We've posted quite a few things about augmented reality, mostly because we can see its potential as a marketing tool and as a new way to interact with the end-user...well, that, and it's really neat. But it seems in the rush of 'me too,' user accessibility has fallen to the wayside and may be hurting the fledgling tech. Advertising Age has posted an interesting look at the augmented reality landscape so far, and proposes that if more thought isn't put into it, it's bound to go the way of those blue-and-red 3D glasses (that is, until they're brought back decades later).
View - "Augmented Reality is Overhyped and Abused" at Advertising Age
Social media blog Mashable has a great post on how interaction between business and customer is changing during the social media age. Check it out by clicking the link below.
Read - "4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business" at Mashable
As a high-fashion luxury goods manfacturer, Hermes is in the image-seling business. And although swaths of fabric may not be part of that, Hermes' Tokyo branch uses a little storefront magic for something passerbies won't soon forget. How's it done? Well, according to one commenter:
The fan / air tube is mounted up in
the ceiling, pointing almost straight down and slightly to the rear of
the scarf, and they generate a somewhat turbulent air movement. The bar the scarf is suspended on is heavy enough that the fan does not affect it. The bottom corners of the scarf are weighted just enough that when the
fan blows down, it's the center of the featherlight silk scarf that
bellows out first and most, giving the impression that the direction of
the air movement comes from the screen.
Gone are the days when great ideas travel around the globe due to
the simple fact that they are great—supposedly. Henry Ford never had a
need to market the concept of the assembly line. He changed the world
simply because he had one magnificent thought that transcended
industries. An age of heightened analysis and accessibility has
increased the amount of quality thinking that goes on in our world
today, making the notion that a good idea equals widespread recognition
obsolete.
You may not have guessed a hospital staff as the synchronized dancing-type, but it turns out they may have a little bit of the Gloved One in them after all. The Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, organized the "Pink Glove Dance," a music video to promote breast cancer awareness featuring seemingly the entire hospital staff with some thoughtful editing and some smooth dance moves. The time invested seems to have paid off — the video has over 3.8 million views to date.
Let’s
face it, corporate buzzwords usually deserve an eye roll. Viral marketing is
one of those terms that have been floating in the business vernacular for some
time now, to many existing as a murky Web 2.0 whisper. It often raises eyebrows
and inspires smirks towards what is believed to be a secret society of
marketing counterculture. Conversations with sideline-sitters usually go
something like this:
It’s a typical afternoon scene in a city park. That is,
besides the crowd that has decided to gather around a garbage can. Are they
huddling for warmth? Maybe talking to a not-so-friendly sock puppet? No,
they’ve been drawn to the “World’s Deepest Bin,” a trash receptacle that makes
the whistle of a Looney Tunes free fall whenever trash is disposed of.
Remember shouting in glee over presents? Video game retailer GameStop does, and is helping you remember with its new holiday promotion. The Flash applet uses a popular Internet meme — Nintendo 64 freakout kid (seen here), a family video of a young child overjoyed over getting a Nintendo 64 video game system for Christmas — and allows a user to submit their own mug to map onto the face of the boy. The results, as seen above, work surprisingly well. After a video is viewed the user is given the option to save and e-mail the entry or post it to social media Web sites. The applet is powered by Oddcast, a viral marketing company. Freak out like the Nintendo 64 kid by following the link below.
Psst! eMarketer has published a story on online video content and how it spreads, and research suggests nothing beats the tried-and-true personal recommendation. Although social media exists as a platform for word-of-mouth communication, a distinction is made between it and "verbal" word-of-mouth – actually talking to someone in-person or over the phone. It likely isn't a testament to social media's ineffectiveness, but rather the potency of traditional word-of-mouth. Read about the findings more through the link below.
Read - "Video Viewers Spread the Word" at eMarketer
In an economy still struggling with high unemployment, any good news is fit to be celebrated. It seems the annual sales blowout holiday of Black Friday has seen a substantial bounceback from last year's event, a day that took place shortly after the worldwide economic collapse. Data optimization firm Coremetrics released the figures, and some of it is quite illuminating in regards to consumer shopping behavior. That includes a 35% increase in dollar value consumers spent online, a figure led by clothing retailers. There was an overall hit in time spent browsing online retailers, however, which Coremetrics concludes is list shopping gathered from research prior to Black Friday. Visit Coremetrics' site below to see more of what was uncovered.
Avatar, the uber-expensive, uber-hyped James Cameron picture that has been on-again off-again for more than a decade, comes out next month. And as one of the most expensive movies of all-time, a major marketing push has followed suit, including an interactive Avatar trailer built upon the Adobe AIR framework. It allows the user to click on objects in the trailer to learn more and integrates Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to ensure connectivity to all the latest movie info. It rests as a great way to guarantee an audience stays informed and discovers more in the process, and may become the de facto standard in interactive digital content. But enough talking, go and try it for yourself already.
The Financial Times is reporting that News Corp, run by the loved-or-loathed Rupert Murdoch, is in talks of de-indexing its newspaper sites from Google and being paid by Microsoft's Bing search engine to include them instead. This comes after Murdoch has claimed Google is stealing content instead of being a search aid for people to find the content they desire. It would be an unprecedented move and could potentially change the game for search engines with a 'pay-to-play' model. That, or News Corp sites will get a whole lot less hits. It'll be interesting to see where this one ends up.
Read - "Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact" at the Financial Times
Volkswagen has hit the viral nail on the head with "The Fun Theory," a series of short videos that make the mundane — such as using the stairs — oh so much fun. Produced by DDB Stockholm, the videos have been a hit on YouTube and are complimented by TheFunTheory.com, a platform for user-submitted ideas that are voted on by a panel of celebrity judges. It's tenuously related to Volkswagen at best, but the goodwill spread by it is probably worth its weight in gold.
View - "The Fun Theory: Volkswagen Masters the Viral Video" at Mashable
Yesterday Google announced Chrome OS, a version of their Chrome Web browser turned into a full-blown operating system. Based on Linux, Chrome OS behaves differently from standard operating systems. All of a user's files, such as music and documents, are stored online on Google servers that can accessed from anywhere. This is what is known as "the cloud," where files are always on and always available. This is ideal for netbooks (compact laptops), but really won't fill the place of operating systems that can install non-Web applications locally. Got that? It's a little esoteric, yes, but just know that Google is moving the ball forward is some interesting ways.
View - "Google's Chrome OS revealed -- with video!" at Engadget
Last week, I strolled into a certain local department store. To be frank, I’m not
really sure what spurred my visit. Maybe they had 2-for-1 on dandruff shampoo,
or a killer deal on a Huffy. But if there is one sagely piece of advice I can
give to you this day, it would be this: do not model your business after this
department store. And yes, that includes your Internet storefront.
