Graeme Wood

2010 has been an amazing year for technology. We’ve seen an explosion of tablets, the rise and rise of Android, the saturation of location-based services, not to mention set-top boxes from Google and Apple, 3D TVs, Microsoft Kinect, and the first mainstream movie about a website, The Social Network. Mobile technology also continued to race forward at light-speed, with many advances in mobile payments, augmented reality and high speed networks.

But don’t expect it all to end there. 2011 is already holding some intriguing and exciting possibilities.Let’s take a look at some the technologies and gadgets in store for 2011.

Desktop computing:

• Google’s Open Source Chrome OS.
• Apple’s OS X and the much anticipated Mac App Store.
• Oracle’s Solaris 11 Unix operating system.
• Intel’s next generation Core processors codenamed “Sandy Bridge” for desktop and laptop computing.

Mobile Phones:

• Near Field Communications technology to make credit and debit cards obsolete
• Embedded SIM cards that can be activated by software and work on any carrier
• The iPhone 5 and the hopefully (mercifully), the white iPhone 4
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread handsets such as the Samsung Nexus S
• New phones from HP running WebOS
• The Playstation Phone
• Multi-core phones such as the dual-core LG Star thanks to dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon, Intel “Moorestown” and NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPUs
• 3D smartphones such as Sharp’s autostereoscopic 3D Galapagos
• MeeGo OS based phones from Nokia
• High quality cameraphones such as the Android based 14 megapixel Altek Leo, and Sony Ericsson using the world’s first 16.41 megapixel cellphone sensors

Tablet computing:

• Multi-core tablets such as Research In Motion’s hotly anticipated 7-inch PlayBook.
• New WebOS based tablets from HP
• New tablets running Google’s new tablet specific operating system, “HoneyComb”
• The iPad 2, rumoured to run on both GSM and CDMA networks with a front-facing camera
• MeeGo OS based tablets from Nokia
• Powerful, low powered tablets thanks to Intel’s “Oak Trail” and NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processors

Device Interfaces:

LightPeak, the high-speed optical cable interface designed to connect peripheral devices at 10 Gbit/s and could replace SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, PCI Express and HDMI interfaces

Highspeed USB 3

Super enegery efficient Bluetooth 4

The WiGig and VESA effort to push wireless DisplayPort gear that will connect PCs and handhelds to monitors, projectors and HDTVs without cables

Gaming:

• The PlayStation Portable 2
• Nintendo’s 3DS for 3D gaming without the need for 3D glasses
• Nintendo’s Wii HD

E-Books:

• Colour E-Ink
• Copia’s Social Reading platform, that plans to be a social network for books
• The New York Times’s plan to launch a bestseller list for e-books

Displays:

• More widespread use of flexible and transparent display technology such as AMOLED and OLED displays from Samsung and Sony
• Low-power color display that looks great in bright sunlight such as those from Pixel Qi and Qualcomm
• USB-powered desktop PC monitors such as those planned from Samsung
• Silicon film from Artificial Muscle that expands and contracts with an applied voltage could provide a real sense of touch to touchscreens

Wireless Networks:

Wider roll out of HSPA 21 Mbit/s networks

Next generation LTE and Wimax 2 networks running at 100 Mbits/s and upward

TV:

• 3D-TV without glasses in 2011 such as those from Toshiba
• Worldwide release of Google TV, Apple TV, and the use of set-top boxes as app platforms
• A growth in 3D-broadcasts of movies, television series and sport events
• 30-inch and larger OLED TVs

Web:

• Firefox 4
• More widespread use of HTML 5
• If you listen to Apple, Flash will battle for relevance, but it might find a safe harbour in tablet UIs like the one of RIM’s PlayBook

Photography:

• The Panasonic GF2
• Sony’s NXCAM HD Super 35mm camcorder

Cars:

• Electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt and BMW’s Megacity EV
• Electric motorcycles such as the Brammo’s Empulse, and electric bicycles such as the M55 Beast Electric Bike
• In-car computer operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Automotive that makes it easier for car manufacturers to create their own in-car computer interfaces
• OnStar that expands smartphone control for monitoring stats like tire pressure and oil level from your smartphone
• Plans for the Volvo S60 to feature pedestrian tracking and provide automated evasive maneuvers

Peripherals

• The extremely cool looking Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse

Miscellaneous:

• Berkeley Bionics eLEGS exoskeleton that aims to help paraplegics
• More advances in wireless electricity for gadgets thanks to the Wireless Power Consortium
• Commercial space flights thanks to Virgin Galactic
• Battery-less remote that gets its power from button presses

Facebook's social inbox: an engagement tool like no other?

