IWC.com and the publishing system powering it are a new cornerstone for IWCs digital strategy. Given the goal that this system remain relevant for a minimum of 10 years (and what can happen on the internet in 10 years) technology choices were particularly important.

How do you future-proof a development like this?

For us, the logical place to start is...

Continue Reading »

Recently, the teams at Odopod gathered together for a presentation on Mobile from our Director of Technology, David Bliss and Senior Developer, Lucas Shuman. They shared some interesting insights and statistics about the growing Android market.

"Android has overtaken Symbian as the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide and that there is a three way tie in the U.S. between Blackberry, iOS and Android. What's more, indications are that Android's market share will continue to grow in 2011."

In their Flash for Mobile presentation, David and Lucas help us, our clients and our industry better understand what this all means.

Check out their presentation here »

Every year, the Society of Digital Agencies releases the Digital Marketing Outlook, a comprehensive look at the state of the digital industry with deep insights, thinking and analysis from some of the top players in the digital space as well as contributions and survey results from senior marketing executives, agencies, technologists and digital marketing practitioners.

This year, Guthrie Dolin, Director of Brand and Strategy at Odopod has provided key insights to the DMO, serving as section editor for the Digital Consumer and authoring the article, "Digital in a Physical World." Additionally, Guthrie provides case study examples for our work on DonQ under the Emerging Technology and Trends section.

We're excited to be a part of the growing Society of Digital Agencies and to continue working on developing content, ideas and themes that will help aid in the planning and development of digital programs into the future.

Check out Guthrie's thinking and the rest of the Digital Marketing Outlook 2011 »

For more information on SoDA's mission and members, news and events, visit http://societyofdigitalagencies.org/.

Odopod started at the end of 2000. It was the dawn of the “Digital Decade.” Over the past ten years, we’ve grown from a small digital studio to a fifty-plus strategically-minded digital agency. Meanwhile, the Internet has evolved from being something people use – to how people live.  

People are boldly adopting new ways of using digital. We are empowered by our personal devices and social networks to try things that might have previously seemed too difficult, time-consuming or expensive. Cultural shifts are taking place at a massive scale to how we shop, communicate, read, consume media, play games, bank and work.

How and when did this happen?

Rewind to 2001.

The dot-com bubble had just burst. Still, there were high expectations and optimism for the Internet. The decadence and “get rich quick” schemes of the dot-com era gave way to innovation and “stuff that works.” With a glut of used furniture, office space and brilliant minds, it was a great time to start a new kind of company.

Continued after the jump »

Google’s new Web Store offers themes, extensions and apps for Google’s web browser, Chrome.

Themes and extensions are not new to Chrome; the store simply brings them together with apps to provide improved discoverability.

Outwardly, the applications might not seem all that different, but for those using the Chrome browser, Google has added a layer of functionality that app developers can take advantage of.

More after the jump »

As a follow-up to my earlier post on Flash and Web Standards, I put together a presentation about how these evolving technologies can be used in our work. By looking more closely at the boundaries of what each technology is capable, we inform our decisions about the experiences we can create for different platforms and how to build them.

The slides are now available here and my notes for the presentation can be found here.

In a previous post on how brands might take advantage of the coming Internet of Things (wherein most of the everyday objects in our lives are connected and equipped with sensors gathering data about the world around them), I introduced a notion I called the "Media of Things." This post envisions this new idea in more detail.

Take your average city. Imagine all the advertising media plastering its streets - sidewalk kiosks, bus shelters, billboards, posters, screens in malls and on top of subway stations. The occasional bit of video aside, all this out-of-home media is static. Closed. Unconnected. A one-way broadcast.

Now, what if you were to take that media and add the technologies behind the Internet of Things: ubiquitous connectivity and suddenly cheap sensors streaming out data. Suddenly you've turned every billboard and bus shelter into an intelligent, communicative node in the Internet of Things. You've just created a wildly-versatile infrastructure for new advertising ideas.

I saw a first glimmer of the Media of Things when we worked on Chapter 2 of the Fiesta Movement with Undercurrent + Team Detroit. As part of that program, we asked people to check-in at Fiesta billboards using FourSquare - turning each billboard into a crude "people sensor." We then reflected that check-in activity on the Movement's website. That's a Media of Things idea - albeit in cardboard and duct-tape form.

Since it's a bit of an abstract notion, let's bring it to life in a simple scenario which I'll call: Go Giants Orange (Apologies, we're still psyched about our World Series win.)

--

So, to break it down:

1. Connect out-of-home media to Internet

2. Pack sensors of all kinds into it

3. Provoke interactions and gather data

4. Use that data to create interesting, interactive stories and experiences

5. Do it again, but totally different this time

This scenario is just one idea - if you have any thoughts about how you would utilize the Media of Things, or any other thoughts on the matter, I'd love to hear them.

