I was recently interviewed by Laura Rich, a digital media reporter, for an Advertising Age paper: Shiny New Things: What Digital Adopters Want, How to Reach Them and Why Every Marketer Should Pay Attention.

I recommend that you read the article as it presents many new angles and insights provided by professional researchers, marketers and early adopters (as Bill Tancer from Hitwise, Steve Rubel from Edelman, Robert Scoble, and many more).

I wish to further develop some of the points I suggested in the article:

Digital Adopters: what has changed?

Following the adoption of technologies in many consumer domains, a shift can be observed in the last few years in the segmentation and characteristics of early adopters. I tend to attribute this change to the wide and global adoption of the internet.
Technology is no longer the domain of a small minority of young male experimenters (previously known as “geeks”). It is now one of the main communication and business channels available. Consumers are no longer passive to new technology, but are fast learning – active producers.

Here are some evidences to the shift in the concept of early adopters:

• Technology is global: Asian and South American countries (considered as developing countries) are seen to adopt changes much faster than developed countries (follow their activity on social networks for instance)

• Gender differences are weaker than ever: Women are embracing new technologies.

• Adoption rates have shortened: from decades to years, from years to months (Facebook, iPhone).

• Social behavior and technology advancementare well combined: The first smartphone users are first to adopt social networks (Facebook, Twitter), to experiment with apps, to view TV via internet / mobile. (see PEW survey: 39% of internet users with 4+  internet-connected devices use Twitter) and next to use location based solutions.

The power of early adopters:

In the last five years, early adopters have received a stage to influence others. Social Media gave them the screen power.
Early social media users have grown to be the main influencers, and their influence is far beyond technology. They have become the new celebrities. As part of their positioning, they are expected to act as early adopters, much the same as celebrities are needed to keep updated with fashion.

What should marketers consider when marketing to early adopters?

Early adopters are physically easier to reach but now much harder to “buy”. Most of the brands (and Apple is one big exception) have lost their attractiveness. Brands that can provide early adopters a good reason why – will have a chance to influence. It’s all about proven value.

If early users will find your product handy – they will be willing to spread it. Otherwise – they will not hesitate to share their real thoughts.
I suggest you will follow one of the first Coca Cola initiatives in the social media domain. They choose Brazil as their beta site and sent bloggers a free gift. We named it “Rent a blog strategy” which obviously failed…

Marketers definitely need to learn and understand the new social norms shared by early adopters.

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“2010 Mobile Influencers” is the sixth and last report from the series “2010 Influencers Series: Trend Predictions in 140 Characters“.

Findings: Major trends in 2010 Mobile:

Across many of these predictions, we have identified the following trends suggested to influence Mobile in 2010:

# Payment      # Commerce      #Metrics

# Advertising:  networks,  SMS, display, search, premium

# Smartphones: Apple, Apps, iPhone, Google, Android

# GPS      # Location      # Augmented Reality

# Gaming      # Music      # Video

I wish to thank all experts who participated in the 2010 Influencer Series, and submitted their insightful prediction tweets.

Many thanks to the TrendsSpotting team, and most to Apurba Sen, Nizan Malkit, Aviv Sher, and Yotam Shochat who made it all possible in such a short time.

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“2010 Tech and IT Influencers” is the third report from the series “2010 Influencers Series: Trend Predictions in 140 Characters“.

Findings: Major trends in 2010 Tech and IT:

Across many of these predictions, we have identified the following trends suggested to influence Tech in 2010:
@Clouds – free, private, public, green, data, identity
@Mobile – apps, store, iPhone, Android, Location (AR)
@Netbooks – cheap notebooks / smartphones, Google
@eBooks – Amazon, apps
@Social – enterprise, computing

TrendsSpotting Market Research is now running its third annual prediction reports following major trends in six categories. We will be featuring the predictions of digital and marketing experts on the big changes awaiting us in the coming year.
This year we are adopting a new “tweet style” format, easier for you to focus on, comprehend and forward.

Already released from the Trend Prediction Influencers Series:

@2010 Social Media (published also at NYTimes / RWW, Mashable, Examiner)

@2010 Consumer Trends.

