check please…mobile electronic payments are the missing plumbing we need

(eyeball time: 2.2 minutes unless you fast-scrub the video)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.google.com/wallet

by now you know we are not anybody’s lapdog (we tastefully forgo using the rap music alternative submissive relationship adjective here so please note our class).

look, you have lots of stuff to track and worry about out. so we bring this to your attention because it is one of the most non-glamourous but important things you need to track so pls listen up:  it’s how you get paid. we have discussed micro-payments and all the other plumbing needed to power games and all other forms of digital entertainment. but let’s get real. digital entertainment isn’t a big enough tail to wag an electronic commerce payment solution dog. even with facebook credits. but retail business-to-consumer sure as hell is…but you already knew that. besides amazon’s, apple’s, ebays’s and paypal’s legendary contributions in the digital payment space, google now makes it possible to purchase stuff on a mobile basis in physical retail outlets with their initial wallet offering.

google, with mastercard, is blazing a trail here with no help from our friends at the telcos. verizon just delayed allowing google’s electronic wallet solution on the samsung galaxy phones. we won’t waste your time or your pixels on a deep dive on this, the la times already did a brilliant job so check this if you need more.

the stakes:

think of it this way. basic trans-platform digital currency. digital currency which works the same in ALL worlds…on all devices and all services the same way: game worlds, movie worlds, tv worlds, music worlds, real world restaurants, stores and any point of sale. the same consolidated financial transaction records and interconnected devices. beyond paypal, ebay, second life world lindens or game coins, frequent flyer points,  way beyond amex, visa or mastercard or even square up. the ancient long-gone roman empire sorta pioneered this concept with the “coin of the realm” idea. the euro, which ain’t so hot these days, is a build on it since charlemagne.  the stakes are so huge it would be an insult to even try and convince you because you are already there.

we believe telcos are in a unique position to move the mobile payment world forward, despite the vision-impaired executives at verizon (who would now go work in the netflix marketing department where they belong). players like sprint already are leading as a small mighty mouse as usual in this area,  but asia, as with most things, is way ahead of the u.s.a. on this. so we don’t see them doing it in the u.s.a. we believe all new digital payment innovation will come from asia, driven by a.) smart innovators, b.) a mobile computing-based population of 4 billion people, c.) lots of great mobile device manufacturers who work well with infrastructure players like telcos.

the dea takeaway:

if your are a creative industry content creator or publisher, get educated fast in this area and built these digital payment solutions into everything you build at the service layer. bet on multiple tables and allow your customers multiple payments options. don’t worry about accepting diners club though. we think that is over. (as they say in japan, “we just told a joke to you [now laugh or I lose face]”

if you are a telco executive, try and forget that fact, “think differently” to quote our patron saint steve jobs, and do something your industry never does: innovate. no more excuses about massive capital deployments, security, etc. that is just too lame a set of luddite excuses. all cell phones now have security built in and players like google have baked it in already. wake up and answer the phone! hellooooo! you guys need to lead. you finally woke up to the net at the turn of the century, after pushing stupid failed isdn concepts for decades, don’t make us wait on this for pete’s sake! this is huge! what are we missing here? and revise your tariffs now to make it work and don’t be so greedy like you have been with sms fees which are so high they have completely stifled innovation.

if you are a credit card player like mastercard, visa, amex, etc. continue to make the smart moves you are making with micropayment and mobile payment companies. if you don’t, risk adjustment notwithstanding, you will lose. but the good news is that you guys get it. sorta. keep pushing and spending. this is the future and you know it.

if you are a retailer, check out new alternatives in the payment space. small businesses are loving square up despite some of its severe limitations. monitor google and the phone companies if the later ever start elephant-lumbering forward soon.

be clear about trans-media navigation… “the new yorker” magazine is… “wired” isn’t…

(eyeball time: 45 seconds but you might read evelyn woods wicked faster…but if you eyeball the funny great video add 2.2 minutes…)

full disclosure: we have no business or commercial interests with the new yorker magazine or conde nast. wish we did though! this is an independent assessment.

