Awareness is Everything

icanmakeitbetter.com 2.0 released!

2011-12-12T11:48:00.001-06:00

My apologies for the lack of recent posts. We have been extremely busy launching new clients on icanmakeitbetter.com and building our 2.0 release - announced today!

This release includes many tweaks for speed and stability, but also takes the platform to an entirely new level with these key features:

Facebook app: In 30 seconds add our app to your Facebook page and start innovating and conducting market research.
Customization: Customize "How can you make it better?" text, customize Forum text and more.
Public Discussions: Create open "town-hall" meetings.
Customize all system emails.
Improved discussions: Super cool new expanding features and user flow, makes the user experience way better!
Private Communities: That's right, create completely private online communities for innovation and research with employees, partners, you name it. Limit by invite, IP or email address.
Enhanced security: SSL, email validation.
Updated website: icanmakeitbetter.com - scroll down and check out the new "how this works" and "key features"
Improved Forums: make Forums private, choose where Forum ideas show and more.
Feature Box: Promote a Forum, Idea, Survey, or Discussion in one click to your home page.
Surveys!: Now create quick and easy question-of-the-day or full surveys and promote right on your home page. Integrated reporting and unique ability to allow respondents to see how the community answered if you choose.

A few screen shots are below, but please contact us with any questions or needs at all. Thank you!

Change By Subtraction

2011-05-06T08:52:00.000-05:00

I read a great quote in the most recent issues of FastCompany: "It's so much easier to change things through addition than subtraction." This was in regards to an organization needing to change by subtracting due to budget constraints. While it may be "easier" to affect change through adding or doing, it may not always be the best, most enlightened or most sustainable form of change.

On a personal level I began thinking of these differences in how I attempt change. Most of us always have some "change" we want in our lives to produce a desired outcome - I assume that is typically some form or "happiness" and "peace". But, we try to do that through adding, not subtracting. "I will take more vacation time", vs. "I will work fewer hours each week". One ramps up the need for money, luggage (a personal love of mine) and other items, while if one were to do subtraction those actions may return the same desired results for less money, effort and stress.

As market researchers much of our research is on "what's next", "what new features do we need to add", and what else do we "do". Perhaps more of our research should focus on "what do we remove", "delete", "not do" in order to increase usability, reduce costs, increase customer loyalty and drive meaningful change instead of just additive actions that may look like progress but do not create meaningful change.

While Apple may be too easy an example to use, I think they are the best. Take the iPod "one button for all my music, no way will that work!" and now the iPad - both created a massive shift in the market as much for what they did as for what they did not do or have. Summed in an Apple ad here:

Let us know your thoughts. How can you innovate and grow personally and in your business by subtracting instead of adding?

Research Less, Know More

2011-05-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

We have just launched icanmakeitbetter, a new innovation and market research platform. Our platform enables companies and communities to create, share, and act upon ideas to drive innovation and make everything, and every day better. In a nutshell we built a platform that allows businesses, government and organizations to:

Innovate: Community driven idea portal.
Research: Conduct primary market research that is faster, cheaper and more actionable than ever before.

Check out this quick video overview:

What can you do on the platform?

Get great new ideas from customers and the community.
Gather feedback on bugs and improvements for your website, products, software, services, you name it.
Provide a single place for your community to provide innovation and feedback - don't lose feedback across Twitter, Facebook, etc. where ideas get lost, are not vetted or researched.
Build a CAB (Customer Advisory Board).
Conduct online focus groups.
Build a panel/market research online community cheaper, quicker and of higher quality.
Conduct market research - usability, creative testing, product development...

We hope you like the platform. We already have Dell and the City of Austin on the platform. Let us know how you think you could use it!

Garbage In - Bad Research Out

2011-01-07T10:55:00.002-06:00

Market Research is more necessary than ever - product development cycles are shortened, margins are thin(er), consumer driven innovation is building the next generation of companies...you get the idea. Grab a recent copy of Inc. or Fast Company and you will see articles on iCitizen (citizen generated government innovation), The Customer Is The Company - Threadless (fully crowd-sourced product innovation - we will call this market research, since we are research types), and many, many more. The connection between company and customer is getting tighter and research + technology must keep up with it to provide the data, communications and intelligence. For my take on this that was printed in Inc. read HERE.

What does all this mean for Market Research. It is positive and negative. The positive side is that research is getting a seat at the executive table, is part of product development, drives the customer experience and is an integral part of the innovation process. It also means panels are being over used, and some corners are cut by clients or research partners to "just get it done and get some numbers". If you don't pay attention to quality at the front - who is answering that fancy conjoint survey, all the segmentation and animated PowerPoint slides mean nothing, in fact they are worse than nothing, they are wrong.

How wrong?

In a recent Havard Business Review summary the following alarming facts were pointed out:

In 13 out of 18 panels 32% or more of panelists said they took 10+ surveys in the last 30 days (Research by: Burke)
14% of panel respondents in one panel claimed to own all 10 items on a list - one of those items was the Segway scooter (only 80,000 were ever sold, so this is about 1,000+% off, that is well beyond the acceptable margin of error!). (Research by: Theo Downes-Le Guin at Market Strategies)

We can we as researchers do about this? Quite a bit actually. We will be writing more on this subject and launching a revolutionary new research platform to address some of these basic issues in the coming months. Questions before then? Give us a call or send an email to: infoATsentientservices.com.

A Year in Review – Google Style

2010-12-10T11:32:00.008-06:00

What a whirlwind of a year 2010 has been… in world events, in life and in work. And what better way to reflect on the year than to utilize the largest search engine Google to see a snapshot of the biggest events and searched terms of the year both globally and by country.

Google recently released Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched. Here, you can find animated graphing using HTML5 (the latest and greatest in coding), which shows an aggregation of the terms that people all around the globe searched throughout 2010. Take a second to look at the search stars that have fallen and risen over the past year.

One of my favorite parts of this press release is the 2010 in Review video below. It shows a great recap some of the year’s biggest struggles, achievements, tragedies and milestones.

From myself and Sentient Services, we hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season. We cannot wait to see what 2011 will bring. Enjoy!

Does marketing really work?

2010-11-12T13:23:00.002-06:00

One big question on every business owner’s mind: “Is the money I am spending on marketing and or advertising really working?” As part of my job, I spend lots of time trying to help optimize the marketing and advertising for companies. The problem is that it is not always easy to track and quantify with numbers if all their work and money is truly paying off in the end. Today I came across this quick survey that I found very interesting by CramerSweeney - http://www.cramersweeney.com/smiq.html. It tests the recognition of brands using 4 main areas:

1. Icon Identification
2. Tagline Memorization
3. Mascot Identification
4. Audible Recognition

While most of the brands used here are fairly mainstream brands, I think many people would be surprised at the amount of marketing and advertising they actually absorb unconsciously. I identified 17 out of the 20 brands, some of which I actually use and some of which I have never used but unconsciously knew the tagline or mascot.

So my point is this, while it is not always easy to quantify how well marketing works and allot a number of customers to the dollars you are spending, marketing and the messages you send to customers get absorbed in many ways (and that list is ever expanding with social media). This has implications for how ROI is calculated and how “standard” market research to develop and measure marketing effectiveness is done. Sentient is currently exploring new ways to do this. Let us know if you have any great ideas to share.

Last, but not least, we think the actual survey format and tool CramerSweeney uses is pretty cool, interactive and engaging. Let us know your thoughts on any other survey tools you find interesting.

Marketing 101

2010-10-29T14:39:00.000-05:00

Believe in what you are doing, build great stuff and sell the hell out of it.

That is what Apple does. For a quick and funny snap shot of their recent release of the new MacBook Air check out the video below. And then read the quick summary on TechCrunch.

In today's market - product is marketing, marketing is product. When you realize that and break down silos between product development, design, research and marketing you get a team working seamlessly together with a shared vision and focused goal. The result is the video below.

Velvet Rope Clients

2010-10-22T10:31:00.004-05:00

Admittedly this is a weak blog post - I am posting about another blog, that was posting about a book. However; it has been a very busy few weeks and the other post is really good and gets to a core tenet here at Sentient Services - we do great work, for great people and great companies. Life is too short to work on junk and with not-so-nice people.

We are very fond of saying "We don't have clients, we have friends that happen to pay us money.". And, that is very true. Our "clients" are great friends - we travel the world together (drink tea in Turkey, hike to through the alleys in Hong Kong, beer in Germany), work long hours, create game changing products, and have a lot of fun along the way...good friends + good clients = great times!

Read about what makes great clients and some guidelines on the GetSatisfaction blog. It covers Michael Port's books and philosophy.

The key takeaway:

Do you have your own red velvet rope policy that allows in only the most ideal clients, the ones who energize and inspire you? If you don’t, you will shortly. Why?

First, because when you work with clients you love, you’ll truly enjoy the work you’re doing; you’ll love every minute of it. And when you love every minute of the work you do, you’ll do your best work, which is essential to book yourself solid.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Research 101

2010-10-09T15:26:00.000-05:00

A friend just shared this Penn & Teller video with me. WARNING - NOT SAFE TO PLAY ON THE LOUD SPEAKERS AT WORK. While not completely academically correct, or a thorough two-sided investigation (not that there are ever many of those), it does quickly and easily explain some basics of survey writing, analysis and how it can all go wrong. And, it is entertaining. Some very basic things to watch when writing a survey:

Non-response bias. Who does not answer can sometimes be more compelling than who does. Quick example: Do a phone survey Monday night on TV matching habits. The results? Hardly anyone watches football anymore! No, not really - the people watching football did not answer the phone. You have a big non-response problem. That is why, for all surveys you want to manage replicates (how much sample you release), contact design (how many times and over how many days you try to reach a record before you call it dead) and always take into account non-response bias.
Scales: Likert scales (good Wikipedia overview here) are the standard. But, even how you use these varies widely. A few quick comments:

Using 4-point, 5-point, 7-point, 10-point scales. Always a hot debate here, quite enthralling and very sexy. But, in a nutshell I favor 5-point for several reasons. When you use 10-point, you typically roll up "top-box" as 9+10, so why not just go with 5 and make it easier? 10-point causes more respondent fatigue - larger survey questions (actually twice as long), more options, etc. Additionally, what is the difference between and 8 and 9? Moving from 4 to 5 seems a lot clearer form an analysis standpoint and form a respondent standpoint.
End-labeled or label all points? If you can, always label all points. The human mind is much better and more consistent at deciding between "somewhat satisfied" and "very satisfied" more so than "3" vs. "4". This is another argument to keep scales short - you can't anchor every point on a 10-point scale, but you can on a 5-point scale.
Neutral point? Typically I say no. The idea of using a scale is to differentiate respondents; to differentiate the most satisfied or dissatisfied - to find those levers you can pull as a business to make a difference. Allowing a neutral typically wastes a scale point. Instead I prefer to do a positively weighted 5-point scale (e.g., not at all satisfied, not very satisfied, satisfied, very satisfied, extremely satisfied). We want to make that "top box" the cream of the crop; hard for people to check, but if someone checks it you know you want to figure out how to get more of them. The goal is to move your 3s and 4s to this 5 spot. And, to figure out how to limit the bleeding with your 1s and 2s.

Don't Know: The inclusion of "Don't Know" as an answer choice can drastically skew survey results. The classic example is in voter polls. If you only give the option of the two candidates with now "undecided" option your survey results can be drastically different than if you allow for an "undecided" option. Last minute voter turn-out drives, the results of primary races, the overall propensity for "undecided" voters to lean towards a given party - all throw off results by the inclusion or exclusion of this one "little" answer choice.

There are plenty of other ways that survey design can dramatically change how data looks upon completion. You have to take into account cultural differences in scale usage (including colors - there are some great survey platforms that allow visual selections and provide visual cues, but remember while red means stop or bad in the US, it is a positive color in China), respondent propensity to check "Don't Know" (much higher in Japan than the US) and a myriad of other little factors.

Okay, here is the darn video - enjoy!

Design Thinking Applied To New iPad App

2010-09-17T08:52:00.001-05:00

I came across this good, quick read on design thinking and applying it to launching a new business - in this case the iPad app Pulse from Alphonso Labs. You can read it here. In a nutshell here are the 5 steps:
1)Empathize: Research and understand the end-user - their needs, pains and usage scenarios.
2)Define: Focus on a core niche and then research that niche to define the why and how.
3)Ideate: Brainstorm sessions and innovation.
4)Create Prototype: These can be rough and even Post-It notes. But create something to narrow and code from.
5)Test: Usability test in the real world.

I would add a 6th one here which is to get Steve Jobs to present your app at the launch of iPad...which happened for Pulse. The result of good design or luck? Probably both, but you won't get lucky with bad design!

Lessons from Hawaii

2010-08-30T16:05:00.000-05:00

At the end of June through the beginning of July, I took advantage of Sentient’s sabbatical benefit and took off to Hawaii for two weeks in the great outdoors. Unplugging for a full two weeks was a little bit of a challenge – I went through email withdrawal for the first couple of days. Once I did unplug, I was able to regain some perspective outside of my computer and smartphone.

Lesson #1: You have to get dirty to find the best views.

On Maui, we drove the road to Hana and saw LOTS of waterfalls. By far the most fun we had at one was in Pua’a Ka’a State Park. However NOT at the lower falls that you just stroll to on the park’s walkway; instead, the upper falls aboe that one.

Lower Falls

Upper Falls

Our guidebook, Maui Revealed by Andrew Doughty (which we highly recommend), clued us in:

“There’s an awkward trail on the right of the upper falls. It first leads to a short path to the top of the falls, but if you go past it for 5-10 squishy minutes (it’s usually muddy), there’s a much heavier untapped falls and pool just above the diversion ditch that’s taking much of the lower falls’ water. When the trail gets to the elevated waterway (viaduct), you have to walk along it (which those afraid of heights will hate), then across. Only 100 more feet upstream is your prize.”

Awkward, squishy and muddy are all understatements – the whole trail was practically a slip-n-slide. At one point my hiking shoes were completely submerged in mud. These were new shoes when I left for Hawaii, and after this hike, they looked like this.

There were at least 3 different times where I wanted to turn back – crossing the viaduct was one of them.

But being the only person swimming in the waterfall’s pool was definitely worth all the work.

Takeaway: Don’t be content with the status quo – find new trails in your work. From a research perspective, this could mean:

Using a new technique to understand the desirability of a design described in the paper Measuring Desirability: New Methods for Evaluating Desirability in a Usability Lab Setting (WORD DOC) by Joey Benedeck and Trish Miner of Microsoft
Trying a new platform from 20|20 Research with a mobile population that lets you reach respondents via text message
Reading this month’s edition of Quirks to learn more about social media research (PDF)

Lesson #2: The human mind tries to relate new things to things it knows.

We also visited Mount Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui. Going up the 10,023 feet, I saw terrain and vegetation that reminded me of the alpine climate I have seen in the Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park. However, there were some plants, like the silversword, that I had never seen before. We were also lucky enough to see one that was blooming – something that they only do once in their lifespan of 50 years before dying.

And then there was the crater. This was terrain that I had never seen before, yet my brain still tried to relate it to something – namely what I imagine the terrain of Mars to look like.

Takeaway: When presenting something new, make it relevant. For example, relate new research findings to things that your audience might be familiar with – previous research, industry news, etc.

Lesson #3: You’re more interesting when you’re moving.

Starting to wonder if I spent any time in the ocean? Well yes, we went on a snorkel trip to Molokini. We saw all sorts of coral and fish.

On the way back to Maui, some dolphins started swimming around our boat. The captain stopped and the dolphins came to check us out. They played a bit, and then started swimming away. When the boat started moving again, the dolphins were immediately back, in front of the bow, and racing the boat – we were much more interesting when we were moving.

Takeaway: MOVE on your findings. At Sentient, we are always customizing and finding creative and actionable ways to interpret and present research that allows our clients to:

Know the why behind the what
Easily distribute market intelligence throughout the organization
Take action and build consensus based upon market research
Have complete confidence in the analytics and validity of implications

Ideas On Usability Presentations

2010-08-13T11:26:00.001-05:00

So, this could be considered a lazy blog post - a blog post about another blog post. And, this other blog post is about other posts and presentations on usability, so this could be considered extremely lazy on my part.

