Checking in, and uploading this post using my iphone WordPress app. This is kinda cool I must say to be able to be anywhere to start a conversation. This week I have been travelling and thus using my mobile and associated communication applications to a high degree. I have also been following the South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive, film, and music festivals and conferences that are taking place in Austin, Texas right now and held each and every year in March.
SXSW first began in 1987 focused on music and in 1994, added film and interactive conferences. Now in its 24th year the conference has grown into the must-attend, must follow networking event for the 21st century advertising and marketing professional. The conference produces considerable amount of twitter and blog posts and is an incubator of cutting-edge technologies that brings together the world’s most creative digital folk, web developers, designers, bloggers, wireless innovators, content producers, programmers, widget inventors and new media entrepreneurs.
Five days of keynote presentations and provocative panel sessions provide hands-on training as well as big-picture analysis of the future of advertising and marketing using technology. I have enough data and insight from this to drive ideas at our agency for the next six months!
Because of this conference we have seen some amazing innovations and trends develop and scale very quickly into main stream advertising channels. For example it was only three years ago that Twitter launched at SXSW Interactive. At this year’s conference Twitter CEO Evan Williams gave his highly anticipated keynote address with much of the preceding buzz surrounded the possible announcement of a revenue-generating advertising platform for the popular micro-blogging site, but that never materialized. Instead, Williams announced a new service called @anywhere, allowing users to use Twitter through other websites, similar to Facebook’s Facebook Connect. Initial partners in @anywhere include the New York Times, Bing, Advertising Age and The Huffington Post. More details will be needed to see what impact this has on social media advertising strategies over the coming months.
So within three years of this conference Twitter has now become main stream in the advertising world and become a constant conversation on how businesses should use the channel in the communication mix. This is amazing when you really stop and think about it.
Last year it was Foursquare launching a location service-based social network-come-game where in twelve short months it has swelled to more than 500,000 users worldwide. It now has 1.6 million check-ins a week and growing. Check into restaurants and any kind of nightspot or watering hole, perhaps with a little message about where you are and what you’re doing – all very brief – and the system will then register what you’re up too.
Gowalla is another location platform with over 100,000 people using its application that is also very active at South by Southwest this week. Gowalla revolves around finding virtual objects in real-world locations, something like a scavenger hunt. Conference members can find a virtual drink coaster and redeem it at a participating bar for a free beverage.
In 2010 based on the SXSW conference conversations had over the coming days it’s a fair bet that GPS location features are going to become mainstream over the next twelve to twenty four months.
This could give a lift to mobile advertising, which is now just a tiny percentage of overall spending on online ads. It could drive new customer engagement programs and marketing programs to spark and engage tied customer databases.
So who in New Zealand is going to put some investment and learning into this trend to enhance their current brand customer experience? Or is the strategy to wait until GPS location tools, platforms and features are considered mainstream and begin to roll solutions, ideas, products in a crowded channel like we currently do on the platforms Face book and Twitter each and every day. Learning how to engage in a crowded market certainly has its risks for brands in my mind and I have always strongly advised our clients to be learning new platforms i.e. mobile apps, facebook apps, IPad applications as examples of this. Get in early.
The lesson here is as it’s always been data drives insight drives idea, drives testing, drives learning, drives innovation drives programs, drives optimization and ultimately drives business success.
Checking out!
Author: Adam Good, AIM Proximity / Clemenger Group
