12 Lessons on User Experience + Transmedia Storytelling from SXSW 2012

I had the opportunity to attend SXSWi this year, a mega-conference in Austin which is essentially the mecca for internet geeks. The event packs in over 1,000 panels + talks, hundreds of networking sessions + demonstrations and just as many parties in 5 quick days. It’s completely impossible to do everything you want to do, so you basically have to pick what you want to focus on and allow serendipity to drive the rest. I split my time between fun “brain candy” inspiration type things and educational sessions on two primary topics: User Experience and Transmedia Storytelling. Here are a dozen lessons I learned from entrepreneurs like Path’s Dave Morin and media mavens like New York Times’ David Carr on the topics:

...on user experience and product success 

1.  Effective user experience should be designed to convey values + emotions to the user during the experience itself, not just at the outcome. That means thinking about everything from colors, to menus, to page animation and more. 
2. Think about how device types provide different experiences. Path was built as a mobile phone app only to enforce personal content creation and intimacy. Path is more emotional because you can’t do a lot of things you can do on Facebook, etc. 
3. Either it’s good or it isn’t. Be honest with yourself or you’ll end up never achieving great. Demanding “great” before shipping was the different between Path 1.0 failure and Path 2.0 success. 
4. We are in an attention economy. To succeed you need to find new ways to stimulate and provide value continuously, in the face of a generation that is more incapable of paying attention than ever before. 
5. Information design is critical in modern storytelling. The New York Times architects stories so readers with five seconds, thirty seconds or two minutes each have a complete experience, while maintaining the choice to dive deeper. 
6. Popular new media apps Intapaper + Flipboard have fantastically enjoyable reading experiences but no business model for content creation. New York Times and other stalwarts have a business model that ruins user experience. Who will crack the middle ground? 

...on social’s role in transmedia storytelling

1. Your social ecosystem isn’t separate from your other platforms, it’s part of one cohesive story that your brand is telling. Understand how your social hubs can be access points to that larger story. 
2. Social enables your audience to expand your potential farther than you can on your own. ESPN Top 10 is now more diverse because fans help identify great sports moments in smaller markets and less popular sports. 
3. Marketing opportunities are more engaging when all touch-points are planned as one. MTV develops 360° programs by planning broadcast, web mobile and social for partners all at once, as illustrated by this year’s Verizon + VMA’s sponsorship. 
4. Know your purpose across your ecosystem. ESPN knows it can’t always be the one to broadcast every sporting event, but it can be the one to host and drive the conversation for them all. Other brands become curators to help illustrate their point of view. 
5. Don’t lose sight of meaningful actions in the face of social KPI’s. Causes was fantastic at building audiences empowering “armchair activism”, but it hasn’t yet figured out how to move participants up the ladder. 
6. The goal of a mashup is to enable people to see something that already exists in a different way. Similarly, understanding creative ways to tell stories beyond just straightforward narrative will make your content more compelling. 

The truth is most of what you take away from SXSWi can’t be captured in a number of bullet points.  Spending the majority of a week focused entirely on trying out new mobile products (I had four different ambient awareness iPhone apps running simultaneously on my phone), meeting new people and feeding thought-provoking concepts into your head is something we should all do at least once a year, if not more. That alone is a lesson in itself.

* This blog post was written as part of my research for a larger project at SS+K.  That completed project will be published on Slideshare soon.

Implications of the Facebook Timeline for Brands Launch

Last week I was lucky to get to attend the Facebook fMC Conference, Facebook's first major event dedicated to their marketing + advertising platform (my photos here). In a single day, Facebook announced a slew of major changes that will completely re-write how brands behave on the platform. Much has been written already about the many functional differences that brands need to prepare for by March 31st, so I focused on analyzing the high level implications of Facebook's new direction for brands. This was issued by SS+K to our clients; if you don't mind a long read, let browse through and let me know what you think.

Implications of the Facebook Timeline for Brands Launch

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NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX ... Facebook? [My Ad Age Article]

I had the following article published on Ad Age last week.  I'm publishing it here for the few people who read my blog only, and to have a record for the future [direct link].

NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX ... Facebook? 
The Real Opportunity For Content Is Web Series, Which Can Benefit From Facebook's Engagement

By: Kevin Skobac
Published: December 21, 2011

As Facebook continues to grow its user base worldwide, entertainment companies are increasingly trying to find ways to use the platform as a new form of TV channel with unprecedented reach. Both major TV networks and Hollywood film studios have previously allowed people to watch their content via their Facebook pages, including paid video trials such as Warner Brothers renting its "Dark Knight" film from its ultra-successful "Batman" franchise for Facebook credits.

Unfortunately, for WB and others, no early tests of traditional companies pushing their content on Facebook have registered any real success. Audiences simply don't seem interested in watching long-form, lean-back content wrapped in a Facebook environment (though augmenting traditional TV with a second-screen social context is another discussion).

But new Web-only entertainment creators can succeed where big media failed. Here's why: they're producing video content that differs significantly from the classic TV model. First, each "episode" is typically much shorter, commanding less of a singularly focused, lean-back experience. Second, outside of the normal broadcast schedule, users aren't trained to "tune in" or remember when the next episode will be ready for viewing. Facebook can help content creators meet these challenges in ways that would drive more interest, engagement and repeat viewership.

Push notification systems 
Typically, Web-only video series are discovered via recommendations through press or friends, but then suffer steep drop-off in eyeballs for the 2nd episode. This occurs typically via both standalone Web sites as well as YouTube. Hundreds of millions of people, on the other hand, return to Facebook every day. Video series can take advantage of news feed posts, event invites, and top-bar notifications to inform viewers every time a new episode or piece of content is released. In this manner, shows will be able to command much more repeat tune-in than typical Web fare. Shows can also easily fill in the time between episodes with goodies like extra footage and cast interviews in the same tuned delivery system that new episodes flow through to keep viewers interested during down time.

Personalization capabilities 
Facebook has an immense amount of user data accessible through its APIs that have been leveraged in interesting ways within content. Advertisers and musicians have already been pushing the boundaries of personalized experiences in exciting ways (see: "The Wilderness Downtown" or "Take This Lollipop"), but original content producers have, for the most part, not taken advantage of the opportunity until recently. AOL's new Facebook-only show "AIM High" launched with a unique feature that allows viewers to login with Facebook Connect to view a more personalized version of each episode. After connecting, viewers may notice their own faces on posters in the school setting, or even find themselves running for high school class president directly within the plot of the show. While these personalized elements are superficial so far, it's easy to imagine future shows with much deeper integration. For example, a show could find a way to turn the viewer's friends into the suspects of a mystery, driving much more engagement and viewer loyalty.

Parallel conversation streams 
Newer short-form content series like "AIM High" also seem to benefit more from integrated comments than long-form content can. With episodes no longer than 5-10 minutes, the plot of "AIM High" is always in flux, leaving room for speculation and discussion. The comment box isn't just a place to voice love or hate for the show, rather it becomes a real-time discussion of what's taking place and what could happen next. Facebook's commenting system also allows discussion to take place both on the show page and within people's news feeds, providing more seamless conversation both when viewers are watching the show and afterwards. 3rd party apps like GetGlue and IntoNow are starting to provide this parallel conversation stream via a second screen, but no companies in this space have yet been able to tie the discussion as close to the content as a Facebook-viewing platform can.

As all content consumption becomes hyper-connected and on-demand, even the major TV networks are quickly noticing the need to evolve in order to meet consumer wants. It may not be as easy for them as it is for digital pure-plays like YouTube, Hulu and Yahoo! (all of which announced a full slate of Web-only shows during this year's television up-front), but they have to be as vigilant in breaking through. Everyone is experimenting with the most effective way to attract and keep audiences for this new form of content. Facebook, with its unmatched notification system, personalization capabilities and conversation tools, could be just the solution everyone is looking for.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kevin Skobac is senior digital strategist at SS+K, an integrated marketing and communications agency specializing in creative social engagement.

Where'd my writing go? Introducing UsableClicks

So I never took the time to write on this blog about my new project, and where the majority of my writing has gone lately.  Most of the people reading this blog probably already know it by following me on Twitter, Facebook, etc, but I started a joint venture project with a few old co-worker friends.  The new website is called UsableClicks, and the focus is on actionable marketing strategy and tactics.  Ultimately it will be a combination of our writing, recommending reading of marketing content out on the web, and resource pages such as all you need to do your own blog & buzz tracking.  This doesn't mean I'll stop blogging at my personal blog here, but lately it's meant I haven't had much time for it.  Again, I hope that I find better balance.  In the mean time, you can follow UsableClicks three ways (besides visiting the site):

Rss , Email , Twitter 

My most recent article "Why do we waste our time (and why you should do the same)" is a personal introspective into why we care to be early adopters and spend hours playing with new products that give us very little in return.  It meant a lot to me to write; if you have thoughts on it, feel free to comment or discuss over at UsableClicks.

