Razorfish Outlook Report 11 (vol 10)

Our new global Razorfish Outlook Report 2011 (vol 10) is out people.

If you’re not familiar with the report it is compiled by Razorfish in the U.S. and provides an in-depth analysis of emerging trends in media, technology and creativity.

A major theme from  this year is collaboration, content and relationships defining a new approach in media.

The year in digital media is reviewed here and other hot topics include:

Game Mechanics

How the Social Cloud can Accelerate Brand Interactions

Forget Mobile, Think Multiscreen

The Importance of Agency Collaboration

The Report is also available in presentation format here and you can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #orv10.

Happy reading.

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Ultimate list of Cool Touch and Gesture Based Video Walls

So who has the best interactive walls? Here’s some of our picks below. As we move into a world which is transitioning to devices using the NUI (Natural User Interface) there’s a lot to keep an eye on. If you know any more please post them in the comments.

1.University of Groningen:
Pros: Looks awesome, very responsive. Multi-user capable.
Cons: You can’t go out and buy one off the shelf. Touch based only?

2. Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect AND Windows Phone 7, working together!
Pros: Kinect SDK on the way for PC (fingers crossed) so a very affordable way to develop. Multi user. Facial recognition. Supports second screen in this video.
Cons: None. Seriously! SDK pending, this will be the easiest entry point to start building your first video wall.

3. Toyota Vision Multi Touch Wall:
Pros: Massive 82 inch screens at high res. Very responsive.
Cons: Expensive setup.

4. HD 18 Screen 20 ft Paint Wall with iPad integration.
Pros: Very cool. Huge. HD. Responsive. Works with a second screen (iPad)
Cons: Looks a bit like a one off application for now. Can’t go out and buy one.

5.Yahoo’s Gesture based Video Wall. http://vimeo.com/19177169
Pros: Looks good, hi-resolution and seems responsive.
Cons: Tiled screens. Looks like only one user at a time?

6. Microsoft LightSpace
Pros: It’s a true 3D interface for an entire toom. It projects working interfaces onto your arm/ hand.
Cons: Early days. Long way to go here (but still very cool).

7. Hard Rock Cafe Vegas:
Pros: Multi user. Smooth and responsive. Great content.
Cons: Looks expensive?

8. Ring Wall http://vimeo.com/6648869
Pros: It’s a massive 425 square metres in size. Enough room for everyone to play.
Cons: With 15 HD projectors we’re betting the ongoing running costs might stack up? 

9. The Schematic TouchWall with RFID
Pros: It recognises RFID cards allowing you access to personal info. Social integration.
Cons: Nothing obvious. This wall is pretty cool.

10. The BendDesk.
Pros: It’s horizontal AND vertical.
Cons: Not quite wall sized! It’s a prototype so a little rough round the edges.

 

11. Canon’s big wall – Expo 2010
Pros: It’s looks big and multi user.
Cons: We can’t quite tell if this is a ‘smoke and mirrors’ job. This video is more about the camera than the wall itself.

12. HP’s video wall of touch (link):
Pros: Nice tight looking tiled screens. Cons Already looking a bit dated compered to the others. Touch only. Touch looks a little laggy.
 

13. The Giant iPhone – Table Connect
Pros: Pretty simple concept. Just plug in your iphone and mount it on a wall!
Cons: Do they make a wall sized one yet?

We’re pretty sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of these soon. Please send us any good ones we might have missed! 🙂

Will it go dot.mum? (the real adnews article)

A new phrase has entered the building – dot.mum. It was blurted out (as these things normally are) in a creative brainstorm the other day, ‘I like it, it’s a great idea, but will it go dot .mum?’.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/3946109956

At the time, it came out as shorthand for ‘the mainstream’. The incomplete thesis behind the mumbling was once you’ve gone dot.com you then need to go dot.mum, which means you’ve pretty much got yourself into every household (pretty much – an incomplete thesis as I said).

