Here’s a good strategy for working a conference as unpredictable as South by Southwest Interactive. Give yourself an assignment, e.g. a resource you need to find or a topic you learn about, then refer back to it whenever there’s a choice to be made in your activity flow.
The Silent Majority: Facebook developers at SXSWi
Here are my two. First, I wanted to find out about Facebook and SXSW. Specifically, I wanted to follow up on my hypothesis that while it is a vast online community, people in the geek world don’t want to talk about Facebook because it runs on a proprietary platform. I started by putting up a #Facebook #sxsw hashtag search in TweetDeck and watching the traffic. Yep, not a lot of it. I did run across the Facebook Developer Garage off site event and spent a couple of hours there yesterday. Show of hands requested from the audience: how many of you are Facebook developers? (almost everybody) How many actually use Facebook? (quite a lot fewer.)
We all love Twitter because it’s an erector set, but meanwhile Facebook is Dad’s muscle car (or maybe Mom’s) idling in the driveway. You can’t ignore 400 million users indefinitely. Josh from Gowalla got cheers on the stage and everybody loves Josh/Gowalla and how they now have their Facebook Connect check-in. So what happens in a few months when Facebook introduces its own check-in feature?
Meanwhile, my second assignment was related to the fact that several folks have recently asked me about being a social media consultant for them. I’m not sure it’s a good fit because social media marketing requires constant attention (similar to good P.R.) and as a freelance copywriter I sometimes need to hole up for a couple of days at a time. So I wanted to find folks who actually are social media consultants and are good at it. Through the #facebook #sxsw tag I ran across the the folks at The KBuzz. I went to their mixer to meet them and talked to some of their clients and was impressed. Mallorie Rosenbluth is their Director of Small Business which is what most of my inquires would be; for $1000 they will design a Facebook page for you and do a detailed analysis of your business and your social media opportunities, then provide recommendations which you can execute on your own or through a monthly contract with them.
Check them out. UPDATE: Mallorie contacted me to say that if you use the code OTIS10 they’ll give you 10% off above pricing.
Breadcrumbs are those little links you see on a website that help you to retrace your steps; “social breadcrumbs” is a phrase Jeremiah Owyang came up with (new to me anyway) a few minutes ago to describe the cumulative record of your presence you leave in social media that can be followed up by your friends or others interested in your activities or wanting to know what you would recommend. This was from the best panel I attended today, except it was in stealth mode. Supposedly Brian Solis as sole speaker but @jowyang, @comcastcares and some heavy dude from FourSquare were all up there unannounced talking about how to listen to the customer in social media.
This is what is so frustrating and fascinating about South by Southwest: the unpredictability. Before I got to this panel, halfway done, I had walked out on two completely packed rooms presenting astonishingly basic insights on how Google developers work long distance and what web content is all about. You just don’t know.
My other accomplishment so far is to run into and spend time with the folks from The Startup Bus: “25 strangers board a bus in San Francisco – and at 60 miles an hour and over 48 hours – they are to conceive, build and launch 6 tech startups in time for a SxSW party in Austin.” In other words, you got a free ride to the show in return for agreeing to put together and pitch a concept with several other people you’ve never seen before. The teams are presenting their ideas to a panel of venture capitalists tonight.
Also, the registration process is much less stressed this year, even though anecdotally there are more people. Stay tuned and I’ll report if I run into anything else interesting.
Bing is the Mac OS of the search world. (Yep, that’s ironic.) It only has a small market share, but those users have become so loyal that it has to be considered in any search marketing plan. Succeeding against all odds when other search engines were becoming an afterthought, Bing did it the same way as Google: an innovative software algorithm.
Now, Bing is taking on another Google property with its enhanced Streetside which was introduced at CES 1010. This is like Google Maps combined with Google’s directory features, but with more information and better organized. If you’re looking at a restaurant, for example, you can see ratings from a variety of sources and an aggregate quality score.
Yet what is most cool is the Photosynth feature, which allows multiple users to contribute their own visuals of a landmark which are then stitched together to enable a 3D view that can be much more information-rich than Google’s Streetview. For a heavily documented site, like the Rome Coliseum in the example, you can zoom in on a detail and do a virtual walkaround.
