Gifts that keep on giving.

Apps. Everyone’s heard the word. And anyone with a smart phone most likely already uses several (you need an iPhone application to read the QR codes we’ve talked about in our previous emails, for instance).

But applications, be they for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android or whatever the next astounding smart device will be called, also represent another opportunity for us: an app created on behalf of one of our clients could start out as part of a multimedia campaign, but then live on for a long, long time – providing a functional benefit to consumers and generating good feelings about our clients’ brands in the process.

You may remember, for instance, the application from Stuttgart agency Jung von Matt for their client Bosch, which used Apple’s built-in gyro technology to turn the iPhone into a leveling device.

The Tim Horton’s folks will recognize TimmyMe, the app that shows you the nearest Tim Horton’s using GPS. As it turns out, TimmyMe wasn’t created by Tim Horton’s or by any of its agencies, but by two independent developers who loved the coffee and had some free time. It’s now one of the most popular free iPhone applications, with over 24,000 downloads.

In Brazil this past summer, Heineken offered an iPhone app that showed users where the nearest bar selling Heineken was, and how to get there.

The point, of course, is that if an app is useful on a daily basis, then it’s a great way to engage consumers – and to introduce our clients to a mobile strategy.

Below are a few other favourite applications, courtesy of Gavin Wiggins and Mark Phillips. Hopefully they’ll inspire you to ask “what app could I propose to my clients?”

Whole Foods
Sure, it’s got a store locator. But even if you’re not near a Whole Foods, the app provides a recipe search by working with the ingredients you have on hand. Once you choose a meal, it automatically provides a shopping list. Brilliant!

Zipcar
If you’re a Zipcar member you can use the app to reserve a car, honk the horn to find that car in a parking lot, and even unlock it. If you’re not a member you can still use the app to find available cars and browse models.

The Score sports app
When the iphone came out, the Score made a commitment to offer the best sports app in Canada – it definitely is. Easy navigation allows you to switch seamlessly between various sports, with breakdown of scores, stats, standings, and news.

Globe and Mail
It’s sleek, easy to read, and provides pretty much all the stories you can find online or in print. With e-mail, twitter and facebook connect options.

And a bonus link. This app is courtesy of Frank Macera. A little unsettling, it shows just how far one can take app technology – if society will allow it.

Social Campaigns.

It’s been said that in the rapidly approaching future, the social web will essentially be the web. After all, if you want to find people on the internet, odds are they’re already on facebook – and facebook now actually drives more traffic to sites like yahoo and msn than google does.

In the past we’ve talked about what it takes to create a successful facebook fan page. But there are other ways to take advantage of social behavior and its inherent advertising opportunities.

Today’s link shows how Miami agency Crispin Porter Bogusky has taken a key facebook characteristic and used it as the pillar in a campaign for Coke Zero.

Their simple idea is built around the fact that most people on facebook have uploaded photos showing their faces. The premise: just as Coke Zero has the same taste as Coke, perhaps someone out there has the same face as you do (and wouldn’t it be cool to make contact with them). You can find your double via a special Coke Zero portal.

This isn’t the first time Crispin has taken advantage of an existing facebook feature. You might remember, for instance, their idea for Burger King where if you un-friended 10 friends, you got a free whopper.

But the really interesting thing here is that their idea is not based simply around a facebook feature, but around an aspect of social behavior in general. Because whether we’re talking about facebook, or whatever social media engine will come after it, the point is that there’s always going to be something out there that helps people share and connect – and lots of people are going to use it to do just that. The question for us is: how do we make our clients relevant to that activity?

So be a social media user and explorer. It may just help you come up with the next great – and potentially really popular – idea.

Print and posters go interactive.

Y’all will remember how a couple weeks ago we talked about QR, or quick response codes – those things in the newspaper that look like a bar code and when you scan them with your smart phone, the code sends your phone to a web site. And we linked to the building in Japan with a giant QR code on the front of it. But what about more current examples closer to home?

Today we have two. For those of you who take the subway in to work, keep an eye out for the Auto Show posters. You’ll notice at the top of the poster is a QR code, and when you read closely you’ll see that anyone who buys their tickets using that QR code gets a 25% discount. Not a bad way to attract a tech-savvy crowd to the show – a crowd who is more likely to share their positive Auto Show experience with other potential customers through facebook, twitter, foursquare, blogs etc.

We also have a link (because this is the weekly link, after all) to an article about how the Detroit Red Wings now use QR codes in their new program. Again, a great way to deliver exclusive content and strengthen the connection between fans and team.

Based on these latest examples, I’m going to make a prediction: this year will be the tipping point for QR code adoption. In a short while, I’ll bet QR codes will be the norm on posters, newspapers and in magazines. And consumers will start expecting it.