As the presumed ruler of the household purse, Mums have long been the targets of some pretty one-dimensional strategies (we’ve all seen it before in this industry; food = fear, toilets = pride, etc) and, of course, the terrible advertising that accompanies it. There is a lot more to dot.mum than meets the eye though (now that I’ve actually bothered to explore my mind fart) the truth of the matter is that actually dot.mums are changing the nature of what the mainstream is.

The Entertainment Association of Australia quietly released a study last month which predicts mums are set to overtake teenage boys as the new gamers (ask anyone at Facebook and they’ll tell you they’ve already seen it happen). Their study shows that 46 per cent of the Australia’s gamers are now female, with the average age 30 years.

While we’re fighting some female marketing stereotypes, I’d like to include a side point of clarification here: In the same way that mums aren’t fear-driven, pride-seeking, FMCG buying machines, when women play games they do not necessarily want teddy bears and shopping apps.

A study undertaken in 2006 by the Australian Catholic Univeristy no less (their misspelling not mine… Given this, perhaps we should view all results as indicative at this stage) found that female gamers find mental stimulation, creativity, interesting story lines and superior graphics more important than anything else (more important than dolphins and flowers for example).

Once you’ve put your copy of Ad News down go and check your analytics for some genuine insight. When we launched our paper plane game (check it out – it’s fun) we found out that the majority of the users where female (55%) and since then we’ve taken specific learnings into a number of campaigns. One implication is the fracturing of engagement (mum’s are very busy people) so we need to make any content bite sized, flexible and something they really want to return to.

Make no mistake the dot.mum phenomena has its downside. Is something still cool if it has gone dot.mum? Just ask Dido. And then there is the question of where dot.mum finishes? Once the chick chick boom girl appeared on sunrise her cache evaporated. So where does Sunrise fit and should we include Sunrise in our media plans for dot.mums? That really is the stuff of sleepless nights.

So guess what, games are increasingly a mass marketing channel and women aren’t idiots. No, there is much more to it than that. Going dot.mum is important, it is the future of the mainstream, a future mainstream we must connect with and, in order to do so, ultimately understand. If we can’t get that far let’s at least make sure we don’t fall back on some of those bad marketing assumptions.

Now you’ve read this rubbish, go and check out some serious gamer girls here – girlgamers.com.au, thumbbandits.com or womengamers.com (the latter of which is now 11 years old btw).

Ben Hourahine is Strategy Director at Amnesia Razorfish – @benhourahine

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Published in Adnews – ‘Dot.mum is the new mainstream’ – 19.11.10

This is the original version before the re-edit, my name is also spelled correctly here too 😉

 

Once you’ve put your copy of Ad News down go and check your analytics for some genuine insight. When we launched our paper plane game (check it out – it’s fun) we found out that the majority of the users where female (55%) and since then we’ve taken specific learnings into a number of campaigns. One implication is the fracturing of engagement (mum’s are very busy people) so we need to make any content bite sized, flexible and something they really want to return to.

No! You can’t enter our social media competition

I just had a rather interesting experience with a guy from Vodafone Australia looking after the Android Man Social Media comp. The problem – I tried to enter with a photo of Android Man and an iphone:

Full size image and actual caption here.

The story goes like this:

I went down to checkout Vodafone Australia’s Android Man competition. The game: locate Android Man from his cryptic tweets, take a creative photograph, upload it to facebook and you could win a HTC Desire HD.

My idea for the ‘creative photograph’ was to give Android Man my iphone in the hope that he would give me a shiny new HTC Desire HD in return. However, after I took the shot I was approached and encouraged to delete the shot. The conversation went something like this:

Vodaman: “You can’t take a photograph of Android Man and an iPhone”
Me: “Why not? The competition is take a creative photo. That’s creative”
Vodaman: “I want you to delete the photo of Android Man and the iPhone”
Me: “Sorry mate, it’s user generated content, social media, my phone, my picture and a public space”
Vodaman: “Delete the photo or I can help delete it for you”
Me: “Seeing as you put it so nicely … Sorry I’m not deleting it”
Vodaman: “Look if you upload Android Man and the iphone to the Vodafone AU facebook group it will be removed and you won’t win the competition”
Me: “Fair enough … You know. You sometimes see dolphins here some times. Seriously. I’ve seen one once.”
Vodaman: “Just one?”
Me: “Just once. It was looking for something.”
Vodaman: “Maybe some food?”
Me: “Yeah maybe”

Well … yeah …I made the dolphin bit up, but the rest actually happened.

