What exactly is cultural latency, you ask? Latency refers to the lag time between cause and effect, typically in reference to gaming. The lower the latency, the faster the response time. With advances in technology, we [...]]]> Ever since Faris Yakob wrote this piece for Fast Company on cultural latency, I have been fascinated by the idea.

What exactly is cultural latency, you ask? Latency refers to the lag time between cause and effect, typically in reference to gaming. The lower the latency, the faster the response time. With advances in technology, we continue to see diminishing cultural latency across a wide range of day-to-day activities – from communication (think snail mail vs. email or IM) to advertising.

Which leads us to the ridiculously awesome Old Spice videos that W+K pulled off.

In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, first check out the original Old Spice ad here and the newly released sequel here. The concept is great, the copywriting is excellent. But here’s where it get’s good: For two days, Isaiah Mustafa, “the Old Spice guy,” was responding to the digital world in almost real time. What happened to the script approvals, post production work and lengthy edits? Gone – out the window.

[Side note: One of the things about advertising that has always annoyed me is the amount of time that it takes to get things done. From signing contracts to script approvals to shooting to post production, by the time it's all said and done, it's hard to keep track of where things started in the first place. This is probably one of the reasons I love social media - everything has to be quick, and so it is!]

After posting updates to various social networks inviting users to ask questions to Isaiah Mustafa (the star of the videos), they received responses from Demi Moore, Ellen DeGeneres, Digg founder Kevin Rose and even the guys from Twitter (who asked if Mustafa had any experience training whales.) In a single day, over 80 videos were created in response to tweets, Facebook comments and even 4chan postings.

The videos were genuinely hilarious, but they also felt extremely personal. But I suppose you could argue that’s nothing new – There are lots of creative people in our industry.

What was so crucial for this to work was the response time. Tweets fly by… Responding to a tweet months later, even days later, just wouldn’t have been the same.

But like all good things, the videos, too, come to an end. So what now?

Brands will be challenged with trusting the agencies that are producing their content even more and agencies will be challenged with creating content (that matters) on the fly. How are you stepping up to the challenge?

One thing that particularly stuck out to me was a panel’s reference to the “lightning rod effect,” when people with [...]]]> Yesterday I attended the Creativity and Technology Conference and got to see a ton of great panels/speakers. I’m convinced that CaT is the new (& better) SXSW. All the tweets you read were true

One thing that particularly stuck out to me was a panel’s reference to the “lightning rod effect,” when people with large followings start talking about you/your brand, causing others to do the same. In some cases the chaos that comes from it can be good (”we had so many people visit our site that the server went down” isn’t such a bad problem to have), but more often than not people express their POV when they’re angry or have an issue with your brand. And in those instances, the mobs tend to attack.

So if the mobs attack, what can you do to come out on top?
- Thicken your skin. Sometimes the comments will be accurate, while others will be a bit silly. While it may feel personal, especially if you’re the founder or CEO of the brand, step back and toughen up.
- Acknowledge their comments. Even if you can’t fix the problem immediately, publicly recognize the fact that you’re getting an influx of comments and are looking into the situation or a possible solution.
- Don’t shut people out. Break down the communication barriers and really let your consumers and fans know what is going on. If the solution is taking longer than expected, acknowledge that. If you’re struggling to fix the problem, ask for input from your fans. While it may seem harder for bigger corporations, this is the most crucial bit.
- Be transparent. Now isn’t the time for marketing speak. Instead, pull them closer and appeal to human nature. Give consumers a reasonable and honest answer. If you can’t fix their problem, explain why to the best of your ability and recommend alternatives.

While it may seem like an uphill battle, it doesn’t have to end badly – In fact, this panel argued that often times, it may build an even tighter-knit community.

The costs start at $99 for individuals which amounts to less than $10/month – a small price to pay in [...]]]> As much as I love bit.ly, I’m thinking that I may have to make a move to a different URL shortener soon – Totally Awesome, or Totally.Awe.Sm, creates a URL shortener from any domain you own.

The costs start at $99 for individuals which amounts to less than $10/month – a small price to pay in my opinion.

The personalization trend has already taken hold – I think it’s fair to say that we’ll see more and more people & companies using custom URL shorteners in the near future.

Tim talked about process, quality and culture at AOL and how it contributed to both their successes and failures. Whereas Google does a great job of marrying art and science, AOL has missed the boat a bit [...]]]> This morning I was invited to an “Innovation Breakfast” with Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, hosted by Wolff Olins.

Tim talked about process, quality and culture at AOL and how it contributed to both their successes and failures. Whereas Google does a great job of marrying art and science, AOL has missed the boat a bit and is now playing a game of catch-up.

Having come from Google, Tim had a lot to say about internal culture. The most important point, I think, was about competitive culture. Tim pointed out that everyone at Google had a competitive drive and wanted to do their very best – But beyond that, Google had also set the bar of quality pretty high.

Tim argued that to help employees succeed, they assume that employees are smart. By trusting them to manage their own time and workloads, you are giving them the freedom to create their own success. Think of micromanagement and then think of the opposite.

Beyond management styles, Tim touched on meeting culture at AOL. “We don’t do PowerPoints about PowerPoint,” he said, pointing out that this is just a waste of everyone’s time. The company is conscious of not wasting their employees time and has even implemented a 5 minute meeting rule – If you are 5 minutes (or more) late to a meeting, you’re locked out. This holds true for employees across the board: Tim cited an example earlier this month where there was a new business meeting with a large client and the Director of Business Development was late. Instead of pushing back the meeting, they locked the doors.

So can AOL redefine itself and truly succeed? I think so. And so does Tim.