However, click here for the Useful Usability blog and get links to 5 Radical Ideas From Usability Presentations. There is stuff in here for UX professionals, iPhone developers and tips on presenting research findings. All good stuff.Share it this post around and let us know what radical ideas you have for presenting usability research.

Here is a quick link to the first presentation covered:

Usability 2.0

View more presentations from Greg Bell.

The Power of Mobile Market Research

2010-07-14T14:33:00.008-05:00

As advertising to the public via mobile phones becomes more widespread, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for other marketing activities – including market research. Market research will need to keep pace with location-based marketing services like FourSquare, wantANDfound, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Placecast and many others. Emerging as the latest medium for reaching consumers, how can mobile research technologies be utilized to gain deeper and richer insights into behavior and drive innovation? Think about it, what if customers could give feedback anytime, anywhere to improve products and services – right when the issue happens or the idea arises!

A relatively new tool we have come across is QualAnywhere from 20/20 Research, Inc. QualAnywhere allows you to build panels or do one-off recruiting and then interact with respondent via their mobile phone for surveys or qualitative chat. A few examples 20/20 Research gives as ways to utilize this methodology includes:

• Conducting studies about eating habits DURING the lunch hour
• Conducting studies on shopping WHILE participants are likely to be at the grocery store

Interacting with respondents at the POD (Point-Of-Decision) is a rarity, but when available adds to the research validity and actionability. How do you conduct research at the POD? I would love to hear about it and how it helped your research.

The Power Of Doing Nothing

2010-06-25T11:28:00.002-05:00

It is time for some Sentient employees to take off! Don't worry they will be back. We have Julie reaching her 3+ year mark and Kristen is in year 4. At Sentient we provide a little extra time off (you must take 2 weeks without email or contacting the office) and $5,000 travel allowance after 3 years and then every 3 years after that. The only catch is that we get to keep their computer and they can't call in to the office or contact us.

As we are fond of saying:
We all want to be proud of our work. But as important as our next project is, we know that it’s not our greatest gift or the greatest good that we can do. We have to work for a living, but it’s the living that defines us, not the work.

Well, this is part of that "living" thing we strive for. So, Julie will be gone part of this Summer and Kristen in the Fall. I could try to explain the benefits of this, but I think this video from TED says it very well. (Though we have not figured out how to take a year off just yet.)

New ways to "research"

2010-06-18T14:49:00.001-05:00

While it may not be “classic market research,” social media is bringing new ways for businesses to connect with customers for communication and feedback.

Interesting case in point – I was eating dinner at Tarka Indian Kitchen last night, and I saw that they had a well placed call to action to facilitate feedback from customers.

As my camera phone lacks the focus of an SLR camera, what you are looking at is a table tent that is found on each table. On one side is the wine list, and on the side we’re looking at is an invitation to “Share Your Experience” by reviewing them on Yelp. The final paragraph invites customers to submit their review immediately using Tarka’s free Wi-Fi connection.

With this open-ended approach Tarka is accomplishing several things:

Driving user-generated content about their restaurant by encouraging reviews
Gathering unstructured feedback from customers
Advertising that they have free Wi-Fi
Gathering point-of-purchase feedback from those that login at their table using their smartphone or laptop

Pushing customers to post reviews creates a wealth of data for Tarka. What to do with this? One could use text mining (analyzing and categorizing unstructured data, e.g., reviews and other text), set up social media monitoring dashboards such as Yext or a myriad of other services that are starting to pop up and trying to take all of this user-generated-content (UGC) and structure it to help businesses make more informed decisions.

A tool we use to gain a topical level of understanding when looking at focus group data and other unstructured text is wordle.net. With it we create word clouds where more frequently used words are displayed in larger font sizes and less frequently used words are displayed in smaller font sizes. We have used this successfully to showcase brand attributes, political campaigns and many other areas. This can help identify broad perceptions and opinions people may have. Below is the resulting word cloud when we feed Tarka’s Yelp reviews through it (note this is just a quick rundown – it has not been cleaned or edited of “nonsense” words such as conjunctions).

The Future Of Brand Research?

2010-05-26T16:00:00.000-05:00

This is a quick post, since I missed mine last week! However, the subject is not a small one - brand research. As many of you know Sentient Services believes that the closer research can mimic actual brand interaction environments the better that research is. What do I mean here? Well, if most of a customer's brand experience is with a brand online, then it makes sense to conduct the research online (e.g., an online bulletin board focus group instead of an in-person focus group). Why?

If a customer is telling others about a brand only online, then you want to hear and measure their within "native brand language"
We love focus groups and love traveling and they are great for a myriad of subjects. However, if normal brand interaction is not part of a group, then it makes sense to measure brand interaction on an individual level and not within a group setting.
If others are receiving peer-group brand feedback online and via social media, the research needs to use the same format. By researching within the format that future communications will take place one can get a better grasp of vernacular, content, and motives to use when making brand research recommendations for implementation.

The idea for this post came about after playing with new social brand site - SocialSmack. This new site allows users to "prop" (thumbs up) or "drop" (thumbs down) different brand experiences they have online and in the real world. These reviews then are shared on Facebook and other social networks. Just like watching a live Twitter stream for brand reactions when news breaks, new sites like this combined with language analytics may start to form the baseline for future brand research.

They won't replace focus groups, back-room M&Ms and the nuances that only having a skilled moderator and 8 consumers in a room can bring (think collages, innovation sessions, white boarding website tasks and all sorts of other stuff that keeps us in business!). However, as researchers we have our eye on these new brand engagement platforms that live beyond the typical measured and researched "customer experience" CE scorecards. The customer experience is now everywhere, and discussed everywhere. Research needs to be the same. What are your thoughts?

A New Way of Asking the Same Question

2010-05-10T12:10:00.013-05:00

In the day and age where online surveys have become quite common, there is always a need to keep respondents engaged in the survey process. As you can see in this recent Quirk’s article “How Web 2.0 Made a Long Survey More Palatable,” by Amy Hebard from earthsense, the need to balance getting the information you need and keeping respondents from feeling fatigued is a very big challenge. In this article Amy speaks about how they utilized the latest Web 2.0 techniques in order make sure the respondent enjoys their survey taking experience.

In our own search to keep our audience engaged, we have come across several visual survey formats that allow the ability to ask standard types of questions but in an innovative and captivating way. Take for example Vision Critical’s survey tool within their Sparq online community platform. You can see a full range of abilities they offer in their Respondent Experience product demo, but some interesting capabilities it offers include:

Ranking by just dragging text or images on the screen into buckets
Visual marking up of images or pictures and then commenting on the highlighted area
Other visual type questions such as ordering images to rank and sliders for allocating points or money

Another interesting survey I recently came across is by Ionz. When you go to their site (you must click on the British flag in the right corner for English), an extremely engaging survey pops up. Below are a few screenshots of some questions. You can check out their website to see the full survey.

Instead of the normal radio button question for gender, Ionz used figures of a man and woman that move as you mouse over them.

Another interesting concept they used is displaying other respondent’s answers after you have selected your answer to the question.

Have you come across any interesting examples of using Web 2.0 features to make the survey experience even better? I would love to see them!!!!

This blog has moved

2010-04-26T10:24:00.001-05:00

This blog is now located at http://sentientblog.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://sentientblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

User Research Technologies

2010-04-23T16:31:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month the Austin chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association hosted a panel on user research technologies. One of the attendees, Erin Lynn Young, posted some excellent notes about the evening here.

Morae, Uservue, Silverback, Clicktale, VMWare and WebEx were the main technologies covered; however, the open discussion surfaced many other technologies as well – such as TreeJack from OptimalWorkshop and Grupthink for capturing open-ended responses.

Morae is our tool of choice for lab-based usability testing here at Sentient. It is actually a suite of products with Recorder, Observer and Manager.

Recorder – used to record the actual test sessions – is simple to set up, transparent during the actual session and allows for “markers” to be inserted into the recording via quick key shortcuts.
Observer – used to stream test session live – is easy to connect to Recorder for streaming and allows an observer to insert “markers” into the recording as well.
Manager – used on the backend for analysis – has robust editing capabilities allowing you to create a story board with analytics and video clips

When we are doing eye tracking in a study (another tool in our user experience arsenal), we use Tobii Studio. It has many of the same capabilities of Morae and adds the additional layer of eye tracking. In analysis, we can create heatmaps (an aggregate image across all participants that represents the eye gaze data of all users viewing a given page) and gaze timelines (an image indicating the path of one user’s eye gaze for the during of each page, view or visual stimulus.

What tools and technologies have you used or come across?

Eye Tracking Web Usabilty - Jakob Nielson + Kara Pernice

2010-01-08T07:57:00.003-06:00

So, while putting off a late night report review I came across Cennydd Bowles UK blog reviewing the new eye tracking book - Eye Tracking Web Usability. The bottom line review of the book - not a great read and not a great case for eye tracking (even though that is the express purpose of the book). I beg to respectfully disagree - my response here.

Let me know your thoughts, would love to continue the discussion.

Social Media and Market Research

2009-09-21T10:54:00.003-05:00

Earlier this month Brad Bortner posed this question in The Forrester Blog For B2B Market Research Professionals:

"Are MROCs [Market Research Online Communities] the next big thing in market research, and will they eventually take measurable share from traditional qualitative research?"

Sentient Services has been working in online qualitative for a few years now through asynchronous bulletin board focus groups. While you give up a lot in moving away from a face-to-face interaction (body language, vocal intonation, etc.), in an asynchronous online group you have a lot of different strengths.

Less time restraint – respondents have more time to think, they can look up notes and do “homework” assignments. Additionally, we can let side conversations go and see if the tangent provides additional insight
Broader coverage – asynchronous participation means that respondents aren’t locked into 6-8pm ET, making time zones a non-issue. This translates to breaking down some geographic boundaries.
Bigger groups – we’re not limited to the capacity of a conference room, meaning that we “seat” at least 12 participants per group (vs. 6-8 participants in a traditional group).

While we’ve previously scrutinized sample goodness when using social networks for market research and the value of polling features in LinkedI n, I believe MROCs (private online communities focused on research) are just an extension of online methodologies we already see. Instead of recruiting participants to one online discussion or survey, they are being recruited for continuing feedback on a variety of topics. And MROCs will impact both qualitative and quantitative research – it’s just as easy to host a survey in an online community as it is a forum discussion.

What are your thoughts on MROCs? What other evolutions do you foresee in the research industry?

Sentient Services (Ubiquity Marketing Un Summit 2009) V1

2009-09-18T14:53:00.002-05:00

Presentation from Paul Janowitz (Founder, Sentient Services) at the 2009 Ubiquity Marketing unSummit.

Covers the current state of research in a customer driven web2.0 world. Contains tips and resources for entrepreneurs to leverage free and inexpensive market research techniques.

Sentient Services (Ubiquity Marketing Un Summit 2009) V1

View more presentations from Paul Janowitz.

And, one more CNN.com article featuring Sentient. Forgot about this one.

2009-05-29T13:48:00.002-05:00

Forgot about this one - looking at e-commerce and site usability for CNN.com profile. Article covers cart, shopping path, branding, design, messaging, and SEO. It is here.

Sentient featured on CNN.com

2009-05-29T10:30:00.006-05:00

I was just interviewed by CNN.com regarding web usability and design for a small business website make over. Always fun to do this and see the great ideas entrepreneurs come up with, and then help them bring them to market in a user-centered manner. Article is here.

Just how useful is the new LinkedIn polling feature?

2009-04-15T13:47:00.010-05:00

LinkedIn recently added a new polling feature to their business social networking site. While LinkedIn’s own blog touts this new feature as a way to finally tap into the minds of the highly coveted business professional segment, its seems to fall significantly short of this.
I have been hearing about Linkedin’s upcoming polling feature for a while now and was looking forward to the launch of this new application. After taking several polls and going through the features and capabilities, this tool lacks the ability to truly gain much insight into a business or delve into the minds of business professionals within a targeted segment. Allowing only one question to be asked simply does not provide any real opportunity to gain much insight. Instead, similar to Facebook’s polling tool, it seems to be less of a true research tool and more of a glorified general market surveying tool to which questions must be generic, similar to that of an MSN or CNN poll.

The major limitation of this tool is being sure those taking the survey are truly qualified. Even if you utilize the targeting features that are provided (which are job function, seniority, industry, gender, age and geography – all very nicely presented and easy to use), you have no way of being sure your poll is being answered by qualified respondents since there is no ability to ask pre-qualifying screening questions (i.e. correct company size range, has decision making authority for your product or services, etc.) . This type of feature is definitely needed when you consider surveying current or potential customers within your business market and therefore limits the type of questions you can ask.

As Tom H.C. Anderson pointed out in his blog on social networks and market research last year, this type of tool is not truly useful for gaining specific insights about your customers. Walking through the “Browse Polls” tab anyone can see that this tool is being used for exactly what its capabilities have allowed – selling services (i.e. Do you need flash design on your website?) or generic questions (i.e. What has happened to the value of your house this year?). I am not sure how either of these really gives you any special insight into any of the rich and robust information that business professionals have to offer. And as a LinkedIn member myself, these type of polls do not motivate me to participate and do not utilize any business knowledge I have gained over the years.

As more social networks move toward providing tools for companies to gain insight into target customers in the future, I hope they consider the true purpose of why people would want to poll these individuals, which is to gain real insight into your customers wants and needs so you can offer the best product for them, and how it relates to the customer segment they represent. In a time where online surveys pop up on almost every website, there needs to be a compromise between not overloading members with lengthy surveys but also allowing for truly insightful and valid surveys that can tap into the knowledge base their community has to offer.

With that being said, LinkedIn is sitting on a goldmine of respondents that are most likely very qualified and vetted given their LinkeIn profile. Using this source is most likely going to reduce the number of “bad” or “fake” business respondents and give one high quality respondents. What is lacking now is the tool to ask meaningful questions to these high quality respondents. I hope to see this come soon!

Have you used the LinkedIn polling tool? Has it been useful to your company in gaining insights into your customers’ actions, wants or needs?

A moving video.

2009-03-03T11:56:00.005-06:00

Social justice is lacking around the globe. Social media is growing. Can social media and the internet "change" the world. Not overnight but they can help spark ideas, collaboration, share resources, get education to places it has never reached and connect you, I and others through content like the video below. Enjoy and spread the news, change the world.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com/

Google and Eye-Tracking

2009-02-13T14:13:00.002-06:00

A post from the Official Google Blog caught my eye last week: Eye-tracking Studies: more than meets the eye.

As Google points out, most people are not conscious of their eye movement, especially when doing something as mundane as a web search. Eye-tracking data lets you identify which elements of a webpage (or other stimulus) are viewed, and in what order. Just as importantly, you can identify elements that are not viewed - which may be the reason why task completion, ad recall or messaging breaks down.

In my opinion, eye-tracking is most powerful when it is combined with traditional think-aloud usability protocol. At Sentient, we do this with a little bit of a twist - first we start by allowing the user to complete a series of tasks without interruption from us to capture task completion and eye-tracking data without interference from trying to hold a conversation as well. Then we have the user walk us through what they were thinking and doing in a qualitative debrief.

By delving into a qualitative debrief after a user completes a task while their eyes are tracked we can learn the why behind what they did. For example:

Did they linger on an element because it intrigued them or confused them?
Why did they look at one navigation element, but then move to other navigation elements and click on them?

By adding eye-tracking to the usability arsenal, you get a rich interaction between the quantitative eye-tracking metrics and the qualitative insights derived from traditional usability methods.

Stats, Media and a new book

2009-01-08T08:49:00.004-06:00

I was listening to XM Public Radio with Bod Edwards this morning and heard a fascinating interview with Joel Best. Joel is a professor at the University of Deleware and just published a book titled "Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data". A timely book if there ever was one - on the heels of an election with data thrown everywhere, financial markets that are either melting down or poised to rebound right about now depending upon the numbers you read that day and of course all of the numbers released daily on growth/no growth by industry/sector and just about any other segment one might be interested in. And, of course, market research and all of our clients and colleagues that deal with data, its interpretation and implications.

