Wired Magazine’s Freemium Long-Tailer Chris Anderson led an interactive “conversation” about the new Tablet Computers with the audience at the 4A’s Transformation 2010 conference today. They used Aerva’s Mobile Polling service (and other interactive applications mentioned here on the 4As Blog) to listen to the community and react. Y’know, really understand their audience and engage like the Advertising Industry wants to.

Chris did not agree with the Advertising Industry executives in the room… Nice…

As you can see above, the room voted that hardware like the iPad is going to be hot in a decade… and be “just” another distribution channel. Chris and his crack evaluation team at Wired think considerably higher (and faster). I agree that this new method of interacting with the Web, and your “personal cloud” of info will change the “face” of media creation and consumption.

As Marketers we need to eagerly discover ways to provide value and utility (not just ads) around these new forms of engagement. Consider what entices people to literally reach out and explore. This new presentation platform is a new reputation platform between Consumer - Content - Sponsor.

I recently posted about MIT’s project that takes your movement and convenience even farther with a custom multimedia rig.

(Special thanks to Lance and the team at Stillwell Partners for their usual guidance and inspiration.) ]]> http://aerva.com/wired-tablets/feed/ http://aerva.com/making-mobile-and-outdoor-displays-work/ http://aerva.com/making-mobile-and-outdoor-displays-work/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:47:25 +0000 aerva http://aerva.com/?p=944 By Sanjay Manandhar

The proliferation of increasingly sophisticated mobile handsets offers the opportunity for a variety of interactive campaigns. To succeed, mobile engagement requires an integrated marketing mindset and attention to scalability, reliability and security.

Digital signage and mobile handsets are made for each other, but outdoor displays and mobile interactivity are particularly well-matched. Working together the attention grabbing outdoor display becomes a dynamic call to action. With such a successful pairing it is critical that both mobile and outdoor displays be consistent parts of a marketing mix—“a holistic approach” according to Bill Donabedian, managing director of Fountain Square Management Group that manages a 28 foot x 42 foot outdoor LED display in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Integrated marketing or the “holistic approach” is easier said than done. For one thing, marketing groups as well as agencies historically have had different teams handle various marketing avenues with labels such as TV, Print, Radio, Outdoor, Internet, Mobile, etc. These demarcations have to be dissolved. The end users don’t see these distinctions and are expecting marketing messages to be more integrated. Brands and some innovative agencies are starting to integrate various marketing methods and busting the proverbial “silos.” Kodak, who is powering a digital LED at Times Square, New York, and clearly has marketing programs in all imaginable media, says they integrate the outdoor display in Times Square as part of their overall marketing mix, not a distinct, one-off display. Hence, it was easy for Kodak to introduce campaigns that integrated mobile and digital out-of-home (as most marketers call the outdoor display) to sharpen their marketing message and enhance their branding.

Figure 1. Kodak LED Display at Times Square, New York, using Picture-to-Screen application that uses email to submit images and SMS to call up the approved images up to the giant display. This “Smile Gallery” campaign by Kodak is free to the public—send pictures to kodak@aerva.com

Nobody leaves home without their mobile handset—it’s a very intimate device quite unlike any other. What’s more, these mobile handsets come so feature-rich that they are more than just tools for voice communications—they are typically packed with SMS, MMS, camera features and the smartphones also allow full browsing, email and many interesting apps. Mobile handsets by themselves can entertain, engage the users and help communicate with others, but allowing users to interact with an outdoor display adds a new dimension to entertainment, engagement and communication. Providing call-to-action on the giant outdoor screens for users to collect coupons or sign up for sweepstakes are some of the simpler applications. Multi-user games, Text-to-Screen, mobile voting, Picture-to-Screen and even Tweets to the giant screen add much more to enhance the user experience and create a “wow” for the brand and the venue.