Tim said he accepted the position at AOL because he is a “huge believer that the Internet is going to be much, much bigger than it is today.” Beyond AOL as an Internet Server Provider (ISP), Tim pointed out that there were a lot of other assets and features that AOL has such as MapQuest (the #2 online mapping site) and AdTech. He skipped over Beebo, but when an audience member brought it up, he pointed out that at the time of acquisition, it was a pretty solid social network – especially overseas.

What else is going on behind closed doors at AOL? Tim is challenging his employees to “beat the internet.” Looking at what’s available online today – from flavors.me to Twitter to Wikipedia – there are some amazing tools and platforms available. Tim and his team are taking close looks at what is out there and how they can create something better.

The biggest challenge I think they face is the stigma associated with AOL. While the new logos are cool, lots of people (myself included) still remember AOL as an ISP promoting their service on little CDs of free hours. When I think of AOL, I think ‘old school.’

AOL has a long way to go, but I, for one, am pretty excited about what the future may hold : )

Clay Shirky’s SXSW session (Monkeys with Internet [...]]]> If I asked you to borrow money, you would likely be uncomfortable on some level – even if you fall within my closest social circles. But if I asked you to send me some stats that you shared on your blog last week, you might feel less uncomfortable. Why?

Clay Shirky’s SXSW session (Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature and Digital Data) covered social sharing and why we do it (or why we don’t.) Sharing something physical takes effort. Sharing goods means you’re likely going to have to give something up to share it with someone else. Sharing services doesn’t necessarily mean you physically have to give something up, but it still takes some effort. However, when it comes to information sharing, it’s so easy to do that you may feel bad/guilty if you don’t do it.

We know how to handle scarcity, he said, but “when things become abundant, the price goes away – things become available to everyone. It changes the world people operate in.” Things we previously thought of as scarce are now essentially new products and we don’t know how to value them.

Think about where the music industry is today and where it was 15 years ago. The product they had created was little plastic discs – music itself wasn’t the product. Once Napster hit peoples’ desktops, music became shareable information. Instead of sharing a good or service, you were able to share music files with no real cost to you. Shirky thinks that Napster became such a big hit so quickly because we are biased to feel good when we share information with one another, and sharing these informational files of music was no different.

In this digital age, it’s easier and easier each day to share information with each other – we do this via blogging, via Twitter, via texts, etc. Many of these tools that we use to share information today weren’t available 10 years ago. But where does the future lie? On some level, there are still qualms about sharing information… How does intellectual property play into it? I’m betting we’ll see a lot more of Creative Commons in the future.

What are your thoughts? Will social sharing take over and become more widespread?

Every SXSW badge was equipped with a QR code and at the SXSW Foursquare party the other night, Toby Daniels (founder of Social Media Week) was walking [...]]]> At SXSWi, I saw endless QR codes. While I’m interested in principle and consider myself a technologist of sorts, I scanned a total of zero (yep, zero) QR codes.

Every SXSW badge was equipped with a QR code and at the SXSW Foursquare party the other night, Toby Daniels (founder of Social Media Week) was walking around with a QR code stamp. I even know someone who won $5k from a Microsoft contest that involved scanning QR codes.

But here’s the thing – in my opinion, there are just too many steps for me and the process is unintuitive. I see the squares of black dots and patterns and I want to turn and run the other way.

Having said that, barcodes feel a bit more intuitive. I see them getting scanned on a regular basis and have even scanned a few myself (thank you, college job at Starbucks!), which is one of the reasons why Sticky Bits are particularly interesting to me.

Sticky Bits are sticky barcodes that you can use to attach data to. Unlike QR codes that typically redirect to URLs, Sticky Bits can be used to share almost any form of multimedia.

They’re well designed (even cute on some occasions) and feel more useful than QR codes, which sometimes feel a bit gimmicky. They’re also made to measure. You can attach locations to them and set up notifications so that when someone scans your barcode, you’re able to track that data.

While the physical stickers are a bit expensive (~$0.50/sticker), Sticky Bits offers unique codes available for download for free so that you can tattoo, glue or stamp them anywhere you like.

Would you use Sticky Bits? What would you attach to your barcode?

After logging into your Facebook account from the kiosk, you are asked to pick pictures from those that you’ve uploaded. At this point, it doesn’t appear that you can print pictures where you’re tagged if [...]]]> Kodak recently announced that beginning this summer Facebook users would be able to print their pictures directly from Kodak printing kiosks.

After logging into your Facebook account from the kiosk, you are asked to pick pictures from those that you’ve uploaded. At this point, it doesn’t appear that you can print pictures where you’re tagged if they were uploaded by other people.

Worried about the size? Kodak will show an icon if your pictures aren’t high enough resolution to limit disappointment.

For a walk-through of how it works, check out the video posted on Kodak’s “Plugged In” blog here.

The only bad thing I have to say? The contact info they give on their press releases is TinyURL.com/emailkodak. [Why would anyone use any URL shortener other than bit.ly?!]

With Kodak taking this step, I think we’ll start to see other printers doing the same. We may even see sites like Facebook and Flickr add an element of digital printing/ordering to the site itself. What do you think?

One iteration, by Kikin (a Firefox add-on), allows you to search Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, Google Reader, Wikipedia, YouTube, Bing etc, from within your [...]]]> I definitely think that will all the publishing platforms out there, we’ll see more and more around creative (and social) filtering. (Maybe we can even convince brands to play in this space?)

One iteration, by Kikin (a Firefox add-on), allows you to search Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, Google Reader, Wikipedia, YouTube, Bing etc, from within your Google search.

But then the cool stuff happens – If you connect Facebook or Twitter, you can choose to see public comments or comments just from your friends. If you’re looking at a product on Amazon, a Kikin bar will come up at the top of the page that shows you recent searches along with feedback from FB/Twitter.

What do you think about Kikin?

DOWNLOAD // EXPLORE // PLAY: http://www.kikin.com/