Imagine a future where everyday objects - roads, trucks, toasters, water pumps - are equipped with sensors, capturing data about the world around them and sharing it out to create a digital mirror of everything that happens. That’s the vision of the Internet of Things and it’s coming sooner than you think.

Like the social web and location-based services before it, the Internet of Things will send serious ripples through all aspects of business, from manufacturing to supply chain to retail.

But how might brands and marketers get in on the action? Here are a four initial thoughts about how brands and their agencies could get their hands dirty in this emerging arena.

Be the Johnny Appleseed of sensors
The Internet of Things depends on sensors. By spreading sensors to places where they’re needed, a brand could expand the frontiers of this new world: a form of sponsored utility.

Find a territory your brand can own, seed sensors there, then make the data feeds free and open for everyone to use.

Create a media of things
What if physical advertising media could be infused with sensors? If I worked at a media agency, I’d be thinking about how to turn all those bus shelters, mall kiosks and roadside billboards into intelligent nodes in the network of things.

Build intelligence into outdoor and other forms of media, first using low-tech workarounds like barcodes and QR codes, later with increasingly cheaper and smaller sensors and transmitters. Then discover awesome, campaign-specific things to do with it all.

Make your operations transparent
This idea builds on Adrian Ho's concept of operations as marketing.

In a world of sensor-equipped objects, the day-to-day operations of any company will generate lots of data as a natural byproduct. Making that data transparent could be a powerful way to show how a company is living its brand idea.

Pull together your business’s data - sourcing, supply chain, sales and so on. Then present it in a way that tells the undeniable true story of your brand.

Turn data into wisdom
More sensors in more things means we’ll be deluged with an ever-growing flood of data. That’s neat. But the real magic will lie in finding the patterns, meaning and insight in all that noise. This work could be one of the most valuable forms of utility a brand can offer.

Pick an area of focus that’s right for your brand. Use your resources to apply the intelligence required to transform that raw data into wisdom. Then share that new-found wisdom with your audience.

--

These are just my first ideas around this. If you have any to add I’d love to hear them.

The pendulum has definitely swung. Flash is the new F-word and HTML5 is everyone's best friend.

Apple, Google and Microsoft have showcased HTML5 experiments and projects demonstrating how dynamic and interactive experiences in their browsers can be without using Flash.

At Odopod, our teams are well versed in both Flash and open Web Standards development. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and, in order to make the right decisions about these technologies, we need cut through the hype and weigh the options as objectively as possible.

Following are some of the questions that we have been hearing and debating at Odopod. The responses are intentionally high-level, intended as an overview. If you are looking for more exhaustive details, you will find some links at the end that will help you along.

Read More »

If you don't know Planningness, here's the short version: it's two days of provocative sessions led by industry brains, followed by hands-on audience activities. Learning, then doing. This year it was held simultaneously in Brooklyn and Denver.

During my two days in Denver, certain themes emerged: ideas I'll probably be pre-occupied with over the next few months and years.

(This is meant as a Cliff's Notes view - check out the individual presentations as they're posted here to get the full story.)

So, recurring ideas:

Driving groups to participate is an increasingly crucial skill
Definitely the most pervasive topic at Planningness, popping up across many sessions. Mike Arauz (Undercurrent) put it most poignantly: "We will be judged by our ability to engage networks."

Len Kendall (The3six5 project) offered his learnings on creating participation - with the frank reminder that because we do this in the service of brands, we're starting from a disadvantage. And John Winsor took us through his ongoing adventure building Victors & Spoils, as he braves change and turns the disruptive power of crowdsourcing on our own industry.

Agencies need more scientists
I'm not talking about the usual marketing pseudo-science, shallow research and half-baked venn diagrams. This is real science, the stuff that thrilled you as an 8-year-old. A session by Craig Elston and Ethan Decker of Integer Group showed us to how to hack people (well, nudge them at least) using behavioral economics and cognitive psychology. Meanwhile, Stamen showed off their gorgeously-geeky, math-and-data-driven take on storytelling.

Planning is splintering into many wildly-differing roles
The aftermath of digital is conjuring an endless variety of alternate reality versions of both planners and strategists: from specialists to generalists, from crowd-wranglers to curators and beyond. And in my chats with the folks sitting around me I'd say that the audience was made up of people who do very different jobs under the same (couple of) titles.

Whether this is a good thing or a danger, I don't know yet.

We're at our best when we embrace change
We are an industry in the midst of change - technological, cultural and economic. Which brings me back to the closing Q&A by John Winsor - one person who seems entirely at home in the chaos - during which he answered the audience, over and over: "That's a good question. I don't know. We're gonna have to try it and see what happens."

In other words, it's a fun time to be doing this. Get excited and make things.