360DigitalInfluence

This week, we turned our weekly DI staff meeting into a digital show and tell. Our DC team of designers, developers, strategists, art directors and producers shared some of the videos, websites, digital experiences and apps outside of our own work that we think are cool, cutting-edge, inspiring or just fun to watch. So, take a break from online holiday shopping working and enjoy our Best of the Web picks.

Israeli rocker Yoni Bloch’s “choose-your-own-adventure” music video is a must-watch. Viewers can interact with the video, seamlessly changing the course of events as the song continues. Yoni’s  a rock star off the stage too. He’s the founder of Interlude, the interactive video technology company behind this video and may others.

For a little more music to your ears, Philips partnered with the Metropole Orchestra on an interactive campaign to showcase their audio products. Viewers can single out individual musicians, hearing each note in a track played by the entire orchestra.

Cute kids, pets, people that take awkward to a new level… We love a good montage of the year’s best viral videos.  79 all wrapped into one great restrospective.

If you’re in the mood for a more serious look back at 2011, watch this Google Zeitgeist year in review video. From natural disasters to political uprisings, see the events and people that shaped our year. (You might need a tissue. Just sayin…)

Indie band Arcade Fire wowed us last year with The Wilderness Downtown, a personalized music video experience that used HTML5 and Google Maps. This year, they have us dancing at our desks with Sprawl II. We enjoyed the sweet moves of one of our creative directors, as he demoed how the computer camera detects movement and incorporates it into the video.

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Here are a few funny, entertaining and inspiring things I collected along the way this past week.  The only common thread is that I’ve seen all these things discussed in numerous places, both online and offline.  What did I miss?

GOOOOAAALLLLLL

If you missed the US Women beat Brazil to advance to the World Cup semi-finals, you missed one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen.  In the final seconds of overtime, Megan Rapinoe landed a ball on the head of Abby Wambach, who finished with authority.  This sent the match into penalty kicks, where the US prevailed (since then, the US has advanced to the finals).  The Internet exploded with excitement, and despite FIFA’s best efforts, it can be found here (the break starts about 5 seconds into where I linked the video).

By the way, this is what you get on YouTube when you search for the official video clip of the goal [insert sad trombone here]:

Kenny Powers - MFCEO Of K-Swiss

Not since Old Spice have I seen a brand receive so much Internet love as K-Swiss did this week.  Eastbound and Down is an HBO show about a has-been professional baseball player called Kenny Powers.  Kenny is pretty much the most despicable character on TV, but in a really funny way.  Anyhow, K-Swiss broke a brilliant campaign this week in which Kenny Powers is named CEO of K-Swiss.  There are a series of great video clips on Funny or Die (NOTE: the language is not for the modest) and a cleaner TV version.  Like it or not, this is a brand doing something big, bold and inescapable.

GIFs GIFs Everywhere

Animated GIFs were all the rage this week, apparently because you can post them to Google+.  GIF Shop seems to be the go-to source for creating them yourself, as I’ve done.  Fascinating, I know.  My apologies for not including a cat, which seems to be pretty standard.

How New Yorkers See The Rest Of The US

Thanks to Ogilvy’s Gavin Becker for this gem.  As a former New Yorker I know there’s a lot of truth to it.  The LA-SF note is my favorite.  Click on it to expand.

Late one night on Twitter last month, a tweet from Jane McGonigal- gaming advocate and researcher extraordinaire-caught my eye. “Only 8 more hours to submit your entry to STAY OVERNIGHT at the New York Public Library & play my new game! http://game.nypl.org” I was intrigued, to say the least. I navigated towards the site and ended up submitting my application to participate in an incredibly unique game and first-of-its-kind event. When I received my acceptance via DM a few weeks later to Find The Future: Write All Night, I was ecstatic.

