How the Tokyo Newspaper uses an AR app for kids

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Many newspapers are trying to find new ways into the digital future. The Tokyo Newspaper is facing the same challenge. However, Dentsu Tokyo may have found some good idea how to connect with readers with an Augmented Reality Reader app for kids. It is transforming paper into real life experiences and create a “Newspaper for family and children communication”. Their iPhone App identifies with markers different articles and advertisements on single pages of the newspaper, by overlaying the educational content of the article specifically for kids. Although we have seen this all over the world, I think, it is definitely an idea to get kids back to reading the papers.

Do you think this idea will bring some new readers for the newspapers or magazines? Is it an option to get kids reading paper?

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YOUM: Does Samsung show the future of mobile displays?

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When I wrote about three magic inventions discovered at CES 2013 some days ago, I definitely missed out on YOUM. The rumors around flexible displays is out there for quite a while. Remember Yankodesign’s vision of a flexible multiscreen phone or the Motorola Flipout?

Now, at CES the first YOUM displays were presented on stage, alongside a funny commercial clip. The OLED displays are thin that an iPod, can be bowed and rolled up. It sounds like science fiction or a good James Bond film invention, and it will be as log as the technology needed to make the OLED’s work is not getting thinner.

In the presentation Brian Berkely, VP Samsung Display, showed with different prototypes how it is possible to build displays that go around the smartphone or tablet. There, you then could see the latest text message, email or calendar entry that might be relevant. I can imagine these displays will hit the smartphone and tablet market quite soon.

And the question will be what is Apple’s or other smartphone and tablet manufacturers’ answer to this invention…

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McDonalds App: Check out where your Mac was made

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McDonalds is one of those companies where people want to know exactly how their food was made. And sometimes they need to do something not to get into the spotlight of a shitstorm. Now, the Australian team of McDonalds, with the help of DDB Australia, knows how to do some prevention – with their app “TrackMyMacca”.

This app lets Australians have a look in the McDonalds kitchen (and before ingredients even gets there) of their meal. It dives straight into their supply-chain and augmented reality to transmit an interactive experience that makes McDonald’s delivery process transparent, “showing where your ingredients come from you are eating”.

In my eyes, this is an interesting experience, and makes eating your burger alone a bit more exciting… and engages the customers. Ever thought about how you could do that with your product and services? Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Hey, Lufthansa! Not interested in Frequent Travellers?

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SkyThere were days when I thought it is better to stay out of the discussions around the changed terms and conditions for Frequent Travellers and lounge access. A long time did my trips hit the airports with the lounges where Lufthansa still values the status of a Frequent Traveller (FTL) as a “superior customer”. “Acces granted for FTL passengers!”

Now, in just some weeks it happened to me twice that I got the answer: “Access denied for FTL passengers!” I think, it is time to write some words in order to give Lufthansa the chance to reply to all the clutter that goes live on the Web. So, Lufthansa – please listen up.

Amsterdam Schiphol and London Heathrow! In both airports Lufthansa cancelled their contracts with the lounge partners for FTL passengers. However, there are rumours going on that in 2014 when the new Terminal 2 opens, that situation might change. True? Wrong? We don’t know! Lufthansa, is not monitoring or listening it seems.

The lounge access topic might have some financial background. Still, I wonder if Lufthansa knows what kind of economical impact this might cause. Lufthansa, do you believe in the power of Social Media? Seeing your massive activities on social networks I assume you do. But, why do you not answer the conversation that is led by some link in position 1 on Google for the quest: “Lufthansa FTL London Heathrow”? Doesn’t that show how much Lufthansa values FTL passengers? Sorry, Lufthansa! In my eyes, you want to get rid of the FTL status. Correct…?

And let me give you another reason why I believe that. I am just illustrating briefly the situation of a business man traveling around Europe quite often, and in my eyes approx. 50 times is often.

If I am allowed to have access to the lounge, I don’t lose time. Time is money, is efficiency, is essential for doing my business. Access means: No need to find a quite and comfortable place, buy my drinks and food, or ask myself why I pay your Bought Media. Lufthansa, understand that FTL passengers think about the benefit of paying you the extra thousand year-on-year to get to that status?