23 November 2010 | By Joe Fernandez

It was perhaps only a matter of time before Facebook upped its offerings and gave brands even more engagement opportunities. Its approach to advertising has often been hailed as the ultimate way of leveraging brand equity and exploring the innermost thought patterns of customers.

Indeed Syzygy Group’s Unique Digital claims it now represents over an estimated 30% of its UK inventory already and Phil Stelter, its client services director, says roughly 75% of fans report becoming a fan as the result of an invitation or advertising from that brand.

“It’s clear that the campaigns are effective in encouraging those affiliations and drawing the attention of fans…an undeniable tide pushing agencies to reconsider their approach,” he adds.

With the upgrade of Facebook Messages, it seems that Mark Zuckenberg and co have realised the potential of its platform to become the main resource for online users to engage in social discussions and relate to their favourite brands.

Its terminology - it is offering a “social inbox” and not an e-mail platform - further proves that it is intent on being the online hub for consumers - a place to escape the elitism of the office and have complete control of your social persona. For advertisers, the prospects are mouthwatering - but filled with challenges too.

Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital, explains: “The challenge is understanding the need for tailored, personalised adverts and adapting your approach to keep your offer fresh. That requires a blend of technology, the right tactics, a savvy team and a culture that is open to new ideas and ways of doing business.”

It’s no secret that most brands are already utilising this power available to them on Facebook. What will become much stronger now though is a brand’s ability to communicate directly to their fans in their “social inbox”. At the moment, brands can only post “updates” and these are not always so easy to find on an already busy home page.

Ben Clapp, creative director at Elvis, warns that to make messages and not updates a success, then brands “will need to learn to be less formal, engage in dialogue, stop interrupting – or get de-friended.”

Facebook’s opportunity is made all the more plausible by a gradually declining usage of email, compared to Facebook’s continually increasing usage numbers - it currently reports 500 million active users, 50% of who log in at least every day.

Dan Thwaites, planning partner at Crayon comments: “The ultimate aim will be to build always-on relationships with the audiences, to be accessible and relevant, when they are ready.  The challenge for the brand must be to earn the right to be on their audience’s inner circle.”

Facebook engineer Joel Seligstein, says in a blog, that Messages will now “feel more like a human conversation” based on what the user wants to share with their Facebook friends - who those friends are is completely up to the user. The aim is to make the service “more like a conversation and less like e-mail”.

Phil Harvey, chairman of JPMH says: “A driver for this is likely to be the desire for real time and location based communication, against which email delivers poorly.”

Unlike e-mail, which continues to be plagued by spam problems, it means that brands will have to prove that it understands the customer individually and is offering them what they want to hear about. Effectively, brands using Facebook Messages will have to replicate the intelligence much beloved of personalised e-mails from Amazon.

Steven Ledgerwood, client service director at e-mail marketing firm Emailvision, says the ultimate challenge for companies “will become much more focused on keeping their emails interesting with relevant topics to lure their customers to the email accounts on a daily basis.”

Yet marketers can see the potential for this development to change the face of e-mail in the long term, especially amongst younger users who “like” brands almost every day on the site.

James Kirkham, MD of Holler, says: “By weaving in such a coherent and seamless email client within their platform it means an even less clumsy and more fluid experience for the user.”

However, he warns that brands will have to think more carefully about how they treat social media: “It throws up a whole new set of rules and etiquette, which haven’t yet being properly understood or explored.”

