iWunder | Wunderman New York Blog

Wunderman's IdeaCorps

This week Wunderman is launching a social idea platorm called the IdeaCorps.  Wunderman's IdeaCorps is a global initative that has begun to roll out across North America. You can visit the the Wunderman IdeaCorps website at http://ideacorps.wunderman.com

The Wunderman's IdeaCorps site is a great resource that enables you to view inspiring tweets, blog posts, videos and pictures from our global network of thought-leaders. Contribution is easy and open to everyone! We know that great ideas can come from anywhere! We would love for you to share what inspires you at http://ideacorps.wunderman.com/shareidea

We know that an great idea can strike at anytime - this is why we are releasing our Wunderman IdeaCorps mobile apps next month. The mobile apps will allow you to contribute your inspiring thoughts, pictures and videos on the go.

Beyond Cookies - An Introduction to Fingerprinting

The increasing awareness of, and concerns with, online tracking technologies such as cookies have led several new firms to introduce cookie alternative for tracking and identification purposes. Once such approach, know as device fingerprinting, takes advantage of all of the information a computer typically broadcasts unknowingly when going online to form a uniquely identifiable device profile.

Collecting web browser configuration information to unique identify users isn't new; it's long been used to uniquely identify users in an effort to accurately measure traffic, filter out attempts at click fraud, and customize the experience presented. Device fingerprinting startups targeting online advertising utilize a variety of techniques, including data collection scripts that execute within the browser, that help build a unique fingerprint based on a variety of factors. Because they don't rely on cookies, but rather a combination of passive (data the browser provides normally) and active (client-side code embedded in a web page that pulls additional data), they are much more difficult to bypass or defeat than cookies (see How to Fingerprint A Computer for details).

While this would seem to provide a much greater level of accuracy in tracking user activity, it's the promise of combining this fingerprinting technology with data exchanges that aggregates information about these users to further "score" these individual identities for considerations such as reputation, behavior, intention, and affinity holds great promise, as does the potential to associate these profiles with other data sources to provide more focused targeting, with greater levels of accuracy vs. cookies.

As for addressing privacy concerns, fingerprinting's increased accuracy in identifying individuals also benefits those wishing to "opt out", although the inability to effectively block fingerprinting is sure to raise concerns as its use grows. One immediately accessible technique is the "private" browsing mode already available in most browsers. As for assessing how unique your particular setup is, The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a tool, Panopticlick, that determines how unique a particular browser configurations is.

More on Device Fingerprinting Companies:

BlueCava, Inc.

41st Parameter

Recent Articles of Relevance:

Race Is On to Fingerprint Phones, PCs

Shunned Profiling Technology on the Verge of Comeback

EFF:

Panopticlick

Defending Against Browser Fingerprinting

Personal vs. Private

At 90, Direct-Marketing Legend Wunderman Looks Forward to 'Personal Advertising' Future.  Lester gives a clear definition of making personal advertising free of privacy issues with a simple definition.

[via advertising age]

The Rise of Productivity Apps Validates the Slate Form Factor, Creating New Opportunities for Established Players

Surprisingly despite all of the promise of the iPad and the excitement around all of the apps I’ve seen and gotten to play with, there really hasn’t been anything that’s become my preferred way of working vs. my traditional laptop from a professional perspective. The iPad always seems like a contextual compromise from a professional application perspective, something I’d use in a pinch or out of pure convenience, as a point of origination for an idea perhaps, or as a more convenient option vs. my laptop on during my daily commute. But my experience with one particular app, , represents the first time that I truly see the slate becoming the preferred form factor not just for idea origination, but as a preferred tool for execution.

 While you’ll immediately say that the nature of my work has something to do with it, as I sat on a recent late night flight where I actually had the aisle space to unpack my incredibly powerful and beautiful new Dell Latitude E6500, and fire up my trusty copy of Microsoft Visio 2010 (which actually introduces some incredibly useful experience improvements for placement vs. previous versions).  I instead reached for my iPad, and fired up a recently download app, OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle represents of the many existing OS X “professional” applications not simply being ported but actually “re-envisioned” for the platform.