The book is available on Amazon.com and here is the description from Amazon.com, that summarizes it nicely:

Are four million women really battered to death by their husbands or boyfriends each year? Does a young person commit suicide every thirteen minutes in the United States? Is methamphetamine our number one drug problem today? Alarming statistics bombard our daily lives, appearing in the news, on the Web, seemingly everywhere. But all too often, even the most respected publications present numbers that are miscalculated, misinterpreted, hyped, or simply misleading. Following on the heels of his highly acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics and More Damned Lies and Statistics, Joel Best now offers this practical field guide to help everyone identify questionable statistics. Entertaining, informative, and concise, Stat-Spotting is essential reading for people who want to be more savvy and critical consumers of news and information.

Happy New Year!

Usability Survival Kit - Be prepared

2008-12-01T13:51:00.001-06:00

We all know the scout motto: be prepared. And having grown up in Girl Scouts, I like to think that I stay prepared for whatever life might send my way. For example, when traveling to conduct usability sessions, I always drag a copy of the project folder from the server to the local drive on my laptop. I also bring hard copies of critical documents for the study.

However, during usability sessions last month, life threw me a curveball I wasn’t ready for: The power went out to the entire building. There were no lights. No microphones. No recording. My laptop had limited battery supply, and there was no internet because the routers had no power.

Luckily this happened on the first day of a two day study, and we were able to reschedule the remaining participants for the next day. We had a marathon second day, but we successfully completed our study.

Having gone through this experience, I’ve compiled a “survival kit” for usability sessions that should get you through a power outage.

Mobile broadband card – plug it into your computer, and you have internet access
Portable power supply – power your computer through the rest of the sessions
Digital audio recorder – hit record and capture the conversation from the session

Those three pieces of equipment should get you through usability sessions without power. Now, how you would travel with a portable power supply in addition to everything else you’re already carting around is another story.

What about you? What unexpected events have you encountered while doing research? How did you cope with them or resolve them?

Got Old Biz Cards?

2008-11-13T13:48:00.012-06:00

A small problem that all working people have to face at one point or another - what am I supposed to do with all these old biz cards?

When we moved to our new digs, we didn't order new biz cards right away because we still had a TON of the old. After a little bit of using the old ones and having to explain several times that the address on them wasn't correct anymore, we decided it was time for a newly designed biz card. That's when the question arose. My first reaction was to just throw all the old biz cards in the recycling bin, but then after a quick search, I found many other ways to recycle your old biz cards:

You could use them for making a grocery list, jotting down a note for a loved one or taking down messages when on the phone. Plus, since biz cards are made of thicker stock paper than your normal sheet of paper or post-it note, if you wish to take your notes or list with you, you can put it in your pocket and it won't get crumpled as easily.

You could use them for entering drawings for door prizes or free catering as long as you make sure you have updated contact info on the card before you enter.

You could use them as luggage tags because they hold up better than a thinner piece of paper, but again, make sure you update your information by hand on the card before you use it.

You could use them as labels for organizing & identifying CD cases, files or hanging folders.

You could use a folded corner of a biz card to make a nice toothpick or fingernail cleaner if you are in a pinch.

You could fold up a biz card and use it as a wedge for a wobbly table or chair.

You could use the back (if it's blank) as a gift label.

After reading a few articles on what you could do with old biz cards, I thought that most of the suggestions for uses were kind of boring and expected. I ended up searching for more creative and unexpected uses for old biz cards and found the following:

You could use old biz cards as noisemakers for the wheels of your child's bike (or even your own for that matter :-) All you have to do is tape or clothespin a card to the supporting bars of the fenders on your bike so that the spokes on the wheel create a motorized sound when they strike the card.

You could make your own deck of playing cards and make up a game with them. This is a great one to keep kids busy for awhile with some creative fun.

You could cover a wall with the backside of the cards (if they are a solid color or have a cool pattern) for an interesting wallpaper effect. This one would be good for creative agencies or some kind of place that likes to get creative with their work environment.

You could use them in being crafty or making art. They make great paint scrapers for scraping paint on a canvas, great for creating collages with to add depth, or blend shreds of them together with other paper to make handmade paper.

You could make biz card cubes and put them all together to construct a house of cubes, cube furniture, or even make ornaments for your Christmas tree! This biz card project may take a while and you might actually find that you don't have enough old biz cards! I found this idea to be the coolest, by far, so I ended up making a few cubes myself. I also found someone who had actually spent the time to make a house of cubes.... it took 66,000 biz cards to make the house of cubes-- also known as Menger's Sponge. Now that, is dedication!

Pretty neat stuff, huh? Well, I hope that this gives you inspiration to do something with your old cards that have been sitting in your desk collecting dust. If you decide you really aren't the type to do anything with your old cards, please recycle them or send them to this guy named Steve Patterson -- he collects biz cards. If you are the type of person to do something with your old cards, I say "happy biz-carding" to you!

The election is over - a lesson in usability?

2008-11-05T14:23:00.007-06:00

It is the morning after the election - a historic moment in American history regardless of party or vote. Now come the pundits, the analysis and hindsight brilliance. But, one thing has been evident all along - the web and social media made a difference in this election. And, one candidate used them much more adeptly than the other, the one that won.

President-elect Barack Obama hired one of the co-founders of Facebook, Chris Hughes, to run his online strategy - not a bad move. I came across a great article comparing the two websites www.barackobama.com and www.johnmccain.com on BNET (here). Marc Mendell points out some striking differences in the article, and it is a great read just for practical design and usabiity best-of-breed parameters and how-tos.

Senator McCain gave a moving and wonderful speech last night conceding the race to Barack Obama. I woke up this morning at 5:30CST to start checking the polls and coverage (I am an election geek with an MA in Government concentrating on political behavior and survey research, so I love this stuff). What did I find at each candidate's website?

McCain's was unchanged and running through autoplay for several of his end-of-campaign ads attacking Obama - wait I have just heard from others that they saw the updated image below, apparently my browser cache was viewing an older version - NOTE - then it would make sense for any site with time sensitive matter to put in measures to keep this from happening through redirects, replacing index pages and so forth. Now, back to what was there today. There were buttons to vote, make phone calls and all sorts of stuff out of date. See it here:
Then I went to Obama's webiste and saw this:
The difference? Besides the usability dynamics pointed out in the BNET article - Obama was up to date with a "Thank You" page, a donate to the DNC as a payback to them for their help and a simple message and the most recent blog posts. The McCain site did not reinforce the great message that Senator McCain had laid out the night before and had many a CTA (call to action) that were irrelevant.

The lesson? Besides that usability matters and most likely played a major role now in the history of America - have a plan B. Both campaigns should of have had "Thank You" and concession pages built weeks ago, beta tested and deployed with hidden vanity links ready to go. Sometimes simply being prepared is the best usability tool out there.

Usability, the internet and design matter. They matter for the highest office in the land and they matter for your customers that want to purchase a t-shirt or a server.

Sentient Services - Welcome to our blog.

2008-11-05T13:21:00.004-06:00

Welcome to the blog of Sentient Services. If you are seeing this page you are most likely waiting for a web meeting or remote viewing of research. While you wait, please take a look around our blog or visit our website. Links to our site and recent blog posts are over there - to your right. Enjoy and please let us know how we can be of service.

Thanks!

The Sentient Team

Election 08, Propaganda, Marketing and Advertising

2008-10-30T14:18:00.004-05:00

Given the imminent election it seems fitting to take a closer look at propaganda tactics (and parallels to marketing), especially those that have emerged in the 21st century. And don’t worry I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of platform delineations. I think it might be much more fun to look at how the candidates get us to think what we think and ultimately persuade us to vote one way or the other.

The most basic definition of propaganda is the presentation of information in order to influence an audience. The modern day interpretation of the term is definitely more menacing (depending on the culture) and is most commonly associated with political messages (full definition at Wikipedia). Not surprisingly advertising can be thought of as propaganda that promotes a commercial product or shapes the perception of an organization, person, or brand.

A little history…
Propaganda is of course as old as people, but a quick google search on the history of propaganda will tell you that the origin of the word is attributed to Pope Gregory XV when in 1622 he established the Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith. As you may have guessed, the primary responsibility of this department was the dissemination of Catholicism.

There are many forms of propaganda, but generally speaking all tactics fall into 7 main categories identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. They are Assertion, Bandwagon, Card Stacking, Glittering Generalities, Lesser of Two Evils, Name Calling, Pinpointing the Enemy, Plain Folks, Simplification, Testimonials, and Transfer (you can probably get the gist of each type, but for full definitions go here).

Propaganda, Marketing and the 21st century…
People with ideas, whether they are religious or political, will always want to persuade others and they use various means to do so. Throughout history campaign posters, entire books (Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto”), movies, and radio and tv advertisements have all been tools in the propagandists’ arsenal. In the 21st century technology has changed the game a bit.

In the 2004 election, Howard Dean was one of the first presidential candidates to utilize the internet to communicate with supporters and raise funds. Via the web, he raised approximately $50 million in campaign contributions, started a blog, and created a group of political activists called “Deaniacs” that organized gatherings called “meet ups”. In 2007 all 19 primary candidates had websites and a blog at the bare minimum and today all three of the candidates (yes, even Bob Barr) have a dedicated website (www.barackobama.com, http://www.johnmccain.com/, http://www.bobbarr.com/) and email campaign and are leveraging increasingly creative strategies typically only executed by marketers like social networks, consumer generated viral videos, widgets, blogs, SEM strategies, and iPhone applications.

Barack Obama has unquestionably seen the most rewards by balancing mass marketing techniques with the latest developments in social media and niche marketing. He employed a Facebook founder (Chris Hughes) and other hired guns from various ad agencies and it’s paying off big time. In September alone Obama raised $150 million and the cash continues to flow. It is estimated that the Obama campaign spends $2.8 million a day on advertising, which is double McCain’s daily budget (McCain’s total budget for September 1st to November 4th is $84 million). On October 29th, 2008 Obama will air a half-hour infomercial on 7 networks that is considered to be one of the largest ad buys in election history. Not since Ross Perot’s run for president in 1992 have we seen such media roadblocks executed by a candidate. So I guess it’s not that surprising that Barack Obama was recently named Marketer of the Year (above Nike, Apple and Coors) by AdAge.

Regardless of which side of the fence you stand on (or maybe you stand ON the fence),
I don’t think anyone can question the remarkable change in propaganda tactics this election. Here are a few content examples – candidate generated and supporter generated.

• Obama-Biden Tax Calculator widget: Based on your annual income and filing status (can also populate # of dependents, age, retirement, etc.) you can see your estimated tax savings under each candidate’s plan. Unless you make more than $200K a year Obama is going to save you money.
• Viral email campaign: Sponsored by MoveOn.org and TrueMajority PAC. Enter your friends name and email address and they will receive an invite to view a CNN type website with news coverage about how they (name inserted) lost the campaign for Obama by not voting. And to make sure you don’t forget to pass it on the creators send you a follow up email encouraging you to continue your “social nudging” efforts to help them achieve their goal of 10 million forwards by election day.
• Will.i.am music video: Entertainer Will.i.am created a music video that features celebrities reading/singing an Obama speech. To date it has been viewed 970,223 times on YouTube.com.
• Paris for Prez video: Created by Adam McKay (FunnyOrDie pioneer), this video is a response to John McCain’s political ad that attacks Obama’s celebrity.
• Countdown for Change iPhone application: A clock (days, hours, minutes, seconds) created by a supporter that counts down the days to Election Day. Even if applications like these don’t directly garner any votes, it is yet another example of how Obama is immersed in the modern consumer experience.

You may be wondering why there are no McCain examples listed. All I can tell you is I sincerely tried to find some examples, beyond the standard myspace page, but was not successful. Perhaps that explains the polls. Time will tell.

What are some of your favorites? Have you found any good examples of McCain leveraging social media, web 2.0, etc.?

Happy Halloween! Want A Chip?

2008-10-17T18:07:00.003-05:00

Found an interesting site the other day – Hotel 626.com. There are several cool elements on this site like soliciting email addresses as a “reservation” to access the site, webcam and microphone integration and overall the site is incredibly creepy (just in time for Halloween). There’s really no direct product pushing so from the user’s perspective it’s pure entertainment. It belongs to Frito Lay, but from a messaging perspective that’s put on the back-burners.

What’s really interesting is the way they handle access to the site. As indicated by the name, the site is only accessible from 6 PM to 6 AM (Hotel 626). Here’s why I think this is a cool idea:

It’s Risky, But Not Really.
Would this approach work for 90% of the sites out there? No, absolutely not. But, I think it’ll work quite well for this one. The reasoning is that it’s risky, but not really. Although it’s harder to access the site, they have technology in place (reservations) that’ll send the user an email when the site opens for the evening. On top of that, they’re effectively weeding out the fickle fly by night users and honing in on the active, engaged market. This brings you closer to your loyalists; and it’ll certainly provide a decent amount of those lost in the branding “grey area” as well.

It’s Breaking the Typical Online Experience.
We all know that the tougher you make your online content to access, the more you become susceptible to increased drop-off, decreased conversion and all the wonderful financial repercussions in between. However, this site’s putting that school of thought on its head a bit. In an environment where users are cynical, have the shortest of attention spans and have more competing entertaining online options at their beckon call than ever, this site tells them to “wait, you’re going to view this site on our terms.” It’s all very reminiscent of the trickle-like release of Nintendo’s Wii and the iPhone.

However, this site’s not directly tied to revenue, which begs the question – what will they do next? It sounds like there’s a product launch coming, in which case Frito Lay will be locked and loaded with a pool full of advocates and otherwise engaged users just waiting to mobilize and ultimately, eat some chips.

As always, time and traffic numbers will bring success or failure, but I’m very interested to see how the product launch goes.

The Election

2008-10-06T20:05:00.004-05:00

Just watch this.

Awareness is the Key – Lessons on the economy

2008-09-30T11:42:00.002-05:00

While contemplating what to write about, I cannot seem to get my mind off of recent events occurring within the economy. I don’t think there is a way to get around the recent turmoil with headlines across all major news sites such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. I guess what has intrigued me the most is just how little I really knew about what truly has been going on with the economy over the past 70 years.

In many ways our economy has been taking a turn for the worse for years. The government has been passing policies and manipulating the market so that it seems that up until recently our economy has been great. However this is not the case and our economy has been on a path (though a slow one) to where we are today.

So what is my point with all this you ask? I feel that it is important that we be aware of the economy, what is going on and the underlying issues that have lead us up to the point where we are now. Therefore, I thought I would offer up a link to several educational videos from Chris Martenson, an ex-professor and VP of a fortune 300 company now turned author.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/three_beliefs

The reason I chose this series of videos, is that they go beyond what the current news is reporting and gives a history of the economy and how policies and/or actions have shaped it over the last 100 years. Martenson does a fantastic job of breaking a complex subject down and explaining in an easy to understand manner. The videos cover how the economy interacts, where the economy has slowly gone wrong and implications for the future that go way beyond just a couple of major bankruptcies that are happening today (although this number continues to rise).

Remember “Awareness is Everything” and being aware of what is going on in our country and our economy is very important. What other content have you found beneficial to furthering awareness of the economy crisis?

Why the web matters and will still change everything.

2008-09-24T12:32:00.003-05:00

Yes, the web matters - duh. But, its major impact is yet to come. Currently it has democratized (somewhat) information, changed the way we share, communicate and learn - along with about a million other things. However, the large scale social, psychological and economic ramifications have not happened...yet.

Let's leave out the psychological discussion for now (does having 500 "friends" on Facebook increase closeness, dilute actual bonding with family? what happens to a generation that grows up sharing video, photos, private moments with Dear@www - how does a 1:1 relationship, be it marriage or parenting stack up to or compare? and so many others).

What is really interesting right now is the tapping of the collective wisdom of crowds, social networks, starfish theory, desire for fame, money, social capital - whatever you call it to find serious solutions to major global problems.

The big case in point here is Google with their Project 10^100. According to Google "Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible." Seems like a perfect use of some of their money, brand equity and the web.

I, for one, am very excited to see what comes out of the project. My guess, some amazing mind blowing ideas, game changers and a few "smack me sideways - why didn't I think of that" ideas.

Google video is below - and go post your ideas!

