Guest Speaker
Speaker: Josh Levison, practice lead for Mobile & Gaming at IPG Emerging Media Lab
The Inter Public Group (IPG) Lab is a holding company of advertising agencies that is harnessing innovation to further technologies. A few of the emerging media that they work on: mobile, gaming, online video, and social media. Josh’s job is to be a digital strategist with a focus on mobile and gaming. The discussion we had was amazing. There is a lot of emerging technologies that makes these two fields particularly exciting.
MOBILE
Infrastructure: Soon mobile phones will be your primary computing device. People need to have technology in hands. It needs to be simple to use. And the network needs to support that technology.
Behavior: People are adapting new behaviors with their phone. Already 40% of iPhone users browse the web more on their phone than on their PC (3 years down the road, this could be pretty telling).
4G: Speed of network is staggering—20x faster than average US Broadband speed. Expect phones to run your Internet and TV connection by the end of 2011.
Location-Based Movement: This allows you to figure out the person as an advertiser and target content specifically to meet their needs. For example, if someone is reading about iPhones, then have an ad about the phone. Better yet, if someone is in a movie theater, target he or she with an ad about a Bose surround sound home entertainment system. Location-based movement allows you to target people that are more inclined to buy your product.
GAMING
Things to consider: How does a brand interact physiologically? If you are petting a dog on a touch screen for an ad, are you paying per click or per pet? In-game marketing is an advantage to advertisers. Farmville offers you the ability to unlock certain things if you participate enough on the fan page. This is a model that will be used more frequently down the road.
Things to check out: MIT 6th Sense Project and Project Natal (Milo)
Karen’s Corner
- User experience is everything. Always think about how easy it is to start up and use your site.
- Don’t give up on Email. It is still very useful in business, and is a good way to get your message out. Even if spam mail, people will read the subject line.
- People by nature (social norms)
- Diffusion of responsibility—point out someone to do something instead asking a group of people to do something (people will place differ the responsibility to others in the group instead of taking it on themselves)
- Law of reciprocity—if someone gives something to you… you’ll likely want to give back
- Reactants—reaction you have when someone forces you to do something (you react back and don’t want to do it)