Oh, and if you have any interest in writing about marketing strategy, let us know - we'd love to have some guest writers.

Making a Market vs. Taking From It

Another good post from Seth Goden, this time discussing the difference between Making a Market vs. Taking From It. His examples are clever in that they illustrate his point but may not be the obvious way you would think about the concept.

Making the market: "By combining protein and chocolate, we've developed a new food that's both dessert and dinner" - The first thing I think of here is the Snickers Marathon bar; I'm not sure I totally believe it's invented a new market, but then again maybe I just didn't buy into it.

Taking from it - "This has a touch screen, too, but you can get it from Verizon" - Since the iPhone came out, there have been a number of these that all feel like runner ups for people that can't get out of their contract or don't want to leave Verizon for the better service. Pretty much none of them, though, have pushed the market forward (though the BlackBerry Storm might). On the other hand, the T-Mobile G1 is the cell phone version of making the market - by taking some of the best of the iPhone and the Blackberry and creating a hybrid market that appeals in a different way.

The decision to make a new market or take from it will be based on many things - how strong your product is, how appealing it is, whether it is only ready to piggyback on existing success - there are probably more brands & products that piggyback (and to success) but it's the inventors that we'll remember.

[cross posted on my Advertising blog KBS Advertising]

A Deep Dive Into the Latest Nike Lebron James Spot

Ian Schafer wrote a great analysis of the new Lebron James Nike Commercial; all things to think about when you are building out advertising and wondering if it will really connect with your target (the elements may change but the mental process needs to stay the same)

This spot is phenomenal because it does the following:
1) It shows that Nike gets LeBron.
2) It shows that Nike gets basketball.
3) It shows that Nike gets the intersection of basketball, hip hop, and street culture.
4) It shows that Nike gets music.
5) And if you're savvy enough to understand all the finer points of the spot, Nike understands you.
Sheer brilliance. Yes. TV spots can still be great at telling stories -- but the web is a great place for continuing their discussion.

Side note - didn't Lebron steal the chalk toss from Kevin Garnett?

Learning From Seth Godin’s Gravity vs. Evolution Marketing Theory

This week my team has been in an interesting discussion about the different lessons we’ve taken frfrom Seth Godin’s recent piece Gravity is just a theory. The basic premise, naming something that people already believe in is very smart marketing, lives both in reframing existing ideas (such as Gravity) and answering existing wants (the iPhone as an answer to everything we already knew we wanted in a phone).  On the reverse side, evolution faced an uphill battle because it required people to abandon their current school of thought, as well as because the timeframe of the message was longer than the attenion span (in the case of evolution, the lifetime) of the audience.

I originally introduced the article to my team and presented the idea that relaunching the ONDCP’s Anti-Drug  message as the Above The Influence message in November 2005 was a powerful marketing tactic that repositioned the message to fit Godin’s “gravity” outline and away from his “evolution” outline.  In essence, the Above The Influence framework took Anti-Drug and reframed it in a way that most people already think is a good idea - to be yourself, be the best that you can be, by being above the influences in the world.

Someone else took an alternate lesson from the article.  He pointed out Godin’s principle that the timeframe of the message relevancy in fitting with the audience’s attention needs to be paid close attention to.  This leads us to consider whether the campaign needs more pro-active in showing how being above the influence can benefit people in real ways, directly within the window of time that the decision is being made - either tangibly or emotionally.

Still another person reading the article took away a completely different learning.  Focusing on the line Persuading someone to start a blog is evolution marketing. Lots of people have been brainwashed that they have nothing to say, or can’t say it, or aren’t allowed to say it. And you rarely see someone become an overnight blogging success, we discussed how mindsets have to change to really believe that contributing content to facebook, twitter, yelp, etc, really have value and matter to our social graph.  This lead me to read up on Chris Brogan’s opinions of The Annotated World, essentially pushing us all to see the value in incremental contributions (another discussion for another time).  The discussion doesn’t relate to my job as much as it relates to the evolution of communication and social interaction in general, but it is significant none-the-less.

