What We Are Reading

What We Are Reading | What We Think | Subscribe to DigitalBeyond

We cut through the clutter of the web to highlight innovation and forward-thinking. The best stories from leading publications – hand selected and organized to provide you a single point of access.

Search Results

Results 1 - 47 of 47 for All Dates , All Industries , Technology Implementation , All Regions , All Audiences

Sort results by:

Newest |

M3W Favorites

Results per page: 5 | 10 | 25 | 50

Building A Brand Story Greater Than The Sum Of Its Individual Parts (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 01/20/2011

Rather than providing a plethora of tactical solutions, today’s abundance of marketing channels may simply overwhelm marketers. Standard targeted marketing used to be a relatively simple game of point-and-shoot at three main channels (TV, print and direct mail) to cover all bases. Now, with the addition of social media platforms, mobile marketing, web, and email to the traditional channels, adopting a successful strategy can get confusing. Aim the same message at all the channels and the results can be downright disastrous. Multi-channel marketing offers marketers a mechanism to “pull all these conversations together and build a brand story that is greater than the sum of the individual parts” so marketers can keep their eyes on the prize: customer engagement and action. The key is to understand and respect the characteristics of each channel and then execute each according to how it works uniquely for your brand.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

Retailers Dial-In To Smart Phone Shopping Trend (CRM Daily)

Posted: 01/04/2011

With one-third of mobile phone usage to be “smart” this holiday season (Nielsen), retailers are getting dialed-in to e-commerce. The 21 percent increase over last year indicates that retailers can no longer rely on independent strategy for their retail outfits, whether they are bricks-and-mortar stores, Web sites or mobile shopping channels. Heather J. Brunner, chief operating officer of Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice, said a phone is "just a mini-computer, and our challenge now is to transfer the Internet experience to a much smaller screen." For instance, outdoor brand Patagonia recently launched a new application that suggests similar items and price ranges while customers browse. In-store, the app will recommend complementary items based on the tag’s bar code. Companies like Neustar are working on types of “second-generation” bar codes for smart phones that are square rather than rectangular while Pronto, a company owned by New York-based IAC, plans to launch a mobile app for product price alerts.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Digital River Is Getting Social With Ecommerce (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Digital River, a global ecommerce service provider, recently launched SocialStream, a new social media tool. Using the tool, Digital River customers can rapidly set in motion new e-store promotions and then manage them over different Facebook and Twitter accounts. Ecommerce-Guide.com reported Jim Wehmann, senior vice president of global marketing for Digital River saying that “Social Stream lets marketers and e-store owners optimize social media campaigns with just a few clicks from within the standard Digital River interface they already know and use.” While SocialStream is certainly not the first ecommerce service offering of its kind, the package’s most significant advantage is that it provides e-store owners with access to social analytics. The ability to report critical commerce data relating to social media activities like unique clicks, conversions and revenue generated for each social campaign for each social account allows companies to validate the success of each campaign.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

How Big Is Big? The Rise Of The Mobile Advertising Market (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 12/01/2010

eMarketer recently revised its assessment of the mobile ad market, predicting it will grow 79% to over $743 million this year alone – growing to more than $1.1 billion in 2011 and more than $2.5 billion by 2014. Based on these numbers, it’s safe to say mobile has been elevated to mainstream status. The report indicates that SMS is still the largest format, with an estimated tally of $327 million for 2010. Companies like Phizzle and Skycore are further enhancing their service offerings to engage audiences and allow increased functionality to their users, including enabling mobile marketers to run applications such as movie trailers sent with tickets or sports videos sent with tickets. eMarketer predicts that display formats will increase. Apple’s iPhone remains the top choice with 82.7% of marketers, but Android’s 9% increase since last quarter indicates it is quickly gaining traction. Other services new to the market include Opera Software’s Ad Marvel, Sprint’s Sprint ID and Burstly.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Filtering The Noise: Discovery Personalizes The Online Experience (Tech News World)

Posted: 11/11/2010

The internet abounds with buzzwords. Now, there’s new buzz about “discovery,” the real-time aggregation and personalization of content as it is applied to an online experience. Take Amazon for example, an online retailer that makes purchasing recommendations based on your past buying behavior and others that match your browsing and purchasing habits. True discovery, however, elevates this concept to the next level: It will tie together what you have liked, purchased, viewed, discussed, and browsed, into a real-time aggregator that provides recommendations on any category of your choosing. For discovery to be completely revolutionary, it must have both an online and mobile interface. From websites like Yelp to smartphone applications like mobile GPS, several discovery platforms are in the works, including Ping, a music discovery engine launched by Steve Jobs in September.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Motricity Delivers User-Preferred Content On-the-Go (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 10/27/2010