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.newyorker.com

when we think of trans-media we tend to overlook the amazing traditional magazine space moving onto tablets like the iPad and others. it is exploding. this is the quintessential new wild west for trans-media coming together with text, image, video and games. but the navigation user experience metaphor is up for grabs. many think that wired magazine made the first best new effort at designing the new tablet magazine. we find it as confusing as a rubik’s cube to navigate and read. and that tends to get average readers hostile to content and drives advertisers crazy as well. the iPad navigation experience design metaphor in wired is just too cool for school, convoluted as a table of periodic elements and well, a pain in the ass, although their web site is fine. on the iPad or other tablets, wired is tired in trans-media or at least, tiring and exhausting to experience.

comes the new yorker magazine iPad app.  they get it. well, why wouldn’t they? they have managed to port their content perfectly, giving it that classic new yorker magazine look and feel. it is easy to navigate and the ads and the editorial content all work together. just check out their  “department of explanations” video when you download your subscription. you will see what we mean.

the stakes:

one of the newest biggest spaces and places in trans-media for traditional magazine advertisers to place ads is on tablets. duh. we know you know that. the adoption rate is exploding and the venue is tailor made for a new style of “reader” experience. the wall street journal has gotten the user experience navigation mostly right (yes, it is also worth paying for!). so has the washington post.  the new york times is a rich site in terms of content and media assets, but still has a few miles to go in improving navigation, but they are close. and check out all your fav magazines. martha stewart living has totally nailed it, as usual. but we expected that. she is the queen of trans-media and was before anyone else. it is no accident her holding company is named martha stewart living omnimedia and was named that before anyone got trans-media.

the dea takeaway:

for content/tablet development people: get the navigation metaphor right. make it simple. the rules are similar when a traditional print reader transitions to your new tablet version. be gentle with them. don’t go crazy with vertical/horizontal sideways layouts just because you can. the conventional metaphor which seems to be winning now seems to be a simple left-to-right scrub pan with in-depth reading top-down scroll. ads should be nested throughout…and not left as an “add-on.” imitate the new yorker magazine if you want to keep life simple.

for advertisers: in seeking advertising venues with traditional print-going-to-tablet publisher offerings don’t rush into any magazine or newspaper ad space if you don’t feel the navigation makes sense. ask their team about views, placement and your fav metric, CPM. do what works best for your brand. also consider doing video for your ads. the view rates for video dwarf everything else.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

creating fun branded trans-media content for mobility: Tocquigny’s TripCast™by Jeep®

Tocquigny's TripCast™by Jeep®

(eyeball time: 2.5 minutes but you might read faster…or longer if you get into the cool video clip…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

http://www.tocquigny.com

check it out… it’s Jeep®’s first iPhone application: TripCast™, a trek-tracking, geo-social sharing utility which leverages iPhone as a mobility platform using all its bells as whistles for Jeep® branding purposes. Check the vid now… please…or else you won’t know what we are talking about below unless you are a savant or swami with powers none of the rest of us have… more below…

a lot of advertising or interactive agencies talk the trans-media talk but few know how to do it. Comes Tocquigny, an amazing austin-based full service interactive, social and mobile marketing firm. they get it on pretty much everything and are creating very innovative trans-media campaigns and solutions to enhance brands.

o.k., more on why we love this iPhone app…

1. this is what great product branding is all about

Tocquigny ‘s TripCast™by Jeep®  fully leverages apple’s iPhone as a mobile entertainment platform for the Jeep® brand… Jeeps® are about adventure. but you knew that. while it is true that you can make a social statement pulling up in a tuxedo or ball gown in a Jeep®  for valet parking at the next met ball in nyc, Jeeps® are more about, well, like taking an adventure trek someplace. to swipe another product’s motto: “share the fantasy!” mobility can also be about adventure, travel, maps, social networking, personal videos and photos…they all are fun and…you got this by now…so are Jeeps®!

