 June 18, 2008
 iCopyright on iCarlyTagged as: Open brand, digital millennials, social web, trendsPosted by: Molly Metzger
User-generated content on kids’ TV is nothing new. I loved ZOOM as a child but I never bothered to actually “send it to Zoom”. Jaded by age 8, I knew there was little chance my recipe or joke would be aired. Once, I used every crayon in the box to perfect my picture of Toucan Sam with the hope of winning a new bike from Kellogg’s. I think all I got was a form letter. It’s a hard knock life. But kids have more luck these days. If a video submitted to iCarly doesn’t make it to broadcast, it just might be aired online, which is probably just as good. What’s more, Carly and Sam pave the way for a generation who no longer needs marketers and TV shows to express themselves to the world. Here comes iCopyright We know kids have more ways to express themselves publicly than we ever had. We know they have free access to a lot of valuable stuff. Research tells us that there is little regard for or understanding of the value of copyrights and trademarks. But think about this: one recent episode of iCarly featured the effervescent hosts singing what they called their “public domain birthday song”. Another featured Carly’s brother, stuck in an air vent, declaring “I will now sing songs from the public domain.” Insert laugh track. I learn a lot from research, but I didn’t quite get that kids were savvy enough to joke about topics like copyright. Isn’t this grown-up stuff? But I suppose that an 8-year-old whose homemade video gets rejected by iCarly because she chose to sing her favorite songs from High School Musical learns the meaning of “copyright” pretty quick. No need to be discouraged – she can just host her own web show. NOW who’s got the hard knock life? June 18, 2008
I pull out my Treo and hold it up to my computer monitor, right next to the hero shot of the new iPhone 3G on Apple’s home page. Next to the picture of the iPhone, my Treo looks especially ugly and antiquated today. Maybe it’s the chips on the edge of my phone where I dropped it in my driveway last week. Don’t get me wrong, my Treo is an awesome business device and provides all the tools to make me more connected and more productive regardless of where I am. And since I’m ultimately responsible for our infrastructure decisions, including phones, I’m particularly aware of both the cost and benefits of how we’ve integrated the Treo into our work. But the iPhone is, well, sexy (and cool). And with Apple finally targeting the business market—integration with Microsoft Exchange, faster network speed, lower price point, and better security (like the ability to wipe data from the phone remotely…an absolute security necessity for any device carrying business data)—it can now be considered by business for real. Maybe. Is the iPhone tough enough (I will drop it)? Is Apple’s business support and customer service robust enough for the enterprise? Does it work well enough across the globe? That remains to be seen. And maybe it doesn’t matter. As Michael Gartenberg, analyst at JupiterResearch was quoted in Computerworld, “If the CEO buys an iPhone, it’s a business device, no matter what the IT folks say.” My CEO just asked for the new iPhone. Maybe I should get two. June 16, 2008
I'm sure it wasn't written by committee. And the budget was probably tragically low. But the message and the graphics, together, have inspired me in a big way. You? June 13, 2008
So, we teamed up with Sherwin-Williams to make inspiration the easiest part of your project. Check it out -- The Color of Inspiration. The idea is to create color palettes from fav photos that inspire you. You can browse the gallery or upload your own and Sherwin-Williams will instantly reveal which colors from its paint palette match your photo. You can also add comments, tags, or forward to a friend (or spouse/partner you're negotiating with for color over beige!), and of course, then save it to the site or print it out to take it to the store for a fast and easy transaction. No more guessing! C'mon...what's stopping you? Upload your dreamiest vacation pic and get one step closer to that sea blue bedroom you've been dreaming of. June 13, 2008
I've been remiss in posting much lately. Mainly, I've been traveling a bunch and spending my spare time at my kids' softball and baseball games. Although it's been nearly 2 weeks, I have to give overdue kudos to the Brett Hurt and his team at BazaarVoice for putting on a killer conference on social commerce in Austin. They had a stellar line up speakers including Ed Keller, Josh Bernoff, Andy Sernovitz, Bryan Eisenberg, just to name a few. I shared Strategies for Opening Your Brand but the highlight for me, personally, was interviewing Ze Frank on stage. He did a 15 minute stand up routine that showcased his rise of web celebrity status by getting people to make earth sandwiches, dress up their vacuum cleaners, pass along inane jokes and games. His list of projects is long, silly, and impressive. Check out ColorWars 2008. Anyway, our discussion was intended to help retailers learn and apply his lessons for building a community -- commitment, transparency, and humor. Speaking of funny, the BazaarVoice execs left everyone laughing with their must-see homemade video. June 12, 2008
