Tag: andymaskin

It’s that time of year again; mid-March means [maybe] less snow and SXSW Interactive. Startups, technologists, pundits, marketers, engineers and BBQ aficionados will descend upon Austin for several days of waiting in line for panels and several nights waiting in line for parties. The Lab will be down in Austin with a crack team of scouts, strategists and content creators.

There are literally hundreds of panels to choose from, and we have our eyes on dozens and dozens of them. But for the sake of brevity, we’re going to give you our three picks for each day of the festival. These are the three panels, for each day, that we think are most worth attending.

We are making these picks through the lens of marketing and the goals of Mediabrands’ clients. There will undoubtedly be some fantastic panels on responsive web development and maybe drones. We’re here to focus on brands and audiences, and thus our picks:

Friday March 7th

• Big Data Inverted: The Best Candy from Strangers?
• The Internet of Cars
• Arena vs. Couch: The Battle of Game Day Experience

Saturday March 8th

• Welcome to the Mobile Majority: Now What?
  
• Being Social with Grandma: Social Media for 50+
• It’s Complicated: Teens’ Social Media Practices

Sunday March 9th

• The Soap Lady: Finding Disruptive Consumers
  
• Accelerating Innovation in Retail
• Crushing Second Screen: The Ultimate TV Companion

Monday March 10th

• Platforms vs. Publishers: A Big New Theory
  
• TV Storytelling Adapted for Twitter
• Is Online Video Killing TV?

Tuesday March 11th

• MCNs: The Next-Generation Media Companies
  
• Disruption of TV and the Future of “Online” Video
• Faster than Real-Time: Predictive Marketing

If you make it to these, we hope to see you there. Maybe we’ll grab some BBQ afterwards.

Here at the Lab, we are always looking for new ways to capture the attention of audiences using emerging technologies. We ask ourselves where there may be opportunities for brands to influence purchase decisions in new ways. We engage in thought experiments such as “Would adding ultra-short games to a purchase flow be an annoyance or an opportunity? Could they be an chance for a brand to engage with a user in a mutually beneficial value exchange?”

In parallel, we evaluate new technologies based not just on what they do, but what they could do with some creativity applied. Sometimes, we see a technology that has little or nothing to do with advertising and ask ourselves whether there is a way for brands to utilize it in a new way. Since we have a perspective on such a wide range of technologies and services, we often find ourselves connecting the proverbial dots between them to create whole new ad product prototypes.

A few months ago during a routine scouting mission we met a company named Vengo. They are a nimble NYC-based start-up out to create high-tech vending machines with small form-factors optimized to go everywhere from offices to the back of taxis. We liked their demo and it was very nice-looking, but it was a pretty straight-forward vending machine purchase user experience. But we took note of their touchscreen interface and flexible platform and began to wonder – is there a unique way a brand could play in this space? Can we do something fun and engaging while this machine has a consumer’s attention? Could this even be a new type of ad product?

We kept in touch with Vengo and bounced ideas around within our own creative team. What resulted was the idea of incorporating sponsored micro-games into the purchase flow of the vending machine. Now when we say micro-game, our requirement was that the game would have to take less than 15 seconds. The reason a consumer might engage is that there’s a payoff: do well enough in the game and you get a discount on your purchase.

By sponsoring the game (i.e. covering the cost of the discount), a brand gets a consumer’s focused attention for a short but intense period of time. Since the vending machines are all networked, the different games can be deployed to different machines and swapped out at will. And thus you effectively have created a new kind of out-of-home ad product, which could easily be bought programmatically across a big enough footprint. The CPM would be relatively high, but so would the engagement – if the content were strong enough.

We came back to Vengo with the idea and they loved it. So after collaborating on the precise design, game mechanics and form factor of the test unit, they developed a prototype. The unit is now up and running in our NYC Lab and has been warmly received, especially by those who have figured out how to make the demo dispense treats without using a real credit card.

A user can come up to the vending machine and buy treats as they normally would using the touchscreen. But our prototype has a call-to-action in the upper left to play the “Snapple Imposter” game. If the user opts to play the game, they are presented with 8 different bottles of Snapple. They then have ten seconds to identify which of the eight is a fake flavor. As time ticks by, the discount you win decreases. Get the correct answer quickly and you get a big discount. If it takes you 9 seconds to figure it out, then you get a smaller discount. If you get it wrong or time expires, you get no discount. Regardless of whether the user wins in this scenario, the brand wins. As the user plays the game, they have to think really hard about the Snapple brand and which flavors they offer or would realistically be flavors they might make. We would possit that 10 seconds of intense focus is worth more than a passing glance at a 30 second TV spot.

