More thoughts from SXSW on emerging media and its implications. The next wave of innovation will almost certainly happen as "the internet leaves the internet" said Patrick Moorhead (Razorfish) during the panel on emerging media innovation during a recession. Mobile devices will play a key role in facilitating this innovation according to Ron Gonda & Juan-Carlos Morales (Sapient) and Ryan Stuart (Adobe) in their panel on trends in mobile technology. My takeaway is these trends are likely to dramatically alter where, how, what and to whom we market products and services in the near future - and, most importantly, why we do it.
Moorhead and co-presenter Daniel Polinchock (Brand Experience Lab) highlighted developments in play today that they predict we won't be able to live without tomorrow. Examples include QR codes placed on clothing that allow you to take a picture and, say, get the Facebook profile of the person wearing the code on his t-shirt. (Sounds like "Personal Social Media Presence Curator" might be a good career opportunity in the near future). Life broadcasting in real time. Ordering and paying for items via RFID tags and cell phones. Visual search and the move toward finding items through image recognition (e.g., on Like.com). You can now take a picture of a logo with your iPhone and the company website appears on your screen.
Morales underscored this in the mobile panel noting that we're "merging the digital world with the physical world, with the phone as the portal." Location-aware cellular technology is able to provide an overlay of historical information as we walk through London, for instance, or about our current location as we use the iPhone as a navigation device while driving. Gonda sees promise in sub-audible frequency information streamed along with the audible sound of, say, dialog in a film that can be picked up by mobile phones and provide backstory to what is appearing on the screen. And these are only a few of the innovations to augment our reality in play right now.
If we're moving toward an augmented reality that enables always-on and everywhere deep access to information, companies, people, products, places and services - and facilitates interacting with them - we're heading into territory that creates an unprecedentedly rich interactive marketplace. So much so, it will up-end how we think about marketing products and services, it blurs the line between personal and commercial and challenges the fundamental structure of the established marketplace.
As Polinchock said of traditional retail, "Physical retail experience has to deliver more than price and product." If retailers don't evolve to compete with applications such as Amazon's iPhone app that allows you to enter a brick and mortar, take a picture, price compare and purchase online, they will become "stupidly expensive websites." To survive, physical stores will have to provide some valuable service or experience that can't easily be found online. In Polinchock's view, it's a matter not of creating just brand awareness, but "brand utility."
As marketplace gets truly interactive, creating brand utility will mean more than providing easy access to context-relevant, valuable information and facilitating transactions. When marketing gets truly interactive I believe it hits escape velocity from the realm of linear transactions and practical utility into the realm of co-creating a story. Polinchock hinted at this by saying people are now searching more for meaning - than possessions, presumably. I'd take that a step further and say that what people are really starting to look for is to be part of a story that resonates with them and provides a satisfying experience. To the extent brands can connect with the marketplace on that level, they will successfully evolve.
Update: Added TED video of reality augmentation working prototype from MIT Media Lab:
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