Which of course will only speed the need for agencies to offer fully integrated solutions – and provide us with the opportunity to offer ever deeper campaign ideas to our clients.

Bonus link, courtesy of Gavin Wiggins: Blogger Thomas Purves talks about how the National Post is using QR codes in its daily newspaper. The interesting thing here is that this is a demonstration of how it’s not just typically “younger” brands that are adopting QR codes – attesting once more to the potential universality of this technology.

Our future audience.

Today’s link is to a blog post – a rather interesting true story written by a counterpart at my former agency. It’s not so much about what we can do on the web, but rather, what the next generation of consumers expects our clients to do.

Some of our previous weekly posts have touched on the power of two-way dialogue between our clients and their consumers, through, for example, facebook or twitter. This link reminds us that those consumers are starting to take such dialogue for granted.

Sure, the main characters in the story are kids. But they learned about what to expect from their parents – our current audience. So this link is really more ammunition for us to use when we’re selling our clients on the value of digital interaction – and integration.

Better branding through hashtags.

Facebook is often the first tool we think of when people say “social media.” But we shouldn’t forget its quick and nimble nephew – Twitter.

For those who don’t know Twitter, think of it as blogging lite. You broadcast messages (‘tweet’) to other users who choose to follow you. Similarly, you can choose to follow other Twitter users whose comments interest you. But there’s a catch – you only have 140 characters in which to craft your thoughts, brilliant or not. Twitter also lets you re-broadcast someone else’s message, or send a direct message back to them. Many people use Twitter as a way to share links to web sites, articles etc.

You’ve probably already heard that Twitter helped elect a President (and it wasn’t Taft). You may be surprised to learn that several major companies (including Starbucks, Ford and Best Buy) maintain a constant Twitter presence, broadcasting special promotions and news and even directly messaging consumers. Why? Several reasons: tweets sent out by a real person (even if it’s, say, Ford’s PR guy) help humanize the brand. And Twitter’s share-able and bite-sized nature makes it very easy for consumers to engage with a brand they like. (See their tweets here: Ford, Starbucks, Best Buy)

But wait – there’s more. Much more. Twitter offers us even greater communications potential thanks to the ability to create a ‘hashtag’ topic.

To ‘hashtag’ simply means to append a word with a # (for example, #haiti) that you would then place at the start of your tweet. When you do this, the hashtag signals to Twitter that your tweet is part of a current and popular topic. Twitter can then take all tweets, from every user, with the same hashtag and stream them together, making them easier for everyone to find and creating an impromptu community.

To see how much involvement this can generate, simply go to the twitter home page and type #haiti or #ipad into the search field, and see what comes up (Don’t worry, you don’t have to sign in).

By hashtagging your tweet, you have the potential to ensure a much larger number of people see it. And if your topic represents a powerful enough idea, you have the opportunity to create a social movement as other Twitter users apply the same hash tag to their tweets on the same topic.

Could we create such a movement for Benylin, by inviting people to share their sick day stories with #BenylinDay as the hashtag? Unite Kraft Dinner lovers with #GottaBeKD? Encourage the sharing of positive messages about Sick Kids Hospital with #SickKidsStories?

Obviously, there’s the matter of letting people know about the hashtag you create (Land Rover actually paid people to use the #LRNY hashtag when they tweeted about the company’s New York auto show debut). And, as with any campaign, hashtags would represent just one part of the initiative. But they can be a very powerful part, as long as there’s a powerful idea behind them.

Bonus Links:
40 of the more successful Twitter brands (and why).

And let’s not forget how many celebrities tweet to their fans. Follow everyone’s favourite B list actress, Alyssa Milano, on Twitter.

Turning old media into new media.

One of the interesting things about technology is that it allows us to take what used to be mass media back in the 20th Century and re-make it as interactive media today.

Case in point: QR (Quick Response) codes. You may not have heard the term but you’ve definitely seen QR codes around. They’re those things that look like a bar code, but when you point a smart phone (with the right app) at them and take a picture, the QR code causes your phone to automatically go to a web site where you can get more information.

Those free Metro newspapers you get in the subway system are full of QR codes, allowing a reader to get further details about a given story on the spot (essentially making the paper interactive). There are QR codes on t-shirts and on plaques at historic landmarks.

Put a QR code on your product and you have the ability to provide helpful information (or a sales pitch) to a consumer in real time. Put a QR code on a poster, and that poster becomes a digital medium, literally stopping people in their tracks if they choose to interact with the message.

Today’s link shows how someone took the idea even further – turning the entire front of a building into one giant QR code. People outside the building can use their smart phones to reveal what’s going on inside and access the occupants’ twitter feeds.

The point, of course, isn’t the execution (although it is kinda cool from an artistic sense). Rather, it’s that it’s easy to add interactive elements to things we’re already creating for our clients, like outdoor.

Here’s the link, with a video showing the building in action.

Bonus link – other uses for QR codes.

Location-based social networking.

Today’s link is not just a web site. It’s a phenomenon. FourSquare.com is the leading example of a growing trend: location-based social networking.

FourSquare is essentially an ongoing game played around real-life locations using a smart phone.

The idea is that you earn points for checking in at whatever location you’re in – your favourite coffee shop, the library, wherever. You earn more points for leaving tips for others and for exploring new locations in your city. Check in enough times at the same location and you become the mayor of that location for the week.

Why would anyone do this? Bragging rights, for one. Think about why graffiti artists tag a building – other graffiti artists see the tag and know who was there. (It may interest you to know that, as far as FourSquare is concerned, our own Gavin Wiggins is the mayor of JWT Toronto this week).

More importantly – and this is where relevance to our clients’ businesses come in – there are tangible benefits to playing the game. FourSquare has partnered with local retailers, bars, coffee shops etc where that week’s mayor gets a discount or something for free. And Harvard University has started using FourSquare as part of their new student orientation.

The thing to think about is the opportunity that FourSquare represents: rewarding customer loyalty based on social behavior is another way to engage with a savvy consumer segment. Imagine the buzz and the number of potential extra visits a Tim Horton’s location might generate if they announced each week’s FourSquare mayor gets a free coffee. Or if the Wal-Mart electronics section ran a FourSquare-based promotion.

Right now we’re looking at how we can take advantage of social networking behavior for an online contest we’re developing for Crush and their young, mobile-phone-using target audience.

But the bottom line on FourSquare is that the technology it uses is less relevant than what it’s based on: how people behave. And that’s something we all know very well.

Here’s their site.

And how they speak to businesses.

Bonus links: what others are saying about FourSquare.

Harvard – foursquare partnership.

Adage’s take.

Mashable’s take.

Blogs.

There’s been talk lately around the benefits of including blogs into the communications mix.

As with the facebook pages we linked to in December, blogs are relatively low cost – the cost comes in the form of the time commitment required to maintain them.

Like any other medium, blogs work when they’re a relevant part of an overall strategy and when they provide a reason to visit often, with content that engages or provides news.

This week’s good examples are from General Motors and Southwest Airlines. Both blogs go way beyond boring press releases. And both have multiple contributors, making it easy to keep current with a minimum of effort on any one individual’s part. Are they part of a specific ad campaign? No, but one can see how they could contribute to a campaign, with specific posts, videos, links, contests etc.

Social Media: Facebook.

We’ve all heard how important this social media thing is to advertisers these days. And it’s not hard to see why.

Take facebook, for example. Every brand’s target audience is already there. Setting up a facebook page is relatively low cost (the cost comes in the form of time required to keep your page current) and the participatory nature of facebook means fans themselves help spread the word, which is free advertising. And as we all know, engaged consumers make the best customers – and facebook pages help generate more of such customers.

Still, you might well ask: why would anyone become a fan of some big company’s facebook page? Here are three of our competitors who have the answer.

Red Bull (over 2 million fans)
Red Bull uses their facebook page to, among other things, offer a pile of fun content that gives fans a reason to come back and play. Their drunkish dials (see their Boxes section) is a popular feature, and bang on to what their consumer likes about the brand.

Starbucks (over 5 million fans)
Starbucks uses the status update section of their facebook page to impart information and links to helpful articles, reviews, videos etc. Thus fans have an ongoing reason to return and stay involved with the company.

Coca Cola (over 5 million fans)
Sure, it’s loaded with content that keeps fans engaged with the brand. But the best part about this page? Coke didn’t create it. Two average guys did. The page became so popular that Coke found out about it and partnered with the two guys to make the page even better. The two guys still run it and even made a video that tells the story (it’s on the facebook page).

Incidentally, here at JWT Toronto we also have a facebook fan page success story. Our own Show Your Colours campaign effort for Smarties included a facebook fan page, as a vehicle through which people could express support for the overall campaign. In the space of one month the page grew by 80,000 fans.

Which only proves that facebook pages, like everything else we do, work best when they are driven by an idea that’s relevant to the consumer.

PS: If you’re interested in learning more about successful company facebook pages, here’s where I got the information for this week’s link.

Micro Sites.

One of the great things about digital media is that the same skills we already draw on for TV, print and other work also come into play in the interactive space.

Case in point, this week’s link: the “American flag of coal” micro site for Consol Energy, created by a combined team at the Brunner agency.

This could have been a pretty flat exercise. Instead, there’s an idea here that works both emotionally and functionally. And the site is loaded with video and bite-sized information (the agency even worked with a documentary film crew throughout the production process). As Homer Simpson would say, it teaches you as you learn.

Check it out by clicking on the big American flag of coal.