Motricity recently launched mCore MobileCast, a service that allows wireless carriers and large companies to define content based on their smartphone users’ preferences. Requiring "zero touch" by the users, the cloud-based service takes a user’s location and prior usage into account before delivering audio, video, text and HTML5 content streamlined to the user’s preferences. For instance, a mobile user purchases tickets to a rock concert via a mobile device. Enter mCore MobileCast: The service ingests the concert data in combination with GPS data to disseminate auxillary information to the user, such as the concert's opening act, parking locations and even places to eat nearby. "All that information is in separate places today, but we aggregate it all up," said Jim Ryan, Motricity’s chief strategy and marketing officer. The company provides mobile infrastructure services to "hundreds of enterprises" and 10 major wireless carries, including the top four in the U.S., Ryan said.

InterContinental Hotels Group Offers Hospitality With A Technical Twist (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/14/2010

It’s easy to chalk IHG's, InterContinental Hotels Group, ubiquitous success up to one thing: customer loyalty. Tom Conophy, IHG's CIO, said the company’s core focus is on making customers "the center of our universe," and customer loyalty is vital to growth in the hospitality industry. The ever-growing hotel group, which owns seven hotel chains, including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and InterContinental Hotels, keeps its guest doors swinging by making business intelligence one of their core competencies. 200 million guest profiles currently occupy the company’s 25 TB database, with detailed information on 43 million loyalty plan members. The company currently receives 30 million availability requests per day, supported by its own proprietary search technology, the Bottom-Up Optimum Search Strategy(BOSS). "Search is the killer app for us," Conophy says, and with IHG’s iPhone app as the industry’s most downloaded, adding mobility is another success factor with a concept the group has named “Virtually Me.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Video Girl Barbie Goes Viral (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 09/30/2010

In true Barbie fashion, the social girl charged the virtual social world this July to build the buzz for her latest professional stint: videographer. Mattel tapped into social networks Foursquare and Twitter to launch a campaign that criss-crossed the boundaries of traditional marketing. The campaign celebrated the new Video Girl Barbie with a scavenger hunt that had fans scouring San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York to locate Barbie’s real whereabouts. The first follower to find the fashion-forward doll in each city won a Barbie Video Girl doll. “We really embraced social media as a marketing platform a year ago as part of a major campaign in support of Barbie’s 50th anniversary,” says Lauren Dougherty, director of Barbie marketing at Mattel. Barbie currently has 17,600 Twitter followers and about 440,000 likes on Facebook—more than 200,000 of those added since January. Future plans include a promotion that puts the camera in the consumers’ hands with user-generated video, as well as introducing other members of Barbie’s entourage, including Ken, onto the social platforms.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Asian Persuasion – Social Media Marketing In Japan (ClickZ)

Posted: 09/16/2010

Before MySpace and Facebook were even a glimmer in the virtual eye, Japan had Mixi – one of the country’s most popular SNS (social networking sites). While businesses in the U.S. are really only just beginning to tap into social media as a viable marketing tool, savvy businesses in Japan have been on the social bandwagon for more than 10 years, using platforms like Mixi, Gree and 2channel. Japan’s preponderance of social media might even prompt some to say that Japan was the genesis for social media marketing. The country’s rich social media platforms include: general social networking sites; video and photo sharing sites, social bookmarking sites; blog network sites, mini-blogging sites and micro social networking (SNS) sites. With most services available for both PC and mobile (unlike the U.S. where mobile is just gaining traction), mobile is already a key part of the countries inhabitants’ online lives.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Asia Pacific
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Get The Scoop: Ben & Jerry’s Launches Sweet Twitter Campaign (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 09/16/2010

This summer there was a new way to get the latest scoop, and this time it wasn’t breaking news – it was free samples of ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. Led from destination to destination by consumer tweets via Twitter, the “Scoop Truck” went on a sampling tour of New York City in June and July. While the initial campaign plan left one weekday open to a virtual “see-which-way-the-tweets-blow-the-truck” kind of spontaneity, by the end of the nearly two-month tour nearly half of the sweet stops were those requested by the 3,000 local followers the tour handle @benjerrytruck amassed. Responses to outgoing tweets yielded anywhere from five to 100 responses. Although followers will still be able to get the latest scoop through Twitter and view images of the happy samplers on Flickr, the next tour is aimed Boston, where stops will be announced primarily via Facebook.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

New Old Spice Campaign Aims To Go Viral With A Little Mystery (Fast Company)

