JUICY NEW TECHNOLOGY

The Universal Product Code (UPC) made its first commercial appearance on a 10-Pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum sold in Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio on June 26, 1974 for 67 cents. Much has changed.

The ubiquitous bar code is slowly evolving to provide much more than the simple management and tracking of inventory. Today, barcodes track rental cars, air traveler luggage, mail, library books and more. It has processed billions upon billions of items through the checkout counter and sped up the processing of returns.

As bar codes became popular and their convenience universally recognized, the market began to call for codes capable of storing more information.
Efforts to increase the amount of information stored by bar codes, however, caused problems. Enlarging the bar code area complicated reading operations, and increased printing costs.

As a result, a more sophisticated two-dimensional density matrix code (QR CODE), storing information in both vertical and horizontal directions, was developed by Denso Corp. to pack over 300 times the numeric data stored in conventional (UPC) barcodes…. in a minimal amount of space.

QR Codes will go far to break down barriers to mobile e-commerce as scanners are built into state-of-the-art mobile phone and communication devices. Beyond product labeling, these codes can be created to capture data “on the go” on ads, business cards, address books, maps and comparison price shopping. Amazon.com is experimenting with QR codes in Japan, generating affiliate mobile sales through scanner enabled mobile phones.

Applications are as boundless as a marketer’s imagination.


UPC CODE vs. QR CODE

CHALK ONE UP TO CREATIVITY

Sidewalk art has been around for centuries and is, perhaps, the oldest form of “citizen art” made available to the masses.

Fast forward to the 21st century and we find the art form has been raised to new heights . . . . waiting to be exploited by smart, forward thinking marketers willing to commit the time and energy experiment with the medium. If nothing else, the gallery that follows exemplifies forward thinking crying out for the extension of these creative values on a national scale.

But can this art form be scaled to reach a broad national base? Absolutely! Cutting edge vinyl printing technologies make it both possible and economically feasible.

With compliments and kudos to Julian Beever, creator of these visuals, enjoy the gallery. Julian can be reached by visiting his website …. http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/

TALKING TURKEY

The expected lift in eCommerce spending this year to a conservative $180 Billion will top last year’s efforts by a margin of 17% plus. This will undoubtedly place a great deal of pressure on those days, considered to be the best cyber-shopping days, that follow the Thanksgiving weekend.

When compared to a projected ad spend of $15.7 Billion this year, an ad/sales ratio of 8.7 falls a bit short of overall averages for Food (11.9%), Liquor (10.4%), Movies (13.7%) or Health Services (18.7%). This bodes well for the Internet, expected to continue its upward spiral through this decade.

In the coming weeks, Monday will be the new “Black Friday” as online shopping behavior shifts away from tradition. Monday sales have been indexing at 111 and 119 in the weeks following Black Friday. Weekday and workweek clicks remain highest. ComScore notes, however, that only 9% of online spending occurs during the lunch hour.

Marketers keen to follow trends will manage copy and keyword bid prices to reflect both seasonal and these new intra-week peaks. Beyond bid-management, optimization of shopping comparison site placements should also appear on their radar screens along with personalized e-mail campaigns.

Happy Thanksgiving!

TAKE TWO AND SEE ME IN 2009

It has been three years since the tablet PC made its heralded debut and racked up sales of $1.4 billion the first year. Although he introduction failed to spark the expected interest, last July sales were projected to reach $5.4 billion in 2009.

Fast forward to November and the same predictors now boldly estimate the market for 2009 to be a whooping $15 billion …. almost a threefold increase in a few months!

The science (or art) of projecting tablet sales is just about as accurate as predicting the weather.

Realistically, there are several factors that affect the outcome of any projections for the tablet market.

Market Presence – how many people have you seen pulling out a tablet in a Starbucks lately? The low market penetration is not helping post-early adapters jump in. Out of sight, Out of mind.

Market Penetration - driven by consumer need has not yet rooted. Applications for the consumer market are not obvious. OEMs must do a better job of providing a ‘raison de tare” to incent purchase.

Price – An obvious barrier which will, over time, correct itself. At a price point of $2000 plus, these machines are competing with handheld PCs.

