Last week Forrester released a report advising most marketers wait to use location-based social networks (LBSN) as only 4% of the US population is currently using platforms such as Foursquare (the current market leader), and that the networks skew heavily male. They advise that brands that target young males experiment with the services and other brands adopt a “wait and see” approach.

I couldn’t disagree more. Here are my 5 reasons why it’s smart to start experimenting now.

1. First Movers.

There’s something to be said for getting a head start on your competition in the digital space. Brands like Starbucks, Dell, Pepsi, and Nike have all taken advantage of the emerging channels and reaped the rewards of building a strong early foundation with consumers.

While you should not rush into a new tool without understanding your strategic goals and how it integrates with your business objectives, experimenting with emerging technologies that are opt-in and potentially have a direct customer impact is smart.

When Facebook opened their gates to the general population in 2006 they had a small user base of university students. Four years later they are a behemoth. Twitter adoption rates have been increasing exponentially year over year since their launch in 2007 and the tool is now considered a “must use” for social business. Considering Foursquare launched about a year ago, can we expect to see the same type of growth curve as the early adopters begin to influence the early majority? (see “Crossing the Chasm” adoption curve)

2. Google. Facebook. Oh My.

Location-based services are not limited to the current apps we have been hearing about. Facebook has expressed they will add a location-based offering soon, Twitter has added “Tweet with your location” to their service, and the biggest news is that Google is adding a Places API to their eco-system, as well as adding LB data extensions to their mobile advertising product.

LBSN will become mainstream sooner rather than later, and it will be the big players, not the niche networks that will drive the adoption. Testing and learning now, before it becomes ubiquitous should be something on every marketers radar.

3. Data and utility.

There is an enormous amount of insightful and actionable data that can be gleaned about your customers and prospects from mobile & LBSNs. Eventually this data could be used to inform inventory control, staffing levels, consumer tastes and trends, etc. The data can also be used in loyalty programs, to identify influencers, test new products, and as real-time service focus groups.

Companies already testing the waters include:

Nike with True City; Starbucks with their Foursquare offers; The Pepsi mobile branded app; and the City of Chicago with their Tourism campaign.

4. Sales, Coupons, Offers, and more.

Part of the Forrester analysis identified that mobile couponing is widely successful with the users currently using the services, which is interesting as the base is primarily young males, not the average coupon-consuming demographic. Gone are the days of clipping coupons in the Sunday paper, now you can serve relevant offers and drive foot traffic and purchase directly to a mobile device. These offers are opt-in, and contextually relevant, not SMS spam. Testing offers, tips, and messaging via mobile should be on every retailers plan for the next year.

Of course one size doesn’t fit all and ensuring that your product or service fits within the make-up of the demographic, depending on service (existing or branded), is a must.

5. Mobile usage.

Of course mobile, and specifically smartphone, usage is soaring year over year. Ignoring mobile at this point is like ignoring the Internet in 2002 because broadband wasn’t prevalent yet.

Bottom line for marketers:

Experiment. See what fits, what your customers are looking for, and where you can add value. Don’t wait until it becomes mainstream, because that will be sooner than you think and you’ll be playing catch-up.

[photo credit: john weiss via Flickr]

Over the last few weeks I’ve received a lot of feedback on our move to an Adaptive Marketing approach. One of the recurring questions has been around how it works. As one of our LinkedIn forum members said, “If no one is currently doing this, how can an agency possibly integrate the process and make it work?” Great question and one that’s been on our minds a lot lately, too.

As luck would have it, a campaign recently exploded online that I believe illustrates the adaptive approach to marketing. I’m talking about the Old Spice Guy work done by Wieden+Kennedy. It began as a great Super Bowl TV spot but what happened afterward – and they way they worked with their client – is what I find most compelling.

Iain Tait, in a readwriteweb.com post explains it best, “In a way there’s nothing magical that we’ve done here… we just brought a character to life using the social channels we all [social media geeks] use every day. But we’ve also taken a loved character and created new episodic content in real time.” As for the mechanics, he explains, “we’re looking at who’s written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we’re editing it as it happens. Then the social media guys are looking at how to get that back out around the web…in real time.”

My first thought was that to pull off such a responsive program they must have had a tremendously trusting client and collaborative working relationship. Tait said that Proctor & Gamble let his team create on the fly with little supervision, “There is such great trust … They have given us a set of guidelines and if we get close to the edges we contact them.”