that appears to be the general logic behind Jeep’s® TripCast™, which enables you to share and broadcast your trip, via twitter and twitpic to friends and family as a well as map your trip data in real time and listen to iTunes music. you can also store your trip for all kinds of Jeep®-like adventures which are part of the Jeep® “adventure experience” brand: kayaking, biking, and hiking. TripCast™ by Jeep® is a part of a new form of socially branded entertainment emerging in the marketplace. you don’t need a Jeep® to use TripCast™  so it is subversive the way the best advertising always is…it gets you thinking life might be more fun owning a Jeep® having an “adventure experience” parked in your driveway, available on demand . [note to don draper: that is great creative branding.] the trans-media entertainment experience is synonymous with the brand. the iPhone application features leverage the brand and the mobility concept wonderfully in an integrated way.

2. leveraging trans-media content with the mobile platform’s features

most iPhone applications are “hi! I am an application. I happen to be running on your iPhone. but that is just because i can.” true, there are thousands that leverage one or more aspects of the iPhone’s features but most don’t. Jeep’s® TripCast™ goes the extra mile using features built into the iPhone in a broad and deep way most others don’t: real time mapping, the iPhone camera, video, connectivity to facebook and twitter/twitpic, music from the iTunes store and mash ups with gowalla and foursquare’s technologies which run on the mobile platform as well.

3. showing how powerfully trans-media can work for mobile

it is sad but true that most brands simply “get on facebook” and think they are done. they don’t think about how they can leverage their brand  features with the features of the platform with which they are working. the core qualities of what their brand is about…in Jeep®’s case, a mobility metaphor. obviously, Jeep® is a synergistic [sorry, bucky, we had to use that word] brand for mobility. that is what a car/truck/SUV does. it moves around places. like a mobile phone, it is the essence of mobility. Tocquigny’s creative genius was putting these concepts together and expanding the Jeep® adventure experience metaphor into “adventure entertainment tools” linking the brand with the application they built and on the technology platform where they placed it.

the stakes:

according to the latest pricewaterhousecooper’s “2010 global entertainment and media outlook,” the wired and mobile global advertising market will be $66 bb in 2010 and grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.4% over five years to $103 bb US in 2014. While not the size of exxon’s annual revenues these days, when viewed as a single segment of the worldwide advertising business, it is impressive growth, second only to video games. Anyway, nothing to sneeze at in the world of digital entertainment.

the dea takeaway:

1. brand managers and agencies

get with the trans-media program even more than you are. but don’t get all gimmicky on us with all kinds of gizmos and silly ideas. a good place to start is to think about trans-media venues, platforms and features which would lend themselves well to your advertising brand. then carefully and deliberately map your brand’s core qualities to the target market experiences you can provide and then pick the appropriate content and platforms for them the way Tocquigny did for TripCast™ by Jeep® by selecting the iPhone for a mobile application. make sure they are compelling, aligned with the brand and useful.

2. partner up

you know a lot but not everything. depending on who you are, figure out your ecosystem and do what you do best. if you are a brand manager, find a great agency who understands branding, trans-media, content and technology. if you’re an agency, find people and companies that know how to integrate facebook, foursquare, gowalla and iPhone apps together with content, video, phone and photo assets. if you’re area a content management company, find ways to create, manage and publish content easily across platforms with easy-to-use content management templates (like multiple mobile phone types from different companies, in this case). if you’re a network player, built a value-added services layer into your service architecture to allow closer integration with your mobile partners be they phone manufacturers or content providers… but nobody can do the whole mash up themselves. although it’s getting much easier…

3. the mobility opportunity and its core characteristics

think about all the ways you can leverage the fundamental qualities of the mobility experience…ask yourself some of these key zen mobility questions to get started, add to the list, then work yourself back to the pieces of your puzzle… your brand, your digital venues, your content, and the platform features you can leverage, etc. once you have locked onto some initial creative concepts…you are on your way…

mobility questions

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

micro-payments can make you rich… (when advertising is not enough and you are creative and greedy…)