Bulk – who needs to carry around an extra three plus pounds when a pocket PC can do almost as much with much less bulk. Inroads have been made recently by Lenovo, having just announced a tablet PC with over 7 hours of battery life and a hard drive that can expand to 120 GB, and as much as 4 GB of RAM. Dubbed the X60, this machine also boasts the support of nearly all forms of wireless connections.

B to B – Providing the greatest thrust for sales, vertical markets that include Healthcare, Real Estate and Insurance are fueling the projected threefold jump by 2009.

Will the PC tablet market hit $15 billion in 2009? With the right wind behind its sales, it might even hit $18 billion in a perfect storm scenario.

SHADOW WORLDS, SHADOW CUSTOMERS

A cultural phenomenon is surfacing that may change how and where we live with the click of a mouse.

Welcome to virtual worlds. We glimpsed a primitive version of these worlds in the late 90’s with the release of video games where addicted gamers spent countless hours, and in some cases days, chasing imaginary characters in two-dimensional worlds.

We can trace the first arcade video games (Computer Space and Pong) back to 1971. In 1976 Death Race 2000 was released as the first violent video game, where points were earned by running over stick figures. Pac-Man hit the market in 1980 as the most popular game at the time, selling 300,000 units.

Graphics were, however, still relatively unstable until the turn of the century as Microsoft, Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo and other major players entered the gaming arena.

Today, we connect, and in some cases disconnect, to join virtual 3-D worlds via the internet. There are dozens of gateways, providing a menu of worlds that number in the thousands.

By far, the most advance of these worlds is Second Life (www.secondlife.com). As you step into Second Life your options are limitless. You can create your character (avatar) in your own image. You can purchase land, build a home, visit and interact with other avatars, open a business and reap the benefits in real dollars (where Linden dollars, the virtual currency, can be converted to U.S. currency).

There are over 1.2 million residents in Second Life. Marketers are awakening to the phenomenon by securing their positions in this virtual world ….. Starwood Hotels, Adidas and Toyota are just a few of the pioneering marketers pursuing Second Life residents....or shadow customers.

In-game ad spending will surge past $1 billion in 2010. Advertisers eager to secure a foothold in these new worlds should consider exploration in their marketing strategies.

OPPORTUNITY RRRRRINGS!

They are ubiquitous. There are over 210 million cell phones in use in the United States, accounting for a 70% penetration rate. The US statistics pale, however, in the face of a worldwide deployment of 2.3 billion phones. Hong Kong tops the penetration list with 129% …. more phones than there are people. Our planet is only just beginning to discover the implications for a user-created, participatory medium that is globally connected.

As the US catches up with its Asian and European counterparts, we will begin to see a shift in the way we access data. Behavior patterns will emerge, displacing the PC for information needs. Consider that there are 575 million household PCs globally and 2.3 billion cell phones. Do the math! Which platform holds the brightest promise for marketers?

Marketers will, sooner than later, face the need to confront their communication options as internet-enabled technologies migrate to the cell phone. Today, consumers are loath to accept any form of commercial interaction unless it is to their distinct advantage. That will change as behavior changes.
Establishing a mobile marketing strategy is mission critical. Consider the following:

-Mobile phones are always on and within arms reach of the user while PCs need to be accessed.
-Over 60% of cell phone users take their phones to bed with them
-PCs are often shared (especially in an educational environment). Mobile phones are personal.
-Payment mechanisms are already built into mobile phone technology.
-Outside the US, mobile phones have outstripped the PC for Internet access.

There are hurdles. Standards need to be addressed. The fragmentation of handsets is an industry-wide concern as developers resist working with a host of wireless implementations. Efficiencies of scale, however, will soon wipe away competing platforms, giving way to one global interface standard, eventually with translation capabilities.

Opportunity rings. Are you picking up?

Tube Cookies

Google’s acquisition of YouTube for the princely sum of $1.65 billion has set in motion a new thrust in M&A activity by major media companies in an effort to acquire video distribution channels.

Marketer’s and net publishers should step lightly until the picture clears for emerging standards and formats. A quick scan of this arena reveals a host of service offerings which include the following start-ups as most prominent today – not your cookie-cutter YouTube:

Blinkx
TV Eyes
Veoh
Brightcove
Bittorrent
Video Egg
Venice Project

Each performs search and distribution using proprietary technology. This includes Google’s YouTube which is text driven and not considered state-of-the-art for comprehensive video search. Blinkx and TV Eyes, as examples, serve up search results based on audio/video keys.