In my opinion, Tait’s team has arguably created the most significant program since Subservient Chicken. They put all the right pieces together. But more so, they’ve illustrated exactly how an agency can practically develop and deploy a campaign that actively involves consumers in real time and delivers meaningful experience. Not only that, they completely repositioned the brand and now have an asset they can use in myriad ways.

I’ll probably take some heat for this, but personally, I always felt that Subservient Chicken was one-dimensional. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it and felt it arrived at exactly the right time in our industry. It showed how technology could be used to involve consumers without being ham-handed. But it was really just a playful destination. Somewhere to waste a few minutes online.

The Old Spice Guy concept goes way farther and operates on a much deeper level. It watches consumer activity, pulls it in without asking and feeds it back out as unexpectedly fresh content. On top of that it demonstrates a fundamental change in agency structure and approach. In fact, it’s so extensible that consumers themselves can run with the idea, create their own content and still be in line with the original idea… at no incremental cost to the client! See for yourself, have the Old Spice Guy create your voicemail message.

So What’s It Take To Do Work Like This?

• A leggy idea
• A diverse team with a blend of traditional and social expertise
• A client who trusts the creative team to take chances
• And most importantly, the ability to identify emerging opportunities and develop iterative solutions on the fly

There’s no debate that social media has completely transformed how marketers engage with their customers. And the impact of this change has rippled through agencies as they struggle to catch up to the changing needs of their clients – and consumers. But what hasn’t happened up till this point is agencies figuring out how to bring all the pieces together in one agile approach.

For a time I thought that BURT were onto something with their Agile Advertising approach, but the more I noodle it, the more I feel like what they proposed with their four feedback loops is really more of an optimization phase in a linear model (and something we’ve done at Teehan+Lax for some time). It’s great for tuning individual pieces of creative and improving their effectiveness but it isn’t necessarily about creating a platform for iterative ideas to be rapidly developed, tested and deployed. And an iterative development approach is really what we need.

“Everyone applauds innovation. At least, they love it in retrospect, after it has worked.”*

I believe we need to build teams and create operating environments that allow for responsive marketing that’s always on. Programs that respond to changing market conditions. Programs that naturally integrate the ability to test ideas and embrace failure. Programs that will use data to help inform what is made, how it’s designed, and who will be involved.

Tim Leberecht in his article, “Time for Marketing Innovation 2.0” delivers a stern challenge to all of us searching for new solutions. “As we are entering the new decade, it appears as if the marketing discipline, after undergoing a mesmerizing major transformation in the past two to three years, is facing stagnation. This often occurs when pioneering concepts are fully absorbed by the mainstream: Social marketing is on the way to becoming THE marketing, as social media is becoming THE media (it is always a sign of broad adoption if adjectives are dropped). Authenticity, engagement, meaning, communities, social, conversations, transparency, etc. – they’re all accepted across the industry and widely implemented now. What then is the next frontier for marketers? What will be the next big marketing innovation?”

To me the next big innovation won’t be the products we envision as much as it will be agencies we create that are structured to deliver Adaptive Marketing. And as the team at Wieden & Kennedy have shown us, it’s entirely possible and should now be expected. Silver fish hand catch!

Reading List:

• The making of Old Spice’s commercial: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Leo Laporte interviews the W+K creative team on TwitTV
• Silver Fish Hand Catch: A New Benchmark For Social Media Campaigns, PSFK
• How Old Spice Ruled the Real-Time Web, AdWeek
• How The Old Spice Videos Are Being Made, ReadWriteWeb.com
• How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising, Mashable
• Agile Advertising At Cannes Lions, Rich And The Four Feedback Loops, Burt
• Time For Marketing Innovation 2.0, FrogDesign
• Innovation: Who Else Is Doing It?, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School
• @OldSpice
• Old Spice YouTube Channel

Many of us entered the interactive industry because it was fast-paced, exciting and highly innovative. We saw an opportunity to help change the way business was done, and in so doing help consumers in fresh and engaging ways. Recently, we’ve noticed an unsettling trend. Agencies are becoming more and more similar. They’ve adapted the same processes. They create the same products. And for the most part, they deliver similar results.

For an industry that prides itself on a spirit of innovation, what we see happening doesn’t feel right. We believe it’s time to press forward. We believe that time to change is now. To that end, we are actively in the process of transitioning our Marketing Programs Group to an Adaptive Marketing model.