(eyeball time: 2.5 minutes but you might read faster…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

asian game companies like nexon have known how to mint money with micro-payments with “free-to-play” games for years. it is their core business model with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.  but there is a wider opportunity for social networking, net tv and gaming companies, digital advertisers, content, technology and infrastructure companies to leverage micro-payments for enhanced revenues. advertising revenues can’t pay for everything in the universe. even product placement has limits – last year only $25B us was spent on them. thinking creatively about micro-payment strategies on a much wider basis across content types, applications, technologies and infrastructure could pave a road to riches for many, if everyone can just shed their very provincial and limited thinking on the matter all can get rich. maybe, if you read this.

the stakes:

billions of dollars (or second life lindens if you prefer). free-to-play gaming companies have made millions using micro-payments. we are thinking of games like nexon’s dungeon fighter, maple story, zynga’s farmville on facebook, lord of the rings online, and even small linden lab’s second life. while they have pioneered the field (although porno probably leads in this area with video chat and “dating and mating” services), there is a huge opportunity for many companies to enhance revenues by using micro-payments. it is very simple. think of anything you can sell in small amounts, say $1 to $50. in games it typically objects players need like cars, guns or clothes. but in social network, gaming  and net tv environments it could be anything you can think of…say…an old yearbook picture, an object related to an organization like a t-shirt, any object you want to gift a friend from a book to a song or food, a coupon, a promotion, household or pet products…just about anything you can sell on the net. and all within the context of specific content or context situation while another activity is underway (e.g, a game, a social network conversation, a net tv viewing experience, a document, email, etc.).

the processes. well, you need to be able to do a number of things: users & subscription management, inventory, offer and store management, offer presentation & discovery, auctioning (optional), transaction management, wallet, payment, delivery, clearing settlement invoicing, and reputation management. those are just a few areas you should be thinking about.

the plumbing. while you can build and roll-your-own micro-payment environment on your own with the usual suspects (i.e., credit card companies, paypal, banks, etc.) there are several global full service providers who can help as well and this is a very partial listing at best from the gaming world but plumbing is plumbing. [nb: we don’t have a dog in this fight or any interests in any of these companies. we are independent.] but these companies have figured out how to integrate micro-payments in context of an another simultaneous interaction which is going on with the purchase/payment transaction. they all do different things but check them out to get going. in europe, check out digital river’s fatfoogo, zaypay international, and dialxs. in asia, try ppay .and in the usa/canada, check out usemyservices, instapayment, live gamer, mochi media, livegamer, gamersafe. we don’t vouch for any of them but that a start for you. you want more info., hey, call us.

the dea takeaway:

most usa gaming companies with some minor major exceptions, have their heads in their heads in the sand on this. as usual, asia leads on the and most americans don’t get out very much and don’t understand they don’t lead here. asians get it big time. many usa game companies say they have studied the mirco-payment opportunity casually but have convinced themselves that the audience will feel exploited and that “hard core gamers” will feel ripped off; “it’s for casual gamers only” they tell themselves. they have also convinced themselves they can’t make money on mobile phone platforms with high SMS payouts. although many are open to the idea, they not attacking it aggressively or creatively. message to game companies: wake up and smell the coffee! it’s ready!

for social networking companies, there is a huge opportunity that goes way beyond anything facebook has done with zynga and the farmville-style franchise. there are a million things that could be turned into micro-payment revenue sources. as yoda says in starwars “do or do not, there is no try.”

for content, context, service, application, technology and infrastructure players, think about how you can build the relevant features into your offerings. get moving now.

