Check out this example of Augmented Reality from a current Papa John campaign.  Augmented Reality (AR) has come up a lot in the last month.  And there has been some interesting uses — so far my favorite is Lego’s use of AR with an instore kiosk.  Hold a Lego box up to the kiosk and see what the Lego set build in 3D.

I’m not sure that AR is the novelity dejur or here to stay.  If it is here to stay it needs better execution than this example from Papa John.  There’s something interesting to the technology — it will be interesting to see it develop.  Keep an eye on this space to see if it is a potential tactic for a promotional campaign or online/offline product.

Nielson Report

Yes, it is here to stay.  Twitter offers a new and compelling service that has quickly grown to be an Internet phenomenon.  But marketers beware — you’ll see a very different story emerge over the next couple months.  What appears to be a mass market communication machine will shrink back into a platform for the  highly connected niche.

Here’s some great data from Neilson’s Blog (link here) detailing Oprah’s Twitter usage since her show on the subject aired.  Like most users, now at a 60% bail out rate, she is quickly trailing off usage.  As the graph above shows, Twitter is bleading users at an unsustainable rate.  They need to change or they will start to shrink.

Thoughts:

• Twitter needs to tweak it’s service offering to break into the mainstream.  It needs to identify it’s core reason for being and develop tools that allow users to tap into that core service.
• I’d recommend that Twitter focus on being the ultimate real time distributor of news.  “News” defined here as any sharing of information like “Space Shuttle Lands” to “Party at My House Tonight”.   They need to develop tools that allow users to set up an interface that makes it easy to digest that news in ways that are more friendly then they have now.
• They should expand their news offering to include more professional content and separate the professional content from the amateurs.  We’ve seen celebrities attract huge followings, but what about the paparazzi?  I’m not endorsing paparazzi’s but I could envision a service where they could sell real time celebrity feeds.  Or reporters could Twit out events as they happen.
• Twitter needs to be integrated into HULU.  I want to be able to watch Lost and discuss Lost with the Lost community at the same time. I want my Twitter feed to scroll on my TV screen as I watch.
• Marketers need to define how they can use Twitter.  If at all.  Does your brand have a need for a continuous live feed?  Maybe — but make it worth it for both you and your brand.

UPDATE:  I was not aware of the Twitter TV concept when I wrote this post last weekend.  Check out this article from USA Today (LINK HERE).  It’s very close to the Paparazzi concept I outlined above — not trying to toot my horn here.  But I though the idea was way way out there when I posted it.  I’m a bit floored that it is in the “works”.

Hulu.com is a fairly simple concept.  In 2007 NBC and FOX created Hulu.com to broadcast television content over the internet.   In April of 2009 Disney’s ABC unit bought into the joint venture with a 27% stake.  The concept is pretty simple – push TV shows over the Internet.  But the reason why these historic competitors would work together and the ramifications it will have on both the television industry and the Internet are profound.  Let’s dig in a bit.

The first thing we have to understand is who the players are and how they make money.  I’ve created this over simplified chart to help illustrate:

Major Players

Cable Companies, Internet Service Providers, and Cell Phone companies make their money by selling subscriptions to consumers to gain access to content.  These companies have saturated the US market — essentially everyone has cable, cell phones, and internet access.  The market is not going to grow.  So the only way they can grow is to add new services to their offering.  But there is only so much the consumer is willing to pay.

Content Producers like Disney and Fox make their money by selling advertising placement on their content.  (This is oversimplified but provides the picture we need to understand what’s going on).  The more content they get in front of the consumer the more money they make.  The bigger the audience the more they can charge for the advertising spots.

Hulu brings that content directly to the consumer through the internet.  Allowing NBC, FOX, and Disney to create a bigger audeince for their content.  But since the Internet providers charge a flat rate for internet they don’t make any more money.  In fact, since the Cable companies are also the Internet providers they are concerned that consumers could cancel their Cable subscriptions and just watch TV over their internet connection — reducing the consumers monthly subscription fee.  AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN AND WHY HULU IS A HUGE PARADIGM SHIFT!

Once you can watch TV over the internet and once your TV is connected to the internet you don’t need cable anymore.  How does this effect the players…

Content Providers love this!  In the short run they are now growing their audience by providing content on the Internet and Cable TV.  Which increases their revenues.  Plus they can launch new shows on the internet to test them before going to big budget main stream distribution.  In the long run they get to add functionality to their content that only the internet brings — like instant product purchase, sampling, coupons, and promotions.

Cable Companies are scared to death.  How do they justify selling two services to consumers when the consumer only needs Internet in the future.

Internet Service Providers need to figure this out.  For the most part they are also the Cable Company.  But more importantly, they need to figure out a model that charges consumers for usage — not just flat rates.  The news is full of stories right now about ISPs capping the amount of data you can download.  There is a future where the more Internet you use the more your bill will be — and TV over the internet uses a lot of bandwidth.

So, why is Hulu important?  According to Neilson:

“Hulu ranks #2 (online video outlet behind YouTube) as it continues on a steep growth trajectory, increasing 490% in total streams year-over-year (YoY), from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009,” (Link here to full article).

People are ready for TV content over the internet.  The Content Creators will be the winners.  The Content distributors need to figure this new model out.  Marketers will have innovative new ways to communication their message to consumers.  And consumers will end up paying more — but will be getting a lot more content and functionality for their money.

When developing campaigns that solicit user generated content it’s always difficult to determine a measure of success.  How many submitted videos and video views make a campaign successful?  When answering this questions I take two approaches:

1)  Cost of impression.  A successful campaign will meet a Cost of Impression measure.  For instance, if the campaign costs $1MM and generates 10MM impressions the cost per impression is ($1MM / 10MM) = $0.10 per impression.  You can then benchmark that against other media options to determine a successful campaign.

2) Benchmark against historics.  One reason I keep this blog is so that I can record data points for campaigns.  This article from ClickZ has some great data points on a viral Pepsi campaign (article here).  The main take away is:

• “There were 400 video submissions posted on YouTube, surpassing YouTube’s benchmark of 200 videos.”

• “The videos received over four million page views.”

• “Over 700 blog postings mentioned the ad campaign.”

We don’t know how much Pepsi paid to promote this campaign — probably a lot.

eMarketer Data

What do teens do online?  Same thing they do offline — socialize.  These numbers from eMarketer paint the picture.  75% of Teens are engaged with online Social Networking.  If you’re looking to reach this audience a robust SocNet program is key.

The difficult part is interrupting the conversation.  Just like offline socialization marketers can’t jump into the middle of a group of girls in the mall.  We have to create opportunities for the marketing message to be a part of the Social Conversation.  Easier said than done — Teens are savvy and will reject overly obvious attempts.  I’ll keep an eye open for good examples of marketers working SocNet for teens.  My thoughts are…

Thoughts:

• Social Networking for teens will evolve.  The current hot spot is still Facebook but don’t expect it to be next year.
• Teens are connected to their mobile phones.  Expect to see a mobile social networking platform to emerge in the next 12 months.
• When thinking about how to play in this space look for opportunities to improve the SocNet experience for Teens.  A big win for marketers is when they can add value to the experience AND deliver their message.  For example, a travel agency that let’s Teens rate and rank the best beaches and share those experiences with their friends.
• Consider merging the marketing message with the product functionality.  It’s not just a running shoe — it’s a community of like-minded individuals challenging each other to beat their best.  It’s not just a stick of gum — but a dating service.  It’s not just lipstick — but a fashion coordinator.