@2010 Tech and IT.

@2010 Online Marketing.

@2010 Online Video.

@2010 Mobile.

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Google Latitude or other location based applications working through mobile phones can let you track your kids whereabouts during Halloween.   Aside from tracking, many of those applications can be used (note privacy concerns) for sharing the Halloween experience. Locations of retailers selling costumes and decorations can also be found by using applications as Poynt. To improve the Halloween experience, Zillow.com, have created a Trick or Treat Housing Index, which presents the top-five neighborhoods to maximize candy harvesting. The index uses four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population density, Walk Score, and local crime data. Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least walking, and minimal safety risks. Follow the index for top five neighborhoods in SF, LA, Seattle, Chicago and Boston.

To further improve kids safety,  “Offender Locator” (iTunes Link) which works with Blackberry and iPhone, tracks sex offenders on your trick or treating route. The app provides you with a list of offenders based on their proximity to the location given. You can get information as names, pictures, age, height, weight and the specific sexual crime they were charged with.

LBS (Location Based Services) is a market predicted to grow (according to Gartner – LBS subscribers are forecast to grow from 41.0 million in 2008 to 95.7 million in 2009 while revenue is anticipated to increase from $998.3 million in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2009). Gartner suggests that North America is the largest market due to mobile carriers’ strong efforts in navigation services and family-safety solutions.

I find Halloween as a good example for the conflict introduced by LBS technology systems: The need to share experiences and learn about friends locations comes in contrast to safety measures. The same system that gives you more control, is the one to danger your privacy.

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Google’s power lies in knowledge. The knowledge of what people search for.
Google shares some of this knowledge as it updates their tool – Google
Insights for Search .
With a posteriori examination of historical trends – it suggests a basic
model for predicting the next search trends.
We can now improve the understanding of consumer behavior in variety of
markets and geographical locations.

How does that work?

On many search trends queries, conducted on the Google insight for Search
website, you receive along with the historical data, a 12 month forecast. For good example search for  “iPhone“.

What’s behind Google’s forecasting model?

Google has characterized the predictability of a trends’ series based on its
historical performance. To do so they compared the discrepancy of forecasted trends, applied at some point in the past, to the trends’ actual performance. When the discrepancy between the forecasted trends and the actual trends is smaller than a predefined threshold, Google denotes the trends query as predictable.

Google’s research observations:

- Over half of the most popular Google search queries were found predictable in 12 month ahead forecast, with a mean absolute prediction error of approximately 12% on average. That means that nearly half of the most popular queries are not predictable.

- High predictable categories: Health (74%), Food & Drink (67%) and
Travel (65%).

- Low predictable categories: Entertainment (35%) and Social Networks &
Online Communities (27%).

- To earn more predictable indications – best to search for trends of
aggregated queries (”all categories” option): 88% of the aggregated category
is predictable with a mean absolute prediction error of less than 6% on
average. The larger the aggregation set is, the smaller would be the
variability of the aggregated time series

- There is a clear association between the existence of seasonality
patterns and higher predictability, as well as an association between high
levels of outliers and lower predictability.

For the above summary results of the 10 categories, the correlation between
the Predictability and the Seasonality Ratio is r= 0.80 while the Deviation Ratio has a (negative) correlation of r= -0.94 with the Predictability.

While TrendsSpotting is working on a new research on US Recession Trends
(you are welcome to contact us for more information) – we have
observed such trends, where seasonality seems high and predictability can
be inferred. Take the trend search for “gift” as a good example for the seasonality effect:

In many of the consumer industries we have followed, the recession has
definitely distracted seasonality and made forecasting abilities more difficult: Refer to the search for “flight” for example.

Whats missing in Google Insights for Search?

1. As I have pointed out some  years ago – Google Trends Search gives you
relative search volume only (relative to the total number of searches done
on Google over time). It doesn’t represent absolute search volume numbers.
2. While Google does calculate forecast parameters – how about releasing
the data on seasonality and deviation for the specific search?