Successfully mastering this will be reliant on brands creating more rich content experiences, which are interesting, entertaining, and which can be shared - effectively advocacy marketing. Whilst negative comments can never be fully ignored, brands have to take responsibility for their own presence online.

Nick Gill, planning director at integrated agency DCH, says: “For brands, it’s another large step on the road to a socialised brand architecture. One where you need to have customer intimacy; where the normal conventions of batching responses and speaking when you deem it necessary is gone. Instant is the new mantra.”

Yet, instant hasn’t taken off in the way it should have done in previous attempts. Martin Harrison, senior social media planner at TMW, suggests Facebook’s move is too similar to the ill-fated Google Wave. because email is firmly embedded in people’s everyday lives.

“Its role is defined, people know their way round it and despite the odd chap out there who still thinks their bits could be bigger people are very, very comfortable with it.”

According to recent research by e-mail marketing firm eCircle, there is an overlap between email and social media communication. In the UK, 56% of fans and followers of company/brand social media profiles are also reached by email newsletters.

Phil Storey, the company’s creative consultant, says: “With this new initiative, Facebook is simply giving people what they want:  all their multichannel conversations in one place and the chance to manage all their personal admin in one, convenient place.”

Dan Northover, digital design director at Partners Andrews Aldridge, adds: “Facebook’s social inbox will be the significant step towards the convergence of email, SMS and social media messaging. This will mean brands will need to work harder to create compelling content and develop useful services, therefore earning the right to have a relationship. Email marketing will continue to have a role for a long time but needs to be considered as a part of a wider Social CRM strategy.”

Tying such advertising content in to the Facebook Messages system will be key to its success, in the same way as Facebook Pages have become effective ways of having an ‘opt in’ relationship around content and products, using both sponsored ads and the news feed as an advertorial tool.

Ben Ayers, head of social media at Carat, suggests: “Perhaps the biggest opportunity around messaging could be the potential for Facebook to sell targeted ads based on conversations within the messaging system, a la Gmail, plus make use of the associated data. But Facebook have shown that they don’t always take the obvious path at first, opting instead for being a brilliant utility – and then monetising.”

He adds: “The other issue is one of trust. How much will users trust Facebook to keep their conversations private and secure? That level of trust needs to be earned which I think it another reason that unified messaging on Facebook won’t be killing web based email just yet.”

Yet if digital is loved for one thing above all else, the one-to-one relationships that can only otherwise be achieved through face-to-face contact would be it. Potentially, Facebook Messages could centre all such engagement onto one page.

As Christina Lemieux, strategy director, TBWA, concludes:  “The Social Inbox should allow brands to humanise themselves and initiate truly one-to-one social conversations versus just broadcasting messages to consumers.”

 

smart analysis and new stats

The Marketing Agency world continues to change and evolve.

Just the other week, news broke that ZenithOptimedia UK will be going through a restructuring. There are rumors that Starcom MediaVest Group may also look to change things up in the UK. With every passing week, we hear more stories about Marketing professionals coming and going, departments being shifted, removed or created, and consolidation is a common practice when big brands meet big business.

What's it going to take a for an agency to make it? What's it going to take for a brand to find the right agency for the job?

Last week, MediaBizBloggers, had a post titled, The Agency of the Future is Now the Agency of the Past, by Uwe Hook. As the Marketing industry continues to mature, and as new channels and platforms enter the fray (mostly due to technology), it's important to think long and hard about what a real Marketing agency  is going to look like. Instead of hacking together a quick Blog post to respond/elaborate on Hook's perspective, I took the week to think, take notes and push some of the ideas to an edgier edge.

This is what the agency of the future might look like... 

