One of my pet peeves lately is how our industry doesn’t seem to have a consistent name attached to it. Ad Age usually refers to Interactive Marketing as Digital Marketing while other advertising pubs sometimes refer to it as Online Marketing. I’ve even seen both terms used interchangeably when it really doesn’t get to the essence of what matters most. That Interactive Marketing isn’t just digital and it isn’t just online.
Interactive Marketing is just that. Interactive. Our job is to entice people to interact with the marketing or advertising initiatives we provide. Interactive Marketing isn’t just about creating websites, ‘online’ banner ads, etc. etc. Interactive Marketing is much more. It is a unique medium that allows instant interaction between a marketer and his/her consumer. I would also argue that social media falls under Interactive Marketing because creating a dialogue (social media staple) is synonymous with creating interaction (interactive marketing staple.)
Interactive Marketing can be online. But it’s becoming a greater part of event marketing, mobile marketing, and even television advertising and marketing through social media integrations.
Interactive often is digital, but not always. Digital Marketing often implies again that our industry is about ‘computer’ and ‘code’ related marketing initiatives when it’s so much more than that.
Interactive Marketing is about dialogue, conversation and interaction.
When I think of digital marketing, I think of this:
When I think of online marketing, I think of this:
But, when I think of Interactive marketing, I think of this:
And it’s about time the Traditional Media and Trades did the same…
June 23, 2009, Los Angeles – Here at Zugara, we’re proud to announce the launch of our newest application, The Webcam Social Shopper. Coupling the functionality of both Augmented Reality and Motion Capture, this application will allow anyone with a webcam to shop online right from within their video feed. We like to think of it as “Augmented Reality meets Utility”. This app allows you to seemingly hold articles of clothing up in front of yourself to see “how they look”. And the Motion Capture allows the app to track your movements so you can interact with the site (e.g. cycle through a product’s various colors/styles or take a picture of yourself so you can get immediate feedback from friends on Facebook) while standing several feet away from your computer’s controls. No extra downloads, no new plug-in, no consumer headache.
To see the application in action, check out our video below.
Now that you’ve seen the application in its “Alpha State”, think about the potential an app like this has as we partner with brands to allow their consumers to do things like:
Livestream their webcam’s feed to friends and loved ones, and get comments and feedback right next to the application in real time.
Receive “clothing care packages” from loved ones who might be somewhere else in the country and set up times to “shop together”… online.
Enter their measurements into the app and get a “fitted image”.
Match entire outfits at the same time, both top and bottom.
Shop right within a branded Facebook application.
It’s not a secret that friends/family recommendations influence a consumer’s purchase decision and beat any other “consumer touchpoint”. Now, we can help brands empower their consumers to integrate their friends and family into their online shopping process like never before. The thinking is that this application will help bridge the gap between how people like to shop offline and how they are forced to shop online, subsequently providing an enhanced interactive shopping experience for the consumer and increased sales for the brand. So, what do you think? Please, feel free to share this post with anyone and everyone, or embed the video above in your own blog. And, as always, we’d love to know your thoughts below…
(UPDATE: We’ve partnered with RichRelevance to integrate their recommendation engine into WSS and create a completely unique application dubbed Fashionista. Fashionista is currently live on Tobi.com and you can read more about that launch on Fast Company.)
About Zugara
Zugara is an interactive marketing agency with a passion for emerging media and technologies. Unlike most agencies, we don’t claim to do everything: Interactive Video, Social Media, Mobile Marketing, and Website & Application Development are our core competencies. Since our doors opened in 2001, we’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the world’s best brands such as Reebok, Sony Computer Entertainment Of America, Toyota, Activision, Jelly Belly, Casio, The Air Force, and Lexus to create strategic interactive campaigns that focus on accomplishing their business objectives. Based in Los Angeles, we’re currently in the process of expanding, and opening our second office in New York (www.zugara.com) (www.zugarastudios.com).
For more information on The Webcam Social Shopper or ZugMo Technology, please contact ar@zugara.com. For all other inquiries, please contact info@zugara.com.
Copyright 2009 ZugMo Technology
Copyright 2009 Webcam Social Shopper
Copyright 2009 Zugara Inc.