A Market Research perspective:

I welcome Google for sharing more trends search capabilities.
I personally met a few of the Google Trends team and highly appreciate their work.

Web search trends are very important for the understanding of consumer behavior. In the many years I have worked as a market researcher, I have always preferred direct methods to analyze consumer behavior.
Compare that to surveys – those can tell you mostly about intentions (far future), about previous actions (depending on good memory skills that respondents  don’t have..), and perceptions (but not in a natural manner where one freely chooses to express her/his feelings). Surveys can indeed provide some indications and estimations for behaviors but they lack the means to reflect consumers’ real behavior.
In the last years, web metrics as search trends, blog citations
tools, and social media monitoring tools have captured my full attention. As a Social Psychologist – I find them to be valuable tools in examining people’s natural behavior. TrendsSpotting (company and blog) is all about making sense of it all.

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Many of us perceive Twitter as a tool to monitor consumer behavior. As Twitter reflects the live streaming thoughts and needs of consumers – what can be more insightful for marketers than following the “must buy” products Twitter users tweet about.
We have generated a tag cloud for 24 hours cycle of tweets containing the actionable words “must have”. We have worked hard to clean irrelevant words and came up with the following shopping list:

You can see Twitter users tweet about their urge to buy tickets, books and games.  On the brands list we see:  iPhone, Ikea, Dell, Wii and iTunes. Most common products discussed are black and pink color.

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Just as Apple succeeded to light consumers’ enthusiasm once again with Apple’s tablet (Twitter tweets:  trend volume, mostly positive sentiments), Apple seems to be risking its well known reputation.

Since the launch of the iPhone, the Apple brand was influenced by negative attitudes towards AT&T, mostly for issues of connectivity and costs. Only thanks to its brands strength (high involvement among Apple’s fans, high emotional engagement, design and innovation credits) Apple’s brand image was protected.

It seems today this status quo might change as Google Voice service is getting pulled from Apple’s App Store. Reading the extremely negative posts and tweets (see some of the sentiments analysis here) I wonder if Apple is not risking too much.

Will social pressure work on Apple as it did for Facebook? or Digg?

Blocking Google seems a risky game even for Apple’s fans. Don’t you think?

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It’s almost the time to review Android . We reported earlier that Google’s announcement on Android raised lots of doubts & ambiguity over the web. Moreover this much touted “iPhone 2.0″ competitor demonstrated relatively low effect on web.

Last September T-Mobile launched the world’s first Android-powered mobile phone in partnership with Google & recently the software giant expected that around 18-20 phones from 8-9 manufacturers on the market worldwide will be based on the Android operating system.

Riding on the hype Android’s US market share on mobile OS surpassed 6%, its application store hosted around 5,000 applications (in comparison to Apple’s 50,000-plus) until this happened at the Computex Taipei electronics show in May 2009 :

Gartner announced Android running on devices was “snappy” & stopped endorsing the platform saying that Android is a work-in-progress. However, backed by the strong Google brand Android may be an alternative to Windows in Netbooks.

We have attempted to put in place the evidences for the hype cycle curve for Android & in the absence of a perfect measure we have relied on proxies to derive the Y axis of the cycle as ‘Expectations’ -more precisely the red trend line describes the summation of “shared interest indicator” & “market share”. We used Google Trends (US search volume) as an indicator of shared interest & Android’s OS share in US market as an indicator of market penetration & real progress.

So what can be learned from this Android graph and its “Expectation” measure ? Android appears to have had a plateaued growth to the peak of inflated expectations – followed by a quick fall since May end when its mobile OS market share nosedived to less than 1%. Possibly that’s an indication of Android approaching the trough of disillusionment.

Research firm Strategy Analytics have previously suggested that Android will be running on about 12% of global smartphones by 2012. Another estimates from IDC suggests that netbook shipments will grow from 11.4 million in 2008 to 22 million in 2009, a potentially massive growth area for Android.

Will Android find its slope of enlightenment & subsequently its plateau of productivity via netbooks growth (or smartphones) that remains to be seen, possibly when we revisit this trend again in future.