Amsterdam, London, or anywhere else. The lounge is the main value for FTL passengers to continue flying more often with you than with other airlines. No access to the lounge means, I will fly i.e. British Airways, one of you biggest competitors for the UK region. And there are many obvious reasons for this i.e. in London Heathrow: Cheaper flights, newer terminal, nice gates, better shops with more popular brands, a Fish restaurant, and, and, and… Do I have to continue the list? No? Thank you, Lufthansa, for making my time efficient and my critic spot on. That’s what I want you to understand!

In the end, the “lounge-access-thing” is just a numbers game. I doubt that your stakeholders at Lufthansa is good in understanding how to scale the business. Sorry Lufthansa, but I doubt you are clear about the long-term effect this “multi-level-lounge-access-nonse” might cause. Why? Let me tell you what happens, if I don’t have access to the lounge. Quite frankly…

No revenue for Lufthansa
250,- EUR
Revenue for BA:
170,- EUR
(without tax, petrol & stuff – average deal, booked early in advance, etc.)
Personal or Company Win: 80,- EUR
Result: Me or the company can safe money or be drunk & data addicted (ok, I am…), if I spend that on a bar at the gates in Heathrow!

I don’t believe the lounge rent, my two drinks and one sandwich costs those 80 EUR, right? So, not granting access to lounges for FTL passengers on different airport makes me think whether…
a) Lufthansa is testing whether you kill the FTL status.
b) Lufthansa doesn’t appreciate the money of Frequent Travellers.
c) Lufthansa has not made their business homework.
Lufthansa, please tick!

Taken it from an Earned and Owned Media perspective, I would suggest you know how often people fly with you, how much you could do with that, how you could engage on networks, how this would catalyse your brand perception, what that would do with people usually flying some oither airline, how this scales in sales. If not, contact The Strategy Web and we will tell you how Social Media scales your business, Lufthansa, predominantly if it comes along in a positive way.

Did I make the benefit of lounge access clear to you, Lufthansa? Next time I am flying, I will make sure I get my travel assistant check the lounge access before booking the flight. I cannot believe you are not interested in our business (feeding you), our needs (scaling your business) and our money (enabling acceleration and growth)?!

Gimme some arguments why I shall still fly with you when I am busy…??? Come on, Lufthansa!

Google: Demystifying Duplicate Content

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In many meetings, and I had one of those calls today, I understand again and again that managers have limited knowledge of what “Duplicate Content” means when working with multiple sites and/or using similar content on those. Now, what does Google really say about duplicate content? Can your business place similar text blocks or complete texts on different blogs and websites? And how about same content but in different languages?

In a video clip Greg Grothaus, a Google engineer for search quality, explains what “Duplicate Content” stands for and what it means to businesses.

General answer: Is there a Duplicate Content Penalty from Google? No, it’s a myth! Google wants diversity in the results that Google displays on search results. That’s the reason why pages might be omitted from Google which makes sense.

Deep answer: There are typical downsides of “Dupicate Content”.
– Dilution of link popularity: Better have 20 links go to one page, then twice 10 to two pages.
– User-unfriendly URLs in search results: Useless URLs effect branding & decrease usability – so better leave it.
– Inefficient crawling: The less Google has to crawl, the better for the new content to be seen.

Best answer: Google does not like Spam. Spam will find penalty, if it is done with a systematic approach, or when there is the absolute same content on different pages with no changes at all.

Our Advice: Create fresh content! Or do you want to buy the same stuff or gadgets you already have received as a present for Christmas? See…?

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Google Zeitgeist and YouTube Review 2012

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Each year Google Zeitgeist reminds us from a search perspective what happend in the last 12 months. And this year again, we get their point of view of 2012. So, no more words. Just watch it…

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Well, hang-on! Don’t forget to watch Google’s official YouTube review “Rewind YouTube Style 2012” as well. Are we surprised that it is representing the Gangnam Style “Call me Maybe”, and is including web stars like Felica Day and the viral success of Kony 2012, or the Walk Off the Earth?

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Study: Big brands could do better on social customer service

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Some weeks ago, we have written about the importance to be fast on response time on Social Media platforms. We made clear, based on some research by Convince & Convert, that companies need to react in not more than 60 seconds on complaints, customer enquiries and questions that appear on company’s and brands’ social platforms.