• It won't be small. It won't be big. Many pundits thought that the big agencies with multiple disciplines would rule them all, while others thought that it would be the boutique shops that can pay more attention and care to the brand that would win. It's probably going to be somewhere in the middle. The more likely solution will be an agency with a solid core group that can accommodate both the size of the brand and the scope of the work. One that can scale as needed and detract when the needs are less imminent.
• De-centralized. While geography and understanding the "people on the street" will still be important in terms of cultural relevance, the agency of the future will be more de-centralized. That core unit (mentioned above) will be working with more freelancers that are both physically present and those that are anywhere and everywhere in the world. While great creative comes from great collaboration, the tools that enable us to collaborate are getting us to the point where the realities of leveraging a Digital Nomad workforce will become more prevalent and cost-effective.
• Chief Marketing Technologist. Marketing and IT are going to have to come together in a much bigger way. I made the case for this, right here: The Time Is Ripe For A Chief Marketing Technologist. If technology (and living it) is not core to your Marketing agency, you'll never make it out alive. Start looking at how many full-time tech people you employ versus creative and client services, and get that ratio working better.
• Content. Most brands don't see themselves as publishers and most agencies don't have a lot of people creating value-added content. This is going to change. Whether it's because of Social Media or the sudden growth of branded content, more and more agencies will have amped up content departments that will look, strikingly, like the creative departments of today and yesterday.
• Community Management. While many brands are hiring community managers to deal with the many online conversations, they are are going to struggle with the scaling of this role, and it will be encumbent on the modern agency to act as the community manager for many of these brands. More and more consumers are starting their conversations with a brand online and a handful of people within an organization managing this back and forth won't be a viable long-term strategy.
• Strategy lead will come from the Digital side. If more and more people are having their first brand interaction at a search box and more and more brands have the online channel as the primary point of contact for consumers (or the first place a consumer goes with a query), the current landscape of the traditional agency leading the communications program is going to have to change and shift. If the majority of consumers are starting with a brand online, that's where the strategy lead needs to take place as well.
• Advertising shrinks. We tend to forget that advertising is a sub-set of Marketing. Marketing is going to become the primary driver and advertising - while still being a critical part of the marketing mix - will play a less significant role. The jewel in the crown of an entire Marketing campaign won't be the 30-second spot or the billboards. It's probably going to be many jewels from many different parts of that marketing mix (and the majority of them will be digital).
• Non-integrated. Brands think that an integrated solution is best, more cost-effective and cohesive to messaging. This is going to be the biggest and most dramatic change. Integrated won't work. Multiple disciplines working together is where the gold is going to be. We're not just talking about your digital shop sitting at the table with your corporate communications and general advertising agency - it's going to be deeper than that. There will be micro-specialists (like search engine optimization, analytics, etc...) all brought in (as needed) to make things flow. Even the current slew of agencies that claim full-integration have silos so wide and deep that they may as well be non-integrated.
• Mobile is Digital. As much as those micro-specialists will be critical to a brand's success, the digital aspect needs to think with one-line of connectivity. Having an online strategy and a mobile strategy is not going to work. Consumers are simply connected, and whether they are doing a search on their smartphone or at their desktop, they're not thinking of it as two very different or unique channels. The agency of the future shouldn't either.
• Analytics. The beginning, middle and end of success will be the analytics and metrics. Real metrics. Real insights and real reactions. None of this will be possible without a heavy analytics department capable of not only slicing and dicing the data, but working with the creative and client services department to help their brands see what others cannot.
• The new creative. Creative will not just be about "the big idea." Creative will be much more about many big ideas done in many different channels. This is going to force the hand of the current slew of creatives to re-think how they structure, present and produce great creative. It's not about shifting from 30-second spots to banner ads, and it's not about making a billboard work in an email. The core role of the creative department will extend and expand well-beyond it's current incantation.
• Storytelling as a department. Storytelling may be part of how this creative department will evolve. Whether it's transmedia or the growing popularity in having a non-linear story being told by a brand, the core idea of making a brand a better story-teller (through content, analytics, social media and various other media channels) is going to change the org chart in a major way.

That's my side, what's yours? What does the agency of the future look like to you?

By Mitch Joel

Related Posts:

• Maybe It Is Time For Marketing To Move Away From "The Big Idea"
• 7 Things That Blogging Does
• Is Social Media Right For Every Business?

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best summary of 'what has changed and what to do about it' deck that i've seen

UK figures sound on par with the Guardian's predictions