On Friday May 20^th, 500 nerds, librarians, gamers, history buffs and maybe even a LARPer or two gathered at the New York Public Library to take part in an all night digital scavenger hunt throughout the library’s archives and exhibition halls. This multi-platform, multi-player game designed by McGonigal, served as the launch event for a larger media campaign celebrating the library’s 100 year anniversary.

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Definition: Badge fatigue – noun. c. May 2010

• a reduction in the effectiveness of mobile loyalty programs that use status or icons as incentives
• being so over the idea that you’ll be rewarded with some intangible thingy for identifying yourself as a fan

About a year ago, the discussion around “badge fatigue” began. Fans and followers were starting have trouble seeing through the clutter of countless gaming programs that offered incentives. So, plans were hatched to reinvigorate the model before it became another fad.

In the initial format, a user was given the incentive to go to an establishment because he or she would be rewarded with an intangible prize: a title (e.g. “mayor” Foursquare or royalty titles on Yelp!) or an icon (e.g. “badges” on Foursquare or “pins” on Gowalla). Users competed with their friends and unknown competitors to get the best status and personal gratification. As users achieved higher status and left check-in competitors in the dust, they got an even greater incentive: a discount or something for free.  This discount wasn’t targeted to the individual’s tastes specifically, but more so, whoever got the reward first.

The model grew and companies began to experiment; people gained VIP access to parties (Internet Week 2010) and points for existing rewards programs (Top Guest). And this is where we stand today – with a lot of great experiments, but also a lot of clutter.

So, what will happen next?

There seem to be three (somewhat nebulous) schools of thought:

1. We continue along the same lines with this gamification model that has a broad reach, because, in all honesty, it has worked. These indicators of status in the “game” continue to get people in to the cash register even without targeted (and often intangible) incentive. (Note: Some are questioning the impact on business)
2. We move on. Since the market is becoming saturated with these types of programs, it is worth the effort to focus efforts elsewhere.  “Call me crazy, but I say that Foursquare badges go the way of POGS, Tamagotchis, and Farmville – interesting ideas that captivated our attention for a time, but ultimately lost out,” hypothesizes Colin Slasheimer.
3. We repurpose and rebuild these programs a highly relevant, laser-focused marketing tool. Two examples of how this can happen include finding a way to hyper-locate down to the layout of a store or revaluating how the data is used (see pilot launched by Foursquare).

I fall in the third group. I want to be found where I already need to go and told about specifically what I want with hyper-relevant offers. I want to check into the toothpaste aisle of the drug store, and be told what toothpaste brand sale right now.  (Ok, I know this probably isn’t possible right now, but could be pretty cool.)  If I go to the hairdressers, I want to come across an incentive in 3 months when I need my next haircut, instead of right when I check-in.

So, what do you think?  Have we jumped the shark?

Your mobile phone probably hasn’t replaced your wallet yet, but it could in the next few years. Several retailers have tested or implemented in-store mobile payment systems, including Starbucks, which launched its mobile payment program at stores nationwide in January 2011. Using the Starbucks Card Mobile App, customers can pay for purchases with their BlackBerry, iPhone, or iPod Touch by scanning the on-screen barcode at the point of sale.

Beyond mobile applications, advancements in near field communication (NFC)—the wireless technology that connects devices over a short range of a few centimeters—will drive adoption of in-store mobile payment systems.

NFC isn’t new, but it has recently created a lot of buzz stateside and companies are getting behind it. The NFC Forum recently welcomed 32 new members, including Google. Among the industry association’s highest level of members are Microsoft, Visa, MasterCard, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony.

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This week marks the beginning of arguably the most exciting sports event of the year – the NCAA Tournament. From frantically preparing brackets, diehards planning out their wardrobe to optimize their sporting of team colors, to heated discussion on who will be this year’s Cinderella team, March Madness is one of the most social sports experiences around.

Last year, social media was the talk of the tournament, and it will continue to play a major role in how Americans experience the madness. In fact, research released by IMRE Sports found that nearly a quarter of online American adults (23%) plan to use some sort of social media to follow this year’s men’s NCAA Tournament.