 HP releases TouchSmart 2Tagged as: branded manufacturers, retail, technology, trendsPosted by: Dennis Bajec
While everyone was busy chatting up the new iPhone, HP released the new much slimmer, sleaker TouchSmart PC.This is a huge improvement over the rather large and clunky first generation of this product. The really cool thing is you are able to quickly access and control a bunch of touch screen entertainment (movies, photos, music) functions without having to dive into Vista. June 10, 2008
Checkout Tag Galaxy. It's a thesis project from a student at a university in Germany, created using Papervision3D and Flickr API. Type in a subject and it pulls images tagged (I assume, I don't actually see the tags) with that topic. What I love is the playfulness of the experience. Use your mouse to spin the globe and look for an image that catches your eye. Click on it to see it up close. What an inspirational technique that could be used so many different ways! (Imagine a tag galaxy for shoe shopping...or any topic you're passionate about!) June 9, 2008
Trendspotting is trendy these days. Not so very long ago, the field consisted mainly of a few author-titans like John Naisbitt and Faith Popcorn, and several prestigiously inscrutable institutes, but we now have a proper cottage industry and widespread corporate interest. There are coolhunters, frequently below the legal drinking age and manning the fringelines for new product ideas and other cultural quirks. And there are hyperlinked weekly newsletters, MBA program case studies, trend schools, Merchants of Cool viral hits, and camera phone-enabled global trend dragnets. The best part about trendspotting is that it engenders cultural literacy in the corporate “war” room. It enables lifestyle-agnostic engagement with the Other, with individuals whose values might also be our own (assuming some values are universal to the human condition) but whose tastes and pastimes decidedly are not. It empowers the quarterly quota-bound to unzip the zeitgeist for opportunity clues. As an Innovation Consultant and WeThinker, I’ll be serving up trendy tidbits that illuminate what we do in greater depth in our RI:Lab-powered Trends Workshops: tie consumer, cultural, and technological trends to the digital experience. Said trendy tidbits, I hope, will also engross you in the kinds of richly referenced cultural debates that make you a human geyser of game-changing ideas for your brand. June 5, 2008
Early in my technology career I helped design and develop a system that tracked product through a meat processing plant—from raw meat coming in, to packaged cold cuts, hotdogs and sausages going out. The system helped you know how much of each meat product and ingredient you had and where it was in the plant. But the primary objective of the system was to ensure a quality, consistent and healthy product. To that end, it tracked the movement of every ingredient and batch throughout the entire process ensuring that any problem that was found at any point (like a contaminant in the meat) could be instantly traced back to its origin and fixed. Today we use technology to track our customers’ movements through the digital space—from their initial interactions with banner ads, email and mobile campaigns, through every click on our sites. To what objective? We build systems to make sense of these movements so that we can put the appropriate offer or complementary product in front of our customer at the right moment (often with the hopes of increasing conversions or total order size). But like the meat processing example, don’t forget quality. Use your tracking information to ensure a quality and consistent experience—one where the customer is not getting lost in clicks, experiencing dead-end searches or tripping over broken links. Use this information to find the origin of the problem and fix it. Your customers are expecting it. June 5, 2008
Home is a different story. My husband is a 30-something marketer for a big-brand wireless outfit. He thinks OPEN is cute—but he’s building a career on CLOSED. My kids have a college savings account thanks to CLOSED. CLOSED paid for two kitchen remodels and a home theater system. So I guess you can say he believes in CLOSED as much as I believe in OPEN. How did we end up the James Carville and Mary Matalin of marketing? Recently heard on Rosewood Court: I guess you could say I keep my friends close and my enemies closer. My work in the LAB extends to my home, where I am lucky enough to observe the behavior of an endangered, though certainly not rare, marketer in his natural habitat. What I have observed so far is a really good, smart guy so busy working 60-hour weeks and catching up on life in-between that he’s missing the online revolution. This, by the way, describes 75% of my friends. I will learn to speak his language and use every bit of data and intelligence gathered through my work with the RI:LAB to change his course—and the course of others just like him. I will report back regularly. Stay tuned. |
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My 7- and 8-year-old girls love iCarly, Nickelodeon’s sitcom featuring teenage girls with their own web show. Kids can upload videos to 
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