Imagine a new type of ad unit that could be deployed to vending machines and other points-of-sale giving users the opportunity to exchange 10 seconds of fun for a discount. And this would be deployed into the middle of a purchase flow, so a brand is getting to the consumer right when they’ve got their wallets out and they’re in a buying mood. It’s a juicy moment for a consumer to hear a brand’s message.

Excited marketers, please note: this is not a real product out in the world yet. There is no programmatically buyable network of micro-games on vending machines to be had at present. But the Lab is happy to have dreamt up an experiment and get it made into a real thing that can get us all thinking about the future.

As for Vengo, they were happy with how our experiment has turned out as well. Per Brian Shimmerlik, CEO of Vengo: “Tapping into the collective creativity of the people at the lab has been a huge asset for Vengo. The lab gets building tech from scratch and they understand the needs of large brands. The lab is a valuable hub where the two commingle and hang out.”

Check out the short video below for a sense of what the user experience is like.

Today in New York City, the NFC & Mobile Money Summit kicked off with many talks of interest including a panel on the state of NFC. Organized by the GSMA, the same organization behind the annual Mobile World Congress, the event featured a couple dozen exhibitors as well as an engaging conference track.

The aforementioned NFC panel was well-attended, and featured speakers from three continents discussing their thoughts on where things stand with NFC. The bottom line, not to spoil the ending of this recap, is that we are still in the very early stages of the technology. All but one of the panelists was primarily payments-focused, and there’s a fair case to be made that this is a grounded perspective. But no one could boast enormous NFC adoption and a mature state of the technology just yet.

The first speaker was J.H. Kah of SK Planet, which is a recent spinoff of South Korea’s SK Telecom. It operates its own app store and payment infrastructure. It focuses on developing capabilities for mobile credit cards, mobile debit card and mobile transportation card. That said, he did acknowledge that in order for payments to take off, NFC had to be better integrated into people’s lives. SK Planet is working hard on the engineering challenges in particular of putting the secure element for NFC payments inside carrier-issued SIM cards, such that carriers can control mobile payments.

From Norway’s Telenor, Viktoria Erngard introduced the audience to the carrier’s new Valyou platform. The Valyou platform is a contactless payments mechanism launching in Oslo this week. Telenor ultimately hopes to leverage this sort of technology worldwide to their 150 million customers. Valyou is a mobile wallet at heart, tied at launch to the major Norwegian bank DNB, with more such banks to follow in the near future. Ms. Erngard urged the audience to have patience, as customer uptake of this technology worldwide may be slower than expected.

Mikhail Damiani of Blue Bite brought a marketing perspective into the mix. His company has been involved in many NFC-powered out-of-home campaigns. They did a Samsung campaign where device users could tap a bus shelter sign to download a free song or eBook. For the latest Star Trek movie, users could tap a poster in the movie theater and download longer-form exclusive trailer. In another interesting execution, this time for Toyota, users who tapped out-of-home signage in malls could launch an HTML5-based augmented reality experience.

Blue Bite has even attempted to upgrade the advertising experience of airport security bins. NFC tap points in these bins during one campaign launched ads for the Clear security program. They also rely on what they call an “mTag”. This is a combination of an NFC sticker with a QR Code, to accommodate those comfortable with either. As a baseline, Mr. Damiani recommends that for any NFC-based campaign, the best practice is for the payoff to be relevant to the context of the ad, valuable to the user, and exclusive.

The last speaker was Maxim Sidorov from Russian MNO VimpelCom. In June 2013, VimpelCom launched a PayPass pilot in partnership with AlphaBank and MasterCard. They are also rolling out a SIM-card based pilot of a mobile solution for the Moscow Metro. Their view of the NFC ecosystem encompasses SIM cards, handsets, POS terminals and payment sources. It is a very SIM-card-based, payments-centric perspective on NFC. Mr. Sidorov directly addressed the ongoing divide between telecoms and device-makers over where to store secure payment data for NFC transactions. He advocated for the carriers to manage this via the SIM card, since they know how to drive mass scale adoption of technologies and have the power to adopt and enforce standards. He lamented that competition between these points of view could damage the whole NFC space and delay wide adoption.

During the panel discussion, everyone agreed that their programs were all early-stage and there’s no big consumer uptake yet. Even Blue Bite acknowledged that in their “mTag”-based out-of-home signage, only 30-40% of interactions were NFC rather than QR-code based.

Interestingly, considering mobile and smartphones are the focus of the event, it was 74 minutes into the 90-minute session that Apple was first mentioned. The sense on the panel was that Apple hasn’t adopted NFC yet because consumers are not yet asking for it. One theory is that as transit systems adopt contactless payments, consumer demand may rise.

