Josue Sierra

One of the memorable scenes in the Minority Report (Tom Cruise), a Gap billboard mis-identifies Cruise’s character by the “donated” implanted eyeballs he is “wearing.”

“[Cruise] walks into a shopping mall, where his new eyes are scanned with a telltale spark. Mistaking him for the eyeballs’ former owner, a nearby Gap billboard exclaims, “Hello, Mr. Yakamoto! Welcome back to the Gap! How’d those assorted tanktops work out for you?”"

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Marketing Vox has an article on this and covers how several retailers are using RFID to do something similar. Make sure to read to the end of the article where they cover the new cutting edge stuff.

The most exciting new technology for vigilant early-adopting marketers is that of facial recognition:

Cameras embedded in digital screens that can record and identify customers as they roam stores or make purchases.

Facial-recognition technology, like those of YCD Multimedia, capture a person’s image and analyzes features (size and shape of nose, eyes, cheekbones and jawline) against their databases.

The result is a near-instant classification of a customer into a particular demographic (age, sex, even ethnicity), creating the possibility of serving highly-targeted advertisements to individual shoppers, not groups.

Of course, one can already here the shouts of protest over privacy issues (legitimate, but not insurmountable I think).

Tech firms and marketers hope to avoid privacy issues by taking care not to capture or store personally identifiable information about consumers. In June, for example, facial recognition firm TruMedia Technologies committed never to record or store video from the tracking systems in its billboards.

Cool stuff.

Short and rather shallow piece on Twitter and political communication strategy. I was hoping for some more in-depth thoughts from the founder of Twitter, but then again, Cavuto didn’t really ask heavy questions. This is the equivalent of a tiny McDonald’s hamburger — fast-food business television.

Somewhat interesting nevertheless. I went ahead and added Obama and McCain to my Twitter “follow” list — maybe I’ll find out who Obama’s running mate is going to be over the weekend!

Neha Gohad, a Student at Manchester Metropolitan university posted an interesting question on LinkedIn Questions. She asks what is the commercial appeal of Social Networking Sites for Brands?

I am doing a Research on Social Networking Sites in UK and their implications for Brands and effects on future consumers as a part of my Masters Dissertation at the Manchester Metropolitan University. The top Social networks in UK such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo are amongst the most popular destinations . eMarketer reports predict the UK advertising spend on these networks would be well over £115 million in 2008 and forecasts this figure to go up to £285million by 2012.

These were the two parts to her question with my thoughts on each:

1. Do you think the Social Networks would fail to attract users if they are exploited excessively by Marketers/Brands?

Certainly. We saw the backlash to Facebook’s “recomendation” engine that caused concerns among users. Privacy will continue to be a concern among the general population, and exessive exploitation usually tends to cause privacy concerns. But beyond that, brands/marketers need to pay careful attention to how their “social interactions” impact the user’s experience and the user’s ability to interact.

The new paradigm of advertising is all about user-control or user-influence–something difficult to handle by traditional legacy agencies and corporations. Slapping “banners” on a social portal is a losing proposition for the most part when you consider the saturation and the click throughs — still worth it in some cases, but quickly fading as an effective approach as far as social media marketing. According to the brand, marketers need to be either subtle or in-your-face — the point is to be engaging according to the audience.

2. What factors/ approaches do you think should be considered most important in future for Brands on Social Networks? [eg: peer recommendations, highly targeted approach, interactive/ entertaining/ engaging campaigns etc]

Certainly targeting is a major factor — even more so in social media marketing than ever before. Without the right market segmentation strategy, it becomes challenging to craft an engaging and relevant message. It seems to me that peer recommendation has a lot going for it, but with some minor exceptions, it is yet to be executed to its full potential. For example, in Facebook, I keep seeing a recommendation-based ad for Visa Small Business from a couple individuals I do know and trust, but the thing is — I don’t have my own business. So, while the referring social aspect is right-on, the message is still not relevant to ME!

Not all social marketing needs to be entertaining. Just look at Mint.com — I fully enjoy using their “comparison” charts that show my spending against others in my city or state. The key is to make it relevant, useful (if its not easy to use, it will never be “engaging”) and what the user wants.

Honestly, I’m not sure that the old phrase “content is king” is valid anymore. Not because content is un-important, but because the phrase is not consumer-focused. Its now about the user — what it wants, how it wants it, when it wants it, and in a language and style most relevant to him or her.

There is the paradigm in which social media marketers need to start shaping their strategies.

I’m watching Olympic Team Sabre between Italy and Belarus — I still can’t figure out the rules, but it seems like a cool sport.

You should be able to find the video in the widget below:

I finally got around to watch Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” over the weekend, and found this other lecture that Pausch gave on time management I thought would be worth watching. In case you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who Randy Pausch is, here is a short bio:

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch gave a lecture on Time Management at the University of Virginia in November 2007. Randy Pausch — http://www.randypausch.com — is a virtual reality pioneer, human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center — http://www.etc.cmu.edu — and creator of the Alice — http://www.alice.org — software project.

I’m watching it now, so I won’t comment much on it. Having watched his more famous lecture, I’m confident this will be worth the time spent watching it.

PS: Via CMU website:

Randy died July 25 of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47. Randy’s family is planning a private burial. A campus memorial service is being planned and details will be announced at a later date.