View from 30,000 feet

Facebook just announced Location Based Services integration, with Facebook Places. This is required viewing for any marketer or agency professional, or just about any entrepreneur. But from a marketing perspective this is going to require those who are looking at retail, ooh, POS or any environmental marketing to consider the social media, mobile and digital impact of what they do.

From a user perspective now you can not only provide your status update but incorporate the location, context and ideally the people around you.

But this is very significant for our business, while LBS isn’t new (its been around for years – the wireless company I started was one of the first to create Location Based Services – 1999), this is the first time its available at scale.  While Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and others have been in place the scale has never really been there. Now that Facebook has integrated LBS into its platform 500m+ people have access to this tool’s capability and over 150m people using Facebook mobile can begin to be using it directly. Users can now share where they are, see which friends are in the local area, and discover new places by following where others from their social network have checked in.

Some interesting things to think about:

• Retail, POS, OOH, Experiential have a new requirement and that is mobile and the digital/social experience.  How do you want your audiences to engage with your experience on the mobile platform while they are there and what will they be talking about?
• How will you reward customer loyalty? Provide customers a reason to keep coming back and “checking in” to places, as well as share that with their networks
• Places will be a wonderful tool for promoting business and experiential marketing as well as providing special offers.
• APIs and data of facebook places will be a great resource for applications, start thinking about how to leverage this resource of information – Marketers should be thinking about this as well as entrepreneurs.

There is a Facebook Places FAQ for Advertisers here http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=places#!/help/?page=1159

As well as a user guide for Facebook places here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=places

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http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Google is opening up the mobile platform to the masses by providing a set of tools that lets give everyone from six graders to lit majors tools for building mobile applications and being able to launch them on the Android platform.  Using a GUI the application lets anyone build applications without the need for a PHD in C++ or an engineering team of HTML 5 developers.  The application system also allows users to create “disposable” applications, simple solutions that fit an immediate need, can be built quickly, launched on the mobile device, used for a few hours and then disposed of.

Not only is this a direct shot at Apple, which is known as a walled garden on the application and content to their iOS4, but it continues to position the mobile device as a fully functioning consumption and creation device.

I am looking forward to seeing the new content available, the new marketing opportunities that become viable and the continued success of this mobile,  personal, portable and highly targeted platform

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My friend Niel Robertson wrote this article about how he looks at business through these three charts: Distribution Curve/Bifurcated Distribution, Sigmoid Curves, and Network effects.  Its interesting to apply these different charts to current and future business models: Search, DSPs, Media consumption.

He also makes an interesting analysis of the professional services business as how it is counter to the Network Effect, in fact its much more of a linear effect – therefore takes considerable time and effort to grow and scale since adding each additional customer requires almost as much (sometimes more) costs as the previous customer.  This is very relevant as the advertising industry begins to look at potentially finding network effect solutions for the marketing and advertising industry for scale – a great example is Demand Side Platforms and their effect on the media buying and planning industry. Once you have established your DSP, your next primary cost is data, with some staff costs, but the incremental cost of adding an additional customer is lower as the business scales especially if you can gain economies of scale around data and audiences. . .

Everything I learned in business I learned from these 3 charts | VentureBeat

Everything I learned in business I learned from these 3 charts
July 8, 2010 | Niel Robertson

(Editor’s note: Niel Robertson is the founder and CEO of Trada. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

I’ve been building venture-backed businesses for over 11 years now. In that time, I’ve seen a sea change in how businesses are put together. Engineering approaches, marketing approaches, pricing, service delivery … they’re all dramatically different than what they used to be.

But what I’ve come to appreciate is that, ultimately, businesses live and die on three simple dynamics: Distributions, network effects and sigmoid curves (s-curves). Almost all problems (and most opportunities) come from understanding how to take advantage of these functions – rather than fight against them.

Distributions – A distribution is a measure of how tightly grouped something in your business is. For instance, if you plot all of your customer deal sizes in a distribution, you’ll identify some interesting observations. You might see a tight packing around the mean (average), which indicates that most of your deals are about the same size.

You may also see a bifurcated distribution – which means you have two types of customers. (For discussion’s sake, let’s say one has a peak value of $1,000, while the other’s peak is at $100,000). If you find yourself in this scenario, you’re likely heading towards a problem.

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The advertising industry was built by people that didn’t believe in the status quo. They were sitting in their current jobs and believed that they could do it better, smarter, more creative and deliver more value to their clients.  They pined, they collaborated, they worked at midnight when their current jobs ended, they sometimes took jobs as fry cooks putting it all on the line, until the moment that their business finally began. . .and then they put their name on the door and changed the industry.

