Along the lines of framing the future, I submitted a panel for SXSW on Simplifying Innovation - would really appreciate your vote and feedback.
With today’s pace of technology innovation, increased expectation of user experience, and company leadership mandate to innovate - how do you answer a simple question: what?
read moreThere is a growing startup community and ecosystem in South Florida. Developers, entrepreneurs, investors, incubators are all present, trying to get organized and kickstart the local innovation culture. There’s also the added benefit of the tropical lifestyle and international culture that defines South Florida. Below are some resources to get you started and get you connected to the tech vibe and professional networks in the tropics.
SapientNitro’s 2012 Cannes Lions presentation on Global Brands vs Global Celebrities, by my good friend Freddie Laker, who moderated a debate beween Daz McColl and Omar Epps.
The Apple WWDC Keynote is hours away and we’re expecting to hear about iOS6, Siri, new Macs, and my personal favorite, the new Apple TV SDK.
read moreBuzz words come and go faster than bad news, another year went by and now it’s all about Apple iCloud, Google+, mobile payments, cloud computing, NFC, IPTV - everything is moving so fast, it’s exciting, we want to be part of it all - but how to prioritize? what’s sustainable? which ones are trends and which ones are fads? what are the true drivers behind these experiences that will really impact behavior and habits?
read moreMonday, 20 June. Review for The Re-Calibration of Form and Function Online by AOL, presented by Tim Armstrong, CEO - AOL, and Arianna Huffington - Co-founder, Editor-in-Chief - The Huffington Post.
Huffington Post: Adrianna opened up, she’s extremely charismatic, funny, and overall a great entertainer. Overall she provided a lot more entertainment than good content, but that’s part being up there.
Her big idea: values online should mimic values offline. She gave a brief history of the Internet and claimed it has been very immature, and asked what shou
ld the Internet be when it grows up? All online brand experiences should focus on 4 pillars:
1. Trust: brands need trust 2. Authenticity: is like pornography - you know it when you see it 3. Engagement: around their values, not their products 4. Pursuit of happiness
…. that was it - very enlightening! :)
AOL: Then Tim took the stage, here comes the good part. Tim shows state of the art research and studies performed on aol.com using eye tracking to fully understand behavior, attention, reactions to visual stimulus, and A/B testing performed by changing key content units on the page. The result, staggering, Tim concludes that the future of the Internet and effective monetization models will consist of migrating from old fashion traditional banners to new improved bigger banners. Yes! By changing the format, adding more richness, better experience, more video, and making it longer, you can effectively increase the noise to effectively disrupt the attention of the web users and make him look at the ad. That Tim described as Ads with human emotion.
Then to try to make this statement a little more appealing, the rephrases it as brands will simply rent 20% of AOL’s portal space, so it’s not technically a banner anymore, it’s a space where they can embed rich content. Much better, phew, I thought the future of the Internet are better banners.
Ok, now finally for some real business value. Studies show that 83% of consumers use fewer than 30 sites a month; they use 20 fixed brands, and 10 rotating brands. I found this insight quite useful, makes you rethink the entire SEO and long-tail strategy. So that’s AOL’s strategy? Let’s acquire all the top brands to make sure we’re always part of the top 20.
Finally some words of wisdom: give creativity a space in the web and stop taking orders from the silicon valley.
Such statement was intended to please a creative audience, but I totally disagree. There is much to learn from the silicon valley, and the future of experiences is a marriage of brands, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
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