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Episode Summary:
It's been a while since my good friend Andrew Baskerville and I had a chat, so we decided to change that. Baskie and I caught up on some interesting news that has been circulating over the past little while, including: fake stores in China, social networking stats in Canada, the new old spice guy, Groupsquare and more. We hope you enjoy the show! (Runtime: 39:39)
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On this episode I am once again joined by a fellow KWAwesome Trustee, Matt Duench. This time around, Matt and I decided to take on augmented reality! We both agreed that the technology was interesting enough to warrant a full episode and our conversation focused a lot on how this technology can impact marketers. We hope you enjoy the show! (Runtime: 40:37)
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On this episode I am joined by a very special guest, Gabriel Tomescu. Gabe is an entrepreneur (founder of Quotica and Noctural), Laurier grad, hustler and all around great guy. During the show we talked about Gabe's experiences as an entrepreneur and some of the lessons he has learned so far. We also talked about his latest startup - Quotica - and his team's vision for the future of the service. Gabe is an inspirational guy and I look forward to having him on again! We hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 41:38)
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Episode Summary:
On this episode, I am joined by my good friend from Washington Andrew Baskerville! It's been a while since Andrew and I got together so we decided to make it happen and catch up on some recent news. Our topics of discussion included: Playbook's new line of commercials, LinkedIn's IPO, Apple's malware, corporate social media and more! We hope you enjoy the show! (Runtime: 41:47)
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If you were ever a fan of Knight Rider or Thunder in Paradise (Hasselhoff and Hogan ... classics), then you have at some point dreamed of having a vehicle that talks to you. Well ... according to a Fast Company article, Toyota in collaboration with Microsoft and Salesforce will soon bring you something just as good ... a car that tweets to you.
Imagine if all you needed to do to personify your car was sync up an app on your phone with a unique vehicle identification code. I'm not sure if it will necessarily work this way; however, if it did then the following scenario may just become a reality...
It's coming close to the end of a given work day in 2012 and suddenly I receive a tweet from @carofshum. It reads, "Hey Shum, I'm a little low on gas ... if you could fill me up soon that would be great. Thanks, much love homie." Luckily for me, I recently just acquired one of those fancy tweeting Toyotas. I decide to boot up my car's personalized app and take a look at the dashboard that displays the level of gas I have left in the tank ... yikes, it's pretty low ... I decide to hit the convenient button that says "Get Gas."
(At this point you may have a question in this hypothetical story ... if you're a creature of habit, then why must you hit that 'Get Gas' button? You should already know which gas station you need to stop off at in order to get gas? There's probably one on your way home right? ... just wait, the story gets interesting...)
After I hit this button, the app pulls up a listing of gas prices from nearby stations that are updated in real-time (using crowdsourcing) so as to equip me with the best deal in town. Once I've found a suitable station I click on it to check whether there are any Foursquare specials at that location (extra incentive to go there of course). Turns out there happens to be a station I hadn't heard of that's just around the corner from my workplace and offering a new Foursquare check-in special ... 'Check-in and purchase $40 worth of gas to recieve a free ice-cream!'
Nice. It's been a long day and I feel like ice-cream ... so I decide to make a trip to the gas station.
There are really only two things I wish to leave you with from the hypothetical scenario:
1. Collaboration is a competitive advantage.
2. It all started with a tweet.
"It's like seeing the future when you do it" - Tim O'Shaughnessy, LivingSocial CEO & Co-Founder
Here are a couple of key takeaways from this interview:
1. Real-time location-based offers = demand fulfillment: When we want a question answered in real-time, our phone will be able to answer it for us ... regardless of what the question is. Services like Foursquare and Yelp can tell you where to go within a certain radius of where you are; however, it seems LivingSocial is taking it one step further by enticing you with deals. I can imagine a collaboration between Foursquare and LivingSocial in the future; whereby, a social-layer gets added on top of the deals so that you can find out where your friends have eaten and which deals they recommend trying.
2. Is there a danger of commoditization? Henry asked a very interesting question regarding the ability for merchants to control deals in real-time and make adjustments based on competition. Will this lead merchants down a rabbit hole? There are many sides to this argument; however, if I took the most simplistic and assumed a consumer was solely interested in the price (the best deal) ... might this lead to a bidding war to see how low one can go? This may be a very shallow question because there are certainly other factors to consider here; however, it will be interesting to see whether or not this happens.
3. There will be no need for wallets in the future: As Tim said in the interview ... there was no need for a wallet to be used at any point during this entire series of events. Can you imagine a future without wallets? Sure you may think that it's a little risky to lay it all on the line with a phone ... what if you lose it? What if it gets stolen? What if you have an 'incident' involving a toilet (classic #fail)? All valid questions no doubt but I would like to turn your attention to two simple trends: 1. The cloud (your information is not actually stored on your phone, your phone is merely a device for displaying things from the cloud) and 2. Increased levels of security due to recently publicized hacks of major networks (encryption levels will only rise).
Final Thoughts: This is only the beginning.
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Episode Summary:
On this episode I had the chance to talk to a twitter friend and very special guest,
Ben Wise. Ben is a Brand Consultant at a company called Level5 and was able to share some fascinating insights into our topic of the night ... Facebook. Ben and I discussed various aspects of Facebook including: Like-walls, sponsored stories, brand tagging and more. Ben's insight combined with his experience on the platform helped make this conversation one of the most interesting on the show yet. We hope you enjoy it! (Runtime: 40:46)
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Before you read on ... hop over to Facebook ... find a picture you've posted or perhaps one that a friend has posted, which has some kind of product placement in it. One of Facebook's latest features will allow you to now tag this photo with the corresponding brand page!
This raises 3 questions in my mind:
1. Why did Facebook choose to launch a feature like this? - Is this Facebook's attempt to grow it's marketing tools offering? One of the things this features allows for is the auto-population of a brand's photo gallery. Brands that are more likely to appear in photos have a higher chance of being tagged and as such have a higher chance of gathering free marketing materials (customers using products)! That leads me to question number two...
2. Should customers in some way be rewarded for tagging a brand in a photo? After all if companies pay TV shows to have their products placed ... why should they not reward Facebook fans in the same way? It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct monetary reward (in the form of a Facebook credit), it can be something like a discount code perhaps or even a coupon. However ... this idea certainly begs the question...
3. If customers don't tag brands in their own photos, is it ethical for brands to go out and tag themselves in fan photos? This was the premise of a great article by Todd Wasserman on Mashable. Since brands can now act as people on Facebook (another recent feature), a brand could technically go out there and look through some pictures of all the people who have liked them and potentially start tagging their photos. This seems a little beyond the line because it completely violates the underlying principle of permission marketing that Facebook is built upon.
Final thoughts: It will be interesting to see how brands use this feature to enhance the permission model and potentially leverage it, rather than abuse it. What are your thoughts?
p.s. Later this week I hope to record a special episode of The Digital Marketing Lounge with my friend Ben Wise. We will be discussing all things Facebook! If there is something in particular you would like us to talk about, drop it in the comments below! Thanks in advance :)
The Digital Marketing Lounge
A blog and podcast dedicated to the musings and occasional insights of a digital marketer. Written and hosted by Shaminda (Shum) Attygalle.
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