Posted: 08/19/2010

Ad firm Wieden+Kennedy has taken a successful “Old” television ad concept viral. Old Spice, owned by Procter and Gamble, is leveraging the appeal of its TV spot star, Isaiah Mustafa, by taping 30-second YouTube videos in response to Twitter feeds. The team behind the campaign works in conjunction with technology to scan responses and identify the social influence of those responders to choose messages that will create a wow factor and perpetuate themselves throughout “virally-relevant” communities. Wieden's global interactive creative director Iain Tait asserts that rather than using a dedicated proprietary site, the campaign gets maximum exposure on YouTube, especially since the current spots are being watched and re-tweeted extensively. The ability of embedded material on YouTube to be liked, shared, favored and dispersed quickly factored into the decision for which social medium to use. Heeding the nature of the ‘want it new, want it now” internet culture, the company strives to produce the video responses in real time to the keep the content fresh, relevant to the brand and newsworthy. The content goes successfully beyond pure entertainment value to make “the connection between the content, the product and the experience of the product.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Pulling Klout: Website Helps Users Measure Their Social Influence (CNN Money)

Posted: 08/19/2010

Users can now discover their social “Klout” by numerical rank by inputting their Twitter name into Klout.com. The San Francisco-based social media start-up is shoring up its position to become the online standard for measuring social impact by partnering with Virgin America to offer a hand-picked group of “influencers” a free flight from San Francisco or Los Angeles to Virgin America's newest destination, Toronto. Here’s how the new type of marketing campaigns (implemented by brands like Starbucks and Cover Girl) work: (1) Users accept product offers; (2) In return, Klout requests for disclosure of the freebie; (3) Klout measures some two dozen variables, including the number of times their comments are retweeted, the size of their Twitter audience, and the influence of those followers, to come up with a numerical value and ranking on a 0-to-100 scale.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

What's In A Name? The Term Cloud Computing Breathes New Life Into An Existing Technology (Forbes)

Posted: 08/05/2010

In an industry where fancy buzzwords abound, "cloud computing" really signifies more of a generational evolution than a new technology. While there may be some hype related to doing business "in the cloud," on-demand, internet-based computing leverages the same technology companies like Google and Amazon pioneered and perfected through trial and error. Now, companies can access even more highly evolved programs like Google App Engine and Apache Hadoop - as well as a steadily increasing list of other options - to write their own data center infrastructure applications. In a virtual world where complete computer security is always somewhat questionable, the flexible and economical strengths of cloud computing remains very attractive to corporate computing operations. The end-goal is to partner with trustworthy, security-focused services that respond to and eliminate threats as they are exposed.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Fuel Your Facebook Fan Page In 4 Easy Steps (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 07/22/2010

Marketers may successfully be racking up the fan numbers on their Facebook Fan Pages, but they are ultimately failing to establish long-term relationships with customers in the process. Companies shouldn’t lose hope, however, because the code to successfully reaping rewards on Facebook lies in four critical steps. According to an E-Commerce News article, in order to retain customers, marketers need to “1) develop a strategy; 2) create a solid presence; 3) motivate [their] fans to take action; and 4) use Facebook to amplify other campaigns, promotions and marketing activities.” Committing to the management of their Facebook walls after business hours, considering brand contribution cadence, and asking if they are doing what their fans want will also aide companies in amping up their fan totals.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly: Crowdsourcing Provides Answers For Online Marketers (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 07/22/2010

For marketers looking for solutions to a plethora of problems, crowdsourcing could be the answer. Marketers gain key insight while spending minimal dollars to survey the expertise of entire online communities. Still, crowdsourcing is not without limitations. Primarily, crowdsourcing is dogged by knowing how to separate the great ideas from the bad ones. To illustrate, Jez Frampton, CEO of Interbrand, tells of a creative director who tried crowdsourcing for a campaign and within 48 hours received hundreds of ideas, leaving him with the even bigger problem of how to sift through the crowd’s offerings. (via Forbes). Marketers should not be deterred, as crowdsourcing has a number of advantages, including web usability testing sites like UserTesting.com and Feedback Army, where companies post questions about their websites and testers choose which questions to answer.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Procter & Gamble Seeks E-Commerce Innovation (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 07/08/2010

Consumer favorites manufactured by Procter & Gamble are now even more available. P&G’s new retail web site offers 52 products (with more coming) for consumer purchase, including Tide detergent, Oral-B toothbrushes, and Gillette razors. Though P&G made $76.7 billion in sales in 2009, increasing those sales is not the Web site’s main goal. According to the manufacturer, the site will provide a “living learning lab for developing e-commerce innovation.” Data gathered about P&G’s online consumers will provide a better understanding of various shopping behaviors and preferences. “As big and influential as Procter & Gamble is, there is no doubt this is a sign of a broad trend with consumer goods manufacturers,” says Jim Okamura, senior partner with consulting firm J.C. Williams Group.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer

Developers Build Native Mobile Web Applications With Titanium 1.0 (Info World)

Posted: 04/29/2010

Appcelerator recently released Titanium 1.0, a cross-platform development system for mobile and desktop applications. The open source system is compatible with JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby, which eliminates the need for mobile application builders to learn the Objective-C language for iPhone or Google's Java language for Android systems. A translator enables building mobile and desktop applications that will run natively on different systems. The system supports development for PCs, Macintosh, and Linux while mobile platforms include Apple iPhone and Google Android. Plans include Research In Motion Blackberry support within the year. Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing for Appcelerator attributes Titanium’s competitive advantage over other cross-platform development frameworks to its ability to “offer native performance as well as native UI (user interface) and access to device capabilities.” Eliminating the barrier of learning Objective-C makes Titanium highly attractive to developers. Appcelerator will also develop a version of Titanium for Apple's new iPad.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Zappos Implements “Video Experience” (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 04/15/2010

Zappos recently launched interactive videos detailing Nike products, one of the shoe and clothing company’s largest brands. Initiated from customer queries that were best addressed visually, Zappos used software from Overlay.tv to link videos about various Nike items to its supply-chain system. Among the perks: shoppers can click on featured items to view any current promotions and find out if the product is available in stock. Customers can post video links on Facebook, upload their own videos to Zappos.com and post comments. Zappos objective is not necessarily the bottom line, but it will track stats on customer click-thrus and purchases. "The goal is to create a more pleasurable experience on our site," Kalma says. "The general philosophy is that will lead to purchases."

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Mastering The Whole Customer Experience (.net)

Posted: 04/15/2010

In a recent interview, Oliver Lindberg caught up with Paul Dawson, EMC Conchango’s experience director, to discuss the company’s methodology. EMC Conchango concentrates on what it calls “total experience design,” taking a comprehensive look at the customer journey from beginning to end, and all the points in between. EMC Conchango operates as the European arm of EMC Consulting, allowing it to leverage its global reach and cast a wider net to capture more global business. Based on fact, the experience planning process incorporates Agile methodology, regularly released software and eye tracking to analyze how people interact with the content of a page. The agency is also experimenting with electroencephalograms that are literally wired to reveal what consumer’s brains are thinking and feeling. The agency also partners with Microsoft to adopt new user-facing technology to better understand customer behavior and devise ways to prolong consumer interactions with brands and products.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, Europe
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Rice University Study: Facebook Fan Pages Excel at Niche Marketing (ClickZ)

Posted: 04/01/2010

The results are in for Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business study to determine how creating a presence on Facebook impacts businesses. The study incited an article in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review, with the study authors calling the Facebook page a qualified success for niche marketing. Rice professors collaborated with social media virgin Dessert Gallery, a local bakery and café chain in Houston. The study revealed fan pages have impact; however, mostly when targeting niche groups. First, after taking a preliminary survey, 75 out of 700 loyal customers accepted the invitation to fan Dessert Gallery’s Facebook page. Three months later, respondents completed another survey that revealed Facebook had a significant impact on their interaction with the brand. The bakery’s fans stopped by the cafe 20% more than non-fans, spending 33% more. The fan page also seemed to cultivate brand affection and loyalty.

Industry: Retail & Products
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

From Buzz to Buy: Social Commerce and Word-of-Mouth Marketing (ClickZ)

Posted: 04/01/2010

There’s a new buzz in town: social commerce skilfully links customers to customers online and then bridges them into commercial connections... driving customers to transition from "buzz" to "buy." The ultimate goal for delivering a meaningful and measurable social commerce program is to integrate all marketing activities into one streamlined campaign, blending social programs like Facebook, Twitter and company blogs with more traditional programs like in-store, direct marketing and mobile advertising. Building a social commerce program entails the following: (1) give your customers a venue for creating user-generated content; (2) expand your customer-voice from the outside-in and (3) leverage customer feedback in all your marketing initiatives. The challenge then is to deliver meaningful products and services that meet your customers’ needs.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

On-the-Go with Target’s Mobile Gift Cards (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 03/18/2010

Now, with its mobile gift card option, Target, the second-largest U.S. discount chain, makes paying with plastic old school. The retailer is letting customers use mobile phones to redeem gift cards as more consumers use phones with Internet access. Shoppers simply save the account numbers for their Target GiftCards to a PIN-protected area at either online or at the retailer's mobile-optimized site. Customers access the mobile site on their phones, enter the login and PIN for the card and complete the purchase when the cashier scans the unique 2D barcode on the display screen into Target’s P-O-S system, which has been outfitted across all 1740 Target stores nation wide. Customers can also access the mobile site to view merchandise, check product availability, manage gift registries and find locations, among other things. Other retailers like Starbucks and 7-Eleven are testing similar barcode technology to incorporate into their mobile business strategies.