Clean Advertising, Clean Planet

2008-09-19T16:22:00.003-05:00

I was reading last months Creativity magazine when I came across a beautifully simple and earth-conscious project called “The Reverse Graffiti Project”. My interest was instantly sparked because I’m actually a huge fan of well-done graffiti. Wondering what ‘reverse graffiti’ was, I visited the site – www.reversegraffitiproject.com. I found that this is a project powered by Green Works– a spin off from the Clorox Company that’s producing plant & mineral based biodegradable cleaning agents. As soon as I read that, it hit me what they were doing— they were cleaning dirty, smut-caked walls in cities in order to make earth conscious, artistic advertising! BRILLIANT! However, it made me somewhat question the reasoning behind it all— is Clorox really trying to help the planet? Are they just trying to make an extra buck or are they just trying to offset the damage they’ve already done to the planet with their normal line of Clorox products?

After reading a little more about it, watching the videos and rolling the concept of ‘clean art’ around in my head, I decided to focus on the positive instead of questioning the motives of Clorox. I came away from the site with two main ideas to take from this project: #1– Use of advertising that actually HELPS the environment instead of destroying it; #2– Make something “new” out of something already existing– a form of recycling, if you will. The basic ideas of ‘clean art’ have been around for a while and probably exist in many different forms. The most recent example I can think of was an email I got a while back about ‘dirty car art’.

I went on thinking about the 'clean art' concept and wondered how it could be applied to other means of advertising or life in general. Seems like a lot of individuals and companies are starting to become more interested in 'earth friendly' alternatives to just about everything. I'm glad people are starting to finally wake up and realize just how much we impact the health of our planet. So, the questions still stand– how can these ideas be used to make something 'new' out of something pre-existing for use as an advertisement? What are other people already doing that's recycling pre-existing objects and making them into something new?

Online tools for parents

2008-09-15T11:43:00.003-05:00

As some of you may know I have been on maternity leave for the last 3 months. My days (and nights too) have been consumed with feedings, changing diapers, trying to keep up with the endless amount of laundry (who knew someone so little could produce so much laundry), and staring in wonderment at this amazing person. Now that I am back to work and my former life at Sentient has resumed I am spending my days talking to clients, writing proposals, reviewing reports, and managing projects again. Two very different roles. And as many working parents before me I am learning to manage and balance work and family. So how do we manage it all? Fortunately for me I work for a company that is my “village” so to speak and has been very supportive, generous and accommodating during this time of adjustment. In addition to working for a great company, I have discovered a plethora of online tools (many of course sponsored by brands) to track, answer, remind, and verify my every parenting move, question, task and concern.

Here are a few of my favorites.

www.Babycenter.com – everything from mommy and baby horoscopes, to baby milestone videos, community blogs, development calendar, recall finder, deal finder, and much, much more.

www.cozi.com – Their tagline is “Family Life. Simplified. This tool is a multimedia organizer for busy parents. The tool keeps track of calendars, shopping lists, family journal postings and pictures and you can coordinate it all from your desktop, notebook, phone, or PDA. You can sync your outlook and cozi calendars, send or leave a message to a family member (dinner at Hula Hut at 7pm!) or send your shopping list to your cell phone. See a tutorial here.

www.bellyhood.com – a widget that lets you customize your own pregnancy countdown so you can watch your baby grow from a tiny dot to a full grown fetus. Check it here.

These online tools and forums were not available to my parents when they were raising me. They had to rely on more archaic means…like calling their parents in a panic in the middle of the night to find out how to treat a fever and of course there was and is always Dr. Spock (he is online now too). So as the diffusion of parenting information evolves, I wonder what tools my child will use when she becomes a parent. What’s next?

Volunteering

2008-09-12T13:49:00.003-05:00

Arrived at work this morning, and my boss wasn’t in yet. It took me a minute, and then I remembered, he’s volunteering today with LifeWorks. One of our work benefits is that we get one day a year to volunteer for something that pulls at our heartstrings.

What sort of impact does this have on our business? Having been involved in volunteer organizations, my reaction is: volunteering has a big, positive impact! It builds interpersonal skills, problem solving skills, increases patience and flexibility, among other things. And then there’s just that feel-good high you get from helping another human being.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one that thinks this. According to the 2008 Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT Survey, companies are paying attention to volunteering.

“Not only does skills-based volunteering provide much-needed support to local nonprofits, but it also helps foster meaningful business and leadership skills among employees.”

What are your thoughts? How has volunteering impacted your skill set, career or business?

If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity to use and build your skill set or portfolio, check out AustinProBono, a site that connects businesses that want to help with nonprofits that need help.

Platform Thoughts

2008-09-05T11:53:00.003-05:00

I ran into an interesting article today on CNET, titled “"Should software developers fear Facebook, Apple?" In summary, and I’ve dumbed this down considerably for the sake of brevity, the author feels Apple and Facebook’s quality control maintained over third-party applications developed for their respective platforms is excessive to the point of stifling growth in the software development industry. I agree, productivity will be limited by their actions, however I don’t like the causation implied – i.e. larger software developers using their “weight” and influence to force Apple/Facebook to suppress smaller ones.

I tend to skew closer toward this thought. Apple and Facebook may be slightly stifling innovation, but they may be doing so to stay out of court and on the legal side of copyright laws, etc. In my opinion, they’re ultimately raising the standards for the developer community. As this platform continues to grow, I’m hoping we’ll soon see a chasm between allegedly copyright/trademark infringing developers versus the innovators. With current platforms developing and new ones continually coming to fruition, original and useful applications will be recognized as such and widely adopted, period. We’ve reached the point of application saturation in which truly only the “cream” will rise to the top.

What do you think? Does it make sense for Facebook/Apple to control applications or should they be more of a platform? From a brand perspective, was Scrabulous hurtful or helpful?

CPC - CPM - CP?

2008-09-02T13:00:00.013-05:00

More money is being spent online, serving up ads and an ad revenue model continue to be the driving force behind new start-ups, Microsoft purchases (or planned ones) and Google product development such as the new browser Chrome - built to further deliver targetting for those that buy via Google and potentially shut out others like Microsoft from lucrative profiling data The big question becomes how do you measure such terms as "immersion", "product placement", "gaming", "social media" and so forth.

One interesting idea we came up with at Sentient was in regards to measuring brand interaction in virtual worlds for market research (at the bottom of this post). How are you measuring brand interaction on emerging platforms?

Virtual Worlds activity is measured with specific metrics that are different from web metrics

These are the areas it makes most sense to measure:
– Sim Traffic
Sim = server
Sim traffic is the total amount of users that have visited the respective presence in a given time frame

Currently virtual worlds can accommodate 65-100 users per sim
– Concurrency
Average number of users on a sim at the same time

– Sustainability
Average time experience per user (in hours)

– Experiential Value (EV)
((Total Traffic/(Concurrency/10))*Sustainability= VE ratio

Benchmark - WBHV, 12/12/06 launch - ((200/(40/10))*40 = 533.33
– WBHV Rave Party was considered a success by Second Life standards

Printing with Zero Ink

2008-06-13T12:51:00.002-05:00

As I was reading a magazine today, I came across an article about a company called Zink. I have never heard of it before, so it caught my attention. I realized the name stands for Zero Ink – And it means exactly that. No Ink. No Ink to print pictures or any other kind of graphics? What happened to make this possible? When was there ever NOT a need for ink cartridges, toners or ink ribbons? Soon everyone will have a different kind of printer – one that could even fit in your pocket. This is BIG news for printers everywhere and a HUGE breakthrough in printing technology.

As my curiosity grew, I started to read more about Zink. I found out that the key to the digital printing process involves a special kind of paper. A magical paper, if you will. This magical paper has an advanced composite material with cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals embedded within it. Okay, well that’s cool, but how does it work? Well, I read on and found out that they’ve created a “device” that uses heat to activate the crystals thus revealing your image. What’s great about this “device” is the fact that it can be extremely small because you don’t need the room you’d normally need for ink cartridges or ribbons. This means that it could soon be installed on any or all your hand-held devises. You could get prints no matter where you are.

If you’re a big print buff like me, this new Zink product just totally blew your mind. Just the thought of never having to buy another expensive ink cartridge or toner again just sent a series of chills down my back. Zink will totally change how we print and even where we’re able to print. Need your airline tickets? No problem. Print them from your phone enabled with the Zink device and *bam* you’ve got it right there on the spot. With Zink, you have instant gratification and “Zero Hassles”. I forgot to mention that these Zink devices are not affected by gravity. WHAAAAA? This means that you could mount a Zink device on the wall next to your workspace and print right off the wall. The Zink paper is all you need to buy and can also be finished with an adhesive back. I'm not sure exactly how much the paper will cost, but it’s the only supply you need, and it’s not light sensitive so it doesn’t need special storing conditions. The Zink device also prints in a single pass at a consistent speed and quality regardless of the print width. Wow. That deserves a standing ovation in my opinion.

Probably the most important fact about this product is that it leaves absolutely NO waste stream. If normal printers produce 100% waste (ie: used ink cartridges, used toners, etc), then these Zink printers produce 0%. The photo itself is the only artifact of the printing process. I’m still not sure if the paper itself is actually recyclable– I’d be interested to know if they plan on it being recyclable.

So, I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these printers. They sound like they are so effortless and fun to use. So where do I buy one, you ask? Actually, Zink paper and Zink enabled products are in the final stages of development, so they aren’t available in any stores….. yet. You can, however visit their website – www.zink.com - and click on the “where to buy” to enter your information so that they can notify you about when and where you’d be able to buy and enjoy the “magic of Zink”.

Please, after looking at the product and visiting their website, share with me what you think of this new innovative way to print. Would you use it? Do you think it will revolutionize printing? If the whole world is trying to go “green” how does facilitating personal printing help? In making printing easier, is it encouraging people to print stuff they don’t really need thus creating waste that may or may not be recyclable? Do you think that instead they should be working on a technology that makes paper obsolete?

Austin is where the digitally savvy things are

2008-05-20T17:15:00.003-05:00

That’s from a Scarborough Research report, which found that Austin has the highest concentration of consumers that own certain high tech items (such as DVRs, satellite radio, VoIP), engage in certain internet behaviors (including blogging, downloading music, online gaming) and use leading-edge cell phone features (email, text messaging, etc.). Scarborough Research terms these consumers the digitally savvy, and nationally, 6% of the population is classified as digitally savvy. While Austin boasts 12% of its population as being digitally savvy. Yet another reason why Austin is the coolest place to live! (Ok, perhaps I’m slightly biased as I call Austin home…)

As both the report and this recent article in Ad Age point out, the digitally savvy are leading edge digital consumers. Historically, this demographic has provided marketers a glimpse into the future in terms of cell phone and third screen behaviors. These behaviors are what enable the lifestyle of the digitally savvy – they are entrepreneurs and business decision makers that tend to have a longer commute, plus they like to travel. Thus they seem to prefer to “pull” information at their convenience instead of having it “pushed” to them. For example, they are more likely than the general population to download TV and video programs online.

The digitally savvy make an ideal target for a variety of market research engagements since they are more likely to be heavy and diverse online spenders, entrepreneurial, business decision makers and hungry for information (among other things).

Ethnography could be used to further define how and from where this demographic pulls their information and to discover how a relationship model of advertising might be incorporated into the digitally savvy’s daily habits.
Usability tests, especially on e-commerce sites, could yield tweaks to your site that greatly improve conversion rates. The digitally savvy, through their own tendencies, will have explored many sites and thus have developed a sense of best-of-breed on which they base their expectations of where certain parts of a site to be.
Ideation would also be a great way to harness the strengths of the digitally savvy. Their entrepreneurship and hunger for information point to creative thinking processes that are just waiting to be tapped.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts – how else can we tap the digitally savvy? And let us know if you want to take a trip to Austin to visit the digitally savvy in person.

Summer Reading List

2008-05-16T09:59:00.006-05:00

Following Paul’s reading lead in his post titled Being A “Small Giant” I decided to see if I could get some feedback on my own summer reading list. Like Paul I am constantly trolling online publications and eNewsletters – AdAge, CNET, Austin Business Journal, the IAB SmartBrief, etc., etc. for the latest happenings and breaking news in the industry. Along the way I have come across several book reviews that I thought were worth adding to my list.

As the dog days of summer approach (or are already here in Austin, Texas - I think they said it was going to get up to the 90’s today!) I plan on watching less TV and reading more books. So far on the list I have:

· Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) – By Cathie Black

Not sure why this made my list (I guess I should start trying to “get ahead” by taking better notes).

Here is a brief synopsis from the book:

Cathie Black is the wise, funny mentor that every woman dreams of having. She was a pioneer in advertising sales at a time when women didn’t sell; served as president and publisher of the fledgling USA Today; and, in her current position as the president of Hearst Magazines, persuaded Oprah to launch a magazine. In 2006 she was named one of Fortune’s “50 Most Powerful Women in American Business” for the seventh consecutive year. Now, in the exuberant, down-to-earth voice that is her trademark, Cathie explains how she achieved “the 360° life”—a blend of professional accomplishment and personal contentment—and how any woman can seize opportunity in the workplace.

A fairly limited web search unearthed mixed reviews on both her book and her character. I won’t make any predications about her character having never met her, but book reviews generally stated that the book only offered limited advice. Publishers Weekly states “While the author’s life is an interesting one, readers looking for tips will do better with a more pointed book” (see entire Publishers Weekly review and others here).

It is always interesting to learn about others’ path in life and business and gauge your own resolutions if put in similar situations. I think I will keep this book on the list for now.

· The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office – By David Norak

Book summary:

David Novak—one of today’s most engaging, unconventional, and successful business leaders—lived in thirty-two trailer parks in twenty-three states by the time he reached the seventh grade. He sold encyclopedias door to door, worked as a hotel night clerk, and took a job as a $7,200-a-year advertising copywriter with the hopes of maybe one day becoming a creative director. Instead, he became head of the world’s largest restaurant company at the ripe old age of forty-seven.

While David never went to business school, he did learn from the greatest of teachers—experience—and plenty of other very smart people as well: Magic Johnson on the secret to teamwork, Warren Buffett on what he looks for in the companies he buys, John Wooden on ego, and Jack Welch on one thing he’d do over. Now he wants to share with you what he discovered about getting ahead and getting noticed; motivating people and turning businesses around; building winning teams and running a global company of nearly one million people; and always staying true to yourself.

I know why this one caught my eye - I can never get enough of the underdog story and am constantly amazed by those that overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Probably has the potential to be a bit hokey, but most reviewers seem to agree that it provides guidance, inspiration and strength to those seeking success in business. Read more reviews here and here.

· What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds – By Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart

Book summary:

What Sticks is the one book that explains exactly how marketing and advertising works today! Based on new insights from analysis of over $1 billion worth of advertising.

Decades ago it was okay to believe, as retail magnate John Wanamaker did, that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” However, today the stakes are much higher. Marketing thought leaders Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart estimate that $112 billion in advertising spending in the U.S. alone is wasted, cutting deeply into company profits.

What Sticks uncovers bold new insights from the largest-ever global marketing research project among 30 Fortune 200 companies, including: Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, McDonalds, Unilever, Ford and others. This is a comprehensive and solutions-oriented book that outlines how any marketer, at any level, can guarantee their advertising succeeds.

This book appears to veer away from the anecdotal nature of the above selections and focuses on more practical applications. AND it is research driven, which mirrors Sentient’s approach of listening to the customer before embarking on a solution path.

Reviews can be found here.

If you have read any of these books or have others to add to my summer reading list I would love to hear from you.

Being a "Small Giant"

2008-05-02T12:50:00.004-05:00

So, there have been some interesting posts here recently covering emerging media research methods panel quality control and the changing world of coffee and the Starbucks brand - great article HERE from FastCompany.com. However, I also promised a bit of soul searching and business talk here from my original post.

I have almost finished my first business book since I founded Sentient Services over four years ago. It is not that I don't read, I devour FastCompany and Inc. each month and spend way too much time learning random things on the web and through Google Gadgets. I am also almost done with a very exciting Hardy Boys (a true classic series that my kids are actually enjoying). The book that has managed to capture my severely limited attention span is "Small Giants - Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big". Written exquisitely by Bo Burlingham with first-hand accounts and an approachable tone, it is safe to say it has changed my "business" life. Here is a nice summary from the jacket:

How maverick companies have passed up the growth treadmill—and focused on greatness instead.

