Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Tablet wars: iPad vs. JooJoo

Just when you were getting your hands on the first iPad, along comes JooJoo, which is created by start-up company Fusion Garage.

HP is also launching the Slate,  Dell has Streak 5 and Microsoft has the Courier.

iPad is the standard, of course, especially for those who love Apple’s OS (Operating Systems) and apps.

While iPad is more user-friendly and ties into the overall Apple family, JooJoo has a couple things that make it worth watching.

First, it bills itself as the “ultimate Internet experience” as opposed to iPad’s positioning as a reader.

JooJoo also emphasizes its speed, guaranteeing Internet connect in 9 seconds or less.

But for pharma companies looking to take existing web and digital content to tablet, there is a huge difference.  Apple products don’t allow for use of Adobe’s Flash product, which shows motion on websites.  And that doesn’t figure to change anytime soon, as Apple’s Steve Jobs has said that Apple will “never” allow Flash to be used in Apple devices.

So, if your digital assets are in Flash, and you  want to move to iPad (vs. the other tablets) you’ll have to be fluent in how to redesign them.  If you aren’t willing to incur that expense, the other tablets will be of interest.

The JooJoo’s browser supports Adobe’s Flash technology and Java, which is Oracle (formerly Sun’s)  programming language on the Web.  Apple’s iPad does not.

JooJoo can access many more Web-based applications and features than the iPad and it’s easier to watch movies on sites using the JooJoo than the iPad.

JooJoo isn’t perfect.  It doesn’t allow you to store data locally, so you HAVE TO HAVE an Internet connection to listen to music, read a book or watch a video.

And JooJoo isn’t as sleek, or as friendly as the iPad, but is just as expensive … at least to start.

You can read a review here.

And here’s a simple video overview … JooJoo vs. iPad

mwallinger
Mark Wallinger | April 21st, 2010 | 0 Comments

Chatter? Blippy? I was just getting to know Twitter!

For those of you just getting used to Twitter, here comes Chatter, the newest “killer app” from Salesforce.com and Blippy, the Silicon Valley-based “what’s everyone buying” social play backed by venture capitalist River Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Will they rival Twitter? Read Full Entry

mwallinger
Mark Wallinger | April 20th, 2010 | 1 Comment

Five new roles marketers will be hiring for

Who has time for that?

It’s the social media objection heard across our industry.  Making an ongoing commitment to updates and interaction is daunting. Particularly in the face of already-overwhelming responsilbities and stretched resources.

As companies move from Phase 1 of social media experimentation (let the intern do it) to Phase 2 of social media adoption (let’s make a commitment to this), they’re finding that they need help.  All these new ways to connect are creating new opportunities and roles in the marketing department.

Although most marketing organizations are experimenting with these roles on an ad hoc basis right now, they’ll soon become tablestakes staffing for social brands.

Top five new jobs I predict companies will be hiring for in the next year:

  1. Content curator. Content is the currency of the social web. Content delivered to the right place at the right time. In a compelling voice. And, with a listening ear behind it.
    • What they’ll do: Be the daily voice of your brand on the social web.
    • Where they may be working now: Brand planner
  2. Community advocate. A brand’s social engagement cannot be led by one person alone. It’s an organizational commitment. One that changes our thinking about every interaction. The community advocate leads that change management cause and always asks: What do we hope people will say about that?
    • What they’ll do: Integrate social media into the fabric of your culture
    • Where they may be working now: Project manager with a high “get it” factor
  3. Conversation monitor. People will talk. The smart brands know how to listen. Not only to respond, but to gather valuable insight about how peoples’ needs are changing and what new brand opportunities that might represent.
    • What they’ll do: Listen broadly, synthesize crisply to make the social conversation actionable for your brand
    • Where they may be now: Focus group facilitator
  4. Engagement planner. Too often, social media plans become one ongoing brand act of kindness. We give away the coupons and ideas and access. And just hope it’s what people want. The engagement planner changes that paradigm – looking for ways to connect people with a brand, to start a multi-way conversation and bring back not just love, but investment.
    • What they’ll do: Answer the question: What do people want?
    • Where they may now: Product development
  5. Interaction designer. Millennials have a unique life experience that will change what they expect from entertainment and engagement. They grew up on games. Sophisticated, smart, highly-interactive games. Ones that distracted them; ones that taught them; ones that connected them. Leveraging that level of immersion and interation in digital marketing will require a new kind of designer.
    • What they’ll do: Develop interactive marketing with game mechanics
    • Where they may be now: Psychologists married to a game designers (or maybe just gamers)
lhouseholder
Leigh Householder, VP/Managing Director of Innovation Strategy | April 19th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Going digital: Cisco touts telemedicine

As if tablets, mobile, search and social media were not enough to have every pharma brand manager re-thinking their business, Cisco is now touting its new telemedicine.