Industry: Retail & Products
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer

Programming With Screen Shots, Not Just Code (Dr. Dobbs)

Posted: 03/04/2010

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new system that allows one to program with screenshots. For more than three decades, the graphical user interface (GUI) has dominated computer programing, but its underlying reliance on code manipulation means it’s still relatively labor intensive for computer programmers to customize or build programs. The new system, Sikuli, enables programmers to develop programs using GUI screen shots. While it requires some knowledge of Python, the system enables even casual users to create new programs without mastering complex programming language. The user simply draws a box around the desired content, captures the screen shot and then places it appropriately into the Python code. The research team plans to present a paper entitled GUI Testing Using Computer Vision at CHI, the premier conference on human-computer interactions, where they will describe new applications of Sikuli aimed at large software development projects, both for programmers and non-programmers.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Market Intelligence the Smartphone Way (CRM Daily)

Posted: 02/04/2010

Context-aware software tries to connect the real world with the vast stores of information about places in a virtual world: the Internet. The technology channels the knowledge amassed to provide useful tools to the smartphone user. Consumers gain more control over their buying experiences and save time when they purchase from vendors who have critical insight into their shopping habits. The software’s diverse industry applications include retail, business management, hospitality, and food and beverage. Research firm Gartner projects the market for this technology will grow to $12 billion by 2012, with Google standing in prime position to address and profit from the new wave of demand. Other companies that stand to benefit are Nokia, Cisco Systems, Avaya, large telcos like China Telecom or potentially even social networks such as Facebook, Gartner says.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Apple and Facebook Key Influencers in New Tech Cycle (eWeek)

Posted: 02/04/2010

Apple and Facebook have literally changed the face of mobile internet. With mobile internet users projected to double by 2013, it’s easy to see a "mobile Internet cycle" emerging, a new cycle detailed in Morgan Stanley's "The Mobile Internet Report." Cited as the fifth computing cycle in five decades, the report claims this one is faster and bigger with a wider global net than previous cycles. While Apple, Google and Amazon.com lead the pack, the report suggests that the key influencers from previous cycles won’t necessarily be given the keys to this new kingdom. The analyst team, headed by Mary Meeker, attributes the high level of anticipation for mobile users to five of the most promising IP-based products and services: social networking, 3G network adoption, video, Voice over IP and "impressive mobile devices."

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, North America, Asia Pacific
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Opening the Line of Communication with Feedback-Form Analytics (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 02/04/2010

We’ve all heard of shopping cart abandonment. Until now, companies have had no way of knowing if this so-called digital window shopper’s syndrome was due to Web glitches or other, more personal, reasons. Kampyle is changing that by offering on-demand feedback-form analytics so companies can improve their turnover rates by learning more about their customers. The customizable forms promote open communication between customer and company by directly asking customers relevant questions to reveal why they chose not follow through with their purchases. The software also features “smart pop-ups” that can be personalized to appear when the visitor clicks off the site. Easy to implement, companies can have the service converting clicks into sales in as little as five minutes.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

On-Demand Software Adds Flexibility to Direct Digital Marketers (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 01/21/2010

The robustness of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products positions them to effectively tackle emerging trends in direct digital marketing. The secret to their success? They share the same “it” factor ideals that often boost the best new businesses to the top of the rung: they are cost-effective, easy to implement and inherently scalable. On-demand products must seamlessly integrate between the three primary channels of direct digital marketing–email, mobile and Web–meaning developers must create software that is simultaneously heightened in usability and simple to implement. The bottom line is that the functionality and flexibility of SaaS and universal profile management systems enhance direct digital marketers’ own flexibility and success in their drive to leverage customer information and boost sales.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

The Name Game: The Web Becomes Truly Worldwide (BBC Business News)

Posted: 12/17/2009

Until now, Web addresses for other countries have only been written using the English language. Thanks to internet regulator Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the Web just became more accessible by allowing countries to request new internationalized domain names in their own languages, including non-latin languages and scripts like Chinese. "The IDN [International Domain Names] program will encompass close to one hundred thousand characters, opening up the internet to billions of potential users around the globe," said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of Icann. Approved in June 2008 and expected to go live in 2010, the months in between were dedicated to working out kinks in the translation system.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

From Business Revolution to Evolution in 15 Minutes (Harvard Business)