I love social media competitions like this. In fact I helped create The Smirnoff Secret Party Treasure Hunt a few years ago. However, this incident highlights just how important it is that everyone from the ground up is aware of just how transparent social media is. Your people are your brand and they need to know that everything they say and do can be repeated and tweeted and be the make and break of such campaigns.

Just sayin 🙂

@handypearce

Update (16.54 on 28/10): Nice response from @vodafone_au

Project launch: The Fresh Start Project

“We wanna make this digital” is the cry of many a client when they enter their ‘digital’ agency with a shiny new TVC and poster under their arm. Too many agencies will take a client’s TVC (and money) and make it ‘digital’ simply by putting a browser around it or sending it’s animated cousin off to Double Click.

I’m proud to say that’s not what we do here at Amnesia Razorfish. When our client, realestate.com.au, shared their really nice ATL spring campaign with us, we got really fired-up by the challenge of making this campaign come to life in the digital space. We didn’t want to simply TELL consumers that realestate.com.au helps give people a fresh start, we wanted to actually GIVE someone a fresh start. Some one that really needed a fresh start.

Say hello to The Fresh Start Project from realestate.com.au.  The aim of the campaign is simple. Build a a new home, for a family in need, through people’s use of realestate.com.au. As users interact with realestate.com.au they collect ‘bricks’ which they can donate to the 1 million brick target. In partnership with Habitat for Humanity Australia, the house will be built. There’s no augmented or virtual reality here. Sure – it won’t cause world peace, but it will make a real difference to a real family in real need. And that’s why I love this project so much. Hope you do too.

Visit the site >

@eunmac talks Mobile Marketing on Gruen Transfer Sessions

OK, so our ever-so-modest founder, Iain McDonald (@eunmac) is likely to have a whinge about me putting this up on our blog, but I love it so it’s going up anyway.

WATCH: The Gruen Sessions – Mobile Marketing

PS: is it just possible that he managed to surpass me on the hind leg donkey talk-off? 😉

Jen x

Crust Free Pizza Fail

When talking about Twitter accounts which do it well – which engage users, spark conversation and create evangelists, I’m usually not one to go past @Crust_pizza, who do it right.

Their Twitter account has risen to huge popularity using the Weekly #crustfreepizzafriday competition which – every Friday – is practically viral.

Their day-to-day content is targeted at the younger audience, with videos drawn from the vein of Funniest Home videos, music tracks which they’re into, movie trailers, in addition to a sprinkling of corporate news like store openings. And, perfectly, they respond to customers in realtime.

However, today they tweeted this:

What, did they put the Work Experience kid on Twitter for the day?! More on this, after the jump.

How Exciting: Algorithm Detects Sarcasm

The amusing nerds over at Geekosystem, and the more serious nerds over at Slashdot are reporting in that someone has created an algorithm capable of picking sarcasm in written statements. Great, just great. That immediately ruins the chance of ever messing with some straight-laced, sensible robot slave in the future.

It’s called SASI (semi-supervised sarcasm identification algorithm), and apparently “SASI achieved a precision of 77% and recall of 83.1% “on an evaluation set containing newly discovered sarcastic sentences, where each sentence was annotated by three human readers.”” More info and a couple of thoughts after the jump.

Life Beyond Social: The Next Big Thing?

Now the wheels are finally in motion on the Social Media train, I find myself becoming increasingly keen to focus on the next big thing, and the approach to make it all a reality.

But first thing first: what IS the next big thing?