And thus, in summary, the space continues to inch along. There are lots of interesting innovations brewing, but the inflection point of consumer demand for NFC has not yet arrived. That said, it is exciting to think about all the possibilities that lie ahead once adoption does begin to scale.

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for a movie that came out almost 25 years ago. It’s also a bit more exhaustive than these reviews tend to be, but we’re making an educated guess you won’t actually go see the movie (which is unfortunate).

Right up until showtime, my colleague Myles and I were not 100% sure we were even in the right place. It was 4:45pm on a Tuesday in a 25-screen Times Square multiplex, and we were the only ones in the entire theater. There was no “NCM First Look” pre-preview content, just a fairly audible buzzing sound. Then, to our relief, the lights dimmed and the show started.

Thus began our expedition to experience Disney’s augmented re-release of “The Little Mermaid”. What made this special, and why we were there, was that Disney is experimenting with an interactive big-screen format meant to bring more kids to the movies. They call it: “The Little Mermaid: Second Screen Live!” I’m not a fan of their naming this a “Second Screen” experience. “Second Screen” is industry-speak within advertising and entertainment, and people in those industries too often assume the general public knows what we’re talking about. The most egregious expression of this pet peeve of mine is in the liberal use of the word “content” in marketing communications. “Hey Jill, I saw the most awesome exclusive content last night” said no one, ever.

In any case, this Disney experiment is titled such that you’re meant to know you can experience the movie on a big screen and a screen in your hands simultaneously. While using your iPad during a movie is almost always strongly discouraged,  this experience is meant to be an exception. Not only are you encouraged to have an iPad, not having one seriously detracts from your ability to enjoy the movie.

When “The Little Mermaid” came out, I was too old for it, and my colleague Myles was not yet born. So we came at the experience from two different perspectives. He also had a built-in leg-up on me vis a vis the in-movie trivia, since I had never seen the movie before.

I had pre-loaded the “Little Mermaid SSL” app onto two Lab iPads and had them fully charged, ready to go. As we waited for the movie to start, we found the provided “SSLIVE1” Wi-Fi access point, but figured out pretty fast it had no uplink to the Internet. When the show starts, the actress who does the voice of Ariel comes on and walks you through the required iPad setup procedures. She tells you to turn Airplane Mode on (to conserve battery?) and then turn Wi-Fi back on, then connect to the access point “SSLIVE1”.

Up on the movie screen, they explain how to set up your iPad

I suspect the Wi-Fi part of this is not to transmit content, so much as it is to relay players’ scores back to a central computer running the show. More on that later.

It appeared as though the iPad app stayed in sync with the movie via audio watermarking. A few times I exited out of the app to check something else on the iPad, and when I went back in I saw it “Listening …” and then syncing right back up.

Throughout the movie, the relationship between what’s going on in the movie and all the activities on your iPad is guided by the characters Sebastian and Flounder. In fact, at the beginning, you are asked to join either “Team Sebastian” or “Team Flounder” (“Team Edward” was not an option). During moments of sustained lack of dialogue, an extra layer of voice-over has been added to the movie wherein Sebastian and Flounder banter about the iPad-based games you’ve been playing. When characters in the movie are talking, they switch to communicating with you via captions at the bottom of the movie screen, written as if Sebastian and Flounder are texting each other. I thought that was actually a pretty clever solution for maintaining continuity without drowning out the actual movie.

Periodically throughout the movie a caption of this type announces a new game is coming up, along with a 5-second countdown clock up on the movie screen. Then a game happens down on the iPad. Some games were very directly linked to the action in the movie (e.g. “What Happens Next?”) and others were just skill games (e.g. “Pop the bubbles as fast as you can”). One game, somewhere in between, had you tilting the iPad back and forth to right the sailors’ ship during the big storm towards the beginning of the movie.

Here are some screenshots of game examples:

“What Happens Next” – rapid-fire game that follows the movie closely

What doesn’t belong in this scene? In this example, you had to find three things.

Straight-up multiple choice trivia

A maze!  The maze themes more or less followed what was going on in the movie

As you play these games, you earn points. Periodically, Flounder or Sebastian chimes in to show you the running scores of Team Sebastian vs. Team Flounder. Since Myles and I were the only ones playing along, this conveniently reflected our individual scores as well.