MDC wants to make it just a little bit easier.  With an idea and a brilliant submission, MDC will invest $1 million in starting up the next new transformational marketing communications business and own 51 percent.

I am excited! oh and just in case you didn’t know the email address is startup@mdc-partners.net

‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ for New Marketing Firms – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com

Venture Capital
‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ for New Marketing Firms
June 25, 2010, 2:29 am

The TV quiz show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is about to get a Madison Avenue version, “Who Wants a Million Dollars to Start an Agency.” MDC Partners, the holding company based in Toronto that owns agencies like Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, plans to announce on Friday what top executives are calling the “Million-Dollar Challenge.”

Would-be entrepreneurs will be invited to submit business plans for agencies in any area of marketing communications. MDC will review the submissions, choose at least one plan from among 10 finalists and invest $1 million in starting it up in exchange for a 51 percent stake in the new shop, Stuart Elliot reports in The New York Times.

The proposal is to be described by Miles S. Nadal, chairman and chief executive of MDC, at a seminar at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France. The seminar, titled “How to Build an Agency From Scratch,” is to feature Mr. Nadal as the moderator and Chuck Porter, chief strategist of MDC, as a speaker.

“It’s a great time, as we come out of the recession, to back entrepreneurs,” Mr. Nadal said in a telephone interview from Cannes on Wednesday. “There’s such an amazing amount of talent in the world today, to not capitalize on it would be a lost opportunity.”

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Congratulations to Judy Hu, Linda Boff and all of GE for taking this big risk.  They reached out to the community and asked the consumer to not only participate, but create the next campaign for the brand. What a wonderful way to create brand advocates and brand loyalty, it also takes such a huge brand and connects it directly to consumers (where it has typically been a very B2B business).

This is not only a very forward thinking move by GE Marketing, but it is also a true justification that real brands are looking at the crowdsourced model as a potentially viable way for sourcing creative ideas. . .

The proof will be in the execution. . .

Btw if you read here it says that the program is open to advertising industry professionals or startups as a way to win GE’s business. . .

GE + YOU = AWESOME – Google Moderator

GE + YOU = AWESOME
Let’s face it – when large companies enter the digital space, they are not always met with the warmest reception. (Translation: they tend to blunder in, mess it up, and get torn a new one.)

To make sure GE continues to succeed in new media, we’re going straight to the experts – you.

We want your best ideas for how to engage an online audience. Got a great idea for an ad campaign? A creative concept for a killer contest? A truly innovative social media program? With your help, we can avoid the lame and embrace the awesome.

Enter your suggestions for the next great new media initiative in the space below, or email us directly at ad.ideas@ge.com.

Before you post, please take a quick look at our submission guidelines at http://www.ge.com/adideas_terms/.

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The TV screen is the best screen for watching Video. . . most curious about the boxes that are going to be needed to execute.  But all in all I believe that the opportunity here isn’t about the on-demand HD lean back video experience, its about delivering more IP enabled media, targeted, focused, data driven and built on ROI. I would say “TV just got interesting” but I think we will wait and see.  I do love the idea of using Real-Time Bidding across multiple channels (Display, Video-youtube, Search, and now TV) to deliver the right ad at the right time to the right user for the right price.

This won’t be fun for the big media companies when true supply and demand for audiences dictate the price of premium television advertising on programming. . .

Google TV turns on at I/O — Engadget

Home Entertainment, HD Industry, HD Set Tops
Google TV turns on at I/O
By Nilay Patel posted May 20th 2010 12:23PM
Breaking News
As expected, Google just announced Google TV at I/O. There’s four billion TV viewers worldwide, making it the biggest market in the world, and Google’s after it in a big way — it’s a $70 billion ad market in the US alone, after all. According to Google, “video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, and that’s the TV.” The idea is to merge the web and TV without compromising on either the web experience or the video experience, with a focus on discovery and personalization. Of course, since it’s Google, the interface is search-driven, so you can just type in things like “30 Rock” or MSNBC” to find channels and content — including upcoming content to record and content from the internet. Yeah, it’s kind of like the TiVo Premiere’s swivel search, but prettier — and there’s a Hulu logo on the screen, which is extremely intriguing.

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If you enjoy reading, as much I do, and even more so with my new Kindle, you will realize that the challenge of finding books is still the biggest problem even though you can get them instantly anywhere, even with Amazon’s recommendation engine. Now Kindle (probably the iPad will do the same as well) has literally transformed how I read, because its the ultimate reading user experience – On the subway, I can sync to the page I was on at home and then continue to read my book on my Kindle Ap on the iPhone, on the airplane, I can download a couple books preflight, or just sitting on the couch or the beach and I can read my kindle like a book, and when I am done with that book I have access to entire bookstore at my command.