This would really be the first time I would use OmniGraffle on the iPad for any length of time, and within the hour I not only felt comfortable, but was able to complete a process flow diagram due for a 10am meeting the next day. However, I was working in a manner that was absolutely frightening I’m sure for those sitting next to me, as I wildly tapped and gestured and dragged my fingers across the surface. But it felt very natural.

The point here isn’t simply to laud Apple and Omni, but to show how this use case validated for me the slate form factor. Existing desktop applications truly need to be re-through to take advantage of it, and this will take some effort; as sign of this, you’re seeing many early slate projects canceled or rethought. What you are already seeing are efforts from key players such as Dell intelligently leveraging mobile platforms such as Android, leveraging a mobile platform with momentum in the apps space for their new Streak slate. And this is the key; it’s the apps, and an easy way to sell/distribute/buy them, that will drive adoption. Existing platforms / operating systems aren’t relevant as long as application-level compatibility and interoperability exists, and in this area, the potential for Microsoft to be a dominant player in the slate apps space is clear. Just as it develops for OS X, Android and MeeGo versions it’s key applications, rethought from an experience perspective but seamlessly compatible from a data and functionality perspective, represents the future, even more so than the cloud and web-based apps. Why? The end of flat-rate data plans for mobile devices is around the corner, which will actually increase the need to run as much of an app locally as possible.

The most exciting thing about the rise of productivity apps for slate platforms is that it represents the true opportunity for mobile market dominance as people realize the ability for this form factor to complement their phone, but completely replace their desktop environment – which current no phone can truly do. What this also says is that the slates are here to stay.

 

w.url - a Wunderman branded URL shortner

Have you tried sharing a link recently that was simply to long for your tweet, yammer or email? When every character counts, URL shortening services reduce long URLs to tiny forms. But which is the best to use, when so many are offered and new ones seem to appear each day? 

Look no further! Our friends in the Wunderman Melbourne office have just launched the w.url.  This is a fantastic new URL shortening tool that can shorten and customize a URL. This new app is great for social media, link sharing, presentations and super-quick customizable Wunderman URL generation.

Visit, bookmark and share http://www.wndr.mn/  today!

Is Google Doomed to Repeat the Mistake of "New Coke?"

For those of you that haven't seen the recent Forbes article on Google's interface changes -

http://blogs.forbes.com/marketshare/2010/05/11/is-google-doomed-to-repeat-the-mistake-of-new-coke/

It's interesting why people refer to New Coke as a failure; the New Coke campaign had some incredibly beneficial impacts to their business:

1. When New Coke was replaced with Coke classic, it netted Coke twice the effective shelf space

2. Changing the name of Coke to Coke Classic allowed them to change the formula as well, reducing their production costs

The point is - Google won't live or die by changes to it's experience, and the complaints of users - if that was the case, Facebook would be dead by now - unless they're loosing, rather than gaining, additional features and functionality. The changes they're referring to are actually ergonomic, and those are things people will live with, since the actually primary interface for search is the input field. The rest is just supporting functionality such as filtering, and those are ones people grow comfortable with or ignore based on exploration and experimentation.

What's your take on Google's new look? 

Single-Tasking is Back

As Apple prepares to release a multi-tasking version of the iPhone OS, early impressions of the new interface highlight one of the fundamental problems that should have kept Apple true to the purity of the original experience and avoiding introducing a feature that adds a level of complexity that compromises the overall usability of the iPhones OS.

The iPad has demonstrated the power of single-tasking, reminding me of the days when personal computers could really only do one thing at a time. It demonstrates how  a modestly powered device – a single core processor, graphics chips, and a minimal amount of RAM - in a very compact and ergonomic form factor that can deliver  an incredibly compelling, engaging, rich, and even productive experience for applications ranging from entertainment to productivity. The iPad’s insistence that you focus on a single application at a time – while still being able to easily suspend and switch between apps as needed – also avoids introducing a level of system management that I feel fundamentally defeats the simplicity that makes this device a better experience than using a desktop for key applications. The iPad doesn’t force you to worry about or manage files, so why would you want to worry about what processes are running in the background?