It’s a widely accepted axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, some entrepreneurs have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do . . . creating a great place to work . . . providing great customer service . . . making great contributions to their communities . . . and finding great ways to lead their lives.

Who wouldn't want this? Well apparently a lot of us fall far from this model - me being one - and don't see this as an option. Our business MUST grow or we will die. New projects = new employees = more overhead = need to sell more = more projects and so on. I was convinced for a long time that the more people I hired the less I would work, and I tried to convince my wife of this as well, alas she was smarter than I - as usual. But we sure did grow. We made the top 25 agencies in Austin for the past 2 years, made the Fast 50 for Central Texas and made the Best Places to Work as well.

But, none of this made us "great" it just made us busy, with more overhead and a bit stressed if I do say so myself. Reading the examples in this book is like watching all the mistakes I have made in business in slow motion - painful, true and hopefully a growing experience. The one take away I have so far is that the forces to grow are almost unstoppable without a conscious plan on how your business will maintain focus, passion and excellence in the face of business, economic and personal theories that all point to the need for growth and funding.

Okay, I am off to read more of the book now. Please let me know your thoughts and I will post more soon!

It's About Time

2008-04-30T17:47:00.007-05:00

The other day I turned on the TV and was given a glimpse into the trials and tribulations of Alaskan crab fisherman. I was tempted to look forward to a visit from a witty, sarcastic friend whose charm and optimism were balanced only by a slew of empirically disgusting and laborious “jobs”. I also watched a crash-test dummy get the living snot smashed out of himself – all in about two hours’ time. If you were able to identify the above references without clicking on the hyperlinks, then you have something in common with about 97 million American households. You know I’m talking about the Discovery Channel.

It also occurred to me that 95% of the programming either stored in my DVR or scheduled to be recorded was that of Discovery Communications, specifically their marquee network the Discovery Channel. How did this happen? In the name of full disclosure, I AM an old soul. I have preferred the Discovery Channel and History Channel over MTV ever since I realized that Milli Vanilli were faking it. Needless to say, my predisposition for mature television habits certainly left me susceptible for these types of viewing habits, but somehow I still did not sense even the slightest air of transition.

As it turns out, the Discovery Channel recently arose from turbulent times and snuck in amongst a reality landscape peppered with of Flavor Flav suitors conflicting over who knows what, Rock of Love contestants conflicting over voyeurism and silicone and every pointless reality show known to man. So you may ask, how has the Discovery Channel won its way back into my heart and more importantly, my DVR? The answer is simple. Stay true to yourself.

Discovery Channel is dedicated to creating the highest quality television and media to inspire audiences by delivering knowledge about the work in an entertaining way; evolving a timeless brand for a changing world.

- From Discovery Communications

The key factor is that consumer trends and pop culture will change with the tides – today they’re bewildered by a slice of life previously unseen, tomorrow they’ve been there/done that, but the inquisitive nature of people will always remain constant. Now, this is an important observation when your job is to educate the masses and you’ve been trolling for novelty since 1985. The Discovery Channel began with nature specials, then next thing you know fish, birds and mammals seemed to all follow the same plot – birth, growth (with significant adolescent cuteness), digestion of other animals (or gross things), and death. Eventually, Discovery adapted to the reality television craze. After four seasons, the viewer is convinced they know all there is to know about building a [insert novel craft here] and ratings come from character conflict opposed to viewer epiphany. The natural result of learning is to become learned, so where to next? Try the internet. I know; yet another ground breaking observation on my part. :-)

Discovery has done a fantastic job thus far integrating their television programming with online content. I would consider MythBusters to be the epitome of this integration. Fans can propose new myths to be ‘busted’, discuss the validity of processes filmed on the show and access a slew of video content not included in broadcast episodes. Dirty Jobs has a similar online content procurement model as well.

However, Discovery Communications has taken this online success one step further in building HowStuffWorks.com.

Since formally becoming a part of the Discovery family in December, the combined HowStuffWorks.com/Discovery.com supersite has gone from 10 million unique visitors in December to 15 million uniques last month. The plan for 2008 is to sell the two as a way to package contextual online search buys for clients to effectively own a category of information on the site, like hybrid cars or car engines.

-Andrew Hampp, “No Sales Pitch Too Dirty for This Cabler”

Will this digital endeavor work? As always, time will tell. With online video and social networking very nearly reaching point of saturation it’s very difficult to predict. However, with their recent addition of an in-house creative arm they appear to have the right idea. Provide your viewers the right content, show your advertisers a little love and affection then watch the dough roll in……..hopefully.

What do you think? Too little, too late, or are have they figured out what everyone else is trying so desperately to articulate and mobilize?

Spring has Sprung (Creatively Speaking)

2008-04-03T18:08:00.013-05:00

What inspires a creativity enthusiast? For me, Sentient’s Art Director, it’s the spring. Could it be all the new blooming buds everywhere? The gorgeous weather? The thought of soon being able to go tubing down the Guadalupe River with beer in hand? Yes, yes and yes, but there’s also an energy and freshness that comes with the changing season. Spring brings in the new and I’m always looking for new places to get inspiration from. A lot of new sites/work being put out there is giving off an amazing amount of energy and a fresh outlook/perspective. Let me give you a few examples of awesome resources for inspiration and good energy for your creative soul.

American Poster Institute
The American Poster Institute is a non-profit corporation dedicated to furthering public awareness and appreciation of the poster art form. I had never heard of it before this year’s SXSW music festival. The API has a traveling poster convention called ‘Flatstock’ where they gather posters from all around the world—different styles and different eras. Someone like me could go CRAZY at a convention like this. You can walk around and look at all the posters and if you find one that you like, you can buy a copy of it. Talk about inspiration EVERYWHERE you look!

Logo Pond
I just recently stumbled across this site, and was really pleased by the work being put up on the site. So many unused, beautiful logos! I thought it was fun to go through all of the logos my fellow designers have done for their clients. It’s also great to hear how they were all received - which ones worked, which was the designer’s favorite and was it actually chosen? Logo Pond is a great place to spark new ideas for an identity system.

Arcade Fire Video
This website was sent to me, and not only am I a big Arcade Fire fan- I am a big fan of this video and this site.. The song was so well done that you can turn off and on different parts of the music and it still sounds beautiful. All the while, the video is playing and still goes along with the different elements of the song. The song and the site are a superb marriage of video and audio. It is really an inspiring piece of work.

Blurb
This is a book making website. This website made me inspired to get my own book started—they appear to be really well done and very personalized in both layout and size. Might be a perfect way to uniquely show off your fabulous work! They have very fair prices and provide FREE software that you need to make your book. You also have the option to sell your book on Blurb’s bookstore and receive 100% of the markup– so be creative AND make some money!

MoMA- Color Chart
Very cool flash website for the MoMA museum- this is for people obsessed with color like myself. You can read an introduction or jump right in to viewing work by time line, by artist, or medium. Okay, and this is the coolest part— when you click through to the work depending on which you choose (artist, medium, or time line), it will use color to categorize each topic. I LOVE IT! Talk about inspiring color use!

I hope you have enjoyed these websites that I have stumbled across – I have definitely been inspired in some way by each one. Now that I have shown some websites that have inspired me, what websites inspire you? What websites have you found this year that you believe to be exceptionally creative or that are doing something cool/new?

Utilizing Social Networks for Market Research: Friend or Foe

2008-03-18T10:09:00.006-05:00

As social networks grow it is inevitable that market researchers will try to and tap this market (mainly consisting of teenagers and young adults born between 1980 and 1997). A new company, Peanut Labs, is working to capitalize on this opportunity by creating an online panel from social network members.

So what makes Peanut Labs’ panel different from other online panels? All respondents are recruited directly from multiple social networking sites using non-monetary rewards. According to Peanut Labs website, there are 2.8 million respondents in their panel across 72 social networks and online user reach is up to 12 million.

With huge concerns around professional survey takers and panel overlap in online research (as noted in this Quirks Article), the idea of having non-monetary rewards is a big selling point. Instead of money, respondents are paid in virtual currency according to their social network. For example respondents on Facebook can earn a currency called “munny” for their virtual pets at (fluff)friends. Respondents earn 100 “munny” for their first survey, 200 “munny” for each new survey they complete, and 40 “munny” for being pre-screened out of a survey ($1 USD = 200 “munny”). This method is considerably cheaper than paying respondents actual money and marketers can therefore offer higher incentives to not only respondents that finish survey but also to those who do not qualify. The logic behind this is people will make “munny” regardless of qualifying for the survey, and will consequently be more likely to answer questions honestly.

At first, I sit back and think “Wow, this is pretty amazing.” Most of our concerns as online quantitative researchers could be solved (or at least this is a good start). Then I begin to think about my own personal social networking habits. I am currently a member of Facebook, Myspace, Ringo and LinkedIn. Most of my friends and colleagues are also members of multiple social networking sites. Some are also members of panels such as E-Rewards and Greenfield Online. In addition to being members of multiple sites, we also use multiple email addresses when logging into these sites. This makes it considerably easier for respondents to misrepresent themselves and brings up concerns on the issue of respondent duplication.

Take this scenario for example: A respondent signs up to take surveys through multiple social network sites by using different email addresses on each site, how will a client be able to have confidence in the sample and know that a respondent did not take the same survey three times on three different social networks (especially if the target for a survey is a niche market)?

I believe utilizing social networks and offering non-monetary incentives is a great step toward eliminating some online research woes, but until respondents can be verified and duplication is eliminated across panels, social networks, etc. can anyone really say that one is more reliable than the other? What are your thoughts?

Back away from the Research Methodologies (and leave them to the experts)

2008-03-10T11:51:00.009-05:00

Lately, in magazines, blogs, and e-newsletters, I’ve seen several articles in which a few market research methodologies are explored usually through the same three facets: how each methodology works, its advantages, and its disadvantages. This “research methodologies for dummies” influx seems to point out the recent rise in the misuse of methodologies and their results.

The other day I witnessed a study being conducted at a local movie theater in which a slew of research rules were being violated: preset answers were being suggested by the moderator, exact wording was being modified and recorded however the moderator deemed appropriate, and at one point, two respondents’ answers were compiled to fill a single survey (just to name a few).

When methodologies aren’t used correctly, research data deteriorates. Implementing invalid research data more than likely yields poor results. Getting poor results, in this case is a result of methodology malpractice NOT the research field in general. However, since many marketers are unaware of the importance of the methodology chosen and how it will influence the gathered data, they leave behind not only their poorly predicted results and their budget for research, but also a cloud of unmerited doubt around whether research really works or not.

To make matters worse, we also have a surge of people who like to not only criticize the industry but do so poorly with flawed, illogical arguments and often offer no solution in return. Seth Godin attempts to argue that “our personal outlook is a lousy indicator of what works for anyone else” in his post titled “How do I persuade you?”

Here’s the main problem with this question and the rest of his post: the definition of the word “you.” Now, I hate to get all Bill Clinton-y here but I do think this is a very valid point in this context. Godin specifically labels the population to which he is referring as “human beings.” Could he be more right in this context? I don’t think anyone is arguing that the entire human race makes decisions in the same way or even in a similar manner. Decision processes don’t transcend across the entire world’s population, or even the US for that matter.

What I think many would argue is that when you limit that population down to a specific demographic, whether it’s based on geography, age, sex, and/or what brand they purchase, you may be able to narrow this defined population’s decision making process down to a common thread.

Now, John Windsor’s comment in response to Godin’s post somewhat validates my perspective but perhaps needs a bit of sustenance to back it up. Yes, “we need to listen to those we hope to influence, and then adapt our approach accordingly,” but again, to regurgitate Windsor’s original question, “Now what?” There are a couple questions you need to be sure you are answering correctly before you “adapt your approach accordingly.” They are:

What is it you want to hear about?
What is the most efficient/accurate way to listen to it?

All of the previously listed problems above could be solved by recognizing the inherent relationship between these two questions. Determining which methodology will be the most accurate and efficient all depends on what you are trying to hear. Common desired results include pain points, reactions to a new design, or how satisfied people are with each with its own best-methodology-to-use solution. If you just want a quick rundown of a few methodologies and the types of data they can produce, this is a good start.

So, if you are looking to do research in the near future but are not completely sure which methodology would be the best way to go about gathering your desired results, please ask and find out to so we can fight research methodology abuse and bring it to an end.

The Best Things in Life are Free

2008-03-03T12:04:00.004-06:00

Have you thought about how many free (or near free) products and services you use in a day? Here are just a few examples.

Google – nearly all services used by consumers are free – from email to Picasa to GOOG-411.
News – you can’t even count the number of websites that give news away for free. Now there is an ongoing rise of *paper*-based newspapers and magazines distributing news for free too.
Web-based services – there’s everything from financial services to diet plans available.

For an impressive round-up of free (or near free) products and services in many categories check out this trend report from trendwatching.com: FREE LOVE.

Chris Anderson sums up this phenomenon of free in his article “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” in Wired Magazine and also explains it in an interview with Ad Age. The cost of goods is becoming cheaper, and digital technology is experiencing this on a grand scale. As technology advances and bandwidth, storage, and processing power continue to increase (often for less than last year’s model), the cost of supporting additional users becomes more and more marginal.

Why would you offer something for free? Because money isn’t the only scarcity in an economy. So is attention (as Seth Godin points out). And, in a world where consumers have reached their saturation point, free gets attention. Free allows consumers to skip the cost-benefit analysis in terms of money. You still have to make a worthwhile offer though, because if you waste their attention and time, then consumers will be just as angry as if you had wasted their money.

As marketers, we instinctively understand some of this “value of free” – cross-subsidies, loss leaders or encouraging a first trial or purchase by offering a sample. As we forage into an increasingly digital world and costs move towards zero, we are challenged to explore new business models. My humble opinion is that this seems to work with online business models. Offering a service for free = more users on the site = more advertisers willing to buy in. Or offer a free version of a web-based service and a premium for-pay version that has more features, and the pay supports the free. There are overhead costs for servers, development, etc., but they are spread over thousands or even millions of users. So when you divide it out, the cost to support one more user is negligible.

Offline, this concept of free seems harder to grasp. Tangible freebies are costly to produce and distribute, and lots of marginal costs total to one big cost. The question becomes, how do we not only make up these costs, but *profit* from them? There are some companies that are out there working on this conundrum to offer their products and services for free or near free. For example, here’s how Ryanair offers near free air travel. The pie chart does a great job explaining how Ryanair meets the costs of their flights, but I have some issues with it and especially the explanation below it.

Cut costs – this point makes sense to me. Boarding and disembarking from the tarmac and going to less-popular airports are smart moves to keep expenses down.
Ramp up the ancillary fees – this irritates me. I do not want to be charged for using my credit card or checking my luggage or wanting a drink. And $3.50 for a bottle of water is an obscenity that’s mostly reserved for sporting events and theme parks. A fair question is do they really think that people aren’t going to realize where the profit is coming from and stop drinking the water? After all, they won’t fly out of the country for more than $100 so why in the world would they pay almost $4 for 12 ounces of water?
Offset losses with higher fares – I suppose all airlines do this to some degree, charging a higher price for popular flight days. However, if the consumer is price conscious, and comes to Ryanair looking for a $20 flight, how often are they going to choose to fly on the more expensive days? Just from a mathematical standpoint, if 30% of your airline is ‘expensive’ and the remaining 70% is ‘average’. That high end 30% has to support a portion of average flights twice its size for the airline to profit. Which begs the question of how long do you feel you can pull a fast one on the high end customers?

What are your thoughts? Is $0.00 the future of business? What freebie models do you know that work? Which ones don’t seem to work?

Starbucks Media Jolt

2008-02-28T09:37:00.014-06:00

Branding has become a hot topic again in the mainstream media (to some, myself included, it is always a hot topic. I guess it is the nature of the job). This week on the Today Show they featured the decline of the Starbucks brand. Starbucks’ woes in the last year, slowed growth and declining sales, is no secret and it seems every advertising joe has an opinion on what they should do. Most opinions center on returning the focus to the baristas and making the best espresso. The point being that the barista position (for more on baristas visit here) is not interchangeable with the cashier or the greeter or even the store manager, it is a honed skill that takes training and plays a pivotal role in elevating Starbucks above competitors. AND the extended business lines – music, movies, network tv, really doesn’t heighten the taste of my Grande Non-Fat, Double Vanilla Late at the end of the day either.