“Business has only two basic functions – marketing and innovation.” Peter Drucker

Adaptive Marketing is the next step in our evolution and will provide a truly progressive approach for our clients – one that we believe will become the approach that many marketers will use in the future. To the best of our knowledge we will be the first agency in Canada to provide this service.

Why are we doing this? Quite simply, we believe the days of doing traditional online marketing campaigns are fading. Linear programs based on reach and frequency are highly ineffective. As a direct marketing vehicle with clickthroughs averaging 0.02% they don’t work. And with banner-blindness being what it is, as a brand vehicle most efforts are largely ignored.

The reality is that consumers have changed faster than marketers. And they expect communication that delivers tangible value. Traditional campaigns that trumpet brand messages or focus solely on unique selling propositions are no longer considered the principle measure of value to consumers. To be blunt, what worked in the 50’s simply doesn’t work anymore. Today’s consumer demands more.

Value used to be derived from a consumer’s perception of what a product could do for them. This interpretation of value has evolved. And these days value is better characterized as, “what can a brand help me do?”

When we switch our strategic approach to deliver tangible consumer value – we are obligated not only to evolve the ways we engage with consumers, but also, to re-examine the approach (and processes) we use to create, monitor, deploy and continuously tune our marketing programs.

The Old Way

The “traditional online” marketing approach is linear and built on the idea of telling consumers about products and services through increased reach and frequency.

Forrester’s recent analysis of Adaptive Marketing issued the challenge that marketers and agencies need to change and move away from the old way of doing things. According to Forrester, agencies struggle to adapt because their models are still built for yesterday, in that they:

• Focus on campaigns rather than experiences
• Talk but aren’t very good at listening (or more importantly, conversing)
• Are built for waterfall versus iteration
• Treat customers as audience rather than participants
• Are mostly “unbundled” — creating disparate skill sets
• Have trouble mastering many new specialties at once
• Moved down the value chain and rarely distinguish themselves from each other
• Can only move as fast as their clients

At Teehan+Lax, our Programs Group is purpose-built to be the exact opposite. Our agile creative approach, small, team-based structure, and value-based compensation model (we’ll talk more about this in another post) allows us to create highly effective Adaptive Marketing programs.

The New Way

Instead of looking at projects as a series of requirements that extend the reach and frequency of a message we need to look at the problem differently. We need to first determine how to help consumers solve a problem. When we look at a marketing challenge this way, it allows us to identify a completely different set of success metrics and solutions.

If your marketing isn’t helping consumers, then you’re shouting messages from the sidelines.

In the past we were incentivized to create ads and microsites that would launch onto the Internet, exist for a while and then disappear. In the future, we will create programs and “things” that solve consumer problems. They won’t be ads, but instead, they will be solutions that need to be marketed. It’s a completely different approach. And a whole new ballgame.

The new way is about creating programs that continuously evolve as they go. They are build on the principle of listening to consumers, identifying what they need, and creating communication that helps them. There are several projects that we see as benchmarks for this way of thinking, notably, Domino’s Pizza Tracker, Pepsi Refresh, and Nike+ Chalkbot. We’d be well advised to learn from them.

In the future, programs must be iterative, highly adaptive, and responsive to consumer needs, market conditions, and technological opportunities.

The things we create will be as unique as the problems we need to solve… and our approach demands that we look beyond paid advertising as the first solution. Ultimately, what we will create are not campaigns (in the traditional sense of the word) but will be continuums of activity and initiatives – some small, some large, each of varying shapes and sizes – that each satisfy the real needs of consumers while delivering against a marketers connection objectives.

We believe that Adaptive Marketing is the right approach, one that will be the way of the future. We are extremely excited to move in this direction. And we’re looking for clients who share this philosophy.

Reading List

Forrester (registration required)

• Customer Experience Skills Are Critical To The Success Of Agency Relationships
• Adapting Agency Relationships In A New Marketing Era

BBH Labs

• So what exactly might ‘Adaptive Brand Marketing’ be?

Mullen

• Forrester debuts its findings on “The Future of Advertising Agencies”

Other

• Adaptive Marketing. How not to go the Dodo way
• Why is digital advertising so lousy? Industry is too smug to innovate.

Imagine that you were commissioning the development of a new home for you and your family. What would you look for in a bid from a contractor? Would you be satisfied with one option, one price? A quote that lays out averaged costs in the most generic of terms? Boiler plate descriptions of process and procedures that fail to address your specific needs and desires?