I think the key driver for multi-tasking requests come from people who are trying to get the iPad to replace rather than complement their other computing devices. When Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) researchers in the 80’s and 90’s talked about ubiquitous computing, their point wasn’t that we’d have one device for everything – it was that we’d have devices everywhere. Our move to the web, and applications into the cloud, actually enables an entirely new paradigm of contextual computing, where your experience adapts to the multiple devices in your life, rather than a single device that provides a portal for all of your experiences.

Is multi-tasking even truly relevant to mass market mobile phone buyers? Multi-tasking as a benefit theme in the marking of mobile devices hasn’t has the type of traction one would expect – the Pre is a case in point – because multitasking in and of itself isn’t a benefit, it’s a feature. And in the context in which you would be utilizing a mobile device specifically, it can be a distraction, something entirely unnecessary for the majority of what you want or need to do at any particular time.

One of the most frequently cited examples if the ability for applications that want to stream background audio. This could have been accomplished in a way that would have allowed for the feature to be tied into existing system functionality – say, within iTunes, as it is on desktops. What are your thoughts on the introduction of multi-tasking to the iPhone OS and its true benefit? What do you see as a good potential application for it? And are the interface complexities that result worth it?

Orientation as Navigation and Other iPad Oddities

The early flood of iPad applications has been an interesting experiment in seeing not only individuals take to the new form factor, but how developers / content publishers intend to deliver applications, experiences, and content optimize for this combination of form factor and interface metaphor. Neither the slate nor the iPhone interface are new; the combination in this size is, and the rapid realization when you start using it is that unlike some other Apple efforts on the interface engineering side, something about Apple’s own applications don’t feel quite right.

From touch and gestures to orientation and even rotation, Apple has sacrificed the elegant simplicity of the single button mouse days for flexibility. The result can be quite frustrating, and feels less like interaction and more like, well, experimentation, as more and more of the interface becomes gestural, with you manipulating the device itself vs. the interface on the screen as we’ve become accustomed to in our interactions with computing devices to date.

Case in point – Apple’s Pages for iPad; in addition to the frustration I encountered at discovering the compromises made, like the subset of features vs. actual desktop pages application, the decision to only make the top menu visible while in portrait mode, when the optimal orientation for typing is landscape mode, seems like an odd choice of compromise. At first I found it a novel approach – the interface gets out of my way while I’m typing. But then when I actually began to use it as I typically use a word processing application, I quickly realized that among the iPad’s many compromises is not only that of established convention – it really is an adjustment to the way you interact, since you’ll do things here you’d never do on the mobile devices that previously shared this same interface – and the need to learn all new behaviors. It’s more jarring than one realizes and begs the question of whether to prioritize familiarity or form factor for certain applications.

Another example is the iPad vs. the iPhone for casual gaming. While I was incredibly excited to see games developed to take advantage of the larger form factor, I still enjoy playing Scrabble more on my iPhone than I do on my iPad. The iPad seems to have the clear advantage – larger screen, no need to zoom in and out of the board when playing. Yet I enjoy the experience less. It could be that for a casual game of that nature, the form factor quickly becomes and inconvenience, especially in certain environments – like a crowded commuter train in the mornings.

The change in the experience of interactions with the iPad means a whole new way of working, and it’s yet to be seen if people adapt to the compromises iPad developers (and Apple itself) are making in order to accommodate the form factor. One thing we can be assured of if that we’ll soon begin to see that the applications that become truly successful on the iPad are the ones people find both useful and usable.

What Apple vs. Adobe Really Means

With Apple's official stance on Flash so clearly stated by Steve Jobs, the big question is the potential impact of the Flash vs. Mobile Issue for online advertisers and marketers specifically.

In reality, apps across mobile devices are still about native frameworks / APIs, and not a question of Flash or not; to date, anyone who wanted to build an experience optimized for a mobile device would use the libraries and tools for native application development, with the occasional exception, like rapid application development tools or other meta-platforms, of which Flash could be considered one. Apple’s arguments are valid regarding Flash – it solves some real problems, but it’s targeted to a completely different platform / environment. What all good developers have known for a while is developing our applications in a fashion where the presentation / interaction is decoupled from the underlying logic and data driving your application, so you can present an experience appropriate to the target channel /platform based on context, device capabilities, etc., is already considered a best practice, but one we can’t always follow, especially where we have very specific requirements, like online media. For clients of ours in or just entering the mobile space, it will be interesting to see how they steer developers – I’m sure it will be to native apps, in which case, the Flash vs. HTML5 argument is a less relevant one.