I shot a video with a demo of Streetside by a Microsoft boother. The really cool stuff, demoing Photosynth, is toward the end.
foneGEAR's non-booth. Some teaser signage on those mirrored walls would have helped.
Can you create buzz at CES without showing any product? A couple of companies tried exactly that. First up is a company called foneGEAR. They decided sometime before the show to completely revamp their product line and positioning so, rather than show their current product, they elected to turn their large and expensive booth into a giant “coming soon” sign. The curious were funneled down a mirrored passageway where a single booth rep swiped their card and gave them a key code to unlock a product preview on their website. Booth traffic was pretty light… it might have been a good idea to put a few teaser messages on those long blank walls.
The case of PowerMat is more interesting. Their booth was jammed on Friday and I couldn’t get a demo because they were tied up with Good Morning America. All this with no product on display, just a loop of TV commercials in which hipsters place their iPhones and other portable devices on a pad and it goes bzz! and starts charging. Wireless charging, that’s cool!
But since I didn’t get the demo I read up in the press kit, and discovered PowerMat’s secret: you can’t just fling the device down, it has to be in a special inductive power sleeve that’s not obvious in the commercials. And early users and reviewers have lots of complaints like: it’s hard to get the sleeve on and off; it’s too bulky; it interferes with the compass in the GPS.
All hat, no cattle? PowerMat booth at CES.
I returned Saturday and asked a booth staffer why they aren’t exhibiting product. (Meanwhile, traditional media guys are circling waiting for their demos like hungry sharks, sensing they’re really onto something. After all, everybody knows the pain of plugging in to charge your phone. Oh, to be free!) He said they did have product out the first thing on Thursday and there was such a mad scramble for it they put it away.
Now, this isn’t a stealth product. You can buy it at Amazon and Best Buy. I’ll take him at face value, even though creating mystery around a buggy product rather than showing seems like a pretty cool marketing strategy. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain..
Last month, like most consumers, I fell victim to “wrap rage” as I attempted to pry various gifts out of the theft-resistant clamshell packages in which they were packed. MeadWestvaco’s Natralock® is getting some attention at CES, a tradeshow featuring thousands of consumer products manufacturers, with a packaging system that is less paranoid but still secure. The secret is a cardboard backing containing an impossible-to-tear inner layer of film that can also include a security chip. Thus the plastic clamshell overlays attached to the card can be simpler and cheaper, display the product better, and because they are smaller they are less expensive to store and ship and gentler on their ultimate destination, the landfill.
Speaking of landfill, I asked Todd McDonald of Tegrant, the partner that manufactures the card backing and the system used to attach it to the package, what if I wanted to make my clamshell out of cornstarch plastic (which I learned is technically called PLA) so it would decompose? Consumer electronics companies wouldn’t do that, he explained, because it isn’t as transparent so the product doesn’t look as good. More important, PLA melts at high temperatures such as inside a warehouse in Texas in summer.
Also, he went on to explain, virtually no PLA actually gets decomposed anyway because it goes right into landfill where it is undesirable to have decomposition. That’s because decomposition produces methane, which can make the soil unstable and is also a greenhouse gas. Methane produced in a controlled environment, where it can be converted to fuel, is a good thing but landfills can’t do that. Landfills don’t decompose. When one is occasionally excavated, the headlines on 50s newspapers are still readable.
Todd, who is a Certified Packaging Professional (CPP) went on to describe his reservations with PET, the plastic now used universally for food containers because it is recyclable. The problem is, again, that virtually none of this plastic actually gets recycled; unless it’s got a deposit on it, it goes into the landfill. And PET takes twice as much petroleum in manufacturing as the PVC it replaces. A complex tradeoff.
Cool idea, but the sound isn't all that great.
Meanwhile, across the hall in the digital lifestyle pavilion, www.OrigAudio.com (“the origami of audio”) is going in the opposite direction with an audio speaker made out of recycled cardboard—a cardboard box, in other words. You can get two of them for $19.95. Or if you prefer you can make your own speaker from any old resonant trash you may have lying around with the $49.95 Rock-It, a vibration speaker system that attaches to a cereal box, a milk carton or an inflated plastic bag and creates vibration in the object to generate sound. No clamshell packaging is used for either product.
