services and data. Mobile apps are often providing direct and automated access to cloud services and data.

Video
Perhaps one of the most surprising tech trends is video. Obviously video is not new but per the Gartner release, its use as a standard media type used in non-media companies is expanding rapidly. Over next three years Gartner believes video will become a commonplace content type and interaction model for most users. In fact, by 2013, 25% of the content people consume will be dominated by pictures, audio, and video.

The prevalence of low-cost video recorders (such as the Flip cam) are everywhere and as video continues to make its way into all business processes, companies are going to need video content management systems, better design skills and they’ll need to address privacy issues and policy concerns. Also, while YouTube might be one of the largest user-generated video-sharing sites on the Internet today, other platforms are beginning to surface that are more business-focused, easier to market videos on and not as crowded. Sites like Viddler, Vimeo and Dailymotion are predicted to gain momentum in 2011.

Starting in 2011 we’ll also see video start to cross over from a marketing tool, into a tool that can be applied across business processes to improve the way businesses communicate, collaborate, and educate all stakeholders. According to the HorizonWatching blog, visual communication can actively promote teamwork and accelerate problem-solving processes leading to better business decisions. In 2011, expect forward looking business leaders and business process reengineering consultants to begin to use video to transform key business processes in order to create competitive advantage, lower costs, and to reduce environmental impact, particularly by avoiding the need for travel.

Stay tuned for part two of this series where I’ll break down trends to watch for in mobile applications, tablet computers, analytics and social communication and collaboration.

--Jennifer

Newseum: History of the news or just history?

• Moving = showcased in depth the coverage of many recent tragedies such as 9/11, hurricane Katrina and the Challenger explosion as well as the Pulitzer prizes winning photographs (and the stories behind them) that are often hard to look at.
•  Creepy = an FBI exhibit that deals with persons of interest like Timothy McVeigh, the Branch Davidians, Ted Kaczynski and the Beltway snipers (it even has the trunk of the car they were shooting from).
•  Cool = The portions of the Berlin Wall (pictured above), a profile of noted Sports Illustrated photographer Walter Iooss, a large screen video feature on Elvis and the chance to play newscaster in the interactive newsroom. 

Fantastic blog. Supports Malcolm Gladwell's th...

Fantastic blog. Supports Malcolm Gladwell's theory about mavens creating a tipping point.

Well said! I'm not a Harry Potter fanatic, but...

Well said! I'm not a Harry Potter fanatic, but you had me at hello. Love the last paragraph, really drives the point home Mr. Katz!

Yes, I visited over the Christmas holiday. If you&...

Yes, I visited over the Christmas holiday. If you're a hard-core Potter fan, it's probably worth the trip. If not, I'd skip it.

Jonathan

Jonathan, did you really go? I'd like to go, b...

Jonathan, did you really go? I'd like to go, but not if it's really as bad an experience as all that.

Everything I Know About Marketing, I Learned from Harry Potter Land

David Meerman Scott tells the story of Universal Studios marketing honcho Cindy Gordon.

When the Harry Potter theme park was about to launch, Universal gave Gordon what was essentially a blank check. She could have bought Super Bowl ads, Times Square billboards, Good Year blimp-ertising, or a full-scale media blitz.



Instead, she decided to tell just 7 people.

In a week’s time, the 7 biggest Potter bloggers on the Net had spread the word—free of charge—to over 350,000,000 consumers worldwide.

Or so the story goes.

Exaggerated or not, that’s surely one of the cheapest theme park launches in history, and one of the most successful.

Indeed, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is something of a master class in marketing manipulation. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

You’d probably scoff at the idea of waiting in line 90 minutes for the privilege of buying a $35 plastic wand. But you’d do it if you were there. Because they’re not selling wands; they’re selling magic and mystery.

Here’s an interesting back-story to the Harry Potter park: It was originally offered to—and rejected by—Disney.

See, J.K. Rowling’s demands were unheard of at the time: total creative freedom, uncompromising fidelity to the books and films. That’s not how you build a successful theme park! It's about restroom placement and Churro availability.

And in many ways, Disney was right. J.K.’s park is, in some respects, a disaster. For instance, the terrain is a near-exact replica of the Hogsmeade sets used in the seven films. Which is to say that the park is far too quaint and narrow to accommodate the throngs of voracious Universal tourists.

And so the experience is sometimes hellish, often unpleasant, horribly expensive, and yet always rooted in an unprecedented, unimpeachable devotion to the purity of Potter.

It’s a labor of love, not a product.

It shouldn’t work. It doesn’t work, really. But you can’t make magic with pragmatism, best practices, and focus groups. And when something is truly magical, you only need to tell 7 people.

--Jonathan

If you could have any superpower what would it be?