The Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, the Jet Age, the Space Age and the Information Age - every technological era has brought about profound effects on socioeconomic and cultural conditions. They've reshaped human behavior and reset reality.

But, before the full effects of each of these technological developments have taken hold and fully permeated the collective understanding, people and businesses undoubtedly found themselves navigating a strange "in-between" time - a time where future visions are uncomfortably mingled with legacy artifacts and pre-existing expectations.

Today, in the Connected Age, technological innovations are bringing about seismic shifts in our reality every day. The dust is far from settled, and perhaps, it never will be. For businesses and brands this uncertain and unpredictable landscape is wrought with danger. Red herrings, pitfalls and fruitless dead-ends surround us, while opportunity is elusive.

But fear not, Larry Johnson (Odopod's Associate Director of Strategy) and I (Director of Brand and Strategy) have been hard at work cataloging the common mistakes, collecting helpful techniques and distilling best practices to survive and thrive in today's in-between times. We've compiled them neatly, into a presentation of course, and would love the opportunity to share them with you, our industry friends and peers at SXSW 2012.

But we need your help. Please vote for our SXSW session: Danger is Everywhere: Illuminating common pitfalls of marketing's in-between times and take a peek at some example slides here.

This preview is just a taste of what's to come. We promise to keep it short, sweet and useful so send us a vote and we'll see you there.

Most conversations about mobile strategies include the following two perspectives: limited resources of devices require new technical approaches, and mobile use cases are different and demand unique content and application features.

As we’ve settled into our new multi-device lifestyles, a new perspective has entered into these conversations: finding different content at the same place on different devices is a problem and flies in the face of web accessibility and common sense.

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The SF Business Times recently paid a visit to our offices for an in-depth look at the state of Odopod, our history and the future. Check out the excerpt below...

The San Francisco Business Times
March 11, 2011
Odopod Gets Bounce off Digital Work
By Bridget Riley

Ad firm's bigger footprint comes from new focus

Odopod Inc. couldn’t have picked a worse time to open a business in 2001’s bust, or to expand into a new specialty in 2008’s uncertainty. But the digital agency’s three founders also couldn’t have picked a better field to flourish in the worst of business climates.

That investment of several hundred thousand dollars in 2008 into digital strategy cinched Odopod’s place among competitors worldwide. Recent clients won on this new global scale include International Watch Co. in Switzerland. The company bounced back after just one down year from the recession in 2009, and grew more than 30 percent from 2008.

Read more: Odopod gets bounce off digital work | San Francisco Business Times »

An Interview with Robert V. Kozinets

As section editor of the “Digital Consumer” in the 2011 SoDA’s Digital Marketing Outlook I had the opportunity to speak with Robert Kozinets about his unique brand of online ethnographic research – netnography. An anthropologist by training, Robert is recognized as a pioneer of contemporary consumer research and is published in countless industry journals and is Professor of Marketing at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto.

Briefly, what is netnography and how does it differ to traditional ethnographic research?

Netnography is cultural research adapted to the unique contingencies of the online environment. It is a cultural look at social media. Online, there is surely culture and community, but lots of things about culture change. Conversations are archived, for instance. Bodies are not present. "Location" becomes rather malleable. Identity is in flux. That means we need new techniques specifically adapted to this altered state of reality, a new state of culture. Netnography was devised for this purpose.

Continue reading the interview »

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 »

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.)

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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.

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

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.

The rise of brands vying for young advocates continues to spike. Stats abound regarding teens and their unquenchable thirst for social networking. We know it is not enough to design cool FBML tabs, write fresh copy and ask every millennial in your network to “Like” the brand. At Odopod, we have found that young people are, indeed, selective. Sure they are flooded with internet noise, and yes, they are looking for a meaningful experience. However, these attributes are no different than other age groups. The problem lies in the approach. Brands continue to pour resources into social platforms only to replicate the same traditional marketing tactics. These tactics do not translate well for an audience with a finely tuned “legit” radar. Our work with youth-centered brands has given us some insights that will help maximize your Facebook campaigns.

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Complexity requires fierce collaborators
The complexities of working with global brands in the digital landscape require Odopod to be a deeply collaborative company. We are often one partner in a large ecosystem of other agencies and internal teams, all servicing different aspects of our clients marketing and communication needs. For this reason, we have embraced our role as collaborator and strive to forge formidable partnerships.

Knowing our role in these loose confederates is paramount. Too frequently, overreaching agencies debate their area of ownership and jostle for the client’s favor, which can be a recipe for dysfunction and subpar work.

I’ve found that effective ecosystems surrounding a brand must demonstrate the attributes of any productive and successful team – specifically; mutual trust, mutual respect, complete communication as well as a shared purpose and vision.

Beyond merely accepting the idea of collaboration, the larger team must invite it. Desire it. Even, when required, fight for it.

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