Yesterday at CES I got a demo of a soon-to-be-released product aimed at parents concerned about their kids. There are two modules. Mobile Protector is a phone app they receive along with their first mobile phone. It allows the parents to control what numbers they dial and receive, whether or not they can text and under what restrictions. If they like, the parents can serve as a switchboard: incoming calls come to them and they can answer, decline or forward to their kid’s phone.
When the child reaches driving age, a vehicle mounted console called Driver Protector is added. Parents will now know where the young driver is at all times and they can set up a “Geofence” to be sure the kids are staying within an approved area. If the kid strays, or texts while driving, the phone can shut down automatically. They can tell if the kid is driving too fast, and if they are in an accident there is an alert triggered by sudden deceleration or the deployment of an air bag.
Mobile Protector demo at CES. Afterward, a woman from the audience allowed herself to be tased for our amusement.
The interesting thing is that these products have been developed and will be released by Taser. Yeah, that Taser. I asked the booth guy how this fit with the weaponry and he said Taser’s motto is “protect life”—as in, using our product will help you protect the things in life that matter; as in, if you mess up we’ll tase you but hopefully not kill you.
I see this cutting two ways in the marketplace depending on how it’s marketed and received. Best case is that kids think it’s cool: mom and dad have given me my own Taser, sorta, to keep me safe. Worst case is they think it’s an onerous form of parental subjugation. Let’s see how it plays out.
This year I pre-registered as a blogger at CES, and as a result I’ve received hundreds of press announcements via email over the past couple of months. Coincidentally, I was reading the just-released new edition of David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR
on the plane coming out. Scott’s premise is that the internet has changed public relations because, instead of hawking their message to the media, businesses can now promote themselves by speaking to the public directly—via blogs, content on their own website, posts and responses on networking sites and viral media.
I did an evaluation of the PR emails I’d received with this in mind. The pitches that grabbed me were the ones that were written like news stories and tied to a course of action I could take at CES to find out more and bring it to my own readership. Find out why Apple is up but Sony dropped seven spots in the Greenpeace rating of green manufacturers. Team up with Dr Dre, Lady Gaga and Monster to fight AIDS in Africa. See how Natralock ends “wrap rage” with the end of hard-to-open clamshell packages.
The interesting thing is, many of these are the kind of made-up stories or manufactured events that used to be easy to make fun of: a marketer whipping up fake news because they couldn’t find a legitimate product benefit. Now I’m reading them as a recipient of information, not a conduit, and they become relevant. I’m eager to blog about it and add my own spin, and then the flack’s work is well rewarded.
By comparison, landing side by side in the inbox, traditional press releases just didn’t cut it. (“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: La Cie announces new server for business.”) And some of the senders show a lack of finesse in using email as a medium. No-nos in my book include emaiing the press release as an attachment rather than including it in the body of the email (with this sea of info, why would I take an extra step to read your release?); addressing me as your bud because, you know, it’s email (e.g. starting with “hope all is well” or “hope you had a good holiday”); and sending a graphics-heavy announcement without ALT tags which is basically illegible unless I download the visuals (I’m looking at you, Vizio).
Scott’s theory is that there is a huge sea of traditional flacks who are trying to hang on or just don’t get it, and I guess this would be evidence. Meanwhile, I’ve got a couple of upcoming posts in the hopper, based on those pre-show emails I received.
Just finished my first day at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. The aisles are packed, at times so much so you can’t get through. But there are no exhibits in the huge Sands center this year, several of the areas in the back of the South Hall are blocked off, and one of the ballrooms usually used for the Hilton International pavilions is dark. In the main hall, OEM no-names share the prime spots with the likes of LG and Panasonic. My guess is that exhibitors panicked and stayed away while significantly more attendees are here than last year, signaling their intent to lift us out of our gloom.
According to show sponsor CEA, consumer electronics sales were off 7.8% in 2009 yet with higher volume led by bargain hunters. Sales for 2010 are projected to be up “slightly” from this terrible level. So it was interesting to see what attracted the most attention at the show.
Most popular trend that is going nowhere: 3D TV. Everybody is standing in lines to get into the theater rooms and see it but my prediction is, this is like the hot girl you’re never going to bring home to meet mom. Once the 3D glasses get stepped on or lost in the couch cushions, the party is over. (One vendor, TCL, shows a Fresnel lens type 3D where the picture is slightly different as you sift your vision, and doesn’t require glasses, but it doesn’t really have the drama of the polarized glasses kind.)