Buying a Web site (or any user experience) design shouldn’t feel like this—and yet, consider how we often pitch, scope and quote on projects.

We put together a statement of work that estimates the costs on an “average per-square-foot” basis (e.g. number of templates). We talk about us: our process, our people, our proven track record. If we’re placing a fixed bid, we typically propose one option and one price that studiously and reflexively attempts to cover off everything in the brief.

A couple of weeks ago, Jon posted up some thoughts on why we’re switching from costs-plus to a value-based pricing model. This generated a very lively discussion, which—if I were to summarize it—really boiled down to a sentiment of “that’s great, but how do we do this?”

Since then, we’ve experimented with a number of pricing options and strategies. I’d like to share one that we think shows a lot of promise.

A tiered model for value-based pricing

A tiered model lays out multiple options at different price points and empowers purchasers to make better, more informed decisions that feel less arbitrary. I wish I had a simpler name for it, because it really is a very standard and straight-forward way to price things out. Here’s a template that we developed for a recent client:

Each of these options also got a one-pager that provided more detail. Here’s why we think this approach works better than a more traditional costs-plus estimate:

Measured response

Very rarely are you presented with a purchasing decision where there’s one option and one price. In fact, if you were, I bet you’d have a hard time judging whether or not the price was worth it. We’re not wired to make absolute evaluations in a vacuum. We need points of reference to help set expectations, anchor and compare.

Laying out options gives clients a clear way to compare, contrast and ultimately be more intentional about who they decide to award their business to and why.

What are we actually selling?

Each fixed-bid option focuses on outcomes rather than costs. Clients don’t want to buy 20-30 templates. They do want to buy a digital experience that delights customers and gives them a competitive edge. It’s up to us to understand how this maps onto specific requirements and outcomes, and reflect the perceived value of those outcomes in our pricing. Clients need to have confidence in us and understand how we will execute the project. But ultimately, they care more about how they can derive value from the end result.

Meaningful choice

Rather than pandering to a brief that asks for everything at once, multiple options let us de-couple conflicting requirements (e.g. fast delivery time and lots of features). This means that from the start, we’re setting ourselves and our clients up for success.

We want each option to have a purpose and represent a viable option for the client. We can state exactly what problems we’re going to solve and what trade-offs these solutions will entail. For example, in this case we proposed one option that optimized time-to-market, a second that set specific parameters around certain kinds of innovative features and functionality, and a third no-holds-barred, multi-channel approach.

Final thoughts

The American philosopher John Dewey once said that “a problem well-defined is a problem half-solved.” The goal here is to creatively and conscientiously define problems well, right from the outset, and empower clients to make purposeful choices about what they really want. One thing I didn’t expect to get out of this process was that it was actually fun. Quoting and scoping projects doesn’t have to be a dry, automatic process. It can and we believe should be part of the value you bring to the project.

It’s really nothing that new. Companies like FedEx have been connecting physical things to the web for years. Most of the examples are similar though – they involve scanning codes and updating systems to keep customers up-to-date. Another notable one is Domino’s pizza tracker. A system that lets the pizza makers scan barcodes at certain parts of the pizza making process to update their customers on the Web.

Recently we’re seeing an increase in activity here that goes beyond scanning codes, and it has me giddy with excitement to see where it goes. Poke’s Baker Tweet is a prime example of the physical Internet. Put simply, it’s a physical box located in the bakery that sends messages wirelessly to Twitter to let followers know what’s fresh. The guys who built it actually started a company called Breakfast who, from what I’m told, is all about creating experiences like this.

Another good example of this is Nike’s Chalkbot. A machine that took tweets and messages from real people and plotted them in chalk along a portion of the Tour de France.

I think we’re going to see some really innovative stuff this year, most of which will be connecting virtual stuff with real stuff. Last week, Andy Sandoz over at Work Club posted an interesting article that touched (sorry) on what it may be like if Facebook had a physical ‘Like’ button. I’d love to hear of more examples or thoughts on this.

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel discussion at the IAB Canada MIXX event held in Toronto. The theme for the conference was emerging platforms and the opportunity we have to create truly innovative marketing in Canada. It was a call to action and speakers illustrated three key points:

• How Canadian media usage patterns have dramatically changed
• Why advertising within VideoGame, Mobile and Digital Out-Of-Home channels are poised to reach critical mass, and
• Where Social Media is being harnessed to drive sales.