For me, the next significant phase in marketing is a [much deeper] convergence of the real and digital worlds, in a way that will not only amaze, but adds value to our every day activities.

OK, before I go off into crazy ideas land, I’d like to say that Real:Digital Convergence isn’t a diversion from Social Media. It’s a build on it.

Social Networking has enabled us to locate and connect with many more like-minded people than would be possible for the majority of us in the real-world. And thanks to that, we’re able to efficiently distill the masses of information on the internet, through [explicit and implicit] recommendation from those like-minded people, on what’s worth a look/read/buy and what’s not.

R:D convergence simply extends the ability to do the same distilling of information [to aid fast & informed decision-making] in the real world.

So now to the fun part: what it could look like.

Sixth Sense
If I were a VC, I’d be backing MIT labs’ Sixth Sense, which conceptualizes R:D Convergence exceptionally well.

I imagine being out shopping, seeing a product that I like but am unsure about, and using a ‘reviews’ gesture to project the latest reviews [from my social networks and beyond] on the product or my hand; and a similar thing when out looking for a good restaurant to eat at. Of course, you could do this research at home, but this doesn’t work for spontaneous decisions. A critical success factor of this then, would be the speed or returning the relevant information, and displaying it in a way that makes it quick and easy to absorb – you are, after all, out and about and unlikely to have the time to read a novel to inform that spontaneous decision.

I then drift off on thought-tangents, thinking about the introduction of unique product/service codes (perhaps in place of bar codes, and on business cards) that are instantly recognised by your Sixth Sense-style device: simply give it the reverse-review gesture and up pops the ‘what YOU will love / hate about this product/service/company’ [based on a personal profile, built on your internet behaviours, previous reviews, diggs, likes, blog comments, etc]. You can later tell it how accurate it was in guessing, which teaches it to adapt for later reverse-review requests. Ooo, this would be good!

Augmented Reality
And then there’s the combination of real world image recognition [eg, building outlines etc] combined with mobile + internet capabilities (location + web content/data] to provide a situation contextual internet… and it’s already starting to happen, with early Augmented Reality applications starting to appear: check out this Real Estate AR app from Holland.

Truly Interactive Advertising

In a similar vein, I see new forms of advertising developing too, along the lines of an ‘integrated sponsor’ model. For example, in TV, the products and services (whether a car, clothing, furniture, or even fast-food) used in the program could be clicked to get info on that product, including the ability to ‘[Facebook] Like’ the product, and even purchase it direct from your screen.

In this model, the retailers loan the products for the TV program rather than paying for traditional advertising; the production company no longer has to buy the products in, and; the consumer gets an opportunity to have a richer experience and the ability to build stronger association with their favourite shows, by ‘owning’ the lifestyle it represents, as well as benefitting from fewer interruptions during the show. The retailer also could benefit from increased exposure [no ad skipping] and measurability [click-thru; ‘like’-ing etc].

OK, I’m going to stop there before I get tangled up in my own thoughts. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – what do YOU think the next big change in marketing will be?

@jbewes

Moshtix Needs To Sing Their Sorry Song

Update 17/05 at bottom of post, after jump

Splendour in the Grass went on sale today, and Moshtix had a pretty good go at ruining absolutely everything. Quick summary for the uninformed:

• 8:45am Everyone in Australia who loves music preps their computer
• 9:00am 32,000 tickets go on sale
• 9:01am – 2:14pm It all goes horribly wrong, site outages, mass complaints, Aussies take their complaints to the social space, Moshtix disable comments on Facebook, realise their mistake some hours later and switch comments back on
• 2:15pm All tickets are sold out, thousands of people are filled with rage

After the jump I’m going to lay out a few examples of the kind of negative sentiment Moshtix have been receiving over the course of the day, and then lay out some blunt advice for what I’d like to see them do now. Yes, there will be swearing.