A hybrid approach, combining text, video and audio, cleansed for duplication, would appear to offer a well rounded solution.

It is obvious, from market feedback, that quality and broadband resources have yet to match TV quality. A quick check of the services mentioned here reveals the following pros and cons ….

Blinkx, TV Eyes and Bittorrent searches returned spotty (if any) results when queried for a Geico commercial. Blinkx served up “Ghetto Insurance” while results for the others were nil. Bittorrent, which utilizes peer-to-peer technology for fast and broader search netted zero returns, cluttered with annoying sponsored links. Video Egg is still searching for a good user experience.

Veoh, still in beta, did find a Geico commercial, but suffered in video quality. In all instances, the depth of video libraries did not come close to YouTube.

Both Brightcove and the Venice Project, although not search engines, are perhaps the most promising in video delivery. Brightcove provides a high quality, TV-Like experience but did suffer a bit synchronizing video to audio, apparent in Jeremy Allaire’s corporate pitch on his site.

On the horizon, Niklas Zennstromm and Janus Friis, of Kazaa and Skype fame, are launching their Venice Project for P2P video distribution, promising a roll-up of quality rivaling that of TV. They are in negotiations with major producers and will likely make an announcement this Fall.

For now, tube cookies are still baking.

"ALRIGHT MR. DEMILLE, I’M READY FOR MY CLOSEUP "

Corporate America is taking to broadcasts in a big way. Only today, the broadcasts are in the form of Podcasts.

Downloadable, portable and easy to create, companies the likes of General Motors and IBM are penning podcast strategies for both internal and external communication needs.

Internally they are used for information delivery, training and educational aids. Externally they create a viral buzz about a product or service. They are quick to produce and are timely. Attached to a feedback blog, they can communicate with global teams without confining time zone boundaries.

Increasingly, these companies are building their own well-equipped sound studios for as little as $10,000 with quality output.

By 2010, estimates put the number of Americans playing podcasts at a conservative 57 million, over 20% of the adult US population.

Corporate America must be mindful that podcasts and blogs need to allow room for both restrained content control and freedom of expression without turning the user “off” to a product or service. The corporate voice is not as trusted as the individual voice in this environment.

A.C. Nielsen Killer App

For the longest time, TIVO has been bleeding red ink as it struggles to maintain its lead as the only branded DVR on the market. Its current share of the DVR market hovers in the 31% range, with approximately 4.4 million subscribers. The fate of the company has been in question for some time as cable operators distribute their own units that do just about everything TIVO can do.

TIVO’s advantage is not in the hardware. It’s in the software and the reporting capabilities they have quietly mastered and just released under a new research division. TIVO can provide, for its subscriber universe, second by second ratings for both programming and commercials. This can eventually turn into a huge goldmine for TIVO as it fills a long-standing demand by marketers to substantiate the difference between commercial and program ratings …. a huge and costly problem for A.C. Nielsen, with no practical solution given their approach to data collection.

TIVO can quickly pull together consumer panels that replicate the US population and provide better ratings projections. A blend of current subscribers and those that are typically under-sampled by Nielsen can be had by giving away subscriptions to consumers that will correct TIVOs sample base. After all, who would turn down a free TIVO subscription?

This is not brain surgery. The ability to draw several panels from an existing base of 4.4 million has the potential to unseat A.C. Nielsen overnight.

NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS

The network and cable news services feed on the visuals that attract and keep viewers glued to many a TV screen. That the majors are losing ground to the internet as a news source is no surprise. Add to that equation the possibility of a day or week without major news events on a global scale and you’ll have the networks scampering to rehash yesterday’s news.

What to do?

Hire Rioters-R-Us! Create chaos. Pinpoint a religious cause and put the PR machine to work!

A lighthearted view of this “tactic” can be found in George Simpson’s column today on Mediapost’s Media Daily. His satire plays well …. if it is satire indeed (?).

Follow this link to his commentary …. it's a riot.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=48646&Nid=23702&p=19549