More on Gartner Hype cycle here.

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Introduction:

QR codes used as mobile tagging has started in Japan (2003) and since are  implemented in several fields of mobile marketing world wide. As marketing applications their uniqueness stems from their Quick Response orientation which allows customers to access real time information.

The QR code process:

Mobile users, taking a picture of the code or reading it with their cameras,  trigger an action leading to content download, a message or link.

QR Codes – Trends Review:

QR codes are offering endless marketing opportunities. Today – with the remarkable growth of mobile and smart phones – this potential can be easily implemented.

Follow the trend as it grow: see the rise in interest through Google search – world wide (since 2007) and in the US (since mid 2008).

Taking advantage of local targeting, mobile users (provided with a good motivation) can be directed to your brand ads and messages. You can bring your targets to a remarkable real time action, engaging with the brand and leading them to purchase. Moreover, QR codes embedded on packaged goods can provide information previously limited by space (ingredients, features,  recommendations etc.) As such it is an excellent real time marketing tool for retail.

Brands utilize QR codes in their marketing campaigns:

December 2005: Northwest Airlines advertising campaign (Tokyo’s streets and subways)

June 2008:  Adidas

November 2008:  Pepsi Max

May 2009: Coca-Cola Japan QR Code promotion (at vending machines)

June 2009: Speed Stick

Games:

Many games are using the QR codes to achieve a connection between location and information (location based games). In this direction, many urban games are being developed (for example: QR-Kill)

Television and movies:

• CSI New York featured QR code technology in the plot.
• Fox Searchlight Pictures were using QR Codes in its poster campaign for the about to be released ‘Notorious’

Music:

• The Pet Shop Boys featured QR codes embedded in their “Integral” video.
• iCandy – QR codes application that connects you to iTunes, Amazon, or Rhapsody.  With iCandy bands can now create merchandise (flyers, t-shirts, cards) which link directly to bands homepage or to their music.
• QR Code posters advertising UK dance music producer Grum are appearing all over North London.

Fashion:

• Instant Digital Window Shopping from Ralph Lauren Rugby
• The Lendorff Kaywa QR scarf
• SuitYourself – a fashion shopping application

Tourism:

The local information demand holds a promise for tourist initiatives. Have a look at Japan’s & Paris tourist maps, American Airlines boarding passes, playing cards as an aid for tourists in planning their tour (Japan).

QR codes and Education:

QR codes technology was already adopted for education purposes as teaching the periodic table of chemical elements, acquaintance with materials etc.

The Future of QR Codes:

TrendsSpotting believes that QR codes, as any other technology to trigger  information solutions for real time demand, will become popular and mainstream as the traditional bar code. Brands investigating this potential will learn the importance of location based needs and real time information. Here, sky is the limit.

————————————–

Comments:

1. It has been suggested that the iPhone’s low quality camera misses the potential of QR codes. Any idea if iPhone’s new models can improve this option?

2. To follow QR code news – we recommend 2d-code.co.uk. Also – have a look at Set (Japanese design agency specializing in QR codes branding).

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A recent online survey conducted in behalf of PopCap Games by Information Solutions Group among more than 1,100 AT&T wireless customers (ages 18+), reveals the growing popularity of mobile gaming.

Still, looking at the figures – paid games on mobile seem as an early stage market:

1. Most mobile gamers (76%) said they had played free games that came pre-installed on their phone, and a third indicated they had downloaded one or more free games to their phone. Only 24% of mobile gamers had ever paid for a game.

2. Mobile gamers who have purchased one or more mobile games have on average purchased a total of 7.2 mobile games.  26% said they’d purchased four or more games in the past year.

3. One third (32%) of all mobile gamers said they were “somewhat or very likely” to purchase a game for their cell phone in 2009.

4. Only 17% of mobile gamers consider their mobile phone to be their primary device for playing video games.

Unfortunately, no results were presented for smart phone gamers as a separate group. I believe that for those the market potential can be much more promising.

Here are the survey results in details: Continue reading Mobile Paid Games – still an Early Stage Market: US Online Survey

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