Now, a recent study of some of the biggest brands in the U.S., like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Visa or Starbucks shows that providing a top standard of customer support on Twitter is not really as fantastic as it seems. Although some readings of all those good posts about these brands and their Social Media efforts might assume the companies do whatever they can in Social Business terms.

In the study, four Software Advice employees used their personal Twitter accounts to address customer service tweets to 14 consumer brands in seven industries – McDonalds, Starbucks (Fast Food), Coca Cola, Pepsi (Soft Drinks), Visa, Mastercard (Credit Cards), Wells Fargo, Bank Of America (Banking), Walmart, Home Depot (Retail), Apple*, HP (Consumer Tech), Gillette and Colgate (Personal Care).

They sent each brand’s Twitter account one tweet per weekday for four consecutive weeks, from “Urgent, to Positive/Negative, or questions about FAQ or technical issue. Then, brands were evaluated on their average response time and rate. See the results in the following infographic…

2012 Internet & Mobile Trends (Infographic)

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The year 2012 shows an impressive growth of the Mobile Internet, especially in the developing countries. The desktop loses more and more control, and shows an increasing shift to smartphones and mobile devices. The trend towards mobile Internet access and the mobile workforce cannot be stopped any longer. It offers some massive opportunity for businesses if they are open and think about how to approach the mobile freedom of the mobile workplace. More latest trends were uncovered and collected by Background.org in this infographic.

Study: Content Marketing is becoming big in B2B, focus is shifting…

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A recent study by Curata identified the main drivers of content marketing activities in B2B companies. The findings are based on Curata’s poll of 465 B2B marketing professionals in October 2012 from business owners, VPs of Marketing, CMOs, managers, marketing consultants and agencies.

The study explains that content marketing continues to become more and more important for B2B marketers. However, the drivers for content strategies are shifting towards thought leadership and market education.

The results show that 87% of responding B2B marketing professionals use content marketing for business goals targets (5% increase to 2011). Content marketing gets followed by SEO (67%) and event marketing (60%) as further leading channels in marketing strategies in 2012.

Further findings of the study show that although engaging customers (81%) has top priority for their content marketing efforts, thought leadership and educating the market are increasing in their importance for the business. More than half of B2B marketers (56%) state thought leadership as a key objective (13% increase to 2011). Also, educating the market (47%) increased by 3% to last year. Just 24% see SEO as a key objective (still a 5% increase to last year). Former top marketing tactics (print/TV/radio) went down from 32% to 26% this year.

Spot On!
Lead generation is still one of the key marketing goals for B2B marketers according to the survey. Most B2B marketers (82%) see driving sales and leads as their top marketing goal. Establishing thought leadership (42%), increasing brand awareness (40%), or increasing Web traffic (32%) follow in the next places. Content curation is also getting traction as the next step in content marketing. 57% of B2B marketers see it as an important evolution step. However, content curation is in it’s infancy when only 34% of curating content marketers have done it since six months or less. Quite scary I found that a staggering 43% of B2B marketers don’t measure the efficiency of their content marketing efforts. I found interesting that the topic brand advocates was not on the spot in terms of content marketing in this study.

36% of mobile car search convert within an hour, finds study

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It will be one of these studies that will make the car and travel industry think. Nielsen, xAd and Telmetrics just published the third part of their “mobile path to purchase” study. The research is based on findings for the travel industry, restaurants and the car industry. The study found some significant differences in the consumer behavior from the three industry sectors. Especially for the car industry the findings seem notable…

The research discovered four types of mobile car users: car researchers, car, deal hunters, ircumstantial or emergency users, gear heads. All showed different signs of behavior, demographic and income profiles. There are some significant findings.

Half of the mobile car search was done as a longer term research. However, 49% were “looking to make a purchase within the day.” Even more, 36% of this part converted “within the hour.”

By comparing the three categories, the study found some elementary difference between apps and mobile web usage. While car searchers are heading for mobile web usage (maybe because their demand is not of daily expertise with these apps), the travel search is done predominatly via apps.

The study also clarified some differences between smartphone and tablet user behavior which was especially in the automotive category of importance for the car industry:
– Tablet owners are 3x more likely to be influenced by positive reviews than smartphone owners
– Tablet users spend more time looking at reviews and doing price research than smartphone users
– 42% of smartphone users do some research while in their cars

Most car search activities were business directions (44%), pricing comparison (43%) and phone numbers to business impact (36%).