Prior to the conference I got a chance to discuss these topics with Eyal Zilnik from One Stop Media. He delivered the presentation for the panel I was on, Do It Digital: How The Latest Advances In Digital Out-Of-Home Bring Internet, Mobile and Social Media To Life. Eyal did an excellent job of illustrating how DOOH has changed. And it was exciting to throw ideas around with someone else who gets as excited about Digital Out-Of-Home as I do. We came to several conclusions, namely

1. Marketers still regard DOOH as an animated billboard or a placement to run video loops (often running adapted TV spots without audio)
2. Few people understand that DOOH boards are more like desktop computer screens than they are Out-Of-Home billboards – they are integrated into a network with a unique IP and facilitate the full range of dynamic targeting we now take for granted in traditional online advertising, and
3. Few Canadian marketers have experimented with DOOH despite the low cost of participation, and fewer still have embraced the opportunity to link DOOH with mobile and social media.

These points were reinforced by the comments and questions we heard during our session. Several attendees came up to me after the conference and said they had no idea that the things we discussed were even possible. Maybe it’s because I’m interested in this topic but that came as a surprise.

To me, DOOH is much more than just another media tactic. DOOH will play a key role in the future of marketing. With the rise in smartphone usage and the recent introduction of the iPad (and the announcement of Apples’ iAd platform) consumers are moving away from the desktop. One only need look at consumer adoption of Facebook and the platform changes announced at F8 to understand that for many, social media is the backbone of current communication habits. Could a retail marketer integrate their social presence with DOOH (or their in-store signage network) and enable consumers to engage over mobile? Most definitely. The technology and systems are already in place.

My hope is that marketers will seize the opportunity to innovate and begin to create communication that does more than shout messages, but instead engage with consumers in new and profound ways.

Dave Stubbs is a member of the Emerging Platforms Council, IAB Canada

Cross-posted from the Applied Arts Wire, Image c/o Steve Rhodes.

Location-based mobile services (such as Gowalla, Foursquare and the recently launched Check In) are all the rage in the social media sphere these days, and I participate in one of them, Foursquare, to keep track of my buddies around town and on occasion get a good tip on a restaurant or bar I haven’t been to or a discount for being the “Mayor” somewhere.

As a marketer, I see a ton of positives for business to embrace these types of services, and the opportunity to provide added content to users, increase awareness and maximize the potential of mobile. The space is growing rapidly. For example, Foursquare has inked partnerships with major media players and fashion designers, Bing is now integrating Foursquare check-ins into real-time search, and mash-ups of check-ins and reviews are popping up. It’s an exciting time full of potential.

That being said, online privacy has always been a passion of mine, especially as I’ve watched the web mature over the last 15 or so years, and yet it seems to be falling by the wayside as new start-ups are launched and people fall prey to “shiny object syndrome”. I see a dark-side to these services, and one that honestly should be more top-of-mind as we continue to push the boundries between “real life” and “virtual life”.

It boils down to one simple point: be aware of what you share.

The data we’re sharing is open to all; the web isn’t a closed garden where only your friends see your data. Criminals pay attention to things like patterns: do you take the same route to work every day? Do you check-in at your physical house? Do you hang out at the same coffee shop every Saturday? We usually aren’t aware of how much our life follows a pattern and that people can use that info for ill gains. Being smart about how you use these services is a must in my book. That doesn’t mean you can’t check-in when you’re out with friends or around the city, it just means be aware of where and why you’re doing so.

It really hit home for me when I saw this tweet from SXSW (where “checking in” became a geek phenomenon – and had a charity element to it with PayPal & Microsoft donating money per check-in registered), coupled with danah boyd’s outstanding keynote on privacy online.

Let’s not make it this easy for people, shall we?

The Internet is a buzz with the news that Facebook has surpassed Google in the number of visits per week. The social sphere is hailing the news as another reason social trumps “traditional”, in all respects, including “traditional” digital.

Well, yes and no. It really comes down to understanding the psychographics of how people use the various platforms.

Google is an intent-based system, not really a discovery-based system. Google isn’t there to maximize your page views; they want you in and out of their platform with the most relevant results. They aren’t doing their job if you spend 30mins browsing to find something useful.

Facebook on the other hand is about keeping your attention. The only way they do this is by connecting you with the collective consciousness of your friends. It’s all about discovery. Discovering the best product, the best band, the best dog park. All curated by the people (and brands) you choose to connect with.

