With the new year almost here – I’ve started thinking about what I’ll be focusing on this year.
- Bio-Fuels
- Gamification
- Loyalty/Rewards System
- Immersive Marketing
Bio-Fuels
I have plan to continue my experiments with algae. I’ve had some success with growing algae in my small scale bioreactor and I’ve already begun to scale it up. Of course the hard part is solving the harvesting and extracting issues. Some of my recent studies have suggested that contamination might be something I’ll have to deal with. I’ll keep you posted.
Gamification
I have some really cool gamification ideas. I recently re-imagined what we could do with our current game platform and the sky’s the limit. Hopefully a lot more on this later in the year.
Loyalty/Rewards System
Humm, I wonder what I can say about this?? How about this, there’s a new loyalty system in the works and I’ll be heavily involved with the migration and implementation.
Immersive Marketing
This is a concept I’ve been toying with. I’ve considered writing a book about it, or maybe I’ll just try create a demo of what it is. The hardest part is being able to bring together all the data sources into a A.I. like platform – I think the pieces are available but we’re a few years out on this one.
I don’t usually write about theses things – but what happened?
First the Patriot act – Spy on anyone for any reason – no search warrant required.
Now the Defense Authorization bill passed the senate, really? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it ~ Imprison anyone forever, for any reason without a trial… Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch said, “By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,”
Next mix in SOPA – you know the bill that basically allows the government and big business to censor anything on the internet.
Remember:
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
– Thomas Paine
Here’s the challenge taken directly from the link/story below – how will we “interpret huge–and ever-rising–amounts of information being collected today”?
Sometimes I think the missing ingredient is: What do we want to know? Maybe we don’t know what we want to know? I think the person with the best answers to “What do we want to know” will be the most important thing to start with… from there I’m sure will find more questions to ask.
For those of you who know me – you know I like to create stuff. Checkout my newest creation an algae bioreactor. It’s kind of a small profile bioreactor just a proof of concept really. So far no leaks in the house. I’ll be excited to see if I can grow some algae and then harvest it.
“Communicating Information in a Social Network System about Activities from Another Domain.”
The abstract:
In one embodiment, a method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain. The method includes maintaining a profile for each of one or more users of the social networking system, each profile identifying a connection to one or more other users of the social networking system and including information about the user. The method additionally includes receiving one or more communications from a third-party website having a different domain than the social network system, each message communicating an action taken by a user of the social networking system on the third-party website. The method additionally includes logging the actions taken on the third-party website in the social networking system, each logged action including information about the action. The method further includes correlating the logged actions with one or more advertisements presented to the one or more users on the third-party website as well as correlating the logged actions with a user of the social networking system.
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facelook-coca-colas-facial-recognition-app/
Interesting, don’t you think? I’ve worked on similar projects where the marketing message displayed depended on the who was watching but this takes that to a whole new level. The software and image recognition software I worked with only knew the demographic of who was watching not the the actual person.
How long before we can start to tailor marketing messages by identifying you by your face? Maybe newspapers and magazines could embed inexpensive biometric sensors on their pages so they can tailor ads to you? Should be interesting to see where this all goes.
Mark today down or Facebook will for you – Facebook just became a digital all knowing scrapbook of your online life. Its a great way to get you to give more personal and or private information for Facebook to sell to advertisers, right?
Edit:
You’d think as a marketer I’d really be into this… but I’m really not. To me this adds confusion to my idea of immersive marketing. For instance – just because I’m listening to a new song or reading an new article doesn’t mean I like it, or that I want to recommend it or even share it. I prefer to run it through my “personal filters” then think about if my friends might like it or find it useful or even hate it. (yes, sometimes I like to share stuff I hate just to see the response I get from other people). I assume you’ll be able to decide if you want to: “frictionless” share or whatever the other choices in the app might be but while you and I are tech savvy – I know a lot of people who aren’t and will just automatically choose the app default.
Now lets take a look at the extreme. I start to “frictionless” share my location, tweets, purchases and anything you can think of. As a crafty programmer you add all of this info to a map and schematics of buildings. And now you share that I’m in the bathroom reading Backpacker Magazine, or you correlate that I am with someone at a specific location and you pull up the public webcam that is near me and share that video, or you know that the person I am near is reading a story about radical thinking – am I now suspected of being a radical with that guys same views? (by the way I hope not I am a radical with my own views damn it!)
Now lets consider the not so extreme. Hey, Troy… Thanks for applying for our job. Could you please friend me on Facebook. Thanks.
If this “frictionless” sharing becomes the norm – I’m happy to be weird!
A business that takes some of load off of emergency rooms and doctor visits.
Here’s how I envision it.
- We build several hardware devices that attach to a tablet device. The devices will have the ability to monitor; breathing, heart rate, bloold pressure, etc (maybe even an x-ray camera)
- All that data gets fed into the tablet for monitoring and – later communications
- Have a team of nurses (working from home or anywhere really) ready to receive a call from anyone using the tablet.
- Before you visit the emergency (unless it’s really bad of course) you click the program’s icon and it calls (video call with the front facing camera) an available nurse (or other provider) and the nurse asks you what is wrong – you answer - then she instructs you to attach the device (if you didn’t already) and she gets a real time data feed… I think you get the rest.
Wanna help build it?
Just a quick post about the most important part of your ad. My research has shown 70% of the pulling power of your ad comes from the headline. It makes sense to me. When you are reading the news or a magazine (online or off) You scan the headline of each article to see if you want to read more… if you’re not interested you simple skip to the next article. That same action applies to ads. Your headline has 5-8 seconds to capture the attention of the reader – that’s it only 5-8 seconds! That being the case – when you are creating ad – spend most of your time focused on the headline.
What makes a good headline?
- A strong benefit
- An extreme promise
- A startling statement
- Stimulate curiosity
And please, please, please don’t put your company name in the headline! Your company name belongs on the bottom. It’s part of the call to action not the headline…
I just finished Flash Foresight and I have to say the author (Daniel Burrus) and I share a common vision. It’s one of the best book I’ve ever read. I highly recommend reading/listening to this book.
Here’s a little about the book:
How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible
Have you ever wished you could predict the future—and be right? What would it be like if you could clearly see critical changes in the months and years ahead, and use those glimpses to shape that future, instead of just letting it unfold by default? You can, says noted visionary, technology forecaster and business strategist Daniel Burrus. But the buzzwords of the past two decades—being agile, staying proactive, thinking outside the box—are no longer enough.
In a world that is transforming at unprecedented and accelerating rates, it takes something more. It takes flash foresight: the ability to trigger a burst of accurate insight about the future and use it to produce a new and radically different way of doing things. In his new book, Flash Foresight.HarperBusiness, January 2011), Burrus takes the concept of looking into the future and transforms it into a new paradigm for solving “impossible” problems, unearthing “invisible” opportunities, and running extraordinarily successful businesses in the twenty-first century.
If you only read one book this year make sure it’s this one!