While certainly not new, Cisco is just one player doing it; Intel and IBM are also getting into heathcare in big ways.

The reason?

A recent study from the analysts at Frost & Sullivan estimated that the telemedicine market will be $6.1 billion in 2012.

One obvious use for video technology is delivering medical services to remote places through the Internet, of course, but is that an opportunity to:

  1. sponsor the “broadcast”
  2. co-brand with GE, Intel, or IBM
  3. provide services at the patient end of the interaction
  4. re-think distribution channels
  5. broadcast HCP’s as “centers of excellence” to almost anywhere on almost any device

Is it the “You Tube-ization” of individual “celebrity” physicians as well? Maybe creating the next micro-Dr. Phil, who can then raise rates on individual hours (pre-booked and pre-paid for) without ever leaving the office.

Or could doctors embrace the “one-to-many” model and review dozens of patients virtually at once and have local support staff handle the “back end” of the interaction?

While it all might be theory, a $6 billion expectation means that high tech will continue to change things faster … for better or worse.

All food for thought.

You can read more about it here.

mwallinger
Mark Wallinger | April 16th, 2010 | 0 Comments

SXSW 2010 – HTML5, CSS3, geolocation and social health

2010 was a breakout year for the Interactive portion of SXSW. Attendance was up 33% from 2009 for Interactive alone. Since Twitter’s launch there in 2007 the industry has focused on this event to launch and tout new products and services directly to the audiences that can can make or break them. As a first time attendee I was energized by the excitement around the latest topics of HTML5, CSS3, geolocation and the birth of the consumer tablet.

These new technologies and platforms will drastically change how consumers view, participate and respond to brands digitally. It will also have a dramatic impact on the agencies that are paid to develop content and strategies for clients as there are a slew of new tools available to utilize these technologies faster and more efficiently than ever before.

HTML5 and CSS3 greatly expand the ability for designers to leverage typography, video content, enhanced interaction, robust navigation and Flash-like interactions all with a few simple lines of code. Just a few years ago the approach of build it once and deploy everywhere was just a dream, but HTML5 and CSS3 are quickly making the dream a reality. Modern browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Chrome have already adopted these technologies and proven their potential. Enough so that Microsoft finally fell in line and announced that IE 9 would be Web Standards compliant just like the competitors.

Geolocation also promises a lot of potential. With the ever increasing use of smart phones and the huge array of mobile tablet devices about to ship, users will expect content to be relevant not only to the type of device they are viewing it on but where they are when they view it. Google has new services available to anyone to take advantage of this approach while at the same time social networks Gowalla and Foursquare are defining how to leverage geolocation data to influence consumer behavior through gaming-type point rewards.

The future of Flash was also a major topic of discussion as these modern browsers can replicate similar functionality without the use of the Flash plug-in via new HTML elements called Canvas and HTML5 Video. This is a serious threat to Adobe’s monopoly on rich content delivery (specifically video) via the Web. The anti-Flash movement has also gained serious momentum with help from Apple through their lack of Flash support on the iPhone and recently released iPad.

But SXSW isn’t just geeking out on topics for developers and designers. One of the most energized sessions I attended was a small but intense discussion called ER 2.0, whose topics included how social media, sms and other technologies are being used in the healthcare environment. The audience was a mix of doctors, designers, healthcare providers and advertising agencies. The session is still going on now via Twitter with a list created by @EdBennett who led the session. You can participate or just listen in on the continued discussion found at #er20 on Twitter. Just send Ed a tweet asking to be added to the list to participate or just listen in. @PatrickKing also posted a great re-cap from a designers perspective here which I found very insightful for agency folk.

How all of these new technologies will be leveraged by healthcare in the long run is a big question that we can all help answer. Pharma companies will be looking to us for guidance on where to focus their efforts and which technologies to use for effective spends of their marketing dollars. It will be our job to connect the dots between these technologies so that they match up with strategic planning and consumer or HCP expectations. Looking forward vs. leaning on our existing ideas of what digital can do is going to be critical to a successful campaign or brand launch. We are at a place in time on the Web where the new frontiers these technologies afford us have yet to be explored in detail or practicality for the health industry. No longer will the digital disciplines be able to be outsourced to a team at the production end of an idea. It’s will all need to be interwoven from the onset to create the seamless end user experience that the Web of today demands.

scowan
Sean Cowan, VP Creative Director | April 15th, 2010 | 0 Comments
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