Patent Pending
The main appeal of Twitter is that many people use it for a variety of different things. But one area I don’t quite get is why you would ‘tweet’ a video on a platform off Twitter that requires you to spend time not only uploading but converting it as well? At least to me, the appeal of Twitter has always been short, quick text based information and the availability of real-time search (of that info).
In this recent mad dash to have a Twitter video platform, companies like 12 Seconds, Twitvid.io, and even YouTube, are trying to create a service similar to TwitPic where you can upload your videos for your Twitter followers to view. Once uploaded, your followers would be notified that the video is ready for viewing. But that’s the problem – Twitter’s success is based on real-time information and conversation. So the same should hold true for Video in order for it to provide the same impact of a real-time conversation and flow. Does a few minutes really matter if someone’s not watching video in real-time. Well yes. Think of watching a sporting event as it happens or being told 10 minutes later what happened during the sporting event. What has a greater impact?
Then you have practical internet and consumer bandwidth limitations to deal with. Video is a much larger sized upload than a picture. So even with YouTube’s recent announcement that they’re joining ‘the stream’, they’re still not offering information in a real-time capacity for users. They’re only sending out a ‘tweet’ about your video after it’s been uploaded AND converted in their system. And if you’ve done this before you know it’s not an immediate process.
Though we’re still in the infancy of the real-time web and information ‘stream’, everything is evolving at a breakneck pace. You can see some of this evolution by tracking some of the live streaming sites or people that are already ‘lifecasting’. For example, Qik and Ustream already have Twitter integrated into their platforms so that the second you start broadcasting live, real-time video, a tweet goes out to your followers with a link so they can watch your broadcast in real-time. Not only is your audience notified in real-time and can join your broadcast as it happens, but they can also interact with you while your broadcasting. (We recently used Qik on the iPhone to experiment with live interactive mobile broadcasts at E3 and blogged about it here.) Contrast this with YouTube’s method of tweeting out an uploaded video and it almost makes the online video market leader look even more behind the times than they already are.
Further emphasizing how important video will be to the web is a recent forecast from Cisco that by 2013, 90% of all internet traffic will be video. With recent announcements of video on the iPhone 3G S and Qik’s addition to Nokia’s handsets, mobile real-time video is also going to contribute to the real-time and ‘in the moment’ nature of how video is both viewed and shared. Shooting your video, uploading, waiting for it to convert and then finally letting someone view it is not going to be optimal for this real-time revolution.
The question isn’t whether the real-time revolution will continue to evolve (like it has) to feed people’s increasingly insatiable need for instantaneous information. Rather the question will revolve around who, from the current stable of real-time streaming video communities, is poised run the next leg of the real-time race. Currently, Qik and Ustream are neck in neck in that race with no indication that either is about to let up.
Interactive Data Visualization is becoming a hot trend in the interactive marketing world and the Many Eyes Website has some great examples. One in particular is the World Map of Social Networks created by user Vincos that was posted here. The link has an interactive version of the map so check it out. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ve included the image below:
How accurate is this? I’m not sure and haven’t had time to fact check what the largest social network is in Belarus. But, one thing this shows that’s definitely accurate is how fast MySpace fell off the global map and how quickly Facebook has risen to global dominance. This is also accurately reflected in recent Compete stats (as my compadre Jack pointed out):
What is also apparent (and disturbing) is that in this 21st century world, we still have many countries in Africa that are not connected and are getting left behind in this latest social media / internet revolution…
For this week’s post, I wanted to keep it simple. A friend of mine showed me this site and even though I haven’t had much time with it, it’s definitely worth a Beta Spotlight posting. It’s called Colorotate! This site is a tool for all designers. You can create, share, and view other users’ color palettes while creating art. Although many of you who may read this will think that this site is similar to Adobe’s Kuler, I can assure you that it has its differences and may even be better. I’ll let you decide…
“Colors come to life in 3D! – Browse color palettes, or create your own. Adjust, mix, and blend to your heart’s content.”
Photoshop CS4 plugin available Fall ’09! Pretty Cool!