All in all, I highlight this because Godin’s article on Gravity vs. Evolution Marketing really stood out to a variety of people in very different ways, and generated internal marketing discussion in a way that rarely happens on a higher level above our day to day work.  I will look to highlight more of his thinking and the critical analysis it instigated in further posts.  I invite comments.

[cross posted on my Advertising blog KBS Advertising]

Notes from The Future of Media Panel

The panel on The Future of Media was a collection of brilliant minds all looking at the media landscape from different historical backgrounds, different working positions, and different needs for the future. All of this lead to a dynamic conversation that leveraged the broad opinions across the panel to come to some vague truths, but more importantly some important learnings about how to continually approach the future of business in general. Overall it was a 2 hours we worth spent listening to a rare group of people that respected each other, respected the challenge of the discussion, and will likely be some of the key drivers in the developing future media landscape.

In no specific order, here are some of the key topics and ideas that I thought were interesting:

• Yahoo and AOL are examples of great companies with valuable products thcat face the weighty challenge of unwieldy expectations; if a new company reached their traffic and income levels, they'd be the darling of Wall Street

• A challenge that websites face: web browsing is fragmented, and so all of a single website's audience is able to be reached somewhere else. This is why YouTube has millions of users but nobody really needs to chance advertising with them

• When Google's revenue growth slows, investors will start to start asking why it is subsidizing the internet's video streaming with no profitability; businesses need to start thinking about what's practical versus what's possible

• The future of brands in media is uncertain
• proponents of brands as significant believe that brands organize perception and author trust, which is all the more important in this 'everyone has a voice' landscape
• proponents of brands as outdated believe that brands are overvalued premium prices on content that's readily available from countless sources and that millions of people are ready to produce for free

• The opportunity with social networks is the massive information layer that's being formed. The true value for Facebook won't be within Facebook itself, but leveraging the data that's been collected as an information platform that can enhance targeting outside of the individual web property. This will be the power of Facebook Connect - allowing brands to leverage the detailed personal data that Facebook has collected about its users to enhance product relevance and advertising matching on partner sites

• Data is a currency and a commodity - how you leverage data is a key question. Project Canoe is broadcast television's attempt to add a data layer to their product in order to provide both a better product and a better value to advertisers, and it's a key to broadcast television's continued profitability

• Right now behavioral data is a currency but is that a generational thing? If it becomes apparent that the sale of behavioral data is a trojan horse, then future generations will value privacy more
• On the other hand, is there even a possibility of privacy in the future? This may have died the second camera phones became ubiquitous
• Andy Warhol "We're all famous, now how long"
• The electronic footprint - will it enable transparency (in the '08 presidential election we learned of Edward's affairs for example) or will it force us to shut down in order to preserve what little privacy we have left

• The future of media is imagination and courage; the courage to brave new approaches and reinvent yourself time and time again, the imagination to think of how to do so
• One example of a brand with imagination is Uniqlo - a creative idea spurred it from a small Japan retail chain to a global phenomenon through the development of Uniqlock http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/

• Users will want to pay for services on the internet when they see the value of a superior product that can only come through funding; right now, services are surviving without revenue due to relatively low cost structures, but soon the millions of websites and start-ups will need to show profit, and we will lose the services we treasure that were offered for free because advertising can't support everything

• We are the point of devaluation of content - we're seeing this quickly with music, the music itself is being pushed to zero, and the music industry has to find value around the music (around the content)

• "Music will never again change the world because of how it's passed around now" - Neil Young
• We have lost the ability to experience awe in the way that single instances of content creation could once jump start a nation
• To be on the cover of Time used to mean you had reached the pinnacle - there is no single powerhouse left that can create such a stir
• Is the internet in this way actually destroying community in its quest to unite everyone on one level?

