Category — Interactive Marketing

Yesterday I was meeting with a hiring prospect who had reached out to me because they had found my blog through Google. We covered a variety of topics related to marketing, social media and mobile.

Besides enjoying the discussion, one thing that really stuck out was a conversation line around online identity, personal branding, and calculating your personal brand equity score.

How do you measure your personal brand equity online?

I did some searching today and came across this blog article that introduced me to the online identity calculator.

Check it out – it’s basically a short questionnaire that leverages google results to come up with a score that puts your online identity  equity score in one of four quadrants. 

Here’s how my personal brand netted out:

What tools do you use to measure / gauge your online brand equity?

Thanks to Lolly, I’ve discovered typealyzer – a  new blog analysis tool that looks at the content of your blog and assigns a type based on myers-briggs.

Type Indicators  are a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.

According to Typealyzer, this blog falls into the INTJ – the Scientists category.

Scientists are the long-range thinking and individualistic type.

They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it – often with a highly creative and imaginative touch.

They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be psychically hesitant to try new things. The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity.

Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communcating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use conrete examples. Since they are extremly good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

With retailer’s becoming more technologically advanced (RFID, Bluetooth, wifi) what is the future of “proximity marketing” through a mobile device? – Ian Barnett, spider marketing.

With technology playing a larger role in the retail experience, we can expect traditional old in-store media to become very interactive. It’s happening now with LCD screens – but the ability to get additional product information or get drawn to products through bluetooth, SMS, mobile web, or qr codes represents real and near future opportunities

In some countries like South Africa for example, consumers are entering malls and downloading virtual coupon books through Bluetooth before starting their shopping. They download a widget or application to their device once, then simply update the content through bluetooth every time they enter a bluetooth zone in the mall.

Think of mobile technology as conversation enablers vs. interruption devices. Nobody wants to be bombarded with messages on their phone – so the successful retail experiences will incorporate opt-in first for any technology play that goes beyond signage.

When will this happen in Canada?

It’s already started. Several malls in Ottawa and out West have already started piloting bluetooth projects and other mobile related projects are also in play across the industry. RBC is piloting a mobile payments platform called mobex which could also roll out to the masses in the next 18 months.  You won’t see widespread qr codes until a carrier incorporates them on their device.

We have enough examples from around the world on the future of proximity marketing in Canada, the bigger question is when will proximity marketing really take off. My bet is 2010.

Question from the audience this week: Could you speak about the multi-device testing process when building mobile sites? Any testing pitfalls with pushing SMS?

Actually that’s two questions, but good ones and easy to answer.

To test how ready your new mobile site is to function across all devices, simply input your test URL here at ready ready.mobi. Getting a 5 out of 5 on their score means you can confidently launch your site knowing it will work on all devices. I personally wouldn’t launch anything that scores less than 4

If you want to test or build for devices specific features or get more testing support, check out mobiforge.com. It’s a great resource.

SMS testing is a different story

Although SMS is a universal feature on mobile devices, testing your SMS programs requires a live shortcode bounded to a platform. Shortcodes are like URLs for mobile… but the process of acquiring them and maintaining them is far more complicated. Learn more at txt.ca.

Chances are you will be hiring a mobile company (or an agency that does mobile) for your SMS needs. They should do all testing and validation for SMS for you. This process requires testing of individual connections between all the carriers bounded to your shortcode.

Be sure to allow for plenty of time for testing – you can’t rush an SMS program out the door. It’s not unusual for it to take 3 months for new shortcodes or at least a few weeks if you are using a shared shortcode

Although it’s impressive that the iphone outsold the blackberry and it’s also impressive that the gphone has 1.5 million pre-orders, keep the following in mind:

1. RIM has not been able to launch the Blackberry BOLD in the U.S. (the largest market for them) due to issues AT&T has been having with certifying it. If the BOLD had been on sale the last few months as expected, the numbers would look very different
2. RIM is releasing a few new consumer driven devices over the next two months including the new clam-shell pearl, a curve with push to talk, and the thunder – RIM’s touch screen version meant to compete with iphone head-on
3. Don’t confuse pre-orders by a carrier with sales to consumers. They’re very different… and most initial reports on the gphone say it’s no iphone killer as it’s heavier, clunkier and the interface is nothing new or innovative. No word yet on who will be the first carrier in Canada to carry it either.

2009 is shaping up to be the year of the smartphone as all the major players are releasing “iphone killers” and you can expect Apple to have a few surprises of their own. More competition and choice can only mean good things for consumers. 

Our National do not call list was launched this week and Canadians were ready for it.

Over 90,000 calls to register phone numbers per hour were being placed on the toll free number and over a million phone numbers were registered within the first 24 hours alone – and that’s with phone lines getting over-run and the website crashing a few times due to volume. 

I decided to wait a few days and was able to quickly add my mobile number to the registry today from their website.  There are two ways to register your phone number: www.LNNTE-DNCL.gc.ca or call the toll-free number 1-866-580-3625

What does this mean for marketers? 