Key Features:
Login and/or create a Colorotate account by using your Google account. Simple as logging into Google and creating Colorotate display user name!
Intuitive: In 3D, you can quickly see the multidimensional nature of your colors and the relationships between colors in a way that matches how your eye and brain perceive color.
Agile: Change your colors one at a time, blend two colors together, or transform a full palette of colors all at once with contrast and color joysticks — adjustments that previously have been beyond your reach.
Reliable: Take the guesswork out of setting up color harmonies or color contrasts by adjusting the distances between colors in 3D.
Efficient: Use Colorotate’s quick drag-and-drop to adjust hue, brightness, and saturation. Import and export in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE). Soon, you’ll be able to save even more time with our Photoshop Plugin.
Piggyback: Browse themes created by the community, or search by tag, title, or creator to discover new color ideas.
Community: Post your palettes, and tag palettes to engage with the ColoRotate community, or discussions. In the future, look for features like comments and ratings.
For this week’s post, I wanted to share a site with those of you who love to travel around the world. It’s called “Ruba“, and if you’ve never heard about it; it can be a traveler’s best friend. I will definitely use this for my next trip out of the country. For a phase 2, I hope they integrate some type of video interface to allow users to upload travel videos. Most of all, it would be cool if they make this into a mobile site as well, so users can update their travels right there and then.
“Discover Your Next Perfect Trip – Ruba.com is a community who is passionate about finding and sharing the greatest travel destinations worldwide.”
Key Features:
- Make your own Travel Guide
Name your own travel guide
Choose your activity during that visit
Upload or add existing photos to your travel guide
Add multiple destinations to your travel guide
Write a review about where you were
Share your guide via Twitter, Facebook, HTML embed, and/or URL
- Facebook Connect to ask your friends the best places to visit
- Create a User Profile
- Check out other users’ travel guides for references
- Review a city and/or specific activity within that country
- Google Map mashup of places you or other users have visited
Mashable recently wondered if “Real-Time Is The Future Of The Web”. I definitely think so as the rise of Twitter is basically a result of real-time information. Do you really care if someone is having a coffee at that moment? Probably not but being notified that someone is drinking a Starbucks coffee (your potential brand) at that moment is another situation altogether. As a brand, you are now able to engage with that person on the fly.
So if real-time information is the future of the web, how will that affect the online video world? There are already a few video community sites positioned for the real-time web like UStream and Justin.TV. Why go to YouTube and wait to upload your video when you can just as easily stream it in real-time? This is a clear advantage real-time video communities like UStream have over sites like YouTube. Yes, YouTube has dipped it’s toes into the real-time video arena with recent efforts like President Obama’s First 100 Days In Office live video event and there will always be a need for standard video community sites where your past videos can be archived. But, is YouTube positioned to be a real-time video community like UStream? Not if their agenda is to favor premium content over the foundation their community built.
Where video-based community sites that feature live streaming have a clear advantage is with the ability to incorporate real-time contextual search into the live broadcast itself. YouTube is already doing this with the contextual search ads that appear when you’re watching certain videos. However, imagine you’re watching TV and you hear or see a predefined buzz word or tag that notifies you to change the channel to watch that tagged content. That’s the advantage any real-time streaming video based community will have if people are able to tag specific keywords to find that live and real-time video content. Some technologies like EveryZing already currently allow this for standard uploaded video. Now think of doing a mobile real-time interactive video broadcast that also incorporates contextual search and you have the ability to tag your broadcast with keywords so you can generate a live audience on the fly.
Though this is a potential nightmare waiting to happen for something such as live events (it makes it even easier for someone to broadcast a live feed of a game from the stadium), can you imagine how huge this will be if you’re able to tag the Dallas Cowboys and be directed in real-time to the relevant online video broadcast covering that term? Very, very cool stuff unless you’re a Redskins fan.
We Are Organized Chaos (WAOC) is Zugara’s (www.zugara.com) interactive marketing and advertising blog where we’ll be featuring some great projects and discussing upcoming trends in the digital world. Work — good and bad — will be critiqued. Hope you’ll enjoy reading our insights and thoughts on interactive.
