Exploring Marketing Technology

Author: Jeff Larche

  • If there is ever a Web 3.0 Mount Rushmore, Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ face will be next to Jeff Han’s

    Let there be no doubt. The past year has given us a clear glimpse of Web 3.0 and how we will experience it. First Jefferson Han gave us the multi-touch interface to this new multi-dimensional world. Now Blaise Aguera y Arcas gives us the information architecture behind that glass rectangle. Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, and in this breathtaking video he shows what Ethan Zuckerman called, after this TED2007 (technology, entertainment, design) presentation, “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year.” You be the judge.

    A demo of Photosynth

  • A magical feat worthy of Hogwarts: Harry Potter book materializes via text message incantation

    I read somewhere that Italy has more pet dogs than it does children. That is a bad thing in a country — a sign of negative population growth. However, I tell you very selfishly that this ratio — more dogs than kids — is an excellent thing in a high rise. Take mine for example. The elevators and lobby are teeming with canines, usually on the business end of leashes held by a slack-skinned residents such as myself.

    So how do you account for the fact that the mail room of our building today was full of USPS notices of the arrival of the same parcel: The last in the Harry Potter book series? Obviously I’m not the only “kid at heart.”

    But this kid has a decidedly geeky side. I pre-ordered mine three months ago using nothing but the keypad of my cell phone. As I stated then, in my account of ordering the book, the service that made this miracle of commerce possible is a harbinger of things to come.

    Here were the steps I used to order my copy of this juvenile horse-choker:

    I registered (just once) at the ShopText site. I provided the usual: My name and shipping address, and my credit card information. I also gave them my email address and cell phone number. That’s when the real wizardry began.

    I received a receipt via email and SMS (i.e., cell phone text message). It included my short password, something needed to avoid ordering fraud

    Then, all I had to do was send a text to ShopText’s “short code,” which is a 5- or 6-digit cell phone number that communicates with an SMS server. I placed the keyword in the message body, “Potter,” as instructed in the print ad that offered this ordering option.

    I received a confirmation on pricing, which also requested the security password. Once received, the system sent my cell phone — and my email Inbox — a receipt for the purchase. Poof! Within three minutes I had scratched my itch and bought this last of the Harry Potter series.

    And that’s the point.

    If SMS ordering catches on at all, it will be because of the ease with which spontaneous purchases can be made before having time to think something like, “Heck, I can always go to the bookstore.”

    This is a system that deserves to succeed, and it probably will, considering what big, pampered kids I and my fellow boomers have become.

  • Explosion causes a potty-mouthed Twitter skeptic to see the light

    I had vowed to readers I would never again write about Twitter. It is, after all, a frivolous little diversion. True, in the same breath, I had also acknowledged (in one of my last posts on the topic) that this trivial toy has the potential to save lives. It can spread news when all other sources are slow to arrive or completely cut off. In a time of rising terrorist threat levels around the world, that makes Twitter sound far less trivial.

    Proof of my theory arrived today. Here’s the story that has brought me out of my Twitter silence. Warning: The blog entry I cite, on the other side of this link, includes a profanity in one of the images.

    A friend had been trying to coax Howard Lindzon into the Twitter habit. He refused, and finally conceded only on this condition: His “Tweets” would only come from him via his cell phone, and only when he was — ahem — using the facilities. Since he considered Twitter a waste, he was only going to Twitter about waste. But that all changed when there was a terrifying steam pipe explosion. Caught with no other way to get or receive news about it, you can guess where he turned:

    Lindzon uses the one tool he bashes and pokes fun at to inform and hopefully inform himself of a crisis situation. Instantly! Wirelessly! … My buddy Loic Le Meur’s twitts a few days ago about how he catches up with news on Twitter more that by reading his RSS.

    Now excentric [sic] Lindzon accepts my invitation to join and unwilingly [sic] offers this awesome example of the right person at the right time in the right place using the right service and instantly informing his peers he networked with registering to Twitter. Is this the real web 2.0? Ought to be, as Lindzon did not blog or email about the blast. He freakin twittered it!

    When the telephone was invented, it wasn’t thought of as a tool for doing business. It was imagined by most as a way, before consumer radio appliances entered the picture, of carrying music and news across great distances. That all changed of course. Relatively speaking, it didn’t take long for this “toy” to earn its keep in society (just a few decades).

    Could Twitter, the first truly widespread mobile time-waster, be on its way to its own social legitimacy?

  • Make sure your mass emails look good naked

    My Gmail account is set so I don’t see images embedded in emails unless I choose to, on a case-by-case basis. I just received another email today from the company that sent the one below. In both cases, I had no idea who was sending it to me, unless I remembered what company is behind the Goldpoints Plus continuity program I subscribed to ages ago (fat chance!). Can you tell me who this is? This is a screen capture of the first one I received.

    With the images turned off. If you don’t see anything below this image, click on the MORE link to see who it is.

    And here is what that same email revealed once I turned on the images:

    (more…)

  • What playwrights can teach about strong ad copy

    Playwrights listen to the way people talk. The best of them turn this spoken music into something more than the merely authentic. They use it to convey a higher truth (even if the play simply makes us laugh; or maybe especially if it does). So what about ad copy — be it online, on a printed page or whatever?

    Must jarring authenticity go out the window as the “polish” of professionalism is applied to an ad? This week, Roy Williams made an eloquent case for sparing some of the polish that can water down an ad and sap its power.

    Williams even makes reference to a wonderful statement in the first chapter of a book of his — a book I’d recommend to anyone who is looking for a fresh perspective on advertising and marketing. Right there on Page 12 of The Wizard of Ads are these “Nine Secret Words”:

    The risk of insult is the price of clarity.

    Think of this the next time you review a proposed ad that is a little too jarring for your comfort. It could be bad, or unwise. This is always possible. BUT, it might instead be the most effective marketing investment you make this year.

    Advertising legend David Oglivy once wrote that the ideal copywriter is “half killer and half poet.” I don’t know any professional killers, but I do have my favorite poets. Most of them, from what I’ve read about them, would be about as welcome in “polite company” as a paid assassin. Or a brilliant playwright, for that matter.

    Could it be that this untamed, feral quality in art is something you should be looking for in commerce — in your next online ad, perhaps?