Towards the end of the movie, when Ursula makes her big devious move, The points of Team Flounder and Team Sebastian are united under the banner of “Team Ariel”, and a “Team Ursula” appears. It stands to reason that Team Ursula consists of just Ursula. At the climax of the movie, as the action on the big screen oscillates from hope, to dashed hope, and then eventual triumph of good over evil, Team Ursula’s score, reflected on the iPad artificially jumps ahead of Team Ariel then back down, then ahead again, and finally disappears. Team Ariel then breaks back down to its two components as the movie ends. We felt the way the point scoring changed and then changed back got a little confusing and wasn’t explained thoroughly enough. We figured it out but that’s because we have some sense of how they were trying to line up with the movie narrative and get the kids to root for Ariel. That said, I’m pleased to report that when all was said and done I overcame my trivia disadvantage to beat Myles 31,371 to 29,091. Go Team Flounder!

The games do get a bit repetitive after a while. Although there are at least half a dozen that I can remember, they come at you pretty relentlessly, and each one is played at least 3-4 times. The games also can distract you from key points in the movie.

I think my biggest overall gripe with the experience is when Ursula finally gets killed(?) I missed how it happened because I was busy playing a game on the iPad. Also of note, a couple times during the movie they actually freeze-frame it and let you complete a puzzle on the iPad. Great if you have an iPad, but probably a little irksome if you don’t.

There are also several fun less competitive touches to the experience. When the characters break out into the song, kids are encouraged to sing along (“Crab-E-Oke”) and the lyrics appear on the iPad in time with the song:

Under The Sea

Also, periodically throughout the movie, kids on either team are encouraged to cheer for their side. This is a great way to prep them for a future rooting for sports teams.

I felt as though overall this was a cute, fun, thought-provoking experience. It’s a shame no one else was in the theater with us, especially any kids. Myles pointed out that an 8-year-old with an iPad would really enjoy this sort of thing a whole lot. We both felt it was a very interesting use of the technology and a good way to breathe some life into a classic movie everyone’s seen before.

If you know a kid who is in the right age group for a Disney cartoon and likes the iPad, this is definitely 90 minutes well spent. Likewise, if you are a UX person working anywhere near the second-screen experience space, I’d highly recommend trying to run out and catch this movie before it is out of theaters. The experience just won’t be the same on home video. Act fast, based on the attendance we saw you may not have much of a chance left.

Much has been made this week about Apple’s “iBeacon” functionality baked into iOS 7. It wasn’t part of the 5C/5S keynote, it’s more of a wonky technical detail. But some have embraced it with exuberance as an “NFC-killer”.

But first, for the uninitiated, an iBeacon primer. iBeacon is an Apple flavor of Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE). BLE is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a new form of Bluetooth that doesn’t drain your battery nearly as fast. The trade-off, though is less data throughput. So no streaming media over it, or even your voice. It is designed to transmit very small packets of information. “What good is that?” you might ask. Well, if that small bit of information is “you are standing in the cereal aisle” or “here is a short URL that links to content relevant to this particular spot” then there could be many useful applications.

With BLE-enabled devices an apps, your device can be always listening for these sorts of cues, and not drop to 0% battery after 2 hours. If your phone is always listening, you are always reachable with contextually relevant ads, offers and other content. And that’s great, as long as what you are pinging people with is relevant enough for them to not mind (or enjoy!) getting it. I’m in the cereal aisle, I get a great offer that is relevant to cereal. I enter the European Masters exhibit at the Met, and my phone is pinged with a link to a synopsis of the exhibit.

BLE is also great for “Internet of Things” applications, such as objects with embeddable sensors. It’s all well and good to have a gadget that absorbs all sorts of great information about your body, or the world around it, but if transmitting that information out so it gets to the Internet drains the battery too fast, your smart object becomes a constantly-recharging pain. With BLE your SmartGadget can relay data to your mobile device (or a base station of some sort), which can in turn bounce that information up to the Internet as needed.

Some have argued this technology could be useful to mobile payments, but I’m not so sure about that. The infrastructure lift is a bit harder in that case, because the base station in the store needs to recognize the unique hardware ID of your phone, and tie that back to a specific basket of goods. Then it would have to recognize that a payment has been made. It’s a lot of moving parts.

With NFC, this equation is simpler because the device tapping the terminal is clearly the one paying for the items in the basket being tallied. While BLE is good at addressing ambient conditions, NFC is optimized for more deliberate and considered actions. In short, while BLE is optimized for a 10 foot radius around you, NFC is optimized for the thing you are touching right now. These don’t supplant each other, they are inherently complimentary.

If you ask five people for explanations of why Apple has not yet embraced NFC, you’ll likely get seven answers. Perhaps the most plausible one is that Apple doesn’t want to take the leap until there are enough tappable experiences out int he world. They don’t want to get everyone excited to go tap things, then go out into the world and find nothing to tap. Better to let Google take the hit on that user experience disappointment, their rationale might go. Or perhaps they really do think it is a passing fad. No one outside Infinite Loop can know for sure, but either way it is important not to read too much into it based on the soft launch of iBeacon technology.