As marketers, we need to think about engagement and interaction beyond the constraints of a single specific technology platform or application. We need to embrace the idea of adapting our creativity to different mechanisms of delivery, with a focus on open standards and technologies that represent the future. Flash isn’t going away. Flash will be a part of what we do for a very long time. But it will be just one part of it. However, rich and engaging interactive experiences will always be a big part of what we do. Our objective now should be to leverage our existing tools to craft assets and experiences that can adapt to their ever-fragmenting online world. It’s a challenge we’ll all embrace together.

Augmented Reality: What's In It for Me?

If 2009 was the year of iPhone apps, then augmented reality (AR) may be the darling of 2010. It’s that Hollywood technology that’s found its way into Burger King banner ads, a slew of “must-have” smartphone apps, the cover of Esquire and Adidas shoes. 

So, what’s it all about?
AR enhances the “real” physical world with contextually specific imagery or information. The AR experience is typically triggered in two ways.

The first is through location recognition via GPS/compass-enabled smartphones or other devices. With Wikitude, for example, you can point your camera phone toward a famous landmark and see an overlay of information about the destination pulled directly from Wikipedia.

The second is through image recognition via a video camera in your laptop, desktop or phone. With the USPS Virtual Box Simulator, you can hold up a package to your webcam and the simulator helps you determine the shipping box size you need.

What are the facts?
AR has captured more than its fair share of press coverage lately due to a handful of high-profile marketing application launches and the entry of major players into the space, including Google with its Google Goggles (think search on steroids), Nokia and Apple. But is 2010 the year AR takes over? Probably not.

Penetration of webcams is still limited, and the market share of GPS/compass-enabled smartphones is even lower. The installed base for webcams is estimated to be in the 15 percent to 20 percent range. As for smartphones, despite all the excitement (and what you and your tech-loving marketing friends are toting), more than 80 percent of all U.S. mobile phones are still limited-function, “nonsmart” phones.

Does this mean you don’t need to be thinking about AR? Try again. It’s a technology that will hit mass penetration in a couple of years. Many newly shipped computers now have webcams preinstalled. And two-thirds of Americans will be getting new phones within two years — and many of them have their sights set on smartphones.

What are the opportunities?
Whether and when AR should be considered as part of your marketing mix depends on your company, brand and audience. But the following are three potential marketing applications for AR:

1. Riding the buzz wave. Want to be perceived as hip and of the moment? This is the low-hanging fruit with any new technology. This opportunity is most applicable to the entertainment industry and/or companies targeting youths and early adopters. This is a tricky area, however. Speed is of the essence, as you want to be seen as being on the “bleeding edge.” Remember, though, to hang with the cool kids, you have to be, well, cool. Halfhearted attempts without a strategy or purpose will be viewed skeptically.
 
2. Bridging offline and online. AR can be an opportunity to smooth sales or service friction points that result from a lack of in-person interactions. Natural fits are with beauty, apparel or home furnishings e-commerce sites. Ray-Ban’s Virtual Mirror is a good example of this. It helps consumers find the perfect sunglasses. They just look right into their cameras and “try on” different looks.

3. Enhancing the real experience. Possibilities include helping customers find their way through a store or shopping center, on-demand product information, and more. Unfortunately, the limitation of GPS indoor signal strength and the complexity of image recognition will be significant near-term hurdles. But you might be inspired by the Voodoo Festival and its custom AR app, which enables festival attendees to use their camera phones to get details about performances and navigate the festival venue.

Thinking ahead
What would you do differently if device penetration wasn’t a barrier? Are there processes or experiences that can be enhanced through AR — either made more entertaining, informative or relevant? The possibility of AR is exciting. Creatively it opens a good many doors and forces marketers to look at customers’ experiences in a different way.

Originally published by eM+C