Indie Game Bundle – Choose Your Own Price

Everybody likes finding a good bargain, and that’s exactly what this is. Wolfire Games is an excellent indie game developer, with a couple of wins tucked under its belt. All five games are cross-platform (Win/Mac/Linux) and DRM free. This is a sales model that’s becoming established, and I like it – more on this after the jump.

The games they’re bundling are:

• World of Goo
• Aquaria
• Gish
• Penumbra
• Lugaru

Battle of the Big Thinkers

If you consider yourself a ‘thinker’ then this forthcoming event in Sydney looks set to be a blast – and all for a good cause. 15 Speakers set to battle it out and plenty of audience participation. Go on, click the link and book yourself a ticket. 🙂

http://www.accountplanninggroup.com.au/pls/apg/apg.showPage?in_session=&in_page=ideasExchange

A SPECIAL EVENT – APG PRESENTS BATTLE OF BIG THINKING
Battle of Big Thinking celebrates big thinking that leads to big ideas.
What’s Battle of Big Thinking all about?

>> Big ideas and spiky topics! 15 world class speakers, across five topics; Marketing/Advertising; Business; Media; Storytelling; Government/Social
>> You – the audience – get to vote for the biggest thinker
>> Julian Morrow described it as "a cut-throat reality show for brainiacs – we should have called it "So You Think You Can Think"
>> Fast, furious and lots of fun – at only $260 a ticket, this is a fraction of the cost of other conferences and proceeds go to a great cause…The Inspire Foundation
Fifteen speakers packed into one afternoon of inspirational thinking, new ideas and entertainment.
Aviational-jazz-hop masters The Conscious Pilots will perform for spectators following the match.
Your battle referee is Julian Morrow, Co-Founder of The Chaser.
DATE: Wednesday 17 March 2010
TIME: 12.30pm – 8pm
VENUE: Bay 20, Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St Redfern Sydney.
TICKETS: $260 per person, purchase through Ticketmaster here >>
Speakers preparing to do battle include –
– Tim Gartrell, CEO, Auspoll
– Nic Mackay, Managing Director, The Human Race
– Abigail E Thomas, Head, Strategic Development, ABC Innovation
– Richard Slatter, General Manager, We Are Hunted
– Jon Wilkins, Global Founder, Naked Communications
– Antony Loewenstein, Author of My Israel Question
– Tim Noonan, Director, Vocal Branding Australia
– Peter Williams, CEO, Deloitte Digital
– Richard Sauerman, Brand Strategist, Brand Alchemy

Battle of Big Thinking is sponsored by Fairfax Media and supported by the Inspire Foundation.

Not ….king funny

The new Burger King TV ad in the UK made me laugh. The digital is pretty cool as well, but the gag’s lost a bit in print … and by that burger. Anyway, you can create your own t-shirt and if you get 50 votes, you win it.

The crap bit is that in order to vote, you have to watch the TV ad. (And it was all going so well). I guess those pesky atl suits couldn’t keep their fingers out of the digital pie 😉

Here’s the ****king Amnesia blog shirt. Vote on it (if u can stand being forced to watch the TVC), tell us you’ve voted in the comments below and I’ll send the shirt to one of you if / when we get it :)  Vote here

Here’s the ****king TV ad:

@handypearce

The First Ten Years of Search

Search just finished its first decade! Our US Search teams have put together a look back over the past 10 years and key milestones which have shaped the search landscape today. It’s amazing how far the industry has come in such a short space of time and how much it has changed. Most notably, back in 2000 Google was the default search engine for Yahoo users and now they’re main competitors!

Click here to see The Decade in Search highlights and below our thoughts from Amnesia, it’s effect on the APAC region and what the future is set to hold – for the moment at least!

Why has Google become so strong?

• Leading innovation, products and add ons that are simple for consumers to use and make Google the one-stop shop for consuming and sharing online
• For advertisers they have developed user friendly interfaces, in-depth reporting and free applications such as Analytics and Insights to make sure we can target consumers as effectively as possible on the Google network
• Both Yahoo and MSN have both lagged behind in innovation which has ultimately held back their advancement in the majority of APAC

Key Changes for the APAC region:

• Reputation management – the force that is social is an exciting time as online becomes more of an open forum. As search engines start to rank more and more social content the process of reputation management becomes more challenging and also brings up the age old question – is all news good PR?