Posted: 12/17/2009

Struggling to create a breakthrough in your business strategy? The solution is as simple as turning the revolutionary into the evolutionary. It may sound like a slow process, but with the “15 minute competitive advantage” individual progressive steps occur quickly. As you build your business, each new lesson learned and experience gained (every 15 minutes) evolves into a step toward progress. Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, advises business owners “to turn business concepts into hypotheses to test fast.” Akin to rapid prototyping, this kind of “hypothesis testing” doesn’t require radical change when based on success markers like: Trial-able, Reversible, Familiar and Congruent with future directions, among others. The process gently leads consumers to the next level of business evolution without forcefeeding revolutionary new ideas before they are primed for mass consumption.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Google and Bing Prepare Real-Time Searches to Compete with Social Media (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 12/03/2009

In a socially-driven market it’s tough even for the big dogs like Google and Microsoft to stay relevant. Harder still when Web surfers turn first for information to the sites they spend the most time on like Twitter and Facebook. Google and Microsoft will soon feature information plucked from social media sites on search pages. Microsoft users can perform searches for tweets and eventually status updates posted to Facebook. Google will add Twitter updates in search results and offer a search tool that delivers feeds posted by the searcher’s friends on social sites. Traffic to U.S. search engines grew 15% in the past year while traffic to Twitter exploded tenfold and tripled on Facebook. Considering those stats, Microsoft and Google are hoping to diversify their offerings by adding the new features and functionality searchers expect and capitalize on new ad revenue generated through targeted advertising.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Wharton’s Future of Advertising Project (Knowledge@Wharton)

Posted: 11/19/2009

According to Wharton School's SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, advertising has gone the way of the black and white television. Asking the question, “what will replace it?” Wharton’s effort is aptly named the Future of Advertising Project. Practicing what it preaches, Wharton is not only collecting case studies, data and fresh expert insight to identify best practices for the future; it is employing New Media techniques to expand its own audience. Wharton’s approach includes partnering on the launch of a new channel on Google's YouTube site called Fast.Forward. The site features short video clips called "quick perspectives" that elaborate on the future of marketing from executives, ad gurus and academic thought leaders. The project examines the creative combinations of old and new media that are defining the radical new terrain of advertising and expands it to a wider audience.

Global Spending on Mobile Advertising to Rise Exponentially by 2013 (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 11/08/2009

New data from Gartner predicts that global spending on mobile ads will rise 74%, reaching $913.5M this year, escalating to more than $13B by 2013. The report claims that location-based targeting and bigger gains in GPS technology, along with wide adoption of smartphones, 3G network data plans and downloadable applications will incite the growth as early as 2010. Parks Associates reports that advertising revenues in the US and Canada will grow from $208M in 2009 to $1.5B by 2013, with smartphone sales accounting for 45.5% of all mobile phone sales that year. JiWire reports a 79% increase in the use of mobile devices at public Wi-Fi hotspots in North America in the first half of 2009, and while research from MRI shows early consumer disapproval with mobile ads, 20% of that same audience would like to watch live TV via their cellphones.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer

Getting Social with Adobe Flash Platform Services (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/22/2009

Adobe partnered with Gigya, a social media management platform, to launch Flash Platform Services, to add more sociability and measurability to developers creating Flash applications. The service’s three core principles: Distribution, Collaboration, and Social, aim to take Flash viral and social in the online distribution of Flash applications over platforms like Web, desktops and mobile devices. Available later this year, users will be able to “Flash” forward with the service that enables them to share, collaborate and facilitate real-time application distribution, tracking, and monetization to get one solid application that can ultimately deploy over 70 social networks and services. 98% of PCs with Internet connections are equipped with Adobe's Flash software, but applications are not always installed.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

SaaS Hits the Sweet Spot for Business Intelligence (Intelligent Enterprise)

Posted: 10/22/2009

You’d be hard-pressed to describe a major business intelligence deployment as fast, flexible, and affordable. Which is exactly why BI service software (SaaS) is primed to change business intelligence. SaaS-based BI vendors aim to get the implementation process off the ground in days rather than the months it usually takes. Shaklee CIO, Ken Harris, views SaaS as more than a stopgap to on-premises BI software deployments. Harris deploys SaaS to stretch his small IT staff and budget by storing data in a PivotLink-hosted data warehouse and using report and query tools to evaluate the data across a network that has expanded from 50 employees to as many as 5,000 independent business people who sell Shaklee products. The cost is perfectly reasonable for small to mid-size companies with limited IT resources.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Transforming Innovation: New Technology. New Speed. New Price. New Customers. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Posted: 10/08/2009