Bad news for the 3D TV folks: virtually no traffic in the zone promoting mobile TV, a technology that is designed to provide high quality reception in a moving vehicle. If you don’t want your kids to watch live TV in the car, my prediction is you won’t want to watch 3D at home either. There’s a limit to how much fun you can have.
Entourage Edge gives you the best of both worlds. It’s an e-reader AND a tablet computer.
Attracting a lot of crowds: e-readers. Diverse interpretations and executions of what Kindle left out, many with added value content such as newspaper subscriptions, complete with graphics, delivered along with your e-books. There was prediction Apple would show its new tablet at the show, but I haven’t seen it. (SF pundits mention Moscone Center is mysteriously unbooked for several days in late January, suggesting an Apple stealth event coming then.)
I saw several specific technologies of interest. Will report on some of these tomorrow.
This is my first year as an “official” blogger at CES (why the quotes, dude?). I’m already a day late because many of the press events are held on Thursday so they can get coverage before the throngs arrive. Definitely sorry to miss Lady Gaga at the Monster booth. Wonder if I’ll run into her later tonight when I arrive, maybe at the Showstoppers Expo?
The first time I attended this show was before many of my readers were born, probably, back in the 80s. I was an account exec at an agency representing The Federated Group, a home entertainment chain that has since gone to its reward. Accommodations were incredibly hard to find pre-internet efficiency. I was put up at the Showboat, somewhere downtown and far from the action. It was all demos of Betamax and Quadraphonic. I did not have fun.
Today the CES incorporates many of the vendors who used to be at COMDEX and they’re primarily my focus in attending. As a marketer, I like to hang back in demos and watch my audience to see what questions they have and what bullet points make their eyes light up (or become less glazed over). I also like to look for new or interesting technology which often comes not from startups (it’s very expensive to exhibit here) but from backwaters divisions of major companies—Panasonic’s heat pump washer/dryer, covered last year, being a good example.
And, as a marketer I like to look at the way all these companies are marketing themselves. If you’re into home entertainment, how do you establish through your booth display that your product is “entertaining”? If it’s a new technology, how do you show in a microsecond what it does? Now that I’m on the press list I get to see lots of flackery, good and bad, in the press releases and invites sent out. Most intriguing so far is Gracenote’s display at the Showstoppers tonight, which promises only “surprises”. Hope I am. More later.
Yesterday at AdTech a panel moderator asked the question, “now that anybody can find whatever they want through search, is creative still relevant?” And a panelist, I think from MTV (I can’t read my notes because my hands were shaking with outrage) replied that sure, for example when people go searching for a band we’ll show them another band they’ve never heard of. She MIGHT have been talking about contextual targeting a la Pandora or iTunes Genius but I don’t think so; I think she was talking about selling product.
Later on I was checking TweetDeck before a session and the guy next to me muttered, “Twitter, what a waste of time.” And it occurred to me how different this conference was than the last few I’ve attended and posted about.
The “old media” here isn’t print; it’s MTV, AOL, Comcast and the other mass produced content that the advertisers who attend will put their marketing messages alongside. I saw some clever solutions for monetizing just about every square inch of the Internet, but the core content providers seem stuck in a 20th century attitude of “we will build it, and they will come”.
Apropos which, equipment failure forced a switch from my beloved TiVo to a generic Direct TV DVR this week and I was amazed at the arrogance of the DTV user interface designers in assuming they could get away with the absolute minimum of features and intuitive usability. Good example: in TiVo there’s a “Season Pass” that lists all the recurring shows you plan to record including what is in the queue. On my new DTV box, I select the show and then it disappears. The “list” function only shows what is already recorded, no positive feedback to reassure me that yes indeed 30 Rock will be taped tonight.
The “new media” is of course the self-broadcasting that the audiences of all these old media companies have learned to do by TiVoing, Boxeeing, YouTubing and mashing it up with applications so you can see and share exactly what you want at any time. And getting back to that moderator’s question about whether creative is still relevant when people can find “whatever they want” by searching… where does he think that “whatever” is coming from?