When high-profile outdoor displays promote their campaigns using mobile engagement, high volume user participation is the goal. It is, therefore, paramount that backend issues like scalability (the application stands up even when many users connect simultaneously), reliability (the applications or campaign continue to perform under user stress) and security (that the application or outdoor display is not compromised) become critical. Users are quite ingenious in their attempts to test the limits of the system or to use the exposure of a giant outdoor display to advertise their own wares (e.g. sending a picture in Picture-to-Screen application wearing a T-shirt advertising their company). So the final must-have is the ability for a system and/or human-moderation capability, especially for user-generated content.

With the proliferation of outdoor displays and increasingly feature-rich mobile handsets, the only limit to the range of marketing campaigns is human creativity. Be prepared for many more interesting and memorable marketing messages and campaigns that connect users and their mobile devices with outdoor displays.

Figure 2. Users sent in a photo to an outdoor display in Fountain Square, Cincinnati, running Picture-to-Screen application—sponsorship message appears alongside.

Users can email photos to valentine@aerva.com and, if approved, it will be shown on the giant video screen in Fountain Square during Valentine’s Day.

For the third year in a row, Aerva is an event sponsor of the Xconomy Battle of the Tech Bands. Net ticket proceeds will be donated to Science Club for Girls and Year Up Boston. This is the tech networking event that really rocks. Musicians from New England’s most innovative companies take on their Seattle competition—you pick the winners with Aerva’s SMS polling technology. Send in your votes with your mobile phone and see the results on the digital displays as they come in. Other Aerva technologies will be featured, including Pic2Screen and AerChat, letting you send in photos and text messages during the event.

Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010

Location: Middle East Restaurant & Nightclub, 472 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge

Time: Doors open at 7:00 pm

Tickets: $25 in advance, $35 at the door.
Snacks are included, and we’ll even buy you a drink or two.
Tickets are transferable but not refundable.
Must be 21 or older to attend; ID required.
Click here to purchase tickets.

Bands to Compete:
From Seattle…
Lion’s Ambition (representing Boeing)
Judas Wake (representing Microsoft)

From Boston…
The Dirty Truckers (representing American Well; formerly representing Sophos)
Deadbeat Darling (representing Pictel; formerly representing Akamai)

Door Prizes: To be announced.

Find out more information and buy tickets!

It’s Time to Smile

According to Tom Hoehn, Director, Brand Communications and New Media at Kodak, “The recently upgraded huge digital display on the 50-yard line of the Crossroads of the World is now networked. The cool part about it is that you control when it shows up.” See Tom’s blog.

Aerva’s Pic2Screen application accepts pictures via email to kodak@aerva.com with optional captions on the “Subject:” line. Users get immediate acknowledgement of their image along with disclaimers about use of the picture on the display and criteria for acceptance. Kodak team uses Aerva’s Photo Moderation web application, which allows batch acceptance, rejection of images for high throughput, especially at busy times like New Year’s eve at Times Square. Multiple moderators from across the globe can help moderate the images. The Photo Moderation tool also allows Kodak to remove or edit captions for appropriateness, length, etc.

The User is In Control

All users get an email upon moderation. Accepted images get a code that users can use to text in when they
want to see their photo, thus making the “Smile Gallery” a destination and the user in control of when the picture will show. The same trigger code can be used up to 6 times during the campaign period. All rejected images are given reasons why they are rejected, usually for picture quality, inappropriate content, including explicit advertising of brands, logos, etc.

Here is how to do it:

1) Send your photo to kodak@aerva.com with a short caption in the subject line.

2) Then give it a few minutes so Kodak can approve your photo.

3) Once approved, you will receive an approval email with a short alpha-numeric code.

4) Using the code, you can then trigger your image on the board up to six times. The picture will also display randomly in-between the adverts.

The Technology

Aerva’s Pic2Screen application uses three technology platforms, 1) digital signage platform called Aerchannel, which allows scheduling of any content type on any kind of digital display anywhere in the world, and 2) mobile interactivity platform called MoApp, which allows text message interaction between users’ handsets and any number of Aerva applications such as Pic2Screen, finally, 3) Aerva’s cloud computing backend is also involved and provides scalability as well as virtualization so that images can be processed at very high throughputs and user texts accepted and acknowledgements in similarly scalable manner.