The more interesting finding of this research is that 27% of those who will use social media plan to use a mobile application, and those with higher household incomes ($75K+) and college graduates are even more likely to use mobile applications and Twitter to catch the action.

In 2010, 8.3 million unique viewers watched or listened to 11.7 million hours of online streams of the NCAA tournament, and those numbers should increase this year. Turner Sports has seen these two trends and has taken an exciting step to continue to drive viewership of the tournament through their NCAA’s online platform – FREE March Madness On Demand for iPhone and iPad (goodbye productivity at work!).

The app – did I mention that it’s now free? (last year, this app would run you $9.99) – allows users to watch live streaming games, provide enhanced statistics – but more importantly, fully integrate their social media life into their tournament experience. One of the things I was most excited to see (other than the games, of course) was that the sharing functionality is front and center in the interface - and conveniently positioned next to the second most important element…My Bracket.

As we see more media networks investing in this trend toward mobile capabilities, I expect we’ll see social networking get continually higher billing.

No matter how you plan to follow the action this year, one thing is clear. It’s going to be “Awesome, with a capital A!”

Headline image courtesy Sports Chump

Nielsen released a report last week detailing the consumer market share of smartphone manufacturers in the US. Android, iOS, and Blackberry lead the pack with 29%, 27% and 27% share respectively. The remaining share was split between Windows Phone 7, Symbian, and HP/Palm WebOS devices.

What’s clear about these results is that the fight between the phone manufacturers is tough, and consumers are the winners with a wealth of devices to choose from. And they are choosing, with an estimated 40 million smartphone users in February of 2010, and an expected 80 million users sometime this year.

While majority of the excitement in the mobile marketplace generally surrounds native apps, mobile sites are a cost-effective standard for any brand hoping to reach potential consumers. Here are a few design and development considerations to take when stating a mobile site project.

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App fever is everywhere and healthcare certainly hasn’t been immune to its effect (um, puns intended). Early apps in the healthcare space tended to focus on dumping huge amounts of data into searchable dictionaries for everything from drug names to conditions and symptoms. Those were useful a small number of times, but for the average person they offered fairly little. Fast forward to 2011, and there are plenty of examples of a bright future for using apps in every aspect of healthcare, from taking a small role in treatment, to mobile screenings, to joining a network of people skilled in providing healthcare so you can be “on call” at any moment to save another life.

Here are just a few of the most interesting apps that are now getting popular and are worth paying attention to for anyone in healthcare marketing considering developing an app strategy of their own:

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I think Pat Benatar had it right when she sang “love is a battlefield” almost thirty years ago. Love is, and will always be, a space for our hearts’ inner most fears and desires to be won or lost for all to see. Love is just that motivating, inspiring dangerous and sometimes, simply nuts. And Valentine’s Day brings all the vastness of love to a head and often times, leaves some of us out in the cold. That is, until social media showed up.

What with all the social media marketing efforts flying around for Valentine’s Day, such as being able to send loved ones an Angry Birds - themed Facebook valentine or sending a virtual gift from CBS’s Mad Love Facebook Page, it is easy to assume that Valentine’s Day has lost all of its remaining sentimental value. However, I would argue that social media is actually beneficial for all the lovers out there. With tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Yelp or even a recent startup (that connects to Facebook to help people find local & gift recommendations that match a loved one’s taste), making plans and sending gifts has become a simplified process. Now, there is really no worry (nor excuse) to not have plans, a gift or even a simple status update to showcase your love for another on Valentine’s Day.

Check out this video from Socialnomics to see just how easy social media has made it for anyone who needs to pull together great Valentine’s Day plans at the last-minute:

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How many mobile devices do you think the average adult carries? One? Two? Not quite. The average adult carries 2.5 phones. That’s pretty amazing when you think about how the growth in number of voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated in recent years. continue reading