It would appear Starbucks is listening. In addition to the expected permanent closure of several stores and 600 job cuts, Starbucks temporarily closed all stores Tuesday evening (2/26) for several hours to retrain employees err baristas to “provide a renewed focus on espresso standards” (see full letter to partners, entitled “Starbucks Makes Organizational Changes to Enhance Customer Experience”). There are also plans to stop serving hot breakfast by the end of Fiscal ’08 and offer free or discounted WiFi beginning this spring.

So the obvious question is…was this really an effort to put the focus back on good coffee making OR was it a PR exploit to show off Starbucks renewed focus?

I present exhibit A: National Media Coverage of Starbucks Closing

FOX News
Today Show
USA Today
MSNBC
ABC
And the list goes on and on and….

Exhibit B:

Let me also point out that Starbucks isn’t open 24 hours and could have offered this “training session” after hours.
Not to mention, the length of the session was reported to be 3 hours. Can you really impart knowledge, grow your craft, and produce minions of genius baristas in a one-time 3 hour session?

Will it work? Well I suppose an afternoon training session is a start, but something tells me it is going to take more than a few hours of coffee making How To, to fix Starbucks (call me a pessimist). But maybe it is a start? Maybe, just maybe this media frenzy will make Starbucks accountable to their customers and force them to return to what made them good in the first place – good coffee and atmosphere? They have drawn a very public line in the sand, put a big ol’ stake in the ground, etc., etc. and the stage is set (can I use anymore clichés?) to deliver BIG. Does media frenzy = accountability = return to good coffee and atmosphere? Tell me what you think?

Live from Austin, TX :: CNN Democratic Debate

2008-02-20T17:01:00.009-06:00

Consider these three things before we dive right in:

I’m new to the political scene. Decided to vote in my college days (actually voted on the uber-conservative Texas A&M campus) since George W. lived in Midland and hello, I had to support my West Texas neighbor since I was raised in the “City of Contrasts” about 25 miles away. Needless to say, after a week at my previous job at GSD&M Idea City, President Clinton stopped by to promote his efforts in Africa and I was awed by his presence.

I now regret that vote and have not watched a single recent debate thus far with one exception of flipping channels seeing the heavy makeup on both leading Democratic candidates at my boyfriend’s house (since I don’t like or have cable).

According to a Pew Internet & American Life study, 72% of bloggers look online for news or information on politics and by contrast, only 58% of all internet users do so. So now that I am a blogger, this topic seems appropriate. By no means is it a type of endorsement.

Considering the above, my routine of listening to NPR daily and the state of our country, I decided it was time to start paying attention. Furthermore, who could resist when we have a Democrat Primary debate here in Austin tomorrow (2/21/08)? Not to mention re-routing what roads I take, I want to be in on the action especially when it’s happening in my city.

One thing I do find peculiar is that several states were rushing to bump their primary elections up and now that the election is so between the candidates, Texas and Ohio hold a larger emphasis.

THE DEBATE (in Austin):
Clinton and Obama will be in Texas tomorrow (2/21) to debate each other live on CNN at 8 p.m. ET and early voting already began on Tuesday. Today, the Texas Democratic Party notified 100 people that they had won the lottery to attend the debate. Around 43,000 people entered the contest. This may not seem too extraordinary but considering only 4,000 Austin Democrats voted in the 2004 primary – it’s big. Since the debate is on campus, 400 UT students will also learn today if their name was picked – oh, and 18,000 applied.

Since tickets seem scarcer than SXSW, tune in or ride your bike down to campus. If you already know who you prefer, take a look at both Obama’s and Clinton’s websites and find local events to participate in. Both of their websites are easy to navigate and let you enter in your zip to find local events in your area. Hint: you don’t have to enter your email address and zip when you visit either candidate’s websites – simply look below the fold.
Here are two events going on in Austin (or you can search your area):

Clinton:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/actioncenter/event/view/?id=9546

“We need all Hillary supporters from all corners to come and help us with visibility for the CNN/Univision Debate on the University of Texas campus. Check in begins at 3pm at the Red River Cafe. Come to collect your sign, learn cheers, and get your debate after party ticket before heading over to the visibility pen.”

Obama:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/debatewatchingparty/4rsrl

Meet at Scholz Garden, which is two blocks south of the campus. Texans for Obama will hold a pre-debate rally and also watch the debate on the projection screen in the outside patio garden at Scholz.

POLITCAL PRANKS & OTHER TOPICS OF INTEREST:
Political pranks are normally unknown to campaign leaders and have been occurring for longer than one would expect. On KUT.org this weekend, they reported that when you type http://www.txdemocrats.com/ (versus .org) you are actually directed to the Republican Party of Texas. It’s true! In South Carolina, Christmas cards were sent out to evangelists allegedly from Mitt Romney highlighting his Mormon faith. A local Austin restaurant that is well-known for it's comical marquee, welcomes the Clinton's to Austin in style:

Want to show your interest in the campaign by sporting some election gear? Whether you are a Clinton or Obama supporter, visit cafepress.com for some digs:

Some might also find it entertaining to check out the “Yes I Can” YouTube video (along with numerous Hollywood celebrities) that mashes up an Obama speech with lyrics of the Black-Eyed Peas. At 12:19pm CDT, the video had 4,579,590 views. According to UT student, Sarah T., the video is spreading like wildfire across campus.

So, from my perspective, take the time to learn more about the issues and where the candidates stand. The promotion of candidates, delivery of campaigns and media is evolving now in front of us and shame on me to just beginning to really take notice. I encourage you to take this “Select a Candidate” online quiz to kick off the learning process:
www.elections.kut.org/2007/11/20/25/

Cheers to learning more, voting and getting involved!

Dogs Rule!

2008-02-20T13:29:00.005-06:00

Here’s a campaign that seems to have popped up with a new found sense of urgency - Pedigree’s Dogs Rule campaign. The site, most likely the brainchild of TBWA/Chiat/Day in Los Angeles is extremely well done from both execution and strategic standpoints.

The premise is simple, “We Love Dogs”. What does that mean exactly? Well, in the context of this campaign it means that Pedigree will match monetary donations, as well as Pedigree product donations given by customers to assist animal shelters located near the customer/donator. Ultimately, it means that Pedigree is working to help homeless dogs find homes and ensure they are a little more comfortable during their temporary period of orphanhood.

Normally, at this point in the post, I’d walk through each creative deliverable and critique it’s execution within the context of the campaign. I’d throw around vernacular like viral components, digital revolution and Age of Conversation. In this particular post, I’ll save us the effort in wading through simple concepts with overly sophisticated names. I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with the use of those terms, nor do I have issue with any of the sources linked above, but in this instance, they’re not of primary interest. The individual executions of this campaign are not flawless, but they are very well done. The point is this - where this campaign really sets itself apart; is when we step out of our “jaded creative guy” skin and put on the trusty “business” hat.

So what’s so different about this campaign? Take a look at the facts, and think about it……….

Dogs eat dog food.
Pedigree sells dog food.
Homeless dogs are put to sleep, thus removed from the market, if they are not adopted.
The Dogs Rule campaign is designed to help homeless dogs find adopted homes.
If the Dogs Rule campaign is successful in finding homes for homeless dogs, there will be more dogs in the market consuming dog food, thus the revenue potential of this vertical will increase.

As a result of the success of this campaign there could be a significant increase in revenue potential for Pedigree, given their current share of voice and share of market. This could potentially be the ultimate win/win scenario. Consumers, who love dogs, adopt a dog or an additional dog – Pedigree has helped them do so and the consumer couldn’t be happier. On the other side of the coin, Pedigree gets access to a larger pool of revenue that their customers, financially, helped them cultivate.

So here’s the point – In today’s marketing environment, full of the increasingly sophisticated, inevitably cynical consumer, your customers will cry bloody murder if they smell even a hint of corporate ambition. I’m not implying Pedigree went into this campaign with that particular objective, but what I’m saying is if you know the customer, and you create advertising/marketing strategy that is spot on to their needs………..it doesn’t matter. As a brand, if you can show you know your customer and you care about what they care about AND provide the actions to support that claim then your leash (so to speak) gets significantly longer. In this case, people who love dogs tend to love ALL dogs, and genuinely appreciate the efforts of shelters, non-profit groups and dog food manufacturers alike who are working to improve the lives of dogs and enlighten owners-to-be. This campaign is a fantastic example of insights informing the creative process and creative being effectively implemented to support those findings.

Broader and bigger is not necessarily better

2008-02-15T09:35:00.003-06:00

By the end of 2007, global active memberships in social network sites were expected to hit 230 million. Experts expect this growth to continue through 2008, peak in 2009, and then level out in 2012. Furthermore, it has been calculated that revenue generated from social networking sites will reach $965 million by 2007 and grow to an estimated $2.4 billion by 2012.

Currently the social networking market is dominated by MySpace (consisting of 57MM US members or 45% of US social networking members) and Facebook (consisting of 22MM or 17% of US social networking members) who comprise 62% of the US market.

Given that MySpace and Facebook have a virtual choke hold on the marketplace, and experts. Given the strength of MySpace and Facebook, experts believe that social networking will continue to grow and maintain its momentum; the opportunity in social networking will be in vertically aligned niche sites that have specific audiences and a specific mission. These vertically aligned sites will need to integrate into the more broad-based sites like Facebook and MySpace, thus using these as a platform and not an end result.

I think the reason for this is that broad social networks like MySpace and Facebook are so big and so general; it is hard for the user (let alone the advertiser) to find the type of content that is really compelling to them. Sure, there are search capabilities on the networks and people create groups, but the overall sites have so much content and such a broad basis simply due to the number of people on the social network that specific vertical niches often get lost, which inherently de-values the impact of the people within those niches.

A vertical niche can be very powerful as well for advertisers as it provides them with a much higher quality lead as they have already shown an interest in the advertiser’s market. In these cases, I believe advertisers should not be so hung up on the pure numbers, but rather the type of content and the crowd effect of having ALL the members interested in the same topic.

For instance, my family is a horse family. My wife rides, my daughter rides, my sister-in-law trains horses, my mother-in-law owns a tack shop, and my father-in-law is on the board of the Texas Hunter-Jumper Association. All of this and I am severely allergic to horses. So I could be a part of my family’s passion, I decided to do something I know about, I started a social horse network (not going to plug it though as this is not the point).

The site was meant more as a hobby and to potentially connect a few horse enthusiasts (try not to say horse lovers as that brings some very unusual sites to the top of the list on Google). However, with nearly no budget, the site has grown to be 1100+ members in just a few months. Most of these come from Facebook as they were made aware of the site via some very cheap ($5/day) advertising and a Facebook application. Now my users spend more time on my horse network than they do on Facebook (according to the members). The reason for this is that the site is totally dedicated to their passion, which should be the highly motivating to advertisers.

So, from my perspective, going out and trying to compete with a Facebook or MySpace is a stuff chore these days, however, if the social network is vertically aligned and narrowly focused, there could be a lot of room for growth in the network.

Social Bookmarking: stop getting lost in your bookmarks.

2008-02-05T16:03:00.000-06:00

STOP using your browser to bookmark sites! If you're like me and have a hard time remembering websites you visit infrequently, bookmarking the old way was probably only helpful when the list is short. Once my bookmark list got too long, finding sites was more of hassle than it is worth, and who has time to organize on the fly?

Social bookmarking puts your dog eared websites on a social network. You simply sign up and start tagging. There’s a short learning curve, but once you get accustomed to tagging sites, you will find social bookmarking to be very useful and almost a second nature to use.

Here is a video I found on YouTube that breaks it down quite nicely.

Okay, now you should understand why the old way is out dated.

Blinklist.com is the service I use. The layout is clean and the design intuitive. "Blinking" a site is simple once you have the plug in installed you simply use the new Blinklist menu in your browser tool bar and go to "Blink it!" a pop up box comes up where you add your tags and description for the site that you are on.

Some others I have tried are StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and Furl all of which are clean and intuitive you will just need to find the one you like best.

For a more complete list go to eConsultant or my growing list of related sites

Also, try searching a social bookmarking site instead of the conventional search engines and you will get better search results. The strength in numbers properties that have made Facebook and Myspace so powerful will help enhance your search. The reason being that someone else has probably already added a site or multiple sites that fit your search and decided that the site is worthwhile. Your search results are now not only qualified to have the content you are looking for, but have been deemed noteworthy by your peers. They took care of most of the weeding through for you.

I’d love to hear about your thoughts or experiences with Social Bookmarking please add your comments here.

Jumpers and HP

2008-01-17T18:45:00.000-06:00

Has everyone seen this by now?

The concept is smart – instead of using advertising to place products in movies, why not turn things on their head and integrate movies into TV ads, right? The idea has potential, but the execution is in this case is incredibly uncomfortable. Hayden Christensen as “David Rice” is hopping in and out of a boiler plate HP commercial - somebody famous’ torso with cool computer graphics illustrating how their lives are so much cooler, yet similar to ours because they use their computers to create visual representations that cannot be done with the software that comes in the box. I’ve digressed.

The discomfort comes in the juxtaposition of the jumper and the tried and true and honestly pretty cool look and feel of the HP commercial. Since you can’t see the facial expressions of Serena Williams (HP Hero) it feels very forced. Ultimately the two never explicitly and directly acknowledge each other, which is very awkward. There are a few attempts, Serena mumbles “Hey, get out of here” and Hayden responds “Yeah, yeah”, but it simply doesn’t work. The whole time you’re on the couch wondering A) How long is this freaking commercial, because I think they’ve gotten out of the huddle right now and I’m missing a blow out and B) Is this for real? What am I supposed to buy again? The former is a typical male 18 to 95 yrs old football enthusiast reaction, but the latter is due in part, to the fact that there are eight brands mentioned in this 1 ½ minute spot.

Count them:

20^th Century Fox (starts off trailer)
Jumpers Movie (starts commercial as trailer)
Mercedes Benz (jumps through window at beginning of commercial)
Microsoft (remote control and logo on TV)
HP (Serena commercial)
Nike (Serena’s new clothing design)
Andre 3000 (weird, random mug-shot)
Aneras (Serena's clothing line at the end)

I’m not saying this isn’t a good idea. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like this in the Super Bowl this year. With :30 second spot pricing persistently shooting through the roof and the medium becoming closer and closer to cave man writings on walls it seems to make sense to split the multiple millions over a brand or two, but eight….seriously?

Cynically speaking – I noticed the ad, which to be honest at this point is all TV is basing their numbers on. I guarantee you that anyone with a full beer and two minutes’ worth of potato chips; since running out of one of the two of those are the only legitimate reason(s) to leave the couch during a football game; noticed the ad. So now we have the all too frequent advertising morality question – have we, the keepers of TV sunk to a new low in that it’s better to sacrifice the consumers’ opinion/experience with the brand for the sake of distributing air time costs to partners and thus there’s more money in the budget for……….crap? I’ve become considerably disillusioned with the over-the-top, primitive beer commercials that ran in the last two Super Bowls, but in all honestly, I’d prefer to see the stray dog longing to be the Dalmatian in the horse-drawn (don’t get me started) fire wagon then some confusing tennis commercial that makes me want to punch a grown Anikan Skywalker in the stomach for interrupting. Budweiser may have momentarily abandoned the pursuit of pointless hilarity, but at least they didn’t give the Clydesdales fleas.

Cliff Bar 2 Mile Challenge

2007-11-28T17:18:00.000-06:00

Okay, this is a great site with a purpose. Cliff Bar has long been known as a great place to work with a decision years ago not to sell and keep quality of life under company control. This seems to have paid off handsomly and now they are working on getting quality of life for the rest of us through environmental activism. This 2 Mile Challenge seems like a good start at getting critical mass around what is typically a "complicated" issue that involved international relations, taxes, science and more.

One of the biggest issues the environmental movement seems to have had is marketing. Here Cliff Bar as simplified this with some facts and actions that are easily at hand. One being that 40% of urban travel is 2 miles or less. This sets a concrete number, puts someting easily attainable (2 miles, not switching to all uncooked foods) and puts up an interactive space with map, blog and so forth to connect all these "2 mile heroes".