This works at the top of the purchase funnel when I’m trying to decide what kind of spring dress to buy, or I want to be inspired. When I actually want to buy something however I’m much more likely to head over to Google and try and find an online retailer.

Nothing is black & white and it’s good to remember that each Internet property serves a purpose depending on our needs at that moment in time.

Facebook has more page views? Great, that means they’ve done their job. Google is dying? Hardly.

[Image inspiration courtesy of: Wikipedia]

I’m fresh off the plane from South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2010 and still reeling from some of the amazing people I connected with and talks I checked out in Austin, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts of some of the top trends and highlights of SXSW this year. This year saw a record number of attendees – I heard as many as 17,000 (a 50% increase over last year’s 11,000) and you could see the difference everywhere.

Panels on user experience and social media were often at capacity, with long lines of people hoping to get in to catch the high-paced hour-long talks. SXSW’s notorious parties hosted by Foursquare, Gowalla, and Mashable and more saw the same surge in people, many even braving the rain on Monday night at the many outdoor venues to get a chance to network and, of course, get in on the open bar.

SXSW panels can be hit or miss. It’s a very loosely organized conference, where you can walk in (or walk out of) any session you’re interested in – no registration required. There’s over 400 sessions to choose from, and I typically had 5-6 really interesting panels to decide between in each time slot.

For me, this year saw a marked increase in the quality of panels I was able to check out. SXSW can be a good barometer for what types of things we can expect in the User Experience and Interactive worlds over the course of the year. It was most famous for the launch of Twitter several years ago, and startups have since capitalized on the massive event to make a major launch event, marketing push or announcement. Our local friends at Freshbooks and Rypple even got in on the action.

This year, at a keynote with Evan Williams, Twitter announced its @anywhere platform that will integrate Twitter into sites in a similar way that Facebook Connect does today, allowing users to more easily register, login and otherwise extend their social presence online.

Apart from this, several trends in the UX and Interactive spaces began to emerge several days into the conference.

Geosocial Apps

Foursquare and Gowalla, the geosocial applications that both used SXSW 2009 to launch, saw a huge surge in adoption at this year’s conference. They were initially met last year with a good deal of confusion, and the web app implementations made them difficult for users to grasp. I remember walking away with a green Gowalla t-shirt last year not really even knowing what it was (but admiring the cute line-drawn kangaroo they use as a logo).

This year, however, both companies launched new iPhone apps just days ahead of the conference with enhanced UI and interactions supported by specially designed badges and achievements for SXSW. Users signed up in droves and not an hour went by where you didn’t hear the words “check in”, “unlock” or “badge”. Attendees were often seen slinking over their iPhones, scrolling through their list of friends to see what sessions they were checking out, or the trending places as hundreds of people made their way from party to party after 5pm.

The rivalry between the two companies was clear even before the conference began. The feature sets of both have been enhanced and each has copied one another to a certain degree, so for me the deciding factor comes down to the user experience. Although Foursquare certainly has gathered a more solid critical mass of users, Gowalla was the standout for me this year, offering attendees a nice welcome banner the moment they touch down at Austin’s Bergstrom International Airport with links and locations to key SXSW events including badge pick-up and upcoming panels & parties (as shown above). Not so shockingly, SXSW awarded the the crown to Austin-born Gowalla over Foursquare at the SXSW Web Awards on Sunday night.

Neither application had been particularly useful for me at home here in Toronto up until SXSW, but that changed in Austin where they were great in tracking down friends and getting a sense for what was worth checking out at the conference and beyond. This worked only because I was a part of a very similar set of users with aligned goals, motivations and contexts for using the apps. I’m not so sure the usefulness of Foursquare/Gowalla will extend beyond SXSW unless you live in an urban area with a wired population; Like all social media, they won’t take off until your friends are on board.

They also have the not-so-simple task of assuaging users concerned with privacy that Danah Boyd so eloquently made a great case for in her keynote early on in in the conference. Provided Foursquare, Gowalla and others can address these issues, the opportunity for these companies to add the ‘where’ to our vocabulary of ‘who/what/when/why’ established by Facebook and Twitter presents an interesting opportunity to make more serendipitous social discoveries.

Content Strategy

As Dave pointed out yesterday, Content Strategy (CS) is seeing a major push as the “next big thing” in User Experience. A relatively new niche in UX, a Content Strategist ideally is brought in early on a project, working in tandem with the client and Information Architect do to audit what type of information a site will contain, and what forms it will take on. This Content Strategist has attributes of both an Information Architect and a Copywriter, and has the ability to weave a brand’s story into the structure of a site through different forms of content, including text, images, video, infographics and more.