• Technology enables the path of least resistance - expect that the internet and computing as we think of it now will die as technology enables more robust mobile consumption and rich interactive television enables us to consume content on the big screen (this is Mark Cuban's bet)

• One investing truth: when everybody is looking in one direction, then the opportunity to create value is in a whole different direction
• This may be true for Mark Cuban, but plenty of firms are successful investing in emerging web trends. It may be that the degree of return is correlated to the degree of which you can step farther in front of the wave

• There are interesting opportunities to find value and reinvent in this landscape because everyone is focused on one specific landscape - the internet. This is why Rupert Murdock was able to buy the Wall Street Journal - it's loss of valuation despite its profitability and it's significant brand value. Murdock buying WSJ is an example of opportunity in chaos

Speakers

Moderator: Ken Auletta, The New Yorker

Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines

Mark Cuban, Chairman of HDNet & Owner of Dallas Mavericks

Randy Falco, CEO of AOL LLC

Jeff Goodby, Co-Founder of Goodby, Silverstein, & Partners

Bob Guccione Jr., Guest Editor of MediaPost

Nigel Morris, CEO of Isobar

Joe Uva, CEO of Univision

Susan Whiting, EVP of Nielsen Company

Michael Wolff, Editor & Columnist of Vanity Fair

Paul Woolmington, Founding Partner of Naked Communications

Starbucks Proactively Building Community Around it's Brand

It's an unhealthy and expensive habit, but I stop by Starbucks in the Mall every morning. There is a coffee bar up in my office, but I like the routine of grabbing a newspaper, reading in line, having the pause before the work day. I also like the incredibly friendly staff that works there, the familiar taste of the coffee, and now I'll add that I like Starbucks itself to my list.

Starbucks seems like a company that you can really feel good about.

You don't usually get to say that about international chains, but after reading the Times Article about founder Howard Schultz and spending time on their company blog Ideas In Action, I'm willing to get behind them.

Howard Schultz has me totally convinced that he cares about his consumers, and his employers. He's going against normal business tactics and breaking up the streamlined assembly-line process that Starbucks has inherited over the last few years from bottom-line-dollar-first CEO's to raise the quality of the coffee. The beans will be ground fresh again, the espresso machines will be exposed to the consumers waiting in line for a more personalized experience. He's giving away internet and removing egg sandwiches, even though they were cash cows, because he wants loyalty for one and he wants nothing to steal from the smell of coffee for the other. He provides health insurance to his employees, which means they stay loyal to him, and I as a customer appreciate the minimal turnover.

The new company blog "Ideas in Action" is allowing customers to write in suggestions and feedback, and is one-by-one responding to the ideas that are brought up, in a detailed and candid manor. In one post about automated ordering they address something I'd been thinking too - why can't we just type in our order when we enter the line, so it's ready at the cash register? On the blog they address that they are in fact looking at ways to speed up the processing, but that automated ordering has it's drawbacks:

As a company, we want to be innovative and use technology to meet the needs of our customers. Ironically, when tested, technology often does not prove to be faster or more efficient than our current deployment and customer service model. Most importantly, we love the personal interactions we now have with our customers. Many of the comments on MyStarbucksIdea express regret that personal contact would be taken away if we replaced the barista who takes your order with an automated system.

Sometimes companies, my own included, forget that it's not enough to be working on an idea, a problem, a potential point of progress, you have to let your customers and employees know that you're working on it. A lot of the ideas Starbucks recognizes are in the works, but they are trying and they do care about the solution, they just aren't there yet. This open dialogue is invaluable to the little people not involved in the inside thinking.

My only complaints with the blog, since I can voice them here: No RSS feed, and no direct linking to articles (otherwise you'd see them in this post). These are usability problems that shouldn't happen in any blog.

This morning when I arrived at Starbucks I was greeted with a new coffee-colored coffee cup, a sign that said when the coffee beans had last been ground, a sign that said the coffee is being brewed fresh every three minutes, a new every-day coffee flavor "pike place roast", and a gift-card in USA Today issues for a free cup of coffee each Wednesday for the next month. The back-to-coffee approach that Schultz is implementing as he steps back into the CEO role starts now.

Oh and I'm not the only one who was acutely aware that the new cups were a sign of something big... this popped up on Twitter around the same time I began thinking of writing this:

Doing more marketing posts in 2008: Using Google News Archives to tell your brand's story

I'm going to try to do more marketing-related posts this year on a separate website: KBS Advertising.  My first article is about using Google News Archives to tell the story of your brand over time.  These posts will usually be about brand monitoring and measurement, and usually are spurred by PR Guru Steve Rubel, whom I read religiously.