Will this work? I don't know. I am sure there are other things to tie this campaign togther and other best practices out there. Let me know your thoughts.

Virtual Worlds Expo: Wrap-Up

2007-10-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

Back home now, with the luxury of a little time to think about it, these are my main takeaways from Virtual Worlds Expo:

Interoperability/open standards: Everyone was talking about this, in all it's iterations:

* A shift from "walled gardens" to interoperability, which could mean the ability to move your avatar and/or identity from one world to another, from a virtual world to a traditional website and back again, from virtual world to mobile phone and back

* Making virtual worlds work like the Web

* Having a common client for virtual worlds

* Having greater accessibility to your online and in-world friends from any world, site, or phone

Measurement and research:

Who's there? What drives them? What keeps them coming back? There was a lot of discussion about the "early adopters" in virtual worlds, although to mind this is wrong -- the early adopter are just *now* getting there. According to the original Everett Rogers adoption curve, it's the Innovators who are currently best represented in virtual worlds populations.

Some thought-provoking numbers were put forward by those on the Demographics panel:

* Michael Cai from Parks Research had numbers (from a 9,500 user study) on what people do less of in the real world while they participate in virtual worlds. The runaway winner was "don't watch as much TV" with 60% -- implications for advertising and brands are very clear there. The number I found thought-provoking as well as amusing was "16% don't know what they do less of" which seems to indicate that a pretty large percentage of people just don't really know how they spend their time!

* Mary Ellen Gordon of Market Truths had some interesting research results (though from a small sample) that indicate Second Life is a good place for a brand, if done right: 57% of respondents considered buying a real-life product as a result of a recommendation they received from someone in Second Life (which actually speaks as much to the power of word of mouth as it does to the value of using Second Life as a marketing and branding platform). Additionally, her research showed that:

55% recommended a real-life product to someone they were chatting to in Second Life.
25% have gone to look at a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
9% have purchased a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
8% have bought a real-life product in Second Life.

Segmentation (or not) between entertainment and "serious" purposes

Across a number of different panels, but particularly in the Community and Customer Service panel, there was discussion of just what it is that "drives" virtual worlds, that makes them so compelling. The aggregate answer seems to be that virtual worlds' growth is fueled by community and narrative (or story). This would seem to suggest what at least panelist Raph Koster of Areae said out loud, which is that there is no real differentiation in virtual worlds between entertainment and "serious purposes". This is actually also true in the non-virtual world as well, but the virtual world, like gaming, is perhaps the first platform that started out that way.

To read all Awareness Is Everything posts on the Virtual World Expo, go here.

This link goes to a Virtual Worlds News wrap-up post that links out to a ton of conference coverage, including ours.

Virtual Worlds Expo: Visionary Panel, Where the platforms are going next

2007-10-11T13:05:00.001-05:00

This was, quite fittingly, the last thing I did at the Virtual Worlds Expo, due to travel arrangements, though there were three more sessions after this. This one was in the Business Strategy and Investment track.

This was a full panel moderated by Mark Wallace, a blogger at 3pointd.com and featuring Corey Bridges, co-founder of Multiverse; Chris Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva; Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft's Virtual Earth; Mike Wilson of Makena, Hui Xu, founder and CEO of HiPiHi (speaking through an interpreter); and Raph Koster, president of Areae.

The moderator began with a question: What needs are not being filled by the virtual worlds platforms today?

Corey: Web integration....integration with Flash, streaming media, the sort of thing we take for granted on the Web....having the same kind of connectivity and functionality in virtual worlds that we would expect on any website. We will see a lot of integration with social networks...social networking integration over the next year will propel virtual worlds into the mainstream, when until it's been video games that have propelled virtual worlds adoption.

Raph: Virtual worlds today work like Prodigy or AOL in the early 90s....we are seeing the biggest shift in the virtual worlds technology architecture that we've seen in the last 30 years...peer-to-peer growth, seeing stuff living straight on the Web...we're seeing a whole bunch of exploration...we're out to do something really radical and make it work like the Web top to bottom. It will be interesting to see what approaches shake out over the next few years. I don't think there's one approach.

Mark: What's interesting to think about is what is it going to take before we see some of these things converge, before we see interoperability?

Corey: A common client, accessibility from one client on the users machine. Consumers are going to demand that more and more.

Chris: For virtual worlds we are experimenting very heavily with social networking as a key component. There's the story of someone who goes into Everquest every night but hates the game. She's there because that's where her friends are. Virtual worlds are the content of connecting with your friends and doing things together. We can learn a lot from the social networks. The closer you bring your real friends in, the better. Two areas for improvement are usability and the mobile space. Think about when do you access the Internet -- my phone's always with me, but I don't take my laptop when I go out. Mobile longterm is a core component of these virtual worlds.

Mike: Looking at gaming...there's compelling content in MMOGs like Everquest and World of Warcraft....if you want to look for a compelling model to follow for getting people into virtual worlds and using them, look at games....also in terms of platforms, with games we started with PCs and moved to Flash and mobile....virtual worlds will move the same.

Mark: How open will your social network be? Will Google kill everything? Do you see virtual worlds running into this same debate?

Mike: We should find ways to expose your virtual identity to virtual worlds and we are doing that with there.com. I think people are overestimating -- I may not want to share everything, to let everyone know that I am a girl, etc. It's fine to talk about shared ID, bit when it's your ID, it's different.

Corey: It's about control, you control how you share your identity, what you give out. There will always be some worlds where you role-play and want to be someone else. People are going to end up having multiple avatars.

Raph: Mainstream is comfortable with multiple IDs -- they think it's fun, especially younger people. It's not a question of openness....identity is a closing kind of word and not an opening kind of word....it's a Prodigy kind of question, not a Web kind of question...on the Web we see many IDs, some federated on keychain systems.

Stephen: Not specifically coming from gaming and entertainment, for something to go broadly mainstream is relative to the number your looking at...280 million people are using IM, 400 million people are using Live ID...even the numbers that we think are large as very small. In order to bring this out to the masses we think about the Web going 3D, like going from ASCII to DOS to Windows...going to a familiar 3D world on a human scale that we use every day. It's important for advertising, 3D search, where you can explore and you have the context...social search. It's going to be an exciting transition.

Raph: 3D is a red herring.

Corey: I agree with you but there's a part you're missing.

Mark: Let's save that path...broaden the perspective...when talking about making virtual worlds more like the Web, we talk about it from a very Western-centric point of view -- the ID Federation is illegal in Europe. How do users in the East consider these issues of identity management?

Hui Xu (through interpreter): This is the first time I come to this conference and I see very few Chinese or people from other races. It's my wish to see greater representation of cultures and people from all over the world. We should let people from everywhere come together in the space. The greatest excitement comes from users interacting with small proportions of foreign users....15% of HiPiHi traffic is coming from overseas...we've created a rich experience for all users. About ID and interoperability: He believes in human rights, the rights of users within virtual worlds...commonness should be left to user communities. It extends to the content issue... how we should manage content is up in the air, the management structures and frameworks should engage in open dialogue with users in virtual worlds, not just developers. An inclination toward interoperability is more toward having a 3rd-party exchange, a platform for virtual worlds in existence today...there needs to be a common standard, a dedicated provider that looks at each virtual world and specializes in making sure these virtual worlds should start talking. The guiding philosophy is returning power and convenience to the users so they can manage their content and lifestyles across virtual worlds. Broadband penetration is increasing in many countries around the world, in South American and the Middle East...I don't know whether browser-based worlds or clients will be the future in these areas.

Mark: What about the evolution of the business model...we've recently seen business models that began in the East gain traction in the US and Europe. Will we converge on one business model or remain fractured?

Corey: Everyone thought the Time Warner sub-based model would be the model for the Web, but it's ad and web-based. We will see a lot of ad-subsidized worlds.

Chris: Virtual worlds offer a unique opportunity, we will see more and more of the worlds being opened up in a free trial or free overall, and to upgrade you have to buy things....virtual worlds offer the opportunity to buy real estate, clothes, etc...we are seeing worlds with subscription models for those who want to have a VIP level...there's growing demand for people to buy something tangible. Like gift cards -- kids are now handing out gift cards to each other at birthday parties. A huge percentage of iTunes revenue comes from gift cards that you see in retail outlets. So I see huge tie-in with retail....look at a blended model, retail, subscription, combined models.

Stephen: Local search advertising model -- $15 billion moving into digital community over 5 years....offering in-game advertising. A transactional model.

Mike: I see four rivers of revenue -- subscription, in-game currency micropayments, sponsorships, and links to e-commerce or white labeling. We do not yet understand how to charge for advertising in virtual worlds. And the world can trigger advertising based on what's said and done. How do i charge for that ad impression? How do you study it and tell advertisers how to use it the best?

Chris: It's CPA, cost per action....

Stephen: CPA is what we are looking at....if there's multiple advertising value-add, how do you value that once they click? how does it build up to action?

Hui Xu (through interpreter): We see real a mirror between virtual worlds economics and real world economics...the first wave in virtual worlds economics has been about sales....land sales, etc. The 2nd and 3rd waves are coming -- 2nd wave is about production in the real world, and in virtual worlds. The 2nd wave is also about goods creation, how can we go about providing an infrastructure for virtual goods.The 3rd wave about services. New sevice models in the real world have reached mature stage, but services are very nascent in virtual economies. In China, a big market in 2nd wave -- trading of emoticons, wallpapers, etc in qq IM services. We are seeing innovation in Japan in the services industry, banking in mobile phones, CyWorld in korea .... in Asia users are used to purchasing goods over the Internet and digital platforms like mobile phone.

Mark: My cousins from Queens fly around in Microsoft's Virtual Earth for fun in the evenings. What do you think about mirror worlds and their role in entertainment?

Stephen: MS Virtual Earth is ranked in top 10 websites to waste your time on, a nice backwards compliment, along with MySpace and Facebook....what kind of utility do they provide? The media has gone from newspapers, to radio, to tv...and we wanted all the same things, sports, what happened, local news, international news. We took a huge step back to the newspaper when we went to the Internet so now we can move back up when you take a combination of video-rich real-world interactivity.

Mike: It's interesting, I can imagine watching on the evening news, a bank robbery occurring...and we can get reenactments now from bloggers, but what is the authoritative version.

Raph: These are blind spots -- the assumption that this may not be the same industry. There is no segmentation between entertainment and serious purposes. We are in the bookstore business, not the fiction aisle or non-fiction aisle business. Media accrete, they do not replace. The idea that the entire Web will be stuffed into 3D is ridiculous. What's going to happen is a diversity of interfaces and using the appropriate interface for what needs/wants to be done. Blogging in 3D is dumb. The place we're going to move to will be representation-agnostic, will show up in different ways depending on the user need. The value in virtual worlds resides in servers....the clients are windows and we will have a lot of windows, including running around slaying dagons in downtown Palo Alto using your cell phone....3D as the holy grail is a red herring. Right now even today when we look at the largest user environment in user numbers and concurrency, 2D websites are on the list... 3D is hard for kids, hard for older people.

Stephen: 3D going to scale out way beyond gaming, but won't replace every UI out there. The point is it's going to be big. All the studies we have seen is that the reason people like 3D shopipng is people can visually make correlations. 3D is difficult to navigate, but yet more intuitive. People have investment in real world 3D, while they don't in forms like spreadsheets. Interiors are best represented in 3D, so are urban corridors. There's no 2D representation of this room than would represent it. Yet the brain can parse 3D in a very intelligent manner. When you scale in to 2half-D, bird's eye view, it gets easier.

Raph: It's about what the user wants and needs. There are a ton of useful apps in 3D, but let's not forget all the other devices and mechanisms out there.

Audience question: The Wii brought a new kind of controller that expanded the game audience to more casual users....do you foresee any similar type of new interface for virtual worlds?

Stephen: Microsoft is constantly looking at different mechanisms.

Chris: Some of our designers use a 3D mouse to develop some of the content....we are a software creator....so until a Wii for the PC becomes more prominent we won't be able to drive it....it needs to be hardware and software working together. We will see more integration between more natural human movement...the Wii is a precursor to what's coming. If you could buy a mocap for $200 and run around in the worlds I think we'd have a big hit tomorrow.

Corey: Multiverse is built to take into account different input devices. I've seen prototypes using Wii interfaces in Multiverse, and different output devices as well, like heads-up rigs. If a platform is built well it will take these things into account so it will be ready when the application is appropriate for it.

Chris: You'll get a more human connection when you are able to use a mocap.

Audience: How rich an experience does the mobile user want?

Raph: It's application dependent. There are virtual worlds apps where someone just wants an auction update, not necessarily to see the avatars. Mobile is a bit of a tangled mess, different standards, a huge variety of handsets. It will take awhile to sort that stuff out, and you have to structure your platform to be as agnostic as possible.

Chris: We will see mobile evolve. The market share is not there for a lot of the really high-end apps, but there are a lot of low-end apps that would be valuable for our community, and should make those available first.

Stephen: We're not trying to reproduce 3D on the small screen at all....we need things like, how can I help myself navigate where I'm going, is there anything available at a better price nearby, etc.

Audience question: Is it like the Las Vegas monorail story -- for virtual worlds that have a lot of users, open standards will be like an exit, while for smaller ones it will be like an entrance. So bigger ones will not adopt open standards.

Mike: If open standards succeed....if someone tries to jail their users, they'll get out anyway and may not come back. There's never really a barrier for anyone to leave a world.

Corey: This is a growing new medium, and there's room for everyone to move around....everyone should embrace those open standards. That's what the users are going to want, that's what we've seen on the Web....walled gardens are not tenable, consumers are smart enough and know they can put pressure. Anyone who's smart is building that in right from the beginning. People who are not are cutting themselves off from growth.

Mike: It worked pretty well for eBay.

Chris: Standards is a pretty broad term....there's a lot of great languages and standards out there (python, etc). Being able to move avatar from one world to another is not a big Kaneva user request. If it becomes one, we will need to do it. You have to recreate your account on eBay, Amazon, etc., and I don't see a lot of demand for that to be different.

Audience question: How do virtual worlds overcome human language differences?

Raph: The first world to do that was in 1998 through machine translation)...there wasn't a lot of demand for it. Reducing the balkanization of virtual worlds and bringing cultures together are one of the things that viritual worlds can accomplish. But people pull apart. International warfare happens a lot in virtual worlds.

Hui Xu (through interpreter): HiPiHi is currently in Mandarin Chinese...when foreigners enter the world, there is a volunteer team that's self-organizing, that welcome foreigners into the world and provides translation. There's no quick fix. Big companies like Google are trying to fix that problem. The focus now is on what we can do, which is to enable the user communities to be welcoming to people from different cultures. Chinese HiPiHi users are beginning to learn English and vice versa, which we think is of value.

Virtual Worlds Expo Christian Renaud Keynote: The Age of the Avatar

2007-10-11T11:15:00.000-05:00

This was something of a two-part keynote -- a long scene-setting introduction by Reuben Steiger of Millions of Us, then the "official" keynote by Christian Renaud of Cisco.

First, Steiger:

Virtual worlds -- that term sounds isolated, niche-y, and doesn't do justice to the profound nature of what's going on...I believe it's a much larger societal movement that's very wedded to what's going on online.

Avatar = in Hindu lore, an early form of a god.....today, = an online persona you take. What I love is that it's sort of an inversion...traditionally meaning going from an ethereal place to a prosaic one, and today meaning going from a prosaic place to a more ethereal one. Avatars are about giving a face to an online identity and to facilitate face-to-face interactions in an online community.

Some numbers: Only 25% of US residents trust conventional advertising (Yankelovich 2007), while 31% of consumer internet usage is in online communities (Comscore, 2007). Second Life is the virtual world that's most talked about, but majority of the market is not SL only, it's web-based and youth-focused, about 100 million users.

Predictions: By the end of 2008, social networks will become avatarized; virtual worlds will become more like social networks; television tie-ins will increase for virtual worlds.

Philo Farnsworth invented the electronic TV in 1928, in a building that is across the street from where Linden Lab's offices are today.