How do you plan for the future if you don’t know what you currently have – or need?

It was clear at SXSW that this was a subject that was close to many of our hearts. Content Strategists Margot Booomstein (slides), Rachel Lovinger, Karen McGrane, and Kristina Halvorson (slides) collaborated to present three separate panels on the subject, ranging from why you should invest in a dedicated CS resource to how to implement it in your organization. The need for a Content Strategist became clear in these sessions, as they can offer clients predictability, reduce unnecessary whitespace and prioritize communication goals while reducing costs – words will always be cheaper than design comps, after all.

We’ve always made pretty bold proclamations in this industry that Content is King, but it really hasn’t been. Content is all too often considered as an afterthought after wireframes and design comps have been presented to and approved by the client. Relegated to boxes as placeholders and Lorem Ipsum, too many of us take a “do it later” approach with what is most important to the user. People aren’t visiting your site to look at colours and boxes, they’re there for a purpose, and the content should be at the core of any design.

Wireframes and design concepts are much more believable when populated with real content, both to the team creating them and the client reviewing them. Speaking from experience, the worst thing that can happen to me as an Information Architect is when I’m asked to design an experience without any content provided up front. It’s like building a house without having any clue how many people will be living there and decorating it without any regard for the resident’s taste; Ultimately, you’re going to end up with a pretty dry experience, a lot of filler and too much empty space.

Persuasive Design

Persuasive Design, like Content Strategy, isn’t a new concept, but is seeing increased focus by designers trying to motivate Web users down a path to take a desired action. It’s the use of tried, tested & true psychological techniques to take advantage of our innate subconscious wills and desires as humans. What it comes down to is taking advantage of concepts like sensory integration (providing a highly rich experience for many senses), social proof (when we’re influenced to follow the behaviour of others, like lining up in a queue), and scarcity principles (offering limited access to a beta or limited editions of a product).

There are many, many more biases and concepts that can be used to enhance Web design. In his panel on Persuasive Design (slides), Andy Budd calls them Cognitive Biases. Stephen Anderson called them Seductive Interactions, and handed out a sample set of cards he’s working on that he calls Mental Notes (see photo above) to help inject psychology cues into Web design.

Many of the examples Budd and Anderson used involved introducing concepts of gaming to give the site or service a sense of playfulness. As humans we inherently are drawn to play and challenges. By making tasks (even menial ones) seem more like a game, we’ve seen user uptake and productivity increase significantly. Take Google’s Image Labeler for example, which lets you play with a random partner online to assign matching words to an image. Google builds up its image search keyword descriptors, and it’s surprisingly fun and addictive to play.

Having started in to this industry by way of my love for games, I’m excited that to have started incorporating some more playful elements into projects here at Teehan+Lax that will benefit both our clients’ objectives and be fun for users. Look for more on that in a future blog post.

More to Come

Having sat in almost 20 sessions in about 4 full days, there’s a lot more to share from this year’s South by Southwest. Over the next week or so, I’ll be rounding up some of my favourite video highlights from the conference. Did you attend SXSW? What was your sense of what made waves of the conference, and how was it for you? Let me know in the comments.

In the world of marketing and advertising, knowing what interests people have in our client’s brands is somewhat exciting for us. At Teehan+Lax we use social media measuring tools to help monitor our client’s brands, and the competition. What are people saying? Is it good? is it bad? It is ugly…

“What’s particularly interesting is the negative sentiment has jumped to 40% from 15%, while the positive sentiment has dropped to 14% from 49%” @sysomos

The findings can help validate expectations, but they also yield some interesting insights and trends. But what happens when these tools are applied to measuring a person’s reputation?

Sure one could argue that celebrities are often thought of as ‘brands’ in today’s society, but imagine being judged by your peers and the general population and be able to physically see the results?

The folks at Sysomos (who offer a variety of measuring tools that we use) did an interesting experiment along those lines. They recently blogged about Tiger Woods’ reputation pre and post the latest media frenzy surrounding his accident and admitted transgressions. (You know where to find these stories).

The social media measuring results are fun and entertaining when it comes to celebrities – but what happens when your own reputation is on the line? There have been recent reports that the CIA have been investigating ways to watch the social sphere. Beware… one false ‘tweet’ and you may end up on a list!