It probably means we can rely less on cost effective off-shore outbound programs to generate new acquisitions or grow existing customers.  Telemarketers have 30 days to comply with your registration and can face hefty fines of up to $15,000 for breaching the list.

Could this mean a revival in print or direct marketing?

Maybe… but my bet is that the real opportunity for acquisition will be through digital channels that are more cost effective, highly targeted and highly measurable as I started to blog about here. 

Imagine only paying for the letter packages that actually get opened – and not for every piece that gets spammed across an area code.  That’s exactly what CPC or cost per click affords us now.  And if you think that’s cost effective, some networks are offering CPA – or cost per action models. That’s like only paying for the letters that are opened and actioned on – like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. 

Interruption marketing is dead.

The do not call list may relegate some ROI acquisition models meaningless, but smart marketers are already creating new models that aren’t just digital – but are based on permission or engaging the consumer based on observed behaviour – as opposed to just interrupting them at dinner time and hoping for the best

Tomorrow I’ll be participating in a professional development day being organized by the the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (RGD Ontario).

They represent more than 3,000 graphic designers, managers, educators and students across Ontario and have organized a day around designing for the digital world.

I’ll be presenting the impact of social media and mobile on communication design and management and demonstrating how Canadians are using new media and how designers can hone their skills to reach them more effectively.

I’ll be posting a copy of the presentation to my slide share account shortly after. For more details, check out their event page here.

Yesterday Google followed up on earlier statements that the browser is now the platform by releasing their own browser dubbed “Chrome.” Click here for full details from Google.

This is not Netscape vs. IE all over again. It’s not even Windows vs Mac. 

It’s more like cold war Russia vs. USA where instead of fighting in proxy countries such as Korea or Vietnam, they’ve chosen the browser as their proxy for world interweb domination.

The browser is the gateway to everything else – from desktop to mobile and everything in between that connects technology to people.  Check out Sachendra’s article here as he goes deeper into some of the other implications to other browser and mobile players in the ecosystem.   

I downloaded the browser last night on my home system and was impressed with the overall experience.

Here are a few things I really liked:

1. URL window is ALSO a search window. Now type in what you are looking for if you don’t know the exact URL without having to open a separate search window
2. When you open a new tab – it shows you large thumbnails of sites you’ve recently visited. 
3. Beautiful & simple interface that optimizes screen space
4. Bookmarks and cached sites were pulled in from firefox
5. Download window appears nicely at the bottom
6. Multi-threaded – meaning your browser will no longer crash or get hung up while waiting for wonky javascript

Things I didn’t like? Like firefox, my web Outlook mail does not render correctly. There doesn’t appear to be the equivalent to the Firefox IETab pluggin – but i’m sure this is coming soon.

Ironically, I had just finished pimping my firefox browser on the advice of co-workers with coComment, IETab, Delicious, Faviconize, Firebug, FireFTP, Linkwad, Live HTTP Headers, PDF Download, PicLens, ScrapBook, ScreenGrab!, SeoQuake, SnapLinks, StumbleUpon, Twitterbar, WebDeveloper, and Window Resizer. 

How soon will it be before Chrome has their own list of custom plugins? Chrome is open source – so it shouldn’t be too long before we start seeing them.

Will there be a mobile equivalent too?

Until there is a declared winner or somebody beats everybody else into submission, I’ll continue to run with Opera, Safari, Firefox, IE and Chrome for all my daily browsing needs

As promoted on this blog previously, I’ve been given the opportunity to present the impact of social media on meetings & events at this year’s Incentive Works conference – Canada’s largest meeting & event show.

I really enjoyed pulling together this presentation as it builds on last year’s topic of “meetings 2.0” and really shows how far we’ve come in one year in terms of leveraging and incorporating technology in our lives – and in our work place.

Here is an outline of what is being presented over 90 minutes on August 19th:

1. Creative opening (thanks to Michael Ofarrell for some of the visuals!)
2. Introduction to Social Media
3. Defining & introducing the tools
4. Impact on meetings & event planning
   • Before the event
   • During the event
   • After the event
5. Measuring Social Media’s impact
6. Pitfalls of Social Media
7. Top 6 things to remember
8. Questions and Answers
9. Obligatory self-promotion of the company I work for, my blog, and the other blogs I contribute to (onedegree.ca & canadianmarketingblog.com)

Specials thanks to Craig Ritchie for providing some of the foundational content and context.

I’ll post a link to the presentation on slide share sometime next week. PDF version also available upon request.

Thanks to Andrew Boisvenue for forwarding me this classic satirical look on the “typical” creative / agency briefing process.

Does this look familiar? I’ve seen this happen before on Interactive projects when technology ends up trumping strategy… and not the other way around.

From my perspective, strategy should lead technology and creative. What do you think?

 
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