Technology continues to transform the face of innovation at breakneck speed. Where it used to take major moxie, manpower and minutes to launch comprehensive testing campaigns, the newfound ability to incorporate new Web features faster and immediately measure consumer response means companies can now achieve rapid fire results for next to nothing cost. The result? Innovation–the lifeblood of growth–is not only more efficient and cheaper, it also more accurately pinpoints behavior to identify exactly what consumers want. Sophisticated tracking systems enable businesses–from web-based companies to retailers–to exploit new information technology to conduct testing and collect meaningful consumer data to ultimately capture even more consumer spending.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Breaking Through the Barriers to Adopting Social Media in Email Marketing (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 09/11/2009

A recent survey by email experts StrongMail cited that 62 percent of firms plan to increase social media spending while 66 percent plan to integrate social media into their email marketing campaigns. NMK sat down with Paul Bates, managing director of StrongMail, to get an insider’s perspective for breaking through the barriers to effectively engage social media. Find out where your customers are hanging out online and observe their behavior there; engage competitive analysis across the social spectrum to find out where your competitors are lurking and determine whether they are or are not enjoying success. The conversation with Bates is packed with stats, insights and tips for marketers to engage customers in meaningful conversation and begin to integrate social media into an email marketing strategy with enormous ROI on their marketing dollars.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

Maximize your Web Site’s Mobilization with CSS (Practical eCommerce)

Posted: 09/11/2009

With mobile internet use and mobile-friendly browsing on the rise, expert Armando Roggio is encouraging businesses to consider his “Web Design Tips” before redesigning their e-commerce sites to address their mobilization. Simple techniques such as adding a second style sheet or slightly revising a page’s HTML can enhance mobile shopping experiences without wasting time to register new mobile domains or create mobile-specific styles. The best solution? According to Roggio, it’s more efficient to redesign your current site to render well across multiple platforms including mobile, desktop, RSS, and more, using CSS. To illustrate his advice, Roggio creates a home page for an e-commerce comic book store with an instructional video demonstrating how to create mobile-friendly background images.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Shopping-enabled Display Ads are Blooming Success for 1-800-Flowers.com (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 08/27/2009

Success bloomed for 1-800-Flowers.com during its 2009 Mother’s Day e-commerce campaign, resulting in a 41% spike in sales per impression compared to traditional display ads. The campaign enabled consumers to purchase directly from “buy” buttons planted into display ads powered by Alvenda. According to Alvenda, consumer interaction among the ads, called Shoplets, flourished at more than 10.5 times greater than traditional banner ads. To accommodate the traffic spike and speed up response times, Alvenda shifted the bulk of the floral Shoplet campaign content over to Akamai Technologies Inc’s content management server. “We believe the majority of future online sales will happen offsite. Customers will be able to shop with brands wherever they happen to be, whether they’re on YouTube, a favorite blogger web site, or on Facebook,” says Wade Gerten, CEO of Alvenda.

Great Expectations-Delivering Web Site Performance to Even the Most Discriminating Connoisseur (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 08/15/2009

Don’t expect to elude the connoisseurs’ expert judgement when it comes to your own web site’s performance-especially during the holiday rush. Dotcom-Monitor’s suite of externally hosted network and I.T. monitoring services helps companies like K&L Wine Merchants combat the annual holiday ambush. The wine merchant uses a robust e-commerce navigation system to enable shoppers to sort through the massive inventory of specialty and rare wine selections by variety, country, sub-region, price range, critics’ scores and special designations. No. 356 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, K&L relies on critical services like uptime verification, multi-page transaction monitoring and site performance monitoring to deliver an enjoyable and hassle-free experience to please even the most discriminating shopper.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Following the Digital Footprint with Google Friend Connect (eWeek)

Posted: 08/15/2009

New technology is making it easier than ever to follow your friends’ digital footprints as they trek across the web. Footprints, a gadget for Google’s Friend Connect service, was created by a Japanese programmer to reveal who’s visiting your Web site and when. The gadget displays the following information for up to ten visitors: the visitor’s name, time of last visit, and photo, which links to his or her personal profile. Users will have a reasonable degree of control when using Footprints, including the ability to erase their footprints each time a particular site is visited. The privacy controls also enable visitors to hide their profiles from the sites they visit. Further safeguarding privacy, visitors’ information will only appear if they are signed in and registered users of Friend connect.

