Recently, Google announced “Project Glass,” a concept for a headset that can visually overlay information on the wearer’s field of vision. Picture looking at a restaurant and seeing a review floating above it, seeing a product in store while your glasses show a list of online prices, or meeting a new colleague with their business card hovering above them. It all sounds very futuristic, but it’s closer than you may think. This is called augmented reality, it’s already built into your smartphone and it’s rapidly becoming ubiquitous.

In 2009, review site Yelp introduced a feature to its iPhone app mirroring the functionality described above. Point your camera at a street, and watch on-screen as restaurant reviews and star ratings appear above nearby eateries. Tap the icon to call and make your reservation. Shortly after that, Google rolled out the foundation for Project Glass called Google Goggles, which will show reviews from sites like Yelp, and will also translate text, identify wine or artwork and add contact information to your address book just by you looking at it.

It’s clear that augmented reality is developing very quickly, but what does it mean for marketers and advertisers? Ubiquity is, of course, a few years out and no one knows exactly how things will look, but it’s worth considering some of the possibilities. For instance, right now Google AdWords tracks your searches for ad targeting, but what if you could track what a user looks at and show them, say, ads for new restaurants if it was clear they were looking at places to eat? Or maybe you have a billboard, and when the user looks at it their glasses show an animated overlay — creating a more engaging experience. There are also some implications for street marketing. A person might look uninteresting walking down the street, but through augmented reality maybe they have a big arrow over their head saying, “Ask me for a free product sample.” It’s sort of a human scavenger hunt that will happen as you walk through the city.

In my opinion, the possibilities for this technology are pretty much endless, but I have one use that I’m really hoping will pop up. Picture this: You arrive at a concert, a packed restaurant or, God forbid, a shopping mall on Black Friday. You scan the crowd, looking for a friend you’re supposed to meet. Fortunately, they have their Facebook tracking on, so you take out your phone, and scan across the crowd. Bubbles with names and profile information appear above people’s heads. You see your friend’s name, stroll over and say hello. Pretty neat.

But it certainly raises a lot of concerns from a privacy perspective. The option to turn it off would have to be there, yet how many people forget about the privacy settings that Facebook already has? Of course, if you value your anonymity, you’re probably steering clear of social media in the first place. I fall somewhere in the middle: This new technology sounds exciting, but maybe a little paranoia isn’t such a bad thing.

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To understand the needs of social media, it’s important to understand the social media platforms used by our families, friends, clients and customers. Like the highway system, social media platforms are different roads that take you different places. It’s good to know who you’re traveling with and what you’ll be doing once you arrive at your destination.

When we looked at social media use at Go East and the platforms preferred by our colleagues, we discovered some interesting things: More than half of us use five social media platforms. A quarter of us use at least seven. We lean toward using the most popular platforms to find each other and stay connected to our industry, clients, family and friends. Year after year, our adoption of social media is in alignment with similar demographics and adoption is higher among iPhone users. In fact, there’s not a BlackBerry in sight.

While everyone at Go East uses Yammer for our internal microblogging platform (How else would we know where to go for lunch?), slightly more than half of us use Twitter as an external microblogging network.

Work and personal life find their way to social media. Ninety-four percent of us are on Facebook (it’s good to know what we’re all doing the few hours we’re not together at the office). LinkedIn has 79 percent of our work histories listed in case we forget what we did before joining Go East. Mobile apps like Instagram and location-based apps such as Foursquare and Yelp are used by a core group of iPhone users. Posting to Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr is clearly popular, and we’ve started our own YouTube channel. This is the mashup of our lives: friend and follower, colleague and buddy, online and offline converge. Social media makes the boundaries less opaque.

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Good web developers break everything into three key layers: structure, presentation and behavior. Understanding the difference between these layers will enable you to organize your web content for a more flexible process across multi-platform tactics.

Structure (HTML) <- content goes here
Structure is the organization of your content into a clear hierarchy of information and differentiating its types, such as title, headline, paragraph and link.

A good structure should not change across different platforms and maintaining that consistency will save you a lot of time and money. Keep style and interaction out!

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It seems every time I turn around I’m reading or hearing something about how “everything” is going online or mobile. It appears that if your brand is not online or mobile – in an engaging way – you’re losing out. Well, this may have some truth to it, but that doesn’t mean print solutions aren’t still valid.

Consider this:

• 70% of companies have renewed a relationship with a customer using direct mail
• Consumers receiving a printed catalog are two times more likely to purchase online than those who don’t receive a catalog
• 75% of consumers say they’ve made a purchase as a result of direct mail
• Worried about seeming wasteful? In 2007, 45.2 million tons of paper were recovered from recycling – that’s 57% of all paper and paperboard products

At Go East when we’re working on a project – to be distributed online or  via “old-fashioned” paper – we work hard to balance print and interactive strategies. Campaigns need to be integrated, but not redundant. They need to be impactful and they need to be targeted.

Don’t abandon one for the other or you won’t be able to capitalize on the biggest opportunities!

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First, a pop quiz for you: which of these events generated the most buzz?

a. The Macintosh iPhone launch

b. The Nintendo Wii Launch

c. The Windows Vista Launch

d. The final Sopranos episode

According to recent Nielsen BuzzMetrics, if you chose the iPhone launch, you are correct.

I’m interested in this factlet because I’ve lately been pondering a phrase oft heard these days: “Mobile marketing is the hot new way to communicate with your customers!”