Through the advent of TV our society transformed, and that informs the way virtual worlds may transform society. Autos changed the way we formed communities. Community has been embedded in our lives, but modern marvels have eroded the bonds of community. This makes people profoundly sad. Virtual worlds offer a way to get that back.

Aside from me: OK, while I don't disagree with much that he said, this guy is the poster child for virtual worlds koolaid drinkers!! There is still community out there in, well, real-life communities. He's overstating the problem that needs to be solved. And he also overstated the number of active virtual worlds users as well.

All of this was to introduce Christian Renaud, the official keynote speaker.

His topic: What's next?

Renaud: This is not the first attempt at making virtual worlds and virtual worlds communities a business tool or a mainstream user tool. Prior attempts have been made at virtual worlds communities, viritual worlds and avatars. Here's my perspective on what we need to do next, to go from a boutique, a few hundred people like in the 1988 meeting on interoperability, to thousands of people. I want to enjoy this time before hundreds of people we don't know enter this market.

What's different from times before is that we have all this creative energy. We have all the momentum from MMOGs, and all the production capability from unified communication tools, and slamming them together at a high rate of speed and getting all the energy we have in this industry. An "aha" moment for the industry is that you could take something like World of Warcraft and use it as an everyday business tool. This does fill a need in the technology toolbox. I would like to see this succeed this time around.

There are 6.6 billion people on the planet, of which 2.3 billion have mobile phones, about one-third. There are 1.2 billion with Internet connectivity -- mash those together and that's the addressable market for virtual worlds -- 465 million.

How effective are these virtual worlds? How commonly used is this tool? Take that number and divide by ten -- 40 or 50 million (in contrast to teh 100 million the first speaker mentioned). That's a very small percentage of mainstream adoption. We need to take it from what it is right now to a mainstream thing. Compare it to the 37 million people who in the early 90s were in online communities such as Compuserve, AOL, EWorld, The Well, etc.

We're at the inflection point where we can decide, are we going to go the IM route....do we all want a piece of VHS or do we want to be IM with different platforms? We don't need one platform, we just need interoperability...a common identity so we don't have to have different avatars and stuff. There's too much switching cost, and companies right now have to bet on one of 36 numbers -- which world or worlds will succeed?

If we have to wait for companies to hang back we'll potentially die. We need hybrid vigor -- breed all the best aspects of these virtual worlds together and get the best experience. If we had had these conversations about standards instead of just developing HTML we would still be debating the standards and there wouldn't be a Web.

Commonness is the theme...not just one platform...there are different tools for different jobs. There should not be discrete silos, should not limit connectivtity to everyone I know and all of the resources available to me on the Internet.

The market will have a number of forms, and we need to be able to be multimodal, move between modalities. It's about not wanting to pave over the diverse culture of virtual worlds and make it a big-ass strip mall. I want to take the fun to work. If you can harness the attention and apply it to work, would be great. As IBM says, what if we could get people addicted to work as they are to these games. How about if we could go to a virtual worlds to get our work done instead of to this flat soulless spreadhseet, so I don't have to go from this engrossing experience to a non-engrossing experience.

Beware of the false dichotomy between work and fun. We can make work a lot more fun than it is, we have an opportunity here to change and update the current manner of work. It's incumbent upon us to do better and this is one of the ways we can.

It's almost a fallacy and doing the industry a disservice to say there are these discrete segments -- there's lots of overlap. Think about the good of the industry and everybody's slice of the pie will get larger.

In order to have the overlap between types of environments, you must have a strong concept of identity. When you step back it's about trust. People are looking at solutions like Open ID....I know we haven't solved this for the Internet yet, but maybe virtual worlds can help with that too. Then I can move the goodwill and the reputation I have established for myself across the board, without having to prove myself in each site/world. something else that's a facet of ID is presence (ID with tags) the sanity function....how do you make presence an integral part of the experience and let it follow you around....how do you make that more of an implicit rather than explicit (example: marking every email as urgent, devalues it)?

[Some examples of work being done to help develop virtual worlds along the lines he's talking about, all links that can be found on his blog:] Coventry University in the UK has a Serious Games Institute that is working on wifi triangulation....putting your avatar where you actually are, mapping the real and the virtual -- a way that you can be in two places at once.

Sensible Organizations from MIT MediaLab put "lojacks" on engineers, tracked them online, and got really good contextual interaction, though no one really wanted to be lojacked. Someone is working on making this a piece of bling in Second Life -- the opportunity to add that where-are-you kind of contextual information to the virtual worlds experience.

In virtual worlds, we don't have to be as good as a physical interaction. We often overlook the things we can do in virtual worlds interactions that are better than real-life interactions, such as, augment the meeting by bringing in relative data, have the metadata floating around...we can do better than real life meetings in many ways that more than make up for the ways we are less than real life. We can put people on a continuum according to their opinions, augment and instrument physical reality (MIT MediaLabs again).

And we need metrics -- if it's just amongst us, we can throw around any numbers we like for users...but we have to give those outside the industry numbers they can use. They want to know real metrics, facts and figures. As an industry we should step forward and start putting forward universal metrics that outsides can understand. I'm announcing here the Metaverse Market Index, spearheaded by Nick Wilson of Metaverse and Robert Bloomfield of Cornell...they are going to be building the same kind of info as you would get from the Wall Street Journal stock index.

To be able to go from 40 million true believer, early adopter numbers to something bigger, we wil need common platforms -- not the lowest common denominator, but interoperability between platforms, content when applicable...we all agree in principle to move this forward (do you want all of Beta or a piece of VHS?)...There is an announcement from IBM and Linden Labs about this that is a complement to this and will benefit all of us.

And finally, the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT....we got so tied up in if we could do this, we sometimes overlook "should we do this" (as in Jurassic Park)...Tom Malone founded the CCI to look at things like prediction markets, etc. They are going to look at how you have a "campfire" across these worlds, what do we gain in collective wisdom, collective intelligence. They will be doing a multi-year study to see how these environments are helping us and where they are deficient, understanding where virtual worlds will always be deficient to real-world interactions.

To sum up, we need these four things to grow virtual worlds: common identity (the Open ID project), common denominators (the Metaverse Market Index), common platforms (The Virtual Worlds Interoperability Forum), and common understanding (the Center for Collective Intelligence) to know, when is this the best tool for the job and when is it not? Where is the real societal impact?

To find out more about these, visit Christian Renaud's blogs at:

http://blogs.cisco.com/virtualworlds or http://xianrenaud.typepad.com

Virtual Worlds Expo: Togetherness--What Drives the Human Connection

2007-10-10T18:05:00.000-05:00

Giff Constable, Electric Sheep Company; Beth Coleman, MIT; Betsy Book, Makena (producers of There.com); Robin Harper, Second Life; Ron Meiners, Multiverse

Giff (moderator): Where are we falling down, where is human togetherness not working in virtual worlds right now?

Beth: Persistence of your network identity and a porousness .... on various levels I can carry my avatar in my pocket, it's not limited to a PC interaction....in terms of scale of use, I think the player experience needs to be designed for various levels of engagement....not everyone will end up building things or running a store or business. The different platforms address this in different ways, but all need to have better design for different levels of engagement.

Ron: We're taking interactions that happen in a solid space and transferring them into 2D and digital spaces where there are differentne space and moving them to another. Technology that we have available to us and that's being developed affords new possibilities for interaction....people can experiment with social identity, with a "lower cost of failure" because there are possibilities that are not available in the real world.

Betsy: Virtual worlds are incredibly good at fostering deep human social connections because they are filled with a sense of presence. In a 2D or 3D space where you can see an avatar, there's synchronicity. You can connect in real-time, a level of engagement you can't get in email. The trade-off is that virtual worlds are incredibly cumbersome, it's a full process to log in, etc. We have to work to do to make our spaces user-friendly and make people comfortable. Virtual worlds today are too insular -- they are a deep meaningful experience, but how do you extend that experience out to other parts of your life? Facebook and MySpace are doing this so much better than we are right now. That privacy and insularity works for togetherness, but you need to be able to take it outside the virtual world.

Robin: Downside to being in an online community is the anonymity. There's some value to anonymity -- by pretending to be someone else you can be more of who you really are. But what that means is that the person who doesn't know me in real life doesn't know that aspect of me and that can lead to trust issues. The challenge is to help people who are in this pseudonymous space take advantage of those issues. Portable ID is probably where we are going with this, the ability to reveal parts of your identity in a contextual way. It's the ability to reveal parts of your real life and yet keep parts of your life hidden until you trust the other person.

Beth: We do this anyway....within each context (youtube, myspace, etc.), we reveal parts of our personalities that are appropriate for that place.

Robin: I'm not saying we don't do it, I'm saying that technology could help us do it better.

Beth: We are becoming more compassionate with each other because we know so much about each other.

People find it very frightening because they see it as a privacy issue....not knowing what to expect from other people because you don't really know who they are, these are big issues.

Those have always been problems. Some aspects are new, but we have another set of tools for creating the preferred presentation of ourselves. These tools give us more flexibility in how we present ourselves.

What does togetherness mean? In earlier communities there was a reason why people got together, and now people don't know what to expect. Historically, online communities were together for a reason. Now we have spaces and people just come there.

Giff: What are the key things that are working to bring people together on your platform?

Betsy: Technical and social things....socially, communications form around common interests. One of the most powerful is fandom, sports, entertainment, whatever. That is a common interest that brings people together. wWhat creates the community isn't the topic itself but the everyday sharing of your life. That forms the everyday social glue. Virtual worlds are spaces that really easily enable people to come together around a common interest and then stay together. It's fairly easy in virtual worlds to find your interest group, and people are finding them...features such as voice chat gives you that sense of presence.

Robin: When we introduced voice in Second LIfe, there was a tremendous unhappiness, we were surprised at the pushback. People felt that by using voice, it would interfere with the exploration. Another issue was the language issue, as we are increasingly international. Where we've seen it adopted initially has been with corporations, with educators, the places where you would expect voice to be beneficial.

Betsy: In there.com, avatars create idealized versions of themselves and anonymity isn't such a touchy issue as it might be in Second Life...you're expected to move up the social ladder and use voice. I see people moving back and forth with chat and voice.

Robin: Chat is often being used as a visible backchannel in conversations where voice is used as well.

Ron: Multiverse is primarily a community of developers...most of our community dynamics is among developers, who are a worldwide bunch. In our world, people in voice rooms created songfests, prayers, a 24-hour AA meeting. Voice was a really powerful way for people to connect.

Beth: Does it matter what the tools are? In the different worlds, you get the world that you design. The tools have to be the ones you want. The virtual experience has to be meaningful for individuals, cater to their interests.

Tools that create a richer information stream can potentially create a more involving and presence-based experience. In the real world, we live in this information soup and that's not been translated online yet.

Communication enables socialization -- text, chat, im, voice -- the more options you can give users to communicate, that's what's going to sponsor that sense of togetherness. You have to pay attention to the style and the culture of the community you're working with...the set of tools for one group might not be styled correctly for another.

Also important are the kind of tools you provide users to manage their connections. The nature of the communities that formed in Second Life made us retool and give people a different set of tools, so they could manage things at a far more granular level.

Giff: What about globalization

Robin: One of the best tools in Second Life is a translator that the residents created, that you could type in English and it would come out in Japanese if that's who you were talking to. Overall, there are lots of opportunities for public diplomacy, for sharing your culture.

Questions from audience:

Facebook and MySpace are good at keeping casual connections alive -- how? It's the asynchronous aspect, looking for ways for people to let other people know what they're doing when they are not in-world.

Robin: What happens when a community goes from 75% US participants to 30% US participants in just a few months, as we did on Second Life....there's an opportunity there to bridge misunderstandings about culture, to share experiences.

What design choices has your world made to support togetherness? Robin: We're not interested in trying to micromanage different types of togetherness. We're trying to offer tools for collaborative creativity, allow people to come together in real time and create together.

Virtual Worlds Expo: Narrative in Virtual Worlds

2007-10-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

First up: Eric Rice of Slackstreet Entertainment: The video game industry has narrative figured out -- $350 million in sales in one week of Halo. Second Life is too big -- the narrative there is, what do the people of Earth do every day? Gaming is a top down narrative, virtual worlds are wide open -- would love to have the middle ground. His biggest concern -- How does story scale? How do you tell it across franchises?

Mike Monello, of Campfire (who was also one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project): We stumbled on to [collaborative narrative] by throwing a bunch of material we had used to make the movie online. People came and started engaging in the story, and started extending the story...we were not concerned about intellectual property, we were focused on the movie, and people were extending the story in ways that were not in the movie. We ran with it. By the time we sold the movie, that community was there.

People will engage for the sheer entertainment value of it....publishers don't give you a prize for reading a book, and you don't get a prize for watching a movie. Stories are how we engage in the world, and at the end of the day that's what we're all doing with our avatars. Sometimes it intersects with who you are and what you are doing and sometimes it goes way off.

Panel moderator Chris Carella of Electric Sheep quoted Richard Bartle, "godfather of virtual worlds" -- virtual worlds are about place, not story. He put that question to the panel.

Mike: They're both. I just moved to NY, and to me, NY is a big story. I came from Orlando, where everything is new and fabricated to give you a story. The difference is it's a distributed story, a personal story but not singular like someone making a movie or writing a book.

Eric: What is YouTube used for? To collect media, copyrighted content, or put up videos of people in their underwear singing...there's so much experience-driven. So many virtual worlds I am in, I only hang out with about 5 people.

Someone from the audience: Virtual worlds are a thing, as textured as life itself.

Examples of narrative environment in vitual worlds: Virtual MTV, Virtual Laguna Beach, Gaia Online, Saijo City, Motorati, CSI:NY, I Am Legend

CSI:NY is trans-media storytelling (Anthony Zuiker, creator of CSI:NY, gave the conference keynote this morning, talking about CSI:NY's cross-media storytelling project that will sart with the Oct. 24 issue of CSI:NY).

Mike: Virtual worlds are less about the story that you yourself are telling and more about the stage you are building for people to tell the story and extend the story. Example: Motorati, which gave people land and told them they could build anything they wanted, as long as their story was somehow about cars. When people start telling stories they become invested.

Eric: Gaming is work, and virtual worlds are social. If you golf in real life, I'm probably not hanging with you in virtual worlds. In that way virtual worlds are also anti-social. Do you trust your peers to build something as awesome as Halo?

Audience: Virtual worlds provide the oportunity to explore what is interactive fiction. Games are straight narrative, while virtual worlds are interactive

Mike: When you are designing a narrative for these worlds you have to trust the audience to take you to places you can't anticipate. If you do something that's really interesting and attractive to a lot of people and give them avenues to push and change and adjust, they will. 99% of the time where they push you is better than where you'd go by yourself.

Eric: Success means attracting people to participate. I got one story from American Apparel, but dozens of stories from Motorati. I like to put out what I call an FDK -- a fiction development kit -- which is a story fragment that you can let people run with. Yet I hate being virtual sometimes....can't we just get a bunch of us in a room sometime and look each other in the eye?

Mike: We allowed derivative works of Blair Witch, but we didn't allow anyone to put the real film online. This was part of the success of Blair Witch. Why would you penalize your fans, your customers, by not allowing them to participate by making derivative versions?

Chris -- Everyone should read Henry Jenkins' work on fan cultures.

Mike: Our campaigns are often trojan horses....the client is getting layer A but there's layer B for people, which you can't directly sell. When you don't have layer B it feels hollow, like it's just marketing...

How important is the narrative vs the functionality vs who's there? Do you weigh one over the other?

Mike -- We will use the narrative to attract the people we want....we'll start with who the client wants to attract, then we write a narrative that we believe wil appeal to those people, and leave it open-ended so those people will come in and change the direction so you get to the end game a different way.

Research and strategy -- a lot of people in advertising are frustrated movie makers, and they want to tell stories. To me it's if you want to make a movie, go make one....these campaigns are, someone had an idea for a story and a brand name and they sold them on it....and that's just wrong. The strategy has to come first. Brands should be wary. You have to start with what's the problem that you're trying to solve.

Ars Technica is a site that talks a lot about technology and narrative. They say we need more narrative in games, though gamers are a tough crowd who often say, who cares? I just want to shoot you. So it depends on the genre -- for first-person shooters, the narrative doesn't matter so much.