• Censorship – hot topic at the moment especially here in Australia. Is the free availability of information set to end? We’ll be keeping a close eye on proceedings and also the effects this may have on advertisers

• China is the key market for change, with recent heavy news coverage that Google may pull out over a combination of high levels of censorship and hacking linked to the government.

• Accessibility – the imminent launch of new devices, such as, the iPad and Android phones, will open up the way people can search and the frequency in which they can do it

• Bing – Microsoft’s new search engine has reportedly been growing, albeit at a small rate. It will be interesting to see locally if consumers in each market will transition once it comes out of Beta and all features are available. Look out Google? Only time will tell!

All in all we are about to enter the next chapter in Search. Especially here in APAC where there are many different types of market, from emerging to mature and everything in between. The key to success is strategy localisation to ensure your advertising is meeting the needs of consumers from very varied backgrounds.

Introducing Razorfone: Simplifying Buying Decisions in Retail

Razorfish is proud to present Razorfone. The latest multi-touch project from Razorfish’s Emerging Experiences Team.

From the Emerging Experiences blog:

“Customers are being faced with increasingly complex buying decisions, especially when it comes to technology and services. As a result, increased pressure is being placed on store associates to provide knowledgeable service to customers. Our Emerging Experiences team used this opportunity to develop a solution to demonstrate how an immersive interactive experience can assist customers and store associates with complex buying decisions in a retail setting.”

Using Windows 7, the Razorfish Touch Framework and NextWindow touch screen technology, Razorfone is another example of how multi-touch experiences are going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives.

Kudos to the Emerging Experiences Team!

 

FEED: The 2009 Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report now available

“In today’s increasingly digital world, the experience is the message.” Razorfish’s Group Vice President of Experience Planning Garrick Schmitt (@gschmitt) introduces the 2009 FEED Report, a concise and invaluable output of leading edge digital consumer research.

Topics include:

• Digital Brand Experiences Create Customers
• Actions Speak Louder Than Advertising
• Digital Fluency
• The Language of Love for Brands? Deals.
• Measuring Brand Engagement

…and more.

“This report is probably the best analysis of online consumer behavior” according to Guy Kawasaki.

Check out the blog:
http://feed.razorfish.com/

Download the report:
http://feed.razorfish.com/downloads/Razorfish_FEED09.pdf

If you want to tweet about the report, use the hashtag #FEED09.

@iclazie

Lonely Planet demos ‘Trippy’ app through Google Wave

Chris Boden, Lonely Planet’s director of mobile and innovation, said: “The Trippy gadget turns trip planning into a collaborative activity, enabling a group of users to create itineraries together in real time.” The full article is over at Brand Republic.

@carlmoggy

The Incredible, Amazing, Awesome Apple Keynote

Check out this awesome video of the amazing Apple Keynote from earlier this month, edited down to a relentless stream of Jobsian hyperbole.

CSI creator launches a new digital novel

I love it when old stuff gets mashed up with new stuff. Essentially at various points in this new book by Anthony Zuiker, you are given a code to enter on the website level26.com. The code ‘unlocks a cyberbridge’ that then gives you access to 3 minutes of motion picture footage providing more depth to the story and the characters.

The full trailer here looks pretty neat too.

@carlmoggy

HT to DigitalBuzz

Visualising Australian Web Traffic

A great visualisation tool highlighting the top ranking Australian website statistics (here) built for Neilsen and AIMIA by the interaction consortium. It’s not only a much more usable interface for getting a grip on trends and traffic, but it also gives some interesting insight into how quickly the digital landscape shifts and how those of us in the industry must continue to adapt and innovate. Pretty (and functional) work. 

http://avant.interactionconsortium.com/australian_internet/#

Posted By @eunmac