Alcatel-Lucent Takes the Plunge Into Mobile Advertising (Information Week)

Posted: 07/18/2009

Redefining the drive-by, Alcatel-Lucent recently announced plans to launch a product allowing cellular carriers to reach millions of mobile customers with location-relevant advertisements. Partnering with mobile ad company 1020 Placecast, the technology will help mobile operators determine the location of the customer with accuracy within a few meters. The new advertising vehicle, dubbed proximity marketing, is poised to reach sales of $10 billion by 2013. So don’t be too surprised if soon it’s more than your taste buds beckoning you into the nearest Starbucks for a cup of joe and coffee cake.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Hooked on Location: Skyhook Plug-In Delivers with Pin-Point Accuracy (Information Week)

Posted: 07/03/2009

Building on the recent wave of location-centric applications, three leading Web applications–MapQuest, Flickr, and WeatherBug–are using Skyhook Wireless’s Loki plug-in to determine the precise location of any Wi-Fi enabled device that permits it. With a database featuring more than 100 million Wi-Fi access points, Skyhook triangulates signals from GPS and cell phone towers to deliver precise locations. The app can be seamlessly added to any Web site with a few simple lines of JavaScript. Companies utilizing the technology include Glympse, T-Mobile and Apple’s iPhone App Store. For example, T-Mobile G1 phone users can now download free software from Glympse that enables them to establish local links with other phones to track users' changing locations with pin-point accuracy.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Closing the Sale: SeeWhy Helps Businesses Put Abandonment Issues to Rest (Intelligent Enterprise)

Posted: 07/03/2009

You’re spending huge chunks of money to drive traffic to your site, you’re bound to close the sale, right? Not necessarily. Businesses today are finding a significant number of visitors abandon their shopping carts before completing their purchases. SeeWhy helps retailers put their cart abandonment issues to rest with the launch of their new software, Abandonment Tracker. The free service is designed to entice customers into upgrading to Abandonment Tracker Pro, a paid service that will be released in a few weeks. While the price for Abandonment Tracker Pro has not yet been disclosed, the advanced software promises to improve sales conversion rates and reduce abandoned shopping carts. SeeWhy will help retailers lure potential customers back to close the deal rather than having sales evaporating before their very eyes.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Finding Common Ground: Insights on Engineering and Design (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 06/05/2009

Microsoft Research Principal Scientist Bill Buxton is calling for engineers and user-experience designers to find some common ground. Faced with ongoing questions from well-intentioned engineers regarding design, Buxton acknowledges the answers are more complicated than becoming a designer themselves or simply learning to “do” design as many engineers suggest. First, Buxton counsels that professional competence equal to the task must be added to your team. While the UX and engineering tasks certainly go hand-in-hand, expert proficiency is difficult to come by for each discipline, making it often impossible to jump seamlessly between the two. Buxton advises a four-layered approach: Design awareness, Design literacy, Design thinking, and Design practice to achieve results and solutions worthy of your customers.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Microsoft Vine: A New Twist on Social Marketing (CNN Money)

Posted: 06/05/2009

In an effort to untangle a new path toward social networking prosperity, Microsoft Vine is branching out into unchartered territory: charging subscription fees. Hailed as the 911 for the 21st Century, the new platform will focus on climbing the social networking ladder into the public safety and emergency information arenas by limiting activity to two actions: alerts and reports. Users can customize profiles and bunch their friends and family into groups, creating a virtual safety net to keep informed about events as major as hurricanes or national crises, or as minor as a snow day. The testing phase offers the opportunity to discover how city emergency management agencies across the country might implement this new communication tool. While the basic service will be free, premium services like smartphone access will come with a price tag.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Online Communities Strengthen Brand Power (Chief Marketer)

Posted: 05/24/2009

No matter your product or service, building online brands means building virtual communities that cultivate customer loyalty and provide lasting value. Shaping customer experiences that allows for custom-control, targeted e-mail follow-ups and strategic communications will not only maximize the time your customers spend with your brand, it will also increase your messaging impact and build mindshare, too. It never hurts to make the experience enjoyable, too, through elements like compelling visual design, intuitive navigation and user-generated content. Take for instance, the Pen Collective, by eROI and Wacom. The group now boasts more than 3000 active members, due to the brand’s intuitive mix of tutorials, testimonials, wit and social networking to create an inimitable personal connection to the brand.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Strength in Numbers: Unveiling the Benefits of Eclipse (Forbes)

Posted: 05/24/2009

Faced with the increasing squeeze of a down economy, many companies are forgoing the expense of programming their own software without losing their competitive edge. The experimental Eclipse software consortium offers companies within sectors like technology, finance and insurance the opportunity to collaborate, build and share computer code. “People these days are interested in doing more with less,” says Michael Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. With a budget of $5 million this year, the company is seeking to expand its 185 member base even further into the automotive and telecom industries. Nonmembers can take advantage of the foundation's free software library, while companies who pay dues of up to $125,000 a year get to hand-select upcoming programming projects.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

What We Are Reading

Browse By: