In the four months since its release, the Apple iPad continues to loom large in the tablet market while other manufacturers try to play catchup. In that short time, it is interesting to see how many magazines have been quick to use the iPad to reinvent themselves. Unlike websites and mobile phones, the iPad has shown great promise in translating the book reading experience to the digital forum. Together with the rich content of a print publication, the ever-changing immediacy of a website, and the portability of an e-book reader, the arrival of the iPad represents unrealized potential for the magazine industry.

Storytelling Reimagined
For the first time, both editorial and information design have the opportunity to benefit from a richer narrative experience that can now include 360-degree product views, non-linear navigation, video, sound and the ability to share topics of interest (to name a few).

Only a few short weeks ago (still, a dog’s age in the digital realm) Flipboard introduced the iPad’s first aggregated, personal magazine platform. For those who want the dedicated magazine experience, Flipboard offers up pre-selected partner content. The real breakthrough is that a proportional amount of emphasis is placed on social media. With a double tap, your Facebook and Twitter content is formatted in the same way as the magazine partner content, with rich media links available at-a-glance (or tap).

Distribution
Look no further than the influence iTunes has had on the music industry to understand why publishers are quick to recognize what a marriage between iTunes and iPad could mean. Distributing content digitally in any form offers a big savings over print, and more importantly creates another level of accessibility not yet seen before in the magazine industry.

What’s Old is New Again
As magazines establish themselves with more content, the back-issue will be more accessible than it has ever been. In the ink-and-paper world, a magazine has a 1-month shelf-life, whereas the digital version could potentially exist for decades. And, with social media extensions permeating how this content gets shared, the life cycle of things gets exponentially longer. Going back to the Flipboard example, articles are accompanied by a panel that shows referring Tweets.

Advertising
When it comes to advertising, the iPad format will create a whole new range of opportunities beyond the traditional online ad. Rich media ads within digital magazines will have the potential to engage a targeted demographic while offering more interesting and beneficial content than the traditional printed page.

We’re turning the digital page into a whole new forum for mobile entertainment and utility. It’ll be interesting to see how it  forces lateral thinking from content providers, who now have to anticipate how many different ways people can consume information in one place.

As the demand for tablets grow, and the devices themselves become more ubiquitous, will the traditional printed magazine stand the test of time? Or, will they go the way of vinyl records?

After accidentally smashing my iPhone 3GS to smithereens on Thursday, I decided to spend last weekend technology free. And by technology free, I really mean Internet free. It was a bold experiment I have tried previously without success. It seems that something always comes up. Work. New iPad. Whatever.

With the sudden absence of my iPhone, I thought THIS was the weekend to do it. I told my wife. She laughed sarcastically, obviously used to my good intentions that never amount to anything.

So Friday at 5:30 p.m. I shut off. Shut down. Disconnected. Radio silence.

By 5:31 p.m. I was already suffering withdrawal. What was going on out there? Gawd, I wanted to check Twitter. Facebook. I wanted to log on to Beejive. What if a B-list celebrity died? Is there some new viral thing everyone is laughing about? I wouldn’t find out until Monday!!!

“Hello. My name is Jon Finkelstein and I am an iDouche.”

It was crazy hard. But I was determined NOT to connect with anything digital/screen based for two whole days. My laptop was there, deadly black. My iPhone was in the drawer, tempting me. Every moment of silence, every second I wasn’t doing something else, my mind wandered to Facebook, email, etc. On more than one occasion I reached into my pocket for my phone only to find it empty. I have become a serious multi-tasker. Never satisfied doing one thing at a time, never fully enjoying each moment. I think this is wrong.

When I went out to the park with my kids, I found myself looking at the other dads, head down, thumbs-a-typing as their children called for their attention. I am (usually) one of those guys. I noticed couples doing the same thing at restaurants, favouring the screen over the face across the table. WTF?

During my unplugged weekend I learned some things.

1. I am not that important.
2. If people really need to contact me, they have my phone number.
3. By disconnecting, I allowed myself the opportunity to recharge a little more than I usually do. Which, in a way, made me more energetic on Monday.
4. B-list celebs don’t usually overdose on the weekend.

To say that advertising is a busy industry is putting it mildly. It’s fast. It’s service-oriented. And in order to succeed you have to work hard. Really hard. But in the process of developing my career, I think I have lost some of my ability to turn off and focus outside of the business. And I think that’s a loss. But is it lost forever?

Questions of privacy in the digital space are nothing new. But with the U.S. launch of the Shopkick app and Facebook’s Places platform this week, we may have new material to work with. In one camp, those who love blurring the boundaries between their online and real life behaviour. In the other, those who believe that the combination of Facebook Places’ third-party check-in system and Shopkick’s trackable shopping may have tipped the scales towards Minority Report-ville.

Have you bought your futuristic leather jacket yet? At the very least, you may want to work on your intense, Cruise-esque “game face of the future.”

Whereas existing location-based application games like Foursquare and Gowalla are limited to first-person check-ins to alert friends to your location, Facebook’s application has a third-party check-in system. Simply: if you happen to be in a location alongside one of your Facebook friends, they can post that you’re there too. The trouble is, you can’t really turn it off.

Instead of allowing users to opt-in to Places, Facebook has left the Places privacy settings unconfigured, meaning that users have to independently find the convoluted instructions for disabling it. Those this seems to be common practice when Facebook updates functionality, it has resulted in a rather politically heated discussion with The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who have criticized the fact that you have to manually manage each check-in alert with a “Yes” or a “Not Now” response. Notably, never a “Never.”

Naturally, applications that depend on (or are enhanced by) location-based data will also be able to access the information you or your friends share with Places. Facebook counters the privacy criticisms with an argument that sharing this data has the “potential […] to make really compelling social experiences.” If this is true, then Shopkick has buttered its own bread.

Shopkick rewards you with “kickbucks” simply for walking into a participating retailer (Best Buy and Macy’s are early and notable participants). Not only that, but it geotargets your behaviour IN THE STORE, handing you additional reward points for demonstrating physical intent to buy, such as heading towards a change room or the register. GPS isn’t accurate enough to get down to such a granular level, so targeting is achieved via an in-store device called, compellingly, “The Deducer.” Marvel, eat your heart out.

Marketers involved in Shopkick decry the privacy issue by claiming that the program is opt-in. It’s simply another incentive program, only you are your own loyalty card.

Though Places and Shopkick are, in fact, still opt-in to a degree, they do serve up consumer habits in a way that most people may be incapable of calculating. The question is, do we bother worrying about it? By downloading the Shopkick app, you are technically opting into a rewards program. By signing up for Facebook, you’re signaling a desire to be public with your information to a certain degree. So, to what extent are our curiosity and participation responsible for inviting the very policies that we may come to resent?

Do we only care about privacy issues if our participation results in personal drama or spam?

“When I’ve had my fun I will give my inventions to everybody. That way everyone can be super, and when everyone is super…no one will be.” - Syndrome (paraphrased)

Trevor is a young designer in his early 20s (I believe). He designs characters, logos, traditional media, and interactive. Trevor is a phenomenal illustrator. Trevor works at Henderson Bas as a designer. He does not code sites for a living.  But he could.

At age 14, Trevor built a website with a forum so he could play Counter-Strike (an addictive first-person shooter game) with his circle of online friends. Experiences like these, coupled with inherent understanding of the online world, mean that Trevor has second nature familiarity with PHP and front-end HTML. Possibly as much as someone twice his age entering the interactive workforce. Knowing, understanding, and engaging with the digital and social spaces is almost instinctual to those currently growing up in a developed country.

This shift has profound consequences to the current generation of digital professionals. Knowing the ins and outs of Facebook is common knowledge for 14-year-olds. Building, skinning, and maintaining CMS systems (such as WordPress) is something commonly done by young mothers.

To my mind, this begs one question: “What defines a digital professional when their skillset has become ubiquitous?”

The answer needs to be experience and expertise. It is up to those of us in the digital profession to take things to the next level. We need to invent new techniques and channels in the digital space. We need to take the knowledge we hold and apply it to the analog world. We need to think beyond the computer, or smart-phone screen, and apply that unique form of binary logic problem-solving to larger brand and global issues.

What we are striving to learn now will be common knowledge to the next generation. To remain relevant, we need to ensure that we have the creativity and insight to stay two steps ahead of ubiquity. Just as carpentry and building turned from an art form to a skilled trade, so too will the digital profession move from a theory-based creative profession to a skilled trade.

And while I would like to consider myself and my colleagues partial artists, in accordance with Marshall McLuhan’s comment that “advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.” Innovation is key if we want to keep it that way in the 21st.

Books are dead.

We’ve all heard it, or perhaps even said it, but the truth is this statement is as wrong as that photo of Carrot Top working out. (You know which one I’m talking about.) Books are far from dead. In fact, there are many bright minds out there working to find new ways to create even richer user experiences with them. Like the hybrid book by Mobile Art Lab in Japan that adds a new level to traditional storybooks. Simply drop in an iPhone and voilà! A great new way for parents to connect with their children:

Then there’s “Out Of The Box,” a hybrid book designed for Samsung to help the technologically challenged learn how to use their phone. (Where was this when my dad got his cell?)

This new breed of book is where traditional and interactive media truly converge. And the evolution has only just begun.

So… still think the digital age will see the death of the book?

A recent article on Tech Crunch boldly proclaims: “Advertising will fail.” Written by Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the main argument hinges on the idea that the Internet’s participatory nature is fundamentally undermining what we know as advertising.

I agree that the Internet is participatory, however Clemons’s base premise is flawed. Here it is:

“Advertising is using sponsored commercial messages to build a brand and paying to locate these messages where they will be observed by potential customers performing other activities; these messages describe a product or service, its price or fundamental attributes, where it can be found, its explicit advantages, or the implicit benefits from its use.”

Clearly, Prof. Clemons has not read “The digital why,” where I argued that in the digital space, you need to create value for the consumer to interact with your brand.

Advertising is not dead. It’s not dying. It’s in a state of evolution. Advertising will endure. Here’s why:

1) Advertising is full of smart people.
Adverting is not an industry for the dim-witted. Every day, regardless of your specific role in this business, you are faced with a unique set of problems and challenges. Every day you need to come up with strategic and creative solutions to these issues. Advertising counts among its numbers some of the world’s greatest linguists, artists, strategists, and technologists. All of them explore and learn about the channels available to them, and use them in new and exciting ways. One of these smart people is Dondy Razon. Dondy is ACD at Nurun, here in Toronto. One of the things he is doing is changing the focus of the advertising they do for their customers:

“What if we made ideas that make life easier, that teach and inspire, that give people control of what they experience?”

We call it digital platforms, he calls it digital utility. Which brings me to my second point …

2) Advertising is not just TV anymore.
Good advertisers and agencies know that the Internet is participatory. Armed with that knowledge, they come up with solutions that fit.

Social media is being used by brands to have meaningful conversations with their customers. In that venue they can get instant feedback, and promote their products and services in increasingly human and genuine ways.

Other advertisers create branded content, like the Old Spice guy. Smart marketers are starting to realize that on the net, advertising doesn’t subsidize entertainment – it is the entertainment.

Digital utilities/platforms support a product, service or brand in a way that is useful to the consumer. Nike+, for example, is a run-tracking program that lives online. With a pair of Nike shoes and a $30 Apple sensor you can track almost all relevant information about your runs, and share it with other runners in the community. It is an incredibly robust tool that has one final objective: to sell more shoes.

3) Channels don’t die, they evolve.
When radio came out, print was supposed to die. When TV came out, radio was supposed to die. When the inter-webs were born, TV was supposed to die. The reality is with every new medium, or adjustment to a medium, new tools become available to advertisers. Advertising, being full of smart people, will find new and exciting ways to use all of these channels to solve the business problems of the brands they represent. And it will work.

I’ve seen quite a few articles and videos talking about the end of advertising. Most of them are based on false premises. Here’s another one: “The Information Management program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania teaches outdated concepts.” Therefore, Prof. Clemons is grossly misinformed.

A new book by David Kirkpatrick called The Facebook Effect landed in stores last week. I haven’t read it (yet) but the New York Times, in its review, excerpted a paragraph that caught my attention:

“Members of Facebook’s radical transparency camp, Zuckerberg included, believe more visibility makes us better people. Some claim, for example, that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.”

So, what does everyone think? Will social media exposure make us better people?

Want to compose a piece of music? Want the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra to play your composition? Click here.

“Sounds of Hamburg” is an amazing (though sluggish to load) project that truly engages music lovers and, arguably, potential tourists. Using live-cam motion tracking, the experience employs web cams, broadcasting live from various parts of the city, to compose classical music in real time.

You select different zones on the picture. Add different instruments to your zones. Every time someone or something passes that zone a sample plays (laid down by the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, no less).

Two brands – the city and its orchestra – merged into one wonderful, innovative and highly addictive experiment.

Enjoy.

p.s. Kudos to agency Jung von Matt/Alster for their brilliance.

Welcome to Part 3 in our series on “How to be Social.” Part 1 covered the basic rules of social interaction for brands. Part 1.5 looked at a recent incident where a brand didn’t follow the rules, and the consequences of that decision. Part 2 was an intro to Twitter. Today we tackle Facebook.

Just as Twitter is complex in its simplicity, Facebook is simple in its complexity. I am not going to go through all the feature sets for Facebook. There is far too much to explain everything in detail, from groups, events, developer tools, inboxes (inboxi?) and updates to Farmville. Yet in all its complexity, Facebook is so simple to use, that even your mom has an account. The reason is status updates, which I will get to in a moment.

Like Twitter, Facebook is a microblogging platform. Unlike Twitter, the relationship between you and the audience is much more personal. Let’s start with an average user . . . me.

I have a relatively modest 198 friends on Facebook. I know all 198 people personally. Are all of them REALLY friends? No. Maybe a quarter of my Facebook friends would I consider real friends, and maybe 10-20 would be close friends. The rest are acquaintances, colleagues, and former classmates. But the one thing all of these people have in common is that they are people who, for one reason or another, I want to remain in contact with to varying degrees. Colleagues and friends for their opinions, classmates for nostalgic reasons, etc.

Here are some of the basic parts of Facebook:

Status Updates: Status updates are little posts users make. Unlike Twitter, the post can exceed 140 characters. Also, any significant action you take on Facebook will likely result in a status update. If you post a link, photo, or video, it will show up as a status update.

The Wall: Your wall is a collection of your interactions on Facebook. If you make a status update, it shows up on your wall, and in your and your friends’ news feed. If you upload a picture, or video, it will appear on your wall. Lastly, friends can leave little messages for each other by writing on each other’s wall.

Tags: Tagging generally occurs on photos that a user and their friends are in, however, when you make any post, or upload content (photos or video) you can tag your friends. Tagging someone will notify them that this content is of interest to them.

Fan pages: Brands, celebrities, politicians and side-dishes can all set up fan pages. Fan pages are like user profiles for companies and organizations. Instead of becoming a friend of a brand, people become fans. Fans of a brand will receive status updates from the brand in their news feed.

We all communicate with each other, for the most part, through status updates. Status updates are micro posts that any user can make, and anyone who is a friend of that user can comment on the status. If you are a “friend” of a user, their status will show up in you news feed. The news feed is an aggregation of all your friend’s status updates. As you can imagine, the news feed can get quite cluttered, especially if you are friends with a Farmville addict. So Facebook conveniently splits the news feed into two categories. “Most Recent,” which is every status update from all of your friends, and “Top News” which is news that Facebook feels is most relevant to you based on your interests, interactions with that user (or engagements) and if the status is active (has a lot of comments).

Comments = Community
So this is what separates Facebook from other social media platforms. The commenting mechanism allows a user’s friends to join in on a thought or conversation. Multiple people can comment on someone’s status (or photo, or video). If you comment on a status, and then someone else comments on the status, you will be notified. Just as if you make a status update, and someone comments on it, you will be notified. The result is a series of small conversations, stories and debates that unfold in people’s news feeds and on their walls. These conversations are powerful social interactions. Even the simplest comment on someone getting a hair cut or not being able to sleep, so they write an article about Facebook, turns into a real conversation, and connections between friends can really be felt.

EQ
Facebook, beyond other social media platforms is capable of creating an emotional connection between users. This, in my opinion, is the reason for Facebook’s success. As our lives become busier and more complex, our desire to be connected to people and places still needs to be met. Facebook provides a convenient venue for us to do so. But people don’t just want to be connected to people, places, and events, but brands as well.

Acquisition
The first thing a brand needs to do after setting up their page is acquire fans. One way to do this is through promotions. At the risk of being accused of navel gazing, a great example of a Facebook promotion was one of Grip’s own for the summer launch of Bud Light Lime. When Bud Light Lime was being introduced to Canada, they wanted to generate a brand following even before the beer was going to be available. What we did was set up a Facebook fan page and application. In this application, a user would start a virtual party. They would then encourage their friends to RSVP to their party. If a party’s RSVP list grew to 300 people or more, that party would be entered into a draw for you and all your guests to host the real party. In order to enter, you had to become a fan of Bud Light Lime. This promotion generated more than 80,000 fans.

Another way to acquire fans as a brand is through altruism. Starbucks does a great job of this. The mission statement on their fan page is this: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” That being said, their techniques do boil down to promotion, but in a different way.

Here’s a good and recent example: Starbucks has an ongoing promotion geared to not only sell more coffee, but to save them money and forests all at the same time. Buy a travel mug, get 10 cents off of your coffee purchases. On their Facebook page they promoted a one-day event where if you brought in your travel mug, you got a free coffee. All in the name of making a difference. Starbucks has more than 144,000 fans in Canada. That is a lot of brand stewards.

Side note: Starbucks continues to impress me with their social media policies and business practices. They do not hide the fact that they are trying to make money, but they are also actively trying to make money in increasingly more socially conscious ways. They also have a candor with their brand stewards that consistently feels genuine. In the world of social media, this is a powerful advantage.

Engagement
So you have a bunch of fans. Now what? This is a question a lot of marketers ask themselves. Especially after a successful promotion. The answer is to engage and mobilize. Engagement is keeping a dialogue with your fans. There are several ways to do this, the most obvious way is again through status updates. Making regular status updates on your brand page can spark conversation among your fans. Your fans will also post things to the brand wall. It is very important to contribute to these conversations in a meaningful way. Whether it’s sharing the brand’s opinion on events, or commenting on the posts that fans make on the wall. These interactions need to be genuine, which is hard to fake. Brands that have a successful fan page should always have an engagement manager that has a real interest in the brand, product and community. This will ensure maximum engagement. Strong engagement equals strong stewards.

Mobilization
Now you have an engaged group of brand stewards. These stewards will be more likely to be long time customers, and be great brand advocates. So how do we mobilize them? Stay tuned for Part 4. :D