What does that mean? Well, I know what mobile marketing is, but are consumers really ready for it? Are marketers ready to dive into uncharted waters? Or do they still need to be convinced of its relevancy to their brand? And, by the way, is mobile marketing really uncharted waters?

I am a member of the generation that learned to keyboard on a typewriter and didn’t necessarily have computers in high school, so I think technology is fascinating. I mean, MP3 players – that’s WAY better than carrying around a 10-pound “boom box” on my shoulder. (OK, I didn’t really do that, but I know a lot of people who did!).

So, when “they” started talking about mobile marketing, I wanted to find out more. I googled it, of course, and discovered that information is easy to find because people are talking about mobile marketing and, if they’re not already doing it, they really want to be doing it. In particular, I found a great paper by Jim Nichols on Brandchannel.com that sited this eMarketer poll:

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Social networking is a huge phenomenon and most American adults are doing more than talking on their cell phones, everything from texting and gaming to email and banking.

In fact, a survey of 35,000 people revealed that consumer interest in purchasing a cell phone with streaming video or MP3 capabilities doubled between 2006 and 2007. 

If you’re like me, you’re thinking that statistic represents a bunch of kids — only a teenager can figure out how to work the new phones and only a teenager truly embraces the new technologies. Lo and behold, research shows that isn’t the case.

Case in point: Jim Nichols sites a recent study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project illustrating that, while texting messaging demographics are skewed towards teenagers, there a significant number of 30 to 64-year-olds who are also using this service.

What does that have to do with mobile marketing? Well, it’s possible to deliver promotional messages and news via text messages, and even to gather valuable customer information.

But, you say, won’t that annoy my customers? Nielsen also reported recently that 23 percent of mobile users saw a mobile advertisement in March 2008, and that mobile users are willing to receive ads in exchange for lower phone rates … 

So, if businesses want to do it and consumers are ready to receive it –- what’s the hold up? Is it fear, caution, or simply that folks have yet to figure out how to leverage the technology?

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When looking to leverage mobile messaging services and microblogging platforms such as Twitter, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul media serves up some examples worth checking out:

Twitter feeds from Fox 9 News and the Star Tribune are fully automatic streams of almost every news story they publish. I personally don’t think most people want that kind of a stream in Twitter, but it works for some. WCCO posts breaking news stories on Twitter almost exclusively, which is similar to CNN’s Twitter feed. Minnesota Independent, The UpTake and MinnPost post to their own stories, but also maintain a news dialog with others. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press’ feed is very conversational.

There are Twitter accounts for individual reporters, journalists and other media professionals as well. The advantage for the news consumer is being able to listen to what reporters are talking about before it’s reported, but the disadvantage is hearing everything else they may be doing or talking about that’s unrelated to the news. MinnPost’s David Brauer, Minnesota Independent’s Paul Schmelzer, Pioneer Press’ Julio Ojeda-Zapata, WCCO’s Jason DeRusha and MPR’s Bob Collins frequently converse about news as it happens and before their respective organizations publish about it. MPR has a number of Twitter users including Tim Post, Julia Schrenkler, Tom Scheck and Michael Caputo. WCCO’s Terri Gruca will sometimes poll Twitter for help on stories and American Public Media’s Jon Gordon uses Twitter to ask his followers for help on “Future Tense” segments.

The media’s Twitter use runs the gamut from straight news feeds to news conversation to stalking journalists, so it isn’t easy to figure out what’s the most effective to implement Twitter for your business or organization.

Do you want to communicate with a straight feed of your press releases or do you want to engage people with conversation? Do you want to respond to people that Twitter about you or do you think subscribers will be bothered by conversations involving your organization on their mobile phones? Does it make sense to have an individual representing you or an account named after your business?

Point being, figuring out if using Twitter is right for your business or organization isn’t as simple as signing up for an account and using it, it’s finding the right Twitter “voice” and usage that augments your brand. Either way, you’re no one if you’re not on Twitter:

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Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own experience of the ever-swirling, ever-changing, available-at-a-moment’s-notice technologies. I find that current trends in mobile media are fed by actual pros, benefits that I am able to make work with my lifestyle.

I am all about keeping my personal and professional life as organized as possible. Is this doable? Can I actually stay “with the program” and keep my wits about me? In the end, the buck stops here, with me.

Isn’t that the most important point here, me?

I work full time and am a mother of two growing boys. Business deadlines, sports practices, classes, birthday reminders and bills all need to be dealt with … before they come due. Therefore, my most prized possession is my mobile handheld unit. 

The handheld is an all-knowing one-stop-shop where I can monitor all of the developments, schedules and activities in my life. It is a necessity. Franklin Covey watch out! If planning-on-the-go is the wave of the future, you may be going out of business!

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Is it weird that I have a special relationship with my iPhone? I already use it for everything, but I sometimes wonder – what other cool, new things could I be doing with it? How do other people use their hand-helds?  As a self-proclaimed nerd, I’m proud to say these questions led me to some some great statistics:

Nielsen Table

So, how does this fit into the way we market? We’re all working hard to figure out how to expand our marketing reach into mobile and take advantage of its constancy.

According to a Nielsen mobile study, data subscribers are willing to accept advertising in exchange for lower costs or better content. In that same vein, 32 percent said they’re open to mobile advertising if it lowers their overall bill, while 13 percent will welcome it if it boosts the quality of their mobile media offerings. 

So does this mean that I can get $1 off of my Big Mac Value Meal and also pay less for my monthly AT&T bill? I’m up for that.

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