Digital Doodles

Oprah 2. Or an inspirational video for brand managers

Real meets virtual. Print goes interactive.

Here's a neat idea that has a lot of possibilities for brands and content creators.

As contagious magazine puts it:"indeed it is an ordinary barcode. But it's what we've attached to the ordinary barcode that's special....Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to stickybits. Either an exciting new media opportunity or a gateway drug to total anarchy. You decide.

Here's how it works. You download the stickybits app to your iPhone or Android phone. Then, when you hover over the barcode with your phone, you're given the option to add a piece of film, image or text to that item - and every other item that bears that barcode. Not only is that message then streamed to the leaver's social networking profile, it's also immediately visible to other people using the app and leaving their own content. This means that every item on the shelf is a potential media channel for content, user-generated or otherwise."

Read more about it here: http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/2010/06/contagious_issue_23.php and more about stickybits at www.stickybits.com
Hat tip @luckthelady.

Tunnel vision will always result in dead-end digital

Advertising Fireworks, Social Bonfires

via slideshare.net

This is such an insightful metaphor. Think about it. Better still, share it with the impatient client (ok all of them), who complains of too few Facebook fans, app users or Twitter followers.

And do point out this graph from a recent Seth Godin post: (Organic) Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers (Full post here http://bit.ly/cSuuyj)

To quote SG: "Check out the graph above. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That's yellow on the graph. Pretty soon, it dies out.

On the other hand, if you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net passalong) it doesn't take long before you overtake the other plan.  (the green). That's not even including the compounding of new people getting you people.

But wait! If your idea is just a little more viral, a 1.7 passalong, wow, huge results. Infinity, here we come. That's the purple (of course.)

A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time.

The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux) followers." End quote.

Clearly the better ideas need to revolve around building a long-lasting bonfire, not adding fireworks to the bonfire.

 Aside: In case you're wondering what's my name doing on that last thank you slide, it's.just an example of the generosity of folks around the social bonfire--in this case the author's . As well as the unque way Twitter triggers ideas, conversations and connections. I retweeted @willsh's  original tweet about the fireworks-bonfire metaphor. And it set him thinking and resulted in this slideshare. Do pass it forward.

Article in Impact Magazine

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26868729/Article-in-IMPACT-10-Lessons-for-Marketers-From-AnandMahindra

When I posted my slideshare/post on Anand Mahindra, Pradyuman Maheshwari, Chief Editor of E4M (@pmahesh) promptly asked me to expand it into a guest article for Impact Magazine. Here is a soft copy of the article which appeared last week.

Welcome to the Splinternet Era

Sometimes you see a pattern among the various links and discussions in your tweetstream. This morning it was from the e-newsletters in my inbox.

The first was an emailer from theFWA.com the "Favourite Website Awards" people. After years, of selecting a daily Site Of The Day, Site of the Month and finally Site of the year.Jan 28th 2010 will see the selection of an iphone app as Site Of The Day.

The second was from the Ad Age Digital enewsletter :Apple's Tablet and the New Splintered Web

"As we all gird for the launch of the Apple Tablet, take a moment to step back and realize what all these new devices are doing. The whole framework of the web (and web marketing) is based around the idea that everything is in a compatible format. Any browser, any computer, any connection, you see pretty much the same thing.

Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the web, that's not true. Your site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes Flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don't work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don't work anywhere else......Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization -- it all works because the web is standardized. Google works because the web is standardized.

Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format and technology. Each new social site has its log-in and many hide content from search engines.

We call this new world the Splinternet (with a nod to Doc Searls and Rich Tehrani, who used the term before us with a somewhat different meaning). It will splinter the web as a unified system. The golden age has lasted 15 years. Like all golden ages, it lasted so long we thought it would last forever. But the end is in sight."

You can read the full article http://bit.ly/9GPUXR by @joshbernoff, Forrester analyst and co-author of Groundswell.

The third emailer was the daily Chart of the Day from Silicon Valley Insider: "In less than three years, the iPhone has grown to become Apple's biggest business -- up from zero.Specifically, during Apple's December quarter, the company reported $5.6 billion of iPhone-related revenue, up 90% year-over-year."

Read together, these  signal an acceleration in the shift from PC-based web to a multi-device Mobile Web, where clearly Apple with its iphone and the launching-tomorrow Tablet, aims to rule, with its own AppleWeb.

Marketers and Agencies will have to equip themselves for the changing reality. What do you think will be the key challenges?

What Indian CXO's & Brands Can Learn From @AnandMahindra

The new digital world poses a real challenge for marketers and managers. The firewall between organization and consumer has disappeared. The brand is no longer safe under the TVC limelight, with pre-scripted lines and controlled messages.  The consumer has tasted power and he is not afraid to use it-emailing the CEO for poor customer service; telling the world in a tweet  what he thinks of his bank, mobile service provider  or his Government.

I found Mr Anand Mahindra (@anandmahindra) a natural and a quick learner in the way he was using his Twitter account to engage with various segments of people.  His tweets reflect the new reality-the merging of the professional and personal- in our lives, and in an organization’s and brand’s interactions. 

I put together this presentation as an example of how brands can participate in new media beyond hard-sell and megaphone marketing.

As David Armano, the social design guru puts it: “Your Brand is the sum of its interactions.” And “Micro-interactions are the building blocks of Brand 2.0 “.  Brands and marketers can’t fake it anymore in 30 seconds.

Do share your thoughts and feedback.

Update: Further illustration of real-time engagement: Mr Anand Mahindra acknowledged the tweet/presentation within an hour.

@vijaysankaran Appreciate the constructive feedback Vijay.

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 25, 2010

Why Bluetooth is a verb in Iran

So many of us take the freedom of online speech for granted. Reading this Iranian exile's story was touching-especially how the same technology used to track and muffle dissent is also used to fight censorship.

"Last month, during and after the funeral of the reformist Grand Ayatollah Hossain Ali Montazeri, one of the demonstrators’ most useful tools was the Bluetooth short-range radio signal that Americans use mainly to link a cellphone to an earpiece, or a printer to a laptop. Long ago, Iranian dissidents discovered that Bluetooth can as easily link cellphones to each other in a crowd.

And that made “Bluetooth” a verb in Iran: a way to turn citizen reportage instantly viral. A protester Bluetooths a video clip to others nearby, and they do the same. Suddenly, if the authorities want to keep the image from escaping the scene, they must confiscate hundreds or thousands of phones and cameras."

The full story here: The Iranian Exile’s Eye - NYTimes.com http://bit.ly/8jJtIh

Photo Source: Non-Comm, Attrib, No Derivs: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-g-uk/

#EPICWIN: Of Hashtags and Swine Flu

If you are on twitter, you'll love this presentation-more of a stand up act- by @baratunde. #EPICWIN as they say on twitter:)
If you are, er-into social media marketing--loads of insights on what brands can and shouldn't do.

Facebook is about you, not Yahoo

Source:Silicon Alley Insider Chart of the Day. Comscore Data for Dec 2009. Link: http://bit.ly/8aIyZf

Yahoo may want you to make it your homepage, but the stats tell a different story.

Facebook unique visitors from USA doubled from 55 million in December 2008, to 112 million people in Dec 2009.

Yahoo's numbers moved marginally in the same period. By 15 million, from 104 million to 119 million.