From Print to Phone to Web. And a Sale?

"Item Level Intelligence" (Radio Frequency Identification) will eventually replace bar codes on products. Smartphones will integrate that function to make point-of-sale more interactive and possibly ad/PR more interactive. In the meantime, to get more product info available to shoppers and ad/PR measurement for business, publishers are using scan/web/text messaging to get consumers to interact.

Smartphones that can read bar codes are allowing magazines to add Internet-like interactivity to print graphics and advertisements.

NY Times

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Published: January 10, 2010

Print may be a flat medium, but that has not stopped magazine publishers from trying to add dimension to their pages. For at least a decade, they have been experimenting with bar codes and icons that could take readers to Web sites, trying to add a bit of Internetlike interactivity to their pages.

But the average consumer did not own a bar-code reader — until now. With the sudden ubiquity of smartphones, which have apps that can read bar codes, and cameraphones, which can easily snap pictures of icons, magazines like Esquire and InStyle are adding interactive graphics to their articles, while Entertainment Weekly and Star are including them in ads.

Click to Read NY Times Article

"If It Bleeds It Leads" Just Doesn’t Work Anymore

I think we're in a great position to offer more for news and advertising. What do you think?

Our mantra at IBM in the 1980's was to change the communication world from one-to-many, to many-to-many communication, as we were inventing multimedia technology and predicting what the Web would become.

We believed that newspaper companies would either evolve into web-based media companies or not make it. When I showed Web prototypes to the NY Times in 1990, they just scratched their heads in amazement.

Back then, some said nobody would read that much on a computer screen. Now we watch our teenagers, heads bent over all the time, looking at a cellphone screen.

I’m just surprised newspapers haven’t totally switched or gone under yet.

TV has taken a long time to adapt because the engineering architecture of TV and a computer are completely different and incompatible; and, it’s taken a while for the network (transmission pipe) to get big enough and fast enough.

Radio and other audio were pretty easy to move to the web. I remember getting voiceover talent to come into our studio and do recordings. Now, most of the VO talent lives in Costa Rica, Hawaii, wherever they want, and they have an in-home studio with ISDN lines to deliver what they do. We listen-in while they’re recording.

I pass by Rush Limbaugh’s house here in the Town of Palm Beach everyday and it’s funny to think he’s about to go live on the air from his “compound” on the beach, referring to his small studio space as a "network."

I was asked today what I thought of all the media changes. Here's my answer.

To communicate, inform, market, and sell has almost completely changed and the change is getting faster.

Moore’s Law, once only applied to integrated circuits. Now it applies even more to information.

Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased, doubling approximately every two years. It has continued for over half a century and now they are so small you can put them in ink, along with transmitters (Radio Frequency Identification), so that labels on anything have “item-level intelligence” and can be tracked on a wireless network.

Click to read my blog article about RFID technology and it will blow your mind:

What Item-Level Intelligence Will Mean to Marketers

Because of all this technology, and the masses need for unbridled communication, information is expanding exponentially.

George Lucas told a group of us at a lunch in Las Vegas in the early 1990’s that everyone was going to become a producer… His prediction became reality: YouTube and Google Video is just a start.

I replaced a $5 million post production video studio (2001 dollars) with about $125.00 worth of software on my laptop and still don’t need all the features it provides.

I talk to media advertising reps and members of the press all the time and most are wondering if they will have a job in the next 5 years.

Google now gives advertisers the ability to bid on space and place ads in most offline major market newspapers, much like their SEM AdWords, including a way to deliver camera-ready ads. Plus they offer the 800# and online measurement service for that offline ad – for free.
Newspapers don’t offer measurement and what do you need a media ad-rep for if you can do it all online using Google?

For news, the media covers a very narrow channel of information. People want more than this:

1) If it bleeds it leads (celebrity death is right up at the top, wars and riots if there is a lot of death, airline and mass transit crashes, etc.)
2) The latest sex scandal
3) Stories about animals - mainly cute ones
4) “Newsworthy” information – euphemism for: If it’s very confrontational or controversial, we’ll run it.

That’s it. That covers just about all they publish.

With the many-to-many channels available and a huge body of other information that is of interest to consumers and businesses, the savvy marketing and PR folks among us have figured out a way to do an end-around on the press to deliver stories, so the press aren’t gatekeepers anymore.

If done effectively, the press ends up coming to you.

Media has changed and I think in many respects, if used for good purposes, many-to-many is better. You can be in charge now. Those that don’t adapt quickly will be left behind, and even more importantly, out-of-touch.

Learn Web 2.0 technologies and techniques. Keep up with them as they evolve and get ready for Web 3.0 (more in another article).

Become excellent storytellers and "reporters," and publish a wide scope of interesting content and you will lead your organization to become a stronger brand, engage all your stakeholders, create a much larger lead bank full of qualified prospects, and your reputation and sales will go up!

Item-Level Intelligence

You’re going to hear a lot more in the near future about “item-level intelligence.” This technology puts electronics: transistors, transmitters, etc. into ink that can be printed on everything.

Right now 30 million transistors can fit on the head of a pin. So including the electronics you need to attach to any item you want using ink isn’t hard to imagine. Bye-bye barcodes!

I worked on presenting Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as a future technology when I was at Motorola in 2001. It’s now a reality.

A Simple Example
Think about a consumer package good like a can of beans. The manufacturer puts the beans in a can and a printed label is put on the can. The ink on the label has transistors and transmitters in it so the bean manufacturer knows what ‘s in the can, the date of manufacture, and where the can has to go. The company that ships the can knows where the can is. The company that bought the beans knows when it gets to the warehouse and what store it is supposed to go to, and when it arrives. The store knows when it got on the shelf, AND WHEN A CUSTOMER PICKS IT UP TO LOOK AT IT, or buys it.

Thought that would grab you. Ink based paper antennas are positioned at the end of each aisle so the merchandising system can keep track of where the beans are moved (stop it).

Item-level intelligence brings a whole new meaning to Just-in-Time manufacturing and the entire supply chain. What does this mean for marketing?

You can negotiate with a buyer right at the shelf. Don’t want to advertise the beans? Try a coupon strategy just like they do now. Instead of having tags on the shelf under the beans, when a customer checks out the beans by picking them up and looking at them, the system can offer a coupon to the buyer’s opt-in smart phone when the buyer puts the can back on the shelf. It might make the buyer reconsider.

Benefits to buyers are a way to budget, reduce costs of goods, find them, and create a shopping list that is managed on their phone. Need milk? You’ll know if your garbage can has an RFID antenna. When you throw the milk carton in the garbage, your shopping list gets updated. You see the benefits.

Item-level intelligence will offer in depth data on products, sales, segment penetration and analytics, and will finally allow one-to-one marketing at the residence and shelf level.

Keep an eye out here for more on this emerging marketing technology.