ditto for net tv and digital advertisers. it turns out that when a customer is provided a micro-payment offer, it increases interactivity, “stickiness,”, “dwell time,” and “virality.” customers don’t see this as a “rip-off”. if they did nobody would be using gmail with its ads or any other site on the net with any kind of promotion. throw away your old assumptions and explore this space.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

hulu introduces personalized ads with “ad tailor”

(eyeball time: 2.0 minutes but you might read faster…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.hulu.com

on may 13, 2010, hulu  announced a handful of new improvements to the site’s experience. hulu.com, an online video distribution outlet (a joint venture owned between news corp., nbc universal and disney), now offers an even more refined advertisement assessment tool. Named the “ad tailor”, this system delivers personalized ads to viewers while tracking its effectiveness.

the stakes:

shifting away from its original “thumbs-up/down” system to a “is this ad relevant to you?” and offering “yes” and “no” as possible answers, allows for hulu to better understand whether the product or service being shown is relevant to the viewer. this is invaluable data for advertisers who can now quantify direct viewer results. imagine having the ability to know exactly whether the latest “modern family” audience really loves your latest deodorant. this tool helps eliminate the guessing game. In addition, the system can then recognize and recommend “better” ads for viewers.

according to the interactive advertising bureau (IAB) and pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC), online advertising spending grew 7.5 % in the U.S. in the first quarter, a clear sign that the digital media industry is recovering from a rough 2009. revenue hit US $5.9 billion showcasing a vote of confidence among companies and results in increased marketing spending in areas like online advertising. hulu.com ‘s “ad tailor” can only help foster growth in this segment.

the dea takeaway:

for advertisers and brand managers, this is the magical metric measurement system you always wanted. combined with the hulu surveys, this new direct question & answer system can help really refine targeted marketing efforts. hulu serves hundreds of millions of streams per month and is a top 10 online video property which features an immense collection of premium entertainment across all genres and formats. hulu offers several packages and customized advertising solutions; however, rates are determined on an individual basis. online advertising rates are still highly competitive but significantly lower than traditional print or television spots. If you are looking for a new way to reach an audience, hulu.com maybe an excellent option.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!

liking facebook’s ultimate “like” button – there’s viral gold underneath it!

(eyeball time: 1.5 minutes but you might read faster…)

the dea skinny on what’s happening:

www.facebook.com

during its 2010 developer conference in san francisco, facebook unveiled the “like” button. now as the dust has settled from the excitement, concerns about such a ubiquitous button have surfaced. we’d like to take a moment to review several of them…

the stakes:

you must give the social networking giant kudos for being so bold to develop a tool that can literally span the net. while it’s not really the first of its kind, think about amazon.com‘s “buy this” button, the implications of its release are worth noting. specifically, the type of data in which facebook will be acquiring is a gold mine. in fact, it could be argued that this data is more valuable than current search terms tracked by google. facebook now tracks personal preferences. these personal preferences can then be used for targeted marketing efforts – an incredibly invaluable resource for businesses.

the dea takeaway:

if the search engine war wasn’t hot enough, facebook’s “like” button throws another log into the fire. this newest innovation challenges and severely limits a search engine’s ability to track popular and relevant content on the web. utilizing this button, web sites can now easily drive web traffic from fb more effectively. for example, as a user likes a certain page, the information is then pushed directly to a user’s fb account which then appears on their news feed. the “like” button relies on fb proprietary code to index a wide range of information, websites and connections. this presents a huge disadvantage for google as fb moves to block indexing by the search engine. so, what does this mean for you?

on the surface, installing this code takes a bit of tailoring. from adjusting the content displayed on fb feeds to the design of the button, its installation takes a bit of extra leg work. once the button is installed, visitors can click on the “like” button and not only receive content from your website, but simultaneously show to their friends that they found your content relevant. this increase in exposure of one visitor to multiple exposures to an exponential amount of individuals in a relatively short period of time aides in the virality (and virility) of your content.

for more information, please contact us at 512.825.6866 to discuss the issues more fully and the specific impact & implications to your business. it’s free!