But it isn’t the reading experience I struggle with, its finding books.  You see this is exceptionally complicated for my family, as we all have Kindles and we all have multi-discplines of categories we like to read.   I find the best way to find books is the old fashion way word of mouth or walking into a bookstore. But with Kindles we can no longer share books, so finding still requires word of mouth and then going out and buying. But walking into Barnes and Noble is basically the same as logging onto Amazon and finding that perfect book, is exhausting and its not very efficient in terms of user experience. Its not like having my mother-in-law who is a veracious reader, is on the board of a Detroit book event group, and knows both my wife and I well recommend x book because she knows we will like it both after reading it and knowing us personally.

I am not sure if either technology or bricks and mortars can ever get achieve the recommendation engine of my mother in-law, but just like a date recommendation it requires someone who knows both parties intimately to make the perfect match, and that’s more than your last purchase through a single channel (ie amazon.com)

Living in New York, especially in the neighborhood we live in, we have the wonderful opportunity to browse local bookstores, and yesterday we went into Posman Books in Chelsea Market. I have to say that instantly this became one of my favorite bookstore. The difference between Posman Books and Barnes and Noble is that like a niche museum or art gallery, Posman Books is curated, its curated looking at books as art, and creating an environment that supports that methodology.  The books are basically the same price as Barnes and Noble, but the quantity is a fraction, and the size of the space is but a corner of one of the larger B&Ns. But you don’t have to fight through crowds of people, climb over people laying (sometimes sleeping) in the aisles, or hike 20 miles and speak to five people to find that copy of a small run publisher that fits your needs, most likely you might not even find any of that (including that niche publisher, unless the folks at Posman choose them), but you will find an environment and a collection of books that will satisfy any of  the world’s literati.

So the question then is what happens when I only buy on Kindle? Or I only buy on Amazon or Apple? Its simple. . . Posman books suffers and runs the risk of disappearing.  But this doesn’t need to happen! Posman doesn’t need to be just a bookstore tucked away in a corner of Chelsea Market.  They can be a curator, a brand, and an ambassador for the perfect books, and so can 192 Books, Biography Bookstore, or any of the wonderful bookstores in the world. While yes maybe their revenues at their bricks and mortar stores may fall, but they can simply diversify this revenue. They should partner with Amazon and Apple vs fear it.  And Amazon should leverage the foundation they have of an affiliate marketing program (like the one where if you chose to buy the kindle from my link above I make a small commission) and create the small bookstore sales platform.  The program should allow Posman Books or any other bookstore to create a page that when people are browsing their site or have been in their store and want to remember a book, they saw can simply go to their new ecommerce site (funded and hosted by amazon) and buy the book directly from Amazon’s fulfillment platform, either via download or hardcover, and in return Amazon can design the program so that it delivers a similar margin on the book to the retailer as selling it in their stores.  This allows the retailer to continue to deliver their valuation of curation of books as a small bookstore, but ultimately they can extend their brand beyond the single retail environment, prevent themselves from loosing money on the movement to more books being sold or downloaded via the web, and ultimately scale their business far beyond one or two single disconnected local stores.

Just a thought. . .

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Interesting article about why Apple and Amazon are succeeding while still transforming the industry during a recession.

Apple and Amazon Do Platform Innovation–And Succeed in a Recession – BusinessWeek

Apple and Amazon Do Platform Innovation–And Succeed in a Recession

Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on October 21

Amazon just announced that people are reading more and more books on the Kindle days after Appple announced that people are downloading more and more applications on the iPhone. And profits rose 47%. It’s no secret that these two companies are among the handful that have kept up revenues and profits throughout the worst recession since the Depression and are poised to do even better as the economy begins to growth again.

The reason is simple—but not simple enough apparently for most managers in most global companies to comprehend. Apple and Amazon have created disruptive platform innovations that change the game for consumers. And they have done it within a price range ($300 to $400) that reduces the cost and risks to people even in a recession.

Let’s take this strategy apart. First, a game-changing BIG innovation—a platform innovation. Second, a price for consumers that is low enough to entice them to take the leap into the new, disruptive innovation. Third, a multitude of applications and “stuff” (products, services, experiences) on the platform that provide value (information, insight,entertainment) to people.

That’s it folks. It is that simple. Or that complex. It takes a special type of culture, organization and leadership to make it happen.

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